Jun 18, 2018 08:21 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 18, 2018 08:42 PM by C C.)
https://www.weeklystandard.com/ian-marcu...angerously
EXCERPT: . . . I currently split my professional life between academia and the Boston art world, the most liberal corners of the most liberal state of the union. I can’t speak strongly enough about the beauty and kindness of the black, Jewish, Hispanic, gay, transgender, feminist, socialist people whom I count as colleagues and friends here. They are deep, sensitive, searching souls. As a straight, white, able-bodied male, though—one who has even occasionally voted for Republicans—I am, on paper, a perfect storm of privilege and prejudice.
Perhaps shockingly, my colleagues and I have managed to treat each other with respect and at times even deep friendship and care. That’s good—it’s wonderful, actually—but I also have the misfortune to be a regular reader of opinion journalism and social media posts. The people I speak to in my art gallery and classroom are likely, on any given day, to publish scorching social media screeds directed at people like myself. They post pictures in which they gleefully sip from mugs marked “White Male Tears” and they make sweeping, ecstatically “liked” and commented-upon pronouncements about the insidious, ubiquitous racism of people with my skin tone and about the domination, oppression, and evil that #YesAllMen daily impose upon them.
Now there are many, many injustices that plague our common life. Some are indexed to race, sex, and other identity categories; some have long, horrific histories; in some cases, the lingering fallout is in its own way horrific. Because of the way I look and dress and speak, I surely get preferential treatment from some store clerks, bank-loan officers, job interviewers, police officers.
It is possible to acknowledge all of this, however, and still be struck by the wild imbalance between our lived experience of one another and the verbal portrait of ourselves that we daily paint on social media. Perhaps I’m not treated like a ravening predator in my personal relationships because I’m “one of the good ones” in my identity category. Fine. Many chauvinistic group-ideologies are willing to make exceptions for exceptional individuals. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here; I don’t think that I get a special pass and all of the other white men in my acquaintances’ path are treated like monsters. Rather, for many of us, our public, impersonal lives contain a much higher percentage of status-seeking performance than our day-to-day interactions. We’re playing roles.
Living as I do among activists who talk the talk of “toxic masculinity” and “mansplaining” and so on, I know to take it all with a grain of salt. We’re not truly at war with one another; for the most part, we’re just playing games, enjoying the sensation of wielding high-caliber verbal weapons. But imagine being a differently situated white male—say a high-school-educated pipe-fitter from Idaho. Mightn’t you feel despised, attacked, unfairly blamed? Mightn’t you want to reply that life is very hard and that while you may have messed up in some ways you’re really doing your level best? Would you have any way of knowing that these online activists are actually decent people who would, if they sat and drank a glass of whiskey with you, realize that you too are a decent, trying-as-hard-as-you-can human being?
The rise of populist nationalism in the United States certainly has to do with economic and social issues—demographic changes, the transformation of the workforce, the effects of globalization, etc. And maybe it also has to do, as Ronald Beiner argues, with the influence of illiberal philosophers’ ideas. Maybe it is overdetermined. But whatever its causes, surely our modes of social intercourse are making things worse. A modest proposal: We should all shut the hell up for a little while, go outdoors, and try to understand the people we run into. It is hard to understand one’s neighbors in the best of circumstances, and even harder when the people you run into are unlike you in important ways. That is, however, the task we sign up for by coming to or staying in America.
The Prussia of Nietzsche’s day also included many smart and sophisticated people who obsessed over politics and believed that it was the primary forum for determining human salvation and damnation. He writes, beautifully and perhaps dangerously, that:
MORE: https://www.weeklystandard.com/ian-marcu...angerously
EXCERPT: . . . I currently split my professional life between academia and the Boston art world, the most liberal corners of the most liberal state of the union. I can’t speak strongly enough about the beauty and kindness of the black, Jewish, Hispanic, gay, transgender, feminist, socialist people whom I count as colleagues and friends here. They are deep, sensitive, searching souls. As a straight, white, able-bodied male, though—one who has even occasionally voted for Republicans—I am, on paper, a perfect storm of privilege and prejudice.
Perhaps shockingly, my colleagues and I have managed to treat each other with respect and at times even deep friendship and care. That’s good—it’s wonderful, actually—but I also have the misfortune to be a regular reader of opinion journalism and social media posts. The people I speak to in my art gallery and classroom are likely, on any given day, to publish scorching social media screeds directed at people like myself. They post pictures in which they gleefully sip from mugs marked “White Male Tears” and they make sweeping, ecstatically “liked” and commented-upon pronouncements about the insidious, ubiquitous racism of people with my skin tone and about the domination, oppression, and evil that #YesAllMen daily impose upon them.
Now there are many, many injustices that plague our common life. Some are indexed to race, sex, and other identity categories; some have long, horrific histories; in some cases, the lingering fallout is in its own way horrific. Because of the way I look and dress and speak, I surely get preferential treatment from some store clerks, bank-loan officers, job interviewers, police officers.
It is possible to acknowledge all of this, however, and still be struck by the wild imbalance between our lived experience of one another and the verbal portrait of ourselves that we daily paint on social media. Perhaps I’m not treated like a ravening predator in my personal relationships because I’m “one of the good ones” in my identity category. Fine. Many chauvinistic group-ideologies are willing to make exceptions for exceptional individuals. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here; I don’t think that I get a special pass and all of the other white men in my acquaintances’ path are treated like monsters. Rather, for many of us, our public, impersonal lives contain a much higher percentage of status-seeking performance than our day-to-day interactions. We’re playing roles.
Living as I do among activists who talk the talk of “toxic masculinity” and “mansplaining” and so on, I know to take it all with a grain of salt. We’re not truly at war with one another; for the most part, we’re just playing games, enjoying the sensation of wielding high-caliber verbal weapons. But imagine being a differently situated white male—say a high-school-educated pipe-fitter from Idaho. Mightn’t you feel despised, attacked, unfairly blamed? Mightn’t you want to reply that life is very hard and that while you may have messed up in some ways you’re really doing your level best? Would you have any way of knowing that these online activists are actually decent people who would, if they sat and drank a glass of whiskey with you, realize that you too are a decent, trying-as-hard-as-you-can human being?
The rise of populist nationalism in the United States certainly has to do with economic and social issues—demographic changes, the transformation of the workforce, the effects of globalization, etc. And maybe it also has to do, as Ronald Beiner argues, with the influence of illiberal philosophers’ ideas. Maybe it is overdetermined. But whatever its causes, surely our modes of social intercourse are making things worse. A modest proposal: We should all shut the hell up for a little while, go outdoors, and try to understand the people we run into. It is hard to understand one’s neighbors in the best of circumstances, and even harder when the people you run into are unlike you in important ways. That is, however, the task we sign up for by coming to or staying in America.
The Prussia of Nietzsche’s day also included many smart and sophisticated people who obsessed over politics and believed that it was the primary forum for determining human salvation and damnation. He writes, beautifully and perhaps dangerously, that:
every philosophy that believes the problem of existence to be shelved, or even solved, by a political event, is a sham philosophy. There have been innumerable states founded since the beginning of the world; that is an old story. How should a political innovation manage once and for all to make a contented race of the dwellers on this earth? If anyone believes in his heart that this is possible, he should report himself to our authorities: he really deserves to be Professor of Philosophy.
Politics may be a necessary evil—but talking incessantly about politics and viewing your countrymen solely through a political lens is an evil that we’re actively choosing, day by day. We should stop....MORE: https://www.weeklystandard.com/ian-marcu...angerously