On Accepting Others’ Opinions and Beliefs
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)
Written Sept 2, 2008

It is interesting how we come to form our opinions and how we come to prostelitize and defend beliefs and ideas that we, ourselves, may change in the end. I just read a collection of excerpts from a classic book written by John Locke in 1690, entitled, Essay Concerning Human Understanding. I found Locke’s comments on accepting others’ opinions and beliefs blindly to be profound and well spoken. I was also impressed at how well his comments translated into the 21st century, while being written in the 17th century. The comments he makes could as easily be applied to rabid anarchists who cannot bear any views but their own company line as to war-mongering Republicans or any religious fundamentalist groups, but on a more personal level, people are faced with *others’ opinions stated as fact* daily, and that is what Locke is most focused on.

Locke says “we cannot reasonably expect that anyone should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding of man acknowledges not. For however it may often mistake, it can own no other guide but reason, nor blindly submit to the will and dictates of others. If he, you would bring over to your own sentiments, be one that examines before he assents, you must give him leave at his leisure to go over the account again, and, recalling what is out of his mind, examine all the particulars, to see on which side the advantage lies: and if he will not think our arguments of weight enough to engage him anew in so much pains, it is but what we often do ourselves in the like case, and we should take amiss if others should prescribe to us what points we should study….We should do well to commiserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavor to remove it in all the gentle and fair ways of information, and not instantly treat others ill, as obstinate and perverse, because they will not renounce their own, and receive our opinions, or at least those we would force upon them, when it is more probable that we are no less obstinate in not embracing some of theirs. For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns, or can say, that he has examined to the bottom of his own or other men’s opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, may, often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. At least those who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must confess they are unfit to prescribe to others, and are unreasonable in imposing that as truth on other men’s belief which they themselves have not searched into, nor weighted the arguments of probability on which they would receive or reject it. Those who have fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got past doubt in all the doctrines they profess and govern themselves by, would have a juster pretense to require others to follow them; but these are so few in number, and find so little reason to be magisterial in their opinions, that nothing insolent or imperious is to be expected from them, and there is reason to think that, if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others. “

Locke speaks of mob mentality, and followers of trends and “movements.” Locke says, “For if any one should a little catechise the greatest part of the partizans of most of the sects of the world, he would not find, concerning those matters they are so zealous for, that they have any opinions of their own: much less would he have reason to think that they took them upon the examination of arguments, and appearance of probability. They are resolved to stick to a party, that education or interest has engaged them in, and there, like the common soldiers of an army, show their courage and warmth as their leaders direct, without ever examining, or so much as knowing the cause they contend for…thus men become professors of, and combatants for, those opinions they were never convinced of…”

I have heard many an anarchist complain about “poseurs” who just dress up like anarchists but don’t understand the philosophy or history of anarchy. I have seen blank-minded followers in the pseudo-Christian cult, the Love Israel Family, a cult that was often populated with people who went into a cult for the very purpose of not having to think for themselves. Rush Limbaugh’s followers were nicknamed “Dittoheads” for their repetition of Rush’s thoughts, after “Deadheads” who were also of a mob mentality with their own conformist hippie codes, etc. Doestoevsky says in his classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov, that the thing humans fear the most is their own freedom. I see the truth in that statement in mob movements, cult mentalities, popular trends, and religion.

Although I do not agree with all of Locke’s own belief systems, I do think this insight as to why one should not accept others’ opinions as facts willy-nilly stands. I think he makes a good argument for not accepting easy converts to your opinions as fickle as well. Locke says that a person who does not study his own convictions inside and out, is in no position to try to gain converts or to propose their own beliefs as factual or superior. He also says if people spent more time on the examination of their own beliefs and less time on converting others to them or on condemning others’ belief systems, we would have a more just and balanced society. Locke speaks about cults, sects, the common soldiers of leaders’ causes…and speaks about how little most of these common combatants know or “understand” about the very movements they wholeheartedly defend and evangelize.

Locke tells us not to be deceived into receiving “that for an unquestionable truth which is really at best but a very doubtful conjecture…” He also warns that “nothing can be so dangerous as principles thus taken up without questioning or examination; especially if they be such as concern morality, which influence men’s lives, and give a bias to all their actions.” Locke says “the way to improve our knowledge is not, I am sure, blindly, and with an implicit faith, to receive and swallow principles, but is, I think, to get and fix in our minds clear, distinct, and complete ideas, as far as they are to be had…”

I feel armed with a more succinct statement now for the next time another tries to force me to justify for them their own beliefs and views as the only ones possible, probable, or preferable. And although a bit verbose and thick for the reading, I am impressed with Locke’s eloquence and clarity. Locke writes in a manner which requires you to read several sentences, then form the conceptual thought to get to what he is saying. You cannot just skim Locke, as he writes in concepts, not sentences; which is also the way he thinks, or “understands.” A radical in his own time, his ideas seem as confrontational to authority today as in the past. Or as Doestovesky asserts, the thing people fear the most is their own freedom and what Locke is proposing, this thinking on your own, and a thorough examination of one’s beliefs, is something that not only leaders, *but followers* fear and dread. It seems a vast majority of human beings don’t want to have to “understand” much, they would much prefer to recite someone else’s company line than to read, research, and theorize upon their own beliefs, study, and experience. Too many of the beliefs and ideas spoken of in the world today are merely recitations of someone else’s beliefs as fact, or as Locke would say, “a very doubtful conjecture.” Perhaps people are afraid of standing up for something unpopular as in the fable about the kid who said the Emperor had no clothes, or perhaps they are afraid of having to back up their own beliefs when they have not studied them to their base as Locke suggests. But the manner in which we progress beliefs as factual, desirable, or probable, and the process by which people come to these beliefs, is apparently as old and complex a problem now as it was in 1690.

References:

Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective, edited by Joyce Appleby, et al. 1996 NY, NY: Routledge Publishing, page 50-60.