No Blind Belief

I remember once reading a blog written by a Chinese student in America. The essay is about his experience on an interview to an American company. During the interview he was asked about who his personal hero was, and the answer he gave was “Martin Luther King”. Immediately one of the interviewers asked:”What do you think about his scandal with a white prostitute before the day he was assassinated? ” It’s not difficult to imagine how he felt when hearing such a question. Perhaps he refused to believe Martin Luther King did such thing. More likely was that he just sat there, speechless because he had never ever heard of that before.

I could understand how it feels, especially how Chinese students feel, when they are told about the negative sides of the person who you admire for a long time. The perfect image suddenly collapses, leaving you confused.

Chinese people tend to draw a distinct line between “the good guys” and “the bad guys”. In China when people say someone belongs to the “good”, most time it means he is always “good”, and “good” in everything------he never made any mistakes, and perhaps never will. If someone is regarded as “bad”, people tend to doubt everything about him and he may never get a chance to be right, even when he does make right decisions. If this kind of belief on “good” and “bad” can last long enough, it may later become blind cult of personality and will possibly result in even more serious problems.

The psychology basis of such judgment is quite simple--- We human beings use what happened before (experience) to predict what will happen (the future result).  When someone made a wise decision for the first time, he might just be regarded as “smart” and no one was going follow him blindly. Yet, after that, whenever he made a right decision, people would unconsciously hint to themselves “he is right again”. After an enough long period, if he still makes no mistakes in his judgment, people slowly begin to think he will always be right, in whatever field. The reason is simple--- based on the experience (He never made mistakes ), the prediction can only be “he will never make mistakes”. Such prediction results in the situation I mentioned at the beginning of the blog, because Martin Luther King did all the things in defending human rights, people tend to think he will always be right and right in everything.

One example I can give is the Culture Revolution, during which time people regarded ignorance as the highest virtue, because Chairman Mao said “Knowledge is the tool for the Capitalism to rule Communism”. With such a belief, people burned their books and treated those who were educated as heretics.

It seems to be inconceivable today how ignorance could be regarded as a virtue. The reason was simple------“Because Chairman Mao said so”. Why did people believe in him so much? The reason is, before the Culture Revolution, almost every decision made by Mao Zedong was right and almost every one of those people who doubted him turned out to be wrong. After a long-time repetition of such situations, people came to the conclusion--- Follow what he says, and you will never go wrong. So the trust in him slowly became blind belief in whatever he said and did, which meant people lost their own judgment.

How to prevent such thing from happening? I think the best solution is to make judgment in an objective perspective and doubt everything. No one in this world is perfect so do not become superstitious about anyone. Don’t just form your opinion on what happened before. Instead, base your thoughts on what happens now.