The Interrogative Mood
What really drives me nuts about Sorkin and dudes like him - and it almost always seems to be dudes - is that they proceed from the assumption that they know how to fix the world, then question why everyone else doesn’t already agree with them. Their ostensibly intellectual pursuits are about dominating the minds of lesser men rather than investigating the nature of the world, what is is and how it works. That seems depressingly hollow to me. It is terrifying that I might think I know everything, because I know how much I’d be missing. It sounds so limited but so settled to have decided on what is right and what is wrong, the mental equivalent of staying in the same small town your whole life, never traveling, never leaving. What’s fascinating about the world to me - or, at least, those portions of the world I’m interested in - is how hard it is to resolve the various possible truths. If we grant that different values systems are legitimate, how do they comfortably coexist? If we grant that change comes through a slow accretion of effects rather than all at once, what other outcomes emanate from those marginal shifts? Where in the middle do we land, and how do we describe that middle? What bad does good cause, and what good does bad cause? Once we’ve decided that there is no settled truth, how do we move on to find some sort of consensus? It’s not easy, sure. But it’s a fucking blast to dig into. And it’s way more entertaining to watch than someone who’s already made up his mind, standing there, telling you the way it all works. Sure, dude, you want to say. But what if you’re wrong?
