2016
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While years of “cosmopolitan,” liberal arts education (and travel) have taught me never to presume too much about others, motivation is something with which I can safely surmise most of us have all struggled. Busy or idle. Affluent or impoverished.
Serious struggles with motivation eluded me until 2016 when I was a sophomore in college studying in Shanghai. Having grown up in rural New England, Trump’s victory in 2016 did not blindside me (many on my street had Trump signs in their yard). Nonetheless, 2016 would mark a seismic shift in my approach to politics and the most pressing questions of our time.
2016 elucidated for me the distinction between position and temperament. Position — the particular contents of my thoughts with respect to any given issue. And temperament — how I go about relaying or debating those thoughts with others — the ferocity and expectation with which I forward my positions.
One central philosophical problem I have faced post-2016 is a pervasive sense of wanting to (1) identify and (2) choose what I will call non-futility in my temperament.
What do I mean? In short, I want to feel that my expression of my positions — however valiant, noble, or admirable with respect to any given position I think they might be — are not just entering a vacuum — are not just subsumed by a great cacophony of talking heads, Twitter threads, and campaign rally cries. I want to reach people. The content of my positions doesn’t matter as much for this article. Instead, I want to focus on how my temperament has changed since 2016 and why temperament, regardless of your position, is so important and often overlooked.
Before 2016, I could write stringently on why x, y, and z was wrong because of some fact of history — not interpretation — fact. Or at least what I saw as fact. My temperament was activist in nature. Push the boundaries of the possible. Ignore all signs to the contrary.
There is, no doubt, and important role for such activist temperaments (and positions). Activists urge us to critically question our world and have often driven sociopolitical movements that have expanded economic, social, and political rights.
But the activist temperament can have its pitfalls as well. Before 2016, if you disagreed with me, I would call upon relevant points, downplay alternative positions, even psychological tendencies to prefer certain values — stability, continuity, familiarity, nationhood — and reassert that my position was “correct.” Granted, this tactic is typical in debate. Another word for it, however, is spin.
I think the distinction between the two — good argumentation and spin — is the extent to which you’ve wrestled with your opponent’s position — or other, third, forth, or possible excluded positions. Before 2016, my view was “correct” because it was the view I happened to hold — the one to which I came based on my particular experience — one grounded in books and articles and academics perhaps, but particular to my personal and professional story. And no matter what we might hear, one’s personal interpretation of events and experiences cannot be gospel for all. If anything is to go beyond just you, it must be palatable. It must be able to inhabit the mental space of another based on his or her experience — and hopefully (but not always) objective Truth.
I may have come to my views sincerely, but most people around me in my liberal college arena also voiced approval of them. Even writing this article, I am reflecting on the extent to which my views were, in fact, “mine.” Granted, I think my views in college were nuanced. And it’s not that I never encountered an opposing voice — though I don’t deny for some that this might be the case. I engaged with people who disagreed. But, still, I can’t help but ask myself: Might I have come to different views had the initial books and articles I was given taken a different spin? Had the context under which I grew up was different?
Despite general ideological consensus, many excellent professors in college challenged my thinking. But among fellow students, more than anything it was interacting with students and friends who were Chinese nationals that my views and values were most questioned — as the overwhelming majority of my American college peers at New York University Shanghai adhered to liberal to far left positions on most topics.
Post-2016, thoughtful position-taking — to me — now means asking: Have I come to my view because I’ve argued my way to it — through careful consideration and a balancing of values? Perhaps I came to it just reading on my own, but more hopefully I came to it with other human beings who’ve challenged me to see things in another light. Did I come to my position by silencing or willfully ignoring those that disagree with me and by actively avoiding any good faith interpretation of your opponents? If the latter is the case, I’ve removed myself from the richness of dialogue — one that can allow me to strengthen or come to a better understanding of my own initial position in the first place — perhaps even change my mind, if not entirely, maybe some dimensions of it — or at least how I expect the world to change in light of my particular, “correct” view.
Post-2016, I am now obsessed with the idea of choosing “correctly” so as to somehow assure the non-futility of my efforts. I am eager not to be surrounded by people who only agree with me and want pretty much the same things I do — or did — or might want. I want to find what is non-futile and intellectually honest and effective. A high bar, I know. But it’s really what everyone is looking for. The thoughtful activists hopes that his message will be not just another voice in the void, but actually heard. The question is: How to do it? And this is where temperament plays such a huge role.
Since 2016, I am admittedly less sure about the future of the United States — and more broadly free, liberal societies. And I come to this uncertainty with no joy. One’s own internal dialogue — the ability to form sincere beliefs about the world — is related to the greater context in which one can be exposed to different positions and arguments. Thus, a threat to a free society is naturally a threat to our own ability to make informed, authentic decisions for ourselves.
Having studied in various places around the world — in authoritarian regimes and sclerotic democracies emerging fairly recently from from military dictatorship — I fear a future in which our institutions and civil society do not cherish and enshrine freedom of speech, the rule of law, and open dialogue (conceptions of which of course are historically-contingent, yet are no less important or worthy causes for being so in my view).
I am not alone. In his article Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid, psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes:
… American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis.
What changes are needed? Redesigning democracy for the digital age is far beyond my abilities, but I can suggest three categories of reforms — three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable… We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.
By thought experiment, you could imagine living in a world in which all those around you have betrayed what you hold to be basic moral goodness. Everyone misunderstands you. Everyone — you think — is wrong. Even under such circumstances, you could still theoretically put your head down, pursue what you see as goodness, and there would be meaning in this I think. Such is the story of religious martyrs throughout history whose contemporaries abhorred their particular belief system. We may not agree with their particular religious dogma, but many admire their fortitude in holding strong to their commitments. Yet, our situation, at least now, is not (yet) that of the martyrs. It’s messier. And because it’s messier, there’s still hope.
I resist the idea that any attempt at making things better is futile — that change itself is impossible. History does prove as much to be true. I don’t need to just ignore the world and pursue my narrow lane of whatever I think is important. Even if social media and epistemic bubbles have made dialogue difficult, I’d assert that it is still possible to “reach people.” We are not in a would-be end-of-days scenario in which figurative, intellectual, or ethical martyrdom for one’s cause is the only available option.
That being said, it’s too naive to think just anything works. And no one wants to be stuck doing something useless — especially wrong, or based on empirical fallacies — especially given the stakes at hand. How do I know I’m not mistaken? This is a question I think we should ask ourselves more often.
But that doesn’t mean I will be completely comfortable in whatever I find.
Part of growing up is recognizing that you just won’t and can’t know exactly how your actions might play out overtime. You can’t just choose the fruitful, useful, non-futile path a priori. Even seemingly correct choices — safe choices — can pan out in unexpected ways and change you such that your initial decision and commitment is seen in new light. So whatever you choose, it might end up feeling a bit like shouting to the void — that is until you, or perhaps your next generation — persuade enough people to join in your project.
Being an adult — and a grad student for that matter — is discovering how much you don’t know and then, despite that, providing some kind of innovative, or socially grounded, nuanced, perhaps truly novel answer that can respond to the challenge of existence (or in the grad student’s case, your very narrowly tailored research question).
In this age, deciding to engage despite difference is itself a novel choice. I can’t choose non-futility with certainty, but I can learn about the world, myself, and other people within reason — broaden my horizons, engage with people with whom I disagree — re-examine my opinions on supposedly settled orthodoxies — take intellectual and personal risks. I can read the well-researched, serious book whose author I might not like. I can listen to a podcast interview with a thinker not on “my side.” I can choose to work toward one aspect of the buckets of reforms Haidt recommends.
While it’s no guarantee of impact, this is my best attempt at equipping myself with the tools to keep searching for my adequate response to all that 2016 has set off in me. And I feel much more alive and curious in this position than when I just ignored certain realities and blindly pursued a single path — however successful — or good — or righteous — I felt doing so. In other words, in some respects, processes can matter just as much as outcome in arriving at Truth.
2016 extinguished my old intellectual world. But it also allowed me to think with more nuance — to listen to different voices. Because whether I like it or not, those voices can and likely will impact my wider world.
And such thinking need not bear immediate fruit to be non-futile.
August 14, 2022
