7 - Internal Dissent: The Case for Self-Critique

Summary

It is all too easy for any individual to fall into dogmatism, treating our own beliefs as sacrosanct, whether in politics or elsewhere. Prejudice naturally follows on, especially on the right, but the left can be just as guilty of this trait; communism has left a long and unfortunate legacy to ponder over that will taint left-wing thought and theorising for generations, one suspects. We can see the effect this has on politics, which has of late become ever more polarised in terms of the parties involved in its representative bodies across the democratic system, with a distinctly negative impact on the quality of debate and dialogue both institutionally and publicly; hence the increased resort to cancel culture. Politics declines into a series of theatrical gestures when that happens (the UK parliament is a particularly pertinent, and often very depressing, example of what this can look like in session, particularly at Prime Minister's Question Time), with little meaningful interaction between speakers or parties taking place: producing soundbites seems to be the main concern of the exchanges and the participants invariably oversimplify complex issues in their search for catchy headlines to be picked up by the media. One way to curb the growth of dogmatism would be self-critique, in which we would analyse our own beliefs regularly, and thoroughly, to detect the prejudices they might be hiding – and they are likely to be there in any of us, no matter how socially liberal or ‘woke’ we might consider ourselves to be. The gap between belief and truth is not always observed as closely as it might be to prevent prejudice from crossing the line in our thought; constant vigilance is required. Examining and judging the validity of our beliefs could do with being turned into a ritual that we perform on a daily or at least weekly basis; we should think of it along the lines of a medical check-up on our opinions, a preventative measure to catch dogmatism at source. The objective would be to bring our inner dissenter into play and I am working on the assumption that most of us are capable of doing that if we put our mind to it (exception has to be made for the conspiracy theory faction, who could only regard this as a crude attempt to silence them).