Someone I know that we’ll call John (and some of you will know who I mean) recently demonstrated to me just how important it is to be able to comprehend what you read. He read the preface to a book I’ve recommended, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. It’s about two pages where Sowell lays out the underlying principles of his book and what he hopes to accomplish with it.
John then expressed to me how awful Sowell is and told me how he would never bother with someone with so clearly low morals. I found this totally confusing, as I’ve read a lot of Sowell’s writings and have a lot of respect for the man. John told me that he couldn’t respect anyone whose underlying belief system includes the Machiavellian concept, “The ends justifies the means.”
Thinking that maybe there was something in the preface I’d missed or that maybe I’d just skipped past the preface and not read a key concept, I went back and read it with an eye toward what John had discovered. I believe I found the offending sentence: “That means that consequences matter more than intentions….” Yes, that sentence includes the word “means”, although used with a different meaning, and “consequences” have something to do with “ends”, but clearly John had seen a couple of words relating to concept he’d heard before and jumped to a conclusion that was entirely false.
Now that I got what John meant, I sent him an email clarifying what he’d read and asking if it has changed his opinion of Sowell and if he’d then give Sowell’s writing a chance. So far, after three days, I’ve heard nothing back.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment