The people who really don’t get it, whatever it may be at the time, are people whose hidden agenda conflicts with the message and people who are disconnected from realities that vary from their own limited personal experience. In other words, they don’t want to get it or they don’t have the ability to see beyond their noses. – Adrian Green, SUNDAY SUN, May 7
WHAT MAKES HUMAN BEINGS the most successful of all earthly creatures? A book released in 2013 advanced the theory that it’s our singular ability to deny reality when it’s staring us in the face.
Ajit Varki and Danny Brower argued that consciousness brings no evolutionary advantage if it awakens us to the depressing fact that we’re doomed to die. The first person to have that “all-encompassing, persistent, terror-filled realisation,” they wrote, would likely lose out in the struggle to find a mate and pass on his or her genes.
So unlike self-aware chimpanzees, dolphins and orcas, said the authors of Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, And The Origins Of The Human Mind, humans developed “neural mechanisms for denying reality”. It’s the reason why we eat in ways we know will kill us and keep spewing out enough carbon to cause the seas to rise.
Not only do we tend to seek out and remember information that reaffirms what we already believe, but there is also a “backfire effect”, which sees people doubling down on their beliefs after being presented with evidence that contradicts them.
So where do we go from here? The only way people will start rejecting falsehoods being fed to them is by confronting uncomfortable truths. As Varki and Brower wrote, “It is only by understanding reality denial as an enemy within that we might be able to overcome it.” Speaking for all of us reality-deniers, I say good luck with that.
– CHARLES KNIGHTON