On Idiocy and Getting Critiques

Here is something a writer like me — who plunges headlong into exciting made-up situations but hates thinking of all the ramifications — hears a lot from her critique partners: I didn’t get it.

“I didn’t get it” is a frustrating critique, not because it isn’t useful but because, well, not only do I get it, but I get it so well that it’s obvious to me! It’s so obvious that I can’t conceive of how anyone else could fail to understand. It’s so obvious that the most tempting knee-jerk response for a writer like me is, “Well, the reason you don’t get it and I do is because you are stupid and I am smart.”

Here is something a materialist, naturalist atheist like me — who believes that scientific practice and historical research offer better ways to understand the universe around us and after us and before us — hears a lot from her observant or sceptical friends and relatives: I didn’t believe it.

“I didn’t believe it” is a frustrating argument, not because it sheds no light on the position of the other person but because, well, I do believe it. Some of the premises I believe, like that the idea that no omniscient god would deny basic human rights or that scientific practice is generally trustworthy, seem so obvious to me that I can’t see why anyone else could fail to glom onto them like I do. They’re so obvious that the most tempting knee-jerk response for an atheist like me is, “Well, the reason you didn’t believe and I do is because you are stupid and I am smart.”

I can’t speak for you, but I find facing “I didn’t get it” and “I didn’t believe it” to be a tough ordeal. What do you mean, you don’t get it? I answered that question you’re asking right there in paragraph three, line five. Don’t you have any reading comprehension skills? Or, what do you mean, you don’t believe in vaccinations/the Big Bang/evolution? The evidence you ask for is right there in medical studies/astronomical research/the fossil record.

And in both cases, since the truth is so obvious, the problem here must be with you: you either can’t or won’t perceive it, because you’re incapable of comprehension, at best, or because you’re wilfully malicious, at worst.

When I read the stories I write, I pick up information about the characters and the plot and the world of the story. And I know I put all that information into the story, tucked away in exposition or subtle hints or dialogue. So it’s tempting to put the two together: I learned this information when I read the story because it was put into the narrative in a compelling and obvious way.

Likewise, when I believe something that happens to be true, it’s tempting to think that I came to believe it because it’s true. For instance, I might want to think that I believe in medical science because my razor-sharp intelligence spotted the inconsistencies of alternate accounts, and using nothing more than the empirical evidence and my keen reasoning skills, I whittled away all the “superstition” until I arrived at the truth.

But if I’m honest with myself in both cases, no, I can’t in good conscience say that those explanations of how I came to know the things I do either make sense or are truthful.

It’s more obvious in the critique part: duh, says anyone who’s ever encountered a piece of writing before, Sarah thinks she made herself obvious in the story, but really it makes sense to her only because she already has the world she’s trying to convey laid out in her head.

I know what’s important in this imaginary universe; I know literally everything there is to know about it. So of course I notice the “subtle” hints I’ve laced into the narrative. I already know they’re there. I didn’t learn them from the story — I came into this manuscript with the ideas already mostly formed. And my critique partners, who have no such predisposition, rightly point out that, as long as I’m writing for people who aren’t myself, I have to be clearer.

Similarly, when it comes to metaphysics and worldviews, I’d like to think that I can draw a line between intellect and feeling and place myself on one side and the people who disagree with me on the other, but I can’t. Partly because I think that’s a false dichotomy, but even if those were robust categories, I still can’t put myself entirely in one of them.

First, I’d better face it: I acquired most of my opinions as a small child, long before the validity of logical arguments and assessments of evidence were available to me intellectually. But even changes of perspective that I’ve gone through as an adult, changes I’d like to see as my newly mature intellect triumphing over my feelings or ungrounded beliefs — for instance, moving from the theist I was as a child to the atheist I am today — just don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Long before I decided I was an atheist, I already felt certain ways about science, materialism, metaphysics, religious laws. Maybe, maybe, you could argue that logic and reason came in when I decided that two of the beliefs I held were contradictory and one had to go, but there’s no way to chalk up my choice of which to discard to anything but my own personal historical context.

Take, for example, my belief in the theory of evolution by natural selection. To be clear, I believe in evolution by natural selection in the manner first outlined by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and clarified, modified, and re-imagined by later evolutionary biologists into what we now term the modern synthesis. I know there are still many controversies within the field of evolutionary biology, and I don’t claim to have informed positions on all of them, but I nevertheless support the field’s basic claims as the most compelling explanation of the current diversity of life on Earth.

Right. But how did I come to believe in evolution by natural selection, particular when my elementary school, an orthodox Jewish day school, first taught us a version of Creationism? I’ve read On the Origin of Species; I’ve TA’d a course on the history of evolutionary biology; and I’ve read various popular books by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. It would be really, really nice if I could say, “Ah, I already knew there were problems with the Creationist account of the diversity of life, and when I encountered the theory of evolution, after mulling over all this evidence, I decided it was the more reasonable explanation.”

But that’s not really true. Yeah, now I can give you lots of great arguments for evolution, and as kids, we sometimes questioned literal Creationism (when I was in first grade, dinosaurs were the big cool fad, so we had lots of questions for our teachers — none of which, to their credit, they ever dismissed). But the first arguments I heard for evolution were equally strong as those I heard for Creationism — someone I trusted and/or respected told me a little story* about how life worked. There were some parts I liked, and others I ignored, but  it sounded superficially plausible. And those sown seeds that gave me the metaphysical standpoint to interpret (others’ accounts of) the empirical evidence in the accepted ways. Even now, I don’t think I can truthfully say that the evidence moves me on its own: it sure helps to be in a social environment in which most of the smart people whom I respect consider the theory of evolution to be truthful and alternate explanations to be mock-worthy.

It’s scary to have to do this, as either a person or a writer: to re-evaluate the grounds upon which I believe I’m right and to find them wanting. It’s not personally satisfying to have to say, “I guess I didn’t come to believe these things for the reasons I thought,” or, worse, “Maybe I’ve got to change my story or understanding of this issue to accommodate you” instead of “Whatever, dumbass, you don’t know anything.”

This isn’t to say, of course, that there are no morons out there. There are, although perhaps when I’m not trying to construct exciting sentences, I’d dispute the connotations of that particular label. Anyway, I can’t speak to your experiences, but personally, I’ve encountered both in equal proportions on either side of any particular ideological line you’d like to draw between “us” and “them”. There are morons who share my metaphysical views and morons who don’t; and while the minority of these two groups may hold their beliefs because they’re morons, most hold them for other reasons entirely.

This is also not to say that no one should ever disagree or stand up for what they believe with passion. Not at all. I think gay marriage is a-OK. I think racism is disgusting. I think men and women should be equal. And I think people who disagree with me on those things are wrong, and that people who agree with me should fight against those other viewpoints. But I also think that the minute I say, “Why is that guy over there a homophobe/KKK member/chauvinist/neo-Nazi? Duh, it’s because he’s an idiot,” I lose any chance I had of being able to see him as another human being and maybe understand where he’s coming from enough to make him see my side of things.

Sometimes, it’s true, trying to reach mutual understanding isn’t the appropriate course of action to take: if someone is hurting you or others, you may decide that it’s more important to fight them than to reach them, and that’s fair. But even then, there’s something to be said for not underestimating your opponent, at least not in the privacy of your own mind, even if the most tactically sound strategy is to disparage them publicly.

Finally, to answer the question that the meta-minded among you would no doubt like to pose: no, I don’t think that people who think that their opponents oppose them because they’re idiots do so because they themselves are idiots. Some probably are; most probably are not. But I nevertheless do my best not to share their point of view, even if sometimes I mess up.

P.S. No, this analogy between writing and metaphysical positions isn’t a robust one. But their similarities hold within the context of the purpose of this blog. I don’t intend to take the comparison any farther.

* Sidenote: I think the process by which people learn and decide which details in a story are important and which should be ignored are fascinating. Remember that scene from Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest where Ramona starts a mini-riot of kids demanding to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom? As a former six-year-old who was very anxious about where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’s little turtles’ room was located**, I completely sympathize.

** Don’t worry, it was cool: they lived in a sewer.