Conflicting own beliefs and what to do about them

In the set of beliefs* held by anyone, there will be occasional real or imagined conflicts (consider also e.g. the concepts of “cognitive dissonance” and “doublethink”). People differ mainly in (a) the degree that they are aware of and (b) how they handle these conflicts. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of most or all conflicts that arise, make no attempts at detecting them, and are prone to just explain away the conflicts that are known—even descending to outright doublethink.** A particular issue with awareness is that a too faulty or incomplete understanding can make such conflicts go undetected.***

*I use “belief” as a catch-all that, depending on context, could include any or almost any belief, idea, opinion, whatnot that implies or would imply something about something else. This includes e.g. “cucumbers are green”, “cucumbers are blue”, “God does [not] exist”, and “I [do not] like chocolate”.

**This includes such absurdities as simultaneously professing to believe in Evolution and Gender-Feminism. Indeed, a great deal of my annoyance with politics/ideology (in general) and Feminism/Leftism/PC-ism (in particular) results from the adherents ever recurring faults in similar directions.

***Consider again Evolution vs. Gender-Feminism: It is, for instance, highly unlikely that evolutionary processes would generate physical differences while keeping mental abilities identical—but exactly that is seen as a given by most Gender-Feminists (and a significant portion of the PC crowd, in general). Similarly, it is highly unlikely that the different roles of men and women in most societies over thousands of generations would have left no trace in form of e.g. natural inclinations. A Creationist–Feminist match-up would be less prone to contradictions.

In many cases, these conflicts are sufficiently trivial that they may be neglected.* For instance, that someone has two favorite dishes, music bands, movie stars, …, rarely has major impact on important decisions.** When it comes to topics that can have a greater impact, especially on others, care should be taken, however. Consider e.g. questions like how to vote in an election, what recommendations to make to others, what agendas to push, …—here it is important to have a sufficiently sound view of the topic; and if beliefs conflict, the view is unlikely to be sufficiently sound.

*A resolution can still bring benefit, e.g. through better self-knowledge, and I would not advice against the attempt.

**However, the resolution is often fairly simple, e.g. that none of two is the favorite and that the word “favorite” is best avoided; or that an opinion has changed over time, while still being professed out of habit.

Giving blanket rules for detection is tricky, but actually reading up* on a topic, gaining an own understanding (as opposed to parroting someone else’s), and deliberately trying to see the “bigger picture” and making comparisons between different fields and ideas, can all be helpful. Above all, perhaps, it is helpful to actually think through consequences and predictions that can be made based on various beliefs, and looking at how they stack up against both each other and against observations of reality. In my personal experience, writing about a topic can be an immense help (and this is one of the reasons why I write): Writing tends to lead to a deeper thought, a greater chance of recollection in other contexts, and a thought-process that continues intermittently long after a text has been completed.

*Note especially that information given in news papers, in school, or by politicians tends to be too superficial or even outright faulty. Wikipedia was once a good source, but has deteriorated over the years (at least where many topics are concerned). The “talk” pages can often contain a sufficient multitude of view-points, however.

If a conflict has been detected, it should be investigated with a critical eye in order to find a resolution. Here there are at least* five somewhat overlapping alternatives to consider: (a) One or both beliefs are wrong and should be rejected or modified. (b) Both beliefs have at least some justification and they should be reconciled, possibly with modifications; e.g. because they cover different special cases. (c) The conflict is only apparent, e.g. through a failure to discriminate. (d) One or both beliefs are not truly held and the non-belief should be brought to consciousness; e.g. because profession is made more out of habit than conviction. (e) The support of both** beliefs is approximate or tentative (awaiting further evidence), and (at a minimum) this condition should be kept in mind, with revisions according to the preceding items often being necessary.*** Note that the above need not result in rejection of one belief—it can equally be a matter of modification or refinement (and it can also happen to both beliefs). This is one reason why investigation is so beneficial—it helps to improve one’s own mind, world-view, whatnot.

*A deeper effort might reveal quite a few more alternatives. I write mostly off the top of my head at the moment.

**Here it has to be both: If one belief is taken as true and only one as approximate, then it would follow that the approximate one is outright faulty (at least as far as the points of conflict are concerned), which moves us to the “One” case of (a).

***For instance, if two physical theories are not perfectly compatible, the realization that physical theories are only approximations-for-the-now (eventually to be replaced by something better) gives room for an “approximate belief” in either or both theories. As long as work proceeds with an eye at the used assumptions, with the knowledge that the results might not be definite, and while being very careful in areas of known conflict or with poor experimental verification, this is not a major issue. Indeed, such “approximate belief” is par for the course in the sciences. In contrast, if someone was convinced that both were indisputably true, this would be highly problematic.

Again, giving blanket rules is tricky, especially with the very wide variety of fields/beliefs potentially involved and with the variety of the above cures. However, actually thinking and, should it be needed, gathering more information can be very productive. Having a good ability to discriminate is helpful in general; and with (b) and (c) it can be particularly beneficial to look at differences, e.g. if there is some aspect of a case where one belief is assumed to apply that is not present in a case where the other belief is assumed to apply. With (d), it is usually mostly a matter of introspection. (In addition, the advice for detecting conflicts applies to some parts here and vice versa. Often, the two will even be implicit, hard-to-separate, parts of a single process.)

For a specific, somewhat complex example, consider questions around what makes a good or poor book, movie, whatnot—especially, the property of being hackneyed: On the one hand, my discussions of various works have often contained a complaint that this-or-that is hackneyed. On the other, it is quite common for works that I enjoy and think highly of (at least on the entertainment level*) to contain elements of the hackneyed—or even be formulaic. Moreover, I rarely have the feel that this enjoyment is despite of something being hackneyed—this weakness, in it self, does not appear to disturb me that strongly.

*Different works serve different purposes and should be measured with an eye on the purpose. When I watch a sit-com, depth of character is far less important than how often and how hard I laugh; the romance in an action movie is a mere bonus (or even a negative, if there is too much); vice versa, an action scene in a rom-com is mere bonus; plot rarely makes sense in non-fiction; etc. For more “serious” works, more serious criteria and higher literary standards apply.

Is my explicit complaint compatible with my implicit acceptance? To some degree, yes; to some degree, no.

On the “no” side: I suspect, after introspection, that I do or do not find a certain work enjoyable, thought-worthy, whatnot, based on criteria that are not explicitly known to me.* If I find enjoyment (etc.), I am less likely to look for faults; if I do not, I am more likely to look for faults—but there is no guarantee that my original impression was actually caused by the faults now found. Some will almost certainly have been involved; others need not have been; and there might have been other faults involved that I never grew explicitly aware of.

*There are many aspects of different works that can individually have a large impact, and the end-impression is some form of aggregation over these aspects. For instance, consider the impact of music on movies like “Star Wars” and “Vertigo” or on TV series like “Twin Peaks”—change the music, and the work is lessened. Notably, the viewer is rarely strongly aware of the impact of the music (even be it hard to miss in the aforementioned cases).

On the “yes” side there are at least three things to consider: Firstly, a work can be hackneyed and have sufficient other strengths to outweigh this. Poor works are rarely poor due to one failure—they are poor because they fail on numerous criteria, e.g. (for a movie) being hackneyed and having a poor cast, wooden dialogue, unimpressive music, … Being hackneyed is, alone, not a knock-out criterion—being original is an opportunity to gain points that a hackneyed work simply has not taken. Secondly, different criteria can apply to different works,* and being hackneyed is not necessarily an obstacle for the one work, even though it is for another. Thirdly, if something is known to work well, it can be worth using even if it is hackneyed—“boy meets girl” has been done over and over and over again, but it still works. (See also an excursion below.)

*Partly, as in a previous footnote; partly, with an eye on the expected level of accomplishment. For instance, my very positive discussion of Black Beauty must be seen as referring to a children’s book—had I found the exact same contents in a work with the reputation and target group of e.g. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (which I have yet to read), I would have been less enthusiastic.

All in all, I do not see a problem with this conflict in principle; however, I do suspect that I would benefit from (and be fairer in detail* by) looking closer at what actually created my impression and less closely on criteria like “original vs. hackneyed”. The latter might well amount to fault finding or rationalization. To boot, I should pay more attention to whether specifically something being hackneyed has a negative effect on me (beyond the mere failure to have a positive effect through originality).

*I doubt that my overall assessment would change very much; however, my understanding and explanation of why I disliked something would be closer to the truth. Of course, it might turn out that being hackneyed was a part of the explanation in a given case; however, then I can give that criticism with a better conscience…

Excursion on expectations:
In a somewhat similar situation, I have sometimes complained about a work having set a certain expectation and then changed course. That is an example of another issue, namely the need to discriminate*. There are setups and course changes that are good, in that they reduce the predictability, increase the excitement, whatnot. This includes well-made “plot twists”. There are, however, other types of expectations and course changes that are highly unfortunate—including those that make the reader (viewer, whatnot) set his mind on a certain genre or a certain general development. A course change here is likely to detract from the experience, because different genres are enjoyed in different manners, and because there is often an element of disappointment** involved. Depending on the change, there can also be a delay and reorientation needed that lessens concentration and enjoyment further. Another negative type of changes is (almost always) those that try to rejuvenate a TV series or franchise by sacrificing what once made the series worth watching, by “jumping the shark”, and similar.

*Yes, discrimination is also a sub-topic above; however, here we have a too blatant case to be truly overlapping: There is no need for me to re-investigate my own beliefs—only to clarify them towards others. (Except in as far as I might have suffered from a similar fault-finding attitude as discussed above, but that attitude is just an independent-of-the-topic aspect of an example.)

**Note that this holds true, even when the expected and the delivered are more-or-less equivalent in net value. (However, when there is a significant improvement, the situation might be different: I recall watching “Grease” for the first time, with only a very vague idea of the contents; seeing the first scene; and fearing that I was caught in the most sugary, teenage-girls-only, over-the-top romance known to man—the rest was a relief.)

Excursion on “boy meets girl”:
An additional, but off-topic, complication when considering the hackneyed, is that there comes a point of repeated use when the hackneyed does not necessarily register as hackneyed and/or is so central to a genre that it is hard to avoid. Consider the typical “boy meets girl” theme. This, in it self, is so common and so basic to movie romance that it rarely registers as hackneyed. In contrast, the rarer “childhood friends fall in love” does*. With “boy meets girl”, the question is less whether the theme lacks originality and more whether the implementation is done with sufficient quality** and whether the details are also lacking in originality (is there, e.g., yet another desperate chase to and through an airport at the end?).

*At least to me, which also shows that there can be a large element of subjectiveness involved.

**Oscar Wilde defended against accusations of plagiarism by pointing to the difference between adding and removing a petal when growing tulips: To repeat in a better manner what someone else has already done, is not necessarily a fault.

Excursion on good fiction:
More generally, I am coming to the conclusion that fiction (and art, music, whatnot) either works or does not work—and if the end result works, an author (movie maker, whatnot) can get away with more-or-less anything along the road. This includes the hackneyed, poor prose, absurd scenes, artistic liberties with science, a disregard for convention and expectation, the tasteless, … (But the question of “because or despite?” can be valuable, especially with an eye at a different reactions among different readers.) The proof of the pudding is in the eating—not in the recipe.

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