ON CONVENTION AND CONSENSUS

THE FAILURES OF FREEDOM

In a world with a burgeoning importance of ideas like dissent and consent, is it not necessary to
cognize, question and dispirit the fallacies of the social order? These can range from simply
identifiable rumours, rigid dogmas and superstitions based on common sense and amateur
reasoning to complex arguments and analogies with woven outer layers which, though have a
semblance to logical coherence, yet are coverings on an internal grid of false beliefs which suffer
from dearth either of scientific validity, of factual consistency or of freedom from contradiction. All
this acknowledged, colossal should be the necessity of rooting out the provenance of such
misconceptions.

A CONCOCTION OF THE OLD AND THE NEW

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are two of
several modern methods of psychotherapy that are based on Cognitive Restructuring (CR) which is a
therapeutic process aimed at identifying and changing the illogical or maladaptive thoughts which
are taken to be responsible for behaviours comprising a psychological disorder. The underlying
assumption is that such thoughts are triggered because of, and have origins in, beliefs that are
irrational or simply untrue and are hence implicitly responsible for mental disorders.

These methods employ techniques that are traced back to the time of the Ancient Greek Stoics.
Socratic questioning is one such technique, it was developed by Socrates and used by him on his
students to enable them to critically examine their own ideas and thoughts and as well as those of
others, it allowed them to validate their beliefs by reaching contradictions through questioning and
self-questioning in a disciplined manner, thus it granted them the ability to acknowledge paradoxical
notions. Today Socratic questioning is used in psychotherapy to identify underlying negative and
illogical or irrational thoughts that affect the ailing patient and to challenge them by asking oneself a
series of questions which can help dismember the basis of such thoughts. Roughly this involves
interrogations revolving around the evidence supporting an idea, the alternatives to it, and the
consequences of clinging onto it.

To suggest the dextrous application of such a skill in our daily lives to reform our beliefs and to
develop the habit of sceptical cognition of each new perception would not be to pioneer anything
original but the challenges we face for this purpose always have been and are formidable and often
overwhelming which has never really allowed this practice to thrive.

From Plato's The Republic we know that Socrates was aware of these challenges, he blamed the
influence of popular opinions, common beliefs and generalisations on our minds for our inability to
apply logic. This was one of the reasons which led him to become a critic of democracy and though
he did acknowledge that education can improve the chances of conscious exercise of the volition of
the masses yet at the same time he firmly held that even the most highly educated lot can easily be
overcome by the streams of conventional thought. These might seem to be very subjective
contentions yet what Socrates observed about two and a half millennia ago are now called Social
Influences in Social Psychology. Other than the recognition of such phenomena by philosophers like
Kierkegaard or Nietzsche and by psychoanalysts like Freud or Jung, several experiments have been
conducted which have at least endorsed the existence of such influences. The most remarkable of
these were done in the mid-1950's by the Psychologist Solomon Asch and were termed the Asch
Conformity Experiments. The result of these studies explained how individuals in groups can yield to
conformity to the majority opinion even if it is erroneous while showing a significant decrease in
error when the same individuals were asked for their views in private. Asch did this by creating a
consensus on a false belief among the whole group using participants complicit to the plot.

Conclusively, a third of the participants' opinions gave in to the majority opinion because of what is
called Normative Social Influence i.e. the change in the behaviour of a person identified by the
desire to seek acceptance and avoid disapproval in a group by conforming to its norms.

CAN WE CHOOSE TO CHOOSE?

Perhaps it would seem banal and quixotic to say that the whole object of the idea of dissent is defied
without a flawless volitional approach to our opinions, but what if we were to know that volition
itself doesn't exist? Here we tread upon yet another debate where philosophy intertwines with the
scientific approach.

Being strictly in the neuroscientific realm we know from the Physiologist Benjamin Libet's
Electroencephalography (EEG) experiment that the inception of unconscious brain activities in the
motor cortex precedes the awareness of conscious decisions to perform such motor functions by
about 300 milliseconds. The implications of this landmark study and its extensions have emboldened
the contention that free will, a necessity in democracies and governments where tenets like
freedom and liberty are cherished and are central to their functioning, is an illusion. This view
implies that we are free to choose between the choices we are presented with but not to choose
what choices we would be presented with and therein lies the illusion; the choices are the yarns, the
unconscious is the spindle, yet we never chose the fibres for the yarn, we did not do the spinning,
and the mere feeling that we chose the dye for the yarn masks the fact that we had no conscious
role in its origination.

How then are the options for us to opt determined? A combination of chance events and chance
neurotransmission is one simple answer. But if it is all a game of possibilities then we can assume
that which thought or opinion, whether rational or irrational, good or evil, altruist or selfish will
become popular and pervasive cannot be known. What is known is the effect of such opinions,
irrespective of their essence, on the general public.

It is in the light of all these facts and judgements that we must question what should be popular,
what should be propagated, what should be hailed and what should be shunned.

AN EXPERIMENT

Let us conduct a simple experiment to see how popular opinion or ‘Doxa’, as the Greeks called it,
affects a person. Ask a person, any random person about his take on whether it is correct if two
adults based on mutual consent decide to indulge in sexual intercourse. Most likely the answer will
be ‘yes’. If the response is no then you’re either dealing with a person with strong religious beliefs or
someone with a genuinely unique logic behind their stand but to make our point let’s ignore the
people who give a negative response and stick with the yesses which are probably going to be the
majority. The next question should be why is consent so correct or important and why must it
always be obtained, and this is the momentous question that will show the lack of deep thought in
the person’s justification of consent because the response will be something along the lines of
“because it is their right to choose whatever they want to do with their life” or a personal counter
question like “Would you like to be told how to live your life?”. This is clearly common-sense based
sociology but regardless it reveals to us that the only justification the person has is that consent is
correct because it is the norm, the socially acceptable and the moral thing to do and because it
would deprive his/her freedom and he/she would never accept that but not because there is a
mature logic to it but because it is simply not ‘the way’. If consent or freedom is so important then
shouldn’t there be a profound web of reasoning embedded in every person who exercises it? These
days consent has come to play such an important role that we universally assume it to be necessarily
applicable everywhere. It is seen as a thumb rule. Anything devoid of consent will be by default seen
as wrong, immoral or invasive. This is where socialisation, which has also rooted from popular
opinions, has shaped the thought patterns and approach of the general mind.

CLOSING THE DEBATE

Conventions are the driving force of orthodox institutions and often become dogmas when a robust
consensus is built on such established assumptions. They are more malevolent than they are
benignant and precious care must be taken when using them for positive purposes as well. But the
object is not to learn to disagree or to create wide polarities, instead the same amount of care
should be availed for dissent as well. We fail to understand that it is not dissent that a democracy
should strive to obtain but rather it is the originality in dissent which proves to be a true virtue, a
relic which, if acquired, shall banish all demagogues.

Perpetuating an impartial, sceptical and when required incredulous demeanour towards all
conventions is a fair start, but foremost forget must we not to ask ourselves the question; What do
we already believe and why do we do so? And to answer this question I would simply quote a sage
whose quintessential work built the foundations of the Indian democracy. "A responsible person
must learn to unlearn what he has learned. A responsible person must have the courage to rethink
and change his thoughts." -Dr B. R. Ambedkar

P.S.

This is to acknowledge the people who made this article possible.

The person without whose help I could never have established the content of my work; Mr Sam
Harris, a cognitive neuroscientist but mostly notorious for his reputation as a champion of atheism
and free thought, his enlightening opinions have been crucial in influencing the decisions of my life.
Thanks, Mr Harris.

USEFUL SOURCES: (1) ‘The Republic’; Book 6 by Plato

(2) ‘Free Will’; The Unconscious Origins of the Will by Sam Harris

(3) ‘Effects of Group Pressure Upon the Modification and Distortion of

Judgments’, 1952 Edition by Solomon Asch in ‘Readings in Social Psychology’-2nd Edition-G. E.
Swanson, T. M. Newcomb & E. L. Hartley.