Quote of the Day: Intellectual Rights and Duties

Ms. Wendy McElroy at the Laissez Faire Books enumerates what she thinks constitutes our intellectual rights and duties…

The following are some intellectual rights and duties that I’ve evolved as guidelines for constructing — one person at a time — the type of intellectual society in which I want to live.

YOUR INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS

You Have the Right to Be Uninterested

When you are trapped in an unpleasant or boring conversation, you are well within your intellectual rights to state, “I don’t care to talk about this (or to you) further.” Make the statement without hostility, as a matter of fact, and then simply walk away. No one has an unconditional claim on your time or on your attention. And the assumption that you should care about every issue and event in the world is ridiculous. Don’t accept the unrealistic demand that you find everything and everyone interesting.

Everyone Has the Right Not to Understand

Most of us spend a lot of time trying to avoid uttering the sentence, “I don’t understand what you are saying.” Too often, people see this statement as an admission of ignorance or inadequacy, rather than one of self-confidence. No one understands everything, and it is folly to pretend you do. Nevertheless, the fear of appearing ignorant or stupid frequently underlies a reluctance to admit that you simply do not understand what is being said. Do not apologize. Just ask whoever is speaking to clarify what they mean. Most people are more than happy to expound at length in front of an attentive audience.

Everyone Has the Right to Make a Mistake

This is far more than a right. It is an inevitability. You will commit errors, and frequently. If this upsets you, then curse human nature. As a human being, you are a fallible creature without godlike or automatic knowledge. Yet many people will argue themselves (and everyone else) into the ground or into absurd intellectual corners, rather than admit, “I’m obviously mistaken about that one point.” There is no shame in admitting, “I made a mistake.” Indeed, there is great strength in being willing to acknowledge your errors and learning from them.

Everyone Has the Right to Change His Mind

Changing your mind or a stated position is not intellectual indecision or weakness. It is part of the learning process by which you discover errors and correct them. If someone convinces you on an issue, it is a mark of intellectual honesty and courtesy to say, “You’ve persuaded me to your point of view.” After all, what is the alternative? Holding onto an untenable position just because that is what you believed yesterday? Everyone has the right to say, “Obviously, I am wrong on that point,” and not to feel diminished by this act of intellectual honesty.

Everyone Has the Right to Disagree

Whenever you hear a statement with which you disagree, you have the right to say so. Often you are in situations in which your opinion would be unpopular if stated. Perhaps a family gathering has turned into a political discussion, and you hold the only dissenting view. Your alternatives are wider than either stewing in silence or starting an intellectual brawl. You don’t need to justify yourself. You needn’t become either hostile or apologetic. You can simply state, “I disagree,” and walk away. Or stay and argue. The option is yours.

At this point, many people will ask, “Why bother? Why cause trouble?” In some cases, you may reasonably decide that speaking out is not worth the price. But showing discretion is different than allowing silence in the face of offensive opinions to become a habit. Such habitual silence is destructive to the most-important aspect of your intellectual life: your own self-esteem. Breaking the silence and saying, “I disagree,” can be important. If it were not, most people would not feel such resistance to making the statement.

Everyone Has a Right to His or Her Own Opinion

Everyone has the right to so weighty a thing as an opinion, and to express it. You do not need a diploma, permission from your spouse, a dispensation from the church: Simply by being a human being, you have a right to reach your own conclusions and publicly state them. The more knowledge you have, the more likely your opinions are to be correct. But this does not mean that you should not refuse to reach a conclusion right now based on what you know. That is all anyone ever does: form opinions based on their current level of knowledge. After all, as noted above, you also have the right to change your mind if more or better information arrives. .

YOUR INTELLECTUAL DUTIES TOWARD OTHERS

Never Purposely Embarrass Anyone

People often make unsupported claims, contradict themselves or otherwise become vulnerable to being intellectually humiliated. Don’t do it. Argue as well as you can, but do not take psychological advantage of someone’s weakness. If you do so, then you will make an enemy of the humiliated person and win no points from onlookers who recognize an act of gratuitous cruelty when they see one. If the other person has become so irritating that you cannot continue discussion without launching into personal attacks, then walk away. Brute reason is as inexcusable as brute force.

Give the Other Person Time to Consider the Argument

Do not badger someone for an immediate response or to instantly concede a point you have established. After all, accepting what you say may mean that the person has to question other beliefs, and such a process can be extremely uncomfortable, especially if performed in public or under duress. Allow the person room to think and to change his mind gracefully.

Acknowledge Good Points

If the other person scores a point in the discussion, acknowledge it. Even if he doesn’t change your mind on the main issue, give him the credit he deserves by saying, “That’s an interesting perspective,” or, “You are obviously right about that.” This level of intellectual courtesy is so rare that you will acquire a reputation for fairness based on such remarks alone.

Freely Acknowledge When You Have Made an Error

Honesty works two ways. When you misstate a date, for example, admit the mistake without embarrassment and move on. If you “stick by your guns” and refuse to acknowledge an obvious error, the other person is likely to focus the rest of the argument on that weak spot. Once you have admitted the error, however, don’t allow the other person to hammer away on the point. If he attempts to do so, then cut him short and demand, “If this is how you treat a simple mistake, what would you do if I conceded your main point — ridicule me for agreeing with you?”

Be Tolerant of Small Slips

Don’t jump on the occasional silly statement or inane question. We all make foolish remarks at some time or other.

When You Are Uncertain of Something, Say So

If you are asked a question for which you don’t have the answer, say, “I don’t know,” or, “I haven’t given the matter any thought.” This is not only a sign of intellectual honesty, but as importantly, it is a way to keep from making a fool of yourself.

Avoid Ostentatious Displays of Knowledge

Never argue just to display your own cleverness. This is as offensive to most people as an ostentatious display of wealth, which usually causes resentment, rather than admiration.

Civility and mutual respect are the first things to go in despotic times. A regime that doesn’t trust people to manage their lives tends to undermine our own trust in others and ourselves. In the end, however, the state cannot manage our minds and our habits of thinking and communicating with each other. This we can and must control for ourselves. Let not the state take away our intellectual rights and responsibilities.

Thanks for the advice Ms. McElroy.

Despite The Disaster, Japan Reports Less Incidence Of Looting

Despite the horrible disaster, Professor William Easterly posits a very interesting observation and asks, why has there been no looting in Japan?

I quote Prof. Bill Easterly’s entire terse post... (bold highlight mine)

Amidst the heartbreaking devastation in Japan, many have noticed (especially this blog from the Telegraph) how much social solidarity — and little stealing — there has been. The Telegraph blogger Ed West notes vending machine owners giving out free drinks, in contrast to large-scale looting after Katrina.

Economists have been saying for a while that trust is a good candidate to be a major determinant of development. Think how much contract enforcement is critical to make trade and finance possible. Think how much easier contract enforcement is when nobody tries to cheat. This is supported by empirical studies correlating per capita income with a measure of trust, like that shown below, which is computed as …oh forget that, the current example is much more compelling.

Responding to tragedy, the Japanese have resources because they are rich, and it was their social solidarity that helped get them there.

While it may be argued that Japan’s homogenous society-a strong sense of group and national identity and little or no ethnic or racial diversity-could be attributed to such social cohesion, this idea of 'homogeneity' isn’t entirely true as such differences exists in Japan, like in all societies, as Harvard University professors Theodore Bestor (anthropology) and Helen Hardacre argues.

The economic development paradigm based on “Social solidarity that helped get them there” is perhaps what Henry Hazlitt explained in his The Foundations of Morality (quoted by Bettina Bien Greaves) as, (bold emphasis mine)

For each of us social cooperation is of course not the ultimate end but a means … But it is a means so central, so universal, so indispensable to the realization of practically all our other ends, that there is little harm in regarding it as an end in itself, and even in treating it as if it were the goal of ethics. In fact, precisely because none of us knows exactly what would give most satisfaction or happiness to others, the best test of our actions or rules of action is the extent to which they promote a social cooperation that best enables each of us to pursue his own ends.

Without social cooperation modern man could not achieve the barest fraction of the ends and satisfactions that he has achieved with it. The very subsistence of the immense majority of us depends upon it.

In short, a culture of (trust) social cooperation brought about by the interdependence of people founded on the division of labor, respect for private property and voluntary exchanges is what has mostly led to Japan's civil society that has greatly reduced the incidences of violence and theft even during bleak moments.