The Menso Guide to Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is one of the most important skills a person will learn. This Hub is designed to help us think more critically. To begin, here are my rules.

-There is more than one side to any issue.

-There are almost certainly more than two sides to any issue. I hear people say "there are two sides to any issue" but that's just a mindless cliche. There are probably far more than two sides. That said, many people will try to polarise a debate by saying there are only two sides: my side and the wrong side.

-Stereotypes are always wrong. There are always exceptions. It's fine to say that, for example, Japanese culture is collectivist, but to say that all Japanese people are collectivist is like saying that all humans are over the age of four. Sure, most are, but not all.

-Consider the words people use. Could they use another word that would give it a different meaning? Why didn’t they use that word? Why do we undergo ‘liberation’ or ‘intervention’ instead of invasion? Does it change how you think about the thing? Yes, it does.

-Consider the source of all of your information--do they know what they're talking about? Why would they tell you what they're telling you? Perhaps they have what is called an ulterior motive--a reason they don't want you to know about.

-Just because most people think one way, or someone is called an expert, does not mean any of it is true. Experts make just as many mistakes as the rest of us, it's just that they make predictions and occasionally one of them comes true and they are hailed as geniuses.

-Most people don't know what they're talking about a lot of the time. Judge me not on the colour of my words but on their accuracy based on your observations.

-Consistency is not a virtue. If you do not change your ideas, you are not questioning them enough.

-Consistency is not even common. Sometimes people are right today and wrong tomorrow. Sometimes people who were wrong yesterday can be right today.

-Even our deepest beliefs, strongest values, things we've known all our lives, can be wrong. It’s best to stay humble.

-Everything can be manipulated--facts, statistics, morals, beliefs, emotions, memories, history and so on. It is very common to hear people quote one statistic, perhaps from a poll, and confidently extrapolate from it to bolster their argument. "59% of Muslims in Pakistan say suicide bombing is justified under certain circumstances! Clearly, Islam is a religion of war." We do not know what the people polled were thinking when they answered, including if something had happened just before it (say, a well-publicised US drone attack that killed civilians). We also have no idea how representative the survey was. Finally, this whole argument begs the question, because it is too far a jump from the premise to the conclusion. The statistic is meaningless.

-Most people, when they hear something more than once and from more than one person, start believing it. That’s when I get suspicious. People often think that way because they all get their information from one source. Of course, it may be true, but I find just as often it is a lie that people like the sound of and latch on to. Six hundred years ago, they said “of course the world is flat. How could you even question that?” Six hundred years from now, they will probably say “of course there are beings on other planets. Everyone knows that!”

-Ask lots of questions and ask different people the same questions. If they give the same answer, they have probably been told to think that way. For example, I notice that, talking to people in China, I would get the same answers to the same questions. "Why do you hate the Japanese?" "It's not that I hate the Japanese, it's that they never apologised for what they did to China in the war." The more I hear that argument, the less I believe it. It sounds to me like everyone has been given a good reason to hate someone outside the country, which is a great way to promote nationalism, which is a great way to keep people happy with the government. I also find it funny when people tell me "I think China is different...", meaning that China is somehow different from the rest of the world, which of course is somehow the same. I don't mean to pick on China--people are like this all over the world.

-If you want to learn about something, do some reading, do some traveling; and don't stop at one book, one place, one person: if you read one book, or talk to one person, you can probably find someone else who disagrees.

-People will often insult you for being inconsistent. But if you are always questioning your beliefs, you will be inconsistent.

-Find as many sources as you can when you really want to understand something so that you can enter the debate.

-Debate to learn and don't hold any of your beliefs absolutely, because you, just like everyone else, can be wrong anytime.

I try to do all of those things all the time. I have done a lot of reading and traveling and talked to a wide variety of smart and less smart people with a wide variety of perspectives. The sum of my education is that I have very different opinions from almost everyone on everything I know something about.

Why do we hear people tell us that climate change is proven, there is a consensus in the scientific community on it and there is no more debate on the subject? These assumptions scare me more than climate change itself.

Of all the books that exist on the environment, the Menso Guide to Critical Thinking’s recommendation is the Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. His thesis is that the environmental alarmists are wrong. Through careful analysis of data that is available to all of us, we can see that many environmental “problems” such as air and water pollution, depletion of natural resources such as minerals, forests and arable land are not problems at all. Instead, postulates Lomborg, we should put our precious human resources to work tackling the real problems, such as sustainable management of fresh water where it is scarce, and reducing air pollution in big cities in the developing world. We have the data; our next step should be to prioritise. If climate change is a priority, it deserves rigorous debate.

Bjorn Lomborg and I are not cynical people. Cynics are people who automatically do not believe what they hear. Skeptics, on the other hand, are those who question the knowledge of themselves and others, and educate themselves on the many different sides to the issues that concern them. Cynical versus skeptical is the difference between an open and a closed mind. Be skeptical whenever someone attempts to close a debate. Be suspicious even when someone tries to narrow the discourse by, say, dismissing evidence of beneficial effects of climate change or confining blame for it to humans. Discourse that closes minds rather than opening them is not discourse at all. “Consensus” is a pretty suspicious word in itself: it rhymes a little too well with “groupthink”.

Losing argument on any subject implies that you are no longer thinking critically about it. I see argument as an excellent way to gain (and spread) new perspectives. When we have decided there is no more debate, we’d better be damn sure we are not discarding our critical inquiry into the subject along with it. Debate keeps our brains sharp and reminds us that we can be certain about very little. And in case you need an impractical reason to argue, do it as a middle finger to any self righteous environmentalists who refuse to admit they might be wrong.

One problem with any debate is that everyone exaggerates to make their point. If we all take that into account, it is fine; but exaggerating to extremes or lying is wrong. Fearmongering is not the right way to get people on your side because they will turn against you when they see you are wrong. Alarmists want to make the situation more dire than it is because even in the best of times, hardly anyone stands up to act for a cause. If they say that there is no problem (or just a small problem), no one will do anything to combat it at all, and sooner or later it will be a problem. But if they say we’ll all die if we don’t act now, then best case, a few people start conserving energy, etc, and the small or nonexistent problem does not become big. But after fifty years of hearing about the impending crises caused by humankind’s mistreatment of the planet, and fifty years of being afraid of something that has not happened yet has led to three things: a militant environmental movement, a populace that makes misguided choices and a lot of cynicism about preserving the environment.

Many environmental theorists set limits that we have not reached and may never reach. A classic example is the best selling book Limits to Growth from 1972, which predicted we would run out of minerals like gold, silver and zinc by the 1990s, and most significantly, oil would be gone by 1992. In fact, if I had a penny for every chart I have seen with the year we will run out of oil on it, I would live in Beverly Hills. Not only do I think we have another century of oil left, I will go as far as to say we will never run out of oil. If you disagree, I encourage you to read this article and see where I’m coming from. But the limits imposed on us by the alarmists are unnecessary. For many reasons these people do not take into account (partly because no one predicted all the variables and partly because the future is never what we imagine), we have not run out of any of these “scarce” resources. Moreover, these alarmists seem to forget how adaptive humans are.

Part of the alarm comes from a belief that these limits are significant because our economies, our institutions, our society will collapse if we exceed them. Climate change will wreak havoc on the world because we are unprepared and foolish. I don’t believe it for a second. First of all, barring the possibility of a “Day After Tomorrow” type disaster, nothing happens suddenly. As things get worse, we will accord them a higher priority for our time and money, our human resources. Second, we have an unprecedented understanding of science today that, combined with our unprecedented wealth, will enable us to overcome environmental crises if and when they come. Third, humans are smart. We have always found ways of recovering after a crisis or turning crises into opportunities. We find solutions to all of our problems. If the sea levels rise, we will relocate people, and perhaps we will make new land or construct floating structures to live on. If oil runs out, we will create alternatives (for that matter, we already have them). If fish stocks go too low, we will regulate them even more, or we will learn to farm them sustainably. If the air becomes too polluted, we will stop driving and start planting more trees. Before you know it, we will have clean air again.

So stop worrying and let's get back to arguing like we should be. Here are some things we could be debating.

1. The effects of our behaviour on the environment. That means what are the most likely outcomes 50, 100 and 200 years from now. It includes the good that can come from climate change as well as the bad.

2. How we should allocate resources. If we are going to find solutions, we should know what are the most pressing problems. If we spent all our money on recycling or took every last car off the road we might feel good about ourselves for a while but we would not have solved anything. If climate change is the most pressing environmental issue, we must decide how to allocate resources to take it on.

3. What the individual’s role should be. I have two suggestions. You could live among the trees and the forest creatures, give up your wordly possessions and be at harmony with all nature. If you don’t want to do that, my second suggestion is continue to educate yourself on environmental issues and engage in debate about it with those around you. When we cease learning and debating, we have lost something even more precious than a stable climate.

You are what you eat. When you eat foods with a lot of fat and sugar, your body becomes fat and slow and lazy. The same goes for your brain. When you get your information from a lot of people who don’t know anything, such as the media, the government, your friends and your teachers (and hey, I’m a teacher too: I know what I’m talking about), your brain becomes fat and slow and lazy too. Those of us who don’t question what people tell us, who don’t always look for new information, let our brains turn into fat, hairy men sitting on the sofa. This post will help you prevent lazy thinking.

The biggest example of lazy thinking is stereotyping. Stereotyping is thinking everyone in a group is the same in some way. Sometimes people will stereotype groups they belong to. Anyone who uses “we” to describe the country they come from is stereotyping. WE don’t think like YOU do in YOUR country. It’s ignorant because there is only one thing that unifies the members of any group, which is the basis for the group. Any other characteristics are held by individual members and almost certainly vary from person to person. Such generalising or stereotyping is a particularly lazy way of thinking. Let me reiterate that, since I do mean it as an insult: stereotyping is for people with lazy brains. It prevents us from considering the differences in individuals and their ability to break away from the trappings of their culture or religion.

But the laziest thinking I hear—and I hear it every day—is talk about the West. I still don’t know what that is. Where is it? Just North America and Western Europe? How about Eastern Europe? Do you join the West when you join the European Union? Are Australia and New Zealand a part of the West? How about Latin America? You’ll find it further west than Europe, and a lot further west than Australia. But it’s different. Turkey is a nation divided between east and west—can we throw it on the pile? Some people even include Japan in the West. So can you somehow become the West?

Under globalisation, nothing particularly good is exclusive to one region of the world. Just because the button down shirt and dress pants come from the West, it strikes as ridiculous to call them western clothing. Sometimes "Western" is prefixed to words like science and philosophy to somehow downgrade it, as if the rules of science were not applicable outside the West. When we talk about algebra, do we call it Arabic algebra? No, because it is used everywhere. Talk of western religions doesn’t make a lot of sense either, since three of the biggest came from the Middle East and none from Europe. Thank god for globalisation!

But perhaps I’m being unfair. Let’s take North America, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand as the most common definition of the West. Unless you say something less lazy than “the West”, you are generalising over a group of something more than 800m people, give or take depending on what countries are in the club. That means dozens of cultures and languages and different ways of living. Do you think there are ideas and values that belong to this enormous place? Just because you don’t know the difference, doesn’t mean they’re the same.

Thus the West must not be a question of geography. When you say the West, do you mean white countries? I hope not, since implying that there are white countries would erase any achievements of non whites living there. So perhaps you meant to say democratic countries. But isn’t India a democracy? India makes an effort not to be western. Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines are pretty far east. And South Africa? And Israel? Or are those last two part of the West? I forget. So we’re not talking about democracies either. Education, big corporations, technology, freedom: none are just in one continent or from one continent. So what makes the West the West?

Now you are beginning to see why talk about western countries, western people, western culture, western food, western ideas, western values, western this, western that, western nosehairs and western fingernails is a load of western garbage. There are no such things.

So maybe it’s time to put all this talk of the West away and start using our brains to understand how things really are. Say what you mean. Do a little traveling. Learn to understand your own culture through different perspectives before you start generalising. And if, during your travels, you find that everyone somewhere is the same, you know your brain is getting lazy.

One of the reasons I am so opposed to nationalism and religion is that they are untouchable. Most nationalists and religious people hold their country or their god up so high that it cuts off the circulation to their brains.

When something is sacred to you, you will not hear anything against it. My god, my country, my family, my hair: they are perfect, and anyone who criticises them is wrong. Not only are others wrong, but religion and nationalism very easily legitimise killing everyone who disagrees. Why is it that wars are always fought in the name of god and country? Why do we never have people fighting over ice cream flavours or shoe sizes? Because the sacred is worth killing and dying for.

Sanctity comes from dogma. When we accept religious dogma, or beliefs thrust upon you as the truth, as children in particular are victim to, we believe that we have, by some miracle, received the truth. If we have the truth, those who disagree with our truth must be wrong. Our imam, keeper of the truth, told us that a woman who cheats on her husband must be stoned to death. If you, in your society, let women cheat on their husbands and do not stone them to death, you are wrong and you must be taught a lesson. Almost all of us are inculcated with nationalist dogma in our schools. Through learning about the history of our brave people, the beautiful culture we live in, the wonderful people we are, we end up feeling that our god given land is so perfect that if anyone tried to take it or separate it we must go to war. There is to be no criticism of the sacred.

But when you cannot hear any criticism against something, your brain shuts off. You are no longer thinking, just reacting. People are afraid of getting offended, but they shouldn’t be. If I have a right to speak my mind, you have a right to feel affronted. I take umbrage against people who want to avoid all offense to their sacred cows and so try to censor people who speak their mind. So you got offended: too bad. In fact, so much the better: in the words of author Neil Bissoondath, getting offended is part of learning to think.

But instead of learning to think, religions and countries both build walls of stigma to protect themselves from criticism. Those who are not religious, or who criticise religion, are bad people. You cannot say what you want if it makes others (gasp!) uncomfortable! You can’t criticise religion! You can’t criticise the government! You can’t criticise this land that my ancestors killed each other for twenty thousand years ago! So they hear no opposing arguments, or perhaps just some from “outsiders”, easily labeled as people who hate you. Insiders, meanwhile, will use protective words like "they are jealous", "they are judgmental" and "they just don't understand", or will use ad hominem attacks to undermine the person's own beliefs, while paying no attention to the original criticisms. And since they believe they have neutralised all opposing arguments, the dogmatists conclude they are right.

They’re not. Nothing should be sacred. Everything should be up for criticism. If you are not thinking critically, you are not thinking.

We humans have a funny sense of sight. It is excellent when we are looking out at others, say through a window, but rotten for observing ourselves, as in a mirror. We have no idea how good looking, how popular, how smart or how skilled we are until others tell us. And we are particularly short sighted when in understanding the extent of our weaknesses.

What is going on? Are we truly unaware? In some ways, yes. We do not know all the reasons we do what we do, think the way we think and feel the way we feel. Even if we did, we would not take all of them into account when performing each action. But there is something more sinister going on in the mirror. We are lying to ourselves. We lie to ourselves as individuals, which leads us to do so as groups.

This is self deception at work. When I do poorly in school, it was because the teacher was too hard on me, didn’t like me (for no good reason) or was just generally too demanding. It had nothing to do with me and my poor habits. Self awareness requires honesty and courage. (1) Why do we deceive ourselves? Here are some reasons from psychologist Morton Hunt.

• When trying to join a group, the harder they make the barriers to entry, the more you value your membership. To resolve the dissonance between the hoops you were forced to jump through, and the reality of what turns out to be a pretty average club, we convince ourselves the club is, in fact, fantastic.
• People will interpret the same information in radically different ways to support their own views of the world. When deciding our view on a contentious point, we conveniently forget what jars with our own theory and remember everything that fits.
• People quickly adjust their values to fit their behaviour, even when it is clearly immoral. Those stealing from their employer will claim that "Everyone does it" so they would be losing out if they didn't, or alternatively that "I'm underpaid so I deserve a little extra on the side." (2)

There are good psychological reasons why we do not want to make the painful change to being honest and courageous. Instead, we display hypocrisy, self righteousness and unwarranted pride. Imagine the following. You are a prison guard. You look down on the prisoners. Some are in jail for beating and robbing others. Your job is to beat them and deprive them of basic freedoms. You see no hypocrisy in the fact that you are beating someone as punishment for beating someone else. Why should you? You have the legal right, perhaps even the responsibility, to do so. If someone looked down on you as a criminal for your violent behaviour, you would say you are doing a job that others will not, or the criminals deserve it, or society demands it of you. Having satisfied yourself with your argument, you feel prouder than before that you are doing what is right. Hypocrisy, self righteousness, pride. Keep this in mind the next time your punish your children for something you do or used to do.

But the truly frightening self deception occurs in the collective mind. When we invaded that country, we did so out of necessity. Having exhausted all other options, we felt that the threats to our security were so great we had to resort to war. When someone threatens our interests in some way, however, they are evil, warmongering and wrong. We will even accuse them of doing things we already do. They tortured all those people. Well, so did we, but we did it to survive, or in the name of our glorious revolution, or for the future of our nation; they did it because they are malicious.

You see, a mind that cannot see itself in the mirror can legitimise anything. There are no limits to what evil we are capable of, as long as we are not awoken from the dream that we are still good people. History sees the Nazis as evil, but they did not consider themselves so. Most of them were “just following orders”. Moreover, we are perfectly capable of denouncing the Nazis for their crimes and committing similar ones ourselves. The British criticise the German bombing of Britain to this day while turning a blind eye to the far more devastating fire bombing of Dresden.

But why would the British see Dresden as anything worse than self defence? Their history books were carefully written by nationalists. Nationalism, religious faith and ideology all lead to unconsciousness. While sleeping on the facts, nationalists will write books that glorify their nation, thus fostering pride and more nationalism in those who read them. The same history books, which are portrayed as the truth (as are the Bible or the Quran), magnify the nation’s enemies’ wrongdoings while glossing over its own.

We are thus given a big window and a distorted mirror. Japanese people are not taught about the astonishing brutality of the Japanese military in the 1930s and 40s. Not surprisingly, the Chinese are. Chinese people, as a result, grow up despising the Japanese. And yet, ask most of those same people about the killing of hundreds of protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and they will look at you confused and angry. What is the difference between a struggle for national liberation and an insurgent uprising? Whose side you are on.

Individual self deception, when we lie to ourselves, is dangerous, and collective self deception, which comes from our prejudices, leads to war. If you wish to become more self aware, I suggest spending some time reflecting, looking deep into the mirror to see how you really are, and using your greater strength—the window—to observe others and ask yourself honestly if you are like them, and how you feel about it. The following questions might help.

• What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
• How do your friends describe you?
Do you agree with their descriptions? Why or why not?
• List two situtations when you are most at ease.
What specific elements were present when you felt that way?
• What types of activities did you enjoy doing when you were a child?
What about now?
• What motivates you? Why?
• What are your dreams for the future?
What steps are you taking to achieve your dreams?
• What do you fear most in your life? Why?
• What stresses you?
What is your typical response to stress?
• What qualities do you like to see in people? Why?
Do you have many friends as you just described? Why or why not?
• When you disagree with someone's viewpoint, what would you do?

(1) http://www.vtaide.com/lifeskills/knowself.htm
(2) http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/how-and-why-we-lie-to-ourselves.php

Learning anthropology is an eye opener, and it is fascinating. Although I have lived in several different places and have friends from more places, although I study culture and always try to understand, there is so much about cultures around the world I do not know. The cultures I know about all have significant similarities. They are all large, complex societies; they are all culturally linked to those around them; and so on. What about the others? What about the small, isolated cultures that anthropologists observe with wide eyes? When it comes to pronouncements about humanity, I am a little fish in a big pond.

I read not just to spread my ideas but to understand them. I write what I believe, and as soon as I hit "publish" I can look for gaps in my logic. When others write comments, whether I agree with them or not, I can engage in discourse with them or even with myself. This kind of discourse is the best way I have found to question my own perspective and understand others'.

My application of parochial ideals, such as individualism, to cultures I do not understand; my judgment of those who support undemocratic governments when those governments may fit their societies better; my dislike of Chinese culture's emphasis on superficiality instead of substance: all are products of my ethnocentrism. My saying that capitalism and democracy are universal should read that they are good for complex states. But even that is something I should subject to deeper scrutiny. I will, I assure you.

Are there no cultures out there that are better than others? Before you say, "of course not", consider the culture of al Qaeda or the Ku Klux Klan. Consider burning women to death for failing to make dowry payments. What about cultures that support these actions? Are all cultures morally equal? To quote Kwame Anthony Appiah on the subject, "Vive la différence? Please." Or perhaps we say "they are simply misguided", or "they will learn [like we have] one day"; but up pops ethnocentrism again.

So could we not just change a few things in their culture? Anthropologist Tom Gregor was torn when he was living in the Amazon with a local tribe. One of the tribe's customs was, whenever a woman was found guilty of adultery, the penalty was gang rape. Should he intervene to save this woman? Many people from my culture would; and yet, they would be saying, quite clearly, that their beliefs are superior to the tribe's.

Isn't the ideal observer one who suspends his or her culture or other biases? Perhaps, but surely that is like teaching fish to fly. And besides, there must be some truth out there. Is it wrong to try to prevent gang rape? Is it wrong for me to advance the tenets of evolution and attack creationism? Or only in "my own culture"? Is it wrong for me to want others to believe what I believe as truth? If so, what is the point of even seeking the truth? If not, where is the line between teaching others and pushing your unsolicited beliefs on them? Or is there no line at all?

I suppose what they say about questions being more important than answers is right. As one person, I will continue writing and asking questions, question, write, question, for the rest of my short life. I want to be wise, and I believe the inquisitive skeptical mind will always be wiser than the certain one.

There is an interesting assumption among educated people that extremes can never work. As an extreme in thought in and of itself, this question is worth examining.

There are, of course, many examples in history where extremes have and appear to always fail. On the other hand, there are some extremes that are practiced every day that we do not see as extreme because, for us, they are normal.

For example, many people live in a world where no one except agents of the government are allowed to own guns. They accept this as the right way to live. If one suggested to them that everyone should be allowed to own a gun, like in Switzerland, people would call one an extremist. And yet, extremism is already the norm. We are just considering the other end of the continuum.

Is it extremist to say things like “awesome”, “100%”, “perfect” and “absolutely”? Probably not, but it does evince that we sometimes think in extremes. And that is fine. It is fine to say “George Bush is the worst president ever”, or “I would like to kill George Bush” or even “George Bush is the cause of all the world’s problems”, although they are all extreme. The question is not, “is it extreme”, but rather, is it true?

Reasonable people will agree that arguments are only fairly evaluated when they are evaluated on their logic. Truth is truth whether or not one would like to admit it. And it is possible that the extreme is the truth. In the 19th century, it was unthinkable that women, all women, should be allowed to vote. The suffragettes were extremists, and radical feminists have relentlessly pushed for equality with men for more than a hundred years. They were granted the vote and a raft of other privileges that made them equal to men in many areas of life (though whether enough, more than enough or not enough is still up for debate). Gradually, the feminist arguments made more and more sense to everyone, and the extreme became the norm. Such is our capacity for logic.

Whatever your opinions on life, understand that there is room for left and right, up and down, in and out. We live in world of balance, and of extremes. What works best may just be the extreme in thought, so keep an open mind to every part of the spectrum.

Racism is everywhere. On most street corners in most parts of the world, you can find people who, under the right conditions, are racist. But surely not on MY street corner?

Many people display their racism every day, but it is not always recognisable. You see, we often cloak our racism in a desire for justice. Everyone wants what is right and fair. Unfortunately, we also have trouble seeking out and understanding multiple perspectives.

When we are young, we are usually only taught one way of thinking about each issue. Our parents and teachers tend to speak to us in facts that are not strictly true. For instance, growing up you may have learned that milk is unequivocally good for you; that you are in school to get a good job; that you are good at soccer but bad at ping pong; that immigrants are becoming a problem; or that those people have historically been cruel to our people.

I do not believe that humans are naturally racist. We may fear the unknown, but we can also be curious, fascinated by it. If that is true, racism is created by our conditions. From a young age, we learn to be racist. And most of us we do not completely shed this racism because we cling to our old ways of thinking and brush aside anything contrary.

To some, old beliefs are like old friends: they give us comfort, they tell us we are right, and changing them can be upsetting. The blue people learn that the green people have historically done the blues injustice. The blue people grow up in blue communities with other blue people who take for granted that the greens are cruel and untrustworthy. Then one day, a blue person is offered insight into the truth. Apparently, the blues were once also nasty to the greens. What does a blue person do when finding this out? Surely, an open minded blue would think, "I have been wrong my whole life", or at least "I had better research this subject further".

But humans are remarkably gifted at cognitive dissonance. So when they hear about blue cruelty against greens, they write it off like a subprime mortgage. "This is nonsense. I believe what I read before." "This was clearly written by someone sympathetic to greens or who hates blues." "There go those greens, spreading lies to gain support." Because of dissonance, in fact, we feel more certain of our original positions than before.

This is confirmation bias at work. In one experiment, researchers selected people who were for, and others who were against capital punishment. They had them read two scholarly articles, well written and documented, one in favour of capital punishment, the other against. A critical thinking person would do his or her best to evaluate the articles on their merits, and realise that the issue is not simply blue or green. What happened, however, was that each subject found reasons to claim the article they agreed with was a masterpiece of scholarship, and magnified minor flaws in the article opposing their views. In short, each ideologue came out of the experiment more convinced than ever that he or she was right.

And so it is with us racists. However much we read, it turns out that, lo and behold, we were right all along. We polarise issues in our minds: either you agree with my blue group, or you are with the evil greens. After all, you must be wrong if you are in favour of them and against us. And this is the banality of racism. We can walk around every day thinking we are not racist, we just demand that group apologise for its crimes against our group. We pay more attention to the plight of the groups we belong to, and listen to those in our group. We feel sad when bad things happen to our group and happy when they happen to our enemies, instead of being equally distraught by all human suffering. We seek out others who agree with us, and attack those who disagree as biased, closed minded and ignorant.

Thinking people should question their own beliefs first. Only then can we eliminate the mental tricks we pull on ourselves that lead to our banal, but still dangerous racism.

Are most people natural worriers? Or are they just worried because all the worriers around them tell them to be?

Boy, there are a lot of worried people out there nowadays. Almost everything you could worry about, people have exaggerated it to the stature of Godzilla, poised to bring down civilisation as we know it. Popular books and newspaper articles warn of the end of everything we hold dear.

Fortunately, there are some skeptical optimists out there to shed a little perspective on things, put a stop to all the irresponsible fearmongering and help you get back to living your life. I should note that I do not read just to maintain my optimism, I read to maintain a balanced viewpoint on things. When everyone seems to think something is bad, there is always someone else to tell you the good side of things. This post will give you the pessimists’ side of things, followed by a contrarian’s. Both are worth listening to before you decide to worry. (Please follow the links I provide to get my full side of each story.)

Pessimist: Climate change is the biggest threat to our civilisation and the biggest challenge to our generation. It threatens to destroy everything we hold dear.

Contrarian: That is unlikely. To be clear, I am not denying climate change, nor that it could be harmful. What I am not convinced about is that everything is going to blow up in our faces and our grandchildren will be left with nothing. Climate change is one of those issues on which we have too much certainty, too much worrying that the end is near, and not enough debate about the facts.

Furthermore, every generation worries about environmental collapse. When I was young, it was the ozone layer. Thirty years ago, it was global cooling. And so on for the past hundred years. None of these problems has destroyed us yet. I guess we are just more resilient than the doomsayers realised.

Pessimist: We are running out of natural resources. Oil has peaked, wood is disappearing, and wars are brewing over water. We are in big trouble.

Contrarian: The first problem with these arguments is that they are trying to predict the future without firm grounding in the present. Sure, those things could be true, but we are always finding ourselves wrong about them. We thought gold, silver, copper, iron and so on would all run out completely twenty or thirty years ago, and they have not. Oil might have peaked but we do not know. Existence of debate about something (like peak oil) does not mean it has been proven. And water supplies are getting thinner in some places, where there is indeed water war, and greater in other places, as global warming frees up water supplies embedded in glaciers. Besides, how could we run out of water? It could become harder to find for some people, and harder to clean and desalinate, but surely we are not going to run out.

The second problem is that the future changes every day. Predictions by the wisest experts are notoriously unreliable, partly because every time there is a new, disrupting technology, everything changes. For instance, a big environmental problem at the end of the 19^th century was horses. Everyone was getting around in horses, but horses were leaving messes all over the streets. Flies were being born in great numbers and spreading disease. What was to be done? Then, the automobile came along and saved the day. The point is, we do not know what new technology is coming or when. Every time a new technology comes along, yes, of course, it causes new problems, but it also solves old ones. The better technology gets, the better our understanding of science is, the more likely we can find our way out of the mess. I admit we could be in trouble, but people talk as if, if we turn on another light or start up another car, society will collapse. We are stronger than that.

Thirdly, I am not worried about the depletion of any of these things. Humankind has proven itself highly adaptive to change, and the depletion of one or another natural resource will be shaken off so we can go destroy something else.

Pessimist: China’s rise is a military and economic threat to everyone else, especially us westerners.

Contrarian: We are really scared of China, aren’t we? But why? First, China is not as “rising” as some might have you believe. As I wrote earlier, China is not about to overtake the United States in anything except instability of its environment.

Second, the rise of China is, for the most part, a good thing. It means a big new market for companies from the rest of the world, and new businesses, ideas, products and so on for the world outside China. The China of Mao’s era or before would not be helping to stop piracy in the Arabian Sea, or terrorism on its Central Asian borders. It means more wealth and, in my opinion, more security, not less.

Third, the rise of this or that country is always feared, and always has been. When Japan was ascendant in the 1980s, the bookstores were full of books saying how powerful it would become and take over the world. How many books do you see about that now? What are you afraid of? That China will take over the world? That Chinese business will be more competitive than your country’s? The only problem I see is that Chinese consumers and businesses will use more and more natural resources and create more and more pollution. But it would be hypocritical of me to tell them to stop trying to achieve a better life.

BUT, say the pessimists (and I was one of them a couple of years ago), China could be the source of the next world war. No doubt, China’s Taiwan policy could mean a war between China and Taiwan that the United States might step into. But what is the likelihood of that?

Contrarian: First, a war between China and the United States would be immensely costly. The Chinese government and some of its people would be behind a war to regain Taiwan, but they are not so arrogant as to think they could simply defeat the United States in a year or two. Americans, on the other side, are unlikely to want to engage one of the most powerful militaries in the world simply for the sake of Taiwan’s independence.

Second, there are many people from China in the United States and many from the United States in China. These are people who will do anything to avoid war between the two countries. That means thousands of people saying, “if you want them, you’ve got to go through me.”

What are some other looming wars you may be building a bomb shelter for?

Pessimists: Iran is building a bomb and war is inevitable.

Contrarian: War with Iran is highly unlikely. Aside from a few opportunists, nobody wants it. Iran is not attacking anyone and Barack is not attacking them.

Pessimists: North Korea is shooting rockets and threatening everyone. Won’t they go to war too?

Contrarian: They cannot. Nuclear weapons are so powerful that no one can ever use them. North Korea is a complicated matter but nuclear weapons are among the least of our worries.

Besides, who would want to fight a war when this economic crisis will bring the world to its knees alone? The pessimists, including one of my favourite historians, Niall Ferguson, say that it could lead to depression and war, like the 1929 crash did. (To be fair, Ferguson said “there will be blood”, not “there will be world war”.) I, contrarian, think things are fundamentally different and are not as bad as in the 1930s.

We have lower trade barriers and fewer suffocating regulations than in the days of the Depression. The stock market crash in 1929 was inevitable: stock markets sometimes go up and down slowly, but when they reach such dizzying heights as in 1929, they crash painfully. The crash was pretty big in 1987, too, but then things recovered. The Great Depression was brought on, however, by excessive protectionism and regulation that I do not think we will resort to. Though today there is, of course, a risk of war, none of the major powers are about to become socialist, fascist or communist, and none of them have tariffs even approaching those of the 1930s. You might lose your job, but this economic crisis will not mean the end of the world.

The reason we are told to worry about all these things is that people want to draw attention to their cause, and they know that it is not enough to say “the climate is getting slightly warmer” or “there is a remote possibility of war”. Instead, one person exaggerates, then the next person doubles it, and so on around the circle until everyone is screaming and throwing their hands in the air.

To answer my original question, my guess is that worriers on one end tell everyone else to worry, so they do. Please do not let yourself get caught up in the hysteria.

The most succinct way I have heard evolution by natural selection described is thus. If you imagine a mountain, and you are on top of it looking down, you can see the path sloping downwards. Your ancestors, in effect, climbed that slope, generation after generation, changing slightly as they went along, and in the end produced you. Being at the top of the mountain does not mean we are perfect, that we are approaching perfection or even that we are getting better; we are just moving inexorably in a direction. I have noticed that our opinions evolve in a very similar way to organisms.

Because of our environment, education, genes and culture, we have all formed opinions. For most people, at some point in their lives, their opinions, once malleable, have hardened. Like the evolving organism, we have taken a long trip up a slope to our opinions; but unlike the organism, we have trouble adapting our opinions to new circumstances. If an organism avoided the truth in favour of consistency, it would eventually die off. The individual human, however, feels such a strong need for consistency of thought and belief that he or she is willing to ignore contrary evidence and insult those who found it. Because our opinions creep up on us over time, I call this phenomenon opinion creep.

Let me illustrate opinion creep. When I was in university, I took a class with a professor I liked who was not an extremist by any measure but who favoured free markets and globalisation on balance. One of the books we read was Martin Wolf’s Why Globalisation Works, which I loved because of its unflinching attack on anti-globalisationists. Not all of the reading was pro-globalisation, but what made the most sense to me certainly was. After I graduated, I continued to seek out books and articles to read. But since I had already found the most logic in the “neoliberal” school, when I read arguments that contradicted neoliberal thought, I could easily dismiss it.

I read libertarian thinkers, and then anarcho-capitalists, thinking that, given all the other things I knew about politics and economics, these people made a lot of sense. I started writing about my views and clashing with people who did not seem to see things logically. How could you not see that, given all these premises, this conclusion (eg. that the state should be abolished) is the best way forward for everyone?

I had fallen victim to opinion creep. Instead of reading a balanced variety of perspectives with a mind that is equally open and critical to all of them, I was seeking out what I agreed with and repudiating whatever anyone else said. I was climbing the slope towards an extreme opinion and the more I read, the easier the climb got. However, on the way, I had abandoned my quest for a more balanced understanding of the world and multiple perspectives on multiple issues.

When I realised what I was doing, I began reading contrarian views. I picked up copies of the New Left Review and found that I did not really disagree so much after all. I also read Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans, and found it excellent. It does not completely disagree with the people I have read before, but it cogently takes apart the neoliberal view of development, and I learned immensely from it. I have not simply thrown away my more extreme views, as I think many of them are still valid; but I have learned how to temper them by seeking contrarian opinions.

I can see opinion creep in others now. I once belonged to an American libertarian list serve that was more about complaining about the government than anything. Some of it was interesting but it was amazing how much of it talked about how undemocratic the United States was. Nowhere is completely democratic but surely the United States is better than most places. And yet, one email I got said that it was clear that the United States is not a democracy. The only way it could be is if it embraced libertarianism. These people were so convinced by their own rhetoric, they were blind to outside opinions. Philosopher Karl Popper once said, “If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.”

If you go to enough blogs and newspapers, you find more examples of opinion creep. Some of them say things like “Bush is clearly a dictator” (they might be saying that about Obama in the next few years); “the United States is obviously run by Jews”; “I have become convinced that Canada is too corrupt for me to make a difference”; and so on. Battles of words are raging online between theists and nontheists, libertarians and socialists, Arabs and Jews and their respective supporters, and people who like the Xbox and those who prefer Playstation. Why? Neither is learning anything from the experience. All they are doing is hardening their positions, digging deeper into their bunkers and putting on stronger helmets. When these people started climbing the mountain, they stopped seeking alternative opinions. It is now almost impossible for them to see the logic in the opposition’s point of view.

Any of us can fall victim to opinion creep, especially the educated. My suggestion is, whenever you read something rhetorical, seek out something that contradicts it. You do not have to change your opinion, but at least you will be able to understand how others think. There is more than one way to solve the world’s problems. If we stay open to new ways of thinking, we can cooperate on the points on which we agree.

This idea may sound counter intuitive, but I have come to believe that any time I get angry or offended, it is my fault. Here is my reasoning.

Think about the things that make you angry. I will use racism as an example because racism makes me angry. Does everyone get angry at racism? No, some people like it. So I must have learned somewhere that it is bad, and that I should get angry at it. So I see it as wrong. Does that mean I need to get angry?

Not at all. Some people never get angry. A lot of people in the world believe that there is no good or bad in the world. Everything is neutral. Time washes away both good and evil. If you do not agree, let us think of other reasons you might get offended.

In school, people would try to make fun of me by calling me gay, or a girl, or an idiot. If I had realised back then the power of confidence, I would not have taken any offense at all. Confidence is what makes you feel good about yourself for the things you are, or are not. If your confidence is well-founded, you have no reason to get offended. Am I gay? A girl? Mentally handicapped? No. You might as well have said I was Hawaiian. If it is not true, the insult is meaningless.

Because of this, the last thing anyone should get angry about is offense against god. The truly faithful are comfortable in the knowledge that they are right. Faith in god means that you are certain he exists and loves you and so on. There is no need to be offended because, if you know those things, you know my words or thoughts or actions will not change anything. But what about when the insult is true?

If you have long fingers, and I insult you for having long fingers, will you get offended? No? Even if I am really nasty? “Hey long fingers! Nice long fingers! Take any cotton out of any little bottles today? Haha!” What is insulting about that? It is true. So why would you take offense if someone calls you black, or white, or Asian? Is there someone wrong with being a certain colour? Not if you are not racist. Even if it is a rude word for your race, there is no reason to get upset. Just say yes, I am, so what? What is wrong with that?

Moreover, if I am a racist, and you are a different race from me, my intention is to make you angry. If you get angry just because I called you a name (that may accurately describe you), you are playing into my hands. What you could try is to smile and say “so?”

Sometimes I get angry at the existence of racists. I do not like racism so I get angry at racist people. But where does racism come from? It seems to come from the idea that other races or cultures are somehow inherently inferior. That idea is pure ignorance. Study after scientific study disproves it. So what racists are really telling you is that they are ignorant. Their ideas are outdated and foolish. If anything, I should not be angry at racists but feel sorry for them. Poor racists. They just do not know what they are talking about.

When someone calls you something you are not, be confident that you know the truth. If they call you something you are, agree with them. And if people’s ideas anger you, bear in mind that they are simply misguided, not evil. This way, you can choose not to get angry.