Toward a More Enlightened Tomorrow

The issues I’ve covered can be summarized like this:

• The world has recently undergone rapid changes. The United States government and legal system have grown increasingly complex. The economy is global.
• The very complexity of globalism and our legal system generates conspiracy theories because people look for simple explanations to explain what seems incomprehensible, and so much seems incomprehensible.
• A great many people are malleable and will believe what authorities tell them is true. In our age of fragmented news media, “authorities” often include talk radio stars, cable news pundits, and anyone with a social media account who speaks with enough authority.
• We are in the grip of an information revolution that is causing misinformation, rage, and panic to be disseminated at dangerous levels.
• Our technology is outpacing our wisdom to manage it, which is creating more panic.
• All this is causing a rise in extremist movements.
• Meanwhile, the angriest voices are setting the tone for politics.
• In the best of circumstances, democratic forms of government are difficult because they require a lot from the people. Globalism and the complex problems of a large, sprawling, multicultural democracy require that we engage the higher, more evolved parts of our brains rather than the primal ones.

Okay, so how?

I’ll begin with what doesn’t work. If someone is trapped in an ideological filter bubble, calling the person names will not help. I suspect that no one has ever stopped being deluded because someone said, “You are deluded.”

Understanding the minds of other men and women and hence embracing the spirit of liberty includes understanding what is happening to those who have been pulled into ideological spirals or who have had their authoritarian impulses activated.

Professor Keith Bellizzi, offers this advice:

Presenting new things in a nonconfrontational way allows people to evaluate new information without feeling attacked.

Insulting others and suggesting someone is ignorant or misinformed, no matter how misguided their beliefs may be, will cause the people you are trying to influence to reject your argument. Instead, try asking questions that lead the person to question what they believe. While opinions may not ultimately change, the chance of success is greater.

Karen Stenner reminds us that those with authoritarian vulnerabilities are simple-minded avoiders of complexity—and they are malleable. If one side makes them feel reassured and united by emphasizing shared values, and another side mocks them and makes them feel inadequate, they will transfer their loyalty to the side that offers them a sense of unity. It might seem obvious, but if you want a productive political discussion, start by finding a common cause with people and avoid directly attacking their views. Affirm as much as you can.

Another tactic I have found effective is to say, “The divide isn’t left versus right. It’s the extremists on either end versus people who are more balanced.” I suspect this works because nobody thinks of themselves as an extremist. Everyone believes they are balanced. The extremists are over there. The reasonable people are here.

Reject Rage Merchants

Don’t contribute to the noise. Avoid toxic online spaces. The ideal response is to filter out the noise and engage with politics in a more productive way.

Recall that a public reaction against yellow journalism in the late nineteenth century led to a new kind of journalism that was fact-based. This needs to happen again. The more people become aware of what is happening, the sooner such a public reaction can come. Be part of the reaction against this new and improved form of yellow journalism.

Find news outlets that stick to facts. A reader asked me to recommend good sources for news. I can’t do that because the moment I recommend a good source, something will change. The only solution is for consumers of news to become sensitive to reporting that is not factual.

Good reporters are necessary to a functioning democracy. Find ways to support reporters who stick to the facts. You can be sure that their social media comments are filled with angry partisans who don’t like their attempts at neutrality.

We must insist on non-partisan news reporting that engages the more evolved parts of our brains. If something enrages you, look to see what reasonable people with alternative viewpoints are saying and ask yourself why they are saying whatever it is. This will better enable you to discuss issues with people who disagree with you.

Just as the printing press caused people to be inundated with large quantities of material that they were not equipped to evaluate, people today are being bombarded via the Internet with material that they are not equipped to evaluate, including AI-generated or deep fakes. People need a new set of tools to evaluate online sources.

When you want to feel riveted or captivated, turn to the arts, not partisan pundits.

Withhold Judgment as Long as You Can

When I taught college English, I noticed that many of my students were quick to judge literary characters, but slow to sympathize with them. I thought this was a problem. I agreed with John Updike, who said the purpose of literature is to enlarge our sympathies.

There is an abundance of ways to enlarge our sympathies that help us become more flexible and nuanced thinkers. The study of literature is one way. The towering literary figures endure because they reveal essential truths about human nature. Shakespeare understood the authoritarian personality and ideological spirals long before the phrases were coined. If you don’t believe me, read Julius Caesar and pay attention to the behavior of the crowds. Read Richard III and notice how easily the citizens and noblemen accept Richard as their savior against supposed threats.

The study of history is another way. History offers perspective and shows that there is more than one way forward. When we look back and study what has been, we understand the wisdom in King Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

I found that the work of a criminal defense lawyer is also good practice for withholding judgment and trying to understand the minds of men and women. The job of the defense lawyer is to say things such as, “Let’s look more closely at the facts,” and “Let’s consider what happened from the viewpoint of the defendant.”

The question defense lawyers often get is “But what if they’re guilty?” Another—and perhaps a better—question is this: “But what if they’re not?”

Don’t Become Cynical

Both life and democracy are difficult. Cynicism comes from expecting these things to be easy and then giving up when discovering that they are not easy. Those who do not want to confront the difficulty of both life and democracy are vulnerable to the siren call of a demagogue who promises easy answers.

Democracy requires work, and that cannot happen when people give in to hopelessness, cynicism, or panic. Of the three, panic is the most dangerous. After spending time on social media, I concluded that if I wanted to enable autocracy, I would find a way to keep people in a state of constant panic. Panic impairs rational thought, wears people out, and makes them more likely to commit desperate acts that add to the confusion and chaos.

Make Politics Cool Again

Plato’s concern for democracy was that too few people can think deeply about the complex issues inherent in politics. He also believed that people were too susceptible to demagoguery for democracy to be stable. But if, as Karen Stenner tells us, one-third of the population is “simple-minded avoiders of complexity,” then two-thirds remain who should be able to think about the complex issues that politics involves.

Currently, the loud, angry, hyper-partisans dominate the conversation, drowning out more nuanced perspectives and shaping the way we think about politics. The non-extremists must find a way to re-establish a shared factuality and set a new tone for discussing politics.

It’s time for the rest of us—the majority—to reclaim the public sphere.

There is a wonderful passage in historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals about the Lincoln era and how, in the nineteenth century, politics was a concern to all citizens. She opens Chapter Three, “The Lure of Politics,” with this image from Noah Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book, which was widely read in Abraham Lincoln’s time:

And this:

In the only country founded on the principle that men should and could govern themselves, where self-government dominated every level of human association from the smallest village to the nation’s capital, it was natural politics should be a consuming, almost universal concern.

A cave-dweller with a philosophical frame of mind who heard the approach of a predatory cat and stopped to consider all possible responses while contemplating the point of view of the cat would most likely be lunch meat. Parts of our brains are still in the “watch for predatory animals” stage of evolution. This creates more problems than it solves because we now live in a world of the Internet and a global economy. Our technology is in danger of outpacing our wisdom to handle it. Meanwhile, we are generally not in danger of predatory cats. We are, however, in danger of facts being lost in a tidal wave of speculation, spin, and conspiracy theories and reacting to those with our most primal emotions.

The best response to any political situation, therefore, is to pause, delve more deeply into the facts, and think about the best response.