The Psychology of Moral Certainty

It has happened again. Someone begins a debate with me on my statements on the reproductive health bill, and then just drops me.

A young woman, a graduate of the university where I teach though never my student, tweets me. She is reacting to my proposition made during one of the televised debates that those who oppose the passage of the bill are seeking to impose one set of moral beliefs on the rest of the country.

The exchange below happens over a couple of days. I reproduce it below, edited slightly to make reading easier.

She: “Respect for diversity and opinion” of @seclaudio is standard relativist statement =no single truth

Me: Not relativism but the Second Vatican Council on ecumenism and religious freedom. If I am wrong in assuming you are Catholic, I can send you literature from other religious traditions.

She: Nowhere in Vatican doc says “respect for diversity of opinion”. Opinion is not truth.

Me: Many times. section 2 para 3, whole of sec 4 latter part sec 7, etc. Demand for exact wording is bad argument. Tweets can be harsh. Do not mean to be disrespectful or hurtful but do think your demand for exact wording unfair. I am only asking for fairness. Long encyclopedia section accusing me of relativism doesn’t say those words either.

She: Ma’m I didn’t mean to be harsh & I wasn’t looking for exact wording. But you’re misreading a Vatican doc. Your camp’s been asking for respect for opinion. We respect your opinion,your freedom, no coercion there. But ours is to truth. And RH Bill does not promote the truth about man.
CBCP only promotes what for Catholic teaching is right in fighting against this bill. If you’re Catholic I suggest you try to study their matter closely.

Me: you can’t just say I misread without explaining, that you agree with my call for respect while accusing me of relativism. As to truths, the Vatican statement is that each one may have his or her own perception of truth and we need to talk our truths and not claim that only one of us has commitment to the truth. sorry dear colleague, but your last few arguments seem to me like argumentation that tends to “lay down the law” to me, rather than meet me in good faith. this lessens the room for dialogue when you argue like this.

I have waited 2 weeks since my last tweet. I guess I will no longer get a reply.

Being a person whose formative years happened before the internet, I asked my 15 year old what this might mean. Have I offended? Am I being an old fuddy-duddy? In the good old days when we wrote snail mail, we broke off correspondences with proper goodbyes—even if “proper” could go like this:

“Dear John: I can no longer write you love letters. I heard you have taken Don into your bed. I am not homophobic, but you never said you were bisexual. The diamond engagement ring will reach you by courier.”

My 15-year-old says something like, “ask her if she needs a a mechanic. Looks like she got stopped in her tracks.”

Another young one says to me, “she got owned.”

For these young ones, failure to answer implies defeat. But I have no desire to treat twitter exchanges as contests.

As a teacher, a nerd, and a psychologist, I feel only frustration and concern. Yet another person who thinks that, “because my God (or my Marx) says so,” is an acceptable form of engagement in democratic and secular society.

I am treading carefully here. Not all Marxists or religious people resort to this argument. Not everyone who has a religious or political belief finds it necessary to cling to the idea that his or her belief is the right one, regardless. I am not also certain that the young woman who had an exchange with me is one of these. I wish she kept engaging me, perhaps I could have known for sure.

But I am certain that the psychology of the ideologue permeates the views of the religious right that has gone all-out against the RH bill. This is also why, I get hate mail and hate tweets after each televised debate. The comments can be quite mean, making me wonder what it is that I have said, no matter how scandalous, would make them feel so threatened that they would lash out with such anger.

I have been challenged often too about my agnosticism. Even the nicest ones seem to think that being uncertain is some kind of a defect. But there is to me, a spiritual gain to be had by accepting ambivalence, ambiguity and uncertainty. For one thing, that is how things are. The truth about what those who believe in a God call “creation” is that it is ever-changing, immense and un-graspable.

Perhaps there is a Truth (yes, with a capital T) out there. But it is not something, little-old-me can ascertain. I remain humble about the presence and laws of what a horoscope writer I follow calls, “the Divine wow”. God is not my FB friend. I ask Her often enough if She is out there and She does not answer. When I die I may dissolve and lose the consciousness that will say that the atheists are correct . If I am wrong and I awake—ooohlala—I will have more questions than a curious 5-year-old.

But for now, I have no need for grand answers in order to lead a harmless, happy and hopefully meaningful life. It is a comfort to me that I do not need ultimate guarantees. I am not a high maintenance child of the universe. I have a brain and enough energy to keep on figuring things out as the need arises. I plod along and get by not having yet committed things like abuse, theft or murder.

On really good days, the idea that no one can know for sure when human life begins really makes me ecstatic.

The psychology of moral certainty is the psychology of fear and/or laziness. Maybe when they were growing up, the parents who nurtured those who are morally-certain-Dr. Claudio-is-wrong-on-RH (and therefore we will never yield her a point, besides she is a lackey of the big pharmaceuticals and the imperialist population controllers) laid down the law about what to do, what is right and what is wrong. That can be comforting when one is little.

Simple and unquestionable rules can be comforting while parents can control the external environment against the views of those who disagree or the harm brought by those who are mean or criminal. Perhaps the very young ones need not be asked for the courage to face the immense unknowable.

But those of us who are hoping to live happy lives in a just society must find it in us to face our limitations. Parents must change the parameters of what they teach as a child matures morally and intellectually. Children must be taught not to be afraid of heterogeniety, diversity and uncertainty. They cannot be afraid of difference. Fundamental differences.

If we are afraid to be unsure, to accept that perhaps we and our family, religion, tribe, institutions, science, political party can be wrong, then we will be unable to accept when we are defeated on twitter or we will lash out in anger against people we only see on television.

And I am frightened indeed by the man who is so angry at me because of what I have said on television that he takes the time to tweet me venom. My heart goes out the woman who cannot find the grace to end a debate she started with some decorum.

Perhaps someday, we will raise all our children with enough moral courage so that they can face profound uncertainty with good cheer. At least we can rejoice that there are enough brave and moral people out there such that the scientific surveys show that the RH bill has wide support.

23 comments

  1. I even remember this anti-RH person arguing on the premise that the CBCP is most credible (she refused to argue in terms of infallibility btw) because it represents a quantitatively predominant religion. uhm.. 😐

  2. this is how the debate went btw.

    I tweeted something like "what royal right do you think you have to speak in behalf of what's good for the filipino people?" as a reference to the CBCP

    this UP student replies that it's more than a royal right, and that the CBCP is most credible!

    I remember quoting dr. claudio's statement when she said "have a little respect for diversity and opinion" and everything went downhill from there.. lol.

  3. I'm all for the RH Bill but perhaps it's the approach that needs changing if we want to change minds. Part of my work deals with marketing and I gotta tell all of you, intelligence is not the way to go.

    When you're selling something as volatile as the RH Bill, you play the heart-string game. You tug at the emotions because, let's be frank, for the anti-RH, this isn't about rationality, it's about something deeper than that. The anti-RH is not rational, never was rational and never will be.

    Itemizing the RH bill, arguing against Vatican Doctrine, spewing about scientific investigation, attacking what to the faithful is sacrosanct, getting down and dirty with the whole secular government argument, quoting Russell and his teapot, emulating Dawkins, will not work. I'm sorry. You can argue all you want but logic will not work. You'd just be wasting your breath and then who's to say you're not being as stupid as they are?

    • It's disappointing to see that there are anti-intellectuals even among those for the RH Bill. This is the exact kind of condescension conservatives employ to stifle argument, discussion, and debate.

      How constructive is it to simply assume that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? Yes, many against the bill are dogmatic and impossible to reason with, but there will always be people who will entertain discourse and allow their beliefs to be challenged.

    • [Itemizing the RH bill, arguing against Vatican Doctrine, spewing about scientific investigation, attacking what to the faithful is sacrosanct, getting down and dirty with the whole secular government argument, quoting Russell and his teapot, emulating Dawkins, will not work. I'm sorry. You can argue all you want but logic will not work. You'd just be wasting your breath and then who's to say you're not being as stupid as they are? ]
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

      I rest my case.

      And for the record, I suggest you take a good long look at the slums that most badly need the RH Bill. We don't need to resort to emotional appeals to convince the populace that the RH Bill when the evidence is quite literally something that they pass every day to work, sleeping in karitons if not begging for alms.

      As for Russell's teapot and Dawkins, I'm not sure when I ever had to resort to those, though you'd be surprised how easily an anti-RH bystander will fold when you tell them the facts, sans hyperbole. Yes, the same facts you think we should put aside to make way for appeals to emotion.

      Once again, you are a concern troll. Now kindly go fuck yourself.

    • [The anti-RH is not rational, never was rational and never will be. ]

      I wholeheartedly agree. A shame everything else you've said is bunk.

    • [Part of my work deals with marketing and I gotta tell all of you, intelligence is not the way to go. ]

      Marketing you say? Then you might want to sell out to the CBCP. They're the guys who can use some serious PR mileage right now, on account they've dug themselves into a deep pit, and have covered themselves in shite.

    • Sherwin has a point, the conflict has escalated to a war of the heart rather than of the mind. Its like rooting for your favorite basketball team. No amount of stats or win records can sway you to abandon your team even if it sucks — the issue is further compounded by religion – some see it as a test of faith, something which trumps all the rational explanations in the world. It's useless to even try to change the minds of the deeply conservative-religious, the more you push, the more they cling to dogma.

      The campaign has to be targeted at the people in the middle ground. They're the swing vote. Find out how to grab their attention and see things in a different light, away from the rose-tinted glasses of Catholic fundamentalism. I think most of the essays written here are doing just that. No mention of Dawkins or Russell, no atheist preaching or the like – the RH Bill is not an atheist agenda, its a humanistic advocacy which someone with half a brain should rightly support if their brain wasn't so full of Old-Testament do's and dont's.

      • I have no problem with tugging at people's heart strings Wes – many a good article on international conflict uses a human interest story as a lead.

        My problem is that Sherwin is insinuating that we best give up reasoned argument and just resort to purely emotional arguments. They may work, but the problem is they'll lead the people to support the bill for all the wrong reasons.

    • I partly agree with Sherwin. An emotional tug is sometimes necessary to make the listener more receptive towards new ideas, especially those that he or she disagrees with. I don't think we should brand this kind of approach as anti-intellectual or condescension since we don't necessarily need to adhere to the belief that the anti-RH are incapable of sound discourse. I've used this pragmatic approach on a couple of my friends' mothers and a good number of them are devout catholics, and I tell you, it really does wonders.

      We have to at least concede that not all people appreciate the nuances of a good argument. Not everyone can differentiate reductio ad absurdum from a catch-22. The end goal is still the same (with people finally understanding that they have the right to their own bodies) but the approach just comes from a different direction.

  4. sad but true… pag manlait mga "feeling" katolikong anti-RH, nakapagtataka kung mapagmamalaki nila ang kanilang mga ugali sa harap ng panginoon nila.

    tama bang manakit ng damdamin ng iba para lang patunayan kung gano ka-relihiyoso ka?

  5. Having someone else decide what is right and wrong is not only comforting for the little one (age, size and brain capacity), you also have the convenience of blaming someone else if things go south.

    "I'm only doing what the church said, it's not my fault I can't feed my children"

  6. I had a similar discussion with a taxi driver just earlier today. I was quite shocked to see him turn red when I started asking him what his stand on the RH bill was (he was against it), for what reasons (because its the work of the devil and women shouldn't be allowed access to contraceptives because it will lead to promiscuity), and why a secular government should follow a religious dogma (because we will all go to hell if we didn't). He was quite irate, and I had the impression that he was ready to pounce on me and my 60-year old mother (who is also pro-RH), especially when I finally asked him: "Eh kuya, nabasa niyo na po ba yung RH bill mismo?" He hadn't.

    This is the reality we are facing: there are people who are ready and more than willing to attack at the slightest provocation because their convenient kindergarten truths are being shaken.

    Garrick, when's the next meet-up? I finally have enough time to come. I have a few ideas I've been playing with.

    Ma'am Sylvia, thanks for this article. Being an outspoken intellectual and freethinker has its accompanying dangers (Rizal comes to mind) and I'm sure that you are as baffled as I am when it comes to their reactions. I strongly agree when you wrote:

    "Parents must change the parameters of what they teach as a child matures morally and intellectually. Children must be taught not to be afraid of heterogeniety, diversity and uncertainty. They cannot be afraid of difference. Fundamental differences."

    Let's make sure that this change indeed happens.

    • It makes me sad when people get so violent about differences of opinion. And it is frightening too when RH advocates are demonized. Last saturday I was at an RH forum where former Mayor Jun Simon said the RH bill was the work of the devil. Very Orwellian how the politicos teach the people to hate.

      • [Last saturday I was at an RH forum where former Mayor Jun Simon said the RH bill was the work of the devil. Very Orwellian how the politicos teach the people to hate. ]

        Look at it this way Dr. Claudio: That the anti-RH side has now resorted to throwing bullshit instead of facts means that they have run out of ammo.

        • Reminds me of that line in the Priest (movie) : To go against the Church is to sin against God.
          Something like that.

          Interesting thing is that my teacher in Christian Living emphasized that the Church is the people. Hmm…

      • Religion is not a democracy. It is a brutal dictatorship. They read from a 'holy' book written by very old men with long beards and very bad breath. What they wrote is the 'word'. No discussion necessary. That's why men especially 'turn red in the face' when challenged. They have treated women as less than dogs based on these pious and holy books for thousands of years. You think possibly they ae going to change now? Not without a fight – and as non-believers in 2011 – I'm hee to say if it's a fight they want – they are going to get it. Religious dogma is OUT!

  7. As conservatives accuse agnostics and atheists of arrogance for defying the will of God, in the same breath they declare that they are the arbiters of that will and that they are privy to secrets of the universe unavailable to scientific investigation. For as long as one side in any debate conceitedly declares that their side is the side of God, there will never be a real discussion.

    Excellent commentary on the so-called humility of faith-based certitude, Dr. Claudio.

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