Necessary but Insufficient
Copyright © 1999 by Dave Badtke
True enough, yet not enough truth frequently leads us astray.
Perhaps we are embarked on some new adventure: We read; we ask; we listen; we search for everything we need to know; but somehow something unexpected happens that we’re sure we should have known, and for lack of a horse, our kingdom is lost.
Once on a business trip to Atlantic City, I got in very late to Philadelphia and the car rental company only had one car left. The attendant told me he didn’t have a trunk key for the car and asked me if I still wanted it. Since I was just going from the airport to a hotel, I told him that it didn’t make any difference to me. On the drive from the airport, I was feeling very tired and stopped for a cup of coffee. I was used to Fords that have one key for the door and ignition and a second for the trunk, but General Motors’ cars have one key for the trunk and door and another for the ignition. I had rented a Chevrolet and found myself at 3:00 in the morning trying to find a mechanic to unlock my door.
A complete, logically correct system, one in which what is known is both necessary and sufficient, is the domain of mathematics. In our daily lives, we are frequently suspicious that what we are being told, while true, is not what we need to know, that something important is missing, and that when we finally discover the missing part, we will be devastated.
Since we make an offer on a house after we’ve fallen in love with it, we frantically search the inspection report as much for corroboration as for signs of potential problems. We want to believe that the house will be fine. We are told, e.g., all improvements were done by competent contractors who met or exceeded all local building codes. Required inspections are on file, we are told, and we nod approvingly. It’s only later, most likely during a national holiday when repair work costs a small fortune, that we surmise that the failed plumbing must have been done by a certified roofer.
One of my favorite authors, Neil Postman, wrote "Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk" in 1976. (It’s out of print but in our library catalog.) His concept of self-reflexiveness helps explain why insufficient truth may so frequently get us into trouble.
"What self-reflexiveness means … is that using language is something like being in a mirrored room. No matter where you look, you will see yourself looking at a mirror…. The mirrors encase you, so to speak, in a ‘closed system,’ within which you get only reflections of reflections."
So when I’m talking to you and you’re talking to me, quite frequently we’re really talking to ourselves within our individual, closed systems. And when you offer me a piece of truth that I understand in my context, in my closed system, I eagerly pull it to myself having decided that I have been told what is necessary.
But is it sufficient? Almost never.
Of course, since we’re all at least vaguely aware of the game, we know that we can gain someone’s trust by telling him one truth after another until we see that glimmer in his eyes that signals that we have been admitted into his closed system. Thereafter, we can say most anything and be believed. TV commercials do this all the time, and salesmen, if they’re any good at all, are able to do it even when we know we shouldn’t trust them. And should I mention the "truths" politicians use to gain our trust: lower taxes, better education, less crime, preserved open space?
As an R&D manager in Silicon Valley, I frequently pleaded with my engineers during design reviews to spend less time telling me what was going to work and more time telling me what would most likely fail. They rarely did, because failures beg for fixes – managers don’t want problems; they want solutions! – and to follow a description of possible failure with a grimace and "I don’t know" is hard on the ego of a can-do engineer. The result was that obvious problems were buried by truths and failures were frequent.
And then there was this past Labor Day weekend when my wife and I decided to sail up river to Napa. But that’s a story better left for next week.
- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.
Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com