Like most of our gleeful presumptions, we have a fanciful notion of being composed, pragmatic, rational beings with wonderful abilities to realistically assess. While it is really painful to admit, it is a harsh reality that most of our ideologies and worldviews are based on simplistic reasons. In an ever closer world, most of us have biased, unrealistic and selfish worldviews and are therefore contributing to a world of separation and distrust. And all this is due to our errors in thinking based on exclusivity consciousness that give us illusory identities, instigate clashes with other identities, and can lead individuals or entire communities to fragmentation. It is because of our mistakes in thinking and basic flaws in judgment that we are trying to make ourselves safer and stronger by extremely dangerous means.
Freud, being the founder of modern psychology proposed the id, the ego, and the superego as the three key elements of human psychology. Some other important Freudian theories include his concepts of life and death instincts, the theory of psychosexual development, and the mechanisms of defense. Later the research and development in the field of psychology based on plentiful psychological data suggest that we all suffer from systematic thinking errors[1] which fall into three main types:
(1) internal cognitive errors;
(2) errors of emotion[2], perception and memory; and
(3) social errors that result from the way we communicate ideas and the effects of traditions and dogmas.
Some of the most common thinking errors are misperceiving random events as evidence supporting our beliefs, habitual neglect of contradictory data, our current expectations and beliefs actively changing our memories and perceptions, and using assumptions to fill in unknown information. This occurs naturally and subconsciously, even when we are trying to be truthful and honest. Such errors influence us to strongly believe in the veracity of our beliefs and ideologies, even if they are unrealistic and idealistic, and encourage us to express a harsh reaction if they are challenged by criticism.
According to human personality experts, our social decision-making apparatus was designed by natural selection to produce decisions that would constitute the adaptive “best bets” in the particular environment in which it evolved (Tooby and Cosmides 1992). In this regard, it is remarkable and important that modern politics are developed in large-scale nation-states comprising millions of individuals, because large-scale societies are extremely recent evolutionary phenomena. States emerged in the world around 5000 BC, and while state technology spread rapidly to some parts of the world, states in other parts of the world were only formed in the last few centuries (Petersen and Skaaning 2010).
For millions of years before that, humans evolved as hunters and gatherers in small-scale groups of between 25 and 200 individuals (Kelly 1995). Most parts of our species-typical social decision-making apparatus are, in other words, designed to operate within the causal framework of a small-scale social environment, rather than a large-scale mass society developing into a global village. This implies, first, that the input that this apparatus is designed to extract and process from decision-making contexts would be causally relevant clues to adaptive choice in small-scale interaction, and, second, that the cognitive and motivational output that this apparatus produces is one that would solve a given problem in a small-scale context.[3]
Over time, humanity evolved into larger civilized societies with greater concerns and protections for other human beings, but our collective decision-making remained structured in primitive defensive mass psychology. And, more recently, the insidious evolution of the internet in the socio-cultural landscape of any modern society has become something to be investigated. In a world evolving towards peace and harmony, a single mobilization call can stir up the primitive human psyche, especially in the area of political mobilization and synergy. Recent incidents of political mobilization around the world for war may reflect sensitive areas of the human psyche and the need to address them properly. Can we develop our internal mechanism to have productive decision making, for example mass mobilization for peace or mass mobilization for an end to war? Here are some examples for mutual consideration:
The exclusivity mind can lead us to modern warfare
The recent global incidents of mass political mobilization to fight for the interests of a group or a nationality mean, on the one hand, the immediate stimulation of the primitive human psyche to accept such calls for combating in this modern age and, on the other hand, the possibility from developing a small scale war into the Final World War. We have solid reasons to believe that modern individuals should be particularly aware of these built-in assumptions and therefore should try to overcome them.
While fixing our thinking errors and achieving a realistic worldview requires a complete inner transformation, recognizing our imperfect views based on experience and developing opinions through skeptical thinking has an amazing ability to achieve a comparatively better view. Even acknowledging our thinking errors, thinking critically, and deciding carefully on our opinions and perceptions can go a long way toward maintaining impartiality.
We can confidently predict that the future of our world is not far off when most members of global humanity will overcome the inner division, embrace the reality consciousness and thus gain the ability to find the world and the entire cosmos as their own larger body. Loving and serving all natural phenomena with the same compassion will become the ultimate goal of our lives. And if we can do that, the fate of global peace and addressing crucial global issues are just a click away.
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[1] Carroll, Robert Todd (2011) Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed, E-book. Amazon Kindle digital edition. Published by the James Randi Educational Foundation, chapter 9 “Are We Doomed to Die with Our Biases On?” p186-189.
[2] Carroll (2011) Ibid, chapter 1 “Believing in the Palpably Not True” p7.
[3] Michael Bang Petersen, the evolutionary psychology of mass politics, chapter 8
[4] Euro News, https://www.euronews.com/2022/03/11/war-in-ukraine-putin-approves-use-of-volunteer-foreign-fighters-from-the-middle-east
[5] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/who-joins-isis-and-why_b_8881810
[6] Published online by Cambridge University Press, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-annals-of-criminology/article/abs/mobilization-of-women-to-terrorism-tools-and-methods-of-isis/0D0A0698047A21494327686352C7A2CF
[7] People’s Defense Units (YPG) https://www.ypgrojava.org/International-volunteers-join-mass-mobilization-to-defend-Afrin