A Man for All Eras

If you asked me who my favorite fictional character is, I would—at first—be hard-pressed to single one out. There are so many. I might cite Samwise Gamgee, Aragorn or Gandalf from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. I might also mention Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter, or Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. There’s also Winston Smith (1984) and Guy Montag (Fahrenheit 451). For historical or non-magical characters, I’d have to mention the Finches from To Kill a Mockingbird and Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment. I also love Myshkin from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Alyosha from The Brothers Karamazov. It’s not hard for me to find that this list, upon careful consideration, goes on and on and on. 

However, of all of the fictional characters who have spoken to me, and who seem relevant for our time, there is only one who manages to rise to the occasion in every possible way over and over again. Sherlock Holmes. My readers will know and no doubt will have seen this answer coming, but I think it will surprise you to understand why I think that he is the man we need in our current crisis. The Victorian Era was not so different from our own and though there are obvious dissimilarities, it is also clear that the fictional Holmes was a man of incredible moral and ethical sensibility, as well as being a brilliant thinker and observer. He’s coldly rational in an upturned world; he’s methodical when most rush to judgement; he takes care and is dedicated to the truth not just because it feels good. More than all of it, Holmes represents a potent and unavoidable fact about humanity: our minds (and ourselves) are only at their best when we lean toward rationality and reason, rather than emotion and reaction.

It may sound a bit silly to put a fictional character up as an exemplar for our very real and very difficult modern problems. After all, real dilemmas call for real people to solve, right? Actually, though, there’s a neat loophole here. Most of the people we look up to, the heroes from history, the mythological entities some of us worship, the legends that inspire us, and even the stories that fill us with hope are, essentially stories, just like the fictional tales we read. This isn’t to say that Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin weren’t real, but our understanding of them comes from stories, just like with Holmes. Interestingly, many people thought that Sherlock Holmes was real back then, and flooded Doyle letters begging for the detective’s help. It’s even a well-known fact that he used some of Holme’s “art of detection” to solve crimes in his own time. Even if he isn’t real, though, Sherlock Holmes can still teach us some very important and useful ways of dealing with modernity’s stickiest troubles.

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." — A Scandal in Bohemia

What could be more modern? In a world connected by a giant, convoluted series of tubes all of which floods each one of us with information, it can be hard to filter out all the noise. The world has become a nightmare version of the worst of Holme’s above quote. Everyone—yes, even you and I, dear reader—have been consistently twisting facts to suit theories. This is why so many people believe in nonsense, like flat-earth or anti-vaxx conspiracies. They backed up their beliefs with dubious sources online that support what they want to be true, rather than what is. A confirmed rationalist, Holmes never made a decision based on information that he wanted to be true, but only on what was available, regardless of what would help solve the mystery.

"Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay." — The Adventure of the Copper Beeches 

Holmes is often portrayed as solving crimes which makes the client (or Dr. Watson) reel with the power of his skill. Even the reader wonders how he can so easily point out so much, with no more than a brief glance. In fact Holmes isn’t just looking, he’s observing. In almost every story, after he demonstrates his skills, Holmes goes back and explains the trick. Time and time again, he shows Watson and others that the most important thing needed to solve a crime or mystery is data. Most of us cannot do the tricks that Holmes did. However his techniques—like close observation and deduction—are quite useful in real life, if we take his advice to Watson and apply them.

"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear." — A Scandal in Bohemia 

Most of us look at our phones a lot. Some of us look at our phones a dangerous amount. These tiny and very useful tools have become extremely addictive. They do this by a careful manipulation of our reward centers, which makes us need the stimulus, but without any real or measurable benefit. It also makes us see things, but not really observe them. Hours of scrolling dulls the mind. If you asked me what the last reel I looked at on Instagram was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I know I looked at it, but I have no idea what it was. 

And here is the point: we see, but we no longer observe. This became apparent to me, when I had an issue with a person and I had to call the police. I had just looked at them, but when the dispatch agent asked me to describe them, I couldn’t remember what they looked like. Thank you Social Media. So I have limited myself to no more than nine minutes a day of scrolling, using the inbuilt safety timer. It seems like a very short time, but I’m also balancing that limit with intentional observation exercises, to re-train the cerebellum to not just see, but actually observe and remember.

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." — The Boscombe Valley Mystery 

It was right there. I saw it with my own eyes. The news was obvious. The famous writer had died and I was crushed. News spread like wildfire. No more stories, no more excellent books, no more genuinely spine-chilling tales of the macabre. And then, the writer spoke up. The whole thing was a hoax. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even ailing. He was fine and we were all victims of a false death claim. I went back, then, feeling foolish and looked at what it was I found so credible. It looked like it had been put together by a three-year old. Given a minute and a little more observation (see above), I would have recognized that it was fake. These days, thanks to the nefarious skills of AI, it is even more difficult to tell when something has been faked. Just ask the thousands of people who had their likenesses used and put online nude and in compromising positions by Musk’s AI platform. It might not be real, but it is dangerous and harmful.

These images and claims appear obvious to us and yet, they are not real. Holmes was right, there is nothing more deceptive. We have to train ourselves, not only to observe, but to be mistrustful of what we’re being shown until we have all the facts. Sometimes just a bit of common sense and patience can help us step free of the swamplands of Internet fakery and into the light of reality and hard facts.

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." — A Case of Identity 

This is one of my favorite quotes. Details matter. I’m not a detail-oriented person. Like most visual people, I tend to take in the bigger picture rather than the minutiae. It’s hard for me to focus on the little things. In my work, especially, though, I have had to learn this lesson and make it my own axiom. When we miss the details, we cause ourselves much trouble. It might not seem like a big thing, but when solving a technical issue for library patrons, or getting the data-entry of stats right, or even making sure that we have all items on a meeting agenda, the little things are what makes the difference. It’s how I handle those small things, too, that influences the bosses when they look at my performance. They know I care about my work, and they know I’m here to help, but if I’m sloppy or shoddy or take the work with broad strokes when a fine brush is needed, it will show up in my evaluation. The details matter.

"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose... It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls." — A Study in Scarlet 

I have long subscribed to Holme’s concept here. What we put in our heads stays in our heads, regardless if it is useful to us or not. Uncle Dan used to say, referring to learning and packing for camping, “It is better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.” I have applied this to most of my life, which is why my brain is full of useless trivia, movie quotes and partial song lyrics. In fact, Holmes was right; the mind is a finite resource and if it is chock full of stupid information, like a hoarder’s garage, then there is no room for useful things.

The idea of a “mind mansion” is one that I’m fascinated with. For years, I had trouble remembering my brother’s address. Then, having read a treatise on this concept, I decided to try to apply the principle. I closed my eyes and in a state of semi-meditation, I imagined the address as if it was floating before my eyes. I then took it in my hands (in the mental picture) and set it on a shelf and placed a dancing tomato on top of it, (the tomato was a trick suggested by the writer of the treatise) and to this day, when I scramble to remember Rich’s house number or street name, I just close my eyes and think of the dancing tomato and it jumps to mind. 

I’ve successfully done this with countless other things that it is important that I remember, though my head isn’t full of dancing tomatoes. I think of something silly for each item that needs remembering, which helps as a mnemonic device. Holmes (and apparently Doyle) were far better at this trick. Apparently Doyle used a similar trick when he was studying to be a surgeon, which requires a limber mind. HIlariously, to prove the effectiveness and seriousness of the concept, Watson tells us that Holmes had no idea (and didn’t care) whether the earth rotated around the sun or vice versa. It didn’t matter to him, because it had no effect on his ability to remember the essentials to solve crimes. It wasn’t ignorance, though, it was conservation of space in the finite brain.

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius." — The Valley of Fear 

I see it all the time. Someone with lots of knowledge, like Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye says something in a video or podcast and the comments section becomes a sewer of hatred and vitriol. When Nye agreed to debate Ken Ham more than a decade ago, the famous Biblical Creationist who built a “life-sized” Noah’s arc in Kentucky, it was obvious to anyone who hadn’t drunk Ham’s Kool-Aid who had the upper hand. But Ham and his supporters weren’t likely to believe actual science. Meanwhile, in a slightly less well-known interaction, Nye was called out by another scientist about something he had said, and immediately posted a video correcting his mistake. The mediocre fans of Ham (and Ham himself) couldn’t acknowledge that their dear spokesperson was wrong, but the man he “debated” readily adjusted himself when corrected by an expert in the field. This was Holmes’ (and Doyle’s) way of pointing out what we now call the Dunning-Kruger Effect, but I like how it is put in this quote far better. And it is an important lesson for all of us to learn.

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last." — The Red Circle 

The most dangerous mentality is the one that thinks it has learned all it needs to know. Certainty is deadly and in the modern era, this is so common that it is epidemic. Everyone knows all they need to know. Unless it outrages them or keeps them emotionally engaged, few average people want to learn anything new. This is a constant gripe between me and Pop Bare, especially when we talk politics. Everyone he doesn’t like is a communist. I’ve explained it to him a thousand times. I’m sure I’m like this, too. My coworkers or family might wish I updated my thinking sometimes. I sure need to—we all do.

But as Holmes suggests, here, we ought to be constantly learning and building our knowledge base. It is a joy to come home each day and feel like I learned something I never knew before. I try every day to do just that and each mistake I make provides an important lesson. I hope I never stop learning or feel like there’s nothing else to learn. That’s the mentality of a closed system, or a tyranny.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." — The Sign of the Four 

One of my favorites, and probably the most well-known quote—certainly the most quoted—I have this one hanging on the wall in my office. It is a principle of economy, rather like Occam’s Razor, that might fit in the same context as other intellectual razors. It is a check against intuition and a means to calibrate the likelihood of an event by bringing the intellect to bear, rather than the feelings. 

The modern era is one of emotion; how something feels to us, especially a gut feeling, seems to have more weight than a coldly mental observation. This might be a natural or knee-jerk reaction at the moment, but it is just that: a reaction. Here Holmes is saying that we can do a bit better. By applying a cold and rational thought process, we may not like the answers, but we can be assured that the emotion is removed and therefore the treacherous landscape that emotion sometimes causes.

It’s not that I expect everyone to feel the way I do about Sherlock Holmes or the Doyle stories. They’re not for everyone. But aside from the stories, few fictional characters have such practically applicable ideas that really can make a positive difference not just as a subject of Queen Victoria, but also in the modern world. Holmes really is a man for all eras.