Worldviews 101, Part 2

So, what happens when Type 1 people interact with Type 2 people? Does a calm, reasoned discussion of disparate ideas result in a final identification of the truth? Consider these facts:

Type 1 people are often committed to Biblical values, which they identify as objective, unchanging truths not amenable to compromise, dilution, or adjustment.
Type 2 people often view their commitments and beliefs as moral imperatives that are not only unavailable for debate or compromise, but are the embodiments of righteousness, so that to oppose them is not simply wrong but evil.

Type 1 people often enter helping professions, to add their energies to the repair of others damaged by the coarseness of life. Type 1 people often work the Midnight Missions, food banks, evangelization organizations, disaster relief efforts, and so on.

Type 2 people often work in institutions that can influence change on the front end through social engineering: law, politics, government, political action groups, and the media. Indeed, Type 2 people dominate the mainstream media, the universities, Hollywood, and the Democratic party. As a result, Type 2 people tend to control the information environment, with the result that on a large set of issues, only one viewpoint is permitted. (After all, if your belief is a moral imperative and opponents are therefore in favor of evil, you see it as your task to suppress them.)

The positions held by Type 2 people are thus described in ways that prohibit variance or contradiction:

• settled science
• the debate is over
• the only fair answer
• justice

Opponents (such as Type 1 people) are

• irrational
• inhumane
• beyond the pale
• extremists

And the labels of opprobrium and excoriation:

• racist
• sexist
• homophobic
• classist

Because Type 2 people view their beliefs as moral imperatives, they often become angry when anyone questions one of their positions even a little bit. You might have noticed the anger from a Type 2 person when someone criticized or took the politically incorrect view of

• global warming
• gay marriage
• Neo-Darwinian evolution
• abortion
• separation of church and state issues
• environmentalist issues

Type 2 intellectuals often want to impose their viewpoints on everyone in an authoritarian manner, which is why they seek positions of power (government, academe, media), and why they use the courts to prohibit opposing ideas. 

These facts explain why Type 2 people, who think of themselves as liberal and open, are willing to implement speech codes and persecute dissent--because openness does not extend to the expression of evil ideas.