Other people’s needs
Francine Prose has thoughts on Trump’s cult of callous brutalism:
[U]ltimately our president’s failure of empathy is less disturbing than the ways in which it appears to resonate with his supporters. He and his allies have framed our response to the crisis in terms of partisan politics, to imply (incorrectly, as the polls suggest) that tough conservatives are eager to get back to work sooner than scaredy-cat, stay-at-home progressives.
The flag-waving, gun-toting, defiantly unmasked protesters storming the capitol buildings in Michigan and Wisconsin would seem to support that view.
Indeed they would, and isn’t that bizarre. A virus isn’t political. It’s not “liberal” or “hard left” or even “socialist” to want to avoid a lethal virus and to avoid giving it to others. It’s bizarre that so many on the right seem to be happy to claim that it is.
It may be that the deepening polarization in our country – the suspicion, grievance and rage that the president is spouting and encouraging – is less political than spiritual. These divides go deeper than how we vote; they express our core beliefs about our responsibility to those with whom we share this brief span on this damaged planet. As Slate editor Tom Scocca posted on Twitter: “Conservatives have by now been conditioned to believe that thinking about other people ‘s needs or interests in any way is tyranny by definition,” a sentiment echoed by Emily Raboteau in the Huffington Post: “I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to our fellow human beings.”
That is why I keep disputing people like Neil deGrasse Tyson when they say reason and evidence are not just necessary but also sufficient. They’re not sufficient. The instinct to give a damn has to be there too.
‘[U]ltimately our president’s failure of empathy is less disturbing than the ways in which it appears to resonate with his supporters.’ Yes. Yes yes yes. Who gives a shit what that guy is like–what’s terrifying is that there is a sizeable number of people out there who ADMIRE it.
Yes but we can’t plumb the depths of the horror of the sizable number of people out there who ADMIRE it without plumbing the depths of what it is they admire. (That’s my attempt at explaining my constant return to the dog-vomit.)
Oh, completely agree–and it’s worth documenting because otherwise no normal person would believe it.
I don’t see it quite this way. I don’t think it’s (always) that Trump supporters or conservatives stopped caring about other people. I think that everything is so polarized now that if someone on the other side says X, they automatically believe not-X. Also, “grievance culture” and paranoia play a big role. “Oh, this pandemic is really serious, is it? I should alter my behavior to avoid getting or transmitting the disease? You’d just love that, wouldn’t you?
THIS.
‘That is why I keep disputing people like Neil deGrasse Tyson when they say reason and evidence are not just necessary but also sufficient. They’re not sufficient. The instinct to give a damn has to be there too.’
I wholly agree.
The assumption that ‘reason and evidence are not just necessary but sufficient’ seems, alas, to be quite common among people who have spent most of their lives as scientists (particularly) in academia. I remember the ‘debates’ that used to take place between that American theologian whose name I can’t remember and scientists or at least intellectuals who knew something of science. The former would indulge in a ‘Gish gallop’ and muddy the waters so successfully that he very often came out on top. Eventually, most of those who respected the theory of evolution recognised that such debates were pointless and, moreover, harmful, since even if the debates were won by the enlightened side they gave the impression that their opponents had some sort of case.
And then the matter of free speech. I remember a well-known biologist on his website complaining about some well-known American homophobe (again I can’t remember the name) being denied the chance to present his disgusting views on homosexuality at some debate or colloquium somewhere in Jamaica. I pointed out that the man wasn’t going to Jamaica to argue some genuine case in some nice, polite, rarefied academic atmosphere but to stir a stinking pot, since in Jamaica homosexuals get killed (I had a Jamaican acquaintance who said he had got out of Jamaica to avoid being killed – I don’t know in fact whether he was gay or not, but am pretty certain that he was).
I have every respect for rational speech, but language is not first of all made for rational speech and argument, as people like deGrasse Tyson and that biologist suppose. It is made first of all for communication of various kinds (obviously), to establish status, and it is a weapon, as Shakespeare knew. Cicely Berry, who was the vocal coach for the Royal Shakespeare Company, remarked somewhere that working-class young people readily understood how to speak Shakespeare since they came from a predominantly oral culture and understood the force of spoken words, whereas well-brought-up and educated young people, who supposed that Shakespeare was ‘literature’, and that literature was superior to speech, and more civilised, generally did not understand this. She found the same working with prisoners. Which reminds me: one of the best films of ‘Julius Caesar’ I have seen was an Italian one, directed by Paolo & Vittorio Taviani, in which the actors were members of various Italian gangs who were imprisoned in a high-security prison. Those men knew exactly what was going on in the play, and they brought it out to a wonderful degree.
It is not just that such as deGrasse Tyson don’t understand that the instinct to give a damn is important, they do not recognise how language actually functions – even when it is under their noses, for most academic departments, including scientific ones, are filled with squabbles, factionalism, back-biting, fights over status, etc. Academic life is not all calm rational discussion and sweet Platonic light. Yeats knew that it was not, and never could be: see ‘The Delphic Oracle upon Plotinus’ & ‘News for the Delphic Oracle’.
And while on the subject of free speech & homophobes, what right do evangelical missionaries have to go to Africa and persuade governments like that of Uganda to adopt homophobic policies? The real world is not a seminar room, as a look at what passes for debate, particularly where Boris Johnson is concerned, in the House of Commons, or, let us say, in the House of Representatives when Jim Jordan lays hold of the microphone.
Tyson himself is not exactly a poster boy for being swayed by reason and evidence, as his (lack of) response to criticism of his embarrassingly naive understanding of history and the humanities demonstrates. (Was just trying to look this up and can’t find any information about followup–so I could be wrong, and he could have admitted ignorance and willingness to learn, but I kind of doubt it.)