We all know how this happens. It's that tendency of those who surround themselves with like-minded others to forget that when rubbing elbows with the general public they just might encounter a few ideas that are a little less inbred and a little less dependent on the same set of unquestioned assumptions to which they've grown accustomed.
Racism is like that. There have been studies. They assume everyone appearing to be a fellow tribe member will be like-minded. Those with a core fear, apprehension and intolerance of the social and cultural differences in some of our off-white brothers and sisters assume that the rest of the world is a little more like them than it is in reality. Reverse racism becomes an obsession and justification. More than a few times I've been talking to someone, possibly even warming up to them, when they slipped up and shared some revealing confidence about a group or member of some other group. Maybe they find out you did a little huntin' n’ fishin' way back when and when an Obama reference somehow works its way into the conversation there's a feeling out in the form of some reference to open season on coons followed by the glimmer of a grin, cocked eyebrow and a studied look of anticipation. ...being read in a way that makes one appreciate how a book must feel. "Obama hates white people. Reverend Jeremiah Wright!" is the stock reply if one comments on the apparent obsession and proof enough of hatred and/or insecurity, cleverly disguised, possibly even from self. It's a grab at victim's rights and all the accompanying benefits. It's measuring and bean-counting -- an attempt to apply the same strategies perceived to have wronged them. It provides a palatable explanation for their low station due only to the accumulated wrongs committed against them and advantages wrongfully given to others. It's the fact that you can't always discern the anger accompanying reverse discrimination that makes it even more nefarious than a simply stated dislike for someone. The fact that it's so darkly evil that forces it to lurk well-concealed beneath the surface. That they don't say what they must be thinking only proves they are trying to hide it. The fact that it's so well hidden only serves to highlight the effort taken to conceal it. And so the logic goes, round and round like some reassuring mantra providing justification for a host of peeves upon which a larger world view relies.
Then there's the even less clever "equivalencing" that passes muster only when buoyed by the presence of fellow tribe members. It owes to a consummately childish "I'm rubber your glue" or "I know you are but what about me" deflection that eschews self-examination. Each and every question about an assumption, threadbare conclusion or unfounded assertion elicits only yet another claim that "the other" (take your pick, Republican, Democrat, cracker, black Mexican, Jew) is just as bad or worse. For example, when a litany of whining about how the liberals brought on the current recession is met with a "How so?" and finally, after further attempts to get at the reasons, all the while drawing on the patience of Job, their rant is characterized as a "factless diatribe" the retort is that the "factless diatribe" started with the last presidential inauguration. It's as if everything can be argued from the perspective of personal opinion at a level approaching the level of juvenile aphorism without turning to facts or cause-and-effect. When the simple "How can that be?" query can be so handily dismissed we know we might be rednecks or even worse. Sometimes that query is met with disbelief, slack jawed incomprehension or the assertion that "everyone knows..." But does everyone really know? That response seems to be more of a superficial deflection than a result of serious study or examination. A day hardly passes without coming up against a disinclination to think, question, to seek out facts or consider the contradictions in the ones already internalize (i.e. question assumptions) that you'd think us to be a nation of geniuses...each person possessing all they need to know...and an absolute certainty which belies a doubt which can never be openly admitted. A refusal to rationally engage issues, facts and contradictory assumptions is proof enough, isn't it?
Now it's not that these sorts of cross-tribal stink bombs are lobbed with any expectation of actually taking out one of the evil or not-so-deserving others. It's more a form of sniping and tribal ego boost intended to garner fraternal words of support and agreement from members of ones own tribe and to further establish oneself as a reliable member-in-good-standing, perhaps even an elder with higher intents and purposes so distilled as to serve as example and motivation to others.
You know what I'm talking about C'mon, you've seen all this before. Admit it.
How can this be explained? Can we retrace the footsteps that were made in our arrival to this place? Has it always been this way despite the feeling that something has changed? If one turns to earlier attempts to explain our culture the answer is most assuredly that not much has changed. There have been many attempts at taking a few steps back, indulging in an "outside looking in" survey of national character, and how we are different. One of my favorites is American journalist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) who, in a fascinating essay titled The American Credo co-penned with George Jean Nathan, takes such an inward look at our distinct American culture. It is a free download in a wide variety of E-Book formats including PDF, from here : http://manybooks.net/titles/menckenh2385823858-8.html There's no doubt that cultures are shaped by circumstances, even to the point that individual self-awareness, trapped in the assumptions of culture, cannot offer sound basis for their most fundamental beliefs. Mencken observes, referring to tribes:
...collected into herds, they gather delusions that are special to herds. Beside the underlying mass thinking there is a superimposed group thinking--a sort of unintelligent class consciousness.
Anthropologists offer insights into Japanese culture, observing that water rights in hilly areas were essential to survival resulting in inter-cooperation as a survival skill. Any reduction of a single cause is an oversimplification but there are contributing factors. So what about ours? It's quite a task to decipher the myths and assumptions of ones own culture or tribe. Mencken affirms some distinct American differences in comparison with other cultures, the foremost being the history of a "new world" and the consequent expansive opportunity. Social classes in Europe implied personal meaning. One knew who they were and that self-awareness not only assisted in gauging ones expectations but also found relative contentment within the scope of what they saw as being possible in their lives. Waves of destitute immigrants landed on our shores and even today there exists an ethic in the idea that latecomers must "get in line", something in varying degrees unfathomable in many countries, particularly the Nordic ones. and Mencken notes that in comparison to other cultures:
No American is ever so securely lodged. There is always something just ahead of him, beckoning his and tantalizing him, and there is always something, just behind him, menacing him and causing him to sweat.
I'd add that we know so little of what it might be like to have more security that we fear it. It is so foreign to us that, out of fear, we "know" it must be bad for us, particularly if it's also good for those who are "breaking in line" or trying to climb over our backs. We reject healthcare not because we believe it to be too good to be true but because we see it as a gift for those less deserving than ourselves. We cut off our noses to spite our faces. We are so accustomed to hearing footsteps that we're at the mercy of the indelible and steadfast belief that any form of common good bestowed on all cannot constitute security but is rather the cause of our insecurity. This fallacy is so fundamentally ingrained that we cannot seem to extricate ourselves from the resulting pervasive low expectations that accompany it. It is much better to be unbelievably rich in a poor nation than to be somewhat less rich in a somewhat more equal and stable one. This is our training...our legacy.
It is this constant possibility of rising, this constant risk of falling, that gives a barbaric picturesqueness to the panorama of what is called fashionable society in America. The chief character of that society is to be found in its shameless self-assertion, its almost obscene display of its importance and of the shadowy privileges and acceptances on which that importance is based. It is assertive for the simple reason that, immediately it ceased to be assertive, it would cease to exist. Those who have arrived are eager to keep down the competition of newcomers; on their exclusiveness, as the phrase is, rests the whole of their social advantage. Thus the candidate from below, before horning in at last, must put up with an infinity of rebuff and humiliation; he must sacrifice his self-respect today in order to gain the hope of destroying the self-respect of other aspirants tomorrow. The result is that the while edifice is based upon fears and abasements, and that every device which promises to protect the individual against them is seized upon eagerly.
Mencken posits numerous effects of this history and how it has shaped the national psyche. We accept the highs and the lows with respect to fortune and what is considered elsewhere to be basic, fundamental security. With this comes a great deal of contradiction -- much yammering about freedom and liberty accompanied by a reluctance to protect when it is taken from us, that is if we do not give it up willingly.
Ask the average American what is the salient passion...-- what is the idea that lies at the bottom of all his other ideas-- and it is very probable that, nine times out of ten, he will nominate his hot and unquenchable rage for liberty. He regards himself, indeed, as the chief exponent of liberty in the whole world, and all its other advocates as no more than his followers, half timorous and half envious. To question his ardour is to insult him as grievously as if one questioned the honor of the republic or the chastity of his wife. And yet it must be plain to any dispassionate observer that this ardour, in the course of a century and a half, has lost a large part of its old burning reality and descended to the estate of a mere phosphorescent superstition. The America of today, in fact, probably enjoys less personal liberty than any other man of Christendom, and even his political liberty is fast succumbing to the new dogma that certain theories of government are virtuous and lawful and others abhorrent and felonious.Perhaps we've descended even further since Mencken's time. Other distinct American traits noted by Mencken are :
- contrary to cultural outsiders impressions of Americans as money grubbing we're much looser than, for example, the French who plan and budget "to 5 decimal places". Easy-come-easy-go is ingrained.
- Contrary to deeply avowed thirst for liberty Americans have exhibited strikingly contradictory lack of protest and the turning a blind eye when it comes to walking the walk. "The really startling phenomenon of the war, indeed, was not the grotesque abolition of liberty, but the failure of that usurpation to arouse anything approaching public indignation."
- "...a resolute avoidance of a priori method, an absolutely open-minded effort to get at the facts. We pounce upon them as they bob up, convinced that even the most inconsiderable of them may have its profound significance--that the essential may be hidden in the trivial"
- We succumb heartily to "the imbecile bait of advertising."
The American is marked, in fact, by precisely the habits of mind and act that one would look for in a man insatiably ambitious and yet incurably fearful, to wit, the habits, on the one hand, of unpleasant assertiveness, of somewhat boisterous braggardism, of incessant pushing, and, on the other hand, of conformity and subservience. He is forever talking of his rights as he stood ready to defend them with his mast drop of his blood, and forever yielding them up at the first demand. Under both the pretension and the fact is the common motive of fear--in brief, the common motive of the insecure and uncertain many, the average man, at all times and everywhere, but especially the motive of the average man in a social system so crude and unstable as ours. "More than any other people," said Wendell Phillips one blue day, "we Americans are afraid of one another." The saying seems harsh. It goes counter to the national delusion of uncompromising courage and limitless truculence. It wars upon the nation vanity. But all the same there is truth in it. Here, more than anywhere else on earth, the status of an individual is determined by the general consent of the general body of his fellows; here as we have seen, there are no artificial barriers to protect him against their disapproval, or even against their envy. And here, more than anywhere else, the general consent of that general body of men is coloured by the ideas and prejudices of the inferior majority; here, there is the nearest approach to genuine democracy, the most accurate response to mob emotions. Facing that infinitely powerful but inevitably ignorant and cruel corpus of opinion, the individual must needs adopt caution and fall into timorousness. The desire within him may be bold and forthright, but its satisfaction demands discretion, prudence, a politic of ingratiating habit. The walls are not to be stormed they must be wooed to a sort of Jerichoan fall. Success thus takes the form of a series of waves of protective colouration; failure is a succession of unmaskings. The aspirant must first learn to imitate exactly the aspect and behaviour of the group he seeks to penetrate. There follows notice. There follows toleration. There follows acceptance.
But I digress. Back to the modern day tribal warfare, if for no other reason than understanding its origins has little bearing on and offers no compass for navigating its straits as we're inextricably stuck in it...pickling in it.
I know, I know...but what about THEM? This is so one-sided. I know what everyone is thinking but that misses the point...the point. There should always be a point shouldn't there? Where'd we start? Oh yeah, politics at parties. We'll leave a trail of breadcrumbs so we'll be able to return to that soon enough but for now we digress a couple of inches deeper because there is not just one point. There never is. There are several or even more but let's just say several to keep this manageable.
One point is that everyone is in a tribe. You can't help but be. I am in a tribe and if you are reading this it is probably your tribe cracker, though you might be considering revocation of my lifetime membership in this point because, like my mentor Mr. Twain, I am cynical about all tribes and, as Groucho, will most likely not join any that would have me as a member. Realizing that my utterly depraved lack of dependability vis-a-vis my tribe might result in my being ostracized or exiled I'm content to walk alone if need be. Effem if they can't take a joke.
Sure, there's always a reverse animus from another tribe. After all, who am I to argue with Sir Isaac? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The fly in the ointment is that it's sometimes hard to identify any original provocation or even that one's perception of the other is nothing more than a projection of one's own dimly perceived, bubbling cauldron of twistedness onto that other. Do we really know ourselves well enough to know this to be false?
So I distrust myself. Can I take you into my confidence on this? Without fear of derision or reprisal? Will you think me insane? There's a little part of me inside, possibly in my brain but it might be in my heart that, as the systems all shut down before drifting off into the arms of Morpheus each night and giving in to the subconscious, is the last to shut down. It watches over all the other parts like a hallway monitor in elementary school. It catches me behaving badly, it catches me working things out to my advantage and the disadvantage of others, it catches me trying to justify these things and rationalizing why others have brought the pain I've triggered in them onto themselves.
I don't know what to call this hallway monitor...a daemon? Windows-service-inside-my-head? Super-Ego? Consciousness itself? Regrettably, sometimes, it would be better if it had an on-off switch. But alas, there is none. There's alcohol but I'm a coward...the hangovers hurt too much. There's weed but I cannot financially justify stopping the merry-go-round and getting off for a spell. There's exercising the body into such a tired state that the mind is numbed in the process but old joints hardly allow it anymore. There's writing but sometimes I bore even myself. What's your drug...your soporific? Don't delude yourself. Everybody has one...or more.
Religion, a prominent tribal identification, tries to address so many of the related issues. There are ample stores of teachings, parables, allegory and stories which have meaning and can be all-at-once simple profound and deep. If it weren't for the fact that we have these human incarnations of God we might be able to regard religion as nothing more than teaching and avoid all the bloodshed that seems to come with it...at least those evangelical branches which recruit and always seem to be the most bloodthirsty. I hardly remember the Buddhists conducting crusades, or the Jews either but they were usually packing up their bags and high-tailing it somewhere.
As common as it is for practitioners of some religious belief system to hijack it in ways that defy its teachings there are some common themes. There is that which can be known and that which cannot be known, an apt characterization of the human condition. There is a sense of the base and low and a sense of higher things to which we should aspire. There is the consequential puniness of humankind which lives in a perpetual state of stark nakedness given the inability to not only fully know others but even ourselves. Fleeting moments of God-inspired clarity shame us into hiding the awareness of our nakedness and insufficiency in myriad ways, not the least of which is our tribal identification and the shipload of Samsonite that comes with it.
What passes for truth comes easy for so many. Could this ease could be pure genius, low standards or dissonance-adverse cowardice? Take your pick, there might be other possibilities. Was the late Harold Pinter right in his characterization of difference between the murky world we inhabit and our public need? Is the hardball back and white we conjure up just an artificial substitute like saccharin, aspartame or cyclamates?
There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
So now, if you've read this far, you might understand an ancillary point -- that the struggle with my tribe is actually a struggle with myself. And that's the reason why I focus on the foibles of my tribe. These foibles are much more apparent to me than my own but they are, to the extent that I've internalized them, my own. Hey, ain't nothing sacred. You can call your fireplace mantle an altar, set a coke bottle on it, whisper a prayer or incantation at it each time you walk by and even that will eventually assume associations and meaning...become holy. In the end it is just yourself, naked and alone, trying to figure it all out.
Nihilism or quest for meaning? Neither and/or both. It is what it is. Feeling a little lost? Need a map? I do. Is asking directions a sign of weakness? Hardly. Who's selling? Anyone buying?
For the love of maps! Aren't they interesting? Maybe that depends on whether you're a dilettante or a creature of habit. I like them all and I won't knock yours though I find any refusal to subject your own to open examination and the deepest scrutiny annoyingly superficial. And an inability to discuss it makes one a useless consumer of the space (s)he inhabits. Sadly, many derive their sense of security from the complete and total adherence to tribal mores by those around them. So strong is this effect sometimes that extra-tribal others are deemed enemies for nothing more offensive than inscrutable differences arising from accident of birth.
Dorothea Brand in her classic book on writing, appropriately named On Writing speaks about learning to see with the intensity of interest that a sensitive child feels of his expanding world and how we sometimes lose this ability as we become wrapped in our personal problems. The true neurotic may be engrossed in a problem so deeply buried in his being that he could not tell you what it is that he is contemplating...the sign of this neurosis being ineffectiveness. Even the most normal among us are insulated by habit.
Perhaps there's some optimal balance to be struck between openness to life and mind-numbing habituation to it.
How productive it would be if we shared the same map or at least recognized the merits of others besides our own. Just as there are common types of maps -- climate, topographical, and geopolitical -- valid in some way depending upon your purpose or situation. If you find yourself in the southern hemisphere or Cleveland you might find yourself wanting a different type of map from someone in Tallahassee or Uzbekistan.
So I read this book, A Guide to the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher that discusses this topic of maps. Not so much a map that gives you the destination but rather one which provides some support for knowing where you are. It's hard enough to know with any certainty where you want to go but after all, it's kind of hard to get to where you want to go if you don't know where you are.
At this point, I imagine skepticism to be palpable. Who needs a guide when they already have one? What's the risk in considering another or coming to understand what another considers to be the merits of their own? A little cognitive dissonance? A headache or a sprained brain? Exile or doubt from members of your tribe? Doubt is weakness, right?
Schumacher takes an epistemological approach, by asking "what constitutes proof?" What might be easy for you or I does not seem like such a slam dunk to Schumacher. Most bodies of knowledge considered fit for consumption today abide by the tenet of "If in doubt, leave it out" but Schumacher stands this accepted paradigm on its head suggesting the opposite -- "If in doubt, show it prominently."
The latter is commonplace in academia and science but the former is often more palatable when it comes to social prescriptions. Given the state of our culture, economy and international relations doesn't the former approach merit just a little skepticism? Have we really earned the type of absolute certainty that comes from mainstream media today? What sort of reporting would ever admit to further, still unanswered questions?
Freud even asserted:
This I know with certainty, namely that men's value judgments are guided absolutely by their desire for happiness, and are therefore merely an attempt to bolster up their illusions by arguments.
The point to which Schumacher logically progresses is that with most "maps" available today (often replete with recommended destinations or prescriptions for what to be) the absence of things is more telling than the content -- even with these maps there is no easy road to happiness.
Schumacher posits what he calls the four fields of knowledge. We can know about:
1. ourselves directly, the highest knowledge upon which all others depend
2. the perceptions of others indirectly
3. ourselves indirectly through what we perceive of #2 above, a double translation, if you will
4. others directly as we experience them
He goes into great detail on these and pulls it off with a compelling relevance that holds the interest and keeps the pages turning. This is literally a characterization of our existential spot on a map. It's where we're at. He doesn't try to tell us where to go.
A great deal of needless inter-tribal warfare and self-serving, shortsighted social prescriptions can be attributed to a rejection of the importance of all four types of knowledge which inevitably leads to ignorance of the self-imposed kind. Other ignorance might not be so willful.
For example, if type #2 knowledge is seen as pointless the behavior of others will be inscrutable and interactions with them will devolve. The actions of those who are little understood will be seen as threatening or even evil. The threatened will threaten and the social fabric will unravel.
A drunken partygoer railed against those wanting security from either the bottomless risks of being without healthcare or the whims of unregulated insurance companies...
"It's income re-distribution. Those worthless sons of bitches just want something for nothing" she squealed.
It was the engagement party for a friends daughter and this talk stood a chance of casting a pallor over an otherwise memorable occasion.
"I know just what you mean" I consoled, adding in a sufficiently self-righteous and bilious tone "The hell if I want any insurance company CEO standing in between me and my doc. That's fascism."
There was a momentary look of confusion but given the general level of intoxication it was too much work to figure out what had really been said. The strident angry tone and cadence sounded familiar enough and I was welcomed as one of the tribe and co-conspirator against the injustice of it all.
..smiles all around and general relief that there were no weak-kneed liberals to contend with. Just the proud, the few, the righteous.
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