failures of communication 8 (out of order)

salary, theory, identity

Upton Sinclair made a famous remark in 1934: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”[1]

In present-day English it reads “It is difficult to get a person to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it”

The word ‘salary’ can be replaced by many other words, such as

(1) pride

(2) theory

(3) identity (using ‘identity’ in the now common way to mean ‘sense of self’, ‘self-conception’)

(4) love of someone

(5) belief in the innocence of a member of their family

(6) belief in the correctness of what they have published (or taught others)

To say it’s difficult is not of course to say it’s impossible.

Tolstoy commented on (6) (and (2)): “most people . . . can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.”[2]

Herbert Feigl, a member of the ‘Vienna Circle’ endorsed (2) (and (3)): “A puzzle which does not resolve itself within a given favored philosophical frame is repressed very much in the manner in which unresolved intrapersonal conflicts are repressed. I surmise that psychologically the first kind may be subsumed under the second. Scholars cathect certain ideas so strongly and their outlook becomes so ego involved that they erect elaborate barricades of defenses, merely to protect their pet ideas from the blows (or the slower corrosive effects) of criticism.”[3]

Francis Bacon also had a lot to say about (2): ‘Once the human mind has favoured certain views (whether because they’re generally accepted and believed, or because it finds them attractive), it pulls everything else into agreement with and support for them. Should they be outweighed by more powerful countervailing considerations, it either fails to notice these, or scorns them, or makes fine distinctions in order to neutralize and so reject them … thereby preserving untouched the authority of its previous position.”[4]

Plainly (1), (2), (3), and (6) can get entangled.

There are profound individual differences, when it comes to the ability to understand. As for (5): some people are convinced of the innocence of a member of their family even when their guilt is obvious. Others have no difficulty accepting that they are guilty. People of the first kind are obviously very dangerous.

[1] Sinclair, U. (1934–5/1994) I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p. 109.

[2] Tolstoy, L. (1898/1899) What is Art?, trans. A. Maude (New York: Crowell & Co), p. 124.

[3] Feigl, H. (1958/1967) The ‘mental’ and the ‘physical’: The Essay and a Postscript (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press), p. 6. ‘Cathect’ is a neologism that James Strachey coined to translate Freud’s use of the word Besetzung. It means, in effect, ‘to invest emotionally in’.

[4] Bacon, Francis (1620/2000) The New Organon, trans. L. Jardine and M. Silverthorne,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, §1.46. From the Latin “intellectus humanus in iis quae semel placuerunt (aut quia recepta sunt et credita, aut quia delectant), alia etiam omnia trahit ad suffragationem et consensum cum illis: et licet major sit instantiarum vis et copia, quae occurrunt in contrarium; tamen eas aut non observat, aut contemnit, aut distinguendo summovet et rejicit …, quo prioribus illis syllepsibus authoritas maneat inviolata”.