Readers have been gracious and kind in responding to the post about The Boy’s graduation. Some wrote for the first time, which is always nice. One comment in particular, though, resonated with me. A new correspondent mentioned that her politics are more conservative than mine, but she finds value in much of my stuff anyway.
That was gratifying.
I don’t see this blog as primarily political, and I certainly don’t offer electoral endorsements or anything of the kind, but if you read between the lines long enough, you can get a general sense of my perspective. That said, I’m increasingly concerned about the severity of political polarization in the U.S., and the degree to which people seem to retreat to information sources that align with their priors. With mutually exclusive narratives getting reinforced daily, it’s easy for people to talk past each other, or to assume that the “other” side is simply irredeemable and not worth engaging.
At the risk of seeming old-fashioned, I like the idea of assuming that it’s worthwhile to engage with people who aren’t starting from the same place. Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom—although my readers are both wise and worldly—and some epistemological humility is in order. It’s out of fashion right now, but all the more important for that.
That doesn’t mean defaulting to the assumption that the truth is always in the middle. It isn’t. (Is the world round or flat? Splitting the difference and calling it cylindrical isn’t helpful.) But it does mean taking the time to spell out the why behind arguments, and assuming that one’s own view of a given issue might be partial at best.
The political theorist Wendy Brown, of whom I’m a fan, has a terrific piece in The Chronicle this week encapsulating her latest book. Both the article and the book are worth reading slowly, but for present purposes, I’ll highlight her suggestion that the value of academic inquiry, as…
Read the full article here
