The last few postings have
attempted to contextualize the polarization plaguing the nation’s political
arena. Through the citation of various
evidentiary information, they attribute this division among Americans to the
inability to address various incubating problems and issues. This posting looks at an underlying cause for
this inability.
Now,
not all readers will agree with what follows, but this posting makes a case
that the all-encompassing factor – the root cause of incubation – is identity
politics. According to Ezra Klein:
… everyone engaged in American
politics is engaged in identity politics.
This is not insult, and it’s not controversial: we form and fold identities constantly,
naturally. Identity is present in
politics in the way gravity, evolution, or cognition is present in politics;
that is to say, it is omnipresent in politics, because it is omnipresent in us
… It runs so deep in our psyches, is activated so easily by even weak cues and distant
threats, that it is impossible to speak seriously about how we engage with one
another without discussing how our identities shape that engagement.[1]
Is this true?
When one starts talking about what is natural, one cannot
solely depend on the social sciences in general or political science
specifically to provide sufficient grounding for any such claim. And surely, the reportage of a journalist
(with all due respect to Mr. Klein) does not make the case either. So, perhaps the ideas of an American neuro-endocrinologist,
Robert M. Sapolsky,[2]
can be of sufficient gravitas in this field to help convince a sceptic.
But
before sharing his thoughts, can one assume that a social arrangement, be it a
church congregation, a labor union, a governmental jurisdiction, a corporation,
etc., counts on some minimal ability for the participants of the arrangement to
feel empathy among themselves? Afterall,
scarcity is part of the human condition – not to mention a condition of all
organic life – that leads to inevitable conflicts.
To
weather social conflicts, one main factor that allows for solution or
compromise seems to be, at some level, the ability of those involved to feel
what the other parties feel in relation to the conflict at hand. And if so, that begs a question: What causes humans to feel empathy for others?
A
lot is involved, but one important factor is whether the other party to a
conflict or any interaction – be it a person or group – has some sense of being
an “us” as opposed to being a “them.” If
that’s true, to what degree does that feeling need to be felt? Well, ostensibly that would be to the degree one
can ascribe the idea of mutuality. And
that sense of mutuality has to be strong enough to motivate the person to do the
work necessary to engender empathy.
Sapolsky
explains the mind’s machinations, both biologically and cognitively, and it
turns out that empathy does not come without effort, it takes work to engender
it. Yes, empathy, under the right
conditions, seems to come naturally, but only if certain factors are met. To understand this, one is helped by placing
oneself in incidences where empathy is expected – such as in situations of
injustice.
Here's
one. As one can guess, actual
observation of deprivation or exploitation of a victim more easily solicits
empathy. Say that one sees a person’s
life being snuffed out by a policeman putting his knee on that person’s throat,
as opposed to when one hears of the same incident without the assistance of a video. The former is less work than the latter in engendering
empathy and even more work is demanded if one hears some abstract diatribe about
how minorities are mistreated by those in authority.
As
one goes from one exposure to the other, as just described, the work becomes
harder and, therefore, less likely to be exerted. A lack of direct experience, Sapolsky reports,
acts to diminish one’s ability to be empathetic or the likelihood of it taking
place. And along these lines, he claims,
It is an enormous cognitive task for
humans to overcome that, to reach an empathetic state for someone who is different,
unappealing … That is straight out of Us versus Them … showing how extreme
out-group members, such as the homeless or addicts, are processed differently
in the frontal cortex than other people … [The] tragedy of the commons versus
tragedy of the commonsense morality, where acting morally toward an Us is
automatic, while doing so for the Them takes work.[3]
Or, for example, to quote
this natural scientist use of nonscientific language, when it comes to
empathizing with the plight of the disadvantaged, the rich “suck.”
Why? Because the experiences of the disadvantaged
to these well-off people is foreign unless they themselves come from deprived backgrounds.
His description of these rich people, in
general, is even more self-centered and selfish than this quote indicates, but
the reader gets the idea. In general,
the more one sees victims as Them, one is more apt to believe the worse of them
– they are lazy or dishonest or conniving – and that justifies any unempathetic
bias the non-associated feels.
And
when one can avoid seeing the individual – as when one hears but does not see
the above described incidence of homicide – one can categorize the account as the
homicide happening to a group, not a person.
That also adds to one attributing the incident not happening to a person
in one’s own identity group.
Often,
one hears this being a problem of cognition when the solution would be
education. At other times, the problem
is attributed to feelings, such as one is lacking “brotherly love.” And this leads to a false dichotomy between
emotions and cognitions. Sapolsky claims
it is a shortcoming of both making the challenge of encouraging empathy more
difficult.
A
bleak picture, for sure, but Sapolsky offers some hope. Yes, one can easily see from the above that
humans are doomed to a tribalistic social disposition if they cannot be
sufficiently empathetic. Left to
people’s own natural tendencies and allegiances empathy is limited to those who
are immediately around as one grows up.
Social arrangements under such thinking and feelings will not expand and
that limits a group to few resources and stifles economic, cultural, and intellectual
enrichment.
So,
where is the hope?
Spelled out this way, these findings
don’t seem to bode well for humans. We
have evolved to support our immediate social groups, a tendency that can be
easily manipulated into discriminatory behavior, especially at younger ages. The good news, according to Sapolsky, is that
there are always individuals who resist
the temptation to discriminate and won’t conform to harmful acts based on
othering or hierarchy.
…
[Sapolsky] offers suggestions for how we might subvert social tendencies to
conform and [instead] aim our behavior towards better social ends. For example, his advice to counter xenophobia
includes “emphasizing individuation and shared attributes, perspective taking,
more benign dichotomies, learning hierarchical differences, and bringing people
together on equal terms with shared goals.[4]
And given this overall
concern – that social arrangements depend on good doses of proactive
instruction – this message needs to be taught and encouraged for the sake of a
common good. In addition, the common
good is essential not only for progress, but for maintaining what has been
accomplished both socially and individually.
But what one can read between the above lines is: these
tendencies can serve those who want to exploit the social/political landscape
for their own ends. And its utilization,
that of exploiting people’s proclivities to limit their concerns to their own identity,
either by using direct language or code language, can prove to be
effective.
One
notion that seems to be prevalent among those who do not appreciate the
challenge these natural tendencies pose is the belief that one needs to be
taught prejudices. This is true, but not
true. The above indicates a natural predisposition
to hold the Them with at least suspicion if not out and out hostility. The teaching comes into play when it sharpens
the targets of such disdain.
To
counter this bias, one needs proactive instructional efforts aimed at revealing
to students
·
what is natural – the proclivity to divide
the world between the Us and the Them;
·
the inefficiency that such biases accrue;
and
·
the experiences of being exposed to as
many Them as is possible in as many settings as is possible.
In short, what one needs
to be taught is how to battle these divisive tendencies.
The
Ogbunu quote above hints at the direction such lessons should take. This blog’s argument holds that in terms of
civics instruction, federation theory directly addresses the aims that quote
identifies and its postings have, to varying degrees, attempted to share
information that helps teachers help civics
students acquire the information that would lead to healthy levels of empathy.
One more point:
Klein adds to his concern over this dysfunctionality by pointing out
that by “wielding” a bias toward identity politics, people cover up many
problems. They attribute problems to Them
people, not to those individuals or to an Us.
Police mistreatment? That happens
to blacks. Exploitive labor
conditions? That happens to immigrants
from south of the border or the under educated.
Poverty? That happens to the lazy. This proclivity ignores the details of how
Those people are being mistreated much less defining Them as really being Us.
As
such, the tendency “forces” an array of factors under that cover so that one is
removed from what is at stake for those on the other side of some contentious,
festering problem. It assists the
general factors feeding the incubation that have led the nation to the
polarization currently being manifested. But then what happens, a video appears on TV,
and a multitude of viewers see for the first time what is really happening to
an individual. And guess what? Empathy among many ensues.
[2]
Robert M.
Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
(New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2017).
[4] C. Brandon Ogbunu, “Why Do People Do Bad Things?,” Greater Good Magazine, December 1, 2017,
accessed March 14, 2019, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_people_do_bad_things
. Emphasis added, AND see Anna Rita
Manca, “Social Cohesion,” Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being
Research, 2014, accessed July 24, 2020, https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-0753-5_2739
.
No comments:
Post a Comment