Humility -- The possibility you might be wrong
Once the possibility that we made a mistake is recognized, it is up to us to resolve not to make the same mistake again.
For who has ever considered himself lacking in sense? That would be a self-contradictory proposition. Lack of sense is a disease that never exists when it is seen; it is most tenacious and strong, yet the first glance from the patient's eye pierces it through and disperses it, as a dense mist is dispersed by the sun's beams. ... There never was a street-porter or silly woman who was not sure of having as much sense as was necessary. We readily recognize in others a superiority in courage, physical strength, experience, agility, or beauty. But a superior judgment we concede to nobody. And we think that we could ourselves have discovered the reasons which occur naturally to others, if only we had looked in the same direction.1
If a man remembers how very many times he has been wrong in his judgment, will it not be foolish of him not to mistrust it ever after? When I find myself convinced by another's argument that I have held a false opinion, I do not learn so much from the new fact he has taught me and from my ignorance on this particular point – this would be a small gain – as about my own weakness in general and the untrustworthiness of my own understanding.2
There are no angels. When we admit to the possibility of having been wrong, our minds open to represent reality more closely, better to plan our own futures.
Page Smith's newly published histories of the United States list some foolish and laughable things we have done.3 We are not alone in that.
We color how we look at the past
Historiography, the history of the study of history, examines the ways people have looked at what they have done. It studies those colorations we discover that we applied subconsciously in our mind's eye to things we thought we saw clearly at the time.
Who can assume a current view is colorless? All past views are seen now to have been shaded. But, as the shades of the past now are seen, so too might the future show the shadings of today more clearly in retrospect. Yet some would crush any unauthorized variation of history that should appear. A rigorously protected interpretation of history survives at the expense of truth. Truth that assures the integrity of our mental map. From this mental map we plan our own futures. We have to allow all interpretations of history and ferret out the truths from among them. We can entrust this task of judgment only to ourselves.
We color what we see today
Let's look not at history, but at the way that people have written it. People have interpreted the same events differently depending upon the conventional wisdom of the day. Popular and respected American historians have written with bias only obvious later:
1621 – Historians wrote from the point of view that events occurred explicitly as a result of divine intervention.
1830 – At this time the concept of manifest destiny or the selection of a chosen people first achieved popularity.
1870 – This was the period of the patrician historians who concluded that great men mold history.
1930 – At this time the Marxian interpretations came to the fore. Their conclusion was that events were substantially influenced by economic considerations.
1956 – Consensus historians believed that historical events were molded by consensus – by an invisible hand.
1970 – Chaos and chance became prime movers to these historians. Events happened almost as dice roll.
Bias has happened in writings by previous historians intent on objectivity. Recognizing that, shouldn't current writers assume that they are subject to bias today. Why should our observations of the past be accurate when those of previous historians were not?
History without 'interpretation' has come to be seen as a self-deceptive undertaking, the naive assertion that facts speak for 'themselves,' not for their selector.4
Is our mental map of reality guaranteed accurate? If decisions are made on the basis of an inaccurate mental map of reality, those decisions might not be in our own best interest. For instance, if one grew up in a family that traditionally dislikes foreigners, we may be predisposed to ignore perfectly respectable answers to problems simply because those answers were not domestic.
Then what are we? The things that surround us, the things on which we live, what are they? Our whole universe is no more than a semblance of reality, perhaps a deceptive semblance, perhaps one without substance altogether. I should find it difficult to say which of these people annoy me most, those who would have us know nothing or the ones who refuse even to leave us the small satisfaction of knowing that we know nothing.5
It is not hopeless. Thought can be used to detect errors in thought. An imperfect tool can be used to improve itself and it's own results. Recognizing your own shortcomings is a recursive process. It is a feedback situation; an exercise in dialectics; an example of Hofstadter's tangled loops as described in Godel, Escher & Bach.6
Constant re-evaluation is required
What other people say may not be truthful. Your own ideas may not be correct. The everlasting validity of things that may now be true cannot be assured. The process of revaluation is a constant process. Such is the understanding the possibility that you just might be wrong.
The word dialectics comes from the Greek term for dialogue, and a residue of give-and-take, of relentless questioning, continues to inform the concept. At the core of all varieties of dialectics, we find a continuation of that incessant querying. . ..7
And no concept is final: Concepts are made and remade. Gravity does not become a lie when Einstein substitutes something else for it; it becomes part of the wider concept of relativity. There will in time be unifying concepts wider than loyalty and independence and dissent. They will not make these concepts false; they will make them part of a new and wider understanding.8
There can be no unthinkable thoughts
There may be actions that are unable to be done, but that doesn't mean the actions cannot be thought about and talked about. There may be thoughts that are not constructive or thoughts of limited value.
I will tell you something extraordinary, but I will tell it just the same: in many matters I find more order and restraint in my morals than in my opinions, and my appetites less depraved than my reason.9
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1 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 218.
2 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 355.
3 ++++Page Smith title and examples
4 Heilbroner, Robert. Marxism: For and Against. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980. Pg. 79.
5 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 161.
6 ++++Define Recursion and Dialectics.
7 Heilbroner, Robert. Marxism: For and Against. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980. Pg. 31.
8 Bronowski, Jacob. Fulfillment of Man. .
9 Montaigne, Michele de. Essays. Translation and introduction by j. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1958. Pg. 181.
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