From the Director

Dr. Daniel E. Wueste

Fools, knaves, and us

Listening to voices in the public square, it might seem an unavoidable conclusion that there are only three sorts of persons: fools, knaves and us, the last being the group to which we belong, which consists of all and only “constitutionally questioning and critical”[1] persons whose being such could only be doubted by a fool or a knave.

There are, I suspect, many reasons for this sorry state of affairs.  One reason, cited by many, is a new media landscape in which consumers of news and commentary find it not only comfortable but also very easy to hear only the voices of persons with whom they agree; voices that, as it happens, enthusiastically accept the responsibility of keeping their audiences up to date on what the fools and knaves are up to.  The general phenomenon —thinking in terms of an “us” and a “them” (the fools and knaves)— is not new, of course.  So, the explanatory force of this reason is in fact narrow: it helps to explain the extent or greater intensity of the phenomenon, but not its source.

One reason that certainly predates the modern media landscape is the human tendency to simplify, or more precisely oversimplify, and exaggerate, in short, hyperbole.  Another is that, in general, human beings aren’t very good at recognizing and accepting that they are mistaken; that what they thought was true isn’t; or that as a matter of fact, things aren’t as they thought they were.  While these considerations don’t do much more than the one discussed above to explain the origin of the us-versus-them phenomenon, when combined with it they suggest a way to avoid or mitigate the damage that can result from what I earlier called this sorry state of affairs.

The capacity to recognize and accept that one is mistaken, like a muscle that is never or rarely used, atrophies when there is no occasion for its exercise.  Occasions for its exercise are bound to be less frequent when the voices one hears are those of like-minded others and all the more less frequent if, as a result of hyperbolic articulation, the ideas of others seem not to merit consideration: “only a fool or a knave could possibly believe _________”; the ellipsis here being filled with an idea that is contrary to, not in sync with, or just can’t be comfortably coupled with our ideas (that is, ideas shared by us).

There are, in fact, people who cannot rightly be placed in any one of the three groups listed above.  Some people who aren’t in our group and, in particular, people who have ideas that are contrary to, not in sync with, or can’t be comfortably coupled with our ideas, are neither fools nor knaves.  Such a person might simply be mistaken.  Or not.  That is, she/he might be right.  This last is where the rub lies for us.  That someone else whose idea is contrary to ours is mistaken is something we can accommodate with little or no difficulty.  That she is right, on other hand, is not.  The implication here, that we are wrong/mistaken, is unwelcome, of course.  But the weighty matter in this situation is the potential loss of something of value (a truth—the thing that the other is right about); something that we could have if we were, as Antony Flew puts it, “not either by theory or by passion distracted.”[2]  

The challenge for us lies in this: we can’t know whether the other is mistaken or not unless we take the time to listen to, strive truly to understand, and then, in good faith, consider what the other has to say.  The recommendation that emerges here is that we should create and work to sustain an environment for living, thinking, and interacting where the human capacity to recognize and admit that one is mistaken can be exercised.  Doing this would be salutary for individuals and the communities (groups) that comprise them.  In addition to good consequences such as learning things that might otherwise be unknown, we would be treating others as they deserve to be treated (by treating them as we believe they ought to treat us) and developing habits of interaction that are elements constitutive of good character, in a sense applicable to individuals and organizations.

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[1] Antony Flew, “The Profit Motive,” Ethics, Vol. 86 No.4 pp. 312-322, n.18 p.319.

[2]  Ibid. p. 316.  In this article, which provides much in return on the investment of time one makes in reading it, Flew is responding to an indictment of the “profit motive” and in so doing flags some mistakes made by folks on both sides of the question.  For example, he discusses the mistake of “identifying the interested with the selfish.”  This is a mistake because “though selfish actions are perhaps always interested, only some interested actions are also selfish.  To say that a piece of conduct was selfish is to say more than that it was interested, if it was.  The point is that selfishness is always and necessarily out of order.  Interestedness is not, and scarcely could be.” Id. at 314.  Another, rather pithy point about trade: “Mutually satisfactory sex is a better model here than poker played for money.  For in the former the satisfactions of each depend reciprocally upon those of the other; whereas the latter really is a zero sum game in which your winnings precisely equal, because they are, my losses.”  Id. at 316.