Believe it or not, I have found nonconservatives who do not believe that there is a man-caused climate change going on right now. And there can be several reasons why this is the case. There is one reason for the denial of climate change by some Leftist and it is the same reason why many on the Right deny the reality of climate change. That reason is that acknowledging that climate change is occurring introduces a world that is beyond their conception because it is so different and complex--or at least the description of all that is involved in climate change can be complex--for them to adequately understand the issue and how life must change to adapt.
It isn't that one can automatically conclude that a rejection of climate change is because one can't handle the complexity of what's involved with the issue. But it is just one of quite a few reasons why people don't accept the reality of climate change as well as other realities. So to determine whether the inability to grasp the subject at hand, one has to observe such people discussing other topics and how they react to disagreements.
And so for some, regardless of their ideology, if they can't understand the complexity of an issue, they deny its existence. The inability to understand and the fear of complexity directs one to simple explanations for complex issues of life and thus leads one to a rejection of what is real. It also leads one to embrace an authoritarian approach to understanding the world. Or perhaps it is the other way around. Those who are authoritarians, either as followers or as leaders, are threatened by complexity. For followers (or passive authoritarians), complexity introduces them to faults in what their leaders say which they are reluctant to admit. For leaders (or active authoritarians), complexity threatens their control of their followers because simple thinking keeps followers from finding faults in what their leaders say (click here for the source that divides active authoritarians from passive ones).
Complexity tells us that people, especially our esteemed leaders, say some good things and say say some bad things. Simplistic thinking has many of us to believe that our leaders are [almost] always right or wrong. Thus, simplicity tells us that those who disagree with an esteemed leader or ideology must be seen as an enemy. And so, as one article put it, the fear of complexity is what has caused the polarization that we continually see around us (click here for the source).
It isn't that complexity is comfortable for everyone. I know I tend to put of projects that are complicated. I tend to gravitate toward articles and books that I can easily understand. But that is different from rejecting claims because of their complexity.
It use to be that we would leave complex issues to the experts in their fields of study and rely on their expertise--and there was both good and bad in that. But many of us no longer reasonably, rather than absolutely, believe the experts; we prefer to latch on to what our tribal leaders have to say whether those tribes are oriented around some political-economic-social ideology, race, religion, political party, or people with whom we share some other important similarity. Here we could think of those tribal leaders as being nanny-thinkers for their followers because those followers allow leaders to tell us what to think.
Erich Fromm distinguished between putting a high, not an absolute, degree of trust in the experts from putting a high, and often and absolute, degree of trust in our tribal leaders. He saw the former as being rational and the latter as being authoritarian (click here). And here we should note that part of authoritarianism involves a gross oversimplification of an issue or view of the world so that a person sees the world in binary categories. It's black-white thinking and it contributes to our submission to a tribal leader and their control over us. It also contributes to our polarization of believing that one's own side is good while those who oppose are evil. Black-white thinking contributes to the belief that oneself or one's side has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them (that phraseology is based on a Martin Luther King Jr. quote when he spoke against the Vietnam War).
In contrast to that black-white thinking, we might want to consider Martin Luther King's approach to Capitalism and Communism/Marxism as he wrote about it in his book, Stride Toward Freedom. Unfortunately, King conflated Soviet Union Communism with Marxism, but his example still holds. Though he called Soviet Union Communism evil, he shared the view of Marxism given by the late ArchBishop of Canterbury, William Temple. Temple called Marxism a 'Christian Heresy.' Both King and Temple used that term because they saw in Marx a concern for justice which was essential to Christianity. Tragically, Marx combined beliefs with his concerns for justice which were totally antithetical to Christianity. King also had criticisms of Capitalism.
And so when King compared Capitalism and Communism/Marxism, he said that neither has the whole truth and so we must create a hybrid from the two. That is because, according to King, while Communism/Marxism forgot that life is individual, Capitalism forgets that life is social. In other words, life is complex (click here for the source and start with pg 92, the document starts on pg 90). Some tribal leaders would have us forget what Communism/Marxism forgot while other tribal leaders would have us forget what Capitalism forgets. That is because those tribal leaders want us to have an over simplistic, black-white view of the world to better control us.
Some tribal leaders want to sow distrust in our scientific experts on climate and diseases as well as what the social scientists and other experts from other fields have to say about race. They do so because they oppose the political/social/economic ramifications of what our experts have observed or found. They sow that distrust by claiming that those experts have been so corrupted by the system that they are completely untrustworthy. In other words, those tribal leaders are promoting a black-white view of those experts. And with that, the complexity of a given finding or issue becomes a dealbreaker when it comes to accepting what a finding says or what is said in an issue.
Because of the distrust in our medical science experts, the US had one of higher, if not the highest, death rates from Covid. Because of our distrust in climate science experts, some want us to sprint toward an environmental cliff with our way of life. In short, too many of us will only trust our tribal leaders and we will flee in horror from any presentation made by legitimate experts in their fields that our tribal leaders do not agree with.
And so in short, the fear of complexity plays a role in several of our major problems today. It played a role in the rejection by many of what the medical science community had to say about the pandemic. It isn't that our experts are infallible, but they were correct more often than not. And they also corrected themselves as new findings were discovered. The fear of complexity played a role in the widespread election denial that almost led to the overturning of an election despite even what Trump appointed officials and judges had to say. It plays a role in the rejection of the existence of systemic racism despite what the majority of Blacks are telling us. It plays a role in what in the rejection of what many scientists have to say about sexual orientation and gender identification. And it plays a major role in the religious, ideological, racial, political, social, and economic polarizations in our nation. As noted above, the fear of complexity is not the only fear that we need to fear. But it certainly is a prominent one with which we will have to deal for some time to come
No comments:
Post a Comment