Mass conviction rests on social group membership, not recalled arguments
Evidence
The most important element is undoubtedly one whose character is determined not by reason but by faith. But faith in whom, or in what? In particular in the social group to which he belongs, in so far as in a diffuse way it thinks as he does. The man of the people thinks that so many like-thinking people can’t be wrong, not so radically, as the man he is arguing against would like him to believe; he thinks that, while he himself, admittedly, is not able to uphold and develop his arguments as well as the opponent, in his group there is someone who could do this and could certainly argue better than the particular man he has against him; and he remembers, indeed, hearing expounded, discursively, coherently, in a way that left him convinced, the reasons behind his faith. He has no concrete memory of the reasons and could not repeat them, but he knows that reasons exist, because he has heard them expounded, and was convinced by them. The fact of having once suddenly seen the light and been convinced is the permanent reason for his reasons persisting, even if the arguments in its favour cannot be readily produced. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1220
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: Mechanism by which common sense is held: faith in one’s own group, with arguments delegated to unseen experts within it.
- DEEPTHINKING: Sits at the top tier — the whole architecture of how ideological adhesion works without rational recall is dense and counterintuitive.