Surveys and mob rule

By Fr. ROY CIMAGALA, roycimagala@gmail.com
March 21, 2012

“If the issue is political, surveys can be resorted to as part of a demolition job.”

“How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?” The word of the Lord. (Jn 5,44)

These words remind us that what really matters is what God says, and not so much what we say, no matter how wide the consensus we may have about a certain issue.

We have to be wary of our tendency to supplant God’s word with our word, to replace God’s will with our will. These days, this tendency is reinforced by the almost mindless recourse to surveys and popularity ratings that at best are done tendentiously since they are resorted to with some selfish, manipulative motives in mind.

Neutrality and objectivity barely figure in these exercises. Much less, charity. They are often arrested and conscripted by elements with hidden agenda. Despite the heavy guises of civility, the fangs and the claws of malice can hardly be hidden. It’s hardly about the search for truth and justice. It’s more for furthering one’s interests.

God is thrown out of the picture, and only human forces and reason are made to play. The intentions are highly suspicious. Survey-making is more for market-testing than anything else. It’s used when it is thought to be beneficial to the user.

Those behind them – financiers, backers, sponsors, propagandists, etc. – already have some designs to suit their purposes. Their biases and prejudices are very much inputted into their survey-making. Especially when the issues are political or ideological, the people involved are likely to be very partisan and conspirational.

That’s why they look for the favorable timing, the concurring state of public opinion, and other sympathetic circumstances before they run the surveys. And it is not unthinkable that the ulterior motive for the surveys is to rabble-rouse, to appeal to the sentiments and passions of the people instead of looking for the truth in charity.

Have you seen comments of people in blogs and the feedback sections of media outfits about certain issues? Many of them are unspeakably low and vulgar. More than truth and fairness, what immediately come out are sheer bias and lack of basic manners. Can we expect much if we make a survey of this kind of reactions?

If the issue is political, surveys can be resorted to as part of a demolition job. They can be effective in demonizing opponents. They are often used to inflame people’s passions. They are hardly used to help people make dispassionate judgments.

If the issue is moral or ideological, they are made to soften the impact of their different if not aberrant positions, as if truth is only a matter of numbers. This is called the tyranny of the majority, of the strong, of the privileged.

Thus, in issues like abortion, contraception, the RH bill, same-sex unions, etc., surveys are made to somehow prove that these things are already okey, since a lot of people are practicing them. The moral considerations are glossed over. Worse, morality is now determined by popularity.

The next time we are presented with survey results and popularity ratings, we should take them with a grain of salt. We should not be taken by them at prima facie. We need to make a closer look, and most likely we can detect the flaws, some of them so significant as to invalidate the results.

But beyond this wobbly character of surveys and popularity ratings, we have to learn to bring whatever issue, concern, problem or challenge we have to our prayer always, and there ask for our Lord’s light and wisdom even as we study it with utmost serenity.

We have to be careful of making instant and rash judgments without the proper study, reflection and consultations needed. Let’s remember what St. Paul once said about how the spiritual man can make the right judgments, how only when one is with Christ can he make the right judgments.

“The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that we may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2,15-16)

We should be wary when we use our reason alone or, worse, our gut feel in assessing issues. Without Christ, without faith, without prayer and sacrifice, we are bound to be indiscriminate and even cruel in our personal judgments, let alone judgments given by our institutions such as our legal system.