I don’t need to tell you that 2020 sucked. The year was terrible. Unless you’re living secluded from the rest of global society, you’ve had to deal with the COVID 19 pandemic. If you’re an American, you’ve also had to live through the summer of social unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd. To cap off the year, there was also the very divisive and stressful election. This year had a large impact on my worldview. I saw many of our social systems strained in ways I never saw them strained before. My biggest takeaway has been that we have a major problem of disinformation in the United States. I know The US the best but I believe it’s a problem throughout all western culture.
In the United States, a whole section of the country believes something the rest of the country doesn’t. They believe that Trump won the 2020 election and that the presidency was stolen from him. This isn’t an insignificant amount of people. Trump got the most votes for President ever, aside from Joe Biden. Obviously, not every Trump voter believes in voter fraud, but a significant amount do. 34% of voters believe Biden’s victory was illegitimate. That’s just over 1 in 3 people who are registered to vote in our country. That’s not insignificant. These are people you probably know. They are even probably some of your family members.
Now, I love to argue. I like to push and prod at people with who I don’t agree. Discussing everything from Religion to gaming opinions. I love to explore the side I don’t understand because I like to know why they believe what they believe. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I poked at many of these people who believe there was voter fraud and that Biden didn’t win the election.
When engaging with voter fraud believers, you’ll see them point to “evidence”. This will be something neither of you can confirm first hand of course. They will use it to justify their belief in what occurred during the election. This evidence will contain videos of people pulling out ballots from under tables or trucks arriving late at night to polling stations. Maybe ballots where they all have perfectly filled in bubbles? Just a bunch of things that could be mundane, or, to someone wanting to prove a huge conspiracy, evidence. But because you can’t disprove it, it justifies them to believe it. My favorite thing to see these people tackle is the simple fact that the court cases were thrown out. It must be remembered that the Trump administration packed the court system with their chosen judges. A lot of people were worried about a Supreme Court with 3 Trump nominees having to make a decision on any election disputes, but they had integrity, unlike the man himself. So when you bring all this up to a Trump voter they just blow it off. They believe even people appointed by the Trump administration are part of a conspiracy against the President who gave them power. It’s irrational and delusional, but where do we go from here? Let’s go shopping. What do you think of this black and blue dress?
The Dress. The Dress that broke people. I think “The Dress” is probably the single best example of how humans not only can misinterpret information but get irrational when they hear others don’t see something the same as them. For those not aware, in 2015, a dress went viral for the simple reason that nobody could decide on what color it was. The Dress in the photo is agreed to be black and blue. The lighting of the photo can trick people’s brains, making them think it’s white and gold. Our brains fill in information quickly and many people initially will see it as white and gold. Given the knowledge that it is blue and black, you can change how you see it. I have done it myself. I was scrolling social media back when the dress first hit viral status and I saw the picture come up and it appeared white and gold to me. I thought it was a joke re-coloring, but then I realized it was the original picture and right before my eyes, it switched back to black and blue. Look at my initial reaction though. I immediately thought it was a joke, or intentionally misleading. I’ve known people who get irrational when told it’s actually black and blue. They say there’s no way, or that in that photo it does appear white and gold. They can’t fathom a world where what they see is not true, or at least not seen to others the same way. I think this is telling of human nature. We want everything to be simple and seen the same by everyone. Anyone who doesn’t see the dress like us is lying or delusional. I’ve seen people I’d say are very intelligent tell me to my face I’m lying about how I see the dress, and if we can’t agree on the color of a dress, then how can we expect everyone to see our political views the same? While the color of a dress might be a stretch to compare to differences in political opinion, I’d argue it’s actually overkill. If we can have an issue coming to conclusions on the color of a dress because of misinterpreted information stemming from the failings of our perception, how many failings can we have when interpreting information from complex, multilayered political issues? I’d say a lot. This gets more complicated and volatile when we see how angry someone can get just in the dress debate. We can easily devolve into thinking others are being intentionally misleading, lying, or just ignorant. This all feeds into why it’s so hard to make any progress in political debates with others. It all comes down to us having different views on what are the facts.
A fact is something we take for granted. It’s an undeniable piece of reality we see as integral to understand the world around us. When the idea that the things we know to be facts may not appear the same way to other people, I notice that almost everyone prompted with this idea gets very defensive and incapable of accepting that their set of facts can be questioned or challenged. The funny thing is, while being so convinced that their facts can’t be questioned, they’ll question the facts of the person they’re arguing with. What separates us truly between the voter fraud people and ourselves besides us believing our set of evidence is better and or more logical than theirs? If we can’t convince others, what does it matter that we’ve proven our point with facts and evidence? How can we claim our way is better and has authority over other ideas?
I think the solution is more of a recontextualization of how we view facts in relation to our world. I’d argue what I’m about to say is already how we determine facts as facts, we just don’t think of it like this. Instead of saying “I’m correct because of facts backed up by evidence”, we can define what is “fact” from the perspective of what the majority of people believe. This sounds like mob rule, and it is, but it’s already what happens. Most of us believe things based on the fact that the majority believes these things as well. Obviously, not everything we believe as individuals lines up with what the majority believes, but the vast amount of what we perceive daily is made up by facts we haven’t ourselves proven. This sounds bad at first. This would be admitting that it’s not the truth that shapes our idea of facts, but how else do we even view the truth if not as a result of the facts we know and if they are determined this way already as I theorize, then again, truth, like facts, are made by majority opinion. Also, ask yourself. Why do you personally believe something? If I pushed you on why you believe the sky is blue, you’d probably tell me the science about how the sky reflects the ocean. Most knowledgeable people on the subject would answer this way and those who don’t know the science learn that it is blue from observation and that everyone around them never contradicts it.
So what’s the benefit to recognizing the majority determines truth if it’s something we already do? Well, I believe we need to understand this process so we can better interact with people who don’t fall in with the conclusion of the process. It’s easy to dismiss these voter fraud people as delusional, but a third of registered voters see the election as illegitimate. These are people we know. We interact with. They are our family. What do you do when there is a sizable portion of your country that operates with different facts? Instead of just thinking of them as stubborn to the facts or willfully ignorant, we can recognize the only thing separating us from them is the majority opinion. Claiming superiority based on your evidence gets us nowhere, because, given that qualification, they can and will do that same thing, as we both should, but not as a definitive “how could you possibly see otherwise” ultimatum. We should use our evidence to try and convince with the knowledge that not everyone sees the world the same as us.
You see, every single person who has a stake in a topic is worth no more or less than another person who is involved in the topic. You might think that people in power, like politicians, or of great influence, like celebrities, have more worth in their opinions, and they do in a way. They have reach and in the case of politicians, they may have means to change policies, but they themselves still are only worth one opinion and while their reach is important, it’s only as strong as the individuals they influence or convince. I don’t categorize them as worth more because it’s similar to how the public’s view on scientific matters comes to exist. Many people trust experts on topics, and while they don’t have the publicity of politicians or celebrities, ideally, I hope, they have even more influence on opinions. I think it might come as a problem to some that celebrities with no real deep knowledge on a topic can have a sizable influence on others, but the responsibility of accepting the position on the topic is still on the individual who is or is not influenced. It’s all about convincing others. I believe the strongest way to do that is through debate and the presentation of good arguments, but it could be through whatever means to get you to the end goal of having a majority of people on your side of an issue.
I believe this idea can be interpreted very differently based on your optimism concerning the intelligence of the majority of people. I myself have had my optimism rocked recently. This year convinced me the average person isn’t as intelligent or as good intentioned as I once believed, but it doesn’t change my conviction that every single person must be worth just as much as anyone else when tallying for the majority opinion. I can see where some would argue those with power can force compliance with a position they have invested interest in, and yes that’s true, but compliance isn’t acknowledgment of truth, it can turn into that, but it doesn’t inherently mean that.
In an abstract, dark example, people with an agenda and power could cull people who don’t believe what they want them to, turning themselves into the majority, therefore, changing their agenda into fact. This sounds abstract but if this were to happen, isn’t that what their history would conclude? As long as they survive to propagate their agenda, it’s indistinguishable for the people who come after them. Unless these people go out of their way to learn the views opposing their own culture, they’d have no basis to believe their culture isn’t correct in their views. If people from the society came to learn the beliefs of the people who were culled they’d have to fight through the biases and education they were given by the people who culled the opposing views. Even if they could get through all of that, it still wouldn’t change the truth in their society because only them and maybe a handful of other people would come to the same conclusions. They would have to convince a majority to change the facts back to pre-culling.
As an expansion to the idea of people in power having more influence on what are facts, they may be able to force people to comply with their agenda, and their whole society may operate under the rules they set, but this shouldn’t be conflated with what is “Fact”. If the majority of people living under this don’t believe the current agenda when questioned freely, then that would still define what is true. What people tolerate and what people know to be fact are different and can be distinguished. This is important to understand from a practical point of view because people under a system with an agenda they don’t believe in, can and I’d say usually do cause conflict. History shows that people making up a majority who are under a tyrannical minority tend to rebel and usually win. While not always the case, the majority usually do win, either by assimilating to the ruling power, or rebellion in an effort to change the ruling power.
I believe around a third of our country has a fundamental difference from the rest of the country. I believe they can’t be disregarded purely on the basis of “they don’t recognize our facts of reality”, because if tables were turned, they would claim the same of us. So, how do we handle this? We stop hiding behind the term “fact”. We stop using it as an ultimatum. It’s not doing its job if it’s not a universally accepted truth, and nothing is, because we can’t even get everyone to agree on the color of a damn dress.
Bernard Lamar Rice 