Ideas versus People

Some Kind of Wonderful Fallacy?

When ideas saunter into the Thinking Aloud studio, they arrive (as it so happens) with people attached to them: stuck on like epoxy. So before I begin an interview, I often wonder if my task is to devote myself to the ideas that have presented themselves or to the people who come along in tow. An either-or fallacy lurks in there somewhere. But stick with me as I explain myself.

Ideas and people are not mutually exclusive categories … not necessarily. Yet while people often lack ideas, ideas never exist without people. We can justifiably ask ourselves which should take priority in our estimation … people or ideas. The one category is physical, tangible; the other abstract and often nebulous.

Time for an aphorism:

One idea (and one idea only) comes close in value to the value of any single human being: namely, the idea that no idea will ever be of equal value to (or greater value than) the value of any single human being.

That strikes me as axiomatic … and not entirely tautological. Unfortunately, it took a few years for me to arrive at this conclusion. This axiom or premise may well be the major plank in the Thinking Aloud platform, or should be. It’s a fundamental idea that underscores everything we try to accomplish. At least, that’s the way I see things as they relate to my role in these radio conversations. I might very well have used the word significance or importance in my premise. Here, I’ll try it again with a few tweaks:

One idea (and only one idea) will ever be nearly as important or significant as any single person. And just what idea would that be? It is the idea that no idea will or ever could be of equal importance to (or greater significance than) that of any single person.

There are easily a dozen people here, behind the scenes at BYU Broadcasting, who would, at this point, be tempted to scold me for my style of expressing this thought. The word count is high. It’s convoluted. Maybe even heady. But Thinking Aloud is—by intention—a place where we come together to flout the prevailing broadcast wisdom which holds that shorter is always better, good ideas always need packaging in transparent slogans, and listeners can’t cope with audio longer than a soundbyte. If you’ve read this far, you’ll know that I’ve already lost the audience that needs facile headlines and short paragraphs—the audience that seems to subsist on daily, reductive regurgimedia.

If you’ve ever studied the great rhetoricians of the ages, you’ll know that the third time is often a useful trick: a third iteration of the same idea can pack a whallop. So here goes, with maybe even just a little more tweaking:

Of all the world’s impressive ideas, I’ve never come across a more potent or challenging one than this, namely, the simple idea that no single thought, premise, tenet, viewpoint, concept, abstraction, doctrine, principle, deduction, conclusion—in short, idea—will ever be as valuable, potent, significant, weighty, or profound as—or ever excel the value or importance of—a human being.

The truly dangerous ideologue, in my view, is always someone who will not subscribe to the basic delineations of this assessment.

Feel free to think back at me.

-Marcus Smith