Posted on 10/21/2018 2:27:09 AM PDT by Rocky
So, here's a story. You probably saw it in the news, in the dueling op-eds, in the outrage that swirled around it. But the story is still worth revisiting as a microcosm, a little diorama, of our cultural situation. This past July, The Nation published a poem by Anders Carlson-Wee called "How-To," narrated by a panhandler offering advice to other panhandlers, explaining how to gin up sympathy among the passers-by.
As a poem "How-To" was, meh, just about average: one of those not-particularly-good-but-not-particularly-bad productions by authors and editors well versed in the mechanisms taught by writing schools. We have a system for much of American poetry, as dominant and strict as the Academie Française ever was, and it dictates a liberal politics, an indulgence of sentimental situations while rejecting sentimental phrasings, the dominance of a theme, and a sense that a single good metaphor makes a poem. All of which adds up to a new formalism, even while it generally rejects the old formalism of meter and rhyme.
But the power of social-media outrage has not yet found its heights, and the fearfulness of those who respond to it has not yet found its depths. Complaints began to appear on Twitter about the poet's appropriation of a black narrator's voice and the language used to name disabilities. Which led others on Twitter to add their complaints. Which led yet others to add their complaints. It's a question whether many of these complainers were readers of poetry in any context other than going to Carlson-Wee's poem primed to be outraged. For that matter, it's a question whether many of these complainers were subscribers to The Nation. But within a few days, the editors had run through various deletions and apologies to arrive at leaving the poem online while attaching an editors' note, longer than the poem, that apologized for the "disparaging and ableist language that has given offense and caused harm to members of several communities."
Carlson-Wee eventually apologized as well, groveling that he had been insensitive and the Twitter objections were "eye-opening." Not that it did him much good. As Thomas Chatterton Williams notes in the New York Times, the very first reply to his contrite tweet lambasted him for yet more abuse of people with disabilities, since the phrase "eye-opening" offends those who cannot see.
I love this story—you should love this story—because it's a jewel, a perfect diamond, catching in its facets and unifying into a single brilliancy the light of many apparently different fires in our current cultural disputes. One thing the story shows, for example, is that we have no clear way back, no sufficiently defined penance, for those subjected to public shunning. Another aspect is the mimetic power, the increasing competition for outrage, that our Internet connections fuel—as though the Web had become a laboratory for testing René Girard's theories of social contagion.
An underappreciated aspect of the story, however, is the tribal identification allowed by the outrage over The Nation‘s minor poem. We know who we are by the upsets we share. Carlson-Wee is only an incidental victim; he clearly intended to write a poem empathizing with poor panhandlers and sneering at the middle-class Christians walking by. But he allowed an opening for complaint, and the complaint escalated—to the point at which the poet and his editors, the objects of the complaint, ended up joined the complainers—mostly since the outrage took on the shape of identity: Because the good are objecting to the poem, the poem must be bad.
The clearest analysis we've had of this phenomenon came last week in The Atlantic with a strong column called "The Idioms of Non-Argument" by Conor Friedersdorf. The analysis is not yet complete; this was just a magazine column that set out to examine a single book review. But Friedersdorf has pointed us down the road toward understanding the process of tribal identification that bedevils us.
Perhaps more immediately he helps us understand why so many book reviews these days grate on the reader's soul. Ever get the feeling that you don't have to read a book review to know its basic line—the argument predetermined by the reviewer's political identification, the political reputation of the publication, and the political stance presumed to be held by the book's authors? Everyone who reads book reviews suspects that the window for eccentricity is closing. We must like—or even engage in actual argument—only the books by our kind, feeding us talking points for our politics.
The book Friedersdorf takes up is The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff (which began as a 2015 article in The Atlantic). Looking at the ways in which the culture—especially the middle-class, college-educated elements—are overprotecting their children, the authors note the emergence of an entire generation of college students and young adults who are both overly fearful and far too easily offended.
"Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology," Haidt and Lukianoff suggest in what is, in essence, a self-help book and parenting guide, "you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals" if you (1) stop "eliminating or avoiding everything that ‘feels unsafe,'" (2) stop "always trusting your initial feelings," and (3) stop "assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality."
Friedersdorf notes that some of the recent reviews have commended The Coddling of the American Mind, while others have been more negative. But what caught his eye was a piece in the Guardian by Moira Weigel, praised on Twitter as the definitive review that "eviscerates with ease" and "systematically demolishes" the book. Unfortunately, as Friedersdorf discovered when he read the actual review, Weigel hardly engages the text of the book. Her review is, in essence, a long series of ad hominem attacks on the authors, rendering Haidt and Lukianoff sufficiently beyond the pale that the book they wrote, the arguments they make, should be rejected by readers.
Weigel is engaging in the "Idioms of Non-Argument," Friedersdorf suggests, observing her use of vilification, guilt by association, and misrepresentation through a kind of willful misunderstanding of the authors' prose. But the key comes when Friedersdorf identifies the rhetorical technique of "reduction to privilege anxiety."
It's generally thought a failure of literary interpretation to seek too deeply into, say, a novelist's motives for writing a particular novel. How is A Christmas Carol damaged by the knowledge that Dickens wrote it because he needed money for a good vacation? A common pattern in the corrupt modes of book-reviewing these days, however is to impute a politics to authors, deploy the names of the worst examples of those who hold vaguely similar politics, do a bit of socio-psychiatry to identify motives for those worst examples, and then declare such motives the reason that the authors wrote their book.
Thus, for example, Haidt and Lukianoff are defenders of free speech, and free speech has become (incredibly recently, as cultural trends are measured) a slogan on the conservative side of the political spectrum. So Haidt and Lukianoff must be conservatives, just as white supremacists are conservatives. And white supremacists are presumed to hold their psychotic views because of the anxiety they feel about their declining privilege, so that must be the reason that Haidt and Lukianoff wrote The Coddling of the American Mind. And the reason we don't have to read it.
With his description of the Idioms of Non-Argument, Friedersdorf has identified some of the techniques by which our cultural arguments are debased. But we need more, if we are to correct the problem. The point of Weigel's review isn't simply that the book's authors are bad guys so the book must be bad. The point is also that the book must be bad because the good guys are objecting to it—and, in the perfect circularity of such things, the good are objecting to the book, so the book must be bad.
In other words, there's a deep tribal purpose to reviews like Weigel's—and to many other book reviews these days, on both the left and the right. Like the Twitter users who gained both confirmation of tribal identity and increased rank within their tribe by deciding to be outraged by Anders Carlson-Wee's little poem in The Nation, so reviewers like this are both asking us to confirm them in our sociopolitical tribe and elevate them within the tribe for their demonstration of right feeling.
How could we not see the ground here for what René Girard called mimetic rivalry and social contagion? Poetry, book reviewing, and the literary life may form only a minor facet of the culture wars that are starting to spill into bloody encounters, but they remain a clear example—a microcosm, a little diorama—of all the trouble we face.
Yes, we need to stop being so easily offended. And we need to stop behaving as though there was a provision in the Bill of Rights protecting us from being offended.
A couple years ago, I gave a buck to a street musician drumming on plastic pails and a shopping cart. He had some talent and I enjoyed it. Otherwise, I’ve never paid a panhandler.
I also don’t donate extra money at the cash register for the stores charity. I donate plenty to the causes of my choice.
“A couple years ago, I gave a buck to a street musician drumming on plastic pails and a shopping cart. He had some talent and I enjoyed it. Otherwise, I’ve never paid a panhandler.”
That is busking, not panhandling. The musician is performing, and you made a contribution to show your appreciation. A transaction was made. The busker isn’t asking for a handout. This service is much different from the old squeegee guys who would walk up and spray God knows what on your windshield. They were a nuisance.
If you look closely at this looney-tunes argle-bargle, you see the subject/verb/object group "language caused harm." Absolute blithering bosh. Simply not true. Language does not cause harm.
Unless you're a Democrat.
What the left appears to be doing ... without stating it clearly as usual ... is defining words they hate as "fighting words". Besides the classic 'yelling fire in a crowded theater' the other basic exception to allowing free speech is fighting words that induce people to become violent.
According to the left whenever someone says something nice about Trump, decries illegal immigration, etc. those words are not just something they disagree with, they are words that incite violence and should therefore not be spoken.
Even if it is folks like Antifa and BLM that inflict the violence and destruction. It wasn't their fault as they were incited into their actions because of our so-called "fighting words".
People need to grow thicker skins, but those who pretend to have thin skins are going to be the death of free speech if the politicians cave to their whims.
That's one of the arguments. The other is that hearing or even being aware of the existence of opinions different from yours causes "harm," just like being hit on the head with a brick causes harm.
But it can cause hurt feelings. We just need to remember that there is no legal protection against hurt feelings, nor should there be.
Unfortunately, using this as a cover, certain people on the left are trying to gain control of the language. Professors and activists redefine words, and by doing so, they mutilate the language so that nobody is sure any more how to properly communicate.
They also punish people (students, celebrities, and coworkers) for using words that they deem hurtful. The strategy seems to be that if they can make us afraid to say anything except what they judge acceptable, they can control people's speech, and perhaps even their thoughts.
I don't think that most people on the left consciously intend this, but some do, and the rest follow suit because that's what their tribe believes is good, much as the article above describes.
In other words, there's a deep tribal purpose to reviews like Weigel's—and to many other book reviews these days, on both the left and the right.
Red flags goes up. There is no tribal purpose on the right which the author states. It's like the Democrats getting in the face of people in restaurants and then, when it happens to them, they say we all need to be a little more civil. It's entirely phony.
The rage and nastiness of today isn't around tribal mentality but it is a hidden war that the left wants to win at all cost. Nancy Pelosi even said as much. And one can easily see how the DOJ, media, the left, entertainers, and business leaders are all in this together. Articles like these are simply by those people who want to imply that they are civil and above the fray. They are the George Bush of the world who are willing to let the Democrats have their way towards a one world totalitarian government all the while blaming Republicans.
Quite frankly, I have had enough.
Unless you're a Democrat.
There is a great deal of protection for people of the same tribe. Indiscretions are often overlooked. From the article: "the good are objecting to the book, so the book must be bad." In other words, it's much easier to condemn something if you are siding with people you consider "good." If a Republican criticizes a Democrat, other Democrats will usually feel obliged to defend the Democrat, since a "bad" person is criticizing him/her.
LOL. I know what Jim Acosta would Tweet to you.
If you can’t take language you can’t take freedom.
True. There is no point to free speech if it only applies to inoffensive speech. It's like saying, "I'm not afraid to touch the stove top," when you know that it hasn't been turned on for hours. Proponents of political correctness want the stove to always be turned off, but then what is the point of the stove?
Well said. Your entire reply was very well put. Thanks.
I don't believe this is correct. In general, people on the right have not yet resorted to violence. But the tribalism definitely exists. Two things can be observed:
1) A more tolerant approach to outside-the-box opinions if the writer or speaker is a known conservative, and
2) A willingness to pounce on any little thing that someone outside the tribe says that might reveal wrong thinking. That is, a quickness to judge the outsiders without giving them the benefit of the doubt.
I don't condone the violence, and the perpetrators should be punished. But a lot of liberals are holding back from condemning it because of this tribal mentality.
I don't know what the answer is, but I hope there is a way out besides civil war and fighting in the streets as is happening in Portland.
You're welcome. I hope you will decide to pursue your poetry in spite of the frosty response you may get from the PC crowd.
I think I see your point, but I don’t entirely agree. On the one hand, there are only two political “tribes,” roughly equivalent to Republican and Democrat, or we we could call them “leftist” and “non-leftist,” because there’s a lot more variety of opinion in the broad category of “non-leftist.” (The 15 or so regulars on the FR North Carolina Forum once spent a couple of weeks trying to come up with a definition of “conservative” that included all of us. Then we gave up and went back to arguing about sports and barbecue.)
On the other hand, there are lots of other “tribes” - race, sex, religion, national origin, football fandom, etc. - which sometimes correspond to the political divisions and sometimes don’t.
While Democrats will circle the wagons against a perceived attack by a non-leftist, they are only circumstantially concerned about “minority or oppressed people.” Minority people who support the left are wonderful; if they don’t, they’re proclaimed “not-real.” Women are impeccable victims of oppression, but only if the perceived oppressor is not-left. A woman can go fish if she claims oppression by a valuable figure on the left, and so can a racial or ethnic minority person.
In summary, “The issue is never the issue,” and the tribe is not really the tribe: “the issue is the Revolution.”
There are certainly some dedicated leftists who are driving their movement in that direction, but I don't think they would have much power if it weren't for the influence of celebrities, teachers, and people in the press who spend a lot of time trying to make the left seem "cool." This builds a following of dupes who want to be in the tribe of cool.
Certain trigger words get an instant response, quickly building to a crescendo that drowns out any opposing views. It's like a lynch mob in one of those old western movies. I don't think most of those people have a clue where this whole thing could end up. They have emptiness in their lives, and rage against the perceived uncool is used to fill the holes.
I agree that the main tribes are Democrat and Republican, but these are coalitions of tribes, and can break up. I believe the drivers on the left were hoping that they could break the Republican Party by forcing them to focus on internal differences, causing splits. Trump became a rallying point, and for the moment, stopped that effort. I think it's the main reason that there is so much animosity toward him.
Internally, the two parties have lots of divisions, but, at least up to now, they come together when there is any perceived threat from the other side. I don't think that people necessarily permanently belong to any one tribe, or that the tribal definitions remain the same through decades. I think what the author of the article is addressing is how people respond today with today's tribal divisions. Unfortunately, the tribal definitions usually change glacially while the lynch mobs move at the speed of light. A serious breakout of violence can spread like a wildfire across the country. To me, this is the danger of all of this choosing of sides and resorting to violence. Are we past the point of dialogue and cool-headedness? Are we headed irrevocably to chaos and destruction? I hope not.
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