Uniting Our "Divided" Nation

Dark sarcasm in the classroom? No spank you!

I would like to continue the theme discussed in two of the last posts (by CapeTown and Virginia) and their comments about America as a "divided nation."

The topic has been familiar discussion on this blog and also among politicians, the media, and undoubtedly many of our everyday conversations. Some interesting questions are the following: How divided are we, really, as a nation, among conservatives and liberals? To the extent that we are divided, how did this come about? Are these divisions the inevitable result of human nature? Or are divisions in opinion artificially created? Is the division healthy or harmful? If it is harmful is there anything we can do about it?

The issue begins with human nature (of course who am I to say what human nature is but here is my take on it). Many philosophers, perhaps most notably Hegel, have written about our innate desires to be "recognized" by our fellow humans. This "recognition" can take the form of something like mutual respect, agreement, understanding, friendship, or love. To achieve happiness we need this recognition and we actively seek its fulfillment in various ways. When we fulfill this desire by making connections and achieve mutual recognition, this makes us happier and more secure, whereas if this desire goes unfulfilled we will be more insecure. One way we fulfill this desire is through one-on-one relationships with people, and of course, another is through belonging to some group.

One example of this is sports teams. If you think about it, it's pretty arbitrary how people develop passionate allegiances to their teams, but I think that taking on a sports allegiance is one way where humans satisfy some innate desire to be recognized by other humans, in this case by belonging to a group. Listen to people talk about their team and often they call the team "we" like they are actually on the roster! Allegiances can also be pretty irrational, for example we think the players are on our favorite teams are great people in their personal lives, and we think the players on other teams are jerks (I bet more Lakers fans thought Kobe was innocent than fans of rival teams). Although I don't think it's necessary, one thing that makes the "belonging to a group" feeling stronger, is when the group defines part of its identity as simply being not some rival, other group. So for example part of what makes a Yankees fan a Yankees fan is the fact that they're not a Red Sox fan. So a way to assert your identity as part of a group, and your group solidarity is through being different from some other, rival group. So if you are a Sox fan and you see a random person on the street in a Sox jersey, you automatically fell a connection, and someone in a Yankees jersey you automatically feel some kind of animosity, whether stong of very slight. There is the issue that this might be more of a male thing (being a sports fan) but I don't want to get too off track. The point is I think that this is an innate human desire since so many people all over the world do this, and since I don't see it explained through any "rational" explanation.

Now just like you can be Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan you can be a a Democrat or a Republican. Sports are not exactly like politics, some would say politics are much more important, although in our day to day lives many of us are much more affected (at least emotionally) by sports. But there are competitions (elections) and people rally behind either side much like with sports.

Of course, when you think about it, it just doesn't seem to make sense, or feel "right" that we should treat politics like sports. As opposed to sports, where adopting an allegiance to a team is a pretty arbitrary act that makes something entertaining much much more entertaining, adopting a political party is supposed to be something different. We aren't supposed to just like whatever a candidate says or does the way we convince ourselves that our sports heroes are cool and good people, but it seems like that shouldn't work for politics - we are supposed to listen to what these people say, agree with some of it, and maybe disagree or not be sure about some of it, not just agree with a candidate or a whole party of hundreds of politicians on all of their views.

So then why, if it doesn't seem to make sense, do so many people line up behind a party on everything, agreeing with nearly everything their party says and disagreeing with nearly everything the other party says? Wel as I said I think it is part human nature, and part our conditioning from society. Part of it is that Americans (maybe humans in general because of the above reasons) in general live in a competitive and contentious culture. Our court system and our economy could both be looked at as more cutthroat than in other countries.

Looking specifically in the realm of politics, though, it is pretty easy to see how politicians and the media alike feed the "sports-like" culture of democrats versus republicans, thus exagerating perceived and actual divisions at the same time. Not only are most pundits on television and on the radio partisan ideologues who agree with everything in the party platform like robots, but they have actually created shows that pit one side against the other, like Crossfire and Hannity & Colmes that explicitly pit one side against the other, in addition to the shows that are just one partisan doing the show solo (ex: O'Reilly). Politicians? Some are more guilty than others of playing up party divisions, but I'm sure we can all think of numerous examples.

So why all of this divisive, partisan rhetoric from the media and politicians? Well it's simply a tactic used to maximize their audience and their attention. The media is just a bunch of corporations competing for viewers, while politicians just want attention and votes. Of course, one way to get attention is through civilized discourse where you respectfully consider all sides of a debate and maybe don't arrive at a conclusion since there is no clear answer to some of these complex issues. But not everyone wants to waste their time listening to a newscaster or a politician admitting that these are complex issues and there is no right answer, or at least we are not used to that, so many of us are not so drawn to that type of thing.

Instead, the way it works is that media and politicians have become very good at exploiting this inner human desire to derive happiness and security from being part of a group, a feeling that is strengthened when the identity of the group consists largely of simple the fact that they are not the "other" group. It is just like with sports - surely there are many Yankees and Red Sox fans who have billions of things in common and one of their comparatively much fewer differences in personality is the fact that they happened to one day decide that they like different baseball teams. But rivalries and the feeling of "belonging" to the team we like is one of the reasons people love sports so much, why they are so entertained and impassiond by it all, and the media and politicians have harnessed the same psychological effect and attached it to politics, which is good for them, because it means many more viewers of their programs and listeners to their speeches and contributors to their campaigns. So the media and the politicians really benefit from this, and thus they have a lot of incentive to fan the fire and perpetuate the divisive culture. Whether the image is real or meaningful, an explanation of how Americans are divided along party lines will sell you a lot of books.

But do Americans benefit from it? Does our country as a whole? I would say definitely not, for many, many obvious reasons. One big reason is that these divisive debates don't ever get anywhere. The conversations on the big news shows are pointless, they don't accomplish anything except getting people who disagreed before the discussion to disagree more passionately afterwards because the discussion was done in an aggressive, contentious, and often very disrespectful way. Everyone has witnessed the phenomena where if you try to convince someone of something disrespectfully, you will just cement their original position - the person will not even want to listen to you or consider your opinion if you address them aggressively and disrespectfully. But this is how a great many media pundits and politicians talk, and I think that when they do this they waste all of our time and accomplish nothing useful, and do much harm.

I think it was Socrates that said that there are two kinds of debate. Truth-seeking debate, and victory-seeking debate. Truth-seeking is where people admit that they don't know the answers, and they might not even know what they think about certain issues, and the point of the discussion is to learn more about what you and the other people think, to consider different views on something, and arrive at the best possible conclusion. Victory-seeking on the other hand is an attempt to convince someone of your pre-decided opinion, to "win" the argument. Often there is no way to prove the argument, so "winning" is often thought of as shooting down someone or making a point they can't respond to or shoot down themselves. This of course makes for much better entertainment, which means more people paying attention, and this has become the object of the media and politicians, as opposed to figuring out what is best for this country.

Well maybe that is a bleak picture, it is definitely a generalization and is not true for all journalists and politicians, but I think we can agree that there is too much of this sort of thing going on. The good news is that with blogs, anyone can be a pundit and join in the debate, but with blogs we face the same danger of falling victim to the great temptation of making our blogs entertaining and boost viewers (say something anti-one party and watch the members of your party pour in to comment and check back to read future posts). Thus the phenomena of people self-selecting and only reading blogs of their party.

Despite this danger, blogs have the potential to be a really positive and productive force for our country. If we can overcome the temptation and the emotional satisfaction of responding to a republican statement with a disrespectful jab at how wrong they are and visa versa, if we can instead respectfully consider each other's opinions, admit that there are perhaps no issues more complicated than the ones we undertake to discuss and thus there is probably no clear and obvious right or wrong answer (Iraq?), if we can overcome our impulses and our adrenaline and our emotions and resist arrogantly assuming that we know all of the answers, blogs can really be something amazingly helpful for the country. By having respectful, truth-seeking debate, we can not only get closer to understanding each other and understanding these complex issues and all of the people in the US and the world that they affect, but we can also change the divisive, victory-seeking debate culture that dominates our news and our politics. I believe we can change it becuase I believe that people are tired of it, and we want a change. Our impulses and our emotions may sometimes cause us to take the bait when media and politicians dangle the partisan hook (sorry I got carried away hook line and sinker with that metaphor), but deep down inside I think we all know that the divisive culture is not helping at all and in fact doing real damage, and we also know deep down inside that no one agrees with everything every politician from one party believes. So we are ready for this change, and I think that this change can only come from the blogs, since the media and the politicians all benefit from the increase in attention they get from keeping the divisive atmosphere alive. Of course maybe single journalists and candidates can do something to reverse the trend, but it will be tough because their competitors, of which there will be more, will continue the same old divisive tactics, so I think that this is up to us. I think, potentially, we can change things and we can help this country enormously, and I don't think it will even be that hard, although it could take a long time. All we have to do is control our impulses and emotions, be calm and patient and respectful, and seek the truth as opposed to victory (or the appearance of victory). I don't see why anyone would want to do it otherwise given how much these issues affect our country and our world, and how important it is for us to reach those answers that we can most strongly agree on.

So let's see what we can do. Now I am off to the Red Sox game.

I-Bituary: Thoughts on Imus, the Media, and American Society & Culture

The Imus Story, 04/04/07 - 04/16-07

Like everyone else I am deeply saddened by last Monday's tragic events, and my heart goes out to those affected. That said, I would like to continue with my somewhat but not completely relevant theme of thinking about the American media and its interplay with our discourse, our politics, and our culture. I mean no disrespect towards Monday's events and I hope not to portray any in what I am about to write.

Maybe, the proper media response to a national (or, maybe even international, becuase this was top news in lots of international newspapers) tragedy, is to drop everything that was being focused on immediately before, and to focus on the crisis. Undoubtedly, things like this make us reflect on the relative insignificance of other things in our lives, as well as various national issues. Allowing ourselves to get upset or stressed out by something, whether a routine part of our daily lives or even a national political issue, we are, the next day, humbled by events such as these. Whether personally or socially, events such as these shake us from our prior state of routine and complacency and force us to reconsider certain things. Personally, or socially, they can make us think of the important things that we have that we take for granted, they can make us consider the important things we don't have that we lose sight of, or they can make us think about the unimportant things that we were stressing about and realize that we were blowing them out of proportion.

Because the dust has perhaps not yet settled regarding Monday's events, and because it perhaps has regarding Imus, I would now like to consider the Imus story, perhaps from a fresh perspective.

The story began on April 4, 2007, when Imus made his comments. Incidentally, many people probably began that day reflecting on Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated on that day in 1968. The media began that day like it begins most days: trying to figure out what sort of coverage would attract the most viewers. Granted, there are amazing breakthroughs of intellect, egregious acts of violence, oppression and injustice, corageous and altruistic acts of people helping one another, and other awe-inspiring signs of hope and despair at all times and at all corners of our world. But, of course, it helps if they involve a celebrity.

It was a day with no completely new injustices or breakthroughs, just the same stuff that's been happening and has been happening. Now this may be the stuff that our life and culture is all about, but it doesn't spell ratings. Viewers want to see something they've never seen before, and they want it to be exicting and unthinkable, like in movies. These things don't happen too much, so when they don't happen, we go to movies. In the meantime the media informs us that Mel Gibson is racist, Brangelina adopted a child from a developing country, Dick Cheney accidentally shot his friend in the face while hunting, and Bill Gates and Bono are trying to eradicate diseases and poverty.

As I said in a previous post, it is interesting how the media discusses social issues through celebrities who, by behaving just like zillions of other people, serve as an example for aspects and developments in our society as a whole. I am not sure exactly what I think about it, because I think it is good to raise awareness of certain issues, and this seems to be one possible way to do it. But I often wonder whether it is a good way or a very bad way to do it.

We are a product of our culture, or experiences within our culture, and our reflections on those experiences. I don't know if it's part of human nature to want to know what's up with Paris Hilton and Brangelina and Imus, and cling to "sexy" news stories, or whether it's part of our capitalistic, consumer drivern culture, and is thus a self-perpetuating cycle. The cycle would go: the media know we want sexy, they give us sexy, we watch sexy, we are seduced by sexy, we want sexy, the media know we want sexy. I don't know at what point the cycle starts, but it's clear to me by observing our culture that once it starts, it spins right round baby right round.

A story about the personal life of a celebrity? Splendid!! This calls for a sexy party!

Many of us have heard Governor Schwarzenegger's comments on how to get more people behind the cause of protecting our environment and how to raise awareness and concern about climate change:

"We have to make it mainstream, we have to make it sexy, we have to make it attractive so that everyone wants to participate."

So even in politics, the fabric of our society, the strategy being touted is "sex sells." Personally I completely agree that we need to get serious about addressing the issue of climate change or global warming or whatever, but I hope that I can honestly say to myself, about that issue, and about every single other issues that I have an opinion about, I hope I can honeslty say to myself that I am not espousing certain opinions because they are sexy.

Maybe it's elitist to say that I want to feel passionate about certain things but for the right reasons, and not because they're sexy. Maybe it's elitist to say I don't want other people to agree with me on certain issues because the issues, or the positions on the issues are sexy.

Or, maybe it's elitist to say "I want everyone to agree with me on this issue, so I am going to "make" the issue sexy, because this is how I will get everyone to agree with me."

To me, this is either elitist or it is expressing a pretty low opinion about people's intelligence, and of course a high opinion of your intelligence that you can control their thoughts or actions by sexifying things. Are people not smart enough to become concerned with issues like the envirnment based on the facts and substance alone? Will they fall for your sexification?

If advertising is any indication, people apparrently respond a lot to sex, and not so much to substance. Advertisers believe this, otherwise we wouldn't see so many commercials for cars, beer, etc that just show attractive women and don't really give us any substantial information about the product.

Once again we can ask: have advertisers tapped into the foundation of human nature and found the most salient and most effective way to get us interested in what they have to sell us? Or do we respond because we grow up and operate within the context of a culture, wherein we are basically from birth inundated with people selling "sex" to us and everyone we know? Have we allowed aspects of our capitalistic and consumer-driven culture to go too far, by adopting the strategy of "whatever it takes" to sell?

In any case, we might say that "sex sells" should be a perfectly acceptable strategy for advertisers, since they should really be free to run their business and advertise their products however they want. Companies have no responsibility to us, unless we are shareholders, in which case their obligation to us is to make as much money as possible. Whether that is, or ought to be true, is of course debatable, but what really needs to be debated is whether we want more powerful and responsible aspects of our culture, our politicians and our journalists, also embracing the strategy that "sex sells," and further engraining it into our national psyche by integrating it into our news and our politics. In my opinion, it makes a profound statement about our culture when our politicians are following the example of Coors Light in doing their job.

Politics aside, there is no question that this strategy has been embraced wholeheartedly by the media. Everyone has heard the cynical saying "if it bleeds it leads" to describe how the media choses what they tell us about and when and how much.

So given these reflections, we have at least one explination of why Imus was all that the news talked about for the last two weeks, which has almost nothing to do with what Imus actually did. To make matters worse, the discussion that the media gave to the issue, and the commentary that pundits offered while weighing in on the issue, was similarly devoid of the substance of discussing the issue of what Imus actually did. By that, I mean, we basically just got people's knee-jerk political reactions to an issue that the media had decided it was going to focus on. Conservatives spoke about the good things Imus has done in his life, and the fact that he had apologized, and said that his treatment in the media was too harsh, and that his firing was excessive. Liberals emphasized his hurtful words and those words' affects on those they referred to and others who had heard them, and said that his firing was appropriate. While Democrats and Republicans alike talked past each other, refusing to even acknowledge that this was a complicated issue where both sides had valid points, everyone seemed to forget that whether he gets fired or not is none of anyone's business except his boss/bosses, who, like all other bosses, are free to fire any employee for whatever reason whatsoever, and under the law they don't even have to give a reason (this is subject to some exceptions that are irrelevant to the Imus situation). Hearing pundits and politicians talking about whether Imus should have been fired makes about as much sense as hearing Hollywood actors talking about presidential candidates - they are no more qualified or knowledgeable than the next guy, yet there they are, on the TV, giving us their opinions, day in and day out.

Now people with ordinary opinions just like ours, getting widespread media coverage of their opinions is merely another example of "sex sells." I can do all of the research and polling I want, CNN ain't gonna have me on the TV to discuss the presidential nominees or Iraq or the Second Amendment or whatever (the same goes for Matt Drudge, etc). Of course if I had starred in Good Will Hunting, Forces of Nature, Reindeer Games, Bounce, Pearl Harbor, The Sum of All Fears, Daredevil, Paycheck, and Gigli, it would be a different story.

So the point is, while Imus didn't do anything that out of the ordinary (not condoning it, just saying, racism unfortunately exists all over this country), the media -- because he is a celebrity -- seized it and didn't let it go. Now that there is a more pressing issue facing the country, we can likely expect the Imus story to get swept under the rug, and go the way of Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, Kramer, Gary Conditt, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay and plenty of other people that were scrutinized for doing relatively ordinary things, and then the media acted like it was the end of the world for them, and now they are doing great. I mean look at Clinton, after what happened to him, the guy has been a god over the last few years.

I personally find the "sex sells" strategy in the media very concerning, especially when we look at how these stories are so efficiently utilized by the media, and then discarded as soon as either, it is still going sexy but something sexier has come along (is it better to burn out?), or, it has simply outlived its sexiness (or to fade away?). The willingness, eagerness, and ability of the media to do this again and again should at least give us pause. During that pause, we should think about where, if anywhere the conversation should go from here, and we should reflect on what we think about all this, whether we think it is good or bad for our culture, and what, if anything we can or should do about it.