Outside the Asylum

Douglas Adams’, Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a tremendous source of comic relief during my adolescent years.  I must have read the space travelling escapades of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox a dozen times.  It easily tops the list of re-reads in my collection, and for no better reason than I found it a laugh out loud pleasure to read.

I haven’t opened it for nearly 10 years now, I think I will soon.

“Wonko the Sane” is a minor, but important, character in the book.  I’ve been thinking about Wonko a lot in the last few days.  I’ve been inspired to remember him by the public outrage that has broken out in the UK over a decision regarding the legal points of Brexit. Three senior members of the independent judiciary have been been publicly lambasted in an online frenzy of anger.  Their crime?  Making a legal decision that some people don’t agree with and only a few truly understand.

This isn’t a post to reply to the faux-outrage of the masses, it is to point out that the people who have leveled that criticism are, for the most part, poorly equipped to do so and the reasons why.  Rather than careful deliberation and an attempt to understand the complex arguments on both sides; they have driven themselves to a nonsensical level of enraged impatience, frustration and incompetence.

Perhaps it’s something of a cliche, but readers often say that their understanding of literary characters evolves over time.  As the reader grows, the character grows with them, and they gain a better understanding of the character as their life unfolds.  I’m happy to accept the cliche, because I don’t think I’ve ever had a clearer understanding of a fictional character’s perspective than I have had of “Wonko The Sanes” in the last few days.  I’ve always remembered his story, but never appreciated what an important point was being made by Douglas Adams, when he inserted him in Arthur Dent’s epic journey.

Let me explain.

Wonko is an eccentric who has decided that the world has gone mad, he was pushed over the edge by reading a set of detailed instructions on a packet of toothpicks.   He decides that any society that needs instruction for such a task, was one he could no longer be a member of.  He decides that to separate himself from the madness, he will house civilisation in an Asylum.  To do this, he hangs a sign above his front door, informing the world that they are now inmates in the Asylum but encouraging them to “Come Outside”.

The space inside his home is allocated as the the outside of the Asylum.  He moves his furniture and fittings to the outside walls of the house – you know – to make it nice for the inmates (you have to park on the carpet).

At the entrance to the Asylum he has a sign inscribed with the instructions from the packet, to serve as a reminder of the madness that prevails on the other side of the walls.

Wonko only rarely enters the Asylum (the world) now, lest he is afflicted by the madness that only he seems to have noticed.

“It seemed to me,’ said Wonko the Sane, ‘that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

Wonko’s problem was not that he couldn’t process the world.  But that he didn’t understand why others couldn’t.  Why did people need these things explaining to them?  It’s obvious isn’t it?

Clearly Wonko’s reaction to detach himself was extreme, but his assumption about the world was sound. Tolerating detailed guidance for simple tasks, told him that it must be widely needed, otherwise why keep printing it?

Wonko simply did not want to live in a society where people’s ability to think for themselves, had been rendered mute by omnipresent instruction.  And nor do I.

But Wonko’s problem wasn’t just about over-simplicity.

More generally, Wonko couldn’t bear that people needed assistance to locate the boundaries of their own competence.

In my view, it is a strength to be able to assess your own boundaries and restrain yourself to them, both lower and upper.

And herein lies my problem.  I suspect people have been overwhelmed with readily available information, they have lost the ability to see where their own boundaries lie.

The capacity to be an informed citizen is greater now, for a large mass of people, than at any time in human history.  The information and technological ages delivered us handheld devices, providing lightning speed access to immeasurable peta-bytes of somebody else’s neatly organised and networked knowledge.

Social media confronts us with an audience outside our social, economic and cultural backgrounds.  And we feel a visceral desire to express ourselves, to shine, and above all to be on the right side, in the eyes of this audience.  This is a breeding ground for both inspiration and antagonism.

The anonymity of the internet removes many of the established protocols of communicating with other people.  Our thoughts, stripped bear in public make us vulnerable, they put us at risk of ridicule, but our ‘e-selves’ don’t need to be restrained by the potential of a physical confrontation or embarrassment. Nor can the ‘e-self’ be deeply probed for error, there is an easy option to withdraw if one starts to look silly.

With these conditions ignorance can be profligate, so in an attempt to mask it, polished opinions, are sought out and borrowed, often twisted into personal authority.

A word or phrase jabbed into a search engine (spelling automatically corrected for you, of course) returns unreadable quantities of information (sorted by popularity, of course).  Scanning a Wikipedia article, often the primary return from a search engine (and therefore the most likely to be read); can prime a person with ill-deserved confidence in their opinions.  A favored media outlet’s cutting polemic of an opposing viewpoint, reinforces the mind with the only acceptable version of the truth.

Humanity has expanded its repository of knowledge, and the means to access it, at an unprecedented rate.  But a good deal of people have not learned how to use it with some sense of humility or common sense.

The result?  In this foggy market place of e-ideas, personal competency and hard fought for knowledge, have been cheaply bartered for a Google search and personal credulity.

I don’t have an issue with any of these tools in isolation or even collectively.  They all hold remarkable utility.  However, the speed at which they have become available, combined with the speed at which we can access them; has had a negative effect on our reverence for genuine experts, professionals and intellectuals in their fields.

It is as if inexpensively acquired knowledge, hauled into an unprepared brain in a matter of minutes and seconds, were a satisfactory shortcut for years of experience and learning.

Before I am accused of elitism, consider the likelihood of this paragraph being true:

Much of the modern world is complex and counter-intuitive and the methods of processing information within it may not occur to us naturally.  Statistically, the best placed people to make decisions, give advice and form coherent opinions, in a given field; will be those who have access to the information AND have established methods in how to process it.  

This simple point has become my version of Wonko’s toothpick instructions.  A self-evident statement of such simplicity, that it should not be a problem for anybody to accept.

This is not arrogance or snobbery at all.  Nor is it seeking uniformity of opinion on subjective matters.  It is not absolutism.  It is not an appeal to authority.  There are always people on both sides of the argument who are genuinely knowledgeable and able to understand and communicate what is going on.

This is plain common sense.  It appears as both obvious and irreducible to me and many others (I’m certainly not alone in the Asylum).

We all act as if this simple proposition were true, until we are tempted away from it by the pressure and pace of life and situations that require, often self-induced, urgent responses.

For example:  We don’t request a mechanic’s advice on future currency markets, any more than we go to an economist for guidance on the correct exhaust system for a car.

So why do people go to Katie Hopkins or draw their own insidious conclusions if they want to genuinely understand the decision three senior judges have made?

The easy access of the low quality information that sponsors ignorance; allows people to leapfrog entire processes of thought, detail and reasonable argument, to reach the conclusions that they wanted.

To know this to be true and do it anyway is an unreasonable and self-interested response.

Experts will differ in their opinions and we are unlikely to ever overcome our cognitive bias or reach objective conclusions on every topic.  But at the very least, referring to people who know what they are talking about on all sides of an argument, is a sensible strategy when trying to find a pathway to refined knowledge.

The temptation to find shortcuts is great where they are both abundant, easy and rapid and conditions demand fast results.  I’ve had to do it myself, we all have.  But shortcuts only win the race when there is a finish line.  In the competition for knowledge, there is no finish line in sight.  In this context, shortcuts are delays.

If we accept our limitations, slow down, and look for answers with an iota of humility and impartiality, perhaps our children, neighbours and fellow humans will extend that courtesy to us.  Otherwise we are locked into a hopeless loop of ignorance and regress.

And until we can recognise that it is not a good strategy to: ignore, publicly shame and undermine, truly knowledgeable and qualified people, who happen to not agree with us; I think I’ll stay without the Asylum, and encourage people to “Come Outside” with me.