When dogma disappears, progress follows

The annual two sessions always provide an opportunity for reflection, a moment to re-examine past assumptions and change course for the better. The trouble is that we humans often stick to old ways just because they are familiar, not necessarily because they are right.

Nothing characterizes human behavior more than dogmatism, the habit of clinging ferociously to an inherited idea and closing off discussion, even in the face of good evidence to the contrary.

Dogmatism can be deadly. Wars, especially religious ones, are usually fought because at least one party is absolutely certain that its view of the world is the only correct one.

There is also a more benign aspect to dogmatism, though it’s unhelpful in the search for truth: It gives people a sense of safety, order and orientation. It offers explanations.

And even if the explanations are wrong, at least they are comforting. That is why challenges to dogma almost always meet with resistance. Ideas that take people out of their comfort zones, whether at the dinner table, negotiating table or in a legislative session, can be troublesome.

The major downside to dogmatism, of course, is that it fundamentally closes off possibilities for improvement and, at worst, morphs into a sort of didactic religious orthodoxy that must never be challenged.

Such was the case with the Catholic Church, which for centuries knew for certain that the earth was the center of the universe. It maintained this false axiom even after Galileo used his optically superior telescope to deliver the scientific coup de grace in 1610.

The church was finally dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era, but it did not officially forgive Galileo until 1992 — more than 350 years after it had condemned him.

Dogmas are always difficult to break, simply because they are precious to those who hold them.

Another example bears mention. Before the dawn of science, everyone knew the earth was flat. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, got the sphere theory going around the 4th century BC.

In China, however, astronomers didn’t follow the path of Western scientific reasoning — which boiled down to the constant destruction of old explanations and replacement with new ones.

Under that model, nothing was ever certain or stable, which was deeply offensive to the Chinese mind.

As a result, flat-Earth dogma persisted in some circles in China beyond the 17 th century — perhaps in part because flat and square symbolized virtue and righteousness — concepts deeply embedded in Chinese culture and cognition.

While the Greeks had launched modern science based on logic and human reasoning, the Chinese valued something more immutable. Western reasoning was uncomfortable because of the limits of human intellect and understanding, and so it was the Chinese scientists’ job to discover and follow fixed natural rules.

Ruan Yuan, a prominent Chinese scholar during the first half of the 19th century, lamented that Western astronomers were constantly altering their explanations for celestial phenomena.

“The laws are always changing … I don’t know where the real reason lies,” he said. “Heavenly laws are so profound and subtle that they lie beyond human ability.”

For Ruan, scientific theories should express certainties that “last forever without error”, according to Liu Shuchiu in an online periodical from the Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching.

What all this history has to do with the two sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee is simply this: Legislators considering proposals to improve the country have a choice. They can cling to old notions simply because they are old, perhaps even venerated, or they can reason their way to new approaches that promise greater benefits — whether that’s a re-examination of family planning concepts, or deciding whether or not to raise the retirement age.

Choices abound, but be warned: The answers to many questions are backed by dogmatic constituencies.

It is not that long-held ideas are wrong because they are old, but merely that they ought to be moved from the realm of dogma into the realm of reason.

Once stubborn dogma is rooted out, along with the tribalism that usually comes with it, progress inevitably follows.

The collision of competing ideas is healthy for individuals, organizations and even states. When the clash produces light and not merely heat, we are rewarded with livelier understandings of the world and can choose the way forward with greater confidence.

That is the basic task of the two sessions.