Myopia

Expanded from a response to a Stephan Molyneux video on youtube:

Perhaps psychological Myopia is the sane mind's attempt to stay sane in the face of the forced demand to conform to contradictory social ideals.  This strategy is to "remain focused" on one's immediate surroundings and then willfully "ignore" the philosophical problem areas of belief that are off "in the distance."

Given the situation where one is commanded to believe a new fact that "must be true," even though it is obviously false.  Additionally, when the penalty for being discovered "promoting" the falsity, or lack-of-truth, of the new fact is a painful corporeal punishment (i.e. physical torture or imprisonment) and almost equally painful social censure (poverty and homelessness); the mind struggles for a rational solution.  

Assuming that the healthy mind seeks to avoid internal contradictions and inconsistencies of facts, this mind finds it difficult to accept new data "as true" that contradicts all prior evidence.  One possible solution to this dilemma is to relax conditions of truth and reliability, in effect refusing to judge or discriminate truth from falsity.   But this is not satisfactory because then nothing you believe has any validity and it could lead to very serious consequences in other areas of activity.   You could die.  If you no longer trust you ability to evaluate, then you no longer can reliably avoid peril, because you cannot discriminate peril.   Eventually you will be a victim to a hazard that might have otherwise been avoided if you had just learned to "trust your instincts."

Another possible solution is to accept the new data as irrefutably true and discard all previously know facts that contradict this "new data," but this is not acceptable either because it devalues your own sense of evaluation and self reliability.  Ultimately, this also degrades the previous truth value of the facts that you know to be true.  You are forced to doubt what you know to be true once again. You are forced to doubt your ability to ascertain truth and once again the consequences can be serious.


About the only solution that the sane mind can accept, and remain sane, is to "not think about" the philosophical contradictions posed by this "forced belief"and instead concentrate on the immediate world close at hand.   In this way, the consistency of thought and action can be maintained without struggling with the philosophical and social dilemma of trying to refute an obviously untrue "fact."   Any contradictions between personal philosophy and social dictates to conform can be largely avoided most of the time.

copyright(c)2014

William Schaeffer