I am struck by how often I am confronted with what I have come to think of as the taking sides dilemma. Either President Trump is a good guy who deserves our support and confidence or is a bad guy who we should fear and distrust. Either immigrants are merely harmless people looking for a better life or are dangerous thugs and potential terrorists who are a threat to our families and communities. Either unrestricted access to guns is a benign, constitutional imparitive or is the underlying cause of mass shootings and random violance. Make your choice and then take the side you know is right.

We are thoughtful, logical, reasonable people who are not mindless side takers. We are open minded, take care to consider all perspectives and aspects before making decisions and judgements, and base our choices and conclusions on facts and a clear grasp on reality. We don’t reflexively take sides. Rather, when we take sides, truth, logic, and a firm understanding of conditions and situations guide where we stand.

How well does that work for you? I hope it’s working better for you than it is for me. I struggle with figuring out what is true, what is real, and what does and doesn’t matter. Even if I’m sure that something definitely matters, my struggle isn’t over. It’s not yet time to take sides. I also have to assess just how much it matters in relationship to everything else that matters. …

Taking sides and knowing which side to take would be much easier if we could limit ourselves to our direct experiences. It still would not always be easy, but we would at least be basing our choices on personal knowledge. Unfortunately, our world no longer works that way, if it ever did. Most of our side taking is based on past influences and current circumstances over which we have little control and limited understanding. Most of what we know and think we know about the world we live in comes from others who are getting their knowledge from others who are getting their knowledge from others. Which side we choose to take comes down to who we choose to believe, or does it?

Who Do We Believe?

Quite often, it doesn’t matter all that much who we choose to believe. This is especially the case when most everyone is saying approximately the same thing. A huge hurricane came ashore in North Carolina. North Korea has an atomic bomb. Unemployment in the United States is at or near an all time low. Many of our roads and bridges are in urgent need of repare or replacement. There may be some dissenters but the majority view is compelling.

Side taking becomes much more difficult when we get conflicting reports, opinions, perspectives, and opposing understandings of events, conditions, circumstances, and the people associated with them. The atmosphere at the White House is or is not chaotic. Congress is or is not effective. The risk of global warming is or is not over rated. Tariffs are or are not good for the economy. Pick most any local, state, or national issue, and we quickly see that opposing views and opinions are rampent.

When I put it that way, it seems that most of us would have trouble taking sides, – so many problems, so many issues, so many possible choices. I’m not sure whether it’s human nature, habit, indifference, or some kind of rational reductionism; but most of us will use our default decision template, our standard fallback position. That means we will stand with the side we have always stood with, continue believing what we already believed, trusting the sources we have come to trust. We simply adopt the views, opinions, and perspectives of those who’s side we have taken in the past.

There is another dimention to this. Again, I don’t know whether it’s human nature, habit, indifference, or some kind of rational reductionism, but once we have taken sides and particularly when we have taken sides with a person or group,