Partisan Politics Reduces Rationality

 When the answer to a math problem resulting in undermining the claims of their tribe, partisans tended to be unable to complete the math problem! We need more idealogy and less partisanship.

See study report here. 

Why Dr. Hannibal Lector Would Have Identity Politics Advocates for Lunch

Because the character has been redone and re-interpreted so often, I want to start by saying the Hannibal Lector I reference here is the one from "Silence of the Lambs". I also should say that I never saw any of the movies featuring Dr. Lector beyond 'Silence of the Lambs', which was disturbing and gross enough for me. I didn't need to see any sequels that tried to top it! Nevertheless, I have researched what author Thomas Harris was trying to do with the character, because I felt what everyone else felt after "Silence of the Lambs". I was horrified and disgusted by Lector while at the same time some part of me was sympathetic to him, if not rooting for him. He eats the kind of people who irritate us all. How did the author/film-maker manage to pull that off? 

I believe that so many people started seeing Lector as an anti-hero that in later novels Thomas Harris had to in a way "undo" his character and make him not just a monster, but a hypocrite and a fraud. He emphasized that Lector was a pure, though complex, villain by attacking the root of one major reason we were tempted to see past his monstrosity. So I ask that you not bring the later alterations of the character into what I am going to say next. Rather, think back to the Lector you saw in "Silence of the Lambs". The one who did horrible things to bad people, but had his own code that drew him to Agent Starling. What was it about this monster that led us to root for him on any level?

For me, and I suspect many whether they realize it or not, a key was the scene where Starling in effect challenges Lector to used his analytical power to find out what "happened" to him. In effect, how he got so messed up. His answer, and I am paraphrasing, was that nothing "happened" to him. He happened. Whatever factors that may have shaped him, he was his own first cause. He was who he chose to be. "You can't reduce me to a set of influences" he said. He was more than just the result of a group of first causes.

Lector was serving notice that he was more free in that cage than all of his former patients who were unwilling or unable to rise above their influences and become who they chose to be. Perhaps they wallowed in the mire of their own grievances, lashing out at others with mundane self-absorption and rudeness. At some point he decided that the only way they could do any net good in the world was to provide an enjoyable meal to someone who otherwise knew how to conduct themselves!

Lector was labeled a "psychopath" by the Director of the facility. Starling more accurately assessed that "they don't have a word for what he is". He was his own category, and in a sense all of us are. 

Look, as an advocate of Localism I am more open than most to letting some of these identity politics people, in particular the racial or religious ones, have what they think they want: Their own dreadful, boring, mono-cultural "utopia" off somewhere so that the rest of us don't have to deal with them. So long as citizens are free to leave once they rise above such thinking of course.

Nevertheless, it strikes me that all of these cultural forces insisting that I, and all others, be defined by the labels and categories that they decide matter flies in the face of the principle described above. Whatever the intent, the effect is to rob us of our true identity as unique individuals who are in fact more than a set of first causes. It would reduce us to mere molecules in motion, bouncing off our environment. It reduces us from free moral agents to mere products of our circumstances. 

I am not saying that identifying with a group is wrong. We are all members of groups. Christians for example are in theory to identify with the invisible Kingdom of Heaven on earth which is supposed to transcend many of these other divisions. That alone, if done well, can destroy the basis for identity Politics. Even so, I am saying that we are more than just the perceived stereotypes of the groups we identify with. 

Reducing us to the sum total of groups we are in isn't just demeaning, it is in a way its own kind of cannibalism. One of our soul. It serves as an attempt to devour any part of the human soul that does not conform to the expectations of our group-matrix. So in the same way that Lector wasn't really a hero even though he ate people that we might find offensive, neither is the Identity Politics movement heroic even if it attempts to undo some things that we might find offensive. Both it and Lector act to rob people of whatever chance they had to become whatever it was they were supposed to be. Even if that chance appeared to be zero anyway, neither today's "Social Justice Warriors" nor Lector (despite his brilliance) are qualified to make those decisions for others.   

 As someone with a classical Christian view of man, I think we are all bound by sin. Disconnected from our Maker, unmoored to eternal truth, even our supposed virtues can be dangerous. That's what happened after the French Revolution of the late 1700s. It started with activists spouting high ideals and ended with the Reign of Terror and falling back into dictatorship. Unfortunately I fear many today are ignorant of that important lesson of history. Sometimes, even deeply flawed elites can be better than mob rule.

 The proponents of Identity Politics are not particularly evil. They are instead mired in that such as is common to man. Many are just insecure. Since our ruling class and their institutions have turned their backs on God, the populace is confused about what it means to be a "good person", and most of them want to be a good person. They want to be a virtuous member of society. That is not a bad thing, it is a good thing that has been twisted to a flawed purpose. They think that they are promoting "virtue" with the Identity Politics stuff, because that is the message that our ruling elites and their media and institutions have been telling them. 

Seeing past the haze and propaganda, the big picture is that we have a deeply corrupt ruling elite, which essentially runs both establishment political parties, that is trying to divide the populace against itself based on superficial distinctions and tribalism. While our attention is directed to fighting among ourselves, they rob what is left of the middle class blind. They are using debt that they have no intention of repaying to bribe the lower and working classes into sticking with the existing system until this titanic theft is complete. They and their key minions can then escape to New Zealand or someplace while the rest of us get stuck with the bills. 

They want us divided against one another into tribes. This not only keeps the spotlight off them while we gnaw at one another, it permits them a façade of legitimacy as the referee in the disputes among our warring factions. Identity Politics is an important tool in this scheme. It is in effect the engine behind the distraction they need pull off the crime without being noticed. Well-meaning people are therefore unwitting accomplices. 

Ultimately this is a spiritual problem and policy solutions alone will not deliver us. To the extent that they can though, The prescriptions of Localism as a system of government is the answer. Not just localism where you are, but the embrace of a system which robs the robbers of the systemic tools they use to perpetrate these crimes. To do that, we have to be mentally healthy enough to sleep well at night even though people we have never met in a city that we have never been to are doing things that we would not approve of. Meanwhile, be kind to people where you are, even if they are not in your "tribe". After all, neither they or you can be defined strictly by what tribe they associate with. None of us can be reduced to a set of first causes!