Humans are emotional creatures before they are rational ones. So, in order to get people to appreciate a rational argument, we must engage their emotions first. Mark Lilla here argues that having our beliefs challenged is often an emotionally unpleasant experience, and to counter this unpleasantness of being wrong and to counter humanity's will to ignorance, we must make reasoned debate emotionally rewarding.
Aristotle taught that all human beings want to know. Our own experience teaches us that all human beings also want not to know, sometimes fiercely so. This has always been true, but there are certain historical periods—we are living in one—when the denial of evident truths seems to be gaining the upper hand, as if some psychological bacillus were spreading by unknown means, the antidote suddenly powerless. Mesmerized crowds follow preposterous prophets, irrational rumors trigger fanatical acts, and magical thinking crowds out common sense and expertise. One can always find proximate causes of such surges in resistance to truth, whether historical events or social changes or new intellectual and religious currents promising a holiday from reality. The source lies deeper, though, in ourselves and in the world itself, which takes no heed of our wishes.
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