The Rationalist: A Primer On How To Think, Pt. 1

There are things about political discourse in 2017 that are right, perfect, and wonderful.

For instance, we now have more ability than ever before to know what our ideological allies and opponents are using as the underpinnings of their research. This is vital, as eliminating bad ideas and finding good ones is key to an increasingly educated citizenry capable of handling, and properly understanding, the detailed and complicated problems of both foreign and domestic scope that define the world in 2017, and for years to come. 

In fact, if you were so inclined, you could watch full-length debates between some of the world’s sharpest minds discussing truly complicated issues.

All of this, every bit of it, is wonderful.

The trouble with all that knowledge, all those educated thinkers being a literal fingertip away, is that no one tells you how to tell the truth from the fiction. In fact, there are men, and women, who will speak the language of the intelligent, of the well-read and well-educated, to fool you with ideas that are not researched to rigorous completion.

Finding them is easy. Pointing out the mistakes so you don’t fall into the same trap so many others, your humble scribe included, have already fallen into once or twice? Well, that’s the noble thing. Noble is valuable and vital.  So, it’s with that standard in mind that we begin this edition of the Rationalist.

Before we begin, a fair word of warning that I think is appropriate considering the roads we are about to follow. Not all of this is my idea. In fact, if you leave this article with one thing in mind, I would love it to be that you do your own research and determine whether I was wrong in what I told you. This would please me in ways I could not describe.

First, and most importantly, be wary of those who speak in absolutes regarding people.

It might feel freeing to simply, and plainly, say that “All (race, gender, or class) are (positive or negative statement)” and thus be done with it.

The trouble with that is simple. Firstly, it ends the conversation. Anyone who tells you that they know the sole defining personality trait of an entire group of people based solely on some factor that they had no hand in creating is either a liar, or a genius of the sort to be cultivated and molded in the finest schools of higher learning to do…… exactly the opposite of that.

Let’s be plain about what I mean, with no flowery language or dancing around it.

I mean the people who say, “men are trash” and “men do X” with no hint of understanding the irony of the fact that if anyone dared to say anything like that about women, they would not stop until the very corona of the sun itself was brought to bear on whatever fool said it.  

There are men who are steely-eyed defenders of everything good, right, and noble. These are men who you would want your son to model himself after in every single way. 

There are also men who are psychopathic man-children who are interested in exhibiting their own power over others in whatever way they possibly can. These are men who are monsters, who exhibit the worst impulses of the worst parts of the male experience.

Both facts are true. No one can deny this with any credibility.

And yet, for whatever reason, the former is barely mentioned while the latter gets hammered home again and again.

It is difficult to find nuance, but it is worthy to search.

Support the person who tells you a person is bad, or an idea is bad. Do not support a person who tells you all people are bad, not because of shared ideas, but because of traits they can't control. 

Understand the difference.

Secondly: Ignore, out of hand, those who tell you to “google it” when you ask them to show you research or explain how they got there.

It is difficult, obviously and reasonably, to explain complicated things like white supremacy, systemic racism, and male privilege. It is also true that not everyone who tells you about it wants to explain how they know you have it in the moment.

But there is a difference, in both tone and importance, between being unwilling to explain a complicated sociological point as soon as you bring it up, and telling someone to “google it” when they ask you to explain how it works.

The former implies that someone is willing to explain how it works, at a time when they might be more emotionally ready to explain some painful fact of the world. The latter, on the other hand, is the dismissive arrogance of the sort no one needs.

Telling someone to google it, with no further guidance on the matter, implies two things. Each is chilling to the understanding of the issues.

Firstly: It implies that the person who is asking knows the appropriate sources. If I ask you to find something out on an issue that is as thorny to understand, with as many different tendrils, as systemic racism is, but I don’t tell you where to look, it is not your fault if you come away more confused than when you started. It is mine for simply sending you off into the intellectual wilds with nothing but an end goal on a map, and no advice on how to get there.

Secondly: It is arrogance borne of refusing to believe you could be wrong. If I ask you a question, and your response is google it, I can take this two ways. Younger me, the less confident man who didn’t know how to stand up for himself and explain what I needed and wanted, would have nodded his head like a good boy and just never raised the subject again. There is a chance, and a real one, that I would have simply never even thought about it again. 

Older me, on the other hand, would have wondered if you really were as well-versed in the topic as you would want me to believe.

It’s not an unreasonable thought either. The person who tells you to google it may not trust that they can explain it to you. Or it may be that they view you as an oppressive force, and thus, refuse to do so.

But regardless of why it happens, anyone who does it is not someone you can or should trust.

And that’s where I will leave you. On the next edition of the rationalist, we’ll name names.