The Pitfalls of Knowing

Is it possible to know?  

Much of what bloggers talk about is predicated upon knowing, and whether or not it is possible to know a thing.  Bloggers constantly spout loads and loads of presumptive indisputable fact.  Innumerable mavens of the New (more democratic) Pravda of the blogosphere will use the very same information to promote opposite conclusions.  

How does this happen?  The obvious reason is because people have a tendency to believe what they want to believe, and use information in creative ways to support their cherished positions.  But this still begs the question, "Is it really possible to know a thing at all?"

Sound a bit too esoteric or philosophical?  Perhaps, but consider the following, for instance:  Test groups of people with admitted pro-Israeli sentiment and pro-Palestinian sentiment were shown the same documentary on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The pro-Israeli group overwhelmingly reported that the documentary displayed a pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli slant, whereas the Pro-Palestinian group overwhelmingly reported that the documentary displayed a pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian slant.  (Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, 1985)

Perhaps this seems a bit pedestrian and obvious to the reader:  a group with a vested sensitivity on an issue will become hyper-vigilant in its reactions to perceived slights to its cause, and will constantly see that which it is on guard against, whether or not it is really there.

This illustrates a principle of confirmation bias, which is a perennial bogey-bear of the thinking person.  Confirmation bias is often what makes collected climate data read as both evidence of man-made climate change for some, and as evidence for natural periodic climatic fluctuations for others, depending upon the desired viewpoint or construct of the individual analyzing the data.  Confirmation bias is the inner yes man.

Does this mean that serious, conscientious men and women of science cannot have honest, bias-free reasons to differ in their scientific conclusions?  Not at all.  In the above example of the two groups favoring either Israel or Palestine, the fact that both groups saw a slant in the reporting against their own cause does not necessarily indicate that there was in fact no bias in the presentation.  

Bias, after all, has a tendency to pop up wherever those wily creatures known as human beings put their two cents, including in documentaries and news reporting (one could argue, especially there).  But I think it also means that people who deal in information must always be aware that they are subject to this most human of fallacies.  I readily admit that I am especially subject to it.  Tolstoy wrote, in his essay "What is Art?",

"I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty -- conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives." (Tolstoy, 1899)

Why do I bring all this up?  Because I believe it is, for bloggers, the elephant in the room.  And if I'm going to blog, I have to deal with it honestly and up front.  In the course of blogging (and of following current events generally), I will not always have time to do extensive fact-checking or run down any and every opposing point of view for a contrasting opinion.  

Does that mean that my blog will be a soap box, and my audience a "choir"?  Possibly.   That is certainly a risk I run.  But I don't see any reasonable way around it.  Indecision can be every bit the prison as dogmatism.  While dogmatism can make us insufferably bellicose and closed-minded, realize too that excessive open-mindedness can turn us into ineffectual tail-chasers whose rhetorical meanderings aren't worth reading.  It is my hope and endeavor to operate in the temperate clime between these two poles.  And I need my readers to comment regularly, to supply those steady doses of feedback that can contribute to keeping me grounded and realistic.

Another reason I bring up this subject is that there is very real evidence that confirmation bias and allegiance to ideology has truly polluted and corrupted the world of news reporting.  By now this phenomenon is so universally acknowledged as to be axiomatic, and partisan finger-pointing so wild as to be not worth sourcing at the moment.  Suffice to say, evidence abounds, and I think all would agree.

I cannot in good conscience conclude that the only good position is to take no position.  I think this would be pointless and even foolhardy.  I believe there are patterns and signs of the times that can be read by anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence and intuition.  The trick is to always be ready to abridge one's knowledge and revise one's views with new facts as they are presented (and corroborated).  Openness to this process, I think, is nothing less than essential.  In addition, a good dose of humility and God-given wisdom goes a long way. 

Let us go forward, then, with a renewed commitment to courageously seek the truth, no matter what it turns out to be, no matter how lovely or repugnant, how convenient or inconvenient it is to our desired outcomes.  And let us always be willing to look at new evidence honestly and reflectively, to see if it holds up, with as neutral a disposition toward the latest information as we can reasonably muster. 

As I further blog, I will endeavor to keep myself open, while at the same time taking a position.  Although I don't want to be a jingo, I've definitely come to believe some things.  I welcome scrutiny in this process of examining various topics, because (I believe) I love the truth.  And the truth does not fear scrutiny.  The truth welcomes the light of examination.  It is in the light of more and more perfect examination that the truth shines brightest of all.  

Selected Bibliography

Vallone, R.P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M.R. (1985).  The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the "Beirut Massacre".  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 577-585.

Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art? p. 124 (1899).  Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett, New York, 1894. Project Gutenberg edition released November 2002. Retrieved 2009-08-24.

An Introduction and Overview

The time is short.  Free, Western civilization is a mortally wounded creature that keeps running on the adrenaline of habit and the opiate of entertainment, never guessing that its gaping wound is spilling its life's blood in astonishing torrents upon the unforgiving earth.  Not realizing that it is, in fact, dead already.  Like a nerve-ridden, severed head that gulps morbidly at the air it cannot swallow or remotely benefit from.

Dead already.  Dead, that is, unless there is a miracle.  And history, as I read it, shows us that miracles do sometimes happen.  My task, then, is to demonstrate that it's the miracle we now must seek, rather than pinning all our hopes on some vain solution born of human cleverness or some romantic but futile rage against the dying of the light.  But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.  I cannot presume my reader shares my grim assessment of our spot in history.  So let me first make that case.

Before I do this, I must make every effort to mitigate what would otherwise be an excessively tedious, fatalistic tone.  I do not believe all is lost.  If I did, I wouldn't bother to write down so pointless a sentiment. There is hope.  The distinction is this:  our hope lies NOT in conventional human efforts alone, but firstly in the petitions of the penitent before a truly merciful God.  And even should the end-game conclude in the direst of scenarios in the relatively near future of our lives, in that selfsame fashion in which many of us believe it must one day so end, all still is not lost.  I fondly believe that God holds our every tomorrow, and that He remembers His people in their darkest hours, and carries them through even the valley of the shadow of death.  But it need not come to that just yet.  I, for one, am holding out for that miracle, a miracle that could save and even prosper our Western (and Christian) civilization, and I do not by any means whatsoever reckon this an empty hope.

With this hope in mind, let us consider the following important trends in current events.  First off, as I see it, the vast majority of media outlets in the United States, Canada, and Europe, present history and current events through the lens of deconstruction.  By this I mean the deconstruction of all things pertaining to individualism (and therefore freedom), and of Christian history.  Instead, they promote the State as the solution to all societal issues.  The problem with this utopian view is that it has never worked in the past, but rather led to far worse situations and even atrocities.  And this skewed historical and political view is having a profound impact upon the thinking of the populace, as evidenced by recent polling and the facile repetition of toxic axioms of mental slavery now ubiquitous in popular culture.

This leads me to the second major trend, which is the hijacking of education to the demands of proselytizing for the Cult of State.  Statist agendas dominate in the vast majority of educational institutions and forums in America, and certainly elsewhere, and most references to such liberty-friendly ideas as individual and local sovereignty, and free-enterprise capitalism, are distinctly disparaging.  In addition, the "dumbing-down" of education in recent decades by the centrally-empowered federal Department of Education only serves to make culturally, economically and politically malleable subjects with no sense of history, common cultural identity, or common national narrative.  It serves to produce a balkanized people who are played against one another for the precise, cynical manipulations imposed by the machinations of realpolitik.  We find ourselves, therefore, subjects of a rogue government that no longer follows the principles of its founding. Our increasingly shiftless, self-cannabalizing society is nursed and suckled by a government that buys votes out of its shrinking treasury, subsidizing its own slow death and assimilation into the even larger, more centralized global sovereignty.

Here, then, we see the trend, promoted in media and government circles, for greater and greater centralizing of power, with a view to ultimate global government.  Under such a regime, all our eggs would be in one basket.  If a global government were to "go bad" (as if it would have to "go" to get there) and begin abusing its subjects, where on this planet could one hope to seek refuge from it?  And if we make such a bed for ourselves, who will our bed-mates be?

I will tell you who.  They will be South American and Chinese Communists of the Maoist and Pol Pot persuasions, whose agendas cannot compete in the free marketplace of ideas, but can only survive in a strictly-enforced ideological vacuum, on pain of death.  They will be Islamo-fascists, those self-admitted haters of freedom and equality, who virulently seek to overthrow modern civilization and replace it with a theocratic Caliphate, a worldwide Ummah, built upon the spilt blood of the "infidels."  Western Europe is within the very real opening stages of falling to this force, as their native birth-rates are far out-stripped by the influx and birth-rates of Muslim theocratic colonists.  The Russian army is already projected, by conservative estimates, to be majority Muslim by 2020.  The "Arab Spring" is even now placing the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt, and threatens to do likewise in Libya and Syria and a whole host of other Middle-Eastern countries.

The vast majority of Muslims, in my experience and to my knowledge, currently lack either the will or nerve to resist the extremist agitators in their midst, and it is my fear (and opinion) that they will not stop the turning of that particular tide.  Most will instead become band-wagoners at the critical moment.  In America, the Muslim Brotherhood operates through a number of political front groups to cripple American resistance, so that forces hostile to historical American values and freedom can manipulate from within, even as American statist media seeks to tie our hands and leave us defenseless against these ploys.  Hopelessly defenseless Americans, after all, are more likely to sell their sovereignty to the protection racket of a global state.

As I plan to demonstrate in greater detail in future posts, recent developments on several of these fronts have resulted in situations which are now completely untenable and unfixable, through ordinary human planning and efforts.  But none of these situations alone is beyond all hope.  It is only their sum totality, the combination of ills, which makes them untenable and unworkable.  This is not to say that we shouldn't continue to influence and fight in the arenas of our lives, to try to hold sway in the human realms through human means.  Often these are the vehicle through which God's will works upon the world.  But this is NOT the basis for our hope.  Our sole (and soul) hope lies now in the miracle, which I hasten to remind you is not out of the question.  I will now, at the risk of cliche, quote what is to me a most compelling and hopeful scripture from the mouth of God:

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."  (II Chronicles 7:14, KJV)

So then, being a believer in the Christian Bible, I must conclude that the matter is not completely out of our hands.  There is something which we believers, those of us who are Christians (who call ourselves by His name), can actively do.  We can humble ourselves, and pray, and seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways.  This is how we actively seek out the miracle that can heal our land and save our free western civilization for the next generation, if it is God's will.  I frankly believe that there is absolutely no other way. And I suspect that God wouldn't have it otherwise.