I hate when people try to sound smart by opening their writing with a quote from an ancient philosopher, but two thousand four hundred years ago, Athenian orator Demosthenes wrote, “The wish is parent to the thought, and that is why nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”
Fifty-one years ago, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
And eight years ago, then-President of the University of Chicago Robert Zimmer connected these two ideas and called them, together, the Demosthenes-Feynman trap: essentially, confirmation bias.
Four years ago, when I applied to be on The Cypress staff, I proudly fell right into that trap. I wrote in my application that all I wanted to do was write opinion pieces. I was not interested in news, arts or sports. And although I wanted other people to listen to what I had to say, frankly, I did not have an open mind. I knew what I thought, and I wanted to tell other people what to think. And that was that.
Two years ago, I started writing this column.
Today, as I look back at the first editions of Everything by Ezra, I cringe in the same way one might cringe at old photos of themselves; these pieces a snapshot of my thinking two years ago. The first edition was called “be civically engaged”—how bland and uninteresting is that? At the time I wrote it, though, it felt really important and meaningful. Just as the pieces I’ve written this year have felt really important and meaningful. In another two years, I might hopefully look back at my pieces from this year and cringe again. Maybe hopefully is the wrong word. Inevitably?
My point here is that everything I’ve ever written is probably wrong. Not that opinions can be wrong. But it’s all been half-baked, partially informed; claims made with a lack of experience and perspective.
In George Saunders’ magical realism book “Lincoln in the Bardo,” one character, the ghost of an army general who was damned to hell for killing his enemies after they surrendered asked: “With time flowing in only one direction and myself made just as I was … With my short temper and my notions of manhood and honor, my schoolboy history of being beaten to within an inch of my life by three older brothers, that rifle feeling so beautiful in my hands and our enemies appearing so loathsome? How was I (how are any of us) to do other than that which we, at the time, actually do?”
That is to say, everything I do is just a product of me – imperfect, 18-year-old me.
The scariest part of it all is that my half-baked, partially informed ideas, thought up with a lack of experience and perspective, actually have an impact on the world. How can that be right? Possible?
Of course, these kinds of ideas (that is to say, every idea, ever) are the only things that have ever changed human society.
Whether or not any of my ideas, or any aspect of the life I’ve attempted to lead in accordance with my values, has actually been good, I have no idea. What I do know is that what I’ve put forward has generally been the best version of myself that I could muster at any given time with the information I had. And that’s all I can do. That’s all any of us can do.
That is why I have come to understand, the opinions section is so important. I may believe, in any given moment, that I know something about how to make the world a better place, and you might believe in the same moment that you know something about how to make the world a better place. And either one of us, or neither one of us, or both of us could be right or wrong. But if we don’t share our ideas, we all get stuck in our own Demosthenes-Feynman traps.
The key principle here is that we all make the best decisions we can at any given time with the information we have at that time. To become better people, we must exchange information so we can start making better decisions as our corpuses of knowledge, perspective and experience expand.
As an Opinions Managing Editor, I have worked very hard to cut our community free from the trap by bringing more diversity of thought to this section and the high school.
In his book “The Overstory,” novelist Richard Powers writes that “Reason is just another weapon of control … the invention of the reasonable, the acceptable, the sane, even the human is greener and more recent than humans suspect.” There is, he is saying, no natural way of being. There is no God-given greater good. Everything that we see as concrete, “sane,” “human,” even, is just made of lines we have drawn in the gray area. If we don’t push back against widely accepted beliefs, the lines become more and more solid. We get more and more trapped, our courses more fully pre-determined.
As I’m now graduating high school, I find myself increasingly questioning the path that I’m on. Is it the right one? The best one? Where am I going? Where do I want to go?
The place I am now is different from the place I thought I would get to when I applied to The Cypress four years ago. Not that it’s all that different. But it hasn’t been too much time. I have established a new trajectory for myself—a trajectory I’ll (for now) keep heading down (until my trajectory changes again). And I’m glad. It’s for the better (at least as far as I know right now).
As much as anyone, I tend to get set in my convictions, my routines. But I’m working on that. All we can do is the best we can at any given time with the information we have, and to keep moving, changing as the world changes around us, and making an effort to stay out of the trap!
