Do YOUR Research! Strengthen Your Character to Stop Getting Triggered by Wild Beliefs

Image by Sammy-Williams from Pixabay 

In this climate of polarization, do you have the strength of character to look at where your own beliefs come from and really do your own research before dismissing others’ seemingly strange and wild beliefs?

I’ve been noticing extremes as they cross my path this week.

Before I begin, I will say this is not an article about pro or anti any subject except:

• maintaining freedom of choice
• using critical thinking and
• thinking for oneself.

The first extreme I noticed was a pro vaccine post titled “Why I vaccinate”. It included statements like“I choose to accept the consensus of science, not focus on one discredited study in isolation”,”I value evidence, not anecdote”, and “I make a choice from clear rational thinking, not unfounded fear or conspiracy theories”.

All that sounds great but since the post lacked any of the science it mentioned, nor any evidence
of rational thinking having been applied, it sounded more to me like a very deliberate dig at those who choose not to vaccinate.

I can understand where this groundswell of opinion arises from though. In fact, another post credited to Linda Gamble Spadaro, a licensed mental health counselor in Florida, sums it up well:

“Please stop saying you researched it.

You didn’t research anything and it is highly probable you don’t know how to do so.

Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on the reported results? No?

Did you at least take each article one by one and look into the source (that would be the author, publisher and funder), then critique the writing for logical fallacies, cognitive distortions and plain inaccuracies?

Did you ask yourself why this source might publish these particular results? Did you follow the trail of references and apply the same source of scrutiny to them?

No? Then you didn’t f*cking research anything. You read or watched a video, most likely with little or no objectivity. You came across something in your algorithm manipulated feed, something that jived with your implicit biases and served your confirmation bias, and subconsciously applied your emotional filters and called it proof.

Scary”

In some ways, yes, I agree. However, I have to step back and ask myself where my own opinions have arisen from. As I grew up in the world I accepted a number of truths. In the case of vaccines, that really came from the government literature and medical professionals I was exposed to, and the adults around me readily accepting those as truths, and so I formed an implicit bias towards them; I didn’t compile a literature review from a random sample of sources and apply any of the rigor Linda points to.

A friend of mine was talking to a family member about the roll out of COVID19 vaccines here in New Zealand, and she was questioning the efficacy of them. His view was “why would they lie to us?” This is precisely the sort of question that is useful to ask if used to examine motives. In this case though it was an indication of blind faith placed in a system of power, not dissimilar to my own when I was growing up.

When I relook at the original post I read on pro vaccines, I do know there is not just “one discredited study” that challenges the efficacy of vaccines in general, there are mountains of literature out there both pro and against. That kind of glib statement, to my mind, discredits the point it’s trying to promote. Yes, sure, as it says, there are thousands of safety studies looking at vaccines from all angles, but who is the author, publisher and funder of those?

My own journey with health issues in the last few decades of my life has caused me to question many aspects of the government and medical views I was fed as a matter of course.

I covered this journey in a series of articles back in 2019 (Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing, Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress and You Have Amazing Options When it comes to Healthcare) but the one thing that I can’t deny is pharmaceuticals are extremely profitable, and who stands to make from those profits? And what power (direct and indirect) does that give pharmaceutical companies?

On the other hand I don’t see the same incentives for health. Yet I know how astonishingly well my immune system works when supported by the right mindset, diet and lifestyle. I feel that the fact my kids had twenty routine vaccines by the age of four, essentially intentionally infecting burgeoning immune systems twenty times, should be something I’m encouraged to investigate and question.

I have another friend who is most definitely in that corner of having no trust in what the powers-that-be tell us and questions everything. She feels “the programming that occurs is not okay, and that we should not allow ourselves and our children to be fed bullsh!t and be kept in the dark in order to control us”.

Certainly British politician, writer and diarist Tony Benn concurred in his interview with Michael Moore in the documentary Sicko, looking at America’s healthcare crisis, when he said “An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern”.

Someone who had been diving into the world of Flat Earthers encouraged me to listen to a series that apparently gave lots of scientific data. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it beyond the first part though as there was no ownership of who the commentator and director was and I like transparency so I can delve more into the credibility of a source.

While it sounded extremely scientific in some of its language (to the extent I’d need to be or have access to experts in the field of physics and so forth to be able to corroborate or refute the points made), there were also a couple of things questioned that, to my mind, were no real mysteries at all.  
I agree it’s important to question things, but I try to limit that, particularly to things I'm interested in or I can control and have a direct impact on me. Whether the Earth is a disk that is essentially a platform for a hologram is an idea I’m merely intrigued by, and why it’s of such importance to so many.

But I also think we need a shared understanding of reality in order to remain stable. As Tristan Harris says in The Social Dilemma “Imagine a world where no one believes anything that was once held true, and everyone believes that the government is lying to them about everything, and everything is a conspiracy theory. We need a shared understanding of reality in order to remain stable”. 

That's what is great and simultaneously unsettling about the online world these days. On one hand there is much greater access to information than ever before. On the other hand the artificial intelligence does not know the truth and is wired for popularity.

So its ability to bring out the worst in society, create polarisation, outrage, instability, lack of trust in each other, loneliness, alienation, election hacking, populism and distraction is also an opportunity to create an inability to focus on the real issues, which is indicative of a society devolving into chaos. 

I personally feel the real game changer, aside of disengagement from the feed and the rat race, is the internal personal work required to defrag our mental and emotional dysfunction as a collective in order to be able to discern the truths that will allow us to grow and flourish as a society.

Much of my journey in recent years has focused on becoming conscious of the dysfunctional patterns of thinking and behaviour I adopted when growing up, recognizing they no longer serve me as a free thinking adult, then creating interruption to those well worn neural pathways, and deliberately creating newer, healthier responses.  

But another aspect of human nature has also caught my attention lately, and I think it relates directly to a person’s ability to question the kinds of things I’ve been talking about here; that of human character.

Thanks to the kids’ thirst for Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s book series lately, I’ve been thrust into the world of a fictional 1940’s Girls’ boarding school, and met an inspiring head mistress, Miss Theobald, who says:

“We are not out to cram facts and knowledge into the girls’ heads all day long, but to help them form strong and kindly characters.”

“I may not know what type of brain you have, exactly where you stand in class, or what your gifts and capabilities are without referring to your form mistress, but I know your characters; the good and badin you, the possibilities in your nature, your tendencies, your faults, and your virtues.”

“Unless you have enough courage to face up to yourself, and try to tear out the unpleasant failings that are spoiling and weakening what character you do have, we have nothing to offer you”

“Faults such as greed, irresponsibility and silliness, these arouse disgust but can be forgotten and forgiven. Spite and malice rouse bitter feelings; they rankle and are never forgotten”

Instead the stories about the school promote such qualities as honesty, self awareness, ownership of failings, bravery, leadership, resourcefulness and ingenuity. And I believe these are the very qualities required to really critically question some of the aspects of our lives that can lead to the growth and evolution of our species and planet.

So when you are confronted by someone’s strange and seemingly wild beliefs, do you have the strength of character to look at where your own beliefs come from and really do your own research before dismissing them?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma, Are You Getting Distracted From Who You Came to Be This Life? What Are the Right Questions to Ask Right Now? and What Is the Deal with Conspiracies? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.