Faculty Soapbox: The clash of symbols
My Facebook profile describes my political views as “very liberal.” This is a shorthand way of telling the world that I support gay rights, government-run health care, stricter gun laws, abortion rights for women, abolition of the death penalty, reduced military spending, environmental protection, campaign finance reform, the United Nations, Charles Darwin, the Toyota Prius, and higher taxes on people richer than me. Oh, and also, obviously, the public humiliation of fat cat bankers.
When I get together with other very liberals—which is quite often, since I’m married to one—a favorite topic of lamentation is the blindness of our political opponents. Why don’t they get it? Why don’t they see that we’d all be better off—even the fat cat bankers, once they’d recovered from their public humiliation—if we spent more on education and less on weapons systems; that if they really want to see fewer abortions they should support rather than oppose sex education in school, universal healthcare, and free childcare for all; that if they really want to fight terrorism they shouldn’t bar talented people from military service just for being gay.
Our discussions of such matters follow a predictable course. After a round of annoyed tongue clicking, irritation gradually mounts until we reach a crescendo of infuriation and incredulity, from which we subside, with much headshaking, onto the soft but comfortless pillow of our usual answer. Why don’t they get it? Because, to quote Samuel Beckett, “people are bloody ignorant apes!”
As an explanation of why millions of people don’t agree with me, this thesis has the virtue of simplicity. But I can’t help feeling that it lacks depth. After all, in most areas of life conservatives aren’t any more stupid than me or my fellow VLs. They make perfectly good accountants, engineers, managers, mechanics, parents, pilots, plumbers, scholars, and teachers. So why do our wonderfully cogent arguments have so little purchase on their thinking?
I have an answer--that is, an answer that may at least be an advance on the ignorant ape hypothesis. I’m not claiming it’s original, but it only really impressed itself on me recently.
In any debate, on any topic, the ideal is for the outcome to be determined entirely by the force of the best evidence and arguments. Indeed, submission to the argument is largely what we mean by scientific or scholarly objectivity. In politics, though, submission to the argument is obviously much less common. One reason for this is that political stances have symbolic meanings. Here are some examples.
Gun control. The symbolic significance of the issue derives from the symbolic meaning of guns. And guns symbolize many things: the frontier; hunting; masculinity; martial values; rough and ready justice; self-sufficiency; individual strength; power; toughness; courage. So stricter gun control laws are seen as assaults on these values along with the traditions and identities steeped in them.
The death penalty. Support for this expresses and symbolizes a commitment to biblical law, natural justice, traditional justice, individual responsibility, tough-mindedness, and clear-cut thinking about crime and punishment.
Gays in the military. Opposition to this symbolizes affirmation of heterosexuality, masculinity, old-time religion, tradition, the “natural,” the “normal, and a moral outlook based on these.
“Drill, Baby, Drill!” This was a Republican mantra during the 2008 election. Official meaning: Lift environmental restrictions on oil drilling. Symbolic meaning: screw the tree huggers; affirmation of capitalism; freedom from government interference; individual enterprise; the frontier; self-sufficiency; strength; toughness. Oh, and masculinity--thank you Dr. Freud.
The same sort of symbolic charge electrifies many other issues: abortion; euthanasia; posting the ten commandments; invading Iraq; health care reform. Indeed, it is their symbolic dimension that makes the controversies so fierce, and the participants so entrenched. We hold onto symbols like precious objects; and like Gollum’s “precioussss,” they come to exercise a hold over us.
While the issues are diverse, their symbolic meanings form an overlapping cluster. Underlying them all, though, is a struggle over which aspects of modernity to embrace and which to resist. Liberals of my ilk tend to see ourselves as champions of modernity engaged in a tug of war with folks whose thinking is out of date. Since we believe we have Reason and History on our side, we expect to pull the other team over the line—that is over to a more up-to-date, secular, scientifically informed point of view. When this doesn’t happen, we’re puzzled. Then we become annoyed. It seems as if the other team has hitched themselves to a bunch of hefty posts sunk into the ground and set in concrete, posts with words like “Religion,” “Tradition,” “Individualism,” “Heterosexuality” painted on them. (The symbolic meanings have here turned into hitching posts; the technical term for this is “creative mixed metaphor.”) So no matter how hard we pull, no matter how good our arguments, our opponents stay put.
That’s my answer to the question of why conservatives don’t agree with me: not stupidity, but symbolism. I see only two problems with it. It’s insufferably arrogant; and it’s inaccurate. It’s arrogant in the way it represents liberals as rational thinkers compared to conservatives who adopt positions for their symbolic meaning. It’s inaccurate for the same reason. The truth is, surely, that all of us, liberals as well as conservatives, are swayed by symbols. Being in favor of affirmative action, for instance, symbolizes sympathy for the oppressed, commitment to equal opportunity, and recognition of past and present injustice. That’s why we liberals automatically distrust evidence suggesting that affirmative action may not have the effects it’s intended to have.
Still, becoming aware of the role of symbols in our political thinking is important. We may not be able to detach ourselves entirely from them; we may not even want to. But a key part of the modern liberal agenda--and this goes back to the great philosophers of the Enlightenment—has always been to inject into politics the sort of respect for evidence and argument that we expect to find in the sciences. That remains an ideal worth upholding.
