Esse Quam Videri: Obama, the Spill, and Hamlet
That's the motto of North Carolina. To Be, Rather Than To Seem. I may get this as a tattoo. No, you may not laugh. Too often, the whole country seems to have the reverse tattooed on the inside of our national eyelids, or deep inside the national hippocampus. So I applaud Jason Horowitz and Matt Welch for taking our political obsession with "narrative," or what seems rather than what is, down a peg. Right now I'm reading Up From Liberalism, wherein Our Hero complains that liberalism is all about method at the expense of substance, because it holds that nothing really is, so all we can learn is how things seem. When Obama's critics adopt this approach to flogging the president, something rotten ensues. Horowitz:
The plume of crude rising from the seabed is not only the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, darkening the gulf and thousands of lives and pervading the nation with a sense of helplessness, it is a metaphor for Obama's loss of control, a revealing moment to study our protagonist. Will he feel the seafarer's pain? Will he shake with fury? Will he weep tears into the salty sea? Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Washington's Achilles.
Yep, there's that phrase again -- sense of helplessness, as opposed to really being helpless, which assuredly we are not. Our sense of helplessness, no doubt, is deepened by a federal bureaucracy which is actually counteracting the ability of proactive locals to help themselves. But at the same time, Horowitz is right that we are suckers for senses of things. They make us less accountable to ourselves: who cares what's really happening to me -- what matters is how we feel! Notice how both verb and subject undergo a metamorphosis. Welch remarks:
Narrative obsession is what happens when facts and public policies are too hard to sort through. Meta is an abdication of micro, and a perpetuator of lazy generalizations and outright falsehoods, for which we all suffer.
But careful: seeking solace in wonkitude -- in policy microanalysis, in data, in technical expertise -- steers us clear of one set of perils and plunges us into another. We make a huge mistake to imagine that there is no alternative to politics as theater other than politics as engineering. Rather than art or science ruling politics, we can turn to philosophy to educate politics. Philosophy, in fact, is dedicated -- or at least classical philosophy is -- to the task of separating out what is from what merely seems to be. Welch would pit postmodern narrative against modern science, championing the latter and pretending as if a third option, classical wisdom, did not exist. And Horowitz worsens matters by reducing the classical view -- bye bye Socrates -- to the pagan poetry of Homer.
The ultimate sense of helplessness, as Hamlet explained, was to no longer know what is and what isn't. To be, in such dire straits, is to be unsure whether to be. And the foundation of governance, including self-governance, is to say, as Hamlet said in one of his better moments:
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
In Hamlet, the grown-up scientific alternative to Hamlet's undergraduate narrative obsession was the courtroom and backroom politicking of Polonius and Claudius, more monstrous compartmentalizers than Clinton and more devoted micromanagers than Carter. They were experts at sorting through public as well as private policies which perpetuated outright falsehoods -- falsehoods from which all of Denmark suffered dearly. Neither Hamlet's histrionic politics nor the calculating politics of his uncle and his uncle's retainer cast light on what was most needful: a recovered recognition of the true order of things. That is where philosophy comes in. Without a philosophical education for our politics, we are doomed to exhaust ourselves obsessing over seeming and senses of things.
- Comment (5)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments :
May '10
Re: Esse Quam Videri: Obama, the Spill, and Hamlet
I love this analysis James. But honestly, aren't you describing the political condition in its entirety. How is this just a liberal/Democratic problem? Surely the "assault on individual liberty" decried by the Teapartiers is largely about feeling as well. After all, the Federal government already has enormous power over our lives. And what was the neocon notion of turning Iraq into a bastion of liberty in the Middle East if not willful ignorance of cold, stark reality?
Re: Esse Quam Videri: Obama, the Spill, and Hamlet
These are great, huge questions, Trace, and they're the right ones to ask. I'll have to ruminate on how to deliver concise answers! But that I will.
May '10
Re: Esse Quam Videri: Obama, the Spill, and Hamlet
At least we have 200 words and not 140 characters. Trying to have any real conversation on Twitter is like trying to enjoy filet mignon through a straw.
May '10
Re: Esse Quam Videri: Obama, the Spill, and Hamlet
I have less of an issue with "senses of" and "seeminglys" when used as rhetorical devices -- it's hard to state some things as a universal fact when we're limited by the scope of our senses (I believe that's an Aristotelian, as opposed to Platonic, conception, although it wouldn't be the first time if I've mixed them up). So, I can use "seem" in the following statement to convey an approximation:
"Most San Franciscans seem especially tolerant of different political stances, as long as they agree with them."
Now, I can say this based on my experience as a San Francisco resident for 15 years, but I can't claim to either (a) know exactly what's going on inside people's heads or (b) have the benefit of polls that substantiate the magnitude of my observation.
More troubling is the triumph of style over substance -- of seeming over being -- that we saw in the last presidential election. A teachable moment (if a moment can last four years), perhaps?
Jun '10
Re: Esse Quam Videri: Obama, the Spill, and Hamlet
Not every problem has a regulatory solution. I think we'll find that this spill was the result of a series of individual bad decisions--people choosing to ignore the best safety practices, and accepting a little extra risk here and there. The problem is, those little bits of risk added up to a great big risk. I don't the the problem was lack of rules.