- If you say to your doctor, "I have a sore throat," your doctor may take a look in there and say, "You have laryngitis. No need for meds. Call me if it gets worse."#
- If your doctor is used to keeping patients at arm's length from the thinking of medical practitioners, the doc might leave it at that. For the patient, the medical language holds the insights of medicine at arm's length, not fully available for the non-expert to view and reflect upon.#
- If your doctor is more egalitarian, the doc might say, "You have laryngitis, which means you have a sore throat, which you knew when you woke up this morning. You didn't need me to tell you. The body heals most minor illnesses by itself with rest and good nutrition, and I can help you with that kind of knowledge. We can't easily say more about your laryngitis, your sore throat, than that. If you orient yourself towards healthy living, chances are you won't have minor illnesses very often and when you do the body will usually heal itself. This is what we know to be true. Medical experts can get involved in the harder cases, where we may or may not be of use, depending on the case. This is my best understanding of what I or any doctor has to offer you."#
- The doctor has knowledge and social prestige, which amount to a couple of different kinds of power. The doc can acknowledge that power, and what in an egalitarian society should be the limits of that power. The doc can aim that power inward toward ego flattery and wealth, or outward toward healing, and even toward the self-determination of the patient in living one precious life. The doc can share that knowledge and power, out of respect, with another human being. Or the doc can use expertise to hold the other person at arm's length. Part of that power play on the doc's part is social, involving status, involving the barriers of language, training, and privilege. #
- It's a choice that every kind of expert faces. In a society so thoroughly based on siloed expertise as ours is, we readily see more self-aggrandizing made by experts, even well-meaning ones. They don't understand the ethical dimensions of their power, they don't own up to those, and accordingly they can't aim the power fully towards service of the other. They don't share what they know in a life of service. #
- I get these terms, owned, aimed, shared power, and my understanding of them, from Howard Brody, from "The Social Power of Expert Healers" in his book The Healer's Power.#
- The question is above my pay grade, and I haven't bothered to read the full document trail, but a tweet by Tao Leigh Goffe gave me a thought about it anyway. Goffe wrote:#
- "When Toni Morrison was my prof in college, she told us students not to trust those soundtracks designed to tell the audience how to feel with little violins and orchestras. So much of storytelling is sonic and can be manipulative."#
- So, music is a layer of storytelling that sometimes places a hand upon a viewer's shoulder, leans in, and says, "This is what you should be feeling here." That must be right. Goffe's recollection invites me to try for a distinction:#
- "Feel and think this way" is probably different from "Please attend to this moment in the story" -- yes? A work of literature, or any art form, probably, can urge an audience member toward an experience while at the same time trusting the person's openness and judgment. Or the work can try to manipulate the person as much as it dares while the experience unfolds. #
- So, literature, I'll say for the moment, is written art that trusts a reader's judgment and openness. The more trust, the more the writer can refrain from manipulation, the more literary a work is. The more complex a body of experience the work manages to conjure for a reader to explore and consider, the greater the literary work is.#
- Something can look from the distance of a foot or two like a novel but turn out to conjure a simple realm that you can't think about for very long. Maybe it has the real pleasure of suspense, maybe it gives a glimpse into an interesting place or an exciting portion of life, maybe it links an emotional charge to a previously held belief, thus confirming a righteous prejudice or a common sense simplification about the world. That's probably a "novel" rather than a novel. It has chapters and characters, sure. A "novel" can look like a great deal like a novel but have its hand on your shoulder manipulating the whole time, too. A "novel" differs from a novel in the amount of respect paid to a reader's judgment and heart.#
- Art of any kind is about bringing us experiences and tempting us to trust our openness, our reflection, and our judgment. Art has a point of view, sure, and while experiencing a work we surrender our senses and selves for a time to it, as Robert Scholes and others have written, and then we must step back and recover our own sense of things. Art tunes our senses and our good sense, if it's not aimed at twisting our arm somehow. Some people don't seem to have a place for it in their lives, which is a mystery.#
- Or maybe it's not a mystery. Reading, for example, is a risk. We take a chance encountering someone else's ideas and experiences, and we may not be the same when we are through. But hey, who wants to be the same at the end of life as we were at the start or in the middle?#
- If you say to your doctor, "I have a sore throat," your doctor may take a look in there and say, "You have laryngitis. No need for meds. Call me if it gets worse."#
- If your doctor is used to keeping patients at arm's length from the thinking of medical practitioners, the doc might leave it at that. For the patient, the medical language holds the insights of medicine at arm's length, not fully available for the non-expert to view and reflect upon.#
- If your doctor is more egalitarian, the doc might say, "You have laryngitis, which means you have a sore throat, which you knew when you woke up this morning. You didn't need me to tell you. The body heals most minor illnesses by itself with rest and good nutrition, and I can help you with that kind of knowledge. We can't easily say more about your laryngitis, your sore throat, than that. If you orient yourself towards healthy living, chances are you won't have minor illnesses very often and when you do the body will usually heal itself. This is what we know to be true. Medical experts can get involved in the harder cases, where we may or may not be of use, depending on the case. This is my best understanding of what I or any doctor has to offer you."#
- The doctor has knowledge and social prestige, which amount to a couple of different kinds of power. The doc can acknowledge that power, and what in an egalitarian society should be the limits of that power. The doc can aim that power inward toward ego flattery and wealth, or outward toward healing, and even toward the self-determination of the patient in living one precious life. The doc can share that knowledge and power, out of respect, with another human being. Or the doc can use expertise to hold the other person at arm's length. Part of that power play on the doc's part is social, involving status, involving the barriers of language, training, and privilege. #
- It's a choice that every kind of expert faces. In a society so thoroughly based on siloed expertise as ours is, we readily see more self-aggrandizing made by experts, even well-meaning ones. They don't understand the ethical dimensions of their power, they don't own up to those, and accordingly they can't aim the power fully towards service of the other. They don't share what they know in a life of service. #
- I get these terms, owned, aimed, shared power, and my understanding of them, from Howard Brody, from "The Social Power of Expert Healers" in his book The Healer's Power.#
- The question is above my pay grade, and I haven't bothered to read the full document trail, but a tweet by Tao Leigh Goffe gave me a thought about it anyway. Goffe wrote:#
- "When Toni Morrison was my prof in college, she told us students not to trust those soundtracks designed to tell the audience how to feel with little violins and orchestras. So much of storytelling is sonic and can be manipulative."#
- So, music is a layer of storytelling that sometimes places a hand upon a viewer's shoulder, leans in, and says, "This is what you should be feeling here." That must be right. Goffe's recollection invites me to try for a distinction:#
- "Feel and think this way" is probably different from "Please attend to this moment in the story" -- yes? A work of literature, or any art form, probably, can urge an audience member toward an experience while at the same time trusting the person's openness and judgment. Or the work can try to manipulate the person as much as it dares while the experience unfolds. #
- So, literature, I'll say for the moment, is written art that trusts a reader's judgment and openness. The more trust, the more the writer can refrain from manipulation, the more literary a work is. The more complex a body of experience the work manages to conjure for a reader to explore and consider, the greater the literary work is.#
- Something can look from the distance of a foot or two like a novel but turn out to conjure a simple realm that you can't think about for very long. Maybe it has the real pleasure of suspense, maybe it gives a glimpse into an interesting place or an exciting portion of life, maybe it links an emotional charge to a previously held belief, thus confirming a righteous prejudice or a common sense simplification about the world. That's probably a "novel" rather than a novel. It has chapters and characters, sure. A "novel" can look like a great deal like a novel but have its hand on your shoulder manipulating the whole time, too. A "novel" differs from a novel in the amount of respect paid to a reader's judgment and heart.#
- Art of any kind is about bringing us experiences and tempting us to trust our openness, our reflection, and our judgment. Art has a point of view, sure, and while experiencing a work we surrender our senses and selves for a time to it, as Robert Scholes and others have written, and then we must step back and recover our own sense of things. Art tunes our senses and our good sense, if it's not aimed at twisting our arm somehow. Some people don't seem to have a place for it in their lives, which is a mystery.#
- Or maybe it's not a mystery. Reading, for example, is a risk. We take a chance encountering someone else's ideas and experiences, and we may not be the same when we are through. But hey, who wants to be the same at the end of life as we were at the start or in the middle?#