Welcome friends!
I was listening to a little talk by a psychologist at my workplace the other day on managing stress and anxiety. Not because I feel particularly stressed or anxious although one might reasonably suppose I might be given the enduring damage American conservatives in rural areas of the country are doing to the USA just now. But no, not really. That’s how life goes sometimes. Our unfortunately rather large block of less informed voters clamor for something they don’t really understand and once they get it start clamoring for the opposite in an endless cycle of ignorance that with any luck tends slowly toward the positive but which threatens of course to go spinning wildly out of control at any moment landing us all in the proverbial ditch of history. One does what one can but honestly one can’t expect too much. That’s the way democracy works. We try to keep everyone on board by being willing to take one step back for every two steps forward. We obviously took a really big step back this last time around. No, I’m talking about a step of truly prodigious proportions. Maybe this time we’ll need to take quite a few more conventionally sized steps forward to get back where we were in the not so distant past. Might take a while. But it’s a difference of size rather than kind. No, I attended the talk in question not because I felt stressed thinking about the long-term prospects of the USA or other western democracies but for general knowledge. As fate would have it the very first point the fellow made, the old saw about the importance and value of appreciating the difference between things one can control and those one cannot and the proper mental and emotional response to both, got me thinking of a very fundamental disagreement between conservatives and liberals relating to just that point. From the liberal perspective conservatives habitually assign a great many things to the category of things under one’s personal control that truly are not while one supposes from the conservative perspective liberals must be viewed as doing just the opposite, assigning a great many things to the category of things not under one’s personal control that truly are. The psychologist in question mentioned he had worked in mental crisis situations and with criminals and so on and in his considered opinion this issue was the single most helpful issue to address when attempting to resolve the psychological component of such cases. It got me thinking it makes a lot of sense people may need a bit of help sometimes sorting this out given our very fundamental social disagreements on this issue. But I wonder if we really disagree or if conservatives are just talking funny as they do sometimes. Maybe it would be worthwhile to spend a few moments to talk it out.
What makes me suspect conservatives might simply be talking funny is it has been my experience conservatives often use language for rhetorical effect rather than simple communication or discussion. They say things for the behavioral reaction they think or hope they may generate rather than to express what they really think or engage other people honestly on whatever the issue may be. I suspect this has long been the case but it has become increasingly and indeed screamingly obvious ever since Mr. Trump has burst upon the political stage. The man is famous for talking absolute rot and then changing it about every which way depending on the audience and reception. To put it bluntly, the man lies incessantly and outrageously in a rather transparent attempt to appeal to the emotions of people to get them to do what he wants. His conservative Republican base is famous for at least claiming to understand this and not being bothered by it at all. Indeed, by all accounts they appear to expect it and love him for it. They feel if it helps him do what he wants to do then what’s the problem? The man’s casual relationship with the truth is something they respect and accept as evidence the man is truly one of them on some fundamental level.
Why would anyone pretend some things are under one’s control when they really are not? Well one reason that comes to mind is something akin to cheerleading. We have a large self-help industry here in this country that makes a lot of money from people looking for someone, anyone, to encourage them and give them ideas about how to be more successful financially. One of the mantras of these self-help gurus is one should act as though everything is under one’s own control to provide oneself with the greatest possible incentive to do the best one can. The thinking appears to be if one acknowledges some things are not under one’s control then one may be a little too prepared at the first sign of difficulty to throw up one’s hands and bemoan one’s fate rather than working as hard as one can to overcome whatever it is. This theme shows up in all manner of funny places for example Yoda’s disjointed bit of pseudo-wisdom to young Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars film: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” I suppose he might have been talking about some context in which everything was arguably under one’s control and the only issue was one’s determination to do or not do a thing but that’s not normally the sort of context in which one would say one intends to try to do something is it? One generally doesn’t try to sit on one’s ass all afternoon and stare into space. One does. Or does not. As the case may be. However, to accomplish more advanced tasks in the real world one generally needs a little help or co-operation or at least neutrality from some things outside one’s control. One tries to drive to the convenience store to get a six pack of beer moments before the store closes for the night but one’s car breaks down on the way. Wah wah. So why would wise old gnarly Yoda spout off such idiotic claptrap? Well, he’s not just a Jedi Knight. He’s also a Self-Help Guru. He’s player, coach, and cheerleader all rolled into one. Actually that’s not a particularly attractive image but anyway I’m sure you get my point. Sometimes one says things that are not necessarily true to encourage other people to do their best at whatever it may be, in the case of Luke Skywalker to complete his training and save the princess in one movie rather than the usual three.
On the other hand it seems quite possible at least some conservatives truly struggle distinguishing things under one’s control from things that are not. One of the lines of ethical criticism of the distributional results generated by a free labor market involves just this sort of thing. The argument is the real world labor market rewards not just effort of the sort one might reasonably suppose to be under one’s own control but a variety of things are not necessarily under one’s control including one’s innate abilities and talents, the quality of one’s early education, the conditions surrounding one’s education including did one have bigger things to worry about such as not getting knifed in the school corridor on the way to lunch, one’s level of family support for education and later in the labor market including helpful connections, even things like what’s going on in the macroeconomic environment at different stages of one’s life and technological developments and so on. It’s why liberals are generally prepared to dispute the ethical standing of market distributions and willing to consider ways to change them up to help out people who may be struggling for reasons they have very little control over. Conservatives of course tend toward just the opposite line of reasoning. Many apparently feel the labor market unfailingly rewards effort and right behavior so to put it in a nutshell rich people are good and poor people are bad. Under conservative ideology helping poor people is illogical and immoral because they’re getting exactly what they deserve. Psychologically one would suspect this approach might appeal to the ego of wealthy people although of course it’s also shared by many salt of the earth conservatives who are struggling to make ends meet, which seems a bit weird and self-destructive to me but then I suppose one does tend to see quite a lot of weird and self-destructive behavior in that particular echelon of society. Hmm, never really thought about it before but I wonder which way the causality runs on that? You don’t suppose they do all manner of funny things because they’ve managed to convince themselves they’re pretty worthless and have little to contribute anyway so what difference does it make? I hope not. That would be such a waste, wouldn’t it? And of course I haven’t brought up the issues surrounding those elements of our distributional patterns that don’t necessarily involve the labor market directly such as inheritance and that sort of thing. I’ve mentioned before the jarring disconnect between the conservative conviction that distributions are the result of things mostly under one’s control and indicative of individual merit and their hatred of inheritance taxes and so on that, if supported, would appear to strengthen their case. Hard to imagine the sort of personal effort a sperm or egg or maybe fetus would need to expend to be born to wealthy parents and eventually and all but inevitably sit at the apex of our little economic pyramid isn’t it?
But do these conservatives really believe their labor market as ethical arbiter model or is this another case of language being used for rhetorical effect alone? Probably the most well known ethical principle that can be attributed to conservatives with any degree of confidence at all is that greed is good. As far as I can tell most conservatives believe greed is like the mysterious Force in Star Wars. It’s the glue that holds the world together. Under this perspective the big problem with acknowledging there may be a case for changing something up to help people other than oneself is that it runs counter to the dictates of personal greed. One may have to pay more taxes or in the case of a wealthy cad like our president pay any tax at all. Further, the conditions under which one is currently thriving may change and not in a way that necessarily improves one’s own situation. It may appear to be to one’s benefit to claim everyone is getting what he or she deserves on the market and to try to convince other people of that fact even if one doesn’t actually believe that to be the case at all. Some people argue against this line of reasoning by appealing to one’s long term greed or enlightened greed in the sense that in the long run one may reasonably expect do better in a stable thriving society than in a society full of struggling, desperate, and sometimes violent and unreasonable people but getting people to think of the future and give up small current gains for potentially much larger long term gains is always a tough sell. Anyway, the whole argument is neither here nor here for purposes of this post. I’m not trying to resolve or even shed light on any of these arguments per se. I’m just trying to speculate on what conservatives really think about what is and is not under one’s personal control.
So where does that leave us? I don’t know. I must admit my head is starting to spin just a little bit. I may be going into some sort of mental crisis myself trying to think it all through. I wonder if the psychologist from my workplace makes house calls? Just being funny. I think I’ve got a handle on it because I haven’t been able to take conservatism seriously for some time now. I harbor no illusions I control everything affecting my economic situation or more broadly my destiny. I just do what I can and hope for the best. I neither throw in the towel at the first sign of difficulty nor rage against the machine when things don’t go according to plan. I’m satisfied if I’m doing OK and I wish everyone were doing similarly OK. I’m proud of my own modest role in my accomplishments but I don’t sprain my arm patting myself on the back because I appreciate a lot of other people were involved and a good portion of the result was likely due more to the luck of the draw than anything else. But then I’m a liberal so of course that’s what I would think isn’t it? That raises an interesting question. I wonder how much we might save collectively on our mental health if more people were liberals and talked sensibly and honestly about economic matters? Seems to me it might be quite a lot.
