27 December 2001, 835 words
To be proven right is a deep pleasure, but to be proven wrong also has its own kind of thrill. It is, however, a pleasure which I think only scientists, analytical philosophers, and genuine scholars ever experience.
Mind you, I'm not saying that individuals within these groups like to be shown the error of their ways. But the different between real intellectuals and, say, religious fundamentalists, is that the former resolve their disagreements through debate, not violence. Even if established scientists initially reject a new idea, the scientific culture is such that, once the new idea can be shown to have an experimental and/or self-consistent basis, it will eventually be accepted.
A true intellectual paradigm always has this openness to debate. This is why science, self-critical and self-correcting, is the most effective method of understanding reality ever devised. It is an approach which I, scientific in attitude if not in expertise, strictly adhere to; and I suspect it is why the people and organisations I often criticise - ethnocentrists, religious fundamentalists, pseudo-intellectuals, demagogues - so rarely respond even to my most cutting columns.
Despite the unwillingness of most people to use the approach of logic and evidence, the method has a force which makes it difficult for anyone to refute my arguments while still claiming to be rational. This, no doubt, is why the few people who do respond either abandon rationality or use lies to construct a rational facade.
All of which is not to say I can't be wrong. But I don't often have the pleasure of my errors being pointed out to me, even by persons who supposedly have more expertise than me. For instance, in a column titled "Delinquent academics" (Express, 18/5/2000) I took to task two UWI post-graduate students, Cheryl Lans and Catherine Ali, for a paper they had written arguing that there was no causative relationship between single-mother households per se and juvenile delinquents.
In an article rife with errors of theory and methodology, Lans and Ali concluded that economic and social policy, education, housing and the court system are some of the factors contributing to juvenile delinquents coming mainly from single-mother households. "They may be right," I wrote. "But their ideological bias disallows even the possibility that single-motherhood may be a key factor in juvenile delinquency."
It turns out, though, that Lans and Ali were right, and I was wrong. Everything I'd read previously said that an absent father was a key factor in predicting juvenile delinquency. Then, earlier this year, I read The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris. Arguing that children are socialised by their peers, not their parents, Harris writes: "Half of all homes headed by women are below the poverty level...Poverty forces many single mothers to rear their children in neighbourhoods where there are many other single mothers and where there are high rates of unemployment, school dropout, teen pregnancy and crime."
The reason I accept Harris's argument, but didn't accept Lans's and Ali's, is that Harris cites evidence and has a logical evolutionary theory to back her up.
Harris has also caused me to abandon another of my pet hypotheses: that youths in Trinidad are less racial than their parents. I had believed this because of my own immunity to racial bias, and because a lack of racialism is also characteristic of the young people I know.
But I always made the caveat that my sample is almost entirely middle-class. I had also noticed that children in government secondary schools always lime with those of their own racial background. Reading Harris's book persuaded me that group identification is an integral part of human nature; so I now believe that, although its expression might be somewhat different among them, the youths are just as prejudiced as the adults in this society. (Mind you, though: my realisation that I was wrong just means that I now have even more reason to recommend douglarisation as the only effective way to combat racism.)
I have also long argued that media do not make young people violent. Again, this was because of my own experience: I grew up on kung fu and other action movies, yet don't go around karate-chopping people I dislike. But, because of Harris, I now think that the media - i.e. movies and music - can create a culture which, once exacerbated by poverty and illiteracy, does encourage - but not cause - violent behaviour. Again, though, my solution hasn't changed: reduce poverty and illiteracy and you will reduce violence.
In all these instances, I have had to discover my own errors. It is a pity. Because the pleasure of being proven wrong - and I mean proven wrong, not just told you are - is that your understanding of reality is then deepened. But that is probably why so few people here can refute my arguments: ours, after all, is not a culture which puts a high premium on reality.
Copyright ©2002 Kevin Baldeosingh