Rationality Fail
My brother says neo-Nazi shit just in time for the holidays
Like many people, I am getting to the breakpoint with a family member. Specifically my younger brother. He is saying... problematic... things. “Hitler had the right idea” kind of things. Things said, that I cannot help but wonder: "Did I really just hear that?"
The problem is that these espoused positions should logically lead to violence, if he truly believes them. If nothing else, the espoused positions are correlated with violent people.
My brother is not a violent person. At least, I have never seen him be violent, or even directly mean to others. That is to say, if he has a dark side I have never witnessed it. In fact it is quite the contrary. To any given individual, I have only seen him express kindness.
All of the friends and family that we share a relationship with usually describe him along the lines of "having a good heart".
My struggle is holding both of these positions in my head at once. They seem so contradictory that I can only do one thing: push out the violence-indicating rhetoric.
But I shouldn't.
If he was someone I didn't know, and I heard these words, I would not associate with the person who said them. But he is my brother: I cannot imagine him being violent. My actions at this point seem to mirror my mind. I should cut him out, but I feel that it is an overreaction. He is not a violent person, so he doesn’t really mean what he says. My action wants to be — inaction. I am realizing, now that the position is so clear, that I have been here before with him. I have chosen inaction before on less offensive positions. What causes this paralysis?
It feels like I'm having a quantum thought and my brother is in a superposition — who I think he must be, and who I see him becoming. It cannot be both. But every time I try to observe the thought I get one result: "I can't imagine him being violent." This isn't how superpositions work. Where is the other position? Why can I not explore that one?
If I pause, and try to watch myself observe the thought, I can see this other position, as if out of the corner of my eye. Then my eye settles on the only thing I feel can be true — the only position I can seem to grasp.
I am fooling myself. I know this other position exists. I can imagine anyone being violent. It is just imagination. I can imagine Gandhi or Jesus being violent if I want to. Surely I can do the same with my brother? I don't want to imagine it. Like most people I am conflict avoidant. If I imagine him being violent, this somehow registers as "if I imagine this, it will bring me closer to conflict."
But I am already in conflict with him. It is just in my head. Always present, in the background, eating up precious brain cycles, making me anxious. The superposition exists. I can see it. I must engage with it.
What if he isn't violent yet? What if he is entertaining ideas that will lead him to violence? What if he is at a fork on his journey in life, and starting to head down a very dark path?
Is this really why I get so anxious? Is this why I am so angry when he expresses these hateful views? Yes the views can generate anger, but what if my anger really exists because I think I see the path he is on and he doesn’t?
Am I angry because on some level I recognize I am struggling to see the other half of the superposition in my own head? Can I not see it because it implies bad things? Does the anger exist because, subconsciously, I know I am fooling myself?
Am I angry because I resent him for putting this burden on me? If he ever becomes violent and I clung to my belief that he could never be, if I never confronted him, is that on me?
In this case, I am my brother's keeper. I also have a societal responsibility to respond to the things I’ve heard him say. I have a responsibility to try with anyone close enough to me that I might be able to reach yet.
But what does trying look like?
For starters, I must hold the contradiction in my head. The contradiction is everything. If I truly believe he is actually a good person, who is misguided, then I must also evenly weight the possibility he fully believes what he says. I must imagine him becoming violent. I must confront him if I want to rid myself of this contradiction, and the anxiety it produces. I must set my anger to the side for the moment. I must interrogate the other half of the superposition.
I must have him acknowledge to me the path he is going to choose.
I don't think he is too far gone yet. Even if he was, I must confront him. But I think there is still a chance I can reach him.
He seems to be in the 'trying it on phase' of these positions. He has not expressed these positions to all of the family members yet. He is sort of polling the audience to see if there are others with these views, but more importantly, how those closest to him respond. Clearly you can find community for anything on the internet, but there is something special about close family members. How many forum members or casual acquaintances am I worth to him? I don't think this is any explicit calculation he is running, but there is mental math happening. If this is true, how I react may be pivotal in the path he chooses. This is a high stakes and critical moment, where I might have an effect. Yet my first instinct was inaction...
So the two questions I need to ask myself:
Do I believe there is a contradiction between who I think he is versus where I think he is heading?
Am I close enough to my brother that he will value our relationship above holding these 'new' positions?
The first is clearly a yes. The second in some ways is just a matter of tone. If I think he is 'too far gone', then I should still try to confront him, but it will be very different than if I think he still cares greatly about me and how I think of him.
Which brings me back to the quantum thought. This time I need to imagine him being the worst possible version of himself that does not go against my evidence. This is what interrogating the other half of the superposition entails.
I should view all those comments about his "good heart" in a different light. People could have easily described him as a good person, but they often chose to focus on his "heart". In some ways this subtle choice of language could be interpreted that most people see a contradiction in the things he says and the actions they have observed from him. I generally interpret "they are a good person" to mean they are a wholly good person. Their words and actions align closely.
So far as I know, no mutual acquaintance has seen bad actions. If anything they have similar evidence: good actions, but says lots of incongruent things. On the other hand… most of our mutual acquaintances are family and friends of family. We are adults and so that shared phase of our life ended some time ago. I don't know all the people he has interacted with since, all the non-mutual acquaintances. What do they think of him? Have they witnessed him being violent? This is where "I don't know" should keep things even odds for me. Of course I want to assume anyone would give a similar description of "good heart". But I can't know that. That is me always wanting to believe the best in him. But this is exactly where I shouldn't. What if he has spent too much time around the wrong sort of people? What if he sought out the wrong sort of people, on his own initiative? What if he has done violent things in a setting where it was more "socially normalized"?
So largely he has two 'groups' of people. He has all the people we mutually grew up with, who he keeps up appearances with (consistency bias). And a group of 'adult acquaintances' where I assume these positions are more normal. These are the two communities he is doing the mental math with.
The fact that the latter community's ideas are entering the former's sphere is a sign he is heading down a different fork. He is trying to be a whole and consistent person everywhere. This is worrying, as it means he believes the positions enough, and values the community that holds them enough, to attempt to start updating his ideological direction change to those who knew him differently.
So what tone should I strike when I confront him?
First, I must seriously and firmly state the contradiction I see, the superposition. This is what is generating my anger and anxiety. I need resolution on this. I should not dwell on the implications of his espoused positions any more than is necessary to state my contradiction. So this would be my issue with him being/becoming a hateful and violent person. That is all I really need from his positions. If I want the 'brother I know' to return, I should also focus on the aspects that I admire in him. I should repeat my perception of him. I should state that I refuse to believe he is a violent person. This makes him required to tell me that he is a violent person and I am wrong. This would mean that even if he isn't a violent person yet, he believes in his new social connections enough to overcome his long held persona.
In this scenario, consistency bias (from growing up) was the only thing keeping him from adopting these positions. If my assessment is correct, then I should expect him to become violent. In this scenario I cannot reach him. I will never know if I could have (unlikely), but I will know I at least tried. If this is the case I should close the relationship, but make it clear that I am always available to talk if he is ever willing to shed these beliefs. I do not want to burn the bridge with the brother I used to have. I only want to burn the bridge with who he (apparently) is now. I must acknowledge to myself that I am not the one who can reach him. Perhaps there is someone else who can, otherwise he is the only one who can extract himself from these hateful beliefs.
Another scenario is that he will argue that his positions do not lead to violence. If this is the case then there is a chance that I can reach him. This would seem to indicate that he also doesn't see himself as a violent person, or he secretly is a violent person but doesn't want to be (needs help). This will be the longest, most arduous route to help my brother. We will need to first come to agreement on how to discuss anything. This is where having a clear process for how to have hard talks is essential. (If this scenario comes to pass, Ford has agreed to help me navigate it, as we probably won't have all the toolkits published yet. To be clear: I’m not going to try to argue directly against his conspiracy theories. But if we can start talking, we need a way to talk about him without him falling into bad patterns.)
The ideal scenario, of course, is that he acknowledges that I am right and that he has lost his way and wants to discuss why he went down this path. This now seems really unlikely. I think he is too far gone for this scenario. I will not confront him in this tone.
So in order to respond to him I need to make sure I am doing so with the two most likely outcomes in mind: He is too far gone OR There is a disagreement in perceptions and/or conclusion. Notice something? My initial position is not included. The 'ideal condition' is what I kept wanting to believe. If it were true, he would probably figure it out without me confronting him. But nothing supports this with clear-eyed assessment. Only the opposite scenario seems likely...
Besides writing up my personal struggles for the internet, I want to take a moment to explicitly state the meta-commentary this post implies.
Here I am, trying to write a blog about how to think better and be a truth-seeker, and I still have trouble holding certain contradictions in my head, interrogating both states in the superposition. The emotions are particularly potent in my current situation. Emotions clearly are not short-circuiting my rational brain. I have the superposition, it is there and I 'know' both positions. My emotions are short-circuiting my observation of the superposition.
Our challenge is that emotions make us feel like we already have the rational position, when in reality we have a rationalized position. This leaves the other half of the superposition ignored. We have found our answer. We know it is the answer. So why explore other possibilities? In other words, emotions simply try to blind us to the rational result. This is good in some ways, it means we have the result. We just need to get better at correcting the effects of emotions, like how glasses correct faults in our eyes.
Unfortunately emotional reactions release chemicals (drug-like substances) in the brain, and the (truly) rational thoughts... are just not emotional. Our emotions have an unfair advantage, and we need to be aware of this. The more we care about something, the stronger the corrective lens we must use to assess it.
I think the world has a drug problem, and it isn't letting us see the answers we already have.