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Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

All entries in this category: Prejudice

  1. Why bad news pleases

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 3 Nov 06, 10:01 AM

    Very intertesting points about good news / bad news. I would like to give the question another spin though, especially as my next post to this blog is going to be my last. (As you probably know, all the Freethinking blogs are going to be put to sleep shortly after the Freethinking Festival in Liverpool this weekend.)

    The basic problem is this: most of us accept that on the whole the world is a better place now than it was a few decades ago or a few centuries ago, and yet when we consider day to day events, we are always inclined to think that more bad things are happening than good. So a form of prejudice seems to be at work here – another enemy of genuine freethinking: a prejudice in favour of bad news. How can we account for this prejudice?

    I see what William Cope means when he says that people in power are always giving us false good news, and I understand the implication that we should welcome bad news because it restores the balance. But I do not quite agree: it seems to me that there are several forces at work – vested interests if you like – that tend to generate a prejudice in favour of bad news. Three in fact.

    Continue reading "Why bad news pleases"

  1. No news is good news

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 19 Oct 06, 06:18 PM

    Many thanks for some very pertinent comments about my last post. You're right: I was indeed overlooking the fact that optimism and pessimism involve our practical involvement with the world as well as our theoretical appraisal of it. (From the point of view of practice, you might say, the optimist tends to be reckless, while the pessimist is generally risk-averse.)

    But for the time being let’s stick to pessimism as a theoretical attitude. It is, I think you would agree, pretty prevalent in our times. In politics in particular, people tend to be more receptive to bad news than good. In fact if you took what people say seriously, you would have to conclude that they think everything in society has been going from bad to worse for at least a century, if not since history began.

    But we know it’s not true. In Britain in the last century, for instance, there has been a vast expansion of literacy, and of intellectual attainment in general, and mutual tolerance, and stunning improvements in health and longevity; but who wants to talk about that when they could spin a story about a failing school, sectarian violence, or deaths from hospital-acquired infections?

    But why are we so unreceptive to good news?

    Continue reading "No news is good news"

  1. Trust me, I'm a pessimist

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 13 Oct 06, 02:40 PM

    Do we have a prejudice against good news? Or at least an inclination to put more trust in pessimism than in optimism?

    I suspect we do, and will come back to the point in a later post. But here’s a preliminary concern:

    I’ve never understood what people think they’re doing when they describe themselves as ‘optimists’ or ‘pessimists’. Assuming that they’re not engaged in a high metaphysical argument about Leibniz’s Theodicy, all they seem to be saying is that they have a personal disposition to look on the bright or the dark side of things. In which case they are just confessing to a bias and we ought to take heed and avoid relying on their judgments. It’s like someone who says ‘I always put too much vermouth in the martini’ or ‘I always overcook the vegetables’: the only sensible response is not to trust them when they offer to mix you a drink or cook you a meal.

    If you say, ‘I’m an optimist, so I think the problem of climate change is going to solve itself’ then surely you’re undermining your persuasiveness: the fact that you have a sunny personality is not going to help prevent global warming. And equally, if you say ‘I’m a pessimist, I think we’re all going to fry’, you’re making a bonfire of your credibility once again: you’re implying that you have chosen your analysis not on the basis of evidence or arguments, but simply because you’re an old grump – which could be true, but is hardly relevant.

    But that’s not the only paradox about optimism and pessimism.

    Continue reading "Trust me, I'm a pessimist"

  1. The prejudices of self-display, once more

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 6 Oct 06, 02:18 PM

    The prejudices of self-display, as you may remember from my last post, can be defined as the kinds of hasty judgements that we are led to not by base self-interest but by a desire to look or sound good. (I am still not sure that self-display is the best word: perhaps vanity would be better, or self-love, or self-regard, or sanctimoniousness, or narcissism or amour-propre).

    The prejudices of self-display are, I suggested, amongst the vices that dance attendance on progressive politics, rather as the prejudices of self-interest are typically found amongst the vices of conservative politics.

    But we need to push the analysis a little further.

    Continue reading "The prejudices of self-display, once more"

  1. Prejudice, self-interest and self-display

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 30 Sep 06, 11:06 AM

    What is freethinking? It's not so easy to say. But perhaps it's easier to ask the question the other way round: what is the opposite of freethiinking?

    The most plausible answer, I think, is prejudice. which is why there has been so much traffic about prejudice on this blog recently.

    But what is prejudice exactly? In the coming days and weeks I want to try to clarify and define it, and I would appreciate your help: facts and anecdotes about prejudices, your own and other peoples, and also ideas about the different classes they fall into, and the different kinds of threat they pose.

    Here's my starter.

    Continue reading "Prejudice, self-interest and self-display"

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