Sinclair Lewis called it “the sedate pomposity of the commercialist”. Now it has spread to many parts of society, not always in its sedate form.
Back in our final days as architecture students in Austin, our class had a farewell gathering with a professor who had been a valued mentor to several of us. As was habitual on such occasions, the professor was discussing with us the work of various architects when the subject of a newly-constructed building came up.
“I hate that building”, one classmate said flatly.
After an awkward silence, the professor mocked: “you mean, strongly dislike?” Off guard, the offending party protested that his use of the word was innocuous then and there. The professor conceded as much but explained that it was a visceral word, the kind of word that forestalls further discussion and that hardens the speaker’s and listener’s opinions. It is difficult to walk back or to change your mind from “hate”, and easier to do so from “dislike” or even from “strongly dislike”, he argued. His advice was to leave in one’s words an open path for retreat, in essence to never burn one’s rhetorical bridges.
This led to another discussion about certainty and about people who speak with certainty. The professor said that he had a reflexive dislike for certainty and that he felt a profound distrust towards people who speak with certainty. There is very little that is certain in life, he said, even among things of which we are convinced at a given point in time. Opinions change, science changes, research advances. New discoveries change our beliefs. Knowledge doesn’t just flow or evolve gradually like a river; it shifts laterally and sometimes suddenly like an earthquake.
In the same vein, he said that he disliked the phrase “common sense” because he believed that common sense is constantly shifting. What is viewed as common sense today will appear tomorrow as nonsense or, worse, as prejudice, he argued. He saw people who speak with certainty as demagogues seeking to maximize their profit in the present, as self-festooned markers of the common sense of today that will be washed away tomorrow. Years later, I encountered the same distrust of certainty in the pages of Main Street where Sinclair Lewis decried “the sedate pomposity of the commercialist”.
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Yet to us in early 2021, “sedate” sounds good. Most of us would take sedate in a heartbeat because the pomposity of the commercialist has ceased being sedate several decades ago. In earlier times, the wealthy tended to speak publicly in more measured tones, and the successful bore scars from their earlier humbling setbacks.
But not any more today. Today, we have widespread loudness and certainty. A large segment of our culture admires “straight talk” and “straight shooters” who “cut through the nonsense”. More and more, it views nuance and analysis as nothing but feckless and paralyzing casuistry. It glorifies action over thought. Worse, with social media, loudness and certainty are being deployed effectively to amplify wealth and success. Online provocateurs get more followers and more attention. As a result, we witness a public tantrum by a big or middling celebrity on a frequent basis.
Our economy too offers on average vastly greater rewards to those who are successful the easier way (and work in rent-seeking sectors) than to those who are successful the hard way (say doctors or engineers). Banking requires certainty and confidence but it does not require as complex a skillset as for example surgery. Yet the average banker is wealthier than the average surgeon. And a top banker is wealthier than a top neurosurgeon by a factor of 10x or more. It is not unusual in New York City for a middle-aged doctor to be outbid for a luxury apartment by a banker half his age.
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Sami J. Karam is the founder and editor of populyst.net and the creator of the populyst index™. populyst is about innovation, demography and society. Before populyst, he was the founder and manager of the Seven Global funds and a fund manager at leading asset managers in Boston and New York.
Photo credit: Arnold Genthe, in collection of Library of Congress via Library of Congress, no known restrictions on publication.
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