Democracy and the toleration of dissent
This last week or so, I have been contemplating the tribalism of politics, and the way in which even people with similar political values may have vastly different opinions on social policy because they rank those political values differently. Anyone who has been following the blog over the last two weeks won’t need to wonder why this is…
At my English high school, I had a friend who was a neo-Marxist. My other closest friend was a Tory. Neither understood what I saw in the other girl — they disliked one another cordially — but I loved them both. As you can see, I haven’t really changed: I have always been friends with people with wildly different beliefs. Anyway, the neo-Marxist told me one afternoon that she was going to an environmental meeting, then to a meeting of people who were concerned about indigenous cultures. I wondered aloud, “Which one would you preference if an issue came up which produced a conflict?” She glared at me. “There never is a conflict!” she said, angrily. “I can think of a conflict,” I said (perhaps unwisely). “In Australia, indigenous people want to eat turtle and dugongs which are an endangered species. Surely the environmental people would find that problematic, whereas the indigenous rights people would think they were entitled to eat the animals?” From my recollection her response was to say, “Rubbish! I’ve never heard of that!” and to storm off furiously. Unfortunately, I’ve always had a habit of riling people by raising these kinds of questions: I just can’t help myself. It makes me unpopular with those who unquestioningly accept the rightness of a particular doctrine. Because I have these tendencies, I try to be open to other people when they do that to me. I try to be able to admit that I might be wrong, and that there might be things I haven’t thought about. Perhaps that’s why people forgive me…most of the time.
I’ve never really understood why an opposing opinion makes people angry, as long as it’s politely expressed and has reasons behind it (even if they’re reasons I don’t personally regard as important). I’m just fascinated to know what makes other people tick, and to see what reasons they do regard as important. In that regard, I note that this blog is a rarity: a meeting of three people with different political opinions. The only other I can think of is Club Troppo. Many of the big political blogs are firmly tribal, and are populated by commenters who belong to the tribe. If you express an opinion that’s contrary to the tribal opinion, then it’s “stacks on” time, and suddenly 50 people descend on you to tell you you’re stupid and wrong. Many of the people from the other tribes have probably been banned from commenting by this point, so you find that you’re mostly on your lonesome. This isn’t conducive to the expression of dissenting opinions. It’s one of the reasons why I often don’t comment on big political blogs. I read the posts, but I go back to my own place and write a post rather than engage in a “stushie”. Or I may make a single comment, and then retreat. Or I may just say nothing.
Another thing I’ve been contemplating in last week is: what does it mean to be “left-wing”? What values are important? For me, equality, freedom of speech and tolerance are central. The genesis of the Left was in the realisation that workers were not dumb and stupid, and maybe they were entitled to an opinion and a voice too, because they contributed a good deal to society. Gradually, this realisation extended not only to class, but to other people in society: women, people of other ethnicities, people of different sexualities etc. To me, the Left should be all about listening to different voices, not just the voice of a particular few. But some people on the Left are very bad at tolerating dissent or differing opinions (I came across a few when I dipped my toe in student activism). If you disagree with what they say in any respect, you must be a fascist imperialist running-dog, and complicit with the system. I must say I find such doctrinaire leftists extraordinarily frustrating. There’s little point discussing anything with them: you can predict exactly what their views are before they open their mouths. They see themselves as “radical”, but actually there’s a remarkable conformity about their views. Yawn! Of course, not all on the Left are like this and many are prepared to have interesting and open-minded debates between themselves and with the Other Side (I want to make a very special hat tip to the people at Strange Times here with their Monthly Debates).
But all too often, if the Hive-Mind has spoken, no-one may openly gainsay it. If they do openly gainsay it, they are traitors and “no true left-winger” (which reminds me very much of the no true Scotsman fallacy). One shouldn’t be pilloried for expressing dissenting opinions which diverge from the left-wing norm. I think it ought to be possible to be a climate skeptic and a true left-winger, or a person who supports the formation of the State of Israel within its original borders and a true left-winger. I use those two examples because they are two major ways in which my own views diverge from the left-wing norm, and I’m sure in the minds of many left-wingers, this reduces me to a right-wing goon. Often, when I write posts on these issues, people on both the left and the right presume that Skepticlawyer wrote the post, not I. I don’t think that I ought automatically be put in a right-wing camp for expressing such views. The political process should surely be a dialectic, and I think it often is. One of my friends made the point that Menzies wouldn’t have remained in power so long if he hadn’t adapted certain Labor views during his tenure as Prime Minister. Labor may have been in opposition for years, but it still influenced the political process by providing a dialectic.
It interests me that, sometimes, the first people from minority groups to enter into positions of political power come from the conservative side of politics (see eg, Clarence Thomas of the SCOTUS, British PM Margaret Thatcher, Neville Bonner of the Australian Senate and recently, Ken Wyatt, our first indigenous Lower House member). So the Left pushes the conservatives to accept minorities, and the conservatives take that on board, allowing people from minority groups to succeed in conservative politics. London Mayor Boris Johnson once described this as ‘the left opens the door, but the right walks through’. It’s a push-and-pull process.
I share the values of many left-wingers, but I think I just put a slightly different emphasis on them. I really value egalitarianism. I do not want a massive gap between rich and poor, or a society with immovable classes. This is in part informed by my own background, and by my experience of the English class system during my high schooling. Part of the point in that climate change post was that if we are going to have to create a more unequal society in Australia in order to combat climate change, where some people can afford energy and others can’t, I’d rather have climate change, and deal with the consequences when they arise. Another thing I was trying to get at in that post, perhaps unsuccessfully, was that the scepticism of people less well off than I am is directly related to the fear they have of a more unequal society, and of a feeling they have that things are out of their control and that their voices are not being heard.
That’s another thing: I abhor authoritarianism, whether it be left-wing or right-wing. I strongly believe that there is a therapeutic value in expressing one’s opinion, and being listened to rather than silenced. Incidentally, I’d like to see a lot more of that in the law, because I think the grievances of some occur when they feel that they are battling against a giant machine (whether it be a corporation or the State) which doesn’t listen to them, and which just continues on the process regardless. There is nothing more disempowering than the thought that your voice doesn’t matter and that no one is listening to you. When I used to repossess houses, I’d sometimes have defendants crying on the phone to me, saying, “You’re the first person who has listened to me, who has treated me like a human being.” That’s pretty sad, really — it had to get to me before they felt like they were being listened to. Sometimes, that’s all that people wanted: a chance to air their view of what happened. I think sometimes, they couldn’t take action until they had the feeling that they’d been heard, which may explain the “deer-in-the-headlights” effect often seen in this kind of litigation.
I think that one of the things which presented a difficulty for the Australian Labor Party in the recent election was, paradoxically, that it presented such a “cohesive” face on the surface for a lot of the time, and at the start, Rudd made much of the fact that the Liberal National Party was not “cohesive”. To be fair to the ALP, its difficulties may have been largely caused by the operation of the Westminster system, which requires that dissent occur behind closed doors in cabinet, and the fact that it follows this process more faithfully than the LNP. However, behind closed doors, the ALP was very far from cohesive; quite the opposite, in fact. Battles over principle were, for the most part underhand, hidden affairs, as Rudd himself found out. I think the ALP would be much better off if it allowed open dissent as part of its decision-making process, rather than hiding it in the back corridors and behind closed doors. It allowed the LNP to make the “faceless men” jibe over and over. (Did anyone else get totally sick of that epithet? They have faces! It’s not like they’re those scary Japanese ghosts who pass their hand over their face, and it becomes smooth like an egg…ugh…). Can anyone tell me that Peter Garrett, then-Minister for Environment, was genuinely okay about approving the Four Mile uranium mine in South Australia in mid-2009? Cohesive-schmohesive, it just looks damned hypocritical. If one allows voices of disagreement to be heard, then decisions appear more transparent and honest. It becomes obvious that the party has thought about the matter fully. The ALP and Australia’s polity generally may need to rethink some aspects of the Westminster process.
Reducing the political view to a particular party line means that you are not representative of the views of ordinary people. If you allow people to express their conflicting opinions publicly and without ridicule, I think that ultimately, it creates a more cohesive atmosphere. I don’t seek to make everyone agree with me and do as I do, I merely seek to make them at least think about the issue. If you sideline people who express conflicting opinions just by labelling them “fascist”, “sexist”, “racist” or “stupid” then you sideline those people, and they’re unlikely to support you. Of course, some people do have fascist, sexist or racist underpinnings to their point of view, unfortunately; but often it’s vastly more complicated than that. Think of the furore surrounding the “Bigotgate” affair in the British election. I’m sure that incident contributed to British Labour’s downfall. Brown sidelined Northern working class woman Gillian Duffy as a “bigot” in comments recorded after his discussion with her about Polish workers in Britain, but when he actually spoke with her, he managed to get her to change her point of view by pointing to the large number of British workers who are in the Continent, and saying that the exchange of workers was very much mutual. Once you drilled down into it, her concerns were not so much racist as concerns about the job-safety of her family members as a result of the influx of cheap foreign labour. She was not a bigot in the way I define bigot (i.e. people whose views are unswayed by reasoned discussion).
Further, one of the things which came out of that climate change post was that, while science is not about consensus, by contrast, in a democracy, public policy is about producing a consensus that certain action is required. It is for this reason that I abhor Clive Hamilton (and George Monbiot whom he channels): these guys are essentially saying that some people’s voices should not be heard in the political consensus, and that those voices have no worth. Their own voices and those that agree with them, however, are worthy. That’s elitism, folks. And both also say that if people fail to agree with them, and there is a rise in temperature, we should have a police state to force the people to agree to the actions they advocate. Well, that’s a certain kind of left-wing, but it’s a left-wing I abhor utterly: the authoritarian left-wing. It isn’t the part of the Left that I love — the part which listens to different voices. I’d rather a moderately liberal right-winger than an authoritarian left-winger, thank you very much. Good god, I’d prefer Tony Abbott to these guys. *Shivers*
I think that, in a democracy, the Left must be able to accomodate dissent and must be able to come to terms with the fact that, even within the Left, some people will have a different ranking of particular values as important because of their particular experiences and ideas. Otherwise the Left will wither, because it will only accomodate the ideals of the few faithful, and it will become non-representative. I’m harsher on the Left when it doesn’t live up to my ideals than I am on the Right because I expect better of it. The Left shouldn’t just be about “tolerance of people who agree with me”. How can one learn if one does that? How can one grow? How boring would the world be if we all agreed with one another?
One of the things that fascinates me about people is that they can read precisely the same information and analysis as me and come to a totally different conclusion. Some on the Left seem surprised that I might read the IPCC report and come out skeptical, or that I might read Peter Singer’s book on veganism and still eat meat, but that’s something they have to come to terms with: guys, not everyone is going to respond to the same information in the same way, live with it. And just because someone has a different opinion to you doesn’t mean that they are stupid or intellectually lazy. Calling people stupid is a great way of closing people’s minds: if you say they are stupid or treat them as if they are stupid, then it is highly likely that they will focus on that rather than any legitimate arguments you might have. The question people have to ask themselves is this: are they seeking to persuade people of their argument, or are they simply seeking to parade around saying how clever they are, making it more difficult for those who disagree to speak out?
Personally I have no desire to make people think exactly the same as I do. I tell my students that I’d love to hear a different analysis in the exam — it’s so boring if you always get the same one, parroting your own views. The reason I have continued blogging for so long is because I blog with two very intelligent women whose views differ from mine, and they keep me thinking.
All I can say in the end is, vive la différence. I hope dearly that this blog provides a forum for difference, and for different points of view. I think we’ve succeeded very well, really.
61 Comments
“I think it ought to be possible to be a… person who supports the formation of the State of Israel within its original borders and a true left-winger.”
On a point of history, for some decades before and after the formation of Israel a large part of the left held exactly this position, and virtually every socialist party and every communist party in the world supported Israel in the 1948 War of Independence. It was instructive for me to read back issues of the Communist Party of Australia’s newspaper, Tribune, which effusively supported Israel in 1948 against the “semi-barbaric Arab kingdoms”.
Great post. It certainly matches my experiences with people and politics, and it would be good to see more open minded and engaged political discussion.
You have articulated much of my own political view far better than I could have hoped to. (That’s not to say that I would always agree with you. ) But I cannot seem to align myself fully with one party or another. Which makes voting an agonising prospect. I tend to be a little to the right and a little further to the left….
I don’t always understand the core of an issue, so for me, I need to hear varying opinions in order to formulate my own. Kudos to you three ladies for giving us at least one space were open minded discussion is welcomed and encouraged.
So much to discuss. Where should I start?
Why might an opposing opinion make people angry? There’s a range of possibilities. Here are two:
(1) You are undermining their sense of power, as when Basques make Spaniards angry because they want a homeland independent of Spain.
(2) An issue has been discussed, a decision made to act, but someone keeps trying to reopen the discussion.
“public policy is about producing a consensus that certain action is required”
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. I don’t recall the Hawke-Keating government’s decision to float the Australian dollar was the result of public consensus and in fact IIRC, Treasury at the time was bitterly opposed to the move.
There are times when a government should lead rather than follow.
“if we are going to have to create a more unequal society in Australia in order to combat climate change, where some people can afford energy and others can’t, I’d rather have climate change”
But do we have to create a more unequal society in order to do this? Putting a price on carbon, either by taxing it or by a cap and trade regime will certainly increase the price of energy, although politicians bend over backwards to avoid pointing that out. But the quid pro quo is to use part of the government income from the tax or from the sale of carbon credits to offset the increased cost of living for lower income people. That’s essentially what happened when the GST was introduced and increased the cost of living, and that’s what any serious economist would expect to happen.
Being skeptical about climate change and being skeptical about vegetarianism belong to two rather different categories. There are rational arguments that can be presented about whether one should or should not eat animals, just as there are rational arguments about whether one should or should not consume alcohol.
But whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring is not a “should” issue. You can be skeptical about the question; similarly, some people are skeptical about whether HIV causes AIDS. In both cases though, the facts mount up over time, increasingly to indicate that there is a right answer and a wrong one.
Bjorn Lomborg wrote a book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, in which he firstly accused the environmental movement of overstating its case and secondly, suggested that from the point of view of global humanity there were more important issues. Scientific American magazine was outraged and ran an extraordinary 12-page editorial attacking Lomborg. One of the few publications of record that gave him a civil hearing was The Economist. It went on to co-sponsor the Copenhagen Consensus, an initiative tasked with answering this question: if an amount, say $50 billion, were available to benefit humanity, what would be the most cost-effective ways to spend it. There were a number of more worthwhile initiatives put forward than addressing climate change, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
I happen to not agree with the CC’s conclusions for reasons I won’t go into here, but the exercise is valuable in two ways. Firstly, it provoked rational discussion in the hope of reaching a consensus; secondly, instead of just being “the party of NO”, it presented some thought-provoking alternative proposals.
Can you be left wing and a climate skeptic? Of course you can, in the same way that you can be left wing and skeptical about physicists’ claim that space-time occupies 11 dimensions according to string theory, not the 4 that most people think.
However it is fair to say that the evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change is very much more substantial than that supporting string theory.
Gday all,
Great post.
On blogs; one of my frequent haunts is http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/climatechangedebate Unfortunately, the majority of participants are sceptical of the science, as am I. We do welcome all thoughts and comment although there are a few whose thought processes are finely tuned. They will quickly pick up on gaps in narrative. We honestly do want more participants from the left who can make the argument from the left without resorting to personal attacks and appeals to authority.
‘…even if they’re reasons I don’t personally regard as important…’ what a beautiful line!! You choose not to use valid or invalid as the describer of the reason, many would.
I am indeed fortunate that I was reared in a political household. My father had fixed rightwing/conservative/whatever views and I took it as my raison d’etre to argue the opposing view. He is now in his mid 80s and I am the conservative father type and we find the roles have changed. He takes the lefty pinko view!!
The upshot of all this is that I have a learned ability to understand both sides of an argument before making a decision. A very important ability in an aspiring local politician.
It is never easy to be the odd man out in your usual crowd, but if you have a polite well informed position you should be proud to promote it.
Regards,
Frank
As a lefty of sorts who identifies with many of the principles of the Australian Libs (could possibly bring myself to vote for a Turnbull but not an Abbott), this is a blog post after my own heart.
I argue from the position of the evidence when it comes to climate science (given that I am a scientist) and the evidence is politically neutral. I like to think that I consider policy options from a politically neutral position as well (apart from my presupposition that it is in our best interests for many reasons to act to mitigate and adapt to climate change), incorporating state directed, market based, socially driven or technology driven options.
However, I am in it for the sport when I argue evolution with creationists. The evidence being all on our side helps of course
but the fun is in the cage fighting.
Incidentally, I thought that the whole left wing right wing dichotomy came from the French(??) parliament, where those in favour of the king were on the right and those on the left were opposed.
There’s a kind of group dynamic where everyone’s required to conform to a set of codes, opinions, appearance etc. I think, in politics, amongst the politically committed this manifests as a kind of true faith mentality where any opinion that dissents from the established view is thought evidence of a lack of faith, of true belief, or some such. Malcolm Fraser has been subjected to this even tho’ as far as I’m aware none of the criticisms he’s made of Howard-era Liberal party policy are illiberal or ‘pro-socialist’.
The Left are particularly prone to this. At the heart of this is the kitsch that renders the world a battlefield between oppressed and oppressors. When I was a student I got into a very heated argument with an old-school ALP loyalist trade union guy because of feminism. He saw the idea that women had interests and rights as valid as the emancipation of the working class as a move to split this class! He almost got violent. The flak you sustained over climate change agnosticism could be seen as this resistance to ‘splitting’. It was a sub-rational instinct that prevented the howling horde from seeing one of the major points and that it that the AGW debate is increasingly making thinking for one’s self according to the evidence as one sees it impossible.
In my experience Tories are usually better at dealing with dissent. Not because of some generally better standards of civic virtue but because free speech is central to the Right in a way it isn’t in the Left (many will disagree). This is the Left’s Achilles heel. Time and again they run into policy problems because they haven’t thought things thru. They haven’t thought things thru because the us against them mentality disallows any forum in which people can freely speak their minds. With the Left you have to go into all sorts of contortions to prove that you’re not a racistsexisthomophobe if you want to talk about certain matters. Almost always the point you’re trying to make gets lost in a some digression. It’s totally dysfunctional.
The irony is that when the Right need solidarity they’re very good at getting it together. When the Left need to disagree they all agree, but when they need to pull together they burst apart.
Great post. One a point of Australian political history:
Ah, but that was about not showing their faces to the public, about the public not knowing them. They were publicly faceless, not literally so.
One of the most divisive things in Oz politics is “the pledge”; the absolute ban on ALP politicians voting against a Party decision. It drove a succession of people out of the ALP (e.g. Joseph Cook) and forced the Free Traders and Protectionists to combine. George Reid in particular saw the threat to other political views from Labor’s rigid tribal authoritarianism. When people talk about the rigidity of Oz Party politics, and the way disagreement is treated as some awful failure of a Party, that is what, more than any other single factor, drives it.
Lorenzo @ 8 – I knew what the faceless men looked like already, or at least I knew about what some of them looked like. Maybe that’s cos I’m a nerd?
That’s very interesting about the ALP “pledge”. It explains Rudd’s insistence on coherence as a positive. Polite dissent is more of a positive to me; coherence among a large group of people is false, because there’s no way all of those people will agree.
Indeed. That alone would be enough to keep me away from the party even if I agreed in every other way.
The ALP has alienated quite a lot of people with its illiberal culture. Me included. There’s a hard little centre of Stalinists in there. True.
Because ideas have consequences.
Yep, and if we all waited politely for synthesis to be achieved, right now, the only people allowed to vote in the six colonies (what? You want Federation?) would still be white male landowners.
“It is for this reason that I abhor Clive Hamilton (and George Monbiot whom he channels): these guys are essentially saying that some people’s voices should not be heard in the political consensus, and that those voices have no worth.”
Where exactly do Hamilton and Mobiot say/infer this?
“Ideas have consequences”. Right – well I’m very pleased that’s settled then. Don’t know why you bother LE; if you don’t know that ideas have consequences then I’m afraid you’re for it.
I must admit, as a white male landowner, I was grasping for the ultimate refutation of your silliness- and thanks to RM I have it: Ideas have consequences! Such a simple concept – bereft of all meaning; colourless, totally odorless, and can be applied in any situation. (Take suburban roundabouts, for instance) And it also survives the test of reversibility: “consequences have ideas”.
That works equally well, except please maybe not try theory on roundabouts.
kvd, don’t be obtuse, please.
LE wonders why “opposing opinions” might get people angry.
My point – and I think a very simple and obvious one – is that opinions begat actions.
On occasion, actions (or inaction) taken on the basis of sincerely-held opinions have been disastrous.
To take a simple example, Thabo Mbeki’s opinions on the causes and best treatment for AIDS resulted in 330,000 premature deaths and left 35,000 babies infected with HIV.
That makes me angry. How about you?
Robert, I don’t get angry, I am just filled with sorrow, and I recognise I am unable to change the world one whit, or take it back a step, and rid it of the ideas of the Mbeki’s – no matter the consequences.
Anger precedes poor decision making, sorrow comes after such decisions. Unfortunately I am just a powerless bystander.
Now that’s settled – how are you on the subject of reversing around roundabouts? And is that a left issue, or right? This is something I CAN influence.
Yep, and if we all waited politely for synthesis to be achieved, right now, the only people allowed to vote in the six colonies (what? You want Federation?) would still be white male landowners.
Actually, there is no more a cookie-cutter example of ‘synthesis’ than federation and universal suffrage in Australia.
Thabo Mbeki’s opinions on the causes and best treatment for AIDS resulted in 330,000 premature deaths and left 35,000 babies infected with HIV.
Hmmmm…I am familiar with more nuanced expositions of the etiology of HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Robert, silliness aside (like, I could even think I could have affected the aids outcome in SA – or get angry about it) I must state I found this post very interesting. The thing I am struggling with, and maybe (seriously now) you would care to comment upon – is why are these “big” subjects always framed as “left” vs “right” arguments?
Seriously – you lobbed in with your thoughts on that subject which shall not be named, but the general run of comments seemed to align either the problem, or the solution, to a difference between “the right” and “the left”.
That just loses me. And I suspect I’m not alone in my confusion.
What might be called an ‘epistemic bigot’. But then there is bigotry in the sense or racism, misogyny, etc. These two senses of ‘bigot’ are, in fact, related, since the latter form of bigotry casts categories of people in a status they cannot escape from: the framing dominates their humanity and evidence to that effect.
I can understand frustration, but not anger. I think it takes a certain amount of self righteousness and arrogance to get angry at someone for simply expressing a different opinion.
RM@12
Well yes, which means anyone calling themselves a Marxist has some hard questions to answer. But also anyone who supports rent control, extensive public ownership (particularly, in fact, on environmental grounds) etc. Which consequences of which ideas people jump and down about is actually very revealing.
LE @9 Well yes, but there is a deeper symbolism here. Menzies in particular picked up on the fact that the electorate would act against people who were elected by the voters were being explicitly and formally dictated to by people who were not. Remember, the occasion when it really bit was when there was a photo of Calwell (Labor Leader) and Whitlam (his Deputy) waiting outside for the ALP Federal Executive decision — which neither of them were a member of. The Executive was “faceless” in all sorts of (admittedly symbolic) senses, starting with not facing the electorate. But symbolism can be very powerful when it expresses deeper realities.
“The people of Lihir were very clear that the careful placement at great depth of this material was strongly favoured by them,” Professor Garnaut said.
(On the decision to stuff probably toxic mining waste really, really deep into the ocean; aka not in my backyard)
Well, they would say that – wouldn’t they?
I mean, who can you really trust in this world? And what good does it do to get “angry” about it?
LE, so much of what you are talking about in your post is about people’s sense of status and identity. Take the Media Watch program that PW pointed to in a different thread. There is actually very little substantive information in the Media Watch piece, particularly not on Ms Rhiannon’s background and views. SL managed to have far more actual information in one comment than did Media Watch did.
What Media Watch was doing was signaling what “clever and virtuous” people think. Raising questions about Ms Rhiannon’s history and views was just an:
No need to examine the evidence, it was just a tired, old-fashioned “smear”. Clever and virtuous folk will know that.
If your sense of identity is about being clever and compassionate enough to know how society should be (re)arranged, then you are actually making a fairly big statement about your cognitive grasp, moral concern and perspicacity. That easily becomes a status claim.
But such only works as a status claim if failing to agree shows a lack of status. So serious dissent becomes an attack on identity and sense of status. Hence the Left’s perennial tendency to self-righteousness, intolerance and ad hominen attack.
Of course, the history of monotheism is also rife with this, for similar reasons. Make some claim of authority absolutely trumps, and consequences follow.
So, ideas have consequences, but giving ideas particular status roles has consequences too.
Indeed Lorenzo. Once more it comes down to class identity and power.
I think this whole issue was iconically summed up about 15 years ago, when on national television, a provincial ‘bogan’ redhead asked “Please Explain.”
That 15 seconds of television said a million words and counting.
Just throwing this out there: some of the angst over this issue comes, I suspect, from the desire to have control over at least some things outside of ourselves. The older I get, the more I realise that there is stuff all I can do about anything except me and (maybe) a few close friends. Such is life. I’m not saying ‘do nothing’, but I am saying ‘be realistic’ and ‘be careful what you wish for’.
And the older I get, the more unsure I become of even the questions to ask – let alone the answers which seemed so clear in youth.
I don’t get angry in my uncertainty. Just perplexed by the “anger” of the “right” and the “left” over issues they cannot seriously think they have any hope of “control” over.
Robert Merkel @ 12 – yes, of course ideas have consequences. Law itself is essentially an idea with consequences.
I suspect my attitude to different ideas comes in part from my basic personality (curious about everything and everyone) but that it also comes from my legal training. Legal training makes you argue for ideas you might not agree with. You have to turn around and think of reasons why someone might want an outcome which you personally don’t like — because they are your client and they are paying you to advise them. This is something that really freaks people out about lawyers, which is kind of understandable.
I think good lawyers need empathy. You get very good at putting yourself in other people’s shoes, even if the position they are coming from is not immediately palatable to you. You also have to put yourself in the judge’s shoes to understand what argument might convince him or her.
As I say, laws are ideas with consequences…but sometimes they don’t work as one expects. Ideas can have unintended consequences (see eg, the US anti-discrimination law intended to benefit disabled people which actually ended up producing a massive drop in the employment of disabled people – I know SL has mentioned it in one of her posts before, but can’t remember which one). Therefore it seems to me that it befits me to look as widely as possible into what people are saying they think the consequences of an idea are for them. Life is never simple.
Great post! I came to it late as I am currently overseas with restricted internet access, but reflecting on my own time at university in the 60′s, I found the right and left divide then to be far more pronounced than it is now in Australia. Our politics, appear to my mind, to be very much of the centre, rather like to intersecting normal distribution curves where on a range of issues, the left of the party centred on the right is more left than the right of the party centred on the left. (I think I got that right). Issues seem more important than doctrine. This is why perhaps our present parliamentary coalition may work. The passage of time has seen the muting of the Trotskyites, Marxist Leninists, and Maoists of my youth where the more strident arguments were concerned which of these esoteric brands would deliver salvation to the masses. I sense that today there is a tendency, which I think is very healthy, to look at the issues on their own merit rather than taking a 3 simian pledge. Now it is rather like reading the ingredients on a food package rather than accepting the overall merits of the brand. Of course there also does appear to have been a rationalisation of availability of some of the brands such that the availability of some of Karl’s products is restricted to a few old fashioned outlets.
I’m generally all for dialectic and democracy, but it doesn’t always cut it. The entirely democratic redefinition of school science curricula because of popular theist dogma is a case in point. (Not just in the US, but increasingly in Iran too).
You can’t have dialectic with a dogmatist, without an ability to have rough agreement about desirable ends, and rough agreement about the way evidence, probability and arguments can be used. It’s almost as useless arguing with someone as wedded to their dollar as their dogma.
On democracy and dialectic, it’s worth looking at the near thing that was the Indiana Pi Bill which was passed unanimously in the lower house, and was blocked in the upper house by a fluke.
Damn that meddling maths professor – another dratted elitist imposing his arrogant will upon the will of the ordinary folk and their representatives!
DB@31 I had heard of the Indiana Pi Bill, but not read up on the details. This, from the Wikipedia entry you linked to, made me laugh lots:
The research results on intelligence and political reason is interestingly mixed. There is considerable research evidence tying higher IQ with:
On the other hand, the more highly educated and knowledgeable you are, the less open to changes in outlook you are likely to be. While having left-of-centre views means one is more prone to believe economic fallacies. A certain muddling through cognitive humility appears to be in order.
Besides, one has to be fairly silly to think that democracy is a path to truth. It is mostly a way to get government to pay attention to the governed.
Marvellous post from honeymyrtle, 13 also from Merkel.
The attack on Monbiot and Hamilton was anything but fair or honest.
These people work hard enough against the disinformation of the tabloid press and their backers, without being misrepresented, for likely questionable motives, by partisans passing themselves off as neutral and objective observers.
Paul
Do the tabloids really spend so much time on George Monboit and Clive Hamilton? How dire!
Good luck with that, LE, one day you will wake up and realise that you are really a rightie. Until then you have company here: http://normblog.typepad.com/
LOL, you remind me of my friend who hails from the Eastern bloc, Patrick. She says, “But you can’t be left-wing, you’re too reasonable.”
For the people defending Hamilton and Monbiot: do you agree that people who raise the slightest question about climate change are equivalent to Holocaust deniers? Do you believe that we should not debate climate change or (importantly) the measures taken to combat it? Do you think extraordinary measures need to be taken to enforce climate change policy?
I just think these guys are against freedom. Oh they hide it in pretty words, but they actually think they are some kind of Moral Guardian who has the right to tell us what to do. They do not want freedom of speech (indeed, Hamilton is notorious). They want to tell everyone else what to do — damn what other people actually want — they know best.
I share Brendan O’Neill’s view on this issue, essentially. I find Monbiot’s metamorphosis in the minds of the “righteous” perplexing, and I think the chilling effects of various green writers on free speech are very problematic.
In terms of ideas having consequences – Lorenzo has an interesting post on ideas and environmentalism.
Lorenzo@31: “(Democracy) is mostly a way to get government to pay attention to the governed.”
Getting visions of attention-seeking tantrums in the supermarket, parallels between governing and parenting, with many governments neglecting the teaching of virtue, manners and not fighting with siblings/neighbors.
As to education decreasing openness to new ideas – it depends on whether the education is the acquisition of discipline and an aesthetic or mere knowledge. In the words of Frank Zappa “Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, music is the best”. In government, the best is love.
DB@38 Amusing though your images of the politics of spoilt children are, you seem to have more elevated conception of what government is, and ought to be, capable of than I. Plenty of governments have concerned themselves with the “teaching of virtue”. The results have generally not been happy.
Patrick@35: Another Norm fan! Yay!
LE@37: thanks for the plug.
LE@36: Well done on meeting the challenge. But you do realise that mere facts are so last century?
Education is wasted on so many. I know far too many people who think their education is a licence not to have to think.
Lorenzo@31: Elevated view of what politics can be? Perhaps, but I’ve read Aristotle’s “Politics”. The first section should be compulsory for wannabe pollies, I reckon.
As to teaching of virtue, I intended the reading “by example”. Marcus Aurelius comes to mind (forgotten which verse) “Men are made for each other, so either teach them or put up with them”.
The image of the attention-seeking kids/citizens kind of fits with the term “Pater (Parens) Patriae”…. As long as one avoids the nastier things possible with paterfamilas.
(More images of interest groups squabbling over toys… Parent listening to the conflicting demands saying “now kiddies… Share… Be nice… John can play with the lego and Jane the piano, then swap over after 15m. Why not try and build legos together while I look for an easy duet?”
LE I find many of your statements a little overblown. I’m in the midst of marking some university essays right now, and I’d be saying about what you’ve written here, “where is your evidence for your claims?” or “be careful of making broad sweeping generalisations”.
Providing those two ‘spiked’ columns as evidence about Monbiot’s alleged misdemeanours is equivalent to offering up Chris Monckton or Rush Limbaugh as evidence against anthropogenic climate change. Hardly dispassionate, polite or tolerant of differing views.
I want you to show me exactly where Hamilton argues against freedom of speech.
I don’t think anyone, in the evidence you’ve provided is suggesting that “people who raise the slightest question about climate change are equivalent to Holocaust deniers?” My interpretation [from the one column in O'Neill's article for which the link works] is that this argument is directed to those people who set out to deliberately mislead and misinform and continually trot out discredited critiques of the AGW hypothesis – as opposed to those “who raise the slightest question about climate change”. Invoking the Holocaust is really unfortunate and unproductive in my opinion, but I don’t really think this example is representative.
I think there is a very real frustration amongst people who “get” climate change and the implications of climate change, that the voices opposing the basic science of climate change have been disproportionately [to the strength of their arguments] amplified. This appears to be having a very real impact on the timeliness of taking action, at a time when the evidence is mounting and the urgency of taking action is becoming clearer.
Very happy to promote widespread debate about how we can combat climate change in the most fair and equitable way. But I, along with so many others, feel that this endless debate about the science of climate change, when so many of us are not really qualified to make an informed judgement is just wasting valuable time. I really want to ask skeptics of climate change whether they require this same level of rigour and certainty from the science in any other sector/application? I suspect not.
Robert – Because ideas have consequences.
Indeed they do. But I think people get angry before they really consider what you’re saying.
To express an idea is, to many people, to pick one side always over the other. This puts you in a position where you often find yourself defending bad ideas because they’re ‘on your side’ and attacking good ones because ‘on the other’.
Self-righteousness is irritating and dysfunctional but in political discussions it’s de rigeur. I think we’d be better served by a fundamental ethic of toleration; of making a point of pausing to regain emotional composure when a notion inspires hostility so that one can consider it in a colder, clearer light.
If for no better reason than to make one’s rebuttal more effective.
Honeymyrtle – condolences on the essay marking.
The piece by Hamilton which really got my goat is one which I link to in my blog post here. That’s not to say that I sometimes don’t agree with Hamilton (a rare example is here) but I do find the guy’s pronouncements on what people can and can’t say intensely irritating. I don’t mind him having his view (he’s totally entitled to that), I do very much mind him telling me what I should say.
Couldn’t agree more. As I said above in the comment to Honeymyrtle, I try to do that, even with someone like Hamilton. I am prepared to give him credit when he has ideas which I think are good. I battle against my tendency to bristle at his self-righteous mien.
Everyone gets a bit overblown at times, everyone gets a bit silly at times, everyone writes blog posts which are unclear or not the best way of expressing something. I am a melodramatic, passionate person myself (can you guess?) but I try to keep myself in rein.
You are a better girl than I LE (not that I am at all, but you get the point). I gave up on Hamilton, for example, having seen him speak. uggh.
So I trawled back through the various anti-Hamilton pieces in the archives, and the worst I could find was the quote about some “canvassing suspension of the democratic process”, which Hamilton is not actually supporting by that statement.
For the record – Hamilton responds to some of the criticisms against him making the rounds in his pieces on ABC Drum.
“There are two or three charges against me that keep doing the rounds and for the record I want to make brief replies.
1. Using the term “denier” does not equate climate denial with Holocaust denial. The term is used in other contexts, such as HIV denial, as a descriptor for those whose minds are closed to evidence that contradicts their opinion, yet who maintain their opposition to empirical reality is based on evidence. It is not the same as scepticism.
2. I have not equated climate and Holocaust denialism. The passage quoted to “show” that I have is my description of an argument others might use to equate the two (known as consequentialism), but which I explicitly reject.
3. I have not argued that we need to “suspend democracy” to tackle climate change. I have said some people believe this, but I don’t. I have said we must reinvigorate democracy.”
See: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2830890.htm
This at The Economist blogs makes a good point:
The ones with answers to threads-of-doom issues predetermined to suit their own pockets or prejudices, dollars or dogmas, are not necessarily even sticking to the notions of not-actually-lying rule for advocates.
Just because I disagree with LE and others around here on climate policy (hint: look at AS/NZS 4360 “Risk Management”, even just the worked examples in the supplement, and a process for sorting things out becomes pretty clear to me… and I’ll fight with all comers to say that the risk management standard, which takes into account probabilities and risk accrual, is the right approach), but I *know* LE is at least intellectually honest. I *don’t* give the same credit to the likes of The Bolt.
“Intellectually honest” means you make arguments you think are true, as opposed to making the arguments you are “supposed” to make and/or avoiding making arguments that you think are true that you aren’t “supposed” to make
Well that’s everyone in parliament out then. But we knew that didn’t we.
I honestly don’t think a lot of people involved in political discussion can tell the difference.
Adrien@50 “(not) a lot of people … can tell the difference”.
I think there’s a simple question, one of motives, of the person putting the position. “What outcome do you ***really*** want most of all? – advantage yourself, screw the other person, or something more universally utilitarian?”
Good ol’ Cicero: “Cui bono”. Cuts through the crap real fast.
At least I wouldn’t accuse the hardline climate-action-now types of specifically wanting to advantage themselves (unless perhaps they were an owner of an opportunistic “green energy” company), and I’m sure LE has utilitarian objectives. However, I’m also sure there are at least some of the coal lobby who are not so pure in their motives for their statements on these issues.
Dave @ 49 – TY.
I like that analysis. It links into Lorenzo’s point – so much of political discussion is about ideological “status markers” as much as anything else.
People say the things that they are supposed to say. And then they get really angry if you challenge this because suddenly the basis for their beliefs is called into question and it’s uncomfortable.
How do I know this? When I was young and tender, and much more stereotypically left wing than I am now, I dated a right wing libertarian. And he proceeded to call into question every single cherished belief I held, which made me very annoyed, angry and upset. (Surprise surprise, we fought like cat and dog). These days such questions don’t get me upset because over the years, I’ve gotten used to cherished beliefs being questioned, and I have answers for why I believe as I do. This has led me to think that if one is confident in one’s beliefs, one doesn’t mind someone else believing something different or politely questioning one’s beliefs.
Good ol’ Cicero: “Cui bono”. Cuts through the crap real fast.
Yes and I can think of so many great crimes establishing great fortunes in my lifetime and almost no-one ever asks that question.
When the sheep automatically bleat “Four legs good, two legs better” in Animal Farm they’re doing what the pigs want them to do without even being told. I wonder to what extent that applies to humans.
Actually, I’ll hold up a beacon of what I consider intellectual honesty: “The Economist”. It proudly waves it’s good-governance capitalist flag, as what it this will generally lead to the best human outcomes, then, in particular circumstances, will go “we hate to say this, but, nationalize the bank NOW, keep it for a few years and sell it at a profit” (this was when Northern Rock was sinking like a stone).
It’s why I read The Economist – while capitalism offends my aesthetic in general, the “this is our bias – but we are utilitarian first and give opinion on a case-by-case basis” attitude demands I respect the reporting and opinion – I have to pull it apart to disagree with it – and when it comes out with a “lefty” opinion, I get confidence in my own stance on that particular.
(Quadrant and the Murdochs, on the other hand…)
The respect of an “enemy” is the best type – which is one of the reasons why most of the writers and regulars here are good value for me – and dare I say, SL’s upcoming book has moved (against my aesthetic) my opinion on some things.
I think some of the problems address in LE’s post relate to the notion of respecting a *decent* adversary, when able to respect both skill and motive. If you aren’t open to the possibility of giving that respect when it is due, it’s less likely you’ll deserve it yourself.
Then again, being too open to the idea of respecting those with different opinions, and you will be disappointed, become cynical and inflexible yourself, giving in to knee-jerk responses.
It again comes back to what we learn, by example, from leaders in politics and public debate – if *they* were more frequently intellectually honest, I think we *all* would be.
Naaaa….. I’m dreaming.
s/what it this will generally/what will generally/
Dave, there’s a Castle joke in there somewhere…
sl@56 …. yeah, probably, but i’d take me some effort.
Actually my mention of aesthetic makes me wonder how much of *honest* debate that reconcile with difficulty, if at all, boils down to a different aesthetic.
DB@54 As a matter of interest, when is the last time you read Quadrant?
Lorenzo@58. Probably average 1.5 issues a year of QuadRant.
Quadrant has a very wide range of contributors (including the odd prominent Judge, for example) so it seems odd to dismiss the entire content in such a way.
lorenzo@60. The occasional poems aren’t too bad, i suppose, just like the lit supp in the Oz. And there was one article I liked enough to write a blog post on it approvingly. But I’m almost certain /something/ in each issue will put me near hypertensive crisis. Still… I do Quarterly Essay with about the same frequency, with the health risk being laughing.
But I /try/ to fair. Hell, I almost died laughing at quadrant once (but that was an article by Brendan Nelson).
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