When I look at some aspects of my life now, I find them, from the perspective of society, of my beliefs when I was young, etc. to be disturbing, strange, and freaky. It seems, for a moment, amazing that I am so different from most of the people in my culture. It feels like every difference adds distance from me to them. Yet, to me, within the context of my life, I feel (for the most part) healthy and balanced. I did not constantly choose to turn off the beaten path - so how did I get so far off it? The answer is simple. By making a single, important decision, ones entire life can be changed. That decision is: How do I judge the world around me? Where do my values come from? How do I discriminate between right & wrong, healthy & unhealthy, true & false? For many people, the answer to that question (unfortunately) has to do with religion, parents, media, and cultural beliefs.
My answer is different. I strive as best I can to seek the truth, rather than to delude myself. I use logic, reason, and science to analyze the world. I question everything. I ignore external sources that have not established their credibility, but am willing to believe ones that seem to be logical, sensible, and rigorous (one cannot analyze everything oneself). To me, this seems a simple, obvious way to relate to the world. People are so good at self-deception, bias, prejudice and distortion that it is naive to believe them when they do not have evidence. Yet, through things like the scientific method, we can collect meaningful evidence about the world. This single answer makes me break off in myriad ways. I didn't have to think about each departure separately, I didn't have to consciously make each break. I simply made a single decision, or more accurately, chose to express rather than suppress a single impulse - the impulse to judge for myself, whenever possible, what things are good and bad, right and wrong, foolish or worthwhile.
I wish that this answer made me normal. Not that it necessarily made me reach the same conclusions as other people - even rational people have biases (tho we fight to minimize their influence) and can reach different conclusions from the same data ('specially when there ain't enough of it!). But I think the world would be a much, much better place if more people thought like this. Countless zillions of dollars of time and effort are wasted in foolish directions because of people who follow their heart rather than their head. I am not saying that, for example, caring about the fate of indigenous people, or wanting better working conditions in sweatshops, or thinking that the continuing oppression by the US government of Native Americans is appalling are bad. It is wonderful to be driven from deep within to care about injustice in the world. It is the next step, unfortunately, where all the problems come in.
Emotions are great for motivation, but terrible for execution. Once we move on from "this is terrible" to "what can I do to change this?", emotions are only going to get in the way. Sometimes the answer is "absolutely nothing" - but no one wants to hear that. So they do things that are totally useless and waste their time, just so they can feel they have done some good. If they used logic, they could probably find causes where there are ways in which they can help. The world is a complicated place, and it is very difficult to change without a strong streak of realism. If you do not realistically acknowledge how the world works, you will only change it by dumb luck. For example, thinking that a few thousand signatures will change the mind of a Senator accepting a seven-digit bribe to pass a law is unrealistic. There is nothing wrong with hungering to change the world, to make it a better place, but when actually attempting to do so, cold reason must be used.
I like to say that I am both a cynic and a romantic. I am a cynic about how things are and a romantic about how I'd like them to be. I think its a good division.
While some of the beliefs that this leads me
to are shared by others, I rarely find people who share a significant
portion of them. I think this is because I have strange tastes,
because of the fractal nature of truth, and because most people
don't think like this. But I was happy to figure out the simple
key to what makes my life often so different.
Read an email responding to this essay.
Last Modified: September, 2000
Patri
Friedman / patri@izzy.com