Editorial October 23, 1989 Issue

Wiser heads

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.

A box in one of the up-to-the-minute newsmagazines gives briefs on "CW." Arrows indicate whether things are supposed to be moving away from or staying with the "conventional wisdom" on key political and international topics.

There may be some elements of value in conventional wisdom. But the trouble is CW so often comes in the form of likely/unlikely thinking. For example, "It's not likely that so-and-so will ever relent or reform or change." "It's likely that 'they' will do the politically expedient thing." "It's not likely she will ever be able to overcome that tendency; she never has."

And conventional wisdom usually comes from conventional impressions—i.e., from a shallow, frequently negative reading of people and situations. Scientific Christianity would call these conventional impressions mortal mind's impressions. In other words they are the product of the thinking which typically follows from believing that human intelligence is located in matter, separate from God. Christian Science calls such thinking mortal mind because it isn't so much thought as it is a constant tendency to consider everything limited and finite, sinning and dying.