Disbelieving our own Narratives
We will doubt anything but the stories upon which we base our identity.
On October 9, 2016, the second of three debates between U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was held at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. It was meant to feature questions on a range of issues affecting the nation, but from the start it was dominated by accusations of sexual assault.
The infamous Access Hollywood tape—in which Trump bragged to reporter Billy Bush about groping women—had just been leaked to the press, and the Clinton campaign intended to seize upon it as proof that Trump was unfit for office. But Trump had a plan to neutralize his opponent’s attacks: he held a press conference beforehand with women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, and whom Hillary Clinton had publicly dismissed and defamed.
As the cameras began rolling, the two candidates lobbed accusations at one another, the pace of their insults fast and furious. I remember watching the event and thinking what a feeble fight it was, both combatants wounded by the weight of their own misdeeds, unable to land a killing blow. But many Americans did not see what I saw, because they believed only one of the two candidates was in the wrong.
This past week, a jury in New York found against Trump in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, determining that he had sexually abused her in a department store dressing room back in the 1990s. That was the same decade in which Bill Clinton was accused of similar unwanted advances. Clinton’s supporters called the charges a “witch hunt” back then, and Trump’s supporters are calling Caroll’s accusations a “witch hunt” now. The quality of evidence in these cases is similar, so why conclude that Trump is guilty and Clinton is innocent, or vice versa?
Following the wave of accusations against Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and the impact of the #MeToo movement, some Democrats began to reconsider their stalwart defense of Clinton. Whether Republicans will ever experience a similar change of heart is yet to be revealed. What is certain in both cases is that people are more likely to believe accusations brought against their political enemies than their political heroes.
Human beings have a tremendous capacity for self-deception: we interpret the evidence before us according to a pre-arranged narrative in our minds. Democrats in the 1990s knew that if Clinton went down, the entire party would suffer the consequences, so they rallied around him. Prolonged exposure to their own political messaging led them to believe both that 1) Republicans were the type of villains to bend any ethical rule and tell any lie to tarnish a political opponent, and 2) Republicans were therefore a danger to the country if they should gain power. Trump’s supporters feel the same way now in relation to Democrats: that every accusation is part of a vast right-wing left-wing conspiracy, and that allowing the Democrats to gain political power would be a tragedy of apocalyptic proportions for the United States.
The contrasting reactions to Clinton and Trump are proof positive of something I have long believed. Human beings are not purely logical beings who sit around considering factual evidence, debating pros and cons, and making reasoned decisions. We are, in our heart of hearts, storytellers. We construct narratives to help us understand the world around us, and we base our identities upon those narratives. What we choose to believe is then not simply a matter of what is objectively most convincing, but what we desire to believe.
Perhaps at this point you are thinking, “I don’t believe what I believe just because I want to. I have a great respect for objective truth.” Ah, but your very allegiance to objective truth is a belief! Why do you value the truth? Where did you arrive at a notion of what truth is? Even that is part of the narrative in which you have placed your trust: the story by which you live your life.
For an average person living in China, the story of the world may be one in which China is the Middle Kingdom—the historic center of humanity. They will have learned in school of China’s long and glorious history as the most advanced civilization, a record of dominance only interrupted by the arrival of European colonizers who plundered China’s riches for their own profit. Now those same countries seek to keep China in chains, denying the Middle Kingdom its rightful place as the leading world power. They would even seek to sever part of Chinese territory by force: the island of Taiwan, always a part of China, but now living in rebellion. If you were this Chinese person, you might spend an inordinate amount of time on English-language social media, attempting in vain to convince Westerners that your narrative is the correct one.
“Well, I’m not like that Chinese person,” you think. “They’ve been fed propaganda for their entire lives.”
What you call propaganda, I call a narrative. Here in the United States, viewers of Fox News are given one narrative and viewers of MSNBC another. Likewise, black Americans may have a different narrative than white Americans. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians—all have their own narrative. The great conflicts in world history have been driven not only by greed, but by the clashing of narratives. Even as I write, Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting in Bakhmut, with soldiers on both sides believing they are doing so to defend their own Fatherland’s existence. They believe this because it is the narrative in which they have placed their trust, and for which they are prepared to die.
What, then, is the narrative by which you live your life? How do you see the story of history unfolding, and how do you understand your own existence? For if you are human, you will have a story which influences you moment by moment in ways you can scarcely comprehend.
The greatest of all human challenges is the fight for ultimate truth: the bravery to step outside one’s narrative, as it were, and consider if it is really in alignment with the facts.
By no means would I suggest that we should not trust anyone or anything, nor am I arguing that narratives are a bad thing in and of themselves. The danger tends to come when we deny that our narratives are narratives, as if we alone were unbiased. It is no sin to have a narrative, but to maintain it uncritically, never allowing the story to evolve, never allowing yourself to grow as a reasoning person—that is a tragedy, both for one’s self and for humanity.
It bothers me to see so many people who condemned Bill Clinton in the 1990s now defending Donald Trump uncritically, but it bothers me far more to know that many people will go to their graves never having realized the extent to which their desires have shaped their beliefs, and thus never having lived a life fully in communion with the truth. For it is easier to change a leopard’s spots than to change the ultimate desires of a human being.
Well said, Amy. There’s so much fear driving our inability to see our biases. It’s particularly sad for believers because the truth will set us free.
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