Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Superfluous (Chapter 1)
Nock does not give his chapters titles. Instead, he begins each chapter with a quotation, usually in English, sometimes not. Chapter one begins thusly:
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
- Amos Bronson Alcott
Nock begins his book with some anecdotes about his ethnic heritage (French and British), his early efforts at learning to read and spell (he was largely self-taught), and his instinct toward skepticism even from a very early age. Then he transitions into a more meaty topic, the one mentioned in the quote above.
The net profit of my first few years of life appears to have been a fairly explicit understanding of the fact that ignorance exists. It has paid me Golconda’s dividends regularly ever since, and the share-value of my small original investment has gone sky-high. This understanding came about so easily and naturally that for many years I took it as commonplace, assuming that everyone had it. My subsequent contacts with the world at large, however, showed me that everyone does not have it, indeed those who have it are extremely few. They seemed particularly and pitifully few when one contemplated the colossal pretensions which, in its modesty, the human race puts forth about itself. I found myself projected into a society which was riotously pretentious, forever congratulating itself at the top of its voice on its achievements and abilities, its virtues and excellences, its resources and prospects, and calling on all the world to admire them; and yet a society by and large “too ignorant to know that there is such a thing as ignorance”! I was immensely amused by this anomaly, yet I surveyed it with a mild wonderment; it was something of a puzzle.
Ignorance exists. Such a simple statement.
But implied in that statement are some profoundly countercultural ideas. Primarily, that objective knowledge exists, and that someone could be wrong about something.
How many times have we heard the phrase “differences of opinion”, or “agree to disagree”? We’ve been taught for decades that everyone is entitled to an opinion, that every opinion is worthy of respect, that nothing of significance is provable, that objective reality is a fiction.
And yet, those of us who have put any effort at all into our own education know that all of these modern platitudes are essentially garbage. Nock encourages us to embrace what we already know, to accept that truth exists, and to accept the fact that a very large fraction of our fellow men have no interest in objective knowledge or pursuit of that truth.
I was initially put off by the astounding arrogance of such a statement. My fellow men, mostly ignorant fools? How could you say such a thing?
Still, everyday experience bears this out. How many people do we know that go through life with no concern for anything except food, drink, and recreation? How many people do we know that come out of the woodwork for presidential elections to vote for Obama because he’s black, or against him because he’s supposedly Muslim? How many people want to really examine the truth of a matter, to really understand root causes, to build themselves a base of knowledge sufficiently broad that intelligent choices can be made today with known consequences tomorrow? Extremely few, in my experience. Apathy, willful ignorance, superficial logic, and extreme simplification are the norm, nearly everywhere one looks.
What a slap in the face this is to modern society, where equality is the order of the day. But equality is not truth, equality is a paradigm invented by man. Ideas are not equal, ideas can be tested. Men and women are not equal, they are different in very fundamental ways. Political systems are not equal, we do not take turns out of some sense of fairness, we do not consider something that is sliding downhill but has not yet collapsed to be a success, we look to the truth of the matter and make a value judgment.
We are so afraid to make value judgments, of implying that one thing, person, or idea is better than another, that we have crippled our pursuit of truth. Our entire society tiptoes around this reality that we instinctively know exists, so as not to offend one another. Nock wants us to recall that truth does exist, and that there is value in pursuing it. Even if our fellow men are not interested in following us down that road.
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Thus in my early manhood I learned to respect ignorance, to regard ignorance as an object of legitimate interest and reflection; and as I say, a sort of unconsidered preparation for this attitude of mind appears to have run back almost to my infancy. Moreover, when I got around to read Plato, I found that he reinforced and copper-fastened the notion which experience had already rather forcibly suggested, that direct attempts to overcome and enlighten ignorance are a doubtful venture; the notion that it is impossible, as one of my friends puts it, to tell anybody anything which in a very real sense he does not already know.
In our pursuit of truth, we may one day get the urge to try to spread this knowledge into the world, hoping to wake humanity up, to prevent unnecessary pain and suffering. It’s a noble instinct, one that is hard to kick.
But if the vast majority of our fellow men are willfully ignorant, what possible good could it do to get out and try to pass truth along to the masses?
This sentence, “it is impossible to tell anybody anything they don’t already know”, has stuck in my mind for years. I have come to the conclusion that it is absolutely, unerringly, true. If someone wants to learn something, they will seek that knowledge out themselves. Knowledge cannot be forced on anyone, on individuals or on a society, without their consent. And that consent is only given if they have already chosen to seek that knowledge for themselves.
Nock always viewed his role as hanging out a shingle and speaking to anyone that came to him. He was not interested in taking his message to the world, as he saw the world as largely uninterested and mostly incapable of tolerating or understanding his message anyway. This passage is the distillation of that philosophy – an exhortation for truth-seekers to stop trying to force their unwelcome knowledge on others, and to vigorously assist any who show a desire to muddle their way through to truth on their own.
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As time went on, I became convinced that Calvin’s idea of invincible ignorance had a validity which the Genevese French lawyer did not suspect. I was also interested to see that this view had a strong indirect corroboration from the practice of those whom for some odd reason – odd, because no one ever seems to learn anything from them – we misname as “the great teachers of mankind.” Apparently they accepted ignorance as a fixed quantity; apparently also their direct attempts at enlightening ignorance were extremely few and futile. But why should ignorance have persisted as a fixed quantity throughout history, as apparently it has done; and why should the direct effort at enlightening ignorance remain as inveterately impracticable and inadvisable today as it was in the days of Socrates, Jesus, Confucius, Im-hotep, or as it must have been found to be by the wiseacres of the Neolithic period, if any such there were?
These were the questions which interested me, though I was never eagerly curious about them, or much stirred by finding no answer at hand. Now and then some circumstance would bring them to the top of my mind long enough for me to note the circumstance’s bearing on them, but no longer. I never broached them for discussion in my student days. The theory of progressive evolution was top dog everywhere at that time, and its energumens would have met my questions with the “one plain argument” with which Lord Peter met the doubts of his brothers, in the Tale of a Tub. This flat negation of history and common experience would have done no more than to illustrate the quality from which the questions take their rise, and would therefore have been pointless. Not until I was well along in years did I come upon a theory of man’s place in nature which provided my questions with a competent and satisfactory answer.
Nock was mostly active in his writing in the 1930s and 40s, a time when progressive ideology was dominant in both the intellectual and political spheres. The idea behind progressivism is that both mankind and society are perfectible – with sufficient education and social engineering, we can build an ideal society with little suffering, peace, harmony, etc.
Just like our modern paradigm of equality, all one has to do to see the falsity of the progressive paradigm is to look around. Mankind is ignorant and apathetic – how could he be perfectible? It is possible that he could be dominated and forced into a mold, but every time that happens, man rebels against his constraints. To think that society would voluntarily slip into some utopian ideal if only we teach people to be nicer to one another? The whole idea is just absurd, and to ignore that fact is to ignore the obvious truth of the nature of mankind.
Nock spent most of his life arguing against the progressive and collectivist elements of society, those who persist in their beliefs about the perfectibility of society, either through willful ignorance or outright maliciousness. Nock says that his arguments are brushed off, just as similar arguments are largely ignored today, in the face of broad popular support.
Truth is not determined by popularity. Truth exists independent of one’s will and one’s biases. The desire to seek that truth is rare, and truth cannot be pushed on those unwilling to seek it. These are seemingly simple concepts that ideally should have little impact. However, they are so contrary to popular culture and conventional wisdom that as I internalized the implications, they shook me to my very core. The seeming arrogance in these statements is astounding, and yet, it should be noted that no where does Nock advocate treating our fellow man with any less dignity because of his lack of interest in truth. More on that will follow in subsequent chapters.
Comments
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Let me start by saying I agree with pretty much everything you and Nock said. So I don’t have much to say about it because you’ve said it.
But one thing reminded me of another thing.
We are so afraid to make value judgments, of implying that one thing, person, or idea is better than another, that we have crippled our pursuit of truth. Our entire society tiptoes around this reality that we instinctively know exists, so as not to offend one another.
It’s even worse than that. My business partner is afraid to make a value judgment about the value to him of his preferences over other people’s preferences. He said he’d walked through a park the other day and seen two guys playing frisbee and another sitting on a bench texting. “I couldn’t imagine sitting there texting. I’d rather play frisbee. But who am I to judge?”
The problem comes when people conflate judging the personal worth of an activity versus the value of the person who is making the choice versus the right of that person to have an opinion.
Not all opinions are worthy of respect. Though I may honor someone’s right to hold a stupid, wrong opinion, nothing requires that I honor the opinion itself.
In the same way, I tried to explain to my business partner that he was deciding that playing frisbee had more value to him than texting did. He vehemently protested that he had no right to make that judgment. YES YOU DO! There’s nothing wrong with my deciding for myself that texting is a stupid waste of time while commenting on thought-provoking blogs has value. It would be wrong of me to try to legislatively prohibit texting because I think it’s a waste of time. But not to value it myself is fine.
So many people have lost the power to distinguish between fine points of meaning that they’re more easily led down wrong paths. I’ve decided to try to get people to think just a bit more. I am the water, not the stone.
In the end, my business partner seemed to accept that it’s OK for him to make some judgments. Next week we’re going shooting, albeit only a .22.
Weetabix | 11/12/2008 12:59 PM CDT -
Why do you think that is, Weet?
Is it because folks don’t understand the difference between Judging, from the standpoint of determining FOR God if someone gets into Heaven, or judging the value of something on earth?
I do not get this. It is such a clear delineation.
It’s the same thing I wrote about in Punishment/Reformation and Redemption.
Mrs. du Toit | 11/12/2008 02:39 PM CDT -
I think it’s because they can’t tell the difference, and they can’t tell the difference because:
a) we’ve all been hearing about tolerance so long in the (relative) wake of a civil rights struggle that was righting actual wrongs that it lets things that are clearly outside the bounds of judging or prejudice slip in the door with legitimate items,
b) so many people have been through a Dewey-modeled public school system that only the people with real ability or real concern can break the mental chains of intellectual mediocrity and laziness foisted on them by well-intentioned, bleeding-hearted nitwits (or worse), and
c) ignorance exists.
(Can you tell I spent my lunch time at the DMV? I have residual anger to work off.)
Weetabix | 11/12/2008 03:25 PM CDT -
I found this first chapter discussion quite poignant in that I have always tried to address my own ignorance. I have been wanting to educate myself as I suffered from the Dewey-modelled public school system (as Weetabix called it).
I’ve managed to get hold of a copy of The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and I am about to commence reading its recommended list. I shall be doing so in a chronological order and reading about historical events around the time each book was written.
I see this as a life-long journey. I only hope I come out of it a better man than I went in.
Any comments on educating the self are most appreciated. I’d like to end my days of being ignorant.
yabusame | 11/14/2008 10:23 AM CDT -
Weet & AM,
Yabusame is quite serious and asked me to forward his personal details to each of you.
Any advice/mentoring you can provide to him would be most appreciated.
Mrs. du Toit | 11/14/2008 01:30 PM CDT -
Send away!
I’ll offer what I can.
My first recommendation is to get a very good grammar book and to start building your vocabulary. I don’t say that you don’t have that already, but I figure it always helps. Think of it in terms of tools - with bad tools you get bad work. With good tools, you are better equipped to do very good work. Grammar and vocabulary are the tools of thought and speech. Better tools enable you to have more nuanced thoughts and communication, I think.
My second recommendation is to read Mrs. du Toit’s writings on homeschool with an eye toward educating yourself.
My wife uses the Susan Wise Bauer books in homeschooling our kids. I admit with some chagrin that I have not read them.
Weetabix | 11/14/2008 01:56 PM CDT -
Weetabix et al,
Thanks for the response. I stated earlier that I was going to begin reading the TWEM recommendations chronologically, which would mean that Gilgamesh would be first. Instead, I shall be reading by genre as SWB recommended, as my girlfriend bought me Don Quixote by Cervantes at the weekend and that is the first book that SWB recommends in the Novel section.
I like the suggestion of finding a good grammar book and building vocabulary. I figure that the building of vocabulary will come through reading and comprehension but the grammar is an interesting topic. Are there any books you’d recommend in fixing this gap in my education?
I have been reading Mrs Du Toit’s articles regarding Home Schooling with the thought of educating myself in mind. That is why I contacted her originally.
If you do read SWB’s books, I’d be interested to hear what you think of them.
yabusame | 11/17/2008 07:36 AM CDT -
I don’t have any specific recoommendations on a grammar book, but I’d look for an older one. And maybe one geared toward a business person from the 50’s or so. My kids are doing the Latin Road to English Grammar right now. It’s very thorough.
And I like to have the American Heritage Dictionary sitting beside me while I read. I find etymologies help me.
Weetabix | 11/17/2008 10:00 AM CDT
