“As we all know”
I have a friend who once told me of a professor he had in seminary. She instructed the class at the outset of the semester that, when they wrote their papers, she wanted them to imagine her peering over their shoulder. At every sentence featuring a claim, an assertion, or an assumption, they should imagine her asking them, “How do you know that?”
This bit of imaginative pedagogy might be a recipe for paper-writing anxiety, but it’s a good bit of writing advice. It’s a strong but necessary dose of epistemic humility. So little of what we take for granted is actually something we know, or at least can claim to know with some confidence, much less provide cogent reasons for knowing it. That’s not a problem in daily life most of the time. It’s rightly a matter for conscious attention in the academy, though.
I think of this anecdote regularly, for the following reason. In my experience, people consistently take for granted that they know in advance what I believe, including about the most important or controverted of matters. I don’t mean, say, that non-Christians assume I believe in God. That would be a reasonable assumption to make, given who I am and what I do. I mean fellow Christians who, because of my education or my profession or my reading habits or some other set of factors, project onto me beliefs regarding topics about which they have never heard me speak and about which I have never written.
It’s become a recurring phenomenon. Before commenting on a subject, a friend or acquaintance or colleague or person I’ve just met will either say aloud or imply, “As we all know…” or “As I’m sure you, like me, believe…” or “As any reasonable person would suppose…” or “Obviously…” or “We, unlike they, think…” or some similar formulation. I’ve come to learn that the phrase, spoken or unspoken, is a social cue. The other person is marking off the fearsome or foolish They from the wise or educated Us. Whatever the issue—usually moral, political, or theological—there is one self-evident Right Answer for People Like Us; but People Unlike Us (the dummies, the fundies, the voters or church folk who can’t be trusted) think otherwise, for some inexplicable reason. Typically the implication is that They are bad people; or, even more condescendingly, They would surely agree with Us if only They had (Our) education. Bless Their hearts, if only They knew better!
What’s remarkable is that, nine times out of town, the belief my interlocutor is attributing to Them is in fact my own. If I were inclined to take offense, I could do so with justice. I’m not so inclined, however, for the simple reason that I’m secure in my own convictions. I don’t need to roll my eyes at those I disagree with in order to feel confident in what I believe to be true. Nor do I need to whisper about Them in mock-conspiratorial or patronizing tones. After all, one thing all my education has done for me is show me how far from obvious any answer to any question is, certainly those questions that animate and roil our common life. People who think I’m wrong aren’t stupid; nor are they ignorant. They’ve merely come to a different judgment about a complex question than the one I have. Logically, I think they’re wrong just as they think I’m wrong; one of us is right (unless both of us are wrong and someone else is right), and this calls for humility, because it’s difficult to say in the moment, from the midst of one’s all-too-parochial life, whether one’s reasons for one’s beliefs are strong, weak, or just post hoc justifications for what one wishes were true or was raised to believe.
In any case, what most fascinates me here is the social phenomenon of presumptive projection onto others of what they must believe, given their intelligence, education, career, or what have you. I’m struck by the sheer lack of curiosity on display. People rarely ask me, directly, what I think about X or Y. Not that they don’t want to talk about it (whatever it is). Usually, though, they dance around the issue; or they assume they know what I think, and take the trouble to inform me of it. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I began, however so gently, to commit the faux pas of pausing the conversation in order to clarify, in no uncertain terms, that the Bad Belief my interlocutor has so passionately forced onto a Benighted They is actually my own. I almost always avoid doing so, since it would likely embarrass the other person, make him feel defensive, ruin the chat we were having , etc. On the other hand, it might actually make for a deeper and richer encounter, not least because here, in the flesh, would be a member of Team Stupid—ask me anything! A real education might ensue, in which it would become evident (using the same word in a different vein) that the world isn’t divided into stupid and smart groups, the latter tolerating the former with magnanimous mercy. This might also encourage avoiding such presumption in the future, and seeking to learn and to understand what other people believe and why.
Then again, maybe not. Regardless, the experience is a lesson in itself. Don’t assume you know what others think, and don’t carve up your neighbors into Good and Evil. Allow yourself to be surprised. People you love and respect have different beliefs than you. Formal education is not a one-way ticket to enlightenment, where “enlightenment” means “believe the same things as you.” Be curious. Ask away. You might learn a thing or two. You might even find one day that your mind has been changed. Imagine that.
