Shall I be an a*****e?
I could bring this question to every relationship; an entire branch of my philosophy can be built around it.
I don’t mean “should I be intentionally offensive,” but rather, “should I ask virtuous questions that antagonize the masses, or bow to the foolishness that reigns?”
Bring a truth-seeking, Socratic-style approach to any encounter and Eris, goddess of discord, appears, dropping her golden apples. Being polite while dragging bags of uncomfortable questions into a room isn’t enough. We will rock the boat and make enemies, and no partisan tribe will shelter us when they call for our blood.
“I find that I’m accused of being a lot of things because, in a world of answer choices A or B, questioning A must mean I support B or vice versa. I realize I normally neither accept A nor B as I find them missing critical substance and, instead, am trying to find out if there is at least a C and more likely expecting that there is an A – n. But that is nuanced and results in “so what you’re saying is ______” accusations, straw-manning my position to discount it.”
I feel this constantly, and there are at least two reasons why it demands we take a position on the a*****e question.
They Want Things:
People who assert A vs B binaries usually want things from us, and they don’t like having their binaries interrogated. “Let my binary into your identity without inconvenient questions,” is the obvious ask, but also “join this protest,” “vote for this cause”, “tell me I’m right,” and “loan me money without questioning my budgeting.”
Surrendering to the demands of fools, trouble makers, and the reflexively tribal may stem from what Plutarch calls dysopia, or “defeat at the hands of the shamelessly insistent.” Why do we surrender to them? An excessive sense of shame, bashfulness, agreeableness, or modesty is the general pattern he outlines. In On Dysopia, he gives several tips for standing up to the manipulation of our desire to be agreeable and well-liked.
By surrendering to dysopia, we become a party to vice and abandon our ideals. If nothing else, embracing binaries makes us stupider people robbed of cognitive maneuvering room. Anyone committed to philosophy cannot surrender, which means we will appear to be a******s to some.
We Could Make Beautiful Music Together
It’s charitable to assume people give great thought to their confidently asserted positions. That goes double if they demand we kowtow to them.
If we’re wise, we suspect we’re ignorant about most things, since it’s impossible to have more than a few areas of expertise. So it’s natural, when hearing positions that don’t seem to align with reason, that we want to explore it with an expert. We want to be set straight and have our ignorance illuminated and corrected.
This is the Socratic project at its best: respectfully and humbly interrogating the assumptions underlying a claim. Hopefully, both sides will become less ignorant. We make beautiful music together.
Except people hate this. They loathe these questions. They killed Socrates for asking them.
Socrates was invariably polite, but in seeking the truth, he made enemies everywhere by exposing ignorance and contradiction masquerading as wisdom.
Is There Chaos in Your Soul?
Socrates considered his stubborn truth-seeking part of holding the virtuous, rational center as his city went mad. Poking this mass of contradictions was his moral imperative. He didn’t flinch from this duty, though he knew the risks.
Our most renowned philosophers and firebrands have taken this path. Diogenes and other Cynics questioned and mocked kings and emperors along with their fellow citizens, consequences be damned.
* Galileo: “If Earth is motionless, why do we see the phases of Venus?”
* Bruno: “If the universe is infinite, what place is left for God and the Church?”
* Solzhenitsyn: “What if we’ve built an entire society on lies?”
These men died or faced horrible repression for loudly wondering. Perhaps it was worth it. But what did it take to do it?
I’m reminded of Nieztche:
“One must have chaos in one’s soul to be able to birth a dancing star.”— Frederick Nieztche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, Section 5
Today we speak of “trait agreeableness,” which seems to have spread like a plague alongside all the wonders of the Enlightenment. My sense is that agreeableness smothers the inner chaos that values something higher than tranquility.
An unwillingness to rock the boat makes for concord, but also leaves unexposed the foolishness rotting society’s foundations.
I seem to have enough chaos in my soul to be protected from dysopia. I’m rarely captured by Plutarch’s “shamelessly insistent” types, and happily skewer schemes that would draw me into binaries and vice. But this is merely defensive questioning and sticking to my values, regardless of cost.
But I’m no burning star of chaos. I rarely go on the offensive, exposing the questionable beliefs I observe to fresh air and sunlight. Sometimes all I can manage is “hmmm,” as someone spews confident foolishness at me.
Perhaps I don’t value truth enough to dissabuse them. Perhaps I’m a kindness-centered son of the Enlightenment. Perhaps it’s merely that Socratic questions rarely change opinions, and I find them exhausting.
But I also wonder if there’s a better model.
Ben Franklin’s Turn:
In his autobiography, Ben Franklin says he mastered Socratic questioning early and…
“grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.”
But, it seems that, like me, he grew disillusioned with exposing interlocutors’ contradictions. It won him nothing but opposition. Over time he switched to merely expressing Socratic uncertainty on the path to worthwhile ends.
“This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in…I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat everyone of those purposes for which speech was given to us.”
“Persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engaged in,” is one of Franklin’s typical understatements of philanthropic and business success. He might be history’s greatest Otiarius.
The Gift of a Question:
I only love a few people enough to ask them hard questions, and only when they signal interest. It’s a gift, but for most, an unwelcome one. I’ve settled into a Ben Franklin-like approach and only rock the boat enough to pursue what virtue demands with the human confederates on hand.
Perhaps this restraint is my failing; I’m no Socrates. But I don’t think relationships are our personal development projects. Expecting a person or society to dance to logic’s tune is crazy.
“To seek what is impossible is madness: and it is impossible that the bad should not do something of this kind,”Marcus Aurelius reminded himself when his best efforts to do good were resisted.
I get it, and I agree. But here’s my twist: of all the people under my influence, I’m the one most likely to benefit from these questions, so why would I force them on an unwilling world? I see my inconsistencies and failures like no one else, and not probing them is far more egregious than letting a stupid opinion go unquestioned.
Time to turn the mirror around — and ask away.
Thanks for reading Socratic State of Mind.
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