(* “Don't say blueberries. We know that's purple. Blue cheese? No. Blue cheese is just a moldy white cheese.”)
George Carlin made us laugh at our prejudices. He hit the nail on the head on politics and food. We get angry when we want chicken and find out it's venison or rabbit. Our friends walk away from the table when they find out it's fish. Chicken isn't better, it's just not green.
We like what is familiar and comfortable. You don't have to be prejudiced to be prejudiced. Some people and their opinions are simply unpleasant, like eating rabbit for dinner. We can be open-minded, except for people we don't like anyway. Or we can be tolerant without taking differences seriously, like when “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is about race, sex, and gender, not about different opinions. More generally, we miss being complicit to what we dislike. There are strong hints of him in the way we react to Donald Trump, like the feedback loop between MSNBC and Fox News.
It is our similarities, not our differences, that make our disagreements difficult to resolve. We act in our own self-interest while criticizing others for doing the same. “Selflessness” belongs in yoga, not in conversation or diplomacy. Putin is accused of wanting to rebuild the USSR, while we Americans justify our actions as defending democracy. War crimes are atrocities committed by the other side, and God’s grace is rightfully ours.
This may sound like a reductionist relativism condemned as the “scourge of modern times” that denies the possibility that someone could be right. In reality, it's about acknowledging one's participation in other people's prejudices and fighting fire with fire while claiming to extinguish them. We recognize what supports our identity and ignore what doesn't. Political strongmen (and strongwomen) who recognize this understand that the heart is more essential than the intellect for unity. The goal of democratic debate is to build common sense, not to plot unity.
Highly intelligent and educated people are the best at rationalizing their existing beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence. They are better at developing persuasive arguments for others and for themselves, and at logically filtering out contradictory information to reinforce their prejudices. Only a broader concept of egoism, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of our well-being with the well-being of others, can mitigate this.
If you're going to be self-righteous anyway, there's no need to be hypocritical. You can respect the other person's opinion. You can be less biased by remembering what a witty person once said: “There are three sides to every story: your opinion, my opinion and the truth. No one is lying.”
The same principle applies when we misunderstand the basis of an argument, such as ignoring a doctor's advice because someone is overweight, or assuming that someone's belief in God is solely due to their upbringing. Even more subtle is accepting a statement as true simply because Martin Luther King said it. Right or wrong should be judged on the merits of the statement, not where it comes from.
Truth, whether divine or human, is not simply right or wrong, but about the relationship between God and humanity, or between ourselves. Certainty can get in the way. The answer is often hidden in the question, as in legal contexts. The absence of evidence can be as meaningful as the presence of evidence. And in literature, the subtext (what is implied but not directly stated) can convey the true meaning of a story. In poetry and stories, even the spacing between words can convey as much meaning as the words themselves. One critic speaks of the “complexity and liveliness” of What's Better Left Unsaid. In classical music, the absence of sound, the spacing between notes, can be as important as the notes themselves.
Truth often coincides with its absence. As a great mystic said about grace, “Grace can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself that creates this void.”
This is not a standard food, and like any “blue food” it raises questions just like ours. Be true to yourself is a fine cliché. It's a good way to stay true to a world as stubborn and wonderful as we are. We, too, are an acquired taste.
Notes and reading
George Carlin: Again! (1978)Full transcript, ““Scraps from the Loft” (July 11, 2017). Other videos: “Where's the Blue Food?” YouTube.
“Are smart people ruining democracy?”” — Dan M. Kahan, YouTube (December 10, 2018), How Curiosity Affects Polarization, etc. Kahan is a professor at Yale Law School and is known for his work on risk perception and cultural cognition.
Disproof Bias: Why the Fear of Loss Outweighs the Joy of Gain in Sway: Uncovering Unconscious Bias (2021) – Pragya Agarwal is a behavioral scientist known for her interdisciplinary research into social science, psychology, and biology.
Don't Label Me: How to Achieve Diversity Without Fueling a Culture War – Irshad Manji (2020). Founder of Moral College, Manji is known for her innovative approach to “diversity, equity and inclusion” and her “speaking truth to power” workshops. She works with the Oxford Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights.
difference – Scott Page (2008). Crossing demographics, cognitive diversity, and differing perspectives ensures more honest and effective outcomes. Page is a professor of complexity, social science, and management at the University of Michigan.
Better not say it – In a review essay on Blank, Print, Space, and Blank: Archaeology of Absence – Jonathan Sawday, Father Walter J. Ong, Dean of the Department of Humanities, Saint Louis University (2023). The Times Literary Supplementt (12 July 2024). “How ideas of emptiness and absence have begun to take shape in ways that still surround us today.” – Georgina Wilson (Jesus College, Cambridge).
Grace “can only enter where there is a void to receive it…” -Quoted by Simone Weil and Susan Sontag Against Interpretation: Other Essays (2001), 188. (Originally published in Weyl's Gravity and GraceSontag discusses this in “Spiritual Style in the Cinema.”
Approximately 2 + 2 = 5: https://williamgreen.substack.com/about – revision
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