It can be dangerous at the symbolic level, in that political legitimacy needs to pretend to rest on something even if it is in practice circular. This is an is-ought gap problem: the government is legitimate because you obey the government without resistance (descriptive), and you obey the government without resistance because it is legitimate (normative). This second part is, yes, dependent on what one thinks about what makes the government legitimate. Embracing the circularity is unstable. A totalitarian state and a democracy would both be legitimate as long as people don’t protest. But what if people do protest? You need an idea that will pull citizens to obey the government by default, even if it goes against their immediate self-interest, even if many others disagree.
In the US, the constitution is part of this stabilizing idea. It’s not the only part, but it got a sacred character that goes far beyond what constitutions in other places get. This sacralization is in many way unrelated to the practical content of the document as a set of basic rules for a government. Sure, the 1st, 4th, 5th amendments are good ideas, the 3rd is downright obsolete, and the 2nd is contentious. But because the rules are all we got, they become a focal point for coordination, and pointing out that the words on the page might be confused, or obsolete, or unrelated to how we employ them today, is considered gauche.
Is it dangerous to point out? Not more nor less than other forms of critical theory. Is widespread knowledge of Foucault dangerous for the legitimacy of psychiatry, of Judith Butler for gendered norms? Kinda, but those institutions are functionally robust in other ways. The Psmiths are riding the coattails of the entirety of sociology and political science here. I would flip the causal arrow: in most cases, dissatisfaction with existing institutions leverages critical theory to attack them. But the failure of existing institutions causes the unrest, not critical theory itself.
in most cases, dissatisfaction with existing institutions leverages critical theory to attack them. But the failure of existing institutions causes the unrest, not critical theory itself.
You make a good and interesting point here. On the other hand, “dissatisfaction” is not a binary thing; people can be more or less frustrated about something. Some memes can be helpful to help mildly frustrated people create mayhem that would otherwise only be created by the extremely frustrated ones. And because nothing is perfect, there will always be some mildly frustrated people.
So it’s a combination of how much things really suck, and how much people believe that if something frustrates you, you should burn everything down, that determines how many things get burned down.
Or, if you ask a random adolescent about how they would fix some frustrating aspect of the world, the answer would usually make things much worse, if you think about it for five minutes. “Kill the outgroup” is quite popular, or “just tell them to do X and kill/imprison anyone who resists”.
There is also a difference between parents expressing frustration about vaccination, like maybe it happens to early or too frequently, but their reactions will be different if they have e.g. “vaccines cause autism” as a rallying point.
Basically, a meme can offer a “cure” that is worse than the thing you were originally frustrated about, but it sounds attractive because the frustration happens here and now, and the concerns about the “cure” seem too hypothetical.
To a great extent, the underlying “noble lie” is that there is any such thing as objective moral truth. There is no measurement of “should”, it’s just about what equilibria seem to work, which is based on most people accepting it without questioning too hard.
I agree to an extent. I for one was very distressed for a while when I started to believe that moral realism is false.
However, this is not exactly a secret matter. Moral realism and anti-realism have been discussed openly for a while. It may have caused people to act less morally, but I am not sure. That is difficult to measure.
For me, I do not think it made a huge difference on how I behaved. I struggled with cognitive dissonance, and still do, but my conscientious urges remained in place.
It can be dangerous at the symbolic level, in that political legitimacy needs to pretend to rest on something even if it is in practice circular. This is an is-ought gap problem: the government is legitimate because you obey the government without resistance (descriptive), and you obey the government without resistance because it is legitimate (normative). This second part is, yes, dependent on what one thinks about what makes the government legitimate. Embracing the circularity is unstable. A totalitarian state and a democracy would both be legitimate as long as people don’t protest. But what if people do protest? You need an idea that will pull citizens to obey the government by default, even if it goes against their immediate self-interest, even if many others disagree.
In the US, the constitution is part of this stabilizing idea. It’s not the only part, but it got a sacred character that goes far beyond what constitutions in other places get. This sacralization is in many way unrelated to the practical content of the document as a set of basic rules for a government. Sure, the 1st, 4th, 5th amendments are good ideas, the 3rd is downright obsolete, and the 2nd is contentious. But because the rules are all we got, they become a focal point for coordination, and pointing out that the words on the page might be confused, or obsolete, or unrelated to how we employ them today, is considered gauche.
Is it dangerous to point out? Not more nor less than other forms of critical theory. Is widespread knowledge of Foucault dangerous for the legitimacy of psychiatry, of Judith Butler for gendered norms? Kinda, but those institutions are functionally robust in other ways. The Psmiths are riding the coattails of the entirety of sociology and political science here. I would flip the causal arrow: in most cases, dissatisfaction with existing institutions leverages critical theory to attack them. But the failure of existing institutions causes the unrest, not critical theory itself.
You make a good and interesting point here. On the other hand, “dissatisfaction” is not a binary thing; people can be more or less frustrated about something. Some memes can be helpful to help mildly frustrated people create mayhem that would otherwise only be created by the extremely frustrated ones. And because nothing is perfect, there will always be some mildly frustrated people.
So it’s a combination of how much things really suck, and how much people believe that if something frustrates you, you should burn everything down, that determines how many things get burned down.
Can you please give some more concrete examples (historical or hypothetical) of what you have in mind here?
The historically most famous example was “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains”. (It turned out that they actually had something to lose, such as their lives, and the lives of their families.)
Or, if you ask a random adolescent about how they would fix some frustrating aspect of the world, the answer would usually make things much worse, if you think about it for five minutes. “Kill the outgroup” is quite popular, or “just tell them to do X and kill/imprison anyone who resists”.
There is also a difference between parents expressing frustration about vaccination, like maybe it happens to early or too frequently, but their reactions will be different if they have e.g. “vaccines cause autism” as a rallying point.
Basically, a meme can offer a “cure” that is worse than the thing you were originally frustrated about, but it sounds attractive because the frustration happens here and now, and the concerns about the “cure” seem too hypothetical.
To a great extent, the underlying “noble lie” is that there is any such thing as objective moral truth. There is no measurement of “should”, it’s just about what equilibria seem to work, which is based on most people accepting it without questioning too hard.
I agree to an extent. I for one was very distressed for a while when I started to believe that moral realism is false.
However, this is not exactly a secret matter. Moral realism and anti-realism have been discussed openly for a while. It may have caused people to act less morally, but I am not sure. That is difficult to measure.
For me, I do not think it made a huge difference on how I behaved. I struggled with cognitive dissonance, and still do, but my conscientious urges remained in place.