Well we managed to get the first issue out! If you’re reading this, we’ve gotten the second issue out too! That is to say, this term has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations, and the year is not even half over. As a side note, midterms are coming up! Best of luck to all of you. I have nothing else to add to that; I just like saying it and watching the temporary panic which shows in everyone’s eyes when they hear it or, in this case, read it.
Once again, this publication has been made possible by the massive effort of all of the staff and contributors to this paper. A big thanks to Meagan, Nachi, and Jessica who showed up on Sunday to help out with layout, as well as the larger and still-incredibly-praise-worthy group that kept me company on Saturday. A special note to my writing juggernaut Sherwin, who wrote over 2500 words this issue, and to Jessica, and Leah for being around for some Sunday night copy editing. In this issue, you can look up Brian’s article on page 13 to get a look at a revolutionary new law implemented by the French Government. Sam has also written an informative piece on massive political and economic challenges Nepal faces in the light of its recent earthquakes (page 5). Finally, Meagan’s new column on historically important chemicals (page 11) tells the story of nitrogen fixation and the men behind it.
And now on to what I’m sure you have been eagerly awaiting: what is this Myth of the Profound Quote? Is it a newly translated fable from Ancient Greece? Is it an awesome MMO where you are the hero on a quest to fulfill the prophecy of the sacred text known as Profound Quote written by a powerful deity-figure? Alas, I am sorry to disappoint. I’m not going to talk to you today about some epic myth or wild tale. No friends, instead, let me relate my little story about how the idea of profound quotes is nonsense.
To start off with, let me define what I mean by a “profound quote.” I’m sure you’ve seen them before. They’re the quick one-liners that get hung on the walls of high schools the world round. They’re the sentences that are slapped onto pictures of star fields and put on Facebook or Reddit to garner responses like “I love that quote, so powerful” and “Really makes you think!” The one which stuck with me from high-school is “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”—Wayne Gretzky. More generally, they are the single-sentence phrases—often attributed to someone famous—that might be described as powerful or inspirational.
So why don’t I like profound quotes? What could I possible have against an entire class of written communications? Simply put, I really don’t think that a single sentence can be legitimately described as profound, and I think that it is a tragedy whenever one is described as such. There simply isn’t enough information in a single sentence to really say something powerful; all the things you interpret from it are internal to you. Truly powerful ideas may be short and succulent, but they cannot be reduced with any usefulness to the size of a single sentence.
My first feeling when I read a quote on its star field (or sometimes a mountain backdrop or a mist-covered pond) is “gee, that seems really open to interpretation.” There is just so little substance to start with from the shear lack of volume of text. Anything remarkable one sees in the phrase, he or she has created using personal context. Let’s take the example I gave above: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” The message I think I was supposed to get from it is that “You should always try, since if you don’t then you can never succeed.” But when I read that, I start thinking about my return on investment. “Sure, if I don’t shoot I can’t score, but if I do shoot I’m also giving up possession of the puck. I could instead pass the puck to someone more competent at shot-taking, thereby decreasing the risk of failure. What’s the opportunity cost of taking the shot myself?”
What does this example show? It shows, first of all, that I have been listening to WAY too many Freakonomics podcasts. But it also shows that the idea of a so-called profound quote expresses is a reflection of the reader, not of the speaker. Is this a bad thing? I would say so. Everyone has their ideas and their worldviews, and there is nothing wrong with that. But if I start looking for validation of my worldview or my opinion in context-lacking short passages, I shouldn’t be surprised to find the reassurance I seek. Relying on quotes to define and express yourself represents and results in a stagnation of thought. If you don’t think about what you are reading, it can’t affect you. But if you do stop and think about it, thereby making it a profound quote, you must be filling it in with your own pre-existing ideas, because there is not enough content there to captivate for more than a second. So a profound quote can’t really change your world; it’s just a mechanism for re-introducing yourself to what you already know.
The other reason that I don’t like profound quotes is that they lack any of the complexity and nuance that make the world difficult and interesting. There are a lot of good ideas which can be expressed succulently and quickly. Abraham Lincoln’s renowned Gettysburg address was two minutes long, scandalously short after Edward Everett’s 2 hour epic that preceded it. But it is still a far leap from efficient to single-sentence.
Another profound quote is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It seems like a great ethics system, and it certainly has the seeds of one. But before long, we run into our friend complexity. It may be, as my grade 9 religion teacher told me, that every major religion in the world has a similar rule. (The instance I gave above is the one used by Roman Catholics.) But despite all having this same fundamental rule, it can be noted that there are tremendous differences between the various religious ethics systems throughout the world.
Rather than launch into a massive comparative study of ethics and religion which is both beyond my knowledge and interest, I shall illustrate my point by running the Golden Rule through the Trolley Problem. The Trolley Problem goes like this: Suppose 5 people are tied to a track, and one is tied to a parallel track. A trolley heads towards the 5 people. You have a leaver which will change the trolley’s path, leading it instead onto the track with the single person. Do you pull the lever? And if you do have an answer to this question, how do you handle these countless variations I could make to the problem?
Now let’s see where the Golden Rule takes us. If I were one of the five, I would really appreciate the lever being pulled. Well that was easy! But what about the singleton on the other track? If I were her, I would appreciate someone not pulling the lever. What shall I do? Well, since in 5 of the 6 cases, I would have the lever-puller pull the lever, I guess I should pull it. But in following this logic, we have accidentally invoked a utilitarian perspective of ethics, and decided that the decision taken should be the one most people agree with. This is a fine perspective, but it is one which I have decided to take. I cannot definitively interpret from the Golden Rule that this is the correct response. What if I follow a deontological philosophy, in which a solution is judged by its means? In that case, by doing nothing I am not responsible for the death of the 5; I am simply letting existing conditions run their course. If, on the other hand, I do switch the lever, my action causes the death of the one; I am her murderer. Do unto others as I would have them do unto me? Well I would have them not murder me, so I should choose that action (or lack thereof) which doesn’t result in me murdering someone else.
So we see that the Golden Rule, as a profound quote, fails to be all that instructive. It’s fine for situations lacking complexity. (Should I punch that random person on the sidewalk? Well I reckon I wouldn’t like it if they did so to me.) But when the situation gets more nuanced, you must resort to some other source to complete your ethics system. And that source will be entirely dependent upon the ethics you already subscribe to. Once again, the lack of attention to nuance present in a profound statement results in it being not an inspiring or instructive tool, but a medium for our pre-existing opinions.
So what is the big deal? What’s wrong with people liking short phrases and saying that those phrases inspire them? Maybe not a whole lot. The mental adblock I’ve developed to ignore online banner ads seems totally adaptable to shielding me from the aforementioned real-life posters I would also like to ignore. But maybe we would be a bit better off if we didn’t try to compress philosophies and worldviews and ideas into single quotes. Maybe there is just a little too much seeing the world as simple and clear, and these quotes make us a little less inclined to appreciate the validity of alternate ideas, all while providing uncritical reinforcement of the beliefs we already hold.
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