Tribalism: The Empty Middle

So, yesterday I proposed a new tribalism based upon the idea that the ideological age was reaching its sell-by date. And I thought that maybe Trump is telling us something with his appeal to the non-ideological middle.

Now comes David Brooks in The New York Times reporting on a new study of ruling-class ideologies, "The Rich White Civil War."

The report, “Hidden Tribes,” breaks Americans into seven groups, from left to right, with names like Traditional Liberals, Moderates, Politically Disengaged and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most active groups are on the extremes — Progressive Activists on the left (8 percent of Americans) and Devoted Conservatives on the right (6 percent).

The two extreme tribes, Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives, are the richest kind. And they really disagree:

Ninety percent of Devoted Conservatives think immigration is bad, while 99 percent of Progressive Activists think it is good. Seventy-six percent of Devoted Conservatives think Islam is more violent than other religions; only 3 percent of Progressive Activists agree. Eighty-six percent of Devoted Conservatives think it’s more important for children to be well behaved than creative. Only 13 percent of Progressive Activists agree.

 Do you see how these two groups fit into my reductive Three Peoples theory? Devoted Conservatives think that kids should be well-behaved, conforming to traditional ideas of Good and Evil. Progressive Activists think that children should be creative. I disagree.

I say that first you need to learn to be well-behaved and responsible, as in People of the Responsible Self, and then, building on top of your culture of responsibility, you learn to become creative.

So why, you ask, do our liberal friends want to burn down the bourgeois culture of responsibility? Perfectly simple. They do this because we humans tend to take for granted whatever it is we know, and it is a real eye-opener when, from time to time, we encounter someone struggling with something that we have mastered.

I experience this with respect to computer skills. I find it easy to navigate unfamiliar websites, but I find that other people struggle. There is even a real skill in choosing the keywords for a Google search. Hmm, I think, maybe I know a thing or two that other people do not know.

So it is easy for Progressive Activists to down-rank the importance of the bourgeois menu of good behavior and responsibility. If you are an educated American you pick that stuff up with your mother's milk: no big deal. But if you are a recent immigrant to the city, you have to learn all that stuff, and it is hard.

Sorry, liberals. Responsibility is a Very Big Deal. In fact, I argue that the whole set of religions that begin with the Axial Age of the millennium before Christ are all about learning how to make it in the city as a responsible individual, learning precisely how to live in a world where "the priests" actually specify Good and Evil for us (pace Nietzsche).

The whole point about Nietzsche, in my view, is to explore the world that opens up Beyond Good and Evil, in other words, the world of the Creative Self. After you have mastered the bourgeois culture of responsibility and trust.

Nietzsche calls the person living beyond good and evil as the Übermensch, variously described as the Superman, Overman, etc. I interpret the Úbermensch as the creative person, trying to get beyond the familiar world of good behavior and responsibility. Nietzsche says that this person has to be hard. I assume he means that the creative life is hard, and you better not think that any Special Snowflake in need of Safe Spaces is ready for the creative life. Anyone that needs a safe space is not ready to be creative. Not yet, and maybe not ever.

See, I think that Progressive Activists are missing the point when they divide the world into Creative Activists and Helpless Victims on the one hand, and evil Racist Sexist Homophobes on the other. The thing to do is to teach the Helpless Victims how to wive and thrive in the city, and that means mastering the bourgeois menu of responsibility and trust.

But I also think that Devoted Conservatives miss the point. There is life Beyond Good and Evil and that life is the creative life, trying new stuff and learning from your mistakes. Devoted Conservatives ought to know this since the story of the last 200 years and the Great Enrichment is the astonishing successive creative revolutions in the market economy.

But I take the point of David Brooks' piece to be that there are a whole lotta people in the middle to whom the current Cold Civil War does not speak. And I think that the guy that has figured this out is none other than the much-maligned Donald Trump.

You will notice that Trump's appeal to the non-ideological middle is very non-ideological. And that drives the lefty Progressive Activists crazy. And also the #NeverTrump Devoted Conservative right-wingers.

So maybe Donald Trump is the wave of the future and will transcend the Cold Civil War between Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives. Or maybe not.