Lately, like a lot of other Americans, I have been trying to understand our national affliction called "Culture War."
How is it that a great nation can be at the height of its prosperity and cultural achievement—with crime rates dropping and IQ scores rising—yet wallow in an apparently bottomless spiral of deteriorating civility and political contempt? Having given the world a whole new layer of intelligence—the Internet—and countless other great, unprecedented things, we now hurl simplistic barbs at each other with playground immaturity, glowering in a foulness of bitter clichés and broken confidence.
Yes, there is violent foreign conflict and ever-worsening debt. Both readiness and resiliency aren't what they should be, in a world of rapid change. And freedom itself seems to be under storm clouds of threat. Still, aren't each of these problems partly rooted in Culture War? Far more fundamental is a declining trust in ourselves, in our traditional prowess at negotiating with each other, bargaining in good faith.
Oh, it's easy to cast blame for the acrimony in American political life, ascribing it to "the other side" . . . whichever end of the hoary left-right political axis you deem hateful. Indeed, I agree that one end of that axis has been especially noxious lately, promoting Culture War as a deliberately divisive tactic. (link: http://www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html) But then, aren't we all complicit, whenever we create strawman images of every opponent, refusing to recognize subtle differences among them. Differences between the many types of liberal, or conservative? (Both ideologies claim to be all about respecting individuality!) Or when we fail to acknowledge that some opponents are sincere, perhaps even having intelligent things to say? In trying to penetrate this mystery, I've tried to view Culture War from many angles. For example, as a plague of self-stimulated addiction to self-righteous indignation. (link: http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html) Or as a reflex spasm by older styles of romanticism against the rebel worldview of pragmatism and science.(1) (link: http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle1.html) I have even tried to see it as a defense mechanism, by our paid professional protector caste, against a rising Age of Amateurs. (link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BY2PRQ/002-0125361-2995236)
And yet, time and again, what I find is that all of these other perspectives just put icing on a bitter cake. The core source of Culture War appears to be something far simpler.
Listen to partisans of all stripes—left, right, up, down or weird—and try throwing away whatever details of policy you may agree—or disagree—with. Get down to the emotional subtext and most of the angry rants boil down to a theme that's remarkably similar, all across the spectrum. What you are bound to hear, sooner or later, is some variation of the following venerated saying:
"A cynic is an optimist who finally snapped out of it, and realized how awful people really are."
Venerated? Heck, it's one of the great clichés of all time! Try it out and see how reflexively your close friends nod when you say those words. Almost as automatically as when you add:
"Isn't it a shame that human wisdom hasn't kept up with technology?"
Or this one—
"What a pity that our neighbors are such sheep, unable to see truth that stares them in the face. A truth that our side (sadly) has to uphold, as a brave minority, against all odds."
Oh, I admit it. I've indulged in all of these clichés myself, on occasion. Anyone who denies ever doing so is claiming not to be human! After all, who can resist the attraction—the almost druglike satisfaction—of feeling contempt-for-the-masses?
Can you name a political or social or religious movement that does not strive to make its in-group feel special? In-the-know? More in tune with "the way things really are"? More with-it than all those hapless, clueless cattle out there?
And yet, aren't citizens of a scientific enlightenment supposed to question clichés? Even . . . especially . . . those that seem suspiciously convenient? The ones that make us feel good?
In other words, the seductive notions that may have suckered us?(2)
So, let's take a contrarian look at the Contempt Reflex, for a change. Scan those three clichés again, only this time try out an answer–
"What is a cynic who snaps out of it even farther ? Enough to realize that, despite the grotesquely stupid, self-delusional and abysmally corrupt aspects of human nature . . . things are getting phenomenally better? And have been for some time?"
I mean, which is truly more amazing? That the Enlightenment is under threat from collusive cabals of conniving aristocrats, aggressive imperialists, snooty bureaucrats and extremist nutjobs? Or the fact that the same utterly predictable types, that ruled every other urban culture for 4,000 years, have been trying to accomplish this in America ever since the republic was founded? Only to be staved off repeatedly, by a new kind of civilization—one that somehow kept redesigning and renewing itself, using both cooperation and joyful entrepreneurial competition, showing an almost infinite capacity for resilience in the face of repetitious human nature?
Where is it written that we must always see the glass half-empty? Can citizens of this permanent and ongoing revolution shrug off cynicism long enough to be inspired by the part that is half-full?
Here is a little demonstration that I've been recommending to people for years . . . for so long that it's become known as Brin's Exercise in Reluctant Humility.
Go to a busy street corner, preferably one with a four (or twelve!) -way stop signage, where people negotiate traffic rules each second, with little glances, nods and hand-signals. Stand on the corner, take a deep breath, and start doing a slow 360 degree turn, taking in everything from shopping centers to offices to schools and housing. And, then . . . And then . . . while you are turning ever-so-slowly . . . really open your eyes.
Notice all the things that are working! The quiet, efficient flows of people, goods, information and services coming in, and waste going out—almost like the complex systems of circulation in a living body. Take in the hidden competencies—emplaced by a myriad professionals working in the background—that make all the switches turn on time and fill the restaurants with food. Notice, also, the countless little moments of volunteer/amateur decency, without which these professional efforts could never succeed.
Do not let any patch as small as one square degree pass your view without comment, or noticing something that you always took for granted! Not even a bare patch of concrete or grass, because those, too, are marvels with stories behind them.
Unleash your imagination, realizing that each system that you see uses countless interlocking machines, most of which function without reliance on fallible human supervision, each containing innumerable parts, each part having been made in some faraway place by skilled hands, then shipped and assembled and combined into coalescing structures that were designed to be taken for granted. Yes, even by klutzes who claim to hate machinery.
Oh, but don't get lost in the gimmicks. (After all, I don't want to be strawman-labeled as a horrid technophile.) So also watch people! Like that fellow over there, who could have stolen something just then . . . but didn't. That exchange of unspoken courtesies. That moment when some people patiently took turns. That moment of reflex citizenship.
All right, I admit that I'm a Californian. People may have rougher edges in other places, like New York. Still, that only makes it more important to do this exercise, in cities and towns where a smattering of grating moments tempts you to dismiss everyone and everything as rotten. Because, in fact, most things aren't! Most people aren't.
If you finish the turn having counted less than a thousand miracles, start over! All you have proved with your low score is that you are—in effect—quite blind.
Does all of this seeing-the-glass-half-full make me a pollyanna? People accuse me of being a flaming optimist, because I have a naively positive view of human nature.
How absurd!
No, friend. I am a flaming optimist because I understand just how wretched human nature really is! I am well-qualified to know this, partly as a student of all sciences, as a professional builder of alternate worlds, as a person whose third and fourth cousins were all murdered by unprecedented rationalization and human savagery . . . and as one who wakens every morning surprised that barbarians or tyrants have not yet burned my home, taken my wife and kids, tied me to a pyre for my heresies, and ruined my proud civilization—the way they behaved in every other.
Not yet.
Oh, don't imagine that I only see good things when I do the Slow Turn exercise! If you watch from any street corner, you will see examples of nastiness, selfishness and utter stupidity. But we are already well-tuned to notice such things, for very good evolutionary reasons. Often, bad events and behavior need attention and vigorous response. We can afford to let good behaviors slip into the background. But must we lose all awareness that so much is working well, in the background? There is no better example of losing the forest for the trees.
Hence the ferocity of my optimism, oh friends and co-rebels. Hence my deep and abiding disdain for cynicism.
Because cynicism isn't helpful. Fundamentally, it is a self-doped drug high, nothing more. And if something isn't helpful in this fight, I have no time for it.
What lesson can we take away from the Parable of the Streetcorner? That we should be smug and satisfied? Hell no(3). We appear to have come halfway from the nasty darkness of anarchy and feudalism toward a brighter era of decency, when our kids (or their kids) may be mature enough to solve all of the dilemmas that confuse us today. If things stay at this halfway point, the whole world will be doomed. Those who say "this is good enough" would murder us all.
No, we have one hope. That hope is to continue pursuing the game plan of Ben Franklin and the pragmatic wing of the Enlightenment, a campaign of relentless self-improvement—of belief in improvability—that has also been called the Modernist Agenda(4). This plan—combined with a little faith and some tolerance—got us to where we are today. It's a program that's worked so far.
Indeed, we cannot properly fight for it, or improve it, without conceding—avowing—that it has worked. Fantastically. Epochally. Better than any other program for living and working together.
Like everybody else, I am drawn to cynical contempt-for-the-masses-around-me. Masses who seem so dimwitted . . . who support imbecile politicians . . . who don't know or care where Rwanda is or what happened there . . . who actually think we are at "war" . . . who raise such dopey, XBox-addicted brats . . .
. . . only then I do the exercise. I go to that street corner, start turning . . .
. . . and every time I finish one of those 360 degree rotations, noticing the myriad marvels all around me, the incredible courtesy and skill and competence that it takes to (ironically) make a civilization that is proof against the individual incompetence of countless fools . . .
. . . I find myself forced to make a concession. To accept that my inner drives must be wrong, at least at some level. To grasp that (as the best scientists say) I might be wrong. And that is when I mutter, grudgingly—
"My neighbors . . . couldn't possibly . . . be as stupid as they look."
Yes, they look awfully stupid. I'm sure your neighbors do, too. (As you and I surely look stupid to them.) Indeed, perhaps, as individuals, most of them really are! Stupid, I mean.
But when they are taken together, combined, made free to interact under loose rules that encourage decent cooperation and accountable competition, while restraining the worst of the old-vile impulses, something happens. Together, we all get smarter than individual human beings ever were, or ever deserved to be. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/productB000BY2PRQ/002-0215361-2995236)
In the new science of Complexity Theory, this is called an emergent property. And, friends, you live in comfort, wallowing in information and freedom, because of it. Yes, even the freedom to be complacent and ignorant and self-indulgent and self-righteous and contemptuous of all your neighbors. Neighbors who feel the same way about you. Because, somehow, our immaturities often tend to cancel out. While those vital qualities of competence and skill that each of us contributes . . . well, those often tend to add together. They tend to combine, emerging into a sum far greater than the parts.
This is, ultimately why moderates and pragmatists and decent, hard-working people—parents and citizens and students—need to start appreciating everything we take for granted, rejecting the cynical nihilism that we are taught in every self-indulgent movie and by every oversimplifying political fanatic.
Civilization is a word you seldom hear, but we had better start standing up for it.
Because all the ranters out there are genuinely crazy and clueless! All the shortsighted dogmatists who hate complexity have no idea what it is that they are prescribing, when they offer their all-encompassing explanations and simplifying nostrums.
What they are offering is to take it all away . . . the synergies and complexities and compromises and emergent properties . . . and to replace this marvel with various versions of the same old song. The one that dominated all our ancestors. Rule by "wise" philosopher kings.
By platonist philosophers of all kinds. Pick your poison. Left, right, libertarian, religious, nostalgic, tribal, western, eastern or weird. Can we not learn to recognize the frantic contempt that all of these prescribers have in common? Dig deep and it's all the same thing. Dolts who are terrified of complexity and want things simple again. Village idiots who demand kingship—for the common good, of course. Who would kill the very goose that gives a flood of golden eggs.
Oh, yes. I can see the irony. These statements that I have just made are—contemptuous!
Well? I never said that every cynical remark is wrong. Indeed, it's blatantly obvious that some of our neighbors are fools, after all.
So? All this shows is that I'm not gullible, nor do I base my optimism on a naive trust in human nature. In a sense, I am a the deepest cynic of all! For I accept the lesson of Locke and Madison, that no individual can be trusted. No prescription or dogma. Including those I clutch hardest.
No, don't listen to them, neighbors. And especially, don't give in easily to the sweet allure of contempt.
Only one thing has ever worked—consistently and miraculously. And I remain stunned every day that it does.
Us.
(1) A habit of cynicism.
(2) My own trademark aphorism CITOKATE (Criticism is the only known antidote to error) arose when I noticed how this all-too human tendency often made me quite happy, even when strong evidence showed me to be dead wrong.
(3) What is the excuse given by many activists of the left, for never mentioning progress that's already been achieved? In civil rights, in womens' rights, and in a myriad other fields? Countless progressive calls-to-action have been answered, over the years, by a sincere willingness of citizens to mend old mistakes and correct bad, old habits. Yet, it is somehow never allowable to congratulate the people for any of these proud accomplishments. Only further chiding and criticism. The apparent reason? I'm told that praise might let up the pressure to achieve more. And more progress is desperately needed.
In fact, I partly agree. More progress is needed. And the best way to get it is not rebuke, but encouraging justified pride in what the people have achieved, so far. The choice to emphasize rebuke is probably the biggest reason for the plummeting status of the wordliberal.
(4) I am not referring to effete architectural styles of the 1920s, but another meaning for the word "modernism." One that was eclipsed long ago, but that deserves a return to prominence. A confident, can-do belief in the value of practical, incremental improvement. More on this, anon.
© 2006 David Brin. All Rights Reserved.
David Brin is the author of many novels and short stories.