A BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

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Maybe Bush Does Not Lie

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Paul Cohen

A recent BuzzFlash News Analysis asked the question, Does Bush Chronically Lie Because He's Too Lazy to Tell the Truth? To put into perspective the statements made by Bush and many others who call themselves conservative, progressives may need to consider an alternative explanation. Conservatives often seem to have an alternative view, not of what is is, but rather of what truth is.

Children are often convinced that if they believe something strongly enough it will become true. We have all heard of children, who wish for harm to come to parents or siblings. These children are later driven to feelings of extreme guilt when harm does indeed come to that person. They feel their transient wishes may have actually caused the harm. No doubt, even otherwise rational adults occasionally indulge in this kind of self-flagellation.

The notion that reality is merely what we perceive it to be (or even what we want it to be) goes deep in our nature and in our history. The Sophist school of ancient Greece taught the skills of persuasion, and, of course, our legal profession retains more than a hint of this school of thinking. While we can think of Sophist argument as merely a tool to seek out the truth through forceful debate, others may be persuaded by an argument and confuse their belief with actual truth.

The Sophist school of thinking is at odds with the Platonic school of thinking that holds that there is, in fact, an external reality. Plato’s parable of the elephant and the blind men teaches that our perceptions of that reality may differ, but there is nevertheless that externality reality that could turn and stomp us to death irrespective of how innocent we believe that reality to be.

While progressives perceive their planet to be undergoing dangerous global warming, many conservatives sincerely do not want that to be the case, or, if forced to accept that there may be global warming, then they sincerely want it to in no way be mankind’s fault. Adhering to the Sophist school of thinking, if they deny global warming earnestly enough, then it is not real and it is not happening. There is no external reality, only our perceptions. This is not necessarily a case of lying, though some may find it to be self-deception.

While progressives perceive a dangerously growing deficit, conservatives do not believe it because they earnestly want to believe that tax cuts for the very wealthy can only be a good thing. No evidence can convince them otherwise because their reality is inseparable from what they believe. Put another way, they cannot believe that they could possibly be wrong.

Additional examples are all too easy to construct. Whether or not the Platonist/Sophist dichotomy is a full explanation for the difference between conservative and liberal thinking is not clear, but it does offer a framework to help us understand our conservative brethren.

Paul Cohen

BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Sophism (Wikipedia entry)