This week we looked at a debate about immigration to highlight a crucial skill Aristotle wishes to teach us, a skill democracies are prone to lack. As we saw last week, advocates of different political ideologies or platforms tend to absolutize the values their position highlights, while forgetting that their position inevitably fails to cover every conceivable value. We are finite creatures, and our values are finite, in the sense that every gain/advance will come at a cost. We have to leave something behind.
This is experientially true. If you want to get married and have a family, you have to sacrifice the fun of dating and meeting other people. If you have children, you have to leave behind the life of doing what you like and disposable income. You can certainly argue that married life with a family is a better choice than a life of perpetual dating. But worst of all would be the person who tried to have both at once. The married person who also wanted to date other people would wreak a great deal of havoc. The perpetual dater might simply provoke raised eyebrows.
Theologically this rings true as well, i.e., “Except a seed fall to the ground and die, it remains only a single seed; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24). If we are to have life, either spiritually or physically, we must have death, whether that be physical death (the food we eat) or the death of a way of life (giving up a life of dating for marriage).
When faced with a controversial and thorny political issue such as immigration, I wanted the students to use Aristotle’s template to do the following:
See the strengths of each side of the argument
Understand the costs/what you have to sacrifice to achieve your aim
Discern that the debate was not about good values vs. bad values, but involved deciding which kinds of values to prioritize over other values.
The debate we viewed can be seen here:
Both speakers made good arguments, but I wanted the students to see the key underlying assumptions each side brought to the debate. How we view those key assumptions will likely determine what side we favor.
Not everyone loves argument by analogies, but I think analogies have a lot of power to distill key principles of an argument.
The “Pro” side of the debate (Prof. Kaplan) argues that people should be able to travel freely to seek out the best life for themselves they possibly can. He uses the analogy of a house and guest in the following manner:
Kaplan declares that he is not arguing that whomever wishes should be able to come to his house if he does not want them in his house.
If he wants someone to come in his house, and that someone wants to come, he should be allowed to come to Kaplan’s house. True, his neighbor might disapprove, but what business is it of theirs anyway?
He asserts that the “Con” side of the debate essentially argues that people should not have the freedom to extend invitations to people to come over to their house, and that those invited should not have the freedom to accept. This is absurd.
The “Con” side of the debate (Prof. Wellman) also uses the illustration of a house, but with a different emphasis from Kaplan:
He asks us to imagine that he leaves his house and goes to a conference for a week. When he returns, he asks his wife what she did while he was gone. She replied that she played cards with friends, got her hair done, and volunteered. Wellman implies that it would be absurd for him to object to such activities.
But, his wife then adds, I also decided to adopt a child from a foreign country. Here he is–meet your new son! Wellman declares that he would have every right to object to this action. His wife’s “freedom of association” has dramatically impacted his own freedom of association without his consent.
There are some deeper foundations to the arguments from both sides.
Kaplan, a libertarian, seems to believe in two key principles. The first is that the individual is the primary unit of society, and so our laws should be oriented around maximizing individual freedom. Secondly, libertarians tend to believe that maximizing economic freedom (which includes the free movement of labor) is a primary way to boost freedom overall. Economic growth is a moral issue, for greater economic growth means a better life for more people, especially those on the border between the lower and middle classes. So, in his analogy of the house, the homeowner is an employer and the guest is a potential worker.
I am not sure of the philosophical background of Wellman, but he argues that the group (though perhaps not necessarily the family, a la Aristotle) is the primary political decision making unit. Decisions that involve altering the makeup of a household/political community should be made by the community as a whole (or their representatives). In his “house” analogy he envisions a family rather than an employer.
Both analogies are persuasive, and both have their limits. Kaplan’s analogy doesn’t work as well when the guest wants to blast heavy metal music out of his window, which would obviously adversely affect the community. Wellman’s analogy makes perfect sense when comparing adoption to citizenship. But what if his wife just invited a friend over for coffee (maybe similar to a temporary work visa)? Hypothetically Wellman might still object to associating with his wife’s friend, but in that case our sympathies go to his wife. We would expect Wellman to bear up with the “incovenience” of the temporary association.
Deciding between these two positions boils down to the key divide between seeing the group/family or the individual as the primary political unit of society. Kaplan is suspicious of governments exercising authority over the individual, and Wellman much less so.
Hopefully, the students will see how their beliefs about these key “fork in the road” questions influence their position on immigration, whatever that might be.
This week we continued our look at Machiavelli, and paired up chapter 8 of The Prince with the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Nixon is best known for the Watergate scandal that led to his resignation during his second term in 1974. This is a fair verdict of history. However, we do well to remember that Nixon had a variety of foreign policy successes during his tenure, such as
Initiating a policy of detente, and the SALT treaties signed with the Soviet Union which contributed to easing the nuclear arms race.
Assisting in peace negotiations between Israeal and other Arab nations duirng the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
His historic overture to China and our opening of diplomatic relations. While we may wonder today at the ultimate legacy of our shift in China policy over the last 50 years, at the time it was a revolutionary move that likely helped hasten the end of the Cold War.
Domestically, Nixon had several initiatives that may surprise some who know him only through the prism of Watergate:
He started several new government agencies, such as the EPA, OSHA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
He took the US economy off of the gold standard
He reshaped financial policy by creating the Office of Management and Budget*
He passed the Clean Water Act
Some of these policies were popular, some not, but we cannot question that for a time he was an effective political leader and easily won reelection in 1972. But the Watergate scandal, and Nixon’s actions during the scandal, unraveled everything very quickly, and we should consider why this was the case. For that, we turned to Machiavelli’s insights about rulers who exercise “villainy.”
Machiavelli begins chapter eight of The Prince discussing two infamous rulers, and begins with Agathocles of Sicily, writing,
The son of a potter, he led a life of the utmost wickedness through all the stages of his fortune. Nevertheless, his wickedness was accompanied by such vigor of mind and body, that having joined the miltia, he rose through its grades to become praetor of Syracuse. . . . He [then] called together the people and Senate of the city, having imparted his design to fight Hamilcar the Carthaginian, . . . at a given signal had the senators and all the rich men of the city murdered, [eliminating all who could oppose him]. . . . And although he was twice beaten by Carthage and ultimately beseiged, he was able not only to defend the city, . . . but also [expand its territory into Africa] and [eventually] brought the Carthiginians to terms. In the end, he maintained his position as prince by many courageous and perilous expedients.
It cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, be without faith or pity, and without religion, by which methods one may indeed gain an empire but not glory.
Machiavelli goes on to cite the example of someone contemporary to his own day, who used many of the same methods as Agathocles. Later in the chapter, he continues,
Some may wonder how it came about that Agathocles, and others like him, could, after infinite treachery and crueltry, live secure for many years in their country without being conspired against by their subjects; although many others have, through their cruelty, been unable to maintain their position in times of peace, to say nothing of the uncertain times of war.
Machiavelli then answers his query, writing,
I believe this arises from the cruelties being used well or badly. “Well” used may be called those (if it is permissable to use the word of evil) which are committed once for the need of securing oneself, and which afterwards are not persisted in, but which are exchanged for methods as useful to the citizens as possible. Cruelties ill used are those which , although at first few, increase rather than diminish with time. Those who follow the former method may remedy in some measure their condition with God and man, as did Agathocles. As to the others, it is impossible for them to maintain themselves. . . . a conqueror must arrange to have all his cruelties come at once, so as not to have to resort to them every day . . .
We can first note that almost no political leader follows his advice, and indeed, in a democratic system, following his advice (supposing that one should do so, a different question entirely) becomes almost impossible. To get elected, one must promise good things, and certainly not state that one will begin their term by doing various evil deeds. To get elected, one must at least give the appearance of either a) healing the harms done by the previous leader, or b) prevent the harms that the challenger will introduce should they be elected.
The elected leader usually then enjoys a honeymoon period, an era of good feelings, where people assume the best and enjoy the change. Then, later, when the leader makes missteps, they are judged harshly for them. Among other things, these missteps go against the grain of their earlier cultivated image.
For presidents that serve two terms, the second term usually brings crisis and controversy. Truman’s second term had the Korean War, Johnson’s second term had violence in cities and the escalation in Vietnam. Nixon had Watergate, and Reagan the Iran-Contra scandal. Clinton had the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment. Bush had to face increasing difficulties and costs in Iraq, as well as the financial crash of ’08. The good feelings engendered by Obama in his first term disappeared during his second. There appears little escape from this pattern.
Perhaps one problem modern political leaders have is that they have little chance to exercise physical courage in any direct way. This limits their chances to win the favor of the people and renew their mandate, so to speak. Agathocles, for example, didn’t just take political risks that paid off, he regularly risked his own life.
Crtics of Machiavelli assert that he encouraged rulers to do evil things, or at least, gave them a pathway for doing so. This is possible, but I think we have to think more deeply about his words. Machiavelli does not say one can be a great ruler by doing evil, but q successful one. There is a difference. If one regards politics as an inevitably dirty business, then one needs to be aware of how to use the dirt. The divide, I think comes between those who think the dirt cannot be avoided, and those who think that it can. Machiavelli would tell us that the problem with modern leadership is not the dirt on their hands, but that they tell us that their hands are clean.
Dave
*I would suggest that the “throughline” for understanding both his foreign policy successes, his domestic policy initiatives, and the Watergate scandal is that of control. Nixon was not process oriented but idea oriented. He was suspicious of collaboration and had a hard time trusting others. He believed he was the one who best control events and outcomes. So, taking the economy off the gold standard gave the Fed more control over the economy, his budget reorganization put more power into the executive branch, and perhaps he created other federal agencies to extend executive power even in areas traditionally not managed by government. As for Watergate, rather than come clean at first and accept minor damage, he believed he could control the messaging and prevent problematic fallout. His miscalculation on this (in addition to his actual obstruction of justice) led to his demise.
Constitutions are preserved when their destroyers are at a distance, and sometimes also because they are near, for the fear of them makes the government keep in hand the constitution.
Wherefore the ruler who has a care of the constitution should invent terrors, and bring distant dangers near, in order that the citizens may be on their guard, and, like sentinels in a night watch, never relax their attention. He should endeavor too by help of the laws to control the contentions and quarrels of the notables, and to prevent those who have not hitherto taken part in them from catching the spirit of contention.
Some of this may seem jarring to us, as Aristotle is usually so calm and reasonable! Still, we should try and understand him.
First, by “constitution” Aristotle means something much more than the laws or political processes of a particular state. He refers more broadly how a particular order is “constituted,” in all its parts, i.e., its decision making, laws, culture, economics. One can think of their own familes as a kind of “constitution.” Parents make some “laws” that are explicit (perhaps, “no phones at the dinner table”), and there are some things that your family just “does not do.” You have ways of making decisions as a family that might vary, but would vary in a predictable fashion.
Let us suppose that mom and dad have a family meeting and declare together that “We are going to the beach this summer for vacation. You accept this as final even if perhaps you preferred to go elsewhere. You can now prepare to enjoy the beach as best you can. But what if dad says “beach” but mom says, “cabin in the mountains.” Their division would spark division amongst the children. Everyone would see the possibilities, and everyone would have an opinion. The uncertainty breeds division.
But division over where to go on vacation is relatively harmless. Imagine a different scenario with more at stake. Someone new moves into the neighborhood. He does live next door, but he is on your street several houses down. Some say that the new neighbor is a nicy guy, even if he is quirky and a bit mysterious. No one seems exactly sure what he does for work, of if he has a family. But he seems a bit lonely, so its important to reach out. Others say that he is a bad guy, mysterious for all the wrong reasons. He is someone to be avoided. But no one can say anything definitively.
Now imagine if your parents lacked clarity on how they viewed him. Sometimes they see him as a potential threat, sometimes they see him as a someone they should reach out to. They send mixed messages. They cannot decide. The kids too would be confused, and likely divided themselves. All kinds of theories would emerge in favor of every kind of approach.
This is the problem Aristotle alludes to. A threat far away is no problem. We have clarity on the situtation, and can relax. A threat close by also unites us, and again, it is the clarity that unites. A possible threat maybe in gray zone, maybe not, will pose a problem for the constituted order, even if they never actually attack. Their mere presence in the miasma of the in-between will breed internal division and disunion. Most “constitutions,” after all, are eroded from within rather than without.
It is the lack of clarity that divides internally.
In our own nation’s history we can think of some recent examples. Before we entered WW II, for example, the nation was seriously divided over whether or not we should involve ourselves in wars so far away, whether in Africa or Asia. Yes, the Nazi’s were bad, but how much did their “badness” impact us? After Pearl Harbor, we no longer had any doubts about the threat they posed, and we enetered the war entirely united.
This principle played itself out in our own living memory. After 9/11 as a nation we had clarity about our invasion of Afghanistan. We were attacked, and our attackers were there. We had our “Pearl Harbor” moment regarding Islamic terrorism. We invaded Afghanistan under a banner of national unity.
A few years later, we invaded Iraq with much less national unity and much less clarity. Was Iraq a threat? Well, maybe. Perhaps they had weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps Saddam Hussein would actively try to help those who wanted to harm us, but maybe not. We had no national agreement, but invaded anyway. The war lasted longer than we thought, cost more than we thought, and likely contributed to the financial collapse of 2008. One can argue that politically and culturally, we have not recovered from the fallout of these events.
Should we have invaded either country? The question is certainly important, but we can understand Aristotle’s point even better if we eliminate what we “should have” done from the equation. After all, the invasion done under the banner of unity did not have ultimate success (the Taliban is back in power), and the one conducted under national strife seems to have had some positive lasting effects (the constitution we helped install in 2005 still holds in Iraq). The question Aristotle wants us to consider is which conflict proved worse for our own constituted order, and here we have an obvious answer.
When we look at the Vietnam War, we again have a conflict almost guaranteed to cause internal division and threaten our constitution. We can see the violence and massive cultural changes in terms of family breakdown, the sexual revolution, drug culture, etc. as a byproduct of our involvement in a war in which we lacked clarity on the nature of the threat.
One the one hand, protecting South Vietnam could be seen as vital to our interests for many reasons:
We had pledged to defend the country from communist agression. Whether or not we should have done this, once declared, we had to back up our words if we wanted our words honored in other places throughout the world.
We had an interest in stopping the spread of communism, which was/is an evil ideology that wrecks great harm wherever it goes.
South Vietnam’s coastal geographic position made it a key strategic point of all of Southeast Asia.
But the fall of South Vietnam could be seen as not a threat to us for equally valid reasons:
Chinese and Soviet communism did pose a threat to us. But Vietnamese communism was more nationalistic, and thus, no real threat to the United States
Furthermore, Vietnam had a history of conflict with China. It would be in our interest not to fight them but to court them as an ally against China.
The perceived moral imbalance of a wealthy industrialized power attacking a poor peasant nation would never hold politically in the US, a country that mythologizes the underdog.
At the risk of oversimplifying a complex period in our history, our lack of clarity over a threat in the grey area led us into a labryinth that could only lead to the altering of our constittuted order.
When you teach the same classes year after year as I have, one starts to realize that what seems like great material one year seems to fall flat in another. Many reasons exist for this, some of them obvious, such as whether or not you taught the lesson on a Tuesday or a Friday, or at the beginning or the end of the day. Sometimes more mysterious factors present themselves, such as whether or not you have a critical mass of students interested in the topic.
Thankfully, some things work even if you teach it last period on the day before Christmas vacation, such as Assyrian tortures with 8th grade boys, and the Kennedy-Nixon debates. I am always impressed how students, with very little context or introduction, immediately pick up that “somethin’ ain’t right” with Nixon–setting aside the infamous sweat on his lower lip.
What Nixon gets wrong has nothing to do with what he says. Students note, too, that the debate, while it suffers somewhat from the medium of television, has some actual substance to it from both candidates. The problem lies deeper, in the “atmosphere” around Nixon.
At times I think that Marshal McCluhan, for all his brilliance, sees everything as a nail, armed as he is with his significant insight into how the “medium is the message.” But his comments about this seminal debate in 1960 led me to following him down a rabbit hole of sorts, and wondering if our current cultural angst has its roots in transformation of our media landscape.
In a famous interview McCluhan describes the differences between what he calls “hot” and “cool” mediums, saying,
Basically, a hot medium excludes and a cool medium includes. Hot media are high in completion, and low in audience participation. Cool media are high in participation. A Hot medium extends a single sense with high definition . . . A photography for example, is “hot” whereas a rough sketch cartoon is “cool.” Radio is a hot medium because it sharply and intensely provides a great amount of high definition auditory information that leaves little or nothing to be filled in by the audience. A lecture is hot, a seminar is cool.
He continues by suggesting that television is not even a strictly visual medium. Its low definition (here we must remember that McCluhan is speaking around 1968. He might think differently about today’s “high definition” tv’s) means that we the audience have to be “drawn in.” Those who come across “hot” rather than “cool” will put off their audience. He continues
Kennedy was the first tv president . . . . TV is an inherently cool medium, and Kennedy had a compatible coolness and indifference to power, bred of personal wealth, which allowed him to adapt fully to tv. [Without this] any candidate will electrocute himself on television–as Richard Nixon did in his disastrous debates with Kennedy. Nixon was essentially hot, he presents a high-definition, sharply defined image . . . that contributed to his reputation as a phony. . . . He didn’t project the cool aura of disinterest and objectivity that Kennedy emanated so effortlessly and engagingly.
McCluhan’s analysis explains why those who listened to the debate on the radio gave the edge to Nixon. It has nothing per se to do with the content of their messages, but the medium itself.* Nixon’s earnest and direct manner worked much better on radio. McCluhan makes clear in the interview that the process of our interaction with this new media would transform western society–a society built upon the printing press.
I think McCluhan overstates his case a bit, but his analysis of media and culture have a great deal of explanatory power. I will try to present him as best as I can, starting with a long excerpt from the interview (slightly edited for clarity by myself–the ‘M’ is McCluhan):
M: Oral cultures act and react simultaneously, whereas the capacity to act without reacting, without involvement, is the special gift of literate man. Another basic characteristic of [pre-modern] man is that he lived in a world of acoustic space, which gave him a radically different concept of space-time relationships.
Q: Was phonetic literacy alone responsible for this shift in values from tribal ‘involvement’ to civilized detachment?
M: Yes. Any culture is an order of sensory preferences, and in the tribal world, the senses of touch, taste, smell, and hearing were more developed. Into this world, the phonetic alphabet fell like a bombshell . . . literacy put the eye above all else. Linear, visual values replaced an integral communal interplay. The writing of the Egyptians, Chinese, and Mayan were an extension of multiple senses–they gave pictorial expression to reality and used many signs to cover a wide range of data. The achievement of phonics demands the separation of both sight and sound from their semantic and dramatic meanings in order to render speech visually. Â
As knowledge is extended in alphabetic form, it is localized and fragmented into specialities, creating divisions of function, classes, nations. Â The rich interplay of the senses is sacrificed.
Q: But aren’t their corresponding gains in insight to compensate for the loss of tribal values?
M: Literacy . . . creates people who are less complex and diverse. . . . But he is also given a tremendous advantage over non-literate man, who is hamstrung by cultural pluralism–values that make the African as easy a prey for the European colonialist as the barbarian was for the Greeks and Romans. Only alphabetic cultures ever succeeded in mastering connected linear sequences as a means of social organization.Â
Q: Isn’t the thrust of your argument then, that the introduction of the phonetic alphabet was not progress, but a psychic and social disaster?
M: It was both. . . . the old Greek myth has Cadmus, who brought the alphabet to man, sowing dragons teeth that sprang up from the earth as armed men. The age of print, which held sway from 1500-1900, had its obituary tapped out by the telegraph, the first of the new electric media, and further obsequies were registered by the perception of curved space and non-Euclidean mathematics in the early years of the century, which revived [pre-modern] man’s discontinuous space-time concepts–and which even Spengler dimly perceived as the death-knell of Western literate values. The development of tv, film, and the computer have driven further nails into the coffin. It is tv that is primarily responsible for ending the visual supremacy that characterized all mechanical technology. Â
Q: But isn’t TV primarily a visual medium?
M: No, quite the opposite. . . . The TV image is a mosaic mesh not only of horizontal lines but of millions of tiny dots, of which the viewer is only able to pick out 50 or 60 from which he shapes the image; thus he is constantly bringing himself into involvement with the screen and acting out a creative dialog with the iconoscope, which tattoos its message directly onto our skins. Each viewer is thus an unconscious pointilist painter, like Seurat. Â
Q: How is tv reshaping our political institutions?Â
M: For one thing, it is creating an entirely new type of national leader, a man who is much more a tribal chieftain than a politician.Â
In his The Medium is the Message McCluhan quotes a poem of Yeats,
Locke sank into a swoon;
The garden died;
God took the spinning jenny
Out of his side
McCluhan sees the man’s interaction with media thusly:
Pre-literate man was essentially oral. He lived in an sensory integrated world, and an “immediate” world. He lived in a world he could cohere into a totality of experience. His sense of space-time, how he got his information, etc. came within an embodied context.
True–a few unusual people might have been merchants who traveled a lot, whose sense of time and space might have been somewhat different, but these people were rare, on the fringe of society.
The printing press both mechanized information and intensified how we received it, “assuring the eye a position of total dominance in man’s sensorium. . . . The schism between thought and action was institutionalized, and fragmented man, first sundered by the alphabet, was at last diced into bite-sized tidbits.”
Commenting on the poem above, McCluhan writes, “Yeats presents Locke, the philosopher of linear and mechanical association, as hypnotized by his own image, but the “garden” of unified consciousness had ended.”
“Literate Man,” as McCluhan names western man from 1500-1900, valued highly the detachment cultivated by textual interaction. Indeed–we have to detach ourselves to a degree to read at all. We see the values of literate man producing “detached” scientific exploration and experimentation, promoting distance, toleration, and a political transformation away from the directly personal monarchies to impersonal democratic republics. Perhaps we can say that such values peaked in the late 18th century. We begin to see with 19th century Romanticism a yearning for a more holistic way of life. McCluhan’s focus stays on media, with
The invention of the telegraph for McCluhan was the beginning of the end of “Literate Man,” a point he admits to borrowing from the enigmatic Oswald Spengler. The telegraph both began the process of altering our perception of time and space, and made information more direct and immediate, a feature of pre-literate experience.
The radio followed suit quickly, then tv, etc. We saw cultural conflict and disintegration in the 1960’s because television accelerated the process of a cultural transference away from literate man. Our educational system offered all of the values of literate man, a complete mismatch with the desire for holistic integration our interaction with modern media produces.**
Had McCluhan lived to see the internet (some say he clearly predicted it), he would likely say that such instantly available means of breaking down time and space might very well put the nails in the coffin of Literate Man and cause a deep cultural division. Indeed, McCluhan’s analysis can shed light on the division between Gen X–the last generation not raised with the internet–and Millennials, etc. Many under 30 today care little for the Literate Man values that helped found our country, i.e., rational debate, give and take, etc. They want a more integrated communal experience.^
Our current political struggle, then, pits not Republicans against Democrats–who knows what it means to be a Republican or Democrat anyway now?–but against literate/printing press man values of privacy, debate, and individualism vs. the tribal/internet man values of community and integrated life. We see this conflict running through different aspects of our society, such as in journalism. The old journalistic ethic taught that the reporter should cultivate distance and a degree of objectivity. The new school of reporting seeks engagement, communal change, etc.
McCluhan admitted that early in his career he saw the decline of “Literate Man” as a moral catastrophe, but by the late 1960’s he committed himself to trying to observe (ironically, perhaps, a quintessential Literate Man pose) and not attach value judgments to his preferences. But with an additional 50 years of perspective on the influence of new media, I think we should venture some conclusions about its impact.
I agree that no absolute moral difference exists between Printing Press Man and Integrated/Tribal Man. McCluhan’s focus on the telegraph makes one realize that the technological/cultural changes many of us think are 15-20 years in the making are really 150 years old. McCluhan points out rightly that the advent of the printing press, industrialization, etc. into traditional societies was at least in part “a psychic and social disaster.” But he put less attention on the switch back the other way–it too will be experienced as a “disaster” by Literate Man for society to go back to Integrated Man.
I agree too that something mysterious exists with our relationship to media, which includes not just radio and the internet, but all of the ways in which we seek to extend our being, including our clothes. A meshing of man and media leads to a switch in perception and how we act. For example, our reaction to COVID had just as much to do with the media we use as it did with the disease itself. I am not saying that COVID is just the flu, but it is not the Black Plague either. Without online shopping, Zoom, etc. we would never have taken the measures we did with COVID. Some will say, “Thank goodness we had Zoom so we did not have to go into work, and more lives were saved.” Others, like myself, see something not so much sinister as deeply skewed. The media we use focuses our attention, and our view of the world is “made” from where we direct our attention. COVID and the internet worked symbiotically to form our decisions.
McCluhan rightly points out the many advantages of pre-modern societies. He saw us recapturing some of those values as our media landscape transformed. I wouldn’t mind a return of some pre-modern values. But contrary to McCluhan (if I understand him rightly), we don’t see these values returning. Or rather, we see them returning, but in a distorted way. No question, visiting a waterfall would be an “integrative” experience–sight, smell, touch, etc.–in ways that seeing the waterfall online would not. The continual availability of a fragmented online experience has not given us a holistic society but one where, according to some accounts, one in four young adults take some form of anti-depressant. McCluhan might say that this is exactly what we should expect when we ask kids to spend 7 hours a day in a detached, “Literate” environment when the media they use calls them to an entirely different way of life. I would perhaps argue that what we see now is a combination of
Literate Man reaching the end of its days
No good Integrated Man alternative available.
One can argue that there was an “Anti-Nature” strand in the history of Literate Man, with its extreme focus on linear thought and the eye. But so far, the new Integrated Man all in all shows no signs of actually wanting to create a holistic society. For example,
Many of the same environmentalists who want us to be closer to nature also tell us not to have children. But few other things are more “natural” than men and women getting married and having children. How can one speak of integration of our experience while excluding humanity from that experience?
Many advocates of an extreme individual fluidty/”rights” with their bodies (abortion, sexual differences, etc.) also are quite rigid about certain other areas around race, speech, etc.
Most all of us use the internet not as a tool of integration but escape. Television, in some ways at least, brought people together, i.e., we all watched “I Love Lucy,” “The Cosby Show,” and the Super Bowl.
Richard Rohlin noted that one can define conservatism simply as love of one’s parents. By that he meant our biological parents, but also our spiritual fathers, our culture, our past. We need not believe that our parents are perfect, or even particularly “good.” We love ourselves and hopefully know that we have deep flaws that need work, but we cannot build or change anything by starting with a void, a negative. America’s problem, as it relates to McCluhan, can be boiled down to
Conservatives should embrace tradition, but American “Conservatives” hearken back to a tradition of individually oriented, linear, and “cool” world. This is perhaps one reason why appeals to the past in American politics never quite seem to work, and only seem to further individualism.
Modern progressives seem to seek a more communal and holistic vision of society, which has the earmarks of “Tradition.” However, progressives tend to reject the past outright as evil. They seek the impossibility of a traditional society constructed out of revolutionary ideology.
If neither vision can succeed, then our solution has to lie beyond adaptation or understanding of our new media. McCluhan shows us where we are better than most, but he can’t say where we need to go.
Dave
*McCluhan commented about Lyndon Johnson in a spot-on analysis . . . “[Johnson] botched [tv] in the same way that Nixon did in 1960. He was too intense, too obsessed with making his audience love and revere him as father and teacher. Johnson became a stereotype–even a parody–of himself, and earned the same reputation as a phony that plagued Nixon for so long. The people wouldn’t have cared about Kennedy lying to them on tv, but they couldn’t stomach Johnson even when he told them the truth.”
He also noted how Nixon rehabilitated his image by changing his tv demeanor, starting with his appearance on the Jack Parr show in 1963. “In the recent [1968] election,” he comments, “it was Nixon who was cool and Humphrey who was hot.” Correctly, he noticed in 1968 that this was a mask for Nixon. His presidency would prove this the case. If there is anything one can say about Nixon–he was not someone who “invited people in.”
**We see the maddening apotheosis of literate man in the form of the ultra-scholar who only seeks to point out facts, and never wants to commit to a conclusion, never wants to integrate his knowledge into anything cohesive or final. As for McCluhan’s point about “immediacy” and “participation,” think of the impact of television on the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s. Everyone could see the images, the marches, and participate to a degree in the “cultural moment.”
^Note the stereotype of the detached, unengaged Gen X’er, with slacker anti-heroes, i.e., The Breakfast Club and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, etc. — very different movies, but with the same overall theme. Today’s heroes tend to be about “family”–think Amazon’s series The Expanse and the Fast and Furious franchise.
This week we began our first reading of Machiavelli, one of the more controversial and intriguing political thinkers in history. I hope that the students will find him enjoyable and thought provoking.
Machiavelli comes with a reputation. To say that someone is “Machiavellian,” means that they are conniving, amoral, and without scruple. His most famous work, The Prince seems to famously advocate that “the ends justify the means,” another phrase from which many of us shrink.
Students are welcome to their opinion of Machiavelli, whatever that might be. But first we have to make sure we understand him first if we want to reject him.
First, we can tackle the troubling phrase, “the ends justify the means.” As a categorical absolute, this statement makes no sense. It makes as little sense as its opposite, “No ends justify the means.” This phrase usually means means that anything that one does to achieve a legitimate goal is justified. But even the most extreme devotee of this idea would not say that anything one does to achieve a goal be within bounds. When faced with an “end,” such as discovering buried treasure, we realize that some means would be justified to find it, and some would not. So context matters.
For example, if a single guy on sabbatical from his job with some money to burn wanted to take a few weeks to run around the globe in search of treasure, most would think that fine. If a family man on a tight budget did the same thing, we would raise an eyebrow and question the proportionality of the end and its means.
Machiavelli never directly said, “the ends justify the means,” but it is true that, while he recognized context and limits, he willingly expanded the boundaries of ends and means in ways not explored previously.*
Machiavelli did not invent poltical science as a discipline, but he did found its modern incarnation. Previous to Machiavelli, political thinkers started with an “absolute,” a particular idea of the good. They then sought to have the state in question molded to that absolute idea. For Plato, this meant the world of the Forms. For Aristotle, this was Nature. But other civilizations followed along this model. Medieval society, for example, had as its guiding star the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven,” and sought to model their political order around the heavenly order of seraphim, archangels, angels, and the like. Ancient Egypt looked back to a mythic past of harmony and balance, and Pharaoh’s ruled in attempt to recreate this balance, which they called Ma’at. Many other examples exist.
Machiavelli started from the other end. He wanted rulers to look at the situation they faced in real time first and not concern themselves with “ideals” not immediately relevant to their experience. But that is not to say that Machiavelli had no “end” in view. He wanted the Prince to stay in power, but not, I think, for the sake of power itself, but to bring about stability. Stability in itself was a worthy aim, because its lack would almost assuredly usher in violence on a broad scale.
In The Prince Machiavelli deals with various scenarios in which a ruler might strengthen or jeopardize his ability to stay in power.
Our first example involved what Machiavelli described as a “Mixed State.” Let us suppose you have a country (Redland) in which you have a Redland ruler with Redland people. Unfortunately their king is incompetent or destructive in his rule in some way. This leads to some in Redland to conspire with the king of Blueland to come in to Redland, and take over Redland for himself. Taking Redland would be relatively easy. After all, the fight is not fair, and it is not fair in your favor. Blueland’s army has to fight Redland’s army, but Blueland also has the assistance those within Redland who actively conspire to get you to take over, so your victory is quite likely.
But once Blueland takes over Redland, Blueland’s ruler will face many problems quickly, in fact, more problems than if they defeated them “straight up.”
For one, Blueland has to reward those in Redland who helped you to win. But how much should one trust such people? If you don’t reward them, they will turn against you just as they turned against their previous ruler. If you reward them too much, you will alienate your own army, as well as strengthen those who have already proved untrustworthy to their ruler.
If Redland has a different culture, customs, and language than Blueland, you will face additional problems (Machiavelli cites the example of Louis XII of France who quickly conquered, and then quickly lost, the city-state of Milan). Ideally, you can get away with changing as little as possible (mimicking the general policy of the Romans and Cyrus the Great of Persia). If you make the mistake of introducing new forms of taxation on the conquered people to pay for your conquest, you start the clock on your expiration date as the new king of Redland.
So far Machiavelli merely analyzes the problems. This aspect of Machiavelli is not what makes him controversial.
The controversy comes in what follows. A commentator from another era might have then said, “So, we see that Blueland should not conquer Redland even if invited in by a Redland faction.” Machiavelli essentially says, “If you find yourself in a position akin to the king of Blueland, how do you then maintain your power?” He does not concern himself with the morality of the conquest, but supposes the conquest as a thing that happened. The question then becomes, “What do I do now?” rather than “What should I have done?” Some argue he goes farther, and in effect tells rulers how to do the wrong thing and get away with it. Personally I don’t go this far in my reading of Machiavelli, but I understand how others might. Regardless of what we think of what Machiavelli is doing, he certainly puts the emphasis on the pragmatic over the ideal.
He lays out the options:
If you withdraw entirely from Redland and effectively say, “Whoops, my mistake,” there will be chaos not only in Redland but also among your own people in Blueland, as you will look like an idiot who puts his hand to the plow but doesn’t see it through. You might lose power in both places. Again, rulers might want to keep their power for selfish reasons, but amidst political chaos, violence increases and many suffer. So withdrawal from Redland would likely help no one.
What most attempt is some kind of half-measure, where you try to govern your new territory from Blueland and find yourself continually frustrated. This would be akin to trying to babysit toddlers via Zoom. It wouldn’t go so well.
Most are not willing to do one of the two things that at this point must be done. You can either 1) Occupy Redland, or 2) Destroy Redland and repopulate it with people from Blueland.
Both paths come with problems. Occupying Redland will be expensive, and requires a great deal of energy and determination. Do you have the money and patience for this? Most do not.**
The quickest and easiest solution is to burn the territory and scatter the populace. Then, you resettle the land with your own people. This saves you the cost of paying your army for years on end, and gets all the bad stuff out of the way right at the start. The Normal Conquest of 1066, for example, largely fits this pattern. This obviously involves a lot pain and suffering for people in the short term. But it actually creates long term stability. Better to rip off the band-aid in one go than to prolong uncertainty and instability for decades.
Is this “the ends justifies the means?” Yes, and no. He does not counsel that Blueland should have invaded in the first place. He does argue that once Blueland has gotten their hands on a “Mixed State,” they have only bad choices in front of them. The best of the bad choices is the “morally correct” one, the choice that 1) Preserves stability in the long run, and 2) Deals quickly and decisively with the problem.
Again, Machiavelli differs from previous political theorists in that, while those before Machiavelli directed their ideas toward a particular end or goal, be it Nature, Heaven, a Golden Age, Machiavelli has it both ways. Like the Roman god Janus, he has two faces, not just one.
I look forward to seeing how the students will react to Machiavelli’s approach as the year continues.
Dave
*Our squeamishness about “the ends justify the means” is exposed somewhat in our love of stories where a man has something horrible happen to his friends or family, and then goes on a rampage to get his daughter back, or avenge his partner’s death, or something like this. Most often these movie heroes cause a great deal more destruction than they themselves experienced, but we cheer them on anyway.
**The Romans grew their power in Italy largely through this method, which requires extraordinary patience and conviction of purpose, something Machiavelli does not mention, though perhaps he does elsewhere.
A Stick in the Mud 