Dealing with a question in itself is almost impossible for us. We bring our training and job description to the question. The question only impacts us as our training and prejudice lets us. This is most clear in the case of books.

Many years ago when I was in graduate school I spent an enjoyable evening arguing with a new friend about Aristotle. We talked and argued for a while but she finally said to me in great exasperation, ”Look all the experts agree especially Jaspers from Germany. Aristotle meant this!”

I looked at her in astonishment and said, “Have you read Aristotle himself?”

“No Jaspers is the world’s expert, I don’t need to read Aristotle.”

I reached over and pulled my copy of Aristotle off the shelf and opened it to a passage in the Metaphysics we were arguing about. “Please read this out loud”

She did and said to me. “Well yes it seems to be different from what Jaspers says but he must know something we don’t because he’s the expert!”

“Look,” I said, “ forget Jaspers. Let’s deal with the question here and try to resolve it together.”

She couldn’t do it. She was being trained as a PhD in Philosophy and couldn’t leave behind the experts or her training.

We all do this every day. We go into a meeting of our peers and if the consensus is against us we tend to go with the flow.

Democracy and democratic thinking is anathema to clarity. You can’t take a vote on it. You must fight your own battle with clarity.

Every day for every new concept you must fight the battle to make sure you are clear. We are geniuses at fooling ourselves. And if we do this with others they will bludgeon us into being unclear.