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Attack Other in politics
Perry · 12/06/02 at 4:18 PM ET
Hi Everyone, I wrote up this post below as part of a continuing discussion at Don Nathanson's Shame and Affect Theory forum also at behavior.net and when I tried to post it I got a "forum is unavailable" message. When I emailed Gil Levin about this he said "It will not return before early next year, when our new forum software is installed." so I'm going to post it here instead. I think the Shame Forum just got too many posts in it. To briefly summarize our current discussion there, Silvan Tomkins suggested a normative/humanist spectrum in which a person may find himself closer to the normative pole or closer to the humanist pole. You can read more about this and even take a test which is supposed to tell you where you are on the continuum at: http://www.behavior.net/orgs/ssti/bltn11.html One could consider the normative pole to be more right wing or politically conservative and the humanist pole more left wing or politically liberal. The issue was how normatives and humanists might handle shame differently, and in particular which of the two would tend more to using an "attack other" script when they are shamed. The "attack other" mode was postulated by our forum leader Don Nathanson as a certain way some people react to being shamed, that is to attack others, in particular whoever is associated with their shame. So here's the post. ********* This question of how one's politics may relate to how one experiences shame is a very complicated one, so I'd like to discuss just one very narrow facet of it to try to support my thesis. To support the idea that humanists are more likely to find themselves at the Attack Other pole I'd like to discuss the extent to which some people are able (or unable) to see themselves (to borrow the Gunter Seidler book title) "In Others' Eyes". It's evident to me that seeing oneself in another's eyes is a key step in being ashamed. My experience is that the sequence goes like this: Consider a woman getting ready for bed. She removes her clothes and as she's about to put on her nightgown she realizes she's forgotten to draw the drapes, and furthermore there's an image of a man outside on the sidewalk walking by who's turned his head to look at her. He may have stopped completely to turn and face her, staring. She's mortified. She grabs something to cover herself or ducks out of sight and rushes to pull the blind. One of the earliest stories of shame is the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis chapter 3 verses 7-10: This facility of being able to look through the eyes of others is commonly known as "empathy", defined as "EMPATHY, (Greek root) 1. the projection of one's personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better; intellectual identification of oneself with another". I submit that compared to the normative, the humanist lacks empathy, though I personally believe he makes up for that in sympathy, which is a whole 'nother story. To illustrate this lack of empathy I'd like to first give examples of some people's difficulties in putting themselves in others' shoes, then examples of humanists apparently unable to put themselves in another's shoes. Examples of those unable or unwilling to consider the view of those they criticize are legion. I recall an interview with John McEnroe. He's notorious for abusing the linemen and referees in his tennis matches. Once I recall him berating a bald line judge (for whatever reason) with the admonition "GROW SOME HAIR!". There was a back and forth about this kind of on court behavior in the interview, then he was asked "what if you were a lineman". McEnroe was startled as if disturbed from a slumber. "I would never be a lineman", he said. Then there's the now TV star and rapper, former pimp and petty criminal Ice-T. At an appearance at a prison he said with obvious sincerity to the crowd of inmates assembled there as if it was a great truth, "We hate the cops". On hearing this I had to wonder, what if he were a cop, trying to do his best? By what logic should he be hated? Ironically, Ice-T is now a TV star who plays a cop on a popular TV drama (one of the Law and Order spinoffs). Now to humanists who lack empathy. Or rather, who display an inability to look at things through the eyes of others. The most notorious example of this is the left-wing radical Noam Chomsky. He ascribes the most vicious motives to those he opposes. As far as shame is concerned, we can consider those he opposes as "the Other", and his characterisation of those he opposes, "Attack Other". For example, when the US was preparing to invade Afghanistan, he went to Islamabad Pakistan and in a speech there declared that the US action would cause 2 or 3 million Afghanis to die from starvation as international aid would not reach them in the winter months because of the war. He gave a cite (as they always do) of an international aid association which had analysed the situation. His conclusion, therefor, was that the US intended on killing millions of Afghanis. As it turned out, the US mission saved Afghani lives and brought many freedoms. But what Chomsky was incapable of doing was putting himself in the position of a senior US military planner. As a US military leader, would he decide to starve millions of Afghanis? Or would he add his voice to facilitate the delivery of food supplies and work to save civilian lives? He indicates the former, apparently. Imagine this imaginary exchange between a humanist and a normative on the question of racial profiling of suspects in otherwise random stops of cars on an interstate for drugs. This question of the humanist relies on the presumption that the normative has NOT considered this. The humanist is basically saying it never occured to the normative to apply this police procedure to himself and gauge if it were fair. Well, DUH! The normative HAS considered this. It is, in fact, the typical way his mind works to determine whether something is fair or not: he jumps out of himself to look at this from the outside, from the point of view of a "norm" or external standard. He's able to look at himself through the racial profiling lense and decided if he was targeted it would still be fair. Some examples from the forum: g jackson "slippery slope" 11/26/02 - "I guess it's just easier to think about going and killing people in some other country than actually dealing with our problems." I have to ask, it's easier for whom? Who are these people? Are they anything like you? Are they so different from you? What about you? Are you one of these people? (I'm assuming from the context of your post, no!). This is quite a put down of whoever it is you're talking about. A demeaning caricature of a person who seems barely human. Why would you talk about others this way? Does it comfort you in some way? John "Re: Slippery Slope" 11/27/02 - (re: g jackson) "You speak for so very many people who refuse to acknowledge that they feel just as you do, too, people who are intimidated into silence about their true feelings." Who are these people? Are you one of them? Or are you above them somehow? They're intimidated into silence?! Really! Another subhuman bogeyman at work going around intimidating people. Who is intimidating them? What are their motives? Are they monsters or are they human? g. jackson "Re: Human nature" 12/03/02 - "I think we may have outstayed our welcome on this planet and need to move on before we totally destroy it as I don't hold out much hope for humans evolving into a peaceful species". This sounds bleak! Jackson, what about you? Does your voice count for nothing? Or are you bent on destroying the planet as well? These people who will destroy the planet - is that because of their basic nature? Or are they being willfully evil? If their basic nature is evil, is your basic nature evil as well? If so, are you able through effort and willpower to rise above your evil nature, or is even trying to do so impossible? There were several other posts in the nature of postulating some powerful, subhuman malevolent monstrous force, an "Other" who not only (necessarily!) disagreed with the poster but seemed to have few if any rational faculties and was to sum up in one word, simply "evil". These posts were (thankfully) deleted. What I'm describing is a lack of empathy. An unwillingness or inability to to put oneself in another's shoes and try to see what they see: to work to understand why are they doing what they're doing; what are they thinking; what are they feeling; what are their desires and dreams and hopes and objectives. I see a tendency in the humanists in the political debate to not give the benefit of the doubt to those who disagree with them. They (ironically) dehumanize them to take away the sting of the fact of their disagreement. Most particularly they try not to see those who disagree with them as fully rational beings who may have good reasons for their positions. Attempting to view the world through the eyes of the normative (even just to see things as he sees them for a few moments) is out of the question for many humanists. It's distasteful to them. It assaults their sensibilities. It reminds me of a typical reaction to a racist, one of utter disgust. Many people will say they have no interest in understanding how a racist thinks, they already know how racists think and it's disgusting. But I had a chance to get to know an avowed racist online and chat with him and I got to learn his ideology and what made him tick. I admit it was very distasteful, but I worked through that feeling to try to understand him, which gave me an opportunity to comment soberly on what he told me in such a way that he'd hear what I was saying. If we're to ever connect with those we disagree with to change their hearts, we have to treat them and what they have to say with respect. Otherwise we'll just end up yelling at each other. Thomas Sowell wrote about how the left and right treat each other differently in his book "The Vision of the Annointed". On page 4 he writes: "Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, foolish, a dope. Disagree with someone on the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, a sell-out, insensitive, possibly evil". Let me try to get to the essence of the relationship between the humanist and the Other, in particular an Other which doesn't share the humanist's sentiments and sensibilities. To the humanist, such an Other is so flawed it's impossible for the humanist to look through the Other's eyes and see things as the Other sees them. Most everyone won't bother to try to look through the eyes of an Other like Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer. Hitler killed millions. Dahmer ate people. Or a KKKer. But for the humanist the denigration of the Other doesn't stop there. The bigot is a monster. If someone thinks homosexuality is a psychological disorder, they're a homophobe, ipso facto. If you're a Republican, you are selfish and want to starve children and kick old people out onto the street. If you think men and women are different you're a sexist. By denigrating such Others, the humanist says they are unfit and it's not worth stepping into their shoes, trying to fit into their skin and trying to look at the world as they do. It would be interesting to investigate in what precise ways the humanist must denigrate the Other to make him unfit for empathizing with, and exactly what are the resultant qualities of the Other which render it impossible to look at things through his eyes. I hope I've demonstrated to some degree that humanists will tend more towards the Attack Other pole than normatives. It's impossible to say if the humanists' sensitivity to shame (an affective dimension) causes them to find it difficult to look at things through others' eyes (a cognitive dimension), or vice versa. But I think it's fair to say both of these things taken together are an explanation of why humanists tend towards the Attack Other pole when dealing with those who implicitly shame them simply by disagreeing with them politically.
There have been a few recent posts on the now archived board which either come right out and say or seem to imply that the apparent greater willingness of the normatives to go to war in Iraq, compared to the humanists, is indicative of some part of the normative's personal psychology rather than a sober policy decision, perhaps even part of an "attack other" script in reaction to being shamed. In my most recent posts I suggested it's the humanist (not the normative) who's most likely to find himself at the Attack Other pole of the Compass of shame because of his lesser ability to tolerate feeling shame, but I didn't give many details or much explanation to demonstrate why that's so. I'd like to do that here.
1. Minding my own business, doing something privately
2. I notice someone is watching me
3. There is a jolt as I'm pulled out of myself in my attempt to see what that other person is seeing, to look at myself through his eyes
4. Having jumped out of myself, I've neglected myself and whatever it was that I was doing. Instinctly I may freeze up as a kind of protection against the gaze of what Sartre and others have termed "the Other", to prevent them from scanning me and learning things about me I'd rather keep private.
Besides relying on my own experience, at least two other examples of this phenomenon come to mind.
7: [after eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge] Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they discovered that they were naked; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
8: The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze and hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
9: But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?'.
10: He replied, 'I heard the sound as you were walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself'.
Humanist: "New Jersey cops are disproportionately pulling over young black males on the interstate to check them for drugs, weapons, or any other crimes. That is wrong."
Normative: "But don't young black males commit more of such crimes than others? This seems like a good shortcut to arresting and convicting the criminals"
(Now the Humanist thinks he has a trump card:)
Humanist: "Have you considered if they were profiling middled aged white males (supposing the normative is in that group) and not young black males? How would you like that?"
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