Last month I visited with a few relatives, and my brother reminded me of an incident that happened a long time ago (when we were both quite young). We were supposed to be doing the dishes after dinner, and our parents basically said we had to stay in the kitchen until they were done. They said this in part because my brother refused to do the dishes - and I refused to do the work by myself. (I was willing to work, just not without him pitching in.)
From my perspective, doing so would set a baaaad precedent. It basically would have rewarded my brother for being lazy ('cause why would he ever do the dishes, if he knew I'd take care of them for him), and would have probably meant more future work for me. So we both sat in the kitchen, refusing to do the dishes.
And sat.
And sat.
I don't really recall how we got out of that impasse...maybe he finally gave in, or our parents yelled at us to get going, or something. All I really remembered was that I was determined to sit in that fricking kitchen all night long rather than do his work as well as my own.
It wasn't about the work. Not really. It was about not letting him get away with doing less than his share.
I brought that up for a different reason, though. I think it's the mentality behind a lot of what goes on when we complain about 'politics'. For example, I remember trying to coordinate equipment for some training back in 2004(?). Except way up the chain of command there was a little turf war over the funding. Seems TRADOC insisted it was a FORSCOM activity and that FORSCOM should fund it, whereas FORSCOM said it was 'training', and obviously TRADOC (
Training and Doctrine Command) should fund it. The politicking went on long enough that the equipment we needed was rerouted to the front lines, and we were no longer able to get it. From my perspective, their butting heads interfered with our ability to do the mission right.
I'm sure, from their perspective, everyone involved believed what they were doing was better in the long run. Sort of like my refusal to do the dishes that night. And yet all of our defense funding comes from the same place (i.e. taxes), and from that perspective it doesn't really matter which pot of money it comes out of so long as whatever is necessary gets done. (From what I understand, defense spending is an unauditable mess...which probably makes things even worse. After all, it's hard to say that the right things will get funded appropriately when people don't really seem to know what money is going where...and people have a tendency to squirrel away what they can to make sure the 'right' projects get the resources they need. I'm sure that all had an impact on this, since both commands probably felt that money was tight and they needed everything they could to accomplish all their other missions.)
People have this amazing ability to justify doing the things they do (like my refusal to do the dishes), and I sort of wanted to discuss how you know when it's gone too far. At what point should you 'be the bigger person', and accept that you got screwed for the greater good? (I grew to respect Al Gore more after he conceded the 2000 election, because I thought it was better for the nation as a whole than fighting to the bitter end. There are obviously many Democrats who resented and regretted that, though, and now push for Democrats to fight harder instead. And Republicans have similar thought processes on their side...it's so easy to say 'we got screwed and next time we won't take it', which ultimately leads to a lose-lose situation. It means both sides dig in their heels and make things harder for everyone.)
It's hard to decide when an argument for being difficult is legitimate, and when it's just a way of justifying things that appear to be in your own interest.
To make another great jump in this discussion - I actually got to thinking about that for a completely different reason. I attended a webinar on the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. Infowar and foreign influences are a hot topic right now, and I do agree that we need to do a better job of fighting misinformation. And yet I am concerned about government efforts to do so, because there's a difference between fighting misinformation with the truth vs. fighting information that is negative to your side with your own spin on things. (After all, there may be some truth to the idea that certain things would 'destroy' a nation...but from what I've seen it's more often a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, the cover up and the lengths a nation goes to in order to prevent anyone from finding out that they screwed up is what ultimately leads to upheaval when the truth finally gets out. If they'd been up front initially, there'd have been some fuss but it would eventually die down and their political hold wouldn't be so shaken.) So fighting misinformation and addressing foreign influence makes sense when they're spreading lies, so long as it clearly is lies, but is something to be concerned about if it leads to a willingness to label anything that doesn't suit our purposes as a lie.
That sort of goes back to my concern that we're so focused on those 'outsiders' interfering that we fail to realize the only way they can interfere is they touch on subjects that resonate. That is - their misleading ideas wouldn't go viral and spread if it didn't appeal to people, and why does it appeal in the first place? What are the cracks in our society, the weaknesses and fractures, that make us vulnerable to these sorts of things? And how can we fix them, strengthen them? (Sort of like a discussion I had over a decade ago with a friend about some tensions between the black community and police. The fact that African-Americans easily believe that the police overreact and are overly harsh with members of their community highlights a friction point between the police and the community they are supposed to be serving. The sort of thing that could crack wide open into something ugly, the same way that someone stirred up
trouble in Iraq by attacking the al-Askari mosque. Addressing that friction would go a long way to preventing any future such problems...and how do you reduce the tension? Well, not by rallying around the flag, insisting that the police are always right, and believing that any victims brought it on themselves for one reason or another. That just exacerbates things and makes it even more likely that the right incident could act like a chisel and hammer. Too many people seem to
want that to happen, which is stupid since all it would lead to is war and violence. Didn't we learn enough by the bloody mess Europe made of itself during their religious wars?)
Anyways. Part of the problem, I think, has to do with our ability to think too hard. We persuade ourselves to do the 'right' thing, whether that means blowing people up in order to 'save' them and bring them to God, or gerrymandering a district in order to make sure the 'right' policies are put in place even if most people don't actually want them.
It's that arrogant "I know what's best for you, and I don't think I can persuade you that I'm right so I'm just going to force you into doing it anyway". It's the same underlying attitude. The same unwillingness to accept that other people are free to disagree, and choose differently. That same insistence that "I'm right and you're wrong, and since I know better I'll make it happen anyway."
It's funny that the Quran supposedly says that there should be no compulsion in religion, because all I see from fundamentalist Muslims
is compulsion.
And fundamentalist Christians may not be going against their own teachings in quite the same way, but their desire to legislate what's morally right is doing the same thing. "We're going to make you choose what's right, regardless of what you want, because we know what's best for you and we're doing God's work."
That, to me, is the underlying sin...probably one of the worst ones out there. The arrogance of believing you know what's best, to such a degree that you will manipulate everyone else.
Manipulate, not persuade. I've long thought that the key difference has to do with the willingness to let people make their own choices. That is, when you try to persuade someone you try to lay out your arguments and convince them you're right...whereas when you manipulate, you try to make it so the 'only' choice is the one you want them to make. (Like discouraging other candidates from running in the Democratic primary so that the only credible choice was Hillary Clinton.)
It's the difference between telling someone why you think you should eat at restaurant A, but willing to compromise and go to a different restaurant if they're not persuaded...vs trying to tell them that the other restaurants of interest are bad choices by manufacturing false reports of food poisoning or failed health inspections. Or even refusing to tell them about an option they'd be interested in, just because you want to limit their choices.
This is, I think, our major failing in today's society. Our political so-called leaders are so focused on the politicking that they will justify manipulating society in order to do what they think is 'right'. They've, in many ways, given up on the free market place of ideas and persuasion (okay, yes...sometimes the general public does seem uneducated and willfully makes horrible decisions. That's a call for you to educate and persuade, not ignore their wishes and manipulate politics to get around them. Doing the latter undermines the very fabric of our society in a way that's more insidious than allowing horrible ideas to make it into political discourse. After all, there is something to be said about the power of sunlight, and at least when it's out in public we can shine light on it and expose how horrible the idea is.)
If we truly had a free market place of ideas, the horrible ideas will ultimately lose. That's the classic liberal mindset. One based on confidence, and belief in our fellow humans. I know sometimes it's hard to hold on to, there's so much evidence of people buying into bad ideas. And yet I think the best way of addressing them is not to push them into hiding, but to bring them out into the light of day.
All right, that was rather long and scatter-brained. I felt compelled to write it to clarify the thoughts in my head, though, and it seems to have done the trick.
