10 Comments

I've always been the sort of person to have no strong opinion on issues I don't know much about. This is probably why I have never been registered with a political party - for either party, it seems there's a lot of nonsense that is expected to be swallowed along whatever actual good policy there is.

I find it really odd how so many people will adopt a default of "if my team is for it, I'm also automatically for it!" or "if the other guys are for it, I am automatically against it!" I guess it's a basic human instinct to be tribal. Perhaps I'm abnormally low in groupishness or something and that is why it seems so illogical to me.

Expand full comment

I believe you make an excellent point here, Addison. So much of our political discourse these days boils down to, "Well, that person I don't like is for this issue, so I'm against it" (or vice versa). Besides being lazy thinking, it leads to a number of negative effects.

For one thing, as soon as an issue is deemed "political," the idea of bipartisan cooperation becomes virtually impossible. And since the American political system is generally set up to thwart changes that don't have bipartisan support, very little gets done.

This thinking is also behind a lot of the circular-firing-squad debates on the left. Progressives treat moderation on any issue as tantamount to surrender or abandonment of a key ally, while moderates tend to be deeply suspicious of embracing progressive positions on any issue, regardless of the individual merits of that position. It leads to the bizarre position where an awful lot of members of the Democratic Party seem to hate what it stands for.

I've always tried to make a point of understanding the views of ideological opponents so that I can at least understand where they're coming from. And I find that even viewpoints I strongly disagree with often have important insights that should be taken into account. I'm certainly not perfect about it, but I'm at least able to defend my opinions on their merits, not just by pointing out that someone I don't like disagrees with me.

Expand full comment

Thankfully, my sister has finally graduated from considering Olive Garden to be acceptable Italian food.

Expand full comment

Reminded of a line by Andy Ferguson: “Urban planners are like libertarians: They’re wonderful to have around so long as their advice is never, ever followed all the way through.”

Expand full comment

This was a fun one (and a good flex of thinking). In the economic realm, Keith Fitz-Gerald opines: "Buy the best, ignore the rest." Works in the humanities as well. That is, differentiate bad ideas from good, wheat from chaff. Think of the angels sorting fish caught in the net at the end of the age (Matthew 13:47). Avoid "chronological snobbery" (thinking current notions are always superior). Accept the seamless process by which the world changes its mind.

Expand full comment

I once was a libertarian and now feel that way about them in general although there are some areas where I mostly actually agree with their ideas, possibly diluted a bit, eg on occupational licensing.

For me the urbanists are less a group I'm anti aligned with than one I need to carefully vet to filter out radicalism; they're often hardline social progressives.

Expand full comment

I'm a historian and I want to have a deep understanding of a culture before I adopt an idea or practice from that culture. I want to know all the baggage that comes with the idea. If a Martian lands in a spacecraft and says, “This is the ultimate health food,” I would have a hard time just taking that at face value. I have met many people along the way who have seemed to me quite Martian-like. One example that comes to mind are the Kardashians.

It's not that I don't like the unfamiliar, but I want to make a detailed investigation of it. In the last six months, I have set understanding China as my Intellectual focus. I have read dozens of books and hundreds of articles including eight volumes of the Cambridge history of China, beginning in the 17th century. I know much in Chinese country culture is far older than that, but I am happy to understand China as they understood themselves in the last 300 years. My focus last year was Russia.

BTW, I don't actually read these books—I allow my computer to read them aloud to me. If I don't understand a sentence, I can go back and eyeball it. It saves a lot of eye strain!

Expand full comment

On a tangent, the reason you may not trust someone is that the human-constructed reality they live in is different from yours. It may be different in many and important aspects, in which case you don't trust them at all. For example, if a political group subscribes to the idea that some people are more important than others (supremacy), you can't trust them to uphold equal rights for all. Or, urbanists have good ideas about some things, but maybe their reality is too extreme over-all. Or, the reason I don't trust practical jokers is they alter reality so their victims perceive something that isn't actual reality and then laugh at the victim's expense.

Expand full comment

Good example on the specific subject of urbanists. Spokane's zoning and city council are strongly influenced by the urbanist type. Some of their proposals, like approving more mother-in-law cottages and more duplexes, are good. Their traffic ideas, like roundabouts and curb bumpouts, are uniformly bad. Curb bumps make life harder, not easier, for walkers and bikers. Roundabouts are accident magnets. It's tempting to dismiss the good parts because the bad parts are demonstrably bad.

Expand full comment

Roundabouts are great in certain spots, but curb bump-outs are pretty terrible

Expand full comment