Re: US Politics II--return of the shouting
Hey all. I read a very short e-book recently that I thought some people here might enjoy, so am now passing on a bit of a review for it to you guys. It's called "The three languages of politics" by Arnold King.
The basic premise is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians use different linguistic short-cuts, which work well when communicating with their in-group, but which lead to people talking past each other when speaking to people in different groups. King says liberals tend to use what he calls an "oppressor/oppressed" axis in their speech, in which those who are oppressors (or allow oppression) are the bad guys, and those who oppose it are the good guys. By speaking this way, progressives indicate whose views can be ignored in a discussion, and who (in their view) should be listened too. Similarly, conservatives tend to use what King calls a "civilization/barbarism" axis, and libertarians use a "enhance/restrict personal choice" axis. I agreed with him on all these, though the conservative "civilization/barbarism" one threw me at first, since he was using the words slightly differently than I tend to think of them when I hear/read them. He meant that conservatives tend to view the "good guys" to be the ones who are defending/promoting/protecting traditional institutions that they consider to hold society together (civilization) and view the "bad guys" to be those who oppose such institutions, or who are willing to let them decay/weaken/etc (barbarism). To me, "civilization" tends to carry connotations of large, urban places, and also modernity, which wasn't the sense King was using it, and likewise, barbarism to me carries strong connotations of violence, which wasn't necessarily implied in Kings usage. But whatever the case, once I understood what Kind meant with the terms, I thought he was pretty much spot-on.
Going beyond that basic idea, King argues that we tend to use these separate languages to engage in "motivated" rather than "constructive" reasoning. I think all of us here are pretty familiar with these ideas, even if we haven't heard them called that before. King sums it up very nicely (in my opinion) when he says that constructive reasoning is what we do when we're acting like an idealized judge, trying to figure out, from a neutral position, what is right/true/best/etc. Whereas motivated reasoning is what we use when we're acting like an idealized lawyer, picking one side, and accepting any and all evidence in favor of it, while scrutinizing all conflicting evidence with the harshest possible interpretation. King says that once we reduce opposing views to those of the "bad guys" of our particular group, we can achieve closure. We feel we no longer really need to address the points they bring up, and can just write them off as being unreasonable, or part of the problem ("oh, of course he'd say that! He's one of them!").
King argues that we need all the view points in a functioning society, but that our current way of using the three languages is making this more difficult. He makes what I thought was a very good point, in saying that the vast majority of political punditry/commentary is aimed almost entirely at getting people to not listen to the other side(s) of an issue. Most people speaking to an audience about politics these days (whether on talk radio, news paper opinion columns, the internet, or whatever) are speaking to people in their own group, and are telling them why they can safely dismiss the views of the other group(s). In other words, progressives will tell you you can ignore conservatives because they're oppressing someone, conservatives will tell you that progressives and libertarians should be dismissed because they're either destroying our society or letting it be destroyed, and libertarians will tell you that progressives and conservatives can be dismissed because they want to control your actions and limit your choices. Instead of being a tool for helping us communicate and engage in constructive reasoning to reach the best solutions, the way we tend to use language is actually making it harder to do so, and making it easier for us to just ignore/dismiss the views of those who disagree with us.
King makes clear that he's not saying we shouldn't disagree, or shouldn't argue or debate things. He admit's he's firmly in the libertarian camp. He doesn't think all three groups are equally valid, and isn't trying to say that they are. What he's saying is that we're cutting ourselves off from opposing views, which increases the chances of making mistakes, regardless of which group we're in. He offers some helpful ideas on how to reduce this, which I'll mention here.
One is that all too often, we think we know what the "other side" wants better than they do, and that we're very quick to label other groups unreasonable. He suggests that we're not in a position to evaluate whether anyone other than ourselves are being unreasonable. It's fine to believe they are wrong, he says, but if we find ourselves thinking that they're being unreasonable, we're probably engaging in motivated reasoning, and not actually seeing the situation through their eyes.
Another is the idea of the "political turing test." The idea being that of putting someone in a group of other people, and seeing if they can "talk the talk" of that group long enough to convince that group that they are "one of them." For example, taking at libertarian and putting him in room full of conservatives, and having them talk politics for a while, and see if everyone figured the person was conservative. He argued that if you can't do this well, you probably don't actually understand what the other side is actually saying/thinking. You need to be able to speak their language, not because it will help change their minds necessarily, but because you won't be able to understand their points if you can't.
He gives an example from a libertarian's blog, saying something along the lines of "progressives want a nanny state where the government does everything for you, and conservatives want a police state, where the government keeps you line." This, he said, would clearly fail the political turing test, because no progressive would say they want a nanny state, nor would a conservative say they want a police state. When we say "the so-and-so's want X" but the people we're talking about would never say that, then we're engaged in motivated reasoning, and are explaining (to ourselves) why we can ignore them. It can be fair to say that one groups choices might lead to X, but if we say the want X, we're probably trying to justify ignoring/dismissing them rather than evaluating their ideas constructively.
In short, I found it an interesting read, and one that certainly got me thinking about discussions here and elsewhere. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in such topics.