How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

by Alan Jacobs

In what sense then are they “fanatical”? In the determination and resourcefulness with which they avoid considering any alternative to their preferred views. We might consider this point a necessary ingredient of any useful definition of fanaticism: No matter what happens, it proves my point. That is, true believers’ beliefs are not falsifiable: everything can be incorporated into the system—and indeed, the more costs true believers have sunk into the system, the more determined and resourceful they will be.

But in general, and on most issues, it’s fair to say that if you cannot imagine circumstances that would cause you to change your mind about something, then you may well be the victim of the power of sunk costs.

You can know whether your social environment is healthy for thinking by its attitude toward ideas from the outgroup.

he has found a way to say that certain matters about which most people are indifferent are in fact extremely important, and that he (Garner) has the right and proper understanding of those matters, and that we all should follow his advice—and to do all this without sounding like a condescending jerk. Without sounding snooty, we might say. For Wallace this tone marks Garner’s Dictionary as an effective book, yes, but still more as a triumph of “the Democratic Spirit.”

“recast[ing] the Prescriptivist’s persona: the author presents himself not as a cop or a judge but as more like a doctor or lawyer”—someone with demonstrated professional expertise that you’re free to listen to or ignore (though with the silent addition if you choose the latter: “Hey, it’s your funeral”).

This is Keller’s approach also

A Democratic Spirit is one that combines rigor and humility, i.e., passionate conviction plus a sedulous respect for the convictions of others. As any American knows, this is a difficult spirit to cultivate and maintain, particularly when it comes to issues you feel strongly about. Equally tough is a DS’s criterion of 100 percent intellectual integrity—you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.

It is the failure to recognize other dialects, other contexts, other people, as having value that needs to be respected—especially, it’s tempting to say, if you want those people to respect your dialects and contexts and friends and family members, but perhaps what really matters is the damage this inability to code-switch does to the social fabric. It rends it.

The forbearance Wallace invokes is really a matter of suppressing your gag reflex when you’re having a close encounter with our old friend the RCO.

Weak argument for why you should do it. How does it make me a better person? How does it repair the social garment, etc.

you humanize them: they become no longer the RCO, but just…people. Remember: Humani nihil a me alienum puto. Human beings, like you, who happen through circumstance or temperament to have come to different conclusions than yours. This does not mean that their views are correct, or even as likely to be correct as your own; you need not admit any such thing, but when they are wrong they’re wrong in the same way that you are, when that happens to you (as it assuredly does).

Instability of this kind—the kind that makes you wonder whether your ingroup is helping you draw closer to the truth of things or blocking you from seeing that truth—is pretty much impossible to live with for the long term. You simply can’t thrive in a state of constant daily evaluation of the truth-conduciveness of your social world, any more than a flowering plant can flourish if its owner digs up its roots every morning to see how it’s doing.*2

“The same rules apply to self-examination as apply to auricular confession: Be brief, be blunt, be gone.”*3

as long as you don’t think of your old friends as foolish losers. (Remember: it wasn’t that long ago that you thought precisely as they do now.)

Easy for firmer legalistic/fundamentalist (and me) to do this.

“It’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.” Tell that one to parents who’ve been in a minivan all day with three cranky kids.

People make such checklists for themselves only when forced by experience into intellectual humility; proud people don’t want to use them.