Conventional Wisdom

I have read several books lately by John Kenneth Galbraith; while they are older, they are very informative. In “The Affluent Society” I think he was still formulating some of his later ideas but he has a whole chapter on conventional wisdom. When you break it down to its simplest explanation conventional wisdom is simply what most people find acceptable. This doesn’t seem completely negative until you start to consider what that really means in that it is simply the net average of the most common shortcut to understanding.


Conventional wisdom therefore can be a very functionally useless but dogmatic and dangerous thing when applied to politics, economics, or any other social based and therefore intricately complicated process. Because these processes inherently contain so many different variables they are constantly changing; often rapidly. In other words, since these fields are affected by an almost limitless array of variables, the rate of change in the basic laws of social systems is likely to be exponential. Therefore, a constantly evolving understanding is necessary to deal effectively with these changes. This requires a great deal of effort and concentrated study just to keep abreast of changing conditions so that one can even begin to know how to deal effectively with basic social concerns. Conventional wisdom, by its very nature, is fundamentally incapable of effectively dealing with changing circumstance yet it is the core principle of most of our modern political parties.


In other words, politicians cannot get elected unless they understand how to play upon most people’s perception of conventional wisdom. It is an absolute necessity for success at the polls in our modern system. The logical inverse to this is the ability to gain political power by controlling media so that you can shape conventional wisdom; now you have something that is infinitely powerful even though it is also functionally unable to deal with changing circumstance. The very tool that tends to strengthen a candidates ability to get elected weakens his ability to effectively govern. The upshot is that politicians cannot ever really go against conventional wisdom without alienating their own voter base. Unfortunately, this rules out the ability to innovate and deal with issues in a proactive way. Instead, politicians must wait for conventional wisdom to convincingly fail in order to prove the necessity for innovation. Conventional wisdom is the natural enemy of innovation of any kind. Therefore, both in the field of economics and politics what we have are groups of people steadfastly devoted to anachronistic systems that are outdated but cannot be discarded until they completely collapse. At that point, innovation must come about to solve the issue and we start the whole cycle all over with this innovation now becoming the new Conventional wisdom to be protected against further innovation until it also fails because it is not allowed to innovate for changing circumstance; ignoring the truth that circumstance is always changing.


Most of our social beliefs and economic theories have historically been controlled by this cyclical process of conservative resistance to change followed by failure. We are always far behind in reacting to change because we are so enamored with conventional wisdom and the mental laziness that nurtures it. Imagine if we took this model and applied it to scientific studies (although it could be argued that this is exactly what creationist theory is all about). We would still be riding horses and struggling to grow enough food to eat every day. For some reason we have accepted that our understanding of science is constantly evolving and that every theory is just that…. a theory that only remains to be proven wrong before we adapt a new one. Yet in the social sciences of economics and politics we treasure conventional wisdom and will often violently oppose innovation that threatens it. I would venture to say that most wars can actually be traced to this kind of collision between circumstance and conventional wisdom that becomes both outdated and fanatically defended.



This is exactly the reason why American politics is so enamored of opinion polls. Successful politicians are not leading they are following. Any successful politician on the American political scene today is much more interested in finding out what the majority of the voting public believes than actually searching out solutions to problems that come from ever changing circumstance. This tendency is not limited to one political party or another. It is also not limited to conservatives vs. liberals as both are equally careful to avoid contradicting the perceived conventional wisdom of the voter base that put them into office. The key to power is holding office, not in effectively governing once elected. Unfortunately, this pandering to conventional wisdom of any kind is the exact opposite of the innovation that is needed to solve the issues arising from the circumstantial complexity of the social and economic spectrum.


While there is a growing effort to control conventional wisdom by propaganda in this country there seems to be no effort to understand the real problem behind our inability to deal with changing circumstance; our fundamental reliance on conventional wisdom and its inherent inability to deal with change. It is the crippling deformity that paralyzes our government from the very top downward. We seem much more interested in finding men who have the wisdom to spout our own beliefs back at us than finding men who want to solve problems. What we need is the understanding that, like scientific knowledge, political expertise must first accept the premise that every theory is only as good as its most recent proven effectiveness for dealing with problems. We seem to value politicians who are principled beyond those who are willing to innovate. To be seen as someone who “flip-flops” on the issues is to be seen as politically weak or possibly even corrupt and is usually the death knell of an election effort. Innovation in almost all fields is well understood to be both desirable and necessary to increase efficiency but innovation in political or economic fields is looked upon as weakness or worse yet, fundamentally foolish.


The term Conservative in its most basic sense implies an effort to preserve. This preservation can extend to many different areas or beliefs but is most often a basic resistance to change and supports the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports in society. While most conservatives would probably agree that a certain amount of change in society is inevitable, it is their basic belief that the amount of change should be minimal so as to provide stability. Unfortunately, this puts them in the insupportable position of resisting change in a modern world where technological advancement has literally exploded in the last 30 years. The fields of modern communications, economics, manufacturing, and energy are vastly different than they were just a short time ago. Advances in these fields have impacted every strata of modern society and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The conventional wisdom of the conservative agenda is quite literally unable to deal with how these changes have impacted society effectively. To be fair conventional wisdom in any form is incapable of dealing with innovation but a political movement that insists in basing its core beliefs on conventional wisdom to the exclusion of innovation is especially prone to this tendency. Abraham Lincoln was fond of explaining to his detractors that he “dealt with circumstances as he found them” rather than trying to control them to meet his preconceived beliefs. It is that spirit of understanding that we need to promulgate in politics and economics today. The spirit of modern conservatism can be captured in two observations.


1) Those who have power are the most anxious to maintain the status quo.
2) Fear of the unknown is directly proportional to how comfortable you are right now.



It is my own basic antithesis to the idea that conventional wisdom is an effective means of governance that leads me to say that I am not a Conservative. It is this same understanding that deeply confounds me when so many people who are obviously at the bottom of the social strata proudly proclaim that they are.