I’m currently reading through my book Nice Work If You Can Get It for the first time in eighteen months. Here’s a section from Chapter Three:
I do as little lecturing as possible in all of my classes, preferring discussion—preferably with opposing perspectives whatever issues happen to be our focus on a given day clearly presented. Given the power of social media and the toxic nature of social and political discourse over the past several years, it is not at all surprising that few students arrive at college with the ability to converse or discuss beyond competing sound bites and memes.
Have you ever been involved in a conversation, either in person or on social media, in which everyone turns defensive in short order and immediately starts posturing instead of discussing? Of course you have. A philosopher who has had a great effect over the years on my teaching describes and reflects on this very dynamic. Human beings have been angry, defensive, prideful, and fearful for a very long time:
We flee from correction; we should face it and go to meet it, especially when it comes in the form of discussion, not ex cathedra. At every opposition we do not consider whether it is just, but, for better or for worse, how we can get rid of it. Instead of stretching out our arms to it, we stretch out our claws.
This is from “Of the art of discussion,” one of the final entries in Michel de Montaigne’s magisterial Essais, an 800+ page collection of essays that was written over several decades during the French Wars of Religion during the 16th century. In many of my classes, “Of the art of discussion” is the first text I assign in a new semester.
In the passage above, Montaigne correctly notes that our reaction to contrary ideas and opinions is often not to consider them, but rather to dismiss and get rid of them. Accordingly, he writes, “We learn to argue only in order to contradict; and with each man contradicting and being contradicted, it turns out that the fruit of the argument is to ruin and annihilate the truth.” It is in the spirit of Montaigne that I regularly advise my students to introduce qualifiers into their conversations, even when considering their most deeply held beliefs. “This is what I believe, but I might be wrong.” “This is what I believe to be true, but I have a lot to learn.” Such qualifiers serve as reminders that no one is omniscient and that no one knows the mind of God—despite our pretensions to the contrary.
Montaigne knew how to discuss and dialogue effectively. Before he retired for all intents and purposes from public life to write in his late thirties, he served as a liaison and diplomat highly respected by all religious and political factions in his war-torn country, effectively picking his way through the minefields of the complicated and often violent political and religious landscape of 16th century France. Written toward the end of his life, “Of the art of discussion” contains several of Montaigne’s insights about what makes or breaks a discussion in which the various parties disagree with each other.
Early in the essay, Montaigne writes that,
The most fruitful and natural exercise of our mind, in my opinion, is discussion. I find it sweeter than any other action of our life; and that is the reason why, if I were right now forced to choose, I believe I would rather consent to lose my sight than my hearing or speech.
A few paragraphs later, Montaigne uses the imagery of jousting to identify the purpose of discussion, indeed of human enquiry in general:
We are born to quest after truth; to possess it belongs to a greater power . . . the world is but a school of inquiry. The question is not who will hit the ring, but who will make the best runs at it.
The point, in other words, of discussion and conversation is the process and the cooperative pursuit of getting closer and closer to the truth, not the attainment of it. People in discussion and conversation are partners in a foundational human activity, not competitors in a game with winners and losers. When we forget what conversations and discussions are for, things go badly very quickly.
Why are we so inclined to hang on to our most entrenched thoughts, even in the face of evidence that our most deeply held beliefs are rooted in anything but experiential evidence supported by logical reasoning? The most obvious answer is that adopting the thoughts and beliefs of one’s culture, family, and favored group is easy, while critically challenging one’s default settings and perhaps even changing them is hard work.
We tend to believe that those things to which we are most accustomed are true, without ever wondering how we came to be accustomed to those things in the first place. We resonate most strongly with people who mirror back to us what we are already thinking. Parochialism and attachment to what we think we know is not a problem exclusive to any particular set of beliefs or experiences. All of us, from conservative to progressive, from atheist to dedicated religious believer, assume that the way that we think is not only the epitome of common sense, but also the standard of reason well used. We are convinced that what we believe is unassailably true simply because we believe it.
One effective way that I use to bring the randomness of our deepest convictions to light is to simply ask my students the following question: “How many of you think that you would be a very different person today if you had been born in rural Tibet instead of where you were actually born?” All hands go up. Why? Because, as everyone knows, we are shaped early and often by features of our existence—our society, family, location, social status, economic status—that we do not choose. Yet we often wander unreflectively through life relying on these foundations that we did not choose as if we had magically been given the universal truth about all important issues at birth. The fact that our most deeply held beliefs would be different had we been born elsewhere on the planet (or even to different parents down the street) should disconcert us.
Of all the things I deeply believe, those that I have come to through challenging preconceptions and previously unchallenged assumptions are the ones that are now the most definitive of who I am. We should regularly reexamine our beliefs and practices, become alert to weaknesses and inconsistencies in our own thinking, discover something plausible in another’s point of view and in so doing, become better than the parochial and myopic creatures that we naturally are. After all, none of us needs to believe everything that we think. These are some of the most important tools in each person’s lifetime learning kit.
One of the things that I most appreciate about Montaigne is that he describes things as they are with little or no sugar coating. In his more annoyed moods, he calls our defensiveness and judgment of each other in conversation what it is: stupidity.
Nothing vexes me so much in stupidity as the fact that it is better pleased with itself than any reason can reasonably be . . . Obstinacy and heat of opinion is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so certain, resolute, disdainful, contemplative, grave, and serious as an ass?
I have been asked occasionally over the years to reduce to one sentence the most basic moral lesson I want my students to take away at the end of the semester. Montaigne’s “Don’t be an ass” is one of my top candidates.
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