During Our Time of Rising Fascism...
"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.
We start at the end to begin the following quoted article.
To conclude, here is another quotation from Jonathan Rauch. He is writing about the characteristics or traits of wisdom. His definition of wisdom appeals to me because it covers much of what I think is needed of us if we are to engage politically.
Again and again, modern scholarly definitions mention certain traits [of wisdom]: compassion and prosocial attitudes that reflect concern for the common good; pragmatic knowledge of life; the use of one’s pragmatic knowledge to resolve personal and social problems; an ability to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty and to see multiple points of view; emotional stability and mastery of one’s feelings; a capacity for reflection and for dispassionate self-understanding.
Resisting the Tyranny of the Tribe
Buddhist perspectives on society and culture
‘Every Inch a Vermeer’
In the Cankī Sutta the Buddha explains that one ’preserves the truth’ when one states merely what one believes, but does not jump to an unshakable conclusion on the basis of that belief. In other words, one does not insist that the belief is definitely true, and anything contrary to it false. 1
I could not help thinking of the Cankī Sutta when, a while ago, I read an account of the fall from grace of Abraham Bredius, who in the 1930s was the world’s leading scholar of Dutch painters and especially of the master Johannes Vermeer. In 1937 Bredius was shown a recently discovered painting, ‘Christ at Emmaus’, which seemed to be the work of Vermeer. Bredius was convinced of its authenticity, and wrote, ‘We have here — I am inclined to say — the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft. Quite different from all his other paintings and yet every inch a Vermeer.’ He added, ‘When this masterpiece was shown to me, I had difficulty controlling my emotions.’ In the words of the journalist Tim Harford (whose account of Bredius’ story I am drawing on), ‘That was precisely the problem.’ 2
The painting was, of course, a fake. Nevertheless, the entire Dutch art world was sucked into believing it to be genuine on the strength of Bredius’ judgement. How could the supreme scholar in the field make such a big error with such resounding confidence (‘every inch a Vermeer’)? Perhaps we should not single out Bredius so unkindly, for his case was far from unique. Better to ask, how is that intelligent, well-educated individuals sometimes make dogmatic judgements that are well wide of the mark, even in relation to topics that they know a great deal about?
Still, Bredius’ case can help us find an answer to that bigger question. His error can be understood from a Buddhist viewpoint, as a manifestation of an ‘underlying tendency’ (Sanskrit anusaya), or what we might call a predisposition. Bredius had a fascination with Vermeer’s religious paintings, of which only two were known to exist, one of which Bredius had originally and wrongly claimed not to be a Vermeer. Having acknowledged his mistake, he had then openly speculated that other religious paintings by Vermeer might exist, and yearned to discover one.
The forger who painted ‘Christ at Emmaus’ knew of Bredius’ wish to find another religious painting by Vermeer. He knew that Bredius wished to redeem his earlier error. He knew that Bredius would be strongly inclined to see the painting as a Vermeer, as a vindication of his views and desires.
Tim Harford sees the problem in these terms: ‘Recall that Bredius wrote, “I had difficulty controlling my emotions.” That was a truer statement than he knew. When we are trying to interpret the world around us, we need to realise that our expertise can be drowned by our feelings.’ [My emphasis]
Predispositions and Tribes
According to Buddhist psychology, what Harford describes as ‘feelings’ incorporates not one but three distinct factors, operating together to make up what I am calling a ‘predisposition’. Whenever our mind comes into contact with an object, an interplay occurs between our habitual desire (saṃskāra), our perception (saṃjñā), and the related feeling tone (vedanā). (In Buddhist psychology, ‘feeling tone’ simply refers to our response to a stimulus as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.) All three — desire, perception and feeling tone — are partly ‘hardwired’ in the human body, but they are also partly malleable. Perception, for example, depends not just on what we see, but also on how we interpret it, and that depends in turn upon the way that our experience has taught us to interpret it. Different people perceive the same object in different ways according to their different views. 3
But of course, most of us don’t form views through a process of rigorous and independent examination of the world around us. Our views tend to reflect those of the group we belong to. That group might be defined by some permutation of factors like nationality, class, race and so on. Sometimes it is defined by a rejection of these things, and the embrace of a different unifying principle, such as a political ideology or a religion. Either way, each of us belongs to a group, a ‘tribe’. Our tribal identity equips us with — or from another angle, imprisons us in — a set of predispositions. It conditions us to perceive things in a particular way, to have certain desires, and to experience specific things as pleasant or unpleasant or indifferent. The existence of these predispositions is crucial to the argument I wish to make in this essay.
As a scion of a wealthy and cultured Dutch family, and a famous art connoisseur, Bredius had a strong predisposition of desire (saṃskāra) to be the person to discover an unknown religious Vermeer masterpiece. When he saw the painting ‘Christ at Emmaus’, he perceived (saṃjñā) what he was predisposed to perceive. And with that perception arose an intensely pleasant feeling tone (vedanā).
Had Bredius been familiar with the Cankī Sutta, he might — just possibly —have spared himself the stain on his reputation incurred by a second serious error in the authentication of a painting. He might at least have been more tentative in his attribution. We are not preserving truth when we unthinkingly allow our predispositions to determine our interpretation of things or events. Whenever we experience a strong feeling tone — whether pleasant or unpleasant — we should take this as a warning sign to look carefully at our desires and interpretations before jumping to a judgment.
Bredius’ error was perhaps the product of his longing for status within his ‘tribe’. But many failures to preserve truth are produced by conflict or rivalry between tribes. This point leads me from painting to politics. Unfortunately, in my view, people on both the right and left of the political spectrum often fail to exercise caution when they experience pleasure, displeasure or indifference in response to political events.
In this essay I wish to expand on this theme through an exploration of suffering, social and political discontent, and tribalism. This is not an argument against political engagement, but it is an argument for considered political engagement. It is an argument for ‘resisting the tyranny of the tribe’, for resisting internal and external pressures that can push us to make ill-considered judgments.
The Lost Tribe of Somewhere
I am going to start by looking at an example of suffering. Or rather, an example of a refusal to see suffering — a blindness rooted in a set of conditioned predispositions. When we look around the world today, we can’t fail to see a lot of suffering in the form of political persecution, war, disease, environmental degradation, famines, droughts, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, racial and sexual discrimination, unemployment, and other factors. The list is long. Yet sometimes we may fail to see, or we may underestimate, suffering nearer to home.
In the American presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, the Brexit vote in the UK in 2016, and in other recent changes in the Western social and political world — not least in Europe — we have seen a great deal of public discontent, inspired largely by the negative effects of globalisation and a perceived loss of sovereignty and control. This has produced considerable resentment of the institutions and elites seen as responsible for these negative effects. Such reactions span the political spectrum of right and left, including, for example, the original emergence of Syriza in Greece, and the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement in France.
In focusing on expressions of discontent in the West, I do not mean to downplay suffering elsewhere in the world, or to rank the severity of suffering experienced by people in different places. I only wish to draw attention to sources of discontent in the Western world that until recently have not received much careful scrutiny. I believe the reason for this relative disregard is a resistance, stemming from our predispositions, to looking outside a narrow range of sources of information — sources that tend to confirm our settled views. A widening of our perspective is vital if we want to go beyond simplistic labelling, and to understand the wellsprings of what is often called ‘populism’.
To begin, I would like to draw your attention to some writers who I believe offer important insights into the suffering at the heart of popular movements of discontent. Most of these writers are not Buddhists, but their ideas are often very compatible with Buddhist thought because they draw our attention to the web of conditions from which such political responses arise. Even if you disagree with their overall outlook, a fair consideration of their arguments should, I think, give you much to reflect on. Underlying their explanations of popular discontent is a recognition of the effects of economic dislocation on large sections of the population that have been ‘left behind’ by globalisation and rising inequality. But they also go beyond the familiar critique of globalisation to trace more complex relations between economic, social and cultural forces.
The first author is David Goodhart, a former journalist and editor on the Financial Times, whose book ‘The Road to Somewhere’ was published in 2017. The book refers primarily to the UK, but its insights are widely applicable. He argues that our society has fractured into two ‘tribes’. On one hand are those who are socially and geographically mobile, the ‘Anywheres’; on the other are those more rooted in local identity, the ‘Somewheres’. According to Goodhart’s schema, the Anywheres make up about twenty-five to thirty per cent of the population, and are well educated (with at least an undergraduate degree). They often live far from their parents. In Goodhart’s words, they tend to favour ‘openness and autonomy, and are comfortable with social fluidity and novelty’. The Somewheres comprise about half of the population, and are less well educated. They are ‘more rooted’, and ‘value security and familiarity’. In contrast to the ‘Anywheres’ they place a much greater emphasis on local and national attachments. 4
The Anywheres tend to dominate society with achieved identities based on educational and career success. The Somewheres are likely to be older, and tend to find the rapid changes in the modern world unsettling. There is a deep conflict in values between the Somewheres, who cherish local community, patriotism and the traditional family, and the Anywheres, who cherish the identities they have achieved through academic and career success. Moreover, the Somewheres experience a loss of their culture and a marginalisation of their views in the public conversation. In Goodhart’s view the responses and attitudes of the Somewheres deserve more sympathy and respect than they tend to receive in public discourse, and should be seen as every bit as legitimate as the Anywheres.
Comments
Post a Comment
RN USA no longer accepts comments. The information presented is for reflection, contemplation, and for those seeking greater understanding and wisdom. It is for seekers and those with an open mind and heart.
Namaste