Resisting dogma

If I could magically decree the top 5 skills to teach our children, somewhere in there would be how to resist the pull of dogma. To stay stubbornly open-minded.

It’s not easy. One reason for this is the aptly named confirmation bias: that we’re wired to think in ways that favour our existing point of view, to take in information that confirms our existing beliefs, and to discard any that doesn’t. (This comic by Matthew Inman does a fantastic job of illustrating the associated backfire effect.) The first step to overcoming this and our other biases is, as usual, to notice that we actually have them. By educating ourselves about how our mind works, then actively practising to ‘correct’ for our biases.

OpenMind is an online, interactive and evidence-based platform that helps us do just that. It was founded by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and aims to “help people cultivate intellectual humility and open-mindedness while equipping them with the skills for constructive disagreement”. A concept I love that’s explored in the program and that comes from Haidt’s 2012 book The Righteous Mind is the Moral Matrix, in reference to, yes, that Matrix:

Many moral matrices exist within each nation. Each matrix provides a complete, unified, and emotionally compelling worldview, easily justified by observable evidence and nearly impregnable to attack by arguments from outsiders. […] Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to consider the possibility that there might really be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society.

Many people choose the comfort of the metaphorical blue pill. Haidt encourages us to choose the red pill, to step out of our matrix, to explore new ones. It doesn’t mean agreeing with everything we see. But merely acknowledging that there may well be more than one good way to live is a crucial step towards being able to constructively disagree. To being able to hold a discussion that respects the inherent dignity of every person.  

I was lucky to grow up understanding and seeing different moral matrices, but I’ve still struggled over the years with finding the right balance between having a clear preference at any given moment of what ‘better’ means (when I go on about making myself a better person and the world a better place) and keeping a genuinely open mind. Haidt’s vision might be a direction to aim for:

When I was a teenager I wished for world peace, but now I yearn for a world in which competing ideologies are kept in balance, systems of accountability keep us all from getting away with too much, and fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means. Not a very romantic wish, but one that we might actually achieve.

How are you resisting the pull towards dogma?