In a prior post I talked about the “propositional polymaltruism” that’s replaced supernatural Christianity as our major league morality. In propositional polymaltruism, the positions one chooses on political issues become existential tests of character: “Are you a Slavery Man, or an anti-Slavery Man?”, as one abolitionist put it. I’ve got some content on why we’ve ended up there (here, here), and how this partly descends from all-important Protestant propositions like “Do you rely on Christ’s grace alone for your salvation?”
What’s my own position on the current existential test of character: “Are you an Israel Man, or a Hamas Man?” I’m an Israel Man, if you want to test my decency as a human being that way. But as an American living in a country super-saturated by these political decency tests, I’m more concerned about the cognitive trap that propositional polymaltruism seems to have caught us in.
Republicans are mostly “all in” on the current propositional maltruist panic against Hamas, but the same cognitive pattern is being used against them on other issues:
race as indecent white supremacy vs all minorities
climate as indecent climate deniers vs the science-based community
sex as indecent patriarchy vs beleaguered women
LGBT as indecent LGBT-phobes vs LGBTs driven to suicide
The special cognitive sauce driving these panics is a circularity, a la “the Emperor’s New Clothes”: the issue is so obviously black and white and the ongoing harms are so atrocious, that any decent person must oppose the harmers. The certainty justifies the suppression of dissent as indecent and enabling the harm, and the resulting absence of dissent further heightens the certainty. And so an echo chamber is created that’s very robust to criticism, since any contrary voices are dismissable as indecent.
Since we’re in the middle of a very hot stage of the current panic (defining “who’s indecent”), maybe it’s a good time to step back and try to appreciate some of the weirdnesses of these panics. We’re raised under propositional polymaltruism so it seems natural to us, like water for fish. Yet if we step outside it for a moment, it can seem odd. Do any of the following aspects of the Israel/Hamas panic seem strange to you?
1. The enormous cultural bandwidth spent defining and reinforcing “who’s indecent”. As I look at a Twitter feed, almost all the items from both sides seem to have that as their major point, their intended takeaway for readers: “See, Israel is indecent”, or “See, Hamas is indecent”. Like as soon as their item has proven that, it can end. Like we don’t need additional info to make informed policy decisions, that isn’t about whether one or the other side is indecent. Content like this:
You got it? On all the important morally-decisive points, it’s 100% vs 0%. Hence you’re indecent if you disagree. How can anyone support Hamas, in face of this cheat sheet? (Can’t you imagine people carefully crafting the equivalent cheat sheets against white supremacy, patriarchy etc, trying to come up with the most crushing, accusatory wording?).
2. The seeming contradiction between “this is so 100/0 clear you have to be indecent to disagree” and large numbers of people on the other side who don’t seem to be morally blind otherwise. Israel and Hamas both have lots of supporters in the West, so the starting assumption for both sides might be that the issue is not entirely 100/0 clear—yet both sides insist it is. We accept that things aren’t so clear for religion: even Christians admit it’s rational and decent to not be Christian, and we recognize there are large numbers of reasonable people on various sides: Christians, Hindus, atheists etc. Yet none of us accept that kind of pluralism for secular politics. We are locked into quasi-religious positions on secular political panics, while our actual religions have been privatized. (This is the “Jurassic Locke” transition I talk about here).
Growing up under propositional polymaltruism, we think it’s totally normal for 30 to 40% of our neighbors to routinely be morally blind and indecent on issues that are 100% clear (race, warming, Israel, etc). Not just in special circumstances like Nazi Germany—but all the time. As if that’s just the normal state of affairs, always, even in seemingly safe and civilized countries like the UK, France, US etc. Is this actually believable, or do we just need it to be true for propositional polymaltruism to function?
3. Confidence in the blunt instrument of shaming as an effective technique. Going thru a Twitter feed on Israel/Hamas, practically all I see as subtext is shame, shame, shame, shame. Essentially: “These harms are so indefensible, the other side’s supporters should be ashamed”. But if we ask “Does shaming work?”, in most cases we tend to say no. We don’t try to shame people out of mental illness like depression or schizophrenia, though we often frame these political indecencies as mental illness: “Islamophobia”, “homophobia”. Dale Carnegie taught many ways to “win friends and influence people”, but shaming wasn’t one of them. Pastors today generally don’t think you can truly shame people out of sin. If it’s so important for us to flip those on the other side of the Israel/Hamas issue, and if the other side really is as morally blind as we say, don’t we need some more subtle techniques to persuade them than just carpet-bombing them with shame? Won’t direct shaming just backfire into hardening their positions or tuning us out? But we don’t care. Part of the cognitive trap of these panics is they let us morally flex on others, which can be deeply satisfying. Not only do we get to righteously slam and humiliate someone, we’re saving victims from harm as well. The indecency justifies the shaming, even demands it.
4. The assumption that the decency question alone, once settled, almost entirely determines what our national policy should be. As if practicalities like resources, national self-interest, unintended consequences, and so on, must pale into insignificance. It’s like the existence of an indecency creates an absolute moral imperative, and we must start trying to fix it—practicalities be damned. Isn’t this at least a little strange, and doesn’t it feel somewhat religious? If we’re trying to make viable policy, shouldn’t a lot of the public discussion be centered around the practicalities, and not just the question of who’s indecent?
All I’m suggesting here is that as the current Israel vs Hamas panics rage, you try stepping back from them for a moment, and see if any of it seems a bit odd to you: odd a format, a genre, a method for doing our national business?
Is it a method for doing our national business, or is it a method for filling the void left by the privatization of supernatural religion? Our obsession with “indecency” implies the latter.
Do we need to keep living like this?