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Opening, Closing, or Losing an American Mind?
I joined Ricochet as part of a personal, spiritual project—-though a liberal, I had come to see political polarization as an obstacle to what I believe to be not only my calling but the highest human calling: love one another.
Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, had convinced me that liberals have to talk to conservatives and conservatives have to converse with liberals, or the country as a whole will become stupider and uglier. This makes civil dialogue between liberals and conservatives (and everyone in between) into a serious patriotic duty. Indeed, since I am unlikely to be asked to defend my country by force of arms, engaging in such dialogue may be the sole contribution I can make to the great American experiment.
“Center-right” describes (loosely) a much wider range of orientations and opinions than I had dreamed possible before joining. Folks on Ricochet do not agree about everything (to put it mildly). I admire the intellectual diversity I’ve found here, and applaud my fellow members for their willingness to hang in there and keep talking even when passions are aroused and the debate is unlikely to be resolved to everyone’s (or anyone’s) entire satisfaction. I have learned a lot about good conversation—-not just in terms of more and better content, but technique and tenacity too—-from you.
Here is what I’m worried about:
In their 2015 Atlantic article “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff discussed the ways that American college students are being trained into habits of thinking that are strongly associated with mental illness, specifically depression and anxiety disorders.
One of these is “negative filtering,” and Lukianoff and Haidt (quoting Leahy, Holland and McGinn) described it as a habit of “focus[ing] almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notic[ing] the positives.”
“When applied to campus life, mental filtering allows for simpleminded demonization,” said the authors.
When I became involved with Ricochet, I told my husband I felt like I’d gone back to college — challenged, stimulated and discomfited by turns, reading and writing about ideas I hadn’t thought about for years (or ever) while making new and interesting friends. Now I’m wondering if there is another similarity. Am I being trained into negative filtering?
Am I selectively noticing and angrily highlighting egregious nuggets of leftist cant in the president’s speeches, New York Times editorials, idle remarks of friends and relatives while ignoring the rational, reasonable parts? Persuaded that they are irrational and unreasonable, am I now avoiding conversations with left-leaning people the way I used to avoid conversations with conservatives?
“If students graduate believing that they can learn nothing from people they dislike or from those with whom they disagree, we will have done them a great intellectual disservice,” Haidt and Lukianoff write.
If I am simply becoming the right-leaning version of my left-leaning self, demonizing and disdaining the political Other, that may be an improvement in one sense — though fretful and depressed, I am more likely to be accurate in my facts and correct in my reasoning.
But how will this make me a more helpful, loving contributor to the American project?
Published in General
Kate, exactly how are you a liberal. You are (cautiously) pro-abortion rights and pro-gay marriages. But you don’t seperate the world in victims and victimizes, you seperate them into good and evil. I am genuinely befuddled.
No doubt about it. The Dorothy Parker who left her entire literary estate to Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was a head case.
But what a writer.
In the spirit of Kate’s post, I find it entirely possible, even obligatory, to separate out the pearls that fell from her talented pen, from the swine that she was wont to associate with. (On that note, boy howdy, did she ever have Gertrude Stein’s number.)
And it’s hard to deny that, under the byline ‘Constant Reader’ in the New Yorker, her review of one of the overly precious, and sickeningly twee, Winnie the Pooh books, cannot be outdone.
“And it is that word, ‘hummy’ [which apparently Pooh was feeling one day], that marks the first place in “The House At Pooh Corner” at which Tonstant Reader fwowed up.”
When it comes to literary luminaries with questionable or unsavory pasts, I’ll take Mrs Parker over right-wing darling Ayn Rand any day of the week.
Well, I was a liberal. It’s complicated. You know that old New York saying that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged? I didn’t get mugged, exactly, but as a person deeply involved with and fond of law enforcement officers, Ferguson and #BLM proved a pretty loud wake-up call.
As an ex-hard-leftist, I still have quite a few of my lefty friends. I do avoid conversing politics and religion with them as they (more often, their acquaintances) go ad hominum nearly immediately and spin long soliloquies about the kind of Fox-loving, Trump-voting, racist, hater-person I am based on an ambiguous sentence I wrote on a post. No thanks.
Great patriotic-oriented question. I, too, am a fan of Haidt’s work, if from afar, (I’ll get around to reading his books, rather than just his media articles) as he seems willing to be critical to himself as with others.
The call to “know theyself” and to continually punch through the wall of confirmation bias, is the key to an informed polity, in a democratic-republic.
Its always a bit ‘tricky’ to have ‘discussions’ with folks who ‘feel’ their convictions regardless of the facts. When gravity appears to be a concept then reality is merely a suggestion.
Today ‘freedom’ is such a fluid concept that basic principles are hard to find. The confusion sews the idea of ‘fluid’ morals, morals being a construct of (insert your favorite antagonist here- whites/Europens/Christians etc) ______. So finding common ground is not a common goal. The true liberal left muddies all waters because clarity doesn’t achieve their perfection of ideology (a goal isn’t actually accomplished until all are equal before the goal). A concept so devoid of success that the ‘principle’ can be used to beat every other idea into submission.
Kate, so glad you brought this up. I love the writings of Haidt and Lukianoff and have found their work quite valuable in challenging my own thinking, as well as helpful in framing my discussions with others. There is one other fundamental assumption that members of each side share. To quote Peter Robinson, it is as follows: if I explain my position to you, or educate you about it, then you will agree with me.
Just plain silly.
Now, persuasion doesn’t take place with explanation or education, but there is typically an emotional component to it. We on the right, tend to discount that. We “out logic” the other side and think we’ve won the argument and that if they don’t agree with us it is stupidity or obstinance (yes, that sentence is a little strong, but not by much).
People have to change their identity when they change their minds about something as polarizing as politics in the present age. Emotion and values figure heavily into that.
This being said, it is hard to sit in the tension of seeing what is wrong and not pushing to correct it. And that goes far beyond politics into my spiritual and personal life. Personally, I have just started using a feeling of disdain as my cue that I’m not approaching others with grace. It’s not pretty, but I am finding it helpful….
Yes, exactly!
I’m not talking about entering into conversations with the hard-core, insulting lefty…though when someone tells me I’m a racist, I plan to say “you know, “racist”is just an insult. It’s not an argument. Give me an argument. Persuade me.”
When one watches the You Tube videos of William F. Buckley and his show Firing Line it becomes apparent that we have lost the ability to debate and engage in critical thinking skills.
Safe spaces and invective now pass for reasoned and rational argument. Spoon fed platitudes have reached the college and university level. It’s rather sad really.
It infects both the Left and the Right.
Yes! Perfect—thank you. That’s what I have to work on.
People on the Right think people on the Left are wrong.
People on the Left think people on the Right are evil.
Regrettably there’s no bridging that. For example, Trump is demonized as a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-intellectual bigot.
Ditto Romney, ditto McCain, ditto Bush II, ditto Bush I, ditto Reagan, etc.
That’s the Left’s playbook. No matter who was the Republican nominee that person would be smeared that way.
You see BLM, Occupy, and other Left groups shutting down Trump rallies and Conservative speakers on college campuses with violence. Do you see anything comparable from the Right?
There now is a certain extent to which Conservatives withdraw from Liberals out of fear for career and even personal safety. I’m not going to put up a Trump yard sign, or a Trump bumper sticker because I don’t want my property defaced.
This divide has been greatly exacerbated by the current President who never misses a chance to trash people who don’t share his views. The damage he has done to this country is incalculable.
I don’t see this getting better anytime soon.
Ah, Kate. If you are fretful and depressed now, that is nothing to how you will feel when* you allow yourself to realize what you have done to marriage.
*perhaps I should say “if”
This is not nor will there ever be a useful conversation with a liberal unless that conversation ends with the liberal understanding how broken their way of thought is.
Liberal ideology is built upon the use of force to obtain power. There is no negotiating with someone who sees the open use of force as a moral good. Liberals may want the best for people, but the use of force puts them in the same philosophical category as thieves, thugs, and rapists. The difference between cutthroats and leftists is a matter of degrees, not of attitude.
I don’t see it that way. I see it as vanity — pride. Watch that video from MRCTV. These lefties really believe they’re morally superior because they’re “for the little guy,” even when the policies they promote are so destructive to those they’re supposedly trying to help (cf blacks under the Obama administration). I don’t know any stupid lefties — only conceited ones.
The first thing I had to set aside prior to my political (and simultaneous religious) conversion was conceit. I had to acknowledge I might be wrong. Lefties won’t even do that when presented with the colossal failures of their worldview.
Vanity-pride, and the comfort of swimming in the support and respect of your fellow shallow thinkers.
People are herd animals.
What have I personally have done to marriage?
I don’t think that ordinary liberals see it this way, however. They don’t see themselves as advocating the use of force to obtain power, or for that matter, advocating the use of force to do anything at all. They don’t get, for example, that if you pass a law banning guns, that law is going to have to be enforced. The operative syllable in “enforce” is “force.”
“How will we effectively enforce the law you wish to pass?” is a good question to ask someone who thinks that Stop and Frisk is racist.
But if liberals advocate for more government (which is mostly what happens) they are using force for power or vice-versa.
Incidentally, I found myself telling my stepdaughter tonight about the #BLM protesters forcing a gay pride parade in Toronto to halt so the protesters could hand over a list of “demands.”
Her reaction was, simply, baffled silence. She had no idea what to say to this. She’s a bright young woman, a registered nurse, but she doesn’t follow public affairs or politics. There are people—maybe most people—who really aren’t interested. As JoJo puts it, they swim with the school and in a way, why shouldn’t they? Isn’t it enough to work fourteen hour days in the ICU—-should my stepdaughter also be perseverating about the cognitive dissonance that afflicts the American left?
Exactly. But if you point that out to them, they are surprised. Because most of us follow most laws without any overt display of coercive power by the state, we can forget that the power exists—that if we didn’t write that check by April 15th, or refused to wear a seatbelt, the guys with guns could come and get us.
I kept all my friends before I was sworn in. They all had opinions on how police work should be done. They are still my friends, but when I said ride with me some night they never took me up on the offer.
Let’s not be thinking that this is solely a problem of cognitive dissonance afflicting the American left. I’m a father and a grandfather, with half my grandchildren 17 years-old and older, one just married last week. Life is a struggle and it is meant to be that way. Character development is a prime purpose of the life we are privileged to have and the competitive component of life’s struggles is an important factor in progressing and succeeding. I, and my wife, and my children and their spouses, all hope that we do the things that will foster the achievement of that character development in our children. But always and at all times I have my doubts that we get it completely right. I know we don’t.
As these things we are witnessing in universities continue to grow as efforts to remove adversity from life placed atop the already enabled course of living these young people are experiencing, the objective of character development will fail. Look what we have as POTUS candidates. So, yes, there will be depression and signs of mental illness because something of vital importance is absent.
I have no clue how to stem this trend. But I don’t think it is a left/right political issue, per se.
Kate what I try to do is to take the problems that Liberals point out seriously and then I ask what will actually fix those problems? Then I ask what is the nature of the problem and then what solutions actually address that problem.
In that way I stay away from tribal loyalties and the defects in character or effect that plague me and people are more willing to listen to me because I am taking the problem seriously.
Take White Privilege when I discuss that with someone I like to use the real world example.
I am sitting on small plane next to a nice African-American woman and I am having a wonderful conversation about living over seas and humanitarian aide. The flight attendant comes up and is asking people to move to the back of the plane.
How do I avoid a committing a micro-aggression? If I stay I am putting pressure on the Black woman to move to the back, that is of course racist. If I leave I am showing how grateful I am to leave the presence of a Black woman and sit with other white people, which means I am obviously racist. If I refuse and object to the situation and rebuke the female attendant I am an aggressive man asserting privilege against the attendant and the Black woman which makes me a misogynist and perhaps a racists.
What is the right answer here?
In the course of the conversation the liberals I discuss with either end the conversation and run away, admit that micro aggression are bunk, claim that no one really believes in micro aggressions and when people talk about them they are really only talking about old school racism or they end up proposing conservative solutions to the problem.
I have even had a liberal or two admit that White privilege seems to be just a political tactic to throw people off and empower liberals and it has no other merit and it causes them to be afraid for the future.
Take the problems that liberals point out seriously and talk to them on the basis of solving the problems they identify and often both sides of the conversation learn something.
Amen and Amen
“Politics, like religion, is about morality” Actually politics is about power. Political science is the study of power. People want power for different reasons, money, the thrill of exercising it, sex, approval, fame and prestige or they exercise it because they inherited it and it is expected, etc.. Those who seek power often use moral arguments, take moralistic positions, and may actually bring personal moral views and inhibitions to their exercise of power, but morality doesn’t drive them to seek nor exercise power. People see things differently, and those who end up on left or right see things so differently that there’s no bridging the gap. We see law, causation, human nature, knowledge and reason, human capacities, completly differently as Sowell discusses in “Conflict of Visions” but when we all shared traditional and inherited religion and culture we could agree on a lot of moral notions about personal and family behavior. Now even these are sources of division because we lost those moral foundations when we lost those shared religions. There is a lot more to all this than Sowell discusses, including the political views of the disinterested, unengaged or deeply but rationally ignorant who are probably a larger portion of the population than the poltical junkies such as those of us here. They (we all do) tend to suffer from the falacy of composition, they project onto politics the things they know work for them in their personal lives.
After a decade I got tired of it. It is not a useful use of my time, and it made my life materially worse.
You can make a pretty good case—anthropologically, at least—that religion is about power, too. And in human history the two have always been intertwined—only recently, and with difficulty, have some attempted to put a sliver of daylight between them, not always with great results.
When someone says “such and such is about power” my question is: “okay, but the power to do what?”
In James Bond movies, the villains want world power purely for its own sake with (occasionally) some pecuniary motive thrown in. The part of these films that never seems plausible to me is the willingness of the villain’s henchmen to die wholesale in defense of the Evil Lair.
There may be leaders who are motivated by uncomplicated, undisguised lust for power, but they won’t have followers.
Hillary, for example, may look in the mirror and say “all I want is power, pure and simple. I like a little kowtow in the morning, and a day spent pushing people around.” But she has to lie to the rest of us, and tell us it’s about morality because for us it is about morality. (My guess is that she lies to herself, too, by the way).
I once worked with a very liberal guy who constantly spouted his opinions and frequently tried to lure me into a “discussion.” I recall one incident when he persisted and persisted and when I finally gave up and began to respond, he held up a hand for me to stop before I’d gotten out more than a sentence.
I’d love to have a real, intellectual give-and-take with a liberal, but there are so few on either side who can handle it. (I’m not sure I can! It remains largely untested.)
“Power to do what?” I pointed out a limited list, it’s as infinate as there are people. Yes religious institutions and leaders are often also about power but power and morality are different. Religious institutions and inherited moral notions, culture, mores attitudes are different. The conflating the two things shows why you still consider yourself a liberal. Are you familiar with “Conflict of Visions” “Russel Kirk’s “the conservative mind? Hayek’s fatal conceit. These all make important distinctions and place these differences in perspective.
When was this? I have read Sowell and I think his view is as close to the mark as any. I agree that politics is about ‘power’. I also think that ‘money’ is about ‘power’ when its accumulation exceeds reason. So I have what I think of as a ‘personal’ view. ‘Power’ through politics we speak of here, in one context, means control over other peoples’ lives. ‘Money’ can also provide this. I have little interest in either which means I really don’t consider myself significantly engaged in politics beyond an attempt to shed some of the processes that have been put in place for controlling behavior and, in many ways, eliminating the concept of individual liberty. So, I think what we consider the right in political terminology is surely not monolithic when it comes to the notion of power. There are those who think as I do, don’t have any idea of the size of this herd, and then those who are just as interested in power politics as any on the ‘left’.
Not really interested in dialoguing with such an odious creed as Leftism because I am probably not a Conservative but an anti-Leftist/progressive/socialist in all its many wicked permutations and duplicity.
My core tenet in politics and life is to defeat, destroy and discredit the Left as enemies of humanity, diabolical and evil.
I don’t expect any quarter and don’t intend to give any.