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How to Read: An Essay Whose Intentions May or May Not Be Bad
Introduction
The words in an article or comment always come from both heart and mind. When you read (I mean when humans read: “When I read, too”) you’re tempted to try to discern what was in the heart that led them to be written. But, because:
- you have no way of knowing, and
- it often wouldn’t have much in the way of practical consequences one way or the other,
it is better just to think about, and respond to, what might have been in the mind of the writer, not his heart.
Details
The words you’re now reading may have come from the evil part of my heart: they may be condescending, for example. But these same words may just as easily have come from a pure heart, that is, from love. A condescending intent and a kindly intent can produce the exact same words on your computer screen.
If a writer’s words strike you as condescending (that is, insulting and coming from a heart puffed up with self-regard), perhaps it’s just because the writer was in a hurry. Or perhaps he or she is just clumsy, unskilled in expressing himself, displaying his poor empathetic judgment concerning how emotionally sensitive readers might react.
In fact, let’s stop and look at that last sentence. Perhaps I just wrote “emotionally sensitive” as a subtle put-down. I confess that those words, if I’d read them rather than written them, might lead me to jump to that conclusion!
But how do you know it was not from a loving heart? How do you know that the writer wasn’t thinking of emotional sensitivity as a beautiful human quality, and simply speaking objectively about the facts? Or, that he wasn’t thinking sympathetically of emotional sensitivity as an instrument which he, like you, is sometimes led astray by, when its dials aren’t set right for the current conditions?
And anyway, what if I am just a vainglorious prig, expressing his condescension? Does that mean that the thought, the objective idea, in this note could not be of some interest or use to you?
Of course not!
(You’ll be relieved to know that I am not condescending. I’d be an unreliable source on whether or not I’m a vainglorious prig, and it doesn’t matter. Note that if I confessed, it would be an ad hominem attack on myself, and therefore fallacious.)
The solution
Isn’t it true that the only practical possibility left to us, since:
- we can’t reliably judge the heart of another, and
- it isn’t a pragmatically important question anyway,
is to try to discern what was in the mind of the woman or the man who is speaking to us?
Once you have decided what was in the “mind of the words,” then if you respond, respond to the mind of the writer. Don’t attack the heart of the writer.
Yes, if his intent was bad, your attack on his intent may indeed cause him to repent. But it may not, and the attack on his person will probably lead to an attack on yours. That would bring a halt to the pursuit of good or true or useful ideas.
If his intent was good, your attack will only hurt him, as we all know from experience.
Published in General
You raise some excellent points and I am looking forward to putting this selectively into practice.
I liked this comment a lot. When I re-read it I liked it even more. But the third time (when I finally got all of it) I liked it best.
Do I detect a note of loving, paternalistic altruism in your words? Nahh! (just kidding.) :) Notice just now the double use of humorous and gentle kind-hearted affability.
But seriously, and respectfully, I’m not sure there’s a difference between the mind and the heart, and if there is it is very subtle. But even if I could tell the difference, if I am certain I detect in heart or mind or whatever a clear glib disingenuousness, in which, say, he needlessly curses my mother to make an oblique point, I am not to take it as such? Is it really possible to know the mind of the man without knowing the heart? Or must I answer his words without any judgment of either?
In that case the words “heart” and “mind” were a poor choice, because the ideas I was thinking of are completely distinct.
A better analogy might be “destination” and “highway.”
Route 66, a means of getting to an end, matches “the mind”.
“Winslow, Arizona” and Tampa, Florida”, which are ends–the places one might desire to reach–correspond to “the heart”.
Suppose our Ricochet Mixed Curling team is sharing a van from St. Louis to a big tournament in Tampa, and I say, “We should take Route 66 in order to get to Tampa”, and you think that I might really want to get to Winslow to visit the Winslow History of Rap Music museum there. You think my motives may be bad, even though my stated ends are the same as the group’s.
If the facts are on your side, it is better to argue the facts. “Route 66 doesn’t go to Tampa”. The rest of the team will say, yeah, you’re right, and we’ll get to the rink right before the ice melts.
I might actually not have wanted to go to Winslow at all, I was just using a Google Maps app that had been hit by an Internet virus.
Even if I did have bad intentions, I will be unable to win the argument.
You assume more good will than I do. If I’m running down trying to loosen my load all the way to Winslow, Arizona, and the guy in the back seat keeps slapping my head because he wants me to change the radio station and yet not telling me so (and I wouldn’t anyway, because the driver always calls the station) there’s more to the argument than just the destination and the route; there might be two arguments going on at the same with one of them being one I don’t know about.
You must not allow the sheer volume of your tire’s road noise to make you unhinged.
I would phrase it differently, but I agree. And yes, I did LOL. Still LingOL.
TBA, there’s a great lyric in there somewhere. It just needs some tweaking. “You must not let” for example. There’s got to be a punchier way to say it. “You ought not”. No. “Decline to?”, “Forbear?” No. Wait. I got it…
“Don’t let…”
Go with that and see what you come up with. Just don’t get stressed over it. Take it easy.
Don’t let… Don’t let… Don’t let the sound… No. that’s stupid.
Don’t let the sun!… Go round on me… that’s it. There’s a song in there someplace. (This is driving me crazy.)
Take it away, Mark
No, I said
Okay.
I think he’s trying to kill Twitter.
But I think Mark is right. So, okay. :)