Trilling and Newman, on the same page
New York Review Books recently published a new edition of Lionel Trilling’s great 1950 collection, The Liberal Imagination. In an essay about the novel, titled “Art and Fortune,” Trilling writes, “Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.” A simple and obvious truth given perfect expression. It is a kind of corollary to Newman’s famous observation: “When men understand what each other mean, they see for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless.” Taken by itself, this sounds like a warrant for resignation and silence: either people basically agree, or else they don’t and never will. As a convert, Newman knew from experience that people could change their minds — and that this change was not always just a matter of discovering what they already knew. But if conversion was always possible, it was never easy; it always had to overcome the twin inertias of sloth and pride. Something in us wants to misunderstand whatever might knock us off the perch of our intellectual or spiritual complacence. Only grace can overcome our natural resistance to truths that threaten our settled self-understanding. Sometimes grace does this by overpowering our skepticism; just as often, though, it works by redirecting our skepticism against our own hidden preserves of credulity.
When are the times when we must resist conversion? When are the moments when we must try to convert others? It seems the world is structured in a way that necessitates frequent intellectual clash, i.e. disagreement: otherwise we have stagnation. Eternal harmony does not seem to be the purpose of it all.
I write this as someone who hates confrontation.
I submit that Trilling and Newman only touch the surface and tend to ascribe ill will when the real problem is people are wary of leaving their comfort zones. Whether it is the choice one has made on a television, painting, school, hero, spouse, neighborhood, house, people resist questioning of the decision since this means one has to admit being wrong. It is a phenomenon that astute salespeople exploit by flattering people on their previous choices by setting them up to choose the product now offered.
HOWEVER, when we are confronted with goodness, good returned for evil, forgiveness, mercy, generosity, love, we gladly change. This is why Jesus never loses his reputation while the clergy often do. Like the sun, Jesus personifies God and everyone is moved. It is not dogma or liturgy. It is the goodness of God shining before us.
Something in us wants to misunderstand whatever might knock us off the perch of our intellectual or spiritual complacence.
This is absolutely true, and it is undoubtedly at times a big problem and at others a valuable defense mechanism. Here’s a quote from the Scientific American review of A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine, which I have mentioned before:
Mr. Nickol,
If it can be shown that the most lucid observers, of themselves and of others, are the clinically depressed, doesn’t this throw into question the value of clinical categories and criteria? What sort of scheme is it according to which we are psychologically healthy to the degree that we are intellectually blind? I’ll take Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy or Boswell’s Life of Johnson over the DSM any day.
In a set of lectures on existentialism, Bernard Lonergan proposed to his audience that if they wanted to have some sense of what is meant by dread (Angst), they should seriously consider the possibility that their own worldview is mistaken. Like Newman, Lonergan made much of conversion, articulated by the latter on the intellectual, moral and religious levels, the usual sequence being, however, religious (being in love without qualification), moral (going beyond a calculus of pleasure and pain), and intellectual (overcoming the myth that knowing is like taking a look at what’s out there). The last of these is far less common, he said, than the other two.
It is an axiom in psychology that paranoia is really heightened awareness. Humans ignore, discount, avoid, smirk, deride, etc, people all the time. We learn to ignore, and gloss over these things to make life more manageable. So the paranoid people are right. It is just that their coping skills are unrealistic.
Mr. Boudway
“If it can be shown that the most lucid observers, of themselves and of others, are the clinically depressed, doesn’t this throw into question the value of clinical categories and criteria?”
I think the condition “if it can be shown” is crucial. I seriously doubt that it can be shown. Newman’s generalization from his own experience is all too convincing, and he comes across as a lucid observer, but was he clinically depressed? It may be somewhat of a depressing thought that rational argument is often a waste of time, but is being depressed at this thought itself pathological or is it rather reasonable, or perhaps merely immature?
If it can be shown that the most lucid observers, of themselves and of others, are the clinically depressed, doesn’t this throw into question the value of clinical categories and criteria? What sort of scheme is it according to which we are psychologically healthy to the degree that we are intellectually blind?
Matthew,
Let’s take a real-life situation. Here’s a quote about small-business failure:
According to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association, only 2/3 of all small business startups survive the first two years and less than half make it to four years.
It would be quite realistic, based on those statistics, for a person starting a small business to say, “Realistically, I’m probably going to fail.” The place where I took that quote says that if you start out thinking you will fail, you definitely will fail. Which would you consider more healthy in that situation, realism based on the odds, or optimism?
David,
An identification of social success with psychological health seems to me, well, unhealthy. But let’s put that aside. Do you really believe that only optimists are successful in their endeavors? Is it not possible to undertake a project — in your example, a small business — even though you know the odds are against you, just because you want to, or perhaps because you know the same odds are against all of your potential competitors. Resolve is not always a function of expectation. And once it’s assumed that both pessimists and optimists will be trying, against whatever odds, to succeed, is it not reasonable to assume that the pessimists may be at an advantage, precisely because they don’t expect things to go well and so are looking out for every possible problem? I think truth-seeing and truth-telling have a value independent of their adaptive function, but I also think they do often (not always) have an adaptive function. One could argue that our illusions are adapted to protect us from paralyzing anxieties (though I wouldn’t). But pessimism would seem better at getting us to adapt deliberately to reality. Chance is against us, so provide, provide.
Matthew,
I don’t have time to answer at length now, but you are so wrong, I will try to find the time later! ;-)
I think you can know the odds are against you and yet believe you are one of the ones who can beat the odds. I think that’s what optimism is.
People tend to view themselves in a positive light. For example, the vast majority of drivers will rate themselves as above-average drivers. People tend to minimize or explain away their failures (or forget them altogether), and take more credit than they deserve for their successes. In some ways, I am not saying this is a good or bad thing. This is just the way the mind works — the healthy mind.
It seems to me that Fine has confused cognitive disorders (which include bad judgments) and affective disorders (which include depressions of various sorts).
“Happy people have no right to be optimists. It is an insult to sorrow.” Jules Renard