On Being Right and Understanding
Why is it so hard to understand those who live differently?
“Besides, Monsieur, the greatest folly of all is to mock or condemn in others what one does not happen to feel oneself. I love the night, and you tell me that you dread it. I love the scent of roses, and I have a friend whom it throws into a fever. Do you suppose that for that reason I consider him inferior to me? I try to understand everything and I take care to condemn nothing…” - Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 472
In a previous post (See below) I discussed the charge of overthinking. Today, I want to make a more general point.
The imagined critic in my previous piece was someone who believed life should be lived more spontaneously. That putting things under a microscrope is a waste of time, and that we’d be better off all just living moment to moment.
My point in the piece was that thoughtfully engaging with one’s environment is not necessarily a sign of weakness or pathology (though, of course, it can be. But so can anything, including a refusal to live in anything but the moment), and being thoughtful can, in fact, be a way of looking, a way of appreciating the environment around oneself.
But rather than defend overthinking today, I want to focus our attention on the person throwing the stones. I think this is actually a common piece of behavior and I do not totally understand it. This short piece represents my attempt at doing so. I have trashed it a few times, but I keep coming back to it. I hope you think there is something worth studying, as well.
So you have a better sense of the phenomenon I am talking about, I think it best to start with a few examples. There are two people: X and Y. The letters are just placeholders, I am not trying to tell some consistent story here.
X likes talking during movies, while Y does not. Later, Y asks X, "Why do you talk during a movie? It simply is the wrong way to enjoy it—it ruins your immersion."
X likes minimalist aesthetics, whereas Y is more of a maximalist. Upon seeing X's empty living room, which he worked quite hard on, Y tells him, "You really ought to collect more things."
Y uses an iPhone, while X uses a flip phone. One day, X tells Y, "You really ought to switch to a different device; those smartphones are just plain poisonous."
Y is an introvert, and X is an extrovert (whatever that means). One day, X tells Y, "You ought to spend more time with people; it’s bad to be alone as often as you are!"
X is an extrovert, and Y is an introvert. One day, Y tells X, "You spend far too much time with people. You ought to take some alone time to cultivate a more vibrant internal life."
X loves the humanities, while Y loves STEM. One day, X tells Y, "Your area of study is so sterile and devoid of the things that matter most in life. You ought to read some philosophy."
Y loves STEM, and X loves the humanities. One day, Y tells X, "Your studies are completely useless. How does learning about Kant change the world like, for example, learning about electrical engineering would? You should do something more useful with your time."
And, to bring it all back to overthinking:
X loves wrapping her mind around things, and Y prefers to simply be present. One day, while X is appreciating the history of ghost signs on her walk, Y says, “You’re thinking way too hard about all this. Can’t you just walk?”
I hope I’ve gotten the picture across to you. I’ve tried my best to portray both sides as having genuine, worthwhile, and reasonable interests: minimalism or maximalism, introversion or extroversion, humanities or STEM, and so on. At the same time, each of these examples involves someone proclaiming that their side is, in fact, the right one, and that the other person is making a sort of mistake in not appreciating this.
It is worthwhile to start with what is obvious. These are all instances of bad behavior. As we well know, on reflection, people appreciate different things. It is not as if there is but one right way of living: one home aesthetic to abide by, one discipline that is ‘the best,’ one right way to take a walk.
What is so remarkable, then, is how easily and how often this can be forgotten; how quick some are to intellectually recognize that reasonable people can come to appreciate different aspects of life, and yet, at the same time, forget when it counts.
How quick are we to condemn those ways of life different than or incomprehensible to our own! Yet it is our quickness, the almost reflexive character of such critiques, that will allow us to peer into their nature. These are not—or at least, not essentially—reasoned critiques. When Y tells X he is doing everything wrong, or vice versa, we are witnessing something more instinctual, more immediate.
The experience of the critic is akin to seeing: we express some interest or act out some value of ours, and they see it as wrong. They do not think, but merely comment on that wrongness which dares to wander into their their field of vision.
It is for this reason that, as a general rule, such criticism does not come from an illiberal or disrespectful place. It comes from a seemingly impartial one. They are simply saying what they see.
For instance:
In my most recently published article, I discussed an experience of beauty I had while drinking tea. When I saw the light dancing as it did on the cup, the little leaves suspended in the water, I was not thinking about my experience at all. I was thinking about the light, the cup, and the water. It is even still a bit gracious to say I was thinking about much of anything: I was seeing, and I was enjoying it.
In a real way, I saw the beauty. It was there. And I don’t mean anything weird by this: I saw the beautiful things, and didn’t give a single thought to the fact that they were only beautiful because of my specific aesthetic tastes.
And, for what it is worth, it is good that I did not include such a qualification. Imagine: I am sitting in front of my teacup, appreciating the way the light dances on it—suddenly, I think to myself: ‘Well, I ought to remember that someone with different aesthetic persuasions might well find this disgusting. I experience it as beautiful, but that is simply a matter of aesthetic taste.’ No, such a reminder would be ridiculous, and it would only serve to destroy a beautiful moment. By the time I had finished reminding myself of such trivialities, the light would have faded from the scene, leaving me thoroughly disenchanted.
It is worth pausing here and noticing what has just occurred. In the previous three paragraphs, I discussed my experience with something beautiful. I then said something I think is quite right: that if I had added reflection into the mix, it would have taken away from that special moment. It would have prevented me from writing that piece.
At the same time—and I don’t think you noticed it!—I engaged in precisely the mistake that has become the focus of this essay. I ask you, reader: How might you feel if you were someone who enjoyed his or her tea by reflecting on it? By appreciating the fact that this scene is yours and only yours, dedicated to and limited to your subjectivity?
Such a realization would have, in the moment, ruined my experience. But when I described my experience, I said more than that: I said it would be ridiculous, and it would only serve to destroy a beautiful moment. This is, as we have just seen, strictly untrue. We can imagine such reflections augmenting, rather than destroying, someone’s engagement with beauty.
So why, then, did I say what I did? I think the answer is quite simple: it would have ruined my experience of beauty. And I was not thinking of my experience of beauty as an experience, but as a real thing. That light really was beautiful. And, because I was simply perceiving a real thing, perceiving something beautiful, I understood our imagined other, the tea-drinker who dwells in its subjectivity, as misperceiving, or failing to see what I saw. He failed to see the beauty in the cup by thinking about it.
So, I am in a bit of a bind: to recognize the beauty in the tea, I must experience it as a real thing, as existing beyond me. This is why I am able to find it so beautiful. If I start thinking about how it resides purely within my mind, I’ll have destroyed it. But this means that I can’t understand our imagined other person’s perspective without destroying my own experience of beauty.
As a general rule, then, such criticism is borne not out of some discriminatory or illiberal disposition, but in service to a higher power—to the world as we see it. Appreciating the point of view of another requires that we step back and relate to the world as something else—as something that can be understood differently. But, as we have just seen, this sets us with a special sort of problem. Life, if it is to contain any depth, cannot be lived on one’s heels; we cannot stay ‘stepped back’ forever.
So what is the solution? I am sorry to tell you: I do not know! I have a sense that all this is to encourage a more restrained criticism. Perhaps we should not be so quick to condemn those ways of life that are, at first glance, obviously confusing to us. But this is not nearly sufficient. A true answer will tell us when we ought to step back into our minds, to risk destroying immediate experiences of beauty in the name of deeper understanding or empathy.
But, I think, it is a mistake to look for a list of conditions or a cue to do so. Cultivating such an awareness is at the very heart of that virtue we call charity or understanding and is sure to be earned with much sweat and failure over the course of a life.
Finally got around to reading your post! I agree—people often criticize things just because they’re different. I think it comes from our tribal mindset—if another group is doing something differently, we instinctively see it as wrong.