Verified by 
Key points
- Fear of ambiguity and uncertainty can trap people in myopic close-mindedness.
- Ambiguity and uncertainty must stimulate learning, not knee-jerk responses.
- People can benefit from focusing on what they're for, not what they're against.
My recent post, How to Break the Self-Defeating Habit of Negative Labels, sparked requests for further elucidation with examples. So here goes.
If life seems more frustrating than not, you may be confusing conviction with a sense of certainty. Conviction — strong beliefs about the morality of your behavior — is the rudder that steers us through the ambiguous waters of life. To compensate for lack of conviction, many people develop feelings of certainty about other people, politics, religion, or ideology, which comes off as intolerance. No one experiences more frustration than those who are intolerant.
Certainty is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes, which, of course, greatly increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain we feel, the more likely we're wrong.
How we cope with uncertainty and ambiguity determines how well we do in life. Uncertainty and ambiguity, if we can tolerate them, drive us to learn more and connect to one another. They can make us smarter and more compassionate. All of us, at one time or another, cope with uncertainty and ambiguity through implicit recognition that it gives value and meaning to life by driving us to understand and connect.
We’re also prone to react to uncertainty and ambiguity by trying to pretend they don’t exist. We vainly try to cover them up with dogma, superstition, delusions, drugs, ego, attempts to control other people, anger, and, of course, using negative labels and characterizations.
Media-Think
The explosion of negative labels and characterizations in public discourse is in large part a product of media-think. It’s impossible to express nuance and adequate analysis in tweets and instant messages. Labels and characterizations are convenient, if oversimplified catchphrases, which can easily devolve into childish insults. The seduction of media-think has placed a nail in the coffin of dialectical thinking, in which we incorporate salient points from all positions. (See If You Want to Be Right, Don’t Fear Being Wrong.)
Media-think is less about conveying information than signaling tribalism — membership in a tribe (of ideology or class), in opposition to other tribes.
The Power of Mental Focus
Mental focus amplifies and magnifies. What we focus on becomes more important than everything we don’t focus on. A tenet of clinical psychology holds that we’re likely to get more of whatever we focus on. This occurs proactively, by guiding behavior toward a goal. It also creates self-fulfilling prophecy, that is, others react negatively to our negative attitudes about them.
The use of negative labels and characterizations keeps us focused on what we cannot control, namely other people’s thoughts, speech, and behavior. Focusing on things we can’t control causes feelings of powerlessness and frustration. Focusing on what we can control — our beliefs, behavior, and self-validation — creates a sense of empowerment and feelings of confidence.
“For” vs. “Against”
An important feature of conviction is that it’s for something, for example, justice, fair treatment, or equality. Using negative labels and characterizations is against something — for example, perceived injustice or unfairness. The distinction may seem subtle, but it’s crucial. Those who hate injustice want retribution and triumph, not fairness; they fantasize about punishing those who disagree with them, who stir their “justifiable” contempt and, sometimes, violence. Those who love justice and fairness behave fairly and justly, fantasize about about a fair and just world, and work to make it reality. Being for something builds; being against something destroys.
Being for something creates positive feelings of interest, passion, or joy, which tend to improve health, relationships, and goal-directed behavior. Being against something foments feelings of anger, contempt, envy, or disgust, which have deleterious effects on health and relationships, and increase the difficulty of achieving goals.
Think Truth, Not Insults
Before you send a tweet or instant message or write a comment, write a couple of analytical paragraphs in which you give evidence for your beliefs — what you’re for — and consider modifying evidence against your beliefs.
Express yourself in a way that shows you’re interested in truth, instead of signaling tribalism.
Remedial Examples
The following examples of media-think are real comments on social media.
Media comment: “Woke victimhood hysteria wants to erase the first two Amendments to the Constitution.”
Remedial comment: “Everyone has a right to respect and an obligation to respect other people’s rights.”
Media comment: “What can you expect from racist, fascist, MAGA, QAnon, cis, white bullshit.”
Remedial comment: “Please give more evidence for your beliefs. Have you considered evidence for alternative explanations?”
