Been a while since I posted anything, though I’ve had a number of things I’ve wanted to share. But, this post struck me today as a thoroughly apt observation:
John Stuart Mill says this
…the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this mode; nor is it in the nature of human intellectual to become wise in any other manner. (On Liberty)
“Oh, that’s no fun,” I thought.
Isn’t it more fun to go with our first inclination? And stick to it. Especially when people disagree. When people don’t like our ideas, I have a suggestion. Shout:
You just don’t get it!
And then shout at them until they do…get it.
[...]
I was watching the Sky coverage of Israeli boarding of the flotilla. An interview of protesters in the street in London and some guy grabbed the camera to announce, “Sky has real problems and if you are watching this, you are probably a wanker.” There was something about the finality with which he said it that struck me. He knew that Sky viewers “just didn’t get it.”
[...]
American politics descended into “you just don’t get it” some time ago. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone rub their chin and say, “hmm, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s interesting.” God knows, I never say it. I’m too busy shouting, “You just don’t get it.”
There are two possibilities here, anthropologically speaking.
First, we have lost our Millian gift for a thoughtful examination of the issues. We are in love with the theater of being totally right all the time. We are addicted to emotional outrage. We don’t care there are deeper issues. When it comes to politics, we are all now divas. Give us the big gesture. Give us the sweeping condemnation. Or leave us out of it. Politics might once have been a game for sober souls. Now its for emotional show offs.
Second, the cultural world has widened. If we were to do a geographic mapping of the ideological space, we would discover that it has expanded. So much so that it is now vastly larger than it was in the Mill’s England. In this case, the outrage is entirely justified. We live in a larger world, where the differences really are more different. When the world of politics expanded, its tensility would not hold. Ground opened up. The consensus tore.
Probably both are true. And if they are both true, what then? How do we put Humpty Dumpty back together again?
Something akin to this has been on my mind for some time. Particularly the sort of paradox involved in feeling this way about the world: being exasperated that all of the people caught up in “you just don’t get it” absolutist theatricality… they just don’t get it.
Perhaps it’s the oldest problem of humanity: how do you transfer a willingness to listen to others to those who are unwilling to listen? Brings to mind the “empathy gun” of the Hitchhiker’s movie…