The Downward Spiral of Contempt

[honorentheos]

Heard this today on NPR. It seems to tie into many of the discussions that have taken place here as well as apply to others.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/season-11-episode-8/

The current American polarization has been building for a while now. Here’s an example: in the 1960’s, only 42 percent of votes in the U.S. Senate were party-unity votes — that is, votes in which the majority of Republicans opposed the majority of Democrats, or vice versa. By the 2010’s, that number had risen to 63 percent. Here’s some more data to consider: in 1935, the Social Security Act was passed with 90 percent Democratic support and 75 percent Republican support. So — not unanimous, but united. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed with just 60 percent Democratic support but, again, 75 percent Republican. If you look at the major legislation passed in recent years, however, it’s a different story. ObamaCare made it through Congress with zero Republican votes. President Trump’s 2018 tax-reform bill made it through with zero Democratic votes. This political partisanship is clearly echoed in the public. Consider how people think about the media. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 83 percent of Democrats trusted information from national news organizations, along with 70 percent of Republicans. Today, 78 percent of Democrats still trust the major media but Republican trust in just a few years dropped from 70 percent to 35 percent. So, how did we get here? What’s been driving this intense spike in division and partisanship?

...

These news networks, they follow market signals. And those market signals are coming from a whole lot of frustration. And then, of course, the tail starts to wag the dog. So the contempt that actually is serving the markets as an outlet of frustration for the lack of progress that’s going to the margins of society, then actually fires up more contempt and it self-fuels.

DUBNER: Let me be sure I understand, because you’re saying all this frustration comes from us, from the citizenry who feel duly wronged by the big macro events that have ruined our livelihoods. And that feeds into something that politicians then respond to and it creates this even bigger storm. But, you also just told us that most of us don’t want to be involved in that contemptuous partisan cycle. So, you’re saying that we are both victim and villain, we being the citizenry, no?

BROOKS: For sure. And the same thing is true with any addictive cycle, where you want some relief and so you drink and then the homeostasis sets in and so you drink some more and you want the relief, but you hate the process. And so what we’re in is this weird downward spiral of contempt.

On the old board I had a feud with EA over the negative influence of using Twitter for one's news feed. My arguement to him then was he, one of the most intelligent participants on our board, was becoming the poster child for someone whose thinking was becoming bent by the medium into fighting demons to the point he wasn't being rational. From the link -

DUBNER: What do we know about the characteristics of people who are most likely to exhibit contempt or to be the target of contempt? In other words, break down if you can, whatever you can tell me, gender-wise, Republican-Democrat, old-young, anything racially/ethnically, and so on.

BROOKS: So we don’t see racial differences and we don’t see gender differences. And we actually don’t see differences between right and left. What we do see is differences in consumption of media. So the more time you consume political information on social media, the more you’re going to be both a victim and a perpetrator of contempt. The more that you watch cable television, you’re going to be a victim and perpetrator of contempt. For example, answering questions like, “What do you think is the biggest threat to the United States?” The likelihood of you saying it’s a person of the other party is directly related to how much political news that you consume. And I don’t even have to know what political news you consume. It’s funny, but it’s not, right? It’s straight hits off the bottle for people who just can’t handle it.

I highly recommend the podcast. You can, as an alternative, read the transcript of the Arther Brooks interview portion instead, if that's more your thing.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/arthur-brooks/

Key takeaways:

1) Increase Love, or will/act into being the good of others.
2) Vote for politicians who will act FOR you rather than vote against something you oppose.
3) Media diet matters more than just about anything if you want to defrag the matrix.

[Gadianton]

These news networks, they follow market signals. And those market signals are coming from a whole lot of frustration. And then, of course, the tail starts to wag the dog. So the contempt that actually is serving the markets as an outlet of frustration for the lack of progress that’s going to the margins of society, then actually fires up more contempt and it self-fuels.

DUBNER: Let me be sure I understand, because you’re saying all this frustration comes from us, from the citizenry who feel duly wronged by the big macro events that have ruined our livelihoods. And that feeds into something that politicians then respond to and it creates this even bigger storm

I agree with the feedback loop, but I guess where I'm inclined to disagree is on the "macro events and ruined livelihoods -- the parts I've italicized". I might not have experience with the right demographic here. In all the complaints I've heard from my right-wing friends on my walk, I can't point to any material claims of being wronged by society or government or anything, other than random outbursts about the price of gas and blaming it on democrats -- stuff like that. These right-wingers are all relatively wealthy. Their life hardships are thanks to stuff that has nothing to do with politics, you know, unstable family members or medical problems. Even the most unhinged right-winger I know, a friend from my childhood, whose life is torn due to his own mistakes, doesn't have a real political gripe. That friend is a window into the phenomena as he's a dreamer. Very intelligent but disconnected, and fortunate to discover at a young age that real life is actually a dystopian sci-fi novel, which gives him a common bond with others truthers living in the Matrix who can see what nobody else can. It's not a problem with discontented starving children, but discontented spoiled children who have nothing better to do than invent a more interesting world to live in. It's like the ultimate escapism. My more affluent right-wing friends are just a notch or two down from that extreme.

A local church leader who was a big corporate guy used to say that in building a competitive corporate team, nothing motivated like a common enemy. Maybe politics is becoming an extension of football and basketball and my favorite, pro wrestling (maybe not so much now, but during the rise of Rush Limbaugh and conservativism as escapism)?

[Kishkumen]

Very insightful, Dean Robbers. I would say there is a whole lot of vapid LARPing adventures going on on all sides. Watching January 6th documentary the other night, I was stuck by how much of it seemed like posing, the difference between fighting for freedom and playing the role on TV (YouTube) no longer being discernible to practically anyone. I would say the same of Democratic senators kneeling with Kente stoles on in “solidarity” with BLM. Posing, posturing, and bull crap. People are bored so they invent conspiracies and revolutions to break through the ennui of bourgeoise life.

[honorentheos]

I apologize for the lack of context in the quote. That section follows Brooks describing data that showed after big market retractions like the Great Depressing and apparently the Great Recession there is a major uptick in populism. The description in the quoted section was describing the manner by which this uptick in populism feeds political divisiveness.

BROOKS: It’s a perfect Freakonomics question, actually. So there’s an interesting paper from the European Economic Review that was published in 2017 by three German economists that looked at 800 elections over 120 years in 20 advanced economies, including the United States. And what they found was that a financial crisis, which is a two-times-a-century deal — not a regular V-shaped recession, but a financial crisis like what we endured in the ‘30s and what we endured in 2008-2009 — has a very, very strong impact in the following decade on political polarization. Specifically, on average, it causes a 30 percent bump in voter share for populist parties and candidates. This is Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump by the numbers. So we don’t know how to distribute the returns after the economy is coming back, without 80 percent of the returns going to the top 20 percent of the income distribution, which opens the door for political populists to say, “Somebody’s got your stuff, and I’m going to get it back,” whether it’s foreigners, or whether it’s trade, or whether it’s bankers, or whether it’s wealthy people.

DUBNER: You’re saying that the populist sentiment comes from frustration over how the recovery gains are distributed? Because I was assuming it was about blaming the experts and elites for the underlying crisis.

BROOKS: Well, there’s that too. But that generally comes later.



Anyway, the description in the podcast of contempt and it's effects on discourse is really worth, well, something. I hate to say it, Gad, but if contempt is the root problem how is seeing your right wing associates in the light you paint above not contributing to the problem you recognize in their behavior just because you can observe them objectively but not yourself?

[honorentheos]

DUBNER: Let me be sure I understand, because you’re saying all this frustration comes from us, from the citizenry who feel duly wronged by the big macro events that have ruined our livelihoods. And that feeds into something that politicians then respond to and it creates this even bigger storm. But, you also just told us that most of us don’t want to be involved in that contemptuous partisan cycle. So, you’re saying that we are both victim and villain, we being the citizenry, no?

BROOKS: For sure. And the same thing is true with any addictive cycle, where you want some relief and so you drink and then the homeostasis sets in and so you drink some more and you want the relief, but you hate the process. And so what we’re in is this weird downward spiral of contempt.

DUBNER: Tell us what you can about the science of contempt. I’d like to know, first of all, just how empirically it’s been identified as a separate thing from, let’s say, anger.

BROOKS: Anger is a basic negative emotion, the negative emotions are produced vis-a-vis stimuli of your limbic system. It’s kind of your lizard brain. Anger is a hot emotion that says, I care what you think and I want it to change. The problem is when you mix these emotions into complex emotions — so shame and guilt are complex emotions, for example. And contempt is this nasty cocktail of anger plus disgust, which is not a hot emotion anymore. It’s a cold emotion, it says, “You are worthless. And what you said is worthless. You are beneath my regard.” And that’s something that should be reserved for something that’s not human.

[honorentheos]

To make a meaningful point, when we attempt to view our own emotional responses to others and events "objectively" we almost inevitably find justifications that make our thinking, our reactions seem justified.

What struck me about the things Brooks had to say was that they bypass this by simply saying stop doing that and focus on being a positive force. You can always find grounds for holding others in low esteem. You have justifiable hurts, wrongs, and have carried them like a champ so of course you can justify being disgusted and angry. But disgust and anger won't fix the problem, they only contribute to it.

[Res Ipsa]

I think those are very good points, Honor. I read a book about the use and misuse of statistics and how to spot the difference, What was really interesting to me was his first rule, which was something like: if you read a statistic that you react emotionally to, set it aside until you can read it without reacting emotionally. Then start to evaluate it,

in my opinion, if someone provides you with a piece of evidence that produces an emotional reaction, that’s a dead giveaway that your cognitive biases are preventing you from rationally evaluating the evidence. The emotion is a sign that your brain is trying to explain away or find an excuse to reject the information because it doesn’t want to change its map of how the world works. Only when the emotional reaction passes can we rationally evaluate the evidence.

[Gadianton]

I apologize for the lack of context in the quote. That section follows Brooks describing data that showed after big market retractions like the Great Depressing and apparently the Great Recession there is a major uptick in populism. The description in the quoted section was describing the manner by which this uptick in populism feeds political divisiveness.

BROOKS: It’s a perfect Freakonomics question, actually. So there’s an interesting paper from the European Economic Review that was published in 2017 by three German economists that looked at 800 elections over 120 years in 20 advanced economies, including the United States. And what they found was that a financial crisis, which is a two-times-a-century deal — not a regular V-shaped recession, but a financial crisis like what we endured in the ‘30s and what we endured in 2008-2009 — has a very, very strong impact in the following decade on political polarization. Specifically, on average, it causes a 30 percent bump in voter share for populist parties and candidates. This is Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump by the numbers. So we don’t know how to distribute the returns after the economy is coming back, without 80 percent of the returns going to the top 20 percent of the income distribution, which opens the door for political populists to say, “Somebody’s got your stuff, and I’m going to get it back,” whether it’s foreigners, or whether it’s trade, or whether it’s bankers, or whether it’s wealthy people.

DUBNER: You’re saying that the populist sentiment comes from frustration over how the recovery gains are distributed? Because I was assuming it was about blaming the experts and elites for the underlying crisis.

BROOKS: Well, there’s that too. But that generally comes later.



Anyway, the description in the podcast of contempt and it's effects on discourse is really worth, well, something. I hate to say it, Gad, but if contempt is the root problem how is seeing your right wing associates in the light you paint above not contributing to the problem you recognize in their behavior just because you can observe them objectively but not yourself?

I don't think you're wrong to ask the question, but unless a person is Jesus, the assumption is always that pointing out the beam in the other person's eye reveals the mote in your own. If my criticism of somebody else only reveals my own failing that is equally bad, then I'm forbidden from social commentary out of the gate. Perhaps I could salvage my image in the eyes of those who look for fairness by equally criticizing the left. I could invent something and throw it in to make myself look more objective. But I have not had these experiences with anybody from the left and I've not seen this problem from the left in companies I've worked for. I do see other problems. For instance, I worked for companies that are as liberal and progressive as companies can be. I've seen gay executives who are not good people, in my opinion. I've seen orientation and race card played to justify poor performance, and get other employees in trouble. But, that's a different problem. As Trump began his rise, my friends at the company at the time -- I've never talked about these guys, they're in a class of their own -- got vocal about "the wall" and stupid stuff like that, jubilant over Trump's trolling of the status quo. I did not see any any equal antics in the name of Hillary or Bernie from those on the left. Mainly a few eye rolls. Even the once-illegal Hispanic lady who took me to the airport one day on a shuttle couldn't stop talking about Trump; how funny and cool he was. I didn't vote in 2016; I was on the fence. If it weren't for EA, I'd have guessed Trump as the better pick, because I thought out of the two, it was unlikely he could get anything done. My fear was a fanatic politician getting too many things done.

If I'm like my friends, in what way? Let me point out one difference: My criticisms of them are based on things they actually do as real people I know in the real world. It's their evangelism directed toward me, or their antics in my presence. In contrast, their contempt for liberals has nothing to do with actual liberals they encounter in life -- it's about what's circulating in the emails they send each other or what's in the news. Maybe my most extreme right-wing friend has one or two real-life complaints but pretty much nothing. I never hear, "my neighbor who is a liberal said..." or anything like that from them.

But, you could point out contempt is still contempt. And my contempt, pretty much entirely restricted to this forum, is still part of the downward spiral. If the only solution is not to say anything, then I guess I'm guilty of contributing. Okay, you're going to love this question I'm sure: In Nazi Germany, was contempt for the Nazi party an equal part of a downward spiral that mirrored the Nazi's contempt for certain classes of people?

[canpakes]

DUBNER: And contempt is this nasty cocktail of anger plus disgust, which is not a hot emotion anymore. It’s a cold emotion, it says, “You are worthless. And what you said is worthless. You are beneath my regard.” And that’s something that should be reserved for something that’s not human.

There’s the rationalization process for moving to the next step, correct?

We now have plenty of folks across the country that would speak of secession by force, if necessary. That gets easier when one characterizes their political foes as less than human.

[honorentheos]

If the only solution is not to say anything, then I guess I'm guilty of contributing. Okay, you're going to love this question I'm sure: In Nazi Germany, was contempt for the Nazi party an equal part of a downward spiral that mirrored the Nazi's contempt for certain classes of people?

The issue isn't binary - contempt or inaction. That may be the issue with message board discussions where a point is just one dimension of a complex issue.

If contempt is the problem, and inaction isn't the only option available, what would one take from Brooks regarding potential action? I don't know. I pointed out three I found in just a listen to the radio program without having read his writings. Maybe that's a start? He's a conservative free market economist. So, options.

Otherwise, we're back to debating if it is ethical to go out and punch Nazis...and I don't want to live in that world. Not anymore. It's a crappy place.