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 As
our regular readers know, this is our “Quote” page where
gleanings from the wide field of literature is presented for your
consideration. The job of finding, condensing and copying such
material is no easy one, so we truly appreciate the following
contribution from bro. Osby Weaver. He says it is adapted from “The
Mind In The Making,” by James H. Robinson.
As
we read the material we thought perhaps the writer was being too
hard on the public— surely we are not all that defensive of our
beliefs. Then we asked ourselves, “How often have you made a
careful research to re-evaluate some former conclusion you had made,
and found yourself wrong?” Yes, it has
happened, but seldom enough to be embarrassing in the light of Mr.
Robinson’s piercing analysis. Being wrong is no virtue; but never
finding our error may be worse— proof we do not honestly “prove
all things.”
“We
are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find
ourselves filled with a fervent passion for them when anyone
challenges or questions them. Obviously, it is not the ideas
themselves that are dear to us, but rather that our self-esteem is
threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own
from attack, whether it be our person, our family, our property, or
our opinion. A United States senator once remarked to a friend of
mine that God Almighty could not make him change his mind on our
Latin-American policy. We may surrender, but we rarely confess
ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world, at least, peace is
without victory.
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Few
of us take the pains to study the origins of our cherished
convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We
like to continue believing what we have been accustomed to accepting
as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt cast upon our
assumptions leads us seek every manner of excuse for clinging to
them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists of
finding arguments for continuing to believe as we already do.
This
spontaneous and loyal support of our preconceptions— this process
of finding “good” reasons to justify our routine beliefs— is
known to modern psychologists as “rationalization,” clearly a
new name for a very ancient thing. Our good reasons ordinarily have
no value in promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how
solemnly they may be marshaled they are at bottom the result of
personal preference or prejudice, not of an honest desire to seek
accept new knowledge.
In
our reveries, we are frequently engaged in self-justification, for
cannot bear to think ourselves wrong yet we have constant
illustrations of our weaknesses and mistakes. So we spend much time
finding fault with circumstances and the conduct of others, and
shifting onto them with great ingenuity the onus of our failures and
disappointments. Rationalization is the self-exculpation which
occurs when we feel ourselves or our group, accused of
misapprehension or error.”
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