What do you call someone who privately knows they may be wrong about something but publicly advocates in favor of it, sometimes with intense fervor, because to admit they are wrong would be against their interests?
A weasel? An asshole? A hypocrite? A lost soul?
A lot of political cataclysm comes from people doubling down on things because of an unwillingness to say, “Maybe I was wrong.” Those actions affect their lives but also the lives of all the people they come in contact with and cause a lot of damage for everyone else.
Actor Joel Edgerton, in the Washington Post
For a long time, people kept many of their opinions to themselves, for a variety of reasons. But today, people’s lives are so we’ll documented, and we have more ways of learning fact than ever before in history, that now we have many examples of this kind of clinging to wrongness.
For instance, there are those who cling to the belief that the Earth is flat. There are those who hold deeply conservative religious views and who show no interest newly revealed truths. We have people who believe there is evidence that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
Is this wise? If not, why does it happen with alarming frequency?
Based on casual observation, it appears that such persons take psychic refuge in what they are believing. Their belief system–political, religious, views of human nature–provides value to them, often in the form of a coherent narrative to their lives. Which is what belief systems have done for tens of thousands of years, so it’s human. But more often than not, such beliefs can conflict with new ways to understand the world. People willing to adapt will learn to adjust. Others, even in the face of evidence, dig in their heels.
At that point, the humane thing to do is quietly but firmly inform them of their wrongness, be strong and ignore their continued attempts to assert their opinions, and be compassionate. Some of these people can be redeemed but many are so caught up in their belief system, sometimes with intense fervor, that they are essentially lost.
Interestingly, Jesus said much about hypocrites while he was teaching 2000 years ago, none of it good. Somewhere along the line, many people stopped listening to that teaching and instead doubled down on their out-of-touch beliefs. But also, Jesus–and the Buddha, and Hindu scriptures–teach compassion for the lost.
Wise teaching indeed.
The Seeker 