You may have already listened. I do schedule these posts in advance. Brooks said,
When you treat somebody with contempt and feel like you are right, you get dopamine, too. It’s kind of amazing how ubiquitous in our learned behavior that reinforces rewards. It’s involved in–there’s a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens that imprints habitual behavior. But, the neurotransmitter that it is occurring with is dopamine. So, for sure, when we have a habit of doing it, it gives us a little reward; the reward is reinforced neurochemically; so therefore it gets harder and harder to get out of that cycle. The thing that we need to keep in mind is that, with most things that give us a little bit of dopamine–hence a little bit of satisfaction–that the reward is very different in the short run and as it is in the long run.
The conversation is not about any particular economic or political issue. It is more “meta,” to use a fancy-sounding buzzword. Brooks claims that mutual contempt is a dangerous element in today’s partisanship.
A question that comes to mind is why this is happening now. And I am tempted to blame the technology. On Twitter, you get a lot of short-term reward for expressing contempt for the other side. Saying things that would improve relations with the other side gets you rewarded less. In fact, it gets you punished by your “base.”
If it was Twitter then why are there huge countries (say all of Asia) where it’s not having the same effect?
“A question that comes to mind is why this is happening now.”
I’d say it’s not just “now”, or at least one should try to see if one can make a stronger case for that impression besides just “Trump”. We tend to look at the past with healthy amnesia and false nostalgia, but over-emphasizing our own current impressions. Also if the influential media keeps saying this is the worst it’s ever been, one is likely to believe it.
My own impression is that the contempt and tension has been high for a long time – indeed, it was even higher in the relatively recent past in even more severe “national nervous breakdown” moments – and that social media hasn’t created it, but more revealed it, and perhaps amplified it.
Consider this anecdote: Twitter didn’t come out until 2006, but by 2003, the late Charles Krauthammer already coined “Bush Derangement Syndrome”. Also, in the 1990s, if you listened to the typical caller into talk radio like Rush Limbaugh’s show, the resentment and animus for Democrats and ‘liberals’ in general was a constant, and vice versa on the more edgy public radio programs. What’s funny is that 25 years ago people were also wringing their hands about the uncouth expressions of mutual enmity, and blaming it on talk radio and cable news channels, especially Fox.
Well, I believe most of US history is ‘contempt and tension’ of different regions and segregated communities not a single US nationalism.
1) Break out the Brennan Cross Gold Of Speeches or remember how segregation US neighborhoods used to be. The main difference of North or West states to Southern states is the Southern states had defined Jim Crow laws while the North and West had a lot neighborhood ‘Understandings.’
2) The period of a single US nationalism lasted 1941 – 1990 when the nation was dealing with Pearl Harbor and the Cold War. (And read any George Wallace speech to see how ‘contempt and tension’ there was in 1968.)
3) Literally we had the largest Civil War of any nation in terms of troops dieing.
4) A lot of internet ‘dumb comment’…(guilty as charged!) and not defined political violence. Yes there has been upticks the last 5 years compared to the Internet boom/early Bush years, but political violence is nothing compared to 1968. Or if you want labor and political violence remember the 1919-1920 Anarchist and Palmer Raids as examples.
I wrote something about the causes and potential solutions for mutual contempt a little while ago:
“The goal of this hearing is to provide a more direct vehicle for congressional accountability and transparency. While a Republican certainly has to answer to her constituency concerning votes and policy proposals, she doesn’t have to answer in the same way to Democratic voters in her district.This format could provide a bridge between parties, a concrete and immediate pressure to respond to members of different political stripes.”
https://derrickmiedaner.com/2018/12/14/the-reverse-congressional-hearing/
O where’s that girl Reconciliation?
-Aristophanes in Lysistrata
“A question that comes to mind is why this is happening now.”
From a Three Languages and Gurri perspective, one wonders if the political mechanisms that previously allowed clashes in social values to be hashed out and resolved are now failing and what is causing that failure.
This failure of political processes today may stem from the unprecedented plethora of scientific publishing and the parallel fall into disrepute of public policies based the discussion of competing values.
Today, everyone contends that their policy and position is the one that is based upon science and the facts and it is this scientism that is frustrating reconciliation of competing values and providing the confidence prerequisite for scorn of those with whom one disagrees.
Roe v. Wade is an important early example of purportedly scientific approaches silencing values and leaving nothing but acrimony in its wake. The Roe v. Wade pattern is being repeated with increasing frequency.
A 2004 article in the journal Environmental Science & Policy entitled “How science makes environmental controversies worse” by Daniel Sarewitz (drawn to my attention by Kip Hansen in his essay “Sarewitz Validated”) looks at the role of science in the “real winner” studies that emerged post Gore v. Bush, GMO regulation, and earthquake probability assessments to contrast and compare similar processes in climate policy.
Sarewitz (references deleted):
“I look for explanation not in the social construction of science, but precisely in “the
fact that scientists do exactly what they claim to do,” and argue that the fulfillment of this promise is what gets us deeper into the hot water—science does its job all too well. The argument, in brief, is this: nature itself—the reality out there—is sufficiently rich and complex to support a science enterprise of enormous methodological, disciplinary, and institutional diversity. I will argue that science, in doing its job well, presents this richness, through a proliferation of facts assembled via a variety of
disciplinary lenses, in ways that can legitimately support, and are causally indistinguishable from, a range of competing, value-based political positions.
He concludes:
“The point is not that stripping away the overlay of scientific debate must force politicians to take action. But if they choose not to act they can no longer claim that they are waiting for the results of the next round of research—they must instead explain their allegiance to inaction in terms of their own values and interests, and accountability now lies with them, not with science or scientists. To the extent that
our democratic political fora are incapable of enforcing that accountability, the solution must lie in political reform, not more and better scientific information.”
Roberts also recently interviewed someone recently, Bjorn Lomborg, whom I believe embodies this sensible approach to values and science. The Copenhagen Consensus seems to be an excellent model of how values and science can co-exist and reduce the animosity of debate as well improve political efficiency. Raise their status and maybe we can reduce the amount of scorn.
The reward in the long run is still dopamine. This is about stone age man, she is still us.
I know the cure. Give her a rock, a rock she can tap anything she wants. Tap windows, products, cars, houses, and banks. A throwing rock, she grabs it with her dominant hand.
Then connect her rock, via wireless, to the intelligent logistics network and she will get the mostest satisfaction she can ever have. She will never know a better way of doing things, except by pounding it different ways with a rock.
If propose a possible ‘economic’ rather than technological explanation: as people have gotten materially better off, they focus less on improving material well being and more on positional goods like social standing, less time harvesting crops, more time trying to establish their superiority over others.
When I think of people I know who don’t spend much time on social media, I don’t think they’re any less contemptuous (especially the ones who are well off). I think there’s definitely a long run payoff, and it may be the more important one than the short run one. I think how people identify themselves relative to others may be the important thing that’s changing, and it may have more to do with improved economic well being than technological change. Just some speculation.
Did anybody else chuckle at the part where Brooks starts citing Goleman’s styles and going on about how mean bullies who chew people up and spit them out aren’t effective leaders and then Roberts says, “Steve Jobs” and Brooks hand-waves. Well, um, then he was a mix – not purely toxic and ‘coercive’ all the time (really?) Well, um, then he would have been even more successful had he been less of a mean bully.
Oh brother. That’s ‘cult of nice’ silliness. It’s one thing to say that one ought to be nice and gentle to people as a moral matter, even if you must pay some other costs as a result. It’s another thing to claim that there are no costs, only benefits, and vice-versa for being rude and rough.