What You Can't Say - Quareness Series (61st "Lecture").
Here's a few thoughts on the value of a curious "anarchist" mindset -
Ever seen yourself in an old photograph and been embarrassed at the way you looked? What were you thinking to have dressed and worn your hair like that? Probably most of us had no idea at the time of how "uncool" we looked ....it's in the nature of such fashions to be "invisible" and mistaken for good design. Of course there are also moral fashions which are just as arbitrary and invisible to most, and in turn often mistaken for good. Such though pose a rather more dangerous prospect in that while dressing oddly may just get you laughed at, violating moral fashions can get you outlawed or worse. Opinions we now consider harmless could have had you in big trouble during an earlier time, even though nerdy types have always found themselves in trouble while saying "improper" things and basically for the same reason they might dress unfashionably and have good ideas i.e. convention has less hold on them.
Constantly throughout history it seems that people have believed ridiculous things so strongly that you'd be in dire trouble for saying otherwise. It'd be remarkable if ours was the first era to get it all right. The chances are that people in the future will find things we believe to be just as ridiculous.
Ever ask yourself if you hold any opinions you'd be reluctant to express in front of your peers? If the answer is no, is everything you believe something you're supposed to believe? And if so, could it be odds on you just think whatever you're told? The other alternative might be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable, which seems sorta unlikely given that you'd also have to make the same mistakes as the "originals". Our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes, like at every time throughout history.
If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't have believed everything you were supposed to growing up in say Germany, Britain, America or Ireland in the 1930s, 40s, 50s or 60s? Take for example an approval term like "well-adjusted" which kinda implies that there's something wrong with you if you think things you dare not say out loud....on the contrary there's more likely to be something wrong with you if you don't think such things.
In considering "what you can't say" it can be instructive to look out for things with enough chance of being true that the question might remain open. In this context you find that the statements that tend to annoy people most are the ones they worry might be believed, or indeed might be true (e.g. when the church realised that saying the earth orbited the sun would set people thinking). It's useful to keep track of any opinion that gets people into trouble and to ask if it could be true (even if it may be heretical).
Another way is to consider the idea of heresy itself. Throughout our history labels have been regularly applied to statements in order to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not....labels such as evil, bigotted, blasphemous, divisive, inappropriate, indecent, improper, phobic, sexist, unamerican, etc. Over time such tend to lose their sting but we can readily see looking back that in their own time they had real impact. Back in Germany around 1917 the labelling word "defeatist" was used as a weapon by Ludendorff to purge those who favoured a negotiated peace, as did Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents in 1940 where any argument against his aggressive policy was "defeatist". As to whether it was right or wrong, it seems no one got far enough to ask.
For any period we can suss out such labels simply by looking at what people call the ideas they disagree with (apart from those that are clearly untrue). It's a straightforward criticism when someone says his/her opponent is mistaken, but it's a dead giveaway when he or she attacks a statement as say "disrespectful" or "divisive" or "insensitive" or "off-the-wall" instead of arguing that it's false. As for ourselves, perhaps many interesting heretical thoughts have already been largely formed in our minds and will readily emerge if we temporarily turn off our own self-censorship thereby unearthing things we've already noticed but didn't let ourselves think.
Another way to figure out what we might be getting wrong is to look back at what used to be acceptable and is now unthinkable. Although some changes can and do represent real progress (e.g. in a field like physics) this becomes less true as we move away from the relative certainty of the hard sciences....in the case of social questions many changes are just fluctuating fashion. People in the past were much like us today and whatever their ideas they were what most "reasonable people" could believe for their time and place.
Of course different societies (even in our own time) have very different ideas of what's okay or not. In one culture it might seem shocking to think something while in another it is shocking not to, and it can be quite liberating to consider whether the side that's shocked is more likely to be the mistaken one. There may be some taboos that are and have always been nearly universal (murder?) but it might well be that any current taboo idea considered harmless in a significant percentage of other times and places, could be something we're mistaken about.
Ever wonder why our children's heads are full of taboos? Could it be that the picture we give them of the world is both simplified (to suit their developing minds) and sanitised (to suit our ideas of what they ought to think)? Rude words are part of our languages (our adults regularly use them) and many (most?) parents end up giving their kids an inaccurate and incomplete idea of their language by not using them within earshot of the little people. Likewise most adults lean towards deliberately giving children a misleading view of the world, thinking it cute for example that little kids believe in Santa Claus. We seem to like for children to seem innocent but we could perhaps ponder whether we treat them this way for their sake or for ours?
For our purposes here the important result is that a well brought-up teenager's brain is a more or less complete collection of all our taboos, untainted by experience. And almost certainly already inside that head is whatever we think will later turn out to be ridiculous. We can imagine comparing what's inside the brain of a well travelled, widely experienced, worldly wise guy with the head content of a well behaved 16 year old from say a well-heeled suburb. We could say he knows the world and the youngster knows (or maybe embodies) our present taboos. We can further figure out "what you can't say" by identifying what the former thinks might shock the latter over and above what's already taboo for him/her.
It might also be instructive to look at how taboos are created, how moral fashions arise and why they get adopted. Our "ordinary" fashions appear to arise mostly by accident when the mass of people come to imitate the whim of some influential person, but our moral fashions more often seem to be created quite deliberately - when there's something you can't say it's often because some group doesn't want you to. And this prohibition tends to be stronger when the group is nervous. Although confident groups do not need taboos to protect them, the less assured ones nevertheless need to be just powerful enough to enforce taboos. Indeed many of our moral strictures may well turn out to be grounded in power struggles in which one side barely has the upper hand....where we find a group weak enough to need taboos but also powerful enough to enforce them.
Most of our group conflicts tend to be cast as struggles between competing ideas, whatever they're really about. It's easier to get people to fight for an idea and the ideas of the winning side will also tend to be considered to have triumphed (with God or good on our side, etc.). In truth some such struggles may occasionally be about ideas but the point here is that all tend to be cast as such whether they really are or not. And just as there is nothing seemingly so out of favour as the last (now discarded) fashion, nothing tends to be viewed so wrong as the principles of the most recently defeated opponent.
Early adopters of fashion (moral or otherwise) will be tend to be driven by ambition.... "cool" people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd. As the trend becomes established they'll be joined by a much larger group adopting the fashion not because they want to stand out but because they are afraid of standing out. This is the basic mechanism at work which we need to look carefully at in order to figure out and predict what you can't say....which groups are powerful but nervous ....what ideas would they like to suppress....what ideas were tarnished by association when they ended up on the losing side of a recent struggle....what are conventional-minded people afraid of saying. This approach is likely to turn up a good number of "unthinkable" ideas.
You may wonder why someone would deliberately go looking around for disreputable ideas. Well maybe it's because of curiosity...."let me see and decide for myself". If we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, we may want to know what they are in order to avoid believing them now. Of course this curious mindset could simply be good for the brain....it's arguable that to do seriously good work you need a brain that can habitually go anywhere (and especially where it's not supposed to).
Much useful work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked, and no idea can be so overlooked as one that's unthinkable. It can be a great advantage to be able to question assumptions. This is particulalry so in the sciences where the better modus operandi can involve looking for where conventional wisdom is broken and trying to see "what lies benenath"....that's where new theories come from. Any good scientist (or indeed any wise scholar) would perhaps make a special effort to break through conventional "wisdom" which could to some extent be because it's clearer in the sciences whether theories are true or false, and this makes for a bolder approach. But there might also be some kinda link between general intelligence and a willingness to consider shocking ideas - convention might have less hold over such people to start with (e.g. considering the way many of them tend to dress/present themselves).
In any competitive field, you can win big by seeing things that others dare not see. And in every field it's likely there are heresies few dare utter. Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts can provide a "stretching" advantage....like for a warm-up routine before running where you put your body into far more extreme positions than any it will encounter during the run. If you can think way-out outrageous things, you'll tend to have somewhat less trouble with what people call innovative.
There's an Italian phrase - "i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto" - "closed thoughts & an open face" - which could be loosely interpreted as advice to smile at everyone but don't tell 'em what you're thinking. And it may indeed be wise to draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech....inside your head anything goes but perhaps much should remain there. The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. Feeling you have to reveal all your thoughts may inhibit you from thinking "improper" ones. Quite apart from the possibility of getting into trouble, saying heretical things can become a serious distraction. Now while many might deem it cowardly to keep quiet, this always needs to be set in context e.g. if you said all the things you can't say you'd have no time left for your real work. On the other hand though, by keeping your thoughts secret you lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas and it seems beneficial to have a few trusted contacts/friends you can speak openly to. People you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on could well be the most interesting to know.
Having said as much, it might be the better part of valour to make it plain that you don't agree with whatever zealotry is current in your time but not to be too specific about what you disagree with. Zealots may try to draw you out, but you don't have to respond to any such attempts e.g. if they try to force you to treat a question on their terms say by asking "are you with us or against us?" you can always just answer "neither" or "I haven't decided". Of course you could also "engage" with them indirectly....say by rachetting the debate up one level of abstraction. By arguing against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of being heretical in respect of something someone is trying to censor....or you can attack labelling by citing "meta-labels" that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. Other useful "counterattack" tools could be metaphor and humour. When the playwright Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" about the Salem witch trials, he never referred directly to the "witch-hunt" activities of the US Congress House Un-American Activities Committee, thereby not providing them with any chance to reply. Like most zealots they probably did not greatly appreciate humour (maybe a key "weapon" in defeating say prudishness or political correctness?) and Miller acknowledged he might have taken better aim when he later wrote - "looking back I have often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation deserved."
It's pretty clear that open-mindedness in itself is no guarantee of free expression. Nearly everyone (at least in the Western World) seems to think they're pretty open-minded but they often appear to draw the line at what they regard as really "wrong", "negative" or "destructive". People know when they're not great at maths for
example, but rarely know it when not so good at open-mindedness....in fact they tend to think the opposite. Fashion (being necessarily invisible in order to work) doesn't seem like fashion to someone in its grip....it just seems like the right thing to do. Only from a distance can we see the oscillations in people's ideas of what's right and identify them as fashions. And it's clear that such distance arrives over time e.g. with the appearance of new fashions making old fashions (at least temporarily) easy to discern and to seem "way off" by contrast.
Without the passage of time to give you distance, you must create it for yourself in order to clearly see fashion in your own time. For this purpose you may have to stand well away from the mob and watch what it's doing, paying close inquisitive attention whenever an idea is being suppressed e.g. what exactly now counts as pornography or violence or hate-speech? Such labelling might be a big clue....probably the worst you can say about some statement is that it's false and there's no further need to say it's heretical. And if it's not false, why should it be suppressed? It could be a sign that something is "off" when you hear/see statements being attacked with "values" labels.
Ironically you can catch yourself at it too if you're unable to watch your own thoughts (as well as the mob's) from a distance - in truth a distinguishing difference between immature and mature persons e.g. our children rarely understand what's happening when they get angry because they're tired, whereas adults can distance themselves enough from the situation to say "never mind, I'm just tired". In the same "grown up" way maybe we can readily learn to recognise and discount the effects of moral fashions.
Clear thinking requires us to take this extra step even though it's the harder road due to having to work against (rather than with) social customs. Society encourages us to grow up to the point where we can discount our own bad moods, but there's little encouragement to continue to the point where we can discount society's bad moods. How to see the wave when you're the water? - always question....what can't you say and why?
I'll leave y'all now with some incisive words (still aptly current for this crazy world we inhabit) from the late great
Mark Twain hisself -
FIFTY YEARS AGO, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man -a slave -who daily preached sermons from the top of his master's woodpile, with me for sole audience. He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergymen of the village, and did it well, and with fine passion and energy. To me he was a wonder. I believed he was the greatest orator in the United States and would some day be heard from. But it did not happen; in the
distribution of rewards he was overlooked. It is the way, in this world.
He interrupted his preaching, now and then, to saw a stick of wood; but the sawing was a pretense -he did it with his mouth; exactly imitating the sound the bucksaw makes in shrieking its way through the wood. But it served its purpose; it kept his master from coming out to see how the work was getting along. I listened to the sermons from the open window of a lumber room at the back of the house. One of his texts was this:
"You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."
I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher's idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions -- at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.
I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I think he did not go far enough.
1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the majority view of his locality by calculation and intention. This happens, but I think it is not the rule.
2. It was his idea that there is such a thing as a first-hand opinion; an original opinion; an opinion which is coldly reasoned out in a man's head, by a searching analysis of the facts involved, with the heart unconsulted, and the jury room closed against outside influences. It may be that such an opinion has been born somewhere, at some time or other, but I suppose it got away before they could catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum.
I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing -- if it has indeed ever existed.
A new thing in costume appears -- the flaring hoopskirt, for example -- and the passers-by are shocked, and the irreverent laugh. Six months later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has established itself; it is admired, now, and no one laughs. Public opinion resented it before, public opinion accepts it now, and is happy in it. Why? Was the resentment reasoned out? Was the acceptance reasoned out? No. The instinct that moves to conformity did the work. It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn requirement of self-approval. We all have to bow to that; there are no exceptions. Even the woman who refuses from first to last to wear the hoop skirt comes under that law and is its slave; she could not wear the skirt and have her own approval; and that she must have, she cannot help herself. But as a rule our self-approval has its source in but one place and not elsewhere -- the approval of other people. A person of vast consequences can introduce any kind of novelty in dress and the general world will presently adopt it -- moved to do it, in the first place, by the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority, and in the second place by the human instinct to train with the multitude and have its approval. An empress introduced the hoopskirt, and we know the result. A nobody introduced the bloomer, and we know the result. If Eve should come again, in her ripe renown, and reintroduce her quaint styles -- well, we know what would happen. And we should be cruelly embarrassed, along at first.
The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears. Nobody reasons about it. One woman abandons the fashion; her neighbor notices this and follows her lead; this influences the next woman; and so on and so on, and presently the skirt has vanished out of the world, no one knows how nor why, nor cares, for that matter. It will come again, by and by and in due course will go again.
Twenty-five years ago, in England, six or eight wine glasses stood grouped by each person's plate at a dinner party, and they were used, not left idle and empty; to-day there are but three or four in the group, and the average guest sparingly uses about two of them. We have not adopted this new fashion yet, but we shall do it presently.
We shall not think it out; we shall merely conform, and let it go at that. We get our notions and habits and opinions from outside influences; we do not have to study them out.
Our table manners, and company manners, and street manners change from time to time, but the changes are not reasoned out; we merely notice and conform. We are creatures of outside influences; as a rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot invent standards that will stick; what we mistake for standards are only fashions, and
perishable. We may continue to admire them, but we drop the use of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare is a standard, and fifty years ago we used to write tragedies which we couldn't tell from -- from somebody else's; but we don't do it any more, now. Our prose standard, three quarters of a century ago, was ornate and diffuse; some authority or other changed it in the direction of compactness and simplicity, and conformity followed, without argument. The historical novel starts up suddenly, and sweeps the land. Everybody writes one, and the nation is glad. We had historical novels before; but nobody read them, and the rest of us conformed -- without reasoning it out. We are conforming in the other way, now, because it is another case of everybody.
The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts. The Smiths like the new play; the Joneses go to see it, and they copy the Smith verdict. Morals, religions, politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely; not from
study, not from thinking. A man must and will have his own approval first of all, in each and every moment and circumstance of his life -- even if he must repent of a self-approved act the moment after its commission, in order to get his self-approval again: but, speaking in general terms, a man's self-approval in the large concerns of life has its source in the approval of the peoples about him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter. Mohammedans are Mohammedans because they are born and reared among that sect, not because they have thought it out and can furnish sound reasons for being Mohammedans; we know why Catholics are Catholics; why Presbyterians are Presbyterians; why Baptists are Baptists; why Mormons are Mormons; why thieves are thieves; why monarchists are monarchists; why Republicans are Republicans and Democrats, Democrats. We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid business interest -- the bread-and-butter interest -- but not in most cases, I think. I think that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated; that it is born of the human being's natural yearning to stand well with his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise -- a yearning which is commonly so strong and so insistent that it cannot be effectually resisted, and must have its way. A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties -- the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety -- the one which can't bear to be outside the pale; can't bear to be in disfavor; can't endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, "He's on the right track!" Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances.
Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party's approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals.
In our late canvass half of the nation passionately believed that in silver lay salvation, the other half as passionately believed that that way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part of the people, on either side, had any rational excuse for having an opinion about the matter at all? I studied that mighty question to the bottom -- came out empty. Half of our people passionately believe in high tariff, the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that question, too -- and didn't arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of God.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
December, 2015.