Grading the News

Many of my friends have interesting things to say about the election.  I do not.  But in the eleventh hour, I finally got into watching the news.  It’s been transfixing to me.  Here are my grades for some of the major news anchors on two dimensions: impartiality, and how much I’d like to go on a road trip with them.  I offer neither as an ideal to strive for. 

Wolf Blitzer.  Wolf Blitzer is flawlessly neutral, though his perfect impassivity makes me just slightly less impressed by the achievement.  All the same, I would be fascinated about what he would be like in person.  I imagine a Wolf Blitzer road trip as a seamless procession of descriptively accurate sentences.  “At this moment we are passing what – by all available evidence – appears to be a barn.  This is Wolf Blitzer, in North-Central Wisconsin…”

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: A

 

John King.  John King has to be one of the big winners of this election cycle.  His tireless obsession with detail is already taking on its own legend.  This parody is spot on, but also reveals the absurd difficulty of his real-life job.  With a bizarrely comprehensive knowledge of county-level data seemingly anyplace in the country, John King comes off as half old-school newscaster and half lord of whispers.  “I have a contact in Cumberland County – a Republican but just a solid county official – who tells me she’s seeing more support for the President than had been expected.”  Could he keep it up all the way across Pennsylvania?  I wouldn’t bet against him.   

Impartiality: A

Road Trip: B+

 

Nora O’Donnell.  I’m so impressed by Nora O’Donnell.  Her impartiality is extraordinary, down to the smallest nuances of facial expression and intonational contour.  She is surrounded by people who don’t go to any great pains to conceal their perspective, which complicates things.  On election night, I heard her repeat a colleague’s impassioned comment, but somehow her restatement cancelled its normative valence.  Her verbal fluency is near perfect, yet she seems fully human.  “The president is maintaining his lead in Georgia, but it’s getting prosciutto thin.”  Does she think of this stuff in the moment? 

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: A+

 

Lester Holt.  Lester Holt is the paradigm of respectability.  Every sentence, every question, every expression – no mistakes.  He could have any personality in the world, and we would never know.

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: B+

 

Savannah Guthrie.  Savannah Guthrie may be the most endearing human.  Any agent that did not find Savannah Guthrie endearing I would suspect of being a zombie, which also would move my credences about whether zombies are possible.  In the long hours of election night she broke the monotony by teasing her co-anchors with great affection, highlighting exactly those parts of their performances they seemed to most value about themselves.  She’s not especially impartial, as the send up of her town hall with Donald Trump emphasized.  But in the end, she just wants Americans to get along, and believes they can.  She concludes the night with a kind of civic homily admonishing us to have faith in each other.  I don’t even go in for these values, but I’m still kind of inspired by it.  She even lent Kate MacKinnon the actual suit she wore for the town hall so that Mackinnon could wear it to make fun of her.  Maybe if we were more like Savannah Guthrie, Savannah Guthrie would be right about us?

Impartiality: B+

Road Trip: A+

 

Chris Cuomo.  Chris Cuomo is full of mistakes, misstatements, and bias.  Somehow it all makes him seem more relatable and genuine.  Plus, his biases aren’t exactly partisan in the Fox/MSNBC way.  He’s just against anybody punching down.  Chris Cuomo is like the American citizen’s protective brother.  “Hey, leave those vote counters alone!  Don’t you know they’re doing a civic service?!  You got a problem, take it up with your Secretary of State!”

Impartiality: B

Road Trip: A

 

Fox News, News Desk.  I have to say, I think Fox News did a great job.  If anything, they seemed a bit overzealous in making calls for Biden.  They may have Republican faces, but the news staff seem committed to getting it right. 

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: B

 

Remaining Questions:  What would the world be like if media outlets were more civil?  Mostly that would be good, I think.  But it’s surprisingly hard to say, because sometimes in-group incivility in media actually pushes people away from their party.  Are rural voters responding differently to media?  I would like to know.  Would I purchase SG monogramed clothing to match my RF monogramed clothing?  Yes.  How would Wolf Blitzer respond to Savannah Guthrie on a road trip?  No idea.

 

The Debate Will Be Terrible

 Who will win the debate?  No one.  No one will win, because it will be terrible.  Political debates are always the worst.  And I say this as someone who loves debate.  I always want debates to be like the debate episode of the West Wing.  (It was a simpler time.)  But that’s not how they are.  What is going wrong?

If ever there was ever a debate that might have been like the West Wing, it was Clinton vs. Trump.  Clinton was highly qualified, incredibly prepared, and extremely competent.  Trump was…not.  And yet, debates didn’t move the dial for Clinton. 

There’s a longstanding debate among debate people about whether sometimes the judges are just wrong.  I’m on the side that it’s fine to blame the judges – but then maybe that’s because I lost my share?  (Or at least, the judges voted against me, which is note the same as losing.)  Anyway, I do think sexism is part of the story, but I think the story is more complicated than just sexism against Clinton. 

In the last few days lots of people have been posting debate advice.  I want to get in on this before it’s too late.  Here are seven guidelines.

1. It’s hard to gain ground; it’s easier to lose ground.

For the most part nobody cares about debate.  So as long as you don’t do anything dramatic, you can play for a draw.  If you do shake things up, that’s taking a risk.  Once as a speechwriter in high school I lost a race for Boy’s State Governor, when victory was otherwise a good bet, by going for something interesting.  (Yes, I called myself a speechwriter in high school.)

 2. Be charitable.  It’s a mistake to try to make your opponent’s position look as bad as possible.

A very successful competitive debater once told me that the biggest mistake novices make is trying to argue that everything their opponent says is wrong.  For some reason it’s very tempting to think the right play is to make the opposing side look as weak as possible.  But this intuition is exactly backwards.  You should try to make your opponent’s position look as strong as possible.  This makes you look better.  If the opposing argument is so bad, why does it look like a draw from the outside (see rule 1)?  When you make your opponent’s points look good, it makes you seem like you’ve considered all the angles.

3. Facts are boring.

Lots of people on the internet are saying this so I won’t make heavy weather of it, but the studies are in.  You can’t get someone to believe the facts by telling them the facts.  That is not a winner. Once as a speechwriter in high school I lost an election for student body president by thinking it was a good idea to make it about “the issues.”  To my knowledge, I may be only political consultant in the actual world who has literally never won anything.  Good thing I got a philosophy job!

4. Stories have to be interesting.

Politicians tell the worst stories.  Just the worst.  “Lemme tell you about my friend, First Name.  First Name is a decent, hard-working American. But because of policies like the one Opponent favors, First Name is having a rough time…”  This is insulting to everyone.  More importantly, it’s a terrible story.  Anyone could have predicted everything what happens in advance.  For a story to be compelling, something unexpected must happen. 

I know it doesn’t sound like I’m giving debate advice, but I am.  If you make the story didactic, it becomes a way of trying push someone around with the facts.  People hate that.  This isn’t just folk wisdom.  Pushing people with facts does nothing, or maybe even provokes a backlash.  Most of us hate the experience of someone trying to persuade us, because it literally feels like a threat our autonomy.  On the other hand, when we hear a story we can relate to, we don’t feel threatened.  Here is the crucial point: we are more likely to be persuaded when nobody is trying to push our beliefs around. 

You know who told good stories?  Jesus.  The reason they were compelling is that it was genuinely hard to figure out what he wanted people to get out of them.  As theologians like John Dominic Crossan and Amy-Jill Levine have pointed out, Jesus was more provoking people to consider something than trying to get them to believe anything in particular.  Imagine if Jesus had said, “I have a friend who was a good, hard-working guy, but then the Romans came round with these policies…”  Nobody cares. 

5. You have to think about what your opponent will say back to what you say.

This is so obvious I don’t know why I’m writing it. But for some reason people are tempted to think about their opponent’s position, not what their opponent will say back when they’ve finished talking.  That’s a mistake.

6. It is very difficult to land pre-planned, contrived jokes.

Antithesis: it is remarkably easy to land a joke that could not have been written in advance.

7. Only attack someone if the audience will think they have it coming.

It doesn’t matter how many unjust deaths your opponent is responsible for; the audience will only take your side in a fight if they have just witnessed bad conduct for themselves.  We all love to see someone who really deserves it get the receiving end of a verbal attack.  But it’s hard to get someone to reveal that they deserve it. 

If you have never seen it, Jon Stewart’s premeditated dismantling of Tucker Carlson on his own show is a masterclass in baiting someone to throw the first punch, then going all in.  In less than three minutes Carlson finds himself on his heels in an argumentative terrain he hadn’t planned for or thought about.  Jon Stewart gets him to reveal exactly the disposition for which Stewart wants to criticize him, and then doesn’t let up for the duration.  It’s incredible to behold.  As the leading youtube comment notes, you can witness Tucker’s “villain origin story.”

So much for rules.  Now, advice.  I like backseat quarterbacking as much as anybody.

The advice: It’s weird that a Republican President who used the executive branch to make a propaganda video for North Korea should be a difficult mark in a debate.  But, here we are.  Probably the smart money bet debating Trump is to recite boring Democratic talking points so your base can pretend like you “won,” and call it a night. 

Say, though, that you wanted to try.  In that case, consider trying to get Trump to say something vaguely disrespectful of the military or another conservative institution.  This is apparently not that difficult in private.  Start with praise.  “It’s great that the President is against bombing people for no reason – so good job throwing out Bolton, etc.”  Then suggest consensus.  “But in our system it’s important that the president be willing to listen to people who know more.”  It’s very unlikely to work, but might Trump be tempted to say he was right in one of his famous un-doings of military decisions?  One could also try pushing to see if Trump will say more on opposing democratic outcomes of elections in America.

Of course, it’s all a long shot.  The likely outcome is boring.  May I recommend instead counterprograming with election episode of Gilmore Girls?  It’s not that realistic, but at this point, who’s counting?

The Rules Made Me Do It!

Here’s a story ripped from the headlines.  Yesterday at the US Open, Novak Djokovic accidentally hit a linesperson with a tennis ball.  He had just dropped his serve at love, and – clearly frustrated – took a ball out of his pocket and knocked it behind him.  (He might have hit it a tad bit harder than usual, but sending a leftover ball to the back of the court after completing a service game is standard practice.)  A split second after thoughtlessly hitting it, Djokovic looked back to see it had struck a linesperson, and was clearly horrified to see what he had done.  After rushing back to apologize, a lengthy conversation with the tournament referee ensued.  The outcome was that Djokovic was defaulted from the match and tossed from the Open.    

I’m of two minds about this.  A longtime Federer fan, I’ll cop to a little schadenfreude for any misfortune that befalls The Djoker.  (What’s a good nemesis for, anyway?)  But as a human being interested in rules, fairness, and normativity, the decision strikes me as a mistake. 

Here’s a second case.  In the 2018 US Open Final, Serena Williams played Naomi Osaka.  Early on, Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was cited for nonverbal coaching.  This gave Williams a ‘code violation’—basically a verbal warning from the chair umpire.  Serena protested that she had not cheated, and the chair umpire admitted her point, responding, “I know that.”  From there, however, the match “descended into chaos”.  In the second set, Serena broke her racquet in frustration.  Because she had already been issued a formal warning, this time the rules required her to be docked a point.  Serena was incensed.  She declared the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos, to be a thief.  He issued a third code violation for “verbal abuse,” resulting in Williams dropping a game at a crucial moment. 

It’s easy to see things spiraled from what appeared to be a simple ambiguity.  When Serena initially talked to Ramos after Mouratoglou’s coaching violation, she had insisted that she had not cheated.  Ramos agreed that she had not cheated.  From the player’s point of view, they had settled their difference.  From the official’s point of view, the issue was not that a player had cheated, but that the rules demanded a code violation for a coach’s action.  So when the racquet incident came around, it could appear either as the “first” of Williams’s violations, or as the “second” violation assessed to Williams, depending on how you were counting.

My present concern is not to resolve what was or was not retracted by implicature of Ramos’s from-the-chair speech act, “I know that.”  Rather, my claim is that for the US Open to turn on niceties of this sort is ridiculous.  Serena herself was the first to make this point.  When Donna Kelso, the Grand Slam Supervisor, entered the court to explain how Ramos was following the letter of the law to an understandably upset Williams, Serena countered: “I get the rules, but I’m saying that it’s not right.”

Serena’s case is different from Novak’s.  The most basic rights are those protecting one’s physical person, so it matters that someone suffered harm in today’s episode.  The only physical damage done in the 2018 final was to Serena’s Wilson Blade racquet, which I strongly suspect she owned outright.  But anyone on the ground of a grand slam tennis match appreciates that tennis balls will be moving through the air.  Djokovic is the responsible party, as he also understood.  However, it’s hard for me – at least – to see how altering the course of the Open in response to a truly bizarre accident serves anybody’s interests (except, well, Federer’s – and so by extension, my own).  Like I said, I see both sides of this one.

Don’t worry about that.  Believe as you will about Novak and US Open rules.  I’ve taken my (and your!) precious time getting to it, but what I’m really after here is The Rules as a kind of normative banner.  In the wake of today’s decision, lots of commentators have insisted that the tournament referee had to throw Djokovic out because The Rules required it. 

Two points about this.  One: whenever anybody says “The rules require it!” I strongly recommend consulting the fine print.  Two: what The Rules require is not conceptually transparent to what’s right. Serena was too smart to be go in for that bit of bureaucratic doublespeak, and we should be, too. 

I teach a big intro class at a university.  Alas, there are rules.  Lots of rules.  My syllabus is full of them.  Yours probably is as well.  But here is the thing.  I – for one – have learned by sad experience that I’m just not clever enough to construct any set of rules such that their strict enforcement will serve the values I care about.  I don’t know quite why this is.  My experience is that enforcing the rules is bad for me, and for my most vulnerable students.  Now, you might think I haven’t thought hard enough about how to make the rules fair.  And maybe so.  But no matter what rules I put down, those rules aren’t even dry on the syllabus before Ambitious Students will have figured out how to maximize their interests within the game those rules constitute.  And because I have to grade on a curve, that’s not great news for not-so-ambitious students.  For whatever it’s worth, my very consistent experience is that the students who stand to win from The Rules are overwhelmingly upper-middle class or rich, white, and male.  Nothing against those students, who are within their rights to play by the rules.  But a system where you only get ahead by figuring out The Rules and playing hard within them will not be neutral in upon whom in confers benefits and burdens.

I’ll end with a jeremiad.  I have met The Rules.  I hate them.  Including my own.  Sometimes I feel a temptation to enforce The Rules against a student whom I really feel has it coming.  “They called me a thief!” I’ve said in my own way.  But when I’m in that state, I’m not seeing things right.  People I trust have to tell me to suppress my vanity, to let go of the rules.  I have never regretted following their advice.  I’ve also had students try to enforce The Rules against themselves.  (Curiously, never the same students eager to use the rules to get ahead.)  That’s not good, either.  I don’t work for The Rules, and nor should they.  Were we created for the syllabus, or the syllabus for us?   

What’s my thesis?  When someone tells you they are just following the rules, it’s also true that they are following the rules.  We cannot divest ourselves of responsibility for our actions by saying the rules made us do it.  They didn’t.  There’s a question about what the rules say, and there’s a question about what’s right.  Running those questions together is more dangerous than a flying tennis ball.

In Defense of Lori Loughlin

 If you read this blog, you’ve probably noticed its writers largely agree that the political state does more than its share of unjust things.  But that point is pretty mundane.  I’d venture that a majority of academic folks we associate with across the political spectrum broadly agree about the most egregious examples of political injustice. 

Sometimes, however, there is a case where something seems obviously unjust to me, but for some reason a lot of academics I know see it differently.  This post is about Lori Loughlin, who yesterday was sentenced over her well-publicized ploy to get her children into USC under the guise of a rowing scholarship.  I confess this strikes me as crazy.

Here’s a case to warm you up to my view.  Imagine you want to get into Fancyperson Richclub, an exclusive fraternity for the well-heeled and well-mannered.  One of the rules of admission is that your parents and grandparents must have also met certain criteria of membership among the social elite.  As it happens, your family’s past is checkered with markers of low and middle class heritage.  Your application is turned down.  Indignant, you fabricate a new family history, purging old family pictures of birthdays at Cheesecake Factory and photoshopping in nights at the symphony, etc. etc.  Unused to your plucky ambition, Fancyperson Richclub is duped.  They admit you.

Is your action wrong?  Well, there is some deception, which is often wrong.  But in some cases, deception as a way of parrying unjust background conditions – or what philosophers sometimes call defensive deception – is ok.  I’ll admit mileage may vary on this question.

Is your action unjust?  Here I say no, it’s not unjust.  If they smell you out as a low class striver, they’re free to excommunicate you.  That’s freedom of association.  But nothing more.

Second case.  Over the years, Fancyperson Richclub starts losing members and money.  Sure, they still have their pride, but that doesn’t pay for the ice sculptures.  They decide to take a few members with less distinguished pedigrees, provided they can make a “donation” up front.  You just have to take your "donation" to the Appropriate Office.  As long as you do, you’re in.  But if by chance you take your “donation” to the Inappropriate Office, the attendant there calls the police on you.  As it happens, you bring your briefcase of cash to the Inappropriate Office and get made.  The police arrest you.

Here is what puzzles me.  I don’t know why the state should intervene at all.  And if the state intervenes, why take the side of Fancyperson Richclub?  Doing that looks plain suspicious.  It’s almost as if the state had some interest in defending the old class structure. 

I’m going to introduce a technical term.  I will call something a “scam” whenever some agent or group represents themselves as something they’re not in order to get a positional advantage.  Elite colleges like to represent themselves as not trading admissions for money.  That way they can maintain certain reputational gains that give them a positional edge.  At the same time, elite colleges trade admissions for money.  So elite colleges are engaged in a scam.

Astonishingly, Lori Loughlin got the better of them.  How did a middle class divorcee turned B-list celebrity do it?  The answer to that question is the stuff of what I regret will probably not be first Hallmark true-crime thriller. 

How should an egalitarian minded political society regard people who scam the scammers?  Polite indifference?  Public commendation?  A medal of some kind?  Those are my pre-theoretical intuitions. 

Not so.  Lori Loughlin was sentenced to two months in jail.  I think this is unjust. 

I’ve had this argument with a few people.  Sometimes I’m told that it wasn’t fair for Lori Loughlin’s kids to get admitted to USC because they took some else’s spot.  Three responses.  First, I want to note that most academics tend to think “you took my spot!” reasoning betrays a kind of category mistake.  Second, for spot-taking to be unfair, it must be the case that the person who’s spot was taken was in fact more deserving.  But third, let’s say for the sake of the argument they were more deserving.  Now some star high school rower is slumming it on the crew team at UC Santa Barbara instead of USC.  And we’re going to put Lori Loughlin in a cage used by some humans to physically contain other humans as a form of punishment?  Insanity.  At the worst, we should make her send a note of apology or something. 

But really, why should the state intervene at all?  To me it looks suspicious.  It’s almost as if they had some interest in defending the existing class structure.  Maybe you disagree.  I realize I’m in the minority.  But if you’re on the other side, I am curious who you think the bad guys are in any heist movie you’ve ever watched. 

 

On Trails, Trespassing, and What Neighbors Owe to Each Other

Here is an essay in Outside magazine on the ethics of neighborliness and trespassing.  It explicitly takes up that always relevant question: What do we owe to each other?

The author is a trail runner who – we gather – has relatively recently moved onto a five acre property with ample wilderness area around it.  The trouble is his land comes up against his neighbors’, and so do his values.  The author tells the story of accidentally trespassing on one neighbor’s property while running.  Here is his account of the ensuring exchange:

“You can’t be up here. It’s private property,” he said.

I hesitated. “I thought you had a flat tire,” I told him. “It looked like you needed help.” But as I looked at him and his bike more closely, I could tell that his only problem was me. 

“Hi, I’m Jon,” I said. “I’m your neighbor. My house is down there in the valley.”

He didn’t introduce himself back. I hoped not to cause trouble, but I pressed him anyway.

“Would it be OK for me to occasionally run your trail?”

“Doesn’t matter who you are. This is private property.”

“I understand. But I could give you something in return.” I attempted a more utilitarian approach, accepting that my moral appeal had failed. He clearly was not interested in treating his neighbor as he would like to be treated. “I have children. We could put them to work here on trail maintenance.” 

He didn’t laugh. So I offered my services as a doctor in case he got hurt up here on his bike. 

“Private property,” he repeated.

I could even be there, I told him, if only to regard the sound of a falling tree when nobody else was around, a rather existential approach. Now I was pushing him, resorting to sarcasm. He said he would sue me if I used his trail again. 

 

What’s going on here?  The author has one explanation:

Privilege and power ultimately determine what is a right. But it is possible to take that responsibility upon ourselves, in our daily lives, in how we act and speak to each other. 

Most of my neighbors do this. They are good to each other. They don’t threaten lawsuits as they hide their fears behind property lines. They are willing to solve problems through conversation and cooperation, not threats and litigation. They stop to say hello. We talk about small things, make eye contact, and slowly develop relationships. We can count on each other for things we need. We make a community by developing trust and meaning among ourselves.

On the author’s view, the bottom of the issue seems to be that some neighbors don’t get that society should be about cooperation, and so fail according to the norms of neighborliness by enforcing their property rights.  Call this the communitarian objection to property rules.

I have another explanation.  Trespassing on someone’s land is one way of insulting them.  I know a little about this, I confess, because I too am a veteran trespasser.  My particular combination of hobbies, vacation destinations, and singular navigational ineptitude has landed me inadvertently on private land some number of times.  Most of the ensuing exchanges begin like the author’s – with a fair bit of wariness.  That’s because it’s natural to be wary of someone who is violating your entitlements, even without malice or knowledge.  Compare: I spit in your face and – baffled – you ask me what I’m doing.  It would be unwise prudentially and morally for me to needle you.  “We’re neighbors!” I might say, but should not.  I also should not ask you for something like a justificatory explanation of your offense.  That misunderstands the dialectical situation.  If I have violated a norm and you have been slighted by my trespass, I should offer an apology, not a demand. 

The first explanation accuses the neighbor in the story of not getting that neighbors should cooperate.  I think that gets things rather seriously mixed up.  Observing the property boundaries is not flouting cooperation.  It is the cooperation.  Of course it’s a fairly minimal norm of cooperation, but the way we get to more intimate norms is by showing fidelity to the minimal ones.  It’s tempting to think we can substitute respect for others’ physical or moral space with offering benefits they didn’t ask for and probably don’t want.  But that’s not enough.  It doesn’t matter how well your children will maintain the trail.  Cooperation involves respect for each person, and that means making offers the other actually accepts in real life before we help ourselves in return.

Of course, you might have some serious worries about the regime of property as it presently exists.  There are lots of people against whom property is enforced, but who aren’t seeing much benefit in return.  That’s completely fair.  But that is a different objection – and not one comfortably pressed by anyone who can afford five acres of land on a forest boundary.  The egalitarian objection to property deserves our attention.  The communitarian objection does not. 

For my own part, my experience with property owners is that a little penitence goes a long way, and many a landowner has been glad to help me on my way once things got straightened out.  I don’t really think it’s trespassing in the physical landscape that gets people upset.  Trespassing in the moral landscape is another matter.

 

Is Politics like a Relationship?

Philosophers in the Rawlsian tradition often like to think about political relationships on the model of personal relationships.  My own view is that we don’t share a meaningful connection to other persons just by virtue of happening to live within the same political state.  But nevermind that.  A bigger worry is that if political associations are like personal relationships, that is more disturbing than comforting.  No matter how bad things get in our personal relationships, resorting to threats of force or coercion remains totally beyond the pale.  If we really think about the relation of political rule on the model of a relationship, then it seems like a very messed up kind of relationship.

Let’s say we go ahead and think in relationship terms.  Consider what we know from political psychology about the kind of people who want to rule over us.  They are more Machiavellian.  More than most, they seek their own ends at others expense, rather than looking for shred values.  They are more narcissistic, or inclined to exaggerate their achievements and deny criticisms.  They prioritize short-term rewards to longer-term commitments.  They are less agreeable, or concerned with getting along with others.  And they may score higher in psychopathy, which would make them more willing to use force and violence than most people.  In short, “There is no doubt that some who run for elective office crave the benefits and adulation that comes from positions of power.”

People curious about the prospects for exercising rule generally want to couch their ambitions in terms of “service” for fellow citizens.  But given the list of traits just mentioned, we should know better than to take this at face value.  Those who want to get into politics often see it more as a way of realizing a goal to hold and exercise power over others more than they see it as a way of providing communal goods.  (This is especially true for men, who continue to be dramatically over-represented.)

Imagining these problems away by idealizing political rule as a healthy personal relationship can give us the wrong idea about how we should treat signals from political elites.  As Jess wrote a while back:

Charisma is not a positive feature of a leader, nor is it ‘value-free’ as Weber claimed. Rather, charisma is quite morally problematic insofar as people defer to charismatic leaders on the basis of their charisma rather than their moral or epistemic authority. A charismatic presence often inspires followers to bypass any deliberation of their own. Whether charismatic leaders are moral or not, when charisma is the reason for deference the motives followers are therefore morally worse.

There are a lot of reasons to think this is a real phenomenon.  People take their partisan leaders’ word for it all the time.

What to make of all of this for thinking about actual political activity?  Lately my sense has been that those who have opposed peaceful protests seem to think that protestors should be more grateful for the terms of political rule.  To my ear, their skepticism still has the tone of “You’ll be back!”  That rejoinder has been wrong before, and relying on political rule to guide our moral actions and beliefs – the way we might rely on people with whom we share real relationships – continues to look unpromising.  The bottom line is that if the reminder of someone’s love is found at the literal point of a fully armed battalion, it might time to start rethinking some relationship goals. 

Masks and Motivations

Not long before his own death in 1955, James Dean did public safety announcements encouraging people to drive safely.  The format was a kind of interview about Dean’s penchant for racing.  The interview concludes with the question “Do you have any special advice for the young people who drive?”  Legend has it that Dean was supposed to advise cautious driving with the line, “The life you save might be your own.”  Instead, he retorts something much cooler: “Take it easy driving – uh, the life you save might be mine.”

Although car accidents still cause many deaths, one good thing is that everyone nowadays more or less accepts that reckless driving (drunken, distracted, etc.) is bad.  We agree on a pro safe driving norm, however imperfectly we follow it.  Contrast this with mask wearing.  We’ve gotten into a bad place in which wearing masks is politicized and moralized.  Politicization is bad because everybody hates their political enemies, so no one wants to signal submission to the other side’s norms.  Moralization is a less obvious case, but I still think it’s probably bad.  We don’t like feeling like we’re being forced to do stuff, so we react against it – even if we otherwise might not have had a strong preference, and even if the relevant “forcing” is just through moralized blaming attitudes. 

By way of personal disclosure, I will confess that I’m on Team Scared about Covid-19.  However quite a few people I know are on Team Meh.  As a result I’ve had to explain a few times why I wanted to be strict about this or that rule for social distancing.  I’ve tried playing the ethics professor, saying something like, “Well, there are vulnerable people around here and I don’t want to get anyone sick.”  That tact has met with consistent incredulity.  Usually the response goes something like, “Yeah but really, why?”  Then I tried saying, “Look, I’m very afraid of death and there are entire mountain ranges in Wyoming where I’ve never fly fished even once yet.”  Everyone I know has been totally willing to accommodate my preferences when presented in this way. 

Now, maybe this isn’t a fair experiment because my friends know me too well to go along with the unselfish storyline.  But I’m trying to get at a question about motivation and identity. 

My understanding of the literature so far is that people respond better to public than to personal-interest appeals when it comes to reporting an intention to wear a mask.  Messaging focusing on “your community” positively influences reported intentions to wear a mask more than messaging about “you” or “your family.”  That makes it seem like appealing to someone’s altruism is better than appealing to their self-interest.  Of course I have my own biases about this, but I’m suspicious.  Reporting an altruistic motivation is socially desirable.  I am interested to see how these findings transfer to behavior.  Maybe norm promotion doesn’t really have much effect on action at all.

I’m not a psychologist, though I did once use the term “p-hacking” in a sentence.  Anyway, here is my speculation.  Telling someone to wear a mask for moral reasons seems like tsk tsk-ing them.  People don’t even like being persuaded by reasons, because it feels like a threat to their autonomy.  At the same time, people do like getting credit for doing moral things when it doesn’t feel like they’re getting pushed around.  So they are more easily persuaded by stories than arguments.

Masks are uncomfortable for some (read: mostly men) because they think it’s strange or shameful to wear one.  (The gender story here is a subject for another post.)  But as with driving, once everyone is on board, those self-directed feelings go away.  Maybe we need more steps to push compliance without insinuating that defectors are violating a moral requirement. 

I wonder if conservatives might just need a different kind of story to get on board.  I mentioned the gender issue.  I wonder if there is also a class issue.  Childhood socioeconomic status affects whether people respond better to self-interested or altruistic concerns when safety is at stake. 

For my own part, if and when the time comes again that we have in-person classes, I plan to tell my students they have to wear masks not because there is something such that “we” are somehow “in it together”, because I’m old and fragile and still have to make it to the Wind Rivers.  Put on a mask!  The life you save might be mine.

The Fantasy of Individualism?

I’ve been thinking lately about the importance of our social ties to other people.  I want to consider one claim about these relationships, which I will call the ‘isolated individualist thesis.’  According to this thesis, your individual identity is more or less up to you.  The most practically important facts about you are not up for negotiation with your friends, family, co-workers, fellow citizens, and the like.  You get to decide.

Lots of philosophers are very skeptical about the isolated individualist thesis.  And not just philosophers.  When I tell people I write about autonomy, I often get a response something like, “Why would you even believe in that?!”  I think there is a common view according to which the ‘isolated individual’ is disingenuous myth propped up for politically nefarious purposes.  Samuel Scheffler gives voice to the skeptical thought:

Whether we like it or not, such relations help to define the contours of our lives, and influence the ways that we are seen both by ourselves and by others.  Even those who sever or repudiate such ties—in so far as it is possible to do so—can never escape their influence or deprive them of all significance, for to have repudiated a personal tie is not the same as never having had it, and one does not nullify social bonds by rejecting them.  One is, in other words, forever the person who has rejected or repudiated those bonds; one cannot make oneself into a person who lacked them from the outset.  Thus, while some people travel enormous social distances in their lives, and while the possibility of so doing is something we have every reason to cherish, the idea that the significance of our personal ties and social affiliations is wholly dependent on our wills—that we are the supreme gatekeepers of our own identities—can only be regarded as a fantasy.[1]

According to Scheffler, people really want to believe that some version of the isolated individualist thesis is true.  The trouble is that such hope flies in the face of a realistic psychology.  So, the view is a mere fantasy.

I think Scheffler’s rejoinder gets everything precisely backwards.  I think people really want to believe that some version of the isolated individualist thesis is false.  The trouble is that such denial flies in the face of a realistic psychology.  Something in the neighborhood of the isolated individualist thesis is much closer to an uncomfortable reality than a heroic illusion. 

Let’s consider the easiest case for the ‘social ties’ theorist: Spouses.  If anyone matters to the ongoing identity of an ordinary person, probably their spouse does.  Many people forecast that if they lost their spouse, it would make them very unhappy.  But as often the case, our ability to affectively forecast our reactions to future events is not very good.  It turns out that most people are quite resilient after the death of a spouse.  Dan Moller summarizes the empirical literature in his paper, “Love and Death":

…Compared to a control group, "The effect of bereavement on symptoms of depression and general psychopathology…was significant only at 2 months following the loss."  Still another expert sumps up his work, "A general conclusion of this study is that the death of a spouse in later life does impact the surviving spouse’s subjective well-being but not to the extent that many would expect."  If these results are surprising, it gets stranger still: research indicates that not only do half or more of bereaved spouses tend to be resilient or muted in their reaction to their loss, but a consistent 10% or so of the bereaved experience a dramatic increase in subjective well-being following the loss.[2]

To my ear this sounds like unqualifiedly good news.  But as Moller notes, many people don’t like hearing these findings.  It goes against our desire to imagine our lives as tied up in some ineliminable way with the lives of other persons.

So who is actually guilty of indulging in a little make-believe about the self?  Living a life in which our attitudes are not that closely tethered to even the most important people around us – that’s (often, at least) just part of what it is to be person.  But living a life in which one’s will is continually subordinated to the will of another person?  That really is the stuff of fantasy.

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[1] Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 106-107.

[2] Moller, “Love and Death,” The Journal of Philosophy 104:6 (2007): 301-316, pp. 302-303.