From the Sports Desk

As discussed here in the past, one of the questions that continues to fascinate us is how can otherwise seemingly intelligent people hold such radically different political views than do we?  Do they have a huge cognitive blindspot that allows them to accept policies and leaders that we find abhorrent, or do we have the blindspot and can't see what they so clearly perceive?

We just finished reading Johnathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, subtitled, Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, and it has done more to help us understand this question than anything else we're likely to ever read.  We recommend the book wholeheartedly and unreservedly to anyone on either side of the political spectrum who has an interest in understanding the other side.

To avoid stirring up any unnecessary controversy, we'll avoid talking about what we learned in terms of current political events and instead discuss sports. We've made no secret here that we're New England Patriots fans, and have been since college years in Boston in the 1970s.  Based on the recent successes, it's not a bad time at all to be a Patriots fan, but even in their off years (i.e., the 80s), when there wasn't a whole lot to otherwise cheer for (it's hard to remember right now, but they weren't always perennial Super Bowl contenders), we'd always first look to see where they were in the standings and whether they won or lost on any given Sunday before reading about whatever actual contender we found ourselves cheering for that particular year.

Nowadays, a lot of people resent the Patriots for their success and have found no small number of reasons to hate them (Deflategate, Brady's pre-Giselle romantic involvements, Belichick and Brady's bromance with Donald Trump, etc.).  People throw all those things and more at us, and it does absolutely nothing to sway us from our loyalty to the team. In fact, like many Patriot fans, Brady's suspension two seasons ago actually triggered a sense of injustice, and made us bond with the team even more.

Haidt's point is that the subconscious mind generally comes to a decision long before the conscious mind even knows it, and then the conscious mind goes about finding rationalizations and justifications for the decision already made.  What's more, the conscious mind tells itself that those rationalizations and justifications it generated were the reason for the decision, not a defense of the decision.  We are deeply intuitive creatures, Haidt points out, whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning.  Haidt's analogy is to a monkey riding an elephant - the subconscious, intuitive mind (the elephant) goes where it wants, and the rider monkey comes up with strategic reasons to justify those decisions and mistakenly thinks the elephant is responding to it's direction.

Need we point out the similarity between Haidt's analogy of the conscious mind as a monkey and the Buddhist metaphor of our "monkey minds?"

If we're really clear and honest with ourselves, we probably became Patriots fans not because of an appreciation of their gameplay or player roster or any other such rational reason, but because living in Boston in the 1970s we wanted to fit in with our new friends there and watch Sunday football with them.  We wanted to be accepted and liked.  We also dated women there who along with their families cheered for the Patriots, which gave us an added romantic reason to become Pats fans. Our subconscious elephant veered in the direction of becoming a Patriots fan, and the monkey-minded rider came up with reasons to justify the elephant's decision.

Haidt points out that when we encounter evidence that supports our subconscious decision (e.g., a winning season or a standout performance), the conscious mind askes itself "Can I accept this?", and when confronted with evidence that contradicts our decision (e.g., Deflategate), we ask "Do I have to believe that?"  It's very easy to dismiss as hearsay evidence that contradicts our decisions, just as we're inclined to accept evidence, no matter how far-fetched, that supports our decisions.  

Some people, for a variety of reasons, subconsciously adopt a progressive, or a libertarian, or a conservative, mindset.  We am among those people, you are among those people.  Our conscious minds (yours and ours) then go about searching for reasons to support that decision ("Can I accept this?") and reasons to reject contrary evidence ("Do I have to believe that?") for our whole lives, and then we look at each other in disbelief and ask:

"Really?  The New York Giants?  What's wrong with you?"