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The “Signal-to-Noise Ratio” (SNR) is an engineering term that has come to be applied more broadly to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant information in communications (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio). As long as I have been aware of the phrase, it has been a favorite of mine. If we were to attempt to construct a comprehensive and maximally useful paradigm of public discourse, this phrase would have to be a cornerstone. SNR refers to the density of meaning in what is being said, the quantity and quality of relevant information that is being communicated, in proportion to the quantity and quality of everything else that obscures and displaces it.
Most political discourse is characterized by an extremely low SNR. Traditional unidirectional mass media (television, radio, newspapers) used to be tempered by trying to appeal to broad markets, which led to a reduction in SNR in order to offend no one. More recently, the balkanization of traditional mass media, appealing more to ideologically targeted markets (particularly on the right), has led to a different kind of reduction of the SNR, an ideologically intense but analytically poor set of insulated messages, reinforcing the creation of ideological islands of selective information reverberating among the faithful. Even the best mass media programming today tends to focus too much on politics as competition among existing ideologies, and not enough on politics as the on-going search for the best policies by which to govern ourselves. Programs that address head-on the questions underwriting the ideological differences are few and far between.
If you visit message boards and political blogs, you find mostly angry tantrums, flame wars, ridicule, arbitrary assertions and opinions, and even, often, an open hostility to analysis. Many of the most active participants in public discourse not only indulge in a low SNR, but privilege it as preferable and superior. In some places, such as on SquareState, the signal-to-noise ratio suffers from adamant ideological insularity, reinforcing a somewhat informed but assiduously narrow and stagnant ideology.
In other places, such as Colorado Pols, the SNR is particularly low, nuggets of information buried in avalanches of chatter. The combination of comradery among accepted insiders and antagonism toward rejected outsiders (placed within and shifted between these categories according to how well they reinforce the ritual of empty discourse that defines the blog) creates a strong group identity. Shared pride is taken in accommodating “everyone” while accomplishing nothing. Virtual friendships are forged among ideological opposites, and arguments resolved, on the basis of the shared ideology that all political orientations are arbitrary and equal. And a strong sense of community is maintained by means of an ethnocentricity of political ritualism, in which saying nothing knowledgeably is perceived to be the height of discourse.
Obviously, the highest SNRs are found in the most inaccessible forums: Professional journals, symposia, and other venues in which highly distilled information is presented and exchanged. Due to the fortress of jargon, and the assumption of a shared expert foundation on which to build, these “ivory tower” forums exist in a world apart, with too few bridges to the realm which most of us occupy.
The challenge to those who want to improve political discourse is to combine the virtues and avoid the vices of each of these various forums. The most important virtues to be combined are the comradery and accommodation of diverse views that characterizes Colorado Pols with the information intensity of academe. The most important vices to be avoided are the ideological insularity of SquareState, the reduction of political discourse to mere arbitrary opinion of Colorado Pols, and the inaccessibility of state of the art information and analysis characteristic of academe.
What we need to work on creating is an all-inclusive, information-intensive, friendly but robust national, state, and local discussion. What we don’t need is to keep reproducing and investing in the clubhouses that currently exist, the clubhouses of ideological insularity, of superficiality, and of esoteria. We need, as individual information consumers, to exercise the discipline to switch the channel from “Reality TV” (including the blogosphere versions) to “National Geographic,” and as individual information producers to be more informative and less offensive. But no one needs to be an expert to contribute to an improved SNR (and few if any are in all things): Asking cogent questions is as important as providing cogent answers, and learning is as essential as teaching.
Premature false certainties are the bane of high SNRs, because they stagnate individual understandings, and balkanize ideological camps. We all need to consider what aspects of opposing views might be valuable to consider. (For instance, our growing national debt, and our undisciplined spending as a nation, major Tea Party issues, are legitimate concerns, and merit our attention.) We need to avoid the meme that compromise is bad, and embrace the meme that pursuing the best and most informed policies is good. We need each to fight against our own pettiness, and discourage it in one another. We need to recognize that we have a civic responsibility not just to be engaged, but also to become ever better informed, and to develop ever deeper and broader understandings of the issues that confront us. And we have to, all of us, exercise that civic responsibility publicly, together, helping one another to develop those deeper and broader understandings, and seeking from one another our own on-going education, for responsible self-governance benefits first and foremost from an increasingly better and more richly informed electorate.
(This theme is continued in Un-Jamming the Signal.)
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A perennial metaphysical question has reared its implicit head on this site, as it inevitably does when discussing how to strike the optimal balance between personal and social responsibility (i.e., how much do we insist that people are responsible for doing what they can with the hand they’ve been dealt, and how much should we advocate for some shared responsibility for the hand they’ve been dealt?). The question is Free Will v. Determinism: To what extent do we choose our own destiny, and to what extent is it chosen for us?
First of all, we all know that, subjectively, we have free will. I can type this now, or not. I can type the word “choose” or the word “cheese” or any other word that comes to mind. Nothing forces me to type one or the other. It may be the case that I need a keyboard on which to type, and whether I have one or not may depend on factors that are beyond my control (if I were born in a dirt poor sub-Saharan village, my lack of access to one might well be something over which I had no control). But, within the context of what is available, I clearly can choose from a wide range of actions.
On the other hand, my choices are caused by a variety of mostly invisible in-puts, past and present. Just because the causes are many and complex, and are obscured by the impossibility of tracing most of them, does not mean that they don’t exist. In what way am I ever the original force of anything? Though we experience our choices as originating within us, we know that they are affected by pushes and pulls large and small, such as the need to earn a living, to take care of the people we love, to earn respect and avoid condemnation, to satisfy expectations and to realize goals that have psychological roots that ultimately originate in some combination of the genes we inherited and the environment in which they spun out their code. In one very real sense, we are each just a very complex arrangment of dominos embedded in a forever toppling, almost infinitely complex and encompassing arrangment.
If it weren’t for Quantum Mechanics, there would be no doubt that, objectively, the universe and everything in it is entirely deterministic. A simple thought experiment demonstrates this: Imagine the entire universe at any moment in history. For the purposes of the exercise, let’s say one million B.C. Freeze that universe in your imagination and duplicate it. Now set the two identical universes to run forward through time again. How could they possibly diverge? Everything in the second was identical to everything in the first, every motion, thought, impulse, event, were identical. So the spear that the prehistoric man was about to let loose in the first, he is about to let loose in the second. It will hit the beast in the same place, with the same effect. Every particle, every current, every swirl in the suchness is identical, and so all consequences of all causes must unfurl in an identical manner, throughout time, forever. The universe is completely deterministic.
Quantum Mechanics throws a wrench in this thought experiment, because, in reality, at the quantum level, uncertainty is an essential quality of nature. Quantum particles are not in one place and moving in one direction at one speed, but rather exist in a probalistic cloud, so that when the universe is duplicated, only the probabilistic cloud is duplicated, and slight variations will result at the quantum level. These variations will create tiny divergences in reality, that presumably will accumulate and amplify over time, until the two universes are quite distinct from one another. The universe is not objectively deterministic after all (at least not according to quantum theory).
Unfortunately for those who don’t like determinism, Quantum Mechanics has very limited relevance to the issues of personal and social responsibility. And mere free will matters less than how many choices that will has available to select from. Much in our lives is, in fact, determined prior to our existence, and independently of our choices. We are born into a family, with a given socioeconomic status, in a given location, in a given culture, at a given time, with a given social institutional context, with a given genetic make-up, and our range of available choices is dramatically constrained by all of those givens. Even to the extent that we buck the odds, we do so as the result of factors over which we had no control: A role model who encouraged us to be more confident and assertive; an opportunity, or a skill we happened to learn by a confluence of chances, or an inherent natural endowment; all or any of which are just the luck of the draw.
Recognition that the distribution of wealth and good fortune in the world and in this nation has very little to do with individual merit does not mean that personal responsibility has no role to play. No social system can function without an emphasis on personal responsibility, because unless we are motivated to be productive, and law abiding, and good citizens and parents and children and friends and neighbors and colleagues, then the failure to strive to be those things has consequences. It contracts the production of wealth and expands the production of suffering. Without an emphasis on personal responsibility, we all suffer more and benefit less. Personal responsibility is, by necessity, the cornerstone of any well-functioning society.
But there is no need to confuse functionality with fairness, or a social necessity with a moral imperative. While emphasizing personal responsibility, and leaving in place a range of costs and benefits that incentivize adherence to that value, we do not need to neglect the inconvenient truth that we are not in fact born into this world with equal opportunities, and that a commitment to both fairness and functionality demands that, particularly at the bottom, we limit the costs for failure to adhere to, and increase the benefits for success in adhering to, the demand for personal responsibility.
Fairness demands it, because if one is born into poverty and fails to either claw or excel their way out, their and their children’s and their children’s children’s ensuing suffering can hardly be blithely dismissed as just deserts. And functionality demands it, because the incentives to be predatory rather than productive increase as desperation increases, and providing increased opportunities to be productive and benefit from it is a very functional restructuring of incentives. Functionality further demands it, because destitution provides a very difficult platform from which to become productive, creating multiple obstacles (e.g., childcare while training for and looking for work, and resources to be presentable and prepared in job interviews). A public investment in the facilitation of the success of those least well positioned to achieve it serves both their interests,and society’s, for we all benefit from it.
That’s what our social responsibility is: To facilitate success; to create a context in which failure occurs less often, opportunities are more abundant, and personal responsibility is rewarded even if the circumstances themselves would not necessarily have rewarded it. Personal responsibility and social responsibility are not at odds, as ideologues on the right insist, but rather are natural partners in a society that is both more functional and more fair. We do not undermine incentives to work hard and succeed by making these public investments in providing increased opportunities, but rather augment the incentives to work hard, and reduce the burdens on society of failure to achieve due to constricted opportunities and other obstacles to success.
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In my last post (The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without), I discussed the individual dimensions of this classic struggle, a struggle, at the individual and interpresonal level, in which we are all implicated, and in which we all contribute to both sides. The message, I believe, dovetails with other related posts on this blog (e.g., The Foundational Progressive Agenda, The Politics of Anger), a message that emphasizes that we have to build progress on a foundation of reason, humility, and goodwill, rather than on the inflexible assumptions of blind ideology and the continued political treadmill of mutual belligerence.
But as we deal with that fundamentally important personal level struggle, both individually and mutually, the outward battle to implement social policies that reflect the same commitment continues. Our widespread lapses at the individual level aggregate into both angry policies and angry politics, in which some can blithely blame the disadvantaged and their allies for trying to create a more equitable political economy, and in which those who oppose that brutal notion can fail to create an inherently attractive alternative. The question, on the political level, is: What does it take to penetrate the hardening of the heart and shrinking of the mind which informs the historically discredited and transparently unjustifiable political ideology of extreme individualism (otherwise known as “small government”)? One part of the answer, the part that is perhaps most overlooked, involves the personal aspect of the struggle between “good” and “evil” discussed in The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without.
My own personal failures, for instance, have contributed to the weakening of the influence of my arguments, because arguments against the politics of anger are discredited by personal indulgence in anger. Hypocrisy in failing to implement at the personal level what we are advocating for at the social level may not undermine the merits of the arguments, but it does undermine their persuasive force. One cannot effectively advocate for a kinder state and nation while failing to be a kinder person.
We are blessed with extraordinary lives, able to savor the wonders of the world around us, the joys of daily life, the deep emotional gratification of loving relationships, and yet we squander this blessing with amazing regularity. We squander it as individuals, and we squander it as a people. And the two failures are intimately intertwined, though we treat them as entirely separate, or only conflate them when discussing the foibles of elected officials and other political actors.
I am suddenly deeply impressed with the need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, to be as an individual what I am advocating that we become as a people. It’s not enough to do so in the public sphere, in efforts to affect public policy or improve people’s lives. It must also occur in the private sphere, in our daily interactions, in our treatment of those who most challenge our patience and pique our chagrin. If we progressives truly want to help create the world that we envision, then we must work far, far harder at creating it within ourselves first, and, by doing so, establish a far more attractive and compelling force through which to create it in our social institutions. We must model it, exemplify it, demonstrate what joy and strength and tranquility it bestows.
This is by no means advocacy for reducing the challenge to do good to the individual level, as so many on the right try to do, as justification for addressing it not at all. These are two sides of a coin, two aspects of a single struggle: To exercise goodwill in interpersonal interactions while rationalizing political ideological brutality, or to fight for social policies predicated on goodwill while failing to exercise it in interprersonal interactions, are both failures of commitment, and choices that reduce the moral force of one’s professed positions and attitudes. Those of us who claim to be progressives must strive to progress within, without, and together; those of us who claim to be charitable must be charitable not just in how we act in the private sphere but also in what we advocate in the public sphere, not just at the individual level, but at the policy level as well. There should be no refuge in hypocrisy, whether of the left or of the right.
It is clear to me, as it is clear to many others, that the ideology of extreme individualism, the use of the word “liberty” as a justification for public mutual indifference and disdain for the most disadvantaged, the argument that trying to help the poor hurts them (always reducing such investments to mere hand-outs, rather than recognizing that programs to increase opportunities and to provide training cost money as well), the insulation of what’s “mine” from the threat that others might get some of it, define a political position that cannot both claim to be based on any commitment to the “good” (as I defined it in the previous post), and withstand scrutiny at the same time. It is a position maintained by false economic, legal, and moral arguments, justifying an intensely “me-first-and-only” rather than socially responsible commitment. I remain as adamant as ever in that position, which should, by all rights, be a magnet that attracts every human being with any desire to be a reasonable person of goodwill.
And yet it doesn’t. Somehow, people who take offense at being characterized as inhumane for adhering to what is obviously an inhumane political ideology are perfectly insulated from the pressure that that contridiction should exert on them. They have a set of platitudes and ideological certainties that mask the truth, from themselves and for each other, platitudes that simply distort the concept of “liberty” into the concept of “screw you,” and reject the notion that we can or should ever use our agent of collective action, our government, to address the inequities and injustices of life, though few dispute that the most prominent examples of having done so in the past (e.g., abolishing slavery, establishing civil rights laws and protections, establishing schools, etc.) are now indispensable aspects of our social institutional landscape.
The cruelties that invade our daily lives are the same cruelties that invade our political ideologies. The ability to ridicule others for personal pleasure while still imagining oneself to be an individual dedicated to the public good is the same blatant contradiction as the ability to insist that the poor are parasites while still believing oneself to be a reasonable person of goodwill. The challenge we face on either level, be it individual or social, is the challenge we face on both.
I suggest a new progressive agenda, one which is not based just on political advocacy, but also on personal responsibility. Let’s reunite these two sides of the challenge that we have so conveniently separated, and address them as a single whole. Let’s not seek only to implement kinder policies, but, while doing so, let’s strive to implement in our own lives kinder behaviors. It is not just that both are good, and that both contribute to the same good, but also, and perhaps more importantly, that they reinforce one another. Progressive advocates who are striving in their own lives to realize what they are striving publicly to implement will be far more compelling, far more difficult to dismiss, and far more effective than those who leave the two sides of this challenge artificially divided.
Those of us who are truly committed to progressing as a people must also become truly committed to progressing as persons. Let’s turn this movement into the one that can work, and work with any and all others who understand even some isolated aspect of what’s involved to accomplish it. It’s time to break the deadlock, and create a narrative that can’t be denied.
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Now that the election is over, I can speak more candidly about my own candidacy, and how the amateur punditry of the blogosphere consistently fails to distinguish the substance from the ritual of politics. It is, in fact, a classic error, involving the distinction between substantive and functional rationality, between pursuing a rational goal and pursuing a goal rationally. Though some may misinterpret this post as an “apology” for a “failed” candidacy, its real purpose is to point the way toward a political discourse that looks beyond the horse race and remains cognizant of the ultimate purpose of politics: Not to run a race better than others, but to stop running in circles altogether, and actually move toward a destination, whether quickly or slowly.
Substantive rationality must always take priority over functional rationality: We must always first ensure that the goals we are pursuing are the most rational goals possible, before ensuring that we are pursuing them in the most rational ways possible. Sometimes the answer is obvious, such as in how best to use my candidacy (explained below). Sometimes it’s more complex, and involves more weighing out of costs and benefits, with less certain results.
For instance, would it have been more rational for the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats during the past two years to pass as much progressive legislation as they could while they had the chance, or more rational to try to move forward in a way which might be more sustainable? How much political capital should be invested in trying to make marginal deep structural improvements, and how much in trying to make immediate legislative improvements?
Regardless of whether a simple or a complex calculation, we must always examine both our goals, and our means of pursuing them. And we must consider both long-term and short-term goals, and how the balance struck between them affects the means by which we pursue them.
My candidacy for the Colorado House of Representatives this year provides a good example of what I’m talking about, and of the institutionalized pressures to focus on functional rationality at the expense of substantive rationality, to perform the rituals of electoral politics faithfully even if it is not the most useful thing to do.
When I agreed to run, I knew that I was running in a district that no Democrat had won in almost half a century (and even then, before redistricting made it even harder), and whose numbers of registered Democrats, Republicans, and Independents were far worse than any of the seats formerly considered “safe Republican seats” that Democrats managed to orchestrate surprise victories in (generally with the help of funding from a well-organized netrork of 527’s targeting the most winnable races). I also soon realized that even the core Democrats in my district, for the most part, were resigned to losing, and were strongly disinclined to invest any significant amount of time or money in what they perceived to be an impossible task. Finally, it became increasingly clear that 2010 wasn’t going to be a year in which a Democrat could buck those odds and overcome those obstacles.
The Jefferson County political blog Jeffco Pols (off-shoot of Colorado Pols), wrote of my candidacy that “few candidates have done less.” I responded with the following:
Respectfully, I’m going to add my completion of your statement, without which it is not quite correct: “Few candidates have done less fundraising….” In a context broader than the one to which you limit yourself, (yours) is a dramatically inaccurate statement.What I’ve done a lot of is communicating with constituents, discussing public policy issues, learning about and analyzing public policy issues, and actually working on public policy issues (currently on braiding and blending funding streams for children and families in need, as well as lobbying Jeffco Schools to implement a robust school-community partnership). I manned booths the entire weekends at Jeffco Rodeo and Fair, and Summerset, with a political toss game and “good citizens maze” that I created for kids, talking with constituents, and have walked my district as much as I have been able to. I also founded and preside over a local community organization.Prior to and during all of that, I’ve spent my life studying social institutional dynamics and public policy issues, with the ultimate end of affecting them for the better….
I used my candidacy in what I considered the best way it could be used to advance the progressive agenda. That’s what I intended to do, and that’s what I did, with a great investment of time and effort. I did not run to engage in a ritual devoid of a realistic calculation of what I could accomplish and how best to accomplish it; I ran to have what effect I could have. And my choices were based on that calculation.
I’ve attended numerous events in which I can talk with constituents, interest groups, and those who are involved in public policy formation, was on Mike Zinna’s television and radio political talk shows (exposure that few if any first time, long-shot state house candidates manage to get), on a Spanish language radio political talk show, had three feature spreads in The Columbine Courier, and a few op-eds in the Denver Post….
Voters should vote for whom they consider most qualified to legislate, not whom they consider to have done the best job marketing himself, or who they think (between two candidates in the general election) has the best chance of winning. I encourage the voters in my district to make their own decision based on an assessment of the relative talents and qualities of the candidates, and not have it made for them by the self-annointed gate-keepers of democracy.
Following Jeffco Pols repetition of their insistence that none of that is relevant, I continued:
What I did was to state clearly what I have done a lot of, for what purpose, a purpose directly related to running for office, though not limited to winning an election….
You say “few candidates have done less,” and I say, “well, it depends on what kind of ‘doing’ you want to emphasize….” You want to emphasize what wins elections, and I want to emphasize what serves the public interest….
To you, politics is the competition to win elections. To me, politics is the effort to have a positive influence on the world….
You equate working on developing a robust community-school partnership in Jefferson County, and working to create more effective delivery of services to children and families, and working to create a better understanding of some of the social and economic challenges that face us, (with) “driving up and down I-25,” because, to you, if I prioritize serving the public interest, using my candidacy as a platform from which to do so, rather than marginally decreasing the overwhelming odds against me in an election I had almost no chance of winning…, that is tantamount to “doing nothing.” To me, it is the most rational strategy to make some marginal improvement in the quality of our shared existence. And that, not the ritual of electoral politics, is the real goal.
There are activities a candidate can engage in that only have value, vis-a-vis the ultimate goal of improving the human condition, if the candidate wins, and other activities that have some value vis-a-vis that goal win or lose. The more improbable an electoral victory is in the candidate’s particular jurisdiction at that particular time, the more rational it is to shift the balance of investment of time and energy toward those activities that have value win or lose, such as persuasive substantive communication, community organizing, and actual policy work. Those are the activities I have emphasized, and have done so with energy and commitment. Mathematically, it looks like this:
Let’s say the goal is to produce as many units of X (public welfare) as possible. And let’s say there are various means of contributing to it: W (winning an election); O (community organizing); R (public policy research); and P (effective persuasive communication).
Let’s say that there are 10 units of time to spend on all of these means (since time is finite, this just means dividing however much can be spent on political activities by 10). Let’s say that W produces 100 units of X if successfully completed, and zero if not. Let’s say that there are four ways to contribute to the success of W: M (raising money), C (canvassing), and E (attending events). Let’s say for every unit of time spent doing M, the odds of success in W go up 4%; for every unit of time spent doing C, the odds go up 2%; and for every unit of E, the odds go up 1%.
Let’s say that each unit of time spent doing O produces 3 units of X, each unit of time spent doing R produces 5 units of X, and each unit of time spent doing P produces 4 units of X. But let’s say that when a candidate spends a unit of time doing O, it also counts as a unit doing C; and when he spends a unit of time doing P, it also counts as a unit doing E. And let’s say that no more than 4 units of time can usefully be spent on any one of O, R, or P.
Under these circumstances (which roughly reflect reality), the most rational way to maximize production of X is to run for office, and distribute your activities among C (O), E (P), and R, completely ignoring M. In other words, to do exactly what I’m doing. (The expected value of each time unit of M is 4 units of X; of O, P, and R as a non-candidate 3, 4, and 5 units of X, respectively; while the value of each time unit of O, P, and R as a candidate is 5 units of X). The issue becomes a little more complicated if by running you are displacing someone else who might have run instead, who wouldn’t have been able or willing to do O, R, or P in lieu of running for office. But that’s not the case in HD28 (no one else wanted to run, and I have always offered to step aside for anyone who did).
The value in this model that is probably least realistic is the 4% rise in probability of X per unit of M, suggesting that full time fund raising would have given me a 40% chance of winning the election. In reality, nothing would have given me a 40% chance of winning. I inflated the chances of winning in order to make it a closer calculation; in reality, it wasn’t a close call at all. The best way for me to contribute to the public interest was to be a candidate who spent my time doing things other than those that would have maximized my (inevitably slim) chances of winning.
Recognizing this allowed me not to sacrifice the real objective to the “goal displacement” of over-emphasis on trying to accomplish an intermediate goal.
(I want to emphasize, though, that many circumstances have already changed, and will continue to change, the odds of my winning in 2012, if I decide to run again. I will start out with more name recognition, with a bit of a foundation to work with, competing for an open seat, in a different political climate. If, with the assistance of others, I determine that my district’s seat in the Colorado House of Representatives is winnable in 2012, I will do everything in my power to win it).
As we all work together, here in South Jeffco and the Denver metropolitan area, throughout Colorado, in the United States, and around the world, to improve the quality of life for all people, now and in the future, we will have to balance many considerations: What should be the distribution across the spectrum of the most local to the most global of our concerns and our efforts? What should be the distribution across the spectrum of the most short-term to the most long-term goals? What should be the distribution across the spectrum of the most superficial (and therefore, generally, most tractable) challenges to the most deeply structural (and therefore, generally, most intractable)?
These issues of balancing the focus of efforts across levels and across time, combined with the necessity of negotiating conflicting interests and ideologies, and the complexity of the natural, technological, and social institutional systems we are working with, together define the dimensions of our on-going political challenge. Understanding this, and understanding it with ever increasing clarity and precision, is part of what it takes to meet that challenge most effectively.
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One of the defects of our political process is the degree to which it brutalizes us, and we brutalize it. Certainly, as, in essence, pacified civil war, whenever and wherever we succeed in substituting the verbal and ideological brutalities of politics for the physical violence of warfare we have taken an enormous step forward. But wherever we settle for the verbal and ideological brutalities of politics rather than reach further in our ongoing struggle to replace brutality with civility and irrationality with reason, we have cause for shame rather than pride.
Many people seem to believe that being a candidate is something that one does only for their own benefit, and, of course, one’s own benefit is generally a consideration, on some level or in some manner. But more often than not, wrapped up into what one perceives to serve their own interests is their commitment to certain ideals, or goals, that serve some public with which they identify (hopefully, but not always, the public as a whole). Politics is a human enterprise, a human endeavor, not fundamentally different from those enterprises and endeavors with which we all are familiar in our own lives: We aspire, we care, we want, we try, we succeed, and we fail.
Sometimes, we do so in competition with one another. If I start a business that sells widgets, then I am in competition with other businesses that also sell widgets. It is not unusual (though neither is it universal or inevitable) to feel some animosity toward my competitors, since their success comes at my expense, and mine at theirs. But we are both just striving to succeed in our chosen endeavors, and the animosity, unless for other reasons as well, is an unnecessary addition of brutality to a shared existence that is already far too brutal.
In politics, more is at stake. We are competing over how we will define ourselves, over who and what we are, over how we will organize our shared existence. And the emotions of those most involved run very high indeed. Some anger may be inevitable, may even be useful, but when some feel glee not only over the victory of their vision for our state and nation, but also over the loss and suffering of others, they contribute to what we should be trying to transcend rather than what we should be trying to augment.
To be sure, sometimes the animosities aren’t ideological, but personal. During my years posting on Colorado Pols, for instance, a few bloggers there decided that my form of argumentation made me a despicable person, and sought every opportunity to shoot any irrelevant barbs within their reach. On three occasions (twice for having knowingly and intentionally posted false factual assertions about me, and once for threatening me both physically and to virtually stalk me) I mentioned that there are legal limits to how they can express their hatred. Now, “Ralphie” (with the help of the one who both threatened me physically, and promised to stalk me on Pols, who recently posted a highly revisionist reference to that encounter) wants to turn that into yet one more vehicle for his relentless vendetta.
In the wake of the election, I’ve noticed them coming out of the woodwork on Colorado Pols, creating the same group-think reality, piling on as a form of entertainment (which helped inspire the following two posts: The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Part 2). Initially, I felt a far more muted annoyance than usual, the degree of pettiness appearing to me too obvious to be effective. But, to my dismay, others, including some who have been friends, helped reinforce rather than confront the meme, some casually and carelessly.
It is, in part, the expression of a strange cultural attitude, one which, on the one hand, cheers malice, and, on the other, dehuamanizes certain categories of people, including “intellectuals” and “candidates,” two categories to which I have belonged, or have been perceived to belong. That combination of approved malice against approved targets creates ideal designated scapegoats, against whom it is not only acceptable but customary to vent all pent-up aggressions, and to do so as rudely and crudely as you like.
The anger, and sense that there is a specially exempt political zone in which it is acceptable to express it with as much hostility, as little restraint, and as much indifference to what we consider to be basic decency in almost all other realms of life, extends beyond our attitude toward politicians and intellectuals (see The Politics of Anger). But a special sphere of heightened disinhibition is reserved for them, both, I think, justified by some perception that both are attempts to put oneself above others, and so inviting of being taken down a peg.
How strange and contemptuous that we should reserve our most vicious expressions of belligerence for those who have chosen to work on behalf of the public interest in these two ways, either by trying to understand or directly affect our social institutional landscape with the desire to improve it. And how dysfunctional that we should remain so committed to reducing our public debate over how to govern ourselves to a frothing-at-the-mouth hate-fest, one which not only drowns out reason, but seems most hostile to it.
The irony is that “Ralphie” and “MOTR” and many others like them do not direct their rage particularly at their ideological opposites, but rather at anyone who “contaminates” politics by treating it as something more than a fairly shallow exchange of arbitrary opinions. They perceive analysis as hostility and hostility as reason, in one of many complete inversions of reality particular to political discourse.
At the Jefferson County Democratic Party’s election night vigil at the Lakewood Holiday Inn at Hamden and Wadsworth, I sat with fellow candidates and supporters, in what was a very emotional night for us all. We rejoiced at our party’s victories, and mourned our party’s losses. We felt for our friends in office who were not re-elected, who we knew had given so much, with such a sincere desire to serve others, and who at times lost to opponents who, to our minds, represented the insanity of politics. Those of us who knew we could not win joked about the inevitable, and, if anything, found some joy and comfort in watching the culmination of our small slice of the shared story of this election cycle, one which we agreed was really a pleasure to have lived.
I will continue to argue passionately for the policies and perspectives that I believe best serve our long-term collective interests. And I will continue to seek out all people, of all perspectives, who are willing to engage in an ongoing discussion, in a context of mutual goodwill, as fellow human beings trying to do the best we can, regardless of what policies they believe would best serve the public interest. If we occasionally get angry with one another, let’s not enshrine our anger as the defining quality of our relationships. If we disagree, let’s not turn disagreement into justification for implacable hostility. If an olive-branch is offered, take it. If one might be taken, offer it.
If we err in our treatment of others, let’s use it as a reminder to redouble our efforts to do better. If others err, let’s give them every opportunity to find their way back to civility, and accommodate and encourage their efforts to do so. There is never any justification for viciousness and malice. There is never any need to condemn or mistreat any individual for any sincere belief about what best serves the public interest, but there is neither any need to insulate those beliefs from critical scrutiny and blunt challenges. We need to put everything we have on the table, set aside our animosities, strive to cultivate mutual goodwill, and work together as reasonable members of a single society working together to do the best we can.
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As some may know, The Day of the Dead in Mexico is actually two days, November 1 and 2, the first being the day of the return of the souls of dead children, and the second the day of the return of the souls of dead adults. How fitting (if tragic) then, that, on this election day, if predictions hold, we are about to see the return of the souls of dead ideas we had hoped never to see again.
The tsunami of political zeal approaching our shores, about to crash with destructive force against our homes and communities, our schools and clinics, our poor neighborhoods and last refuges of hope for those who we have already left with too little cause for hope, is not a defense of liberty, or of fiscal responsibility, or of the ideals of the American Revolution, but rather a return to an era of Robber Barons, of disregard for the injustices of poverty and inequality of opportunity, and disdain rather than compassion for those who are unfortunate enough to be born into disadvantaged socio-economic conditions.
It is a tsunami of anti-intellectualism, simultaneously declaring itself rational and those who oppose it irrational, while both carefully cleansing itself of any trace of reason and assertively pronouncing its disdain for the fruits of systematically applied reason. It is the dark side of populism, the angry torch-bearing mob looking for monsters to kill, accusing our president of every possible membership in groups that they consider evil: He is a Muslim, a non-American born abroad, a socialist, sometimes the anti-christ itself. It is the dark past of unreasoning and hateful bigotries rearing its ugly head once again, condemning all “others,” be they Muslims, gays, Hispanics, or simply all those who do not belong to the same unreasoning, hateful mob as they do.
I’ve engaged them in the blogosphere, on Facebook, in person and in email exchanges, and while there are some more moderate people who identify with the movement, overwhelmingly those who are its most vocal spokespeople and who set its agenda reject the notion of discourse, of engaging in a process which leads to subtler and richer and more useful understandings, of accepting that none of us have the final answers, that all of us must continue to seek out ever closer approximations of the truth. They call reason irrational and compassion hateful. They turn the world on its head, and will turn our world on its head in very destructive ways to the extent that we sit back and let them take control of the reins of government.
All reasonable people of goodwill, for generations now, have sighed in relief that the horrible ghosts of Social Darwinism and all similar rationalizations by those who are fortunate enough to live reasonably comfortable lives, justifying to themselves why they not only don’t have to care about those who are not, but should actively blame them for trying to take what is theirs (see, for example, Uncle Fish’s comments on various diaries on this blog).
Another pagan precursor of Halloween is the Celtic holiday Samhain (pronounced “Sowen”), in which, due to the Celtic lunar calendar, there were five days of the Celtic New Year left over every year, falling at the end of our October (the Catholic Church moved All Saints Day and All Hallow’s Eve to coincide with it, as it later moved the Aztec Day of the Dead to coincide with it) in which the boundary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead was at its thinnest and most permeable. People dressed and put on make-up to make themselves look as unhealthy and unappealing as possible, to discourage dead spirits seeking new bodies in which to reside to choose theirs.
But as the dead spirits of horrible and hateful ideas now are roaming among us on this day, seeking to occupy our body politic, our halls of government, our institutions of cooperation and collective problem solving, determined to undermine them in their purpose, to deprive us of our instruments of national community and aspiration, to surrender to the problems and challenges that history imposes on us, we do not need to make ourselves look ugly, but rather beautiful, to oppose and defeat them. For Hope is beautiful. Compassion is beautiful. Commitment to the welfare of the least well off is beautiful. Humility and Awe in the face of God’s Creation are beautiful, and should inspire not the false certainties and militant ignorance of the Tea Party, but rather the seeking, hungry minds of those who know that they don’t know, but want to work together with all others to do the best they can to get it right.
If at all possible, drop whatever else you are doing today, and spend the next several hours making sure that every sane and decent human being you know takes their ballot to the nearest polling place, and registers their voice, their will, and their soul in favor of hopeful living ideas, and against the self-limiting and self-destructive ones of a poorer and less hopeful past that should remain dead forever more.
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One of the underlying and defining dynamics of our social institutional landscape is the interplay of centripetal and centrifugal social forces that simultaneously are pushing us together and pulling us apart, across levels and in overlapping configurations. Neither is inherently good nor inherently evil, though system-wide imbalances in one or both directions undermine rather than contribute to the production of human welfare.
Centripetal forces are necessary to sow and reap the fruits of cooperation, of coordinated efforts, of being members of a society. All of our social institutions are primarily instruments of cohesion, at least on one level, while they may be instruments of violent conflict, or social disarticulation, on a higher level (national militaries are a good example), or of controlled conflict, or social decentralization, on a higher or lower level (competitive markets are a good example). Just as teams compete in leagues, corporations compete in a market economy, and nations compete in a global contest with emergent and precarious rules. Alliances form, symbiotic relationships, client-patron configurations, and fault lines among them, where animosities are more noticable than amistades. But all relationships, from the most intimate to the most belligerent, are characterized by some combination of convergent and divergent interests, and by some combination of cooperation and conflict.
Conflict can be energizing, a catalyst for innovation. Military conflict, for instance, has possibly been the single most robust historical catalyst for both technological and social organizational innovations. Economic competition is well known for its robustness. But it is social organization, the creation of coherence and cooperation, that reaps those benefits.
In terms of the pursuit of interests, these two social forces, centripetal and centrifugal, determine effectiveness, for in any social entity competing with others (e.g., nations with nations, corporations with corporations, political parties with political parties), too little organizational coherence dooms the social entity to impotence and defeat, while too much dooms both those within it to excessive subjugation to organizational or authoritarian will, and the organization itself to lethargy and ossification.
Members of organized groups can, intentionally or unintentionally, catalize either force, centripetal or centrifugal, either beneficially or detrimentally for the group itself, and either beneficially or detrimentally for other groups with which it interacts. For instance, some forms of solidarity are oppressive within and/or predatory without, while others are more liberating within and/or more amenable to partnerships without. For maximum benefit to group members, network ties need to bind those within the group into a coherent whole, avoid binding members of sub-groups within it so tightly that they in effect secede from the main group, and form and maintain bonds across group boundaries, if generally fewer and weaker than those within groups, then at least sufficient to create a basis for communication, coordination, and cooperation.
A group that becomes too “coherent,” with tight cognitive and social bonds within but too few such bonds without, can become predatory (as, for instance, Nazi Germany was), while sub-groups that become too rebellious and demanding undermine the ability of the overarching group to act effectively in its competition with other similar groups. (Economist Mancur Olsen wrote a book in the 1970’s or 80’s called The Rise and Decline of Nations, discussing the enervating effects of too much time and energy being diverted from economically productive activities to distributional struggles, and used it to provide an explanation of the paradoxical economic phenomenon of “stagflation”).
In fact, implicit and explicit alliances between internal dissenters and external belligerents are frequent in human history, even when they are ideological opposites (e.g., the Bolsheviks and the Germans during World War I, when the latter funded and assisted the former in order to weaken and distract Russia from within while they attacked Russia from without; or, in an example of greater ideological compatability, the French alliance with the American Colonies, in which the French assisted the colonies in order to weaken Great Britain from within while continuing to engage in sporadic military conflicts with Great Britain from without).
We see such an implicit alliance today in modern American partisan politics. On the left, there are those who are trying to disarticulate the Democratic Party, just as the far right is ascendent with a passionate social movement. By doing so, that faction with the Democratic Party is inadvertently contributing to the success of that far-right social movement, rather than to the reform of their own party that it is their intent to effectuate (Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: Why Our Tea Party Future Will Be The Left’s Fault).
One of the factors that will contribute to Democratic Party losses in Congress (and in state governorships and state legislatures and local governments) in the 2010 midtern elections is occasionally organized, somewhat coherent disenchantment with the pace and boldness of legislation pursued by our Democratic President and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. When the disenchantment rises to the level that they are declining to vote, then it is quite analogous to an implicit alliance with the far right in the latter’s take over of the country, contributing to the centrifugal forces of their own party at the very moment when highly passionate centripetal forces are mobilizing a sufficiently coherent far-right movement to effect a major shift in the distribution of political power.
While competing ideologies tend to explicitly emphasize either more coherence or more disarticulation, in reality, they are all jumbles of the two. The Tea Party is all about “liberty” and individualism, but its members are also more inclined to be highly nationalistic, moralistic, and militaristic. Progressives are all about using government to address social issues and invest in our collective welfare, but also emphasizes civil rights and multiculturalism.
The distinguishing traits between conpeting political parties do not actually involve a consistent commitment to either more social cohesion or less, but rather to more empathy or less. The right coheres around aggression and authoritarianism (in order to defeat others), while the left coheres around human welfare (in order to enrich all). The right disarticulates in order to possess and exclude, while the left disarticulates in order to enjoy and permit.
But, for both, discipline determines effectiveness, a discipline which either permits or does not permit internal discord, but which always contextualizes it in terms of internal consolidation. The United States began with a document that facilitated only discord, and not cooperation (The Articles of Confederation). It drafted a new one, that contextualized individual and states rights within the context of a strong federal government.
The ultimate goal is to create an optimal distribution of centralization and decentralization, neither too much nor too little of either, at any level of social organization. The future belongs to those, whether nations on the world state or political parties on the national stage, who are able to consolidate with enough discipline to compete with others who have done so. Factions that preach against compromise within the more liberal or progressive political parties are also, in effect, fighting to diminish the efficacy of their party.
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Too much of our public debate is over the conclusions we variously arrive at, and not enough is over how we arrive at them. Even some conclusions that more closely correspond to those derived from careful analysis are very often mere articles of faith to those who hold them, a habit which may sometimes embrace good conclusions, but unreliably if embraced blindly.
This is a political challenge that needs to be addressed first inwardly, and then outwardly. Few if any of us have fully transcended the folly of precipitous assumption, of harboring beliefs that snuck into our consciousness without enough scrutiny, and then of defending those beliefs as indisputable truths. We all can do better; we all have an on-going internal challenge to meet.
If we progressives can criticize Tea Partiers, or neocons, or racists, or xenophobes, or homophobes, or ultranationalists, or any number of people holding any number of views that some or all of us perceive to be contrary to the interests of humanity, then we had better learn how to criticize one another and ourselves as well, for the enemy is within far more than it is without. Human folly resides in each and every one of us, myself included, and we had better start spending as much time and effort recognizing it within ourselves as we do recognizing it within others.
The more members of any social group or organization get together to congratulate one another on being the ones who get what others don’t, the more they have failed to meet this challenge.
The real issue is how much we each contribute to moving the world in a direction that improves the human condition. This involves two challenges: 1) identifying and developing the best public policies, and 2) successfully implementing them. Too many people assure themselves that they have accomplished the first with too little justification, and, even when they’re right, the actions thus motivated do not necessarily contribute to the realization of those policies.
If someone claims to be attempting to implement a more equitable distribution of wealth by bombing mansions (to take an extreme example), most of us would agree that their attempts are unlikely to result in the desired ends. Neither the 9/11 terrorists nor Timothy McVeigh succeeded in undermining American (or federal) power, though both succeeded in imposing enormous human suffering on innocent victims to no benefit or purpose. The value of their goals is one thing (whether dubious, as in the preceding cases, or less so); the value of their means is another. It’s not just important what you’re attempting to do, but also how you’re attempting to do it.
The world is rarely comprised of the good-guys and bad-guys that so many so simplistically reduce it to. Moving in a positive direction involves recognizing the complexity and subtlety of reality, a complexity and subtlety that at least the two currently most salient political ideological “extremes” both claim doesn’t exist. And that’s the problem with their ideologies, not how progressive or conservative they are, but rather how open they are to doing a fully-informed systems analysis as the basis for political and policy decisions.
People frequently argue that there is a straight line from where we are to where they think we ought to be. Even when what they identify as where we ought to be is something I agree with (as is sometimes the case), I rarely agree that there is a straight line from here to there. More often, when dealing with even simple systems, let alone complex dynamical ones, you have to do things that are completely counterintuitive to move in the desired direction. And we all have to learn how to incorporate into our convictions realization of that possibility rather than latching onto premature certainties.
An example in a very simple system is driving from Denver to Utah. You drive north on I-25 to I-70, wanting to get onto I-70 westbound. The straight path is turn left, cross the I-25 median, drive the wrong way up an I-25 southbound on-ramp to go west in the I-70 eastbound lanes. It is a straightforward realization of the goal of going west on I-70, but one which is not only going to fail to take you to Utah, but will succeed only in taking you and several other people to the morgue.
You have to turn east to go west, turn right onto the off-ramp to get onto I-70 westbound, turn the opposite of your intended direction. And that is in a completely static system of intersecting lines and curves, not something nearly as complex as human society, in which such nonlinearity permeates almost everything. Examples abound: “You have to spend money to make money.” In some circumstances, lowering taxes can raise public revenues, and in other circumstances raising taxes can increase the wealth of those being taxed. Our world is laden with counterintuitive truths, most of which are not broadly known, and some of which are not yet known by anyone.
Adam Schrager (the pre-eminent Denver political broadcast journalist) once quoted his father as saying (to paraphrase) that people like to think in periods and exclamation points, while reality is characterized by commas and question marks. Those who qualify their statements are often called wishy-washy, though in truth they are often simply doing a better job of tracking the complex systems they are discussing.
Criticisms of politicians are often based on just this discrepency between public reductions and professional expertise. Competing factions of the public zealously demand from their elected officials the implementation of competing certainties. And while there are all too many elected officials who reflect the same mentalities, the best of them don’t, and so are criticized by almost everyone, and adored by few.
That means that we need a different kind of progressive discourse, one which does not presume the answers, but embraces the best processes for discovering them. Process is what gives us perhaps the most robust system for understanding the nature of the world and universe around us (the scientific method), and process is what gives us a very robust system for deciding legal disputes (rule of law, which is fundamentally procedural). And process is where the real progressive challenges are, not presumed answers, but improved and more disciplined methodologies for discovering and implementing them.
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At my official campaign kick-off party at Jefferson County Commissioner Kathy Hartman’s house a little over a year ago, I gave a speech which included the statement, ‘We are confronted by a fire-breathing dragon of blind ideology.” At the time, I was thinking more of right-wing ideology, though I’ve always known that all blind ideology, wherever it falls in the multidimensional space of political beliefs and values, diminishes our ability to govern ourselves wisely, divides us in aggressive and often arbitrary ways, and, in general, is counterproductive to human welfare. I’ve been reminded again recently of how ugly left-wing blind ideology can be, and am constantly reminded of how ugly right-wing blind ideology has become.
The two competing major spheres of political extremism, as usual, are defined more by their similarities than by their differences. It is very much akin to the similarities of Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, each deeply imbued with an absolute false certainty, the two certainties, though very similar, are perceived as mutually exclusive and incompatible, and as absolute truths ordained by god, as justifications for extremes of intolerance mobilized in their service. Political zealots, like religious zealots, are mirror images, arguing over whether they part one should part their hair on the left or the right (or whether, in Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput, they should crack their egg at the small end or the large end).
I recently watched with my seven-year-old daughter “How To Train Your Dragon,” an entertaining and insightful children’s movie that bears some resemblance to the issues raised by competing blind ideologies. The Vikings has an image of themselves, and of their purpose and character and bases for honor, that compelled them to slay dragons, which were constantly attacking their village and stealing their food. The dragons, we eventually discover, are compelled to do so by their overlord, their own authoritarian guiding principle. The clever but “shamefully” peaceful son of the Viking chief, in an attempt to kill his first dragon, instead, when the opportunity arose, saw that it was very much like him, afraid and vulnerable. And by showing it kindness, it quickly became his ally rather than his enemy.
It would be nice if this meant that the instant any reasonable person of goodwill (which Hiccup, the young protagonist of the movie, represents) shows a blind ideologue, whether on his own side or the enemy side, kindness and goodwill, they become instant allies and all is well. Occasionally, even in my own experience, this does indeed happen from time to time. But, more often, the entrenched ideology is not so easily dispelled, the assumption of hatreds, which catalyze reactions even among those who would have preferred a different kind of discourse, not so easily massaged into mutual accommodation. But the idea, though accelerated for the purposes of entertainment and providing a compact enough message, is really very true: We either smite our dragons, and, by doing so, cultivate their escalating enmity, or we tame our dragons, and by doing so cultivate a growing alliance with them.
The question of “how to tame our dragons,” by people of all ideological stripes who seek a more productive and mutually respectful dialogue, is the question we should be facing, first and foremost. It is more important than “how we get money out of politics” (though that is important too); more important than “how we win this election” (though that is important too); more important than just about all other issues and challenges we face.
How to tame our dragons? Both those within (ourselves, and our party), and those without. This is the long-term fundamental political challenge. Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish it?
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The issue of improved public discourse is, ultimately, the most important of all political issues, for it is in the final analysis the means by which reason and justice prevail over irrationality and bigotry, within each of us as well as throughout society. Discourse is challenged along many dimensions: civility, robustness, depth, subtlety, inclusiveness, rationality, factual accuracy, scope, precision, and quantity of information mobilized and assimilated. How kind is it? How productive is it? How well-informed is it? All of these are relevant dimensions to be constantly improved upon.
Discourse takes many forms. As I wrote recently, perhaps one of its most useful and probing forms is satire (Tragically Comical American Political Discourse). Humor can be revealing, as well as enjoyable, and is often most provocative of deep insights of all discursive forms. From Gulliver’s Travels (in which Jonathan Swift gave us the term “yahoos”) to Slaughterhouse Five and Catch 22, and beyond, satire often hits the nail right on the head, and leaves us with a smile on our faces while doing so. That’s as good as it gets.
But discourse fights against many dysfunctional structural inhibitors and disinhibitors. Those with the largest audiences are often either incentivized to censor themselves or to inflame uninformed passions. Those who depend on endearing the many and offending as few as possible must avoid taboo topics and controversial positions as much as they are able to, while those who depend on appealing to and cultivating a loyal following must do just the opposite, and pander to their target market (whether sincerely or insincerely), reinforcing and helping to insulate prejudices and unreasoning passions. This bifurcates the most loudly broadcast voices into those that are sterilized by political and strategic considerations, and those that are contaminated by demagoguery.
Cognitive Scientist George Lakoff argued in his book The Political Mind that we need a new Enlightenment, one which does not try to advance the cause of Reason simply by recourse to rational arguments, but one which embraces new insights into how our minds work, and seeks to advance the cause of Reason along the avenues carved out by those insights (recognizing the roles of frames and narratives, of primary and complex metaphors, and working with them in advocacy of Reason and Empathy). But the old Enlightenment still holds its lessons, some of which we should continue to learn from.
The Economist recently published a review of Philipp Blom’s book (to be released in March): “Wicked Company: Freethinkers and Friendship in Pre-Revolutionary Paris” (http://www.economist.com/node/17358838). The theme of the book is those Enlightenment philosophes who convened in salons to discuss all matters, some of whom refuted the existence of God, despite the dangers of doing so. It was not, overall, a more courageous time than our own, and it was not a time when more people were willing to question the existence of God (Biologist Richard Dawkins, for instance, is one of many famous modern atheists, while Blom critiques some famous philosophes for their own failures to publicly entertain non-religious perspectives). But it is instructive that those committed to reason were discussing over two hundred years ago a reasonable but historically persecuted point of view that is little more tolerated today than it was then.
For the record, I am not saying that I consider atheism to be the final word on the subject (I don’t; I consider the truth to be far subtler, and far less dismissive of the sublime aspects of reality that concepts of divinity address). I am saying that atheism’s continued absence from most spheres of public discourse, along with the absence of subtler but equally unconventional views (e.g., pantheism, Taoist/Buddhist non-anthropomorphic mysticism, etc.), and the continued hold over public discourse and public cognition that the generally reductionist, absolutist, and somewhat superstitious bias of insitutionalized religions continues to command, are evidence of a public discourse unhealthily constrained by cognitive, social, and institutional forces that hinder rather than facilitate a robust and comprehensive public dialogue.
In other words, we continue to put informal “Inquisitions” between ourselves and the pursuit of truth. Galileo, who was basically accurate on every topic he addressed, and certainly more accurate than the Church, was subjected to torture by the Inquisition until he recanted his assertion that Copernicus was right, and the Earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa. And my own career as a teacher ended when I faced my own Inquisition for having compared cultural to genetic diffusion and innovation in a World Geography class (though I remain convinced that it was one of the best lesson plans my students had ever been exposed to).
Religion isn’t the only topic around which informal barriers to discourse are thrown up, nor do such barriers need to be society-wide to contribute to the constriction and impoverishment of public discourse. Some current trends in political discourse are contributing to further constriction, though in a more balkanized manner. Those with strong ideological views listen to and talk with those of similar views, and avoid those of conflicting views, sometimes quite explicitly (one left-wing ideologue, in a post on SquareState, said he was interested in reasonable criticisms, defined as things unlike what I say, which are too incompatible with his worldview to count as “reasonable”). The “confirmation bias” already making cross-fertilization of differing views difficult, is reinforced by the ability now to get news from, and engage in discourse with, those who already agree with us, making it that much easier to filter out contradictory evidence and analysis. Instead of a society-wide constriction of public discourse, we have a balkanized constriction, in which occasional debates across ideological borders quickly degenerate into angry mutual denouncements and insults.
A sociologist named Mark Granovetter wrote a paper in the 1970’s or 1980’s called “The Strength of Weak Ties,” in which he discussed the value of those network connections that form bridges between social (and ideological) islands. He was writing in a different era (strange as it may seem that so much has changed in so short a time), but captured a truth that transcends the form that our social coalescences take. We still need “weak ties,” bridges across social, cultural, and ideological chasms. We still need some threads of authentic social interaction, authentic dialogue, among as well as within our ideological enclaves.
There should be no taboos, particularly no taboos regarding modes of thought that do not preach hatred or antagonism of any kind. There should be no privileging of fixed ideologies. We need to work as a people toward promoting a society-wide public discourse that does not presuppose the conclusions, neither on the left nor the right nor in any other location of our complex ideological space. We need to continue to cultivate a commitment to reason, to analysis, to reliance on carefully acquired and verifiable information. No political challenge is more important, no advance more beneficial to our long-term collective welfare than advances in our ability to participate in a robust and unconstrained public discourse, with reason, humility, and goodwill as our guiding lights.
