On Knowing Shit

This actually happened once. I was with some friends at a restaurant, and having an intense discussion with two of them, when another person interrupts us.

"Tell me this. Deer, horse and cow pretty much eat the same stuff, but the deer excretes pellets, the horse big clumps, and the cow flat patties. Why is that?"

There was silence for a moment, then I spoke up: "Well, they may all eat the same stuff, but they digest them differently. I'm thinking the deer absorbs the most moisture of the three, and the cow the least." That led to the others taking out their cell phones to fact-check what I had said. Yup, I'd pretty much gotten it right.

I'd also deprived the person interrupting us of a punchline:

Since then, I've seen people getting all serious about the logical fallacy that not knowing literal shit means they are not qualified to talk about other shit. There were even people who went out and researched why different animal shit had different shapes and consistencies. No shit, folks!

This is what's interesting. Here I was, with little prior experience or study of animal biology, and I'm able to figure out why each one excretes different shit. Which raises the question of which is more important - knowing shit to begin with, or figuring out shit.

I'm thinking this is why my two friends – who are quite smart – felt uncomfortable responding to that question. They assumed that, since they didn't have enough information about shit, they weren't able to give an intelligent answer about shit. I've found myself in similar situations, even when I was able to figure out that shit. Somehow, we've equated having information with being smart, to the detriment of problem-solving and critical thinking.

That, in turn, affects our discourse. We find ourselves talking to someone, and they're rattling off all sorts of figures and assertions on some shit, and we assume that having this apparent command of facts on this shit means they really know said shit. Or, do they?

Seriously. My father's a physicist, along with knowing all sorts of random scientific and mathematical shit. Yet when something breaks in the house, he gets frustrated and unable to figure out how to get it fixed. One time, the garage door broke, and he was getting ready to bash it with a sledgehammer, when my mother yelled at him to put it away and sent me to take a look. Me, who at the time was studying sociology in college. I looked at what was broken, deduced a possible solution, and had the door up and open within ten minutes so that the car could go in and out and final repairs could eventually be made. How is it that a man with a graduate degree from Harvard, knowing all sorts of shit, is unable to figure out practical mechanical shit, but his youngest son is able to figure out such shit?

Being an empiricist, I'm deeply concerned about facts. But I'm also mindful that understanding such details – their relationship to one another, and how they fit into a larger picture – is just as important as merely accumulating them. Especially because we're often put in the position of figuring something out before we have all the details (what's often called a "minimum information problem").

And no, I'm not talking about endless theorizing and analyzing about shit, or deconstructing how other people try to understand and figure out their own shit. That's what I’ve come to call "criticality over practicality". Ever sit in a room where housemates spend hours debating how to determine who is going to clean the toilets and take out the garbage "in the most equitable fashion" even when one person rolls their eyes and says, "Look, I'm willing to do it, so let's move on"? That's what I'm talking about.

What bothers me is that we're not teaching people how to do the practical work of figuring out shit. We're teaching them to categorize and memorize, to label things and other people, and to delude one another into thinking that this amounts to knowing shit. It doesn't. And until we figure out this shit, we're going to find it harder to get shit done.

Moral Solipsism: A Fugitive and Cloistered Virtue

My mother has often said that, given how she and my father raised me, I’m at a peculiar disadvantage. Both of them raised me to challenge and question preconceptions; in particular, not to merely accept that something is ethically right or wrong, but to ask why with an almost ruthless impartiality. The disadvantage here is that it’s not the way most folks engage in ethical conversation – and indeed, there are far too many who are simply not used to such engagement to begin with.

This seems a major reason why we’re presently seeing such polarized views. One group will assert that some version of divine law should be the basis for guiding our decisions and actions; others point to more general core values, and a desire to reduce suffering and expand happiness. Of course, there are those who equate the latter with the former, and who heed the prophetic call to “come let us reason together” for common solutions.

And then, there are the moral solipsists.

These are the folks who make their ethical views through the limited filter of their own life experience and internal dialogue. Their logic tends to run along the following:

1. My experience and/or emotional response to a given issue X is value Y.
   • Positive example: My experience of Christianity has been wonderful.
   • Negative example: The idea of eating raw fish disgusts me.
2. The value of X must therefore be Y.
   • Christianity must be wonderful.
   • Eating raw fish must be disgusting
3. Universal moral action towards X must therefore conform with Y.
   • Everyone should become a Christian.
   • No one should eat raw fish, or serve it to other people.
4. The fact that others view X is Y confirms this; any divergent opinion regarding X is erroneous and to be discounted.
   • I’m surrounded by other people who also love Christ and the Church, so it is wonderful; all of these naysayers have simply been led astray by Satan, or not willing to open their hearts.
   • I know plenty of people who tried raw fish and hated it, so it is disgusting; those people who say otherwise are either liars, ignorant, or just weird sickos.

Moral solipsism thus goes beyond listening to one’s experience and emotions, and universalizes them to the near-automatic exclusion of other views. It is egoism and subjectivism taken to extremes. This is not to say that personal experience and emotional response ought not to guide us. It’s certainly valid for helping to determine personal preferences. But before we universalize them or make them permanent, they need to be compared to the experiences of others, and tested by reason and evidence.

The problem is that, once someone falls into the trap of moral solipsism, it’s very hard to get out. Thus we observe Americans of European descent who, because they universalize their experience of white privilege, angrily reject the ugly realities being exposed by Black Lives Matter and other groups. We may witness folks who embrace the atheist label purely because of their painful upbringing in one religious group, and never move beyond that. We may know of people who find the idea of providing erotic services for money so personally repellant that they refuse to listen to anyone who has found fulfilment doing so, and surround themselves only with those who share their views, crusading without question to “rescue” sex workers whether they want it or not.

We see the seeds of this in much of how we engage in ethical and political discourse, particularly the emphasis on personal experience and narrative. These are persuasive tools, but by relying too much on them, we risk confusing them with broader examinations of reality – and may even open ourselves up to being deceiving by another Somaly Mam or Chong Kim. We must always remember that one individual’s story is but a glimpse of the larger picture, and even several similar stories may only allow us to see but a pale reflection, when we must endeavor to see the whole more clearly.

The real danger in moral solipsism is its refusal to be tested. At best, it leads to fragmentation and paralysis, with claimants competing for followers. At worst, when one such claimant rises to authority, it leads to tyranny and suffering, all for the sake of an illusion of purity. But as John Milton pointed out centuries ago, purity is never obtained by closing oneself off to questions and challenges:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.