Loyalty, Identity and Recognition: The Side Effect of Beliefs
Subscribe Today!
Everyone has beliefs that are part of their personal viewpoint. Identity and belief are often tied together, and people will die for their beliefs. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom discuss how beliefs affect our worldview, especially in today’s COVID-19 world. Tom talks about his experiences with other parents at his daughter’s schools and how their beliefs led many to oppose the mask mandates. Bill analyzes why people struggle with change and why our beliefs cause us to stop changing and growing. Listen in to Tom and Bill’s insights and see where you stand in these issues.
---
Watch the episode here
Loyalty, Identity and Recognition: The Side Effect of Beliefs
Bill, I'm very interested to talk with you. I probably could use a little support because I've had some challenging conversations with other parents at my daughter's elementary school. That showed me how hard it is to get people to move off their beliefs especially regarding COVID, mask-wearing, the vaccine. A lot of us in our country, regardless of which side of the issue you're on, are dealing with this.
This is the side effect of having a belief. The side effect is that I don't want to give it up. Human beings struggle with change because there's a part of our mind that says, “I want to grow. I want to learn. I want to do something new.” There's this other part of our mind that says, “I need a foot on the brake. I need to slow down. I'm not going to question that belief. I'm not going to change.” The unsettling part of this is that we get to choose when we want to stop changing and growing.
We get to say, “Enough is enough. I'm not going to change anymore. I'm going to stick with what I got. I'm going to enjoy my days. I'm going to move through life from this moment on.” This is a moment I had with my dad when he was about 83. From 83 to 90, he did not work on a computer. He says, “I'm not going to learn that. I'm not going to do it. It's too hard. It's too much. It's nice but I would rather go through my day this way.” There was fixing a bench, painting this thing or things he could do that he didn't have to think as much. He didn't have to get on the internet and deal with XYZ situation on a computer.
He stopped changing. Our beliefs will narrow us pretty quickly so that we are not open to an alternative point of view because it's too much work and upsetting to change the belief about gay marriage. To put something in front of us, some people go like, “Yeah,” or to change the belief about interracial marriage. That would have been back then but there are all kinds of challenges with that particular topic.
I picked some low-hanging fruit. One person can believe one thing and another person can believe another thing. The difficulty it is to have that narrative, it sounds like you ran into one of those buzzsaws with this parent. It sounds like it was one of those things that caused a little bit of a challenge because as you ran into this, the parent brought back that belief or whatever belief that they were bringing. They were like, “This is the belief and this is the way I'm dealing with this belief. Your belief or that belief, we shouldn't be going through this because my belief’s right.”
It was exactly that type of thing. It's interesting. Our entire school district and my city requires every student and teacher to wear masks in school. Our kids are all masked in school. As all those parents that are dropping their kids off, I'm talking like first graders, kindergarteners, second graders, that's the age level that I'm dealing with here. Our kids are all masked and going into school. All the parents who are not yet willing to let these kids walk to school by themselves were all there, waiting for the bell to ring and the kids to go in.
Three-quarters of the parents are masked in that situation. Even though I don't like to wear a mask myself, but my second grader is required to and I don't want to explain to her, “Daddy, why are you wearing a mask when I need to wear one?” I'm wearing a mask. Even on that level, it's important. You're also protecting each other as adults but there are parents that do not wear masks. He’s one of them. He's a very friendly guy. I've gotten to know him.
I like him until we talked about COVID, the vaccines and mask-wearing. It was shocking to me because he mentioned he works for a pharmaceutical company. He's trying to tell me that COVID isn't a real thing and it's not a health emergency. Eventually, it went down to the point of, “The mRNA vaccines change your DNA.” I almost lost it at that point. I'm like, “This is not going to end well.” Although, I tried to give him empathy to have a discussion about this. He is solidified in his beliefs.
There are two feelings that are tough that are fighting inside of him. It is angry and the feeling of scared. Scared is not about the virus as much. Scared is about having to shift his belief or the piece of evidence. A person gets scared by a thought. People scare themselves with thoughts. We know that. People say, “It's just the thought.” Your body can't tell the difference. If I start talking about the spider that's crawling up your shoulder now, your thought will cause you to turn even though you know it's a joke.
If I say, “You missed it. It went down your back,” your mind is trying to grapple with the truth, “Is it real? Is it imagining?” It's a funny thing that we're on a show about purchasing truth. By the way, spider cancel clear. There are no spiders there. We need to clear the thought to cancel it and then clear it. We want that narrative to end. As Napoleon Bonaparte would say, “People die for medals.” They die for the belief of recognition or respect. People die for the belief to win the medal. Even after they're dead, they're going like, “My parents will remember me and they'll get this medal about me.”
“They'll remember that I died because I was loyal to France, America, to this and that. They'll remember me because. I want to leave that legacy, that impression. I want my life to have meaning for that belief.” As soon as I go down that path, there are people that will fight over a product in a store to injure somebody else and even kill somebody else over a product. That's called product loyalty. “I love this product and there are only a few of them on the shelf. I'm willing to stand in line at an Apple store waiting.” That's loyalty and a belief.
I’m guilty of that one.
If you take in an Apple line waiting for the thing, and your parent has the belief about the vaccine, you can see the gripping of those beliefs. On the business side, it's a product piece. On the health side, it's the, “This is what I know. This is the information that I've been fed, spooned, whatever real or imagined.” I'm not saying that the people on the pro-vaccine side have not exaggerated, not necessarily the truth but their narrative about how bad it is to try to get people to say, “It may be dangerous.” A lot of times, the person's belief won't change until they have a firsthand experience of that. We were talking about one of our colleagues, as soon as he had a firsthand experience of COVID, he canceled all of his events.
He flipped from being someone who wasn't that worried about it and wasn't taking it as much of a serious health emergency. When he got COVID, it was the worst illness he'd ever battled in his life. Fortunately, he survived it. All of a sudden he's like, “We need to cancel our events. We're not going to have another event until after people can be vaccinated.”
He went right down, flopped over and stuff like that. The thing I feel exasperated about is it's not until there's that defining moment or picture or celebrity that is high enough on the food chain to make a difference. For AIDS, it was Rock Hudson and Magic Johnson. As soon as the two celebrities started fighting the battle, one died and one living, as soon as that started showing up. Why was the NBA's shut down so dramatic?
It’s because of what happened with Magic Johnson and AIDS. It was so dramatic, it's like, “We have experience here.” Mark Cuban's phone call at the floor, “The season has been canceled? There are no more live games?” As the owner, he's going like, “Huh?” The league just pulled the trigger on your team. “What the hell happened?” The reason why it was so dramatic is the experience from the past had already a belief experience around it of, “This is bad. We know what happened to us last time. We have a historical memory of that.” Tom, we have a picture of smallpox. That image is so dramatic.
That image is incredibly dramatic. It highlights the power of vaccines in a way that's very apparent. This is a website about the history of vaccines and it shows a picture of a boy who's vaccinated for smallpox and one that isn't and they both got smallpox. The vaccine didn't prevent the boy from getting smallpox but he got 2 or 3 pox on his body. Compared to the boy without the vaccine that is completely overwhelmed and devastated. You can't even count. There are thousands of pox on his body.
The thing about that picture is it'll scare a mother in a heartbeat that, “There's no question. My kid is going to be vaccinated.” We do not have that type of imprint for children to get vaccinated at the moment. It's not until somebody takes on the branding messaging of, “Here, all the children that have died and this is the experience of their parents.”
It's hard. The perception is not the same with COVID. I don't know why that is because this parent also kept arguing with me. I was talking to him about the news that had come out that 1 in 500 people, it's a little under technically, like 1 in 498, in the United States, have died of COVID. That, to me, puts an interesting perspective on it. There are 500 people in my little neighborhood right here. 1 in 500 has died of COVID.
This parent doesn't believe the Johns Hopkins numbers and then starts into the, “What about as I'm about? They're saying everybody who died of anything but happened to have COVID died of COVID.” He started chipping away at trying to minimize the number of people that have died. For some reason, the image of somebody on a ventilator is not as powerful.
That person is in the throes of being saved. It's not the level of doubt. When a person gets on a ventilator, this is a great thing about beliefs, the missing message is that the belief is that once the ventilator is in, the person's going to make it. The only problem is that that's not what has been happening.
The numbers are if you go on a ventilator, your chances of surviving it go down.
If you are on a ventilator, are you conscious? Are you intubated? Are you awake?
If you go on a ventilator, some people do survive it but the vast majority of people, it's a last-ditch effort to save their lives to prolong it. If you get to the point where you need to be on a ventilator, you're not in a good place. It's like that radio host we talked about, Valentine, who didn't make it.
He did not think that COVID-19 was a serious health danger as it was until he got it through his brother. We talked about it on the show before, started putting the message out there, “Everybody should get the vaccine. You do not want to get this sick. Hopefully, I'm going to make it.” Regrettably, he didn't make it. He went on the ventilator and he died, never came out.
The initial numbers were 66% then they reduced to 61% to be discharged. It shifted to 49%. It's a 50/50 chance.
50/50, do I want to flip a coin?
Getting back to our beliefs, have some problems with it because that's what truth is about. If we can get caught down the numerical rabbit hole but then we're not empathetic to your parent. Your parent is not going to believe the 50%. They're not going to say, “Bill's uncle died. What was his secondary infection? Didn't that killed him?” I’m going like, “His secondary infection is he was 85.” “He was 85. He lived a long life.” It's like, “Screw you.”
He was likely to die from the flu too. Why should we count it as a COVID death?
There's some annoyance here. All of a sudden, you start talking about apples and then suddenly switched it to oranges. All a belief does this need to be reinforced by a collective group. It's unsettling but I have beliefs about things just as you do. It doesn't make my beliefs better than yours, Tom, or than this other person's beliefs who happens to have a story narrative in their human experience as we do. Are we going to argue and fight over which computer is better than another computer? Tom, I have an Android phone and you have an Apple phone. There are people who will scream and yell about how bad Android is versus what Apple phone is but that's not what's happening.
They're both perfectly good phones.
We're fighting for a belief, loyalty and an identity that goes with buying which phone. All of a sudden, it's not about COVID anymore. It's about what the brain does with the belief and how it reinforces that. If I'm a marketing person or a branding person, and I'm not paying intention to the beliefs or the limiting beliefs of the listener, I'm not going to be a very good marketer or a brand or person that sells.
Your business accelerated by trying to assist people to allow their beliefs to grow and being an extraordinary podcaster. They stepped into their new identity and you helped them get there. The good thing about beliefs is that I have a vision and a belief. I can be something as a podcaster and you help them get there. How magical is that? Now they're broadening their audience. They get to good people and they grow their business and all that magical stuff about what exposure meets at the same time.
If I want to do brand damage towards something, I can look at Republicans and Democrats as an adversary. All I got to do is start slinging mud at the other side, instead of being in a collaborative cooperative way that my belief is a little more over here and your belief is a little bit more over there and we're both going to disagree about how that's going to work. We're going to keep slinging mud at each other. There are a lot of problems.
We see it happening a lot with the school mass debates. Jordan Klepper did a piece where he shined a light on that. It does show these beliefs that people have about the masks and that they haven't done any research or homework. They would prefer their kids not wear a mask. They think it's bad for you. It's clear when you give someone empathy, you talk to them about it and you try to get them to give you the evidence or the good reason why but you've empathized with them. They don't have anything. That's what I was struggling with this parent who's trying to tell me that the vaccines alter your DNA.
Let me pretend I'm you. At that moment, you did your best, you said some things in there and you feel free to jump in with the things you said too. Here are some of the things that come off the top of my mind. I'm going to use his name as John. I don't know what his name is. John, you're angry. Your experience of the truth and the things you've read is that it affects the DNA. Is that what you've read and research? Is that correct? He would need to say yes because it’s in alignment with his belief. Angry is his feeling. His need his truth. I’m backing up the things that he read or the things that he's believed. I'm not interested in exposing his belief at first. I want him to do it.
That's how it would be more effective if he comes to his own conclusion.
It sounds like that you're sitting with some pretty good research being from the pharmaceutical industry and you've compared this disease with other’s diseases. Is that correct? Yes. I'm getting him to say yes to his beliefs because he's already saying yes to his beliefs. He's already looking to reinforce. He has the thought that I'm in agreement with him, which turns me into an ally to listen to his pain, not to change his direction. He's going to change his direction or not in the field of time.
Notice I'm not attached to change his direction. I'm just attached to hearing the person where they are. Somebody can empathize with me, “Bill, do you have some confidence and beliefs the two vaccine shots that you got have worked?” I'm extending trust with the research that I've seen or with the numbers that I'm looking at. That's what I'm looking to do. I’m extending trust towards science and those scientists. That's what I'm doing. I might be wrong with that trust that I extended to them but I'm extending it to them because I'm not doing that work.
They are, that's their profession. “I have all these other scientists that say something different.” You're noticing some other research there that doesn't seem like it's in alignment with the majority of scientists but you can be discovering an anomaly. There have been many times that people look at and discover the long-term effect of leading gasoline. The long-term effect of cigarette smoking. “You're right. Scientists don't necessarily tell the truth the whole time.”
It's okay for you to have some doubt and skepticism because there is evidence on your side that says that scientists don't tell the truth all the time. They, like other human beings, can be bought and sold to say different things. I'm leaning in this direction but I can see how you're leaning in that direction right now, as I would prefer a little more certainty and trust in my world. You're getting certainty and trust with the information that you have. “I'm curious about how this whole thing is going to play out too because I don't think any of us want to wear masks.” John, have a good day.
I would think it would be helpful if we could get someone like that to follow the messaging that they're hearing, seeing and reading. Follow those breadcrumbs to see how much truth there is behind them.
You are, by planting the seed. The thing is that you're expecting the tree to grow or the plant to grow too quickly. It doesn't quite work that way. The belief has invested energy. It's trying to get somebody to diet, “I have too much investment in my pizza. I have too much investment in my carbs or my sugar.” There's a good reason why they don't put the daily amount of sugar on a package because they're not interested in meeting the need for truth.
Who's going to buy a package that says 220% of the recommended sugar daily requirement, who's going to buy that product if the truth is on it? They know that if you're buying a soda that has 24 grams and it's 200% of the recommended daily requirement of sugar, they're going to like, “I don't want to drink that much sugar.”
They don't want to unsell people from buying and drinking their product.
This is the problem. To stick the landing on this is that our brains look to validate things. My self-worth and my belief become the same thing. My identity and my belief, my version of the truth becomes the same thing. My self-worth is now invested. These are the people that are fighting on the planes and the people that are yelling at them on the planes. People will die for their beliefs. Not to open up the rabbit hole as with the first person inside the Capitol that got shot. She died for her belief.
It was based on information. Her belief was agitated and brought in the front of the thing. I have a great deal of confidence. If there was stronger evidence inside the court of fraudulent voting, there's a problem that the court probably would have picked it up. We all would have been watching that unfold. How did that take place? Our beliefs can be done in a good way or follow a good thread but also can support an untruth and it can get reinforced.
The circumstance is that we're not having a compassionate and healthy and empathetic discussion about where did that belief come from, how did it get started and I can see how you believe that way. You’re trying to advocate for your view of truth. I'm sitting over here with my view of truth. This is where I would like to see the world. This is where you would like to see the world. Energized discussion, Tom.
That was very helpful. At least it allows us to have discussions where we're not wanting to come to blows and punch each other in the face. I appreciate that. If it can plant a seed and have somebody question their own belief then maybe that's the victory we're talking about.
He would be willing to have a second conversation with you. With the empathy that you gave him, he's going to see you as someone relatively safe to vent his pain. That'll give you another bite of the cake. That's what it does. Thanks for everything. I appreciate it.
Thanks for your help.
Important Links:
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://billstierle.com/podcast/New Paragraph
