Bias vs. Point of View
It’s Okay to Have an Opinion. Really.
Fourth in a series
“Opinions,” the vulgar like to say, “are like @$$holes. Everybody’s got one.” As with everything vulgar, the implication is that opinions are every bit as nasty as the thing to which they are being compared. That’s the point of vulgarity: to sully, to make dirty. To show one’s superiority through one’s contempt for, well, everything. It’s nihilistic and dark. Everything and everyone, and all of their opinions, are no more than $#!t.
What’s remarkable is not how many people say this, but how many people believe it.
There are non-vulgar, but still nihilistic, ways of expressing the same contempt. One of these, wielded daily on social media, is the relentless accusation of bias. You’re biased, therefore your opinion is of no value. The accusation is of course flung at newspapers and news channels, and that’s fair game because those are, to one degree or another, journalistic organs whose ostensible purpose is to be as unbiased as possible. But accusing a person of bias is far more perilous. If the person cited is not a journalist, why should they be expected to adopt journalistic standards? Unless the point is not to stomp out bias but to stomp out an opposing opinion.
This is not to say that there’s no such thing as bias — there certainly is. Whole websites exist to rate the level of bias of various news media, and an infographic of these levels is a perennial favorite in social media posts and tweets. These are excellent and valuable efforts, but again, these are measurements of journalistic organs.
An individual with hardened, inflexible opinions, whose belief in their own ideology is more important than their dedication to truth, is indeed biased, and dangerously so. And, no surprise, very often the people complaining of others’ biases are themselves the most biased. That’s the fault-line of ingrained bias: the bias becomes your truth, and everything else gets measured against it — and, usually, found lacking. Since it becomes unimaginable that your truth is not everyone’s truth, then the people expressing a different idea must be lying. Because, of course, they’re biased.
But there is a difference between bias and a point of view. One is to be avoided, the other is unavoidable, and there’s just as much danger in suppressing a point of view as there is in propagating a bias. “Use all gently,” as Hamlet would say.
Twelve Angry Men
In his largely-excellent book Winning Arguments, Professor Stanley Fish takes aim at Reginald Rose’s play and film script for “Twelve Angry Men” — lambasting it for the playwright’s bias while simultaneously indulging a bias of his own. In Rose’s classic script, a jury of twelve random men, referred to almost exclusively by their Juror Numbers, ponder the fate of a young man accused of murder, with the death penalty on the line. Initially, eleven of the jurors are prepared to vote guilty, but one lone juror — played in the film by Henry Fonda — isn’t convinced. Over the course of the script he manages, by force of argument, to win over all the other jurors and obtain a verdict of not guilty.
Prof. Fish’s argument is that “[t]he play is a master class in the art of slanting a narrative and stacking the rhetorical deck.” As he explains it, “Those in favor of conviction say things that are easily traced back to motives no one wants to acknowledge. It’s a liberal setup, with all the pumps primed to deliver the requisite audience sympathy….” But there are two problems with this argument. First, it’s factually incorrect — the final juror holding out to the very end, played in the film by E.G. Marshall, is not motivated by racism or rage or laziness, he is the ideological opposite of Fonda’s character: cool, rational, engaged, searching in his own way for truth, but for almost the entirety of the script he comes down on the other side of the verdict until finally he is persuaded by pure reason. The second problem with Prof. Rose’s analysis is a larger one, and it has everything to do with the question of bias vs. point of view.
A play is not journalism, and a playwright who strives to remain strictly neutral on an idea would produce a very dull play. S/he should certainly strive for balance — as Rose clearly does in “Twelve Angry Men” — but in the end, there is and must be a strong point of view. The great works always have a point of view: “Romeo and Juliet,” for instance, is not simply a romantic tragedy, it’s set against the background of a political street squabble between the families Montague and Capulet. If not for that conflict, Romeo and Juliet would have pursued their romance more or less unhindered.
You Should Write That
A playwright often hears a common complaint about their work. It comes from an audience member who thinks the underlying idea behind the play is a good one but really wishes the playwright had done something different with it. My response to that criticism has always been the same: “That sounds great. You should write that.” Because often, this criticism is essentially an accusation of bias, an accusation that we didn’t say what someone wishes we had said.
But playwrights write what is in us to write, and if it’s not what you wish had been written, you have complete freedom to fill that gap in your own way. That’s how ideas spread and bounce against each other and, over time, create the Socratic ideal: the synthesis, the new idea, generated from the clash of the old ideas. The same is true for opinion/essay writers, like most of the people writing for Medium. If you think their subject is interesting but you don’t like the point of view which they approached, well, terrific. You write your version. There’s plenty of room for both treatments of the idea.
In the same way, an individual is completely entitled to their own point of view, and if your point of view is different, that’s great too. That’s the beginning of dialogue. But you should always be careful that when you charge someone with bias, you’re not motivated by mere annoyance at a different point of view.
Telling the Difference
Here are two examples, taken from the various reactions to the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th:
Point of View: Most of the protesters who marched to Capitol Hill were peaceful and intended no harm, and it’s perilous to write off their point of view because of the actions of the few who were violent. Those people, the violent ones, should absolutely be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But the rest of them have something to say, and we should listen to it. (For the record, that’s not an accurate statement of my own point of view, it’s just an example.)
Bias: The whole thing was a false flag event staged by Antifa. (Definitely not my point of view at all.)
The first example is a reasonable position that invites further discussion. The second ignores all the available evidence and is not useful in any way. It’s important to note the crucial distinction: a point of view is an essential element of argumentation, whereas bias is intended to shut down argumentation. Someone who is biased has no interest in engaging in discussion, they only want to bludgeon you with their opinion — it’s an expression of dominance, an act of intellectual violence.
And often, the people most obedient to their biases are the ones who rush to accuse others of bias. The aim is, again, to assert their dominance by prematurely shutting off any contrasting opinions. Bias has no need of external input, it is self-fulfilling, self-executing, self-sufficient. Bias is perhaps the ultimate symbol of this age of selfishness. In a world of I Me Mine, bias is the final eternal act of self-centeredness.
Avoiding Your Own Bias
But of course bias can be tricky. It’s easy to miss the moment when your point of view hardens into the concrete of bias. There are a few simple things you can do to keep yourself from sliding into that abyss.
First, do a little homework. If you read an article where someone is making big assertions but never links to any sources, that’s a giant clue that there’s bias afoot. It can be harder to do this if you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone, but if it’s family for instance, there’s no reason why you can’t ask to table the discussion for a little while so you can go look something up.
Second, if your research leads you to a thought you haven’t yet explored, explore it. This is a matter of simple fairness, and is probably the surest way to guarantee that you avoid bias. If you tend toward liberal opinions, for example, but find a conservative writer who makes a point you hadn’t considered, then you need to consider it. It doesn’t matter if, after working the idea around for a while, you end up at your original opinion again, because odds are you enriched your understanding of the subject in the process. You deepened your point of view, and avoided bias.
And finally, ask yourself questions. Play a little point/counter-point game in your head. Imagine yourself in a conversation with someone with a contrary opinion and be your own devil’s advocate. It’s yet another way of enriching your understanding of an idea, and perhaps it will lead you to a new version of the idea that becomes your new, non-biased opinion.
No doubt, this way is harder. Of course it is. Bias is the easiest kind of opinion there is, which is key to its ubiquity. It’s lazy, sloppy, selfish thinking, and it’s a huge component to our seeming inability to get along with each other. It’s harder to do the research, to explore new ideas, to challenge yourself with contrasting opinions. But that’s how truth is found, and there are no short-cuts. If you think the public conversation is dominated by unproductive bias, if you think we’re arguing ourselves to death, the solution starts with you. Do the harder thing, take the higher road. There are no short-cuts to truth, and those who tell you there are, are almost certainly lying to you.
NEXT: Part Five, “From Both Sides Now (Side A)”
PREVIOUSLY: Part Three, “Unite and Conquer”
