After the second thought

I've been thinking about the expression "on second thought" or sometimes, "on sober second thought." And I've been thinking, what is it about second thoughts that merits this kind of confidence? There is an analogy, I suppose, by which you shift easily from one gear to another; presumably from one that used to be the best gear to the one that is the best gear now. But reverse is another gear, too, and that shift is frowned upon in the operator's manual.
You don't have to be a Marxist to be a dialectician. Really, all you have to do is to remember the last time you discovered that you have been seriously and embarrassingly wrong about something. Your next step is not likely to be edging toward the center of whatever discourse you have offended. It is more likely to be a sharp rejection of your earlier views and an unthinking affirmation of "the other side." (This imagines there is one "other side.") This rash and ill-considered embrace of "the other side" is often the change we have in mind when we say "on second thought."

Marx's notion of the way a major premise generates an opposing premise and his commitment to the idea that history moves in this three step way (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) is breathtakingly broad. My own tendency to "correct" my mistakes by jumping wholeheartedly to "the other side" is embarrassingly narrow, but I think is the same kind of motion (up to the synthesis).

I have, as Tom Lehrer says, "a modest example here." I'm studying Matthew's gospel under the teaching of people (Mostly Davies and Allison, Matthew) who think the best way to understand Matthew is to see how he diverges from Mark. I come from a background where "exegesis" meant mostly taking what Matthew says at face value and by presuming that the words mean pretty much the same to us as they meant to Matthew. I have been wallowing for several years now in how wrong that exegetical tradition is.

I want very much to embrace the teaching I am getting now. What I am reading now is "true" and what I learned (assumed, really) when I was young is "false." The judgment I really want to make is that what I am reading and the way I am understanding what I am reading, is correct. How likely is that, really? Does the fervor of my rejection of the exegesis of my misspent youth really incline me to hear clearly what Davies and Allison are trying to tell me? Not likely. Am I likely to buffer myself against the over-reaction which has catapulted me from my first understanding and landed me in my second (current) understanding? Not really.

There is no point in pursuing examples beyond the one I've already used, but I was also raised with a certain political attitudes and assumptions; some about what really worthwhile education looks like; some about the best kinds of sex roles; some about what kind of music is most worth listening to. I could multiply examples, but you have your own and you know what I am talking about.

When I continue, on "second thought," to affirm these views, I am likely to refine them and adapt them to the new things I have learned. When my second thought inclines me to radically reject these views, my second thoughts really ought to be as suspect as my first ones. That's what I think. It's not how I feel. I feel that I am now seeing the truth, at last, and am justified in rejecting the errors foisted on me when I was too young to defend myself.

So "on third thought" really isn't a punch line for me. On these questions, like whether I really need to read Matthew in a way that separates him maximally from Mark, third thought is going to be my first chance to retain the values of my early training and the values of my later training, even though they are, in the minds of my first teachers and my second teachers, entirely contradictory.

Third thought ought to be my synthetic phase. That's not what I want, immersed in my second thoughts, but I think I ought to try and, if all goes well, I may come to really want the new insights I get from my sober third thoughts. I know I won't benefit from these third thoughts as I should until I really want to and, captive as I now am of my second thoughts, I don't really want to right now. But I hope for better things.