Clash
of Vocations
Robert
West and I were classmates in college. He mentioned that his debate club team
will compete soon. I asked him what his team will debate. He answered that they
will argue for a certain proposition, and the next day, for the opposite
proposition.
I
was baffled. But, but, they can’t both be true! He patiently explained
that such reversals are in the debate club’s rules. My perplexity turned to
alarm. You mean... you’re expected to argue for something that you don’t
believe?!
I
was shocked. I was scandalized. I felt like a nun who’d witnessed an
indecent deed. Robert West was visibly disgusted by my naiveté. He tried to
tell me that the whole point of the debate club is to develop rhetorical skill;
but I remained obdurate in my puritanism.
Looking
back, I now see that our clash of values was due to different vocations. I was
training to become a mathematician. My ideal was to Discover the Truth. He was
training to become a lawyer. His objective was to Win the Argument. Ultimately
my job was to ensure that the bridges don’t fall down; his job was to ensure
that, when the bridges do fall down, his clients don’t go to prison.
Decades
have passed since then, and they taught me the pragmatic necessity for both
vocations; but just then I didn’t understand.
We
graduated and went our separate ways. Later we re-encountered, online, in a
discussion group with a small group of friends. He and I often disagreed; for
instance, on the reality of fictitious social constructs. I was moved to write:
‘Nonexistence
has consequences.’
He
was moved to reply:
‘
“Nonexistence has consequences”. True, but - ’
-
and right there I stopped reading! Triggered, I stood up. I fled from the
computer. To calm myself down, I did some household chores. When I regained my
composure, I returned to the computer. I sat down. I braced myself, and I read
on. He went on to say that social constructs have reality due to community
force. I begged to differ.
In
a related development, he and I later differed on the relative merits of
motivational self-deception vs therapeutic self-honesty.
But
one day we did agree on something; namely, that the correct name for our
species is not “Homo Sapiens”, meaning “Man the Wise”; for that name is aspirational,
not descriptive. We concurred that a scientifically accurate name
for our kind is “Homo Semisapiens”, meaning “Man the Half-Wise”. I was
pleased that we agreed.
But
then I stopped hearing from him. Soon my other online friends told me that he
had died.
I
was horrified. Did agreeing with me kill him? Or did the approach of death
weaken his rhetorical resolve? Perhaps Robert West could have argued for either
proposition with equal plausibility. I, myself, will never know.
Appendix:
Recently
I’ve learned another name for our species:
Homo Mendax.
Meaning
“Man the Liar”.
Only Homo Mendax or Homo Semisapiens would look at our
history and call us Homo “Sapiens”. Which we are – liar or halfwit – is what I
call the “crook-or-fool dilemma”. The solution is that everyone lies to a
crook, so they become fools; and fools lie to themselves, so they become
crooks. Therefore Mendax and Semisapiens meet in the middle.
“Discover the Truth” is a Semisapiens ideal; “Win the
Argument” is a Mendax objective. So I played Semisapiens when I said
“nonexistence has consequences”; and West played Mendax when he said “True,
but”; yet nonetheless we are one.
Plato wrote that the wise must become virtuous, to remain
wise. To this I add its reverse: the virtuous must wise up, to remain virtuous.
