New Deeds for New People

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young then they were.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything, to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it.

If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.

You may say the wisest thing you can old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

[Henry David Thoreau]
Walden, p.10, 12

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Stating the Obvious | Introduction

On the Value of Stating the Obvious

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Back in 2003, philosopher Alain De Botton authored a book called The Art of Travel, which was subsequently adapted into a TV series of the same name. Reviewing the programme in his column Screen Burn, Charlie Brooker described De Botton as, “an absolute pair-of-aching-balls of a man - a slapheaded, ruby-lipped pop philosopher who's forged a lucrative career stating the bleeding obvious.”

This description will be our entry point into a brief examination of the concept of stating the obvious. We’ll be particularly interested in whether, contrary what the tone of Brooker’s quote may suggest, there can ever be value to stating the obvious, and if so, where and when this value arises.

Stating the Obvious | Nature of Obvious

The Nature of the Obvious

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As evidenced by Brooker’s criticism, stating the obvious is a concept that is often denigrated. He goes on to say that, “[De Botton] reveals that guide books are no substitute for exploring a place yourself, and that a hotel is an "anonymous" place … [his] entire travel philosophy boils down to "wherever you go, there you are" … if you pick up one of his books and read it cover to cover, you'll come away with less insight into the human condition than if you'd worked your way through a copy of Mr Tickle instead.”

It is safe to infer that Brooker feels he is being told things he knows already, information that is likely within clear sight. In other words, he fails to see the value of De Botton’s insights, most likely because they are, in his estimation, obvious. In this instance at least, he sees no value in being told things he either knows already, or could easily have inferred by himself - rather, he is looking for “insight into the human condition,” and insight, presumably, is not obvious.

Stating the Obvious | Nature of Obvious | Obvious vs. Not Obvious

Obvious vs. Not-obvious

But what is it that Brooker means by ‘obvious’? How do we work out what knowledge is obvious and what isn’t?

If we conceptualize the idea of knowledge on a sliding scale, with the most self-evident of propositions at one end, and the most esoteric and obscure at the other, then we can view the point at which knowledge goes from obvious to not-obvious as subjective and changeable - its position, like most other elements of the scale, being unique to each person. So, one person’s obvious can be another person’s obscure, just as what is obvious to one may also be obvious to another. There are forms of knowledge that, for most of us, will fall within the boundary of obvious, including, amongst other things, self-evident empirical facts related to the most basic of human experience (knowledge, for example, derived from intuition or sensation).

It is, however, a point of contention as to whether any form of knowledge can truly be called ‘obvious’, in the sense that it would be similarly self-evident to all – the things that we regard as most self-evident begin to lose their universal clarity when subjected to rigorous philosophic analysis. However, as interesting as it may be to probe deeper into this matter, this is not the place to explore the bounds of self-evident knowledge, or whether anything can be known without doubt: suffice it to say that when we refer to ‘obvious’ we are taking it as a subjectivism.

Now, let’s visualize Brooker’s sliding scale; he was disappointed with De Botton’s programme because the insight it afforded him, in his estimation, was not not-obvious. His expectations had led him to hope for not-obvious insight, expectations that De Botton confounded with insight that, on Brooker’s sliding scale, fell short of becoming not-obvious.

It is worth noting that there appears to be an assumption at play here; that is, when we watch a TV programme like this (a programme that in some way purports to expound knowledge, or insight) we should be told things that we consider not-obvious. We watch, therefore, in order to gain knowledge, amongst other things.

If Brooker is making this assumption, then it may not be unreasonable for him to feel short-changed by De Botton’s programme; it may, however, be unreasonable for him to make the assumption in the first place. The idea that insight is achieved through gain is an interesting one, and we’ll return to it later.

Having not seen the programme it would be unwise of me to assess its various successes and failures, and an analysis of it is not wholly useful to our investigation. We are interested in the fact that it has been criticized for stating the obvious, not that it has been criticized for stating the obvious in an uninteresting way (which may, in fact, be Brooker’s real criticism, even if he himself is unaware of it). The former attacks the notion of stating the obvious, whereas the latter attacks the manner in which the obvious is stated.

To clarify; we aren’t interested in the merits of De Botton’s work, or the validity of Brooker’s criticism in regard to these merits, both of which are subjectivisms; our interest lies in an element of this exchange.