There aren’t many beliefs I’ve held for decades but this is one — you can’t improve the world without embracing truth first.
I think I got that from Dennis Prager’s radio show in 1988.
There’s a statement in the Talmud that I love — “The signature of God is truth.”
David Pinsof writes: “We’re tribal, factional, nepotistic, moralistic, short-sighted, close-minded, superstitious, self-deluded, and surreptitiously selfish. We aren’t naturally motivated to make the world a better place, nor are we naturally motivated to see ourselves as mediocre humans, saddled with the same flaws as every other human. We consume “interesting” information—not useful or true information—which prevents us from understanding our predicament. We defend the status games we’re winning—not the ones that improve the world—which worsens the world. We’re in thrall to bullshit political beliefs, including the belief that we’re morally and intellectually superior to our outgroup, which is exactly what our outgroup thinks of us, and what every ingroup has wrongly believed about their outgroup since the dawn of humanity. We should be troubled about this, but we’re not. We’d rather point the finger at the baddies, and cast ourselves as the heroes, than fix our broken incentives. You might have expected psychologists to help us out here, but they’re too busy doing the same bullshit.”
