PSTM: Chesterton’s Fence

PSTM: Chesterton’s Fence

Chesterton's fence is a funny idea.

The setup: a man comes across a fence erected across a road and says, tear it down, it's doing nothing. The wiser response, Chesterton says, is to leave it alone until you know why it's there. Someone built it. Someone had a reason. We have to assume that that someone is not crazy. Go find the reason first.

It gets deployed in arguments about religion, tradition, institutions: don't kick out the scaffolding of what's proven to work before you know what it's holding up.

I'm not feeling that this week.

What I keep coming back to lately is that there are no adults in the room. These well-articulated ideas we treat with reverence weren't handed down from above. Somebody made them up. Somebody with a mortgage and a bad back and a deadline.

I want to look at it from the other side. A reverse Chesterton’s Fence, if you will.

I picture a world full of vestigial nonsense. Fences penning in nothing. Monuments to who-remembers-what. Rules that outlived their reason by a century and now just stand there, collecting reverence.

Tear it down. Bring it.

The Quote:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
The Thing, G.K. Chesterton

The Advice: Take a look at your life. What is there just by virtue of tradition, and not merit? What needs to be set aside for once?

I have a podcast where I pretend to know about things and talk about them.

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