Dangers to a society may be mortal without being immediate. One such danger is the prevailing social vision of our time—and the dogmatism with which the ideas, assumptions, and attitudes behind that vision are held. It is not that these views are especially evil or especially erroneous. Human beings have been making mistakes and committing sins as long as there have been human beings. The great catastrophes of history have usually involved much more than that. Typically, there has been an additional and crucial ingredient—some method by which feedback from reality has been prevented, so that a dangerous course of action could be blindly continued to a fatal conclusion.
The focus here will be on one particular vision—the vision prevailing among the intellectual and political elite of our time. What is important about that vision are not only its particular assumptions and their corollaries, but also the fact that it is a prevailing vision—which means that its assumptions are so much taken for granted by so many people, including so-called “thinking people,” that neither those assumptions nor their corollaries are generally confronted with demands for empirical evidence. Indeed, empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar as it is inconsistent with that vision.
What a vision may offer, and what the prevailing vision of our time emphatically does offer, is a special state of grace for those who believe in it. Those who accept this vision are deemed to be not merely factually correct but morally on a higher plane. Put differently, those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin. For those who have this vision of the world, the anointed and the benighted do not argue on the same moral plane or play by the same cold rules of logic and evidence. The benighted are to be made “aware,” to have their “consciousness raised,” and the wistful hope is held out that they will “grow.”
Despite Hamlet’s warning against self-flattery, the vision of the anointed is not simply a vision of the world and its functioning in a causal sense, but is also a vision of themselves and of their moral role in that world. It is a vision of differential rectitude. It is not a vision of the tragedy of the human condition: Problems exist because others are not as wise or as virtuous as the anointed.
The great ideological crusades of twentieth-century intellectuals have ranged across the most disparate fields—from the eugenics movement of the early decades of the century to the environmentalism of the later decades, not to mention the welfare state, socialism, communism, Keynesian economics, and medical, nuclear, and automotive safety. What all these highly disparate crusades have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government. Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia during the twentieth century, several key elements have been common to most of them:
Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.
An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.
A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.
A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.
What is intellectually interesting about visions are their assumptions and their reasoning, but what is socially crucial is the extent to which they are resistant to evidence. All social theories being imperfect, the harm done by their imperfections depends not only on how far they differ from reality, but also on how readily they adjust to evidence, to come back into line with the facts. One theory may be more plausible, or even more sound, than another, but if it is also more dogmatic, then that can make it far more dangerous than a theory that is not initially as close to the truth but which is more capable of adjusting to feedback from the real world. The prevailing vision of our time—the vision of the anointed—has shown an extraordinary ability to defy evidence.
Characteristic patterns have developed among the anointed for dealing with the repeated failures of policies based on their vision. Other patterns have developed for seizing upon statistics in such a way as to buttress the assumptions of the vision, even when the same set of statistics contains numbers that contradict the vision. Finally, there is the phenomenon of honored prophets among the anointed, who continue to be honored as their predictions fail by vast margins, time and again.
PATTERNS OF FAILURE
A very distinct pattern has emerged repeatedly when policies favored by the anointed turn out to fail. This pattern typically has four stages:
STAGE 1. THE “CRISIS”: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a “crisis,” even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a “crisis” has in fact already been getting better for years.
STAGE 2. THE “SOLUTION”: Policies to end the “crisis” are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and “simplistic,” if not dishonest.
STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z.
STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as “simplistic” for ignoring the “complexities” involved, as “many factors” went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors.
Anyone who looks through enough statistics will eventually find numbers that seem to confirm a given vision. Often, the same set of statistics contains other numbers that seem to confirm diametrically opposite conclusions. The same is true of anecdotal “facts.” That is why evidence is different from mere data. whether numerical or verbal. Scientific evidence, for example, comes from systematically determining—in advance—what particular empirical observations would be seen if one theory were correct, compared to what would be seen if an alternative theory were correct. Only after this careful and painstaking analysis has been completed can the search begin for facts that will differentiate between the competing theories. Seldom is this approach used by those who believe in the vision of the anointed. More typically, they look through statistics until they find some numbers that fit their preconceptions, and then cry, “Aha!” Others with different views can, of course, do the same thing. But only those with the prevailing views are likely to be taken seriously when using such shaky reasoning. This is only one of many misuses of statistics that goes unchallenged as long as the conclusions are consonant with the vision of the anointed.
One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten. Where there is a substantial correlation between A and B, this might mean that:
A causes B.
B causes A.
Both A and B are results of C or some other combination of factors.
It is a coincidence.
Those with the vision of the anointed almost invariably choose one of the first two patterns of causation, the particular direction of causation depending on which is more consistent with that vision—not which is more consistent with empirical facts. As part of that vision, explanations which exempt the individual from personal responsibility for unhappy circumstances in his life are consistently favored over explanations in which the individual’s own actions are a major ingredient in unfortunate outcomes.
Factual evidence and logical arguments are often not merely lacking but ignored in many discussions by those with the vision of the anointed. Much that is said by the anointed in the outward form of an argument turns out not to be arguments at all. Often the logical structure of an argument is replaced by preemptive rhetoric or, where an argument is made, its validity remains unchecked against any evidence, even when such evidence is abundant.
ARGUMENTS WITHOUT ARGUMENTS
There are too many discussion tactics that substitute for substantive arguments to permit a comprehensive survey. Half a dozen common substitutes may be illustrative, however. They are (1) the “complex” and “simplistic” dichotomy; (2) all-or-nothing rhetoric: (3) burying controversial specifics in innocuous generalities; (4) shifting to the presumed viewpoint of someone else, in lieu of supporting one’s own assertions with evidence or logic: (5) declaring “rights”: and (6) making opaque proclamations with an air of certainty and sophistication.
Perhaps a few suggestions might be in order for seeing through much of the rhetoric of the anointed. Some of the things discussed in previous chapters, as well as in this one, illustrate some general principles of common sense, which are nevertheless often widely ignored in the heat of polemics:
All statements are true, if you are free to redefine their terms.
Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster.
A can always exceed B if not all of B is counted and/or if A is exaggerated.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.
Every policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards.
All things are the same, except for the differences, and different except for the similarities.
The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial principle will become harmful if carried far enough.
Most variables can show either an upward trend or a downward trend, depending on the base year chosen.
The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.
Improbable events are commonplace in a country with more than a quarter of a billion people.
You can always create a fraction by putting one variable upstairs and another variable downstairs, but that does not establish any causal relationship between them, nor does the resulting quotient have any necessary relationship to anything in the real world.
Many of the “abuses” of today were the “reforms” of yesterday.
THE ANOINTED VERSUS THE BENIGHTED
The vision of the anointed may stand out in sharper relief when it is contrasted with the opposing vision, a vision whose reasoning begins with the tragedy of the human condition. By tragedy here is not meant simply unhappiness, but tragedy in the ancient Greek sense, inescapable fate inherent in the nature of things, rather than unhappiness due simply to villainy or callousness. The two visions differ in their respective conceptions of the nature of man, the nature of the world, and the nature of causation, knowledge, power, and justice.
Police, prisons, etc., represent only trade-offs, while creating a society in which crime is prevented from arising in the first place is a solution. Hence the former approach is consistent with the tragic vision and the latter approach is in keeping with the vision of the anointed. Not only today, but for more than two centuries, both crime and war have been seen, by those with the vision of the anointed, as things to be deterred by changing people’s dispositions rather than by confronting them with retaliatory capabilities that provide incentives against crime or war.
One of the most important questions about any proposed course of action is whether we know how to do it. Policy A may be better than policy B, but that does not matter if we simply do not know how to do policy A. Perhaps it would be better to rehabilitate criminals, rather than punish them. if we knew how to do it. Rewarding merit might be better than rewarding results if we knew how to do it. But one of the crucial differences between those with the tragic vision and those with the vision of the anointed is in what they respectively assume that we know how to do. Those with the vision of the anointed are seldom deterred by any question as to whether anyone has the knowledge required to do what they are attempting.
The question for the anointed is not knowledge but compassion, commitment. and other such subjective factors which supposedly differentiate themselves from other people. The refrain of the anointed is we already know the answers, there’s no need for more studies, and the kinds of questions raised by those with other views are just stalling and obstructing progress. “Solutions” are out there waiting to be found, like eggs at an Easter egg hunt. Intractable problems with painful trade-offs are simply not part of the vision of the anointed. Problems exist only because other people are not as wise or as caring, or not as imaginative and bold, as the anointed. In short, not only is the external world to be redesigned, so are the people who are to inhabit it. Were this merely the fantasy of one man. it would not be worth noting. But it is in fact part of the vision of the anointed as it has existed for centuries.
By contrast, those with the tragic vision have long questioned whether anyone—themselves included—knows enough to engage in sweeping social and political experiments. “We cannot change the Nature of things and of men,” Edmund Burke said. “but must act upon them the best we can.” Adam Smith took a very similar position. while seeing the more general issue as a conflict of visions between the doctrinaire with an “ideal plan of government” who “seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board” and the more modest reformer who will adjust his policies to “the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people” and who. when he “cannot establish the right,” will “not disdain to ameliorate the wrong.” Those with the tragic vision might share the desire for social betterment without sharing the assumptions as to how much knowledge and control of social ramifications exist. A succinct summary of the tragic vision was given by historians Will and Ariel Durant: Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.
In the tragic vision, individual sufferings and social evils are inherent in the innate deficiencies of all human beings, whether these deficiencies are in knowledge, wisdom, morality, or courage. Moreover, the available resources are always inadequate to fulfill all the desires of all the people. Thus there are no “solutions” in the tragic vision, but only trade-offs that still leave many desires unfulfilled and much unhappiness in the world. What is needed in this vision is a prudent sense of how to make the best trade-offs from the limited options available, and a realization that “unmet needs” will necessarily remain—that attempting to fully meet these needs seriatim only deprives other people of other things, so that a society pursuing such a policy is like a dog chasing its tail. Given this vision, particular solutions to particular problems are far less important than having and maintaining the right processes for making trade-offs and correcting inevitable mistakes. To those with the tragic vision, the integrity of processes is crucial—much more so than particular causes.
To those with the tragic vision, institutions, traditions, laws, and policies are to be judged by how well they cope with the intellectual and moral inadequacies of human beings, so as to limit the damage they do, and to coordinate the society in such a way as to maximize the use of its scattered fragments of knowledge, as well as to correct inevitable mistakes as quickly as possible. But to those with the less constrained vision of the anointed, the goal is the liberation of human beings from unnecessary social inhibitions, so as to allow repressed creativity to emerge and the vast knowledge and talent already available to be applied to existing problems.
For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before. Moreover, the applicability of past experience is further discounted in the vision of the anointed, because of the great changes that have taken place since “earlier and simpler times.” Here the two visions clash again, for those with the tragic vision see no great changes in the fundamental intellectual or moral capacities of human beings, however much the material world may have changed or various institutions and customs may have developed through trial and error.
The presumed irrationality of the public is a pattern running through many, if not most or all, of the great crusades of the anointed in the twentieth century—regardless of the subject matter of the crusade or the field in which it arises. Whether the issue has been “overpopulation,” Keynesian economics, criminal justice, or natural resource exhaustion, a key assumption has been that the public is so irrational that the superior wisdom of the anointed must be imposed, in order to avert disaster. The anointed do not simply happen to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others.
Perhaps the most fundamental difference between those with the tragic vision and those with the vision of the anointed is that the former see policy-making in terms of trade-offs and the latter in terms of “solutions.” This is not merely a difference in words or in optimism, but a difference in procedures. To those with the vision of the anointed, the question is: What will remove particular negative features in the existing situation to create a solution? Those with the tragic vision ask: What must be sacrificed to achieve this particular improvement?
No one denies the existence of constraints, though the vision of the anointed does not incorporate these constraints as a central feature and ever-present ingredient in its thinking, while the tragic vision does. Moreover, the trade-offs made necessary by constraints are seen differently by the two visions. To those with the vision of the anointed, it is simply a question of choosing the best solution, while to those with the tragic vision the more fundamental question is: Who is to choose? And by what process, and with what consequences for being wrong? It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.
The language of politics, and especially of ideological politics, is often categorical language about “rights,” about eliminating certain evils, guaranteeing certain benefits, or protecting certain habitats and species. In short, it is the language of solutions and of the unconstrained vision behind solutions, the vision of the anointed. Indirectly but inexorably, this language says that the preferences of the anointed are to supersede the preferences of everyone else—that the particular dangers they fear are to be avoided at all costs and the particular benefits they seek are to be obtained at all costs. Their attempts to remove these decisions from both the democratic process and the market process, and to vest them in obscure commissions, unelected judges, and insulated bureaucracies, are in keeping with the logic of what they are attempting. They are not seeking trade-offs based on the varying preferences of millions of other people, but solutions based on their own presumably superior knowledge and virtue.
CRUSADES OF THE ANOINTED
It is not only the consummated policies of the anointed which reflect their vision. So do their crusades still in progress. The pattern of thinking involved in this vision shows up as strongly in trivial crusades against particular kinds of maps as in crusades over something as deadly serious as AIDS. The function of the vision in enhancing the self-esteem of the anointed is also revealed in the particular groups chosen as targets and in the particular beneficiary groups chosen to symbolize their moral stances. The symbolic function of these latter groups is much like that of team mascots. A mascot’s own well-being is not so crucial as its role in enabling others to “make a statement.” Many social groups are treated as the human mascots of the anointed, whether or not that ultimately works out to the benefit of those groups themselves.
Few issues are so perfectly adapted to the vision of the anointed—and to politics—as issues involving safety. Such issues lend themselves to the rhetoric of “solutions” rather than trade-offs, and to categorical statements, such as: “Not one human life should be sacrificed for the sake of profits,” thereby establishing the moral superiority of the anointed over the benighted. On the surface, where most political battles are fought, those opposed to policies or legislation for greater safety seem to have an impossible task. It is only when these issues are examined more closely, within a framework of constrained options, that the heedless proliferation of safety rules can be seen as counterproductive—which is to say, dangerous. People are dying from such “safety.”
Just as the logic of their vision guides the anointed in their choices of mascots, so it guides their selection of targets. The prime requisite for both mascots and targets is that they must distinguish the anointed from the benighted. Just as groups disdained by others become eligible to be mascots of the anointed, so groups respected by others are eligible to become targets. These include business people, physicians. and other professionals, members of religious communities, policemen, and others whose social roles or financial success engender respect or influence in the society at large. Just as the law is stretched and strained for the benefit of mascots, so it is stretched and strained to the detriment of targets.
THE VOCABULARY OF THE ANOINTED
In light of the underlying assumptions of the prevailing vision, it may be easier to see why the particular vocabulary used by the anointed is what it is. The swirl of their buzzwords—“access,” “stigma,” “progressive.” “diversity,” “crisis,” etc.—shows a discernible pattern. What these innumerable buzzwords have in common is that they either (1) preempt issues rather than debate them, (2) set the anointed and the benighted on different moral and intellectual planes, or (3) evade the issue of personal responsibility.
The word “crisis,” for example, is a preemptive word used for its prospective political effect, rather than for its contemporary or retrospective accuracy. All sorts of situations have been called a “crisis,” even when they have in fact been getting better for years. When the anointed say that there is a crisis this means that something must be done—and it must be done simply because the anointed want it done. This word becomes one of many substitutes for evidence or logic.
COURTING DISASTER
There is a fundamental difference between a society where a ruler can seize the wealth or the wife of any subject and one in which the poorest citizen can refuse to allow the highest official of the land inside his home. There is a fundamental difference between a time when the great English jurist Coke cringed as King James threatened to beat him physically with his own hands—resistance being treason, punishable by death—and a world in which the Supreme Court of the United States could order President Nixon to turn over evidence to a special prosecutor. No clever trivializing can erase these differences. Centuries of struggle, sacrifice. and bloodshed went into creating the ideal of a government of laws superior to any ruler or political organ.
The rule of law and the vision of the anointed are inherently at loggerheads. The judge who carries out the law as written is the agent of others, and the law that emerges from the political process in a democratic country reflects the values and experiences of the benighted, not the anointed. That judges with the elite vision should find such a situation unduly constricting, if not intolerable, is consistent with the premises of their vision. Only by going beyond the law as written can they impose their superior wisdom and virtue, and in the process preempt the decisions of others. Creative and adventurous “interpretations” of the Constitution, statutes, and contracts give judges that power. While those with the tragic vision decry the presumptions of judges who circumvent the systemic processes of society—as expressed in economic transactions, social practices, and legal traditions, for example—those who assume a more sweeping capability are little deterred by any fear of inadvertently deranging these systemic processes.
Judicial activism in effect allows the vision of the anointed to veto the legally imposed decisions of the community, even when those decisions do not conflict with the written Constitution. Moreover, this veto is exercised in the name of the Constitution and even in the name of the community, meaning by the latter those who presume to consider themselves the “conscience” of the community.
OPTIONAL REALITY
The central tenets of the prevailing vision can be summarized in five propositions:
Painful social situations (“problems”) exist not because of inherent limits to knowledge or resources, or inadequacies inherent in human beings, but because other people lack the wisdom or virtue of the anointed.
Evolved beliefs represent only a “socially constructed” set of notions, not reflections of an underlying reality. Therefore the way by which “problems” can be “solved” is by applying the articulated rationality of the anointed, rather than by relying on evolved traditions or systemic processes growing out of the experiences of the masses.
Social causation is intentional, rather than systemic, so that condemnation is in order when various features of the human experience are either unhappy or appear anomalous to the anointed.
Great social or biological dangers can be averted only by the imposition of the vision of the anointed on less enlightened people by the government.
Opposition to the vision of the anointed is due not to a different reading of complex and inconclusive evidence, but exists because opponents are lacking, either intellectually or morally, or both.
Perhaps even more important than the specific tenets of this vision is that these propositions are not treated as hypotheses to be tested but as self-evident axioms. Evidence is seldom asked or given—and evidence to the contrary is often either ignored or answered only by a sneer.
One of the ominous consequences of such attitudes is that there is no logical stopping place in creating polarizations that may tear a society apart or lead to a backlash that can sweep aside not only such policies but also the basic institutions of a free society. Fascistic “strong men” have historically emerged with public support from those disgusted or alarmed by the breakdown of law and order and of traditional values. There is nothing in the prevailing vision to make the anointed stop before things reach that point. On the contrary, the warning signs of such an impending catastrophe may be seen by the anointed as only welcome indications of their own moral superiority to the benighted.
Even if the individual circles of knowledge possessed by members of the anointed are in fact larger than the average circle of knowledge possessed by those around them, these larger-than-average circles are still likely to be only a tiny fraction of the vast total. To allow the anointed to preempt the decisions of millions of other people is to confine the knowledge that is brought to bear on decisions to what exists within the circles of the anointed—in effect, shrinking the knowledge that can be used to a fraction of what is available. It can hardly be surprising that poorer decisions often emerge from this process. Indeed, dangerous decisions are often the consequence. When one considers how small a defect in reasoning can utterly destroy a whole elaborate analysis, it is truly staggering to expect intellectuals to construct social policies which will compare with what emerges from the systemic interactions of millions of other human beings, continuously adjusting to consequences reflecting the revealed preferences of others and the changing opportunities and constraints of technology.