Letter: Reflecting on “These People All Know Each Other”

“Collegiality may grease the wheels of society, but when does it become dysfunctional or oppressive? Or, to raise another question, what are the advantages of rudeness?”

Erich Prince’s November 2024 essay, “These People All Know Each Other,” which was just featured in the annual list of Merion West’s best articles of the past year, makes a compelling and provocative case regarding some of the pitfalls of “collegiality” and the advantages of retaining a degree of personal autonomy. Certainly, society itself would not be possible without a degree of companionship and a shared understanding of reality. Collegiality may grease the wheels of society, but when does it become dysfunctional or oppressive? Or, to raise another question, what are the advantages of rudeness?

I have a good friend with whom I have engaged in many fruitful philosophical discussions over the years. These discussions have almost always taken place over a campfire during one of our many caving and river expeditions, mostly in Central and South America. Often our guides and cooks would join in: True philosophers, those who actually wonder at the spectacle of reality, are as likely to be found in the jungles of Guyana as in an Ivy League faculty lounge.

Many of these campfire discussions with my colleagues could involve deep philosophical issues—the existence of God, the nature of evolution, etc.—but, unlike in a faculty lounge, they were usually devoid of the kind of politeness associated with collegiality. In fact, no good discussion (often fueled by rum) would proceed without the kind of crude personal attacks commonly found among workers on a construction site. No one tiptoed around fragile egos.