Emergence as the Happy Horse-Hockey Du Jour
Submitted by escoles on Wed, 2004-09-01 16:05
The Tutor is pessimistic about "emergence":
I think some folks on line are making an Hegelian case, without being Hegelians. They seem to think that the Zeitgeist is smarter than we are, freeing us from personal responsibility. We should all do what we please and emergence or the market, or God, Nature, or evolution will bring order out of choas, netting our errors to a wonderful whole.... I don't believe in emergence as a metaphysical principle. In my 55 years what I have seen emerge is increasingly malignant. What emerges most often in evolution are dead ends, of individuals, communities, species, and soon our planet. If left to itself, the mob will not get any smarter. And what will emerge will be a black ball floating in space.
[Emergence is Volkish Nonsense]
The Tutor finds fuel for his skepticism in the demonstrably poor qualifications of American voters:
Of course, if Converse is correct, and most voters really donâ??t have meaningful political beliefs, even ideological "closeness" is an artifact of survey anxiety, of people's felt need, when they are asked for an opinion, to have one. This absence of "real opinions" is not from lack of brains; it's from lack of interest. "The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field," the economic theorist Joseph Schumpeter wrote, in 1942. "He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking is associative and affective." And [political scientist Morris] Fiorina quotes a passage from the political scientist Robert Putnam: "Most men are not political animals. The world of public affairs is not their world. It is alien to them &endash; possibly benevolent, more probably threatening, but nearly always alien. Most men are not interested in politics. Most do not participate in politics."
[LOUIS MENAND, New Yorker, "THE UNPOLITICAL ANIMAL: How political science understands voters"]
What do we do, then? Do we hand over governance to an elite? And who gets to choose who that is? If Menand is right (and though he tries to end on an optimistic note), we already have. Or, at least, we do it all the time, by basing our "heuristics" on elite opinion, by letting party loyalty stand in for assessing policy.
My own 40 years of experience tell me that Menand's "third theory of democratic politics" is more or less correct: People tend to judge who the "right" candidate is to vote for based on heuristics such as whether he knows how to eat a tamale (Gerry Ford didn't, so he couldn't have understood the needs of hispanics), the kind of phrasing that he uses to make points (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush share the repetetive cadences, the repetetive stressing, the repetetive repetition, of the southern protestant church).
So I'd like to be more optimistic than The Tutor, but I'm not. I still believe that The Cluetrain and the idea of emergent techno-democracy are dangerous libertarian techno-fetishist fantasies entertained by people who ought to know better and who should be making much, much more productive use of their time.
On the flipside, of course, the Cluetrain is very very useful to some other people who would like to keep smart folks asking the wrong questions -- or entertaining unachievable pipe dreams. In that sense, perhaps Cluetrain-think is the opiate of the elite.
Heuristics
... the kind of phraseology he uses (... "economic girly-men"? Why Arnold, how,.. how macho -- *gag* -- and, um, did I miss somewhere how this fits the "compassionate" theme?). I must be displaying heuristic tendencies here...
Rhythm and Modulation
Well, let's admit Ahnold speaks well off the cuff; I think it was a stupid thing to say, but the subtext of his macho (which, fortunately for him, most conservatives just don't grok) is that he truly is one kinky S.O.B. Aside from the manifestations (e.g., assault), I wouldn't normally have a problem with that. Gotta admit he's ten times sharper than Ronald Reagan; after all, the guy read Milton Friedman for fun as a teenager. (Again, I question his taste and priorities, but not his intelligence...)
Now, as for the pacing: Think about it. And compare. The Clinton and Bush techniques are superficially very similar. Interestingly, they both were awkward with the technique at first, but have warmed into it. But the differences in execution are basically the difference between... well, let's be blunt: Black and White.
My non-musical layman's ear hears it as a difference in the amount of modulation. Clinton would modulate tone readily and with facility; Gore does the same when he speaks. When I was listening to Al Sharpton at the DNC, I was struck again: This is the speaking pattern of black preachers.
Bush, by contrast, modulates relatively little. But he uses the same verbal flourishes. They're just ... flatter. Grimmer. More constrained. As though passion is the enemy.
I think it's interesting to contrast the new white southern preacher style to the old white southern politician style. That style was often very fluid and powerful, but it was fluid and powerful in a way that consciously avoided sounding "black", even as many blacks adopted and adapted the style to their own ends. Think of the caricature Foghorn Leghorn, if you must, or rather of Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms. Despicable men, in many regards, but fine speakers. I've read some Huey Long speeches; he had a gift, for sure, but he sure enough did sound white.
Not George Bush. At least, not if you don't hear him. Nor Pat Robertson, nor Jerry Falwell. If you don't hear them. Once you hear them, you know. They have to mark themselves as SAFE, somehow; they do it by controlling their modulation.
Wouldn't want to make the congregation feel threatened, eh?
I still believe that the real classes are economic, as I've always believed it. Casting things in terms of race (though there are real cultural differences that play out roughly along racial lines, for a lot of non-deterministic reasons) is another way of keeping people asking the wrong questions.