The Grand Illusion
One aspect of comments by readers about both books and politics is the number of false/inaccurate generalizations that crop up, often because the commenter is extrapolating from too few examples.
If one takes Lerris or Creslin from the Recluce Saga, for example, they’re both woefully ignorant of the greater world, not because they’re stupid, but because they grow up in a restricted and sheltered environment. On the other hand, Cerryl has to claw his way to power from the bottom of society and has very few illusions about people.
Yet I’ve seen comments that imply all my main characters are “almost criminally ignorant” or that they’re all “ruthless” or excessively competent.
The same sorts of ignorant generalizations also show up in the political arena, where so many rightwing politicians portray immigrants as criminals – yet study and after study has shown that the percentage of criminals among legal and illegal immigrants is far lower than the percentage of criminals in the overall U.S. population.
My wife the university professor gets extremely irritated about the generalizations that that universities are hotbeds of liberalism and university professors are all liberals, perhaps because she teaches in a university that’s anything but liberal in a state where almost all colleges and universities are predominantly and extremely conservative. While she’s a moderate Democrat, she’s so outnumbered by conservatives on both the campus and in the town that she rarely offers political opinions (nor do I, except on paper).
Yet I must admit that she’s also generalizing from experience, because, perhaps by chance, most of the ten colleges and universities where she has taught for over fifty years tended to be conservative, if not very conservative. Yet study after study has shown that while “liberal” professors make up either the plurality or a slight majority of university/college professors, depending on the study and data, moderates and conservatives comprise the rest, which statistically reveals that far from all college professors are liberals. Except for the 75 so-called “elite” colleges and universities, especially in New England, where conservative professors are indeed rare.
Yet people continue to draw generalizations from their own experiences, even though most people’s experience in many areas isn’t broad enough to be accurate, at the same time ignoring more representative statistical findings that conflict with their feelings and personal experience.
Anthropologists say that humans are “tuned” to be able to deal with individuals in a group of less than a hundred. Anyone outside that group is dealt with using a best guess based on the cues that are present. Like a stereotype.
But it’s a guess, and should be used as a guideline to be modified. The problem is that some people expect reality to conform to their expectations and guesses.
Ah Dunbar’s Number strikes again…. I use this all the time in my intro classes for Anthropology. It’s an interesting hypothesis and there is some corroborating evidence that looks “test-like” in the right light… But I’m not sure it applies to tribalism. It’s more a “this is how many people you can actually see as people” but doesn’t really have anything to do with whether those people all share anything. Your Dunbar # of people could all have the same opinions about things or they could be widely varied… I’m sure there will be shared things on some axes but I don’t know if anyone has tried to figure out if those axes usually fall into specific categories…
Thanks RRCRrea. But who said anything about tribalism? The topic was ignorant generalizations?
Just look up the definition of tribalism. It’s inherent that humans gather, and certain traits do emerge. It’s false to think everyone in the group would, or should think the same. RRCRrea could be cautioning us, not to over reach, and apply labels to a group, or tribe if you will, as being ignorant. Ignorant generalizations not only smear others, but can show a certain ignorance on our parts, through labeling, and other devicive means.
“… comments that imply all my main characters are “almost criminally ignorant” or that they’re all “ruthless” or excessively competent.”
From extreme to extreme: but not unexpected because readers do only and can only base their opinions on their interpretation of an author’s sequence of words.
“ … Yet people continue to draw generalizations from their own experiences, even though most people’s experience in many areas isn’t broad enough to be accurate, at the same time ignoring more representative statistical findings that conflict with their feelings and personal experience.”
I submit that drawing from one´s own experience is still the safest way to assess something, but only if one knows one´s own limitations. Then we should limit our generalizations to our areas of experience. Maybe friendly blogs are an exception because they offer a learning experience?
Some readers give up and use critic`s lines of description and that choice is also limited by their own experience and understanding of the communication. I usually come back and re-read something I do not comprehend, or I disagree with, a day later: when (an unfortunately significant number of times) it can all suddenly make sense. I wonder how many readers have the time or bother to do this.
I understand why this is irritating to people who produce something after hard work and then get (usually unasked for) criticism. This should be expected because if one tries to predict the next action of even the closest and most stable of friends there is at times an unexpected result even if only in energy level of the expected action. So people cannot really tell what someone else is thinking or even feeling and we do get our generalizations wrong — according to the other people who analyze the communication or information.
Alyakal worked out as a teen not only that hard work is necessary to bring any talent to fruition but he was unusual as a child because he started to apply his insight at once. Contrast that to Lerris who could not get to understand his “boredom” until later in life. From my experience Alyakal is unusual; yet most “successful” people who do not fit “generalizations” have such a childhood pattern. The rest of us deal with boredom and find out who and what we are later, or, too late.
None of us like to be assessed by generalizations. But then how else are we to determine our security and modify our intended actions if we do not generalize our sensory inputs from our environment?