There is a subject that we often return to on Samizdata when discussing things, and that is ‘meta-context’. This is the frames of reference, the unspoken assumptions, the underpinning world view if you like, within which people see things and discuss them. Context is usually explicit, whereas meta-context is implicit and very much in the background.
This is a useful concept for understanding why discussions get framed in the manner they do. When the meta-context of two people is widely divergent, they tend to talk past each other, because much of what they say will not be what the other person understands. A great deal of the success of the statist political establishment comes from their control of the meta-context, so that in the minds of many, much of what states do simply goes without saying… that is just the way it is, even if on a contextual level a person is not predisposed to like or trust the political establishment, the state’s basic purview is essentially a given and thus not really pondered deeply, much like the sun rising in the morning.
So when David Cameron and Gordon Brown exchange meaningless ritual barbs in the House of Commons, we hear an exchange between two people with somewhat different politics and personalities, but they are as one at the meta-contextual level. Each understand the other completely on a great many levels and both understand instinctively what are the ‘proper’ limits of their political ‘disagreement’.
So when someone comes along who does not share meta-context, all sorts of interesting things happen. Not only is there going to be a profound non-meeting of minds, there is going to be both misunderstanding and often great antipathy as people struggle to fit the opposing person’s views within their own meta-context, assuming things that are actually not the case at all and imputing meaning that tell you far more about the person doing the imputing than the person they are discussing.
And so I present you with Randy Cohen, who blogs for the mainstream statist-left newspaper the New York Times as The Ethicist. The article which caused my meta-contextual antennae to start tingling a few days ago was titled How not to talk about health care.
Public discourse necessarily and legitimately involves the clash of interests and opinions: that’s what politics is. But that clash, rough as it may be, must still be conducted with intellectual integrity, not as the oratorical equivalent of Ultimate Fighting. This is a matter of honesty and thus of ethics.
I do not know if the public option is a wise law – health policy is beyond my purview – but I do know what it is not: unusual in its general approach. Public and private institutions have long undertaken similar tasks and without dire consequences. Private schools survive public education: Brearley and Bronx Science peacefully coexist. FedEx tolerates the U.S. Postal Service. Six Flags is facing bankruptcy, but no one proposes that we close down Yosemite or Yellowstone to protect it.
In his critique of the public option, Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, invoked the inability of his 7-year-old daughter’s lemonade stand to compete with McDonald’s. (You’d think she’d thrive, incidentally, what with lemonade not being on the McDonald’s menu.) “It’s impossible to have a level playing field with a public plan,” Ryan said, asserting that private insurers could be driven out of business by the unfair competitive advantages enjoyed by a government-sponsored insurer (presumably much as the University of Massachusetts turned Harvard into a ghost town, or the New York Public Library system drove Barnes & Noble into the ground). Again, this is not to challenge Ryan’s conclusions about the public option: that’s politics. It is to demand veracity in his arguments: that’s ethics.
Here’s another sort of dodgy reasoning deployed on this issue. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove concluded: “If Democrats enact a public-option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state.” This is a slippery-slope argument, the sort of thing that should set off warning bells. If we impose a 65 miles-per-hour speed limit, we’re on the way to a 55 m.p.h. limit, then down to 5 m.p.h., and ultimately to mandatory driving in reverse. If Rove was exaggerating for rhetorical effect, he was acceptably – delightfully – bombastic; if he meant that remark literally, he was deceptive and hence unethical.
This is almost a case study of IF THEN statements that spring from a very parochial conventional urban left meta-context, but it at least has the virtue of making no bones where it is coming from. The fact that almost every refutable contention is treated as if it is a self-evident truth is what makes this almost a pure argument from subconscious meta-context. A quick fisking of the ‘money quotes’:
Public and private institutions have long undertaken similar tasks and without dire consequences. Private schools survive public education: Brearley and Bronx Science peacefully coexist. FedEx tolerates the U.S. Postal Service. Six Flags is facing bankruptcy, but no one proposes that we close down Yosemite or Yellowstone to protect it.
Something many conservatives and almost no libertarian would agree with. Private schools tend to be tolerated as long as they submit to massive regulation of content, in effect becoming outsourced state approved education providers, with truly dire long term consequences for the culture. FedEx does not ‘tolerate’ the U.S. Postal Service, it is prevented from delivering letters under force of law. The last example is a non sequitur. Yet these are presented as examples because Randy Cohen cannot really believe anyone in good faith could think otherwise. No doubt he is surrounded by people who reinforce that feeling.
This is a slippery-slope argument, the sort of thing that should set off warning bells. If we impose a 65 miles-per-hour speed limit, we’re on the way to a 55 m.p.h. limit, then down to 5 m.p.h., and ultimately to mandatory driving in reverse.
Sure, the final bit is an attempt at reductio ad absurdum, which is not intrinsically unethical but the reason the whole thrust of the argument fails is that it is logicaly false, based on the meta-contextual given that states are free to impose speed limits. Stated more logically, an absolute prerequisite of having a 65, 55 or 5 mph speed limit is permitting the state to set speed limits. If you oppose speed limits, allowing the state to set speed limits is the slippery slope to having the state actually impose a speed limit. That is not a disingenuous argument, it is an indisputable fact.
This is the very argument used by Second Amendment defenders in the USA: allowing the state to restrict people’s right to keep and bear arms is the slippery-slope to restricting that right completely, and so the very principle must be resisted in its entirety. To argue that is not true, regardless of where you stand on the issue, well that is disingenuous and therefore unethical.
So Representative Paul Ryan’s claim that a politically directed, non-market sensitive tax funded alternative to the (already heavily regulated) market in health care will distort the market even more is not just his opinion, it is a truism, because such things are designed to distort the market in ways that are deemed politically desirable. That much is indisputable because that is the objective: these schemes are designed to make non-state directed health care less profitable and therefore ‘more affordable’ (so the reasoning goes).
This may be a good or bad thing, but the notion that it is unethical to take the view that a market-immune state funded competitor will damage some businesses is remarkable because that is, frankly, what it is intended to do.
Now one could argue that Randy Cohen is in fact the unethical one by trying to place perfectly supportable contentions beyond the bounds of ethical discussion as a political tactic, and for all I know that is true…
…but as I do not know the man and do not habitually read his blog, I am just looking at this article in isolation and offering up a possible alternative theory why he wrote what he wrote: he literally does not understand the premises from which this opposition to something he supports comes from. Thus he can only conclude unethical motivations because it just does not make sense to him. His meta-context simply prevents him from understanding the real reasons people do not think as he does.
Perry:
Yes, a very important observation. A related point is that another person’s point of view may appear completely illogical but it’s quite likely that it’s as logical as one’s own point of view, just derived from completely different meta-contextual premises. A lot of time is wasted trying to demonstrate that someone else’s opinion is illogical that would be better spent trying to find the key difference in meta-contextual premises and arguing about that.
Just off the top of my head, here are some meta-contextual pairings that I have observed at the core of a lot of political disagreements.
* the labour theory of value v. the market theory of value
* rights as things provided by the state v. rights inherent in the individual
* human nature v. the perfectibility of mankind (might also be thought of as “essential goodness” v. “essential badness”)
* contradictory attitudes toward free will (not sure how to characterize that as a pairing)
Having said that, though, I have also found it challenging to get people to talk about meta-context. Most of the time I’ve been met with objections such as, “you’re talking hypotheticals,” or, “let’s stick to the subject.” At least then, though, I know that the conversation is about debate for sport, or some other purpose, not about finding real answers.
Picking on a minor point (not the main thrust of your article), it is now commonplace to decalre the slippery slope a “logical fallacy”; that is it is inherently a fallacy to invoke it. Technically this is correct, in that to move from position A to position B is no evidence on its own that further movements to C, D and E are inevitable or more likely.
Where it fails to be a fallacy is that generally when invoked it is when greater information is available beyond the mere data point of a move from A to B; that is that the persons demanding the move from A to B have in other situations then demanded a move from C to D; or because one is already at position D after previous increments from A to B, and B to C, etc. When one has reasonable suspicion that the persons moving from A to B desire position Z, it is not a fallacy.
As an example, it was not fallacious in 1939 to expect further territorial expansion by Germany after Poland, as evinced by previous movements down the slope (the Sudetenland etc).
Just waffling, apologies for the tangent.
If I may add one to your list, Tedd, ‘doing something’ versus ‘consequences’.
There seems among many well-intentioned statists a belief that ‘doing something’ is in itself a moral imperative. It is difficult to begin a discussion of moral strengths and hazards of statist versus market responses to situations when they believe that if you don’t ‘do something’ it can only be because you approve of whatever is happening. Some examples are: if you oppose drug laws, you support addiction and its consequences – if you oppose tax funded welfare, you support starvation – if you oppose public housing, you support homelessness – if you oppose wage controls you support poverty – if you oppose discrimination laws, you support racism – ad infinitum.
With so many good hearted people, I can never get past that belief that to ‘do something’ is a moral imperative in and of itself. It carries some moral absolution and after having ‘done something’, their own goodness is vindicated and beyond reproach.
This appears to be closely tied to the defense of having ‘good intentions’, the belief that harm done with good intentions is somehow morally superior to good done for personal gain. As long as that is their meta-context, it is impossible to open discussion of negative structural incentives or moral hazards of statist responses.
I love it when my meta-contextual antennae start to tingle!
😉
This makes me wish I could remember the title of a book I read on Classical Rhetoric when I was a grad student in AI and Cognitive Psychology. It showed the ideas of what Perry calls meta-context in a science fiction story in which the population of Earth all believed that scientific advances had led to the ability to exactly define the day of each persons death and that certain acts could decrease or increase that time… they were of course controlled by an establishment. The stories hero does a runner when his official death day arrives and… he is hunted down because if he is not polished off it might break the carefully constructed meta-context that keeps the population under control by the benevolent global system.
It was quite an interesting way for a pre-libertarian (I read this in 1973 I believe) to get introduced to the ways in which what you think is controlled.
It’s also known in Marxist terms as ‘the dialectic’ I believe.
Ascribing a real-world context of any sort to the mental box within which Randy Cohen is politically confined is granting him far too much credit.
There is an all-out, Goebbels-style assault on truth underway, especially on PBS, but, more relevantly, on radio and TV news programs. One odd little part of this is the direct quotation of sources without regard for and without any attempt to assess the truth of their statements. Now perhaps this all boils down to a general inability to think, as if quotation were ipso facto newsworthiness and fairness and balance that would together somehow lead to the truth. It is at one with all of the special effects, constituting utterly shallow entertainment for mesmerization’s sake, and it has allowed pathological liars like Obama to take center stage and ham it up in the limelight without regard for whether their makeup will slide off.
A further error on Cohen’s part is one of reading comprehension. Rove’s main thrust in that op-ed article was not on the slippery slope, but rather on the terrain currently underfoot, and specificly on what arguments to make at the moment; the slippery slope was part of the hook, not of the line. Had Rove chosen to make the the woefully-understated claim of America’s becoming a European-style welfare state a central part of his argument, perhaps he would have had some capacity to do so. But surely even the WSJ would not devote the kind of space necessary to lay out such an argument, if it somehow were deemed of sufficient interest to their readership. The purpose of direct quotation is no longer one of news, and Cohen has learned this lesson well,
The teachers and newsbimbos that helped to shape Cohen’s mental model did not give him context; they robbed him of it, substituting counterfeit fiction for sound reality, flash for clarity, and noise for speech.
What the heck is ETHICS these days anyway?
What is an Ethicist?
Does all this derive from Aristotelian theses? Only?
Ian B:
Eugene Volokh wrote an interesting article on this topic, in which he analyzes various mechanisms of slippery slopes that occur in practice:
http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/slipperyshorter.pdf
Anyone who argues that invoking the slippery slope argument is necessarily a fallacy should definitely read this.
An ethicist is someone who regards anything that he (1) doesn’t understand (2) doesn’t support politically as… unethical.
Isn’t that obvious from the article? 😀
Midwesterner:
I think the meta-context that produces the ‘doing something’ versus ‘consequences’ conflict may be rational values versus human (or emotional) values. Some people prefer that human values have priority over rational values, and will therefore feel that “good” has been done if people feel better about something, even if no material good has resulted.
I think that’s a perfectly valid way to make personal choices, but not political choices. And then, of course, in a lot of cases people just haven’t thought it through.
1) Ethicist comments on something outside his speciality which he doesn’t really understand.
2)Because he doesn’t understand, the ethicist thinks that someone else is being dishonest.
3) He then thinks that, because of this dishonesty, the issue now falls within his speciality (ethics).
4)If he was actually good at ethics, he would realise the possibility of 2), and understand the negative ethical implications of accusing someone else of dishonesty in an area which he doesn’t understand.
Tedd, if I may attempt to refine it even further: rather than ‘rational’ vs ’emotional’, I’d say ‘objective’ vs ‘subjective’ values (sincerely hoping that it doesn’t turn into one of those threads…)
The left (led by the New York Times) have long wished to drive out (if need by by banning) those who have opinions do not have as their foundation fundemental collectivist doctrines.
They particularly hate people like Paul Ryan – voted against the best part of a TRILLION Dollars of corporate welfare that goes by the name of “TARP” and so on.
This is at the heart of the “ethical” persons deception about how government subsidized services (“public”) and private ones can “coexist”.
Harvard is not really a “private” part of Civil Society at all – it gets vast sums of taxpayer money (directly and from student loans and other such) and tries to educate its students in the doctrines of collectivism – so it is not a true alternative to to the “public” colleges in Mass. Only a handful of independent universities still exist – such as Hillsdale.
Also the subsidy of higher education has had the effect of massively pushing up tutition costs (it is normal for any subsidy scheme to push up costs), just as Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP have pushed up health costs – and now these costs serve as an excuse for yet more statism.
The public (i.e. government) schools mean that nonelite private schools are pushed out (see E.G. West’s “Education and the State” for how this was done in Britain) and yet more health intervention would do the same to private health insurers in the United States.
And just in case it did not – the thousand page plus Bill has little things tucked into it that would have the effect of the long term deliberate destruction of any real choice in American health care anyway.
Just as Comrade Barack Obama is on record as saying was his intention – as recently as 2003 he was openly a “single payer” person (i.e. a government monopoly person). He has not changed – Comrade Barack is the same collectivist person he has always been, which is why the New York Times likes him – and hates people who tell the truth about Obama (such as Paul Ryan).
If the NYT folks had their way all media would be “responsible” – i.e. they would all support (or at least not oppose) the drive towards socialism in the United States.
Of course we are seeing yet another example of statism right now.
General Motors and Chrysler are using taxpayers money to subsidize their competition with Ford.
The destruction of Ford is a bit bigger than the bankruptcy of “Six Flags” amusment park, but indeed government parks should NOT be subsidized in competition with them (let the environmentalists buy Yellowstone and preserve it – they are include very rich people).
Nor should the post office be subsdized in its competition with FedEx.
That is basic morality – no use of force (the taking of taxpayers money by violence or the threat of it) to subsidize the competitor of a private enterprise.
Basic morality that the “ethical” guy does not follow.
Remember it is not just the education system (including many of the supposedly private schools and colleges) that teaches collectivism – or just the “mainstream media” either.
There are also youth movements like AMERICORPS – serve and you will have a paid job (even more needed as unemployment goes up, and the increase in the minumum wage rate law will help push it up even more).
Serve and you will have status – even Republican politicians (the ones the New York Times says are “responsible”) will say how wonderful you are, and girls will find you attractive.
Serve and agree to ten years of government or “non profit” work and all your debts will be forgiven.
Serve and sware this oath of alliegence to the principles of AMERICORPS – not the reactionary limited government principles of the Constitution of the United States of course .
No you get to sware to “get things done” and so on.
Of course there are still bigoted reactionary enemies of AMERICORPS – but you get to destroy them.
And this will be great fun for young strong people like yourselves.
A fair bit of my work involves Decision Theory, though applied mostly to scientific and engineering applications of pattern matching, artificial intelligence, engineering control systems, etc; not in the fields of economics and politics. Nevertheless, I feel that it has something to offer those fields, and on Perry’s posting. Though I strongly suspect many readers here will not be particularly keen on such a mathematically based offering, I will at least be briefer than the 54 pages (though well written) in Ivan’s link to the article by Eugene Volokh on the topic of the slippery slope.
In the bits of Decision Theory that I am mostly involved with, one is trying to determine the effect of (or adjust) system parameters to maximise benefit, and with the assumption that those parameters are continuously variable. In economics and politics, for example, one might be looking to adjust total government expenditure as a percentage of GDP, or the proportion of GDP that should be spent variously on defence, education and healthcare, or the proportion of education that should be funded by the state compared to privately.
In all of these applications of Decision Theory, there is a ‘cost’ to be minimised or a ‘benefit’ to be maximised, thus requiring different sorts of cost or benefit to be equated to a common scale and then combined. In Decision Theory, this cost or benefit is called the Objective Function, and it is dependent on all the system parameters. Some form of optimisation is then done, to find the set of values of the system parameters that give the best value (or at least a good value, better relative to the status quo) for the Objective Function; typically this is some sort of mathematical search over all (or many) possible values of the system parameters.
There are two particular feature of this approach that I’d like to discuss, within the softer scientific aspects of politics, economics and other social or societal sciences.
Firstly, I think of Perry’s meta-context as equivalent to the Objective Function. Clearly, if two opposing views on some decision have no agreement on what to optimise, it’s pretty pointless having a detailed argument over the optimisation algorithm. It is surely better for the two parties to try and understand and acknowledge each others’ position on the meaning of overall ‘benefit’ or ‘cost’. It seems to me that this is Perry’s point, expressed in different words: so I am content to agree with him, that those who skate over that issue, and label their view with some unexplained ethical superiority, are suffering from an excess of rhetoric over rationality.
Secondly, I am concerned that a great deal of political argument holds system parameters (perhaps the levers of power) as binary, or at least discrete on a very coarsely quantised scale, rather than as a continuum. This is often embodied as concern with starting off on some slippery slope. Unfortunately, most of the time, there is a continuum for each system parameter, and the best value to use is somewhere in the middle of the range. Thus arguments that require a particular system parameter to be at one extreme of its range (eg zero government funding of healthcare and of education) are, almost implicitly, not going to maximise ‘benefit’ or minimise ‘cost’. This sort of thing seems to infect many whom I would otherwise agree with, to at least a significant extent.
On the slippery slope problem, it would be much better, and firmly within the methods of Decision Theory, to consider the optimal decision at the outset, according to each the various different definitions of Objective Function, and set system parameters (if that is possible) such that all Objective Functions are improved with respect to the status quo. This would be a principled compromise. Moving further down the slippery slope would not be possible, unless one side or other of the argument were to change their Objective Function: and that itself would call for rational justification.
There is, of course, much more to be said on this issue, including (not least) dealing with inconclusive evidence and with risk of false assumptions.
However, the general scheme of acknowledgement of different meta-contexts and acknowledgement of a continuum of possibilities should assist, in many cases, in avoiding the pitfalls of rhetoric, be it the slippery slope or other dangers.
Best regards
Nigel, the problem is that for people who actively push for government involvement (i.e. collectivists) it is not a parameter subject to a considered adjustment, it is the Objective Function. Similarly, with individualists the Objective Function is the exact opposite: no government involvement. So this is where the slippery-slope argument is absolutely valid: one side is by definition pushing towards absolute government control, while the other similarly by definition is pushing towards no government at all. Unfortunately there really is no possibility of a long-term compromise.
“With so many good hearted people, I can never get past that belief that to ‘do something’ is a moral imperative in and of itself. It carries some moral absolution and after having ‘done something’, their own goodness is vindicated and beyond reproach.”
Doesn’t the persistence of the “something must be done” imperative (as you call it) just reflect the fact that action is the end which evaluation serves? Upon evaluating something as bad, the immediate implication is to see what (if anything) can and should be done about it. It ought not therefore be too surprising to observe that people feel “vindicated” on having taken action to right some perceived wrong. That seems to me basic to human nature (and why such people are nevertheless – as you say – “good hearted”). The flawed bit is the sequel evaluation of the different possible choices for action or inaction along with attendent consequences.
“I think that’s a perfectly valid way to make personal choices, but not political choices. And then, of course, in a lot of cases people just haven’t thought it through.”
There are certain individuals who have counted on the existence, and no doubt increasing prevalence of, this level of idiocy for as long as I have been alive. Try arguing about meta-contexts with that silly cow.
“Nigel, the problem is that for people who actively push for government involvement (i.e. collectivists) it is not a parameter subject to a considered adjustment, it is the Objective Function. Similarly, with individualists the Objective Function is the exact opposite: no government involvement. So this is where the slippery-slope argument is absolutely valid: one side is by definition pushing towards absolute government control, while the other similarly by definition is pushing towards no government at all.”
Agreed – but I point to the fact that lefties can occasionally be “turned” as evidence that this…
“Unfortunately there really is no possibility of a long-term compromise.”
… doesn’t have to be so. It is possible to shift meta-contexts, even if you may only succeed one individual at a time.
Nigel:
Thanks for the interesting post.
Expanding on Alisa’s comment, if a mathematical model had shown that some problem could be optimized by killing all the people not presently satisfied, I think most of us would realize that the model was either not correctly determining the costs and benefits, or “the system” was not fully defined, and there were constraints imposed on it by the optimization of some meta-system.
I suspect that’s how some people view our present approach to optimizing the society-government system: What we have created is so self-evidently wrong that what’s required is a re-examination of the model, not more optimization of it.
Mike: sure, but then they are not real “lefties”, or at least not real collectivists. There seem to be 3 kinds: collectivists, individualists and those who either don’t understand the difference or don’t care. It is the third kind to whom the individualist metacontext needs to be explained, so that they can make an informed choice. This does not make a compromise between the two meta-contexts possible though, only reduces confusion.
“There seem to be 3 kinds: collectivists, individualists and those who either don’t understand the difference or don’t care.”
Oh I quite agree that those three kinds are out there, but I think the rub is in just how far that little verb “understand” stretches before we get to the “don’t care” bit.
That’s a very good point Mike, but I actually see it in the reverse order. What I have observed over some time that there are many who understand the distinction [between the two meta-contexts], but fail to fully grasp/acknowledge the long-term consequences of the adherence to the collectivist one. As someone on this site once put it: principles matter. That’s the point many people seem to find convenient to overlook in the short term. And when the long term finally arrives, it always manages to catch those “pragmatics” with their pants down, and the rest of us with no pants at all.
Of course the biggest meta-contextual discontinuity of late has to have been the recent BNP poll success.
Even on this site, few seemed to understand it.
It is very easy to understand. Firstly it means very little as BNP is just another conventional statist party with the single major differentiator that the ‘identity politics’ it favours are those of white people (which strangely is the only socially unacceptable form of that idiotic thing called identity politics).
Secondly the public uproar over BNP poll success was so that the media/political class did not have to confront the vastly more significant UKIP poll success, because UKIP is a genuinely meta-context busting party.
“That’s a very good point Mike, but I actually see it in the reverse order. What I have observed over some time that there are many who understand the distinction [between the two meta-contexts], but fail to fully grasp/acknowledge the long-term consequences of the adherence to the collectivist one.”
As to the order, I see two groups:
The first is – as you say – people who seem to understand the moral difference between a market solution to problems and government solution to problems, but who apparently fail to see the meaning of each over the long-term. Yet such people are capable of understanding the long-term implications of household saving and of not saving, of investing or not investing. My bet is that their “don’t care” response doesn’t come from an inability to consider long term consequences (although there may be an unwillingness to do so), but from the apprehension, even on a subconscious level, of the implications for action. To find ways of confronting the State over a long-term threat that hasn’t arrived yet and of which other people (maybe their friends and family) do not even believe exists – especially when one has family and job etc to worry about – this is where the “don’t care” bit comes from. “I’ve got to drive the kids to school and I haven’t got time to listen to this nonsense about inflation!”
The second group of people is those who think within the collectivist metacontext and have some ratio of understanding/non-understanding of the assumptions and principles that make up that metacontext. These are people who really care and believe, erroneously, that they are doing the right thing in, for example, voting for social democratic candidates or attending anti-capitalist demonstrations and the like. Some of these people will become aware of their ignorance and then a combination of doubt and curiosity may eventually obliterate the hold which the collectivist metacontext has over them. But how far down the line they go before doubts start to surface is critical. How many of these people have a tipping point before which the power of doubt and curiosity can exert an influence and after which cognitive dissonance sets in and they switch to a “don’t care” mindset, begin lying to themselves, ignoring evidence of crimes or begin fabricating “justifications” for them etc?
I don’t think the matter is quite as clear as “understand” vs “don’t understasnd”.
“As someone on this site once put it: principles matter. That’s the point many people seem to find convenient to overlook in the short term.”
Absolutely – but the principle of private property, for example, has been “overlooked” in the long-term too.
Among the several small ways I try to challenge the preponderance of the statist metacontext is in consistently challenging the premises behind the editorial line* of a certain newspaper. In Taiwan, nearly all politics is framed by the overwhelming context of China-Taiwan relations. The way it is commonly framed for one group (mostly populating the south) is as “totalitarian bastards” vs “social democrats”. For the other group (mostly populating the north) it is framed as “political and economic progressivism” vs “backward and parochial pineapple-heads”. I point out that both political groupings are as one in principle when they are framed by the metacontext of freedom vs government. Yes, there is a difference of degree between the commies in Beijing and those in Taipei (whether blue or green) but that degree is gradually narrowing. My usual point of departure is to put the skids under the southern lot when they claim to be standing up for the freedom of Taiwan – because what they really want is freedom for a Taiwanese State, not freedom for individual Taiwanese citizens. My aim, ridiculously hopeless as it may be, is to try to shift the metacontext within which opposition to China and the KMT bunch can be framed. Any suggestions on that would be welcome of course…**
*Scroll down to the third and final letter – “wrong on the economy”.
**The obvious one of doing it in Mandarin rather than English is something I’m working on!
Alisa comments:
I agree that that does happen, quite frequently; in fact that is one of the very points I am trying to make. My case is that both sides so arguing are failing in rationality.
In addition, and even more importantly, the rest of the country (a far greater number of people) usually agrees with neither of them, very likely seeing a broader and less emotive picture. Even worse, the very irrationality and obduracy of the contesting parties leads the rest of the country to wish for nothing more than that they both shut up, rather than viewing the issue of dispute as of any importance (which it actually may well be).
Best regards
Mike, I agree with you on the whole. The reason that I tend to focus on that particular kind is that they seem to be trickier to tell apart from the real* collectivists.
A very good point, again. In fact, I have been increasingly becoming convinced that the people who truly are intellectually incapable of grasping these matters are a small minority. With the majority it is either a matter of not having been exposed to the metacontext, or of unwillingness (either conscious or subconscious) to understand (because once you understand, you have to change the way you actually do things, and it may be “inconvenient”). That said,:
mind, she does have to drive the kids to school:-) (It’s not necessarily your chain that I’m yanking, I’m just into chain-yanking for the sake of it – to see if there is anything fun on the other end:-))
*I like to know what makes people tick, the real (psychological) reasons for the views they hold, which in turn determine the way they make decisions.
I hope to find the time to read those links: it sounds very interesting, and I can already see at least some similarities to Israeli politics.
Nigel:
I beg to differ: both sides are entirely rational, and the reason for disagreement, followed by the inevitable conflict, is the diametrically opposed moral premises. It is the undecided and the indifferent who act irrationally, either by being unaware of, or unwilling to acknowledge the existence of the conflict and the very real implications it has on their own lives, in both present and future.
Now, to be fair, you mentioned ‘the rest of the country’, which to me implies that the two opposing camps you have in mind are not exactly the same as mine. But then I am not sure who exactly you do have in mind, as I am unaware of any political party in the UK that can be identified with the individualist mindset strongly enough to make the ‘rest of the country’ want them to ‘shut up’. So what am I missing here, and who exactly are these ‘contesting parties’ that you refer to?
“..mind, she does have to drive the kids to school:-)”
Ha! Yes of course, but I say it depends; if they’re old enough, then she could just give them a computer, set them some sort of intellectual task and tell them it has to be done by the time she gets home from work…
Why send an unwilling child (much less your own) to some god-awful commie factory?
Well, yes. Truth be told, my son has figured this out since he ever started school, which was about 10 years ago. He has been going, but only for the friends and the sports. Almost none of the very many things he knows he learned there.
Just as Stalin wanted to be the one to count the votes, I wanna be the “Debate Umpire”, regardless of the merits of the debate. Boy, that would be fun.
Just how would a Debate Umpire work in practice? I think it would be indistinguishable from a totalitarian dictator. Which is why I assume Cohen likes it, so long as he or similarly thinking friends get appointed.
The essence of Cohen’s argument can be distilled into a simple ad hominem; “The people who disagree with socialized medicine are bad and shouldn’t be listened to. ” The “bad” part is unstated, but assumed by Cohen and most of his likely readers. It is the meta-text as you put it.
There is a difference between opposing someone’s opinions and thinking they are a bad person.
For example, I disagree with very many opinions of Bill O’Reilly.
Iraq operation in 2003 a good idea (I held that it was legal but not a good idea).
War on drugs a good idea (my own view is closer to that of Glenn Beck).
Death penalty wrong (I support the death penalty).
High price of oil caused by speculators (I do not agree – to put it mildly).
Obama a pragmatic person (even Bill is having doubts about that one now).
And so on and so on.
Yet I think Bill O’Reilly is a good man and I watch his show whenever I can.
However, Mr Randy Cohen makes my skin crawl – and he did long before I read this post by Perry.
Mr Cohen is not just a man with whom I disagree – he is a bad man.
The concepts are quite different.