On intellectual humility
[Warning: this post contains mild spoilers for those poor souls who have never been to a Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum.]
In an exhibit at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum toward the beginning, you are prompted to try to roll your tongue, or make other sorts of not-especially-elegant faces, in a large mirror. Later, toward the end of the exhibit, you come across what looks like a window; but you quickly realize that this window is in fact the backside of a two-way mirror, and the frontside is that very mirror in which you, approximately 30 minutes ago, were making the very same sort of unflattering faces as the people in front of it are making now.
At first, you laugh a bit at the people who are on the other side of that mirror: they look like fools, and they have no clue that you’re watching them on the other side. But a moment later, you realize that you, too, were once the foolish-looking one, in front of that mirror, making silly faces, and there was another group of people where you stand now, laughing at you, as you now do to the others. And of course, the group you now mock will soon be in your shoes, laughing at the next batch of fools—and so and and so forth, ad infinitum.
Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about this as a sort of metaphor for what, for lack of a better term, we can provisionally call the wisdom of age. And I think it can help draw out one specific feature of that ‘wisdom’. The metaphor is imperfect, to be sure; but stay with me.
You might have read recently about the apparent disdain that Gen-Z has for Millennials. They think we are lame and pathetic. We are apparently quite ‘cheugy’. More to the point, there seem to me (anecdotally) increasing clashes between these generations—as well as other pairs, like between Millennials and Gen Xers—on myriad political matters, such as ‘cancel culture’, ‘wokeness’, a variety of economic issues, and so on.
My initial reaction to many of the superficial comments—i.e. about our cheuginess—is just pure indifference. I simply do not care if the youths think I/we are lame. (And, honestly, caring whether the youths think you are cool is a telltale sign that you are, in fact, not cool.) But in terms of the political issues, I tend to treat Gen-Zers’ opinions on these issues as having substantially less weight, being bound up in naïveté, etc. This is partly because, frankly, I have taught many Gen-Zers, and (no offense to any of them who may be reading), I know very well that their views on these issues are typically ill-formed, a product of a variety of social influences the sheer force of which they haven’t yet begun to appreciate, and alarmingly and inextricably aesthetically driven in nature (especially in the age of Instagram).
This isn’t to say that they are necessarily wrong. In fact, I often find myself pleased that they have gotten it right on a bunch of things, in my judgment. They are, on the whole, much more tolerant and accepting than any previous generation; they are more engaged and less put-off by the inherent corniness of political involvement; they have identified and rightly mock the absurdities of late capitalism.
But often, when we do disagree, I often find myself thinking some version of: Well, we’ll see if you still think that when you’re older.
Now, let me quickly clarify a couple things. First, I do not mean to suggest that the views others hold are silly, like the faces the exhibit guests make. This is one area where the metaphor is especially imperfect. I just mean to suggest that, at that early stage, we don’t always see our views from the full range of available angles.
Also, I certainly do not think that age=wisdom. For one thing, education (formal or otherwise) is hugely important, as is specific contextual experience, genuine self-reflection, an ability to be self-critical, and so forth. Nor do I think that we ought to assume any sort of inherent default deference to those older than us, particularly on issues where we might think their age tends to generate a sort of bias or misunderstanding. In general, I think age is at best an extraordinarily rough proxy for wisdom, and the realm of that wisdom is highly person-specific.
(Cue the old folks reading this thinking: Well, we’ll see if you still think that when you’re older! But, actually, yeah—that’s kind of right! I’ll come back to this sort of point shortly.)
My point, then, is not that older folks necessarily know better/more than younger folks. Rather, it’s that for many of the issues on which I find myself disagreeing with Gen-Zers, I can truly say that I once thought something similar too. Maybe not that particular view—often they are too context-specific to admit of any such generalization—but something of more or less equivalent radicalness, boldness, or counter-culture-y; or of a similar certainty, with a similar fervency, and with all the tidy readymade rejoinders. And a collection of life experiences, time, education, and self-reflection have caused me to see things differently now.
It is, in other words, like I am on the backside of the two-way mirror, looking at those in front of it, and saying: “I was there once too; I get it. But once you’re where I am, it will make more sense.”
Of course, the extension of this point follows the pattern of realization when one learns it was a two-way mirror all along. Just as I have come to see that the youths are naive on certain issues, so too am I seeing that I was once naive on certain things too, and those older than me were often right to call it out. In other words, realizing that you’re on the backside of the mirror also prompts the thought—and often, the cringe—of realizing that the same relationship you have with the youths of today is the one your elders had with you.
All of this, I think, is central to the virtue of intellectual humility.
When you find yourself on the other side of the mirror, so to speak, it’s not just that you look back on your past self with the new knowledge afforded to you, which allows you a distinct critical perspective. Nor is it just that you look to those older than you and realize they must have felt (and perhaps still feel) as you do now. Rather, it’s the very realization itself that your perspective is inherently bound up in your place in the sort-of historical position you occupy—your place among the guests at the exhibit, as it were. And it is not just time that generates shifts in judgment, but an appreciation and understanding of the various occasions, ideas, perspectives, and life experiences that caused those shifts in judgment.
Seriously taking in this very insight, I want to insist, is the epiphanic moment. This is the wisdom that those much younger simply do not yet have. They do not yet possess the genuine humility (to be contrasted with just a lack of certainty or conviction) that comes with this sort of revelation. They have not arrived at the other side of the mirror yet—but they soon will. (Incidentally, I think far too many people never arrive on that side of the mirror in any significant sense, or they take exactly the wrong lessons from that epiphany; see the extreme conspiratorial culture that is festering in the US and elsewhere nowadays.)
Again, I worry that one might misread me here as putting new wine in the old bottle—namely, the bromidic ‘you’ll grow out of it’. But that’s not what I’m saying. For one thing, this point isn’t easily applicable to any particular issue of substance, so this sort of charge is too weak and convenient as it stands anyway. For what it’s worth, I tend to think the youths will be vindicated on a lot of their critiques of late capitalism (much to the dismay of those older than me, and perhaps many in my generation), but I think many of their fervent stances on certain social/cultural issues, perhaps especially ‘cancel culture’, will be substantially amended and rethought as time goes on—and thus, partially vindicating the viewpoints of some of their elders.
In short, the wisdom of age—and the intellectual humility I’m speaking of here—is not, in my view, best viewed as a simple aggregate of experiences and knowledge. Rather, the wisdom that comes from age is just the understanding and realization of how the evolution of your experiences shapes and adds color to your initial (and, yes, often naive) judgments—whether substantive, theoretical, or otherwise—and those causal forces that generate changes in those viewpoints. Those in front of the mirror simply do not have access to that wisdom; indeed, they cannot have it, due to its very nature. To my mind, this is an invitation for mercy, sympathy, and understanding, rather than mocking (as one does with those making silly faces in front of the mirror).
Recommendations:
This piece on the 'Time Tax’ was fantastic. I think we really ought to be thinking more about how certain people in society bear enormous costs (literal and otherwise) that the wealthier/more well-off simply do not have to endure. The same sort of issue arises in a book I read many years back and quite enjoyed, called Free Time by political theorist Julie Rose. In short, Rose argues (roughly) that free time, like money or other goods, ought to be viewed as relevant to distributive justice, particularly since it is so essential to carrying out one’s life projects.
I enjoyed this interview from Tyler Cowen with a man named Alexander the Grate [sic]. He considers himself NFA (no fixed address; not ‘homeless’). He’s exceptionally erudite, and has probably spent more time at the various cultural institutions in D.C. than nearly all other ostensibly ‘cultured’ residents.
Shameless self-promotion: An article that first appeared (in a slightly less refined version) as a chapter in my dissertation was just published—after a long time under review and, after having been accepted, as merely ‘forthcoming’—in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. It’s open-access, so you have no excuse not to read it! (Kidding.) In it, I argue that partiality is sometimes ‘scope-restricted’, which means that the goods and contexts in which it is morally relevant are limited. This, I argue, has important implications for certain arguments made against the application of national partiality in contexts like war. Maybe national partiality isn’t applicable in war (I happen to think it is), but certain prominent arguments in defense of that idea are, I argue, mistaken. Anyway, I’m pretty proud of the piece; I’ve given a version of this paper as a talk in four different countries, and worked on it for countless hours. It always feels weird when these things eventually make it to print and it’s all just…finished. Out there. Ready to be read (or not), cited (or not), and, over time, completely ignored and forgotten (probably).
–JVD