Hobbits, Hooligans and Vulcans
February 19, 2017 5:14 PM   Subscribe

 
Because humans in aggregate are mean and dumb? That's been my base assumption for decades now... goes to RTFA Yup, pretty much.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:45 PM on February 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think that any discussion on politics needs to draw distinctions between values and policies. People who share the same values might have wildly diverging ideas of how to implement them. And people who might be horrified at one another's values can end up agreeing that a certain course of action is the best.

Condensing it to "people are tribal" misses the very important complexity that makes politics work and keeps human society from just being a bunch of parochial jerkasses stabbing each other over everything.
posted by Zalzidrax at 5:53 PM on February 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'm in the middle of reading the book (mentioned in this article) The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt.

The book, so far, implies that there really are no Vulcans (described in the article as those who "think scientifically and rationally about politics")--that underneath it all we all have an emotional basis to our beliefs, but that some of us are just a bit better at influencing those emotions with rationality than others. He seems to imply that the key to influencing others is to understand this emotional, intuitive foundation to their beliefs, and only then can you use reasoning.

It is kind of depressing, but the idea seems to have merit.
posted by eye of newt at 6:40 PM on February 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Like Zalzidrax, I think the article was missing a discussion of values. You don't (indeed can't) establish moral values by rational argumentation, but they're not emotions either.

I also think it's not so cut-and-dried that being a "Vulcan" is better than being a "hooligan". If you fight for civil rights, will you do better if you lack a passionate commitment to the cause, or a revulsion for injustice?

Finally, I think these discussions miss the importance of institutions, or just historical chance. US Politics looked very different 40 years ago in part because both parties were far less polarized: there were liberals, moderates, and conservatives among Democrats and Republicans. Arguably it made it easier for both sides to get some of what they wanted, but harder to get a lot of what they wanted.
posted by zompist at 8:49 PM on February 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


> Ah, to return to the good old days of 1960, when whites on both sides of the aisle could agree that segregation was important

You know, I dislike segregation as much as anyone here, but I'm getting pretty tired of every mention of anything being better in the past being smugly refuted with "oh yeah but what about segregation!?" (Or, depending on the historical period, slavery.) It's a sure-fire favorites magnet but reduces the past to a one-dimensional caricature and short-circuits discussion. Pretty much everyone who came before us was sexist, racist, and classist, so let's just ignore the whole unpleasant subject!
posted by languagehat at 6:06 AM on February 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


It would be impossible to make completely rational choices. There just isn't enough time for that, and a lot of political issues are intentionally obfuscated and misrepresented, so biases come in handy for streamlining the process. So if there's a bill titled "Protecting our Jobs and Environment for Future Generations," and the text is long and convoluted and hard to tangle real meaning out of, how do you decide? The name sounds like a good thing, so maybe that. Or do you look to see who wrote it and who supports it? Do you read what different media outlets say it'll do? Do you read multiple media outlets from different perspectives and average those? Does the answer change if there are ten bills like that?

And candidates can be even harder, especially in local kind of 'starter' positions, where they don't already have a voting record and everyone takes the same sort of milquetoast positions like being in favor of jobs and children, and against crime and disorder, so you rely on bias and little semiotics like how many flags and guns they have on their campaign materials, how often and in what context they use the word 'family,' and things like that. And, if they mention it, you look at party affiliations.

You can't be totally rational and informed, and anyone who says they are is lying or delusional. In fact, the people who think they don't have biases are probably the most biased people there are, because they're completely oblivious to them.

I haven't been alive forever or anything, so I don't know for sure, but it seems to me as though politics has just plain gotten squishier and more obfuscatory in recent times, depending more heavily on perceptions and subtle indicators than on concrete, explicit positions, so voters have to rely more on associations and their own biases and group identifiers and emotional responses because that's just about all they've got to go on.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:49 AM on February 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


This is an interesting article but I think it fails to discuss one of the most fundamental problems we have in American politics right now. Starting with Reagan the GOP has pounded home the idea that "Government is not the solution, Government Is The Problem." When the arena where ideas are to be shared and policy crafted becomes poisoned in the minds of those who enter it and the very arena is considered corrupt, how does any good work get accomplished? And by "good work" I mean - work that preserves, protects or advances the "common good."

I am taking this notion of "the common good" from the preamble to our Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I am convinced most of America no longer believes that A) We should work for 'the common good' nor B) That good government insures justice or tranquility or C) that good governance sometimes requires cooperation and compromise. Most Americans no longer believe in "the common good" because they have been convinced that POC or immigrants or both are getting more benefits, more justice, more tranquility from the government than they are.

Surely most everyone on MeFi has read at least one news article about the desperately poor people who are dependent upon ACA and/or Medicaid but voted for politicians who want to abolish it. Their reasoning is - Obamacare is for "deadbeats and illegals" who don't deserve it, but the ACA is OK because it helps them. The fact that they don't understand that Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing is mind boggling to me, but there you have it.

I just don't think it's helpful to psychoanalyze people in relation to their politics without acknowledging the political climate. Politics is a game. If the game is fair and both sides abide by the rules and agree to all the regulations then you can have a fair fight, so to speak. But if the game is rigged, or all the rules favor one team over another, that is something else entirely. If the game is Hooligans vs Vulcans it really shouldn't matter - as long as the rules are fairly enforced. That is not the situation we have in America right now. The game has been corrupted, rigged and basically rendered useless. The American form of government is not perfect, but it is workable -- IF all involved play by the rules and agree to the basic tenets of 3 branches of co-equal government with separation of powers.

Our current president and his administration believe the Executive Branch "outranks" both of the other branches. He has hooligans and vulcans helping him perpetuate that lie. God help us all if the free press is abolished.
posted by pjsky at 8:27 AM on February 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Pretty much everyone who came before us was sexist, racist, and classist, so let's just ignore the whole unpleasant subject!
Is this what you are saying or is this what you think others are implying?
posted by soelo at 11:53 AM on February 20, 2017


You know, I dislike segregation as much as anyone here, but I'm getting pretty tired of every mention of anything being better in the past being smugly refuted with "oh yeah but what about segregation!?" (Or, depending on the historical period, slavery.) It's a sure-fire favorites magnet but reduces the past to a one-dimensional caricature and short-circuits discussion. Pretty much everyone who came before us was sexist, racist, and classist, so let's just ignore the whole unpleasant subject!

A lot of the good of the past was predicated on the existence of a literal underclass. You can't extricate the good of the past (good for whom?) from the problematic systems on which it was built.
posted by Dysk at 1:32 PM on February 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Is this what you are saying or is this what you think others are implying?

The latter.

> A lot of the good of the past was predicated on the existence of a literal underclass. You can't extricate the good of the past (good for whom?) from the problematic systems on which it was built.

I don't know what you're saying. I mean, yes, we all agree that "A lot of the good of the past was predicated on the existence of a literal underclass"; how does that address my point?
posted by languagehat at 2:53 PM on February 20, 2017


The point is that it's always relevant. We can't return to what worked in the fifties, and nor should we, because the consensus at the time was a consensus that excluded an awful lot of people from participation in society. Democrats and Republicans did not get along, and as an entirely separate point, there was systemic and sanctioned racism and sexism to a degree we don't see today, Democrats and Republicans got along over systemic and sanctioned racism and sexism to a degree we don't see today.
posted by Dysk at 3:08 PM on February 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Ever notice how more wealth was captured by the 99% in the decades immeadiately after The War? Are you arguing the current misery of the 99% is preferred to that?

It is entirely possible to pick up pieces of the past and brush them off and try to see how they might be relevant today.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 4:04 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


The current misery still looks a damn sight better to me than the lot of a black woman in pre-war times, for example.
posted by Dysk at 4:13 PM on February 20, 2017


For clarity, I mean WW2, not the Civil one.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 4:39 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


There have been a whole lot of changes that had little if anything to do with civil rights, though. Particularly in the role of media.

There are good and bad things about that, too, of course, but there have been some real downsides to progress that shouldn't be overlooked just because they were concurrent with other, more positive trends.
posted by ernielundquist at 5:08 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


> We can't return to what worked in the fifties, and nor should we

But literally nobody (here) is saying that, and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the reflex response to anybody mentioning something good about, say, Thomas Jefferson ("He owned slaves!") or the '50s ("Racism!") or pretty much any other aspect of the past. It's just as idiotic as the right shutting down any discussion of Islam with "Terrorism!" To take one aspect of something complicated and make that the only thing you're willing to talk about is pure anti-intellectualism.
posted by languagehat at 5:17 PM on February 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


To take one aspect of something complicated and make that the only thing you're willing to talk about is pure anti-intellectualism.

This seems like a good time to re-familiarize ourselves with the strawman argument.
posted by MrJM at 8:26 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


One central thesis--that reasoning evolved to"win arguments"--is specious on its face. Reasoning evolved to enhance and extend observations. Colloquially, it's called "figuring things out." Other animals do it. Logical argumentation can't exist without reasoning and probably is an artifact of disagreeing about group decisions. This error doesn't detract from the central conclusion, however. The need to win arguments, especially political ones, certainly distorts reasoning. Clearly, the political hooligan has become quite prevalent. One might argue that they are more common on one side of the spectrum than the other, but they clearly exist in numbers on both sides.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:20 PM on February 20, 2017


Crony Beliefs

I contend that the best way to understand all the crazy beliefs out there — aliens, conspiracies, and all the rest — is to analyze them as crony beliefs. Beliefs that have been "hired" not for the legitimate purpose of accurately modeling the world, but rather for social and political kickbacks.
posted by Glibpaxman at 9:58 PM on February 20, 2017


Thanks for posting, the hot side of randy! This is definitely the best politically related post I've read in a while, particularly on MeFi.
posted by ethical_caligula at 11:44 PM on February 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


You know, I dislike segregation as much as anyone here, but I'm getting pretty tired of every mention of anything being better in the past being smugly refuted with "oh yeah but what about segregation!?"

I understand what you're saying, but it's probably worth noting that the original comment being responded to was, specifically, about marrying members of the other party in 1960, not just hanging out with them or engaging in friendly debate or whatever. Considering in 1960 both the denial of franchise to various people of color (Voting Rights Act passes in 1965) and the prevalence of anti-miscegenation laws (Loving v Virginia handed down in 1967), it's not terribly surprising that, in 1960, relatively few people would be opposed to their children marrying a member of the other political party. The question presumes the parent's own membership in a political party (their children can hardly marry someone in the opposite party without it, after all), and that means that we're largely talking about middle+-class white people and their opinions about their middle+-class white children marrying other middle+-class white people.

With regard to the specific comment, about intermarriage between political parties, both parties' acceptance and enforcement of segregation and racial bias in social and political life during that time period is pretty relevant and not merely a knee-jerk "1950s were bad tho" reaction.
posted by Errant at 11:16 AM on February 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


With the caveats presented earlier, this is still a good, meaty piece.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 12:05 PM on February 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Further, when people feel strongly about an issue, that is, when they think it is important and when it evokes strong emotions, they are more likely to evaluate arguments about that issue in a polarized, biased way."

Great article, really interesting. Its relative lack of popularity here is a vindication of its argument.
posted by alasdair at 10:24 PM on February 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


> With regard to the specific comment, about intermarriage between political parties, both parties' acceptance and enforcement of segregation and racial bias in social and political life during that time period is pretty relevant and not merely a knee-jerk "1950s were bad tho" reaction.

Fair enough, and I admit I'm somewhat knee-jerk about this myself; thanks for the dose of perspective!
posted by languagehat at 7:59 AM on February 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Starting with Reagan the GOP has pounded home the idea that "Government is not the solution, Government Is The Problem." When the arena where ideas are to be shared and policy crafted becomes poisoned in the minds of those who enter it and the very arena is considered corrupt, how does any good work get accomplished?

I totally agree. I think this is hugely to blame for the current narrative in America that blames every system except for ourselves. I don't think the appropriate conclusion is that politics makes us dumb; it's that we're not talking about politics in a way that's constructive. We're not thinking critically. Critical thinking (in my opinion) can solve just about every problem with an ignorant group of people.
posted by hannahschaef at 9:48 AM on February 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


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