While we have no shortage of political news to discuss, with the country at a fever pitch over the constant “groundbreaking” developments that come to us through our various wires each day, none of these stories are as interesting or important as that very occurrence. This should become apparent when you consider this in light of the fact that nearly anyone you come across in polite political discussion will, at some point, lean on the most fashionable banal platitude of our banal platitudinal culture saying, “live and let live” or “you do you”. So how does a culture whose summum bonum is radical indifference get stirred up into a frenzy of ideological clashing? Before you close out this tab in a fit of fury over my imagined ignorance to your determined driver of division, humor the largely unknown and scarcely repeated explanation I am about to lay out.
René Girard, a now late professor of French literature at Stanford, proved how this hyper-modern openness actually leaves us susceptible to the most fundamental form of division, covetous
competition. This is because trying to eliminate conflict through apathy is a complete misunderstanding of man and his nature. Look at anything from modern martial theorists to the ten commandments and you will find at the root of all division, envy. So how exactly does a radically neutral value system lead to this covetous war of all against all which we are so often caught up in? Well, Girard’s thinking posits that we actually cannot escape living in a system of value. Reasonably, when you choose one book over another, one news channel over another, or one style of dress above some other you are creating a system of values which as a human being you inherently wish to be respected by those around you to some extent. Further, when these determinations are made on the basis of fads and fashions instead of reason or tradition (which is just practical reasoning tested by time) the value structure of your life is at the whims of social opinion. Therefore, any action or thought that is in the slightest opposition to your unspoken foundational dogmas must be struck down, for any continuance would represent the downfall of your “identity”. Rhetorically, as you might be on edge when on a street in which the standard customs of human behavior are not assured to be followed, the same occurs at a theoretical level in all of our interactions in such a culture. This can be seen in a common meme format where people joke about using the wrong humor with the wrong people. Instead of being able to subordinate worries about your basic manners of expression and focusing more on human connection (the purpose of social interactions), we are forced into a neurotic focus on the appropriate set of behaviors (if you have any regard for your relation to the world around you).
So, by failing to hold to a system of basic norms founded in tradition as it comes into contact with its cultural inheritors, we are constantly in a state of unspoken competition for the most foundational aspects of our lives, nicely covered over by a hallmark-esque political ethos which nobody really does or even can believe. The abandonment of normative notions of niceness and
proper behavior for the negligent “virtue” of tolerance has not decreased division but rather let it run rampant. Not to say that we need a rigid monoculture, anyone who actually knows me knows my natural aversion to such an idea, but rather that we need some basic agreement on values and standards. With this actually being a mechanism for social liberty (in its proper form), and not a pathway into egoist petty power games as we have now.
Featured image via cartoonresource.com.
About Cooper Pugach
Cooper is an assistant editor of the common ground section and a sophomore. He studies political science and classics and wants to work in journalism after school. When he is not thinking about politics and writing he enjoys fishing, golfing, and reading. Cooper’s literary influences include Ring Lardner and Ernest Hemingway.
Cooper is an assistant editor of the common ground section and a sophomore. He studies political science and classics and wants to work in journalism after school. When he is not thinking about politics and writing he enjoys fishing, golfing, and reading. Cooper’s literary influences include Ring Lardner and Ernest Hemingway.
