Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage.
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground (1864)
Approval, assent, agreement, acceptance, acquiescence all seem to revolve around the way we go along with something. Yet given the right circumstances and backing we can easily be persuaded to go along with the most abject nonsense.
Dostoevsky was right of course, nonsense can be the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage, which is why we see so much of it and why it can't be eradicated. Some make use of the advantage and some don’t. Making use of it successfully almost always requires the nonsense to be called something else and imposed on others.
Yet it is surprising how often nonsense offers some kind of advantage even when quite startlingly blatant. It can be built on the distortion, corruption and endlessly subtle misuse of language, yet still be absurdly obvious. Not to everyone of course.
As we grow up we learn our native language and make ourselves understood. We learn to mimic whatever language forms are appropriate to the situations we encounter. But from an early age we also learn nonsense language appropriate to other situations such as fairy stories which evolve over time into political convictions.
We also learn from an early age that it can be socially beneficial to repeat nonsense. Often it becomes an apparently innocuous activity such as watching Monty Python with friends. It doesn’t seem to matter if nonsense enters the language as amusement but perhaps it does.
As children we receive subtle and not so subtle approval cues when we use language appropriate to a situation. Approval almost becomes a thing, almost an entity, an essential aspect of language. Without approval there is no way to learn a language, no way to get it right. But many of us must have signalled our approval of Monty Python nonsense and a vast amount of other nonsense in a similar vein.
Approval is an aspect of what we are as social beings and is necessarily manipulated because we are social beings. The Monty Python team aimed at one type of approval, political movements aim at another. We approve or we don’t, but as individuals we cannot cause even the most obvious nonsense to expire through terminal disapproval. We may approve or reject political nonsense, pass it on or ignore it, but cannot stand in the way of it.
Nonsense can have value and in our value-conscious world that value can be pumped up by pumping up the nonsense market. Almost inevitably it has become common for experts to offer dubiously simple opinions to a wider audience than their fellow experts. These wider audiences may be incompetent, but their approval is guaranteed because the experts are pumping up an approved narrative.
All of which is familiar, but it leaves us with an insoluble problem. Many people clearly give their approval to anything authoritative and pass it on rather than carry out their own analysis. Others are far more inclined to withhold approval, recognise nonsense for what it is and reject it whatever the social consequences.
For some people, the search for truth often goes no further than conformist approval of anything authoritative which is dutifully passed on socially. The distinction is blurred of course, but not that blurred. Conformist blockheads who can't even detect nonsense are a problem. Possibly the problem.
Yet it is surprising how often nonsense offers some kind of advantage even when quite startlingly blatant. It can be built on the distortion, corruption and endlessly subtle misuse of language, yet still be absurdly obvious. Not to everyone of course.
As we grow up we learn our native language and make ourselves understood. We learn to mimic whatever language forms are appropriate to the situations we encounter. But from an early age we also learn nonsense language appropriate to other situations such as fairy stories which evolve over time into political convictions.
We also learn from an early age that it can be socially beneficial to repeat nonsense. Often it becomes an apparently innocuous activity such as watching Monty Python with friends. It doesn’t seem to matter if nonsense enters the language as amusement but perhaps it does.
As children we receive subtle and not so subtle approval cues when we use language appropriate to a situation. Approval almost becomes a thing, almost an entity, an essential aspect of language. Without approval there is no way to learn a language, no way to get it right. But many of us must have signalled our approval of Monty Python nonsense and a vast amount of other nonsense in a similar vein.
Approval is an aspect of what we are as social beings and is necessarily manipulated because we are social beings. The Monty Python team aimed at one type of approval, political movements aim at another. We approve or we don’t, but as individuals we cannot cause even the most obvious nonsense to expire through terminal disapproval. We may approve or reject political nonsense, pass it on or ignore it, but cannot stand in the way of it.
Nonsense can have value and in our value-conscious world that value can be pumped up by pumping up the nonsense market. Almost inevitably it has become common for experts to offer dubiously simple opinions to a wider audience than their fellow experts. These wider audiences may be incompetent, but their approval is guaranteed because the experts are pumping up an approved narrative.
All of which is familiar, but it leaves us with an insoluble problem. Many people clearly give their approval to anything authoritative and pass it on rather than carry out their own analysis. Others are far more inclined to withhold approval, recognise nonsense for what it is and reject it whatever the social consequences.
For some people, the search for truth often goes no further than conformist approval of anything authoritative which is dutifully passed on socially. The distinction is blurred of course, but not that blurred. Conformist blockheads who can't even detect nonsense are a problem. Possibly the problem.
2 comments:
Built into Dostoyevsky's quote is the idea that at some point it is possible to free ourselves from nonsense, to know it for what it is, and to plot a new course. Otherwise, we would never even know that nonsense was possible, or we would just think that nonsense was for other people, not us. Growing up demonstrates this. We realise that lots of our childish dreams and fears were nonsense. And then the same for those things that seemed so intense during adolescence. And then, rather scarily, a lot of our "adult" thoughts might turn out to be nonsensical.
I wonder whether we have evolved to review our past ideas and consign them to the "nonsense" category until such time as we reach our potential and then start accepting them as true. A form of mental senescence which explains why huge swathes of the population just go along with whatever nonsense they are presented with. They have reached their potential, and then they just drift.
Alternatively, maybe there is a big evolutionary advantage in group-think, and people will gravitate towards nonsense just because it is the easy option and their hormones warn them against critical thought.
Sam - "I wonder whether we have evolved to review our past ideas and consign them to the "nonsense" category until such time as we reach our potential and then start accepting them as true."
That's a most interesting idea. Rather like the Peter principle where people rise to their level of incompetence but in this case they rise until their ability to detect nonsense reaches a plateau. Name it and write a book!
Post a Comment