Too Busy? Maybe You Need Some Awe

Cultivating Awe, part 1

Awe doesn't magically create more time. It just feels like it does.

Do you feel "time-starved"? It seems a feature of contemporary life: busy-ness, busy-ness, busy-ness. Even the term, the concept, “time-starved,” is a creation of the last couple decades. A generation ago, the notion of “time-starved” would have been novel.

People are, increasingly, reporting they are time-starved.

“A December Gallup poll found that 61 percent of working Americans said they did not have enough time to do the things they wanted to do. Some of us feel this more acutely than others: A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that 9 in 10 working mothers said they felt rushed all or some of the time.” (Laura Vanderkam, NYTimes, 2016 May 13)

But the busy-ness of our lives has two components. One component is how many hours you are actually productively working or commuting – including necessary household chores. The other component is how busy you feel.

How attached are you to your story of how busy you are? Professionals tend to overestimate work hours. We

“remember our busiest weeks as typical. This is partly because negative experiences stand out in the mind more than positive ones, and partly because we all like to see ourselves as hard-working. One study . . . found that people estimating 75-plus hour workweeks were off, on average, by about 25 hours.”

Moreover, while reports of being time-starved have been increasing, the overall time that Americans spend watching TV or streaming video has not been going down. Adults aged 25-49 average about 30 hours a week watching TV or video. Those over 50 average even more. Which raises the question: are we really as busy as we feel?

Laura Vanderkam, an author with a busy speaking schedule and a mother of four children under the age of eight,

"logged on a spreadsheet in half-hour blocks every one of the 8,784 hours that make up a leap year. I didn’t discover a way to add an extra hour to every day, but I did learn that the stories I told myself about where my time went weren’t always true. The hour-by-hour rhythm of my life was not quite as hectic as I’d thought."

Certainly, there were some times that really were frenetically busy.

“If I wanted to construct a narrative of craziness, the sort professional women in particular tell one another as we compete in the Misery Olympics, I had moments that would qualify. I pumped breast milk in Amtrak bathrooms. I was up from 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. with the baby one night before getting on an early flight to Tampa, Fla., where I was giving a speech. I logged hours doing laundry — sheets, blankets, pillows — as a brutal stomach bug worked its way through the gastrointestinal tracts of all four children. To catch up, I worked late at night. I worked on weekends. I worked on vacations. These data points exist, but there was plenty of evidence of a calmer life. I got eight massages. I went for long weekend runs (constituting some of the 232.75 hours I spent exercising). I went out to dinner with friends. I spent evenings after the kids went to bed sitting out on the porch, reading fashion or gossip magazines. (My reading total: 327 hours flat. It could have been War and Peace. It wasn’t.)” (Laura Vanderkam, NYTimes, 2016 May 13)

Feeling time-starved extracts a toll on health and well-being. Is there a way to do just as much but feel less stressed, hectic, frenetic?

Yes. There is.

Experiences of awe increase your perception of how much time you have.

Awe experiences also increases your orientation toward compassion, which is a crucial indicator of your own well-being. Across three different experiments, researchers found that jaw-dropping moments made participants feel like they had more time available and made them more patient, less materialistic, and more willing to volunteer time to help others.

"The researchers found that the effects that awe has on decision-making and well-being can be explained by awe’s ability to actually change our subjective experience of time by slowing it down. Experiences of awe help to bring us into the present moment which, in turn, adjusts our perception of time, influences our decisions, and makes life feel more satisfying than it would otherwise.” (Melanie Rudd, psychologicalscience.org, 2012 Jul 19)

One of the measures they use is the box of pencils drop. An experimenter pretends to accidentally drop a box of pencils. Almost every subject will help pick up the pencils -- but are they merely going through the motions of helping because there’s social pressure not to just stand there? With the pencil-drop test, experimenters measure how many pencils the subject picks up.

In studies of how money effects people, researchers used the pencil drop test and found that if people had been answering questions about money, or were just sitting near a stack of Monopoly money, they pick up fewer pencils. Just the thought of money makes people self-centered and less compassionate. But when people have been exposed to something awe-inspiring, they pick up a lot more pencils than the control group.

Awe is good for you. Your awe is also good for the people around you.

* * *
This is part 1 of 3 of "Cultivating Awe"
See also
Part 2: In Praise of Being Temporarily Off-Kilter
Part 3: In Praise of Not Knowing

Simultaneous Experience of Opposites

Why is There Awe? part 3

Psychologists say awe is a form of self-transcendence. You transcend, step outside of your usual sense of yourself. The boundaries between yourself and others blurs.

Neurologically, what’s happening is decreased activity in the brain’s parietal lobe. The parietal lobe contributes to our spatial sense of self and orients us in the physical world. And that in itself is kind of awesome. We tend to think that the sense of “me,” and the difference between “me” and other is just a feature of reality, but, no, there’s a particular part of your brain whose job it is to create that sense – to generate the useful illusion that there is a distinct “me,” spatially located “here.” When that parietal lobe calms down a bit, the illusion of self is a little less robust, and we see through it to oneness and connectedness.

Relatedly, the autonomic nervous system is gearing up when awe happens. The autonomic nervous system has some circuitry for calming us down, and it also has some circuitry for arousing us for fight or flight. Normally, the autonomic nervous system is either generating one or the other -- calmness or arousal -- one side comes on, and the other side shuts down. You can also be somewhere in between: not particularly calm, but not particularly aroused either. But experiences of awe involve both heightened calmness and heightened arousal at the same time.

Think about when you’ve experienced awe, didn’t it seem both exciting and calming at the same time? It’s extraordinary.

There’s also another mix of simultaneous opposites: a sense of mystery and unknowability, with the sense of knowing and insight. It feels like seeing something, at last, clearly – while at the same time having a sense of impenetrable, profound mystery. Paul Piff, psychology professor, says, “An awe-inspiring thing can be literally large or just conceptually large, but in either case your current understanding or frame of reference can’t accommodate it.” We’re like the baby going into a tunnel – nothing in our past experience has prepared us for it. Awe is a connection to something vast and mysterious – something impressive and powerful.

If you gaze into the sky on a clear rural night – or stand beneath an impressively large tree staring up at it -- you can get a sense of wonder almost right away. If you keep gazing, relaxing your shell, you might break into awe.

Billions of stars, balls of fire bigger than imagination, yet farther away than you can conceive. Billions of plant cells photosynthesizing, and carrying sap and making wood. There’s a sense of power in that vastness – and mystery. Vast, mysterious, powerful – just what our ancestors (and many today) call God.

The feeling of awe, studies show, appears to increase people’s feeling of connectedness and willingness to help others. People are more likely to behave altruistically after an experience of awe. One 2012 study found that awe had a social bonding effect that included reducing impatience and causing “people to perceive that they had more time available.”

Events that induce awe are among the fastest and most powerful drivers of personal change and growth. “Awe,” says psychologist Robert Leahy, “is the opposite of rumination.” Awe

“clears away inner turmoil with a wave of outer immensity. . . . Being in awe is losing yourself in something or someone else. The anxious person’s sense that ‘it’s all about me; I must control my situation’ disappears.”

Awe experiences teach that “it’s not about you.”

Confronted with grandness, we feel small – but not small as in ashamed or humiliated. Small yet connected to something much bigger – which makes us big -- and small at the same time.

Subjects who saw an awe-inspiring video were more generous than those who watched a humorous video, and they behaved more ethically in lab experiments. They helped the study’s investigator pick up more pens that were “accidentally” dropped, and they showed less of a sense of entitlement. Some of the subjects watched a video showing droplets of colored water “colliding with a bowl of milk” in super-slow motion. These subjects then exhibited higher pro-social behavior.

Other subjects watched awe-inspiring videos of destructive forces with potential to wreak harm: tornadoes and volcanoes. These subjects also exhibited the pro-social behavior. In another study, subjects were taken to the tallest hardwood grove in North America and were asked to look up at the eucalyptus trees, some exceeding 200 feet, for one minute. The control group went to a more urban area and looked up at a plain, tall building for one minute. Sure enough, the tree-gazers felt more awe and were happier precisely because of what they felt. They also acted more generously in a lab test and reported feeling less entitled than the building-gawkers.

There wouldn’t seem to be much fear mixed in with the sensation of gazing up at trees. But it is a milder form of something that pulls you out of yourself – something that, in more intense versions, would get scary.

In any case, it seems to be good for you.

* * *
This is part 3 of 3 of "Why Is There Awe?"
See also
Part 1: Awe is Scary Wonder
Part 2: What Evokes Awe?

What Evokes Awe?

Why Is There Awe, part 2

What evokes awe? Well, for starters, big things. Vastness seems to be a key component: the Grand Canyon; a starry sky on a clear night miles from city lights.

Psychologist Frank White, back in 1987, identified what he called the Overview Effect. It’s a shift in awareness reported by some astronauts and cosmonauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from orbit or from the lunar surface. White’s research found that many of the astronauts had undergone “truly transformative experiences including senses of wonder and awe, unity with nature, transcendence and universal brotherhood.”

One NASA astronaut said:

“It’s hard to explain how amazing and magical this experience is. First of all, there’s the astounding beauty and diversity of the planet itself, scrolling across your view at what appears to be a smooth, stately pace . . . I’m happy to report that no amount of prior study or training can fully prepare anybody for the awe and wonder this inspires.”

German cosmonaut Sigmund Jahn added:

“Before I flew I was already aware how small and vulnerable our planet is; but only when I saw it from space, in all its ineffable beauty and fragility, did I realize that humankind’s most urgent task is to cherish and preserve it for future generations.”

The experience showed them “it’s not about me,” got them out of the ego-self, connected them to a bigger reality.

There was both perceptual vastness, or being confronted with something of striking physical magnitude. And there was also conceptual vastness, “which is like a mind-blowing idea,” he says. If we just focus on imagining that, our Earth, in a vast sea of black, gently floating by, we can begin to approximate the sense of awe. For scientists, conceptual vastness alone can suffice. There’s a real awe that can come even when they aren’t confronted with immediate sensory perceptual vastness.

Michio Kaku is now a theoretical physicist and science writer. He tells about how when he was eight years old at school his teacher announced a great scientist, Albert Einstein, had died. She showed the class a photo of Einstein at his desk. She pointed to his unfinished manuscript in the picture. Young Michio found himself wanting to have a crack at it.

At eight-years-old, there’s so much of the world that seems unfathomable. At that age, he didn’t yet know much physics. But just the idea that this world could be known in this way, described on paper with the formulas of physics, gave him an experience of awe – an experience that has driven his career, and continues, he says, to be “the well from which I draw water when I’m tired and need refreshment.”

Michio Kaku went on to become one of the originators of string field theory. He says:

“All your selfish little concerns mean nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. Awe gives you an existential shock. You realize that you are hardwired to be a little selfish, but you are also dependent on something bigger than yourself. We look at the stars and think, ‘My problems are so trivial compared to the majesty of the night sky.’”

There’s awe in science. Is there awe in music? Erika Strand has sung in choirs since she was 12. Her college choir performed of Verdi’s Requiem. She says,

“Everything just came together and clicked. It starts with the Day of Wrath. Verdi is a sinner, and he’s terrified because it’s Judgment Day. The feeling of fear we conjured was so powerful. The music united all of us with the audience -- we all have fears and regret not having been the person we wanted to be -- as the piece expresses something so human.”

Erika Strand’s choir director used to tell his singers that they needed to continually adjust themselves to be perfectly in tune and balanced with each other.

“If the choir is a bit flat, you have to make yourself a little flat. If everyone is behind, you have to join them by compromising your pace. If your voice sticks out, even if it’s pretty, the whole thing is ruined.”

When the Requiem was over, no one had to say anything — everyone knew they had escaped the mundane and achieved transcendence. “Moments like that give life meaning,” she says.

But why does this happen? Why were we built to be animals that experience this thing called awe? I’m having some wonderment about awe.

One theory is that awe reinforced social hierarchies. Low-status individuals felt awe in presence of high-status individuals, which helped signal that they understood their place. The high-status person was big, and had to be adapted to – accommodated. Later, this primordial awe generalized into a response to anything that was vast and required accommodation. So now grand vistas, hurricanes, the Hoover Dam, Beethoven’s 9th symphony, or the experience of understanding a grand scientific theory can evoke awe.

But why would primordial awe have generalized in this way? We don’t know – except that sometimes traits do generalize. When you face a situation that cannot be assimilated by current knowledge structures, you may need to have your attention seized and step outside of your normal way of thinking – and that’s just what experiencing awe is.

* * *
This is part 2 of 3 of "Why Is There Awe?"
See also
Part 1: Awe Is Scary Wonder
Part 3: Simultaneous Experience of Opposites

A Thanksgiving Reflection

Perhaps the year 2020 has been on your mind of late -- because we SO enjoyed the presidential campaign and can't wait to spend another 18 months going through that! The year 2020 is on my mind today for a different reason. 2020 will mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the ship “Mayflower” in the region now known as New England.

Native American tribal leaders, human rights advocates, environmental justice advocates, and others have expressed concern about the way colonization may be celebrated.

As Unitarian Universalists, our heritage is particularly enmeshed with this issue. Several New England churches established during the 1600s continue today as Unitarian Universalist congregations, and Unitarian Universalists have had a role in developing this holiday known as “the American Thanksgiving Day.” And we are committed to peace and justice for all the world’s people.

Taking note of all this, the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly last June in Columbus, OH, adopted a resolution encouraging “all Unitarian Universalists to enter a time of education, careful reflection, and healing, during the years 2016-2021.” (see the full resolution: CLICK HERE; for more on the UU role in the Thanksgiving holiday: CLICK HERE.) The run-up to the quadricentennial of the Plymouth Rock landing is a particularly apt time to give special attention to the suffering, indignity, and loss that native peoples have suffered in the last 400 years.

As we seek to build a more just future, a more beloved and beloving community, we must be mindful of the past we share with others. To prepare for the future, we must make peace with our past – and better understand the people and the environment of the 1600s. The story of the Radical Reformation and the religious Dissenters and Separatists of the 1600s is part of our Unitarian Universalist story, and their influence is still with us. The story of indigenous peoples, including the Wampanoag Tribal Nation of Mashpee, Massachusetts, who first met the Pilgrims, and the story of their spiritual wisdom also needs our honor and respect. (Here's a start: CLICK HERE.)

The resolution asked for “all UU congregations across the United States of America to enter into dialogue with the local Native People in their areas about the Thanksgiving holiday and its history.” Here at Community UU in White Plains, NY, we have begun steps to connect with Lenape in our area, to learn from them their perspective and experience and how that can better inform our understanding of this Thanksgiving holiday.

Truth and reconciliation for all Americans, including those who were here before it was called America, requires this dialog, grounded for us in our Unitarian Universalist recognition that we are part of an interdependent web of all existence.

And so we celebrate harvest – the bounty of the earth that sustains us. Most of us grew up with a romanticized picture of the first Thanksgiving, and that’s not an altogether bad thing. We can correct for the inaccuracies of how we have recounted the past while holding on to the vision of cooperation and good will across cultural difference. The past wasn't really like the picture we learned as children of intercultural harmony between the Pilgrims and Native Americans at the First Thanksgiving. That picture of the past is a fantasy. Perhaps the future can make it a reality.

The creation of Thanksgiving involved influences from Native American people, influences from colonist Pilgrims, influences from the Jewish Sukkot festival -- and others. The meaning of Thanksgiving continues to be shaped by the encounter of people of different cultures. It takes all of us -- those who can trace their ancestry to the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims of 1620, those whose ancestors lived in this part of the world for many centuries before 1620, and those who arrived here, with or without documentation, from foreign shores just in the last few years, and everybody in-between. It takes first-generation Americans, 2nd-generation Americans, 16th-generation, and 160th-generation Americans to embody what it means to be American and to be thankful together.

In our harvest celebration of cornbread and cider, let us be reminded of the vision of radical hospitality, where we all have a seat at the welcome table.

Awe is Scary Wonder

Why Is There Awe? part 1

Rosh Hashanah is called "the days of awe." It's also called "the days of repentance." It's interesting that awe and repentance are combined in this way. What’s the connection, you think? How do awe and repentance connect? You’ve got 10 days to reflect on that.

One connection is that both awe and repentance involve setting aside our ego defenses, getting out of own way. They remind us, “it’s not about me.” This message is always challenging. It comes to us this Rosh Hashanah in the midst of the special challenges of a Presidential election. The candidates are trying as hard as they can to say “it is all about me.” And despite ourselves we are apt get pulled in to that style of thinking.

But it’s not about me, or you, or them.

Yes, we need our ego defenses. We also need to see how control is an illusion – and let something bigger – something wider or higher or deeper – take control. Remember again that the self that dreams itself to be in control is not separate, and therefore has nothing to control.

In this time for turning, we confront the paradoxical truth that we have the ability to change – that turning does not come easily – that unless we turn we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways – while at the same time recognizing that we can’t make the turning happen.

Our ego selves cannot turn us. They can, at best, conspire with the greater forces of friendship and family, of stars and trees and nature, of all our relationship – for in the end there is no self other than a web of relationship. Which might be called God – and by whose grace we might yet turn. So today, as we begin the Days of Awe, I want to reflect with you on how Awe turns us, gets us out of our way, fills us up with a spirit not of our own making, reveals to you the truth that it’s not about you.

One way to get a good picture of awe: next time you’re on Youtube, try searching “baby in tunnel.” You’ll see small children riding their car seats as the car enters a tunnel. Their faces show surprise and confusion – wonderment mixed with fear – in other words, awe. Their current understanding – their frame of reference – can’t accommodate this new experience. For them, it’s a transformative experience. Those videos are a great illustration of awe.



There’s a lot of overlap with “wonder” – that feeling of surprise and admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. Awe is like wonder, but with some scariness mixed in. “Shock and awe,” for example, is a military strategy of overwhelming force to stun and scare the enemy into inability to fight. The Hebrew Bible mentions awe a number of times – and it’s a mixture of great reverence and fear.

Awe is scary wonder.

Psalm 119 says “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments” (NRSV). Other translations give “stand in awe” or “tremble in awe” in place of “am afraid.” Have you felt that? Profound wonder mixed with fear? As I wrote in this month’s issue of “On the Journey”:

When I think back on some of the most significant moments in my life – usually events that were firsts: my first high school debate tournament, first date, first kiss, first job interview, my wedding day, becoming a parent – one thing is clear: I was scared. I was trembling in fear. The body’s fear response, with accompanying adrenaline, is what let me knows: “Hey, there’s something really, really important here.” Fear gets your attention -- and that’s a good thing. The fear I felt made those events so meaningful for me. Those were moments when I understood that something was about to happen that would change my sense of who I was.

Awe is intensified wonder. If the wonder starts to get close to overwhelming, starts to unnerve you, starts to unsettle your unquestioned sense of who you are, putting in question what you took for granted, then there’s some fear that comes with that. That’s what turns wonder into fear. To get to awe, start with wonder and dive in until it spooks you just a little bit.

* * *
This is part 1 of 3 of "Why Is There Awe?"
See also
Part 2: What Evokes Awe?
Part 3: Simultaneous Experience of Opposites

Join the Rebel Alliance

Liberal Entitlement, part 4

"Good People"

Last July, journalist George Saunders published a long essay in The New Yorker reporting on his experiences attending Trump rallies. The piece was titled, “Who Are All These Trump Supporters? At the candidate’s rallies, a new understanding of America Emerges.” What haunted me from that article was the segment in which the phrase "good people" recurred. Saunders wrote:

"Talking to a Trump supporter about Trump’s deportation policy, I’d sometimes bring up Noemi Romero, a sweet, soft-spoken young woman I met in Phoenix. Noemi was brought to the U.S. when she was three, by undocumented parents. A few years ago, she had the idea of applying for legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But the application costs four hundred and sixty-five dollars, money her family didn’t have. Hearing that a local Vietnamese grocery was hiring, she borrowed her mother’s Social Security card and got the job. A few months later, the store was raided. Noemi was arrested, charged with aggravated identity theft and forgery, and taken to jail and held there, within the general prison population, for two months. She was given spoiled milk, and food that, she said, had tiny worms in it. Her lawyer arranged a plea bargain; the charges were reduced to criminal impersonation. This was a good deal, he told her, the best she could hope for. She accepted, not realizing that, as a convicted felon, she would be permanently ineligible for DACA.

"Puente, a local grassroots organization, intervened and saved her from deportation, but she is essentially doomed to a kind of frozen life: can’t work and can’t go to college, although she has lived virtually her whole life in the U.S. and has no reason to go back to Mexico and nowhere to live if she’s sent there.

"I’d ask the Trump supporter, 'What do we do about Noemi?'

"I always found the next moment in our exchange hopeful.

"Is she a good person? the Trump supporter might ask. I couldn’t feel more sorry for her, he might say. That kid is no better or worse than I am and deserves the best God can give her. Or he might say that deportation would have to be done on a case-by-case basis. Or propose some sort of registry—Noemi, having registered, would go back to Mexico and, if all checked out, come right back in. There had to be some kind of rule of law, didn’t there?

"Tellingly, the Trump supporter might confess that she didn’t think Trump really intended to do this mass-deportation thing anyway—it was all just campaign talk. The most extreme supporter might say that, yes, Noemi had to go—he didn’t like it, but ultimately the fault lay with her parents.

"Sometimes I’d mention a Central American family I met in Texas, while reporting another story. In that case, the father and son were documented but the mother and daughters weren’t. Would you, I’d ask, split that family up? Send those girls to a country in which they’d never spent a single day? Well, my Trump-supporting friend might answer, it was complicated, wasn’t it? Were they good people? Yes, I’d say. The father, in spare moments between his three jobs, built a four-bedroom house out of cinder blocks he acquired two or three at a time from Home Depot, working sometimes late into the night. The Trump supporter might, at this point, fall silent, and so might I." (New Yorker, 2016 Jul 11 & 18)

What do we do about Noemi? Is she a good person? the Trump supporter asks. Should the family with father and son documented and mother and daughter undocumented be split up? Were they good people? is the response. Not "is this cruel treatment of any human being?" Not "is this fair or just?" Not even "is this policy good for the US economy?" But "are they us?" For that, of course, is what “good people” means: it means "people who act in ways that make sense to me without any stretching of my sympathetic imagination." The division of the world into "good people" (us) and "bad people" (them) is a tell-tale indicator of the authoritarian attitude. People who are different are dangerous, and dangerous people deserve cruel treatment.

So if you’re needing a story to make sense of what happened, that’s what I got: Reactivity to a changing world has produced rising authoritarian and anti-politics sentiments, which started as ideological rigidity and morphed from ideology to raw identity, accentuating the racism that has always been a part of American culture.

What To Do About It

First, remember that this, too, is just a story. It helps me make sense of things, and it might help you. But no story is ever the whole story. There’s some stuff going on out there that this story will help you see, and other stuff that it could make you blind to. So keep your eyes and your heart open, and be ready to take in other stories. The antidote to identity wars, us versus them, is listening with care and empathy to every story you can.

Second, let’s get over being surprised. I admit, I was. Perhaps our greatest liberal entitlement was the luxury of being shocked. Sure, some people of color, LGBT people, and Muslims were also surprised, but overall, not so shocked as white liberals at the "discovery" that the US harbors a lot of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and bigotry.

Third, as the great labor organizer Joe Hill said on the eve of his execution in 1915: “Don’t mourn. Organize.” Join the rebel alliance. There’s a new Star Wars movie coming out, and, no, we don’t have any cool spaceships to zip around in, but we can take inspiration from the metaphor.

My friend and colleague minister at First Unitarian in Orlando, Florida, Rev. Kathy Schmitz, posted on Friday afternoon:

"Wait and see what he does post-election" they said.
OK, I gave it 48 hours.
So far, far worse than I thought.
"Keep your heart open," they said.
It is.
Wide open.
And fully committed to the rebel alliance.
Hashtag: MightAsWellGetOnTheEnemiesListEarly.

Courtney Parker West posted an open letter:

Dear liberal white people whom I often love:...
I get it. It’s awful. It’s terrifying. It’s devastating. But find yourself a white person and complain to them, then get past your feelings because if you really want to be an ally, we don’t need your posts or your shock or even your tearful apologies, but rather your organizing manpower. People of color have always resisted and you can follow us. You can’t be with her anymore, so be with us.”

You have been called to live into this period of darkness that has been with us for some time. You have been called to the fierce love of resistance, solidarity, and hope.

As we are also mourning the death of Leonard Cohen, I conclude with Cohen's reminder that this fierce

love is not a victory march.
It is a cold and it is a broken hallelujah....
Even though it all went wrong
We stand before the lord of song
With nothing on our tongue but hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.

* * *
This is part 4 of 4 of "Liberal Entitlement"
See also
Part 1: Election Prayer
Part 2: Called Into Darkness
Part 3: The Problem with Anti-Politcs

The Problem with Anti-Politics

Liberal Entitlement, part 3

Another point that has stuck with me was made in a David Brooks column from last February.

"We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship....Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want 'outsiders.'” (NYTimes, 2016 Feb 26)

Politics recognizes that competing perspectives and interests are legitimate, and the messy, interminable process of hashing out compromise and making deals is necessary and, on-balance, is good. No one gets everything they want, but in the long run more people get more of what they most want, and the outcomes result from ongoing dialog among diverse viewpoints – dialog which is a good unto itself, helping us feel that we’re in this together across our differences.

From the anti-politics point of view, there is one right answer, and compromise and deal-making are forms of corruption – departures from ideological purity. Anti-politics says, “Dialog? We don’t need no stinkin’ dialog. The right way to do things is the right way to do things, and any form of compromise is corruption of righteousness. You don’t make deals with the devil – you stand strong for your principles."

The problem with that is that it doesn’t recognize other people. Calling other people the devil is called demonizing them.

We’ve been seeing anti-politics on the rise for 30 years. It’s true that politics is a little distasteful. Compromising and deal making – as in, "I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine" – can easily seem like corruption. But those were the ways that for most of this country’s history legislators of different parties were in conversation and got things done. They recognized the legitimacy of competing perspectives and interests. It required the humility to understand that your side might not be in sole possession of all virtue and truth.

Now our legislators don’t talk across the aisle at all, and little gets done. If you are seen working with the other side, then you are weak, you are caving, and next election you are likely to lose in the primary to someone who promises even greater ideological purity. Our legislatures are now filled with legislators who live in fear of legislating.

The rise of Trump is a continuation of the anti-politics delusion in which standing up for your principles means not taking into consideration any opinion but the one you already have, not considering other viewpoints, not compromising and not making deals. No one else’s interests count.

Anti-politics is political narcissism, and US voters have been demanding more and more narcissism for some time now. Our liberal entitlement has allowed us not to attend as energetically as we could have to the startling trends.

Further, anti-politics brings a declining importance of policy. Standing on principle has devolved from standing on policy principle to just standing for the principle of “us” against “them.” What was once an ideological purity test is now turning into, “We don’t care about your ideology – we just want to know that you are with us against them.” Policy is almost but not quite entirely beside the point. Very little of it gets passed anyway. We are fighting cultural battles and identity wars through political means.

So standing in opposition to Obama was more important for many legislators than noticing that some of what he was proposing was Republican enough so that it could have been proposed by a Republican president – and then they would support it, but what matters is supporting “us,” not the content of the legislation.

The election of 2016 breaks along identity lines rather than ideology lines. As a column on Friday by Mark Schmitt said:

“Consider immigration, the concept that drove both the Tea Party and the Trump campaign. For most of the long campaign, the media thought that it was about immigration policy: comprehensive immigration reform versus border security and deportations. The Republican 'autopsy' from 2012 concluded that Republicans should support immigration reform. But it turns out it was always just about immigrants, as in, people who aren’t like us, not policy.” (NYTimes, 2016 Nov 11)

That’s why so many voters didn’t care that what Trump said was so often clearly and blatantly false. Whether he was lying or not wasn’t the point. What he was saying demonstrated that he was on our side against them.

The dominant middle-class white culture has felt under assault for some time as economic and cultural shifts have brought changes. People who feel under assault start finding authoritarianism more attractive. With authoritarianism comes anti-politics: the feeling that dialog, compromise, and deal-making is what got us into this mess, rather than understanding that political process mitigates the mess. With anti-politics comes the replacement of any policy concern with merely identity concern.

When Trump said, “I’m the least racist person you’ve ever met,” my guess is that he was imagining that racism was about skin color. But skin color is only a marker of a likely different culture. It’s the different culture that isn’t “us,” that Trump supporters don’t like. If black people would only act just like white people, there’d be no problem. For many Clinton-voters, that attitude is the epitome of racism. For many Trump-voters, that attitude is the epitome of not being racist: “If black people would only act just like white people, there’d be no problem. See? That proves we don’t mind that a person is black. We only mind that they don’t act white.”

Of course, African American culture is in part a response to the ongoing legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, housing discrimination and segregation that we are perpetuating to this day, the abandonment of school desegregation that is the current reality. And white culture is a response to the privilege that Africans Americans don't have.

Many Trump supporters don’t see that. They just see, “They’re different.” And from the authoritarian, anti-politics standpoint, different means wrong.

* * *
This is part 3 of 4 of 'Liberal Entitlement"
See also
Part 1: Election Prayer
Part 2: Called Into Darkness
Part 4: Join the Rebel Alliance