How to Think Like Shakespeare - A Review

The list of books I have purchased because of Ken Myers and his Mars Hill Audio Journal continues to grow. Though subscriptions to the journal run about $30, regular listeners are likely to find the actual cost of the journal and the free, weekly Friday Features much greater because Myers has the gift of bibliography. He also brings such interesting people in for interviews or reads such enthralling essays that curious minds will find it difficult not to want to follow where he leads. For those without robust university libraries nearby, the cost of following those intellectual breadcrumbs can rise as online orders and regular deliveries from the postman serve to dish up fuel for the mind.

One recent book that I purchased because of Ken Myers is How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education. The author, Scott Newstok is a professor of English at Rhodes College. He has previously published on both Shakespeare and renaissance education. In this volume, published with Princeton University Press, Newstok brings those ideas together.

How to Think Like Shakespeare sounds like a “how to” manual. Thankfully, it is not, though that might annoy some who pick up the volume thinking it will provide “10 easy steps to better writing” or whatever.

In an interview with Myers, Newstok related that one of the driving forces behind his writing the book was a rejection of the education-industrial complex. His daughter, enrolled in a public school, came home muttering about “assessment,” which is code for “high stakes testing to justify money spent on novel methods with unproven results which may not have a valid goal in mind.” The problem with assessment is that it pushes toward educating in measurable information without necessarily considering whether the end goal is right and proper. What could have turned into a manifesto is framed much more positively, though, as Newstok provides a framework for considerations for the Renaissance Mind.

The purpose of this book is to help reframe the goal of education around more human considerations. Newstok writes:

My conviction is that education must be about thinking––not training a set of specific skills. . . . Education isn’t merely accumulating data; machines can memorize far more, and far less fallibly, than humans.

The best way to learn about thinking is not to hire a neuroscientist to measure the electrical activity in the brain, but to watch how others have thought before. Since we do not have a time machine to travel back to meet Shakespeare or other thinkers who lived before our technology-saturated age, we must consider what they have written and follow the trails they have followed.

How to Think About Shakespeare takes an intriguing approach. In a world that prizes originality, the book is comprised largely of quotes and tight allusions. Newstok is fastidious in his annotation, so this is no plagiarist’s volume. However, what is illustrated is the great degree that we are dependent upon those that have come before us. In many cases, they have already thought better with clearer language about the things that we consider imponderable.

The book has fourteen chapters, which all deal with particular issues relevant to human thinking and our contemporary culture. For example, Newstok begins with “Of Thinking,” which is appropriate considering the title of the volume. The upshot being that the lament “why can’t people think” is not a new problem driven by smart phones (though perhaps accelerated), but one that spans the intellectual history of the world. The conclusion we might draw from that is that it may be better to see how the problem has been overcome in the past and model our solutions off of that, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Newstok then moves on to discuss ends, craft, fit, place, attention, and more. All the topics serve to outline aspects of human thought in a humane world. Each of the chapters is brief—usually about a dozen pages, which keeps the pace quick while providing some material for future consideration.

How to Think Like Shakespeare is not so much earthshattering as paradigm disrupting. It’s hard to define, really, but this is book that caused me to think and is still nagging at me to continue thinking. Mostly, it’s driving me to continue to explore what it means to be human and to think as a human in a computerized world. Newstok’s brief chapters highlight the ways that we have been habituated to a technological society. He doesn’t provide a lot of clear answers, but he raises some of the more significant questions that we should be asking and which humanity has previously asked. This is the sort of book that I read and have dipped into several times as I’ve mulled its contents since then. The book is one that that will stick with you at the edge of your mind and encourage dabbling.

How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education (Skills for Scholars)

By Newstok, Scott

Buy on Amazon

Defeater Language and Critical Thinking

The habit of reflexively affirming current evolutionary theory is inculcated into new generations of students, too. For example, in a section on protein structure in a college biochemistry textbook we read:

Keep in mind that only a small faction of the myriads of possible [protein] sequences are likely to have unique stable conformations. Evolution has, of course, selected such sequences for use in biological systems.

Note that jaunty ‘of course.’ Yet we don’t have anywhere near sufficient experimental evidence for the book’s conclusion. The authors’ confidence isn’t based on empirical knowledge––it’s feigned knowledge. An unembellished second sentence would read plainly, ‘Such sequences are used in biological systems.”

Gratuitous affirmations of a dominant theory can mesmerize the unwary. They lull people into assuming that objectively difficult problems don’t really matter. That they’ve been solved already. Or will be solved soon. Or are unimportant. Or something. They actively distract readers from noticing an idea’s shortcoming. ‘Of course,’ students are effectively prompted, ‘everyone knows what happened here––right? You’d be blind not to see it––right?’ But the complacency isn’t the fruit of data or experiments. It comes from the powerful social force of everyone in the group nodding back, ‘Of course!’

When references to it can be dropped from explanations with no loss of information, when proffered evidence for it boils down to a circle of mutually nodding heads, alarm bells should blare that the theory is a free rider.

---Michael Behe, Darwin Devolves, 24-25.

Whether one agrees with Behe’s theory of intelligent design or not, this passage from his 2019 book, Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA that Challenges Evolution, is worthy of consideration for those that claim to seek truth.

The finiteness of the human experience requires that we absorb certain assumptions on faith. William Clifford famously claimed that accepting something as true with insufficient evidence was morally wrong. His exaggerated bid for empiricism, however, is simply impossible. We simply lack the time, energy, and objectivity to evaluate all truth claims exhaustively.

And yet, there are times when falling into the habit of accepting a consensus understanding of something can be decidedly unhelpful. At times, advances in technology and society are held back because “everyone knows” that something is true. Everyone knew that darker skin meant an inferior person through much of the early modern period. There was apparent evidence in the “primitive” quality of African culture, for example. But more often, the point was assumed in Western cultures rather than proved in more than a cursory way.

Cursory proof often takes the form of appeals to consensus to fill in limited available information, creating the image of a comprehensive and convincing argument. As Behe points out, these arguments are often much less convincing when they are presented without the logical “defeaters.”

Words like “obviously,” “of course,” and “clearly” can be useful rhetorical terms. There are points at which the evidence is so consistent that one can claim that something “clearly” indicates something else. But these are also dangerous terms that can be used to defeat sound arguments without engaging them.

When an expert in the field states that “clearly” something must be true. Or that “obviously” this leads to that, they might be skipping some important evidence. Or––a popular tactic among revisionist biblical scholars––“the best scholars argue” for a particular position they are often trying to subvert a really contentious debate by presenting a certain way of thinking as “best” when it simply agrees with their position. Orthodox biblical scholars sometimes do the same thing, of course, dismissing valuable readings from revisionist scholars without fully considering them simply because the individual does not approach the Bible as an authentic testimony to God’s working in history; that presumption does have significant impacts on the resultant reading of Scripture, but—as the saying goes—sometimes a blind squirrel finds a nut.

In any case, it’s worth thinking about the way arguments are put on display and the amount of defeater language that is used. It should raise red flags in our minds when we read “obviously,” “clearly,” or “certainly” in places where they are not needed. It may be that the author is conveying a greater amount of confidence than the evidence warrants.

Darwin Devolves: The New Science About DNA That Challenges Evolution

By Behe, Michael J.

Buy on Amazon

How to Think - A Review

It is an understatement to argue that our nation and, indeed, the world is significantly divided. This is not a new phenomenon, really, though the nature of the division is somewhat different. Anyone who lived through the social polarizations of the Vietnam era in the US is likely to recognize some similar patterns of division, especially in the apparently significant division of thought between younger and older generations.

However, as Neil Postman shows in his classic volume, Entertaining Ourselves to Death, our culture has cultivated an alternative epistemology by producing and consuming media that shape us in ways that tend to undermine our ability to sustain cogent thought for extended periods of time. My review of that book left more questions than answers about how to overcome this seismic shift in the way we know.

In his book, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, Alan Jacobs actively tackles that challenge, offering an approach to thinking that promises to begin to unravel the tangled know to social dissonance.

Summary

After outlining the problem and its significance in the introduction to his book, Jacobs proceeds to offer some helpful considerations of the nature of thinking and how to do it better. For example, he begins by arguing that thinking must be done in community. Despite the intellectual isolation that often gets attributed to Descartes––I think, therefore I am––Jacobs shows that solitary thinking, divorced from the community, results in antisocial rationalities that often lead to internal conflicts within someone’s vision of the world. Thinking together helps form people for community and sharpen thinking to prevent rational inconsistencies.

Part of thinking together, as Jacobs notes, is ensuring we come to an understanding of the position of others before we respond. Much of our division is the result of people actively misrepresenting their intellectual opponent’s position. This is enabled by our contemporary social climate because there is a prevalence of repulsion to outgroups, whose status of being gross justifies people’s ignorance of their position. For example, many academics (by their own writing) actively despise orthodox Christians and the feeling is reciprocated in many cases, not least because of a regular pattern of condescension and abuse. Those who think will have to overcome our tribalism and seek to understand the position of humans with whom we disagree.

Add to the social dynamic the confusion of communication forums and you have a recipe for incomprehensibility. For example, there are few forms of communication that have a defined audience. The internet makes it possible for someone’s offhand comment or argument shaped for a particular hearer to be dissected, masticated, and hurled back at the writer with incredible bile. For example, a few years ago, TGC contributor, Gaye Clarke write an article about her transformation regarding her views on race and humanity. The article was, fairly plainly, intended to help white evangelicals remove their racial blinders. The language she used, therefore, did not match the latest terminology and Clarke was trolled, abused, and harassed by activists who find her terms repugnant. The article was removed, the woman defamed, and the prejudices of Clarke’s intended audience against “Social Justice Warriors” was confirmed. The conversation has no defined borders. Similarly, the “Sea Lion” phenomena, is when someone overhears (literally or on the internet) a comment not intended for them and persistently harasses the participants in the conversation demanding a response. The technique does much to further division and little to aid communication.

Division is augmented and fertilized by attempts to change and control vocabulary. The standard terminology from five years ago is this year’s hate speech. Or, certain terminology is considered to be permitted only to people within a special demographic. The point is rarely to further human knowledge, but more often to create a power dynamic that disadvantages someone from an out group. For example, the term social justice arose from Roman Catholic literature, but has since been coopted to imply a whole host of anti-human policies. Likewise, the political left is getting increasingly belligerent in their insistence that the only “pro-life” position is full socialism. Jacobs show that words matter, how we use them is important, and that thinking people have to sometimes get beyond delimiting terminology to actually examine differing the support for other positions.

Another critical aspect of Jacobs’ treatise is his undermining the idea that an “open mind” is the ideal state for thinking individuals. While he spends multiple chapters encouraging people to carefully consider other positions and to active reevaluate their own, he is also clear in arguing the point in seeing is not to go on seeing through things, but to actually see some things clearly. Channeling Chesterton, Jacobs argues that the only purpose of an open mind is to close on something solid, like a mouth. So, being a person that thinks does not mean being an ideological drifter.

Finally, How to Think is encouraging, even after all the work Jacobs recommends, because it shows that being a thinking person is well worth the effort. Becoming better thinkers is the only way we are going to get out of the mess we are in.

Conclusion

How to Think is a worthwhile book. It is relatively short, concise, but very important. Although I came into the book agreeing with Jacobs—especially about the importance of thinking—there were multiple times where his examples stepped on my toes and made me reconsider the way I argue and respond to arguments.

For those who want to reach others—to really engage and persuade—this is the sort of volume that can help someone break through barriers and, perhaps, lead even hostile voices on the opposite side of the issue change their minds. Or, at worst, even if it doesn’t help us persuade, it can help us understand and therefore reduce the frustration with our ongoing ideological deadlock.

How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

By Alan Jacobs

Buy on Amazon

Offense and Oversensitivity

Perhaps one of the most dangerous threats to truth, meaningful communication, and human liberty is the increase of calls to regulate people's thoughts and speech. There is a terrible idea floating around that people have a right to avoid encountering ideas they don't like. As this approach to public speech expands from the most militantly postmodern enclaves to the broader culture, it is destroying lives and will eventually contribute to the intellectual crippling of the population.

The Insecurity of Safe Spaces.

One need not look any farther than the so-called Safe Space movement on college campuses. These are areas set aside where students can recover from being exposed to ideas--no matter how genteelly expressed--which conflict with their existing worldview.

One troubling concern with this approach to truth is that trains young people who should be exploring the deep truths of the world that they can live in a bubble of ideas that match their presuppositions. While this sort of thing might help prevent students from being converted to conservative viewpoints or having to go through the admittedly challenging process of figuring out in rational terms why they believe what they do, it seems to be very unhelpful for society in the long term.

Attempts to shield people from competing ideas is exactly what creates bigots (used in the traditional meaning of the word). This is the approach to truth that leads to people who are, in fact, narrow minded and incapable of seeing anyone else's perspective. In present times, the sheltered minds are saved from realizing their status as actual bigots by the convenient redefinition of the term to include people that hold positions that are out of vogue with the folks that edit the online dictionaries.

Of course, the reaction to the bubble forming culture can be (and presently is) just as bad. This is the point a lot of modern discourse has gotten to where prominent political candidates become popular simply because they are willing to say things intentionally to offend people or Twitter mobs swarm anyone who dares raise a point criticizing their dear leader. That sort of reaction is based on the same foundation used by the creators of safe spaces--emotional response instead of dialogical engagement.

Sometimes comedians are the best cultural exegetes. This is not always to say they are right, but that they often see things and are able to point out issues in ways that many of us can see. John Cleese, who is no theological conservative, commented on the dangers of silencing debate and extreme forms of political correctness earlier this year. He frames his concern as a loss of comedy, which is his livelihood, but the same concerns could be applied to the ability to think any thoughts beyond the thought patterns presently approved by society.

Whether it is in the recent attempts to prosecute anyone who funds, talks about, or openly questions the extent of climate destabilization or the rabid pillorying of anyone who disagrees with a novel and popular expression of sexual ethics, attempts to shut down speech by force are not helpful and, in fact, endanger the sort of dialogue that makes democracy possible. It also intellectually cripples those that are never exposed to any challenges to their worldview.

Intellectual Crippling

The complaint that contemporary society is forming people who lack the ability to think critically and engage in meaningful dialogue is not new. It can be found plainly in the pages of C. S. Lewis' essay, "Men Without Chests," and just as clearly in Dorothy L. Sayers' plea for classical education, "The Lost Tools of Learning." Both call for an approach to learning the recognizes emotions, but calls reason to work despite emotions. In other words, it is necessary to move toward something that approximates absolute truth rather than simply something that merely feels good.

Setting aside for a moment the important, but very large question about the nature of truth and whether there actually is any objective truth, let us presume that there is an objective reality that is not merely socially constructed but actually extant. Even accepting the realistic and valid corollary that we biased, finite, and flawed humans can never fully comprehend the totality of objective truth, we can approximate it more or less well. However, in order to consider approaching anything like the objective truth we must be willing to engage with thoughts that we do not already have.

Environmentalists rightly complain about monoculture in the contemporary factory farm. This is the proclivity to plant the same crop year after year on the same fields. The trouble with this approach is that each type of plant draws only certain nutrients in a particular ratio from the soil. To replace those nutrients, scientists have developed various fertilizers in laboratories that help replenish the needed elements in the soil. However, there is evidence that the chemical cocktails are not quite adequate for proper replacement. Eventually, despite the best attempts or replenishment, monoculture has the tendency to deplete the soil. This is analogous to what happens when only a single ideological perspective is made available to people.

Used by CC license. Mere by Natural England. http://ow.ly/iT1K3005ycH

Over time, if children and adults are only exposed to one worldview and all others are either excluded or dismissed without engagement, the soil of the culture will be depleted. Even if the ideas that are popular are right or better than others, the basis on which the ideas are held will be neglected if opposing viewpoints are not considered. The increasingly anemic culture that remains unchallenged can be artificially supported through propaganda, emotivism, or violence. However, sooner or later the crop will fail or a heavy rain will come and wash away the depleted soil, which has been made vulnerable due to its abuse.

The present milieu is one that promotes ideological monoculture through safe spaces and ironic but belligerent accusations of bigotry for deviations from whatever the popular orthodoxy of the day is. There is still resistance to this intellectual abuse, but that resistance is increasingly being legislated against, sued, and assaulted in the public square. It remains to see whether the so-called politically correct monoculture will triumph, but signs point to its growth rather than its diminution. 

What then?

The natural reaction to intellectual violence of the advocates of ideological monoculture is to try to fight fire with fire. If they take words out of context, then it seems fitting to do the same. If they overreact to your words, then you overreact.

If the monoculturists were sufficiently self-aware, then this might help them recognize the irony of their actual attacks on people who dare to express contrary positions in their presence.

In reality, fighting fire with fire threatens to burn the whole place down. 

The answer must be something else. It is likely that in casual interactions, the ideological monoculturalists are unlikely to ever except a contrary view, especially if they are challenged in public.

I don't think there are any quick answers. Things seem to have only gotten worse since Lewis and Sayers wrote, and we're farther from the foundations of classical education. I do think that part of the solution is working toward a society that values critical thinking and reasoned arguments more than cheap shots and cheesy entertainment. In the present climate, I'm just not sure how to get started on the project except by cultivating my own little garden of children at home.