May 8
Virtue knows no sex. Strengthen the understanding instead of training for obedience — for whoever acts rightly from their own insight stands more firmly than one who has merely been made compliant.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Virtue knows no sex. Strengthen the understanding instead of training for obedience — for whoever acts rightly from their own insight stands more firmly than one who has merely been made compliant.
When you teach someone a task, the shortest sentence is often: “Just do it like this.” It saves time and usually works. As long as everything runs as intended, you can't tell from it what is missing.
If instead you explain why something is done this way, you give away more than you might like. The other person can now examine your reasoning. They may notice that one of your reasons stopped applying long ago. Or a case turns up for which your rule makes no provision, and there they decide differently from how you would have.
Someone who only follows remains reliable as long as the situation resembles the instruction. Someone who has understood remains reliable beyond that too, but in a way that is no longer entirely in your hands. You get a counterpart instead of an executor.
It is hardly different with you. Some of your habits you have never questioned; someone once showed them to you that way, and they work. That is exactly why you don't know at what point they would give way.
