If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.
The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.
Sent-ts’an
From the vantage point of the non-doer, during this Year of Nothing I became much better at detecting the petty little games I play with myself and others when caught up in the race towards achievement — a race we all inevitably participate in every single day of our lives.
Being right
The luxury of being able to spend long periods of time reflecting on my not-so-lovable traits allowed me to conclude that one of those petty little games I love so much, is that of being right.
If I consider a topic important enough to have a strong a opinion about it, I adore the feeling of proving to others that my opinion is supported by strong evidence and is logically coherent.
And I must confess, I get almost the same rush from proving that others who dare contradict me on these Important Subjects, are wrong. That their opinion on these Crucial Topics is biased, incoherent or otherwise flawed.
Having caught myself in the act more times than I would have liked to, I decided to do a bit more research on the subject.
Self-serving biases and natural selection
An hour of Amazon.com browsing and ten bucks less in my bank account later, I was reading The Happiness Hypothesis, an awesomely illuminating book by Jonathan Haidt. (Full disclosure: that’s an affiliate link.)
Haidt’s TED talk, to which I link below, addresses many of the book’s key arguments:
After reading for a while, I was comforted to confirm that I’m not alone in my addiction to being right. The book presents lots of research supporting the idea that humans are biologically wired to hold the belief of being right — regardless of the truth.
Actually, this tendency to think we are the Chosen Holders of the Truth is a special case of a genetically ingrained bias towards detecting the faults of others, and turning a blind eye on ours.
We’re programed from birth to see the speck in our brother’s eye, but not the log in our own. We have an instinct for hypocrisy.
The argument goes like this. Evolution favored those who played the game of life using a strategy of tit for tat: cooperate with others as long as they don’t cheat. And whenever they cheat, do not hesitate to retaliate.
React to what the other does to you, paying in kind.
But in real life we don’t react to what someone does to us. We react to what we think they did:
… and the gap between action and perception is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator?
Natural selection, like politics, works by the principle of survival of the fittest, and several researchers have argued that human beings evolved to play the game of life in a Machiavellian way. The Machiavellian version of tit for tat… is to do all you can to cultivate the reputation of a trustworthy yet vigilant partner, whatever reality may be.
… Machiavellian tit for tat requires devotion to appearances, including protestations of one’s virtue even when one chooses vice. And such protestations are most effective when the person making them really believes them (this last emphasis is mine).
As Robert Wright puts it in his masterful book The Moral Animal, “Human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse.”
Naive realism
Our natural tendency to think that we are right is what Emily Pronin at Princeton and Lee Ross at Standford university call “naive realism”:
Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don’t agree, it follows either that they have not been exposed to the relevant facts or else they are blinded by their interests and ideologies… It just seems plain as day to the naive realist, that everyone is influenced by ideology and self interest. Except for me, I see things as they are.
Whatever the benefits naive realism gave us when we were subject to the forces of natural selection, its usefulness in our modern societies is much less clear:
If the only effect of these biases was to make people feel good about themselves the would not be a problem… Evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions. But such biases can make people feel that they deserve more than they do, thereby setting the stage for endless disputes with other people who feel equally over-entitled.
And when naive realism gets a grip on group dynamics, things get much uglier:
If I could nominate one candidate for “biggest obstacle to world peace and social harmony,” it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the individual to the group level: My group is right because we see things as they are. Those who disagree are obviously biased by their religion, their ideology, or their self-interest.
As it seems, naive realism is similar to overeating. An instinctual drive to eat as many calories as physically possible gave an evolutive advantage to our pre-historical ancestors, who probably ate a couple of times per week, whenever the hunting or gathering session was successful.
But in a society flooded in caloric over-abundance, the instinct doesn’t favor our survival. Quite the contrary. So it pays to learn how to control it.
The antidote: taking a 5-minute hard look at ourselves
First off, Haidt advises us to humbly accept two basic facts about our nature. First, judgmentalism is, however harmful, a natural tendency of out minds. Second, we cannot change that by willpower alone:
[As stated by Chinese Zen Master Sent-ts'an in the opening quotation of this post] Judgmentalism is indeed a disease of the mind: it leads to anger, torment, and conflict. But it is also the mind’s normal condition — the [subconscious] is always evaluating, always saying “Like it” or “Don’t like it.” So … you can’t simply resolve to to stop judging others or stop being a hypocrite. But, as Buddha taught, [you] can gradually learn to tame the subconscious…
And a simple exercise for taming the subconscious, for changing our automatic judgmental reactions starts, as Jesus advised, with ourselves and the log in our own eye:
And you will see the log only if you set out on a deliberate and effortful quest to look for it. Try this now: Think of a recent interpersonal conflict with someone you care about and then find one way in which your behavior was not exemplary. Maybe you did something insensitive (even if you had a right to do it), or hurtful (even if you meant well), or inconsistent with your principles (even though you can readily justify it).
When you first catch sight of a fault in yourself, you’ll likely hear frantic arguments from your inner lawyer excusing you and blaming others, but try not to listen. You are on a mission to find at least one thing that you did wrong…
… When you find a fault in yourself it will hurt, briefly, but if you keep going and acknowledge the fault, you are likely to be rewarded with a flash of pleasure that is mixed, oddly, with a hint of pride.
It is the pleasure of taking responsibility for your own behavior. It is the feeling of honor.
I have been doing this exercise for 5 minutes, a couple of times per week during the last few months, and I’ve found it to be incredibly rewarding and effective.
I recommend you to keep a log of the times you catch yourself at being judgmental, wanting to be right, to prove others wrong, and all those petty little games we play. I did that for the first couple of weeks, and was impressed by how visible the results of the exercise were.
I meditate regularly, and sometimes perform this exercise after a formal meditation session, which has the effect of amplifying the “pleasurable feeling of honor” that Haidt talks about. And meditation itself, of course, can help us become less judgmental:
Meditation has been shown to make people calmer, less reactive to the ups and downs and petty provocations of life. Meditation is the Eastern way of training yourself to take things philosophically.
You don’t need to perform any formal meditation before the exercise, but definitely take a few extra minutes to sit down in silence, breathe and relax.
And of course, let me know how you feel afterwards.
I’d love to hear you say my advice was right on spot. But if you think I’m wrong, I won’t try too hard to prove I’m not. 