Untruth and the Pandemic

INTRODUCTION

THE GROWTH OF OVER-ENTITLEMENT TO OPINION AND EXPRESSION

As I was growing up in the 1950’s, Westerns were popular on  TV and in the movies. One trope that made an impact on me was the much-fussed-over custom of creating safe spaces in old western towns. Cowboys reluctantly endured a ritual called “checking your guns at the door” as they crossed the swinging panel thresholds into the local saloon. 

A case can be made that each time you head out the front door of your house, or let something inside it, you might want to consider checking something at the door, cowboy-style: I am talking about your opinions (often more dangerous than guns), and those of others. 

We are all entitled to our opinions, and to reasonable expression of them. But having an opinion has no cost, conveys no special qualities or qualifications, and means nothing in terms of establishing the authority or credibility of the person who lays claim to one.  We certainly need to be legally free to express ourselves. That said, at this moment in history, the norms and ethics regarding individual and professional expression (in physical life and cyberspace) are no longer up to the task of ensuring the continuity of the basic systems that meet our needs. We desperately need to update these ethics. 

Humans individually and as a group originate and celebrate many, many opinions, jamming the airwaves and cyberspace. For all their ubiquity, most of the opinions that are on offer every day starkly demonstrate the presence of significant denial within the population about the degree of difficulty involved in processing the complexities associated with specialized fields.  This has consequences.  One of them, out of many: we tend to pounce on error instead of celebrating it as a necessary result of experimentation—which is our only path to wisdom and skill.  The freedom to fail has largely vanished from public discourse and political leadership This is worth underscoring: unqualified opinion, too-freely-expressed, dangerously stifles the much-needed freedom to experiment and fail. Paraphrasing Mr. D. Vader: “Never underestimate the power of the ignorant critical opinion.” 

As a coach and consultant with a thirty-year clinical and lecture practice, my life is spent helping people who already possess significant masteries as they find ways to improve performance excellence in a wide variety of fields.  I do this most often by exploring new and revolutionary approaches to attention.  Checking opinions at the door is a starting point, a simple bit of advice I often give to myself and to my clients.  I propose that this step is a precursor to learning, participation, and growth. It is also, in the present climate, a survival skill. 

YOUR ATTENTION, THE PANDEMIC, AND A DATASTORM 

It is more important now than at any other time in living memory that we all find the best possible ways to manage our attention, functionality, and states of being. We have to do this in the most complex cognitive environment in human history (quite apart from the pandemic).  We have to simultaneously deal with the coronavirus, global warming, wealth and income disparity, and health and diet issues. Each of these, and more, play contributing roles in sustaining and accelerating what I have come to regard as an unprecedented crisis, equivalent to an ultra-massive extreme weather event. This event is taking place simultaneously in the biological world, the economic sphere, and in what can reasonably be called mindspace.  The datastorm delivers a powerful and ruthless mix of vital and wonderful knowledge, along with large-scale tendrils of untruth in many forms, with the good and the dangerous mixed together so as to deliver a virus-like contamination into the mindstreams of people.  The result, as is obvious to many but by no means all, is that the vast majority of people have difficulty knowing what is reliable, what is fiction, falsehood, misperception, or fantasy-driven world creation.  

WE ARE NOT JUST PASSIVE VICTIMS IN THE STORM’S PATH, WE ARE ACTIVE CONTRIBUTORS TO IT 

Not only are we in the storm; the storm is coming, in part, from inside us.  We paradoxically participate in the creation and maintenance of the whirlwind every time we add something to or deliberately draw something from the torrent of information. We have got to find a way to minimize our role as storm creators, or stop it entirely. The impetus to do this can come from refocusing, and paying more attention to the consequences of communication of which we are a part.

CREDIBILITY AND CREDULITY

If you want to live more cleanly and sustainably in the datastorm, you will want to protect your all-important social assets. Consider this: Our individual credibility is at stake whenever we pass information along. But how many of us are thinking about how crucially important our credibility is? In my experience, many people regard the act of passing along a bit of information on the Internet as an incredibly casual act.  This lack of attention to issues of verifiable truthfulness cuts in two directions. There is credibility and there is credulity. (Credulity is defined as a tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true).  We wish and need to be known as credible and also to be seen and known to be relatively low in credulity.  Our self-perceived and socially perceived credulity is at stake whenever we are exposed to new input, especially from afar.  We would do well to ask ourselves:  How rigorous are we, really? What standard does an admirable, trustworthy, intelligent person want to meet and maintain before they state an opinion or endorse/share a view?  Are we actually meeting that standard?  

PASSIVE DATA OR “ACTIONAL” INFORMATION: KNOW THE DIFFERENCE 

Another crucial point of focus may be insufficiently emphasized: people do not seem to weigh what might be called “actional” elements when they pass along or originate information. It is one thing to rebroadcast data that doesn’t affect people’s choices and behaviors (even indirectly). It is another thing to pass along elements that, because of our hardwiring as human beings, may reasonably be likely to trigger significant changes in the behavior of those exposed.  Anytime we offer anything to another person that potentially influences a high-consequence choice, we are doing a very serious thing.  Nowhere is this truer than in offering information, or receiving it uncritically, in cases where individuals involved display a predilection to grasp firmly, and/or undertake extreme actions on the basis of conspiracy theories. Rigor and care on the part of those who offer information (and especially opinion) is particularly vital anytime a disclosure might affect choices on someone else’s part  that are irreversible, as many life choices are. The consequences of many such choices can extend into other lives and resonate negatively, far into the future.  We who would originate, receive or transfer information need to learn to look at these issues as a precursor to either sharing or listening. 

UNTRUTH AND COGNITIVE SUCCESS 

In terms of how pushy people can be with the many opinions they generate, it is fair to say they behave like passengers on an airliner who are feeling increasingly free to thrust views and demands about the construction and operation of an aircraft onto other passengers and onto crewmembers, with the potential to change behaviors, while in flight.  This, with all lives of those aboard in the balance, and in the face of the ready availability of people who can actually design, build and fly airplanes. Passengers should check their opinions on flight operations at the door of the aircraft unless they have specific and earned expertise, and even then, expressing such opinions is a fraught undertaking requiring subtlety and skill.