#TwoCentsOnTuesday

The arguments that people get into over politics are, to a significant extent, low level conspiracy theories. Conservatives think that liberals are conspiring to tax them into oblivion, to take away their guns and property rights, and to rig elections by legitimizing illegal immigration. Liberals think conservative are conspiring to make the rich richer, restrict the voting ability of minorities, collude with Russia, and silence environmental scientists. Both sides think the other is spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

If we seriously want to solve any of the mounting problems we face—or even just be better partisans—we need some spaces where we listen to one another and show up humble enough to accept the fact that we might have something to learn.

It might seem safe to stay in the middle of the road, straddling the line between working on a relationship and leaving it alone. But staying in the middle is unhealthy because there is no progress in any direction. We’re avoiding pain instead of pursuing health. We sidestep making a decision because we’re afraid it will be the wrong one. However, it’s better to make a decision and take action, then steer the results as they arise. There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.

I recall being asked why I didn’t wear a tie, which at the time was the equivalent of walking down Fifth Avenue naked. “One part arrogance, one part aesthetics, one part convenience,” was my usual answer.

Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.

For so many, instead of looking for “cause of death” when they expire, we should be looking for “cause of life” when they are still around.

What if there were no wiggle room? What if we knew for sure that we would get a “bill” for every single one of our follow-through failures? What’s more, what if we knew that the bill would always come immediately? It would be an entirely different ball game if, for example, we knew that smoking just one cigarette would kill us; that ignoring a child just once would cause immediate and permanent harm; or that failing to tackle a problem at work today would end your career today. The very thought of failing to follow through would indeed be alarming.

Thinking for oneself is, beyond a doubt, a laudable goal. But there are three problems with the idea that it is a good way to ward off error. The first is that the glorification of independent thought can easily become a refuge for holders of utterly oddball beliefs.

The second problem is that (as we have seen), our own direct observations and experiences are not necessarily more trustworthy than secondhand knowledge.

The last and most significant problem with the idea that we should always think for ourselves is that, bluntly put, we can’t. Every one of us is profoundly dependent on other people’s minds—so profoundly that if we took seriously the charge to think for ourselves, we would have to relinquish our faith in the vast majority of the things we think we know.

The vast majority of our beliefs are really beliefs once removed. Our faith that we are right is faith that someone else is right.

Efficient people are really lazy people in disguise–true or false? If you said false, you clearly aren’t one of us. The truth is we lazies strive to do as little as possible as quickly as possible so we can get back to lazing around. Being efficient fits nicely with our goals and, more importantly, it gets better press.