Why Sermons Don't Work

David Brooks in The New York Times wrote a thought-provoking column on why sermonizing, rehab centers, abstinance programs, 12 step programs, and imprisonment seldom change a person's core behavior.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/abstinence-and-the-perception-in-decisionmaking/2007/06/22/1182019369233.html

He writes that these programs are " based on a false model of human nature. It's based on the idea that human beings are primarily deciders. If you pour them full of moral maxims, they will be more likely to decide properly when temptation arises. If you pour them full of information about the consequences of risky behaviour, they will decide to exercise prudence and forswear unwise decisions.

"That's the way we'd like to think we are, but that's not the way we really are, and it's certainly not the way teenagers are.

"There is no central executive zone in the brain where all information is gathered and decisions are made. There is no little homunculus up there watching reality on a screen and then deciding how to proceed. In fact, the mind is a series of parallel processes and loops, bidding for urgency.

"We're not primarily deciders. We're perceivers. The body receives huge amounts of information from the world, and what we do is turn that data into a series of generalisations, stereotypes and theories that we can use to navigate our way through life. Once we've perceived a situation and construed it so that it fits one of the patterns we carry in our memory, we've pretty much rigged how we're going to react, even though we haven't consciously sat down to make a decision.

"Construing is deciding."

I think Brooks' model also applies to how people embrace world views. It is seldom a matter of deciding-- weighing the evidence, exercising the logic, exhibiting the implications-- no matter how rational that world view may seem. When rationality is used, it is used only in conformity to reinforce deep-seated subconscious prejudices. I think this is true whether you are a professing atheist, Hindu, or Lutheran. As Brooks suggests, it's not deliberating over datum that turns one one person into a heroin addict or a doctor of biochemistry, or, if I can elaborate on his argument, a theist or an atheist. Rather, it is living in and absorbing the sea of information and social and cultural associations that information engenders that allows us to validate reality in a certain way.

Brooks compelling argument is pessimistic, as it seems to minimize the illusion that we freely and consciously decide our world views and it is also pessimsitic as it seems to promote the intractability of human nature in the face of progressive education, reform, and legislation.

Some of us are capable of trading commodities, editing law journals, and solving calculus problems-- all highly rational pursuits. But the constructs that allowed us to do that in the first place was established by an exposure to a vast array of experiences that seem irrelevant to those actions. I once read somewhere that in the progression to becoming a world class pianist, the first step for many maestroes was not a skilled tutor but a loving teacher. Apparently, love is some strange way is the launching pad to uber-achievement. I also read elsewhere somewhere that the vast majority of CEOs came from homes in which the parents either were divorced or died. In these case, to simplify, the launching pad was insecurity.

Brooks is correct. Our brains contain a huge bundle of memories encoded as molecules, ions, and neurons deposited there since before birth. The heaviest influence on those memories occur in infancy by the person's surroundings. By the time a person is a young adult, there is not much anyone can do to change those memories. (Think of the many aphorisms that encapsule this fact. Think how the madrasses teach their version of morality over several years beginning at an early age.)

I don't see his views as pessimistic. That is your attitude toward them. I consider them statements about the way people learn.

True enough. I also think Brooks' understanding is just part of the picture. In boot camp and in religious cults, it appears that it's possible to displace core beliefs with other core beliefs, although maybe those who were brainwashed may have been predisposed to be brainwashed. I don't know. At a scientifc level, I agree with Brooks. But as a matter of personal conduct, I prefer to act on the belief that I am in control of my actions and my conscious beliefs shape those actions-- presumptions that are really at the heart of jurisprudence and capitalism.

That's because you've been taught to think that humans are so noble, so like God, that they must be able to control their actions.

You don't know me very well to suggest that I think humans are noble and god-like. I certainly haven't been taught that! I take freedom of the will not as a fact but as a premise of personal existence because I accept sole responsibility for my actions, which, as I said earlier, is at the heart of jurisprudence and capitalism. If my crime is because of "society", then everyone is guilty. If everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty. Only in the most exceptional situation do we excuse a criminal for misconduct, such as committing a crime while insane. It is at the heart of capitalism because I attribute my wealth or poverty directly to decisions and actions that I suppose I freely take. This has nothing to do with theology or the supernatural and every to do with common sense. I don't gainsay the scientists when they tell me that my conformity to legal norms and my desire to excel in the market place have complex and deep-seated neuro-genetic antecedents. But I embrace the myth of an autonomous will to prevent me from taking that flight from responsibility that places failure with social and biological predestination.

Of course people must make others "responsible" for their actions.

I don't think I or anyone else can make other people responsible for their actions at all. In this respect, I agree with Brooks.

The legal system indeeds rests on a useful lie. Without that lie, why not attribute your bank robbery to the devil, god, or the movement of the stars? It is in our nature to grope for rationaizations when our conduct pains us because there is nothing more painful sometimes than to look within and thereby take responsibility for ourself. I think it is also in our nature (at least for most us us) to see ourselves as hopelessly powerless, tossing about like a a leaf on the ocean, in thrall to forces beyond our control. That, for most people but not for me, is another useful lie.

I certainly agree that capitalism is the result of historical forces stretching back over the centuries. But, as you point out, we live in the real world, and the world I live in is a world where it is assumed that capital rules through the invisibe hand of individual, autonomous, and selfish choices. It is the idealist, the commune dweller, the trust fund baby, in our present society who puts his prayers and hopes elsewhere.

What is this mysterious force called free will?

You could ask by analogy what is sorrow-- merely a biochemical reaction to pain-- or thought-- words and nothing more. It's a construct, an a priori, a reminder, that in realms of choicelessness-- we didn't choose to be born, or where we were born, or the circumstances of much of our life-- we can neverthless choose, and by so doing, define ourselves by the sum of our choices. As Satre says: "Man is free. The coward makes him cowardly. The hero makes him heroic." (Curious how existentialism is one of the few rejoinders to the prevailing scientific and philosophical systems of determinism.) Perhaps this a priori is merely the remorseless result of countlesss antecedents, but, as you suggets, it's a useful lie and one I embrace.