Scott Payne has noticed something interesting :
In listening to the audio of Freddie, John and I , . . . I was struck by a certain admiration for both of them in their ability to stand firm on certain precepts and yet still have a healthy respect and willingness to engage other perspectives. I realize that I am much more inclined to hold back my own views and explore where others are coming from, to understand their reasoning and try to find points of convergence that forward the discussion in meaningful ways.What Scott has noticed about his own blogging holds true for political conversation more generally: We all ought to be humble about our arguments, given how many smart people disagree with us completely, but a man whose claims are always tentative will (a) never make any progress against, toward, or with his opponents, and (b) bore everyone. Rather than offer the commonsense advice that an off-the-cuff medium like blogging should be handled with humility, I’ll read that advice against the grain and say that, the more humble a blogger is, the less tentative he will be.
It concerns me somewhat that this approach may come off as a bit wishy-washy, perhaps as overly pragmatic and not housing of enough in the way of “first principles” that buoy a coherent worldview. In worrying about the perception, I suppose I am also worrying about how real that perception is. I don’t feel that way when I’m engaging, but the question arises: at what point does one stop inquiring and start proposing?
Having a realistic estimation of one’s talents is a virtue, and having enough self-respect to be willing to suffer humiliation is, too. These two virtues yield utterly opposite styles of argumentation and I can’t imagine why they are both called "humility." I am more interested in the latter kind. In the same way that every man will eventually die, every man will eventually be wrong. The dogmatist never accepts this; the pragmatist accepts this before he begins; the humble blogger knows his humiliation is coming, but argues assertively until it arrives, secure in his confidence that, when it does, it won’t be that bad. This illogical confidence is an important rule of engagement, and one of the best things Wilson has ever written explains why:
Let’s start with intellectual street-fights . . . There’s a particular process at work here—something sublime and yet irremediably soiled—in which we let ideas and concepts boil up from the subconscious faster than we can control them. I am talking about the process of creation, something as akin to "divine madness" as anything I’ve ever experienced. Whether it be as music, prose, poetry, improv acting, or visual art; we vomit forth the spinning and shifting patterns from within. Most of what comes out is garbage, but the occasional gem sparkles amidst the rubbish.To refuse to speak before one’s own ideas are fully-formed is just such a "meta-block," which is why blogging’s pace is a blessing in disguise. Scott doesn’t want to appear more confident in his ideas than he actually feels, but the flipside of his kind of humility is this: While it may be a kind of pride to argue as if you were certainly right, it is more prideful still to nurse an unwillingness ever to be wrong. It takes the sin of pride to be wrong, but it takes the virtue of humility to be revealed to be wrong. Slug it out.
. . . intellectual street-fighting is not about analysis, it is about creation .
. . . To take a different example, the Cardinal Rule of improv comedy is "never say no!" One of the participants of the scene saying "no" destroys the rhythm, blocks the flow of ideas, and jolts everybody present back into a thoroughly pedestrian frame of mind. Similarly, when engaged in intellectual street-fighting, the thrust, jab, parry, and block are all legitimate. What is entirely illegitimate, however, is a meta-block which denies the terms and validity of the art form itself.
