Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 3 - Groups, Differences, and Conflicts

Go to part 2

There has been a lot of research over the last eighty years or so into the nature of prejudice, group perceptions, and inter-group conflict. A lot of this has looked at the nature of racial conflict. Perhaps because the researchers were mainly white liberals a lot of the research has focused on white prejudice towards black people. This may even have given rise to an unexamined assumption both within the research and in the conclusions emerging from it that racial discrimination and prejudice are predominantly a white problem. The possibility that black people could feel prejudice and would act in discriminatory ways towards white people was not even considered. Marxist intellectuals are fond of claiming that science is “socially constructed” and perhaps they would be correct in this instance.

A lot of research on group behaviour sought to shed light on why conflict occurs between groups. Some of the main factors that appear to create or exacerbate conflict are:

• Racial differences

• Ideological differences

• Competition for (scarce) resources

• Wider social norms which condone hostility toward out-groups (certainly true of Islam)

• Conflict of interests


Whilst all these factors are important in the understanding of inter-group conflict and the attitudes associated with it, there may be something more fundamental at work.


Minimal Groups

Henri Tajfel (1971) undertook a series of studies into what are known as “minimal groups”. The proposition is that the mere perception of the existence of another group can itself produce in-group preference and out-group rejection/hostility, possibly the ultimate foundations of discrimination. He argued that before any discrimination can occur, people must be categorized as members of an in-group or an out-group. This makes categorization a necessary condition for discrimination but, more significantly, he found that the very act of categorization by itself produces conflict and discrimination, which makes it simultaneously a sufficient condition.

The discoveries of Tajfel’s research are remarkable; he found that when people are separated arbitrarily into groups, groups stripped of all distinguishing features, even when they know they have been allocated to their group at random, they still develop in-group preference and out-group rejection. Even when subjects were shown their allocation to their group on the basis of a coin toss, they still showed a strong in-group preference.

These findings have been replicated many times using a wide range of subjects from different age groups, different countries, and different cultures. The results are always the same: strong in-group preference and out-group rejection. I’ll be returning to this important research.

Islam will tend to foster inter-group conflict by marking its adherents so distinctly by their dress-codes. It is virtually impossible to see Muslims as anything other than a discrete group, as outsiders, and once you learn something about Islamic attitudes towards non-Muslims, the conflict is all the starker. The converse is also true: Muslims by being a very distinct in-group to themselves, will see non-Muslims as outsiders very strongly.

A lot of the effort directed at reducing prejudice has focused on dealing with the perceptions that people have of those belonging to different social groups, since this is perhaps the only factor that is amenable to education and re-training. A leading light in this area is Jane Elliot, who as an Iowan school teacher came to fame through her “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” experiment:

In 1968 she told her class of nine-year-olds that brown-eyed people are more intelligent and “better” people than those with blue eyes. Brown-eyed students, though in the minority, would be the ‘ruling class’ over the inferior blue-eyed children, and given extra privileges whilst the blue-eyed children were to be ‘kept in their place’ by such restrictions as being last in line, seated at the back of the class, and given less break time. They also had to wear special collars as a sign of their low status. The brown-eyed group adopted a superior attitude to the blue-eyed children becoming oppressive and mean and making derogatory statements about them.

Elliot’s experiment was clearly building on the strong tendency (that minimal groups research indicates that we have) to take a more negative attitude towards an out-group, but this time some of the more typical furnishings are added: different physical features; superiority; rules of behaviour based on group membership; power differences.

We abhor this behaviour and yet we all have a tendency towards it. Elliot has gone on to become a crusader for “diversity training” and a strong embodiment of “white guilt”. She is a fervent believer in the self-censoring watchfulness that we have come to define as political correctness. She believes that racism is in the eye of the beholder and therefore one need be ever-sensitive to the possibility of giving offence.

"Perception is everything," she says. "If someone perceives something as racist then I am responsible for not saying that thing." Racism-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder is possibly one of the most noxious and illiberal concepts currently adopted by diversity enthusiasts.

Whatever underlying concern for the underdog motivates this puritanical thought training, there is a very unpleasant sense that those deemed to be in the “wrong group” from Elliot’s perspective (e.g. Whites) will get very rough treatment. At her workshops, Elliot has demonstrated great verbal ferocity towards those in the “wrong” group, which would seem to bear this out.

There is a world of difference between feeling more affinity with one’s own racial/religious/cultural/generational group and believing that those of different groups are inherently inferior; should suffer systematic discrimination; and as the Koran puts it, “feel themselves subdued.”

People like Elliot give one a sense not of someone who has transcended racism but rather of someone who has inverted it.

Minimal groups research would seem to show that however enthusiastic you might be to escape the in-group/out-group trap, you are very unlikely to succeed. I also think that liberals are in an impossible dilemma when they try to apply this sort of framework to different cultures, and Islam in particular.

It is within the paradigm of diversity training and anti-racism that a lot of liberal thinking regarding Islam is cast. There is for example the view that perception is hugely important: regard people more positively, without prejudgement and as equals and relationships will improve and we can enjoy harmonious social relations with people who may have some differences but between whom there is equal respect.

Simple ethnocentrism is the attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others and that there is little of value on offer from cultures other than one’s own.

There has been a widespread dissemination of the idea that ethnocentrism is wrong. Again, within the paradigm of people like Elliot, ethnocentrism is our problem in the sense that we have to avoid seeing our culture as superior. We don’t have to concern ourselves with ethnocentrism being directed at us. Our concern should be limited to reducing our in-group preference. We can do this by seeing all cultures as equal and as having equal validity relative to the group members of each culture. To start talking about the virtues of our culture relative to another risks a slippage into the in-group/out-group trap and all the discrimination and associated horrors that come in its train.

Liberals like Elliot are certainly right to warn us about in-group preference and ideas of superiority. They are right to see the in-group/out-group dynamic as a potential source of error (really massive error in some cases). The Nazi treatment of the Jews is probably the most memorable case but there have been all-too-many others: the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks (and which is still not acknowledged in Turkish society), the Rwandan genocide, the ongoing Sudanese genocide of Christians, Animists, and non-Arab Muslims, the list goes on.

Apartheid South Africa provided a long running case for liberals to focus their outrage against white oppression of blacks. It fits a pattern that liberals are very comfortable with: white, Western, in-group superiority against black, non-Western, out-group inferiority. This is what I call the Liberal Template. It’s a pattern that liberals can detect in many group situations which have certain variations but which are always seen to share some or all of these characteristics:

• White, western, wealthy versus dark, non-Western, poor

These "markers" are associated with other concepts: White, western, wealthy are seen to belong with oppressor, dominant, arrogant, racist, imperialist, colonialist, selfish, exploitative. Dark, non-Western, poor are seen to belong with oppressed, underdog, humble, innocent, downtrodden, generous, exploited.

Where the pattern does not fit too accurately, information can be filtered in or out so that it does fit. In fact, getting the Liberal Template to fit, to impose it as it were, can become the main focus. The liberal wants to see the world in terms of the liberal template because he knows his place within it and it is a virtuous one: he fights the oppressive qualities of his own in-group.

The classic case of the liberal template being misapplied is Israel. Israel is a small ethnically diverse, democratic country, which is tolerant towards minorities and progressive with respect to homosexuality, colour, class, gender, and different religions within its borders. It is located in the midst of hostile, reactionary neighbours and should be supported by liberals. It even gets accused of Apartheid, a prime liberal tactic to demonise an entire country. Why then is it the object of so much liberal vitriol? I would argue that it's due to the liberal template. Remember the difference between "seeing-that" and "reasoning-why"? Like the Muller-Lyer Illusion and the Old/Young woman image (see Parts 1 and 2), the liberal template imposes a pattern on the Israeli situation that overrules the use of evidence and reason. All the liberal sees with respect to Israel is Western/wealthy versus non-Western/poor. The former is the oppressor, the latter the oppressed. Contrary information is filtered out both by the imposition of the template and in order to maintain it. As a result, the liberal ends up in the absurd situation of supporting the very reactionary forces that he claims to be against at home.

The archetypal form of the liberal template is European colonialism and the Atlantic Slave Trade. This was the classic case of white people full of ethnocentric self-belief and arrogance using their (superior) technological know-how and organisation to conquer people in an (inferior) state of development. The self-serving justifications employed to define black people as inherently inferior, like animals, and not worthy to be treated any better, are key examples of the way belief and ideology are easily used in the service of in-group objectives.

All this is fine but there is an emotional force at work too which does not want anyone muddying the waters with evidence or argument that does not fit the template. Here’s where the selective nature of attention, perception, memory and all those other thought processes comes in – the cognitive mission – which are employed not to check whether the liberal template is in fact correct but to defend it. The liberal template is highly energised for self-protection not fact-checking.

However, I think their view of this is incomplete, dangerously incomplete.

I defined simple ethnocentrism above. There is another type of ethnocentrism that is more subtle. This type of ethnocentrism, let’s call it liberal ethnocentrism, is generally well-informed of the dangers of simple ethnocentrism but it falls into ethnocentrism all the same. Whilst not making negative judgements about other cultures and being always at the ready to value and accept people from different cultures, this type of ethnocentrism fails to acknowledge that the world views of these alien cultures could actually be built on completely different foundations to those of the liberal subject and may indeed share no common understandings or assumptions. This liberal ethnocentrism is so focused on eliminating simple ethnocentrism that it fails to see the profound simple ethnocentrism of the alien culture. Rather, the liberal assumes that the members of these cultures are just as ready as he is to reciprocate his respect for their culture. But when they aren’t, they can readily take advantage of his naivety. The liberal ethnocentrist naively believes that because he is accepting towards outsiders, they will treat him well too. It's like the innocent explorer accepting an invitation to dine with cannibals.

Liberals (back to the wider sense of the word I set out in my introduction) have become accustomed to the idea that whilst they have had the upper hand they have done many wrongs towards people in weaker positions. They (or rather their fellow in-group members) have been the ones doing the oppressing; they are the ones who need to correct their view of outsiders in order to be fairer towards them. This way of thinking has become deeply ingrained in our culture. It begins in the early years of child-rearing and education. There has been an army of teachers like Jane Elliott at work since the 1970s.

With all the focus on “the white problem” and the effort to reduce racism, out-group rejection, and ethnocentrism something of enormous importance has been missed: out-groups to us may feel in-group superiority for themselves. This is certainly true with respect to Islam and Muslims.

The liberal mind appears to be immoveably blind to the possibility that other cultures have their own ethnocentrisms (this is its own peculiar form of ethnocentrism). Islam just so happens to present us with one of the most blatant examples of this ethnocentrism:

Cultural superiority:

• Jahiliya is the doctrine that every culture preceding Islamisation is in a state of ignorance
• The Bible and Torah are viewed as merely corrupted versions of the Koran and are full of error. Their only merit is that they point toward the coming of Muhammad
• All forms of non-Muslim culture are inferior or evil: democracy, music, figurative art, free thought, drinking alcohol, mixing of the sexes etc.
• Muhammad is the final messenger of God and what he teaches supercedes all other beliefs

Legitimacy of Islamic domination:

• Warfare against non-Muslims is fully justified in order to bring (or force) the superior (and only true) way of life of Islam to them
• Muslims in mixed societies are to be seen as superior to non-Muslims and they are justified in exploiting, deceiving, and plotting to overcome the non-Muslims
• The dhimma pact underwrites the justified domination of Muslims viz a viz Jewish and Christian communities living under Muslim domination. The inferior status, absence of legal protection, and resumption of persecution following any (perceived) failure to uphold the dhimma pact are all justified because Muslims have both a right and a duty to dominate non-Muslims 

Imposition of Islamic law upon all people is a moral duty:

• Jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam. It is not simply defensive but a moral obligation upon all Muslims to replace all other cultures and religions with Islam
• Warfare against non-believers is to be understood as a gift to them as it brings them into contact with the only true religion of Islam

Internal controls: 

• To leave Islam is to challenge its truth and supremacy. This is an insult to Islam and anyone doing this is “no better” than a non-believer (kuffar) and hence deserves to be killed.
• To question Islam or Muhammad is to be guilty of doubting the truth of Islam. This is an insult to Islam and warrants a death sentence.

If this is not ethnocentrism in its most virulent form, what is?

I have a further question: how do you feel about a very ethnocentric culture displacing a less ethnocentric culture?

Go To Part 4

Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 2 - Patterns and Intentions

Go to: Part 1 - Perception

A few definitions:

Heuristics

When we have to carry out a task involving physical effort we will usually try to do it using the least energy. We take the path of least resistance – unless we have some other motive for doing more. The same is true of mental effort. Psychological studies show consistently that people adopt strategies to cut down the amount of mental effort required in all types of mental processing. This includes the effort needed to solve problems and the effort needed to assess social situations. We are cognitive misers – we avoid unnecessary expenditure wherever possible. We adopt various strategies to decrease effort and avoid information overload. If we had to assess all the possible options in every situation we would quickly become paralysed by too much information and too many choices.

For this reason we have strategies which cut down the range of possible choices quickly and enable us to make quick judgements. These strategies are known as heuristics: rules of thumb which allow  inferences to be made and conclusions reached rapidly. These heuristics, though essential, often lead to biases and omissions in our thinking. For example, people use stereotypes to evaluate individuals and groups. Stereotypes are over-generalisations made about a certain category of person. The Occupy Wall Street movement has a stereotype of the “1%” of America’s richest people which consists of white, male businessmen. This has some truth in it but not all of America’s richest 1% fit this description. Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey are among this group, as are many movie and pop stars. These latter don’t fit the stereotype so they are easily filtered out of OWS's minds. These short-cuts and biases easily become filters for the information we don’t like or which doesn't fit with intuitive patterns that we take for granted.

Cognition

Cognition is a term used by psychologists to describe areas of mental activity which involve some form of information processing. Things like perception, thinking, memory, attention are forms of cognition. Cognitive psychology has been heavily influenced by the model of the mind as an information processing system akin to a computer. These might best be seen as forms of lower cognition. Disciplined thinking involving language or other systems of symbols, such as mathematics, are higher forms of cognition. A cognitive ability such as perception just happens, whereas a higher form of cognition requires considerable conscious effort.

Intuitions

Intuitions are the domain of hunches, gut-feelings, and guestimates. They are not rationally considered but emanate from a semi-conscious, emotionally toned area of the mind. They are linked with the lower cognitive levels. They are also linked to feelings and the motivational drivers of the personality. You are experiencing intuition when you know something (perhaps the way home when you are lost or that an action is wrong)  but can’t explain why or how.

Looking into the Righteous Mind

Having looked in some detail at the psychology of perception in Part 1, I'm going to move on to one of the most crucial areas of psychology for helping us to understand why the Liberal Mind is so locked. I will be basing the first part of this on a section from Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, and I will be largely paraphrasing what he has written.

In The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt shows a clear link between moral reasoning and emotional/intuitive responses to issues like incest, oppression and cruelty. What may well surprise you is that the emotional/intuitive response comes first and the moral reasoning second, not the other way round. A piece of work by Howard Margolis proved to be crucial in helping to understand why this relationship exists and why the emotional/intuitive response comes first.

Howard Margolis, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, was trying to understand why people's beliefs about political issues are often so poorly connected to objective facts and he turned to cognitive science to try and shed some light on the matter. He published his ideas in Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition. He took the view that the best model for the way we think about political issues was lower cognition: processes like perception. One of the most important features of perception is that it carries out rapid pattern matching. Margolis took as his starting point the effect of illusions like the Muller-Lyer illusion (see Part 1) and from this he concluded that there are two very different kinds of cognitive processes when we make judgements and solve problems: he called them "seeing-that" and "reasoning-why". The seeing-that type of cognition is the pattern matching that brains have been doing for millions of years. Simple animals can react to patterns of light and dark with particular behaviours. The way that we instantly recognize faces, letters of the alphabet, all derive from pattern matching. Pattern matching is instant, automatic, and seemingly effortless, although the brain devotes large resources to it. To see your own pattern matching processes at work have a look at the old/young woman image below:

The mind uses pattern matching to detect the young woman then the old woman and vice versa. Because the image is ambiguous in a balanced way, it is quite easy to see first one then the other. Note how your mind seizes on one pattern then the other.

Margolis came to the conclusion that people often use simple pattern matching to address more complex problems. This pattern matching uses the lower rather than the higher cognitive processing. It is intuitive rather than rational. He summed it up thus:

 “Given the judgements (themselves produced by the non-conscious cognitive machinery in the brain, sometimes correctly, sometimes not so), human beings produce rationales they believe account for their judgements. But the rationales (on this argument) are only ex post rationalizations.”

The non-conscious cognitive machinery responsible for the “seeing-that” is intuitive and affective, the rationale is the “reasoning-why” which attempts to give a rational justification for the position taken by the non-conscious mind. Margolis again, “reasoning-why is the process by which we describe how we think we reached a judgement, or how we think another person could reach that judgement.” Reasoning-why can only occur for creatures with language who have a need to explain themselves to other creatures. Reasoning-why is done specifically with a view to convincing others.

This pattern matching can also be seen in the way we make assumptions and logical fallacies. Take the example of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore on account of this). This error is based on the misapplication of the causality pattern. When one event follows another it sometimes means that the first event caused the second, but not always. It's an easy trap to fall into. The lower level cognitive pattern matching sees one event following another and jumps to the conclusion that the first caused the second. Take the example of Grandpa suffering from a fever, he takes a shot of fine whisky and low and behold he feels better the next day. Searching around for an explanation he seizes on the (notable) fact that he had the whisky the night before. "That whisky made me better", he says. This is a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc; he might have got better irrespective of whether he drank the whisky. Motivation can also play a part in the explanation we seize upon. Grandpa may well welcome the prospect that fine whisky can "cure" his fevers!

Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of a rider and an elephant to describe the relationship between the reasoning and verbal part of the self and the intuitive/motivational/emotional part of the self. They generally work together with the elephant being the powerhouse and fundamentally in charge while the rider can present things to others in the most acceptable way, thus looking after the elephant's reputation. This is a very powerful metaphor because it describes well the relative power and influence of the two aspects of the self and because, if you take note, you'll realise how your elephant leans one way or the other when confronted with information, other people, or situations. The elephant thus gives the lead and the rider searches for a way of explaining the response to the world outside. The elephant has all the advantages of the animal brain: supremely adapted from millions of years of evolution and very fast to respond (remember the affective flashes referred to in Part 1?). Do take time to reflect on this metaphor or, better still, get yourself a copy of The Righteous Mind.

It is very important to understand that our minds are primed to accept or reject pieces of information. This may not necessarily be our conscious intention, it just is the way we are and the reason we are like this is due to the elephant, that powerful set of responses that reaches back into the animal brain. Tom Gilovich has studied the psychology of strange beliefts and he has identified two basic responses to information. When we like a piece of information we quickly ask ourselves the question "Can I believe it?" because we are already willing to accept it but we need a small justification. We search for a reason to accept it and when we've found one, we can stop thinking (remember we are cognitive misers). But, when we don't like a piece of information, or our suspicions are aroused that it contradicts deeply held views in some way, we ask ourselves the question "Must I believe it?". We search for a reason to reject it and when we've found one, we can stop thinking. Psychologists have accumulated abundant evidence of "motivated reasoning"; it's just the way we are. As Jonathan Haidt puts it in The Happiness Hypothesis (see chapter 4 - The Faults of Others),

 "Over and over again, studies show that people set out on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support their preferred belief or action. And because we are usually successful in this mission, we end up with the illusion of objectivity. We really believe that our position is rationally and objectively justified." [my italics]

He quotes an anecdote from Benjamin Franklin which illustrates very well how the mind goes about its business. Franklin was a vegetarian out of principle but on a long sea voyage he found his mouth watering at the smell of grilled fish:

I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet."




This episode shows Franklin searching for a justification for the action he wants to undertake. He sets out on a cognitive mission. The mission is given to him by his elephant, hungry and drawn by the smell of fish. We can all recognise this experience. It's something we all do in order to provide a rationale for something we want to do but which conflicts with another principle or interest.



The mind is a very integrated system which continuously adapts perceptions, thinking, and memories  to the demands of the moment. It is strongly coloured by intentionality, an inward pursposefulness which is not wholly, or even mainly, conscious. When we are attached to a viewpoint we are terrible at looking for information which contradicts it. We are very good at finding and accepting information that confirms it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is universal and very strong - always bear this in mind when dealing with people holding different views to yourself. It's as if the mind has filters allowing some information to pass and keeping other information out. Once the mind goes into combat mode, your opponent's cognitive mission intensifies along with his search for information confirming his viewpoint and discounting yours. The filters lock down and only attend to your evidence and arguments with the purpose of shooting it down. The chances of changing any attitude or opinion are virtually zero in this state.

A few of us are sufficiently reflective and honest with ourselves to overcome this tendency on our own but most of us need the help of friends and people we respect to get us to look at things differently; to see a different pattern in the same image; to look at the same information from a different perspective.

The kinds of judgements that I want to address with respect to the Liberal Mind are essentially concerned with moral and political questions: is it wrong to prefer your own culture? When should you oppose oppression and when should you ignore it? Do some groups have a right to be protected from criticism? 

Questions such as these are intimately bound up with the subjects I’ve been discussing. I may not like the way some people behave; that’s largely an emotional (affective) response but in order to convince anyone else that they shouldn’t behave like that I’ve got to come up with some justification for my response and articulate it as a principle that all people should uphold. In other words, I’ve got to find reasons why people ought to share my (intuitive) judgement. I shall be arguing that the Liberal Mind is falling into the trap of applying simple pattern matching to issues that are far too complex for such an approach. In the next section I’ll be explaining what I think this pattern consists of and then how it is applied and how it constrains the Liberal Mind in disastrous ways.

Go to Part 3

Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 1 - Perception

Go to: Introduction

We all are engaged in a continuous process of evaluation of our social world, a world which includes both our political opponents, people from different cultural backgrounds to those closest to us in upbringing and outlook. To make evaluations of these people, their similarities to us, their beliefs, and their intentions we evaluate information that we get from outside in terms of criteria applied according to what is likely to be true for others. We might see Republicans as selfish and mean-spirited for example. This will make it more difficult to accept as a fact that Republicans give more to charity than Democrats (which is actually the case).

I want to begin an exploration of the factors which influence these processes by looking at some of the complexities of visual perception. Visual perception is the channel through which huge amounts of information regarding the social world enters our minds. The processes operating at this level are therefore important for understanding how accurate the information is and what factors are at work to make it less accurate.

Let’s start by looking at the constructed nature of visual perception of objects. Contrary to what common sense tells us about what we see, the world of objects is a mental construction from the information available to our visual cortex. I’m not suggesting that reality is completely made up. What psychological research tells us (from over 100 years of investigation) is that our brains build a representation of the physical world by using various cues. For example, take depth perception, our 3 dimensional image of the world around us; the information available to our brain is an inverted 2 dimensional image on each retina. Our brains use cues like superimposition (where an object near to us obscures an object further away) to infer that one object is closer than another. Take another cue: objects further away look smaller even though we know they don’t change size. This helps our brains to assess the relative distance of similar objects. Notice the word “infer”. Our brains do this automatically and generally arrive at the correct conclusions. There are instances where the depth cues can fool us, such as the Ames room.

In the Ames room one person looks huge while another person looks tiny. This is because the brain has been fooled into using depth cues to arrive at the wrong conclusion. Even though we know it is unlikely to be true the depth cues are too powerful and automatic to be overruled. The depth cues of linear perspective are so strong we can't prevent them from creating this illusion even though the relative sizes of the people in the room are completely improbable.

What is the brain doing?  The eminent British psychologist Richard Gregory suggests that the brain is engaged in a process of hypothesis testing, looking for the best fit for the available information and using the "rules of thumb" that our brains have developed over millions of years. This hypothesis testing activity can be seen when looking at the Necker Cube:

The brain looks at the cube one way and then finds another way which is equally plausible (the nearest face can be bottom left or top right). Our brain switches back and forth trying one “hypothesis” then the other. The key point to take from this is that the brain, even at this basic level of perceiving simple figures, is interpreting the available information. There is no fact in the naïve sense. The only "fact" in this instance is a set of black lines on a white background. Our brains build this into a cube.

Another example of our inability to overrule the interpretive nature of perception is the Muller-Lyer illusion.

In the Muller-Lyer illusion one of the horizontal lines looks longer than the other.  Measure the two lines and you’ll find that they’re exactly the same length. So now you know, consciously and rationally, that they’re the same length but they still look different. But, can you make them look the same length? This is a good example of a lower cognitive level (perception) being more powerful than a higher cognitive level (reasoning and knowledge).

There is another important facet of perception at this level and that is selection. The amount of available information is huge so the brain filters out what appears to be less relevant. The area around the focal point, for example a face we recognize in a crowd, is given more detail, while the faces around it are given much less. We can choose to attend to particular areas of the visual field but we can’t give the same amount of attention to all of them at once.

These processes start to get even more interesting when look at the issue of perceptual set. Perceptual set refers to a whole range of factors which lead to systematic filtering and biased interpretation of the visual information (though it can also apply to other senses like hearing). One important factor in perceptual set is expectation. We interpret what we see in terms of what we expect to see. A simple piece of research shows this in action. One group of people is shown a list of numbers and a second group is shown a list of letters. In each case the letters or numbers are shown briefly for a fraction of a second, one after the other. At the end of the sequence in each case an ambiguous figure which can be either 13 or the letter B is shown. You can test this yourself by scanning left to right, then top to bottom.

The group that has been shown the list of numbers identifies the middle figure as 13 whereas the group that has been shown the list of letters identifies it as B. In each case what has gone before has preset the likely interpretation of the figure. There are many other factors that have been experimentally demonstrated to show an effect similar to this: motivation, context, and mood, for example.

Affective priming is another important factor in perception. The founder of experimental psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, proposed the concept of "affective primacy". Affect refers to small flashes of positive or negative feeling that prepare us to approach or avoid something; it instantly primes us towards acceptance or rejection. Everything and everyone we encounter will trigger a small flash of affect. Try scanning through the headlines of a newspaper and take note of the flashes of emotion they set off. Wundt argued that affective reactions are so tightly integrated with perception that we find ourselves liking or disliking something the instant we notice it. (I'm basing a lot of this on Jonathan Haidt's book: The Righteous Mind where you can enjoy a much more thorough discussion of this topic.)

Research carried out by Robert Zajonc between the 1960s and 1980s showed that feeling of this kind occurs much faster than thinking and is much more powerful. Thinking is an evolutionarily newer ability which is rooted in language. Feeling carries far more motivational force and is much more closely integrated with behaviour.

Zajonc concluded that thinking could work independently of feeling in theory, but in practice affective reactions are so fast and compelling that they act to steer our thoughts and prime our perceptions.

Jonathan Haidt goes on to cite very interesting research which looks at alterations to peoples' reaction times when presented with faces from different racial groups. Depending on the nature of the task, a person's pre-judgements, which include affective flashes, can be shown to slow down or speed up response times. You can try this for yourself at ProjectImplicit.org

As Jonathan Haidt says, "The bottom line is that human minds, like animal minds, are constantly reacting intuitively to everything they perceive, and basing their responses on those reactions. Within the first second of seeing, hearing, or meeting another person, the elephant [Haidt's metaphor for the animal brain] has already begun to lean toward or away, and that lean influences what you think and do next. Intuitions come first." [my emphasis]

We can also add that the affective response will configure your perceptual systems to "see" in accordance with those affects. This feeling-toned thinking is part of the human condition. We are not computers. There is always an emotional and intuitive substrate to our thinking; it guides us, deceives us, compels us. We are held in the orbit of the lower self to a greater or lesser degree.

Just how compelling are these effects? There is a massive amount of research showing that we judge attractive people to be smarter and more virtuous (it's known as the halo effect), and we are more likely to give a pretty face the benefit of any doubt. Juries are more likely to acquit attractive defendants, and when beautiful people are convicted, judges give them lighter sentences, on average.

When these affective flashes contain feelings of approval or condemnation, we are experiencing moral emotions. These are particularly relevant for understanding both our own minds and the particular dynamics of the Liberal Mind.

I'll be returning to these findings and making use of them when I focus more directly on the Liberal Mind. Obviously, all that I have said so far can be applied to any of us but they can be used to help us understand the Liberal Mind too.

Go to: Part 2 - Patterns and Intentions

Unlocking the Liberal Mind – Introduction

I’ve undertaken a more long term project looking at some of the dynamics of the Liberal Mind. As I have a full-time job as well as other responsibilities I’m not in a position to write the whole thing at once. I therefore propose to publish a section at a time. This is the introduction where I will set out my aims, give an overview of the territory I’m venturing into, and counsel my readers to prepare for the long haul.

Over the last 10 years I have educated myself about the nature of Islam and have become distinctly alarmed both by its incursions into the West and the increasing evidence of radicalisation both at home and abroad. That in itself is bad enough but what has exasperated me almost as much is the continued blindness of so many people in the non-Muslim world. They continue to make assumptions about Islam that bear no relation to reality; they continue to defend a political position which takes absolutely no account of Islamic doctrines or of the many instances of behaviour inspired by those doctrines. This attitude which encompasses people on the political left, the political right, and the political centre is what I mean by the Liberal Mind. It’s liberalism in a broad sense: the habits of mind which originated with John Locke and the British empiricists, encompassing as they do both a theory of society and an approach to knowledge; habits of mind that were built upon by utilitarianism (seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number) and the progessive movements of the 19th century; Thomas Paine and the rights of man; the Founding Fathers of the American Constitution; culminating in such achievements as the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of women, the fairer treatment of minorities, all underpinned by a belief that societies could progress by better education for all, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, respect for empirical evidence rather than clerical or academic authority, and so on.

Liberalism in this sense constitutes what Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm. It’s an all-encompassing set of ideas as to what is possible, what is knowable, and the best means of achieving progress in human affairs; in short, it provides the context in which all things, including human life, are to be understood. This mode of thought and living has hitherto been adamantly opposed to all forms of tyranny, oppression, inequality, ecclesiastical dogma, and social forces that can be broadly described as reactionary (that is, wanting to turn back the tide of liberal progress). And yet, today these liberal forces are unable to bring themselves to oppose the most reactionary, tyrannical, oppressive, non-egalitarian, and clerically dogmatic force on earth today: Islam. Why is this? That is the question that I hope to shed light on.

I have drawn primarily on well-tested insights from psychology using such areas of research as: attitude formation and prejudice, cognitive processes such as memory and perception, moral psychology, cultural and evolutionary psychology, and studies of social influence. I use these to explore why and how the Liberal Mind has become “locked”; why it has become incapable of looking facts in the face and adjusting its attitude and behaviour to address a considerable threat to the very values it claims to espouse. Why is it that when you tell a liberal that you are concerned by the spread of Islam that they are more likely to see you as the problem rather than Islam? Why is it that a liberal will avoid finding out about Islam, except from sources approved by such bastions of liberal thinking as The Guardian?

Be prepared for a long haul. I have to lay down a lot of groundwork in psychology before I can apply the insights of psychology to the question at hand. In the next section I'll look at some aspects of the psychology of perception for this is important for our understanding of how we see the world - both in terms of our physical environment and the social environment. By the social environment I mean the whole global social world which is not your individual self.

Go to: Part 1 - Perception
 

So what's wrong with Olympic Ceremony message?

What is it that disturbs me about the Olympic ceremony? What is wrong with celebrating the Industrial Revolution and the NHS? I can add to that list but what bugs me most is that the multi-culti utopia that they tried to portray in the ceremony is composed of blind fools who refuse to look facts in the face: the facts of economic catastrophe hanging over them; the facts of excessive immigration undermining society; the facts of Islam with an agenda to subjugate and destroy all the "progress" that they are celebrating.

Why Muhammad Ali to open the games? Easy. He's the biggest loudmouth in the history of sport, he's black, he is or was a muslim and he's called Muhammad. He ticks a lot of boxes.

I really wanted to find a religion of peace

Reading Dr Elsa Schneider's account of her discovery of Islam, I was struck by a statement she made: I really wanted to find a religion of peace. I was the same; I expected to find a religion of peace. It never occurred to me that a major religion could be an ideology of conquest.


I first became more closely acquainted with Islam when I became friends with a Muslim couple in the mid 1990s. From them I gained some understanding of what muslims do, what they believe and what some of their attitudes are. I learned about the Hajj (the pilgrimage that muslims are supposed to make if they are able to); the 5 daily prayers (these were diligent muslims and they never missed their prayers); refraining from drinking wine, not eating pork etc; opposition to figurative art and music; reverence for Mohammad; opposition to Israel and a dislike of Jews; a positive attitude to such places as Jordan and Saudi Arabia; the benefits of Sharia law, and the general superiority of the muslim way of life. Opposition to comparative religion and anything that might relativize Islam or lead to a questioning of its teachings. Also, a tendency to interpret everything from psychology to astronomy
as knowledge that is already contained in the Quran.

I also learned about some of the sectarian divisions within Islam: the Sunnis, the Shi'ites, and Sufis. I also learned about some of the muslim views on such things as the healing power of honey. What I did not get from these people was any insight into the nature of the religious texts and their interpretation. Nor did I get any insight into the character of Muhammad except that he was supposed to be a thoroughly likeable and pretty near perfect person. Given the thoroughly positive recommendations of these people, I became curious about the Quran and thought it would be interesting to have a look at it. I thought that I would find edifying stories and poetic parables with a peculiarly Arabian wit and character to them. I thought I might discover a very humane message that was tolerant of human weakness and indulgent of human pleasure. I think I might have gained this idea from reading the Rubayaat of Omar Khayyam, the only thing I had ever read with a vague connection to the Middle East that springs to mind.

On reading the Quran, I was rather taken aback to discover that it repeated the same sort of things over and over again. Moreover, these themes were not positive but thoroughly negative in character. For example, a theme that is constantly reiterated is the doom awaiting the non-believer. Lurid descriptions of the torments awaiting the non-believer in Hell followed by a comment such as "Lo! Allah is merciful, wise." are very, very common. The impression that I immediately got was that the Quran delighted in telling how non-believers were going to suffer followed by the rather contradictory message that Allah was compassionate. These 2 things are irreconcilable for me. But Islam is highly dualistic, it divides people very starkly into believers and unbelievers (kafir) I was disappointed by the way the Quran was written for I had expected it to be on a more elevated level. Instead it was repetitious, bombastic and faintly ridiculous. I spent some time searching the book for something different but to no avail. It was all pretty much the same.

Needless to say, withouta believer's mentality that this was the most perfect book ever written, nor a desperate curiosity to know more about Islam, I abandonned the Quran as a poorly written and rather nasty book. Some years later, after Sept 11th 2001, I again became curious about Islam and muslims. I remember, when the Twin Towers were hit by the planes, being in my kitchen listening to the radio when the news bulletin interrupted the broadcast. I rushed to the TV to see if it was covered there - it was. My initial reaction was not "this is the work of middle eastern terrorists or muslims" but rather "this could be the action of environmentalists protesting about the USA's dismal green performance." Having discovered that it was carried out by muslims, I again became curious about Islam, as many people did. In fact, following the attacks, Islam appears to have gained many western converts. This will remain one of the supreme paradoxes of the 3rd millenium. I had lost contact with my muslim couple so I did not turn to them for their account. Had I done so I might well have been diverted from the truth. Muslims seem to have a peculiar blind spot for the negative aspects of the religion. This may have something to do with the particular emphasis that Islam places upon the supremely serious sin of disbelief.

Many of us brought up in a non-muslim culture have been led to believe that the worst sin is murder. But for muslims this is not the case. In Islam the worst sin is disbelief. What the psychological effects of this are one can only imagine but it may go some way to explaining the intolerance of questioning and doubt that is frequently displayed by muslims. Anyway, having acquired access to the world wide web by this time, I decided to search for "critics of islam" on Google. One of the results of this search was a link to faithfreedom.org  This is a site developed by ex-muslims which aims to expose the dubious claims of the religion and in particular to debunk the prophethood of Muhammad. Needless to say the site's authors receive countless death threats and abusive, blood curdling emails. They also offer a challenge to anyone who can expose any untruth in anything on their site with an offer to pay them $50,000 if they can demonstrate that any of their claims are false. I spent of lot of time studying this website and I concluded that what they were saying is true. This site had a link to another website called thereligionofpeace.com. It was here that I found a day by day, blow by blow account of the atrocities carried out in the name of Islam all over the world. Likewise jihadwatch.org, where I became acquainted with the work of the great Robert Spencer. Robert Spencer was able to show just how closely the jihadists were following both the example of Muhammad and the commandments in the Quran.

I have tried to discuss with muslims the subject of Islam's justification for acts of violence and the atrocities carried out by muslims around the world. I have found that they are able to say things with great conviction that they have no way of substantiating. If I draw attention to the violence of the jihadists, they answer that they "are not real muslims. Islam does not support violence." So I show them the excerpts from the Quran such as, "Kill the unbelievers, wherever you find them." To which the response is, "that's taken out of context", with the implication that, seen in its proper context, the passage would mean something competely different. This is stretching credibility to its limit. So I ask them to show me the context in which this does not mean what it appears to mean. This they cannot do, so I can only conclude that it does mean what it appears to mean. Where do they go from here? Back to the belief that Islam is perfect, non-violent and entirely peaceful (and somewhat misunderstood).

Pressed on these matters and their inability to explain the discrepancies, I find they start to make excuses like "I am not an expert. I cannot comment." The fact is most muslims have had the message dinned into them since childhood that Islam is the true path, that those who disbelieve in it are committing the worst of sins and that those who commit such sins can expect no mercy when judgement day comes. This is a huge barrier to reasonable and responsible enquiry. Unlike my muslim acquaintances I have an enquiring mind and I have sought to find answers. I also have the advantage of coming from a culture in which free thought, sincere use of reason, and an openness to doubt have allowed people to view ideas and beliefs more dispassionately than muslim culture does.

You may wonder why I bother myself with such matters. The answer is that I care about the future awaiting my children and their children. I do not want them to be faced with a choice between the mental slavery that Islam offers, grinding oppression under a muslim state, or death. These have typically been the choices offered to non-muslims when Islam has arrived on the doorstep of unsuspecting peoples down the ages. I also care about other non-muslims, both in my own country and elsewhere. I must say I've discovered wells of empathy for others that I didn't know I had. I feel a genuine concern that as few people as possible will suffer under such religious totalitarianism. I am also a student of western culture and it would be the most tragic loss were Islam to trample down and devalue the achievements of the western world, as it almost certainly would. I also feel concern for other non-muslim countries and peoples that could also be obliterated by Islamic infiltration and conquest. If you want to know what a muslim culture does for (or should I say to?) its people, take a look at Pakistan.

If you think such fears are alarmist, do bear in mind that muslim birth rates are far higher than most non-muslim birth rates. Many countries now have a muslim population that is growing much faster than the indigenous one. Though the muslim population is still a minority at present, the time is not far distant where parity between the two will be reached and from there onwards the muslims will begin to predominate.

What effect will that have on those societies? That very much depends on how committed those muslims are to Islam. Where religiosity is greater, tolerance will be lower. That is a good rule of thumb. If you think that's exaggerating, just bear in mind that where the indigenous population will have a higher proportion of older people, the muslim one will have a higher proportion of the young. The energy and dynamism will be with the latter.

Tiger Mother challenges western orthodoxies

“Chua directly challenges the prevailing Western orthodoxies, in place since Dr. Spock, or even since Freud . . .The analogy of child-rearing to our national situation is clear enough: just as American parents are too concerned with self-esteem without basing self-esteem on an actual accomplishment . . .so our entire culture operates on some notion of natural rights that is no longer realistic. Chua' s point is that a delusional culture based on unearned self-esteem can' t for long be a realistic player in global competition for influence, power, and resources. Is it possible that we should mind our Tiger Mother?” — Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books