Things Thomas Sowell Said

Choosing ignorance is choosing serfdom.

I saw a Thomas Sowell quote that made me think of some things I learned while reading Immanuel Kant.

Immanuel Kant wrote of the condition he called “nonage”, or an extended period of immaturity. In my lexicon “immaturity” includes a condition where people lack the ability to recognize and ultimately to deal with reality.

Thomas Sowell updated Kant’s idea by saying:

“Insulating people from reality produces unrealistic people. It doesn't matter whether they are welfare recipients, spoiled rich kids, tenured professors in the ivy league, or federal judges with lifetime appointments.”

In Critique of Pure Reason (published in 1781, the year the American Revolutionary War ended) Kant wrote:

“Thus, it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use–or rather abuse–of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds.”

Kant continued to further expand that remaining ignorant is easy and people will take advantage of it:

“Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on–then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind–among them the entire fair sex–should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts.

Thus, it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use–or rather abuse–of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds.”

Kant also argued that while we do perceive things through the filters of our own experiences, reason must be the basis for our decisions – and we must be active decision makers, not choosing to be passively ignorant because should we submit to elective idiocy, “to give up enlightenment altogether, either for oneself or one’s descendants, is to violate and to trample upon the sacred rights of man.”

In other words, people ignore reality at their own peril as the world continues to turn, change is inevitable and is a simple consequence of natural law. What you refuse to learn on your own, Nature will teach you…and not always in a gentle or kind manner.

Kant needs one of those Orwell memes that says “Did I call it or what?”