The Dental Chair Confession

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I've logged many an hour in the dental chair lately, but the time that stood out the most to me -- thanks to some pretty good drugs -- was a mostly pleasant conversation I was having recently with a hygienist who was cleaning my teeth.

Young and married, and with a couple of young kids, she was around the same stage in life as my wife and I. The conversation was very natural and enjoyable, moving smoothly from my account of the accident that screwed up my otherwise excellent teeth to other things, like what our spouses did for a living. I was impressed by how knowledgeable and enthusiastic about her work she was: She was obviously intelligent and seemed focused on filling her life with rational values. In short, she struck me as someone I could probably be friends with if I knew her better.

And then she started talking about the war. While I was in her chair, getting my recently-traumatized, but healing mouth cleaned. While I couldn't really speak my mind at any length. At a time that I would not rationally want to do so if it turned out that I disagreed with her on the subject and she was heavily invested in it. I've seen otherwise reasonable-seeming people turn into banshees about this topic before, and I didn't want to take any chances. I was mildly alarmed for a second or two.

Fortunately, since my political views look liberal to conservatives and conservative to liberals, I found myself on pretty familiar ground with this issue: I am neither a pacifist nor a fan of the extension of our welfare state into the Middle East that Bush passed off as a "war" in his term. The usual opportunity at intellectual activism this topic represented was instead, under the circumstances, an opportunity to stall and survive with an intact mouth, if I had to.

As it turned out, neither of us pushed too far, and it was to the extent that I am not terribly sure what her views on the war actually are, beyond, "We ought to be done by now." The conversation did not, as I thought it could at first, turn into a monologue on her part about how war is always evil no matter what. I was lucky to be dealing with a fundamentally decent person. I suspect that, probably, she was leftish, saw her opinion as what any decent person would think, and, as such, a fine topic for pleasant, casual conversation.

But the situation I was in was interesting in another respect, and it ties in to a story I remember hearing about some time ago. A guy was meeting a potential employer. He was unctuous with the possible new boss and friendly with his other potential new colleagues -- but rude to the waiter at lunch. He did not get the job because the boss saw how he treated the waiter, a person in a position of relative weakness, as opposed to how he treated everyone else, people in a position of strength who could do something for him. The boss rightly concluded, basically, that this potential employee was not a trader, and that he saw everything in terms of a zero-sum power struggle, and that he might not be someone he could count on when the chips were down.

What does that have to do with my situation and what did I learn here? I was puzzled by the hygienist bringing up the war until I recalled the above story and remembered that she did not take advantage of my situation to "enlighten" me or to extract a professed agreement with her views. I thus saw more evidence that she is probably a good person. I also saw evidence that my expectations about dealing with more leftish people may be skewed by my not having lived in a "Blue State" (and interacted with the natives very much) until now.

Context is everything in evaluating new knowledge. Twenty years ago, my reaction to the hygienist might have been far different, and much more unpleasant for both of us because I probably would have not fully considered the circumstances we were in and how each of us acted. (And I would have learned less from the encounter.) Specifically, at the time, I held in check my initial, "How rude of her to bring up the war out of the blue with a total stranger!" (And later, I remembered other facts about the conversation that were more relevant than they seemed at the time.) I think it's a fair guess on my part that to her mind, she was hardly being rude at all.

But what if I'd had the Anti-War Harpy from Hell instead? I might have had to go along with whatever she said just to protect my own health, but what would such "agreement" have told her? Nothing. But her lecture would have told me to find another dentist post haste. In that situation, I was the "waiter" and she was the job candidate.

Judging people is a very, very difficult and subtle art. To think you've got it down cold is only to fool yourself.

-- CAV

10 comments:

Rational Education said...

Gus,
The only standard from which one evaluates and judges and chooses one's actions and thinking are morality. And that is the same standard one judges others. It is not the particular knowledge that a person may not have, but the person's ambition and striving to be a moral person that one evaluates and judges. The Objectivist view of ethics and morality, fundamentally recognizes man as a rational being, having volition and free will in the use of his faculty of reason. Any discussion between two people (or more) is of any meaning and either or both parties will gain something of value from the discussion only if the premise of rationality is, even if in unspoken terms, is the basis. This last point is well brought out by you when you wrote:"I might have had to go along with whatever she said just to protect my own health, but what would such "agreement" have told her?". Or in other words there would be no trading of values involved.

This is a very interesting post. I may add more to my comment later as I chew on your post!

Jasmine

Gus Van Horn said...

Jasmine,

Thanks.

Also, I'll take this opportunity to clarify why I was concerned about being in the chair with an angry person doing this work: Intense emotions can cause people to make mistakes doing detailed work like that.

Gus

Craig Ceely said...

Gus,

Isn't it wonderful, every time, to find out how many decent people are out there? I still smile every time someone in the Moscow Tverskaya Starbucks bellows out "Grand Latte: Craig!!"

I don't think this woman was being even remotely rude, either: it in fact is high time we were out of there. How long is a war to last, after all? You yourself perfectly described Bush's prosecution of the war as an extension of the welfare state.

Excellent post.

Gus Van Horn said...

Thank you, Craig. As you may have surmised, I may well have had more common ground with the hygienist on the war issue than I thought. (I imagine it WAS clear that I agreed with that much of what she said, but that, for whatever reason, I didn't want to talk about it much beyond that. If I recall correctly, I managed to say that we took less time to finish WW II.)

It would have been interesting under other circumstances to find out, and maybe I eventually will. I like the dentist I'm using and everyone there.

Steve D said...

There is a paradox here. The majority of people I deal with are also basically decent and I suspect that the majority of people in the world are in fact decent. If this is the case, how do you explain the prevailing political trends? Another way to ask the question is how can mostly decent people end up with a mostly indecent result? Wouldn’t you expect a society which at least approaches the ideal - albeit not perfect?

I don’t know the full answer to this question but like most of the issues that confound us today I think the answer lies with epistemology. The ethics of altruism fits into this as well but how strongly is this really accepted? So often, welfare state or socialistic programs are justified by appealing to our selfishness. (e.g. Think of how advantageous for you to live in an educated society, therefore support public education. etc.)

This is not just an academic question because the answer will inform how we approach trying to convince the majority of people that our philosophy is correct.

I would like to hear what people have to say on this issue.

“Judging people is a very, very difficult and subtle art. To think you've got it down cold is only to fool yourself.”

Very true in most cases. People are very complex and often have a real jumble of good and bad ideas. It is very seldom one can adequately judge someone unless you have had extensive dealings with them. Even then I am not particularly good at it.

Of course there are cases when peoples words or actions speak for themselves.

Steve

Gus Van Horn said...

"The majority of people I deal with are also basically decent and I suspect that the majority of people in the world are in fact decent. If this is the case, how do you explain the prevailing political trends?"

Pragmatism probably goes a long way to explain that. People don't normally integrate what they know fully, so they wall off politics from their work ethic, for example.

Mo said...

lack of principles I suppose.

Gus Van Horn said...

I'd say that lack of integration of conflicting principles, explicit and implicit, is closer to the mark.

Steve D said...

"I'd say that lack of integration of conflicting principles, explicit and implicit, is closer to the mark"


I would add that in most cases they probably do not even know they have conflicting principles.

You end up with people who advocate socialism but are meticulously honest in their personal life. They abhor corruption in government while at the same time advocating everything necessary for it to flourish.

Steve

Gus Van Horn said...

I think the trick in getting them to stop advocating their bad ideas is to help them see how they conflict with their better ones and their most noble aspirations. That isn't always very easy and it won't always work fully, but it's probably the best way.