Patrick is in a Grump

Patrick Kurp, proprietor of the formidable Anecdotal Evidence, is in a grump.  It seems he's been getting way too much advice, particularly of the improving kind.  "[W]hat I hate most about efforts to usurp my will and run my life:" he intones--

arrogance and self-righteousness, and the assumption that someone else knows better than I what’s good for me. What if I don’t want to be happier? What if I suspect I’m already too happy? ... Beware, always, of do-gooders and their casual fascism.

Can't quarrel with that.  But that's the fascinating point: nobody can quarrel with that.  If Patrick ever chooses to run for public office (not likely), I suspect a platform of "no more advice" will carry hm to victory in a landslide.  Nothing, so they say, is so freely given, and so unwelcome.

But this is only one of the paradoxes of advice.  To explore the topic further, Patrick might have considered (but far be it from me to advise him to consider) some of the suggestions offered up by James Boyd White in his path-breaking law school classic, The Legal Imagination.   White it a pioneer, the pioneer, in the exploration of the lawyer's life as a form of self-creation--and not incidentally, LI is one of one of the most challenging classroom coursebooks I've ever had the good fortune to deploy.  It's a book about reading, writing and the law--not (and I cannot put this too strongly) a mere cafeteria of "law and literature" (there are many of those).  Rather it is a full-scale invitation to the student, to engage with, to find his own voice in, the long tradition of humane letters.

White operates through a series of finely-crafted exercises--unanswerable questions, really--inducing the student to think through the kinds of issues that perhaps any professional, not least a lawyer, ought to consider as he undertakes his responsibilities (to White's work, the closest analogue I know is the work of Robert Coles, trying to explore the same sorts of issues with students of medicine).   White's enterprise may seem too grand an undertaking for someone who will spend his life tending to, as Rumpole says, "a spot of indecency down at the Uxbridge Magistrate's Court."  But that may be part of the point.  White's premise, not explicitly stated, may be that any life, even a lawyer's, can be led grandly as an exercise in virtue ethics ("Did there come a time," says she to he in an old New Yorker cartoon, "when you thought you could love a lawyer?")

One of White's exercises, of which there can be few more relevant to the life of the lawyer, involves the matter of advice.  It's probably been 20 years since I actually read the exercise and I'm in a hotel coffee shop with no copy at hand (and Google Books is unavailing).  But I vividly remember the drift.  What is good advice?  How do you get it, or give it?  Specifically, if we say "that is good advice," how do we know?  If we recognize it as good advice, do we need it--and if we don't need it, is it really advice?  One could easily fold in some of Patrick's own thoughts.  "Unsolicited advice," says Patrick, "always presumptuous, is never welcome and often dangerous."  Yes, but what of solicited advice; is it any less dangerous?  Any more (be candid now) welcome?

I certainly don't mean to deride so arresting and provocative an essayist as Patrick.   Indeed on questions like White's, I would cheerfully solicit  his opinion, even his--oh, I'm pushing this too far.   Go dust a copy of White, Patrick.  See what you can learn.  See what you think you can teach him.   And then come back and teach us all.

Afterthought:  This is the point in the discussion when the essayist is obliged to recall Elihu Root's canonical dictum that "about half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop."  For a jaundiced reading of Root, go here.  

I Dunno, Maybe I'm Just Gettting Old...

...but I listened to every word of this.  Takeaway: envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins you won't enjoy.

More Advice

Since I've declared myself an expert on advice (link), I might as well aggravate the offense with this (link) (h/t Kottke). Samples:

1. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.

[Perhaps corollary to the rule that if a movie has more than two big stars, they couldn't afford to pay for a script.]

9. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

[True enough; but isn't that also the purpose of a good many organized protests?]

12. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter/janitor, is not a nice person.

[That's a longtime favorite of mine, which I freely credit to Samuel Johnson, though I can't find a citation & am very likely making things up.]

Take This to Heart As Well As to Mind

Just last week, I wrote a bit on advice. Following up, my son (sic) sent me this bit from The Best of Craigslist—“Advice to Young Men from an Old Man.” I won’t reprint the whole thing, which you can find here (link)—but this is a sample:

1. Don’t pick on the weak. It’s immoral. Don’t antagonize the strong without cause, its stupid. …

4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose. …

9. You’ll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them.You don’t owe the vast majority of people shit. …

23. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You’re going to see some girl and feel like you’ll die if you don’t get her. If she rejects you, move on to the next one. It’s her loss.

Even as excerpted, I cannot endorse this list unreservedly. For example, when I was young I did get in a few fistfights. I always lost and I cannot imagine what good it did me. But on the whole, the list seems balanced, compassionate and generous.

But it did set me to thinking about the general matter of advice. It’s a puzzle. There is, first of all, the matter of the target. We know that the son of Lord Chesterfield, that most famous of all advisers, for all his loving tutelage, ended life as a nonentity and largely a failure. Does anyone ever take advice except that which he wants to hear? Or even understand it? Does anyone ever ask for advice, except when he knows that he will get the advice he wants?

There is also the problem of the adviser. We’ve all heard of radio announcers with Tourettes’ Syndrome, who can’t speak in sentences unless we are on the air. We know that Machiavelli, the grand master of political advise, was an unemployed second-tier civil servant seeking (unsuccessfully) after a new job. Is there any connection at all between the character of advice-givers and the advice they give—and is so, is it perhaps negative, as in “don’t do as I do, do as I say”--? Could it be that the guy from Craigs’ List makes a habit of picking on the weak and antagonizing the strong, and running away from fistfights at every chance?

For more on this line, perhaps the best source of all is Samuel Johnson in an essay for The Rambler, for January 15, 1751 (link). Consider, inter alia:

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason everyone is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground. . . . Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

Or at last, from the guy on Craigslist:

Remember, 97% of all advice is worthless. Take what you can use, and trash the rest.

Advice

My friend David, a lawyer in his 60s, likes to say—when I see a young lawyer, I ask myself, what is keeping this guy from being the best lawyer he can be? I’ve always thought that is about the classiest attitude I could ever imagine. But I thought of David when I stumbled on this, from the memorial service for a once-famous law professor, now deceased (link).

Every day you will have the opportunity to do something special – give a great class, help a colleague, advise a student, write a paper. Try each day to paint a masterpiece.

Don’t show anyone up. Be lavish and open with encouragement and praise for students and colleagues. Be cautious and private with criticism.

Don’t make a habit of proclaiming your greatness. Others have covered that field exhaustively. Try something different. Take satisfaction in quietly raising the game of everyone around you.

Brush aside the inevitable slights of academic life. You will find that many academics have a high estimation of their abilities. Some can be acutely tiresome, and you may be tempted to dwell upon their missteps. Each minute you spend to nurse old hurts is time lost, time stolen from preparing a better class, counseling a student, or reading a case. You cannot build a good reputation by keeping grudges.

Finally, when success comes your way and the day comes that you are established as a usual suspect, pass the favor along. May you never become too important to help those who need it the most.

I wonder, if I had run across this 30 years ago, would I have been smart enough to profit from it?