There are a few things about pop-philosophy that really get to me. What do I meant by pop-phil? I mean aphorisms, mostly about how to succeed, what we ought to do with our lives, what we should value. It's not meant to be rigorous, it's meant to provide some guidance; to reassure or inspire us. Pretty obviously there's some spillover from/to pop-psych. Mostly, I don't mind it, Epictetus' Enchiridion (hardly new) is probably the best of the bunch, but unfortunately some of the aphorisms in other works or oft cited on social media are just plain wrong.
The big one that bugs me is getting conditionals mixed up. I suppose it could be affirming the consequent, but I don't even think that it's obvious what the antecedent and consequent are intended to be in many of these cases. Usually it's something like: If you work hard you will be successful. If this is true then what do you know about someone who is not successful? Well, they must not have tried. But of course that isn't true. People work hard and still fail all the time. And what do you know about someone who succeeds? Not much. Maybe they worked hard, maybe not. But flip it around, take the inverse and you get: If you don't work hard, you won't succeed. That seems much more true to me. And what do you know if someone doesn't succeed? Not much. Maybe they worked hard and something got in their way. You don't know. You can't point fingers. You can't blame every failure on a lack of trying. But at least you know what you ought to do if you want to succeed. You ought to try. You ought to work hard.
Another one is getting feelings mixed up with facts. Confidence, fear, and epiphanies are some of the big offenders here. One might consider these to be semantic disagreements, sometimes yes, but we still ought to be careful not to get too much spillover from one meaning to another. Being selfish or judgmental is different from having self-interest or being discerning (respectively) even though these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
I remember back in middle school someone claimed (in the gym locker room) that they weren't afraid of anything. I answered back that I was afraid of lots of things. I was justifiably afraid of falling from heights, getting in a car accident, disease, and the like. Now maybe I'm getting fear and respect mixed up here, but I don't think the other guy was claiming that he had respect for heights, etc., it was a brag. Of course being afraid here doesn't mean that I stayed in bed all day. It meant/means that when I briefly worked as a rigger I clipped in, I do my best to drive responsibly, and I wash my hands, among other things. Of course since we're talking about feelings versus facts here there are plenty of cases where it is unreasonable to have fear and fear is distinct from panic.
Confidence is a similar case. If you are confident that you know what you are doing it doesn't mean that you do know what you're doing. If you know what you're doing it doesn't mean that you're confident. Well placed confidence is great. It means you can apply your knowledge appropriately, but in many cases misplaced confidence is worse than no confidence. Well placed confidence comes from long experience; from successes and peer evaluation. If you think you're a great poet, but no one likes your stuff maybe you ought to take a step back (working hard couldn't hurt though). Hedging bets and being unsure of oneself is a really great thing when it is called for.
I don't trust epiphanies or “ah-ha” moments either. Just because I think I understand something doesn't mean that I do. Just as with confidence, understanding is something that is proven through experience, not emotion. If I read something and think, “yes, I got it,” I can't really be sure until I've checked my knowledge and believe me, many times I haven't “got it.”
“Do or do not, there is no try,” is still pretty cool however.
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