The real battle in American politics today isn’t between left and right, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative—it is between fact and fiction, true and false, reality and utopia. One of the most prominent attributes of human nature is that we all like to be right, which by definition means that those who disagree with us are wrong. This is not just a mental quirk, it is deeply rooted in our biology and played an important role in the survival of our ancestors. It is not something we think as much as it is something we feel and react to before we think.
Given this, the central question in American politics is how we excite the same level of passionate intensity to effectively solve problems that we naturally get from trying to prove that we are right and others are wrong.
Over the past several decades, psychology and cognitive neuroscience research has conclusively demonstrated that our minds automatically search for information that reinforces our existing beliefs, attitudes and intuitions, regardless of the objective facts. Science is just now proving something many have known for quite some time. In the early 17th century, at the beginning of the modern age, Francis Bacon pointedly observed this aspect of human nature: “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”
If we dig a little deeper, we find that history is chock-full of examples of this phenomenon. For example, Thucydides, the ancient Greek scholar and general, had similar reflections in describing the mistakes of the Peloponnesian War: “When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.” Centuries later, Thomas Jefferson made the same conclusion , “The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination see in every object only the traits that favor that theory.”
Given the historical frequency of its appearance, it is no surprise that Americans understand this concept on a fundamental level. A recent survey conducted by USAfacts.org found that even though 88 percent of Americans favor an informed debate based on facts and evidence, 89 percent believed that most people only utilize “facts that fit their beliefs.” This is not a recent development. It is an enduring part of our nature.
Why reason is not useful in solving this problem
The most oft-cited proposal to bridge this divide and restore intelligent debate is the widely misunderstood role of reason. During the Enlightenment, French Revolutionaries put so much stock in the power of reason that they elevated it to full theological status by enshrining the “Cult of Reason” as the official atheistic religion of France, intending to replace the Catholic Church. After the “Reign of Terror” and two decades of dictatorship, we can safely conclude that reason did not solve their problems any better in the 18th century than it does today.
In 1979, Stanford researchers conducted a study on the effectiveness of reason. They discovered that people with different social views did not use reason to critically evaluate evidence. Instead, they sifted through empirical data to find ways to reinforce their existing views. The study concluded, “People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a biased manner. They are apt to accept ‘confirming’ evidence at face value while subjecting ‘disconfirming’ evidence to critical evaluation, and as a result to draw undue support for their initial positions from mixed or random empirical findings.”
Both the Stanford researchers and the French Revolutionaries could have saved a great deal of time and disappointment if they had only read David Hume. The 18th century scholar presciently described the problem quite accurately, stating that “as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principle.” A century later, Aleksandr Pushkin reaffirmed similar sentiments more dramatically, “The illusion which exalts us is dearer… than ten thousand truths.” We desperately long to be right, regardless of the facts and evidence.
You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks
Given the difficulties in “reasoning” our way to solutions, we return to the fundamental question of how can we excite the same level of passionate intensity to effectively solve problems in our politics that we naturally get from trying to prove that we are right and others are wrong. The answer to that question is not as difficult as one might think; it merely requires a brief moment of perspective.
In the early modern period, nearly every field of human endeavor confronted this same challenge. Science, medicine, agriculture, commerce, technology, and others were ruled by kings, clerics, and medieval convention. Gradually, we began to discover that the world around us and the cosmos above us does not conform to the dictates of medieval assumptions, instincts, intuitions, and opinions. In fact, there was an entire universe just waiting to be understood, if we would overcome our entrenched beliefs.
Fortunately, there were gifted, insightful men such as Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Voltaire, Newton, Locke, Adam Smith and our Founding Fathers who were willing to meet the challenge of discovery and do the difficult work of establishing the foundations upon which the unparalleled advancement and prosperity of the modern world was built.
Error is the enemy, not each other
This process of discovering how the world actually works and solving problems took many forms, all of which were framed around two guiding principles: reality and results. The animating spirit of this transition was one of relentlessly finding better ways to do things, making miraculous discoveries and improving the lives of vast populations—in other words, innovation.
In the Middle Ages, innovation was considered rash and radical, upsetting the perfect balance that “god intended” of absolute rule of kings, clergy and convention. One popular expression was that medieval humanity was living in the “best of all possible worlds.” The following four centuries proved that Panglossian perspective was nothing other than false belief masquerading as revealed wisdom.
The first field to be transformed by the mindset and method of innovation was the scientific method. At the beginning of the 17th century, students were taught at the best universities in Europe that the earth is the center of the universe, that all disease is caused by an imbalance of humors, and that monarchs have the divine right to rule over their subjects. Gradually, these governing myths were exposed to be erroneous and were overturned. Science was the first discipline to escape the clutches of medieval assumptions and beliefs, because the great thinkers of the day used innovative problem-solving to analyze the world and test their new theories through experiment.
To err is human, to innovate divine
Pioneered through the development of the scientific method, the mindset and method of innovative problem-solving quickly spread through other fields in Europe. Before long, medicine, agriculture, commerce and industry were being transformed as well. This upward surge in progress and productivity eventually made its way into the social sciences. Building upon the writings of John Locke and The Glorious Revolution, our Founding Fathers created the first modern republic in history in a stroke of innovative genius through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Even with this strong foundation, our country’s founders understood that the success or failure of this “Great Experiment” would rest on our ability to focus on reality and results, to embrace pluralism while checking factionalism, and to innovatively solve new problems that would inevitably arise. Even though we have successfully navigated and adapted to these political challenges over the past two centuries, our current political process has lost much of the innovative spirit that drove our founding generation.
Fortunately, in most fields, such as business, technology, science, medicine, and agriculture, we continue to innovate with creativity and productivity. But in politics, we have become immutability wedded to the tired, old, failed ideas of the past. We endlessly repeat the same actions over and over while expecting different results. We must end this sequence of futility and move onward and upward using innovative problem-solving.
Our Founding Fathers were political innovators. Why then do we not fully appreciate their genius and apply that uniquely American innovative spirit to our political challenges today? Our current political factions are more recognizable by their dogmas, ideology, and partisan tribalism than their innovative problem-solving. As Albert Einstein averred, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
In looking at why we frequently ignore reality and results, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman described the problem of both sides in this way: “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.” Instead of ignoring our errors and biases, let us embrace a process for systematically removing them, just as our wise Founding Fathers did and as we have done in so many other areas. We can—once again—embrace innovative solutions to our most pressing political problems.