The School of Life

Nick Southgate on Being Rational

When facing the big decisions of life we want to be rational. Houses, careers, study, marriage: these demand weighing things up with care and reason. We muster all our intellectual resources and try to focus them on reaching the right decision. Yet, the sneaking suspicion often remains that our decision came down to gut feeling, hunches or even simple guess work.

Small decisions are no better. Even the most trivial everyday of decisions can cost us disproportionate amounts of confusion and effort. Who has not been delayed for a party debating the degree of smartness demanded of one’s attire? Who has not mulled over the subtle implications and subtexts a choice of gift may unguardedly impart to its recipient? In these cases we are familiar with the rejoinder that we should “think rationally”. But such clear thinking is rarely at hand.

Consistent failure to not be more rational can lead us to upbraid ourselves for lacking intellectual gumption or moral fibre. Before we are so hard on ourselves maybe we should ask ourselves why it is so difficult to think rationally. After all, if it is so desirable why does it elude us so often when we most need it?

Consolation can be found in Descartes masterpiece The Meditations of First Philosophy. In it he sets forth a rational and scientific foundation for all our thinking. It is this ambition that Descartes is remembered for.

What is less often remembered is how difficult Descartes finds obtaining rational thought. To achieve his task he commits himself to six days of meditation alone in a room with only a fire to keep him warm. This ascetic effort does not bring instant rewards. As he strives for clear thinking his head spins, his concentration wanders, he lapses into old ways and is consumed by ferocious doubt and bewildering confusion. The result is not permanent reform. An ongoing effort is required to keep a clear and rational head.

Such effort is the preserve of the philosopher. Few of us have six days to devote to achieving a rational frame of mind. We should not be disheartened. Descartes was searching for a platform for philosophy and science. They yield to rational enquiry. Everyday life does so far less easily. Descartes’ efforts also show that we cannot be rational all the time. We need more than rational thinking to lead a full and proper life and should remember this when being rational once again eludes us.

Robert Rowland Smith on telling lies

When someone asks how you are, do you say you’re fine when you’re feeling wretched? Have you ever assured your host that dinner was delicious, when it made you feel sick? If you’re given a present you hate, might you tell the giver it’s what you always wanted?

 

If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re a liar. Ok, you’ll say these are just ‘white lies’, strategic untruths to spare your questioner embarrassment - in protecting the other person, you’re being almost gracious. But lies that are white sit on a spectrum with those that are black, with an area between that is grey: what about when you arrive late for work blaming the transport, instead of admitting you couldn’t get out of bed? Lies become blacker the more you try to protect yourself rather than the person you’re deceiving.

 

Now, while all lies are false, not all falsities are lies. You can believe sincerely in something quite wrong, as did the entire world before 1543, for example, when Copernicus pointed out the earth revolved round the sun. It’s not that, before then, people were lying when they averred the earth lay at the centre, no - they were, in all honesty, expressing a falsehood. But things get blacker still when you both know something to be false, and you you try to convince yourself of it - you imagine the bus really had broken down, and picture the frustration when you had to get off and start walking.

 

In this, lying parallels acting. There is the Olivier school and there is the Method. The former says a plausible imitation doesn’t require you to get inside your character’s head, whereas the Method demands you become the person you’re portraying, and in preparing for Raging Bull, Robert De Niro, its foremost exponent, trained like a real contender. Olivier was just lying to the audience, De Niro was lying to himself.

 

The lesson is that unless you’re a professional actor, lying can be perilous. Not just because of the tangled web you’ll weave when you start to deceive other people, but because, if you believe your own lies, you, like a Method actor, risk losing your sense of self.

 

Robert Rowland Smith’s Breakfast with Socrates: the Meaning of Everyday Life, is published this autumn by Profile Books. He will be teaching the next Love course at The School of Life on 6-7 June.

This article also appears in Life Class, The School of Life's weekly column in the Evening Standard.

 

Catherine Blyth on silence

Those of you who read the Evening Standard will have noticed The School of Life's regular Friday column "Life Class", which has been runnning there for several months now. It's written by different members of our fabulous faculty and has covered subjects as various as shyness and shopping. I'm posting last week's column about Silence, written by Catherine Blyth, to give you a flavour.

1.    In the beginning was the word.  So what is there to say about silence?  Plenty, judging by Amazon, where 8,772 book titles feature this term.  Most are murder mysteries or spiritual musings, reflecting mixed feelings about these hazy seven letters.

2.    Silence is nothing if not ambivalent. Since it requires discipline, it has long been associated with power, both good and evil. To Romans, the goddess Isis vanquished 'the lamentable silences of hell'.  Yet for Buddhists, freedom from the word brings higher consciousness.  Today, however, negative sentiments are rising, and while city dwellers should appreciate quiet, they seem the most intimidated by silence.

3.    Our noisy culture is unbalanced by the view that good communication is all talk. At a gap in conversation, few of us pause to consider silence's virtues: we're too busy panicking how to fill it.   The quiet person threatens, because he acts as a verbal laxative on us.  Maybe this is why corporations are stuffed with strong, silent types, whose success seems disproportionate to the few ideas anyone recalls them having.  Then again, they can't be blamed for bad ideas.

4.    Silence should be cherished for more than the ease that it signals with a loved companion.  In fact, this communication tool is as versatile as the queen in chess.  Seventeenth-century conversation gourmet La Rochefoucauld distinguished between the “eloquent”, “mocking” and “respectful” silence.  But its meaning is never fixed: it can express empathy or confusion, encourage intimacy or distance, depending on how it is interpreted.

5.    Used wisely, silence compels others to speak (handy in negotiation). It also helps them to listen, by lending weight to what we say.  Stand-up comics pace jokes carefully: 'Don't,' they advise, 'step on your punchline'. In that extra beat the audience's imagination becomes their collaborator.  This is why masters of silence may be taken for master talkers.  Such as the wily French politician, Talleyrand, who used to sit up late, polishing fine phrases.  At parties he was a clam, before suddenly spitting out a sentence that people claimed 'was the sort they never forgot'.  So have a pause for thought.

Catherine Blyth is the author of The Art of Conversation.  She will be hosting The School of Life's next Conversation Meal at the Front Line Club on April 19th. Find out more here.

Next week's Life Class column by Robert Rowland Smith is about secrets. Look out for it in the Evening Standard on Friday 10 April.