The Galli Report: 09.25.20
Transcending the culture wars, Jordan Peterson on marriage and family, and a poignant look at "super tuskers."
Transcending the Culture Wars
A regular feature of this newsletter, and others of its kind, is to point to crazy/alarming/strange views on the left or right, and then comment on them. But even if I try to offer mediating commentary, pointing what might be right about the extreme view, I’m still stuck in the culture war. So more and more I’m trying to find articles that step outside the ring as I try to understand not the opponents but the phenomenon of the war itself. That’s more or less the theme of this issue of this edition.
Let’s begin with a cogent argument by Andrew Sullivan’s “We Are All Algorithms Now: Is that what's really destroying the legitimacy of our democracy?”
The new Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, is … a true must-watch…. The doc effectively shows how the information system necessary for democratic deliberation has, in effect, been jerry-rigged in the last decade to prevent any reasoning at all. It’s all about the feels, and the irrationality, and the moment, which is why Trump is so perfectly attuned to his time. And what’s smart about the documentary is that it shows no evil genius behind this unspooling, no sinister plot deliberately to destroy our system of government. One of the more basic motives in American life — making money — is all you now need, the documentary shows, to detonate American democracy at its foundation.
(By the way, when I link to an article that seems to require a subscribtion to read, I suggest you type the title into Google and follow the link. Many of the sites I subscribe to allow visitors to read a few articles before insisting on a subscription. That being said, as a former journalist, I encourage GR readers to subscribe to outlets they find informative. Good information and analysis is not free, or can’t be free forever. One of the most basic things you can do to help democracy flourish is to pay for good journalism.)
The Culture Wars Ruin Everything. We Need Conscientious Objectors argues that we people are much more interesting than the labels we use to sum them up—liberal, conservative, race activist, Trump devotee, antifa, etc.
This is how the culture wars function — on the fictitious premise that the world consists entirely of a few distinct, self-contained tribes with nothing to say to one another. We know, by now, how damaging these battles have been not only psychologically — effectively stunting us by encouraging us to trim off all the complex and interesting aspects of our characters to fit within the tidy boundaries of some tribal stencil — but to democratic society more generally: to be a mature adult and citizen, after all, requires at a minimum the basic acknowledgement that there are nuances and contradictions within us all. But we’re also finally coming to recognize — I hope — a slightly simpler problem: that the culture wars have made life, well, mind-numbingly dull.
A refreshing counter example is the friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. Much has been written about two people who shared very little politically. As Tod Worner at Word on Fire noted at the beginning of a wonderful description of their friendship:
Weren’t they compromising their principles by fraternizing with the enemy? Not according to them. Scalia, when asked about such a friendship, answered, “If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake.” He would also say with a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous grin, “She likes opera, and she’s a very nice person. What’s not to like? Except her views on the law.” Meanwhile, Ginsburg, amidst her spirited disagreements with her friend, noted, “I was fascinated by him because he was so intelligent and so amusing. You could still resist his position, but you just had to like him.”
Marriage and Family
One way to transcend the culture wars is to spend more time thinking about the more practical decisions required by life—which ultimately will determine your happiness more than whether your side wins the culture war.
Like whether to live together or just get married, as well as advice to young men on marriage and family. Both are shorts takes by Jordan Peterson (the first is one paragraph from his forth coming book, the second a short video from some time ago). Both can be found here. As usual, I enjoy Peterson’s common-sense perspective grounded in his psychological understanding of what makes humans tick, and love.
Super Tuskers!
“With ivory to the ground and weighing at least 100 pounds per tusk, this elephant is the closest thing to a pre-historic creature that still resides on this planet.” A moving look at these noble animals.
Grace and peace,
Mark Galli
markgalli.com