Tag Archives: Stephen Pinker

Because They Said So

We assume we can be in charge because our language easily lets us imagine it.

Rhetoricians like to say that language has its way with us. The phrase is meant to be a reminder that everyday language steers us to conclusions that usually promise more than we as individual agents can deliver. Word choice can easily create perceptions that can make the unlikely more likely, the improbable possible, the fantasy an outcome that will surely happen. We can tie a wish to an action verb, and we are off and running, creating expectations for circumstances that probably will not materialize. Who knew that simple verbs like “is” and “will” can trigger phantoms of deceit?  The phrase “because I say so” is a pretty empty reason.

What seems inescapable is that the ease of committing ourselves to the control of events verbally is easy but difficult in actual practice. This reality is something we’ve come to know all too well in any period of war, where action verbs suggest more control than we actually have. In his recent speech to military leaders, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted that “Either we’re ready to win or we are not,” overstating a single two-tailed option the belies the functions of any military in these complicated times. Hegseth’s language fit the warrior ethos” and “male standard” that he was peddling. But problems associated with foreign policy and its entanglements are highly variable. These words hardly hint at the peacekeeping that arguably remains the long-term burden of the American military. In addition, the Secretary must know that nearly 20 percent of our troops are women. As is so often the case, circumstances on the ground tend to get lost in the neon glow of rhetoric too dim to clearly see the Truth.

Blame our overly deterministic language.

We construct the world as a web of causes and their presumed effects. It’s natural that we will place ourselves and our institutions in the driver’s seat. We assume we can be in charge because our language so easily lets us imagine it. Blame our overly deterministic language as well as the hubris it encourages. Both set up tight effects loops that seem clear on the page but elusive in life.

If we put individual verbs in a lineup, they look more or less innocent: words like affect, ready, make, destroy, are, causes, starts, produces, alters, stops, triggers, controls, contributes, changes, and so on. In the right company they are suggestive. But let them lose in the rhetoric of a leader determined to make his or her mark on the public stage, and they can be vacuous. This is the realm of the familiar idea of “unintended effects,” where what we intended and what actually happens are different. Verbs flatter us by making us active agents, but as President Trump has learned about Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, fantasies of power and control suggest more order in human affairs than usually exists.

There is another interesting twist here. The use of verbs to project expected outcomes is ironically aggravated by our devotion to the scientific method. As Psychologist Steven Pinker has observed, we can’t do science without buying into the view that we can identify first causes. That’s fine for discovering the origins of a troublesome human disease. But even though this logic has spread through the culture, it cannot hold when we immerse ourselves in the infinite complexities of human conduct. Discovering as opposed to fantasizing the reasons and motivations of others is difficult. Add in large entities such as nations or tribes, and first causes of their conduct are often unknowable. And so strategic calculations based on efforts to influence or control behavior are bound to produce disappointment.

It’s a great paradox that we are so easily outgunned by the stunningly capricious nature of the human condition. Take it from someone who has spent a lifetime writing and teaching why people change their minds. We have models, theories and loads of experimental research. But making predictions about any specific instance is almost always another case of hope defeated by extenuating circumstances. We may be able to say what we want, giving eloquent expression to the goals we seek. Our verbs may sing their certainty. But forces we can’t predict are going to produce their own effects.

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What “News” has Become

                                  New York Times

We seem to be bleeding out the positive energy that was sometimes the national style. 

For many Americans this can seem like a season of despair. the constant din of alarming news on various platforms is wearing us out. Our politics now is fraught with controversy over the undoing of years of progress. Normal routes of trade and international cooperation have been undermined.  And, as ever, gun violence continues at about 47,000 deaths a year: much higher than most other peer nations. All of this has been made worse by a president who has mostly abandoned the usual roll of ‘binding up the nation’s wounds’ with appeals to transcendent values. Instead, his ersatz rhetoric of hate punishes individuals and institutions unaccustomed to having to defend their usually laudable objectives. Add in the fact that that legacy television news is folding under the crush of MAGA and FCC threats. ABC, CBS and NBC have yielded enough to have imprints of the President’s shoelaces on their foreheads.  How can a person escape this doom loop?

Most communities are safe, but the assurance of it is gone.  No wonder people are looking to A.I. for prepackaged nostalgia for times that weren’t necessarily better, but seemed more civil.

Researchers like Harvard’s Stephen Pinker note that a look at a lot of hard data reveals our world is now safer and less violent than in previous years (The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2010). The difference is the expansion of the personal boundaries of the known made possible by news sites and social media that have penetrated and been absorbed by the culture. Clearly, Americans think they are less secure. Their perceptions of violence and disruption penetrate our mediated spaces: from school shootings to the collapse of the social or physical infrastructures of whole communities.

Through all of this it is worth remembering what “news” has become. It is now a 24/7 preoccupation for many of us. And we shift seamlessly from video news, social media, and various online sites devoted to updates and opinion. There is a transformation of attention to reporting from a one-shot glance at a newspaper or evening newscast into incessant doom scrolling throughout the day. All-news channels like CNN mostly attract an older audience and continuous viewership. This has been confirmed by research that includes the corollary that these viewers feel less safe even in their own communities.

What exacerbates the problem is the decline in the kinds of activities that generally made people feel better about themselves and others, such as attending live events, attending church services, or participating in clubs and service organizations.

If we remember that traditional news has usually included the worst things that happened on a given day, the pool of available encounters within a population of nearly 400 million is always substantial. Hence, we get Robert Putnam’s representative image of a person bowling alone to feed our sense of personal isolation. Our discomfort is also fed by the steady drone of crime as entertainment, such as the elaborately produced and popular Netflix documentaries about lethal family members.

Solutions

So if news is now ubiquitous and a heavy tax on the soul, what are the solutions? How do we become less sour and more productively engaged? Of course, expressing opposition to the authoritarian impulses of this administration is a must. But it may also make sense to follow neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin’s advice to seek the restorative power of music. Among other things, music can reinstate our faith in the ability of different people to come together in support of one single vision. The parts of any composition are complementary rather than competitive. It is also gateway to those parts of the brain that tap into positive feelings rather than harsher binaries of languages that ask us to pick sides. One can chose any musical form open to the non-discursive world of moods and feelings that are usually resolved in harmonic resolution. As  Nietzsche noted, “Life without music would be a mistake.”

Baroque music usually lifts my spirit. It always reminds me what smart people working together can achieve. The lucky souls who have the talent to effectively enable this inventive world could be playing Bach. But they could also choose a modern classic like that selected by the Danish Girls Choir.

Some people find respite in putting digital media aside in favor of hiking, fishing, reading, or a simple game of cribbage. Modern media observers note that A.I. images of nostalgic scenes from the 90s or earlier on Instagram can do the trick. But anyone temped to find redemption through a richer experience of life can do better than find it on a cramped three-by-five device. Our politicians may be failing us. But there are still so many around us or nearby who are still on their game. Why commit to mediated experience through the filter of someone else’s political or ideological agenda?