Keep Your Identity Small

I think politics and religion are very different than most other disagreements because they extend beyond that one person. When a person believes in fascisim or racism, they begin advocating policies to force their believes on others. Religion gets tossed in there because a long time ago morality got tied to religion.

So in my opinion, people get into "religious wars" because the beliefs of other affect them.

Hell, when people get all worked up about a language there are benefits to convincing people to use their language -- better tool support, better libraries etc; and if they are on the losing side of a language they will have to learn another one.

In the end these types of debates are all about control, either direct or indirect. Direct -- Force, rule of law, etc ... Indirect -- public opinion, social mores, # of followers.

I've found that the best way to do this is to make "values the truth above everything else" be the core of your identity.

Then you can let yourself peripherally identify with other things, and, when they're challenged, your core will step in and let you deal with the challenge rationally.

But doing that is even harder than it might sound. I've been explicitly working on it for a couple years now, and although I've made progress -- I think I care about getting the truth more than I care about avoiding embarrassment now, for example -- I'd still probably religiously defend myself or my loved ones if either were verbally attacked rather than try to figure out what truth the accusation contained.

I think it is more than just having one's sanity questioned. Speaking for myself, I react this way not because I don't value rationality over what feels good, but its that it seems there is knowledge behind my belief and I'm being forced to reject it because I am not articulate enough to defend it. This can be a major problem if the cultural context of the debate does not contain the right words and concepts to explain what I believe. Consequently, since debates go to the most succinct and clear, I must lose, but not due to necessarily having a more irrational belief. Then, if I persist in my belief, I become ostracized as an irrational person.

Articles like this merely fuel the feeling of impotence in the culturally disadvantaged like myself, leading to a more irrational defense of their (my) beliefs, and a vicious cycle follows. This is the "core going critical" that pg mentions. The ultimate result will be a more "rational" person, but they are more "rational" because they have been lobotimized.

Yes, and pg also doesn't observe that a person's identity tends to be strongly tied to things that provide for their welfare. For the common person, religion and politics do this. For the elite, not so much. But, say if they are programmers, they can have a strong identity tie to their editor (vi vs emacs) or language, since they depend on these things to prosper in life.

This is not merely an unthinking thing on their part. Considering other points of view and trying new things can take up a person's time. Claiming that the basis of their welfare is incorrect implies it is taking away from their welfare and they should try something else. If a person reacts "irrationally" on such an issue this may be because they do not judge their resources sufficient to change course. I think "irrationality" should be addressed on these grounds instead of merely labelling a person's opinion as irrational/bad, along with the social estrangement this entails.

Being honest to yourself is much harder than it seems. Have you read Ghandi's "Experiments with Truth" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_My_Experiments_wit... ?