On the NeuroLogica Blog I encountered a discussion titled "Tribal Epistemology" - by Steven Novella - and was immediately fascinated. The author describes the evolution of his studies into the willingness of people to believe in pseudoscience; from his initial hypothesis that scientific illiteracy was the cause, through the idea that a lack of critical thinking skills was to blame, to his current position - that narrative or tribal thinking is to blame.
Steven's post is worth reading, from a writer's point of view - though it is not an optimistic reading of the current world situation as seen by a scientist with real concerns about the direction we are being taken by the various forms of illiteracy and poor thinking skills that have infested public life.
As someone trained in the scientific method, with its emphasis on identifying and confirming facts, no matter how much those facts might conflict with ones own current understanding or personally held beliefs, it must be hard to come to grips with the idea that humans will so willingly set aside facts that conflict with their own pre-existing beliefs.
Authors, poets, playwrights, and storytellers have long known this truth about humans, though. A great story, well told, can change belief in the audience. But authors beware if, in the hope of inflicting your own beliefs on others, you present your reader with a thinly disguised moral or political lecture. An audience seeking entertainment will almost certainly see through a thin plot and poor characterisation to the moralising within, and is unlikely to put up with it.
Story tellers will recognise that the reader desires a story that they can believe, even as they understand that the story is made up. Fiction writers take the reality they have experienced and observed and rework it - taking what can be a chaotic and apparently unconnected collection of facts and weaving the material into a tale with continuity, meaning, and value for the reader. Is this not what we have been doing with the world around us for so many millennia - trying to reduce a vast mass of incoming data to a manageable and meaningful narrative?
Of course, the snake-oil salesman and the charlatans have long known how to spin a tale the audience is willing to believe - without such a skill they would be broke, and would be run out of town in very short order. And there, as in so many other areas of human expertise, is the trap. Just as our ability to manage and control sharp edges, fire, chemical reactions, and so many other things, has given us wealth and comfort and safety, so have those same skills brought us pain, misery, and death.
Our skill with, and love of, narrative is as much of a two-edged sword as any box of matches or sharp knife can be. Stories can give us a sense of right and wrong, a feeling of community with our fellow humans, and a body of lore that will help us and our children to live well in the world - or they can twist our understanding of reality in ways that can ruin that same world.
Why do people fall for the wrong stories? I wonder if it is because we have, as a species, a natural inclination to do enough to get comfortable, but not too much more? If we have collected enough stories to make a comfortable narrative for ourselves, and have found a comfortable tribe to be with - one whose members share that same narrative - why make ourselves uncomfortable by looking too closely into stories that might invalidate that narrative?
Or is it simply because every society has its own version of the warning "curiosity killed the cat"?
We know from observation that babies and small children are determined in their curiosity.
Everything is interesting to babies and toddlers. Before they can talk or walk, and often for a long time after they can, everything is picked up and examined. Each new object is tested with every means at their disposal, including biting, pulling, and tossing. Why does that curiosity fade? Is it, as some people suggest, that adults and the education system somehow crush it through the imposition of uniformity and regulation? Could it be that most humans reach a point where the facts they have collected are "good enough" to form a world view? That once a satisfactory narrative has been composed, the natural inclination for many is to "leave well enough alone"?
It is possible - how often do we see people who have been resistant to the "facts" of others suddenly shaken out of their old world view by some personal encounter with disaster? We see their horror as a comfortable old narrative is suddenly shattered by events, and beliefs held as certain collide with unexpected reality.
Is that not the goal of the song writer, the poet, and the author - to string together words that jolt people with new facts and feelings, that shake them from comfort into confusion and excitement, to open eyes and ears to possibilities that are present but have been ignored?
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