Engage & Participate

Some constructive dialogue here. Andrew Revkin (NYT climate journalist) and Bjorn Lomborg ( 'Skeptical Environmentalist') on Lex Fridman's podcast last Friday 11/18/2022 . open.spotify.com/episode/37fQReeg5fcKIW9jl3ykmn?si=vDRvqOIFQIyQa9_h1G8wVA&utm_source=copy-link

A very good article, thanks.

Thanks. Some thoughts: 1. Refreshing to read how Stephens (whom I've grown to appreciate recently through his editorship of Sapir) opened his mind to new perspectives 2. Interesting that it was physically going to Greenland that made the difference. Reading stories or seeing films of others who went to Greenland didn't cut it. 3. One explanation: Stephens had an allergy to two things he associated with climate change: alarmism and "statism." I see Stephens having a big healthy dose of modernism in him, which largely explains this allergy to postmodern alarmism and catastrophizing. Interestingly, his distrust of anything seemingly alarmist blinded him to modernist evidence of climate change. That's an emotional brain act. 4. The creation of the modern state and big government preceded progressivism by decades and is an act of modernism. So Stephens's opposition to Statism is IMHO an argument from within modernism. Note: this topic is probably worth more discussion in this community! 5. No evidence here that he is familiar with Ministry for the Future, which uses central bank policy shifts (carbon quantitative easing) to change the rules of the game for the free market...and then let capitalism do the rest. It's naive to believe that capitalism will do this without new rules but also naive to believe that government policies alone do the trick.

This was the money quote for me: “But these trends were overwhelmed by other issues, and did not amount to the kind of decisive rejection of Democratic leftism I favored and suspected would happen. I was wrong. I remain convinced that wokeness is terribly destructive to liberal society, but my obsessions are obviously not everyone’s. And my fault was in not seeing how MAGA extremism — the sheer anti-democratic crazy of the GOP — was seen by independent voters as far more dangerous than the crazy left. I actually agree — see this recent piece, for example — and if I didn’t live in a super-blue city, I might have felt differently about my protest vote. But from the broadest perspective, I was simply wrong to emphasize the impact of the far left as much as I have. You’ve told me this many times. I should have listened more, and I will.” This has been my own critique of Andrew’s analysis for the last few years, and I think that his admission, and the results of the election, may well signify a major shift akin to a market-correction: the speculative bubble of what Ross Douthat called the right’s “dreampolitik” just burst. That this happened in the same week of the crypto implosion is symbolically significant. For awhile now, the GOP’s approach to political economy has been constitutionally incapable of dealing with social problems, so they’ve been running on the fumes of culture war. The voters just said enough is enough, rejecting the tacit mantra of Trumpism, a kind of twisted strain of Thatcher: “There is no such thing as reality, just individuals.” As David Brooks put it, it appears that moderate America has decided to build a wall around Trumpistan. Such poetic justice meted out to a movement that was premised on building a wall to keep people out of the country. A movement based on fantasies bent on building a physical wall is now being fenced in by an electoral wall. But a deeper shift seems afoot in the Overton Window: the weakening of “both sides ism.” If the election results indicate that a greater share of independent and moderate voters have developed sufficient nuance to grasp that “there’s bad on both sides, but the right is way worse,” then we are now living in a different political universe.

John O'neill. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I went back & read it and shared it on my feed with my commentary. (www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid035okRxb2ErcQXrgX1KJdLcicTetS5hUtrkYP1ht57j98vZ735...). I'm pleased and cautiously optimistic.

Listening to the Intercept podcast it was suggested that the Democrats might have done better had the New York Dems not worked so hard against their own left in that city, even supporting Republicans against their own. New York was not a positive result for the Democrats. Interesting listening John.

Ditto my comment on your Friedman link. Again, thanks for sharing this.

Rigel Thurston: I had this podcast on deck when I read your post & comments, and as a result, I changed my batting order. I've now completed listening to it. It is a most informative conversation. I was aware of Inglehart & Norris's work (and sorry to learn of Ingelhart's passing), but I'd never read any of it. I've now moved their most recent book up on my list. I will also say that in addition to Steve McIntosh's DEVELOPMENTAL POLITICS, two recent books that I've completed, Tom Nichols's THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE (2021) and William Davies NERVOUS STATES are the two deepest, most comprehensive works I've read so far on the current states of politics (in many nations). Nichols's book really focuses on American politics, while Davies casts a wider net, focusing on the the cultural and sociological forces at play in modernity. (Davies starts with Hobbes and Descartes and moves all the way to modern social media.) It seems that Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism (2019) by Inglehart & Norris may make it onto my select list!

I’m only partway through, but it’s a good interview— refreshing to hear an analysis that doesn’t merely vilify or condescend but seeks to understand and explain.

Thanks, Rigel Thurston! I finally got to this and thought it was excellent. I definitely heard themes of cultural evolution moderated by life conditions.

Rigel beat me to it posting about this podcast. This is worthy of attention, not just for itself, but as a kind of marker for how developmental thinking is starting to edge into the Overton Window. I’ve thought for awhile that Ezra is getting close…he is twisting free of some of the priors of progressivism. I like to think this has something to do with the increasing quotient of philosophers he interviews! The world values survey framework that Pippa is using and developing is, bar none, the framework from social science that is most proximate to an integral/developmental perspective, and the one that has the greatest foothold in higher journalism. That is to say that it’s a conceptual connection we ought to exploit. I’ve seen it popping up in a number of places—David Brooks, Fareed Zakaria. Note how Pippa cautions Ezra against defining the authoritian populists as “right wing”—that is a developmental/vertical insight. The WVS survey scholars have the big three-trad, modern, postmodern—down cold. What they need is for the purple/red waves to be filled in. Ezra asks: “what would a post-post-materialist left look like?” YES! Realize what he basically said: what would a post-progressive left look like? But also NO! A post-post-materialist perspective is not “left”, or rather, such a perspective would have left and right wings.

This is really good Amiel Handelsman! I haven’t read his books yet, but I have greatly appreciated Snyder’s writing and speaking. And I loved reading your thoughts about him. I especially liked these bits: I especially liked these bits: “What is Snyder doing here? Yes, he’s commenting on public events. But that’s not all. He’s also speaking directly to you and me about how we interpret these events — how we read the news, listen to others, and make sense of the moment. He wants us to notice that we aren’t objective observers, rationally taking in the world “out there.” Instead, we are helping create the world by actively interpreting it.” “‘For all of his personal attachment to his odd ideas about Ukraine, I take it that he is more attached to power.’ Here Snyder is constructing a theory of how the war might end. In this regard, he is paving a road that few have dared to tread. Just as even the most hardened observers didn’t envision the war starting, it now seems that few can imagine it ending. But this is the advantage of being a historian. You have studied how things start and end. You see patterns. This gives you enough distance from prevailing media narratives to see a possibility that others don’t or can’t.” I love what you are highlighting in his work, and while he offers some incredible work in his particular niche, I’m happy to say I have found some other historians and journalists with similar big picture perspectives and insightful analytical approaches. One unconventional example is the hip hop artist Propaganda and his podcast Hood Politics. His focus on the show is geo-politics broadly, and he cleverly uses hood culture and gang power struggles and behavior as a lens for understanding national and global conflicts. He’s also funny and entertaining! I definitely recommend a listen. The other place I frequently hear Snyder-esque analysis is on the Slate Political Gabfest. John Dickerson is one of the hosts and often brings a larger perspective with a longer view of time to the discussions, and offers good insight about what politicians might really be angling for beyond what they present at the surface. They also have fantastic guests sometimes like Anne Applebaum.

Thanks so much Amiel! Have been noticing my own regression (fallback) as I've been immersing in the election and the war for the past couple of months. Wonderful to read this! Just a couple of points: I think that both the Obama and Biden elections seemed to interrupt the pattern you describe since 911-- and the disappointment that it has not been sufficient to make a large enough dent in the Universe--has fueled a lot of the fallback into the socialized mind.. I think it would be easy to interject that point (if you agree) in this paragraph: "This assumption, of course, didn’t last long. September 11, 2001 was a bellwether event. Then a war of choice in Iraq fought on what turned out to be false pretenses. The flooding of New Orleans. The Great Recession. The election of 2016. The west coast burning from wildfires. A worldwide pandemic. " Just one more thought: Hubl, van der Kolk and other trauma specialists speak specifically about the lack of vision/imagination as a symptom of trauma. I know that I have felt deep old WWII trauma since the Ukraine war...part of my own fallback and I think that is true for many of us collectively. I believe it's this undergirding trauma/lack of imagination that is leading to the fallback of the midterms in the US (along w not being able to imagine the end of Putin's war). Thank you for the expansion!

Excellent!

Beautiful piece, Amiel. I love how you weave developmental theory in, drawing attention to how we have choice over the way we interpret what's going on in Ukraine. There's so much real power in that, and it's such an important thing to see! The challenge that I grapple with is how to help people see this and let go of their addiction to the typical "drama triangle" way of interpreting things. As for how we interpret Putin's words, I have the sense that there's much that may be difficult for us to understand about Russian culture and its unusual ways of negotiating power and trust. My other half is a wonderful Russian woman and it has taken me 6+ years to gradually figure out how her words don't mean what my Canadian-American brain likes to interpret that they do! 😜