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24 Hours of Democracy Essay
A Simple Wisdom:
the possibility of being wrong
by Stephen B. Waters
Sometimes, even when you think you are right, you are not.
You think you're right, not because you are right, but simply because you think you're right.
- 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. [Seneca]
You need to be right, because your best future depends on it. You plan your future according to the map of reality you carry in your mind. You need that map as accurate as can be. You depend on it.
So how do you know when you are wrong? That's what friends are for. That's why people converse. That's why we write things. Writing freezes each thought for further scrutiny from any side. In the light of a new morning, we see if our ideas make the same sense they seemed to make the night before.
- If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If,
on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will
be in peril. [Confucius]
I'll run to the truth and embrace it as soon as I see it coming.[Montaigne]
Make this simple wisdom your own or the real driving force to learn is missing.
Teaching the Simple Wisdom
We don't formally teach this simple wisdom in schools, churches or families -- though occasionally teachers and students stumble across it inadvertently.
Even so, is accessible. From your own past you can recall personal pain caused by thinking you were right when you were not. From your own experience you can put a name on it. You can grow from it.
- 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. [Seneca]
Simple Wisdom in Democracy
Simple wisdoms apply at any level and apply between different levels of interpersonal relations: individuals, families, groups, societies cities, states and nations.
Schools teach democracy as "majority rules"....
. . . Sigh. . . .
That's the least of it. Democracy is really the civil equivalent of this first simple wisdom. It's the idea that any single person can publicly express a new idea which his neighbors may find of value. It's the idea that society can find a better way of doing things; can discover for itself once again that sometimes when you think you have been right you were not.
Society needs the unrestricted opportunity to nail its thoughts down. How silly to say some thought is unthinkable or unwriteable. Certainly some thoughts are undoable. But unthinkable? Not likely. Unable to be discussed? Never! Beware of any who consider themselves wise enough to judge for you what you should not read.
Your own thoughtfulness
The handful of simple wisdoms extend a common thread through all the great thinkers who turned their efforts towards the everyday problems of living -- Confucius, Socrates, Mohammed, Jesus, Seneca, Bacon, Montaigne, Jefferson, Lincoln, and others. These easily accessible wisdoms develop judgment -- the process of thoughtfulness. But that's another essay.
- To know what you know and know what you don't know is the
characteristic of one who knows. [Confucius]
We are in a race that there is no guarantee civilization will win. Science has put incredible power to hurt in the hands of any who care to learn certain mechanics of operation -- be they zealots, the earnest but misguided, the demented, or the merely ignorant. No longer is a good iron strongbox enough to protect our valuables and no longer can a door with iron bolts protect our families. [Jacob Bronowski, <CITE>Magic, Science and Civilization</CITE>]
We do have a chance because thoughtfulness is an acquired trait. We help people stumble over hints of it for themselves for our own safety's sake. Survival depends upon inoculating ourselves, our friends, and our enemies with the consciousness to understand that an individual's own self-interest rests upon a handful of simple wisdoms and the processes those ideas encourage.
Fortunately, all it takes is a change of mind.
Stephen B. Waters
Publisher
Rome (NY) Daily Sentinel
333 W. Dominick St.
Rome, NY 13440
Phone: 315-337-4000
Fax: 315-339-6282
E-mail: sbwaters@rny.com
About me:
Written in 1996: In 1980 an essay in Dr. Lewis Thomas' book <CITE>Medusa and the Snail</CITE> entitled "Why Montaigne is not a Bore" sent me off on a decade-and-a-half tour of great thinkers who dealt with the simple daily problems of living. Wiser and happier, at 48, I live with my wife Wendy, and two children, Brad (8) and Sarah (6), in Rome, NY.
My family publishes a 17,000 circulation local news-oriented daily newspaper that has been in our family for five generations. I'm on the ice too early in the morning coaching Mite hockey and work too hard the rest of the day, but, hey, these simple wisdoms are too important to our collective future not to take the opportunity to write about them for "24 Hours".
Regards/sbw
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