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The Polarisation of Opposing Views Whether one is talking about skeptics verses non-skeptics, supporters of the US invasion of Iraq verses those who opposed it, environmentalists verses the environmentalist skeptics or just about any cause and those who oppose it, one theme constantly crops up: the polarisation of views and the feelings about those in the opposite camp. For instance, it would be rare to find someone who opposed the war in Iraq to say of those who support it that they have good motives but made the wrong decision; or for environmentalist ‘greenies’ to say of their detractors that their views had merit. This polarisation is almost the hallmark of twenty-first century thinking. One view I’ve heard from many different circles is ‘the argument is so stupid, I can’t even understand what they mean’. If you can’t understand what someone means than how can you say it is stupid? It is important when discussing anything to get into the other person’s shoes – to try to understand how they look at the world. To do that means suspending your own views for a short time. Most people are incapable of doing that because they think that by suspending their own views and seeing the world from a different point of view they may somehow get trapped in it. It is much easier to simply reject outright anything said by those who disagree with you. It saves a lot of work. Many people have confused ideas that they haven’t properly thought through. This does not mean that the ideas are basically incorrect, or at least do not have some merit in them. It does mean that sometimes you have to work hard to understand what the person is trying to say – to see the world as they see it. But you have to start from the assumption that their point of view has at least a degree of rational merit. To not think that is to assume that all people who disagree with you are insane (that is, they are acting completely irrationally). Once you go there (and many people do) you have fallen into the very trap of irrationality that you attribute to them. You no longer have to ensure that your opinions are rational as everyone who opposes them is mad. Therefore, your view is the only sane one. In an article in the Washington Post Shankar Vedantam studies how each side of the supporters and opponents of the war in Iraq attribute dishonest motives to the opposite camp. In other words the other camp did not make genuine mistakes or misjudgements. Reading the comments on the article illustrates the point – and the blinkered vision of those who can’t see that they are doing exactly what the article talks about. Unfortunately, this blinkered vision is almost endemic in the way people think. Many people confuse emotional passion with logic – ‘I must be correct as I feel so strongly’. It rarely occurs to such people that the other side has an equal passion. How many people who, for instance, burn the Australian flag as a symbol of their feeling would stop and think that the Ku Klux Klan had an equal passion for they felt?