Dear Friends,
Welcome to my Substack site. I have named it “Beyond Appearances.” I plan to write on politics, philosophy, human rights, and social and cultural issues. I will also share some personal musings and the occasional book review. My approach will not be merely journalistic; I intend to look at issues of interest from the standpoint of the values and concepts that lie behind them.
I look forward to building a community around common interests and a love of ideas. I hope that you find my thoughts engaging and I would favor entering into email correspondence with you. If you are on my email list, you should receive a mailing from me. If you are linking on from my Facebook page, you need to click the “subscribe” button to continue to receive my entries. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time. Here is my initial posting:
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I have a love-hate affair with David Brooks. I often disagree with his conclusions, but share an affinity when it comes to his standpoint. As I do, Brooks is interested in going beneath the issues of the day and unearthing the values that stand at their foundations. At times, he goes overboard and he feels unctuous, if not preachy. But frequently I find he gets it right.
He was right on target in his column in today's New York Times Entitled “Here's the Mind-Set That's Tearing Us Apart” his piece takes aim as the fallacy of essentialism. It's the penchant to view reality, and people also, through the lens that places them in categories. As he notes, the world is complicated and we create categories to make sense of things.
I think this is psychologically and epistemically correct. We are bombarded by sense data and the mind organizes disparate data into types in order to render reality intelligible. Brooks invokes Immanuel Kant when the master opined that perceptions without conceptions are blind.
This propensity, as implied, is rooted in the way we naturally think. Psychologists have observed that the average person can know only about 150 other people as distinct individuals. As the number grows larger we place people in groups, in stereotypes, if you will. Having done so, it is a small step to categorcially accept or dismiss these types en masse. We can chauvinistically embrace or categorically marginalize, dismiss and hate others merely because they are members of a group.
Brooks' point is, of course, that there is dangerously too much of this stereotyping these days. He cites the Johns Hopkins political scientist, Yascha Mounk as noting that on the right ethnonationalists see race as real and will always be there, requiring that one's superior group always be in charge. On the left there are those who see race as so baked in that it will always define communities and societies. In this sense different and distinct individuals become overshadowed by their identities in racial or religious groups.
I generally agree with these conclusions and have railed against them. When it comes to this social exemplification of essentialism, it leads to such notions that one's racial, ethnic or gender identity determines one's values or how one thinks. Hence if one is Black it is too often assumed that he must hold to specific values and views (often identified by people outside the group itself) If Jewish to those. If a woman to such values, etc. It's a lazy way of thinking and understanding others. It is simplistic, ultimately anti-intellectual, and it is also wrong. Sure, people are molded to significant degrees by their ethnicity, gender and race. But not exclusively. People are socialized to hold the values and beliefs they do because of many factors.
I recall reading years ago a marvelous book Identity and Violence by the Indian economist, Amartya Sen. Sen has increasingly become a social philosopher and he is here. In the book he concludes that people are often identified, and identify themselves, as belonging to a particular and exclusive ethnicity. That mode of identification tends to build walls around people. “I am this and not that.”
Yet, Sen concludes that none of us is the product of a single identity. We are products of multiple identities. Indeed it is true. If I apply this insight myself I conclude that I am at least partially the following: American, Jewish, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Cuban and no doubt others extending further back on the ancestral scale. Sen's conclusion is that if we were to understand our own identity and that of others from the standpoint of this diversity rather than exclusivity, we would often begin to see part of ourselves in the other. As a consequence the walls that separate us would become more porous and the penchant for xenophobia would diminish. I think this is a brilliant and very important insight, and reading Amartya Sen on this topic has broadened my own values as few other things have.
The same can be said of culture. There is an essentialism that is too often ascribed to “culture.”It is my view, which is perhaps unfashionable in sectors of academia these days, that “culture” is overvalorized. Cultures are not monolithic. Every culture is comprised of many subcultures, with different people holding to different values. From the outside, all cultures may appear homogeneous. But all one needs to do is enter into them and one finds that people are often at each other throats. Years back the Sanctuary organization I founded to aid asylum seekers took in as a client an asylee from Kenya. She was a community leader who promoted women's economic development and opposed female circumcision. She fled persecution from members of her own tribe who favored female circumcision. Same tribe; diametrically opposing values and beliefs.
The antidote to essentialism, which Brooks does not invoke, is pluralism. It is a view which I increasingly hold metaphysically, socially and politically. It is the view that while people belonging to specific groups may hold many things in common, the members in the group retain and express their distinctiveness and their individuality. Simply put, different people value different things, and to assume they must all hold to the same values because they belong to an identified group is reductionistic, perniciously stereotyping, patronizing and false.
The same is true of ideas. When similar ideas are grouped into categories they become ideologies. Ideologies are a form of ideational shorthand. Ideologies become reified, are readily weaponized and employed to do battle with one's political enemies. As they become reified and the bearers of inflexible truth, dialogue, compromise, and peaceful coexistence become more difficult.
These are the times we are in. Brooks' view is that we should not drop appreciating people in their groupness, and view them as individuals exclusively. He says, “I wouldn't want to live in a world that didn't have group consciousness, a world without Irish people singing about Irish history, without Black writers exploring different versions of the Black experience.” Brooks' response is that we develop the mindset whereby we are “...constantly toggling back and forth between seeing groups and seeing persons.” I agree. Social reality would be much less edgy and fractious if we lived between the group and the individual, between the universal and particulars, so to speak.
I add that we would be better off if we accepted the notion that reality is complex, and whether we are talking of people or ideas, they are not reducible to simplicities. We would better off – and I believe closer to the truth – if we appreciated that reality is often nuanced and subtle, subject to multiple tiers of understanding and perception. It is my view that much is to be gained and learned through inquisitiveness, curiosity, exploration, openness and dialogue. The reduction of the world around us to simple notions may bring momentary security, but it sets the stage for battle with those who differ.
An enlightened pluralism, an appreciation for the complexity of the realms of both people and ideas, would bring with it an epistemic humility and lay the groundwork for a more tolerant and peaceful world.
Many thanks for submitting your writings to me through email rather than Facebook. Please continue to do so since I value what you write immensely.
And thanks to you, Marilyn. Wishing you well!