Mar 15, 2022·edited Mar 15, 2022Liked by Mike Sowden
I already took ibuprofen today so I'm good.
Love this crux-of-argument line: "We can learn to empathise with & understand wrong conclusions without flinging judgement and shame at them - including our own, when we discover them."
Several months ago I ran into an acquaintance at the playground. Our kids had gone to preschool together so we left them to play while we caught up. Sadly, I found myself almost backing away as the acquaintance went from "switched schools because we're not down with the mask mandate" to "the moon landing was totally faked and it's really easy to prove" within under five minutes.
This wasn't an exchange I was equipped for that day (no ibuprofen on hand), but I got a little fascinated when he launched into "do you really believe that that sun [waving a hand at the sun, which was shining hard in a blue sky on a pleasant autumn day, which on its own is a miracle combination where we live] is ninety million miles away?" And it was so fun to say, "Uh, yes," and explain that I'd done my capstone project as a mathematics undergrad on Newton's Principia, and what a difference it makes to trace the steps of our modern understanding of forces of gravity and having to do the calculations/deductions of the inverse relationship between distance/mass and gravity.
I've been a big believer in embodied learning for a long time -- especially the idea that experiment and doing stuff with your hands can give kids and adults a much better and more accessible understanding of science than book learning. The pandemic years have dented that belief a bit (listening to people I think of as very intelligent but also very grounded in a physical understanding of the world go all "the virus doesn't exist" really early on), but fundamentally it remains. Somehow, that exchange made me relax a little because I thought, you know, he's on his own journey of learning and understanding and maybe we'll never end up at the same place but in a way he's still in the same realm of trying to comprehend the world around him.
(Also dented a bit by "as long as he doesn't hurt anyone," while knowing that in some ways that's quite possible, but in any case your Burke journey here reminded me of that day. Also, add Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" to the Gothic list! The entire book is a piss-take of the kind of helpless-girl-in-remote-castle books that were popular at the time.)
Your comments are always so spectacular. You should publish a book made entirely of comments you've made under articles. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
I love your generosity here, about "he's on his own journey of learning and understanding", and I think that's a great way to respond. Hard to do, but much better than all the other ways. And - I wonder if this could be called "embodied disagreement," where you were able to react that way, respectfully and more open to listening, because it was a real-world offline interaction, where both your physical presences allowed for the nuance and non-verbal cues that kept it from turning into the more binary kind of 'I'm right, you're an idiot' difference of opinion that blights social media?
(In which case: yet another good reason to not bother having a blazing argument with anyone on social media.)
I have not read Northanger Abbey, and now I'm glad of that, because you've given me a new, hilarious angle on doing it. I can't wait to get started...
That's it! My key to success: a how-to book on internet commenting. Why didn't I think of that before?!
I wish I were as generous in my own head; my feelings at the time were very different. I tend to internally respond with "#$%$#%$!!!" at first and then try to find my way to something better later. But you're right that it being a real-world interaction -- especially with someone I already had a relationship with (and who I know tended toward some, uh, more colorful ideas). That's the whole "we all gotta live together somehow" thing that is so important.
I think Northanger Abbey is so much more enjoyable if you know that she's taking the piss of Gothic novels! They're a theme in the book itself, and you can actually read the books that the characters discuss and it makes it even more fun. Jane Austen is an incredibly under-appreciated humor writer. I don't know why so many people think her books are purely love stories.
“But when you realise that no matter what age of history you’re talking about, everyone was, on average, just as smart as they are today...” Weird but true!
Honestly, this was a properly dizzying "oh lordy, I've failed at Life" moment for me, when I realised I had this unthinking prejudice - because, of course I did. We're all hammered with imagery that reinforces it: "cavemen" in rags to depict prehistoric people, and so on. We see the rags and the dirt on them, and it's easy to leap into thinking "they didn't know better" with a silent "(because they were, you know, a bit slow in the brainpan)."
So I felt very lucky to study archaeology, which looks at the traces of how historical and prehistorical people did things - and when you look at how Stonehenge was built....how? How did they get each of the bluestones the 160 miles from Craig Rhos-y-Felin in Wales to Salisbury Plain, without the help of cranes, lorries etc? How did they put those stones upright without modern lifting equipment? And then you realise that Stonehenge is, yes, a ring of stones, but also a feat of engineering that must have required some of the cleverest people in history.
For mine, one of the great aspects of science is that science as a verb (and much like weather forecasting, another topic close to my heartbrain) is n’er really right or wrong…. Rather I’d offer that it is more or less accurate (as a storied description of the reality we find our selves in). Which I find helps alleviate a LOT of that angst about being Right or Wrong and especially when you find yourself in the uncomfortable yet practically applicable in-between of right or wrong. Like your aforementioned example of quantum mechanics “vs” Newtonian mechanics. Both right and both wrong depending on the context, application, viewing scale etc…
I guess much like time or history or our self, our perception of these can lead us to think of them as linear (esp. in our linear "cause-effect" focussed current prevalent culture), and therefore they're also progressive with, naturally, our current selves as the Best Self (yet)… and I think, myself included, that that it is very difficult to embrace - that maybe I was a better person yesterday, or three years ago than I am now. Easier to do away with these notions/versions of a Self altogether I’d say BUT that’s a musing too long for a reply comment here :) The irony here is that by being a Best Self (yet), by your own premise/paradigm you are already admitting you are not The Best Self (definitive/possible), just better than your before self. How did you phrase it? Looking down through your boots at history/those gone previously? Bit like saying I'm a Good Person because I'm clearly not as Bad as That Person. Phew. No personal work needed here. Great!
As a closer, it also seems to me that reading and re-reading Classics that we might otherwise consider irrelevant is akin to exposing oneself to cultures (or paradigms, or ways of thinking etc) other than the one you’re born into or currently know - it really, really helps you to remember we are but a fish in water, and there’s not just different kinds of fish, there’s other kinds of water too! (And places with life without fish or water… Best Self Ego be like: “whaaaaaat?!?”)
>>"Rather I’d offer that it is more or less accurate (as a storied description of the reality we find our selves in)"
Yes! I love this - it can accurately fit the evidence and hang together in an understandable way, but that doesn't mean anything more than It Fits The Evidence And Makes Sense. Both "right" and "wrong" have a binary inflexibility about them that seems to shut down conversations and turn them into (often pointless?) arguments. And if the implications of relativity and quantum physics (etc.) continue to hold up, "right" and "wrong" may actually be...unscientific?
(I guess this is where everyone starts drinking heavily, especially the moral philosophers.)
I fully agree with your point about the trap of thinking in terms of "Best Self". And, hell, with anything "Best". Again, it's like the right/wrong thing - another foolish dichotomy that seems to be more strongly associated with Western European/Northern American thought than anywhere else. It's also...a failure of empathic curiosity? Because "Best" is often kinda saying "my experience of what's Best is an objective reality", and - yeah, come back when you've asked every single person in the world about that, perhaps? (And hey, what about all the living non-persons? Maybe ask them too? And how about what's good for all the non-corporeal stuff? etc.)
Thanks for your thoughts here, Jeremy. Fun to ponder them.
I've always fancied myself as a guy who can read something once and have a sense of it. The second pass solifies what I think I read. This one required three passes. There may be ibuprofen in my near future. I love your writing and the connections you make.
Newton is one of my heroes. He managed to explain the world when only one of the four fundamental forces of nature was LOOSELY understood. Even that required him to ponder and go back to the drawing board and invent calculus so he could explain it to everyone else. I think because he gave us the world of calculus, limits, derivatives and integration, he created the language where the rest of the world could be unlocked. All while not considering the other three fundamental forces (first principles of nature). The makings of a hero.
I'm sorry about the ibuprofen-inducing denseness of my writing. 😆 That one got...a bit out of hand. (And thank you so much for the kind words.)
>>"He managed to explain the world when only one of the four fundamental forces of nature was LOOSELY understood."
I needed this reminder, thank you. What an astonishing thing, yes. And what a curious mind. I've just reread Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver", a work of (madcap) fiction but one grounded in the real history, and Newton is a character in it - and it depicts the time he took a bodkin (large sewing needle) and poked it deep into the corner of his eye, so he could use it as a lever to deform his eyeball and observe the results. He was certainly...dedicated, in his search for the secrets of the universe...
I read a book about his career at the onset of the counterfeiting challenge at the Royal Mint. A remarkable person. The eyeball story is crazy!!! I will seek out Quicksilver
I'm so glad. Thank you, Ash - and as I said elsewhere, I think you have a really fantastic idea for a newsletter there that everyone should check out. (I'm a bit behind in my reading, but I will be catching up!)
I already took ibuprofen today so I'm good.
Love this crux-of-argument line: "We can learn to empathise with & understand wrong conclusions without flinging judgement and shame at them - including our own, when we discover them."
Several months ago I ran into an acquaintance at the playground. Our kids had gone to preschool together so we left them to play while we caught up. Sadly, I found myself almost backing away as the acquaintance went from "switched schools because we're not down with the mask mandate" to "the moon landing was totally faked and it's really easy to prove" within under five minutes.
This wasn't an exchange I was equipped for that day (no ibuprofen on hand), but I got a little fascinated when he launched into "do you really believe that that sun [waving a hand at the sun, which was shining hard in a blue sky on a pleasant autumn day, which on its own is a miracle combination where we live] is ninety million miles away?" And it was so fun to say, "Uh, yes," and explain that I'd done my capstone project as a mathematics undergrad on Newton's Principia, and what a difference it makes to trace the steps of our modern understanding of forces of gravity and having to do the calculations/deductions of the inverse relationship between distance/mass and gravity.
I've been a big believer in embodied learning for a long time -- especially the idea that experiment and doing stuff with your hands can give kids and adults a much better and more accessible understanding of science than book learning. The pandemic years have dented that belief a bit (listening to people I think of as very intelligent but also very grounded in a physical understanding of the world go all "the virus doesn't exist" really early on), but fundamentally it remains. Somehow, that exchange made me relax a little because I thought, you know, he's on his own journey of learning and understanding and maybe we'll never end up at the same place but in a way he's still in the same realm of trying to comprehend the world around him.
(Also dented a bit by "as long as he doesn't hurt anyone," while knowing that in some ways that's quite possible, but in any case your Burke journey here reminded me of that day. Also, add Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" to the Gothic list! The entire book is a piss-take of the kind of helpless-girl-in-remote-castle books that were popular at the time.)
Your comments are always so spectacular. You should publish a book made entirely of comments you've made under articles. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
I love your generosity here, about "he's on his own journey of learning and understanding", and I think that's a great way to respond. Hard to do, but much better than all the other ways. And - I wonder if this could be called "embodied disagreement," where you were able to react that way, respectfully and more open to listening, because it was a real-world offline interaction, where both your physical presences allowed for the nuance and non-verbal cues that kept it from turning into the more binary kind of 'I'm right, you're an idiot' difference of opinion that blights social media?
(In which case: yet another good reason to not bother having a blazing argument with anyone on social media.)
I have not read Northanger Abbey, and now I'm glad of that, because you've given me a new, hilarious angle on doing it. I can't wait to get started...
That's it! My key to success: a how-to book on internet commenting. Why didn't I think of that before?!
I wish I were as generous in my own head; my feelings at the time were very different. I tend to internally respond with "#$%$#%$!!!" at first and then try to find my way to something better later. But you're right that it being a real-world interaction -- especially with someone I already had a relationship with (and who I know tended toward some, uh, more colorful ideas). That's the whole "we all gotta live together somehow" thing that is so important.
I think Northanger Abbey is so much more enjoyable if you know that she's taking the piss of Gothic novels! They're a theme in the book itself, and you can actually read the books that the characters discuss and it makes it even more fun. Jane Austen is an incredibly under-appreciated humor writer. I don't know why so many people think her books are purely love stories.
Excellent read. Now, I need ibuprofen. Lol
Thank you! :)
(And yeah, if that's ibuprofen from an eye-strain headache, that figures - I kinda went a bit mad with the word-count on this one!)
No problem. I love it, that's what makes it a great newsletter. Makes me giggle that I'm not the only one that's long-winded. Lol ;)))
Excellent piece here! Thanks.
My pleasure, and thank you for saying, Ryan!
This is really great Burke
*whips off top-hat and makes a bow*
“But when you realise that no matter what age of history you’re talking about, everyone was, on average, just as smart as they are today...” Weird but true!
Honestly, this was a properly dizzying "oh lordy, I've failed at Life" moment for me, when I realised I had this unthinking prejudice - because, of course I did. We're all hammered with imagery that reinforces it: "cavemen" in rags to depict prehistoric people, and so on. We see the rags and the dirt on them, and it's easy to leap into thinking "they didn't know better" with a silent "(because they were, you know, a bit slow in the brainpan)."
So I felt very lucky to study archaeology, which looks at the traces of how historical and prehistorical people did things - and when you look at how Stonehenge was built....how? How did they get each of the bluestones the 160 miles from Craig Rhos-y-Felin in Wales to Salisbury Plain, without the help of cranes, lorries etc? How did they put those stones upright without modern lifting equipment? And then you realise that Stonehenge is, yes, a ring of stones, but also a feat of engineering that must have required some of the cleverest people in history.
So - aye. Startling weird! But so very true.
And we're so unwilling to accept this that we theorize that maybe things like Stonehedge were created by aliens from outer space!
100% this. :)
Thanks Mike for a great think-seed here :)
For mine, one of the great aspects of science is that science as a verb (and much like weather forecasting, another topic close to my heartbrain) is n’er really right or wrong…. Rather I’d offer that it is more or less accurate (as a storied description of the reality we find our selves in). Which I find helps alleviate a LOT of that angst about being Right or Wrong and especially when you find yourself in the uncomfortable yet practically applicable in-between of right or wrong. Like your aforementioned example of quantum mechanics “vs” Newtonian mechanics. Both right and both wrong depending on the context, application, viewing scale etc…
I guess much like time or history or our self, our perception of these can lead us to think of them as linear (esp. in our linear "cause-effect" focussed current prevalent culture), and therefore they're also progressive with, naturally, our current selves as the Best Self (yet)… and I think, myself included, that that it is very difficult to embrace - that maybe I was a better person yesterday, or three years ago than I am now. Easier to do away with these notions/versions of a Self altogether I’d say BUT that’s a musing too long for a reply comment here :) The irony here is that by being a Best Self (yet), by your own premise/paradigm you are already admitting you are not The Best Self (definitive/possible), just better than your before self. How did you phrase it? Looking down through your boots at history/those gone previously? Bit like saying I'm a Good Person because I'm clearly not as Bad as That Person. Phew. No personal work needed here. Great!
As a closer, it also seems to me that reading and re-reading Classics that we might otherwise consider irrelevant is akin to exposing oneself to cultures (or paradigms, or ways of thinking etc) other than the one you’re born into or currently know - it really, really helps you to remember we are but a fish in water, and there’s not just different kinds of fish, there’s other kinds of water too! (And places with life without fish or water… Best Self Ego be like: “whaaaaaat?!?”)
Best of the co-confusion to yee! :)
J
>>"Rather I’d offer that it is more or less accurate (as a storied description of the reality we find our selves in)"
Yes! I love this - it can accurately fit the evidence and hang together in an understandable way, but that doesn't mean anything more than It Fits The Evidence And Makes Sense. Both "right" and "wrong" have a binary inflexibility about them that seems to shut down conversations and turn them into (often pointless?) arguments. And if the implications of relativity and quantum physics (etc.) continue to hold up, "right" and "wrong" may actually be...unscientific?
(I guess this is where everyone starts drinking heavily, especially the moral philosophers.)
I fully agree with your point about the trap of thinking in terms of "Best Self". And, hell, with anything "Best". Again, it's like the right/wrong thing - another foolish dichotomy that seems to be more strongly associated with Western European/Northern American thought than anywhere else. It's also...a failure of empathic curiosity? Because "Best" is often kinda saying "my experience of what's Best is an objective reality", and - yeah, come back when you've asked every single person in the world about that, perhaps? (And hey, what about all the living non-persons? Maybe ask them too? And how about what's good for all the non-corporeal stuff? etc.)
Thanks for your thoughts here, Jeremy. Fun to ponder them.
I've always fancied myself as a guy who can read something once and have a sense of it. The second pass solifies what I think I read. This one required three passes. There may be ibuprofen in my near future. I love your writing and the connections you make.
Newton is one of my heroes. He managed to explain the world when only one of the four fundamental forces of nature was LOOSELY understood. Even that required him to ponder and go back to the drawing board and invent calculus so he could explain it to everyone else. I think because he gave us the world of calculus, limits, derivatives and integration, he created the language where the rest of the world could be unlocked. All while not considering the other three fundamental forces (first principles of nature). The makings of a hero.
I'm sorry about the ibuprofen-inducing denseness of my writing. 😆 That one got...a bit out of hand. (And thank you so much for the kind words.)
>>"He managed to explain the world when only one of the four fundamental forces of nature was LOOSELY understood."
I needed this reminder, thank you. What an astonishing thing, yes. And what a curious mind. I've just reread Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver", a work of (madcap) fiction but one grounded in the real history, and Newton is a character in it - and it depicts the time he took a bodkin (large sewing needle) and poked it deep into the corner of his eye, so he could use it as a lever to deform his eyeball and observe the results. He was certainly...dedicated, in his search for the secrets of the universe...
I read a book about his career at the onset of the counterfeiting challenge at the Royal Mint. A remarkable person. The eyeball story is crazy!!! I will seek out Quicksilver
Mike, this was fantastic! You’ve given me a lot of food for thought for my own articles on mental illness in ancient civilisations! Thank you!
I'm so glad. Thank you, Ash - and as I said elsewhere, I think you have a really fantastic idea for a newsletter there that everyone should check out. (I'm a bit behind in my reading, but I will be catching up!)