We are under the misconception that we are all playing a zero-sum game. You are either Left of Right, rich or poor, devout or atheist, moral or amoral, genius or ignoramus, socialist or capitalist. The list could continue almost indefinitely. We have been conditioned to put labels on ourselves and others. It serves no purpose other than to further empower those that have influence on us. To expect a country of 330ish million people to fit neatly into a simple ‘this or that’ category doesn’t make much sense. It seems quite unrealistic when one takes a moment to really examine it critically.
This is particularly dangerous in the arena of politics. Not only because of the influence-machines the parties have working for them, but because it is selling us the idea that if we like a little of what someone is selling then we have to buy the whole ideology. If you want to be considered a Conservative then you must accept every ounce of Kool-aid in that cup. If you are a fiscal conservative then you need to be on board for their social agenda as well.
The same is true on the Left. If you want to be considered Woke then you must assume that the root of every problem in America is systemic racism. Racism is very real and still pervasive in many aspects of American society. Some of our problems, perhaps most, stem from racism, but not all of them. Eliminating racism and forming a more sympathetic and egalitarian society is something we should strive for, but simply eliminating racism is not a silver bullet to solve all societal problems.
Nuance is a word I’ll be using a lot in my writing. It is a great word for our time because our era is very complex and getting more so each moment. I’ll be as brief as possible in explaining why our present is much different than our past, and why nuanced and rapid approaches to our problems are necessary.
The past two decades have brought about advancements in technology the likes that we have never previously seen. Not only have new products come out at a rapid pace, but a totally new interaction with those products has emerged. Since the post-WWII era we have seen an unprecedented time of innovation in consumer goods. It started with things that created more convenience and time like the washing machine and lawnmower. From there we created things to occupy that extra leisure time – think the widespread adoption of the television set and telephone all the way to the speedboat.
During that time we were lulled into the notion that all technology was good. Innovation that created convenience and connectedness was by nature good for the individual and for the collective. How could less labor and more leisure not be? The products of the past decade or two are vastly different in that they are two-way products. Until recently you only watched the television, the television did not watch you. Now with smart TVs and home devices that is no longer true. The washing machine is very different than Twitter.
We need to find ways of navigating this new landscape and the first step in doing so must be to have a conversation about the nuances of our ideas and break free from the one-size-fits-all approach to our worldview and civil discourse. This complex and nuanced frontier requires us to understand the players involved and the role we play.
Some have theorized that a democratic society is divided into three factions: the rule-making elite, those that implement the wishes of the elite, and the rest of us. If you are reading this you are in the last one, like almost all of us. In our society the elite are the extremely wealthy, the second tier are the politicians and justiciary, and the third are the people that have neither great monetary or political power.
If you question this theory and believe the people are really in charge because we are able to vote for our representatives then let’s take a quick look at that process. We get a choice of essentially two candidates that have been preselected by the established elites. This is maybe even more true in modern times as certain laws and SCOTUS decisions of the past 20 years, i.e. Citizens United, have made tracking and limiting political contributions almost impossible. It is no secret today that the candidate with the most financial resources has the best chance of being elected. Those resources come from the elite along with their agenda and expectations. For those that think government is totally corrupt, where do you think the money that is corrupting it is coming from?
Even if a person of high ethics and little money is able to win an election then they are in a relatively low position of political power. Gaining real power requires them to ‘play ball’ with the political establishment leaders that likely owe their lofty position to the powerful elite. This isn’t to say that new ideas can’t get to the point where they could affect real change, but it is difficult and unlikely.
Perhaps this slow as molasses process worked in the past when culture, tech, and innovation moved slowly. Today we need a governing body and an engaged citizenry that can at least attempt to keep up with the pace of change. This requires new members of the Legislature to have a path to having their ideas heard and not buried by elder members. When the leadership of one party is mostly people in their 60s-80s and the leadership of the other is mostly white middle-aged men then we aren’t getting a legislative body, at the leadership level anyway, that actually resembles the people it’s representing.
The other way that we can start to have new ideas heard is to have the citizens demand it. This can come in the form of writing, calling, or meeting with our representatives en masse to voice our concerns. Or we can vote out the representatives that aren’t reasonably responding with the haste and efficacy that our modern issues require. I know that’s all a bit cliche and is accompanied by justified eye-rolls, but the peaceful protests of the last few years have provided only a mild amount of actual legislative effectiveness. They inspired conversations and some small, and pandering, legislation but little in the way of real change.
We risk being left behind. Not only as a nation, but also as individuals. The lack of nuanced understanding of complex issues along with sluggish collective action will only lead to a further consolidation of wealth and resources into the hands of a small few. It will then almost assuredly lead to a larger amount of disengaged citizens that feel their voice is meaningless. We can see firsthand with recent events how people react when they feel their voices aren’t heard and their concerns not respected. This is what has lead to Trumpism and the rise of socialist sentiments in the past half decade or so.
In the past the success of entrepreneurs usually meant the success of the many. They needed large swaths of people to man their factories, run their distribution networks, or implement their visions. Their existence and ambition had a greater benefit to the whole. Today the large tech companies – Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple – are able to amass their wealth with a relatively small workforce, and their overall contribution to society is still to be seen. It all started out looking promising and positive, but as of late they’ve taken a turn in the other direction.
The most traditional of these would be Amazon as they sell and deliver physical consumer goods. Unfortunately they have a net negative when it comes to job growth. They may be creating jobs in warehouse workers and delivery drivers, but the last statistic I saw is that for every job they create they eliminate five in the retail sector. This is to say nothing of the incentive model for AI development in their distribution network. The likely implementation of largely autonomous warehouses and delivery vehicles is advancing everyday.
The above paragraph alone represents a number of potential problems – from ‘what is the roll of government in regulating autonomous vehicles,’ to ‘what system can we use to allocate resources if most jobs are done by intelligent machines?’ That is a sliver of what is on the horizon at the current moment. If you think those aren’t things we should be thinking about then I think you need to change where you are getting your information. Once a threshold has been breached by AI development and implementation it may be too late to ensure it is used to improve our society. It will add convenience for some and make a very few immensely wealthy, but it also may impoverish huge portions of the population.
This isn’t a piece to warn about the dangers of big tech – one of those pieces is likely coming. But the increasing domination of our world by big tech and the slow will to understand it and act on it by government and our citizenry at-large points to the overarching premise of this piece. We are living in an increasingly complex world that we collectively know little about. We must be aware that it is in the best interest of a few institutions and people to keep us distracted or ignorant. Most importantly we must search out sources of information that are novel and nuanced.
I’m not saying that one can’t or shouldn’t hold certain beliefs, but don’t tie that belief to everything else a powerful political party, media outlet, or other institution is trying to push. You can be pro-life or a fiscal conservative and still believe in Medicare4All. You can be a staunch supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment without being a socialist. You can believe in the need for a strong social safety net and still understand how financial incentives spur innovation. One can recognize the greed of our healthcare, big tech, financial, and fossil fuel industries, and call for reform and regulation while still believing that an ethical market economy is the best way to allocate resources. Again, this list can continue almost infinitely.
Bias exists within every news organization. If any such media outlet tells you how ‘unbiased’ they are then the opposite is likely true. While at school for journalism there was a saying we learned about the news. It goes, ‘the news doesn’t tell you what to think, but does tell you what to think about.’ As if editorial decisions to run certain stories over others doesn’t already provide enough cover for nefarious objectives, one could argue that ‘news’ outlets today actually do tell their viewers what to think. The need to fill a full day with content has resulted in opinion and commentary being packaged as news.
The 24-hour news cycle created by the cable news stations has bled throughout our culture. Every newspaper and local news station now has to conform to the system of constant updating and engagement created by the revolution in 24-hour news. Though that phenomena started with CNN around the first Gulf War, it has grown and been refined over the subsequent years into the polarizing machine it is today.
There are a lot of moving pieces in our current society. There are a lot of people and organizations vying for our attention, and the tactics to get that attention are not in the best interest of the individual or the collective. Our media diets must be as varied as our actual diets. Living solely on cheese puffs and candy bars results in an unhealthy body just as relying solely on sensationalism and outrage media only results in a narrow understanding of our world and its issues – or an unhealthy mind.
A nuanced approach by as many engaged and civil citizens as possible is our way forward. This means an openness to new ideas and a willingness to accept hard truths that don’t mess with our already existing, and likely narrow, view of the current world. This is as true on the Left as it is on the Right – and the designation of left and right has grown out of just politics and is getting dangerously close to cultural distinctions.
We’ve got a pretty good thing going in America. Despite the recent unrest and lack of leadership, we have the possibility to do great things for our citizens. There are many issues that need addressed and many more on the horizon, and I believe progress is not only necessary but possible. I’m not saying the administration about to take power will be the one to take serious reformative action. I do believe there is a possibility that we are on the precipice of real societal change.
It will be a long and arduous process. The only way to navigate the upcoming landscape is through a nuanced understanding of our problems. The only way to solve those problems is by wading through a diverse and nuanced set of solutions, some of which we may have aversion to. We need to avoid the simple answers provided by the institutions that have something to gain by keeping our attention. Beware those that tell you only what you want to hear, and detach your identity from the ideologies of political parties, media outlets, social movements, and other powerful organizations.
Times seem dire and with so much to do we must realize that we can either be hopeful or nihilistic. Being hopeful can seem naive and leave us vulnerable to being seen as foolish. Unfortunately we must get comfortable with some level of discomfort. Getting cozy in comfortable spaces is what has led to our current state of cognitive dissonance. Nihilism can be comfortable, but is useless. Hope requires toil and difficult conversation, but the alternative is just giving up.
We’ve never been a nation of quitters. We can live up to the American ideal of being capable of doing anything as opposed to just talking about being able to do anything. It requires not adhering to self-imposed labels and questioning our own thinking. It will mean we have to deny the easily accessible and largely uniform viewpoints of those in popular media and form our own opinions that may even at times seem contrary to our other existing beliefs. We must be open, and remain open, to the changing landscapes, to new information, and to the possibility that we don’t know as much as we think we do.
Thanks for reading.
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