My editors have been asking me to write about this since the new year, and i have been unable to, watching the movie was like reading our comments section, so much noise. Nobody is willing to make any kind of sacrifice or change, and have you seen that new Silverado electric pickup? It will save the world. Thanks for this.
Very good, thanks. Echoes my thoughts, here in a bit shorter form...
My one-word mental takeaway after watching was "masturbatory."
This requires assuming (I think this is largely correct) that only sympathetic audiences will watch it, and at least the more superficial among them will just feel good and self-satisfied about "getting the [obvious, bottom-level] joke."
But the top-level meta is glitzy, glamorous, media-savvy types delivering a product that satirizes glitzy, glamorous, media-savvy types, all of them believing that they're actually gonna "make a difference" rather than just doing more of the same.
Interesting that per your first para, the creators might not have been intending that meta-meta-self-meta, that they were actually blind to it? Seems kind of amazing to me, but not unbelievable...
So, multiply masturbatory (self-masturbatory? 😉), both for the creators and the (target) audience.
This leaves me feeling 1. Self-congratulatory for getting all that, 2. Sickened by both A. That (self-)performative yuckiness, and B. My own self-congratulatoriness in perceiving that.
Is selflessness really what's lacking? One of my touchstones is this quote from George Washington:
"A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that, almost, every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed."
From a Canadian perspective, it seems to me that the huge challenge facing the US is the weakness of its political parties. The Republican Party was unable to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the nominee in 2016, and has now surrendered to him. The Democratic Party, after failing to stop Trump from winning in 2016, was able to defeat him in 2020, but its popularity with the electorate is weak - there's intense quarrels within the party. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/joe-biden-agenda.html
The American political system spends a lot of its time in gridlock, leading to paralysis, drift, and frustration. And that frustration is what demagogues like Trump draw their power from.
My guess is that for American democracy to recover, two things need to happen: (1) the Democratic Party needs to figure out how to reconnect with the electorate, and (2) the Republican Party needs to escape from Trump's grasp.
I disagree with Washington on this and agree with Madison. Incentive structures matter, the shape of the political system matters, but it's all for naught in the absence of some minimal public ethics.
I'm curious about Madison's view of public ethics. Could you go into this a bit further? (Maybe as a future post rather than a comment.)
Certainly it's true that norms are important, and that Internet culture has weakened social norms. (Hans Morgenthau describes a norm as consisting of a rule *and* a sanction for violating that rule - the sanction is what explains why people follow norms. The sanction may be guilt, shame, or the law, corresponding to moral, social, and legal norms. On the Internet, sanctions for bad behavior are basically non-existent, and so social norms are very weak.)
I'm just skeptical that weaker norms are the root of the ongoing American political crisis. I'd describe it more like this:
- Donald Trump, a man with no sense of shame and no respect for existing institutions and laws, is now running the Republican Party, because
- the Republican Party is too weak to resist him, because
- there's an immense sense of frustration due to various disasters and political gridlock (the Iraq War, the housing bubble and financial crash, the grindingly slow post-2008 recovery).
Even in the healthiest democracy, you're going to have demagogues like Donald Trump floating around. But usually you can count on political parties to filter them out. Joseph Heath explains: http://induecourse.ca/thoughts-on-rob-ford-vol-3/
I'm also skeptical that climate policy is politically infeasible, with even Democratic voters unwilling to support non-trivial costs. That hasn't been the Canadian experience: The 2019 federal election was in large part fought over the federal carbon tax and dividend in Ontario, with the most important battlefield being commuters in the Greater Toronto area. Despite an anti-carbon-tax sticker on every gas pump in Ontario, the Conservative opposition lost vote share in Ontario, with a net change of zero seats in the GTA. (The epilogue: in the 2021 federal election, the Conservative leader did a surprise U-turn and announced a climate plan that included carbon pricing.) Which isn't to say that an explicit carbon tax is the best policy to follow - Mark Jaccard makes a strong argument that regulations can be nearly as economically efficient, and much more politically feasible.
And so, to make sure I understand completely, what are, in your opinion, the "a few small sacrifices" and "few basic steps" to safeguard the current way of life (or democracy) ?
Yes I agree that without public ethics you can't make a society work. However, I personally find hard to believe we collectively became _that much_ less ethical within the last 30 years. Because I think people are as willing as ever to make a sacrifice for, say, a neighbor, and even the ones that stormed the capitol probably saw it as the ethical thing to do, at that moment, given their belief and their loyalties.
I find it easier instead to believe that this is what happens sooner or later when both
1) reasoning about civil issues using the prefrontal cortex (so to speak), and
2) trying to dispassionately tease apart fact from fiction,
are not incentivized, promoted or even seen as a value. And indeed when the opposite behaviors are incentivized and pursued for profit or personal gain, without any deterrent whatsoever. When people like Tucker Carlson not only do not face legal consequences for their relentless destruction of social capital, but they get $6M/Year for doing so, to pick a specific example.
Once we as a society decide that thinking hard about how to solve problems and improve things are not a value, then mental laziness, unwillingness to think long-term and even being manipulated into partisan rage are among the collateral effects.
My editors have been asking me to write about this since the new year, and i have been unable to, watching the movie was like reading our comments section, so much noise. Nobody is willing to make any kind of sacrifice or change, and have you seen that new Silverado electric pickup? It will save the world. Thanks for this.
Very good, thanks. Echoes my thoughts, here in a bit shorter form...
My one-word mental takeaway after watching was "masturbatory."
This requires assuming (I think this is largely correct) that only sympathetic audiences will watch it, and at least the more superficial among them will just feel good and self-satisfied about "getting the [obvious, bottom-level] joke."
But the top-level meta is glitzy, glamorous, media-savvy types delivering a product that satirizes glitzy, glamorous, media-savvy types, all of them believing that they're actually gonna "make a difference" rather than just doing more of the same.
Interesting that per your first para, the creators might not have been intending that meta-meta-self-meta, that they were actually blind to it? Seems kind of amazing to me, but not unbelievable...
So, multiply masturbatory (self-masturbatory? 😉), both for the creators and the (target) audience.
This leaves me feeling 1. Self-congratulatory for getting all that, 2. Sickened by both A. That (self-)performative yuckiness, and B. My own self-congratulatoriness in perceiving that.
All told, I kinda wish I hadn't watched it.
Is selflessness really what's lacking? One of my touchstones is this quote from George Washington:
"A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that, almost, every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not of themselves sufficient to produce persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed."
From a Canadian perspective, it seems to me that the huge challenge facing the US is the weakness of its political parties. The Republican Party was unable to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the nominee in 2016, and has now surrendered to him. The Democratic Party, after failing to stop Trump from winning in 2016, was able to defeat him in 2020, but its popularity with the electorate is weak - there's intense quarrels within the party. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/joe-biden-agenda.html
The American political system spends a lot of its time in gridlock, leading to paralysis, drift, and frustration. And that frustration is what demagogues like Trump draw their power from.
My guess is that for American democracy to recover, two things need to happen: (1) the Democratic Party needs to figure out how to reconnect with the electorate, and (2) the Republican Party needs to escape from Trump's grasp.
I disagree with Washington on this and agree with Madison. Incentive structures matter, the shape of the political system matters, but it's all for naught in the absence of some minimal public ethics.
I'm curious about Madison's view of public ethics. Could you go into this a bit further? (Maybe as a future post rather than a comment.)
Certainly it's true that norms are important, and that Internet culture has weakened social norms. (Hans Morgenthau describes a norm as consisting of a rule *and* a sanction for violating that rule - the sanction is what explains why people follow norms. The sanction may be guilt, shame, or the law, corresponding to moral, social, and legal norms. On the Internet, sanctions for bad behavior are basically non-existent, and so social norms are very weak.)
I'm just skeptical that weaker norms are the root of the ongoing American political crisis. I'd describe it more like this:
- Donald Trump, a man with no sense of shame and no respect for existing institutions and laws, is now running the Republican Party, because
- the Republican Party is too weak to resist him, because
- there's an immense sense of frustration due to various disasters and political gridlock (the Iraq War, the housing bubble and financial crash, the grindingly slow post-2008 recovery).
Even in the healthiest democracy, you're going to have demagogues like Donald Trump floating around. But usually you can count on political parties to filter them out. Joseph Heath explains: http://induecourse.ca/thoughts-on-rob-ford-vol-3/
I'm also skeptical that climate policy is politically infeasible, with even Democratic voters unwilling to support non-trivial costs. That hasn't been the Canadian experience: The 2019 federal election was in large part fought over the federal carbon tax and dividend in Ontario, with the most important battlefield being commuters in the Greater Toronto area. Despite an anti-carbon-tax sticker on every gas pump in Ontario, the Conservative opposition lost vote share in Ontario, with a net change of zero seats in the GTA. (The epilogue: in the 2021 federal election, the Conservative leader did a surprise U-turn and announced a climate plan that included carbon pricing.) Which isn't to say that an explicit carbon tax is the best policy to follow - Mark Jaccard makes a strong argument that regulations can be nearly as economically efficient, and much more politically feasible.
And so, to make sure I understand completely, what are, in your opinion, the "a few small sacrifices" and "few basic steps" to safeguard the current way of life (or democracy) ?
Yes I agree that without public ethics you can't make a society work. However, I personally find hard to believe we collectively became _that much_ less ethical within the last 30 years. Because I think people are as willing as ever to make a sacrifice for, say, a neighbor, and even the ones that stormed the capitol probably saw it as the ethical thing to do, at that moment, given their belief and their loyalties.
I find it easier instead to believe that this is what happens sooner or later when both
1) reasoning about civil issues using the prefrontal cortex (so to speak), and
2) trying to dispassionately tease apart fact from fiction,
are not incentivized, promoted or even seen as a value. And indeed when the opposite behaviors are incentivized and pursued for profit or personal gain, without any deterrent whatsoever. When people like Tucker Carlson not only do not face legal consequences for their relentless destruction of social capital, but they get $6M/Year for doing so, to pick a specific example.
Once we as a society decide that thinking hard about how to solve problems and improve things are not a value, then mental laziness, unwillingness to think long-term and even being manipulated into partisan rage are among the collateral effects.