By BESLEYBEAN
Added: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:39:32 UTC

Christopher Brookmyre's excellent speech, made at the foot of David Hume's statue, on Edinburgh's royal mile. The statue was decked with flowers and balloons for the man's 300th birthday.

Well, here we all are, gathered to participate in Think for Yourself day.

It shouldn’t really need a day, should it? International Talk Like a Pirate day, fair enough. Give it a try. National No Smoking Day: yeah, if you’re a smoker, you can see where that’s coming from. Think For Yourself Day? Kind of like “Wash our hands after you’ve been to the lavatory” day. We shouldn’t need to be encouraged, but unfortunately, it would appear, many people do.

We’re having this day in celebration of Scotland’s contribution to the Enlightenment, and in particular in celebration of David Hume, whose statue we stand before. I’m a novelist: I’m not a scholar or a philosopher, so I am not qualified to address the mighty sweep of David Hume’s work, but I believe that the principles he evoked, the empiricism embraced by Hume, as by the likes of Hunter, Watt, Boyle and Kelvin, can be distilled down to a simple question: Is this a good idea?

But it’s not enough merely to ask that question, because there are, to my mind, three ways of proceeding from there. One is to decide that yes, it is a good idea, and then have an enduring faith in it, no matter what obstacles the world may present. A second is to try, with all your resources and all your imagination, to prove that it is a good idea, and to garner enough evidence in its support in order to convince yourself, should you begin to have some doubts. And still a third, the empirical procedure, is to try, with all your resources and all your imagination, to prove that it is not a good idea.

Because having thrown all of that at it, without bias or expectation, if it remains standing, then, temporarily at least, you can declare that, yes, it is a good idea.

And there is the key-word: temporarily. Because the most important practice is that the next day, and every day, you come back and ask: is this still a good idea? Have the circumstances changed? Is there new evidence?

The most exciting thing to me is the possibility that I might discover tomorrow that what I believe today is wrong. It’s the process of constant re-evaluation that opens up this possibility, but also strengthens one’s convictions in those ideas that continually withstand such scrutiny. Ideas such as empiricism itself.

When we don’t keep asking is this still a good idea, when we don’t practice on-going re-evaluation, that is when we cultivate what I would call cultural inertia, whereby we keep doing things because we’ve always done them; whereby we cease to question things because they’ve always been that way; and whereby we cease to see absurdities in our midst because we have been looking at them for so long.

We do not have to search hard or far for examples.

In a few days’ time, for instance, we are going to be bombarded via all media outlets by the gaudy bread-and-circuses spectacle of a royal wedding. The very concept of monarchy is a perfect example of an idea that has endured so long without re-evaluation, that many people are unable to recognise how indefensibly stupid and indeed offensive a concept it is. The proponents of monarchy will always point to the lack of popular support for its abolition, and this is itself a manifestation of cultural inertia. “We have always done it this way.” I would ask those people, as a mental exercise, to turn it on its head, and imagine that there never was such a thing as monarchy. Now imagine me going before the nation with my new idea for appointing a head of state. Instead of electing somebody, I would say, I propose that we give this position, as well as vast, unimaginable public wealth and individual privilege, to one family, in perpetuity.

“They would surely have to be a remarkable family,” my opponents might counter. “A family of astonishing minds, incomparable thinkers, artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, heroes. Where would we find such a group?”

Oh no, I would say. I was thinking of giving all this wealth, privilege, influence and status - in perpetuity, remember - to a bunch of inbred mediocrities. Trust me on this, the tourists will flock here as a result, especially once we start raiding the public purse to build them some palaces.

How many people would think that was a good idea?

And speaking of gaudy and unedifying spectacles, a few weeks after the royal wedding, we will witness a quite toe-curlingly embarrassing demonstration of cultural inertia, in the shape of a phenomenon that inches me inexorably towards the subject of religion.

If you want the epitome of people moronically doing something purely because they have always done it, then may I commend to you our great summer tradition of Orange walks. “Think for yourself” is probably not a very common sentiment among the Orange marchers and their aides de camp. For most of them, if they ever had an independent thought, it would be desolately lonely. Which is not to say that the marches are not without their merit. Spend just five minutes watching one pass, and you will feel instantly more intelligent, better looking and considerably slimmer than you did only a short time before.

Read on

TAGGED: CRITICAL THINKING