Category Archives: Moral Humility

Arrogant Ignorance

Death of Truth, Moral Humility, The Sleep of Reason

 

Andy Borowitz has written a book with a very interesting title: Profiles in Ignorance: How American politicians got Dumb and Dumber. With a title like that it is hardly surprising that the author is pretty arrogant. Horowitz has looked at how Americans have embraced anti-intellectualism. He thinks it is so bad the nation is in danger. He was interviewed by Walter Isaacson on Amanpour & Co. to discuss the subject broadly.

 

Borowitz said he could have gone back to the birth of the nation to show how this developed, but he held back and basically started with Ronald Reagan. That is as good a place as any.

 

Isaacson focused on the last 50 years of ignorance: ridicule, acceptance, and celebration. According to Borowitz Ronald Reagan really kicked off the ridicule phase. Until Reagan in the ridicule stage, politicians had to pretend to be smart. Reagan was good on TV. That was why some California millionaires recruited him to run for Governor. However, as Horowitz said, “…he did not know anything; he knew very, very little.” That did not matter to the millionaires. They wanted to sell the sizzle if they could not sell the steak. They liked what they saw.  Reagan sizzled.

 

As Horowitz said, “they had to pump him full of information. It seemed like he knew stuff and he won the election by a million votes. That really got the whole party started.”

 

Walter Isaacson challenged Borowitz on this claim. He asked him to say who was smarter Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan? After all, Reagan won the election. Did that not make him smarter? Borowitz said clearly Jimmy Carter was smarter, which of course, millions of American conservatives would never accept. Horowitz acknowledged that he was not a neurologist so was not qualified really to give that opinion, but of course, he was not shy about making it. He added this,  “And that is usually reflected in how much you read.”

 

According to Horowitz Jimmy Carter read a ton.

 

Ronald Reagan did not open a single book in college. That is deliberate ignorance. When his Chief of Staff James Baker prepared a briefing book for a big economic summit, he didn’t touch that and  then James Baker said, “Why didn’t you read that last night?” Reagan replied. “Well Jim the Sound of Music” was on TV.”

 

He was not ashamed of that. He just was not very curious about economics or policy. He was interested in how he sounded on TV. That is what mattered. That might have been smart. At least politically smart.

 

Again, Isaacson pushed back, and said Ronald Reagan was a very successful president even though he didn’t read much. And his adoring fans did not care that he read so little.  He was able to get done what he wanted to get done. Often Carter did not. In fact, according to Isaacson “Jimmy Carter was remarkably unsuccessful.”

Horowitz did not think Reagan was a very successful president. But he did get his agenda through. According, to Horowitz “that agenda was very redolent of his own ignorance.” He let the AIDs crisis spiral out of control because he was very unaware of what Aids was. As well, he really created homelessness in this country, according to Horowitz. He told David Brinkley, “the homeless just want to live outside.” That sound very doubtful to me.

Reagan was much better on TV than Jimmie Carter. He will be able to get an agenda through but his agenda was hopelessly inadequate. “That is why it would help, according to Horowitz, if he actually read a book.”

To this Isaacson posed an alternative  book, written by David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.  These were those guys that John F. Kennedy relied to get his agenda done. You don’t’ get smarter than those guys but they were disastrous when in power and drew America into the swamp of Vietnam.  There was not much good about that.

To this Horowitz said, “Well smart people make mistakes.” Very true but is that enough?  Horowitz said Carter was an elitist who wanted people in power to be smarter than he was. According to Horowitz the guys who have been allergic enough to learning and who refused to read a briefing book and refused to read a book of any kind got us into a lot of trouble. They got us into things like the War in Iraq one of the biggest boondoggles in our history. At the same time, they ignored things like Aids and the Coronavirus. “Yes smart people make mistakes, but …I would still rather put my money on the guy who has read a book” he said.

 

Some are very smart and have very bad judgment like Hillary Clinton. George W. Bush didn’t read the presidential briefing book that said Bin Laden was determined to strike in the US. And the US paid a very heavy price for that ignorance. Ignorance can be very costly, particularly when wedded to power.

 

Horowitz said that FDR was not that smart. He graduated with Cs in High school. But when he had to deal with a big problem like the Dust Bowl which the country had never seen before, FDR was smart enough to surround himself with experts who were smart. He wasn’t like Donald Trump who pretended that he was smarter than everyone else when he clearly wasn’t. “Arrogant ignorance” is a terrible disaster. This is what Trump exemplified he said. Horowitz said “that FDR was an example of a person who had intellectual humility.” That is a sign of being smart and it is something Trump definitely does have. I agree that this is very important. More leaders should have humility.

 

Now when I listened to Horowitz, I could not see him as modest or humble. Far from it in fact. So he does not qualify as smart.

 

When people think they are the best and the brightest and they don’t have anything more to learn that is very dangerous. As Horowitz said, “Smart people sometimes fall into that trap.”

 

According to Horowitz, with the arrival of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin we moved into the age of acceptance. Bush learned that accepting his ignorance was actually a political advantage. He bombed early in his career when he was unable to name some foreign leaders to a radio host, exposing his serious ignorance. His advisor came out and said “we are electing the president of the United States not a Jeopardy contestant”.

 

This led to an era where political candidates said I don’t know very much but I am like you. We have come to the place where political leaders who profess to be smart have a big disadvantage. Many people don’t like that. This is also dangerous.  Ignorance should never be glorified. Too many people do that now.

 

Who would you rather have a bee with. Al Gore a pointy headed intellectual or George W. Bush?  To most people in America the answer was clear. Sarah Palin moved us into the celebration phase.  As Horowitz said, “She really embraces the fact that she did not know many  things. She replaced facts with non-facts.” Embracing ignorance is very dangerous.  That to me seems to be our current status.

 

As Horowitz said, “With the celebration phase which we are now sadly in, ignorance now has become such an asset that it is preferable to people being well-informed.”  Americans like ignorance. It’s not just Trump. Many Americans agree with him on this point.

 

As Horowitz said, “Donald Trump has never read, he doesn’t know very much, so he combines ignorance with arrogance that he thinks he knows more than the generals and scientists and every expert. Marjorie Taylor-Green also comes very naturally to this phase. She is extremely ill-informed, and she thinks that a Petri dish is a peach tree dish and that Hawley, or a Ted Cruz, or Ron de Santis who have the finest education that money can buy in America but are wilfully trying to sound dummer than they are. That sort of spectacle is so regrettable. We looked up to people who we used it to look up to people who were smart, to experts.

 

This of course brings us to the ultimate question. What can we do about it?  Horowitz suggested we stop watching so much cable TV That is sound advice. Don’t spend so much time on Twitter. And we have to start getting active in our democracy. Stop always nationalizing our problems. We get obsessed with the national elections, but the other elections are very important. We have to start working locally where democracy really is at its best. As Horowitz said,

 

“In a town meeting you really can’t be jerk, because you might meet that person next week. I have to curb my natural tendency to be caustic and contemptuous and I have to be civil instead. I think that is the answer. We have had trickle down ignorance in our country where our leaders have said ignorant things. And we as a population have grown more ignorant because of that.”

 

The most important thing is not to cherish ignorance.

Pluralism around the Sault

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Colonialism, History, Indigenous People After Contact, Moral Humility, Pluralism

 

 

The Clergue blockhouse at Sault Ste. Marie

 

The Clergue blockhouse was right beside the Ermatinger house and was part of the original North West Company post at Sault Ste. Marie. Both of which were right beside our hotel.  Of course, I don’t think too many elites stayed in this block house. That was for the lessers.

This area of North America where Lake Huron and Lake Superior meet, including Sault Ste. Marie, Ignace Michigan, the Mackinac Straits, and St Joseph’s Island, were vitally important in the fur trade. There were many varied First Nations, and the French and English, and later the Americans and Canadians. Barbara Huck called it “The Crossroads of Humanity.” Often they fought each other; at other times they lived together peacefully. As Huck explained,

“For a half-century. Michilmackinac [a little south of Sault Ste, Marie] flourished. Living at a crossroads of humanity, the people of the straits were at home with diversity, unfazed by racial, linguistic, or religious  differences. A multilingual, multiracial community evolved as French traders married local Odawa and Ojibwe women. Prefacing the Metis community that would grow up around the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in Manitoba a century later, their mixed blood children soon became the dominant population of the straits.”

In Manitoba as well the Métis people became dominant, for a while.  When Manitoba became a province of Canada in 1870, 80% of the people were Métis. A lot of Manitobans have forgotten this. Some of the Indigenous people had left and the hordes of European immigrants, including Mennonites were not yet there.

It was also interesting what happened after America declared its independence from England. As Huck said,

“In 1775 the New England colonies rebelled, and the British turned to their new-found native allies.  Weighing the situation, the Odawa, Ojibwe, Winnebago, Sauk, Fox, Menominee, and Sioux decided that as rigid and obtuse as the British might be, they were not as bent on clearing and settling the land as the American rebels were.”

 

Where many nations live together, they have to make serious efforts to recognize each other and not assume, that all wisdom resides in their own community. They did learn that in the area around Sault Ste. Marie. Sadly, such lessons are sometimes hard to learn and too often not passed on to the next generation. I am a great believer in pluralism. It breeds humility, something always in short supply. Live and let live. We can all learn from each other. None of us have a monopoly on the truth. Pluralism is not always easy, but it sure beats warfare.

As Sally Gibson wrote in a chapter of Huck’s book,

“Sault Ste. Marie has long been a stopping place for travellers. Once a seamless zone of trade, the area is now separated by the Canadian-American border and twin cities name Sault Ste. Marie on either side of the St. Mary’s River Rapids. The rapids drop almost seven metres over less than three kilometres, draining Lake Superior. Travellers today can enjoy the natural beauty of the area and find remnants of the fur trade that stimulated early European settlement.”

 

Of course, once European countries arrived on the scene it did not take them long to make claims on the land. That’s what Europeans (later Canadians or Americans) do.  As Gibson said,

“The territory around Sault Ste, Marie was claimed for France by Sieur de Saint Lusson in an elaborate ceremony…recognizing the importance of the location, New France granted a seigneury on the St. Mary’s River to Chevalier de Repentigny in 1751.”

 

Of course, Gibson did not say by whose authority France did that because none of the people from Europe had any authority to make such grants. Americans always claimed land by conquest, but the locals in Canada had never been conquered. And the locals had never ceded the land. So there really was no basis for the grants. France could have used some humility.

Chevalier de Repentigny farmed the property and fortified it but he left within 5 years as soon as the 7 Years War broke out between France and England. After the French fell in that war, the English took over, but they really had no authority either. Of course, that did not stop the English from granting exclusive rights to the land in 1765 to an English trader Alexander Henry. He was given authority to the Lake Superior area. What did mean? I would say, as a recovering lawyer, that such a grant would be void for uncertainty. What area was covered by the grant, if the grant was otherwise valid?

I have always wondered what would be the legal effect of the United States placing a flag on the moon?  Would that give the Americans ownership of the entire moon?  Half the moon?  The light side of the moon? A square mile? An acre?  Or no part? How can you make such a decision? When you get right down to it claims of “ownership” are usually dubious at their root. Once more that should generate some humility.

Take another example. Indigenous people roamed the North American continent for thousands of years. Many of them were nomadic. Others were more sedentary farmers. What part did each First Nation own? How can you tell? By what right?

Really all claims of ownership are dubious?  Whether you are talking about the jungles of the Amazon or the plains of North America or the city of Steinbach?  All of them are fundamentally dubious!

I taught real estate law at the University of Manitoba Law School for about 10 years and nothing I learnt or taught there gave me any more certainty.

When Compromise is Heresy

Extremism, Hate, Moral Humility, violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

People are calling for a cease fire in the war between Hamas and Israel. Israel says it won’t stop firing until all of its hostages are released.  Hamas has not offered to release the hostages it recently captured at great expense. It likely sees them as their only hope right now. Neither side seem inclined to compromise. I would love to see a ceasefire. How to get there?  I don’t know.

Here is what I do know. This bloody war is the consequence of turning states over to the extremists as both Gaza and Israel have done. Extremists, particularly when filled with religious zeal, even if they are not particularly religious, inevitably see compromise as heretical. Such groups are extremely unlikely to compromise. When two groups under the dominance or influence of extremists with such religious zeal, the end result is bound to be bloody. Don’t look for quick and easy ceasefires.

The tragedy of the Middle East is that both sides (or should I say all sides?) in this seemingly intractable dispute are chained to murderous theological ideologies that leave no room for compromise or resolution. Each side just wants to bludgeon the other side to death—to oblivion. How can you make a deal with the devil, both sides ask. The answer—of course—is that you can’t. Neither side can make a deal with the devil so they go on pummeling each other to death. That is the inevitable result when both sides have an unshakeable conviction that the other side is the side of the devil. Then your own side becomes the sole bearer of truth and justice for the only rightful god.

We can do better. To do that, murderous ideologies with their murderous certainties,  must be discarded.

 

Newt Gingerich Revolutionary

Extremism, Hate, Moral Humility, Right-wing Extremism

 

After the massive Republican victory in the American mid-term elections of 1994, Newt Gingerich  became the new Leader of the House, and he was obviously a firebrand. Nothing else would do. Moderates were scorned.  It was time for a new Tea Party.

The Atlantic magazine said that Gingrich “turned partisan battles into blood sport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise.” Polarization in American politics was jump started. American politics would not be the same for decades (or perhaps forever?). He called himself the “most serious systematic revolutionary of modern times.”

Here is one of his early incendiary remarks for which he became famous:

“You cannot make civilization with 12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-old shooting each other, 17- year-olds dying of AIDS, and 18-year-olds getting a diploma they can’t read.”

 

Interestingly, this also established Gingrich as part of the culture wars that have taken over American politics, both on the left and the right.

Justin Ling said this about Gingrich on The Flame Throwers podcast:

 

“What he really was, was a pugilistic bomb thrower who was willing to tear down the entire American political structure with his bare hands if he had to.”

 

These were the type of guys (usually they were all guys) that the American right-wing loved. And still love! They were bombastic; they were confident, and they mocked all the namby pambies of the liberal camp. Later they referred to them as “woke.” Gingrich was Rush Limbaugh’s kind of guy! This was a guy he could support, just like Donald Trump later was the kind of guy he could support.

Gingrich, again like Trump later, called Limbaugh for advice. They ascended together. They joined in hatred of  liberals, an in particular the Clintons, and dragged a nation of conservatives with them. According to Justin Ling, “together they remade the language of politics. Liberals are anti-flag, anti-child, traitors, thieves.” Together they helped create the astonishing polarization of American politics. Their extreme language helped establish extreme hatred for “the other party.” There was no room for moderation. This was a battle between Satan and Jesus. It was the beginning of a new age of extremism in which we are still living . Humility found no home in this new movement.

And it had American talk radio to thank.

A Safe Place to Hate.

Conservative, Evangelical Christianity, Fear, Hate, Moral Humility, Politics & Religion, Right-wing Extremism, Trumpism, Woke

 

There had been a lot of social change just before Rush Limbaugh arrived on the scene. There was gay liberation, women’s rights, and liberalism. Many felt they could no longer say what they wanted to say. Political correctness was seen as a stifling chain. They also thought no one was speaking like them or to them. They were ignored and invisible. As Justin Ling said in his CBC. Radio series , “In the universe of right-wing media compared to the Wall Street Journal and like the later Fox News Limbaugh’s listeners were older, whiter, more conservative, and more religious. For this slice of America Limbaugh created a safe space.” He created a safe place to hate.

Surprisingly, because there was a Republican in the White House, as Ling said, “he convinced these old, white, conservative, and religious Americans that they were disenfranchised!” Even though they were in the majority! It was pure alchemy. He told them they were looked down on. He milked them for their resentment—the elixir of devils. As Ling said, “He formed a kind of counterculture; a resistance against the liberals, and the progressives, and the feminists.”

In the mid-80s he syndicated to about 50 stations across the country but by 1990 he got 450 affiliates. He was the rock star of talk radio and the conservative movement. He led a Rush to Excellence Tour to various stadiums around the country with as many as 10,000 people.  As Justin Ling said, “Limbaugh declared a culture war”. Limbaugh put it this way:

“We are in the midst of a culture war. What are rights? This culture war illustrates precisely what is going on. We in America are in the midst—it’s an exciting time to be alive—we are in the midst of a redefinition of who is going to define right and wrong, what the punishment is going to be for those who violate the limits that we place on our behavior. We are arguing about who has the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong. We’re arguing over what censorship is And to me its pretty scary.”

 

And there it is again—fear—the secret sauce of paranoia and right-wing hysteria.

Like Trump later, Limbaugh went from being a spoiled rich kid to a champion of the working class. People all over America were starting to take notice of Limbaugh. I remember at the time hearing about him from a friend of mine, a trucker. Truckers loved Limbaugh, just like they later loved Trump and basically for the same reasons. They liked to have a wrecking ball in their corner as did my friend the trucker, and much later the truckers convoy in Ottawa in 2022. They got a rush from Rush Limbaugh.

As Justin Ling said, “On his radio show he was the voice of God on a one way street. And he loved nothing better than to run over liberal women. On his radio show he said, “this is a show devoted to what I think.” On the Dave Lettermen show he said people were bugged by him because “I have almost a monopoly on the truth.” No one could ever accuse Limbaugh of humility. Humility was a liberal vice. And his fans loved it.  He also said “This is a benevolent dictatorship. I am the dictator. There is no first amendment here except for me.”

Now he was entitled to be the dictator of his own show. If we don’t like it, we don’t have to listen to it.

 

Good People Can Get It wrong

Hate, Indigenous People After Contact, Moral Humility, racism

 

A lot of people—good people—are excited about Manitoba electing an indigenous person ad premier.  I admit it. I am excited about that too. I think Wab Kinew is bright, likeable, and filled with empathy. Those are good qualities  for a leader to have that will serve him well.

I just want to pour some cold water on the expectations.  Many seem to suggest that the fact that an indigenous man has been elected proves that Manitoba is not racist. I wish that were true.  But I don’t think it is that simple.

I am reminded about the election of Barack Obama to the American presidency. That also raised many hopes, not all of which were fulfilled. Many thought too that this proved America is not a racist society.  Many events since that memorable election have proved that to be wildly over optimistic.

Racism in the US, as in Canada, runs deep. Very deep.  The same goes for hate. That does not mean that racism is forever embedded in our societies. I don’t think it is in our DNA as some have suggested.  It does mean we must be modest in our expectations and humble in our assumptions. Eradicating racism will be a big job, over a long haul.

In the US after Obama was elected that supercharged the extreme racist fringes of American society. Many of them could not bear the image of a black man and his black family living in the White House. The racists found this intolerable. This was part of the reason for the amplification of the Tea Party in the US. Racism erupted. It was not pretty. I remember seeing disturbing posters and bumper stickers in the US. It was ugly.

The same thing could happen in Manitoba. Images of Wab Kinew and his family could trigger a new political faction here as well. How about the Beer Party?

We must remember the obvious: Good people can get it wrong.

Collapse of Society

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona, civilization, Environment, Indigenous People before Contact, Moral Humility

 

For reasons that are subject to debate, during the period of 1400 to 1500 A.D. large community centers were abandoned in the American southwest, as were many canals. The people did not die out, they moved instead to smaller villages in small groups. They spread throughout much of the Southwest, including northern Arizona. They adapted to some changed conditions in other words.

 

What really interests me is why this occurred. It is one of the genuine mysteries of North American archaeology. I believe it has continuing important significance for our modern societies. There are lessons for us to learn here. Will we learn them?

They may have left because of environmental collapse. For example, because the ancestral people of the Sonoran desert were so successful at farming they may have produced too many people for the land to sustain.  People around the world need to learn modesty and humility. That certainly applies to us moderns as well.

When Spanish missionaries arrived at the end of the 17th century, they found only an empty shell of the once flourishing village of Casa Grande (as the Spanish called it). Over the next two centuries, many visitors visited the site and damaged it over and over again. Some were like vandals ruining what they saw. We could see graffiti from this time on the walls.  In the late 1800s scientists pressed for its formal protection and in 1892 Casa Grande Ruins National Monument became America’s first archaeological reserve. To this day, the Great House keeps the secrets of the Ancestral People of the Sonoran Desert within its protected walls.

We all must learn that societies collapse. Everyone has done that and so will ours.

No monopoly on Truth

Extremism, Free Speech, Freedom, Liberalism, Moral Humility, Truth Seeking

 

 

It is strongly implied from the analysis of John Stuart Mill, that whenever we are involved in a dispute we should remember it is very likely, though not certain, that there is some truth to the position of our opponent.  Most disputes between competing doctrines and opinions work exactly like that, but too often we tend to forget that. I know I have too often forgotten that. I need to see the other side of a question. I may reject most of it, but if I reject all of it, I am likely making a serious mistake. The truth is usually shared as Mill said. Looking for all of the truth on one side of a serious debate is short-circuiting the search for truth. That is why we must welcome diversity of opinion and listen to all sides. Only then will we find the whole truth and not just a partial truth. That is why free speech is so important for society. Free speech is a human right, but it is more than that. It is also a social good.

 

Mill gave one more example, which I also liked. He talked about liberals and conservatives. There is often truth on both sides, though perhaps not equally balanced. Mill said,

 

“In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away.  Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reasons and sanity. Unless opinion favorable to democracy and aristocracy, to property and to equality, to co-operation and competition, to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to liberty and to discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is not a chance of both elements getting their due; one scale is sure to go up and the other down. Truth in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of reconciling and combining opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners. On any of the great open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being, represents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on most topics. They are adduced to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.  When there are persons to be found who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.”

 

 

Even if there are few contrary voices (as in the case of Rousseau versus the Enlightenment above) we ought always to pay attention and respect to the voice of the dissenter. Otherwise there is, as Mill said, “not a chance of both elements getting their due.”  The rebel is critically important, even when we least expect it. It is virtually impossible for one side to capture 100% of the truth. Let the rebel help us to find what is missing for the winning side will always benefit.

 

This approach of always making room for the rebel opinion has a lot of worth. It is only if one side is infallible that we can escape this approach. Infallibility is unlikely ever to be found. I wish it were otherwise.  But one side rarely holds the entire truth. It can always benefit from some overlooked truth from the other side.

 

In today’s market place of ideas, acknowledging that the other side might have some truth is deeply unpopular. This is particularly true in the United States where to merely acknowledge the other side might have a point is considered traitorous. Members of the group are quick to jump on anyone who even hints at compromise with the wicked other.  In many places in Canada this is also all too common.

 

Mill also wants us to understand that this approach applies to all important issues, not just religious issues, because no side ever has a monopoly on truth. II really think Mill has found a key here in these 3 important propositions that all call for permitting—no encouraging—diversity of opinion. It is the closest we can come to a royal road to the truth.

I must admit that I find this amazingly well argued. How about you?