Oscar Wilde and The Violence of Opinion

Playing With Ideas Gracefully

While imprisoned, Wilde wrote a letter, which has been published under the title De Profundis. It’s quite the read, if you have the time.

In it, he says this :

“The unfortunate accident—for I like to think it was no more—that you had not yet been able to acquire the “Oxford temper” in intellectual matters, never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas but had arrived at violence of opinion merely.”

The Violence of Opinion

Our time, everywhere we look, is one shaped and formed by sensationalism.

Shock and awe.

It’s all provocation - drumming up hype and rage and fear and response.

Gathering interest and influence by aggrandizement.

All of our pundits, so it seems, have been reduced to mere megaphones. Noise, as has been said, is the new currency.

The sad reality, whether it’s political, anthropological, or even theological, is that the vast majority of noise springs forth from mere opinion. Scanty conclusion derived from no more than tribal sentimentality.

Maybe mere isn’t the right word. Maybe Wilde was onto something when he said violence. The violence of opinion.

I’ve been under the boot of violent opinions - attempted intimidation through clamour and the nefarious “sub-tweet”.

What and How We Think

Let’s figure this out by taking the long way around :

You can tell a lot about a person by how they think.

We tend to be very concerned with what people think, and if you take more than 15 minutes online, you can observe the rage and vitriol our broader culture embodies if someone thinks the wrong thing. It’s a tyranny of thought - and it seems like everywhere you go, the tyranny persists.

I’m not really concerned with what people think.

Sure, I have my thoughts and ideas - and I think they’re good and true - but the goal isn’t to force my opinion on others. That’s violence.

And it is key to spot the difference.

What I am very concerned with is how people think. The mechanisms. The process.

I don’t think change or growth happens at the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun, but somewhere else entirely. Somewhere in the how of thinking.

Playing With Ideas

How we think has to do with we interact with ideas.

Wilde says that the Oxford Temper was a kind of disposition that allowed one to played with ideas gracefully.

A dance.

The opposite of the violence of opinion.

Wilde offers an invitation into grace - the elegance, the class, of respectfulness.

And he mocks the violence of opinion with its prejudices, assumptions, and preconceived ideas.

Rather than playing with an idea, interacting with it, dancing with it, assessing it - violent opinions pull out a rapier and prepare for a duel. Rather than understanding and learning, it’s premeditated idea murder.

Death before dialogue.

The only way to know an idea, and either prove it or disprove it, is to genuinely and meaningfully interact with it. To know it deeply enough that engagement can actually occur. Too often, we settle for straw-men.

Let me explain.

The goal of authentic dialogue is mutual understanding - not winning and clipping it for social media posts.

Take the conversation on sex, gender, and sexuality.

We need a true and deep and charitable conversation. And I’m putting a lot on that word “need”. We’re desperate for it - because clearly this is dividing us at a most fundamental level.

What do I see, at least at the popular level of the cultural conversation ?

Sensationalistic Punditry talking past each other.

Grandstanding for supporters.

I see the violence of opinion - and I see its many headed manifestations - rage, derision, and polarization.

I see groups of people oppressed into ways of thinking, to dissent is to be outcast. Social pariahs.

But we will get nowhere with this way of living, except for more and more splintering and partitioning.

How To Play ( Or How to Oppose A Tyranny of Thought )

While it is true that not all ideas are created equal, people are.

And while philosophers can debate ideas, we talk with people. It is people that hold these ideas. And each person deserves love and grace and respect - even if they don’t reciprocate.

There is a maturity and an elegance, a classiness, to those who are able to listen for the sake of understanding and who ask questions for the sake of clarity.

Most people only wait for their turn to talk.

Most only listen for the sake of an attack.

Most ask questions only to undermine.

Being able to play with ideas means we can take the time to listen and understand, ultimately to love, as part of the dialogue.

You Are What You Think ?

A pitfall to this is becoming your ideas; finding your identity in your idea. It becomes very difficult to play with ideas, to change and grow, when we become the object. When it is our identity that seems to be the center of the conversation.

It is hard to hear “that idea seems wrong” when we understand it to be “I, as a person, am wrong.”

You are not what you think - in the sense that you are not simply your ideas. You are much more than that. And being wrong is part of all of life and it’s the only path into growth and maturity.

Part of your conception, as a person, should be a person who is after Truth. Which means ideas can come and go, be played with and assessed, and the goal is to cling to the ones that are True.

A Culture Shaped by Grace

It’s probably a pipe dream to imagine this is what the cultural conversation could be regenerated into - people decidedly against sensationalism and thought-crime - and people committed to the elegance and class of playing with ideas, the grace of understanding and chasing after truth.

I think of what might happen if even a small amount of people committed to this method of operations. Even when it comes to the most egregious of ideas - the grace and charity to understand well enough to lovingly disagree. I imagine the shock and awe of our news cycle drying up, the inter-denominational church wars dying down, and the cynical hate bloggers finding something to Love.

Paradise.

As far-fetched as it might be, I think reformation starts one person at a time. It starts in me and it starts in you.

Develop the Oxford Temper, learn to play with ideas gracefully.