I think what Haidt and Mounk are chasing is right in plain sight.
The desire not to be understood, to assert the impossibility of mutual
comprehension is experienced by every healthy teenager (and parent
thereof) in the process of separation (into adulthood).
It is not merely a rejection of "everything you stand for" but an
assertion of total separateness and inscrutability. To be "understood"
is to be colonised, categorised, placed on your Cartesian grid and
thus dominated and neutralised. The chosen identity is arbitrary, it is
simply not yours, and the demand is that the very apparatus of
perception, the frame within which mutual recognition can take place,
be reset. And yet, weirdly, it is not a genuine bid for isolation, but
Greta Garbo saying "I just want to be left alone!"
Why this happened culturally in this century may remain a mystery,
but I see seeds of it in our own geek version of
proto-identity-politics, in Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence
of Cyberspace" [0]
" Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh
and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf
of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are
not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
I agree to some extent, but there are emotional aspects to oppression / discrimination that are difficult to understand if you haven’t experienced it personally.
But there’s an even more egregious and insidious lie here: the idea that a person can be reduced to their social identity / group membership, and that this gives a complete understanding of somebody’s life. Many people nowadays are even offended when you tell them they can’t know if I’ve had an easy life or not by looking at my skin and knowing what my parents did for a living.
It seems to me that there are some valid points in this essay. The most extreme versions of the position that they are arguing agains, that it is completely impossible for the majority to understand the experience of the majority, is likely both false and harmful.
However, it seems to me that the writer makes a mistake by attempting to evaluate a political strategy as though it was an academic philosophy position. That is to say, he's likely right that "identity synthesis" is not completely intellectually rigorous; however, it was never intended to be, it was intended to be a pragmatic political strategy.
For example, "identity synthesis" was likely never intended to suggest that there is literally a set of shared experiences shared by literally every member of a given minority group. It is just meant to suggest that in general a given group more or less shares a set of experiences.
Similarly, "identity synthesis" most likely is not concerned with whether, from a philosophical perspective, it is possible for groups to have knowledge of experiences they haven't had. Rather it is concerned with the fact that in practice the majority does not prioritize experiences they do not share with minority groups.
in taking a pragmatic political stance and argue that it is not intellectually rigorous; when I don't think it was ever intended to be.
I once spoke to a former Republican operative whose assessment of the communication problems we are facing struck me as interesting:
- In the past, the two parties primarily differed in how they thought issues should be tackled. E.g. should the economy be stimulated by cutting taxes or by increased government investment in infrastructure.
- Now many of one party's priorities simply don't exist in the other party's platform. For example, Republicans have no plan for promoting social justice/equality because it's not something that they prioritize at all. Similarly, Democrats don't really have a plan for advancing Republican's "traditional values" priorities.
- Because of this, Democrats and Republicans often talk past each other. For example, Democrats can't work with Republicans to tackle economic justice because, in a manner of speaking, economic justice doesn't exist in Republican's world view.
I’m not an American, but in general it’s possible for people with different views to understand each other, provided that they have the patience and awareness required to explain their views down to their core values.
It’s not always possible, however, to agree, because the core values are frequently incompatible. A catholic can not reach an agreement with a leftist on e.g. first trimester abortion, because for the former it’s murder, and for the latter it’s not. So the leftist will consider the woman’s right for bodily autonomy, and the catholic will simply want to prevent murder, and evil from happening.
As a person who fits within your example, this is what I always come back to. I can completely understand a person’s position in support of abortion, but no amount of talking through the issues will get us in alignment.
Many of these big issues (homelessness, immigration, universal income, abortion) come down to one’s particular viewpoint on humanity and human rights, and if folks aren’t in alignment from that foundation, no amount of dialogue changes the disagreement that flows from the foundation.
In modern societies the solution here is simply voting - people with similar worldviews group, and advocate for their position. The fringe positions, like advocation of slavery will lose. In the US, the winner takes all makes it more difficult, because you only get two options, and they have to represent views of a broad spectrum of voters.
Also, folks need to appreciate the role that govt has in our lives (or that we want it to).
I don’t want the gov’t to implement my personal moral worldview. I want the gov’t to assure a basic level of law abiding and morality (I.e don’t kill or steal), and stay out of the rest.
Yes but there are rational arguments in favour or against each of these issues, using values that (almost) everyone can agree on... Minimising suffering of sentient beings, or the continuation of our species for instance.
The hard bottom I hit with religious people is more often a disguised form of "because that's God's will" than a diverging core value.
After trying a lot to understand Republicans and right-wingers in the US (where I'm from) I'm much less convinced it's possible now than I was when I first became politically aware twenty-ish years ago. But moreover, even if I can understand someone, I can't understand why they trust their sources of information (which seem to me patently self-serving, pandering and stupid). And when our sources are so different we can't seem to talk anything but past each other.
The desire not to be understood, to assert the impossibility of mutual comprehension is experienced by every healthy teenager (and parent thereof) in the process of separation (into adulthood).
It is not merely a rejection of "everything you stand for" but an assertion of total separateness and inscrutability. To be "understood" is to be colonised, categorised, placed on your Cartesian grid and thus dominated and neutralised. The chosen identity is arbitrary, it is simply not yours, and the demand is that the very apparatus of perception, the frame within which mutual recognition can take place, be reset. And yet, weirdly, it is not a genuine bid for isolation, but Greta Garbo saying "I just want to be left alone!"
Why this happened culturally in this century may remain a mystery, but I see seeds of it in our own geek version of proto-identity-politics, in Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" [0]
[0] https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence