Book: On the Contrary

Overview
Sydney J. Harris’s On the Contrary (1969) gathers a wide range of short essays from his long-running syndicated column, written at the height of late-1960s ferment. Rather than advancing a single argument, the book offers a mosaic of reflections on education, morality, public life, language, and the daily conflicts of a modern democracy. Harris’s signature stance, gently skeptical, humane, and quietly contrarian, urges readers to examine comfortable assumptions and prize intellectual independence over ideological reflex.

Scope and Subjects
The pieces move nimbly from classroom to newsroom, from living room to legislature. Education recurs as a central concern: Harris challenges rote information-hoarding and argues for learning that enlarges perspective and empathy. He worries about how media speed compresses thought, how slogans substitute for understanding, and how the loudest voices drive out nuance. He picks at the seams of contemporary debates, on crime and punishment, patriotism and dissent, success and failure, exposing false dichotomies and inviting a richer vocabulary for public disagreement.

Contrarian Method
Harris’s “contrary” posture is less about provocation than about disciplined doubt. He reverses the expected lens: instead of asking whether society is producing enough experts, he asks whether it is producing enough grownups; instead of measuring progress by gadgets, he asks how humane our institutions have become. The essays often pivot on paradox, revealing how good intentions curdle into conformity, how certainty can be a refuge from thinking, and how the pursuit of efficiency may erode the very human ends it is meant to serve.

Language, Communication, and Civility
A recurring thread is the distinction between information and communication. Harris warns that more data does not guarantee more understanding, and that vocabulary without shared meanings breeds conflict rather than clarity. He defends civility not as politeness for its own sake, but as the social lubricant that allows truth to be heard. The tone is reformist rather than censorious: he asks readers to listen harder, define terms, and resist the laziness of labels.

Ethics and the Individual
Personal responsibility anchors the book’s social concerns. Harris returns to quotidian disciplines, keeping promises, admitting error, extending sympathy, as the foundation of civic health. He is wary of grand schemes that neglect character, and of moralism that preaches outward without working inward. The essays champion humility as a practical virtue: the willingness to be corrected, to revise one’s views, and to include those whom habit or prejudice leaves out.

1969 Context and Timelessness
While written amid war, protest, and generational estrangement, the pieces avoid the ephemera of headlines. Harris treats the moment as a test of habits, how a culture argues, how it teaches, how it measures success, so the book retains an uncannily current feel. The specific controversies may shift, but the cautions against tribalism, haste, and self-satisfaction remain pointed.

Style and Effect
Harris writes in compact, conversational bursts, rich with aphorism and anecdote. The brevity invites browsing; the accumulation yields a coherent ethos: clarity over cleverness, understanding over victory, conscience over convenience. Read straight through or sampled at leisure, On the Contrary models a way of thinking that is rigorous without rancor and principled without rigidity.

Legacy
As a collection, it illuminates why Harris’s column mattered to a broad readership: he treated readers as grownups capable of changing their minds. On the Contrary stands as a quietly bracing call to examine orthodoxy, especially one’s own, and to practice a public reasonableness that dignifies both argument and adversary.