Faith and the future

A tiny taste of a new politics

I’ve been reflecting on the success of James Talarico, the winner of the Texas Democratic primary for the Senate, and Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, thinking about the similarities between the two. Both are young and project a sunny optimism about the future. Both are skilled communicators. And both are people of faith—notably so, in that faith is a key component of the way the public sees and thinks about them. This has not gone undiscussed out in the world, but I think the conversation is missing something important about what these figures could represent.

The novelty with the faith of these men, and especially Talarico, isn’t especially about the fact that they are non-Republicans engaged in a faith-forward sort of politics. While most religiously unaffiliated voters are Democrats, most Democrats are nonetheless religiously affiliated, and most Democratic leaders are happy to talk using the language of religion. Every recent Democratic president has been open or indeed passionate about their faith.

What’s more interesting is the way they integrate their faith into their politics and connect it with their sunny optimism. Their religion isn’t simply a part of their identity, or a thing from which they derive strength, and it isn’t primarily a way to make inroads with more conservative or family-values voters. Instead, they celebrate the positive core values of their religions, which directly inform their political aims and purposes. Both Christianity and Islam preach a duty to love and care for all others, to protect the vulnerable, and to welcome the stranger. Talarico and Mamdani embrace this and make it the basis of an agenda which is inclusive—they want to help you no matter what you believe—and which is focused on addressing real world hardships and building a better future.

This feels extremely refreshing. Far too often, Political Christianity and Political Islam have been focused on the judgment and repression of others, rather than on love and care. And America is now in the grips of a noxious Christian Nationalism, which has made itself the enabler of corruption, lawlessness, and violence committed against innocents. The events of the past year or so vividly demonstrate how much more closely Christian values align with Democratic priorities as opposed to Republican ones.

Talarico makes this point very well. In an interview with Stephen Colbert (which appeared on YouTube because CBS refused to air it), he says:

Well, for 50 years, the religious right, a political movement, that is the perfect description for it. They convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage. Two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about.

Jesus in Matthew:25 tells us exactly how you and I, and every one of our fellow believers, how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved. By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. Nothing about going to church, nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people.

The really intriguing thing to me, though, is the broader critique of society embedded in the politics of Talarico and Mamdani. It’s a critique which transcends the usual left-right fights and which could become an engine of American renewal. The critique begins with two propositions: it takes good people to build a good society, and a good society is one that strives to make the world better. And the judgment it asserts is that we’ve made a serious mistake in thinking that clever institutions could cover for self-interested behavior in the construction of a better world.

That might not seem like much of a foundation to build on, but a lot of powerful things flow from it. First, it provides a powerful framework through which to scrutinize society’s dysfunctional institutions, which is a welcome departure from politics as usual. Helpfully, the idea underlying the framework is powerful and true. It is important that society encourages its members to behave ethically and with regard to others’ well-being. It is really important that we hold the leaders of our political and civic and economic institutions to the highest of ethical standards.

We have spent decades arguing over the proper role of the government relative to the market, and meanwhile the performance of both has grown ever less satisfactory because of the ascendence of the norm that only suckers expose themselves to risk by standing on principle. Over the past few years, reality has grabbed hold of us and demanded that we recognize this, as leader after leader and institution after institution has chosen cowardice and deference in the face of authoritarian behavior, protecting themselves at the expense of others. A message of recognition that this is the core problem in our country would resonate with many Americans, in my view. I certainly hope it would, given how difficult it is to see a road back to a functional state, a healthy civic life, and an economy whose outputs are more obviously good for society as a whole without progress along this dimension.

An important aspect of this framework is that the critique of our institutions and their leaders naturally extends to all of society. Pursuing this extension may not seem like electoral dynamite. Obviously lots of people enjoy the permission society increasingly extends to engage in anti-social behavior, to spend hours dissolving brain cells online, to attentionmaxx rather than engage in the purposeful effort to be a better person. But I also think most of us actually hate this. It’s ugly and brutal and stupid. It’s nice when people feel at least some social pressure to be kind and responsible, to learn and to appreciate the acquisition of skill and knowledge, to help maintain the health of their community. Doing all this can be depressing when no one else seems interested, but it is incredibly personally rewarding when a critical mass of others is working with you. Asking more of ourselves as we ask more of our leaders makes intuitive sense, and I think many Americans will buy into the notion that working to flip us into a more pro-social equilibrium is a good thing to do. That’s nice, because again I think the road to American renewal is an almost impossible one if we can’t make this happen.

Finally, this critique can help us understand what economic growth is for in a post-material age. I don’t mean to imply that there is a post-material threshold that can be crossed and we’ve crossed it. Instead, there is a continuum, and American society has traveled far enough along it to be confronted by some of the serious challenges a post-material condition presents. What sorts of challenges? It seems to me that a socially destabilizing number of people struggle to find purpose in their economic lives. There is always more to buy, but much of what is there to be consumed is empty or unworthy, or exists purely as a token in an unwinnable status game. Meanwhile extraordinary wealth exists alongside real scarcity and need. As a result, I think it has become harder for people to see the point of continued economic growth, which wouldn’t be a bad thing except that it actually is quite important that economic growth continue.

If we can embrace the idea that it takes good people to build a good society, and a good society is one that strives to make the world better, then we can reframe economic growth in a way that doesn’t simply sound better but which also delivers better outcomes. The first thing to understand is that we should not want growth for its own sake. What is good about growth is that it expands our collective capacities: we come to know more and we are able to do more. This, in turn, allows us to alleviate suffering, to discover more things about the universe, and to spend more time being complete people.

As we become a more post-material society, we should be more willing to prioritize the construction of the kind of society we want. We can direct resources toward education, or public transportation, or the development of better health treatments and their broad accessibility, simply because those are things worth doing. We can see economic growth as the pursuit of greater productive capabilities which give us ever greater room to do good things for good things’ sake.

There is a complementarity here between shifting economic priorities and the call for strong public ethics described above. It is reasonable to expect that behavioral standards can improve across society, and it is reasonable to think that this improvement can improve the quality of our collective decision-making and spending. I’m not saying that incentives don’t matter or that there won’t always be people who abuse systems. But professionalism, a sense of duty, and public-spiritedness are real things that have a meaningful impact on the way institutions of all kinds perform. The better we are, the more we can do.

As we become better at demonstrating the tangible public benefits that flow from economic growth, we can make a stronger case that we have a personal obligation to prioritize the public good alongside our own narrow interests. We can all make some sacrifices to make society better for everyone. We need to be able to build a lot more housing in the places people really want to live; that is critical to our ability to make the world better. That will be easier to do if we can persuade people that it’s anti-social to be a NIMBY who holds up a housing development or an infrastructure project. It’s ok to expect people to pay more in tax. We can more easily make the case that it is a good thing to pay more if we actually use the money to make people’s lives better by delivering effective and affordable health care or making it easier to get around. We can draw a similar connection between a stronger sense of social responsibility, entrepreneurship and innovation, and economic growth. A private sector which takes seriously its responsibilities to do business ethically and with regard for the collective welfare is one which may be less bound by red tape. A society in which we all expect more of each other is one that can accept more experimentation and disruption.

Recognizing our common humanity and our duty to others also provides a more attractive basis for global openness. Immigrants are people. Their welfare matters. We should treat them like our neighbors. If we do, then we also expand our collective capacities, because more people in a good society means more people learning and discovering and contributing to growth. Similarly, we don’t need to rely solely on economic arguments to support open trade. People in other countries are also our neighbors, and we should be able to engage in mutual exchange with them on that basis. This doesn’t mean we have to be naive. In deciding how to engage in trade with another country whose government does not respect its own citizens’ humanity and autonomy, we need to make sure we are enhancing those citizens’ welfare and liberty. But here again, a more ethical and humane world is also one with a greater capacity to discover new things and alleviate suffering.

In sum, the sunny and optimistic pitch is a good one and a true one. We can all treat each other better, and we should push ourselves to do that. By doing that we can create a society which is richer and more dynamic and just better. As we become more comfortable seeing growth in that way, a post-material age comes to seem less bleak. Sure, it requires faith to see the possibilities here. I think that’s why a Talarico or a Mamdani can envision it, and I think that’s why they may be able to help the rest of us see it too. At least, I hope that they or others like them will.

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A post-script

Sixteen years ago I had just become a father. I was a new and inexperienced parent, but I was already worrying at an elite level. Driving was among the things I fretted over—my daughter’s driving, of a motor vehicle—despite the fact that she could not yet roll over. I was a hellion of a driver at 16, and so my brain decided to allocate some not-insignificant share of its thinking power to all the things that might happen if she drove that way or was on the road with others who did. It occurred to me, though, that technology might bail me out. I was much more online back then, so I tweeted this thought: that thanks to the eventual arrival of autonomous vehicles my daughter might not ever need to get a license.

A number of people read that tweet and expressed skepticism, and I ended up in a spirited back and forth with Tim Lee, a friend and tech journalist. (I highly recommend his Understanding AI newsletter.) Anyway, Tim ultimately offered me a bet. If on her 16th birthday my daughter could get in a vehicle with no driver in Washington, take a nap, and exit the vehicle in Philadelphia, then Tim would owe me $500; otherwise, I’d owe him. Well, you know how it turned out. I wasn’t too far off. There are a good number of cities where one can now hail a driverless vehicle for a crosstown ride. Intercity travel is still a ways off, but if we’d said 21 rather than 16 I’d feel good about my chances. Long-story short: Tim kindly invited me to join him on his podcast, and you can click over to hear us discussing lessons learned.

The views expressed here are mine alone.