Know The Other Side To Expand Your World — Face Your Fears

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…

Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Whatever your political, religious, or philosophical standings may be, you’ve probably fallen into the trap of confirmation bias once or twice.

Even the way we Google search our questions show us a little bit of our psychology.

“Why [my opinion or side of the argument] is correct/true?”

“Great things about [my current philosophical idea that I hold]”

“Arguments against [the beliefs that I oppose]”

We prepare ourselves with counter arguments and only seek to criticize the other side to strengthen our own, but does this really prove to us that what we hold to be true is actually the best belief to hold?

We sometimes misrepresent our interlocutors by taking their words out of context or creating strawman arguments to criticize and undermine their beliefs. Instead of giving credence and merit to the arguments of the other side, we look to weaken and distort the opposition.

We like to characterize the ‘other side’ as monsters — morally reprehensible, crazy, power hungry, evil, greedy, heartless, uneducated, irrational… It’s easy to rationalize to yourself that you don’t have to listen to these types of people.

It’s easy to characterize and stereotype all individuals on one side of a spectrum into a neat box so that you don’t have to listen to anything they have to say. You can believe that everyone on the other side believes in the same “ridiculous” arguments that have already been debunked and will never change or understand your arguments.

You create catch-all phrases that easily dismiss your critics and can easily become an ideologue — you hold the objective truth, the answers that can change society for the better if only everyone would listen to you, and anyone who criticizes you hold malicious intent that impedes the coming of your utopia.

So this is the state of the world for a lot of people. We consume information from a trusted source on the Internet or on televised news networks that confirm our beliefs and debunk the opposition. We slowly create two boxes of the world — one is the truth (the good) and the other is the lie (the evil). We start only listening to information that gives credence to our beliefs. We start rejecting all other sources that misrepresent or criticize our beliefs. We resort to name calling, falsifying information, slander… and refuse to have a conversation and actually listen.

A nation is a house with many people living in it. The people in the house may have their differences in the things they believe and the way they choose to live their lives, but one thing has to be consistent in order for everyone to live together in peace — compromise. A willingness to listen to each other, address problems that arise inside the house, and find solutions that will please all parties involved.

Abraham Lincoln once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. The more we isolate and antagonize each other, the more troubles we will face and the more we will all suffer. Instead of coming to a balance, we glare at each other from opposite sides of the spectrum. We inevitably produce radicals who only see change in the world through extremities — everything must change and the other side must be defeated. The other side has absolutely no credibility and can be dismissed without a second thought.

What is the next rational step when the possibility of conversation and compromise dies? Violence. When words fail, we will resort to our fists. How else can we make the other side understand? If we don’t believe that they’ll ever understand, the next best thing is to eradicate them so that they will stop being an impediment to the inevitable utopia that will be brought forth.

Why do we do all this? Why do we refuse to listen to each other and prefer cheap tricks to feel morally superior compared to our opponents rather than engage in tough yet enlightening and productive conversations?

Maybe it’s because we can’t come to terms with the terrifying truth:

We all don’t know what the right answer is, which means our past and current beliefs might actually be wrong, which means we have to doubt and reevaluate the life we have lived up until this point.

Humans hate uncertainty. We live in anxiety of the unknown, the chaos that exists outside of our conceptualization of the world. We have to create a world that we could understand — how else could we hope to live and operate? We have to choose to believe in one thing over the other.

We tell ourselves stories and search for the objective truth in this world, because we do not inherently have the ability to answer life’s biggest questions. We don’t have the ability to answer the questions ourselves, so we look for something that will answer them for us.

We walk through life trying out different philosophies and religions, ideas and beliefs that made enough sense for others to keep around, ultimately trying to find something that resonates with us and can convincingly persuade us that there really is an objective truth in the world we live in.

When we do find something that we believe is the truth, that explains the state of the past, present, and future of the world we live in accurately and gives us a sense of guidance in this world, we feel at peace — the peace we humans long for and seek in our lives.

So it makes sense that we wouldn’t want to criticize the beliefs we currently hold. Because the beliefs that we hold are ideas that we believe ultimately make us who are we today. If everything you believed in was debunked today, that would be equivalent to the floor being pulled out from underneath you.

The “stable” footing that once allowed you to navigate the world with an ease of mind and ignore the core existential questions (what is the meaning of life, why am I here, who created the universe, what is the truth, what is good and evil, who am I, is what I am believing in the truth…) that would put you into a state of immediate despair and confusion, turns out to be a thin sheet of ice that threatened to crack and submerge you into the deep chaos and uncertainty that is the nature of this world.

Who would want that? Who would want to feel the existential dread and anxiety? Who would want to bear the unbearable silence of this universe?

I believe there is merit to losing your balance and falling into the chaos. It is similar to facing your fears head-on. Your fears can be manifested as a dragon. The dragon symbolizes the things you fear. You don’t want to face it because it is a monster that is dangerous and threatens to kill you.

Why should you face your fear and slay the dragon? Because first of all, the dragon will always be there and will continue to be an obstacle for your personal growth. The dragon will only grow bigger the more you allow it to scare you. Are you always going to run away from it? The dragon will never disappear until you face it head-on.

Another reason why you should confront your fears and slay the dragon is that the dragon hoards treasure and gold. The treasure and gold do not symbolize actual monetary rewards but symbolizes the great realizations and insights you can gain by confronting the things that scare you most.

The opposing side of your current beliefs is a dragon because it can maim you, poke holes in your armor, and threaten to undermine everything you stand for. You’re also kind of scared of the opposing side because what if their side holds some merit of truth? What if they’re not actually delusional and stupid as you think they are? What if they have arguments that actually make sense and debunk some of your strongest arguments? Then you’ve been living a lie the whole time you’ve held your current beliefs, and that’s not a great realization to have.

But confronting the dragon can only make you stronger. For one, it can make you more courageous. You realize that there is more to you than you believed. You realize that you actually didn’t die when you confronted your fears and, even better, you were able to be a formidable opponent for the dragon, which will give you the confidence to face your other fears more easily.

I’m not saying you must treat your opposition like an actual dragon and attack them physically or verbally. I’m saying you must respect that they will have something of merit to say and that you should listen carefully and do your best to understand their arguments. You should be able to fight for their side even better than them. You should give their arguments the merit they deserve, and even build them up to become a “steel-man”.

Instead of straw-manning and weakening their arguments to make it easier for yourself, why not build them up and make it harder for yourself to debunk? If your belief can stand its ground against the other side’s strongest arguments, and if you give the devil his due and be able to give a great defense for your own side, won’t you have a newfound confidence in your own beliefs? Won’t you have expanded your world and confronted something you once feared?

What kind of treasures could you gain if only you would try to understand the other side instead of demonizing them? What kind of people could we become if only we had more conversations attempting to understand and compromise with each other? What kind of society could we create if only we put down our individual pride and listened to each other?