THE PAIN OF KNOWING AND ACTING ON THE TRUTH
Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D. 11-24
Every day we as human beings deal with reality. This reality, however, is not the same as “ultimate reality,” since our human abilities to receive and interpret information from the environment is limited. For example, we are being bombarded constantly with waves of different kinds. Light is a wave, but the light and colors that we see are only those that we can see, with our bodies as they are. There are waves with both longer and shorter wavelengths than the light that we see, and we don’t see them (because our sensory organs are not designed to include them). Nor do we see x-rays or other kinds of waves. So, we see only a portion of the available information out there. Fortunately, we don’t seem to be harmed by these waves that we can’t sense (or maybe we are and just don’t know it). Sound is similar in that there are waves in the air that we call soundwaves, but we only sense a limited range of frequencies and strengths of these waves.
Luckily for us (and thanks to evolution, if you believe in that theory), our sensory abilities (though they have limits) are sufficient for us to deal fairly well with the environment that we face, but we should not fool ourselves by assuming that we sense everything. Dogs and cats have much better senses of smell and hearing than we do, but we do OK.
Another of the ways in which we have limited capacities is in the realm of telling truth from falsehoods. We assume that there is such a thing as truth, but we often assume that we know it when we actually don’t, just as we assume that we see and hear everything, when we know (if we think about it) that we don’t. But what is “truth”? Philosophers have developed several different definitions, but for this essay we will use the “correspondence” model of truth—a verbal description, assertion, or statement is true if it corresponds with (describes accurately) what we observe in the world. We cannot, therefore, know the truth of a statement that describes something that we can’t observe (like a realm of fairies, or heaven).
We humans function pretty well in the world if we adhere to this measure of truth. For complex issues (when to plant corn, how to make a roof stand up on a building) we can learn over time by trial and error (observing what happens if we try something). For statements about some simpler or “cleaner” phenomena or issues, we can use verbal logic to determine truth (if all men are brutes, and Claude is a man, then Claude is both a man and a brute). When we get into areas of experience in which we cannot observe things in the way we need to do to determine truth (as illustrated in quantum physics or in knowing whether a marriage is going to stay together, since there is no pre-observing the marriage), we don’t do well.
Given our constant awareness and our ability to imagine our future, we want very much to “know” what is going to happen (or at least the range of things that could happen), since this knowing is key to being able to choose behaviors that might affect what is going to happen and make it better for ourselves. When we really don’t know something in an area that is important to us, we are tempted to make up an answer, and since many perceptions cause us emotional pain (because each part of our brain is connected in some fashion with every other part), we are tempted sorely to choose a made-up statement or reason that feels good over one that is painful. If quantum physics contradicts how we experience the world, then it must be simply wrong and will be proven wrong in the future. My proposed marriage will last—I just know it will (or “I feel it”). If we have several possible made-up answers, none of which feels good, then we are likely to pick the one that feels the best. If all of the possible answers feel bad, then we will probably pick the one that feels the least bad. Sometimes the outcome is not particularly important to us, as when we just “know” that someone in that big legal case in the newspaper is guilty or not guilty, even though we know nothing of the evidence either way.
Many times, we have some evidence regarding these questions (most of the marriages in my family and in my proposed spouse’s family have ended in divorce), but even if this should give the person pause, he/she may decide to ignore that evidence or declare that it is not strong enough to overrule the answer that he/she prefers on an emotional basis. This can be rationalized in various ways (we will do better than they did; there’s always a first time; we’ll be the exception that proves the rule). Even when the evidence is very strong (Columbus came back from the Indies with plants and natives, all of the crew agreed that they had been there), some people made up theories about why it was all a sham—a bit like conspiracy theories today or the “faked” moon landing.
Often hope is the deciding factor—we hope that something will turn out as we desire, and hope for outcomes that give us what we want is so important that we may declare evidence to the contrary to be false or made-up, so we can believe what we want. Sometimes we acknowledge the risk of believing what we want to believe but go ahead believing that we will get what we desire anyway (I can’t be certain that our marriage will last, but it’s worth a shot). More often, though, the risk is ignored or denied to reduce any ambivalence or worry that the person might have. Many people who supported Mr. Trump hoped that he would carry out his promises and help their situations, and they saw no attractive offers from the other side, so they ignored his veiled racism and distortions of reality and voted for him anyway. Hope is the key emotional element for gamblers in continuing to gamble even though they have a lifetime net loss.
The underlying assumption of this essay is that making decisions using accurate information will result in decisions that on the whole turn out better than decisions made utilizing false information. All of us probably “know” this at some level, since we have observed our various decisions over the years—some based on reality and some based less on reality, but we continue to be susceptible to believing false information and therefore basing our decisions on that false information. In planning for the Pearl Harbor raid that began WW2 in the Pacific, Japanese planners came to the conclusion that Americans were hopelessly disorganized and could never come together to contest Japan’s conquests in Asia. This error, compounded by the insult of Pearl Harbor, actually resulted in the U.S. ruining Japan’s dreams of conquest. So you see, acting on false beliefs can result in the loss of many lives and a tremendous amount of suffering.
If we do choose the view that most seems to be true and takes the realities of the situation objectively into account over those views that feel better, we sometimes have to pay the price of disappointment or sadness for not getting what we wanted and for giving up hope that we will get it. We do gain the advantage, though, that our decisions will on the whole lead to more successful outcomes than the outcomes from ignoring the realities in the situation. That is the point of this essay—the more one’s decisions are based on reality, the more successful the outcomes. “Successful” here means that we make better predictions about future outcomes of our choices than we make by ignoring reality and going with choices that feel better right now. Making more accurate predictions, we are spared some of the disappointments of not having things turn out the way we predict. (I badly want my proposed marriage to turn out well, but my fiancée and I have considerable differences about how we manage money as well as religious differences, and these so often in other marriages don’t work out well in the long run, with frequent arguments and failures to compromise, that I think that I’d better just accept that it’s very likely to end in divorce eventually and that we shouldn’t get married. I know that I could “go for it” and try my best in the relationship, no matter what might happen, but there would be a lot of pain in doing that until it finally became apparent that we couldn’t stay together, and I’d prefer to avoid that pain as well as the pain of the final dissolution.) Persons who prefer to ignore reality will call the person who takes reality into account a party-pooper or a pessimist.
There is something that could be seen as “gallant” or “romantic” about trying something that one wants badly even when one knows that it might not work out (or probably will not work out), but this is a choice that each of us must make about what pain we want to risk. Some might prefer the excitement and the highs and lows of trying even when it is unlikely that the effort will be successful, while others will think that avoiding the total pain of an effort that will probably fail is more important than having the excitement and the highs. For the eternal optimist, being in the positive emotional space of anticipating positive outcomes (even though having many negative outcomes) may seem more valuable than being in the more neutral or sometimes negative space of predicting more realistic outcomes.
How might people who have a habit of going with perceptions and views that feel better but ignore important aspects of reality be persuaded to stick closer to reality and tolerate giving up the hope that their “feel better” alternatives provide them? For a few, becoming aware of their habit (noticing over time that they always choose the view that feels better when there are more realistic views available) will result in trying out taking the more realistic view and tolerating the pain of “knowing” from the start that things are unlikely to turn out the way they wanted. This may be reinforced sufficiently by having outcomes with better results that they change their prior habit and settle on going with more realistic views, since this result in better predictions about the outcomes.
If people who ignore reality do so in order to feel better but could have better outcomes if they stuck with reality, how can they be helped not to feel so bad about reality and therefore make more decisions taking reality into account?
First of all, they must acknowledge the problematic behavior—that they tend to ignore reality so that they can hold onto the prediction of the positive outcomes that they desire. If one has grown up in a family in which others also ignored reality, then it will be more difficult to give up that strategy.
There are of course various strategies that human beings use to dull their emotional pain—distraction, denial, compensation (ice cream!), seeking other pleasures, etc. The ultimate solution, though, is to come to believe firmly that he/she will be better off in the long run by going with reality as much as possible. This should be obvious to most adults since they have had many opportunities in their lives to see what happens with their decisions that ignore reality. Some will have given them the hoped for payoff, but many will not have.
“Focus elsewhere” is a very traditional method of minimizing pain, usually by distracting yourself with an interesting sensory focus or an activity. A more recent focus is not to get away from the pain but to allow it to be, since it will eventually fade anyway. Awareness meditation (without focusing specifically on the pain) is a way to combine these two approaches (having one’s awareness roam over a wide variety of foci while waiting for the pain to fade).
If there is sufficient motivation to hold onto our magical thinking, we are capable of thoroughly ignoring reality, and for some this is a life strategy and not just a situational one–gamblers may continue to hope for the one big strike that will outweigh all of the other small losses. Other motives can come into the picture as well, such as feeling an obligation to predict the future in the same way that a parent does–not wanting to damage one’s image of the parent or the relationship with the parent by thinking for oneself.
Another example is the dogged belief by the addict that continuing to use will feel better overall even if it leads to losing one’s job, marriage, etc. Going through withdrawal and giving up the good feelings of using are quite a price to pay, of course, and they must be justified by a belief that it is a better way to go than continuing to use. The only real “cure” for the behaviors of addiction is for the addict to believe that his/her life will be better in total if he/she gives up using and can see this conclusion as “real” and justified at every moment of his/her temptation to take up the drug again. This is certainly a challenge if, as in some cases, the desire for the feelings produced by the drug continues for years (and one must re-make the choice not to use over and over using the belief that overall life is and will be better without the drug).
The long-term approach to the pain of giving up a hope as a result of using accurate information for one’s decisions is to observe the outcomes of one’s more realistic decisions and the information utilized, conclude that it truly does turn out better when we use accurate information, and come to really believe (through this real-life experience) that using accurate information leads to a better life for us, even if it does mean that we give up some of our unrealistic beliefs that we have cherished. This process of accepting reality is very feasible, but it means accepting some pain, for a while anyway, for the sake of having better outcomes from our decisions overall. Each of us must want to have those better outcomes in order to justify to ourselves that the pain of giving up some of our unrealistic beliefs is worthwhile.
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