“Who do you say I am?” Jesus asked. Apparently, the teacher thought what his disciples personally believed was more important than what other people said. There is a difference between simply repeating what the crowd said and learning what Peter and the rest had come to understand. The first represents the “cognitive ease” bias, in which anything, repeated often enough, is easily interpreted as the truth. The second is more difficult: struggling to find the truth amidst noise and propaganda, alternative facts and pre-emptive lies. Many said Jesus was a blasphemer, but some knew him as the son of God.
In my college days, we learned to question whether someone really knew what they were talking about, to be aware that many only “parrot” what they’ve heard. It’s easy to repeat someone else’s opinion, as if it is our own. The problem begins when the opinion we repeat is something we want to believe and therefore accept as the truth, not something we’ve thought about and determined to be true. Parrots can only mimic what they hear, not understand it. And many of the opinions we hear are nothing more than parrot-like replays of allegations or claims, not necessarily based on all the facts, much less logic or wisdom. While it’s hard to question our beliefs, in the words of Yoda, “do this we must.”
Parroting a popular opinion is like using a word without understanding its definition, or worse, inventing a new definition to suit what we believe the word means. Words have specific meanings, regardless of how we choose to use them. Nevertheless, it is well documented that a term, even an invented word, used often enough, will be recognized as part of reality. Many will conclude that because they have heard something frequently, it must be true. Advertisements repeat the name of the advertiser multiple times even as the ad itself is repeated throughout the day. Incumbent candidates have an 80 percent chance of winning, mainly because of name recognition. Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” If you want a concept to become accepted, get it into the public mind early and repeat it often.
In the internet era, Churchill’s notion that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” has taken on super powers. The founders of most modern nation-states could not have anticipated the speed or intensity of memes and slogans entering public consciousness. Even poorly thought-out chants and placards have become accepted as real political positions, regardless of whether anyone has proposed legislation based on them. “Defund the Police” comes to mind. I mention this because it’s probably one of the worst slogans I’ve heard in recent times. A well-thought-out proposal simply doesn’t have the same impact as a three-word catch phrase. Besides, short slogans are easy to repeat and therefore easy to remember and therefore easier to mistake for the truth. Broadcasters do us no favors when they replay these soundbites, keeping us focused on the controversy rather than critical thinking. “Ali versus Frazier” taunts and jibes sell. And it’s easier to believe politics is more like rooting for the home team than searching for the best ideas, no matter which party proposes them.
As a professor, I saw first-hand the negative effects of parroting an opinion. I witnessed colleagues being accused of “not explaining things” or being branded with being unfair – “nobody can get an A in his course” – regardless of the truth. Often these claims originated years before, when a disgruntled student or two began a whisper campaign against a professor who wouldn’t give them the grade they felt they “deserved.” Then, the same comments began to be repeated verbatim, and new students would enter the class prejudging the professor, who hardly had a chance to prove these opinions wrong. Prejudice like this is often impossible to undo.
Pre-digested thoughts take on an air of truth. Many people can easily conclude, “These opinions must be right. Why else would I be hearing them so often?” We must keep in mind that received “wisdom” is not necessarily based on facts. A philosophy professor colleague of mine was fond of saying, “just because someone says a thing is true, doesn’t make it so.” For hundreds of years, women were said to have a certain “place,” to be incapable of certain roles in society. Likewise, persons of color were said to be inferior, unfit to own property, only fit to be property. These kinds of claims were repeated, accepted, and passed on. Many grasped at straws to justify their parroted beliefs, because they “had to be true.” Yet, they were not true. They were only prejudicial – a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that worked as hard as any chains to keep the accused from proving them wrong and freeing themselves.
God help us when we parrot what we’ve heard, indifferent to the possibility that we may be wrong, or that we may be perpetuating others’ opinions regardless of their truth or falsehood. We need to resist the temptation to parrot what others have said in order to make ourselves look good or sound good. Perhaps we should give the other person a chance instead. We ought to question our biases, assumptions, and hasty generalizations. And we should double-check our sources. Most of all, we need to think before we become parrots.
MurrayWorks 