Origin of Bias

‘Neutral is a state of imagination’ is what my father had once told me. I was too young to understand the profoundness of these words. Not that I understand any better today; but I’ve come a long way along the journey of my life. I’m gradually realizing the truth in many things my father told me long back. What sounded like rhetoric those days feels like music to me now.

I’ve come to realize that bias is our inherent attribute. It influences our thoughts, beliefs, and dictates immensely as to who we emerge out to be. Each one of us is a representative of a certain school of thought. Everyone I know of represents some philosophy. What we say or want to hear may not always be directly affiliated to a familiar institution of ideas, but we all have subconscious subscriptions. We subscribe to ideas that are attractive, powerful and penetrative. Thanks to our upbringing and the circumstances around us, we learn to admire leaders, organizations, communities, religions, cultures, books, arts, theories and so on. We’re biased from the word ‘go’ of our life. We’re taught what is better and what is worse, what is black and white, what should and should not be. As we grow up, we start reflecting upon things that concern us or matter to us. It is through our responses that we exercise the intrinsic bias we’re made to live with.

The other day, my father and I exchanged our opinions on human rights. Through the discussion, I felt we both were reflections of ideologies we believe in and follow. While confrontations and arguments at times became unavoidable, I observed that we both in a subtle manner were attempting to propagate our individual agenda. On a second thought, was our agenda individual or independent? Not really! It was part of a larger scheme of things we’ve subscribed to. We spoke about television debates and newspaper articles and why nothing could be unbiased.

Is bias therefore a desirable part of life? Or can we remain neutral through the discourse of our daily life? We react to things happening around us, a lot of what is natural reaction. An example of that could be suddenly noticing a speeding car approaching us; that’s when our reflex dictates how we react. On the other hand, there are behavioral reactions where who we are plays a major role. An example of that could be when someone is told that the religion they follow is crap; the person could smile back or become furious. Remaining neutral on many occasions may amount to passivism. Staying neutral possibly could translate to inaction. Isn’t reacting to happenings and events a sign of life and being alive? 

We must take sides. Neutrality may lead to extinction!