In a number of threads, various Dopers have decried the attitude in society that “feelings trump facts;” whereby if someone *feels *that X or Y is true, then that’s good enough for them, to the point of trumping facts that prove that X or Y is *not *true.
One Doper blamed it on education - or the lack of it - but I doubt that is the real issue. This seems to be more of a cultural thing than an academic/educational thing, and I think that Hollywood, entertainment/talk shows, Oprah-type speakers, and certain fiction genres are significantly responsible in the way that they pushed a “Follow your feelings!” attitude and moral in their movies/motivational speeches/books - where the hero or heroine stubbornly pursues what he or she wants, or feels, and triumphs in the end. Some fiction features the protagonist defying everyone who tells him or her that he or she is wrong, and he or she of course is the winner in the end. Elsewhere there has also been plenty of popular advice or Dear Abby-type stuff in the past decades about “Follow your gut feeling/trust your intuition/go by your heart, not your head.”
I think also there has been an increase in “unhealthy sensitivity” over the past few decades, whereby people’s feelings are sacrosanct and to offend someone’s feelings is a grave offense, and hence with this increase in “I do not want to be offended” attitude, many people therefore do not want to be told that they are factually wrong, or have to confront that their feelings may be misguided. They want to feel right and justified. So people are less wiling to admit wrong.
We didn’t get anywhere. You can go back to Greek Philosophy to find people wondering why feelings are more important than facts. This is a basic psychological truth about the human animal. Feelings have much more influence in our decision-making than facts. This has always been true.
Instead of, “You’re wrong, stupid, and you shouldn’t even post here if you don’t know the single first fucking thing about the topic,” you can say, “Well, okay, I see where you might have gotten that idea, but it’s actually not true: here are a couple of references.”
You can simultaneously respect other people’s feelings and defend the truth.
Objectively feelings are more important than facts in dealing with people if you expect a successful result in getting them to like you. Witness the POTUS race as a prime example. How well did the more logical, “adult” candidates do vs the ones focused on validating the voters feeling about immigrants, Muslims etc?
it’s always been this way. Re the e OP’s query “How did we get here” name a point in the past that it was not this way…ever? Beyond this, arguing from “facts” has it’s own issues as the most learned and intellectually agile among us often disagree as to what constitutes a fact and what does not.
For a lot of situations, it simply doesn’t matter that there is an objective truth. All that matters is that people don’t accept the truth and will be unhappy if you keep harping about it. Massive unhappiness can create other problems–some a lot worse than the first problem. So sometimes it just isn’t worth it to be “right”. You just have to accept that people are irrational and can only be appealed to through emotion.
I frequent r/relationships on Reddit. Nine times out of 10, the objectively best solution is to dump the guy/girl that is driving the OP nuts. And yet, only giving this kind of prescription is rarely helpful. Because feelings. People are not robots. People form attachments whether they are “right” or “wrong”. Love is difficult to shake off. If it was that easy to break up with someone, no one would be in a relationship.
I think social media and the 24-hr news cycle contribute to this. When a candidate’s life plays out on-screen 24 hours a day, people will form opinions about everything. Lies are passed around as facts, and they move at lightning-speed to anywhere in the globe. That’s a lot different than the days when all voters had was the newspaper and their families/local friends.