Kicking the Habit

After listening to a recent discussion about the narcotics of violence and pornography, I reflected on how aptly the symbol of addiction illuminates many facets of our time, even the plight of the would-be scholar. This idea is not entirely negative—so-called good habits are the positive side of the addictive coin—but the best of habits bypass the higher brain centers and are, therefore, slightly suspect as the base for truly significant activity. I may drive a car efficiently because I no longer have to integrate hand, eye, and foot consciously, but the very predictivity of my response may play me false in an unexpected situation. The apparently good habit of attending church regularly can be a surprisingly weak defense against the skillful importuning of advertisers who could claim my Sunday allegiance. In blunt terms, that which is addictive is never adequate at best; at worst, the addictive is debilitating beyond our ordinary acknowledgement.

This afternoon I will not belabor those bad habits that are widely recognized. The seemingly careless choices that create hopeless physical dependence are less in need of identification than those we are not quite so disposed to recognize. Instead, today I would like to stress a few habits that never characterize the true scholar but often afflict the pretender. To begin with, consider the habit of self-depreciation, which in its most settled state is sickeningly false modesty. Why must we derogate honest effort and solid achievement with such rhetorical bravado as “Oh, it wasn’t much”? Even would-be scholars should have such respect for the exactions of their discipline that they avoid such simpering. Thoughtless speech patterns betray more than mental lounging. Such patterns suggest a willingness to be part of the herd that is simply incompatible with scholarly achievement. At the slight risk of being misunderstood, one must stand apart from the expected. Real courtesy does not require insincere protestations. A brief course with Emily Post can often help one develop some grace in giving compliments, but how one accepts approval from peers is usually deeply revealing. If I continue in the affected habit of publicly discounting that for which I am receiving approval, I probably will not have my problem very long, for those who would praise me sincerely cannot help but be put off by the false ring in my patronizing disclaimers. Nevertheless, humility is an inevitable hallmark of creative thinking. As we reach for the edges of that which is known, our probing must become modest lest we blunder into baseless speculation. But if scholars would build on the work of one another—which seems to me to be one of the fundamental powers of scholarly activity—they must be as honest in evaluating their own work as they are in estimating the contributions of others. False modesty is a bum steer, a type of dishonesty that is the more debasing because it is so often not truly acknowledged.

An even more disheartening affliction that can beset the would-be scholar is the habit of sardonic comment. As Alexander Pope mentions in “An Essay on Criticism,” “All fools have an itching to deride, and fain would be upon the laughing side.” How pitifully we try to mask our own insecurities by amused carping at the statements or actions of others. We have no difficulty plucking at a loose thread until we have partially unraveled an article of clothing; such activity merely destroys whatever utility the garment may have had. Sensitive criticism is never destructive. Our finest compliment to that which we read or hear may well be a questioning of premise or example. As I reflect on the true scholars I have known in my life, in no case did I feel demeaned in their presence. They were not threatened by what I had to say, and they felt no need to convince me of their own superiority. In discussion, I am sure some of my comments left them little to build upon, but this fact simply added to their challenge. Inevitably they helped me to extend, refine, or refocus my own thinking. The condescending scholar simply exposes personal uneasiness. If I habitually respond with slightly curled lip—suggesting that what is being considered is beneath my attention—I am really fooling no one, myself least of all. The fearful child in me is revealed in the controlled tantrum of my heavy-handed humor. College teachers, especially, seem to me to be infected with the malady of caustic comment. Sarcasm is always the refuge of the unimaginative.

The third habit blocking scholarly development is an addiction to set responses. Scholarship is always an adventure, and my reluctance to try the exotic food I encounter as I move into an intellectual realm should be evidence of how willing I have been to jail myself in the narrow confines of my own background. Conversation degenerates into monologue when we begin to express our traditional interests. Invariably, these stem from the repeated experiences of home and school, and often do not prepare us to reach easily beyond the comfortably known. Tragically, when I do so, I am not exhibiting discrimination. Indeed, my lack of interest is usually directly proportional to my ignorance. The danger of habitual response could hardly have better illustration. Because I do not have to think about those things that I respond to habitually, I can even mistake that which is only familiar for that which is clearly basic.

A potential scholar must remain open to the freshness of the world. In repeating an experience, we may be able to refine our sensibilities, but—in a symbol which has great meaning to the journeyman welder I once was—much of that which we would confuse with refinement is simply trying to put an edge on cast iron. We may file away until we seem to have a true cutting surface, but our first attempted use will reveal that the material we were trying to refine was not capable of holding an edge. How often I have been tempted to settle too quickly on the material I would attempt to refine. My own ignorance led me to gross choices, and I wasted a good deal of time trying to hone that which could not really be sharpened. In those cases, I never recognized imaginative development as being needed nor even desired.

Perhaps automatic responses are useful for some areas in our lives. Surely many decisions are so fundamental that we need not make them every time we face a choice. Yet each of us should reflect on how vulnerable a set response leaves us. I fear that a genuinely muscular temptation might easily shoulder aside a positive response that was merely habitual.

A final habitual temptation of the would-be scholar is our tendency toward undifferentiated effort. Hard work is simply expected of those who would become scholars. But a peculiar temptation resides in exacting, consistent effort that needs to be recognized. Having learned, usually painfully, how hard we must work to develop necessary skills, we can finally become undiscriminating in lavishing equal attention on all facets of any task. At that point, we simply have no best: we can rise to no challenge. Our best effort becomes our usual effort, and we lose the power to distinguish clearly between that which must be done with exquisite skill and that which is simply preliminary. In other words, rather than being applied generally, the maxim “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well” could better be used to suggest that every effort should be directly related to function. Rough carpentry will suit its function better than a cabinetmaker’s precision under certain circumstances, and we should not expect to be praised for failing to see this difference. Our real problem, of course, is that we are failing to define our job. Precise definition requires us to assess our priorities, an assessment that demands fastidious effort some of the time and something less than that in much of what we do. A true artisan is never a fuss-budget.

If what I am saying here tonight becomes an excuse for widespread carelessness, I am failing doubly. I not only stumble as a speaker, but I become justification for sloppiness. Perhaps I can make explicit what I mean by recounting one of the great lessons of my youth. My father had a small coalmine. On Saturdays and during summer, the delight of my life was working at his side. One of my earliest memories is helping him prepare the charges of explosives—what coal miners call “shots”—that had to be set off each night after the miners had left work. Drilling the long holes and wrapping the tubes of mud that would be tamped into the hole after the charge was set were tasks my father let me try under very relaxed circumstances. The hole did not need to be bored perfectly, and the tamping could be used even if a youngster could not get all the cylinders the same size. But when the time came to attach the blasting cap to a fuse and carefully insert it in a stick of dynamite, the whole tenor of the operation changed. Gone was the easy, relaxed manner of our earlier effort. My father’s concentration was intense and unremitting. He did not speak, and his deft hands worked with infinite patience and precision in setting the charge. I can still remember the extraordinary attention we gave to checking the long fuse to be sure that no breaks could cause a misfire. With a surgeon’s skill, my father inserted the cap and fuse into the dynamite and pushed it into the prepared hole with consummate care. Somehow I knew, without being told explicitly, that there were certain mistakes I could never make once, and I learned the difference between the real job of setting explosives, which required skill and concentration brought to their acme, and those preliminaries that had to be done but did not need to exhaust anyone’s best effort prematurely. To this day, my respect for dynamite is wholesome, but I am not intimidated by it. I can use explosives with confidence because I understand precisely the carelessness they will not forgive, and I understand equally what I need not worry about in working with them.

If we are merely habitual hard workers, we will probably learn the frustration of never having enough time to do that which we hope to do. No one has enough time to give equal weight to every task. If we are going to be effective in our scholarly endeavors, therefore, we must work while avoiding false modesty, set responses, caustic observation, and indiscriminate effort. Well, there they are—a revealing foursome of habits. All are expressions of insecurity; all speak to a reluctance to think. Emerson’s definition of the American scholar as “man thinking” is hard to improve upon. We must kick the habit of thoughtless addiction to ways of responding that simply inhibit scholarly development and restrict fulfillment that is the earthly mission and heavenly promise of our existence.