So America {yawn} goes through the Gun-Control-Debate motions once more: cue familiar routine of outrage & dismay (both for & against), show us the lobbing of statistics like hand-grenades into enemy camp, bring out the shouting pundits who aren’t actually listening to each other & have no intention to listen. And just for good measure, the nation mixes in a less-fevered Mental-Health-Dilemna media cycle, which plays a supporting role in the now-masturbatory examination of the question: “How do we stop this from happening?”
At this point, the real question isn’t “How do we stop these murders from happening?” The real question is “How do we stop this from happening?” This being our endlessly repeating cycle of redundant debating & false examination that continually produces zero actual solutions to the problem of people regularly being murdered en masse by gun-toting, mentally-disturbed individuals who have fallen through the cracks of our educational & healthcare systems. But if we want to figure out how to stop this useless, endless cycle of argument & inaction, we need to understand why we’re stuck in that endless cycle.
A Belief War Is Never Won
First, we should note that our endless cycle has produced at least one useful result—it’s revealed how this mass violence has roots in those two different issues: gun control & mental health. We’ll explore the latter issue in our next post, but the focus here will be explaining why the Gun Control Debate could go on forever (and how we might avoid that undesirable result).
We’re stuck in this perpetual, hellish cycle because this isn’t really a war of mathematical or purely-causal logic & statistics (elements that are only doomed foot-soldiers in these battles). It’s a war of beliefs—and a belief war is never won. According to Narrative Complexity, our beliefs play a very specific and prestigious role in our emotional, cognitive & decision-making neural systems. This special role in our decision-making mechanisms can give beliefs a unique, almost-unimpeachable power over our choices & worldview—even when the real-world validity of those choices & views appears to be strongly-undermined by new evidence.
And thus, when these epic cultural battles essentially pit two opposing beliefs or belief systems against each other, almost every ounce of discussion attempting to change the opposing party’s beliefs is entirely wasted effort. It’s all energy without consequence. So, what exactly are these beliefs and why are they so powerful?
As explained in my emotions essay, the roots of our modern belief systems have been evolving since the beginning of mammals, and those early systems originally had a more-focused purpose: olfactory-based disease avoidance—basically, primitive disgust. How that disgust-based disease-avoidance mechanism evolved into our modern belief systems is a fascinating, but complicated tale (again see my emotions essay) but a quick clue to their connection: how do you feel when you witness someone else violate one of your beliefs by, say, littering or spewing hate? Just like the unwelcome scent of disease-carrying fecal matter, you're disgusted by it (and--unlike that fecal scent—probably angered by it, which we cover in a different post).
In humans, these modern (yet still disgust-based) belief systems are broadly-applicable, which is partly what makes them so useful & powerful. According to our theory, a belief is basically a high-value and (seemingly) high-validity, broadly-applicable prediction trope that we have discerned & learned through experience & study (and/or have been taught by highly-trusted others): I believe in forgiveness, I believe violence is a necessary evil, I believe cheating is always bad, I believe in God.
Ultimately, each of our myriad, countless beliefs represents one of these reductivizing, broadly-overarching, but specifically defined & applied prediction tropes. These prediction tropes help our brains to identify one key subset of data within a decision-equation (essentially, within a predictive narrative ) and use the isolated judgement of that subset to determine the most beneficial choice—i.e., in almost all decisions that can be reduced to choosing to forgive or not to forgive, choosing forgiveness is highly-likely to lead to ultimately desirable results, regardless of the specific circumstances.
Consequently, when a person who “believes in forgiveness” makes a choice that represents non-forgiveness, their violation of this intended-to-be-beneficial belief produces some level of guilt (basically, disgust with ourselves—an emotion designed to encourage belief compliance by making us feel bad when we violate or think-about violating a belief). This is the express-lane of decision-making, a quick & reliable (proven-over-time-&-experience) way to guide an important choice toward a desirable result by identifying & judging a key piece of the equation.
And when we make choices that pit two of our own beliefs against each other, the stronger belief is likely to win out—because, like most of our self-built neural architecture, our beliefs are hierarchal. This means that if the belief-founding, experience-based or study-based evidence (something that happened or was told to you) supports high-value results or goals (i.e., the fate of your eternal soul) and that evidence is presented by a highly-trusted source (i.e., your parent, preacher or teacher) then that belief is likely to reside high-up in the hierarchy (i.e., above all else, I believe in God ). In addition, if that belief is frequently (& apparently) “successfully” applied over time, that’s also likely to strengthen its position in our hierarchy (aka, make it more likely to be more frequently, broadly & powerfully applied ).
However, the belief wars at the center of the Gun Control Debate aren’t just going on within one person’s mind, this war is occurring between two minds—each trying to somehow get inside the highest levels of that other person’s hierarchy, hoping to revise & rearrange it according to their own design. But these belief-invaders & their statistical foot-soldiers have not been dispatched by a highly-trusted-source, and therefore, they’re powerless against the well-defined & decades-fortified foreign hierarchy that is their target. Why aren’t they highly-trusted? In large part, because the source doesn’t share the target’s beliefs (as explained in our emotions theory—sharing beliefs triggers emotions, like admiration, that engender crucial, trust-enhancing responses like oxytocin-based bonding).
Are you seeing the impossible-to-break-loop here? When groups possessing opposing beliefs try to battle against (& change) each other’s beliefs, everybody walks into the arena with nerf weapons. Once they’ve all spent a few weeks dispensing their nerf ammunition—and find themselves mystified that everyone is still standing, hierarchies unharmed & beliefs wholly-unchanged—they retreat from the arena, reload their foam weapons, and wait for the bell to ring again, commanding them to drag their passion & toys back into the arena for another pretend battle. In a dark bit of irony, this is one of the reasons why the Gun Control Debate could go on forever: because everybody enters the debate figuratively unarmed.
The Internet Is A Confirmation-Bias Machine
This might seem to make our beliefs nearly unchangeable once they’ve gotten a strong foothold high-up within that hierarchy. But don’t fret. As I’ll show later, although changing those longstanding & high-level beliefs is certainly very difficult, it’s not impossible. Nonetheless, before we explore how we might conquer these problems, we’re going to examine how these problems actually get worse.
One of our beliefs’ greatest enablers is something dubbed confirmation bias—basically, humans’ strong tendency to seek out & choose to trust data that reinforces what they already believe. According to our theory, this is mostly a result of that problem we just discussed: when new & belief-contradicting data is provided by a seemingly-untrustworthy source, that data is viewed by our brains as low-validity (and thus, ultimately-powerless). And it’s almost by-default true: if you’re receiving new data that contradicts your beliefs, it has very likely been provided by a source who does not share your beliefs, making both the source & their new data inherently untrustworthy. In addition—since we’re obviously prone to believe in that belief (a confidence built via experience & study)—our belief automatically leads us to view belief-contradicting data with great doubt.
Thus, humans exhibit confirmation bias, a strong likelihood to seek out & choose to trust data that reinforces what we already believe. Which leads us to something you’ve probably heard of: the Internet. The Internet is a confirmation-bias machine. If you’re looking to find data that reinforces what you already believe (and be honest, that’s what you’re almost always looking for ) then the Internet is, like, the greatest thing ever.
No matter how absurd your belief, there’s seemingly-confirming data out there somewhere (one word: Scientology). And that magnificent World Wide Web has made that somewhere a place that likely resides as nearby as the small smooth rectangle you carry around in your pocket. Although the Internet has undoubtedly enabled many of us to expand our view of humanity though its exotically-diverse lens, I think it’s just as likely that many more of us are using that powerful lens to focus on a narrow-but-deep well of data that merely supports what we already believe—a focus that calcifies those beliefs in our minds and fuels our desire to defend their expression within the larger society.
For many of us who engage in these belief wars, the Internet has become an infinite armory : a location that houses an endless supply of those statistical & analytical grenades that we earnestly-but-incredulously lob into enemy camps (few of which ever land with anything more than a dull thud). And even though these weaponized statistics & analyses have little impact on our targets, they can still have a powerful influence on us—bolstering our already-strong beliefs with more seemingly-confirming evidence. The big problem here is that a lot of those seemingly-confirming statistics & analyses are merely the result of poorly-collected & -evaluated, generally-misleading data.
Nonetheless, thanks again to confirmation bias, if we’re seeking to use that bad data to support an already-strong belief, we’re likely to blind ourselves to the (often obvious) flaws in the evidence. It’s the very nature of a belief to seek out & identify the subset of data that specifically relates the belief’s prediction trope, and then ignore the rest of the circumstantial factors when shaping our response (because our brain thinks it’s already efficiently identified the most important, fundamental element of the decision-equation).
For example, I came across a recent & seemingly-reasonable article (on a stridently non-partisan independent news site) that tried to explain why gun control measures do not ultimately decrease homicides. To support this conclusion, the author cites statistics showing that gun control measures in a few different places were not followed by a drop in the overall homicide rate. To the author (& many of his readers) this clearly helped to prove that gun control measures are not likely to result in fewer homicides.
Of course, to a skeptic, the enormous flaw in this data analysis is very clear: gun availability is not the only factor impacting homicide rates. To the contrary, homicides are the result of wide array of social, personal & randomly circumstantial factors. (Becoming a vigilant skeptic, by the way, is the best route for avoiding confirmation bias; essentially, allowing doubt supersedes certainty to become one of your highest level beliefs cleverly undercuts the power of all your beliefs, which makes them generally more flexible & malleable.)
Thus, it’s altogether possible that in these few cases, other factors impacting homicide rates (which were not accounted for by the statistics) became worse at the same time gun control measures were enacted. This would mean that, theoretically, it’s possible that the homicide rate might’ve been even higher if more guns had been available. Therefore the gun control measures could have possibly been effective in reducing homicides, but the overall rate still remained static or rose because of the growing impact of those other (& statistically-unaccounted for) factors. (Despite pointing out that poverty rates have a significant impact on violence, the author still fails to see how these kinds of factors undermine his conclusions, which he presents as patently obvious.)
In the end, the ultimate ambiguity in what these statistics tell us makes them useless, insubstantial data—which didn’t stop the author from misleading a whole slew of otherwise-thoughtful readers into assuming that the evidence should be used to help support (or change) their beliefs about gun control.
This is, of course, just one example. But it’s exactly the kind of flawed statistical analysis that Facebook posts are lousy with. And you’ll have to believe me—examining brain research (& trying to sort the good data from the bad) has made me a little obsessed with experiment-design, and from everything I’ve seen there’s a huge pile of bad, misleading data that’s being floated around as “evidence” in our culture’s cornucopia of belief wars. (Much of that bad data is even being purposefully fed into the discussion by those massive corporate entities that have some financial gain at stake in the belief wars.)
A decent amount of bad-yet-perceived-as-valid data has always been a problem for humans (aiding in the reinforcement of false beliefs), but I think the steady stream of useless (yet impactful) non-evidence that’s provided by our infinite armory (& those massive profit-chasing corporate entities) has made this problem particularly acute in our contemporary belief wars. Which is another reason why the Gun Control Debate could go on forever: because every participant is fortifying their battle positions with heavy doses of infinitely-available bad & useless (but belief-supporting) evidence that they haven't bothered to analyze very carefully.
Behold The Beauty Of Trojan Horses
Who, then, are the main prediction-trope combatants in these belief wars? What are the primary opposing, futilely-battling beliefs in our Gun Control Debate? For starters, there’s that central obvious battle-pair: I believe gun control is good & I believe gun control is bad. These beliefs are likely the strongest source of our confirmation bias when judging new evidence. But each of our actions & worldviews ultimately intersects with a broad web of our beliefs—because specific actions can symbolically represent a number of different things (& and judging the symbolic value of an act is essentially how beliefs work).
Thus, the Gun Control Debate also involves beliefs like…I believe I have the right to defend my family. I believe I have the constitutional right to bear arms. I believe the 2nd Amendment allows gun-regulation. I believe the government is conspiring against the people. I believe peaceful resistance is the best path for change. I believe hunting is immoral. I believe guns are evil. Etc., etc., etc. Although each of these beliefs is specifically-defined, they can be applied to a broad range of actions & worldviews. So, when we discuss the various aspects of gun control (bans, background checks & so on) each of those proposed actions or policies is likely to end up battling against a wide array of interconnected beliefs that the action or policy violates in the mind of its opponent.
At first glance, this clearly seems like yet another obstacle in our quest to settle these belief wars. But that’s the beauty of Trojan Horses—they’re not exactly what they seem to be. The good thing about specific actions & policies engaging multiple beliefs: it increases the likelihood that the opposing parties might find an actually commonly-shared belief somewhere in that web. And this commonly-shared belief can become the Trojan Horse that allows each opponent to slip unharassed into the other’s hierarchy. By expressing & acknowledging together a shared belief (I believe I have the right to defend my family) we can take the first small steps toward building trust, which is the most crucial element in having any kind of productive interaction between two opposing parties—the element that allows our foreign & possibly-unwelcome data to gain a little bit of that validity in the other (& newly-trusting) person’s mind.
In addition, by using this shared belief as the centerpiece of “negotiations” we can discuss specific actions & policies through a common lens (What does it really mean to “defend” my family? Is decreasing weapons in public spaces a way to protect them? How do I help to protect my family when I’m not with them?) In any belief war, the best way to make real progress toward solving the actual problem is by identifying as many issue-related shared beliefs as possible and placing them front & center in every discussion—using those shared beliefs to frame each action & policy, returning the focus to them whenever conflicts get heated.
It also helps if a Mega-Trojan-Horse suddenly appears on the scene, helping to effectively sneak a new belief architecture into an entire network of minds. A Mega-Trojan-Horse must be an individual who is broadly & deeply admired & loved by one of the belief war’s armies—one of its most-trusted leaders of thought. If one of these individuals begins to introduce a shift in specific beliefs (without losing credibility within too much of their army) then this Mega-Trojan-Horse can affect, essentially, a change in doctrine. The speed of change can vary greatly, but nonetheless, such an individual can still begin a powerful, cascading wave of altered beliefs that ripples through a society. (The best current example of a Mega-Trojan-Horse candidate: Pope Francis & his definitive positions on the fact that the planet is melting and the notion that we should try to do something about it.)
None of this, however, is meant to imply that unveiling a Mega-Trojan-Horse or employing those more modest (but elegant) shared-belief Trojan Horses are simple, magical ways to settle our belief wars and spur real changes in our society. These types of strategies are already often applied at the highest levels in difficult negotiating circumstances, and they’re success can be as much about the players involved as the strategies used. But using these shared beliefs is not the approach commonly taken in our everyday cultural conflicts—and, as they say, change begins at home.
The bottom line is that if we don’t attempt to employ some of these elegant-but-modest Trojan Horses—and try fighting our confirmation bias with a strong dose of skepticism toward our own beliefs—then, because of the way belief wars are rigged, these battles could perpetuate endlessly. This is another reason why the Gun Control Debate could go on forever: because of our insistent, ongoing refusal to seek out & frame discussions around our commonly-shared beliefs (and our failure to be vigilant skeptics of our own beliefs).
Those reasons, however, are not primarily an unfortunate result of how long-evolving neural systems are responding to our contemporary belief wars—they’re a result of us. Our current lack of self-skepticism and our insistent, ongoing refusal to seek out & frame discussions around our commonly-shared beliefs are the result of a whole bunch of conscious choices that most of us have made while lost in the fog of these never-ending belief wars. And the consequences of those choices—the real-world happenings that emerge in the wake of our inaction—seem to grow more gruesome & dire with every passing year.
After everything that previous humans have achieved, bringing all of us now to this glorious point in civilization—is this really the best we can do?
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