Incivility and Sublimation
Pat is absolutely, factually right: There is no new climate of incivility. Humanity in general and Americans in particular are no more rude than they've ever been. There is certainly a new climate of public vulgarity, triviality and incoherent, shallow thought, but I suspect that's more a matter of new technology making it easier for vulgar, shallow birdbrains to publicize their vulgar, shallow opinions than a true coarsening of the culture: There were always a lot of vulgar, shallow birdbrains, but in the past it wasn't so easy for them to get access to a megaphone.
Try this theory out for size: The endless lamentations about the climate of incivility are a classic neurotic defense mechanism, writ large. I don't think what we're really worried about is incivility. We're worried about the end of civilization.
We all know, deep down, that things are looking very bad. I don't think it's so unreasonable to think Western civilization won't survive. Very crazy people have nuclear weapons these days or are close to acquiring them. It is possible, with such weapons, to end the world in minutes. It's not a science-fiction fantasy to imagine it could all come to an end in the not-so-distant future.
The threat is in one sense less acute than during the Cold War, but in another sense much more acute: We have known full well since September 11 that we have enemies now who are reckless in a way the Soviets in their almost infinite imagination for evil never imagined. No region of the world seems to be getting more stable and more peaceful--quite the opposite. Even when the news sounds good--a dictator gone in Tunisia--we are all adults and we've all read Animal Farm.
What's more, we have no idea what to do about it. Really, we don't. Come up with one good idea that really sounds like it might work. I still maintain that our military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were probably the least awful of a slate of awful options, but surely no one here would argue that either has been an unqualified success. We are now so over-stretched, militarily, as to be rendered effectively defenseless. The whole world knows it. Diplomacy seems to achieve nothing.
I don't have kids, but I don't know if yours are going to survive.
That last sentence--an awful thing to say, isn't it? An awful thing to think. You may find yourself angry at me for writing it, and I don't blame you--it's a terrible thing to say. I find the thought unbearable. Who wouldn't? In fact, I suspect it is so terrifying that we can't really allow ourselves to think about it. But that doesn't mean we're not thinking about it--at a deeper level.
My guess: The accusations we are now leveling at each other are a form of Level 3 Neurotic Defense Mechanisms, to wit:
- Displacement: Defence mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening. For example, a mother may yell at her child because she is angry with her husband.
- Dissociation: Temporary drastic modification of one's personal identity or character to avoid emotional distress; separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.
- Hypochondriasis: An excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness.
Again, Pat is right--our discourse isn't really that uncivil. It's often childish, but on the whole, it's no worse than it used to be. So Congressman Cohen called the Republicans Nazis. Bad taste, for sure, but come on--the Spaight-Stanly Duel it ain't. Vice President Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in the stomach, for God's sake. Now that's uncivil political discourse.
I'm very happy to spend a lot of time wringing my hands about our national rudeness crisis. It's relaxing. But it reminds me very much of a woman, upon learning that the biopsy has come back and the lump is malignant, resolving that nothing could be more important than alphabetizing her spice rack. I've seen that. It really is how the human mind works.
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Oct '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
"Times are bad, children disobey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." - Cicero (attributed)
Oct '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
My guess: The accusations we are now leveling at each other are a form of Level 3 Neurotic Defense Mechanisms...
There is something to this, I believe. Walker Percy often wrote of what he called the "Thanatos Syndrome" (he even wrote a novel with that title) - the sickness unto death or death drive that motivates many people toward morbid thoughts and acts and an overriding sense of despair. In light of the various ongoing crises around the world, a general sense of pessimism and a belief that an irreversible decline has taken root are understandable, if ahistorical.
Nov '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Well, then, given such threats, I say we, uh, Oh! I know: ban high-capacity magazines!
Sep '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Maybe its because I was in college when Jimmy Carter was President but I am not so pessimistic about the world my four children will grow up in. Of course the threats are real and we must do all we can to prevent them but I guess I'm a rational optimist in the end. I often wonder what the Founders of our country would think if they came back to see the progress of their work. I think they'd be horrified but quite a lot and amazed by even more. The loutish and vulgar are everywhere but they are not killing themselves at a young age on a subsistence farm.
Sep '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
I don't have kids, but I don't know if yours are going to survive.
That last sentence--an awful thing to say, isn't it? An awful thing to think. You may find yourself angry at me for writing it, and I don't blame you--it's a terrible thing to say.
Claire, it isn't at all offensive. I have kids and it makes me crazy to think about what will likely happen to them. I also believe having children makes you care more about the future. I have quite a few childless friends, also atheists, who seem not to care in the least. They will be dead and gone so why sweat the small stuff. Live life now and be thankful you are having a good relatively easy life is their attitude.
This is a subject that I have been interested in for a while now. In trying to get to the root of how and why people believe in these delusional political tropes I ultimately came to this collective political psychology theory. The left is intuitively aware of this as they focus on persuasion. Facts don't matter when you can persuade enough people.
Sep '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Oh, and don't forget Projection.
A lot of very pertinent political psychology is explored here at Dr. Sanity and some more rather esoteric and creative thinking here at One Cosmos
Dec '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Claire Berlinski! Please wait 24 hours and read again what you wrote here.
By means of the same logic, any time that anyone becomes upset over ANYTHING can be attributed to the same ultimate concern.
Oct '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Claire, at a time when the presidency is in the control of a man who holds this country in contempt, and the political opposition shares his views, a few Iranian nukes and such are relatively insignificant. America is less the America that came to birth in 1776, today, than it would be if we had remained faithful to our roots, and merely lost a few major cities to nukes.
As for the issue of incivility, this meme is nothing but a weapon to intimidate conservative people out of their IDEAS. Incivility isn't defined by our language and acts, but by our IDEAS. Embarrass us into giving up our IDEAS, and you can cow a major part of your opposition into politically correct submission. Bill Ayers was more than a buddy of the President, he was a mentor.
IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS. That is what this whole thing is about.
May '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Re "alphabetizing her spice rack": A memorable scene from that otherwise awful The Day After in the 80's was a mom intent on making her kid's bed while the missiles were in the air.
Dec '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
What confuses me about this whole thing is its genesis:
This reminds me when Dan Rather used a fabricated National Guard fitness report to attack George W. Bush. After it was demonstrated that the document was created using technology not available at the time of its purported creation, Rather said that he stood by his story. Evidence? We don’t need no steenking evidence. We have the media.
Edited on Jan 23, 2011 at 6:06amAug '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
With the Cohn book on millenium cults arriving in the mail per your earlier post ,it will compete today with the overpaid gladiators in Chicago and elsewhere. As I think about watching these contests and of how many others doing the same , it strikes me as repetitive events from perhaps some event in Rome a couple millennia back.
Edited on Jan 23, 2011 at 6:32amAre your fears a universal leitmotiv of Western Civ.
Since it's Sunday there will also quite a few exhortations of "Repent the end is near!" in churches across the country, like any Sunday, like any postwar society, like any millennial cult gazing into the inexplicable abyss of societal urge/nature/ behavior that doesn't match ours. A couple of nukes a mutual destruction no longer assures, to parse an earlier MADness.
So who is the picture ? Louise Brooks? Prom night for Claire at Oxford ? Who's your date ?
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Douglas Pologe: Claire Berlinski! Please wait 24 hours and read again what you wrote here.
By means of the same logic, any time that anyone becomes upset over ANYTHING can be attributed to the same ultimate concern. · Jan 23 at 5:41am
Sure. Logically, it could be. We all know the limitations of the attribution of behavior to unconscious mechanisms. Can't be proven, can't be falsified, etc. But I'd say that anyone who denies such defense mechanisms exist at all just isn't noticing much about human behavior. A theory that can't be falsified may not be science--but it may nonetheless be right.
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Well aware that the words "See, you're in total denial" are the most irritating words anyone can sortie in the course of an argument, I apologize--but what else can I say? See? You're in total denial.
May '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Japan survived two nukes.
Oct '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Foxman: What confuses me about this whole thing is its genesis:
This reminds me when Dan Rather used a fabricated National Guard fitness report to attack George W. Bush. After it was demonstrated that the document was created using technology not available at the time of its purported creation, Rather said that he stood by his story. Evidence? We don’t need no steenking evidence. We have the media. · Jan 23 at 6:01am
Edited on Jan 23 at 06:06 am
I think we should ban green cars, chicken parm, and the letter "h." After all, they had as much to do with the Arizona massacre as did incivil discourse.
Sep '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
The West has succeeded in erasing any memory of what Western culture actually is, and telling those that do remember to despise it. So, yes, just like the Romans forgot what it meant to be a Roman, I can see the West kissing their civilization goodbye not with a bang but with a whimper.
Jul '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, but the valiant taste death but once."
-- Shakespeare
Maybe imagination unmans us. So better to busy ourselves with incivility or some other passing trifle than to contemplate doom all the day and into the night.
Dec '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Are conservatives complaining about the lack of civility in political discourse? Whenever such a meme is developed, we must always look to the source. The Left has identified its enemy and it is us. Conservatives are the primary obstacles to the Left's Utopian vision. Therefore, it is right and good that the Left politicizes Tucson to cow the Right, but showing videos of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11 is an unforgivable politicization of the tragedy by the Right. When did you last see 9/11 video?
The Left is maddening. It can't handle the truth. It is also cowardly. It is forever fighting made up evils: Wall St., AGW, second-hand smoke, the rich, Christian indoctrination in public schools, ..., conservatives. Therefore, every time the Right wants to get to the real fight, it must first climb over the smug Venti-sipping, Kindle reading Left first. It is exhausting and does not bode well for Western civilization. I pray for all our kids.
Jul '10
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
Interesting theory, Claire. But I find it all a bit overwrought. No, the cries for "civility" are not a result of displaced anxiety. They are a deliberate political tactic on the part of the squishy left designed to disarm the right. "More civility" simply means "shut up".
Why do we need to get more caught up in it than that? I may be a simplistic Reaganite, but it seems to me that sometimes things are no more complicated than they appear.
Jan '11
Re: Incivility and Sublimation
I enjoyed this; very clever.
But on to more of a response. I also think that there's not too much a difference between the apparent lack of civility of the past and today. I think you called it correctly: that today's technology makes it easier for us to see and read what's really out there as far as mean spirited opinions. But to turn this into a doomsday scenario seems to be over-reacting in much the same way some people are over-reacting to the supposed new incivility.
Edited on Jan 23, 2011 at 7:59am