Mind-changing books

By Thomas Sowell

Among my own books, those that the most readers have said changed their minds have been A Conflict of Visions, Basic Economics, and Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

A Conflict of Visions is my own favorite among my books. It traces the underlying assumptions behind opposing ideologies that have dominated the Western world over the past two centuries and are still going strong today. The Vision of the Anointed is another book of mine that deals with the same subject, but concentrating on the conflicts of our time, and it is written in a more readable style, not as academic as A Conflict of Visions.

Thanks for mentioning this. I've asked the Mrs to download onto her kindle. Looks really interesting. I've noticed left and right have elements of constrained and unconstrained thought.

re: #2 MacGregor

I've noticed left and right have elements of constrained and unconstrained thought.

Absolutely. Trust me- this book will change your perceptions. Hope you enjoy it. :)

A moment of thinking aloud, . . .

I am a little puzzled by his remarks on Fascism. I would have thought that Fascism would have easily fit into the unconstrained. Nazism is an opportunistic weirdness all its own, but I have always looked at Italian Fascism as a kind of logical extreme of non-Marxist socialism. I will read further on this and see if he offers a more in depth explanation.

re: #4 Syrah

OK.

Sometimes it takes the stating of the question so that you can understand the answer.

What separated Mussolini from the other Socialist theorist of his time was his recognition that humans are innately nationalist, and that to try to transcend that natural tendency in favor of an unnatural internationalism caused unnecessary resistance to socialism in the body politic. Lenin was resolutely dedicated to the internationalism of Marxist Socialism - all other natural human habits and traditions be damned. Mussolini was more pragmatic, more willing to to take old traditions and human habits and make them tools to his own end. Thus his Fascism was a mixture of the constrained and unconstrained

I wonder what that implies for the American Progressive movement?

re: #5 Syrah

I was wondering about that myself- I had to read the first half of Chapter 5 twice. I'm glad I did. I think you hit upon it, as well as fascism's violent nature as well.

I've been considering this passage in the last few days:

Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries' "real" reasons, which must be "unmasked". Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied by references to those adversaries' "blindness," "prejudice," or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make, while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversaries be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complex that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken- and dangerously so. They "may do the worst of things without being the worst of men," according to Burke.

Yeah- you could say this has seemed to have resonated with me the last few days. It's quite fascinating to watch.

re: #7 Sharmuta

That was a "highlight in bright yellow" passage. It grabbed my attention when I read it.

Thinking aloud about it.

So much of what I read in this about the unconstrained makes me look at the unconstrained as essentially emotive at its core. (hence my past remark about a spoiled child.)

Is that something I should hold in check or be self-suspicious of? Is that a product of my own bias' and prejudices'? But then again, maybe that is an essential truth.

It may well be that there is something very much dominated by the Freudian Id about the unconstrained mindset. It would even seem to fit with Rousseau's description of the free primitive man and the unconstrained's idealization of man in the state of nature.

re: #8 Syrah

It's the difference between reality and fantasy. The unconstrained is more emotion based because it's not grounded in the reality of human nature. Accepting that nature is to accept the cold, hard reality of life.

re: #9 Sharmuta

It's the difference between reality and fantasy. The unconstrained is more emotion based because it's not grounded in the reality of human nature. Accepting that nature is to accept the cold, hard reality of life.

"Arrested development" comes to mind.

I am still doubtful about how someone can change from unconstrained to constrained or the other way round. The core difference is huge. Bigger than big. Or, so it seems to me.

I can see how some one may decide that they were unwittingly parroting things that they had not thought deeply about and then changed their outward views to more rightly reflect their inner views, but I don't understand how a person can be "persuaded" to change in their inner view.

This is something that bothers me because if as i suspect, that people only very very rarely change their inner view, then we are looking at something that only changes in a culture at a generational pace. Like a glacier, slow and for all practical purposes, unstoppable.

re: #10 Syrah

This is the interesting aspect we've been discussing all along. So far, I've read Dr Sowell saying either a dramatic event can cause a shift, or a slow weathering away- and it can be from either vision to the other. That's why I pondered if 9/11 wasn't such an event for many. For others, it might be a slow dawning where what they thought were their assumptions are not meshing with reality.

I think it was a slow dawning for me- realizing I wasn't a democrat, along with learning Revolutionary history and living life. It's pretty much made me of the constrained vision. I also think it's grown in the last two years as I've slowly removed myself from much of popular culture and tv in particular.

re: #11 Sharmuta

911 was certainly a big event.

Life is nothing but one long series of reality whacks.

Many people may not set their inner view in the stone of their heart till much later in life than others.

I may be making a mistake in thinking that other people are as firmly set in their world view and as certain of it as I am of mine.

It is an interesting book. I am finding myself questioning my own perceptions as much as that of others.

re: #12 Syrah

This book has done the same for me, as I pause and consider my own opinion and reflect on my reasoning and justifications for holding them. It's not only helped me understand others better, but also myself.

And Scotti posted this, I thought I'd repost it here, since it goes along with what we've been discussing, Syrah:

Thomas Sowell, in his 1987 book A Conflict of Visions, had this to say about fascism:

...One of the hybrid visions which has had a spectacular rise and fall in the twentieth century is fascism. Here some of the key elements of the constrained vision - obedience to authority, loyalty to one's people, willingness to fight - were strongly invoked, but always under the overriding imperative to follow an unconstrained leader, under no obligation to respect laws, traditions, institutions, or even common decency. The systematic processes at the core of the constrained vision were negated by a totalitarianism directed against every independent social process, from religion to political or economic freedom. Fascism appropriated some of the symbolic aspects of the constrained vision, without the systemic processes which gave them meaning. It was an unconstrained vision of governance which attributed to its leaders a scope of knowledge and dedication to the common good wholly incompatible with the constrained vision whose symbols it invoked.

Adherents of both the constrained and the unconstrained visions each see fascism as the logical extension of the adversary's vision. To those on the political left, fascism if "the far right." Conversely, to Hayek, Hitler's "national socialism" (Nazism) was indeed socialist in concept and execution.

re: #10 Syrah

I can see how some one may decide that they were unwittingly parroting things that they had not thought deeply about and then changed their outward views to more rightly reflect their inner views, but I don't understand how a person can be "persuaded" to change in their inner view.

I don't think it's something that happens quickly, but I'm certain it happens. I suspect it occurs as the result of an accumulation of smaller experiences/events, which collectively erode a particular inner view. I know that at one point in my life (early 20's), I might easily have fallen in with the likes of the 'nuke-em-all' crowd, w/r/t the anti-jihad movement. I was fiercely nationalistic and was quite the hawk, having been raised in by deeply conservative parents. But a series of events in my life, for example getting to know several muslims who were members of my college fraternity, gradually changed my position on the matter.

I think the smartest of us NEVER set their inner views in stone per se.

re: #15 Yashmak

Visions are a kind of a filter/test that a person uses to pre-judge things. By its nature, it is set in stone, meaning that it is not easily changeable. Indeed, in order for it to be useful to a person, it must be made of hard enough stuff that a person can live with the surety that it will hold true for them today as well as it will for the next ten-thousand days. People need that kind of inner continuity to keep from simply going crazy.

I think that it is something that people may change in minute incriminates if at all, or maybe only when some event or watershed moment occurs in their life that causes them to smash their former vision of how the world works in favor of a new one that better fits their perceptions of that life changing crisis and its perceived meanings.

As for how people perceive life guides and experiences through that filter, I think that they can be persuaded that something they thought was one way may actually have been another, without changing anything at all about their vision filter/program.

I am still working on this line of thinking. I could be wrong about this stuff, but this is how it appears to me at this time.

One of the things that keeps coming to my mind about all of this stuff is the Jungian personality archetypes. Constrained and Unconstrained seem very much like personality archetypes.

Its Friday.

A new post will be going up soon. Sharm should have the new one up later this evening.

For the sake of tracing back and forth from this thread to the past threads on this subject, here are the links to the past threads.

The First.

The Second.

An interview with the author on this book and its subject.

This book is worth the money and the time it takes to read. It is not an easy read, but it is well worth it. It will help make sense of how people come to make the political and social choices that they do.

There really is a method to the madness.

And the new thread.

See you all there.