Just Because You Think It, Doesn’t Mean It’s True

When Seneca the Younger was accused of adultery with the emperor’s niece, he was banished to Corsica. Seneca’s exile caused his mother, Helvia, tremendous grief; she had difficulties coping with her son’s absence. So, he wrote her several letters in which he consoled her, convincing her that even though he had been exiled, he wasn’t confined intellectually and spiritually.

In one of his letters, he emphasized that his mother’s grief is based on inaccurate thinking about exile. Being banished from Rome and sent to a remote place seemed to appear as a dreadful punishment, including loneliness and misery, while residing in some awful, faraway location. Seneca argued, however, that most people are carried away by the first appearance of things. In reality, exile isn’t so bad. It’s just a matter of changing from one place to another. It’s not as terrible as many people’s thoughts make it out to be (7).

Moreover, his residence in Corsica allowed Seneca to write, reflect, and meet many new people. So, Helvia’s perception of her son’s fate did not match reality. First, life in Corsica was much better than she imagined. Second, the idea that ‘exile’ is an unfortunate event wasn’t accurate either. No matter how convincing they are, thoughts aren’t necessarily facts, and Seneca was aware of this. Moreover, our thoughts are often delusional, irrational, and downright nonsensical.

Yet, we often misinterpret ‘thought’ as ‘truth.’ This misinterpretation can be dangerous, not only to ourselves but to others as well. Our thoughts can drive us mad, creating terrible stories about reality without much actual proof. Or they torment us by being overly judgmental of ourselves and others. And when large groups of people embrace an irrational, false idea as ‘truth,’ leading to collective hatred and hostility, things could become pretty vicious. Even though it’s a master at posing as ‘truth,’ a thought is a thought. And just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

What are ‘thoughts?’ Do thoughts represent the truth about the outside world? Where do they come from? There have been many thinkers who were concerned about the thing they’re good at, which is thinking. A prominent historical, religious, and philosophical figure in the field of “thought” is the Buddha, who recognized the impermanence of thoughts: they come and go and change all the time.

And then we have Immanuel Kant, who believed that thoughts are a way for the mind to process and categorize the world around us; they are constructs of the mind regarding the external world based on what our senses perceive, not the complete representations of it. Cognitive neuroscientists describe thoughts as consequences of complex neural networks within the brain. Every thought, perception, or memory we experience results from millions of neurons exchanging electrical and chemical signals in complex patterns.

So, from a scientific perspective, thoughts are the result of processes taking place in our brains. But science doesn’t disprove the observation that thoughts aren’t perfect mirrors of the outside world. They are, so it seems, imperfect constructs often distorted by our subjective experiences. Even though our thinking capacity has proved helpful regarding our species’ survival, thoughts are not always to be taken at face value. An example from Buddhism is the illusory perception of the ‘self,’ as the Buddhists deny that there’s such a thing as a central unchanging self.

Thus, the self is just an idea, a perception, and a way for the mind to understand what it cannot grasp. Thoughts can be deceiving. They often try to represent the truth, even when they suggest absolute nonsense. There are many ways in which we let our thoughts fool us, which we’ll explore briefly.

A prevalent way of deceiving thought is the phenomenon of overgeneralization. Our minds tend to draw conclusions from a single event (or multiple events) and apply that conclusion to cases where it doesn’t apply. For example, someone gets attacked and bitten by a dog for no reason, and then that person believes all dogs attack (and bite) humans for no reason. This person is overgeneralizing: the idea that all dogs attack and bite humans for no reason is incorrect, as not all dogs behave in the same manner as the one this individual experienced.

But due to the severity of the event, this perception is strong and persisting; it’s a thought that misinforms and, therefore, cannot be trusted. When, in our minds, one or some events become representative of the whole, we’re dealing with a distorted perception of the world. Similarly, there are cognitive biases, in which people cloud their judgments and perceptions because of flawed thinking.

An example of a cognitive bias is the ‘conservatism bias,’ which refers to the human tendency ‘of not updating their beliefs’ properly when presented with new information, as they weigh the old information much heavier, even when it turns out to be inaccurate. We often see this happen with people carrying particular political or religious views; these views may have generated a sense of clarity and security, and thus they are willing to defend these views as they’ve become attached to them.

So, when confronted with new evidence that debunks their current beliefs, they tend to discard or devalue that information. Of course, it’s frustrating for those who seek to share accurate information to run into the sheer irrationality of people with cognitive biases, which are, unfortunately, all too human and show how untrustworthy our thoughts can be.

Another unreliable mode of thinking is what we could call ‘catastrophizing.’ Most people have what seems like a hysterical sub-personality that roams in their heads and appears in certain situations. The ‘catastrophizer’ loves to draw information from cognitive biases and overgeneralization; everything is permitted as long as it fuels the idea that one’s circumstances are terrible and that we’re headed toward a catastrophe. If necessary, the catastrophizer fantasizes, building terrifying stories on previous experiences and observations.

For example, someone’s girlfriend is attending a party without him. Then, on the internet, he looks up a video by a self-proclaimed dating expert discussing the chances of a girlfriend cheating at a party. Not long afterward, the poor man lies in bed, despairing and furious, as his inner catastrophizer has convinced him that she’s cheating. Even though there could be a possibility that she’s cheating, there’s no proof she is. The catastrophizer has constructed a narrative presenting it as ‘true,’ even though it’s nothing more than fantasy.

But the suffering that follows is real. As the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote: “We suffer more in our imagination than in reality.” Sometimes, the mind goes a step further by creating complete delusions. The mind is very good at generating a false reality that appears real. We just have to look at the contents of our dreams and how convincing these creations of the mind can be.

Also, certain substances can induce hallucinations in the mind, which some people claim to be different realms of reality. And, of course, there are forms of mental illness like schizophrenia that cause people to distort their perceptions of reality, for example, by hearing voices that cannot be heard by anyone else. Unless such people are indeed connected to a world others cannot see, it seems that the mind can severely distort reality.

If thoughts are not accurate reflections of reality but merely our constructed interpretations of it, we must exercise caution in accepting them as truths. However, in many cases, people are eager to take certain thoughts as truth, especially when this truth aligns with their own perceptions. And before we know it, people with similar but inaccurate convictions of reality clamp together, forming an echo chamber that increases the magnitude of these convictions.

When thought goes wrong, it can become dangerous, not just to ourselves but also to others. On a personal level, thoughts can make us miserable. From a Buddhist perspective, nothing precedes the mind. And the Stoics would agree that how we think influences how we feel. But this also works on a group level.

And when the media provides us with continual disinformation and strong judgment that arouses hatred and fear in people, then potentially dangerous situations arise. These situations may include violence and even mass murder, as history teaches us how manufacturing thought on a mass scale can mobilize millions.

On the other hand, the denial of conventional knowledge and information can also go to extremes. Take, for example, the idea that the Earth is flat. Science has proven again and again that the Earth is not flat. But a group of people is convinced that it is and that the scientific sources claiming otherwise are part of a giant conspiracy.

A group of people sharing the same convictions while isolating themselves from others strengthens these convictions. They operate from an echo chamber, which implies a strong tendency not to accept information from the enemy’s side that doesn’t confirm or challenge the ideas of the ingroup. Even though part of a greater movement of anti-intellectualism, the Flat-Earth Society itself doesn’t seem to be a threat.

But history shows cases in which certain beliefs have led to great tragedies. Take, for example, the not-so-intellectual Witch trials that arose from the erroneous beliefs that those executed were ‘witches’ that wielded supernatural powers causing harm and made pacts with the devil. Another example has been the persistent conviction that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, widely spread among mainstream media, leading to a bloody invasion, and turned out to be wrong.

We also see the dangers of various instances of state propaganda that have mobilized large groups to go to war, fighting for causes based on lies and delusion. And how dangerous is it when people refuse to change behaviors that have been scientifically proven to destroy the planet and simply dismiss the consequences as a ‘hoax?’

There’s another (perhaps even more interesting) way of looking at how our thinking may be incorrect. As opposed to misinformation, falsehood lies in our judgments of things. Probably, the most well-known form of judgment is the dichotomy of good and bad. Most of us do it: we categorize things as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

But if we consider something ‘good,’ does that mean it’s true? In the same way, if we consider something ‘bad,’ does that mean it’s truly bad? The mind creates these judgments; therefore, they’re subjective, based on how the mind perceives things. However, how we judge the world is more complicated than just ‘good’ and ‘bad.’

Humanity has used language to develop various value judgments: from unfair to fantastic to horrible. But these value judgments highly depend on how we perceive things. So, we could label something ‘wonderful,’ but is that actually true? Judgments influence our mental states and our motivations to obtain or avoid something.

For example, we want to obtain an expensive watch if we judge it as desirable. Or, we avoid illness if we judge it as undesirable. But if, then, we cannot obtain the watch and instead contract cancer, we’ll be utterly miserable, as we didn’t get what we desired and obtained what we avoided. But what causes our emotional pain? The circumstances or how we think about those circumstances?

Here’s what Stoic philosopher Epictetus had to say about it, and I quote: What disturbs men’s minds is not events but their judgments on events: For instance, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates would have thought it so. No, the only dreadful thing about it is men’s judgement that it is dreadful. And so when we are hindered, or disturbed, or distressed, let us never lay the blame on others, but on ourselves, that is, on our own judgements. End quote.

Epictetus challenges our thoughts, particularly about something significant as death. Most people probably perceive death as something bad, negative, or terrible. But are these judgments true? Isn’t death just a natural occurrence, like birth, inherent to being human? So, also, in the realm of judgment, our thoughts may be deceiving. Just because you think something is ‘beautiful,’ is it really?

Now we realize that our thoughts are not synonymous with truth (often far from it), we might begin not to take them so seriously. Usually, they’re not only incorrect but also, in many cases, excessive creations of a mind that refuses to stop thinking. Thank you for watching.