Paranoid Reading And Close-Mindedness

(1) The Idea: Paranoid Reading and The Root Cause of Close-mindedness

I recently finished one of those books everyone wants to say they’ve read but have never bothered to start. It was The Righteous Mind by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

The book was a tour de force of insightful research and engaging writing. Among some of the great lessons, the one that stood out to me the most was:

When it comes down to making moral judgements, emotions come first while rational arguments only show up later to provide justifications in hindsight.

During my third year in University, I took a Philosophy of Ethics elective and figured that we were all wasting our time during discussions. No matter how intricate the theory is or how rational the moral arguments are, we’d still end up in a dead end in search of logical moral TRUTHS.

So whenever one of these in-class discussions starts to get on my nerves, I’ll stand up, flip the table (metaphorically, of course), slam a beer bottle on the table (again, metaphorically) and delegate all of my moral philosophy to that bearded man in the clouds.

The point here is that most of our judgements, no matter how righteous and coherent they sound, are still a mixture of intuition and rhetoric. So whenever we set out to find objective, quantifiable moral truths, donkey ears will start to grow on our heads as we fail to find a cold, rational moral judgement without any emotion.

And with this insight in mind, let’s get to this week’s main idea: Paranoid Reading.

What Is Paranoid Reading?

In 1996, Little Brown published one of those “love it or hate it” novels: Infinite Jest.

I arrived late to the party and started reading it around the late 2010s, but gave up 2/3 of the way through and never thought about that book again.

Then a conversation about the book with my manager at the bookshop back in 2019 made me realise the absolute division between people who swore by the book and those who decried it. People either described it as a masterpiece of the century or issued warnings like: “If you see this book on a guy’s nightstand, run.”

I was confused because I couldn’t find any review of the book that wasn’t tinted by either extreme.

This division was so deep that even literary critics had a hard time making up their minds. Amy Hungerford, in her piece On Refusing to Reading in The Chronicles of Higher Education openly endorsed the practice of NOT READING David Foster Wallace’s works as a valid form of critiquing the book.

This article blew my mind and ran contrary to everything I knew about literary criticism. Isn’t it the point to engage with a piece of literature in good faith and then devise an educated judgment afterwards? How is it possible that we can now critique something without ever engaging with it?

When I went to university, this confusion only ran deeper. I routinely found people who pre-judged writers and denounced them before reading any of their works. And when I turned my attention to internet forums, I noticed that the same pattern persisted. People always pre-judge ideas before hearing the full extent of what they entail.

Note that this happens on both sides of the political aisle. The left and right both have plenty of arrows in their quivers to shoot down the first sign of a different pinion.

Bringing back Haidt’s insight from earlier, there’s only one explanation for this brand of “shooting people down before hearing their arguments”. This is yet another example of us using our moral intuitions to justify an argument in hindsight.

And after a while, this mode of engaging with different opinions starts to closely resemble paranoia.

Are You A Paranoid Reader?

As much as I’d like to be the one who invented Paranoid Reading, I’m far from the first one to put words to this phenomenon.

I’d like to mention two writers who helped me make sense of this strange mode of reading. One of them is the literary scholar Eve Sedgwick in her essay: Paranoid and Reparative Reading and the other one is Richard Hofstadter in his 1964 essay: The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

I’ve linked both of the essays above but I wouldn’t recommend you to read them. They are highly academic (especially Sedgwick’s writing as it is deeply rooted in Queer theory and psychoanalysis) and will require pages of footnotes to gloss over. So here’s my best attempt to summarise their main ideas.

Essentially, five characteristics of Paranoid Reading cause us to leap to disagreement without hearing the other side out. So, take some time to match your reading habits to each of these descriptions and give yourself a score out of 5:

1: A Paranoid Reader Has An Absolute Enemy. This one’s pretty simple to explain but still requires nuance. To engage with Paranoid Reading you have to stand in opposition to something. Are you opposed to a certain industry, a guru, a political party or a host of ideas? And do you inadvertently deem them as enemies and define yourself against them? (I’m not the kind of person to xxx). If you do, give yourself a point.

2: A Paranoid Reader Anticipates Bad Surprises. Whenever you engage with information from the enemy’s camp, do you find yourself anticipating conclusions before engaging in good faith? In this sense, Paranoid readers are always living in the future lest something bad happens to them since it’s easier to look out for danger before it happens. Give yourself another point if you anticipate bad surprises.

3: A Paranoid Reader Already Has Their Minds Made Up. As a consequence, Paranoid Readers have firm opinions that cannot be altered no matter how cogent the argument from the other side is. Give yourself another point if you’re someone who doesn’t easily change their minds.

4: A Paranoid Reader Hates Anomalies. Opinions are not merely opinions, they are usually symptoms of a larger worldview. Paranoid Readers in this case will sometimes sacrifice sound arguments and data in favour of maintaining the consistency of their ideas. They dislike counterarguments and nuance because they are usually incompatible with a clear and simplistic worldview. If your ideas are easily challenged, give yourself another point.

5: A Paranoid Reader Loves Exposing Their Enemies. One of the best ways to avoid challenging our beliefs is to expose someone else’s dogma. So Paranoid Readers are experts in debunking the flaws of the other side’s logic and arguments. There is always something to EXPOSE from the other side. If you’re into fierce debates, give yourself this last point.

So add up all your points… Are you a Paranoid Reader?

Now, View The World Through This Lens.

Put the notebook away. You’ve done enough self-examination so let’s turn our attention to some examples of Paranoid Reading.

For example, Christmas Dinners are hotspots for Paranoid Readers. Why does Uncle George refuse your perspective no matter how hard you try to convince him? Or why is Jenny (who just returned home from college) so set on demonizing anyone who dares to listen to Joe Rogan?

You can bring to mind so many people, including yourself (and myself), who engage in these logical leaps. And if we zoom out and take a look at our political landscape, all of a sudden a lot of things will start to make sense.

In a certain way, we are all paranoid readers but refuse to acknowledge it. This sneaky mechanism is ingenious and it’s designed to keep us stuck in our set opinions and worldviews. And if we ever want to re-engage in civil and open discussions, we have to start paying attention to these traps of the mind.

Also, despite the length of this issue, we’re only scratching the surface. In future issues, we’ll definitely return to this idea and suggest strategies for counteracting this force of close-mindedness. But for now, here are some journaling prompts for you.

(2) The Prompts:

1: Which of the five characteristics of Paranoid Reading do I embody and how might this limit my worldview? We all engage in at least one of these characteristics. Figure out what they are without judging yourself or overcorrecting. Acknowledge that the human mind thrives off of biases and start noticing these traits in your friends, your family and the larger political discussion.

2: Go explore a source you would normally disagree with, and describe how it makes you feel. Anger? Frustration? Are you leaping to conclusions while calling them stupid? Take a deep breath and turn inward: why does it anger you and is it possible that the other side also has a valid perspective? Can you attempt to disagree but still see some validity in the other side’s arguments?