Another in the series of not-something-I'd-usually-pick-ups, but I've read portions of the author's other book, "The Vanishing American Adult," which was insightful, so thought I'd give this one a go. I tried to view this as more of a sociological study than a political one, which I think works OK in general, as the book gratefully doesn't confine itself to the common griping about what's "wrong with 'Merica," but attempts to actually offer some solutions, albeit rather generalized ones. But, hey, it's a start.
The general premise is actually that "something is wrong; we all know it." The author, a self-described Republican senator from Nebraska lays out, in tight yet conversational prose, his beliefs as to what lies beneath the vicious and ruinous divisiveness that seems to permeate American culture, to the detriment of the whole as well as the individual. He argues, convincingly, that loneliness, that is, our separateness from each other, is a primary factor as to why we have all seemingly become to highly polarized, to the degree that we have become incapable of working together to solve our most basic, let alone our most complex and pressing challenges. Indeed, increasingly, adherents of one side of a political orthodoxy can scarcely sit in the same room with opponents from the other ideological orthodoxy, without coming to blows. This situation is intolerable and unsustainable; as Lincoln noted, we are moving ever closer to death by national suicide.
According to the author, our greatest enemy is ISOLATION: from family, friends, workmates, and communities, our "tribes," which have become ever larger but more shallow. He notes that the increased transience at work has eroded long-term relationship, to the point that we have become "strangers at work," due to the rapidly changing nature of the US labor market. Our families have fared little better: increased square footage in American homes, a sign of increased prosperity, has also met with an increase in isolation among even immediate family members; everyone is off doing their own thing in different parts of the house, and are increasingly relying on social media to connect, as opposed to face-to-face discussions at the dinner table.
A third factor contributing to increased isolation and especially polarization is what the author calls "polititainment," or political entertainment, to which we are all subjected on a daily basis, like it or not. This was one of the strongest chapters of the book, in my opinion: as a former data analyst, he's right on. As he does a more than decent job of describing, the 24-hour news cycle is the harbinger of the death of real journalism, although it's been occurring for some time now. News has become entertainment: it's becoming increasingly difficult to determine what even constitutes "news," rather than entertainment. BREAKING NEWS really isn't, typically; to paraphrase another book I read recently, it's more a 24-hour barrage of confirmation bias which continually feeds the "outrage" culture, dictated by two increasingly polarized sides represented by their respective media mouthpieces: there's basically Fox and MSNBC, and their bevy of orbiters. Media outlets increasingly treat "news" as "product," catering to the wishes of consumers in a vicious feedback cycle: the public seemingly demands more "outrage-worthy" events, and TV producers deliver. Real news, or events that affect our lives at the global level, are increasingly glossed over in favor of entertainment. In short, rage is big business, and it sells: enter the keywords, which include nutpicking and echo chambers, so you get the idea where this is going, but the message is profound, and relevant, if a bit biased, but I'll let the reader decide for themselves. There's a lot more, but those are at least the highlights of a quite comprehensive discussion of what is causing our republic to fracture, hopefully not irredeemably.
So, what do we do? 1) DISCONNECT: that is, from our electronic devices, and re-engage with the real world, not a virtual one. Facebooks "friends" aren't friends; they're a snapshot portrait of a person and their life, which little resembles reality. 2) Get "rooted," to something; anything. 3) Build communities, even when on the move: a nomadic life can still grounded to a community, even if that community is a mobile one; and 4) build more tribes, primarily by rejecting "anti-identities." Focus on the ties that bind, not the things that divide. Put politics in its proper place, and live local.
My primary contention, and it's the usual one with the Red Ties, is the admonition that we need to go "back," to "return," "back" to basics, "return" to those ideals we held in the past: in short, it's an unrealistic expectation, because it's impossible. There is no back. There is no forward. There's just different. Even the principles we can agree that we all generally value: family, friends, social ties, have to be applied in different ways, in line with different circumstances and environments. The author keeps harkening back to his "Friday-night-at-the-game" glory days, something with I have very little familiarity, and so reasonably, it just doesn't resonate with me, and laments that this major cultural event has all but vanished, even in his Midwest hometown where his father was a beloved coach for decades.
Overall, I think this was definitely worth a read, primarily because it lays out, in surprisingly unbiased fashion, some of the problems we all face, whatever side of the political spectrum one happens to be on (I opt out, for the record), but we all must acknowledge that we are all affected, even if in different ways, by our new socio-political reality. I think that applying some of these principles (in particular, disconnecting from the simulation for a good portion of the day) may certainly help us to see eye-to-eye to a greater degree, which will hopefully help us meet some of our most pressing and unprecedented challenges, collectively and individually.
------------NOTABLE PASSAGES------------
Anti-tribes aren't succeeding at addressing our emptiness, and they're poisoning our nation's spirit in critical ways. But lacking in meaningful attachments, people are finding a perverse bond in at least sharing a common enemy.
Reclaiming the American idea against all this means returning to the beginning: to our basic commitment to the inexhaustible, inviolable dignity of every person, and to our recognition that an effective and enduring politics can only be built atop this fundamental conviction.
When Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." he was affirming a common understanding. Human dignity is intrinsic, not conferred on us by any man-made power. Government exists to do the work of securing our preexisting rights. Government - that is, power - cannot be absolute; it is only an instrument we use to secure the freedom necessary for the most important pursuits.
General Washington's first ruly great lesson for our people was not winning the Revolutionary War (against, we tend to forget, some very distracted English and very disengaged German mercenary soldiers). Instead, it was resigning his commission as head of the Continental Army when the war was over. **Enter the obligatory Cincinnatus worship here, a hero of the (VERY) early Roman Republic, of whom the Founders were well aware. As in our own history, the story of refusing the role of despot and absolute power is a powerful trope, one on which our own fundamental national ideology is founded. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, playing the part led to, of course, even more power for Washington, the office of the Presidency, which may have been more contentious had he not positioned himself in this way.
Washington, having just risked his life for his countrymen, has won the battle and become indisputably the most popular man in America. The people don't really know what comes next , but they want leadership - and they would surely have made him king if he had wanted the position. But instead he comes to a meeting of the Continental Congress - which represents the rule of the common man, rather than the rule of he rich or well-born - and he relinquishes control of the army. He lays down power.... He doesn't seek power over his neighbors; instead, he seeks to teach them that they should look for their happiness and fulfillment n their families and in their communities, not in the halls of power or in the ranks of military might.
Vigorous debate and real understanding are the only long-term antidotes to violence in any large nation. A healthy republic requires not just the legal freedom to debate, but a culture that welcomes debate an is open to understanding the perspectives of disenfranchised groups. That culture depends on habits of charity and empathy and respect. We'll never understand why our opponents act the way they do if we refuse to listen-really listen-to their arguments.
We are in a period of unprecedented upheaval. community is collapsing, anxiety is building, and we're distracting ourselves with artificial political hatreds. that can't endure-and if it does, America wont. The alternative is restoring community for our new moment, recognizing that the old modes are obsolete, and that we need to figure out a way to realize a sense of home in a world that looks very different than anything we've seen before. New technologies and experimentation will help with that. But, ultimately, it will require habits of hart and mind that introduce neighborliness into a new, more rootless age. It will require us to build new institutions of community that can bond increasingly mobile people together.
The general premise is actually that "something is wrong; we all know it." The author, a self-described Republican senator from Nebraska lays out, in tight yet conversational prose, his beliefs as to what lies beneath the vicious and ruinous divisiveness that seems to permeate American culture, to the detriment of the whole as well as the individual. He argues, convincingly, that loneliness, that is, our separateness from each other, is a primary factor as to why we have all seemingly become to highly polarized, to the degree that we have become incapable of working together to solve our most basic, let alone our most complex and pressing challenges. Indeed, increasingly, adherents of one side of a political orthodoxy can scarcely sit in the same room with opponents from the other ideological orthodoxy, without coming to blows. This situation is intolerable and unsustainable; as Lincoln noted, we are moving ever closer to death by national suicide.
According to the author, our greatest enemy is ISOLATION: from family, friends, workmates, and communities, our "tribes," which have become ever larger but more shallow. He notes that the increased transience at work has eroded long-term relationship, to the point that we have become "strangers at work," due to the rapidly changing nature of the US labor market. Our families have fared little better: increased square footage in American homes, a sign of increased prosperity, has also met with an increase in isolation among even immediate family members; everyone is off doing their own thing in different parts of the house, and are increasingly relying on social media to connect, as opposed to face-to-face discussions at the dinner table.
A third factor contributing to increased isolation and especially polarization is what the author calls "polititainment," or political entertainment, to which we are all subjected on a daily basis, like it or not. This was one of the strongest chapters of the book, in my opinion: as a former data analyst, he's right on. As he does a more than decent job of describing, the 24-hour news cycle is the harbinger of the death of real journalism, although it's been occurring for some time now. News has become entertainment: it's becoming increasingly difficult to determine what even constitutes "news," rather than entertainment. BREAKING NEWS really isn't, typically; to paraphrase another book I read recently, it's more a 24-hour barrage of confirmation bias which continually feeds the "outrage" culture, dictated by two increasingly polarized sides represented by their respective media mouthpieces: there's basically Fox and MSNBC, and their bevy of orbiters. Media outlets increasingly treat "news" as "product," catering to the wishes of consumers in a vicious feedback cycle: the public seemingly demands more "outrage-worthy" events, and TV producers deliver. Real news, or events that affect our lives at the global level, are increasingly glossed over in favor of entertainment. In short, rage is big business, and it sells: enter the keywords, which include nutpicking and echo chambers, so you get the idea where this is going, but the message is profound, and relevant, if a bit biased, but I'll let the reader decide for themselves. There's a lot more, but those are at least the highlights of a quite comprehensive discussion of what is causing our republic to fracture, hopefully not irredeemably.
So, what do we do? 1) DISCONNECT: that is, from our electronic devices, and re-engage with the real world, not a virtual one. Facebooks "friends" aren't friends; they're a snapshot portrait of a person and their life, which little resembles reality. 2) Get "rooted," to something; anything. 3) Build communities, even when on the move: a nomadic life can still grounded to a community, even if that community is a mobile one; and 4) build more tribes, primarily by rejecting "anti-identities." Focus on the ties that bind, not the things that divide. Put politics in its proper place, and live local.
My primary contention, and it's the usual one with the Red Ties, is the admonition that we need to go "back," to "return," "back" to basics, "return" to those ideals we held in the past: in short, it's an unrealistic expectation, because it's impossible. There is no back. There is no forward. There's just different. Even the principles we can agree that we all generally value: family, friends, social ties, have to be applied in different ways, in line with different circumstances and environments. The author keeps harkening back to his "Friday-night-at-the-game" glory days, something with I have very little familiarity, and so reasonably, it just doesn't resonate with me, and laments that this major cultural event has all but vanished, even in his Midwest hometown where his father was a beloved coach for decades.
Overall, I think this was definitely worth a read, primarily because it lays out, in surprisingly unbiased fashion, some of the problems we all face, whatever side of the political spectrum one happens to be on (I opt out, for the record), but we all must acknowledge that we are all affected, even if in different ways, by our new socio-political reality. I think that applying some of these principles (in particular, disconnecting from the simulation for a good portion of the day) may certainly help us to see eye-to-eye to a greater degree, which will hopefully help us meet some of our most pressing and unprecedented challenges, collectively and individually.
------------NOTABLE PASSAGES------------
Anti-tribes aren't succeeding at addressing our emptiness, and they're poisoning our nation's spirit in critical ways. But lacking in meaningful attachments, people are finding a perverse bond in at least sharing a common enemy.
Reclaiming the American idea against all this means returning to the beginning: to our basic commitment to the inexhaustible, inviolable dignity of every person, and to our recognition that an effective and enduring politics can only be built atop this fundamental conviction.
When Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." he was affirming a common understanding. Human dignity is intrinsic, not conferred on us by any man-made power. Government exists to do the work of securing our preexisting rights. Government - that is, power - cannot be absolute; it is only an instrument we use to secure the freedom necessary for the most important pursuits.
General Washington's first ruly great lesson for our people was not winning the Revolutionary War (against, we tend to forget, some very distracted English and very disengaged German mercenary soldiers). Instead, it was resigning his commission as head of the Continental Army when the war was over. **Enter the obligatory Cincinnatus worship here, a hero of the (VERY) early Roman Republic, of whom the Founders were well aware. As in our own history, the story of refusing the role of despot and absolute power is a powerful trope, one on which our own fundamental national ideology is founded. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, playing the part led to, of course, even more power for Washington, the office of the Presidency, which may have been more contentious had he not positioned himself in this way.
Washington, having just risked his life for his countrymen, has won the battle and become indisputably the most popular man in America. The people don't really know what comes next , but they want leadership - and they would surely have made him king if he had wanted the position. But instead he comes to a meeting of the Continental Congress - which represents the rule of the common man, rather than the rule of he rich or well-born - and he relinquishes control of the army. He lays down power.... He doesn't seek power over his neighbors; instead, he seeks to teach them that they should look for their happiness and fulfillment n their families and in their communities, not in the halls of power or in the ranks of military might.
Vigorous debate and real understanding are the only long-term antidotes to violence in any large nation. A healthy republic requires not just the legal freedom to debate, but a culture that welcomes debate an is open to understanding the perspectives of disenfranchised groups. That culture depends on habits of charity and empathy and respect. We'll never understand why our opponents act the way they do if we refuse to listen-really listen-to their arguments.
We are in a period of unprecedented upheaval. community is collapsing, anxiety is building, and we're distracting ourselves with artificial political hatreds. that can't endure-and if it does, America wont. The alternative is restoring community for our new moment, recognizing that the old modes are obsolete, and that we need to figure out a way to realize a sense of home in a world that looks very different than anything we've seen before. New technologies and experimentation will help with that. But, ultimately, it will require habits of hart and mind that introduce neighborliness into a new, more rootless age. It will require us to build new institutions of community that can bond increasingly mobile people together.
