I Believe That You Believe. What's Next?
An interview isn't just a story about a conversation, it's an opportunity to readjust your perspective
I had the privilege of speaking at this year’s (virtual) Frostburg Indie Lit Fest recently (video below). I tried to focus on belief and interviewing, which is a subject that just won’t leave me alone. Thinking about belief, in general, has plagued me for years, but since researching Dragged Into the Light, I’ve become obsessed.
It isn’t always easy to believe people when you’re interviewing them. From politicians to authors to shopkeepers and high school students, there’s a veneer between what the subject wants to project and the interviewer.
For example, when I get interviewed, I want to be convincing and affable. I use a lot of (what I like to think is) hyperbole and self-effacing observations as a way of opening the interviewer and, through them, their audience to my point of view. What I say plus what I convey equals what I mean. How well my meaning comes across has everything to do with my credibility.
The thing is, being credible doesn’t mean being correct. A lot of times we think of someone who has credibility being a truthteller. It’s a fine point of view when you’re talking about budget reconciliations, but when you’re talking about religion it can get a lot dicier.
I spoke with people who claimed that reptilian overlords were secretly running the world. They knew how it sounded, but they didn’t care because they knew they were right. As a person who doesn’t have any religious faith at all, there shouldn’t have been any way for us to have a serious conversation, but we had lots of them.
Many of us have participated in “Change Your Mind” debates, where you research and argue a position you find repulsive. The idea is that understanding a point of view is the best way to see its weaknesses.
I’m not a fan of the process. It’s not just cynical, but also counterproductive. It sets up this notion that a person with the best control over the facts of the matter will win an argument by their mental acuity alone.
I don’t know if this has ever happened. I’ve written before that using facts like pool noodles to whack one another with is stupid. People don’t choose a point of view based on pre-decided criteria, they come to it over time. It’s called a point of view for a reason: it is the lens through which people see the world. The facts that underpin it are secondary at best.
What I learned could be useful about the change-your-mind kind of approach, though, was adopting the point of view, not just gaining command over the facts. There is nothing to win. Discussing culture isn’t that kind of game.
One of the most common questions I get about the book was how people could believe something so fanciful as a reptilian conspiracy. What I accepted early on was that it objectively is no more fanciful than any other religious belief. I mean, it is funnier in print, but that’s pretty much it.
Everything we believe is something we want to believe in and that wanting is universal. We adopt a worldview based on continuing to believe. Learning to accept that a person’s beliefs are as genuine and as strong as your own is an obstacle, but it is worth overcoming.
It also might be the best way to make people a little less defensive about their own beliefs and a little more open to exploring alternative points of view.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
My latest book review is out. I’ve been reviewing nonfiction books about history and culture. You can find them here.
A Century of Swindles: Ponzi Schemes, Con Men, and Fraudsters by Railey Jane Savage is a collection of mini-histories of some of the more audacious scams of the 18th and 19th centuries, but it’s also a reminder that conning and being conned are a bigger part of our collective experience than we like to imagine.
Today’s cons aren’t materially different, only technologically easier.
Here’s the video talk I gave at the Frostburg Indie Lit Fest this year.