|
 Interrogations
By
Ophelia Benson
An
eclectic, literary challenge to everyday thinking.
Number
Thirteen: Influence
We
like to think we know how to think for ourselves. We like to think
we're sensible, wised up, knowing, sophisticated, that we know propaganda
or a sales pitch or spin or public relations cant when we see it,
and can simply shut it out. We also like to think we're hip, aware,
in the know, paying attention, up to speed, in touch. That we know
what's going on (or is it down?) in the street, what people are
saying, what everyone thinks, what's common knowledge. We do not
like to be caught flat-footed, feeling stupid and out of touch and
autistic and sheltered and nerdy, too busy with our pathetic dweeby
indoor pasty-faced occupations to know what's going on in the world.
We usually don't notice or worry too much over the fact that these
two pieces of self-flattery may not be entirely compatible.
We
do like to assume that we think for ourselves and make our own decisions
and commitments, that we're not conformist group-thinkers. But it's
not actually possible to be entirely free of influence, and we wouldn't
want to be if we could. To be entirely uninfluenced, we would have
to be raised in a box and fed through tubes and sensorily deprived,
like some horrible Jackson's Mary kind of thought experiment, in
which case we would have no mind to make up. Even if we were suckled
by wolves...the wolves would influence us. No, the only alternative
to taking our cues from the rest of the world is complete and utter
vacuity. Being empty, blank, nothing. Without conversation and books,
what thoughts could we have? Genie and Kaspar Hauser and the Wild
Boy of Aveyron were not instinctive sages but tragically damaged
humans.
No,
we begin being shaped and changed and moulded at birth and go on
that way more or less forever, though adults do have the option
of escaping human influences for shorter or longer periods. The
infant is ceaselessly talked to (if it's fortunate, anyway: those
that aren't don't thrive), then it learns to play well with others,
then it goes to school which is nothing but a giant Influence Delivery
Device. Then university, work, friends and bosses and spouses and
colleagues, and all through life, tv and radio, newspapers and books,
phone and Internet, chat and gossip and discussion and argument.
We learn to suspect and resist some influences. We listen to campaign
speeches of the party we don't like and we train ourselves to disagree
with them (sometimes all too well). We see an advertisement, we
know it wants us to buy the car or beer or shoe and we decide Well
I just won't, that's all.
But
we also read books by writers and thinkers we respect and admire,
they tell us things we didn't know or hadn't thought of, and they
change us. That's what we read the book for, presumably. To have
our existing ideas (and where did they come from?) reinforced and
expanded, yes, but also to add some new ones. In short, we learn,
we become educated. We start as Calibans and hope to finish as Hamlets.
It's a painful process in a way, education is, it's all very obedient
and compliant and conformist. We're like once-spirited horses tamely
wearing the bridle, tigers doing tricks in a circus. The wild day-dreaming
barefoot fell-wandering free spirit chafes and frets at a desk or
in a library, as Rousseau and Wordsworth, Emerson and Thoreau, Mill
and Twain knew very well. But there is much to be gained in place
of what is lost, as Wordsworth remarked in 'Tintern Abbey':
That
time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence.
Fell
wandering and day-dreaming are wonderful and essential things, but
they're not everything. However confining and taming it all is to
our glorious free spirits, we gain more than we lose in letting
ourselves be educated and influenced. One of the things we learn
is how to discriminate among influences, which to accept and which
to reject. And we learn what other people have thought and said
and written about these things, about education, judgment, thinking
for ourselves, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. What
we lose in blissful freedom we more than make up for in mental richness
and complication.
Ophelia
Benson is editor of Butterflies and Wheels - .
.
Interrogations
will next be updated early June 2003
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