Category: Andrew Fiala Blog

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The Illusion of Nostalgia

Fresno Bee, June 25, 2023

A new study called “The Illusion of Moral Decline” suggests that we are morally better than our ancestors, even though we think we are worse. The study by psychologists Adam Mastroianni and Dan Gilbert maintains, “On average, modern humans treat each other far better than their forebears ever did.” Their focus is on kindness, honesty and similar personal virtues.

We might add that political and social life is also better. Slavery was abolished. Women were liberated. And science, medicine, and technology have improved.

Despite this, a recent survey from the Pew Center concludes that most Americans think the past was better, with 58% of us saying that life is worse today than 50 years ago. In response, columnist Jonah Goldberg argued that nostalgia is a “terrible guide” for social and political judgment. He reminds us that crime is down, people are generally richer, infant mortality rates are better, and workplace safety has improved.

So why are we so fond of what we see in the rear-view mirror? If things are better, why do we think they are worse? Mastroianni and Gilbert explain that psychological biases cloud our judgment. We have limited information and selective memories.

I suspect religion, politics, and marketing also play a part. Religions emphasize the holiness of their founders. Americans also celebrate the wisdom of the founding fathers. And political parties promise to return us to past greatness. Nostalgia is often used to sell us a product.

Poets and artists also tend to paint yesteryear in sepia tones that reek of longing. Herman Melville wrote, “How lovely was the light of heaven, what angels leaned from out the sky, in years when youth was more than wine, and man and nature felt divine.”

Nostalgia and a sense of decline are common throughout history. The Taoists of ancient China spoke of a prior generation of “true men,” who lived in harmony with heaven. And Plato and the ancient Greeks spoke of a Golden Age, and the lost utopia of Atlantis.

Nostalgia makes sense when the present is chaotic. The Athenians of Plato’s era lived in a time of war, plague, and political turmoil. They imagined the Golden Age as an ideal alternative to a tumultuous present.

Perhaps that explains our present moment. We’re suffering through the aftereffects of the pandemic and the polarization of the Trump years. There is war in Europe. The Earth’s climate is changing. There have been rapid shifts in cultural identity. It is not surprising that folks think it would be nice to go back to a simpler, more stable time.

But no such simpler time has ever existed. Nor will the future be stable. The world is built of crooked timber. It has never been perfect. Nor can we expect it to be.

A Woody Allen film called “Midnight in Paris” is worth watching in this regard. In the film, a modern American is transported back to the 1920s, where he hangs out with the heroes of the Jazz Age. There he meets a woman who fantasizes about the “Belle Epoque” of the 19th century. They jump back in time and discover that in the 19th century, artists were nostalgic for the Renaissance.

We might note that the Renaissance was based on admiration for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Each generation is afflicted by nostalgia.

The truth is that we cannot go back. We cannot recreate what is lost to time. We should learn from history. But we should also learn to let it go. What’s past is past. Life unfolds in the present.

And if you think things are worse today, despite the evidence, that really means there is work to do. Rather than lamenting the lost angels of youth, and the heroes of the Golden Age, we should embrace the challenge of improving ourselves and creating a better future.

Nostalgia is misplaced idealism. In seeing the imperfections of the present, we pine for the past. But the past was never perfect. And if the present is better, it can still be further improved. Once we stop gazing in the mirror, we should get to work to build a future that is a bit less crooked, and a bit closer to the ideal.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article276697551.html#storylink=cpy

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Finding Hope Beyond the Political

Or Why We Need Philosophy, Religion, and Art

Political life is limited and ultimately unsatisfying.  When we focus on the external and horizontal dimension of political life, we are bound to be frustrated.  But there are other dimensions and sources of meaning, beyond the political.

The despair of the political

The world is unjust.  Good people often suffer in misery and obscurity.  And bad folks become rich and powerful.  The social and political world is messy and frustrating.  Our imagined ideals fail to become real.  And although progress can be made, there is backlash and unfulfilled expectations. 

We inherit a broken world that conflicts with our idealism.  The dream of justice runs aground on the shards of these fragments.  The more we want to repair these ruins, the more hopeless things appear.  We also disagree about who ruined this world, why it is broken, and how it ought to be fixed. 

This sense of grievance and longing explains why the passion of the political can become shrill, dogmatic, and polarizing.  Political intensity feeds off dissatisfaction.  And when these deep emotions are frustrated long enough, there is the risk of despair.  The passion of the political dwells in the thought that if these ruins cannot be repaired, all is lost. 

Clinging to hope

To fight the despair that haunts politics, political rhetoric is often infused with what Barack Obama called “the audacity of hope.”  The best and most inspiring political speech reminds us of an imagined future in which the ideal will be actualized.

Martin Luther King, Jr. provides a well-known example.  He was aware of the problem of political despair.  In response to the disappointments of the civil rights movement, King said, , “The only healthy answer lies in one’s honest recognition of disappointment even as he still clings to hope, one’s acceptance of finite disappointment even while clinging to infinite hope.”  And: “Our most fruitful course is to stand firm, move forward nonviolently, accept disappointments and cling to hope.”

King warned that disappointment in the face of injustice can lead to bitterness, self-pity, cynicism, nihilism, and other “poisons” of the soul.  His remedy was to “cling to hope.”  This phrase is interesting.  To cling is to hold on, to try to remain committed, even as the storm rages.

Thinking in more than one dimension

As a Christian, King found a source of hope beyond the storm.  King’s hope was oriented toward another dimension, a source of meaning that exists in a realm beyond the political.  This is what Rev. Jeremiah Wright (who inspired Obama’s idea of the audacity of hope) called “the vertical dimension.”

Politics is one dimensional.  It views the self and the other on a merely horizontal dimension, failing to take into account other dimensions of life and experience.   This is bound to be dissatisfying because human beings live in more than one dimension. 

The vertical dimension is often understood in religious terms, as an axis oriented toward the divine.  But secular folks can also discover an inner dimension connected with love, beauty, or other sources of meaning found in the human experience.  The most important of these non-political axes are called art, religion, and philosophy (borrowing a set of concepts from Hegel). 

Now there is a tendency among some thoroughly political (or politicized) folks to reduce art, religion, and philosophy to politics.  Marxists explain the “ideological” in terms of material and economic conditions.  Feminists and race-conscious theorists also sometimes interpret art, religion, and philosophy from a liberatory framework.  Conservatives do this as well, when they think that art, religion, and philosophy ought to support some preferred nationalistic ideal. 

But the wonder of art, religion, and philosophy is that they burst the bounds of any politicized and reductive account of human reality.  The artist, the mystic, and the sage exist in a different dimension, oriented toward values and ideas that are not reducible to questions of justice or power. 

The example of comedy and tragedy

This may sound abstract.  So let’s consider two familiar artforms: the comedic and the tragic.  Comedy can be political.  It can be used both to liberate and to oppress.  But sometimes the comedic reveals the absurdity of existence.  And laughter can be an end-in-itself. 

Tragedy can also be employed for political purposes: to tell a story about oppression or the “triumph of the will.”  But tragedy also transcends the political.  It makes us shudder to wonder about death, evil, pride, murder, and betrayal.  Sophocles has the chorus say in Antigone (line 332): There are terrors and wonders on earth, and none is more terrible or wonderful than we humans. 

When a comedic artist reveals absurdity, we are directed beyond the political dimension toward broader reflection on the human condition.  When we laugh, and play along, we are engaged in a world of imagination, on a dimension apart from the political. The same is true, when we are moved by tragedy to see the terror and the wonder of human existence.  This act of imagination gives us a glimpse of a dimension of experience that is beyond the political. 

This act of imagination can be a source of hope, repair, and reconciliation.  It can also renew the spirit and gives us the energy to return to our struggles with better perspective, and a clearer sense of self. 

Hope beyond politics

Now a critic may suggest that this experience of transcendence comes from a position of “privilege” that is conveniently able to ignore the challenges of political reality.  But the move beyond the political is not an excuse for political indifference.  We are political animals, as Aristotle said.  And we cannot simply ignore injustice and the struggles of political life. 

But we all possess the power of human imagination.  And we can all find consolation and hope when we open our minds to those other dimensions of human experience that transcend the political.

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The Trump lover: How a dangerous political emotion undermines democracy

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Why do Republicans stick with Donald Trump?

The rational thing would be for Republicans to find another champion of their ideas who is not tainted by overwhelming character flaws and indictments. Perhaps the Party leaders are making a rational calculation about the need to appease the Trumpian base. But that calculus is inextricably linked to the strange devotion of the Trump lovers. And Trump love, like other political love affairs, is a danger to democracy.

Love is a dangerous political emotion. Love is not subject to rational calculation. Rather, it is about identity, devotion, and faith. There were Obama lovers, and Clinton lovers. But today it is Trump love that is the problem. Trump love exposes a quasi-religious aspect of political life, related to hero worship and idolatry. Human beings love heroes who personify our values. This often involves wishful thinking, as we project our desires onto our beloved. This process of projection can become a kind of idolatry, as the beloved hero becomes a symbol of identity, value, hope, and dreams. And it does not matter whether the hero actually loves us or embodies our values. Rather, we see what we want to see, reflected in our image of the beloved idol.

This is a dangerous process in democracies, as it runs counter the idea that voters should be focused on policies and ideas. It also makes compromise, negotiation, and rational deliberation difficult. When people base their political allegiances on love and identity, electoral loses are harder to stomach, and the opposition looks like an enemy.

Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate

Idolatry is a common occurrence in religion, and in politics. Sometimes this is a benign kind of hero worship. But the Western religious tradition is full of warnings against worshiping false gods. The tendency toward the love of idols is related to a theory of religion that is associated with Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach suggested that we see in God our own image, a projection of our love for ourselves.

And therein lies the danger: self-love is a powerful and destructive force. Idol worship is often emotional and irrational. This can become dogmatic, as true believers go to great lengths to prop up their cherished idols. We all do this from time to time. Abused wives stick with their abusive husbands. Faithful fans worship celebrities, even when those pop icons prove to be jerks.

We get defensive about those we love. When others attack our idols exposing their flaws, we may turn against the truth-tellers and call it fake news. Idolatry becomes dangerous when those who attack our idols are viewed as enemies of everything we hold dear.

The danger of love is well-known in Greek tragedy. Euripides’ Medea comes to mind, which is a play about love, jealousy, and violent revenge. At one point the chorus says, “Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate.” And Medea’s revenge is gruesome, for as she explains, “hate is a bottomless cup.”

Sycophancy as prelude to idolatry

The Trump story is also about calculating sycophancy. One of the interesting characters in this drama is Senator Lindsey Graham, whose role in the drama is that of a sycophant. Back in 2015, Senator Graham called Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” But Graham later became one of Trump’s faithful sycophants. And even though Graham suggested he was done with Trump after the January 6 assault on the Capitol, Graham has more recently sucked back up to Trump.

As Trump was indicted in New York last week, Graham said in a TV interview: “This is going to destroy America. We’re going to fight back at the ballot box. We’re not going to give in.” Senator Graham moves from the man to the collective here, saying “we” are going to fight and refuse to give in. And here he appeals to the Trump lovers who seem to think that Trump is the party and that attacks on Trump are attacks on them.

Senator Graham’s sycophancy is clever and strategic. He sucks up and ingratiates himself, hoping to obtain a little power and glory for himself. But Graham’s flip-flops on Trump show some part of him knows better. As I explained in much more detail in my book, Tyranny from Plato to Trump, sycophants are blameworthy because they know they are selling out.

Sycophancy is a common human failure. There are brown-nosers in the Democratic party, in our businesses, and in our families. Power is alluring. And it is easy to be seduced into holding your nose, and sucking up.

The ‘indisputable champion’ of the true believers

But the suck-up is not a true lover. Sycophancy remains a step away from idolatry. Senator Graham does not appear to be one of the true Trump lovers. But there are those who are.

Consider The Young Republican Club of New York, who offered a statement following Trump’s indictment that made the love of Trump very clear. They said, “President Trump embodies the American people—our psyche from id to super-ego—as does no other figure; his soul is totally bonded with our core values and emotions, and he is our total and indisputable champion.”

Referring to Trump’s indictment these Young Republicans said “Let anyone who celebrates this downfall of our republic be forever branded a traitor to our nation. No one who mocks the people’s will can claim the title of an American.” And: “President Trump assured us that he was our retribution. Now we must return the rejoinder: our victory will be the joint vindication that our great President Donald J. Trump and our American people both deserve. This is Total War.”

This is not the sycophantic flattery of those who need to hold their noses. Rather, the Trump lovers think the smell of their champion is pure and true. They blame the taint on the enemies of their beloved. This can quickly become dangerous: as a “total war” against the “traitors to our nation.” Love transforms the idol who is worshipped into a focal point of identity, who must be defended against all enemies. And with Medea in mind, one wonders about the ferocity of the lover’s desire for retribution.

Democracy without enemies

Greek tragedies usually end badly. But there are lessons to be learned. The key is enlightenment, including wisdom about love and its misbegotten role in political life. Democratic deliberation should be about policies and ideas. It should include compromise and negotiation. But love makes this difficult, if not impossible.

Mistaken love can sometimes be cured by turning on the light. As the facts emerge, rational beings can be persuaded by the truth. But love, faith, and idolatry are often recalcitrant. When dogmatists are pushed, they harden the armor of their belief, constructing ad hoc hypotheses to prop up their idol. One of these props is the claim that those who attack their beloved are evil enemies.

There may be no way to persuade the most dogmatic of the Trump lovers that Trump love is a danger to democracy. But one strategy is to re-affirm the idea that democratic deliberation is not a battle of idols, who require love and devotion. We should also assure the true believers that an attack on their idol is not an attack on them. The Trump lovers are not evil enemies. They are fellow human beings, struggling to make sense of a world that includes love, hate, and delusion.

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Do we need the opiate of religion?

Reading Time: 4 minutes

These are hopeless times. A widely-cited study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 42% of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. Rates of sadness and hopelessness have increased steadily since 2011 when only 28% of high schoolers reported the same.

A variety of explanations have been offered for this alarming problem. Some argue for a return to traditional religion. But could it be that hopelessness is an appropriate response to a world afflicted by violence, sexism, racism, and injustice? And rather than prescribing the opiate of religion, might the solution be to reform systems built on alienation, exploitation, and hypocrisy?

The causes of alienation

Young people are not unwise to see the world as hopeless. The adults have messed things up. Rather than pretending things are all right, young people see looming threats. Political polarization, racial tension, gun violence, and rising authoritarianism fill the headlines. And climate change has added “climate anxiety” and “eco-grief” to the list of modern maladies.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has also suggested that social media plays a role in the growth of depression and anxiety among adolescents. Twitter and TikTok seem to exploit anxiety (for example in “the fear of missing out”). Social media also makes it possible to disseminate fake news and unrealistic expectations about friendship, body image, and happiness. And of course, unscrupulous actors take advantage and profit from this new frontier in exploitation and alienation.

As all of this is going on, some worry that the decline of traditional religion is part of the problem. One recent study by economists Giles, Hungerman, and Oostrom suggests a link between hopelessness and the well-documented decline in religious affiliation. Under the provocative title “Opiates of the Masses?”, the study argues that an increase in “deaths of despair” (caused by alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicides) is correlated with the decline of religiosity in the United States.

The argument against atheism

It’s a correlation worth considering. Defenders of traditional religion often suggest that loss of religion is the primary cause of modern hopelessness.

Consider this passage from evangelical preacher Ravi Zacharias:

Having killed God, the atheist is left with no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life, and no hope beyond the grave. Significantly, the absence of future hope has an amazing capacity to reach into the present and eat away at the structure of life… There is a complete sense of alienation in in the world one hundred years after Nietzsche. It is this utterly morbid and hopeless philosophy that has sent many of our youth into a search for other realities. Those who do not have hope, in an effort to drown their despair, turn to drugs and alcohol.

Ravi Zacharias, The Real Face of Atheism

I quote this at length because there is tremendous irony in Zacharias’ work. Zacharias, who died in 2020, has been accused of sexual crimes and using funds donated to his ministry to cover up his sexual misdeeds. But at his funeral, then Vice-President Mike Pence called him one of the greats of Christian apologetics.

Others have claimed that atheism causes hopelessness. In a book that quotes Zacharias at length, Anthony DeStefano put the worry this way: “Human beings simply cannot survive without hope, and atheism is the philosophy of hopelessness.” Another Christian author, Steven Cook, says: “The biblical worldview offers value, purpose, and hope. The atheistic worldview—when followed to its logical conclusion—leads to a meaningless and purposeless life that eventuates in despair.”

But is our present sense of hopelessness really about the lack of faith in eternal life? Or does it come from a more mundane sense that the adults on earth have screwed things up?

The opiate of the people?

Now let’s return to the Giles study and its provocative title, “Opiates of the Masses?” The study notes that “nonreligious organizations often fail to successfully duplicate the sense of community, social services, and cohesion provided by participation in a religious tradition.” There is some truth here. Human beings need a sense of community. But again, the problem is not about hope for eternal life. Rather, it is about the human need for genuine connection, friendship, and belonging. And much of this is lacking in the world of TikTok, Trumpian polarization, and Zacharian hypocrisy. 

This study also suggests that alcoholism and other syndromes have increased as religiously based “blue laws” have been repealed. For example, alcohol is more freely available. And the 24/7 economy no longer includes a mandatory rest day on the Sabbath.

But is the decline of religion to blame for increasing alcoholism, anxiety, and stress? The problem is, rather, that unrestrained capitalism is fraying our nerves, while selling us booze, gambling, pornography, and prescription drugs as placebos. The eradication of blue laws is not about the loss of hope for eternity. It is, rather, about opening the door for exploitation by the addiction-industrial complex. And while religious communities can provide a source of comfort and hope, religious communities also involve exploitation and hypocrisy.

The provocative title of the Giles study is unexplained by the authors. But the phrase “opium of the people” comes from Karl Marx. Marx suggested that the oppressed masses turn to religion as a kind of anesthetizing illusion. In explaining the idea, Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”

On this view, religion covers up social problems and defuses the revolutionary spirit of people who feel alienated and exploited. This alienation occurs under soulless capitalism. It happens when decent people watch political and corporate elites fiddle as Rome burns. It also occurs when hypocritical religious leaders exploit the faithful for their own corrupt and selfish purposes.

Beyond the opiate of the masses

If the pale hope provided by religion fades away without fixing the underlying human problem of alienation, despair may in fact result. If we are forced to confront the alienating world in which we live without the solace of religion, hopelessness is not unreasonable. This does not mean, however, that religion is the solution.

Beyond using opiates to mask our pain, we need to solve the underlying disease. The problem is exploitation and alienation. The preachers of hope prey upon their flocks. And corporations cash in on human anxiety. To fix that, we need to critique the alienation, corruption, and injustice that are the source of so much human grief. Solutions for hopelessness include a more humane economy, a reform of the political system, and a critique of religious exploitation. But those are human solutions to human problems that do not require a return to the opiate of the masses.

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Deep fakes, AI, and the need for ethical supervision

Fresno Bee, March 19, 2023

In the era of deep-fake videos, tech companies must not dismantle their ethics teams

Someone forwarded me a story about Microsoft laying off its ethics team. My first thought was “fake news.” It’s surprising to learn that Microsoft even had an ethics department. It’s even stranger to hear that the group has been disbanded at a time when technological innovation is getting wild.

These are the days of deep-fake videos, internet trolls, and artificial intelligence (AI). And so, in chasing down this story, I used my best internet skills. I checked multiple sources. I refused to believe websites I had never heard of. Eventually I found a report on Popular Science. A reporter there named Andrew Paul explained, “This month saw the surprise dissolution of Microsoft’s entire Ethics & Society team — the latest casualty in the company’s ongoing layoffs affecting 10,000 employees.”

The article explains that the Ethics and Society team once had 30 members. It was reduced to seven people in 2022. And now it is gone. The article notes that Microsoft still has a department of “Responsible AI.” That led me to search Microsoft’s website for the Responsible AI department. There I discovered a number of documents and reports based on the following six principles: fairness, inclusiveness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, transparency, and accountability. It’s reassuring to see that Microsoft has this guidance in place. But one wonders how humans are administering this, as personnel are being cut.

Anyway, I recount how I tracked down this story as an example of online critical literacy. You need to actively search for information, rather than letting it flow into your feed. You should check multiple sources, rather than relying on the first click. Double check URLs to make sure they’re not phony. Seek legitimate sources in mainstream or legacy media. Corporate documents, policy statements, and legal filings are also useful. And legitimate sources of information typically include an author’s name.

Of course, it requires effort and experience to sort things out. It helps to understand that the internet, in all of its tainted glory, is as much about making dollars as it is about making sense. Websites want clicks. They entice with spicy stories and sexy pictures. Algorithms force-feed us stories and images. Search engines profit when we click.

There is money and mayhem to be made online. So, you should enter that space with a suspicious mind. Don’t take anything at face value.

This is especially true as AI and deep fakes become better. I discussed the challenge of AI in a previous column. Here, let’s consider deep fakes.

Two recent deep-fake stories are worth considering. In one, students made a deep-fake video of a school principal uttering a racist rant that included threats of violence. In another, actress Emma Watson’s face was turned into a sexualized ad for an app that could be used to, you guessed it, make deep fakes.

In the first case, it is easy to see how deep fakes could be weaponized, as a fake video could be used to discredit an enemy. In the second case, the goal appears to be to allow for customized pornography, where any face could be “swapped” into a porn video. In the first case, yikes. In the second case, yuck.

One solution to this problem takes us back to the ethics teams at big tech corporations. Now is the time to build these teams up — not tear them down. These groups should be monitoring content and establishing norms and guidelines for the use of technology. Beyond that, we need a full-fledged movement for better education about media literacy, critical internet usage, and respectful community standards for the online world. And lawyers and legislators need to regulate and litigate.

Someone said recently that the internet broke our democracy. It is also possible to imagine how deep-fake technology can break people’s hearts. But this kind of damage can be prevented with ethical guidance, wise legislation, and human ingenuity.

I look forward to reading future stories about the expansion of ethics teams at tech companies. Maybe someday there will be college majors and high school classes in critical thinking and the internet. Of course, when I run across these stories, I’ll double and triple check them to make sure they are not fake news.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article273252600.html#storylink=cpy