The Insecurity of Security

Below is a Facebook post I made yesterday. I originally wrote the paragraph in an app on my phone as I drove around in my patrol car during the middle of the night last night. I called it "midnight philosophizing." Some of the language has been cleaned up as it apparently came off as haughty to some people because of my word choices. That was unintentional and those complainers made a bigger show of it than they probably ought to have. Nonetheless, I do want people to glean from what I posted and I thought my pontification was profound enough to share:

Polemical dogma is a sign of insecurity and not truly trust in the soundness of one's own beliefs. Rabid defense betrays resolve. It's like being secure enough with one's possessions to be willing to let them go, whereas locking them in a safe, while protecting, shows a person's insecurity in their materialism. For conversational progress to be made toward a peaceable coexistence with competing worldviews, or for our positions to be considered in the marketplace of ideas, we need humility, not hubris and entrenchment behind our views. We need to listen if we are to be listened to and shown viable. It is one thing to have a sincere belief and another to use it as a club to delegitimize an opponent's views. I know I am sometimes guilty of rambling before listening.

Some people conflated my statement with positing a truth claim, which it was not. Surely, anyone who is secure in their beliefs will believe them true in opposition to other views. I was not suggesting some egalitarian relative nature between two or more perceived truths in dialogue. My point was more about how to dialogue without becoming obnoxious or overbearing, which actually pushes people away. I was also noting how many times, those most insecure in their beliefs (or at least their presentation of those beliefs), are the ones who fight too hard. They are the one's giving way to circular argumentation, ad hominem attacks, strawmen, red herrings, and a slew of other logical fallacies. They are the one's dogmatically asserting a sense of arrogance, while simultaneously calling a more reasoned presentation arrogant. They fall into the trap of confirmation bias because they need extra security. If we are secure enough in our beliefs, we won't fight so hard because we trust that the views stand on their own merit. 

Just so I am transparent, I have been in the "fight too hard" camp before. I know that I have pushed my views too hard and have legitimately come off as pompous and self-assured. Sometimes real self-assuredness can come off as cocky, but more often than not, it is insecurity (and sometimes naivety) that drives poor presentation within debates and proclamations. It is not monolithic.    

As to those who fight too hard, think of it this way... If I hold a rope tightly, I won't let go and fall. I trust in my grip on the rope. But, if I hold it too tightly, because of my fear of falling, the rope will cut into my skin, lacerating and burning it. I am more likely then to let go because of injury. I did not trust my grip or the rope. In this respect, I never really had a secure belief. Instead of having a dogma, doctrine, or belief, these things had me. Such insecurity will not yield to productive conversations and I will either push people away or I will end up letting go and falling into some real relative sense of deconstruction. 

Hold onto the truth, but not so tightly that you lose love, compassion, empathy, self-control, and a congenial demeanor. These are the traits of security in one's beliefs. That does not, however, mean letting go of the truth, because if you are secure in it, you won't. ;) 

Blessings.