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December 05, 2006

Cliches suffocate thought, even when they are themselves derived from thoughts. The fate of Ralph Waldo Emerson's dictum that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" provides one example of a stangled idea. The pedants who edited The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy felt compelled to explain the plain fact that Emerson "does not explain the difference between foolish and wise consistency," something evident to anyone who actually reads instead of just dragging his eyes across the page. Of course, the latter far outnumber the former, and they have adopted the remark as an ever-ready justification for their failings. (Something similar happened to Whitman's line about contradicting himself, a snippet entombed in Bartlett's and eagerly quoted even by those who have not read Whitman.)

Emerson's quip has long since passed on into the realm of conventional wisdom (which is as far from real wisdom as New Caledonia is from the Old), and as a result nobody points out anymore that inconsistencies are equally prevalent in the minds of the mass of men. What is more delightful than that realization, however, is the knowledge that such inconsistencies have been dutifully catalogued and preserved--not by anyone so modern as the members of my generation, who think growing up with the computer and the cell phone has bestowed wisdom on us, but instead by Gustave Flaubert, whose Dictionary of Received Ideas makes for cringing reading. That is especially true for those of us whose trickster vanity had fooled us into believing that we were more enlightened than our parents. And by "we" I mean "I."

Flaubert's listing of bourgeois fallacies hardly shows its age, testament both to the general stubborness of ignorance and the particular stubborness of middle-class pseudo-intellectualism. Entries such as these can hardly be improved upon:

CHIAROSCURO Nobody knows what this means.

DARWIN The fellow who says we're descended from monkeys.

FULMINATE Nice verb.

OMEGA Second letter of the Greek alphabet.

PRINCIPLES Always 'fundamental'. Nobody can tell their nature or number; no matter, they are sacred all the same.

POET Flattering synonym for fool, dreamer.

POETRY Completely useless and out of date.

POLICE Always in the wrong.

POLICEMAN Bulwark of society. Don't say 'the police' but 'the forces of law and order' or 'the constabulary'.

So, acting on the dubious assumptions that the unexamined life is not worth living and that it is better to be Socrates unhappy than a swine contented, I commend Flaubert's little notebook to you, so that you may be mortified--and thereby made repentant of all your received ideas.

Posted by Square Dealer at December 5, 2006 12:41 AM

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