Too little
Send the correction first
Well, actually, that is not what the map is called.
The prepared point arrives before the practical question has been understood.
Self-Command
Understand the question before scoring the point.
The cultivated restraint of impulses that would cause needless harm.
Self-Command gives your impulse to respond time to meet your purpose. A correction may be true and still be the wrong contribution at that moment. Reading the whole question lets you decide whether explaining, clarifying, asking or remaining silent would serve the exchange.
Self-Command gives a response chosen for the actual question
Your reply in the forum begins, “Well, actually…” You have the exact term, its history and a particularly satisfying correction ready. Then you read the whole post. The newcomer is asking which menu opens the map, not what the map ought to be called. You replace the lecture with the next useful click. Your excellent footnote can survive an evening without an audience.
Finding the balance in Self-Command
Read a forum question fully before replacing a prepared correction with the practical help being requested.
A fitting response
Answer the question
The map opens from this menu. Is that the one you mean?
Attention directs knowledge toward the person’s actual task.
Pursued too far
Forbid all correction
I must never clarify a term, even when it sends us to different menus.
Restraint becomes silence when a brief distinction would help.
A pause gives knowledge a purpose in the conversation. Choose the size and timing of the reply by what would help the exchange.
What Self-Command makes possible
The pause can turn an opportunity to display knowledge into an actual answer. You remain free to make a useful correction, but its timing and scale follow the question. The other person gets help, and the conversation can move on to something interesting.
Self-Command in ordinary life
A tabletop interruption
Let a player finish describing the move before correcting the name they used.
A model club question
Find out which dinosaur foot is missing before explaining the terminology of its joints.
Nearby virtues, different work
Temperance
Temperance apportions enjoyment; Self-Command restrains an immediate impulse with foreseeable harmful effects.
Compassion
Compassion notices distress; Self-Command can prevent a needless slight before distress appears.
Self-Command and its counterfeits
Stored contempt
Silence that merely rehearses a later humiliation counterfeits Self-Command. Redirect the purpose of the response.
Compulsory quiet
Restraint does not require leaving an important error or an abusive remark unchallenged.
How to cultivate Self-Command
Let the question finish.
Restate its practical point in words the speaker recognizes.
Choose whether correction, clarification or a direct answer is useful.
Try it today
Before answering an ordinary question, read or hear it through. State to yourself what the person wants to know, then choose the contribution that helps.
Questions worth returning to
- What am I hoping this reply will accomplish?
- Would the correction still matter if nobody knew it came from me?
Keep the practice proportionate
You may leave a hostile conversation. The exercise concerns a willing ordinary exchange, not enduring harassment.
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
We say "Stop and think"; well, all reflection involves, at some point, stopping external observations and reactions so that an idea may mature.
John Dewey · How We Think · The Recitation and the Training of Thought
Dewey gives a pause a purpose: thought can mature before a response. Reading the entire forum post lets its practical question change the answer you were preparing.
I shall be most glad to hear what you can say in the commendation of that recreation which each of you love and practice; and having heard what you can say, I shall be glad to exercise your attention with what I can say concerning my own recreation and Art of Angling, and by this means we shall make the way to seem the shorter: and if you like my motion, I would have Mr. Falconer to begin.
Izaak Walton · The Compleat Angler · Chapter I, Piscator
Piscator offers his companions a turn to speak about the pursuits they love. The forum reply also begins by making room for what another person actually wants to discuss.
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Chapter II, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Mill asks that opposing reasons be heard from their actual holders. The everyday parallel is allowing the person to state their own question before replacing it with the one you expected.
Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Chapter II, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Even a true statement can be delivered badly. A technically correct interruption may still prevent the useful exchange the speaker wanted to have.
The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatise those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.
John Stuart Mill · On Liberty · Chapter II, Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Mill objects to turning disagreement into a judgment that another person is bad. A forum correction can address the point without making the questioner’s character its subject.
When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting upon another.
Jane Addams · Democracy and Social Ethics · Charitable Effort
Addams describes the strain of beliefs and habitual conduct pulling apart. The small conversational practice is to make respect for inquiry visible in how one actually responds.
I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.
Arthur Conan Doyle · The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · A Case of Identity
Watson notices that Holmes listens closely when he might have expected impatience. Reading the whole forum post gives the practical question a chance to displace a prepared correction.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.