Please Sir, May I Have A Bit More Condescension?

The following is my response to this article by Gerard Alexander, associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia, on his Washington Post Outlook article titled 'Why are liberals so condescending to conservatives?'

Personally, I find this debate a bit of a yawn. In my experience and study, people tend to make decisions based largely on their social identification with one group or another. It's a cognitive shortcut for not having to "think" - by which I mean, do all the research yourself on every topic you care about and come up with a conclusion based on the merit and preponderance of the evidence as interpreted by a expert panel of reasonable people through intersubjective agreement of data and their meaning. It's okay. We all have to do it. No one knows or can know everything. That's why we need to either ramp up on a topic or trust other people's expertise and judgment.

What I find disturbing is the louder voices on the right who enflame and encourage an anti-intellectual agenda and then argue that it is a "diversity" of ideas that should inform debate. It is humorous that conservatives as a group routinely and throughout recent history have tended to reject social, cultural, and moral relativism and yet now cry to be included in serious intellectual debate by framing it as a diversity issue. What sublime hypocrisy. Yep, on this score I'm a condescender.

True, we should not stereotype or slap labels on groups without warrant, but when self-identified leaders of a group do not actively denounce anti-intellectual rhetoric - and rather defend it or attempt to mollify the seriousness of this trend as Dr. Alexander does by couching it terms of competing political narratives (a theoretical posture developed through the feminist movement, ironically), it discredits those reasonable voices who do self-identify with the group and wish to see it pull up its neural knickers and not just take a position because they wish to be on the winning side.

Dr. Alexander is on to something, however, but he misses the mark. Too many people on either side tend to use politics as a way to feel special about themselves, because admitting they might be flat wrong or in need of a better education is too much for their fragile egos to handle. Author Howard Bloom illustrates this exceedingly well in his book, "The Lucifer Principle," in which he suggests that people tend to think and behave based on where they see themselves in the pecking order, not by any rational calculus.

Be this as it may, my concern primarily is for people who devote their lives to research and education to find that their work is not respected because it represents an "elitist" agenda... hey, I used to be Republican until I spent 28 years studying. Now I'm largely liberal/libertarian in outlook. I believe this is why most academics lean left, not because they are blinded by ideology or a hatred of taking conservative steps toward lasting change, but because they've put a lot of time and effort into spinning cotton candy into fine crystal.

That as a group "we" academics are called condescending is probably exactly why we're having problems across the country with student incivility and a lack of respect for professors and informed thinkers. Of course, this doesn't mean one has to swallow things whole, but generally one should give the poor scholar the benefit of the doubt. So I will give Dr. Alexander the benefit of the doubt and recognize that his argument is surely based on study after study and not on some liberal agenda that would like to see fairness and equality in intellectual discussion.

Props on identifying four cultural narratives of the Left. I should anticipate his next article would give equal and fair treatment to the Right's narratives. That would be nice and thoughtful.

All sides of an issue do not deserve equal airtime, and I believe he knows it. To argue otherwise reflects a liberalism of the type Ann Coulter and her ilk love to shoot down. Not to resort to ad homonym attacks, but it seems Dr. Alexander may be a closet liberal. Then again, I may be a closet conservative, as I believe life isn't fair and all views are not equally valid. But more name-calling would be unkind.

Can't we all just get along without having to argue about who should have freedom, what's the future of civilization, and who in the public arena can string two neurons together? Let's just keep things as they are and be sympathetic to those who support a party that represses unabashedly individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness through claims of moral superiority or through public policy hijinks. Or by whining that their views should be heard even though they often don't make sense, to professors or to anyone who has lived, learned, and passed on their knowledge and wisdom of how to create a better world.

If learning and change as a way of being is framed as condescension of uninformed and unreflective views, then sign me up to receive the condescension of the great scientists and artists, philosophers and poets of the ages. And another helping of porridge too, if you please.

Heroes

I've been marathoning through "Heroes" - the TV series - you can stream it on Netflix. Really cool. It's the way to go - watching a series without commercials and back-to-back. Saves time, great stories.

Anyway, this series is about people who are genetically different... I mean, we're all genetically different, but the idea is that mutations are occurring and while most mutations are harmful to the human species, some (a rare few) are positive mutations. In the series, the characters struggle to accept who they are while pulling together to save the world. Pretty cool.

Bringing this back to organizational theory, the evolution school of thought would posit that people should be free to use their talents, and that, using the metaphor of organizations as organisms, or meta-organisms, as leaders we should provide experiences for people to display their talents. In practice, this means sending people to conferences, apprenticeships, allowing people to try out new ideas in new situations.

Think of business like a petri dish. Drop one chemical in one solution, nothing happens. Drop it in another, it springs to life. The people who work for you may not even know what they are capable of becoming. As a leader, help them to find their way.