Background (if you find this familiar and boring, skim to the next section which is the meat of the post)
Here are two mutually distinct sets of believers in our society: believers in government propaganda (weapons of mass destruction, e.g.) tend to dismiss fringe conspiracy theories, and believers in fringe conspiracy theories dismiss government propaganda (obviously, since an important component of fringe theory is distrust of government propaganda).
Can we map these false beliefs -- like beliefs in government or partisan propaganda and fringe conspiracy theories -- onto the social pyramid or other social places like gender or religion or urban or rural? Can such socially located false beliefs tell us about those social places and vice versa, do the social places tell us about the beliefs? Answering those questions is my goal: a sociological explanation for who believes what and why.
Why only false beliefs? A true belief can be held solely because it is obviously true or highly plausible. It could be being held because the believer is biased or it could be being held because the believer is rational. But a patently false belief -- a belief that contradicts its own premises or conflicts with facts accepted by the believer -- can't be explained by the belief's rational consistency or perception of accuracy. The holding of it can only be explained by some choice, bias, ignorance or lack of rationality in the believer. False beliefs tell us more about the believer than the belief.
How do we know which beliefs are true or false? In many cases it's not obvious but there are clear cases of contradictory beliefs. There are also beliefs or theories that are far more complex than a simpler theory (see the post "Entropy and truth" about the role of simplicity in theory choice). These over-complicated theories raise the question of motivation. Why choose the complicated theory over the simpler one? The answer should give us direct insight into the psycho-social mapping.
Cognitive psychology, from Tom Gilovich and Daniel Kahneman to Jon Haidt, tells us that our choice of beliefs (e.g., Gilovich's How to know what isn't so, Kahnemen's Thinking fast and slow, Haidt's Righteous Mind, also see the posts on this blog "Fool's Errand Attachment: a cognitive bias" and "the free will oxymoron" among others) are not rationally motivated at heart; we believe whatever we want to believe, regardless of facts. The crucial word is "want". There is always some emotional desire motivating our choices, which we hide behind a veneer of rational justifications to defend and hide our selfish motivations from others -- and from ourselves, since honesty is easier than lying, deceiving ourselves makes it easier to deceive others.
Our rationality seems to be in the service of two emotional drives, one a selfish personal interest, the other an interactive social interest. Our behavioral cognitive psychologist says a liberal Democrat might provide lots of rational justifications for being a liberal Democrat, but it's mere rationalizing, a public show hiding some deeper emotional commitment. It may be, following Jon Haidt, a seeking for approval from one's chosen peers -- the virtue-signaling of the liberal. Or following Robin Hanson, it's a creating of one's identity within one's social context -- holding a respected or prestigious ideology, in his words "good-looking ideas". Or it may be, following Rob Henderson, the luxury ideas that signal high socio-economic status. These are all interactive social drives. On the other hand, the political beliefs may be driven by cognitive dissonance over personal gain, not at all an interactive choice but a merely self-serving one: for example, I'm paid to teach in a public university, so I'm inclined to favor a candidate who endorses public higher education, and I then defend my choice by scraping around for other justifications for voting for that person.
To the extent that we hold our beliefs for reasons other than their superficial public rational justifications, our beliefs are falsely held, regardless of the truth value of those beliefs. We should expect, then, to find many false beliefs held for no reason but personal and interactive reasons alone. If personal interests and interactive social interests depend on social identity, false beliefs should tell us about social locations including distinctions of class, rural vs urban location, even race or gender. The relevance to identity politics is obvious, but in this post I'm interested in two classes, the professional class (the educated elite) and the non elite or anti-elite(?) class. I'll start with the interests and emotional commitments of the professional class and their investment in partisan propaganda.
the professional class -- the virtue-signaling class -- and their beliefs
The following is a very broad-brush picture. Think of it as a kind of caricature. It's meant to describe a statistical inclination among the members of a class. I am well aware of the many many counterexamples to this description and the description in the following section. I beg the reader for indulgence.
Members of the professional class can be identified easily. And quickly. Within five minutes of meeting one, they will tell you what they do for a living. They have a career that they are proud to announce, "I'm a partner with Bellstein and Whistle", "I teach at Superior T U" or "I'm a physician with a clinical practice in insurance-guaranteed pharmaceutical FDA-approved remedies and addictions -- a branch of government finance, you should know". Humor aside, they perceive themselves to be, and are, privileged. They live in safe, clean, well-served neighborhoods; their children go to fancy schools. They themselves attended fancy schools and have fancy degrees with fancy letters before or after their names. Their interactive position is one of prestige and social respect, and they are, and perceive themselves as, the beneficiaries of the many goods that their society affords.
They are, therefore and crucially, deeply invested in their society that gives them so much, including respect. The last thing they want to see is a socio-political revolution in which they'd risk losing everything. They are the defenders of the faith in American democracy, progress, justice and equality. They want to believe that their government and social structure are basically good or at least, better than any alternative, or at the very least, capable of improvement and for that reason worthy of upholding.
However, they also perceive that a vast non elite public does not reap all these social benefits. They have two responses to this inequality. One is self-justification, holding the belief -- perhaps false belief -- that they deserve their benefits. They worked hard for their fancy degrees, their education has given them an appreciation for fine culture, a superior understanding of the world, of politics and of economics and science, whereas, they believe, the non elite are without all of this. According to elite perception, the non elites don't appreciate culture, abuse and debase the heritage of the language, and understand so little of politics that they vote against their own material interests (apparently ignoring entirely that liberalism is defined by voting against one's material interests in order to benefit society as a whole -- see the post on Hochschild vs Stanovich and the liberal blind spot). They believe that the non elites are concerned only in creature comforts so they are naturally lazy and unambitious, lacking all merit. At best, they pity them.
That strategy is widespread -- you see it in the regular publication every couple of years of a new book describing how the plebes are destroying the English language. It's almost comical how something so trivial and misguided (I'll post on this soon, but Pinker did a great job with this in his The Language Instinct) is the source of so much pride, while ignoring that the liveliest, subtlest and most beautiful linguistic innovation is ceaselessly created at the social non elite bottom. I digress. It's the linguist in me.
This strategy of superiority, though widespread and deep, does not however alleviate the educated elite from feeling any less dickish. If anything, it makes them feel more dickish. They need another strategy to alleviate, resolve or hide the dick. It's virtue-signaling, social and financial liberalism, in Phil Ochs' 1966 words, "love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal".
As every news venue must find and cater to an audience market share to serve up to its advertisers, the NYTimes, Atlantic and NPR provide the desired information -- including false beliefs -- to the educated elite. The NYT reader reads the NYT not only because it has prestige, but also because it tells its audience what that audience already wants to believe. Your government, essentially good but imperfect, can be improved by voting Democratic. If you vote for the Democratic Party, it will take a bit of your taxes, not too much, but some, and redistribute it to The Poor. Then your conscience will be clear. And if this doesn't work and doesn't save the society that you get so much from, blame it on the evil Republicans. It's a tidy, neat package wrapped in a pretty blue ribbon.
If the NYT reports government propaganda the NYT reader will believe it. Weapons of mass destruction is the classic case. NYT readers believed this propaganda even though anyone with their eyes open knew it was a dog and pony show from the start. Kofi Annan knew it. Hans Blix exposed it. Nevertheless NYT readers believed it. And today, now that we know that the NYT failed to present the propaganda as absurdly false, the educated elite still read the NYT. NYT readers are original victims of Murray Gell-Mann amnesia. The professional class -- educated elite -- are prone to false propaganda beliefs. It's their emotional investment in a society that provides them with all good things, especially their interactive social value -- respect -- that drives their beliefs. It's their need for virtue and virtue-signalling to cleanse their conscience.
So much for the professional, educated elite class.
[Once, when I was arguing that the educated elite have high voting rates because they believe in the voting process, the person I was talking to objected that there are too few of them to make a difference in elections. It dawned on me that on the street "elite" now refers to a cabal of CEOs or a small cohort of Skull & Bones members or Bilderburg members or Illuminati. Conspiracy theory has overtaken the language. In this post "the educated elite" refers to the professional class and those that identify with it or aspire to it.]
the non elite distrustful and respect-signaling class
The non elite have no need for virtue-signaling. They do not perceive that they are privileged within their society. Many actually do get a lot from the government, but it is in the form of subsidies, so they can't claim them for respect. On the contrary, subsidies are signs of inequality, of the injustices of the society. Subsidies do not argue for an investment in the society, they demonstrate its injustices of its economic structure.
What the non elite want and don't get from the society is respect. They know that the professional class looks down on them. They don't have careers, they have jobs. They have subsidies, not fancy degrees. It's in this world of want that conspiracy theories and distrust of government thrive. Respect is available only from their peers. The essence of conspiracy street cred is "Those educated professionals, they believe government propaganda. I know better. The government at every turn is lying to them and they believe it. Not me. They vote, those chumps. They've been had, losers." A flat-earther once used those very words to me. "You think the earth is round? You've been had."
The sense among the non elite or anti-elite that government is inaccessibly remote is a kind of structural violence. Not physical, but a psychological violence. Its consequence is this response: distrust of government and social distrust of "the elites", the perennial target of their conspiracy theories.
the outcome
There are many false beliefs that can be mapped onto social spaces and class structure. The post on the Liberal Blind Spot focuses on religion and fictional political narratives in urban vs rural social locations. The current post has focused only on the mutually exclusive government propaganda beliefs and conspiracy theories among the educated elite and the non elite respectively.
This mapping suggests that beliefs are reflexes of social place, that properties of social place -- especially degrees of prestige and respect, but also material wealth and perception of inequality -- incline towards specific beliefs to resolve cognitive dissonances (having more wealth than others, getting less respect than others).
There are other reflexes besides propaganda beliefs and conspiracy beliefs. Those who believe propaganda dismiss conspiracy theories as stupid and dangerous. Those who believe in conspiracy theories dismiss propaganda believers as fools.
There's also a behavioral reflex. The virtue-signaling class expect government to solve social problems, and they support change. They are prone to the Fool's Errand Attachment bias.
Conspiracy believers do not expect progress. Their baked-in distrust expects only harm from legislation and the corporate world's manipulations, harm in the form of agricultural poisoning, vaccines, surveillance, indoctrination, war. They are political fatalists (see the post on the Fool's Errand Attachment) and are naturally drawn to Reaganite neoliberalist ideology of small government and deregulation.
However, the non elite are often found helping the people around them. Who is more dangerous, the non voting flat-earther sharing lunch with a homeless migrant and finding him a discarded winter coat, or the voting, unquestioning NYTimes reader, leaving the white cloister to join a protest march? Obviously, each thinks the other is more dangerous. Outside of the US, especially among the ordinary people in the so-called global south, the US Democratic Party is commonly viewed as extremely militaristic, dangerously aggressive and violently murderous. Something for the liberal Democrat to think about.
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