[Kim Seong-kon] The danger of clinging to convictions

We tend to cling firmly to our convictions. We want to believe that our religious or political creeds are completely correct and seldom wonder if they may actually be flawed. However, firm convictions are problematic because they easily lead to stubbornness and self-righteousness and justify the persecution of all others as evil, pagans or reactionaries. But how can we be sure that we are always absolutely right and all others wrong? Living in this age of uncertainty and illusive postmodern conditions, we can never be sure about anything. We only wish for certainty.

It is a well-known fact that the famous German Student Movement in 1968 was triggered by a police officer who shot a student demonstrator to death. Recently, an editorial writer of the Dong-A Ilbo wrote in her column that the West German police officer turned out to be a spy of East Germany who deliberately killed a student to mobilize demonstrators to overthrow the right-wing government. Was the proud '68 generation, then, merely an outcome of a political conspiracy conjured up by the Communists? Such a suggestion is chilling. We no longer know what to believe.

History tells us that firm convictions and self-righteousness lead to the persecution and even deaths, of many people. For example, the Vatican Inquisitions and witch hunts during the Dark Ages, Nazism and communism all inflicted much pain. Self-righteous people such as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot had one thing in common: their political convictions were strong enough to massacre others who did not agree with them. These tyrants firmly believed that their own ideas were infallible and thus they had every right to permanently eliminate from society those who did not agree with them.

Unfortunately, in today's Korean society, there are so many people who seem intoxicated by their political ideologies. As a result, the nation is now sharply divided into rival groups: left vs. right, radicals vs. conservatives. Even newspapers are divided by political stances. When covering the same incident, therefore, these newspapers carry radically different articles and editorials. For example, when discussing the imports of American beef or the recently sunken naval ship, Cheonan, radical newspapers carry anti-American and pro-North Korean sentiments, whereas conservative newspapers reflect pro-American and anti-North Korean attitudes. As different newspapers carry entirely different headlines on the same issue, South Koreans may feel as if they live in two radically different worlds.

Sadly, academia is no different. For example, the divide between progressive historians and conservative historians is so deep that it seems almost impossible to reconcile the two. Recently, the Wooho Cultural Foundation planned to include "history" in the category of the prestigious Wooho Humanities Award and then rescinded their decision. The reason is obvious; the hostility between the two groups of historians is so intense that whoever receives the award will be caught in crossfire. These two factions are not only hostile against each other but also interpret historical facts differently according to their political ideologies. Some time ago, a Seoul National University Press screening member, who was a progressive historian, declined a book publication proposal simply because the author was a conservative historian. What an embarrassing and frustrating situation!

Usually, radicals have a powerful weapon that conservatives seriously lack: "devotion." In a fight, you cannot possibly win someone who has devotion, which stems from firm convictions and self-righteousness. That is why the leftists' voice is much louder than the rightists' -- even though the former is outnumbered by the latter. The problem is that firm convictions and self-righteousness can often transform into a lethal weapon that can seriously hurt or kill others.

Writers have always warned us of the danger of such devotion. In "The Name of the Rose," for example, Umberto Eco presents the Ven. Jorge as a man of blind convictions, self-righteousness and devotion. In order to uphold his beliefs, the physically and spiritually blind Jorge murders people without remorse. In Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," the albino assassin kills innocent people, firmly believing that he is doing the right thing endorsed by God. In another of Brown's novels, "Angels and Demons," Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca poisons the Pope who he mistakenly believes to have broken the vow of chastity. Ventresca firmly believes that science and the church are fundamentally incompatible and thus hates scientists and liberal clergymen who embrace science. To kill a scientist, Leonardo Vetra and four cardinals, Ventresca recruits an assassin who is also fueled by fanatic zeal and is determined to kill anyone who is against his faith. Both Ventresca and the assassin are self-righteous people with firm convictions and devotion.

The late Leslie A. Fiedler once encouraged us to think, "I may be wrong." He advised us to avoid the extremes, cocksureness and self-righteousness, because there is no such thing as the absolute truth. If only we realize this simple truth, we could embrace our adversaries and put an end to chronic confrontation. Nothing is certain but our stupidity.