Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice, was renowned for her sharp and caustic tongue. She was also famous for a needlepoint pillow she took to parties. She would find a seat and set the pillow on the cushion next to her: It said: “If you don’t have something nice to say about someone, sit next to me.” That was opposite what we were taught by The Olds who said, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”
It seems that Miss Roosevelt’s motto is winning out. Now, if we have something nice to say about someone or something, we tend to keep quiet. It is safer that way.
To be sure, we have always had differences of opinions and fallen into different camps. Democrat or Republican; Catholic or Protestant; differences over economic theory and so on. And, of course, in this area, Tigers, Cubs or Sox. It is from amateur and professional athletes that we learned important life lessons about being a gracious loser and humble winner. No matter how competitors might feel about the game and its outcome, it is traditional for players on both sides to shake hands. When there is a dust-up or a player refuses to participate in this tradition it becomes national news.
Something ugly has happened over the past decade or so, and it is not coming from the athletes. It is not merely having differences of opinions, but we have resorted back to the tribalism of my clan versus your clan. It is much like when the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons first encountered each other. It stayed that way for tens of thousands of years, with only the names of the tribes changing.
Then, in the late 1600s through the early 1800s, something shifted in western civilization. There was a quiet, peaceful rebellion against the theory divine right of kings to rule by royal prerogative and the over-reaching power of the Church Science began to replace superstition; astronomy began replacing astrology. Great minds began to explore how humans behaved, leading to new ideas about government and the rights of people, criminal and civil justice, economic inequity, and much more. Overall, it was an emphasis on the rights of people.
Often these great minds met a coffee shop for their debates and conversations, and in time, in rented halls where they could talk in private and without distraction. Just as importantly, they could discuss sensitive topics without being spied upon or interruption. Often, they wrote papers and debated each other’s ideas.
Yet, never far from the surface of these debates was the ancient tribalism of my group versus your group. Sometimes, such with everything connected to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic years, tribalism triumphed, and the streets ran red with blood. Tribalism would resurface with the revolutions in Germany and continue to the rise and fall of the European dictators of the last century.
It seems that we are moving away from the idealism of the Enlightenment back to the stridency of tribalism. Much of it is name-calling, very much like when angry teenagers raise their fists, threaten and circle each other, and do their best to verbally insult each other before the first punch is thrown. We hear the name-calling much of the time: Liberal, Woke, Conservative, Reactionary, Socialist, Red, Blue, and so on. The national elections of 2016 and 2020 are other good examples of the name-calling. It appears that the election of 2024 will be little different.
The return to tribalism is not merely the result of politics. The internet, especially social media, has made it far worse and more vicious. Person A says or does something with Person B and his or her tribe do not like. Instead of a debate, they rely on the anonymity of social media to “troll” and snipe away at Person A. Then, Person A’s tribe comes to their champion’s defense. Both sides begin to “cancel” or de-platform or shout down anyone with whom they disagree. The hot-button issues today seem to be everything that has to do with gender.
Compounding the problem is that public schools and many colleges and universities have all but dropped humanities courses as a graduation requirement. Some schools, even those who built their reputation as a liberal arts college, have gone so far as to shut down their liberal arts department. In great part, this has been a financial decision, but what a terrible impact it has made on our world.
Gone are the debates over the ideas of men such as John Stuart Mills, Thomas Paine, or Adam Smith. Gone are the discussions over the writings of Ayn Rand, Simon Beauvoir, the essayists in literary magazines, and others. In turn, all too often that means that we have missed understanding HOW to debate and disagree in a peaceful fashion so we can learn from each other.
Perhaps it is not too late to turn this around. The great Harvard university historian, Perry Miller, in his book City on a Hall wrote about how frontier pioneer farmers would time their plowing and field work so they could meet at the fence row. They would stop to rest their oxen and themselves, and for a few minutes debate current events, reflecting upon what they had learned from studying the great minds of the Enlightenment. They might not agree, but when they resumed working, they would think things through until the next time they met at the fence. These debates of the course of politics and humanity served our country very well.
A little less than a century ago there was a resurgence of anti-intellectualism that arose because of the Scopes Monkey Trial. It was a divisive challenge to our civilization. To quell their strident voices, Mortimer Adler, professor of law at the University of Chicago prepared a list of books he believed every well-educated man or woman needed to read. The collection, known as The Great Books, is still in print.
Also still in print is the Practical Cogitator, first published in the 1940s. It is a collection of relatively short essays that covers the spectrum of significant ideas, philosophies, and biographies. When it was published, paper for books was rationed as part of the war effort. The War Department realized this book was so important that it was exempted. Millions of copies were printed and shipped to the GIs around the world. Millions more were sent to our men and women in uniform during the Korean War.
If we recapture our quest for knowledge and understanding, we can rein in this return to tribalism with one simple action. We need to stop talking at each other or past each other and return to talking and listening with each other. Once we do that, it is easier to see the perspective of other people as an enhancement to our own ideas, and not something that must be crushed.
People with whom we disagree are rarely the enemy when we make the effort to find shared common points and beliefs.