Story Time In Blogville

It is a curious characteristic of our unformed species that we live and model our lives through acts of make-believe. – Joseph Campbell

A story making the rounds this week of social networks, blogs, and traditional news media concerns a New York City mother, Nicole Imprescia, who has removed her child from a preschool in that city and sued to recover $19,000 in pre-paid tuition. The mom claims, in part, that the school failed on its promise to prepare her child for a test that is required to enter the City's very competitive private school system.

The headlines deliver tantalizing summaries of the story:

"Mom sues preschool for not prepping 4-year-old for Ivy League" –moms.today.com

"Manhattan mom sues $19K/yr. preschool for damaging 4-year-old daughter's Ivy League chances" – NYDailyNews.com


"Upper East Side Mom Sues Preschool That Killed Her Kid's Chance at an Ivy League in Just 3 Weeks" – The Village Voice Blogs

"New York mom sues elite preschool for being 'one big playroom'" –Reuters

There's usually more to these stories than the media reveals—and less. Several news reports claim the child was only in the school for 3 weeks: not true. As the New York Times reported, the girl had attended for a year, happily enough. Then, as her second year started, the school placed her in a class of younger children—contrary to its advertised policy. Mom took the child out of the school after 3 weeks and asked for her tuition money back, saying the school did not deliver on its promises to segregate students by age and to provide age-appropriate learning activities.

When the school refused a refund, Mom sued—claiming misrepresentation and breech of contract. The lawsuit points out that the school did not live up to its claim to group kids by age and prep the toddlers for the standardized ERB test. It claims that such prep has tangible value, which the school did not deliver and that, therefore, Mom is entitled to recompense.

To bolster its claim of lost tangible value, the suit cites studies about the value of early childhood education, including one that suggests a relationship between attendance at "better" grade schools and admission to Ivy League universities. The suit does not claim that the school spoiled the child's chances of Ivy League admission, yet that is what some news outlets have gleefully reported.

We like stories that confirm our preconceptions about such things as pageant moms, desperate helicopter parents, and ridiculous litigation. Such narratives support our mythology and we eagerly lap them up to sustain our beliefs. Consequently, people like this story and pass it around and some bloggers—and even otherwise-respectable news organizations—twist the facts for a better fit.

In reality, it isn't so much a story about a rich, pushy, upper eastside mom; it's a more boring matter of contract law, exaggerated to make it more interesting and emotionally stimulating by inciting public outrage and demonizing and holding Ms. Imprescia up to ridicule.

Put yourself in her position. If a school had promised your four-year-old a placement with children of the same age in an environment of age-appropriate learning activities—but installed her instead with two-year-olds learning the names of shapes and colors—would you not demand that the school live up to its promises? Wouldn't you ask for your money back? Were I the headmaster of the school, I'd have returned her dough on first request; it's the right thing to do when a seller is unable, for whatever reason, to deliver the promised product.

It's curious that we tell ourselves we live in an age of consumer empowerment, in which individuals are better able to stand up against unethical or indifferent corporate behavior and the public can hold businesses to higher standards of customer service. And yet when such an instance as this comes along, reason, truth, honesty and perspective go by the wayside, trumped by a narrative fiction—or at least a flimsy interpretation of the facts—that sustains one or more emotionally appealing myths.

Myths are good things. Joseph Campbell wrote that they are "the supports of their civilizations, the supports of their moral orders, their cohesion, vitality, and creative powers." But they can also be traps that ensnare us in fiction and conceal the truth.

Campbell also wrote: "lies are what the world lives on, and those who can face the challenge of a truth ... are finally not many, but the very few." This is the challenging truth behind the popularity of this story: we hear and believe what we choose to believe—and the facts matter little, if at all.

An even more frightening truth is that journalists are frequently the same, in that respect, as the rest of us.

The Promotion of Ignorance

Timothy Egan's commentary in the New York Times,"Building a Nation of Know-Nothings," describes how, in America, an "astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design."

Not to single out the GOP—for ignorance knows no party—but 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that President Obama is a Muslim. Twenty-seven percent stupidly doubt that he is a United States citizen. Half erroneously believe the TARP "bailouts" were enacted by Obama, not Bush.

A poll released this month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that of all Americans, nearly one-in-five say Obama is a Muslim, while only 11 percent thought so just a year ago. In 2009, 48 percent rightly believed him a Christian, while just over a third think so now.

The public's increasing ignorance is doubtless the product of an incessant disinformation campaign by conservative media and the right-wing leadership, and the inability of liberals—or knowledgeable people, for that matter—to articulate the truth effectively. It's also an indication of the public's gullibility and its growing disregard of "inconvenient truths."

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, John Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, Laura Schlessinger and Ann Coulter plant and cultivate outrageous lies in the media, while John Boehner, Kim Lehman, Mitch McConnell, and other Republican leaders cynically encourage falsehoods and slander in the political sphere.

The promotion of ignorance, hatred, suspicion, and hostility-as-entertainment is purposeful. It serves the commercial interests of the cable networks and builds the brands of their yack-show bloviators. It sells books and syndicated columns and draws eyeballs to blogs and websites. It distracts public attention from the real, hard issues of the day and, in complicated times, it appeals to the fears and uncertainties of voters.

It is a sad commentary on human nature that so many find hostility both entertaining and perversely empowering—and fail to recognize pettiness, dogmatism, spite, hate and self-promotion for what they are. But that is where we are today.


Egan's commentary reminded me of something John Kennedy said about lies and myths in a commencement address at Yale University in 1962. "...the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie...but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." In myths, he noted, "We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

I most remember that speech for Kennedy's witty introduction to his remarks. At the ceremonies, Yale awarded the famously proud Harvard graduate an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and Kennedy remarked, "It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds, a Harvard education and a Yale degree."

This morning I looked up that address and was delighted to find that, apart from some then-topical particulars, Kennedy's words are as useful and instructive today as then. The President spoke eloquently about issues of his day, and they are the same flashpoints that occupy political discussion today: the size of government, public fiscal policy, and our confidence in government and in the nation.

Not much has changed, it seems, about what rattles our cages; we still struggle with the same divisive issues. Not much has changed about our use of stereotypes, myths, and misdirection in political rhetoric; we still suffer from the same strategy of divisiveness. What has changed is that lies and hypocrisy, antagonism and prejudice have become acceptable—even sought-after—forms of entertainment. Personal invective has always been more entertaining than rational conversation about political philosophy. But entertainment value now seems more important than truth.


You can read the full text of John Kennedy's commencement address at Yale University here, but below are some excerpts that I found particular relevant to current events.


Commencement Address at Yale University
President John F. Kennedy, June 11, 1962

"As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality.

"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

"Mythology distracts us everywhere—in government as in business, in politics as in economics, in foreign affairs as in domestic affairs.... In recent months many have come to feel, as I do, that the dialog between the parties—between business and government, between the government and the public—is clogged by illusion and platitude and fails to reflect the true realities of contemporary American society.

"There are three great areas of our domestic affairs in which, today, there is a danger that illusion may prevent effective action. They are, first, the question of the size and the shape of the government's responsibilities; second, the question of public fiscal policy; and third, the matter of confidence, business confidence or public confidence, or simply confidence in America. ...

"... in the wider national interest, we need not partisan wrangling but common concentration on common problems....

"The truth about big government is the truth about any other great activity--it is complex. Certainly it is true that size brings dangers—but it is also true that size can bring benefits. ...

"... Generalities in regard to Federal expenditures, therefore, can be misleading ... each case must be determined on its merits if we are to profit from our unrivaled ability to combine the strength of public and private purpose.

"...Finally, I come to the matter of confidence. Confidence is a matter of myth and also a matter of truth—and this time let me make the truth of the matter first.

"...The solid ground of mutual confidence is the necessary partnership of government with all of the sectors of our society in the steady quest for economic progress.

"The stereotypes I have been discussing distract our attention and divide our effort. These stereotypes do our Nation a disservice, not just because they are exhausted and irrelevant, but above all because they are misleading—because they stand in the way of the solution of hard and complicated facts.

"...But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that our rhetoric has not kept pace with the speed of social and economic change. Our political debates, our public discourse—on current domestic and economic issues— too often bear little or no relation to the actual problems the United States faces.

"What is at stake in our economic decisions today is not some grand warfare of rival ideologies which will sweep the country with passion, but the practical management of a modern economy. What we need is not labels and cliches but more basic discussion of the sophisticated and technical questions involved in keeping a great economic machinery moving ahead.

"... If there is any current trend toward meeting present problems with old cliches, this is the moment to stop it—before it lands us all in a bog of sterile acrimony."

###

It Ain't What You Don't Know"

I have this signature line that is appended to my posts on a writer's forum that I frequent, and it goes like this: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." That just about sums up my most important philosophy. Now, when you quote somebody it's just polite to give the author some credit. So here is the credit line that I use for that quote: "lots of people."

This afternoon a helpful member of that forum dropped me a line to point out that Mark Twain was the actual author of the aphorism I have been using in place of my own wit. But I'm not too sure my correspondent is correct.

My research has shown conclusively that Mark Twain said just about everything that has ever been said. He must have said so much that his acquaintances frequently had to ask him to "just shut up, Mark; just shut the f*** up!" I surmise that he was very boring at parties, always yammering on with some kind of folksy wisdom or other and never giving a fig for what anybody else had to say. (I am very sorry if you are a big Mark Twain fan or something, but the truth is the truth -- as Mark Twain said.)

You can be pretty sure that Samuel Clemens once said, "Pass the gravy." But that doesn't mean he was the original author of that phrase, either, under his own name or his assumed one. That's why I don't give him credit in my signature: that he deserves that credit is something (one of many things) I don't know for sure.

You will read that Twain said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." But you won't find those words or any like them in anything he ever wrote. A friend of his, Charles Dudley Warner, an editorial writer for the Hartford, Connecticut Courant newspaper, wrote that "A well known American writer once said..." the remark. But he did not name the well-known writer so we have no idea who he was talking about and everybody just ASSUMED that Mark Twain MUST have been the guy because he was, well, a well-known author and he was known to be clever and it sure sounded like something that the guy who wrote about celebrated jumping frogs might say. And there's no proof either that Twain remarked that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer day here in My City of San Francisco.

You will also find references to Twain writing that, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." He did write that, but he was quoting the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli and took no credit for the witticism (or is it "criticism?").

Now, most folks will swear that Mark Twain is indeed the author of the line about what you know that ain't so, but I suspect none of them have taken the words to heart in the very matter of who said the thing or who deserves the credit for the saying of it.

See, Mark Twain was a writer (and a very good and very prolific one). But if you have a look at all 20,400 citations that Google will dish up for you, not a single one of them tells you WHERE or WHEN Twain uttered, wrote, or thought up this little tidbit. And that's the sort of thing that makes me just a bit suspicious about his authorship. You'd think if Twain wrote it down -- or if somebody heard him say it and reported it somewhere -- somebody would have by now gone to the trouble to find out just when and where and by what motivation he made the remark.

I am the proud owner of an entire fleet of respected scholarly books of quotations, from which I borrow ideas often and without shame. I have looked through every one of those books and, not very much to my amazement, the "what you don't know" quote appears nowhere in any of them. I must assume that the reason the editors of these weighty tomes have ignored one of the best-known witticisms of America's most renowned humorists is that they're not too sure themselves that he actually said it. They are completely mum on the matter, not even printing the saying with the note: "apocryphal."

Perhaps Twain did say or write the words, or something like them. Closest I can find is in Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." But that's not quite the same thing, is it?

In any event the sentiment of the aphorism we are talking about is certainly not original to Mark Twain. A few other people have been credited with the observation that there is more danger in our holding beliefs that aren't true than there is in outright ignorance. Better to be dumb than wrong.

No less a philosopher than Satchel Paige is said to have observed: It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so that gets you into trouble." Too many "troubles" in that version to make for a good aphorism, so Satchel Paige strikes-out once again.

And speaking of baseball, Yogi Berra has also been credited with the remark. He's one of those people that it's easy to pin weird sayings on; you can credit him with some dumb remark and folks will go, "Yeah, that sounds like ol' Yogi, alright."

As far as INTENTIONALLY funny people (that is, not Yogi Berra), the "cowboy philosopher" Will Rogers is another reputed speaker of the line that got this started but, once again, nobody's been able to find the saying in any of his works.

A lesser-known humorist and semi-contemporary of Twain named Josh Billings (whose real name was Henry Wheeler Shaw, (what is it about humorists that makes 'em want to write under assumed names?)), is credited with saying "It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so." Now EXACTLY those words have not been found in any of Billing's/Shaw's writings but similar ideas are in his 1874 book Everybody's Friend, or Josh Billling's Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, to whit: "I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so." So... did one of them-Twain or Billings-borrow the idea from the other? Did they come up with it independently? Did each of 'em overhear it somewhere separately? Did they use the same joke book? I suppose we'll never know. And that's my point.

Maybe we'd be better off following the wisdom of Confucious: "To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge." Or, before him, of Socrates: "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." What kind of world is this when even famous dead philosophers crib stuff from one another?

Somebody once said, "Good lines become great ones when presented as the utterances of those whom we already hold in high esteem for their wit." That somebody was Barbara Mikkelson, writing recently for Snopes.com. That I know. But I don't know where she got it.

***
UPDATE: Please see this more recent post.

Faith and Fanaticism

Doc Searls Web Log brings to our attention a piece by Arthur C. Clarke in Forbes titled "The View from 2500 A.D." in which the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey writes as though looking back at our time from a few centuries hence:

One outcome of this--the greatest psychological survey in the whole of history--was to demonstrate conclusively that the chief danger to civilization was not merely religious extremism but religions themselves.. Billions of words of pious garbage spoken by statesmen, clerics and politicians down the ages were either hypocritical nonsense or, if sincere, the babbling of lunatics.

Commenting about this on Doc's blog, James Robertson asserts:

"...the problem is less religion than it is fanaticism. Secular fanatics - fascists and communists, for instance - have killed far more efficiently than the religious fanatics have..."

Doc concurs, as do I -- and as history confirms.

But a fanatic is defined as somebody who has extreme and sometimes irrational beliefs, especially in religion or politics. And that would make just about any believer in any major religion something of a fanatic, because the fundamental precepts of religious faith are hardly "rational." God wrote a book? God gives a hoot about what women wear? Jesus in a cracker? But I have to agree with the sentiment in Clarke's piece, which reflects something Sam Harris wrote in The End of Faith:

"(T)heology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings."

With any luck people will one day wake up about that.

Back to Mr. Robertson's assertion, though: It seems to me that religious extremism is enabled by -- to quote Harris again...

"the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself. Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflicts in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed."

It's dangerous for religious moderates to stand back in a politically correct posture and say, "Well, now, I don't believe what you believe but it's perfectly okay by me for you to believe whatever nonsense it is you want to believe so long as you don't hurt anybody."

"What's wrong with that?" you ask. Well, what's wrong is the implication that religious beliefs are and should remain beyond rational criticism. And that leads to the persistence of clearly antiquated and objectively discredited practices -- to the detriment of individuals and whole cultures. This brand of religious tolerance justifies the lazy habit we have of accepting patently absurd ideas "on faith" -- rather than questioning the things we think we know. ("It ain't what you don't know that hurts you; it's what you do know that just ain't so.") To cite Harris again,

"While religious faith is one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction, it is still sheltered from criticism in every corner of our culture."

To practice the seemingly noble custom of religious tolerance is to enable fanaticism. To admit faith to the arena of human discourse, on equal standing with reason, is to ensure the continuation of discord, hostility and, ultimately, violence. Where do you draw the lines of the "don't hurt anybody" boundary? The suicide bomber fervently believes his martyrdom and murder are for the greater good; it says so right there in the holy book that God wrote. But we can't tell him that some of what's in that book is a lot of hooey, because that would be intolerant.

Tolerance seems, on the surface of it, to be a fine idea. And I sure don't want you to think I believe we ought to go to war to make people come to their senses. But I go along with Sam Harris in thinking we ought not give "faith" a free pass, and with Arthur C. Clarke in the conclusion that religions themselves may be the chief danger to civilization.

In Clarke's fictional account, civilization came to its senses. But I don't have much faith that it ever will.