conversableeconomist

"They say. What do they say? Let them say."

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) had this phrase carved into the mantelpiece of his living room: \”They say. What do they say? Let them say.\”

A few years back, a writer at the Hard Honesty website dug down into the sources of this quotation.  It may trace back to the founding of Marischal College, in Aberdeen, back in 1593, at a time of high political and religious tensions.  The earlier version was: \”Thay Haif Said: Quhat Say Thay? Lat Thame Say.\”

Here, I\’m less interested in the history than in considering the sentiment itself. As we launch into a new year that will among other events bring a contentious national election, here\’s a reminder of the spirit that listening doesn\’t imply agreement, and letting people speak doesn\’t imply agreement, either. Anyone who is interested in learning will learn more by listening than by talking–even if you are only learning how to disagree more powerfully–and you can only listen if you let others speak.  In addition, ignoring speakers or smiling insincerely and shaking your head in sad disagreement while passing on are also legitimate responses to unwanted speech. There should be a powerful presumption against seeking to silence others.  And of course, there is no need to silence yourself, either. 

conversableeconomist

"Remember that Writing is not Typing"

Rebecca Solnit is a writer who crosses the boundaries of history, politics, feminism, and social criticism. I especially enjoyed River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, which tells the story of the photographer who managed to capture high-speed motion in California in 1872 but also a meditation about the roots of Hollywood and Silicon Valley and the modern industrial economy.  A few years ago she wrote a short essay: \”How to Be a Writer: 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit–Joy, Suffering, Reading, and Lots and Lots of Writing\” (Literary Hub website, September 13, 2016). It\’s a quick, fun read, but here are a few of her thoughts about writing that especially caught my eye:

Remember that writing is not typing. Thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing, with revisions as you go, and then more revisions, deletions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh, because a good writer is always a good editor of his or her own work. Typing is this little transaction in the middle of two vast thoughtful processes. There is such thing as too much revision—I’ve seen things that were amazing in the 17th version get flattened out in the 23rd—but nothing is born perfect. Well, some things almost are, but they’re freaks. And you might get those magical perfect passages if you write a lot, including all the stuff that isn’t magic that has to be cut, rethought, revised, fact-checked, and cleaned up. …

Time. It takes time. This means that you need to find that time. Don’t be too social. Live below your means and keep the means modest (people with trust funds and other cushions: I’m not talking to you, though money makes many, many things easy, and often, vocation and passion harder). You probably have to do something else for a living at the outset or all along, but don’t develop expensive habits or consuming hobbies.

Facts. Always get them right. The wrong information about a bumblebee in a poem is annoying enough, but inaccuracy in nonfiction is a cardinal sin. No one will trust you if you get your facts wrong, and if you’re writing about living or recently alive people or politics you absolutely must not misrepresent. (Ask yourself this: do I like it when people lie about me?) No matter what you’re writing about, you have an obligation to get it right, for the people you’re writing about, for the readers, and for the record. It’s why I always tell students that it’s a slippery slope from the things your stepfather didn’t actually do to the weapons of mass destruction Iraq didn’t actually have. If you want to write about a stepfather who did things your stepfather didn’t, or repeat conversations you don’t actually remember with any detail, at least label your product accurately.

conversableeconomist

\’The Tone of Civil Life Has Its Necessity and May Even Have Its Heroic Quality"

Yes, we live in outrageous times. But we also live in a time when there is cachet in being the most outraged, kudos to being the most highly angered and offended, and eminence in being the most exceptionally shocked and appalled. When the rewards for dialing up the emotional level are high, other discourse can be drowned out. This blog, in its own small way, tries to model the virtues of civil discourse.

I was moved to consider this point when I ran across a comment from the prominent literary critic Lionel Trilling in a 1951 letter to his former student Norman Podhoretz. Podhoretz had reviewed a book by Trilling, and in the course of an overall positive review raised concerns that the Trilling\’s exposition was perhaps not confrontational enough. Trilling responded in this way (the quotation is from Life in Culture: Selected Letters of Lionel Trilling, edited by Adam Kirsch, 2018, p. 193):

What I would have said about my own prose is that there is a need for a tone of reasonableness and demonstration, that it was of the greatest importance that we learn to consider that the tone of civil life has its necessity and may even have its heroic quality, that we must have a modification of all that is implied by the fierce posture of modern literature.

However, Trilling also expressed a fear that rises in the hearts of all of us who attempt to be civil–that our attempts at a kind of clarity and civility could mean that people just don\’t understand when or how we are disagreeing with them. Trilling continues:

I still think this … But with the arrival in the last few days of some of the English reviews of my book, I have come to feel that my tone isn\’t what I had thought or meant it to be. I have always supposed it had more intensity, irony, and acerbity than the English have been finding in it, and several remarks about its \”gentleness\” have disturbed me, for I don\’t think I am gentle in my intellectual judgments, and don\’t want to be. Possibly the British response is to my willingness to forgive the writer while condemning the idea, but I must also suppose there is something in the style itself–that something is there that I did not mean to be there, or something not there that I meant to be. 

To be clear, a civil tone doesn\’t mean avoiding disagreement. It doesn\’t mean go-along-to-get-along. It doesn\’t mean squishiness. It doesn\’t mean a belief that all discussions should be robotic or \”just-the-facts.\” It means a dose of earnestness about trying to convey one\’s own beliefs, and a dose of humility when confronted by differing beliefs of others.

It does mean not rising too quickly when the easy bait of anger and outrage is proffered. It means trying to make allowances for those who give in to excess, because none of us is perfect, but also not feeding or amplifying that excess, and indeed trying to tamp it down. It means that politeness will be the first and second and probably the third response to disagreements, and even in the cases where politeness must needs be abandoned, a cold, explicit, and angry disagreement can be followed by disengagement, rather than feeding the fire of disagreement for its own sake. 
Those who forsake a civil tone may find that later, when they wish to call on others for sober reflection or careful thought, they have done injury to this form of discourse. If and when they later wish to appeal for a civil discussion, it may no longer be available to them. When tempted to say that you find it impossible to disagree on certain subjects in a civil manner, it may be useful to ask oneself about whether you wish to encourage a society in which conversations will be ruled by those who can emote the loudest, longest, and hardest. 
Most people demonstrate a capacity for civil disagreement in many areas of their lives: family, friends, work, institutions of worship, clubs, local government, and others. In my own experience, there is often a kind of performative dishonesty and group-signalling that occurs when conversations disintegrate into passionate incivility.  What I have in mind here is similar to the sentiment that James Madison expressed in Federalist #50, when he wrote:

Throughout the continuance of the council, it was split into two fixed and violent parties. The fact is acknowledged and lamented by themselves. Had this not been the case, the face of their proceedings exhibits a proof equally satisfactory. In all questions, however unimportant in themselves, or unconnected with each other, the same names stand invariably contrasted on the opposite columns. Every unbiased observer may infer, without danger of mistake, and at the same time without meaning to reflect on either party, or any individuals of either party, that, unfortunately, passion, not reason, must have presided over their decisions. When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.

If someone\’s passion always aligns them with the same group, it seems to me a tell-tale sign that their membership in the group has become so important that they fear the possibility of being seen to disagree with the group more than they desire to think their own thoughts. In that way, the disciplline of civility offers a kind of personal freedom both to oneself and others.