Our very powerful need to listen to ourselves speak

Think about it — By Ryan on September 13, 2009 5:17 am

Why do we argue core beliefs with people that we have absolutely no hope of convincing, people that are just not at a state in their lives where they may be open to seeing an alternate view on things?  There are certain people and certain situations that you encounter where it’s clear that you’re not going to make any headway, and more than likely neither are they.  So why do we find ourselves in passionate debates or spirited discussions over core beliefs with these people about why we’re right and their wrong?  It would be foolish of us to say what we instinctively would like to believe, that we trying to show them the light, or the folly of their ways, but I think this is just a subtle guise that is masking something much deeper.  Because it really only comes down to a few issues and a few circumstances where we’ll really go to bat and get emotional over our beliefs.

The issues I’m talking about have two characteristics:

1. The first is the obvious point and that is that they are issues that we feel are of absolutely vital, life altering importance.   The issues that determine how someone lives their life, derives their entire perspective on the world from, a perspective that could have broad sweeping consequences outside of just their lives but into the lives of others.  Our ego’s are telling us that we are engaging them not only to ‘save their souls’ but also to save the world, for if everyone thought as this person did then boy we’d all be in a lot of trouble.  For the most part I feel this characteristic is mainly smoke screen used by our ego to mask it’s own weakness and vulnerability, to mask its own fear.  Fear being one of the most powerful motivators for the vast majority of humans on this planet.
2. The second characteristic is what I am going to focus on in this article as I feel it is, more often than not, the truest characteristic of issues that we’re going to invest intense emotions in.   The issues which will more easily and more quickly evoke a passionate and intense emotional response from us are those issues which we ourselves are most insecure about.  In fact I feel that how internally secure we are over an issue is indirectly proportionate to how quick and intense our emotional reaction will be to an apposing view, regardless of how much secure bravado you put out on the exterior.  Once you understand the true nature of ego this makes even more sense.

What I am saying is not going to be a popular theory, especially for people with very some very black and white views but what I am saying is that it’s the angry vocal atheist in front of Capitol Hill or the enraged Christian picketing the abortion clinic screaming at patients, who in fact are, internally, the ones that doubt their faith(or lack of) more than anyone else.   The more external, emotional  layers of protection and conviction a belief needs the less internal truth it holds with the believer.  The ego knows that the belief itself cannot withstand scrutiny or prolonged examination and so it much erect layer upon layer of protection to shield the core of the belief from exactly that.  In their most simplistic nature these layers come in the form of anger as anger is but the external manifestation of fear.  But another, more surreptitious layer would be ‘passion’ or at least fear guised as passion, ‘faux-passion’ you could call it.

Humor me if you will and imagine the following as best you can:  You have a dear friend, someone you’ve known long enough that you tell him or her your thoughts without need of pretense.  Now imagine this person, someone you’ve always seen eye to eye with, comes up to you and says that they now believe something completely contradictory to one of your core beliefs.  If you’re a christian lets say they just explained to you why Jesus never existed and that we all evolved from primates.  If you’re an atheist they just told you that all of science is a lie, the earth is no more than 6000 years old and judgment day is at hand.  Ok, now that you’ve read that I want you to close your eyes and imagine it, don’t just read it, feel it.  Hear their voice, feel your heart drop with each word that comes out of their mouth and then feel the emotion bubble up in you as you desperately try to show them the complete lunacy of their new beliefs.  FEEL IT.  Every ‘fact’ that you tell them about Jesus and the bible they counter by regurgitating, with utter conviction, something new they’ve studied showing that you are wrong.  With every ‘truth’ of evolution you throw at them they go into painstaking details over the corruption of science and the validity of the bible and it’s teachings.  Imagine this, put yourself in that situation.  How do you feel, truly feel as you desperately try to convince them that they are going down a very dark path. What you feel for them is secondary, I’m asking how do you feel yourself on the inside?

• Angry that someone has preyed on their weakness and turned them down this path of ignorance?  You bet.
• Are you imbued with passion in your arguments and your convictions?  Without a doubt you are.

All of these reactions are exactly what would be expected of mostly anyone in this situation, it’s very predictable human behavior but I want you to be aware of it, conscious of it, as most of our reactive states happen unconsciously, hence it being reactive and without thought.  Keep in mind I’m being very specific in the emotions I am describing and I am certainly not saying that to simply debate someone about a point is a sign of the above.  However when strong emotions bubble uncontrollably to the surface  it’s a clear indication of what I am describing

Now let’s put ourselves in a second situation:  Let’s say that your friend suddenly believes that everything which you see as blue is actually red and vice versa. Everything, the sky is now red, the ocean is now red and all of the roses have suddenly turned blue.  This friend remarks about this radical transformation just matter of fact “Isn’t it weird that the sky is red all of a sudden?” they say one day in passing.   Now close your eyes, put yourself vividly in this scenario and play it out, conscious pay attention to how you feel when those words come out of your friends mouth…

You’re laughing/smiling aren’t you?

It’s complete lunacy what they’re saying isn’t it?  You can look up and see the sky is blue, there is no question at all in your mind about it.  Now lets say your friend met someone special, someone who holds great influence to them and they also think the sky is red, in fact there’s this whole group of people who think the colors are reversed and they have meetings every tuesday to talk about it.  Do you feel that passion, anger and frustration boiling over in you yet?  Are you fuming with arguments about how much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. How the absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions, scattered all around the sky, making it blue?  Unless you have emotional instability issues my guess is No:

Why would you ever get upset or passionate about something that is so painfully obvious?

Now compare these two experiences and think about it.  The reason you aren’t getting angry, or ‘passionate’ as the ego would have us believe, is because your views of the color blue are not threatened in any way shape or form by your friends sudden bout of sensory confusion.  Internally at your very core, the area which only you are privy to, you are utterly confident in your belief that red is red and blue is blue and in your mind your friend is just wrong or crazy.

Now you might be saying ‘well the color of the sky isn’t an issue of vital importance than influences the fabric of someone’s life’ , but let’s suppose that a red sky represents something of grave importance to your friend and they refuse to leave their house from fear that the atmosphere is burning up(or that judgement day had arrived in the case of a christian).  They even take the time to explain to you this theory and express concern over your safety.  How does the average person feel now?  I’d be willing to wager that your average person is still going to feel drastically different in this scenario, drastically different than if this friend just told them that Jesus did or did not exist.  There might be concern over the mental health of the friend but without anger or ‘passion’ thickly layered upon it.  Anger or this ‘faux passion‘ only arise when the ego becomes involved and the ego only becomes involved when it feels threatened or vulnerable.  Everything else is just common matter of fact issues.  This is why I call it ‘faux passion’ or even ‘faux compassion’ because our ego wants us to believe we are becoming passionate to try to convince them of the folly of their ways but at the end of the day the ego never cares about anything or anyone but itself.  The majority of population, when being told the sky was red, felt a level of emotional concern that was exponentially less intense than when they told of the existence, or non-existence of Mohamed.   Sure there was no doubt concern felt for their friend’s sanity but it wasn’t coupled with the same emotional intensity.  Even though the friend was no longer leaving their house because of the color of the sky, a behaviour which is going to play a far more drastic role in how they live their lives when compared to someone being a good human being because the bible says so versus being a good human being because that’s just the right thing to do.

So now that we are all a little more conscious of exactly how we are feeling in certain situations lets look at the reasons Why:

As I stated earlier I feel that the negative emotional states in us stem completely from ego, the results of which may not necessarily be negative and in our situation I feel that the results can be extremely powerful and positive.  Once we understand ego we realize that most often when it rears its head it is in self-defense as it feels threatened(yes it is helpful to imagine ego as a separate entity for the purpose of our discussion).  With this understanding we can become conscious of something that otherwise would have remained hidden: that being that if our ego feels threatened when contradictory views are expressed then at our core we doubt or question the absolute truth of our views and more importantly we need to spend as much time as necessary to objectively explore these views until we uncover the truth that resonates with us completely.  When we are in a heated debate with someone, when we’re flush with anger or ‘faux passion’ we aren’t there to convince anyone else about anything.  Any rational thinking person would realize that the chances of convincing the other person of our core beliefs are about as great as them convincing us of theirs and yet that doesn’t deter us at all.  The truth of the matter is that we aren’t passionately debating at length out of a desire to sway the other persons views, our ego is doing so to reinforce or better yet to prop up our own internal beliefs that are being challenged out of fear that too much scrutiny will lead to rethinking them and if that were to happen than WATCH OUT! When someone begins to seriously question previously held core beliefs the picture, which the ego has created, of who they are begins to fall apart – it’s simply not strong enough to stand on its own.  Everything a person believes then needs to be brought into question.  This represents not only a fair amount of mental and spiritual labour, which your average human being loves even less than manual labour, but it also potentially represents a great deal of change and change is the one thing that the average human being fears above nearly all else.  For the most part the ego needs things staying the way they are(even if the way they are is undesirable), and secondly the ego survives and thrives when someone else is doing the heavy lifting mentally and spiritually.

As I mentioned any rational person is going to realize that not in 100 years of preaching are they going to convert the non-believer who is just as passionate about his views.  This would lead an equally rational person to the conclusion that the first person is not arguing for the sake of  convincing the other as it just isn’t rational(and we’ve established the first person is rational – you ARE rational aren’t you?).  No more than a rational man will go down to the beach every day and throwing apple seeds into the sand, hoping for a tree to sprout.  He has to realize that no matter how many times he goes down those seeds are never going to germinate and we are forced to conclude that his actions are motivated by something other than a desire to have fresh apples.

At the end of the day it all comes back to ego and its many surreptitious  ways of maintaining the status quo without us realizing it.  It plays it all off under the guise of many things but at the end of the day you can be certain that the only time our ego comes up to say hello is when there’s a weakness in us that needs to be looked at from an objective light, from an outside perspective not influenced by our own egoic tenancies.  Of course this requires you to be able to get to a point where ego is no longer unconsciously controlling your thoughts and actions, something that doesn’t change over night.  It requires dedicating yourself to a practice of mental training where you are no longer in a continuous reactive state but one of growing objectivity.  All of which would take another 2386 words to go into

The wonderful thing is that with this understanding you have a warning sign of sorts and this can be a great enabler to moving closer and closer towards a position of truth as this is like a signal flare that something in you isn’t 100% true in your heart and perhaps it just needs more deep meditative thought to get there, or better yet it may need to be completely overhauled.  Either way the path to truth comes not in a nice fluffy comfortable way but through great struggle and much hard work.

The question I should have asked before making you read all of this is of course:

Is that a path you are prepared to go down?

Tags: anger, arguing, beliefs, debating, ego, emotion, fear, path, question, reaction, reactive state, truth