Changing Attitudes: How I Started Caring About Society

[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]

I am in the interesting -- and perhaps unusual -- situation of having recently changed from being almost completely non-political to becoming highly motivated toward making changes in society. I thought it might be beneficial to share my experience in making this change, especially given that any changes we are going to make for the better require just such a change in motivation among a large number of people.

As a scientist, I would put the most value on peer-reviewed scientific studies of attitude change, but this is (sadly) not my field, and I still believe I can make a case for some ideas based on my personal experience.

In particular, I will argue that the reasons we (in the U.S.) are so complacent in our capitalistic society are:

1) Selfishness. Many of us are satisfied with our lives, on an individual level -- we have nice things, we are kept busy and/or entertained.

2) Belief in "There is No Alternative." We are taught minimal facts about the way society works, why it was set up to work this way, and how it can change if we want it to. It thus doesn't seem like it was ever different, or ever could be different.

3) Imitation over Independence. Most of us are taught to be obedient and not think for ourselves; this leads to a short-sightedness that makes our current situation acceptable to us simply because it appears acceptable to everyone else.

What follows is my story, how I grew up under these circumstances, and how I changed.

Growing up, my parents (a doctor and a businessman) almost never spoke with me about politics; they were very busy and mostly left me to learn at school. As a result, everything I learned about the way our society worked came through my History classes. And although I grew up in an affluent neighborhood with access to excellent schools, their History departments were, in retrospect, shockingly poor. History was largely presented in a rote, learn-by-fact method that mostly involved memorizing names and dates, with little focus on story and almost zero focus on morality and the reason behind changes that were made in society. (I later learned that both of my high school History teachers were primarily sports coaches.) As I lived in the U.S., I was required to take World History, U.S. History, and one class on "Government and Economics" in my final year -- but by that point, I was so disillusioned with the subject that I chose to take the course via mail, so that I could limit my contact with it as much as possible. Importantly, debate, discussion, and exploring our own, independent ideas, were never encouraged in any of my classes, with the sole exception of my English class -- I still think of the teacher of this class as the man who had the single greatest positive influence on my life.

After high school, I tried to engage with the news to learn what was occurring in the world, but I was repeatedly frustrated by the lack of back-story provided with each story -- it was as if they were only talking to people who already had most of the pieces of a puzzle, and my poor history education had left me wanting. Poor science stories, many advertisements, and a plethora of banal local news and "how to" tips drove me away further. As a result, I stopped reading. I barely knew what was happening in the rest of the world.

Furthermore, I didn't know how to engage in the democratic process within my own country. When I turned 18, I was excited to vote in my first presidential election -- but my only contribution to the decisions made in my country for many years was that single vote between two pre-selected candidates. What's more, for the most part, things were going well for me, and I wasn't aware of the suffering of others (or my own possible future suffering), so I just didn't care about the choices that were being made.

As far as I can tell, to this day this is a typical view in my home area (and perhaps the entire U.S.). In fact, when I was in college, whole groups of young people would take it on as their creed; it was "uncool" to care about politics. I tended to side with these people, looking with confusion (and some scorn) on my fellows who were taking up political science majors. The entire process seemed so unwieldy and full of red tape that it would be impossible to do anything other than become caught up as someone else's tool, or make progress at a snail's pace. I wanted to distance myself from it as much as possible.

However, perhaps what saved me from continuing to live with these beliefs was my opportunity at higher education. Although I avoided political science at all costs, I was inspired by another teacher in college who taught my Introduction to Philosophy class, and I went on to take his class in Social and Political Philosophy. I also pursued mathematics wholeheartedly, strengthening my ability to use logic and reasoning to piece together evidence. Slowly, I became able to think for myself, and I had my first experience in reasoning about the way society worked. Also, somewhere along the way, I came to embrace the philosophy of open-mindedness, becoming willing to change my mind based on evidence I found. I was in pursuit of the truth -- whatever it might be, and whatever my prior beliefs.

From that point on, I was directed unerringly toward a new set of beliefs, as a magnet drawing a compass point. By chance, I encountered activists promoting an environmental manager for my university, and I looked up the (shocking) evidence on climate change, forming my first solid political opinion. Finally, I realized that I needed to ACT as well, and I eventually joined the society People and Planet. I later met a friend who was a part of the Project for a Participatory Society, and he was kind enough to explain to me candidly what it was all about. We went over it slowly together, and he answered all of my questions. I joined eventually because the ideas he explained slowly began to make much more sense than capitalism -- although it took time for me to really see the evidence he mentioned with my own eyes, and we had to talk about it several times before I was ready.

To counter the problems I mentioned at the start of this essay (selfishness, no belief in alternatives, and imitation), I would propose the following:

1) Compassion. Compassion needs to be suggested in an action-oriented way. Narratives tend to be very effective ways of communicating values like this. I would suggest we produce fictional films and books that involve taking action to help those in need -- and in a way that would be realistic for ordinary, working citizens to take up. Also, the American public needs to be made more aware that there ARE people in need (and they don't deserve to be in that position). They certainly know about it, but it doesn't seem to sink in.

For myself, I was lucky that narratives were always a big part of my life; I saw myself in the hero's shoes quite often and from this eventually learned that actions speak louder than intentions.

2) Information about alternatives. We need to focus on informing people who have never given society a second thought that it can be different. Again, narratives could be useful -- take, for example, Aldous Huxley's book The Island, in which he tries to put forward his own idea of utopia (through a work of fiction). If people could see with their own eyes an alternative that truly works and is fair, it would go a long way toward changing their attitude.

I also cannot stress enough that I think that our language needs to be as accessible as possible if we want to reach out to as many people as possible. Even highly educated people may tune out if we use fancy words instead of simple ones, or if we don't elaborate on our ideas with examples. I was again lucky that I had someone to explain participatory society to me in simple terms, and with great patience.

3) Independence. We should encourage independence and open mindedness as much as possible. The way I learned independence was to practice my reasoning skills, in my case through learning science and mathematics. While we can't hope to teach these to everyone (or that they will always promote independent thought), what we can do is to encourage reasoning and questioning wherever we can. We can also explain our philosophy in a way that everyone can understand -- to lead them carefully through the reasoning process so that they can see for themselves that it is sound. This requires delicacy and, again, clean, accessible language.

To conclude, I believe that the best way for attitudes to change is for cultures to move in the directions of compassion, open-minded learning about alternatives, and independent (reasoned) evaluations of simplified arguments. We can achieve these in ourselves first, and lead our lives as examples for others -- as Gandhi would recommend. We can also make perpetuating these ideals a secondary goal, such that we may be guided in certain directions rather than others (say, to become a teacher who incorporates debate and discussion, rather than teaching rote learning). And we can also slow ourselves down, and explain why we believe in these ideals to others, and why we believe in the ideals of a participatory society. Some of us may be inclined to write stories to show, rather than tell.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, describes an epidemic as something that occurs suddenly, after reaching a "tipping point." This tipping point occurs in the delicate balance of a suitable environment, a strong idea that can stick with a person, and the right kind of person to pass it on. One final point that I'd like to make is that I believe that we have a strong idea, and it's only a matter of time before we have enough of the right people, and can find the right environment, for it to "tip" into a belief epidemic. We should believe that, and keep going.