Knowing: A lesson from the recent election

 

 

Knowing… Beyond Belief and Epistemological Closure

Posted by John Hutchinson

Recently, the presidential election in the United States came as a shock to many leaders of the party that lost. It came as an unbelievable surprise to fundraisers and directors of super political action committees [SuperPACs] and to their donors who flushed hundreds of millions of dollars into these efforts in the hopes that their dollars would influence voters.

 In some political races, the ‘losers’ find it so hard to believe the results that they are challenging those results and asking for recounts.

I heard a term from a political commentator which caught my attention. 'He' called the dynamics of the losing party as that of falling into the category of “epistemological closure.” What? As they discussed this, I came to understand it as a way of saying, “We know that our candidate is going to win because all the people we talk with also believe he is going to win… and the polls that show other information are biased toward the other candidate and therefore ‘wrong.’”  This ‘closed-minded’ approach of only listening to those who ‘believe’ the same thing is not confined to many in the political party which lost the election. They ignored or reframed all empirical data as ‘wrong,’ ‘biased,’ or ‘irrelevant.’

Supposedly by raising doubts about something means the opposite is true. And we know this is not the case. Another example is the area of climate change. Raising doubts by quoting a handful of ‘scientists’ who are not convinced that climate change is happening and that humans play a role in it as nearly 95% of ‘climate scientists suggest, does not change the empirical data that exists. If in fact someone wishes to prove science wrong, then the scientific method needs to be used to refute scientific argument. Or one can just believe what they want to believe. This does not make it so.

There are other examples of “Epistemological Closure” we can look at and some relate to what is “believed” in religious and spiritual communities. There can be, though not always is, a certain ‘closed-minded’ agreement of “believers” whether it is in the fundamentalism of a religious belief system based upon a sacred scripture or revered doctrine or in the New Age and Consciousness Movement ideas that are shared among the “true believers.”

This begs the question, at least to me, “How do we know something to be true?”

Do we depend on a teacher or book or doctrine to say what is ‘true’? We can. Yet this is information and data that is feed into our sensory being. We can use these as tools perhaps to explore more about life and to see them as one interpretation of life-s meaning or path.

How do we learn of love? Is it through reading concepts or is it in experiencing the dynamics of Love. One can point to love in a conceptual way; the other provides first-hand knowledge of some energy dynamics that leads to an acceptance and knowing that love is. I would suggest this is real ‘knowing’ beyond egoic and mental knowledge.

Many spiritual teachings speak of the oneness of life. Science even grapples with these quantum and unified field dynamics of life. Hearing or reading about this can point to the possibility and the words of spiritual teachers, when authentic, emerge from their experience of ‘Oneness.’  Yet you and I do not fully understand the experience of ‘oneness’ until our egoic mental egg has cracked a bit to allow us to experience the wonder of ‘Oneness.’ Talking about what others have said does not make it so for us. Personal knowledge comes from personal experience, even when it is impossible to put into precise words.

Carl Jung was once asked if he “believed in God?”  His answer, “I don’t believe, I know.” He spoke from personal experience of the ‘Numinous’ or spiritual source and also from the personal experience of seeing healing in his patients when there was this numinous experience in their ‘treatment.’ And we too can say, “I know” as we have experienced that dynamic of “Mystery” which is the One Life.

So let us move beyond closed-minded “Epistemological Closure” and experience ‘Life Energy’ or ‘Spirit’ or the ‘Numinous or ‘Mystery’ or ‘Source’ or ‘God’ for ourselves. Then we can speak from understanding and knowing, not because others agree with us, but because of our own witness to what has happened and is happening in the present moment.

To return to the opening example, Nate Silver was 90% sure of the elections outcome, because he did the live math from real poll averages and researched it in all its ‘nerdiness.’ He was lambasted by pundits from all political parties. Hats off to Nate and his statistical analysis for correctly predicting the outcome of the election down to getting every state’s outcome correct. He didn’t listen to pundits; he listened to his experience and empirical information he received. 

And may this be a reminder to all of us to look beyond the words of friends, colleagues, and co-believers and come to the answers ourselves.