Category: Philosophy

Rescuing Broken Discourse with Logic

We are in danger. Public discourse is almost dead, with important conversations being shut down by twisted logic resulting in false associations and cancellations. We need to step in and reclaim sanity. This article discusses some of the most glaring logical offenses that are sadly ubiquitous in the global conversation.

Anyone who voted for Trump is a white supremacist.

For many of you, reading that sparked a response charged with negative emotion. Some people probably got so angry they stopped reading and aren’t even here anymore.

Maybe you voted for Trump and took it as an attack. Maybe you hate Trump and got angry because you think the US has been overcome by white supremacists. Maybe you strongly agree with the statement. Maybe you vehemently disagree. There are lots of reactions that statement can instigate. But if it upset you, regardless of why, I offer my sincere apologies.

For the record, I disagree with the statement. In fact, I know it to be false. I’m Canadian, so I didn’t have a vote, but I have more than one personal acquaintance who did vote for Trump, and none of those people are white supremacists. That should be safe for me to say. Yet in many arenas, it isn’t. In many arenas, I would just have caused myself to be written off as a white supremacist too, among many other vile labels – guilt by association with a phantom assumption. And I haven’t even stated who would have gotten my vote if I had one which in any case is irrelevant. What is relevant though is how quickly and completely conversation gets shut down on critically important topics like this one that plague our collective discourse. This phenomenon demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding, or perhaps worse, a deliberate lack of honouring, some core principles that we study in formal logic, which has roots both in philosophy and in mathematics.

Let’s switch to a less charged example.

Anyone who drinks water is a marathon runner.

It’s silly right? Drinking water does not imply that you run marathons, and to make the claim that it does is clearly ridiculous. What’s less absurd though would be saying that anyone who runs marathons drinks water. But even there, be careful, because there’s an association that many people will make that has nothing to do with why that sentence is true. See, although distance running does require proper hydration, that’s not the reason that marathon runners drink water. A marathon runner is a marathon runner even when they are not running. And they drink water for the same reason non-marathon runners drink water. In fact marathon runners drink water for the same reason all humans, not to mention marine mammals, sea birds and even trees drink water. Because they need it to survive. So if you discover someone drinking water, it’s not likely you would jump to the conclusion that they are a marathon runner. The distinction between “If you are a marathon runner then you drink water” and “If you drink water then you are a marathon runner” highlights the difference between what formal logic calls implications and their converse. It’s important to understand this concept, so let’s work on a short lesson.

First, we need to understand what we mean in formal logic by a statement.

Definition of “Statement“

In formal logic, a statement is a sentence that has a definite state of true or false. Some examples:

“Justin Timberlake is older than Justin Bieber.”
(provably TRUE statement)

“5 is an even number.”
(provably FALSE statement)

“‘5 is an even number’ is a statement.”
(humorously constructed TRUE statement)

“There is sentient life on other planets.”
(Definitely either TRUE or FALSE, but although I have a guess, I have no proof that I’m right)

We can not always tell if a statement is true.

Although it’s fairly easy to tell if a sentence is a statement, it’s often difficult or even impossible to tell if it’s true or if it’s false. The statement “There is sentient life on other planets” does have a definite truth value, though we can only guess at what that value might be. And that’s where opinion enters the arena. Now consider this much more highly charged statement: “An unborn fetus is not a living human.” I bet that one sparked some intense emotion in many readers. And I’d also be willing to bet that the emotion it sparked is tied to your opinion about whether or not it is true.

That’s just your opinion

Guessing at the truth value of a statement is my preferred way to define opinion. We can argue over what we think about aliens from other worlds, or when human life begins, but until we have evidence that proves or disproves our position, all we are doing is voicing opinion. Isaac Newton said it well:

(We) may imagine things that are false, but (we) can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

Isaac Newton

So we can apprehend (consider in our thoughts) beliefs and opinions, but false is false, so any belief attached to a false thing is not true understanding. Compounding the problem this highlights is that it is human nature that purging a disproven belief requires a deliberate and often painful reorientation, so often what we see is denial, and a loyalty to a false opinion. It might be human nature, but it’s dangerous.

Consider this thought experiment:
Suppose you are pro-choice, because you indisputably support the right of a human to make decisions about their own body. It would likely (but admittedly not certainly) then be the case that you also believe that the fetus is not a human, and so there is no conflict between the rights of the mother and the rights of another human. Then suppose you learned, conclusively, that a fetus is a human baby, effectively equating abortion with homicide. How would that make you feel? Would it be easy to change your position? In this thought experiment, where the premise is that it has been proven that a fetus is a baby, would you choose to deny that truth?

It’s an extremely difficult thing to think about dispassionately. But beware when asserting opinions as facts, and be prepared to understand that until a fact is known/proven, your opinion will differ from that of others, and arguing with them without establishing that both arguments are predicated on opinion is more of an exercise in charisma than debate.

Opinion Vanishes in the Face of Proof

Once the truth value of a statement is established via proof, opinions are rendered irrelevant, and they only persist as the result of deliberate obstinacy, miseducation/delusion, or in many cases, indoctrination. Interestingly, this applies even if your opinion happens to align with the truth. If it is your opinion that there is sentient life on other planets because you believe Star Trek is a documentary, then even if there is sentient life on other planets your opinion is based on delusion, and the fact that you are correct is coincidental. Think of it this way: If you’ve been maintaining that there is life on other planets because Captain Kirk fought a Gorn, and one day life is discovered on another planet, you would look pretty foolish proclaiming that you were right all along. So whether “correct” or not, opinions are just opinions. It is interesting to consider the ramifications of using miseducation to deliberately delude uneducated people into having an opinion that aligns with the truth, but maybe that’s a topic for a different article.

Ok, so hopefully we understand now that a statement is either true or false, and that we can’t always know which it is. Furthermore, if we guess, then we are forming opinions. This gets even more interesting (if that is the word for it) when we create compound statements by linking statements conditionally. Like saying “If you voted for Trump then you are a Nazi.” Using If/then to link statements is called implication. We use them a lot.

Definition of “Implication“

“If you are reading this article, then you understand English.”

Is that true? I think so. In any case, that statement is an example of an implication – a compound statement that conditionally links two statements. Implications claim that if we know that one statement (called the predicate) is true, then we can conclude that a second statement (called the conclusion) is also true. Even though implications don’t always present the same way, they can always be formulated using “if/then”.

Because implications are statements, they will either be true or false. For example:

Predicate: I was born before 1970
Conclusion: I am older than 30
“If I was born before 1970 then I am older than 30”
True – based on arithmetic

Predicate: A person is wearing pants
Conclusion: That person is hungry
“If a person is wearing pants, then that person is hungry”
False – a person who was wearing pants and was hungry, who has just eaten their fill, will still be wearing pants (though they may have unbuttoned them!)

Any statement that can take the form “If A, then B“, which is to say “A implies B“, is an implication. For example:

“All football players use steroids”

can be reformulated as

“If you are a football player then you use steroids.”

It is worth noting that the above statement about football players is an example of a false implication, even though it is the opinion of many. Unlike opinion, truth is not ascertained or even swayed by consensus.

It’s also important to distinguish between the truth of an implication, and the truth of the conclusion. For example, “If I win a hundred million dollars in the lottery then I will buy a Lear Jet.” is a true implication (ask my wife – we’ve discussed it), but it does not mean I am going to be buying a Lear Jet. When “A implies B” is true, it doesn’t mean B is true, or even that B could ever be true. It just means that if you observe that A is true, then you can conclude that B is also true. This connection actually has a cool Latin name in formal logic. It’s called Modus Ponens.

Modus Ponens

Modus Ponens is a special implication that we use to make deductions by citing established implications. It says “If A implies B, and A is true, then B must also be true.” A very common error is when people pervert modus ponens into “If A implies B, and B is true, then A must be true.” This is faulty. Consider this example:

“If you stick your hand into a toaster while it’s on, you will burn your hand.”
This is true.

Now consider these two arguments:

Modus Ponens
“I see you stuck your hand into a toaster while it was on. You must have burned your hand.”

Faulty Deduction (perverted Modus Ponens)
“I see you burned your hand. You must have stuck it into a toaster that was on.”

This perversion of modus ponens can also be dangerous. Imagine the implication “If you are racist then you supported Trump” is true. Now consider this faulty deduction: “I see you supported Trump. You must be a racist.” This is precisely the sort of perverted logic that divides and fragments society, potentially irreparably.

This leads us to the notion of the converse of an implication, and the contrapositive.

“Converse” and “Contrapositive”

Every implication has a converse and a contrapositive. The converse switches the predicate and the conclusion, so the converse of “A implies B” is “B implies A“. On the other hand, the contrapositive of “A implies B” is “not B implies not A“. The contrapositive means that if you know the conclusion is false, then you can conclude that the predicate is false. It’s essentially saying the same thing as the implication, in a different way. That argument has another cool Latin name: Modus Tollens:

Modus Tollens

Like Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens is used to make deductions using established implications. It says “If A implies B, and B is not true, then A must also not be true.”

Consider this example, which demonstrates the ideas of implication, contrapositive, and converse. Suppose you took a Spanish course where students who fail earn a grade of F:

Implication:
“If I got a C, then I passed the course.”
(True – A credit is awarded for any grade other than F)
Modus Ponens: ” I see that you got a C, so you must have passed the course”

Contrapositive:
“If I didn’t pass the course, then I didn’t get a C.”
(True – not passing – i.e., failing the course, means you got an F)
Modus Tollens: “I see that you failed the course, so there’s no way you got a C.”

Converse:
“If I passed the course, then I got a C.”
(False – You may have gotten an A, B, C or D.)
Faulty logic: “I see you passed the course, so you must have gotten a C.”

Notice that the implication is true, the contrapositive is also true, but the converse is false.

Sometimes the converse is true, and sometimes it is false

For true implications sometimes the converse is true:

“If we have a common biological parent then we are biological siblings.”
has the converse
“If we are biological siblings then we have a common biological parent.”

and sometimes it isn’t:

“If our fathers are brothers then we are cousins.”
has the converse
“If we are cousins then our fathers are brothers.”

So knowing an implication is true does absolutely nothing to tell you if the converse is true – or false. Yet there is a strange insistence in public discourse that true implications always have true converses. This is glaringly demonstrated in political discourse.

How would anti-immigration voters have voted?

Consider this implication, which may or may not be true (probably is), but many readers will definitely have an opinion about it:

“If you are racist then you will not hire a black candidate.”

Now consider the converse:

“If you did not hire a black candidate then you are racist.”

I have heard this claimed countless times. And there’s no logical foundation for it. This highlights another common error people make. Implications create links (being racist links to not hiring black people), and people then use those links to try and reverse-engineer a converse (not hiring a black person links to being racist). This can be attributed to the notion of ruling out. Suppose that all immigrant-haters voted for Trump, and that you did not vote for Trump. Then using Modus Tollens I can rule you out as an immigrant-hater (you did not vote for Trump, so you must not hate immigrants).

However if you did vote for Trump, then I can’t use Modus Tollens or Modus Ponens to disprove (rule out) the possibility that you hate immigrants, because in the implication we are citing, hating immigrants is the predicate, not the conclusion, and all I have observed is the conclusion. So your position on immigrants is something I’d have to look at other factors to determine.

Not being able to disprove a statement does not mean it’s true

True: “If you get a D in Spanish, then you earn a credit.”

Suppose you believe that I got a D in Spanish. Now suppose that in an attempt to prove that you are correct, you do some digging into the school records and discover that I did take Spanish, and that I earned a credit. Does that mean I got a D? You can’t tell. All you know for certain is that I am in the group of people who earned a credit. You hopefully also know that anyone who earned an A is in that group. Me being in the same group of people who earned a D is not proof that I earned a D, because all the credit-earners are in that group, and they did not all earn D’s. You could say that you have gathered some evidence that I earned a D, but you can not say that you have proven it. So you have neither proven nor disproven your belief. On the other hand, if your digging showed that I took the course but did not earn the credit, Modus Tollens rules out the possibility that I got a D, and your opinion is false. Which is to say, “You did not earn a credit, therefore you did not get a D”.

So then if it’s true to say that immigrant-haters voted for Trump, and you know your coworker voted for Trump, then all you know is that your coworker is in the same group as immigrant-haters. Now even though you can’t rule it out, you can not conclude that your coworker hates immigrants. So if you start a conversation with them by accusing them of hating immigrants, that’s bound to go poorly.

Implication does not imply causation

We also need to think about a common misconception, which is that true implications are therefore causations. That’s the false belief that if we know that “A implies B” is true, it must mean that “A causes B”. This is actually just another example of mistakenly believing a converse:

“If A causes B then A implies B” is an implication where the conclusion is also an implication, and it’s true.

The converse, “If A implies B then A causes B” is false.

Consider this example, which has embedded causation:

Let A be the statement “Your car has no fuel” and
Let B be the statement “Your car won’t start.”

So:
not A is the statement “Your car has fuel” and
not B is the statement “Your car will start.”

Implication (If A then B):
“If your car has no fuel then it won’t start.”
(True – Cars with no fuel won’t start, and even if there are other things wrong with the car that we don’t know about, knowing it has no fuel allows us to invoke causation to conclude it won’t start)

Contrapositive (If not B then not A):
“If your car will start then it has fuel.”
(True – You can’t start a car if it has no fuel)

Converse (If B then A):
“If your car won’t start then it has no fuel.”
(False – there are lots of reasons why a car won’t start and being out of fuel is only one of them)

… which brings me to strength-training.

What Does This Have To Do With Strength Training?

The car example shows that even when causation is the reason an implication is true, we still don’t get the converse. But sometimes the example in question is less clear, and people jump to conclusions.

For example:

Truth Due to Causation:
“If I participate in a strength-training regimen at the gym, then I will get stronger”
(True because of the causal relationship between strength-training and getting stronger)

So we have an implication that is true because of causation. The converse is “If I got stronger, then I participated in strength-training at the gym”. That’s a conclusion people jump to all the time. “Oh, you have gotten stronger – you must have been working out!” False. Lifting weights in the gym is not the only way to get stronger. Someone who gets a job that requires heavy lifting will also get stronger. Children get stronger just by growing. So if you find someone who has “gotten stronger” you cannot automatically conclude that they started a strength-training program at the gym. Again, even when there is causation, a true implication is not proof that we have a true converse.

It’s time to bring this back to public discourse. It’s crazy-making to see how many people seem to think that the converse is always true. Or if not, they pretend they do, to fool others into buying an argument. Let’s look at an extremely charged example: rape.

All rapists are men

This isn’t technically true, but while a very small percentage of rapes are not perpetrated by men, the vast majority are. This is a horrible truth. One that has troubled me since I was old enough to have learned it. As a thought experiment, let’s simplify this and for a moment assume that all rapes are committed by men. So then we would have this implication:

“If you are a rapist, then you are male.”

But consider the converse:

“If you are male, then you are a rapist.”

I hope we can clearly see that the converse is false. Sadly, I have heard this converse claimed (or implied) many times, and it does nothing at all to help the real issue of rape. Good people want to eradicate rape, because rape is monstrous, and good people want to reduce suffering. Taking good men and lumping them in with bad ones by claiming masculinity as the driving force behind the desire to rape, creates extra suffering. It makes no sense.

There are many other places where we see the converse invoked dangerously. One chilling example is when someone asserts that an implication is true, but then get accused of having supported the converse. This then changes the conversation about a potentially difficult issue into one of accusation and defense.

I will list some examples of implications I have heard claimed, where an immediate switch to the converse then changes conversation to the wrong topic. As an exercise, in each case, state the converse of the implication in your mind and ask yourself what trouble that might cause, and how it would poison the (potentially difficult) conversation. As I said, these are heavily charged statements. In many, if not all cases, the reason they are heavily charged is probably not the implication, but what the converse would mean, if it were true.

I feel that I have to repeat that I am not claiming the implications in the examples are true, though I know they are the opinion of many. But if they are true, it’s because they are, and if they are not, it’s because they are not. Opinion vanishes in the face of knowledge. Still, arguing about the converse has nothing to do with either of those cases and changes the dialogue into something irrelevant. It’s important, as you read, to keep the dispassion of viewing claims through the lens of formal logic. For each implication, consider what it would mean if it were true, and whether the converse would then also apply.

Do you think any of these are true?
Do you think their converse is true?

  • If a person is a white supremacist, then that person would have supported Trump over Harris.
  • If a person is a mass killer, then that person is a gun owner.
  • If a person is a member of Hamas, then that person is Muslim.
  • If a person is misogynist, then that person is male.
  • If a person is a stalker, then they will like all your photos on Instagram.
  • If someone wants to rob you, then they will walk behind you at night.

Do you think any of these are true? If so, do you also think the converse is true? If you think the converse is true, is your evidence of this that the original claim is true? If so, you have no foundation to back the claim to the converse. Seriously. None. Hopefully this article has made that clear.

Just because an implication is true, it does not mean its converse is also true.

And yet there seem to be a huge number of people out there who think that it is impossible to hold to a claim and not hold to the converse. For example they think that if you talk about mass killers being gun owners then you want to paint all gun owners as mass killers – which is a ridiculous notion on so many levels, perhaps the most obvious being the staggering number of gun owners who are not killing anyone with them – and they label you as ignorant, or as a fear-mongering anti-freedom fanatic with a hidden agenda. But there is simply no logical foundation for this connection. What they are doing, from a logical perspective, is saying that since you believe an implication is true, you also believe the converse, and so you are pushing a hidden agenda. And I just can’t say how many ways this is wrong, and dangerous.

“But wait!” some say, “fear-mongering anti-freedom fanatics pushing a hidden agenda DO say that most mass killers are gun owners! So by saying that aren’t you one of them?”

Once again, they are invoking the converse of an implication, possibly without realizing it – though I suspect in some cases fully realizing it and doing so anyway to redirect away from rational discourse. “If you have a hidden agenda then you will say that most mass killers are gun owners” is not the same as “If you say that most mass killers are gun owners then you have a hidden agenda”.

To illustrate just how silly all of this is, I’ll talk a little about probability, using Venn Diagrams. This time we’ll talk about serial killers.

Most Serial Killers Eat Breakfast

This is an implication, but what’s not immediately obvious is that it invokes a probability statement due to the word “most”. It means that if you encounter a serial killer, then they probably eat breakfast.

Because of how we use the word most, it arguably means anywhere between 50% and 100%, so for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that 80% of serial killers eat breakfast. I’m sure that number is low, but I’m thinking that if I attempt to consult studies on the eating habits of sociopathic murderers, I may find limited data has been collected. In any case, assuming 80%, a visual representation might look like this:

Venn Diagram 1

So if you want to bet on whether a particular serial killer eats breakfast, and you don’t know ahead of time, you should make the bet, because you will probably win.

Now consider this Venn Diagram:
Venn 2.jpg
Even though the green circle isn’t nearly large enough (if it were, we wouldn’t even see the yellow part), this still demonstrates that most people who eat breakfast are not serial killers. Think about how much green there is compared to how much yellow. So if you came upon someone eating breakfast, you should be pretty confident that they are not a serial killer, keeping in mind that it doesn’t constitute proof that they are or that they are not. I’m thinking that is probably the case for you – that you don’t consider breakfast-eating to be compelling evidence of evil.

Being in the same group as someone does not mean you share all the same qualities

When someone says or does something that a serial killer, (or a racist, a rapist, a transphobe, a misogynist …) might do, it is false and dangerous to conclude that that person is one of those evil things. Notice the italics on the word might. That’s a probability word. A rapist might have eaten breakfast today. So might a non-rapist. And there are way more of those. To call someone a rapist, you would hopefully be using evidence they had raped someone, not evidence that they had eaten breakfast.

Or evidence that they are male.

Bad People Can Say True Things

It’s true. Truth is not the sole domain of the virtuous. Truth, in fact, like justice (purportedly) is blind. And it’s critical that we do not devalue the truth of a statement just because it aligns with the opinion of someone nefarious.

For example, someone who hates Muslims would be willing to assert that most suicide bombers have been Muslim, because it would further their agenda of hate, especially for those who immediately jump on the converse, which is clearly absurd. But if the claim is true, then a rational thinking non-racist could also say it. To then say “well islamaphobes say that, therefore you are islamaphobic” is to claim a converse that isn’t true. What’s far worse is that the label shuts down conversation. And if we can’t talk about things that are problematic, like racism, mass shootings, terrorism, sexual assault, or a myriad of other difficulties we face in modern society, how can we make things better? We can’t.

Good People Should Say True Things

Especially when it is hard, and even if it coincidentally aligns with the opinions of assholes, it is critical to acknowledge true things as true. Good people want to reduce misery in the world. Good people want to increase happiness in the world. Please don’t use the trick of claiming the converse to stand in their way. Let’s allow honest discussion to flow.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

There Is (No) Fire

There is no fire
he said
They just want you to think there is so you will be afraid

But there is smoke coming out of the vents
I am afraid.
Shouldn’t we leave?

That’s not smoke
he said
It’s vapour from the air conditioning

But those people over there are dying from smoke inhalation
I am afraid.
We should leave.

They are not dying because of the smoke
he said
(wasn’t it vapour?)
They are dying because people die

But the door is hot to touch, and there is smoke coming from underneath it
I am afraid.
Can we leave?

The smoke is because the door is burning
he said
(wasn’t there no fire?)
But it’s just the door, not the room we are in

But there are people screaming in the next room that they are burning
I am afraid.
I’m leaving.

The fire is in the house around us
he said, blocking the windows
(wasn’t it just the door burning?)
This room is not on fire, so we are safe here

But I am getting very hot, and the air is getting hard to breathe
I am afraid.
I wish we had left

The fire in the room is your imagination
he coughed
(did my imagination make you cough?)
The w

Revolutionizing Social Media Interaction for a Brighter Future

As we get closer to the American elections, and then moving into the Canadian elections next year, I find it more and more imperative that we work to effect a fundamental change in the way we interact with social media and, by extension, how we interact in real life. Over the last ten years or so my concern over the culture has grown from mild alarm at some people’s online behaviour, to something approaching real fear that we are at a tipping point into another real-world dark age, specifically with respect to intellectual and cultural decline. And violence.

It’s not all bleak though. Thanks to many private conversations, I know I am not alone in my concern, and I do see signs that there are public figures with a legitimate desire to change this trajectory, as opposed to leveraging the culture for their own personal gain. And considering the magnitude of people who, exclusively through social media, get their news, form their opinions, and – maybe most troubling – learn how to communicate, social media is where it has to start.

If we can do it, it won’t be through any kind of censorship or similar attempts to control how people use their favourite platform though. It has to be you and me. We have to change the nature of our posts. And so I had this idea of a filter, or sieve, that we can apply to our more meaningful posts to both increase their effectiveness, and also combat the culture that is propelling us toward a precipice.

Consider this. If you want to engage in political posts on social media, that is your choice, and I support it. Keep in mind though that these posts are, by nature, argumentative, in that political posts always argue for or against some candidate or issue. Which on its own is not a problem. Argument (or debate) is not a fight. The idea that arguing equals fighting is something that’s manifested because people like getting attention and scoring points. True argument is not a contest, but a means to pursue truth and, conducted properly, is how we progress. Because the acquisition of truth can never be considered a loss, proper arguments have no losers, and in that sense they have no winners either, because to win an argument someone would have to lose.

But many people argue poorly, because they argue for points.

In the philosophical study of argument there are many identified fallacies. If you’re not familiar with the idea of a logical fallacy, think of these as techniques or strategies that falsely trick you into thinking they are effective. When you employ them you or your audience may think you’re “winning” but you have not made a true case. To avoid this, and hopefully steer us away from the precipice, I ask that you apply what I’m calling an effectiveness sieve to your words before you click that post button.

Run your post through the following sieve. If you can’t answer yes to all three sieve questions, refine your thoughts until it passes them all, then go ahead and put it out there.

  1. Do my words avoid belittling, shaming, or otherwise personally attacking someone who doesn’t agree with my position?
  2. Does my post allow for (and even maybe invite) respectful discourse with someone who disagrees with it?
  3. Does my post offer information/education that someone who disagrees with me might not have considered?

You can actually stop reading here, if you like. The value of each question is probably self-explanatory. But if you want to dive a little deeper into the reasoning behind these criteria and their relationship to common fallacies, or to reflect a little more deeply on whether or not your own posts are effective, read on.

(A word of warning though: I use examples below to illustrate the points and a lot of them are, by design, inflammatory in concept and language. I am not expressing my views in any of them – I am parroting posts I have seen in my social media feeds.)

Sieve Question One
“Do my words avoid belittling, shaming, or otherwise personally attacking someone who doesn’t agree with my position?“

Fallacy This Helps Avoid: Ad Hominem (Attacking the person)
This occurs when instead of challenging an idea or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. The fallacious attack can also be aimed at a person’s membership in a group or institution.1

How to tell
Imagine that someone who holds an opposite position made a post worded like yours. Would you take it as a personal attack, or would you view it as someone simply supporting ideas that you disagree with? Keep in mind that we can challenge ideas without attacking the people who embrace them. In fact, this is the only way to dismantle dangerous ideologies. In democratic societies where change essentially requires consensus, attacking opponents instead of ideas is possibly the worst way to stimulate progress. Consider this example:

Example 1
“Considering the unbelievable depths of stupidity you display in believing that climate change is a hoax, it would obviously be a waste of time explaining the facts to your fascist republican ass.”

Example 2
“You have been duped by the lamestream media, so I will leave you to your weak-minded, sheeple liberal delusions about how solar power will ‘save the planet'”

Example 3
“I read conflicting views on whether climate change is real, if it is a concern, and if it is totally caused by human factors. I am not an expert, and it’s not always easy to filter out the real experts from the ones who claim to be. And even then, it’s not always easy to filter out which experts, if any, are twisting their analyses to suit some underlying agenda. However, the scientific consensus points at climate change being a real danger, and being attributable to human factors. The recommendations to address it seem to be a net good, even if the premise that we are the problem isn’t totally correct.”

It should be obvious what’s happening in the first two examples. There is no attempt to change anyone’s mind. It’s just mud-slinging peppered with tired insults engineered to pump up the audience members who agree. Neither post does anything to address the issue of climate change itself, and just drives a wedge between people who hold opposing views.

Meanwhile, if I’ve crafted the third example well enough, hopefully you can see that there is no evidence of ad hominem at all, and even though the poster is leaning toward one “side”, they have not shut down engagement.

Sieve Question Two
“Does my post allow for (and even maybe invite) respectful discourse with someone who disagrees with it?“

Fallacy This Helps Avoid: Straw Person
This occurs when, in refuting an argument or idea, you address only a weak or distorted version of it. It is characterized by the misrepresentation of an opponent’s position to make yours superior. The tactic involves attacking the weakest version of an argument while ignoring stronger ones.2

How to Tell
This is often used in conjunction with the ad hominem fallacy because it adds even more punch. After all, only moron would believe a weak argument. Most people have no desire to engage in discourse with someone who starts off with the premise that “Your position is weak, because it supports x so I am right and you are wrong and unless you can see that you are an idiot.” Consider the contentious example of abortion:

Example 1
“Pro-choice? So you think that murdering babies is ok!?! I guess you don’t care about the lives of the babies who get killed.”

Example 2
“Pro-life? So women should have no say over what happens to their own bodies?!? I guess you don’t care about the 13-year old girl who was brutally raped and is now forced to carry and give birth to the child of the man who scarred her forever.”

Example 3
“I struggle with the abortion issue. I believe it is a clear and terrible breach of fundamental human rights to tell someone else what they can or can’t do with their own bodies, regardless of the circumstances but especially when there is physical/psychological trauma involved that can be addressed with an abortion. But I am also really troubled by the fact that I am in no position to decide whether a viable fetus, at any stage of development, is a human life, and I don’t see how anyone could be, really. The issue feels like being offered only two choices where each choice is loaded with ethical downsides, and there is no option to not choose. I worry that in order to alleviate the moral weight of each choice, people downplay or even outright lie about the consequences of their position. So although I land on the side of pro-choice, I do not do so lightly, and I am aware that it feels like I have made a moral choice to prioritize the essential rights of the mother over the potential rights of the unborn child. I hope this choice is correct.”

Consider the first two examples. Will a pro-choice person who just got told they murder babies want to engage in anything other than hurling insults with this person? Will a pro-life person who just got told they don’t care about the effects of rape on a 13 year-old girl want to engage in anything other than hurling insults with this person? By attacking a weak/distorted version of the other side, each has set it up so that any engagement by someone with an opposing view will manifest as some level of support for the weak/distorted claim.

Meanwhile, in the third example, the author has ultimately stated a position. Would a pro-x person be open to understanding the author’s struggle? Would a pro-life person feel safe to engage in discourse? Does it seem that there is the possibility that anyone who engages – including the author – might change their minds about anything surrounding the issue, including about people themselves who hold the opposite position?

Sieve Question Three
“Does my post offer information/education that someone who disagrees with me might not have considered?“

Fallacy This Helps Avoid: Irrelevant Authority
This is committed when you accept, without proper support for an alleged authority, a person’s claim or proposition as true (and that alleged authority is often the person employing the fallacy). Alleged authorities should only be referenced when:

  • the authority is reporting on their field of expertise,
  • the authority is reporting on facts about which there is some agreement in their field, and
  • you have reason to believe they can be trusted.

Alleged authorities can be individuals or groups. The attempt to appeal to the majority or the masses is a form of irrelevant authority. The attempt to appeal to an elite or select group is also a form of irrelevant authority.3

How to Tell
Are you claiming that some position is wrong? If so, have you explained how you know this? What authority are you citing? Or are you claiming expertise and asserting “Thinking x is wrong!”

Example 1
“Jordan Peterson says switching to a meat-only diet literally saved his life. Vegans are slowly killing themselves.”

Example 2
“I lost 30 pounds when I went vegan and feel so much better. Eating meat is asking for heart disease and dementia.”

Example 3
“It makes sense to at least consider evolution when determining what a ‘healthy’ diet looks like. Before humans had access to foods not native to our geography, the only people that would have survived would be the ones who thrived on what was available. So if your ancestors evolved in warmer climates, it would make sense that your constitution would welcome more grains and vegetables, whereas ancestors in colder climates would have evolved to thrive off meats.”

Consider the first two examples. Jordan Peterson is not an authority on nutrition (he actually takes great pains to make that clear whenever he talks about his diet). So while he has said that a carnivore diet works for him, it is not evidence that the carnivore diet is better than others. In the second example, the author is actually setting themselves as the authority. Neither example offers any warranted expertise or education and are strictly anecdotal claims.

In the third example the author poses an idea that promotes questioning and further research. They are not claiming any personal authority, or even choosing a side, even though they may have a preference. They are presenting an hypothesis that can be (and probably has been) analyzed by experts.

If you’d like to read more about informal fallacies often used in argument, I recommend this link from Texas State University. It lists the common ones and provides explanations and examples. One of my favourites is Begging the Question, which I always laugh about because it’s a phrase that gets used so often, and almost always incorrectly, while at the same time the real fallacy gets used regularly in arguments.

In any case, I hope we can all change the way we interact on social media and beyond. I really do believe we need that flavour of revolution.

Thanks for reading,
Rich

  1. https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/ad-hominem.html ↩︎
  2. https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/straw-person.html ↩︎
  3. https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/irrelevant-authority.html ↩︎

The Power of the Parental Promotional Campaign

Wow. An alliterative title that I didn’t even plan. I feel so clever. Which is ironic…

I’m 55 years old. By all accounts an adult. 55 is to human age as medium-well is to steak doneness, so I guess I’m the right side of middle-aged. Yet it seems nobody has informed my psyche. The child never left, and I don’t imagine it ever will – nor do I want it to. The only thing I can claim as I’ve aged is that I recognize the child in me, and I have no desire to evict that element of my psychological makeup. I simply want to work to understand its complexities and nuances, and see when my behaviour is more strongly guided by its influence. One aspect of this, and perhaps the only aspect that matters, if you dig deep enough, is the lasting effects of what I call Parental Promotion.

I have come to realize more and more clearly that my path in life has been strongly guided by what I think of as my parents’ promotional campaign, specifically about me. My parents, my mother primarily, never missed an opportunity to tell me and anyone who would listen that I was amazing. For example, according to my mother I was, among many other things:

  • The smartest kid.
  • A true mensch (this is a Yiddish word that essentially means a decent person).
  • The most talented singer. This is minor but illustrative, as I will discuss shortly.

They were also able to find ways to go on about my amazing “deficiencies” too, as though they were miraculous. I was, for example, among many other things:

  • The most intensely shy kid anyone ever met.
  • Exquisitely careful. I would come home from a day of playing outside with my friends and my clothes would be as clean as when they came out of the dryer.
  • Deeply quiet. While other kids would be talking, shouting and making noise, I’d be silently observing.

I believed all of it. Not “believed” as in they had to convince me away from a different opinion. Believed at my very core, without even the thought of questioning. I took it all as generally accepted fact. I was the smartest. I was the best singer. I was intensely shy. To be explicitly clear here, I’m not listing these as my own evaluations. They were not observations I made about myself. I didn’t decide these were true based on judgment or comparison. I am saying that because my parents told me they were true it meant they were axiomatic, and thus everyone would know it. It was my childlike perspective that if a fact is a fact then it must be universally known. Like the sky being blue. You don’t have to talk about it – it’s given. You assume everyone knows it. And if it comes up in any context, you don’t consider that it might be contentious or a matter of opinion because, well, look at the sky. It’s blue. Certainly, you don’t stop to consider how it will make you look to others when you act like it’s true.

From my earliest memories, and stretching even until today, this had objectively interesting effects on my interactions with people. Here are just a few (possibly obvious) results.

One, believing I was great (again, I stress, this was not a judgment of myself but taken as fact since it was what my parents told me), and believing that everyone knew this, and also believing that I was quiet and shy and that everyone knew that, I was most commonly seen by others to be snobby and aloof. As I aged this morphed into snobby, aloof and intimidating. Because none of these are internally true about me, and not remotely what motivated my behaviours, I was constantly taken by surprise by people’s reactions to me, which were consistent with their perception of me but so totally dissonant with my inner thoughts and motivations. I really never understood how I could be so misunderstood.

One immediate and persistent impact this had was to make me even more quiet and withdrawn, socially. That may have amplified some incorrect assumptions, but at least it didn’t create openings for discordant reactions to me, which I never learned how to reconcile.

To this point, I grant that I’ve certainly painted an unpleasant picture of the effects of my parents promotional campaign. But it’s not as simple as that. For example, believing that I was smart, I just assumed I could always figure something out. That if I was confused, or frustrated, then it was temporary and just meant I wasn’t thinking hard enough, or more likely was approaching a problem from the wrong direction. This attitude is self-fulfilling. It’s not news to anyone that confidence is a key – maybe even the most important – ingredient to success. Taking your innate ability as axiomatically true is a clear manifestation of confidence. It has led me to success professionally as a math teacher, and in many side pursuits such as visual arts, weightlifting, and sometimes, writing.

That’s not ego, although it can be perceived that way. I am reminded of a Bruce Lee quote: “If I tell you I’m good, probably you will say I’m boasting. But if I tell you I’m not good, you’ll know I’m lying.”

In any event, what I mean is that it’s just an understanding of your own capability and what that means you can do. For my whole life, to this very moment, I have always believed that I can excel at something if I want to. And often, but not always, I prove myself right. I no longer believe this is simply how I was born though. Now I recognize that my parents made me believe it was, and that is enough. When I don’t succeed, I have also realized that my confusion about that was a result of it being in conflict with the notion that it could never happen. I will illustrate with an example that often comes to my mind often. It was the first time I auditioned for a part in a musical.

For background, I was about 40 years old. I hadn’t been on a stage since school plays. Through a friend I discovered a local theatre program that put on amateur musical productions. The way it worked was you paid a fee for the program, and anyone could join. It was a way for adults to experience the fun of performing in musical theatre. Rehearsals happened once a week, and for the first two rehearsals parts were not yet assigned, although you can bet that everyone was assessing everyone else, and how they stacked up against the others, and people were making it clear which parts they were aiming for. The third rehearsal was auditions, and everyone would audition in front of everyone else. The director would let you sing whatever song from the show that you wanted to sing, and then usually ask you to sing and perform a few other numbers. Later that week he would send out the casting, and from then on the rehearsals were more focused. The experience culminated in two performances that were always well attended by family and friends. It was a lot of fun. I did many plays with this company, but that first one was Les Misérables.

After the first two rehearsals, it was clear (to me) that I was one of the best males in the room. It is clear to me now that I was not. But even at 40, that belief that I was great still guided much of my self-evaluation. I was hoping that I would get the part of Javert. And after the audition, I felt sure that I would. There were other cast members who told me they thought I had done well, and the feedback I was getting after each of my songs seemed to confirm that too. What I wasn’t able to filter though, was that people in that environment, wanting to be nice and supportive, compliment everything. Which incidentally is something I have learned not to do, because then the genuine, deserved compliments get lost in the sea of politeness, but that’s another story.

The point of this example is to tell you that I did not get cast as Javert, or any male lead. I was cast as sailor #3, prisoner #1, policeman #2, and a few other similar roles. I wasn’t devastated when we got the casting. I was confused. I also never resented any of the other cast members, because why would I? They didn’t make any mistakes, the director did, although because my parents emphasized being a mensch, I wasn’t angry with him, only grateful for the process he had created. However throughout the rest of the rehearsals, and for a very long time afterwards, I wondered what went wrong. And I started to realize this was a manifestation of the long-term impact of my parents’ promotional campaign. Eventually, after many, many more shows, I developed a more realistic understanding of my abilities as a singer. I am decent. That’s it. No more, no less. Nobody is going to think I have a great voice, but they won’t complain about it either, and that’s fine. But it took a while to see through the filter of the lens of my parents’ praise.

If I can simplify a very complicated concept, what I’ve learned is that believing what my parents told me has been at times a good thing, and at other times a difficult thing. It has led me to excel in many ways, and also led me to confusion and hurt when it conflicted with a more austere reality. But truly, the lasting gift is that at my core, I always believe I’m worthy.

It has been said, by people wiser than me, that the way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice (a quick google search tells me that this sentence may have originated with Becky Mansfield). My parents’ campaign became my inner voice, and my inner voice is kind. That’s powerful. It has brought me great things, and hard things. In my case, it’s been a net good, and I am grateful for it. But I have seen the results of more destructive campaigns on many of my adult friends, and on many of my students (as I alluded to above, I am a high school teacher and tutor). So my final message is this:

To children (and that means all of us). Reflect on how your parents’ campaign has guided your path. Try to see it clearly. Tease out the good it has brought, and work to understand the bad. The process is very healing.

To parents. Think deeply about your campaign. Remember that your children do not have the context of a lived life to apply to what you tell them about themselves. They may believe high praise, or they may wonder why what seems ordinary to them is generating high praise. They will believe harsh criticism. Tearing them down does not “build character”. It builds a cruel inner voice that it will take them years (if ever) to understand is not their own, and does not speak truth.

Campaign honestly. Campaign proudly. Campaign positively.

Thanks for reading,
Rich

Want Good Grades? Then Forget About Getting Good Grades!

Ok, I admit it. I have a habit of creating titles that create a disconnect. And are a little click-baity. But to be honest it only happens because I often like to write about misconceptions, and so by definition the title will appear counter-intuitive. Today I am going to write about something that over the course of my teaching career has met with perhaps the most resistance from students and parents, but which has also met with the most success when embraced.

If you want good grades, stop trying to get good grades.

Scandalous, I know. And trust me, I have heard all the rejoinders. So as you can imagine, I will explain.

See, in the current system of education, grades stopped being a measure of progress some time ago. What they have become instead is currency. A commodity that is pursued, traded and leveraged with as much vigor and ferocity as the dollar, euro, or yen. And I am not using hyperbole here. Schools these days have come to be viewed by many students, parents and even teachers as a marketplace. Teachers have the grades, students want them. And in this marketplace the end goal is to get as high a grade as possible. To very many – but to be completely fair, not to all – how that happens is not nearly as important as that it happens. To this category of student, the goal of school is not to learn, but to get grades. And this paradigm shift causes a fundamental change in how the entire process is viewed. I will list just a few examples:

  • Bargaining
    It has become standard operating procedure now that when teachers return graded work, the immediate next phase is the negotiation. Students dissatisfied with the magnitude of their grade will question, cajole and even harass the teacher about the grade, with the common theme that since the student believes the grade should be higher, the teacher has assigned a wrong grade. There are even times when the guise of reason is dropped completely, and the student will actually say things like “I need a 97% to get into <insert elite university program here> so can you raise my mark?”
  • Academic Dishonesty
    Academic dishonesty (aka cheating) is not a new phenomenon. What is new, however, is the pervasiveness of it, and the total lack of ethical struggle involved in making the decision to use it as a tool for getting high grades. After all, if the only purpose of school is to get a high grade, and if cheating accomplishes that, then where is the ethical problem? And so we see rampant use of things like plagiarism, paying others to do work that students then submit as their own, or gaming the system so that assessments like tests are skipped, then done at a later date after getting information from other students who were present at the time about what was asked.
  • Grade Mills
    Countless “schools” have popped up over the last decade or so who’s sole purpose is to guarantee official credits and high grades. The thinly disguised mission of these schools is to create a means by which, for a price, students can get a credit on their high school transcripts and also get an absurdly high grade. What separates a grade mill from a more legitimate private school is how accurately the student’s grade reflects their knowledge on completion of a course. I have taught many students who received a grade mill credit in a prerequisite course for the one I am teaching, with a grade of 100%, who do not possess the most basic skills meant to be learned in that prerequisite course.
  • Cramming
    This is definitely not a new concept in academics, but it has spread to more and more students, who in fact no longer recognize that it is not actually a means of learning. In courses where there are scheduled tests/exams, students do little to no work during times where there is no assessment looming. They attend class, possibly take notes, and otherwise devote minimal attention to the lessons, because “this won’t matter until the test.” They do not see this as an ineffective strategy at all. The belief that drives this is that the only time the subject knowledge will matter is when they are tested on it (and thus in a position to get grades), and so the plan is to study as much as possible the day – or even the night – before a test. Cramming all the information into their short-term memories just long enough to unleash it onto their test papers, to be promptly forgotten as they leave the room after writing the test.

These are not the only examples of what I am talking about, but they are the most common. And it is clear that none of these appear to give actual learning more than the slightest courtesy of a head nod. They are completely and totally about getting grades.

Sometimes, they even work. But that’s a trap. Because even when they work, they are only short-term solutions to a lifelong endeavour, and they all create stress and anxiety in the process.

  • Bargaining for grades, when it works, teaches that it is not about what you earn, but about what you can badger people into giving you. It shifts the perspective about where the effort should be placed. Rather than placing effort on producing good work, the effort is placed on convincing the teacher to assign a high grade. This creates an internal tension that results in generalized anxiety, because the student ends up in a position of having to convince the teacher of something that is not actually true, and for which there is no evidence.
  • Cheating works for its intended purpose (when you don’t get caught), but like grade mills, perpetuates the “appearance over substance” philosophy, and also imbues dangerous long-term values that erode at the ethical fabric of society. The stress this creates is clear – fear of getting caught, and the consequences. Additionally there is the gradual accumulation of anxiety brought on by creating an academic avatar that is more and more fraudulent and removed from the person who wears it.
  • Grade mills teach that appearance matters much more than substance – if you can appear to be someone who earned a perfect grade in calculus, it does not matter if you actually are someone with a deep understanding of calculus. It is hard to even wrap ones head around how many ways this is wrong. First, the injustice of potentially securing a spot in a college or university over someone who earned a lower grade, but actually knows much more calculus. Then, the fact that with the label of “100% in calculus” anyone who checks that label will assume that you are a calculus genius and expect that you are, creating significant stress on the person masquerading as the calculus prodigy. Finally, the pressure that the very existence of grade mills places on legitimate schools, who have little choice but to begin awarding higher grades so that their students can remain competitive when it comes to post-secondary offers of education, which is a non-trivial contributor to grade-inflation. The stress created here is very similar to that created by cheating, and has the added anxiety-producing bonus that at some point there won’t be a grade mill offering credits and grades for money, and that the student will actually have to perform as the person their grades have indicated that they are.
  • Cramming is arguably the lowest offense on this list, because in its purest form the student is not misrepresenting themselves at all. However it is fraught with disadvantages, from the fact that many students struggle to absorb and then reproduce the knowledge in a meaningful way, to the fact that when needed later – in the same course or in a subsequent one, the knowledge is no longer accessible. It also creates a great deal of stress and is a common cause of test-anxiety, which is a very real issue for many students who find they “totally knew this last night” but can not recall it when test time comes.

Perhaps most tragically, this issue causes stress and anxiety not just for the students engaged in them but for the many students who are not, because it creates an unlevel playing field that places incredible burden on the ones who are doing things the right way. Grade inflation is a real and dangerous phenomenon, where just like monetary inflation, a loaf of bread is still a loaf of bread whether the price tag says $0.75 or $2.99. The difference is that because we use percentages as grades, there is a ceiling, and so we are starting to distinguish by decimals. And that means that for any student mistakes cost much more than they ever did in the past.

Ok. So I’ve devoted the article to this point (approximately 5 minutes of reading time, if the algorithm that tells me how much I have written so far is to be trusted) outlining the issue. And maybe I’ve made it seem like hope is lost, because we do in fact live in a system where grades matter for universities, colleges, academic awards, and sometimes for that first job, and all of these vehicles by which students are getting the grades are either unethical or riddled with stress and anxiety. But hope exists! Because there is very good news.

To get good grades, all you have to do is actually learn the material!

Revolutionary, I know. It almost seems like I am joking. I assure you I am not. This simple fact is lost on more students and parents than I wish was the case. Clearly it would work though, right? Of course it would. Students, you can take all the effort you are devoting to “getting grades” and shift it to “learning material”. Immerse yourself in class. Ask questions of the teacher. Engage in discussion. Pay attention. Do work in increments (that is, homework), instead of cramming the night before a test or exam. Decide that you will be a master of the topic and use your teacher as the resource they are. Develop a love of learning – trust me, this is not as hard as you think – and as you grow into this person who legitimately strives to learn, the grades will automatically follow, as an afterthought!

Now I know from experience that this message lands differently on everyone. Some people roll their eyes, either inwardly or outwardly, and decide that the game as it is being played works just fine for them. Others hear me and know it makes sense, but feel that it’s too hard, and getting grades some other way will be the way to go. But, there is a significant portion of students I have talked to who have taken the idea to heart. And without fail they are the most academically successful, as reflected both in their grades, and in their facility with the material they have learned. These students inevitably report back to me that once they stopped their pursuit of high grades, and shifted their energy to the learning, they began earning higher grades than they ever had before. And their confidence grew as their anxiety atrophied. Because so much of the mentality of getting grades involves somehow gaming the system into awarding false credit, that when they shift into the person who actually has earned the credit they are receiving, they feel bulletproof.

And what a great feeling that is!

Thanks for reading,
Rich

Let Your Child Fail

Depending on the perspective of the different people in my life I am many things: a son, a father, a brother; A student, a teacher, a mentor; A friend, a colleague, a training partner. And yet, in all these capacities I have learned one lesson well, and seen it play out repeatedly. Failure is critical for growth, and letting loved ones fail is one of the hardest manifestations of loving them that there is.

This is never more acute than when it comes to your child. It is one of the most painful struggles in normal parenting. Seeing that a child is making poor choices and is therefore on a path to failure, letting it happen, and watching the fallout is heart-rending. And yet, the alternative is worse: Letting them believe that there is always a safety net.

As parents, it is our job and our duty to give our children all the tools and guidance they need to succeed as they grow. But it is not our job to give them success. It is not our job to undo their failures, or to mask them as something else. In fact, any “success” that is not earned is not a success at all, and any part we play in delivering these false successes is, in fact, failing in our duties as parents.

Repeatedly and consistently rescuing a child from failure teaches them that failure is not on the table. It teaches them that life will be fine regardless of poor choices, lack of knowledge, or lack of skill. It’s like giving someone voice lessons and using autotune to correct their pitch before playing back their singing to them and to the world, letting them believe they are the next Freddy Mercury or Whitney Houston, and then letting the world watch their train-wreck audition for American Idol. It not only sets them up for confusion later in life, it inhibits self-awareness to the point that life in the “real world” will for them will seem like walking through a minefield, where the reactions from others are so completely out of line with their internal measures (calibrated in their youth) that they can, at times, feel like they never really know what is wrong with them or why they get the responses they do. Consider those American Idol auditions where the singer is so clearly awful, and yet they think so highly of themselves that they tell the judges it’s the judges who are terrible.

The thing is though, that in the moment failure is happening, we parents want nothing more than to take the pain away. Every parent knows what I mean. Your child’s pain, whether physical or emotional, is about a million times worse than your own. My wife always talks about that moment when a toddler is running to you in the park to show you some amazing treasure they found, with that big toddler smile and enthusiasm, when they trip and fall and start crying miserably. We all want that enthusiasm and joy to be the only thing they ever feel. We never, ever, want them to fall.

But it’s unrealistic. Everyone falls. Learning what caused it, analyzing how to have avoided it, and recovering from it are the real lessons. The lessons that lead to a person who truly can be successful. And so we have to let our children fail. And then we have to be there for them to love and support them as they recover from it. We have to show them that failure isn’t the end of anything, and that even in their failure we believe in them and love them as much as we always have. That is how they will learn to grow from failure, without spending a ton of counter-productive energy and emotion on self-recrimination and shame.

In my years of teaching, I have had countless conversations with parents concerned about their children’s academic success – or lack thereof. And on more occasions than I care to count, a parent has outright asked me if there is anything I can do to raise their child’s grade. These parents are always taken aback when I tell them that there is nothing I can do, and nothing they can do either. However there is everything the child can do. We can give them the tools, we can be there to support their learning. We can be the best parents and teachers there are. But we can not “raise the child’s mark”. That is on the student. And sometimes, the student fails. When I tell the parents that I am willing to let that happen, they often think it means I am a bad teacher. There have been a few occasion where they said so. But my response is always the same:

“I am being the best teacher I can be. I will always be there to support your child. I will give them every tool I have, and the guidance to use it, in order for them to succeed. When they need me, I will be there. I will be there even when they don’t realize they need me. But I will never do the work for them, and I will never assign a grade they did not earn. And if they should fail, I will be there to support them and help them see what went wrong, and how to address that in the future. Given all that, my only hope is that your child will look back on their time as my student and realize the gift I gave them: The gift of letting them fail.”

We want the next generation to be resilient, strong, caring and educated. Failure is the path to all of these. As hard as it is, we need to let our children fail.

And then celebrate the heck out of their successes!


Thanks for reading,
Rich

We Didn’t Sign Up for This

The global COVID-19 pandemic has been a reality long enough now that the emails and texts that start off “in these extraordinary circumstances” or “considering the difficult times”, or “unfortunately, due to the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in” now feel like the opening sentiment is redundant. It has strangely become awkward to know what to say when sending out an email with yet another update on how someone or some institution has been impacted. We get it. And yet … we don’t get it. Because we didn’t sign up for this.

I have always admired and respected people in law enforcement, the armed forces, and perhaps especially firefighters and EMT’s. I remember 9/11, which drove home the point that hardly needed making that when everyone’s instincts are screaming at them to run away, these are people who run toward. And my respect for them stems from the fact that they signed up to do it. Something inside compelled them when they were younger to sign up for a career of running toward the danger. Of being in place when the shit is going down. Of being the person who was standing between the monster and the town, or being the first person the rest of us might see after getting mauled by the monster – doing their best to get us out of the danger and back into the loving arms of uneventfulness. My respect for them is unchanged.

But now we are finding out that some monsters don’t make a frontal assault. Some of them don’t take the path through the Hot Gates, so that Leonidas and his Spartans can know where to stand to get between the armies of Xerxes and the Greek civilians. Sometimes there is no bridge for Gandalf to block, because sometimes the Balrog descends like a toxic snowfall, on everyone at once.

And we didn’t sign up for that.

Grocery store clerks and cashiers, essential workers in office buildings, gas station attendants … they didn’t sign up to have to go out each day and do the exact opposite of what the rest of us have been told to do. Nurses and doctors signed up to treat sick and injured people – but they didn’t sign up to fight for 15+ hours a day, 7 days a week, against an unseen and not fully understood enemy, under-equipped and underfunded. They didn’t sign up to put themselves at risk caring for ICU patients with a highly contagious virus. They didn’t sign up to hold the phone as patients who might never go home FaceTime their families who just cry as they watch their loved one in an induced coma, breathing only thanks to a ventilator.

It is sadly ironic that some of the lowest-paid occupations in our society are now clearly the backbone of it. I find myself more and more troubled by this glaring imbalance. They didn’t sign up to be brave. The didn’t sign up to run toward the trouble. They didn’t sign up to be at the front. And yet.

What we are slowly discovering is that there are no rules for this. There are no precedents. Values and priorities we thought we understood only a month ago have undergone a seismic shift. And still, many people are operating on assumptions out of a lifetime of habit. As a high school teacher I am seeing this acutely through the lens of my colleagues and my students. Some colleagues are very concerned we will not be able to cover all the curriculum. Some students are very concerned about how this will impact their grades. But it seems to me that what this concern is missing is that the entire world is in the same boat. Every grade 12 student in the province of Ontario is not in school. Every graduating student that will attend university next year is going to have major gaps in their knowledge base as compared to previous years. Every single one of them. As for grades, the only time grades ever matter is when they are being compared to the grades of others. Entrance to university or college. Acceptance to a Masters program. Awards and scholarships. I can promise you that when committees are sitting looking at grade transcripts from this time, they will 100% not be wondering what the hell happened in 2020. Nobody knows yet how they will compensate for the complete inscrutability of the transcripts that we generate, but it is certain that there won’t be individual students who managed to live an alternate reality stream where they did not experience the pandemic and the effects it had on curriculum delivery and grading.

I also find it ironic as an educator that for years now we have been saying that we need to prepare our students for a future that we don’t understand, and yet now we find ourselves living a present that we have no frame of reference for. All the rules have changed. Societal norms are in flux. Responsible governments are scrambling to make the best decisions for the present and for the future. We’ve seen politicians completely shed their veneer, humbled into humanity by the pandemic. We’ve seen others double-down on the default political position of obfuscation, redirection, and selling the fantasy. They don’t have a rule book for this, so some are writing a new one, while others are desperately trying to make the old one work. Time will show either way that governments around the world are making many mistakes. But time will also show the wisdom of many of their decisions. It is too soon to be able to tell in each instance which is which. But as I wrote a few years ago, mistakes are just as valuable in the long term as getting things right, because time doesn’t stand still and we are only ever as good as the lessons we learn. Mistakes make excellent teachers for those willing to learn instead of criticize.

Because we didn’t sign up for this, we don’t have a playbook. There is nothing that is time-tested and proven effective. There is nothing you are “supposed” to be doing with your time. There is only what makes sense in the moment. And the biggest thing to understand is that everyone is in the exact same boat. Or to use another metaphor – we are all on the same ride, and the ride has stopped. So when things return to whatever normal will look like, we will all emerge into the same sunlit sky, rubbing our eyes and stretching our arms and legs. Standards and expectations that applied before the pandemic in many cases not be relevant.

Everyone will understand what you went through.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

Interesting Times

There is a saying that goes “May you live in interesting times” and depending on who you ask it is meant either as a blessing or as a curse. I have always considered it a blessing. After all, who wants to be bored? It is also “interesting” that although the saying has often been attributed to Chinese culture, there appears to be no solid evidence of this.[1]

The application to today’s situation – and the parallels of attribution – are worth noting for a moment, though not dwelling on. That COVID-19 originated in China seems to be effectively certain. That it has anything to do with Chinese culture is not (in a country with almost 1.4 billion people how can we designate any one practice as national culture?) That it has thrust us into interesting times is clear. How we behave is going to be something we learn from and talk about for the rest of our lives. I like breaking down my own experience into two categories: Fear and Opportunity. I’ll talk about both.

The fear. Well this is an obvious one, right? I am afraid the virus will overload our health care system. I am afraid of getting the virus. I am afraid that my loved ones will get the virus. I am afraid that myself or someone I love will need hospital care for some other reason and not be able to get it. This is first and foremost. Like almost everyone reading this, I have loved ones who are vulnerable. I cherish them. I want to protect them. But even for my loved ones who are not vulnerable, I don’t want them to get sick. The threat of COVID-19 is something we can’t see, and it travels on our network – the very network we turn to for much of what we consider a happy existence. Humans are a social species. We rely on our pack to survive and thrive. And the virus uses that exact connection to spread. So, we are in a time where we must go against our culture and our very human instincts and disrupt the network. This naturally creates more fear. We are programmed to find safety and security in our social connections, and these are the very connections we must sever in order to break up the network. There is no human alive who has lived through a time like quite this, though there are certainly those who have lived through arguably worse. In modern memory though, this kind of reaction to pandemic exists only in history books and in movies. So, it’s scary for sure. But the fear also creates the opportunity.

If forced to select a time in my life where this was going to happen, well this is the time I would select. There is no human alive who has lived through a time like this – a time where connectivity is so easily established without physical presence, where we have successfully created a new network on which a biological virus can not travel. A time where respect and understanding has been pushing itself more and more to the forefront of our considerations in how to deal with each other. A time where mental health issues like anxiety and depression have become something we are no longer expected to conceal and endure in isolation, but rather to share and explore so that we can help each other grow and be better. And while much has been discussed about the dangers of this non-physical connectivity, we are now faced with the opportunity to show how we can overcome those dangers and use it for immeasurable good.

We are feeling isolated – we can connect. We are feeling anxious – we can share. We have been feeling exploited and tainted by social media – we can exploit it right back and use it in ways we always wanted to but instead allowed it to deteriorate into a morass of rage and AI marketing.

Most importantly, we can connect with those who we are still face-to-face with. Our families.

As a teacher, my plan is to use what I know and what I am learning about connectivity to continue this year’s delivery of curriculum. It won’t feel exactly like being in class. I have done some experimenting already and I can tell you this – while inferior in ways, it is also superior in other ways, and we will allow ourselves to see it, to embrace it, and to grow. Patience is key, but so is enthusiasm. And I am happy to tell you that swirling around with the feelings of uncertainty and anxiety that I’m having about this pandemic and the measures we are taking, is a maelstrom of enthusiasm that is unyielding. We’ll make it work.

As a human, my plan is to continue to exercise proper caution, in the hopes that months from now there will be a whole slew of people who will be able to criticize what we have been doing as overreaction, using evidence of a less severe outcome to back their claims. I will wait as we all settle into this temporary new normal, and as our politicians perhaps speed up the recognition and acknowledgment of what experts have been saying since the outbreak started. We will have food. We will have our prescriptions. And with care and some healthy paranoia, we will have access to health care when and if we need it. None of us signed up for this, but we can handle it. Humans have weathered worse, under much less optimal conditions!

[1] From Wikipedia, citing Garson O-Toole: “Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th-century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain.”

Why Study Mathematics?

In my job, this question is one I get asked very often. To be honest, it usually comes in a slightly different form …

“When am I ever going to use this? What is it good for?”

As a high school math teacher for 15 years, this is one of the most common questions I received. When I began lecturing at university, I was surprised to find that I still sometimes get asked variations of this question. I suppose it’s a good question, if the idea is that at some point someone will say to you

“Determine

and have your answer on my desk by 5pm today. And don’t get any funny ideas about using WolframAlpha!”

Because the truth is, that rarely happens.

I often give a joking answer, and say flat out, “You won’t,” and then go on a rant about how math doesn’t need to be good for anything, because it is just good. Nobody ever stood in the Sistine Chapel, staring at the ceiling, asking what it was good for! They just appreciate the inherent beauty, because it speaks to their soul. Math is the same.

I think that’s a perfectly good answer, to be honest. But in a more serious light, I find the answer to the question is actually another question: “When are you not going to use this?”

Of course, there are direct applications of many branches of math. But those tend to be very specific, and these days depend heavily on software to do the heavy lifting, so I tend not to think of those. Instead, consider that football players perform bench press as part of their training, to the point that the ability to bench press 225 pounds for as many reps as possible is tested at the NFL combines. Yet not once have I ever seen a football player perform the bench press during a game. Why do they do it then? Couldn’t they just practice the skills they will actually use in a game? I can promise you that at no point during a football game does a player think “oh, this situation is just like bench pressing 225 pounds – I will apply that same skill now.” And I imagine there are very few football players who complain while lifting weights that they will “never use this in real life”. Of course, we know that the reason they train the bench press is that it increases strength and power, so that when the time comes that they need it, it will be there without consciously calling upon it.

Studying mathematics is the same. Math teaches so much if we are awake to the lessons. Here are some things I have learned, continue to learn, and apply regularly from my math studies, along with some examples of how they have impacted me personally.

Scale simple solutions to solve large problems

It is almost always the case that large problems can be effectively solved by breaking them into smaller problems, or by developing scalable solutions to simpler problems. For example, about 3.5 years ago I decided I wanted to learn to draw, so I took a piece of white printer paper and a mechanical pencil and drew a superhero-esque muscle man. It sucked. Like a lot. But I was not discouraged in the least by that. I was fueled by it. Why does this suck so much? I know how I want it to look, why can’t I make it look that way? I was excited by the fact that I could recognize how much it sucked, and by the prospect of working to slowly strip away the suckness. I spent hundreds of hours, solving small problems that were contributing to the suckyessence, and slowly scaling them up. Want to draw a heavily muscled arm? Learn to draw a cylinder. Then learn to draw little cylinders that lie on the main one. Then learn to draw “twisted” cylinders and tubing that changes diameter as it twists. Learn anatomy. Now put it all together. I intuitively understood platonic solids and how they interact with and reflect light. I applied these understandings to understand the types of skills I needed to hone with the way I held and manipulated pencils. I started looking closely at things I never paid attention to before. I still do this, and at no point during this process do I ever consciously say “Oh, that’s just like <fill in math course here>”, but at every point I feel exactly the way I feel when I am working on difficult math problems.

Being right also means proving you are

Math is really never about just “getting the right answer”. It’s about proving that an answer – or a result – is correct. The emphasis on proof is critical. In the real world, being right is rarely enough if you can’t convince others that you are. Careful, methodical, and audience-appropriate explanations are invaluable in this regard. Developing and writing proofs in mathematics is as much an art form as it is a science (perhaps even more so), and my studies in mathematics immeasurably improved my approach to constructing an audience-appropriate argument or explanation. This has had a profound impact on my communication skills, as well as my approach to confrontation. I have used this skill in more ways than I can list, but some examples are: when I have been in contract negotiations, when I deal with sales people when buying big-ticket items (and even when I bargain at markets), when I find myself moderating arguments between friends, family, colleagues or students, and when I used to work as a personal trainer and had to motivate and justify the kinds of exercise and diet choices I wanted my clients to make. In every single one of these situations, and more, I am really constructing proof. In fact, I would say that proof dominates almost all my communication.

Emotional attachment to a belief is irrelevant

Not wanting to be wrong about a belief, especially if it has been long-held, is normal. It is, however, illogical and possibly even dangerous in the face of proof to the contrary. Mathematics trains us to seek, understand and ultimately accept proof on its own merit, and not on any emotional yearning. It also trains us to be grateful when proven wrong, since it makes little sense to want to be wrong for even one moment longer than necessary. My training in math has led to a much more open-minded approach to new thoughts and ideas, and after careful consideration – which involves listening to argument dispassionately, asking relevant questions and weighing evidence – I find myself either happily embracing a new thought, or else more confident in the one I already had, having had the opportunity to test it rationally against a differing viewpoint.

Creativity and math are NOT mutually exclusive.

Not even close. Deep study of mathematics reveals and refines a strong creativity that aligns with and is mutually supportive of logic. This fusion is relatively rare, and people who have it are prone to what seem to be exceptional accomplishments. In truth, the exceptionality of it is not the accomplishment itself but the relative scarcity of people who can do it. One of my favourite examples is Leonardo da Vinci, who most people think of as a great artist, but who was also an accomplished mathematician and scientist, and who did not consider these as separate pursuits or modes of thinking. I find the same is true in my own life, although there are many people who wonder how a mathematician could be artistic.

Clarity lives just on the other side of contemplation

The journey math students regularly take from being completely mystified and often intimidated, to understanding and comfort is a lesson in overcoming that serves us well in all the challenges the future can bring. It instills a confidence that says, “I may not understand this right now, or even feel like I ever could, but I know I can do it.” General wisdom suggests that “easy” might seem gratifying in the moment, but true satisfaction comes from overcoming a challenge. Many people shy away from challenge for fear of failure, but studying mathematics teaches us that we can tackle large problems, even if they seem overwhelmingly daunting at the outset. An example that makes me laugh is the time I purchased a large and intricate piece of exercise equipment for my home gym (a functional trainer/smith machine combo). I bought it used, so it did not come with any assembly instructions, and perhaps embarrassingly, it didn’t occur to me to use Google. When I picked it up the seller had already “helpfully” disassembled it into n pieces, where n is large. I was completely baffled at how to reassemble it when I got it home. But I was not daunted. I laid all the pieces out on the floor, shuffled them around into sensible groups, and slowly assembled sections that made sense. I made mistakes and discovered them when they led to chaos. I backed up, took a different approach, and eventually put it together. The process was not “clean” – I hurt my hand trying to brace a nut while tightening a bolt, and cursed myself for not taking the time to get a wrench to hold it in place. But the result looks like it was assembled by a pro. I’ve had it for many years now, and it still works perfectly. I am fully aware that my engineer friends would consider this a trivial exercise, but for me it was a hard-fought and well-earned victory. This type of approach has stood me well time after time.

You don’t always have to see the whole path to the goal

How often have you been working on a difficult proof or problem, not really knowing if you were getting anywhere good, nevertheless continuing to take small, logical steps – always forward, occasionally pausing to reorient yourself to see if the direction made sense – when suddenly you found yourself having completed the entire thing? Some mathematicians call this the “follow-your-nose” principle of proof. A leads to B which leads to C etc. This might be the most important lesson of all. If you have a long-term goal that seems incredibly distant and perhaps overly ambitious, consider that if you just point yourself in the right direction and take small steps, occasionally reorienting yourself, you do eventually get where you want to go. Plus, the journey is so rewarding. In my life I have used this principle I learned from proof over and over and is in fact how I ended up lecturing at university, something that has been a dream of mine since the 12th grade.

And that concludes my very long answer to the common question! I hope you found something of value.

Thanks for reading!

Rich

Gracefully Honest

In this blog I will talk about honesty – something I think many well-intentioned people struggle with. This is because sometimes it seems like lying is the right thing to do – and in some rare cases, it is. To paraphrase Sam Harris, when Nazis came looking for Anne Frank and her family, anyone lying about them not being hidden in the building was certainly doing the right thing.

That said, in all but the most extreme cases, people choose dishonesty for misguided reasons. This happens because sometimes the truth hurts. In fact, sometimes, truth is used as a weapon.

The confusion is, in part, because while honesty can be a good thing, there is no guarantee that it always is. Honesty must be wielded virtuously, which is not automatic. In fact on its own, honesty is not a virtue.

Honesty is not a virtue

In classical antiquity, there are the four cardinal virtues. In brief, here they are (these definitions are mine – for more formal details, check this link):

  • Prudence: The ability to judge the appropriateness of a possible course of action.
  • Courage: The strength to act in the presence of fear.
  • Temperance: The exercise of restraint in feeding an appetite.
  • Justice: The purest form of fairness, in a righteous sense.

So honesty is not a cardinal virtue. Now over the centuries, philosophers and theologians have added more virtues to the cardinal four. Of these there are three that I think are moral necessities. These are “love”, “charity” and “kindness”.

Still, on it’s own, honesty is not there. This is because honesty can be used morally (specifically in the context of love, charity and kindness), but it can also inflict pain – intentionally or not. Let’s have a look at that second situation first – the “brutal” honesty.

Brutal honesty

“I am going to be brutally honest with you.”

How many times have you encountered that sentiment? How many times have you said it? Let’s stop to consider what it prefaces: that the person is about to lay some bit of perspective on you that they know is going to hurt.

This is usually justified by the idea that you are deluded somehow, and need to “snap” out of it. Or you need a “hard” dose of reality. Or any other number of violent paradigm shifts the perpetrator feels they are uniquely prepared to impose. Because, after all, the world is full of people willing to coddle you, creating the need for someone righteous enough to tell you the truth, even though it will hurt.

This is bullshit.

This “brutal” honesty is really an attempted behaviour modification through punishment. The shock it is expected to impose is designed to somehow shine light on a deficiency in perception, so that you cease your persistence in pursuing some vision. A vision which, according to the person with the flashlight, is a fantasy. It tends to come from a place of anger and – make no mistake – is meant to make you suffer for whatever pain your apparent delusion has been causing them.

People who use this phrase like to project pride in their willingness to use it. You may hear them boast such claims as “Hey, I call it like I see it”, or “I’m a straight-shooter”. It comes with admonishments like “The truth hurts”, or “If you don’t want to hear the truth then you don’t want to be around me”. They may be offering honest assessments, but they are nested in dishonest motivation, even though the motivation is sitting right there in the phrase. Brutal is not a nice word.

Definition of brutal
“Brutal.” Merriam-Webster.com, Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brutal. Accessed Mar. 2017.

Check out that definition. There is nothing in there that speaks to any kind of morality or good intention, and certainly nothing virtuous. Even the entry about brutal truth contains no compassion. Accurate? Yes. But unpleasantly and incisively so.

So then someone who prefaces the delivery of truth with “I am going to be brutally honest” is – by their own admission – embarking on a non-virtuous wielding of honesty as a weapon to deliver misery. I propose that in the vast majority of situations, the fundamental reason for this is that even though they are using the word, they are not being honest about their own motivation – the desire to be brutal.

But I don’t want to be brutal!

It’s okay – I know. This notion of brutal honesty leads to a concern from good people who don’t want to be brutal. There is a perception that if the truth is brutal, or perhaps unsavoury, then a lie would be better. Keep in mind though that lies come with a heightened anxiety of their being discovered. This often leads to uncomfortable situations, where additional and more elaborate lies are needed to maintain the facade of truth.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a way to be honest and virtuous. I call it “graceful honesty”.

Honesty with grace

First, let’s have a look at the definition of grace, so that you can understand why I chose that word. Grace has many meanings, so I have highlighted the ones I am applying in this context:

Definition of grace
“Grace.” Merriam-Webster.com, Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grace. Accessed Mar. 2017.

Recall earlier, when I spoke about the three virtues of “love”, “charity” and “kindness”. In many ways, the word grace encapsulates these, and so I choose it to describe the type of honesty I mean.

First, be honest with yourself

Graceful honesty isn’t difficult, but it does require some practice if you are not in the habit. The key to it is when you find yourself either tempted to be dishonest, or about to be brutally honest, you stop and spend some time being honest with yourself first. If your motivations are virtuous, then there will be a way to communicate honestly with grace. Conversely, if your intentions are nefarious, then hopefully you will be honest with yourself about that and choose some other course, having recognized the toxicity of your initial instinct. The key then, is to use self-reflection to uncover and put words to your motivation. I don’t want to use too many specific examples here, because it is easy to make arguments about the inaccuracy of an example as it applies to yourself, and then decide the concept is flawed, but I’ll indulge in one in the hope that it will be a good springboard.

Dinner at Kelly’s

Suppose you have been invited to dinner at your friend Kelly’s house, and you just don’t feel like going. The likelihood is that if you decide not to go, you will fabricate an excuse. Further, the excuse probably has a half-life greater than a few hours. What I mean by that is that it’s probably a concocted scenario that will likely be referred to at a later date. For example, you may claim “my kid is sick”, which you can bet Kelly will ask about in the next day or two, and may even ask your child. In this case you will have to remember the excuse so that you don’t accidentally contradict it later, and you may even have to recruit your family to perpetuate the dishonesty – something they are more likely to forget about, since they are not vested in the lie. Result? Anxiety.

Instead, consider this. You really do value your friendship with Kelly. You also don’t feel like going. Before choosing to be dishonest, you can spend some time in honest self-reflection. Why don’t you want to go? Be super analytical about that. You may discover that you actually do want to go, or you will confirm that you don’t. If you truthfully don’t want to go, you will now be better able to put into words what the real reason is, which will of necessity consist of the factors that are outweighing your legitimate desire to spend time with Kelly.

If you tell Kelly exactly that reason, and if Kelly is a good human, she will understand, because you have been fully honest and presented the reason in full context of how you struggled with the decision. She will appreciate the conflict, and understand the conclusion, even if she is disappointed.

But wait you say! I know Kelly! She would never understand! She would just be insulted! Well, I’m not foolish. I know this is also a possibility. But here’s the thing: this is only the current state of your relationship because of a history of implicit dishonesty about motivation. Which means there is room for more honesty – on her part and on yours. See, if at the core you both value each other and the friendship, then you mean no insult, and so how can she be insulted? And the core is all that actually matters – because it is impossible that either of you wants the other to be upset. That core exists, and honesty will land you there. Graceful honesty.

Graceful honesty doesn’t mean everyone is happy

In the example above, Kelly is probably going to be disappointed. You might also. That may seem contrary to virtue, but it isn’t. Not if you were honest about the factors that outweighed your desire to go. Disappointment isn’t a monster to be avoided at all costs. It’s a natural consequence of not being able to implement more than one choice at a time.

One of the great contributors to dishonesty is a desire to keep everyone happy – or at least not miserable. But it’s a trap. Lying by definition creates a false narrative. Perpetuating this to maintain a state of happiness, in fact maintains a state of delusion. One from which the participants (barring tragedy) must eventually emerge, and who’s discovery is unlikely to legitimize the illusion of peace they were enjoying. Put simply, the lie just sets everyone up for a bigger fall.

But life isn’t about being happy all the time! We all know this. We all experience negative emotions like sadness, anger, and disappointment. For the most part we don’t let these things impact the zoomed-out graph of our lives. Yet we find ourselves willing to skirt honesty with others to somehow shield them from these normal experiences.

Have you ever said something to someone in anger that you later regret? I’m betting you have. I’m betting some if it was pretty damn poisonous, and required a lot of apology, replete with the sentiment “I didn’t mean it”. But is that really true? More specifically, does “I didn’t mean it” mean the same thing as “it wasn’t true”?

My experience tells me that what we are really trying to say is “I regret using honesty to hurt you – it isn’t consistent with how I feel about you.” This can be about something you’ve been holding in for a while, or it can be about an emotion that was real in that moment, instigated by the anger. For example, “I hate you!” during an argument isn’t totally untrue, just imprecise: it really means “I hate this feeling I’m having right now that you are causing”, and it is 100% true. It is also 100% forgivable, because it is 100% understandable.

If you think about this for a while, you will see that the real mistake is not being honest earlier, when graceful honesty would have worked: “I love you, and I’m in it for the long haul, but I do get irritated when you don’t put the cap on the toothpaste. I do not equate this behaviour with you, and my irritation is therefore not aimed at you, but the behaviour.”

That last quote is wordy and annoying, I know. But it’s the idea I am trying to communicate, not a recipe for how to tell your husband to put the damn cap on the toothpaste. Very often we don’t disclose little irritants like that because we are concerned it will be taken as criticism of a loved one we don’t want to hurt, as opposed to observation of a behaviour that is independent of the reasons we care about the person exhibiting it. Graceful honesty would disclose all of that, and keep the barbs from growing onto a club that could be wielded in anger.

See, hiding the truth is silly. We are all in this reality together. We should share it. All of it.

Honesty is the sharing of reality.

Think about it. How can honesty be anything else? But as I said earlier, to do it with grace requires a deeper searching of our own motives than we normally do. So the next time you feel like a lie is warranted (or if you are tempted to inflict pain with truth), ask yourself why. What is motivating you? Who are you trying to protect? Who are you trying to help? When you feel the truth needs to be hidden, put away the issue whose truth is troubling you for a moment and look at the feeling itself – it will be the source of the honesty you should embrace. The reality you should share. It is the only way to build and maintain relationships that have value.

Thanks for reading,

Rich