Episode 271 of the Podcast RevolutionZ looks at Evangelical Voting, Magical Thinking, and Evidentiary Reasoning - Organizing or Even Just Conversing in Difficult Times. Why do people believe what they do? Supporting Trump, abetting Israel, ignoring climate calamity or even being left in very contradictory ways. How can words change minds?
Episode 271 of the Podcast RevolutionZ looks at Evangelical Voting, Magical Thinking, and Evidentiary Reasoning - Organizing or Even Just Conversing in Difficult Times. Why do people believe what they do? Supporting Trump, abetting Israel, ignoring climate calamity or even being left in very contradictory ways. How can words change minds?
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am testing to see whether or not we're recording properly, and we are, so we will continue after cutting in the first 20 seconds. Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 271st consecutive episode and it's titled Organizing or even just Conversing in Divided Times. The title is a bit strange because the topic is complex and hard to name and, honestly, I don't really have a good grip on it, but maybe there are things we can talk about that's relevant to trying to get a good grip on it. So the idea is to talk about talking productively in our current very peculiar, very threatening and very upsetting times.
Speaker 1:While it is an extreme or it seems to be an extreme case, I want to start off with something I read recently by a person posting in a public venue, which was his effort to explain how evangelicals justify supporting the likes of Trump and Bobaard. This individual wrote so. Now I'm quoting from what he put in this public mechanism or venue quote I have extended family who are evangelical. They're part of the quiverful cult. I've never heard of that but it's easier for them to justify people like Trump and Bobaard than you might think. Sorry, this answer got long, he says, but it spells out the evangelical mindset. As I understand it, the usual rationalizing goes something like this One I have all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Two the Holy Spirit can move within anyone who accepts salvation through Jesus Christ, no matter how fallen. Three since everyone is a sinner, but only people who accept Jesus can be moved by the Holy Spirit, it is far better to vote for a politician who is sinful but open to receiving the Spirit than a politician who is sinful but turns his back on God. Bobaard, I'm not even sure how you pronounce the name, but Bobaard has received Jesus Christ. She may be sinful, like we all are, but through her, god may still do good works. A godless person is incapable of good works. Five isn't it better to vote for someone who can do good works, whatever their private failings may be, than someone incapable of good work?
Speaker 1:The relative of evangelicals continued. Quote that's basically it. That's the logic I've heard. And he continued again quote now, of course, in order to believe this line of thinking, you have to believe that Trump and Bobaard have actually accepted Jesus. If, as the Bible says you will know them by their works, matthew 7.16,. They clearly aren't Christians. They are in fact exactly who Matthew 7.15 warns about. You also have to assume their political opponents aren't Christian, which is actually pretty easy for evangelicals. To them, anyone who isn't a member of their particular evangelical sect isn't really a Christian. Like, my evangelical family thinks Southern Baptists are fake Christians because they aren't conservative enough. The relative of evangelicals went on. Quote Christians enjoy trying to define God into existence and trying to define.
Speaker 1:Let me do that whole thing again. Christians enjoy trying to define God into existence and trying to define other Christians out of existence. And evangelicals are psychologically conditioned to accept two standards of behavior, one from leaders and one from the flock. They do this weird thing where if a member of the congregation has lunch with a woman not his wife he's expelled, but a leader who is photographed having sex with his mistress on a private yacht is worshiped. It looks like hypocrisy, but they legit don't see it that way.
Speaker 1:Evangelicals are authoritarian and rigidly hierarchical. They literally see their leaders as army generals engaged in literal, not metaphorical, spiritual warfare against the demonic armies of Satan. In war. You obey your leaders without question. If their generals sometimes slip into sin. What of it? They have the most pressure. God has placed the most responsibility on their shoulders. Sure, they slip from time to time. They're fallible, like all men, and all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, remember. But God placed them in leadership because that's where he wants them. It is not for us to question God's decisions To the evangelical. God orders all things. God is directly, personally involved in every aspect of our lives. If you're rich, god made you rich as a sign of his favor Proverbs 10-22, 2 Corinthians 9-8. If you're in a position of authority, it's because God has judged you worthy of being an agent of his action.
Speaker 1:The relative of evangelicals concluded by making it timely and specific. That's why it does no good to point out to an evangelical that Bobbert is a drunk sex offender, screw up, so stupid she had to try four times to pass the GED. That's the thing they will agree with you. To them, it's proof that God has chosen her. Yes, bobbert is a drunk sex offender, screw up. Who's dumb as a post. That's why they follow and support her. There is no way such a person could be in Congress, except that God himself wills it. So she did not get elected through her own efforts. Like those elitist West Coasters who use their connections and their money and their fancy education to game the system, she's just a common ordinary person who beat the system and beat those elitists at their own game. Through God's grace and power, amen. So that's the end of the description.
Speaker 1:Now the depiction may be a bit off or dead on, I have absolutely no idea, but I suspect it's more of the former than the latter. The thing is. In either case, it reveals something, I think, of more general relevance. If you think it through, it's, of course, chock full of inconsistencies, but then that might be true of a lot of other things that people believe too, even leftists. Consider a conversation about Israeli behavior in Gaza, or about global warming, or racial, gender, sexual or class hierarchy, or gun policies or abortion and so on. What would make such conversations with a parent, a friend, a classmate, a workmate, someone whose door you knocked on, potentially productive or inevitably hopeless? I don't think there is a known or a single answer, much less a known way to manifest a good answer, to have an intended person hear it, and at any rate I don't have one. But I think maybe we might be able to say some things that are relevant, and I think it's important to try, because organizing is largely even overwhelmingly about trying to communicate successfully with people who disagree, or who it should be at any rate, though it often isn't.
Speaker 1:Let me just insert a story here. I was in Venezuela years ago during the revolution that was going on there. Chavez was president at the time and I was at one of the community assemblies talking to people about what they were up to, and I asked them after a while do you ever go into the part of town where the population is critical of Chavez, even anti-Chavez, where they don't agree with you, and talk to folks and try to organize? And they actually left. They said no, that would be a total waste of time. We can't accomplish anything. Think about that. They're in the middle of a revolutionary process and they don't want to talk to the people who disagree with them, not people at the top of the opposition or anything like that, but just people who live in a neighborhood that's more right than left.
Speaker 1:Here's another story, but this time in the United States. I'm at a school giving a talk, big audience, maybe three, four hundred people. It's a college in College Park, I think, is the name of the town in Pennsylvania. It's where the the largest university with a top rate really top rate football team is. And I'm in there, and I'm there early and we're waiting for the last people to come in and I start talking with the audience, so to speak. And on the way over this morning.
Speaker 1:That morning and I've told this story before, but for me it was pivotal on the way over that morning I passed a what's called a sports bar. That you know, the kind of bar that has the, the TVs on mounted things so that everybody can see whatever game it is that they want. And in the sports bar it was pretty much full, even though it was early in the day. And, honestly, as I looked through the window, the people in there struck me as being unusually large. It was a group of people who were from this football school, into sports, and let me just explain what that means for a second. Being into sports at that school means that in a town of about 50,000 people, on Saturday at the college football game, there are 60 or 65,000 people in the stadium. The whole everything stops and the football game takes place.
Speaker 1:So I asked the audience, I said I was curious and I was just wondering which was the case at the time how many people had been to a football game of their, of their college and of about three to four hundred people. A very few hands went up, very few, a handful. I was a bit flabbergasted. I asked them how many of you have gone into the sports bar I passed on the way here to have a drink or watch something and to talk to people in there about, obviously, politics. You're all radical leftists. And the answer was none. And they too broke out laughing, sort of like in Venezuela, except now it was a large crowd that was laughing. They thought it was, it was funny. I was shocked. I said I don't understand. That's your entire college campus. That's in there.
Speaker 1:You're saying you find it humorous, you find it so silly as to be ridiculous that you would talk with them about politics. What's the point? What are you trying to do? I then said that this is an aside. I'm not sure how relevant is to the home. Probably it is. I said you know, if I were to walk around this campus with a paint gun, I'll bet you I could shoot all the radicals, or nearly all the radicals, with the paint gun, because on that campus the radicals had one form of dress, one way of communicating and walking, and they were a tribe. They were a community. That's not meant pejoratively. They were a community that shared a culture and behavior and taste and so on. Taste an example of it being. None of them go to the ballgame and everybody else on the campus does.
Speaker 1:Everybody else, any constituency you might want to name, okay, consider that often as strange as you. We find someone else's stance, for example I'm gonna take something for granted here, but go with me we would find the stance that says that what Israel is doing in the Middle East is warranted, justified and necessary Strange. At a minimum, we'd find it incredibly strange. We would find a stance that says global warming is of no consequence, push the oil Strange, at a minimum, strange. So consider that often as strange as we find someone else's stance as blind or self-serving or defensive or whatever the feeling may well may be. It is probably reciprocated. They probably feel our stance is comparably strange, self-serving, blind, reciprocated. Let me give you another story, back when postmodernism was a going thing, much bigger, I think, than it is now, certainly much more prominent and visible.
Speaker 1:I was invited to speak at a relatively small event. It was actually at UMass, amherst. It was in somebody's living room, but there were 20, 25 people there and I was asked to speak about economic vision, participatory economics. This is a long time ago and I did and I'm speaking, and you know it's a small audience, we're in like a living room, and after a while it becomes perfectly evident to me that most of them have tuned out. You know, they just weren't paying any attention at all. I mean, they weren't being nasty about it, but I could see it, or I thought I could see it, and I decided I should ask. So I asked, I said it. You know, it seems like most of you, maybe even all of you, have stopped paying any attention and I don't really understand why I should continue talking if you don't want me to, but I do wonder why that is. What have I said that has caused you to tune out.
Speaker 1:And one of the people there and she was a professor and a leftist said to me and this is the first time I ever heard anything like this, michael, it seems like you believe what you're saying, that you think it's the truth and you're trying to convince us of it. And I said yes, that's true. I don't really think of it that way. But yeah, that's of course true. I wouldn't be saying it if I didn't believe it and I wouldn't be saying it if I didn't think there was some point in trying to communicate it to you in hopes that you might agree or provide, and so on. And so the person said well, you asked why we tuned out. I'll speak for myself. That's why I tuned out. I said I don't understand. And I didn't. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. She said well, you're presenting it as if it's true and there's no such thing as truth. There are only stories. You have one, others have one. And I said I was dumbfounded and I said, well, suppose I was talking about Newton's laws of gravity and I was trying to convey them. Would that be just a story? She said yes, and I said and it went on like that, and so I thought she was completely from outer space. I was totally flabbergasted and she thought I was too.
Speaker 1:Later we did an issue of what was then called Z-papers. It was a sort of a more in-depth treatment. An issue of Z-paper was a more in-depth treatment of some controversial thing. We did one on postmodernism. There were, I think it was four, you know four, maybe five people presenting a case for postmodernism and there were, I think it was, three of us who were presenting a case against, so to speak, that we had a problem with it, and you know. So we each wrote pieces and then there were responses and so on, and sometime later I Wrote to one of the people who was in the defendant side, or actually I ran into them and we had a conversation and after a while I said you know, I want to ask you something, but it's a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Is it okay if I ask you something? That my yeah, sure, go ahead. And I said well, you know that, that Exchange that we had in that debate, I was wondering how you felt after it, because I can't remember what yours I use, but the essence of it was because we I mean it was so one-sided it was me chomsky and barber erin reichen I'm not going to name the people on the other side, but in my eyes it was, it was a joke. I mean it was an incredible, you know, argument, evidence, etc. Etc. Trouncing An entity, trouncing very strange Formulations. And she said well, that's interesting, mic. Because I felt the same way, I wondered how you, how you, took the defeat.
Speaker 1:So here was a case where you had and everybody is on the left, everybody is, you know, advocate of humane social relations, and on and on, and you had both sides thinking that the other side had been, you know, so thoroughly Countered as for it to be embarrassing, sort of interesting. So that happens now all the time, with an evangelical and a critic, with an advocate of israel's activities currently and an opponent, with somebody who thinks that oil is Fine and that there's no real global warming and somebody who does think there is, and on and on. And so how do we, how do we Deal in such situations? How do you communicate or try to communicate In in such a situation? Um, I just recently did two essays and two to podcast episodes, one on the upcoming election and one on Privilege and the use of the concept privilege, and of course, I immediately encountered, uh, feedback which to me made no sense at all. It made almost zero reference to what I said, but in each case, it concluded that I was Not being rational and not being sensible, but instead Displaying a bias. Okay, so what can you do in such situations?
Speaker 1:Well, I think we might reasonably ask at the outset what is the basis of the commitment that people have? So, if we think about that, um, one possible basis of the commitment that people have is is that they're protecting their identity? Um, that is, you know, my I. I could be protecting my identity as an advocate of participatory economics and participatory society in arguing stupidly for them if that's what I was doing, or sounding like that's what I was doing or in dismissing a contrary position, just like, say, a I don't know a, a Leninist advocate of the old Soviet model, could be doing it out of protecting their identity. In other words, we each have spent a long time With those positions, and to to acknowledge any counterposition would call into question our past, and so maybe that's we're defending our past, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Another possible reason why somebody can hold a position is desire, that is to say, one wants it to be so, so. So you, you want it to be the case that I don't know that israel is on the side of of humanity in what it's doing. Or you want it to be the case that Participatory economics is possible, participatory society is possible, and you so want it to be the case that you ignore tons of reasons why it's impossible, and likewise for other Formulations. That's the kind of magical thinking I think. But in any case, that's another reason why you want it to be true and so you Sensor your perceptions and your thinking To be consistent with it being true. Some people would say that anybody who thinks that human beings are other than you know, relatively revolting Mounds of organic matter who behave horribly, is engaging in Magical thinking, is engaging in Warping their, their perceptions for their desire.
Speaker 1:A third possible is explanation and understanding. The person holds a position because they have understanding of the associated reality and factors and an explanation for why it is valid. Now, these three things aren't entirely divorce. That is to say, the person who thinks they have an explanation and understanding let's make it me regarding economic and social vision might in fact be driven by identity or desire and only you know unwarrantedly think that they have explanation and understanding. So it gets sort of complicated.
Speaker 1:When you disagree with somebody, what do you assume? Well, if the person you disagree with is ordinarily pretty sensible and operates in light of evidence and logic and you know explanation and understanding, you might have a tendency to think that. But if what they're saying and the position that they're taking is, in your mind, strange or utterly suicidal and, you know, self-destructive and destructive of others or whatever, then you might think that, while they believe that they're, they have an explanation and understanding. Remember that evangelical case they had an answer for anything that anybody wanted to bring up and it was couched in terms of facts and logic. It's just that it rested on a foundation that wasn't a foundation, it was air. But so be it. To them it seems like they're being perfectly sensible.
Speaker 1:And so when we encounter that in someone, when we encounter completely, you know, when I encountered the woman telling me that everything is a story, what do I? What do I assume? Do I assume? Well, okay, that's because they have an understanding which yields that, and therefore I should try and understand that and I should address, when I speak to them, that understanding, the evidence, the logic that they put forth, whatever it is. Or should I assume that it's their identity that's speaking, or it's their desire for something to be true? That's speaking? That's a tricky thing. Our natural inclination is to go to identity or desire and to leave behind explanation as just completely impossible. It can't be that anybody believes that stuff sincerely, based on evidence and reasoning. I hope this is clear. I'm not sure it is. I'm not sure I'm clear about this stuff. So why would determining which it is my identity is speaking, my desire or hope is speaking, my understanding and explanation is speaking?
Speaker 1:Well, first notice there's a big difference. If it's explanation and understanding, then the thing that you could do to counter that or to address that is look at the explanation, look at the assumptions that it's based on, the factual statements about reality and if you can show that those are false, do so. If you can show that that's where the gap between you and the other person is, address that. But what if it's identity or desire? Now that becomes very hard to address because, first of all, it will feel like an attack on the person's very identity you know, on who they are, on their values, on their basic. You know it will sound like you're saying they're crazy, and that's very difficult to communicate and to say in a manner that is going to be heard. So determining what the reasons is is of consequence, because it can tell you something about, I think, what you'd have to say in order to have a productive conversation on either side, given that there's this huge gap. So, for example, one way to fail at communicating is to try to affect one of these three foundations of belief, but not the one that's mainly at play.
Speaker 1:For who you are conversing with. That will likely be hopeless because of the reasons I just gave, but the fact is that very few people ever take a stance, and knowingly take it, because they're protecting their identity, they're manifesting a desire with no logic and no reason and no evidence. We all think that we're explaining an understanding based on truthful perceptions. So it turns out. I think that when you're communicating with somebody, even if you suspect that what's at work is identity or desire, you need to find what the explanation is, what the understanding is, what the assumed facts of reality are, and address those. So is task one, as you converse, to discern why your conversant holds the views that you wish to challenge and even replace. It seems so, but I don't think so.
Speaker 1:So you're having a discussion with an advocate of Israeli policy, genocide policy in the Middle East. Is the thing to do to talk with them a bit and try and figure out whether it's because they hope that it's worthy and admirable, because, or is it because they've said it that Israel is worthy and admirable and they've built up their identity about that and they're protecting their identity. Or is it because they have factual assumptions and logical steps that lead to their conclusion? So they think it's understanding and they think it's. You know, we're honest analysis. It seems to me that you have to assume that last one. If you're going to have productive discussion at all, you have to somehow have a discussion about that stuff. And if it turns out that that is the reason for their views, well then maybe their views would change. Or maybe they'll convince you that your views, or me, that my views, are wrong and that I've made a logical mistake or you have. But if you make headway on those points, then even in their own mind they may be left with their views.
Speaker 1:Well, why did I take that view so strongly? And this doesn't have to just be politics, it could be almost anything. You know, why do I think such and such an athlete is the best athlete in the world? Why do I think such and such a singer is absolutely fantastic? Why do I think anything that you think can be based upon good, plausible, sincere reasons, which could be right or wrong or something else. So it's no easy task.
Speaker 1:I think so if we take the evangelical, the person who I quoted earlier was describing, suppose they literally say to you that the person, what the person quoted predicts, they would say so. They literally say I can't repeat it, I read it before and I can't repeat it from memory. But they literally say you know, god's everywhere, god's intervening and all that, et cetera, et cetera. And you suspect that the reason that they're saying this is because their identity is wrapped up in their evangelical Christian beliefs and practices and they don't want to in any way call those into question. Or maybe it's because they want it to be the case that there's an all-powerful God and that everything that happens has a meaning and is and you can discern what you should do by thinking about it that way. Or maybe it's based on evidence and logic. All right, so you suspect that it's not based on evidence and logic.
Speaker 1:They don't have any evidence whatsoever for any of the factual claims they make about reality. There is none, and they even use a kind of inconsistent logic. Even if we grant all those factual claims For example, if I remember correctly, if such and such a candidate is an idiot and a fender, et cetera, et cetera that means you should support them because they wouldn't have won the election except if God let them and therefore God wants them to be in the position they're in. Well, there's a slight inconsistency there. That's true for their opponent also. That's true for everybody who gets to that point. So Biden has got to be God's choice, just like Trump was God's choice. It makes no sense, but if you combine the various motivations, you can come up with any set of explanations, and the evangelical does. That sounds logical, and pardon me if I offend anybody, but the same thing can be true of, say, a Stalinist or a Marxist-Leninist I would go so far as to say, but let's say, certainly a Stalinist, who can put together a very compelling set of sentences to justify whatever it is they're into.
Speaker 1:Or I mean, consider this all over the United States, leftists, progressives, many liberals even, are incredibly impassioned about rightly so what Israel is doing in Gaza. But consider Israel was responding to a single event, or at least that's what they were saying. Of course it's not true, but that's what they were saying. They were responding to the October combat in which Hamas killed lots of Israelis. Okay, 9-11. The United States then responded to a single event. We didn't even know for sure who did it. We didn't even know there was no.
Speaker 1:Okay, the Israeli response is in most people's eyes, or in a lot of people's eyes, a horrendous violation of any kind of legal or ethical norm that should be at play among human beings. But then again, the US response to 9-11, while it wasn't in some ways as openly blatant I suppose you could call it it was much, much, much more comprehensive. I take that back. It wasn't more comprehensive. What Israel is doing in Gaza is in fact more comprehensive. But the audience, the attacked party, is 2 million people and in the case of the United States it was much more and much longer.
Speaker 1:And therefore certainly any level of anger that applies in the case of Israel appropriately. In fact the level of anger that is appropriate is so great that it's probably not good to display it because it doesn't communicate well. But in any case, the comparable level of anger and criticism would have been applicable in the case of the US after 9-11. But it didn't show up. So why not? It didn't show up at that level, it wasn't that pronounced, and that, I think, has to do with identity and desire, certainly not with evidence and logic and reason.
Speaker 1:So the problem is if your conversant says go Israel, bomb them into oblivion and many polls suggest that the Israeli population is actually critical right now of the government not all Israelis, but a large proportion of Israelis because it's being too gentle. Or your conversant says about global warming? It doesn't exist. Or your conversant says about racial, gender, sexual or class hierarchy those aren't unjust, they reflect reality. Or about gun policies guns prevent crime. Or about abortion abortion is murder. Right. Then what do you do? How do you make progress? And if you say, well, we don't have to make progress, those people are lost. Those people are, to quote a deplorable person, those people are deplorables and there's no communicating with them. Well, the problem with that approach aside from what it does to your own personality to view people in that fashion is that there's a lot of them. There's a whole lot of them. There's so many of them that everybody is worried right now about whether or not Trump will beat Biden.
Speaker 1:So you can't write it off. You can't say like you could say about somebody who says the earth is flat, who cares? Somebody says you know, I'm not going to get up in their face about that. Somebody says you know, on the other side of the moon, there is another, there's moon people you know. You may or you may not bother taking time to explain to such a person why it is that it's not the case and to if you can communicate that and you get that across, you may even then talk about why it might be that somebody would believe that you can't just say about people who are lining up behind a fascist or preventing or opposing actions for instance getting out of oil, actions that would better the situation of the planet, ie prevent global suicide. You can't just ignore that. So that was what the purpose of this episode was all about.
Speaker 1:As, to the extent I could, I'm trying to make a case that we on the left need to be more aware of and even empathetic with the fact that the people who we find to hold views that are self-defeating, harmful, immoral, irrational, feel the same way often about us, and they have a formulation which leads them to feel that strongly, when I take stands that you should vote for the lesser evil or that say I don't know well the thing I just said that the concept privilege has unintended consequences that are harmful. Those are the two most recent things. It doesn't make any sense to the person I'm conversing with, given that it's somebody I disagree with greatly about that. No, they're going to think oh, michael has just been a leftist all his life and he's protecting his identity. What he's saying isn't saying. Or Michael is just, you know, he's Pollyanna-ish, he wants the world to be better than it is and so he makes believe it's better than it is Identity desire.
Speaker 1:They may think Michael has just got some facts wrong. He has some analysis wrong. He's sincere in that he thinks you know the things he thinks because he thinks he's thought them through and he has a case for it. And then maybe I'll debate and argue with them about it. It's not an easy situation, and it's not easy because we're incredibly right all the time and they are incredibly wrong. Sometimes they have facts and arguments which in fact have a degree of validity. They have other facts and arguments, maybe that don't, and they have desire. Maybe that doesn't, or identity that doesn't. But you know what? Sometimes we have identity that doesn't make much sense, or desire overrides intelligence, overrides reason, just like we often have facts. So there ought to be the possibility of a productive conversation. Whether there is or not, I don't know. And that said, this is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z.