The Uncle Dan Approach

Author’s Note: The following essay is dedicated to my late Uncle Dan Swavely, teacher, friend, family and role model. 

1937-2016. “Always Be Prepared”.

I am a lifelong learner. My boundless curiosity was primed by my maternal uncle, Dan, who poured as much knowledge into my hungry brain as possible from when I was a small person. He taught me everything from survival in the woods to the scientific method, which were all part of his extended syllabus. Uncle Dan was a born teacher, though he never worked in school. For his entire life, he ceaselessly educated people, and I’m lucky to say that I was one of his students.

Uncle Dan possessed a rare gift for igniting curiosity about the mundane, effortlessly revealing the scientific wonders hidden in the everyday. His insatiable thirst for knowledge fueled an equally passionate desire to share it, inspiring others to embark on their own learning journeys. This characteristic became his hallmark; a quality so recognized that at his funeral, several people testified that he gave them the gift of learning, too. Throughout his life, he was never without a book and taught himself enough about geology (his true passion) that when, in retirement, he volunteered at a college-run museum, the PhD geologists there recognized and respected his knowledge and skill. These venerable retired professors referred to him cordially as a non-academic “field” scientist. This so tickled him that he shared his variant of the definition of PhD with them. “Pile (it) high and Deep”. For all his wry and good-natured ribbing, though, he found esteem and camaraderie among the academicians, which pleased him.

Dan felt a deeper sense of duty for his sister's children, though. He introduced us to the works of Carl Sagan; to the PBS shows NOVA and Nature and to a host of aphorisms and simple precepts that have remained useful to both of us. One of these: “It is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it” will be with me in the last hour. His lessons were practical and carefully formulated. He believed that—short of reading—experience was the best teacher and in this vein, he brought my brother and me white-water rafting, rock climbing, camping, bird-watching, hiking and spelunking (cave exploring) and much else. I know how to build a fire outside without matches because he made me do it over and over until I got it lit. I also know how to keep my knives sharp and clean because Uncle Dan’s maxim about knives was drummed into me from the time I was small. I know and believe the doctrine that “a dull knife is a dangerous knife” and live by it. I share his fondness for pocket knives and always carry one. I feel quite undressed without it.

Uncle Dan instilled in me a healthy skepticism toward authority. He held those in power to a high standard, emphasizing their duty to disseminate knowledge rather than exploit their positions for gain. This resonated deeply, shaping my own views. His homemade maxim, displayed proudly in his basement lab—“An expert is someone who would if they could, but can’t so they tell someone who already knows how, how they should”—encapsulated this perfectly. While he didn't plant the seed of my religious unbelief, he certainly nurtured my inherent skepticism toward figures of authority, whether behind a podium, a pulpit, or a television screen.

Dan could be a little much sometimes, as all extremely intelligent people tend to be. He was not a misanthrope by any stretch, but his distrust of others was a primary ore of his character and he preferred the safety of his familiar spaces and the people who regularly convened there. He may have been somewhat reclusive, but what he lacked in social grace, he made up for with his love of learning and his physical and moral courage.

It is impossible to quantify exactly how his avuncular instruction influenced the men that we are today. I have tried to emulate Uncle Dan by maintaining that list of his maxims and trying to ‘always be prepared’. I am not as excited to share my knowledge with just anyone as he was and I have had less than pleasant results trying to inspire others to dig into their curiosity. 

For Uncle Dan, knowledge wasn't just power; it was the essential antidote to the fear and uncertainty inherent in the human condition. I sometimes wonder if I've strayed too far from his optimism, becoming overly cynical about what I perceive as a widespread decline in critical thinking. 

At a Rotary Club luncheon, an invitation to discuss library resources became an unintended experiment in tone. My goal was to subtly weave in concerns about online misinformation. While I did highlight the library's digital offerings, the feedback afterward—a gentle "you became a bit stern"—made me wince. Reviewing the recording, I cringed. Thirty minutes, a microphone, and a captive audience transformed my presentation into something resembling a crisp homily on the perils of credulity, complete with a slightly shocked audience. It was a stark reminder of how Uncle Dan would have used the opportunity to help people understand why library resources were a solution to credulity. It was a missed opportunity to follow in his footsteps, as I once did on long hikes. 

I don’t mean to get preachy. Even on this blog, my essays are sometimes a little too pontifical. My coworkers stop me rather than just glazing over while I lecture on this or that topic. My family must put up with it, I guess.

Fearing that I have been sententious in all my writing, I delved back into the file of newspaper articles I wrote years ago. Fortunately, none of them seemed imperious or grandiose to me, though several got close. In one column, in which I reviewed Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil, I composed a calm but pointed warning about the nature of evil as Arendt described it in her book. “The lesson we can learn from [Hannah Arendt’s reporting of] Eichmann’s trial is twofold,” I wrote. “In one way it is a testament [to] the need to maintain a clear and watchful eye on the political movements and leaders we support. In another way it is a reaffirmation of an ancient truth: evil isn’t supernatural or preternatural. Evil is part of human affairs and as regular and common as those from whom it originates. If we remain blind or obstinate to that fact, the consequences we reap will not easily be countenanced.” Pretty easygoing Dave, you may say, and I might agree with you. 

In-person discussions that I had with people while sitting around a fire or hanging out at someone’s barbecue were perhaps civil, but now I wonder if I was any less abrasive. My tune hasn’t changed much over the years, but my tone has. I have grown increasingly dubious about the general public’s ability to think and be rational. This isn’t a new problem, but it has experienced a pronounced metastasis. I think part of my need to lecture comes from a sense of time running out; like if we don’t get a handle on these social problems, our society will be dashed on the rocks of ignorance and hate. 

My desire to share ideas, to put them down on paper, perhaps stems partly from a concept introduced by Phillip Ferriera, one of my philosophy professors and the man who introduced me to Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard. He suggested that we only remember the great minds who took the time to record their ideas and that many other potentially significant thinkers throughout history remain forgotten. His implication was clear. Regular people have the power to change the world if they will, but only if they put their thoughts down for posterity. It is probably impossible to count how many total people there have been since humans first walked erect and started building things. And yet, many of them could have had life-altering thoughts or realizations (I will not say revelations) that perished with them, either because they couldn’t write or because the thought was as fleeting as their lives were. Some, certainly, were persecuted, tortured and eventually killed because of their ideas.

When near-universal public literacy was achieved (after the Industrial Revolution, especially) and public schooling became a norm, enough people were ‘lettered’ to make significant changes in human history and culture, sharing their thoughts and ideas in a way that could benefit humanity. For a brief but glorious time, likely beginning during the Enlightenment and lasting until the end of the 20th Century, almost anyone could make a difference (as Uncle Dan did) merely by sharing ideas.

Today, the opposite seems true. So many people put nonsense ideas out into the ether that they merely add to the deafening roar of background noise. Those of us who do write our ideas down have no real ability to swing the tide of human events or make a dent for good because what we share immediately fades into the static. 

That ceaseless influx of information is too much for us to handle and is the reason why humanity is so stressed and reactive. News that does make it through the barrage is never good. This is intentional. Bad news tends to make stressed and fearful people even more anxious. Whenever a friend or colleague says to me, “Have you heard the latest?”I feel a pit in my stomach, not always because of the specific events they describe but because it is one more example of ideas being used to keep us feeling helpless and stops us from engaging our critical faculties. If you keep a fox on a tether by your chicken coop, the chickens will never settle down. For this reason, most of us go through life stunned into believing we cannot do anything to help or change the tide of human affairs for good.

The amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the temporal lobe of the brain, is responsible for processing emotions like anxiety and fear. This small but powerful part of the cerebral cortex evolved to aid human survival in the ancient savannah and veldt, where social and emotional interactions were crucial. When information upsets, angers or scares us, it is the amygdala that responds first. The prevailing structure of social interaction has been altered by the internet. That change leaves us vulnerable to ideas specifically designed to circumvent rational thought,  and so we miss the social cues that typically inform our understanding of behavioral norms.

Unfortunately, the market of ideas has been compromised. Even if we could break through the noise, our screen-addicted, information-addled culture has been easily conditioned to have knee-jerk emotional reactions rather than rational responses to the worst ideas. This makes it easy for bad ideas to be repackaged in a way that appeals to lazy thinking and emotional manipulation and is why so many of us have been duped into looking at truly bad people as if they are heroes. 

Without intervention, people in our society will become nothing more than automatons, consuming only the information fed to them, lambs to the slaughter with no sense that they have the power to change things. This was one of the key concepts in Orwell’s representation of the lowest class, or proletariat, as described in his novel 1984. Yet there has to be a balance, a way to break people’s addiction to the flood of false data and inspire them with a love of learning as Uncle Dan did. 

He knew and taught me that knowledge drives out fear. He repeatedly demonstrated this by teaching me to respond to my fear with a desire to learn more about what scared me. Eventually, this trick became a habit for me, stimulating the rational parts of my cognition and helping me feel better about the world. This habit eventually made me distrustful of the increasing depth of terrible ideas and confirmation bias, mental gymnastics and self-delusion around me, which were driven by fear and anxiety. 

I recognize that my passion for knowledge and distaste for stupidity and credulity can lead to a harsh and critical tone. I know that it is not the most effective way to promote curiosity. Instead, I need to emulate Uncle Dan's passionate, enthusiastic and patient approach to inspiring a lifelong love of learning. By encouraging intellectual Inquisitiveness and fostering my love of learning, I can better help others to develop crucial thinking skills and re-engage their critical faculties. Everyone learns differently, so being patient and understanding and creating a safe space for questions and mistakes must be my goal. I’m not here to win arguments but to inspire curiosity and foster a community of critical thinkers.

Uncle Dan taught a lot of people how to get excited about science. My passion is helping people to think a little more critically and to avoid (where possible) bad ideas and the people who promote them, regardless of how they appear to be helpful. The best way to do this is to write my ideas down and share them, of course, but there is a right and appropriate tone to use, too. Derision and haughty contempt won’t cut the ice and it sounds too much like what’s clogging up the works.

Thinking about this reminded me of Max Ehrman’s popular poem from the 1920s, which grew to great popularity in the middle part of the last century. Called Desiderata, the second line of the poem clearly states, “Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.” Strangely fitting. 

Uncle Dan has been gone since 2016. It takes time to adjust to life without loved ones, but those who've impacted us live on in our memories. Even after his passing, Uncle Dan's wisdom stayed with me. Yet, ironically, I forgot the most valuable lesson he taught me. Because of his example, I have the power to be less preachy and when in doubt, to speak or write quietly about the challenges of thinking and the rational mind, and do it using The Uncle Dan Approach.