So I’m spending the summer reading the Essays of Michel du Montaigne, generally considered the first man in the Renaissance to perfect the essay form.
He’s also considered one of the world’s first bloggers by many, including Andrew Sullivan:
“A passionate skeptic, Montaigne amended, added to, and amplified the essays for each edition, making them three-dimensional through time. In the best modern translations, each essay is annotated, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, by small letters (A, B, and C) for each major edition, helping the reader see how each rewrite added to or subverted, emphasized or ironized, the version before. Montaigne was living his skepticism, daring to show how a writer evolves, changes his mind, learns new things, shifts perspectives, grows older—and that this, far from being something that needs to be hidden behind a veneer of unchanging authority, can become a virtue, a new way of looking at the pretensions of authorship and text and truth. Montaigne, for good measure, also peppered his essays with myriads of what bloggers would call external links. His own thoughts are strewn with and complicated by the aphorisms and anecdotes of others. Scholars of the sources note that many of these “money quotes” were deliberately taken out of context, adding layers of irony to writing that was already saturated in empirical doubt.”
I’ve tried to read at least one a day, and I came across a passage this morning in his essay “Of Pedantry” that shows not only was he skeptical about the world around him, but also over his own work:
“We only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at the tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad. And here I cannot but smile to think how I have paid myself in showing the foppery of this kind of learning, who myself am so manifest an example; for, do I not the same thing throughout almost this whole composition? I go here and there, culling out of several books the sentences that best please me, not to keep them (for I have no memory to retain them in), but to transplant them into this; where to say the truth, they are no more mine than in their first places. We are, I conceive, knowing only in present knowledge, and not at all in what is past, no more than in that which is to come. But the worst on’t is, their scholars and pupils are no better nourished by this kind of inspiration; and it makes no deeper impression upon them, but passes from hand to hand, only to make a show, to be tolerable company, and to tell pretty stories, like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other use or value but to reckon with, or to set up at cards.”
Well, ~zing. This passage makes me question my role as a blogger and a representative of the news media. Describing the sharing of news nuggets as “like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young” hits home, and makes me question how I can do a better job not just bringing about information, but understanding.
This naturally has been a continual process for me since I began my career as a journalist back in 1991.
But media, and the consumption of it, is a two-way street. Even though – as Montaigne points out – one can describe what I do as a certain delivery system, I still can’t guarantee that those to whom I deliver information will have greater understanding, or use the information in the way I intend for it to be used.
You don’t need me to tell you we live in a world where access to information is increasing by orders of magnitude in a very short span of time. Which gets us back to a two-way street. Just as I have the responsibility to bring you the news fairly and accurately each day, you as a media consumer also bear responsibility – if only to yourself.
Two pieces I’ve come across this week have some great advice on how to do that.
The first is from David McRaney on what he calls “confirmation bias.” You ever come across a phrase or story or song or book or movie – and then all of a sudden over the next few weeks you hear repeated mentions of the same thing? Coincidence? Or is the universe playing games with you? McRaney says the answer is neither:
“If you are thinking about buying a new car, you suddenly see people driving them all over the roads. If you just ended a long-time relationship, every song you hear seems to be written about love. If you are having a baby, you start to see them everywhere.
Confirmation bias is seeing the world through a filter, thinking selectively.
The examples above are a sort of passive version of the phenomenon. The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.
Punditry is a whole industry built on confirmation bias.
Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck and Arianna Huffington, Rachel Maddow and Ann Coulter – these people provide fuel for beliefs, they pre-filter the world to match existing world-views.
If their filter is like your filter, you love them. If it isn’t, you hate them.
Whether or not pundits are telling the truth, or vetting their opinions, or thoroughly researching their topics is all beside the point. You watch them not for information, but for confirmation.”
And this tendency for many people to limit their media diet to only those who confirm their already-established beliefs, I think, is behind the rancorous partisanship that’s infected our national discourse for so long. It is worth your while to expose yourself to views that challenge your deeply-held beliefs – if only to help strengthen them by passing them through a filter of doubt and skepticism.
So how can you do that? Dan Gilmour has some fantastic advice for how the media consumer can become more literate, including:
1. Be skeptical of absolutely everything. We can never take for granted the absolute trustworthiness of what we read, see or hear from media of any kind. This is the case for information from traditional news organizations, blogs, online videos and every other form.
2. Don’t be equally skeptical of everything. We all have an internal “trust meter” of sorts, largely based on education and experience. We need to bring to digital media the same kinds of parsing we learned in a less complex time when there were only a few primary sources of information.
3. Go outside your personal comfort zone. The “echo chamber” effect — our tendency to seek information that we’re likely to agree with — is well known. We need to seek out and pay attention to sources of information that will offer new perspectives and challenge our own assumptions. Certainly it’s easier than ever to join the echo chamber; but it’s also easier to avoid it. When you watch Fox News on television, you are rarely exposed to contrary viewpoints. But when a political blogger eviscerates a contrary viewpoint, that blogger usually links to the other person’s views — they’re just a click away. And it’s in your interest to click that link, to seek out material from different cultures and perspectives, as not understanding how other people see the world can lead to bad decisions.
Which brings me back to Montaigne. What inspires me most about his writings so far is that he does not settle for taking the world simply as he knows it – he constantly tries to examine his surroundings, to poke his established sensibilities, and to learn of areas for improvement – setting an example from five centuries ago that is crucially relevant today.
So what do you think?
EARLIER POSTS ON THIS SAME TOPIC:
-”The ‘Big Macs Every Day’ Diet“
-”Advice on Consuming Campaign ‘08”
