Persuasion and Emerson’s Egg
2nd October 2011
It’s worth reconsidering.
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, V. Behavior.
Emerson was a fearlessly intelligent man, never a scientist, but always smart past counterargument, instruction, or fear. He called this Self-Reliance, but it’s better understood for our persuasion purposes as Sincerity. Consider.
If you believe in The Best Way, you are extremely vulnerable to persuasion. You tend to become a stopped clock that is correct twice a day – hah, hah – but more importantly, stopped, which means I can always find you. Your Best Way better truly be the Best Way, meaning you defeat all others, because if It is not, then I will always know what you are doing with your Eggs and move accordingly. You may win twice daily, but I own the field for the remainder. Think about that.
Realize now that the proof Emerson’s Egg seems to reside largely within his mind. I may have missed it, but I don’t find any randomized controlled trials on the Best Way to boil eggs nor does it exist. Life is contingent; in persuasion Rules, All Persuasion Is Local. For persuasion mavens, the Best Way is another way of saying the Queen of Tomorrow who knows the Laws of Persuasion. Emerson’s Egg is thus the Achilles heel of intellectuals: Knowledge without consequence. Read the columnists at the New York Times. They all profess the Best Way with their various Eggs, yet none of them have ever suffered the consequence of acting on that knowledge beyond looking at the online Comments. Their slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are symbolic. No one died for their Best Way. No one got sick or injured. No one lost a job or a marriage. Shootfire, as Great Grandfather Wil Hains would say, they didn’t even get wet. But they know the Best Way along with the Queen of Tomorrow.
The peril of intelligence exposes itself against, of all things, persuasion. Intelligence convinces itself when it’s really just wearing blinders and letting someone else ride your horse.
