Exhibit A: The government declines to send a Minister to appear on a politics show. “They’re frightened of us because we hold them to account,” the host informs the audience.
Exhibit B: A female observes a certain froideur from a man in her social circle. Can’t handle strong women, she concludes.
Two different events, one macro, one micro, but the same pattern. An individual has observed another’s behaviour and drawn conclusions from it. Conclusions which, mirabile dictu, happen to be flattering to them. Since at least the release of All the President’s Men, journalists have seen themselves as doughty speakers of truth to power (this may, or may not, be strictly true). Strength is something we, having forgotten that the meek will inherit the Earth, see as an unalloyed good.
There is a mistake here, of course. As Pierre Duhem and W.V.O. Quine each showed, it is difficult if not impossible to eliminate all but one explanation for an event. To confirm one thing, they argue, we need to confirm everything. The government may have a grudge against the journalist in question, they may have decided that the channel’s viewers are beyond their electoral pale. The unfriendly man may have other things going on in his life which are distracting him.
But we don’t care. We don’t even, generally, consider. We just jump for the congenial explanation.
Doing so, however, turns those with whom we have a problem from people into props. Most of us wish to think well of ourselves; our lives a constant search for proof of our rectitude. What we conclude when we ascribe motive to our opponents’ actions is that we were right all along. I think I am a strong woman – he’s being cold with me – he obviously doesn’t like strong women – therefore I really am a strong woman. A feedback loop of flattery.
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own,” wrote Marcus Aurelius. Perhaps not so amazing after all. Other people, and their opinions, offer support to our own beliefs. Whether by telling us they agree or by acting in such a way that we can tell ourselves that they agree.
This is a role our enemies are particularly well-suited to playing. We don’t generally spend much time with them, so we don’t get much contrary evidence. No matter how much we may dislike people, politeness generally dictates that we don’t tell them exactly why. A thin veneer of hypocrisy is the ice on which society skates. A lesson I learned at about four, picking up the phone to one of my friend’s mothers and informing her that while I liked one of her offspring, I really couldn’t stand the other who had also been invited to my birthday party. And watched my grandmother’s jaw hit the floor. Avoid and let live is, for most of us, the order of the day.
With our friends, it is different. We see them more, so there is more chance of finding out what they think. We value them, so we take care to find out what they actually think – “You’ve been a bit distant recently. Is everything all right?” Familiarity breeds a degree of frankness. Too much frankness can, of course, bring an end to familiarity…
If we prefer to confirm that we are what we think we are rather than learning what we actually are, then this approach works. But it has a cost.
There is the intellectual contortionism required to believe that those whom we think are wrong about everything happen magically to be right about us.
More importantly though, we pass up an opportunity for true or at least better self-knowledge. If we could admit that there are myriad reasons for someone to dislike another, we might spend more time wondering which applies in our case. Is the TV host obviously more hectoring to those on the other side of the aisle? Does our strength sometimes shade into rudeness? “I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone,” wrote Marcus. It’s certainly hurt a few self-images, though.
The harshest truth, of course, is that most people don’t think much about us at all. However many layers of clothes we may wear, and however many years we may spend in school, we are just animals with big brains and opposable thumbs. We work like animals, likes and dislikes driven by chemicals we cannot consciously sense and memories we do not consciously remember. It may be true that someone dislikes you not because of anything specific to you, but just because you remind them of the primary school teacher who kept them in after class. Acknowledging that, though, would mean acknowledging that to them, you are just a reflection, not really a person at all. And none of us wants to believe that.
“Everybody,” the Blues Brothers sang, “needs somebody to love.” The evidence for this is, I think, mixed. Enough people have pulled off being hermits to cast doubt on the idea and Carrie Fisher spends most of the film trying to kill Jake for dumping her at the altar. Perhaps the darker truth is that we need somebody to hate. Or at least dislike. Someone we can reduce to a mirror, there merely to reflect our ideal selves back at us, there to confirm mutely that we are the most frightening or strongest of them all.
Our wise man, said Seneca, wants friends but does not need them. Perhaps it is enemies the truly wise man doesn’t need. He wouldn’t assume a minister was frightened of him or that someone couldn’t handle strong women. He would wonder if he’d been a bit rude. He would use his enemies to learn, not just to confirm.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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(Photograph: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)
Since at least the release of All the President’s Men, journalists have seen themselves as doughty speakers of truth to power (this may, or may not, be strictly true)…….
Step forward that paragon of journalistic integrity, the mighty atom who fights for truth and justice (As long as it’s his version of truth and justice) … the diminutive hobbit stunt double … Owen Bloody Jones, whose latest ‘literary masterpiece’ (some idiot wrote that on the Amazon reviews … quite possibly Owen himself) ”This Land: The Struggle for the Left” which sounds very Marxist revolutionary in a ‘Mein Kampfish’ sort of way. I suspect the irony is lost on him. ;o)