“If you can only explain the arguments of the other side because they’re mad or dangerous or dumb, the problem is with you.” — Turi Munthe

On yesterday’s show, the psychiatrist Sally Satel described how Americans imagine their own mental condition differently, depending on their politics and age. Which is a nice segue for today’s conversation with the Anglo-French journalist turned media entrepreneur Turi Munthe. It’s not just in our mental health self-evaluation, Munthe argues, that we hallucinate reality. Indeed, the French born Munthe often sounds like one of his post-structuralist compatriots in his defiantly slippery notion of ontological reality.

In Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs, Munthe argues that our deepest convictions turn out to be shaped by genetics, brain shape and sometimes even by the agricultural legacy of our distant ancestors. Left and right thinkers, Munthe argues, are different political phenotypes — each hallucinating their own version of reality.

Total relativism, then — the full French post-structuralist monty? Not quite. Here’s where Munthe’s Englishness kicks in. Following the Anglo-Russian philosopher Isaiah Berlin, Munthe insists pluralism and relativism are different. So Turi Munthe doesn’t just think what he thinks because of his English or French origins. Borrowing from the cognitive scientists Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier, Munthe defines thinking as a “contact sport”. So, for example, believing that the 2020 election was stolen is what Munthe calls a social commitment, because humans would rather be wrong together than right alone.

Speaking of convenient segues, Munthe’s thoughts on thinking set the scene for next Tuesday’s conversation with Emily Eakin, author of The Frenchmen. It’s her history of seductive post-structuralists like Foucault, Derrida and Lacan who corrupted a whole generation of literary American Ivy Leaguers (including Eakin) into hallucinating reality.

Five Takeaways

• Pluralism Is Not Relativism. Berlin's distinction: that Charles Windsor is king is a fact; whether you like it is where opinion begins. Genetics alone accounts for perhaps half of political persuasion.

• Different Political Phenotypes. Right-leaners startle more readily at loud noises; left-leaners have a larger anterior cingulate cortex — the hair-splitting organ. That's why academia leans left.

• Thinking as a Contact Sport. Reason didn't evolve for Rodin-style solitude but for argument — to convince you to hunt the buffalo, I need reasons that look objective to you. The people we disagree with are the condition of good thinking.

• Wrong Together Rather Than Right Alone. The stolen-election faith is a social commitment, not a factual claim. Cross-party marriage outrage: 4% in the 1950s, 45% today.

• The Problem Is With You. Munthe assumed gun-rights supporters were bought, dumb, or corrupt — until he did the work. If you can only explain the other side as mad or dumb, the problem is with you.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy Why We Think What We Think: penguin.co.uk/books/458410/why-we-think-what-we-think-by-munthe-turi/9781529153842

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: why left and right imagine mental health differently
00:02:21 Is this extreme relativism?
00:02:40 Isaiah Berlin: pluralism is not relativism
00:04:57 Why generations think differently
00:05:45 Political phenotypes: the startle reflexes of left and right
00:07:10 A Sufi guru, a Jewish mother, and a teenage atheist
00:10:30 Parlia and the encyclopedia of opinion
00:12:46 Against Plato: opinion, truth, and the cave
00:13:51 We all hallucinate our own version of reality
00:14:45 Affective polarization: from 4% to 45%
00:16:20 Sperber and Mercier: reasoning as a collective sport
00:17:30 Thinking as a contact sport
00:20:22 Pluralist, not relativist
00:22:37 Sticking to your guns without getting them out
00:23:05 Hobbes, Locke, and Rose McDermott
00:24:56 January 6 and the White House website
00:26:06 Wrong together rather than right alone
00:28:57 What Munthe changed his mind about: gun rights
00:30:55 Let's Agree on Poland
00:33:03 Why society needs both left and right
00:34:53 No middle ground on slavery or the Holocaust
00:35:58 Journalism: problem or solution?
00:38:36 Why academia leans left: the anterior cingulate cortex
00:41:35 When the facts change: can we change our minds?
00:43:08 Thinking as a contact sport, reprised