Irony and Compassion
What we call core constructs in constructivism, Richard Rorty called a person’s final vocabulary. In Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989) he writes:
A small part of a final vocabulary is made up of thin, flexible, and ubiquitous words terms such as „true,“ or „good,“ „right,“ and „beautiful.“ The larger part contains thicker, more rigid, and more parochial terms, for example, „Christ,“ „England,“ „professional standards,“ „decency,“ „kindness,“ „the Revolution,“ „the Church,“ „progressive,“ „rigorous,“ „creative.“ The more parochial terms do most of the work.
As you can probably conclude from the quote above, the content of our final vocabulary is usually, in large part, determined by our cultural environment, our family, and our specific life experiences. It contains what we put there on purpose, through our deliberately chosen experiences and interests, but also what was put into us growing up, what values and beliefs we were given by our parents, friends, school, etc.
According to Rorty, developing an ironic relationship to our final vocabulary means that we recognize it as such, as just a vocabulary. Irony here, therefore, isn’t making fun of ourselves or anything that Alanis Morrissette may have sang about. It is the understanding that who we are (how we see ourselves) is a construction contingent on a whole network of events and experiences and that different sets of experiences would yield different constructions. Irony, as Rorty adapts it for this purpose, is knowing that our current vocabulary is the best we were able to do with what we were given.
The opposite of irony, Rorty says, is common sense. A person with common sense “assumes that the presence of a term in his own final vocabulary ensures that it refers to something which has a real essence.” In short: common sense dictates that whatever it says is true because it says so. Whereas an Ironist acts from her final vocabulary, understanding that she acts based on her current understanding as opposed to any ultimate truth, common sense dictates the opposite – it takes its final vocabulary for granted. Common sense knows what’s true and good and has no desire to doubt those. Common sense carries a kind of certainty that easily turns to cruelty. Too many atrocities were committed in the name of an imaginary truth.
When we’re guided by irony, we are likely to pause and think. Irony leads us to redescribe our experiences in search for better solutions. An ironist, Rorty writes, looks at other final vocabularies and is often impressed by them. She knows that other people may have different solutions to her problems, or their vocabularies were shaped in such a way that they don’t even include the problems she has. She is eager to understand, examine and improve.
How and why is this related to compassion?
Reflect on the definition of compassion. Compassion is the desire to alleviate suffering.
Common sense is punishing and unforgiving. If you think about it, common sense treats its beliefs as truths, not constructs we extracted from what happened to us. From that vantage point, you can be, essentially, intrinsically, a horrible person. When you’re convinced that what you think is true, then you can easily judge yourself for having broken those rules. Whatever the rules are, it’s not in the spirit of common sense to re-examine them. They seem obvious. They’re true. It’s the way the world is. What’s there to examine? What else can you do but live with guilt?
Irony gives you more space. For one, it is more forgiving. An ironist knows that her view of the world is not an accurate representation of the world, but merely her construction. She is not attached to her constructions and when she sees that they are not working, she is more likely to proactively find another way to frame her experiences (“redescribe them”, Rorty would say). She looks at the evidence and tells a different story.
Because she is not convinced that her worldview is the absolute truth, she can tell her story based on what she needs and what’s sustainable. She has principles, but they don’t make her feel like a failure when she sees it’s not sustainable to be guided by them, because she is able to look at her final vocabulary and understand that it’s never perfect an always limited.
Her “metastability” is compassionate. Even though her vocabulary changes she remains calm. She changes because she understands that words and concepts are tools that are useless if they don’t work. Her willingness to examine her beliefs and say goodbye to those that don’t work is the epitome of kindness, both to herself and to others. The Ironist’s epistemological position is one of doubt, but not the doubt that’s paralyzing. Instead, her doubt is curious. She acts based on what she knows, she is not stuck in some sort of relativistic hell. But she is open to assessing the results of her actions and she cuts off dysfunctional parts of her vocabulary swiftly, with no mercy, like samurai, because her experience confirms repeatedly that it’s better if beliefs die than her.
In the chapter titled The Contingency of a Liberal Community, Rorty makes an interesting claim that most cruelty stems from those big questions like, "what is it to be human?" Those are questions that common sense takes for granted. According to Rorty, when we ask these questions with a commonsensical approach, we take them as signifying something that’s actually there. There is such a thing as being human and therefore something that’s not human, less than human. And it’s not a big leap from there to unimaginable cruelty. The boundary depends on what we decide is human, on a language game we decide to play. If we drop the big metaphysical questions, we have no tools to dehumanize others.
Adopting ironism as an approach to life means adopting a more narrative – empirical approach. Telling stories and describing the world, only to re-tell those stories and re-describe the world when the need arises. An ironist, after all, uses beliefs and words as tools, but she isn’t attached to them and she understands that one tool isn’t good for everything. In her mind, she continuously validates her idea that world is always in motion, always changing, and her experiences confirms that new tools are always needed to replace the old ones. She is humble and sensitive to suffering, her own and that of others.
It’s safe to say that most of us aren’t there yet and it’s not a road that’s easily traveled. Irony is an approach to life that we often develop through psychotherapy or intense mindfulness practice. It’s like a plant that needs constant maintenance and work. It grows slowly but every step is an achievement, because every step leads to less suffering - less suffering we cause to ourselves, and less suffering we cause in others.
