I don’t think anyone has yet invented a specific word for this phenomenon, but too many Americans are suffering from an intense craving for simple one-step answers to life’s most important questions. Though people have always taken explanatory leaps, the mainstream media seems to tolerate them like never before. In the political realm, for example, the media should be ridiculing simpleton answers, but often doesn’t As case in point is Bush’s preposterous claim that “It’s better to fight them there than here.” [1] As though doing the former protects us from the latter. Perhaps encouraged by the simple-mindedness of President Bush, the news media has taken a hands-off approach incredible amounts of simplistic nonsense.
Many simplistic explanations, but not all, are religious claims. Before you crank out those e-mails arguing that I’m painting with too broad a brush, I will readily admit that many people who sincerely follow religions are incredibly deep and skeptical thinkers (though they have a hands-off approach to skeptically examining their own religious beliefs). Therefore, I am not arguing that all of those people who consider themselves religious are shallow-minded ignoramuses. Nor am I claiming that those who are nonbelievers are necessarily disciplined and knowledgeable skeptical thinkers. There are plenty of simplistic folks of all stripes running around.
In my own mind, I conceive of our over-willingness to accept simplistic views as a “treasure hunt” mentality. All too many people seek ready-made explanations, where finding an minimally acceptable “answer” gives them a license shut down their sense of curiosity for the rest for their lifetime. How do you know when you’ve discovered the an answer? You just know, according to those who believe. It’s time for examples.
Religious believers commonly support their beliefs by asserting that the “Bible tells me so.” They do this without any willingness to consider the numerous contradictions in the Bible and they do this without any curiosity as to when the Bible was written and by whom. [2] In other words, they are quite content to argue that the Bible simply tells them so, which invites them to cite the Bible as authority without any assurance that the Bible is an authority. If you try to encourage them to question their treasure hunt ready-made answer, most religious people get aggravated [for example, look what happened in the comments to this post on Bart Ehrman [2]].
There are many religious people who also pride themselves on being “philosophical.” These are the people who pull out the “argument from causation,” another common example of intellectual brain freeze. With great flamboyance, they start the argument by encouraging everyone in the room to assent to the following proposition: “Everything has a cause.” This “obvious” starting point is far from obvious, of course. Perhaps the universe is eternal, consisting of an eternal string of big bangs. But let’s assume that the starting premise is correct. Everything has a cause. From that (they say) it follows that the universe must of had a cause and that cause is “God.” But woe unto the un-brainwashed philosopher who dares to ask “What caused God?” That is not deemed to be an appropriate question (according to most believers), even though religio-philosophers themselves began their entire argument with the premise that everything has a cause. [3] How strange that so many people who believe in the “argument from causation” will earnestly look you in the eye and tell you that God does not need to have a cause because “God always was there,” or “God is God,” or some other ad hoc nonsense. All of this hokum to save an argument that was wretchedly bad from the start, an argument that inevitably leads to an eternal regress.
People want simple stories in order to make sense of their world, even if these simple stories make no sense. For instance, believers often point to the story of Adam and Eve as the origin of humankind, even though there are two contradictory versions of the creation story in Genesis. [4]That doesn’t matter for most believers. They insist that there is only one true Bible story, even though there are clearly two contradictory creation stories.
Intellectual brain freeze occurs in many fields, not only religion. A large segment of the United States “knew” that we had to attack Iraq and that good things would necessarily come of such an attack, even though red flags were everywhere that an invasion of Iraq would result in exactly the kind of quagmire we are now experiencing. Just prior to the invasion, the mainstream media was leading the charge to invade Iraq, and there was no time for any alternative viewpoint. There was no reason to ask simple important questions about whether any of this was necessary. After all, the story was simple and that’s all that most people needed. We needed to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was “bad.”
Millions of Americans know that we have the “world’s greatest country” despite knowing next to nothing about any other country’s quality of life [5], health care [6] or freedoms [7].
Many of the explanations regarding human nature take the form of folk biology or folk psychology. We commonly hear people explain human behavior in terms of love or morality, as though humans were not animals subject to the same biochemical and biological limitations as all of the other animals. As I’ve written before, there is good reason to take the time to explore both proximate and ultimate causation [8] when seeking meaningful explanations regarding human behavior. People don’t want to take the time to do this, however. They are content with overly-simple stories. This approach is truly absurd and it can be illustrated with an example. Imagine that we are studying the behavior of hamsters, and a purported expert on hamsters stands up at a conference to explain hamster mating behaviors in terms of “love” and then describing physical conflicts among hamsters in terms of “good and evil.” This would be laughable, yet it is exactly the kind of simplistic explanation that so many people are content to accept when they discuss human animals. In short, there is wide resistance to applying evolution theory to humans. People would rather tell simple stories about honor, evil and love than to frame testable theories regarding mate-guarding and a host of other well-established adaptations.
Many simple stories are dangerous stories. For instance, many people cling to a belief in “race,” as though it is a useful term. The people who most cling to the reality of “race” are those most likely to use such beliefs to divide people from one another and to stir up hatred. Contrary to such dangerous beliefs, there is no useful scientific concept of race. “Race” always boils down to incidental cosmetic features such as skin color and facial features. We are all fully modern humans, biologically speaking. We are all cousins. [9] Nonetheless, the simple (and wrong) story of race is embraced by all too many brain-frozen people because it is simple and because it is easy to repeat (even though it is not meaningful on any level).
I could list dozens of additional examples of simplistic explanations on which people base extremely serious social and political decisions. For instance, we often hear platitudes such as “Less government is better,” as though this statement is always true. In fact, the people most likely to utter simple statement are probably supporters of the huge current irresponsible deficit spending and the ghastly and uncontrolled growth in wasteful government.
The peculiar thing about all explanations, even time tested explanations, is that they are never really complete. Even explanations that can be substantiated through carefully controlled experiments are not stopping points for inquiry. Every good explanation opens up the need for further explanations. Worthy explanations invite the need for further work to develop further explanations. Simplistic explanations, those embraced by people with brain freeze, are designed to shut down further inquiry. They are the common currency of power-mongers. Simplistic explanations mock further inquiry in order to protect the fantasy-bubble that surround the people who want so very much to believe and reside in their simple worlds.
I wish I had an idea for inspiring those who are content with simple ideas to dig further and to ignite an ever-burning curiosity regarding the world around them. I don’t have much to offer in that regard, however. I’ve often tried, in the company of those who want to believe in platitudes or fairytales, but I’ve almost always failed. It’s an uphill climb, of course, criticizing simple explanations of people who prefer crude static happiness to the “opportunity” to have a deeper understanding. After all, the life of a skeptic can be an exhausting life of non-ending questioning, a life that guarantees hard intellectual work. The life of a skeptic is a life that guarantees the failure to find a complete stopping point where one can proudly say that one has won the intellectual treasure hunt and now understands “everything.”
Here’s the sliver of hope. Most people who think simplistically about big issues retain the ability to think critically about small things. They get into deep, information intense, arguments about who was the best homerun hitter of all time. They carefully sift through evidence when discussing Britney. They don’t lack the ability to think, I think. Rather, it is a matter of priorities. I hope.
Print this post [10]
[11]