How We Became Aliens: The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 9

Last time, I argued that if liberals still believe in an open society — free, equal, and pluralistic — we must defend reason. It’s the shared “meeting space” that makes the open society possible.

But we must also understand that reason alone isn’t enough.

If we filter all our experience through rationality, we become separated from it, as if we’re not living life, but observing it with scientific instruments.

We become alienated.

It’s a condition familiar to anyone who’s had a modern, reason-based education, especially in the humanities. It has come to define life within the modern, post-Enlightenment worldview.

And as liberals have become ever more educated, it has come to define them. Thanks to the postwar education boom, more and more of them have gone to college.

Meanwhile they have become alien, and alienating, to more and more voters.

Find the full transcript at DastardlyCleverness.com.

— Spencer

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Dastardly Cleverness in theService of Good, I’m Spencer Critchley.

This time (00:04):
Chapter 9 of The Liberal Backbone:
“How We Became Aliens.”
You can find the previouschapters in previous
episodes, or at dastardlycleverness.com,on the Dastardly Cleverness YouTube

channel, or at Substack: just search there for Spencer (00:17):
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Critchley.And
as always,if you have any comments or suggestions,
I’d love to hear them.Here we go.
Last time,I argued that if liberals still believe
in an open society — free, equal,and pluralistic — we must defend reason.

(00:40):
It’s the shared “meeting space”that makes the open society possible.
But we must also understandthat reason alone isn’t enough. It’s
a classic liberal failingnot to understand that.
This too is a legacy of the Enlightenment:
the power of the new sciencewas awe-inspiring.

(01:00):
So were revolutionary, reason-based ideasabout individual rights, freedom,
and equality — the ideas at the foundationof liberalism. Many people,
especially liberals, came to assumethat reason could explain everything.
The world would be comprehendedby our minds — our rational minds.

(01:21):
To think was to be rational.
To be irrational was not to think,But to be “out of your mind.”
It turns out,
though, that reason can’texplain everything — because some things,
including many of the things that aremost important to us, can’t be explained.
Not unless we shrink them down to a sizethat can be, and shrink our minds

(01:42):
enough to be happy about that.Love,
beauty, and meaning, for example.
And, more prosaically but no less
importantly, politics.
Liberals tend to assume that politics is,or should be, rational.
How do most liberal politicians campaign?
By explaining their excellent policies,of course.

(02:05):
And if that doesn’t work?They explain harder.
But policies aren’t politics.
Politics is the art of persuasion.
And policies aren’t persuasive.What is persuasive
is how people feel about policies.
Because the medium of persuasionis not reason, but emotion.

(02:26):
This is
one of the most important lessonsto learn from Donald Trump.
With rare exceptions, like his longtimefixation on tariffs, Trump
has no policies.
Instead, he has impulses, from momentto chaotic moment.
Chief among themis his need to be seen as powerful.
Almost everythingTrump does is a performance of power.

(02:50):
An unconvincing one, to psychologistswho see
the terrified, humiliated little boybehind the show.
[FN]But it’s convincing enough to his followers.
And as Bill Clinton oncesaid, people who are scared would ”rather
have someone who is strong and wrongthan somebody who is weak and right.“

Trump makes sure his people are scared: of Marxist (03:08):
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Democrats, murderous immigrants,and the rest of his gallery of monsters.
Then he offers his version of strength.Why does it succeed?
Trump doesn’t know much, but he does knowsomething about how persuasion works.
Consider the hair, the bronzer,

(03:28):
the steely look, the gilded furniture.
He knows that appearances can mattera lot more than substance.
He learned that by failing his wayto fame as a pretend mogul on TV.
But if he were so inclined,he might also have learned from it
from recent decades of researchin psychology and neuroscience.

(03:49):
That research overturnsthe assumption that thought

is essentially rational: We have non-rational emotions, (03:52):
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drives, instincts, and habits, of course,but in a sane, educated adult,
they’re subservient to reason.
Liberalism was founded on that assumption,and many liberals
hold it still. To them it seems obvious that politics should be
a reasoned debate about policies.

(04:13):
In the end, evidence and logicshould prevail.
That’s not necessarily what happens.
In 2005, a young Princeton psychologistnamed Alexander
Todorov decided to test the power of facesin politics.
In an experiment
he designed with his assistantJanine Willis, people were shown photos

(04:34):
of unfamiliar Senate candidatesfrom elections in other states.
They were then asked to assessthe politicians based on no other
information. “Who looks more honest?” “Who looks more competent?”
The subjects’ judgments were compared
to the results of the elections.
Todorov and Willis were astoundedat what they found.

(04:57):
Just by taking a brief lookat the candidates’ faces, the subjects had
chosen the winners of the elections,about 70 percent of the time.
Willis suggestedthey measure how brief that look could be.
They ran a new experimentin which subjects saw candidate photos
for either one second, a half second,or just a tenth of a second

(05:18):
– barely time to knowthey’d seen a face at all.
It didn’t make a difference.
A tenth of a second was enough.
“If given more time, people’sfundamental judgment
about faces did not change,”Todorov reported.
“Observers simply became more confident
in their judgmentsas the duration lengthened.”

(05:40):
Results this dramatic are often ephemeral.
After an initial splash of excitement,they dissolve
under scrutiny. That wasn’t the case here.
Other scientists replicated Todorov
and Willis’ results,even under tighter conditions.
In one variant of the experiment,Swiss children chose the winners
of elections in France, againwith about 70 percent accuracy.

(06:03):
Those elections had been run beforesome of the children were born.
So… should we stop bothering with electioncampaigns?
Just show voters some picturesand be done with it?
After all, if faces foretell resultsseven times out of ten, maybe
the candidates’ full bodies would get usall the way there. Or maybe not.

(06:24):
In real elections,other factors do play a role.
Think of party affiliation,or strongly held
beliefs about single issues,like guns or abortion.
But what many of themost significant factors have in common
is that they have little to dowith rational thought.
That’s unfortunate for liberals,who have become rational

(06:46):
to a fault,to their great political cost.
If we filter all our experience,of the world,
of other people,and of ourselves, through rationality,
we become separated from it, as if we’renot living life, but observing it
with scientific instruments.We become alienated.

(07:07):
It’s a condition familiar to anyone who’s
had a modern, reason-based education,especially in the humanities.
It has come to define life withinthe modern, post-Enlightenment worldview.
And as liberals have become evermore educated, it has come to define them.
Thanks to the postwar education boom, moreand more of them have gone to college.

(07:29):
Meanwhile they have become alien,and alienating, to more and more voters.
Liberals often puzzle over this.
Why do we struggle to connect with voters,including voters who used to support us?
As I write,the Democratic Party is engaged in yet
another project of study and analysis,trying to identify the problem.

(07:53):
I’d argue that Democrats’ addiction
to study and analysis is the problem.

It’s what aliens do (07:58):
try
to figure out these strange locals,in this case with polls,
focus groups, and delegationsto bars, barbershops, and taquerias.
But to figure out is not to connect.
The harder you try, the more you seem,

and feel, like what you are (08:16):
a stranger.
Alienated.
More on this next time,including glimpses of the way home.