“Nevertheless, the blue tribe’s problems are much less severe than those confronting the red tribe.” Not surprising that an academic, I presume without children, would believe this. Sure Trump is a bad guy. We know that. He is a reflection of the average red tribesperson in some distorted, demented way required by presidential politics. This is disappointing to realize, but I say the blue tribe has much bigger problems than the red tribe. I encourage Dan to tour around America with me. Let’s take a drive through red counties. Get out of your ivory tower, off your computer and meet the red tribe in person. I have lived here for 48 years in blue and red. The blue tribe suffers from and causes more mental illness than the red, especially in children. Or have I misunderstood Dan’s statements? I admit to not having read his very lengthy essay this time. I skimmed. Dan - can you please make your posts more concise and stop using so much philosophical jargon? I know you have good stuff to say, but try upping your status among the red tribe. Break it down for us bro.
I read his comment without giving thought to the point you make so as I started reading your comment, I wanted to disagree but you reminded of some issues and that prompted me to think of others not directly related. There is no right answer but I think one has as much problems as the other at the moment.
It's worth noting that if Trump loses, internal red tribe problem will almost certainly decrease. I'm not going to guess about after a Trump presidency. As for blue, I don't see a chance for much improvement there unless/until they are totally thumped in an election which I don't see happening as long as Trump is around. It would have to be a much bigger thumping than 2016.
Concerns with red:
1 We could argue whether MSM or Fox/WSJ is worse but the left is much less dependent on alternative sources that on both sides are mostly worse to much worse.
2 It's pretty clear those on the left get more mental health treatment. It's almost as clear they have more issues. It's less certain whether blue tribe causes this or people with such conditions are attracted to the blue side. And then there's red states having more suicides, not that this alone determines anything.
I don’t pretend to understand the suicide of the red. Let’s assume that it’s just the natural rate of suicide for humans in the red condition, just as a beam of a certain material has a natural frequency in a certain environment i.e, gravity and fluid. Suicide is more natural than psychological therapy in terms of history and evolution. The idea that an animal (in this case a human animal) is going to pay a lot of money to talk things through with a psychologist is a very modern activity. Suicide on the other hand is ancient— kind of expected. What is the outcome of therapy? Does it make things better? Does it make things worse? It depends. Transitioning from one gender to another probably doesn’t help. Do anti-depressants help? Does alcohol help? Probably not, but there’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand. I can say for myself what works and what doesn’t, but I really don’t have a good feel for what works for other people. What I can say is that suicide is final. There’s no mental health issue after the suicide. I’ll start reading Twenge and Haidt and get back to you on this, but my gut says that the blue is worse off when it comes to mental health. The gender thing is a sign they are very sick. But then again how do we compare this to the high suicide on the red side. I should double check that red actually has a higher suicide rate. Do we know that for sure?
Death by bacterial infection is natural. Does that make it in any way preferable to modern anti-biotics? Does over-use mean we shouldn't use them at all?
I'd bet therapy helps far more people than it harms though the percent it makes little or no difference could be rather high. Drugs are more of a mixed bag.
There is a trade-off with antibiotics. Overuse and abuse it bad; proper use is good. Natural is not necessarily better than non-natural. Current therapy probably helps when comparing with no therapy, but compared with something better than therapy, then therapy is less good. I’m feeling lazy right now, so you’ll have to put up with my circular arguments. Sorry.
“We could argue whether MSM or Fox/WSJ is worse but the left is much less dependent on alternative sources that on both sides are mostly worse to much worse.“ Yeah, but why does this matter? It reminds me of the Revolutionary War. The British Army using mainstream tactics and the Americans using a mix of mainstream and guerrilla warfare. The guerrilla warfare worked better. Thus alternative media might work better too. Might be less fragile.
Define worse. I’m agnostic on this one. We really can’t measure and decide on better or worse in general. Too many subjective dependent variables. Let’s talk about something we can figure out.
“It's worth noting that if Trump loses, internal red tribe problem will almost certainly decrease. I'm not going to guess about after a Trump presidency. As for blue, I don't see a chance for much improvement there unless/until they are totally thumped in an election which I don't see happening as long as Trump is around. It would have to be a much bigger thumping than 2016.” This is good, but don’t you think losing is always cleansing. Why would a blue loss not lead to much improvement in blue?
Probably some but even a moderate loss probably wouldn't reverse the trend. I think the only hope of that is a big loss. As a comparison, note that the red loss in 2018 and Trump's in 2020 didn't really change anything on that side.
I think we can put this under the umbrella question of whether things are getting better or worse overall. Things are getting better right? More freedom, more tolerance, less violence, less disease, less poverty, more knowledge, more wealth, more leisure time, better culture, more good questions and comments from Stu.
There are always local exceptions but I agree things have been getting better. It's worth noting we can't be certain that will continue. There are always chances of catastrophe.
We don't always agree but I'd like to think we both have good comments and questions.
Re: "in order to achieve better social epistemology, we need to fix the systems that determine who becomes influential."
1) There is no Archimedean point at which truth-seekers might uplift the systems. Truth-seekers lack sufficient influence to change the systems.
2) The principle of charity in interpretation has sub-principles:
Clarify whether the disagreement centers on (a) facts, (b) mechanisms, or (c) preferences. For example, people might share a desire to reduce poverty (preferences), and even agree about patterns of poverty (facts), but disagree about whether a major increase in the Minimum Wage would reduce poverty (mechanism). In any case, pinpoint the disagreement.
Then, for the moment, assume that the person who holds a contrary view is rational. She is clear-eyed about her motivations. She takes reasonable care to get the facts straight and to understand mechanisms — or, alternatively, she humbly and carefully channels deference. She decides what to believe by deciding — thoughtfully, wisely? — whom to believe.
Finally, if these sub-principles of the principle of charity in interpretation happen to indicate that the person's beliefs (about facts or mechanisms) are irrational, or that her preferences are inconsistent, then proceed to establish the *specific* irrationality. Wishful thinking (believing what one wishes to be true)? Counter-wishful thinking (believing what one fears to be true)? Innumeracy? Conformity? Social desirability bias (believing what *sounds* good)? Etc etc etc. Precision in any diagnosis of irrationality is potentially a first step towards insight and humility.
3) At the risk of being uncharitable: The grand conversation or debate (Huemer, Kling, Williams, etc) about polarization via social epistemology focusses on careful analysis of belief-formation but reduces motivations to (unconscious?) tribal status-seeking. Although evolutionary psychology sheds fresh light on motivations and social dynamics, there is still room and need for more fine-grained analysis of motivations. We still need to build on the moralists: Montaigne, Machiavelli, Pascal, La Rochefoucault, Smith, etc.
It's worth emphasizing that only (a) facts and (b) mechanisms are within the domain of "truth-seeking".
(c) preferences is where all the action is, and as best I can tell it has little to do with facts and everything to do with polarization.
Would you rather be ruled by those with average command of facts and a zealous preference for your well-being, or by those with an exquisite command of facts and utter disdain for you and those like you?
The thought of someone with a zealous preference for my well-being makes me nervous! :) But, yes, you're right. If nothing else, pinpointing the locus of disagreement (facts, mechanisms, or preferences) has the virtue of clarity.
It's worth noting that there is no precise line between facts and preferences. To point, I'm certain there is much regarding patterns of poverty we don't agree on.
This seems wrong. Especially if you think of facts as "what doesn't change whether you like it or not". I don't like that I'm getting old but every day passes whether I like it or not.
A blurry line can still have many things clearly on one side or the other. I didn't say there were no facts, only that for many bits of information is it hard to agree or to even know for certain which they are. And this tends to be most common for facts and preferences related to controversial issues. Nobody is likely to dispute that days are passing and you are getting older.
Ah, so you are saying not that ACTUAL facts can differ but the PERCEPTIONS and KNOWLEDGE of facts can?
And that often the differing perceptions are caused by differing preferences?
And perhaps that different statements of "fact" are caused by different definitions of facts? So the statement, "life is getting better/worse in America" depends a lot on what you consider to be better and worse and how you weight different facets of life.
Sure the actual facts aren't blurry. Our knowledge of them is.
That limited knowledge also means sometimes it's hard to tell if positions on issues are fact based or preferences. A non- political example is the certainty that peptic ulcers aren't bacterial, which was a fact until it wasn't. Lots of probabilities and risks related to CO2 and climate are treated as fact or overly discounted because they aren't fact, depending on the bias of the person.
I'm not going to waste my time ploughing through another one of DW's soporific essays. The conclusion that the blue tribe's problems are much less severe than those confronting the red tribe is preposterous. It is the blue tribe that is pushing the nonsense that biological males can become females, and vice versa, and based on this idea is allowing one of the most heinous medical experiments in history to be perpetrated on innocent children, and yet Williams has the nerve to say that it is the Republican Party and conservative media that have become almost completely unmoored from reality. As far as I can tell, Williams is basing his conclusion primarily on the controversy over claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating dogs and cats, which Williams labels 'racist' as well as evidence-free and preposterous. But you have to be living under a rock all your life, or perched at some ivory tower like Williams is, to argue that such a claim is baseless. It is common knowledge that different cultures have different ideas about what animals are acceptable to eat versus unacceptable and disgusting. I remember my mother telling me that a popular Chinese restaurant in the SF Bay Area had been shut down after a food inspection discovered cat carcasses hanging in the freezer, and the excuse given by the restaurant was that the cat carcasses were for the restaurant's staff, rather than the chicken salad or cashew chicken served to customers. According to Williams, that story from my childhood is inherently racist. For most Americans, it is considered perfectly acceptable to eat pork, shellfish and cheeseburgers, but for religious Jews living in America, eating pork, shellfish and cheeseburgers is considered disgusting and is prohibited. The 'eating our pets' (or beheading and eating ducks from local parks) story is a metaphor for the problems associated with 'open borders' and mass immigration being foisted by establishment elites on the citizens of Western countries. In the UK, where Williams is based, mass immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and the '3rd world' is associated with knife attacks on citizens and young girls attending a Taylor Swift dance lesson, and Pakistani grooming gangs raping native British girls. Williams has the nerve to turn a blind eye to these realities. What an ass.
"Williams has the nerve to say that it is the Republican Party and conservative media that have become almost completely unmoored from reality."
I generally agree with you but it's worth noting Williams statement is wrong by only one word, "unmoored from HIS reality." He sees some or all of what you list as not being problems.
Williams writes: "The Republican Party and conservative media today have become almost fully unmoored from reality." Really? Half the country, including many brilliant intellectuals and high achievers, "almost fully unmoored from reality?" In support of this, he cites a partisan Harris -Trump debate "fact-check"....from CNN. Williams seems unaware of the "take Trump seriously, but not literally" idea. Trump exaggerates greatly and often quite humorously for emphasis, an effective rhetorical technique. His opponents, thinking themselves in exclusive possession of morality, hate it, and salve their wounds with righteous indignation. Seeing as they lie all the time themselves due to commitment to "progressive" myths (see the eponymous new Huemer book), and their lies are in contrast often seriously consequential ("if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"), their fussing is amusing.
What would Adam Smith say about the blue and red tribes? I won’t do him justice but here’s my best in 10 minutes typing on my iPhone while walking. Let us imagine him as a role model, providing a constructive perspective on this topic. “An impartial spectator would be grateful for the blue tribe and the red tribe. Without both we would be much less; not just economically, but scientifically, culturally and politically. Just as we should be grateful for the less intelligent among us, we should see the benefits of these two opposing tribes. Our opposing tribe serves us in helpful ways. They do work for us that we find difficult and would rather they do. For the opposing tribe is the enemy of my tribe. That limits the power of my tribe and we all naturally fear our own tribe.”
Re: intellectual charity, I think you have to be able to hold multiple explanations for behavior/belief in your mind and assign them a probability range based on what you learn about a person over time. E.g. if you meet an earnest volunteer for the Sanders campaign who explains how socialism is an unalloyed good, I'd say there's a 90% chance this is a monkey-brained feeling and a 10% chance that it's a position the person has given serious rational thought to. Over the course of the argument that probability matrix might shift depending on the kind of arguments they use, their openness to counterexamples, etc.
I have complained to people in the past when they use acronyms that many readers will not recognize. Arnold, I have to complain about your "Ashamnu, Bagadnu, etc."
A lot of readers will not know that this is the beginning of a prayer of confession repeated at Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). It includes a confession of wrong-doing for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Ashamnu roughly translates as, "We have been guilty." Bagadnu, "We have betrayed." And so on.
Or in the words of the lawyer who drastically re-interpreted many of the Jewish precedents (but not this one!), "We are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God."
Are these bloggers ever going to run out of novel ways to say the obvious - "people are stupid" - while trying vainly to exempt their own relatives and pals?
But is Dan under pressure to conform to the blue tribe which surrounds him at work? His livelihood depends on funding from the blue tribe. What would he be saying if his income were purely from Substack subscribers? I challenge Dan to pursue a balanced income portfolio. A 50/50 mix of red and blue subscribers or something much less blue. How would this change Dan’s beliefs, words and actions?
AK is not funded by a public university. Dan is. AK is a wealthy, retired man. Dan’s job is in DEI central. I’m saying that Dan is probably biased by his blue tribe universally funding source. Were Dan to make a risky leap,, quit his philosophy job at public university and go full Rob Henderson, with his income being from Substack, Boston Globe, etc., he (Dan) might be less inclined to favor the blue tribe.
And Dan isn’t that biased. He only said one little biased thing, but I’m still giving him a hard time because I’d prefer he leave academia and go the way of Rob Henderson with his funding source.
Yes, but notice that I say 50/50 or something much less blue. I realize 50/50 isn’t easy or even desirable, but right now his funding is about as blue as it gets—public university. So if he were to setup a gig like Henderson he might be 30/70 or 40/60. It might change from decade to decade as he ages.
Republicans, now under Trump but he’s not the only one, are better about many things, including Rule of Law. A key pillar of “Liberalism”, that Democrats so often ignore. Not just for Every Illegal Alien not deported, but also in failure to prosecute clear violations of laws, like H. Biden & HR Clinton.
Williams’ own Trump hating bias weakens most of his arguments. When I read his generalities, I think of specific Dem violations, but Williams far more often brings up weaker Rep or Trump violations.
All “Lies or exaggerations” — itself a biased exaggeration. With no attempt at comparing it to Harris public words.
On illegal immigration, inflation, and the economy, Republicans are far better moored in reality than Dems. No blue or red tribes are identified on ballots—it’s a mostly nice literary metaphor that literally is not true. But he and his woke truth seekers would claim license because of usage, which I agree with, but point out the failure of a true woke definition of “woman”, which red pilled folk would say is XX folk who identify as women. Trump takes far more exaggerated license than I like, but claiming he’s unmoored from reality seems … unreal. And unserious, as well as inconsistently literal.
I haven't read all the comments but it seems like everyone jumped right past Friedmans intellectual charity. I would say each sides preferences come from a reasonable starting point but a subset take the reasonable to extremes that aren't. If one looks hard enough, they can find the good in each side. It's just covered by layers of not so good.
I subscribe to another SubStack called Wokal Distance which has been doing a whole series on how 'Woke' argumentation basically is nothing more than what Dan Williams decries.
Friedman backed down from calling Hitler "evil" at a student seminar dinner thing of his I attended back in 2009. Of course it was trendy then for intellectuals to sneer at that concept, as it was associated with Dubya and his Axis of Evil. But it did provide a glimpse into Friedman's thinking, which lines up with what's being written here.
I still lean Friedman in this debate, as the highlighting of bias, motivated reasoning and all the rest would seem to prove too much. If these are basic features of humanity, they apply to everyone. The charge of bias and motivation is itself motivated, is it not? If we're thinking about Applied Judgementalism of the Williams sort, it doesn't serve anyone actually engaged in a debate with some discrete individual(s), just because we know wayward motivated reasoning is happening in the aggregate. You're still better served by being charitable wrt political ideas to the degree you'd like them to return the favor.
Friedman was likewise very keen on institutional bias, as his whole "are experts expert?" angle shows. But I suppose because he doesn't harp on *how* the bias works out in left and right terms - just that there's necessarily bias due to homophily or cartelized decision-making processes - it still feels non-judgmental and shrinking back from a fight.
The Williams article is incoherent because it conflates campaign trail puffery with serious truth claims. Politicians cannot be held accountable for false statements made on campaign. A politician can say basically anything and it doesn't matter apart from the consequences to their credibility, which are usually minimal. Trying to cross-examine puffery as if it were rational argument is willfully obtuse, but it became a whole Trump-era genre of tedious journalism.
I don't think it's legally correct, either, to consider loose and informal affinity groups like left/right wing affinity groups as if they represent actual political power bases. Actual political power bases are Robert-Caro-Robert-Moses power bases. They are small. They are the ones with the money, the knowledge, and the ability to translate those mediums into action on the ground. Those power entities can also suffer from epistemological error, but because of competitive selection effects, those errors are kept within bounds. A Shell Oil lobbyist is not going to tell his boss not to worry because Q is going to make sure that they can't install Brandon into office, and if he does, he'll be fired.
Williams seems to put a lot of stock in the press. The problem with the press is that, in the language of the law of evidence, most of what it does is produce little packages of hearsay within hearsay sweetened with narrative. Journalists take particularly unreliable communications and then they make those communications even less reliable by selecting, sorting, and distorting the underlying reality. Any belief system based on this unrelenting torrent of shoddy information is going to diverge from reality; rather, it's more like literary criticism than it is empiricism because the underlying body of "facts" is just a lot of details about fictional stories.
The Friedman article is better and more readable than the Williams article because it distinguishes between truth claims and truth among other things. Perhaps the larger issue with trying to run a society on rationalistic grounds is that the human animal prefers following decisive leaders rather than ambiguous leaders. People prefer stories to incomprehensible torrents of unsorted facts.
What we get from our institutions is that they wrap a lot of highly contingent, inaccurate, and incomplete pieces of knowledge with a wrapper of ultra-confidence, sometimes literally so in the form of a product such as something like Vioxx. In a competitive marketplace, you are going to buy Vioxx or Thalidomide and not an alternative universe Accurately-Marketed-Vioxx if both types of package are on the market. It becomes the official Truth that Vioxx is good for you and to ask your doctor now for more Vioxx. Then, more information arrives, and this conclusion must be revised. Now, Vioxx will kill you, and it becomes the Official Truth. Both the wholesale doctor and the retail consumer do not have the time and resources to conduct a full inquiry into the accuracy of the official truth claims, but both must make decisions based on incomplete information.
"Politicians cannot be held accountable for false statements made on campaign."
Well, when can they be held accountable? Aren't they pretty much always "on campaign", trying to look good to voters, trying to get voters to think well of their party and those it favors?
The mechanism is supposed to just be votes. Lies by politicians are protected speech under the First Amendment (See US v. Alvarez https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-alvarez). Very funny, by the way, to read this opinion in 2024, given the 180 degree turn by the left on the 1A.
So they should be held accountable for false statements made the day after the election but not for anything said the day before? That does not seem like a good idea to me.
And, practically, how far before the election do they get freebies on their lies? The freebies only start after they are nominated? But what if they are running in a primary? Then how far before the primary?
Perhaps we mean different things by "held accountable". I mean that people should feel free to criticize them, think poorly of them, and say bad things about them whenever they make false statements. But I think they should generally not have any legal liability. Maybe a very specific untruth that could really mess someone up, something like, "I saw X murder Y" when the speaker was nowhere near and people watched in real time as Z murdered Y.
Yes I mean criminal or civil liability. Right now the law is that politicians in their public statements and in their private statements about political issues say anything to anybody about anything including your example.
For non campaign statements, it’s an open question. Trump lost his defamation case at trial against Carroll, but it’s on appeal mostly on issues not directly related to this one. But that case also was not over strictly political statements such as promising to eliminate taxes on tips. It’s more about ordinary defamation, but in a politically charged context.
Concerning systems of determining who has influence, and how they might be fixed, we might start by considering four points: (1) the recurring and inevitable cycle of the rise of oligarchic governance; (2) the insecurity of the oligarchic class and their need for control of symbols; (3) alternatives to oligarchy; and, (4) patriotism as legitimating process for oligarchic influence.
Robert Michels sets out the dynamics of the oligarchic nature of democratic systems in his 1911 classic Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies, and it should seem perfectly familiar to William’s regular readers:
"The incompetence of the masses is almost universal throughout the domains of political life, and this constitutes the most solid foundation of the power of the leaders. The incompetence furnishes the leaders with a practical and to some extent with a moral justification. Since the rank and file are incapable of looking after their own interests, it is necessary that they should have experts to attend to their affairs."
"Thus the submission of the masses to the will of a few individuals comes to be considered one of the highest of democratic virtues. “To those who are called to lead us, we promise loyalty and obedience, and we say to them: Men who have been honored as the people's choice, show us the way, we will follow you.” It is such utterances as this which reveal to us the true nature of the modern party. In a party, and above all in a fighting political party, democracy is not for home consumption, but is rather an article made for export."
"the representatives of the people have no sooner been raised to power than they set to work to consolidate and reinforce their influence. They continue unceasingly to surround their positions by new lines of defense, until they have succeeded in emancipating themselves completely from popular control. All power thus proceeds in a natural cycle: issuing from the people, it ends by raising itself above the people."
“"This special competence, this expert knowledge, which the leader acquires in matters inaccessible, or almost inaccessible, to the mass, gives him a security of tenure which conflicts with the essential principles of democracy."
To Williams credit, he seems to see this conflict and seeks to resolve it, primarily by tossing out the essential principles of democracy in favor of the security of the tenure of the expert few, however, despite, or perhaps because of, all his angst, he doesn’t appear to have gotten beyond “four legs good, two legs better” in terms of systems analyses.
Herbert Lasswell’s 1936 book Politics: Who Gets What, When, How offers insight into the insecurity of the ensconced expert class and their response to challenges and conflict. Lasswell observes that:
"A well-established ideology perpetuates itself with little planned propaganda by those whom it benefits most. When thought is taken about ways and means of sowing conviction, conviction has already languished, the basic outlook of society has decayed, or a new, triumphant outlook has not yet gripped the automatic loyalties of old and young. Happy indeed is that nation that has no thought of itself; or happy at least are the few who procure the principal benefits of universal acquiescence."
"The world is divided among those who are influential on the basis of shared symbols of loyalty to nation, class, occupation, person. Some rise to eminence in the name of militant or conciliatory methods; in the name of demands for a vast gamut of policies; in the name of optimistic visions of the future. Quite different personality types may be united in loyalty to nation or class, method, policy, outlook. Thus attitude groups cut across personality classifications, even as they cut across skill or class. At any given time the members of a skill or class group may not have risen to full skill or class consciousness. Although an objective observer may be able to consider the meaning of events for their relative success or failure, the members of the skill or class group may talk the language of patriotism, and have no common symbol of class or skill."
“One aspect of influence is the relative sharing of values. Different results can be obtained by using different values. An elite of deference is not necessarily an elite of safety. More values may be added to the present list of three (deference, safety, income). Whatever the list, the items may be differently combined, thus reaching different results to correspond to varying judgments of the elite. New results may be obtained by defining influence in other terms than relative share of values. The term may be used to indicate a judgment of how values might be influenced if there were conflicts about them. Thus financial capitalists may be judged to be stronger or weaker than industrial capitalists in case of a hypothetical collision. From analysis, then, we can expect no static certainty. It is a constant process of re-examination which brings new aspects of the world into the focus of critical attention. The unifying frame of reference for the special student of politics is the rich and variable meaning of ‘influence and the influential,’ ‘power and the powerful.’”
Lasswell further explains that new symbols are the principal tool of the counter-elite in attempting to redirect loyalty and acquiescence from the old to the new regime. This occurs in nominally democratic as well as any other system. Hence, the establishment’s preoccupation with control of language, symbols, propaganda, and suppression of counter-elites. Yet, the power that must be wielded to achieve these goals, simultaneously weakens acquiescence and the perceived legitimacy of the establishment which increases their insecurity and angst further driving them to ever more radical measures of control, ie., just tossing out democracy and replacing it with “our democracy.”
Other have contemplated how to escape this all consuming battle to control influence. Ivan Illich’s 1973 book Tools for Conviviality lays out a counter-technocratic system in which individuals have greater influence over their lives and relationships: “I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members”
“...to the degree that a man masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning, to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image.”
Personally, I sense a ring of truth in this, and one sees all sorts of activities that appear to embody this drive for conviviality as a reflection of people exercising autonomy in deciding to what influences they will submit.
At a larger scale, conviviality might be what makes a system of influence sustainable. Considering the dyad of patriotism versus nationalism as developed in a 1995 piece “For love of country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism” by Maurizio Viroli, the precis for which summarizes:
“Over the centuries, the language of patriotism has been used to strengthen or invoke a generous and caring love of the political institutions and the way of life that sustain the common liberty of a people, whereas the language of nationalism was forged in late 18th century Europe to defend or reinforce the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic oneness, and homogeneity of a people
He brings to the surface the existence of an intellectual tradition in modern and early modern political thought which has been using the language of patriotism as a language of liberty and civic commitment and argues that it is to the intellectual tradition of republican patriotism that we ought to refer to find a powerful antidote to nationalism and a valuable source of civic responsibility for multicultural democratic societies.” However, commanding a “caring love of political institutions” from the masses you hold in contempt hardly seems plausible. Conviviality might be better found in a liberty that allows participation and offers some measure of respect to the governed. The republics of old were generally small in size, human interdependence was necessary for survival, and not a boutique choice and liberty entailed much more common good pragmatism than non-domination license. Even in Rome, pragmatic governance via subsidiarity meant the smallest cities were allowed freedom of internal cooperation.
If you want to fix systems of influence, then, I would suggest you consider how decentralization, disaggregation, and subsidiarity might create the conditions of conviviality and with it a sustainable form of patriotism.
“Nevertheless, the blue tribe’s problems are much less severe than those confronting the red tribe.” Not surprising that an academic, I presume without children, would believe this. Sure Trump is a bad guy. We know that. He is a reflection of the average red tribesperson in some distorted, demented way required by presidential politics. This is disappointing to realize, but I say the blue tribe has much bigger problems than the red tribe. I encourage Dan to tour around America with me. Let’s take a drive through red counties. Get out of your ivory tower, off your computer and meet the red tribe in person. I have lived here for 48 years in blue and red. The blue tribe suffers from and causes more mental illness than the red, especially in children. Or have I misunderstood Dan’s statements? I admit to not having read his very lengthy essay this time. I skimmed. Dan - can you please make your posts more concise and stop using so much philosophical jargon? I know you have good stuff to say, but try upping your status among the red tribe. Break it down for us bro.
I read his comment without giving thought to the point you make so as I started reading your comment, I wanted to disagree but you reminded of some issues and that prompted me to think of others not directly related. There is no right answer but I think one has as much problems as the other at the moment.
It's worth noting that if Trump loses, internal red tribe problem will almost certainly decrease. I'm not going to guess about after a Trump presidency. As for blue, I don't see a chance for much improvement there unless/until they are totally thumped in an election which I don't see happening as long as Trump is around. It would have to be a much bigger thumping than 2016.
Concerns with red:
1 We could argue whether MSM or Fox/WSJ is worse but the left is much less dependent on alternative sources that on both sides are mostly worse to much worse.
2 It's pretty clear those on the left get more mental health treatment. It's almost as clear they have more issues. It's less certain whether blue tribe causes this or people with such conditions are attracted to the blue side. And then there's red states having more suicides, not that this alone determines anything.
I don’t pretend to understand the suicide of the red. Let’s assume that it’s just the natural rate of suicide for humans in the red condition, just as a beam of a certain material has a natural frequency in a certain environment i.e, gravity and fluid. Suicide is more natural than psychological therapy in terms of history and evolution. The idea that an animal (in this case a human animal) is going to pay a lot of money to talk things through with a psychologist is a very modern activity. Suicide on the other hand is ancient— kind of expected. What is the outcome of therapy? Does it make things better? Does it make things worse? It depends. Transitioning from one gender to another probably doesn’t help. Do anti-depressants help? Does alcohol help? Probably not, but there’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand. I can say for myself what works and what doesn’t, but I really don’t have a good feel for what works for other people. What I can say is that suicide is final. There’s no mental health issue after the suicide. I’ll start reading Twenge and Haidt and get back to you on this, but my gut says that the blue is worse off when it comes to mental health. The gender thing is a sign they are very sick. But then again how do we compare this to the high suicide on the red side. I should double check that red actually has a higher suicide rate. Do we know that for sure?
Death by bacterial infection is natural. Does that make it in any way preferable to modern anti-biotics? Does over-use mean we shouldn't use them at all?
I'd bet therapy helps far more people than it harms though the percent it makes little or no difference could be rather high. Drugs are more of a mixed bag.
There is a trade-off with antibiotics. Overuse and abuse it bad; proper use is good. Natural is not necessarily better than non-natural. Current therapy probably helps when comparing with no therapy, but compared with something better than therapy, then therapy is less good. I’m feeling lazy right now, so you’ll have to put up with my circular arguments. Sorry.
“We could argue whether MSM or Fox/WSJ is worse but the left is much less dependent on alternative sources that on both sides are mostly worse to much worse.“ Yeah, but why does this matter? It reminds me of the Revolutionary War. The British Army using mainstream tactics and the Americans using a mix of mainstream and guerrilla warfare. The guerrilla warfare worked better. Thus alternative media might work better too. Might be less fragile.
That is possible and in some cases true but in my opinion most of it is far worse than the big national media sources.
Define worse. I’m agnostic on this one. We really can’t measure and decide on better or worse in general. Too many subjective dependent variables. Let’s talk about something we can figure out.
“It's worth noting that if Trump loses, internal red tribe problem will almost certainly decrease. I'm not going to guess about after a Trump presidency. As for blue, I don't see a chance for much improvement there unless/until they are totally thumped in an election which I don't see happening as long as Trump is around. It would have to be a much bigger thumping than 2016.” This is good, but don’t you think losing is always cleansing. Why would a blue loss not lead to much improvement in blue?
Probably some but even a moderate loss probably wouldn't reverse the trend. I think the only hope of that is a big loss. As a comparison, note that the red loss in 2018 and Trump's in 2020 didn't really change anything on that side.
I think we can put this under the umbrella question of whether things are getting better or worse overall. Things are getting better right? More freedom, more tolerance, less violence, less disease, less poverty, more knowledge, more wealth, more leisure time, better culture, more good questions and comments from Stu.
There are always local exceptions but I agree things have been getting better. It's worth noting we can't be certain that will continue. There are always chances of catastrophe.
We don't always agree but I'd like to think we both have good comments and questions.
Re: "in order to achieve better social epistemology, we need to fix the systems that determine who becomes influential."
1) There is no Archimedean point at which truth-seekers might uplift the systems. Truth-seekers lack sufficient influence to change the systems.
2) The principle of charity in interpretation has sub-principles:
Clarify whether the disagreement centers on (a) facts, (b) mechanisms, or (c) preferences. For example, people might share a desire to reduce poverty (preferences), and even agree about patterns of poverty (facts), but disagree about whether a major increase in the Minimum Wage would reduce poverty (mechanism). In any case, pinpoint the disagreement.
Then, for the moment, assume that the person who holds a contrary view is rational. She is clear-eyed about her motivations. She takes reasonable care to get the facts straight and to understand mechanisms — or, alternatively, she humbly and carefully channels deference. She decides what to believe by deciding — thoughtfully, wisely? — whom to believe.
Finally, if these sub-principles of the principle of charity in interpretation happen to indicate that the person's beliefs (about facts or mechanisms) are irrational, or that her preferences are inconsistent, then proceed to establish the *specific* irrationality. Wishful thinking (believing what one wishes to be true)? Counter-wishful thinking (believing what one fears to be true)? Innumeracy? Conformity? Social desirability bias (believing what *sounds* good)? Etc etc etc. Precision in any diagnosis of irrationality is potentially a first step towards insight and humility.
3) At the risk of being uncharitable: The grand conversation or debate (Huemer, Kling, Williams, etc) about polarization via social epistemology focusses on careful analysis of belief-formation but reduces motivations to (unconscious?) tribal status-seeking. Although evolutionary psychology sheds fresh light on motivations and social dynamics, there is still room and need for more fine-grained analysis of motivations. We still need to build on the moralists: Montaigne, Machiavelli, Pascal, La Rochefoucault, Smith, etc.
It's worth emphasizing that only (a) facts and (b) mechanisms are within the domain of "truth-seeking".
(c) preferences is where all the action is, and as best I can tell it has little to do with facts and everything to do with polarization.
Would you rather be ruled by those with average command of facts and a zealous preference for your well-being, or by those with an exquisite command of facts and utter disdain for you and those like you?
I suppose everyone would choose the former.
The thought of someone with a zealous preference for my well-being makes me nervous! :) But, yes, you're right. If nothing else, pinpointing the locus of disagreement (facts, mechanisms, or preferences) has the virtue of clarity.
It's worth noting that there is no precise line between facts and preferences. To point, I'm certain there is much regarding patterns of poverty we don't agree on.
This seems wrong. Especially if you think of facts as "what doesn't change whether you like it or not". I don't like that I'm getting old but every day passes whether I like it or not.
A blurry line can still have many things clearly on one side or the other. I didn't say there were no facts, only that for many bits of information is it hard to agree or to even know for certain which they are. And this tends to be most common for facts and preferences related to controversial issues. Nobody is likely to dispute that days are passing and you are getting older.
Ah, so you are saying not that ACTUAL facts can differ but the PERCEPTIONS and KNOWLEDGE of facts can?
And that often the differing perceptions are caused by differing preferences?
And perhaps that different statements of "fact" are caused by different definitions of facts? So the statement, "life is getting better/worse in America" depends a lot on what you consider to be better and worse and how you weight different facets of life.
Sure the actual facts aren't blurry. Our knowledge of them is.
That limited knowledge also means sometimes it's hard to tell if positions on issues are fact based or preferences. A non- political example is the certainty that peptic ulcers aren't bacterial, which was a fact until it wasn't. Lots of probabilities and risks related to CO2 and climate are treated as fact or overly discounted because they aren't fact, depending on the bias of the person.
I'm not going to waste my time ploughing through another one of DW's soporific essays. The conclusion that the blue tribe's problems are much less severe than those confronting the red tribe is preposterous. It is the blue tribe that is pushing the nonsense that biological males can become females, and vice versa, and based on this idea is allowing one of the most heinous medical experiments in history to be perpetrated on innocent children, and yet Williams has the nerve to say that it is the Republican Party and conservative media that have become almost completely unmoored from reality. As far as I can tell, Williams is basing his conclusion primarily on the controversy over claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating dogs and cats, which Williams labels 'racist' as well as evidence-free and preposterous. But you have to be living under a rock all your life, or perched at some ivory tower like Williams is, to argue that such a claim is baseless. It is common knowledge that different cultures have different ideas about what animals are acceptable to eat versus unacceptable and disgusting. I remember my mother telling me that a popular Chinese restaurant in the SF Bay Area had been shut down after a food inspection discovered cat carcasses hanging in the freezer, and the excuse given by the restaurant was that the cat carcasses were for the restaurant's staff, rather than the chicken salad or cashew chicken served to customers. According to Williams, that story from my childhood is inherently racist. For most Americans, it is considered perfectly acceptable to eat pork, shellfish and cheeseburgers, but for religious Jews living in America, eating pork, shellfish and cheeseburgers is considered disgusting and is prohibited. The 'eating our pets' (or beheading and eating ducks from local parks) story is a metaphor for the problems associated with 'open borders' and mass immigration being foisted by establishment elites on the citizens of Western countries. In the UK, where Williams is based, mass immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and the '3rd world' is associated with knife attacks on citizens and young girls attending a Taylor Swift dance lesson, and Pakistani grooming gangs raping native British girls. Williams has the nerve to turn a blind eye to these realities. What an ass.
"Williams has the nerve to say that it is the Republican Party and conservative media that have become almost completely unmoored from reality."
I generally agree with you but it's worth noting Williams statement is wrong by only one word, "unmoored from HIS reality." He sees some or all of what you list as not being problems.
Williams writes: "The Republican Party and conservative media today have become almost fully unmoored from reality." Really? Half the country, including many brilliant intellectuals and high achievers, "almost fully unmoored from reality?" In support of this, he cites a partisan Harris -Trump debate "fact-check"....from CNN. Williams seems unaware of the "take Trump seriously, but not literally" idea. Trump exaggerates greatly and often quite humorously for emphasis, an effective rhetorical technique. His opponents, thinking themselves in exclusive possession of morality, hate it, and salve their wounds with righteous indignation. Seeing as they lie all the time themselves due to commitment to "progressive" myths (see the eponymous new Huemer book), and their lies are in contrast often seriously consequential ("if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"), their fussing is amusing.
What would Adam Smith say about the blue and red tribes? I won’t do him justice but here’s my best in 10 minutes typing on my iPhone while walking. Let us imagine him as a role model, providing a constructive perspective on this topic. “An impartial spectator would be grateful for the blue tribe and the red tribe. Without both we would be much less; not just economically, but scientifically, culturally and politically. Just as we should be grateful for the less intelligent among us, we should see the benefits of these two opposing tribes. Our opposing tribe serves us in helpful ways. They do work for us that we find difficult and would rather they do. For the opposing tribe is the enemy of my tribe. That limits the power of my tribe and we all naturally fear our own tribe.”
Re: intellectual charity, I think you have to be able to hold multiple explanations for behavior/belief in your mind and assign them a probability range based on what you learn about a person over time. E.g. if you meet an earnest volunteer for the Sanders campaign who explains how socialism is an unalloyed good, I'd say there's a 90% chance this is a monkey-brained feeling and a 10% chance that it's a position the person has given serious rational thought to. Over the course of the argument that probability matrix might shift depending on the kind of arguments they use, their openness to counterexamples, etc.
I have complained to people in the past when they use acronyms that many readers will not recognize. Arnold, I have to complain about your "Ashamnu, Bagadnu, etc."
A lot of readers will not know that this is the beginning of a prayer of confession repeated at Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). It includes a confession of wrong-doing for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Ashamnu roughly translates as, "We have been guilty." Bagadnu, "We have betrayed." And so on.
Or in the words of the lawyer who drastically re-interpreted many of the Jewish precedents (but not this one!), "We are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God."
Are these bloggers ever going to run out of novel ways to say the obvious - "people are stupid" - while trying vainly to exempt their own relatives and pals?
Here’s a good example of clear, concise writing by Dan. He refers to this piece as accessible. https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/openfordebate/the-social-roots-of-irrationality/
But is Dan under pressure to conform to the blue tribe which surrounds him at work? His livelihood depends on funding from the blue tribe. What would he be saying if his income were purely from Substack subscribers? I challenge Dan to pursue a balanced income portfolio. A 50/50 mix of red and blue subscribers or something much less blue. How would this change Dan’s beliefs, words and actions?
That's probably a little unfair. AK's mix of readers might be a bit more balanced but not much.
Unfair in what way?
??
In the way I said.
AK is not funded by a public university. Dan is. AK is a wealthy, retired man. Dan’s job is in DEI central. I’m saying that Dan is probably biased by his blue tribe universally funding source. Were Dan to make a risky leap,, quit his philosophy job at public university and go full Rob Henderson, with his income being from Substack, Boston Globe, etc., he (Dan) might be less inclined to favor the blue tribe.
And Dan isn’t that biased. He only said one little biased thing, but I’m still giving him a hard time because I’d prefer he leave academia and go the way of Rob Henderson with his funding source.
I'd say that's way different than attracting equal numbers of red and blue.
Yes, but notice that I say 50/50 or something much less blue. I realize 50/50 isn’t easy or even desirable, but right now his funding is about as blue as it gets—public university. So if he were to setup a gig like Henderson he might be 30/70 or 40/60. It might change from decade to decade as he ages.
Motivated reasoner engages in motivated reasoning! Film at 11:00!
Republicans, now under Trump but he’s not the only one, are better about many things, including Rule of Law. A key pillar of “Liberalism”, that Democrats so often ignore. Not just for Every Illegal Alien not deported, but also in failure to prosecute clear violations of laws, like H. Biden & HR Clinton.
Williams’ own Trump hating bias weakens most of his arguments. When I read his generalities, I think of specific Dem violations, but Williams far more often brings up weaker Rep or Trump violations.
All “Lies or exaggerations” — itself a biased exaggeration. With no attempt at comparing it to Harris public words.
On illegal immigration, inflation, and the economy, Republicans are far better moored in reality than Dems. No blue or red tribes are identified on ballots—it’s a mostly nice literary metaphor that literally is not true. But he and his woke truth seekers would claim license because of usage, which I agree with, but point out the failure of a true woke definition of “woman”, which red pilled folk would say is XX folk who identify as women. Trump takes far more exaggerated license than I like, but claiming he’s unmoored from reality seems … unreal. And unserious, as well as inconsistently literal.
I haven't read all the comments but it seems like everyone jumped right past Friedmans intellectual charity. I would say each sides preferences come from a reasonable starting point but a subset take the reasonable to extremes that aren't. If one looks hard enough, they can find the good in each side. It's just covered by layers of not so good.
I subscribe to another SubStack called Wokal Distance which has been doing a whole series on how 'Woke' argumentation basically is nothing more than what Dan Williams decries.
https://substack.com/@wokaldistance
Friedman backed down from calling Hitler "evil" at a student seminar dinner thing of his I attended back in 2009. Of course it was trendy then for intellectuals to sneer at that concept, as it was associated with Dubya and his Axis of Evil. But it did provide a glimpse into Friedman's thinking, which lines up with what's being written here.
I still lean Friedman in this debate, as the highlighting of bias, motivated reasoning and all the rest would seem to prove too much. If these are basic features of humanity, they apply to everyone. The charge of bias and motivation is itself motivated, is it not? If we're thinking about Applied Judgementalism of the Williams sort, it doesn't serve anyone actually engaged in a debate with some discrete individual(s), just because we know wayward motivated reasoning is happening in the aggregate. You're still better served by being charitable wrt political ideas to the degree you'd like them to return the favor.
Friedman was likewise very keen on institutional bias, as his whole "are experts expert?" angle shows. But I suppose because he doesn't harp on *how* the bias works out in left and right terms - just that there's necessarily bias due to homophily or cartelized decision-making processes - it still feels non-judgmental and shrinking back from a fight.
The Williams article is incoherent because it conflates campaign trail puffery with serious truth claims. Politicians cannot be held accountable for false statements made on campaign. A politician can say basically anything and it doesn't matter apart from the consequences to their credibility, which are usually minimal. Trying to cross-examine puffery as if it were rational argument is willfully obtuse, but it became a whole Trump-era genre of tedious journalism.
I don't think it's legally correct, either, to consider loose and informal affinity groups like left/right wing affinity groups as if they represent actual political power bases. Actual political power bases are Robert-Caro-Robert-Moses power bases. They are small. They are the ones with the money, the knowledge, and the ability to translate those mediums into action on the ground. Those power entities can also suffer from epistemological error, but because of competitive selection effects, those errors are kept within bounds. A Shell Oil lobbyist is not going to tell his boss not to worry because Q is going to make sure that they can't install Brandon into office, and if he does, he'll be fired.
Williams seems to put a lot of stock in the press. The problem with the press is that, in the language of the law of evidence, most of what it does is produce little packages of hearsay within hearsay sweetened with narrative. Journalists take particularly unreliable communications and then they make those communications even less reliable by selecting, sorting, and distorting the underlying reality. Any belief system based on this unrelenting torrent of shoddy information is going to diverge from reality; rather, it's more like literary criticism than it is empiricism because the underlying body of "facts" is just a lot of details about fictional stories.
The Friedman article is better and more readable than the Williams article because it distinguishes between truth claims and truth among other things. Perhaps the larger issue with trying to run a society on rationalistic grounds is that the human animal prefers following decisive leaders rather than ambiguous leaders. People prefer stories to incomprehensible torrents of unsorted facts.
What we get from our institutions is that they wrap a lot of highly contingent, inaccurate, and incomplete pieces of knowledge with a wrapper of ultra-confidence, sometimes literally so in the form of a product such as something like Vioxx. In a competitive marketplace, you are going to buy Vioxx or Thalidomide and not an alternative universe Accurately-Marketed-Vioxx if both types of package are on the market. It becomes the official Truth that Vioxx is good for you and to ask your doctor now for more Vioxx. Then, more information arrives, and this conclusion must be revised. Now, Vioxx will kill you, and it becomes the Official Truth. Both the wholesale doctor and the retail consumer do not have the time and resources to conduct a full inquiry into the accuracy of the official truth claims, but both must make decisions based on incomplete information.
"Politicians cannot be held accountable for false statements made on campaign."
Well, when can they be held accountable? Aren't they pretty much always "on campaign", trying to look good to voters, trying to get voters to think well of their party and those it favors?
The mechanism is supposed to just be votes. Lies by politicians are protected speech under the First Amendment (See US v. Alvarez https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-alvarez). Very funny, by the way, to read this opinion in 2024, given the 180 degree turn by the left on the 1A.
So they should be held accountable for false statements made the day after the election but not for anything said the day before? That does not seem like a good idea to me.
And, practically, how far before the election do they get freebies on their lies? The freebies only start after they are nominated? But what if they are running in a primary? Then how far before the primary?
Perhaps we mean different things by "held accountable". I mean that people should feel free to criticize them, think poorly of them, and say bad things about them whenever they make false statements. But I think they should generally not have any legal liability. Maybe a very specific untruth that could really mess someone up, something like, "I saw X murder Y" when the speaker was nowhere near and people watched in real time as Z murdered Y.
Yes I mean criminal or civil liability. Right now the law is that politicians in their public statements and in their private statements about political issues say anything to anybody about anything including your example.
For non campaign statements, it’s an open question. Trump lost his defamation case at trial against Carroll, but it’s on appeal mostly on issues not directly related to this one. But that case also was not over strictly political statements such as promising to eliminate taxes on tips. It’s more about ordinary defamation, but in a politically charged context.
Concerning systems of determining who has influence, and how they might be fixed, we might start by considering four points: (1) the recurring and inevitable cycle of the rise of oligarchic governance; (2) the insecurity of the oligarchic class and their need for control of symbols; (3) alternatives to oligarchy; and, (4) patriotism as legitimating process for oligarchic influence.
Robert Michels sets out the dynamics of the oligarchic nature of democratic systems in his 1911 classic Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies, and it should seem perfectly familiar to William’s regular readers:
"The incompetence of the masses is almost universal throughout the domains of political life, and this constitutes the most solid foundation of the power of the leaders. The incompetence furnishes the leaders with a practical and to some extent with a moral justification. Since the rank and file are incapable of looking after their own interests, it is necessary that they should have experts to attend to their affairs."
"Thus the submission of the masses to the will of a few individuals comes to be considered one of the highest of democratic virtues. “To those who are called to lead us, we promise loyalty and obedience, and we say to them: Men who have been honored as the people's choice, show us the way, we will follow you.” It is such utterances as this which reveal to us the true nature of the modern party. In a party, and above all in a fighting political party, democracy is not for home consumption, but is rather an article made for export."
"the representatives of the people have no sooner been raised to power than they set to work to consolidate and reinforce their influence. They continue unceasingly to surround their positions by new lines of defense, until they have succeeded in emancipating themselves completely from popular control. All power thus proceeds in a natural cycle: issuing from the people, it ends by raising itself above the people."
“"This special competence, this expert knowledge, which the leader acquires in matters inaccessible, or almost inaccessible, to the mass, gives him a security of tenure which conflicts with the essential principles of democracy."
To Williams credit, he seems to see this conflict and seeks to resolve it, primarily by tossing out the essential principles of democracy in favor of the security of the tenure of the expert few, however, despite, or perhaps because of, all his angst, he doesn’t appear to have gotten beyond “four legs good, two legs better” in terms of systems analyses.
Herbert Lasswell’s 1936 book Politics: Who Gets What, When, How offers insight into the insecurity of the ensconced expert class and their response to challenges and conflict. Lasswell observes that:
"A well-established ideology perpetuates itself with little planned propaganda by those whom it benefits most. When thought is taken about ways and means of sowing conviction, conviction has already languished, the basic outlook of society has decayed, or a new, triumphant outlook has not yet gripped the automatic loyalties of old and young. Happy indeed is that nation that has no thought of itself; or happy at least are the few who procure the principal benefits of universal acquiescence."
"The world is divided among those who are influential on the basis of shared symbols of loyalty to nation, class, occupation, person. Some rise to eminence in the name of militant or conciliatory methods; in the name of demands for a vast gamut of policies; in the name of optimistic visions of the future. Quite different personality types may be united in loyalty to nation or class, method, policy, outlook. Thus attitude groups cut across personality classifications, even as they cut across skill or class. At any given time the members of a skill or class group may not have risen to full skill or class consciousness. Although an objective observer may be able to consider the meaning of events for their relative success or failure, the members of the skill or class group may talk the language of patriotism, and have no common symbol of class or skill."
“One aspect of influence is the relative sharing of values. Different results can be obtained by using different values. An elite of deference is not necessarily an elite of safety. More values may be added to the present list of three (deference, safety, income). Whatever the list, the items may be differently combined, thus reaching different results to correspond to varying judgments of the elite. New results may be obtained by defining influence in other terms than relative share of values. The term may be used to indicate a judgment of how values might be influenced if there were conflicts about them. Thus financial capitalists may be judged to be stronger or weaker than industrial capitalists in case of a hypothetical collision. From analysis, then, we can expect no static certainty. It is a constant process of re-examination which brings new aspects of the world into the focus of critical attention. The unifying frame of reference for the special student of politics is the rich and variable meaning of ‘influence and the influential,’ ‘power and the powerful.’”
Lasswell further explains that new symbols are the principal tool of the counter-elite in attempting to redirect loyalty and acquiescence from the old to the new regime. This occurs in nominally democratic as well as any other system. Hence, the establishment’s preoccupation with control of language, symbols, propaganda, and suppression of counter-elites. Yet, the power that must be wielded to achieve these goals, simultaneously weakens acquiescence and the perceived legitimacy of the establishment which increases their insecurity and angst further driving them to ever more radical measures of control, ie., just tossing out democracy and replacing it with “our democracy.”
Other have contemplated how to escape this all consuming battle to control influence. Ivan Illich’s 1973 book Tools for Conviviality lays out a counter-technocratic system in which individuals have greater influence over their lives and relationships: “I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members”
“...to the degree that a man masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning, to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image.”
Personally, I sense a ring of truth in this, and one sees all sorts of activities that appear to embody this drive for conviviality as a reflection of people exercising autonomy in deciding to what influences they will submit.
At a larger scale, conviviality might be what makes a system of influence sustainable. Considering the dyad of patriotism versus nationalism as developed in a 1995 piece “For love of country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism” by Maurizio Viroli, the precis for which summarizes:
“Over the centuries, the language of patriotism has been used to strengthen or invoke a generous and caring love of the political institutions and the way of life that sustain the common liberty of a people, whereas the language of nationalism was forged in late 18th century Europe to defend or reinforce the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic oneness, and homogeneity of a people
He brings to the surface the existence of an intellectual tradition in modern and early modern political thought which has been using the language of patriotism as a language of liberty and civic commitment and argues that it is to the intellectual tradition of republican patriotism that we ought to refer to find a powerful antidote to nationalism and a valuable source of civic responsibility for multicultural democratic societies.” However, commanding a “caring love of political institutions” from the masses you hold in contempt hardly seems plausible. Conviviality might be better found in a liberty that allows participation and offers some measure of respect to the governed. The republics of old were generally small in size, human interdependence was necessary for survival, and not a boutique choice and liberty entailed much more common good pragmatism than non-domination license. Even in Rome, pragmatic governance via subsidiarity meant the smallest cities were allowed freedom of internal cooperation.
If you want to fix systems of influence, then, I would suggest you consider how decentralization, disaggregation, and subsidiarity might create the conditions of conviviality and with it a sustainable form of patriotism.