Civilized Democratic Politics: Looking for Overlapping Consensus

Context

“. . . . Cornyn spoke in favor of the Republican Party fighting its way back to victory by broadening its appeal to a broader swath of voters, including moderates. . . . . the former aide explained . . . . ‘He believes in making the party a big tent. You can't win unless you get more votes.’ In contrast, DeMint portrayed compromise as surrender. He had little patience for the slow-moving process of constitutional government. He regarded many of his Senate colleagues as timid and self-serving. The federal government posed such a dire threat to the dynamism of the American economy, in his view, that anything less than all-out war on regulations and spending was a cop-out. . . . . Rather than compromising on their principles and working with the new administration, DeMint argued, Republicans needed to take a firm stand against Obama, waging a campaign of massive resistance and obstruction, regardless of the 2008 election outcome.” -- Investigative journalist Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, 2017

“James McGill Buchanan [chairman of the economics department at University of Virginia] was not a member of the Virginia elite. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that for a white southerner of his day he was uniquely racist or insensitive to the concept of equal treatment. And yet, somehow, all he saw in the [2nd 1955 Supreme Court] Brown decision was coercion. And not just in the abstract. what the court ruling represented to him was personal. Northern liberals -- the very people who looked down on southern whites like him -- were now going to tell his people how to run their society. And to add insult to injury, he and people like him with property were no doubt going to be taxed to pay for all of the improvements that were now deemed necessary and proper for the state to make. What about his rights? Where did the federal government get the authority to engineer society to its liking and then send him and those like him the bill? Who represented their interests in all of this? I can fight this, he concluded. I want to fight this.

Find the resources, he proposed to Darden [President of the University of Virginia], for me to create a new center on the campus of the University of Virginia, and I will use this center to create a new school of political economy and social philosophy. It would be an academic center, rigorously so, but one with a quiet political agenda: to defeat the ‘perverted form’ of liberalism that sought to destroy their way of life, ‘a social order,’ as he described it, ‘built on individual liberty,’ a term with its own coded meaning but one that Darden surely understood. The center, Buchanan promised, would train a ‘new line of thinkers’ in how to argue against those seeking to impose an ‘increasing role of government in economic and social life.’ He could win this war, and he would do it with ideas.” Historian Nancy MacLean, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History Of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America, 2017

The ‘perverted form’ of liberalism included opposition to racial segregation, support of racial and gender discrimination and oppression, bitter opposition to organized labor and bitter opposition to a central government that stood for defense of equality and individual civil liberties in schools, churches, commerce, the courts and everywhere else. That was the hated form of perverted politics that Buchanan envisioned, Darden blessed, and eventually the Koch Brothers funded. Later, other GOP billionaires heavily funded and still fund today a softer variant of this radical libertarian ideology. According to MacLean, that 1955 Supreme Court public school desegregation decision was the beginning for the rise of radical right libertarianism in America based on the previously undiscovered historical records she found and wrote about.

Overlapping consensus

In her 2013 book, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, political philosopher Martha Nussbaum describes her vision of how societies can try to approach the best that humans can hope to attain in terms of a diverse, democratic civil society, civil liberties, justice and equality. One aspect of her vision of civil society looks for overlapping consensus among all the various interests, moral and religious beliefs, innate human urges and perceived reasons to be uncivilized. There are a lot of reasons to be uncivilized, ranging from trivial to justified and grounded in reality and sound reason to fantasy and flawed reason. She argues that such a civil society and political liberalism can be built on a consensus.

“.... equal respect for citizens requires that a nation not build its political principles on any particular comprehensive doctrine of the meaning and basis of life, whether religious or secular. Political principles ought to be such as to be, potentially, objects of an overlapping consensus among all reasonable citizens -- those, that is, who are respectful of their fellow citizens as equals and ready to abide by fair terms of cooperation. .... The consensus may not exist at present, but it ought to be a plausible possibility for the future, and we should be able to envision a plausible trajectory from where we are to such a consensus.”

Nussbaum goes on to identify two characteristics of such political principles. The first is narrowness in scope to cover only political entitlements and matters of political structure. The second is having a shallow basis or foundation that is focused on ethical notions central to the core political principles such as equality and equal justice. The idea is that over time most citizens will come to accept the political principles because they respect both secular and religious values and they are also respectful of freedom and equality for people holding such diverse values.

Some of the moral content from such political principles flows from equal respect and tolerance of diverse but mutually respectful beliefs. The point of the political principles is not to establish a single doctrine, but instead to provide a basis for social glue or cohesion with as little coercion as possible, e.g., enforcement of racial anti-discrimination laws.

Instead of drawing on religious or metaphysical traditions, Nussbaum looks to sources such as empirical psychology, sociology, human development science and history to inform political principles. Those empirical sources are used for insight about how to reinforce positive emotions while discouraging negative emotions that can easily derail political liberalism and lead to intolerant tribalism and tyranny. In essence, Nussbaum looks to the science of what humans are and why they think and behave as they do. and then applies that knowledge to building a liberal political framework that is stable, compassionate and dedicated to equality and equal justice. Inherent in those beliefs is deep social moral value.

Nussbaum argues that science has made it clear that despite the human tendency for radical evil, society and culture are universal influences that can blunt its impact. Although radical evil, is inherent in the human condition from birth, society and culture and reign it in and negate most of its tendency to divide and degrade societies and how they mistreat various groups.

Can that work?

It isn't clear if Nussbaum’s vision of tolerant, just political liberalism can take hold at present. The ideology she professes is somewhat abstract, so the strength of the social glue it might afford may not be enough to do the job. Also, the power of dark free speech, lies, deceit, and emotional manipulation, to divide and corrupt morality and behaviors is painfully obvious in current American politics. It may be the case that social divisions and intolerance constitute unsuitable conditions to even try this experiment. On the other hand, there probably will never be optimal social conditions. It is hard to imagine that the new ferocity of dark free speech will lessen any time soon.

40% of Americans Believe in Creationism

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. However, more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years -- either with God's guidance (33%) or, increasingly, without God's involvement at all (22%).

The latest findings, from a June 3-16 Gallup poll, have not changed significantly from the last reading in 2017. However, the 22% of Americans today who do not believe God had any role in human evolution marks a record high dating back to 1982. This figure has changed more than the other two have over the years and coincides with an increasing number of Americans saying they have no religious identification.

As many as 47% and as few as 38% of Americans have taken a creationist view of human origins throughout Gallup's 37-year trend. Likewise, between 31% and 40% of U.S. adults have attributed humans' development to a combination of evolution and divine intervention over the same period.

Sharp Differences by Religious Preference and Education

As has been the case historically, Americans' views on evolution and creationism vary sharply based on their religious identification, how often they attend church and their education level.

Majorities of Protestants (56%) and those who attend church at least once a week (68%) believe that God created humans in their present form. Meanwhile, 59% of those who do not identify with any religion believe in evolution without any intervention from God.

Those with a college degree are much more likely to believe in evolution than creationism, while the opposite is true of those without a college degree. 

However, even among adults with a college degree, more believe God had a role in evolution than say it occurred without God.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx

The World is Facing a Crisis

Humanity faces a global environmental crisis from which war both distracts us and which it exacerbates including but not limited to adverse climate change which will disrupt agriculture, create droughts and floods, disrupt disease patterns, raise sea levels, set millions of refugees in motion, and disrupt natural ecosystems on which civilization rests. We must quickly shift the resources wasted in laying waste to addressing major problems humanity now faces. Starting with the military is a logical step. Not only does the out-of-control military budget take away much needed resources for addressing the planetary crisis, the negative environmental impact of the military alone is tremendous.

Connecting the dots – illustrating the impact of war on the environment:
• MILITARY AIRCRAFT CONSUME ABOUT ONE QUARTER OF THE WORLD’S JET FUEL
• THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE USES MORE FUEL PER DAY THAN THE COUNTRY OF SWEDEN
• THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE GENERATES MORE CHEMICAL WASTE THAN THE FIVE LARGEST CHEMICAL COMPANIES COMBINED

F-22 Raptor: “Military aircraft consume about one quarter of the world’s jet fuel.” (Image: wall4all.me)

• A F-16 FIGHTER BOMBER CONSUMES ALMOST TWICE AS MUCH FUEL IN ONE HOUR AS THE HIGH-CONSUMING US MOTORIST BURNS A YEAR
• THE US MILITARY USES ENOUGH FUEL IN ONE YEAR TO RUN THE ENTIRE MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM OF THE NATION FOR 22 YEARS
• DURING THE 1991 AERIAL CAMPAIGN OVER IRAQ, THE US UTILIZED APPROXIMATELY 340 TONS OF MISSILES CONTAINING DEPLETED URANIUM (DU) – THERE WERE SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER RATES OF CANCER, BIRTH DEFECTS AND INFANT MORTALITY IN FALLUJAH, IRAQ IN EARLY 2010note11
• ONE MILITARY ESTIMATE IN 2003 WAS THAT TWO-THIRDS OF THE ARMY’S FUEL CONSUMPTION OCCURRED IN VEHICLES THAT WERE DELIVERING FUEL TO THE BATTLEFIELD

We simply can’t go forward with a conflict management system that relies on war in a world which will have nine billion people by 2050, acute resource shortages and a dramatically changing climate that will disrupt the global economy and send millions of refugees on the move. If we do not end war and turn our attention to the global crisis, the world we know will end in another and more violent Dark Age.

https://worldbeyondwar.org/world-facing-crisis/#note12

A Critique of Libertarianism

For years, my experiences with libertarianism was mostly unpleasant. They are an energetic bunch of folks who are rock solid certain that their ideology is best and if anyone disagrees, they usually get viciously attacked. That’s why I stopped trying to communicate with that scintillating community years ago. Each brief step back into that rigid ideological world, to test for changes indicated that the old, nasty status quo is still alive and nasty. Those folks are still right and the rest of us are idiots or worse.

Over the years, I came across things that describe most libertarians. This is a good time to put them together in one happy place for posterity’s sake.

Here’s why libertarians are right and you are wrong

This is how a prominent libertarian, Michael Shermer, describes the workings if infallible libertarian ideology:

“Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true. 

Take gun control. I always accepted the libertarian position of minimum regulation in the sale and use of firearms because I placed guns under the beneficial rubric of minimal restrictions on individuals. Then I read the science on guns and homicides, suicides and accidental shootings (summarized in my May column) and realized that the freedom for me to swing my arms ends at your nose. The libertarian belief in the rule of law and a potent police and military to protect our rights won't work if the citizens of a nation are better armed but have no training and few restraints. Although the data to convince me that we need some gun-control measures were there all along, I had ignored them because they didn't fit my creed. 

My libertarianism also once clouded my analysis of climate change. I was a longtime skeptic, mainly because it seemed to me that liberals were exaggerating the case for global warming as a kind of secular millenarianism—an environmental apocalypse requiring drastic government action to save us from doomsday through countless regulations that would handcuff the economy and restrain capitalism, which I hold to be the greatest enemy of poverty. Then I went to the primary scientific literature on climate and discovered that there is convergent evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that global warming is real and human-caused: temperatures increasing, .... 

The clash between scientific facts and ideologies was on display at the 2013 FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas—the largest gathering of libertarians in the world—where I participated in two debates, one on gun control and the other on climate change. .... In the climate debate, when I showed that between 90 and 98 percent of climate scientists accept anthropogenic global warming, someone shouted, “LIAR!” and stormed out of the room.”

Philosophers speak

From the philosophy world come these salty comments: “Libertarian solutions favored by the political right have contributed even more directly to the erosion of social responsibilities and valued forms of communal life, particularly in the UK and the US. Far from producing beneficial communal consequences, the invisible hand of unregulated free-market capitalism undermines the family (e.g., few corporations provide enough leave to parents of newborn children), disrupts local communities (e.g., following plant closings or the shifting of corporate headquarters), and corrupts the political process (e.g., US politicians are often dependent on economic interest groups for their political survival, with the consequence that they no longer represent the community at large).”

Martha speaks

And finally, this is how political philosopher Martha Nussbaum describes flawed libertarian thinking:

“Even the minimal libertarian state has its own characteristic culture of emotions. Libertarians sometimes suggest that it is an advantage of their ideal that they do not need to rely on extensive sympathy. They can use human nature just as it is, relying on acquisitiveness, Hobbesian fear and limited sympathy to propel the machinery of competition. By contrast, liberals, they allege, want to engage in intrusive and uncertain projects of improvement. There is less to this contrast, however, than meets the eye. Even libertarians are opposed to force and fraud. .... Competitive acquisitiveness and the desire to rise above others can upset even that type of state, causing it to degenerate into lawless tribalism. .... Furthermore, proponents of the libertarian state typically assume, and do not argue, that their claims about “human nature” are true apart from culture. .... And yet history indicates that people’s capacity for extended sympathy varies greatly in accordance with the culture in which they live, as do their desires to outdo others in rank and status, or to dominate other racial or ethnic groups. .... we must pay attention to the facts of human psychology, insofar as these are at all understood, and we must not ask of people what they cannot deliver, or can deliver only with great strain. .... Take antidiscrimination laws. All the just state needs to do is to remove artificial barriers to trade, minority hiring, and so forth. Employers, being rational, will quickly see that hiring minority workers is in their interest. Libertarian thinkers argue that these laws are unnecessary because, discrimination is economically inefficient. .... They will not be held back by entrenched hatred, disgust, or, again, the desire to humiliate through segregationist practices. All are understood, moreover, to have a nondeformed view of the potentiality of African Americans, rather than a view deformed by racist stereotypes, whether those impute laziness, low ability or criminal propensity.  .... Libertarian politics is naïve, because people are just not like that. .... And as John Stuart Mill observed, the most ubiquitous and enduring exclusion of all, the exclusion of women from employment opportunities and political participation, is a bizarre policy for a utility-maximizing society, and one that could be held in place only by irrational prejudice.” (emphasis added)

And the libertarian has no grip on reality - don't vote libertarian

Conclusion

Together, those comments nicely describe what it is about libertarianism that has never had any personal appeal. It took others to articulate it for me, but this is basically it. This seems to explain why criticism of libertarianism and its beliefs are sometimes met with such ferocious, often vulgar push back. Libertarian ideology strikes me as one of those logic-proof compartments that Edward Bernays described way back in 1923 in his masterpiece on the staggering power of propaganda, Crystallizing Public Opinion: “Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us.”

Fun fact: The GOP has been taken over by very wealthy, powerful radical right libertarians including the Koch Brother’s organization and money. Their vision for government is exactly as described in the condensed party platform shown above and in the delightful poem. They are dead serious about those things and they tolerate no dissent from GOP politicians to their vision for a new American tyranny.

More than half a decade since dating apps went mainstream, can millennials who’ve lost patience with digital platforms still find love in the analogue world?

T

They’ve facilitated billions of dates and helped pave the way for marriage, children and everything in between. It’s old news that dating apps and online platforms are now the most common way for prospective partners to meet in the US and have become popular around the world. But for many of those who’ve tried and failed to find true love through their devices, the novelty is long gone.

“I've met great people that later became friends and had a handful of extended flings, but never a long-term relationship,” says writer Madeleine Dore, a 30-year-old from Melbourne who’s also dated in New York and Copenhagen. She’s used apps including Tinder, Bumble and OkCupid over the last five years and describes the dates she’s been on as ranging from experiences “that feel like a scene in a rom-com” to “absolute disasters”.

Many of her friends have met their partners online, and this knowledge has encouraged her to keep persevering. But, when “conversations unexpectedly fizzle, sparks don’t translate in person [and] dates are cancelled”, she typically ends up disenchanted and temporarily deletes her apps for a couple of months.

It’s a pattern many long-term singles will be familiar with, with other complaints about the app-based dating experience ranging from a lack of matches to too many matches, misleading profiles, safety concerns, racist comments and unwanted explicit content. Not to mention a host of digital behaviours so confusing we’ve had to make up new words for them, from ghosting and catfishing to pigging and orbiting.

While almost half of adults under 35 living in the US and the UK have tried some form of digital dating, and the multibillion-dollar industry increased by 11% in North America between 2014 and the start of 2019, there are growing signs that many would rather not be using these methods. A BBC survey in 2018 found that dating apps are the least preferred way for 16- to 34-year-old Britons to meet someone new.

Academics are also paying increased attention to the downsides of digital romance. A study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in September concluded that compulsive app users can end up feeling lonelier than they did in the first place. Management Science published a study on online dating in 2017 which highlighted the paradox of choice, noting that “increasing the number of potential matches has a positive effect due to larger choice, but also a negative effect due to competition between agents on the same side.”

“You need a lot of swipes to get a match, a lot of matches to get a number, a lot of numbers to get a date and a lot of dates to get a third date,” explains Scott Harvey, editor of Global Dating Insights, the online dating industry’s trade news publication.

You need a lot of swipes to get a match, a lot of matches to get a number, a lot of numbers to get a date and a lot of dates to get a third date – Scott Harvey

“Trying to find a partner in this way is extremely labour-intensive and can be quite exasperating,” he says, adding that those working in the sector are highly aware that many consumers are no longer “completely enamoured” by apps like Tinder and Bumble.

While Julie Beck, a staff writer for The Atlantic, made waves with an article addressing the rise of dating app fatigue three years ago, 2019 stands out as the moment that deeper discussions about the downsides of dating apps and debates about the feasibility of going without them went mainstream. Millennial media from Glamour to Vice truly began shifting their focus, US dating coach Camille Virginia released an advice book called The Offline Dating Method for those seeking to rid themselves of apps, and British broadcaster Verity Geere revealed how she went on a complete detox from sex and relationships after what she describes as eight years as an online “dating junkie” that failed to score her a long-term partner. Meanwhile research analytics firm eMarketer predicted a slowdown in user growth for mainstream online platforms, with more users switching between apps than new people entering the market.

Dating in the wild

Kamila Saramak, 30, a medical doctor living in the Polish capital, Warsaw, is among those who’ve taken the decision to go cold turkey and focus on dating offline.

Several months after splitting up with her partner of two years, she says she was “pretty much playing with Tinder every day,” swiping through profiles each morning and messaging matches while she had her breakfast. But after six months she realised it was impacting on her mental health.

“I was writing to them, I was meeting with them and then they just disappeared,” she says of many of her matches. “I was very lonely at that time…and it made me feel like I was worse than other people.”

For others, deleting the apps has been more about winning time back in their lives for other activities rather than a reaction to painful experiences.

“Most of the time, the girls didn't look like the pictures...and the conversation was unfortunately, most of the time absolutely uninteresting,” says Leo Pierrard, 28, a French journalist living in Berlin. He stopped using dating apps for 18 months, before meeting his current partner on a trip to Paris.

“I think, definitely people are getting tired of it,” agrees Linda Jonsson, a 27-year-old gym instructor from Stockholm. She says she used Tinder for two years and had a nine-month relationship with one person she met on the app, but deleted it for the foreseeable future earlier this year and remains single.

In her friendship circle, “good first dates” that don’t lead to anything more serious are the most frequent irritation, which can, she says, feel like a waste of effort.

“It was really fine for a couple of years just to try it out and see what happens. But more and more of my friends are actually just deleting them and going out the old-fashioned way just to find people.”

Meanwhile meeting an unattached millennial who has never used a dating app is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but they do exist.

Matt Franzetti, 30, who is originally from Milan and works for a non-profit organisation in Transylvania, Romania, says he is put off by the idea of having to sell himself using photos and pithy profile texts.

You have to be very good about describing yourself to look very interesting – Matt Franzetti

“You have to be very good about describing yourself to look very interesting,” he argues.

He has met some women after having “deeper conversations” at parties or through blogging about his interests, which include rock music and art, but his dating history is limited and he is “usually single”.

Against the odds?

So what is the likelihood of finding a long-term partner in the analogue world, especially for a cohort that has grown up glued to smartphones and with far more limited traditional interactions with strangers compared to previous generations? We shop online, order transportation and food online and chat with friends online. Do most of us even know how to approach people we fancy in public these days?

Matt Lundquist, a relationship therapist based in New York says that many of his single patients have grown so used to meeting hookups or partners online that they end up ignoring potential matches elsewhere.

“When people are going out, going to a party, to a bar, often they are actually not at all thinking about dating,” he says. This means that even if they end up having an interesting conversation with someone they would have swiped right on “it’s just not where their brain is”.

“The clarity of a match online has perhaps made us more timid in real life meetings,” agrees Melbourne-based singleton Madeleine Dore. “Without a ‘swipe yes’ or ‘swipe no’ function, we risk putting our feelings out there to be rejected in full view. Better to open the app and endlessly swipe, blissfully unaware of who swiped you away.”

Ambivalence to relationships

Lundquist reflects that the rise of app-based dating coincided with a decline in social spaces in which people used to find potential sexual partners and dates. Gay bars are closing at a rapid rate in around the world, including in London, Stockholm and the across the US. Half of the UK’s nightclubs shut their doors between 2005 and 2015 according to research for the BBC’s Newsbeat programme.

The current climate around sexual harassment in the workplace in the wake of the #MeToo movement may even be putting off colleagues from embarking on traditional office romances. Some studies suggest fewer workers are dating one another compared to a decade ago and a greater tendency for employees to feel uncomfortable with the idea of colleagues having a workplace relationship.

The current climate around sexual harassment in the workplace in the wake of the #MeToo movement may even be putting off colleagues from embarking on traditional office romances.

For Lundquist, anyone refusing to use dating apps is therefore “dramatically reducing” their odds of meeting someone, since they remain the most normalised way to meet people. “I think that apps are complicated and suck in lots of very legitimate ways. But that's what's happening. That is where people are dating.”

He argues that meeting romantic partners has always been challenging and that it’s important to remember that online platforms first came on the market as a way to help those who were struggling. For many of his patients, the decision to turn off dating platforms, blame them for a lack of dating success, or conversely use them too frequently, can therefore often reflect a more general ambivalence to relationships based on human behaviours and feelings that have actually “been around for millennia”. These might range from previous relationship traumas triggered by former partners or during childhood, to body hang-ups or conflicts around sexual identity, monogamy and confidence.

He advises those who are committed to dating, to improve the process of using apps by making it “more social”, for example sharing profiles with friends, brainstorming ideas about where to go on dates and deciding when to have conversations about exclusivity.

“One of the paths to which people find their way to misery in this domain is that they are doing it in a much too isolated way,” says Lundquist. The process will, however, take time and dedication, he argues, suggesting that “if you’re not engaged daily, the odds of it working I think are close to zero.”

Damona Hoffman, an LA-based dating coach and host of the Dates & Mates podcast agrees that a dating app is “the most powerful tool in your dating tool box” but is more optimistic about analogue options.

“I completely disagree with the feeling that if you're not online, you don't have a prayer of meeting someone today. But I do think dating today requires a level of intention that I see a lot of millennials lacking,” she argues.

I do think dating today requires a level of intention that I see a lot of millennials lacking – Damona Hoffman

Her tips include dedicating around five hours a week to chat to potential matches or meet people in real life, being more conscious about the kind of person you are looking for, and actively searching for relevant spaces where you can approach potential dates directly.

“If you're looking for someone that has a professional career, you might want to go downtown at happy hour and make sure that you're talking to people that work in those office buildings, or if you're looking for someone who has a big heart, you go to charity events and places where you're going to meet people who make philanthropy a part of their lifestyle.”

For those with significant money to spare, hiring a dating coach is another option she recommends (her services cost a minimum of $1,000 a month) or even paying for matchmaking services. This seemingly outdated concept is enjoying a resurgence among wealthy, time-poor professionals in some US cities, while Sweden’s first personal matchmaking agency launched just three years ago and has a growing client base across Europe.

However, Hoffman sympathises with the feeling of dating fatigue and says that anyone who feels at the point of burnout should take a short break, “because then you're bringing the wrong energy into dating”.

What’s next for dating?

When it comes to the future of dating, Scott Harvey, editor of Global Dating Insights, says that artificial intelligence and video are the “two main talking points in the industry” right now.

Facebook’s new dating product, an opt-in feature of the main Facebook app, which has launched in the US and 20 other countries and is scheduled to go live in Europe next year, includes the option for users to share video or photo based Stories from their main feeds to potential dates, cutting down on the effort of creating curated content for separate dating platforms. Since Facebook already knows so much about us, it will, Harvey argues, end up with an “unparalleled insight” into which kinds of matches end in relationships, marriage or divorce, which can be used to inform future matching algorithms.

In terms of video, he says dating app companies also want to test “whether people can get a feel for in-person chemistry by chatting face-to-face” using video chat functions and “whether people will actually go to the trouble of having short video dates on a Sunday afternoon or Tuesday evening” as a way of avoiding lacklustre real life encounters.

Meanwhile industry analysts and coaches including both Scott Harvey and Damona Hoffman also point to a resurgence in offline singles events on both sides of the Atlantic, whether run by larger online dating companies seeking to find new ways of connecting existing pools of singles who are tired of swiping, or newer players looking to capitalise on current debates about the challenges of dating in today’s digital era.

“We saw this huge demand for authentic connection and genuine meetings and how difficult it is to create this on your own,” says Philip Jonzon Jarl, co-founder of Relate, a Scandinavian dating and relationships start-up which organises singles parties, matching guests with a handful of attendees based on their values.

They still need an app for the process, but Jonzon Jarl views it as “a tool for a deeper conversation” that is typically lacking at speed-dating events or mingles for singles. His longer-term vision is for “dating meets personal development”, with couples who connect via the platform able to unlock tips and tools to aid them as their relationship develops, in part, to help them avoid the temptation to jump too quickly back into the online dating pool if things don’t immediately run smoothly.

Therapist Matt Lundquist is sceptical about how much of an impact new methods like these will have and suggests that it would be “rather remarkable” if someone created a silver bullet to dispense with the “challenging” behaviours that have become routinised in modern day dating, such as ghosting and a lack of transparency.

However he believes it’s a positive step that some singles event organisers are at least trying to make our experience of forming new relationships “less routine and anonymous” and attempting to create more “opportunities for a real connection” between people.

“I think the world needs that really badly, not just the realm of dating.”

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191203-should-i-delete-tinder-these-millennials-think-so

Book Review: Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice

Martha Nussbaum's 2013 book, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, presents a fascinating dive into what might be needed to generate decent, honest governance with less injustice and social discord. Nussbaum, a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, considers what the philosophers who have engaged with this topic over the millennia have argued. Then she turns to modern psychology (cognitive and social science) for insight into how to refine what the great minds before her had to say about how to do it. She refines what has gone before in view of modern science.

In essence, Nussbaum sees and does politics the about the same way I do: Look for biological cognitive and social behavioral traits of humans doing politics. Then, try to find plausible ways to advance civil society that accords with what humans beings actually are in terms of their biology and social behavior. The exercise isn't about a complete reinvention of the wheel. Instead, it is about improving existing wheels, i.e., government structures and theories of governance, by acknowledging the fundamental centrality of human biological and social existence. The book is long and dense (the paperback is 397 pages, small print, no pictures), but it shows how human thinking evolves over the millennia.

Good governance

Nussbaum defines the ideal government as characterized by focused on justice and equality for all and a political-social mindset that is compassionate, inclusionary and driven by love of others in widening circles of proximity from self, to family, to locality, to nation, to other nations, and finally to humankind as a whole. The main focus is on use of the nation as the point to generate positive emotions and she is thus a nationalist, but not in the sense of an aggressive ideology.

A core need is compassion and equality morals that operate in a constitutional framework that helps to bridge narrow self-interested emotions to broader inclusive principle-embracing emotions. She asserts that constant critical dialog between the emotions the political culture is necessary. Due to our cognitive and social nature, it is easy for humans to backslide from support of broad practices to narrow concerns. For example, support for an inclusive educational policy can decline when the parent’s children encounter difficulty associated with the policy. Humans are easily distracted from broad goals to their particular circumstances. Some of the great orators, such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and FDR understood this human trait. Their rhetoric tended to stay away from particulars and instead focused on broader principles to foment support for ideals that often required some degree of personal sacrifice or acceptance.

Nussbaum is deeply concerned with the emotions and stigma that critical political and social culture can whip up against minorities, out-groups and other nations. Nationalism has been employed to foment a range of bad things ranging from domestic racial discrimination and misogyny to vicious foreign wars and totalitarianism. Those destructive impulses must be kept in mind and fought against constantly. In her view, playing on nationalism is playing with fire, but is nonetheless necessary. Despite the danger, Nussbaum sees nationalism as a key source to inspire justice and equality.

She argues that the nation is the largest political unit that people can feel is both reasonably accountable to them and also reflective of their collective history, aspirations and moral values. Because of that, the nation has to be a core source of emotional appeal to hold a society together and to induce it to support efforts that ask for personal sacrifice, equality for all and tolerance of both dissent and social differences in individuals and groups.

That is not say that the family and social institutions outside of government are not also important. Nussbaum cites the nuclear family as a necessary source of teaching love, compassion and acceptance of others in children. Public schools are also a necessary reinforcing social institution that can build depth and breadth in personal influence that belief in compassion and equality can exert on people and groups.

Civil religion for solidarity, justice, compassion and equality

Nussbaum argues that good governments and societies need a “civil religion” to help cement public support for justice, compassion and equality. In her view, a “political liberalism” can serve as an ideological basis for building and maintaining overlapping consensus among different religious and secular beliefs about fairness, equal respect and the public good. As John Rawls (American moral-political philosopher) also argued, this civil religion needs to be a free standing social and political force that is drawn from society culture itself. It is not to be derived from any abstract set of values imposed from the outside or any ideology.

However unlike Rawls and other humanists (e.g., Mills and Comte), Nussbaum welcomes existing religions as part of the civil religion family. Because the desired consensus and solidarity that civil religion is supposed to generate is home-grown, it consensus needs “thin” and not try give answers to divisive questions such as life after death or the destiny of the soul. In other words, the civil religion needs to be an ethical doctrine, not a metaphysical or epistemological construct. People will probably always differ in how they view answers to divisive metaphysical questions.

The civil religion concept is an attempted framework for moving people from individual, family and group or religion self-interest to a broader nation and its people interest. The hope is that that national interest can then serve as a fulcrum to extend the positive emotions and beliefs to other nations and ultimately humankind as a whole.

Christianity, democracy, capitalism and libertarianism

Nussbaum argues that Christianity, democracy, capitalism and libertarianism tend to foster narrow self and group interests at the expense of the broader ethical concerns for justice, compassion, equality and so forth at the national level. She asserts that Christianity focuses on an afterlife and an external source of authority and it tends to turn thinking inward and away from others as needed for a broader scope of compassion and acceptance. The religious group tends to elicit a tribal mindset, which can limit a broader worldview. Democracy also suffers from a an innate human tendency to form groups or tribes. Out-groups tend to be ostracized and oppressed.

Opposing that requires constant vigilance and significant effort. When public and political attention turns away from a policy that supports equality and acceptance, the human tendency to narrow the focus often leads to a weakening of the policy. Sometimes the abandoned policy is eliminated ro completely reversed. Thus, walking away from inclusive and pro-justice policies is a mistake that is too common for comfort.

The ideology and morals of capitalism and libertarianism tend to elevate individual concerns at the expense of broader social concerns for equality and justice. For example, ideological demands for almost absolute personal freedom and near-sacred status for personal property, are inherently not compassionate or are ‘anti-sympathy’. Instead, those ideologies tend to argue that human self-interest, acquisitiveness and/or fear alone will serve the public interest very well. Since neither capitalism nor libertarianism are concerned with other emotions such as disgust and the intolerance it foments, such regimes are morally too weak to give rise to stable regimes. Humans are not the rational economic or moral beings that capitalist and libertarian ideologues envision. Cognitive and social science both make that a matter of biological and social fact, not opinion.

One assertion is that a key capitalist and libertarian flaw is their focus is on what humans can do in terms of economic context, while ignoring what they cannot do in a social context. Nussbaum comments regarding anti-discrimination laws: “Libertarian thinkers argue that these laws are unnecessary because, discrimination is economically inefficient. .... Libertarian politics is naïve, because people are just not like that.” That accords with my understanding of history, which is that humans are far from the economic rational person that theory used to rigidly believe. The rational man theory is crumbling under the weight of knowledge flowing from the new research disciplines called behavioral economics and behavioral finance.

Sources of bad behavior and evil

Bad behavior and evil are inherent in the human condition. Nussbaum writes:

“Our working account of  ‘radical evil’ is not complete. We now need to add two tendencies that also appear deeply rooted in human nature, and which pose a serious threat to democratic institutions: the tendency to yield to peer pressure, even at the cost of truth, and the tendency to obey authority, even at the cost of moral concern. Both of these tendencies are very likely rooted in our evolutionary heritage ....”

Immanuel Kant described radical evil as innate tendencies to antisocial behavior that are at the root of our humanity. Because of its inherence, people don't need to be taught to be evil. They can even be evil despite contrary social teaching and norms. Hannah Arendt saw radical evil as a situation where human beings as human beings are superfluous because they lack spontaneity or freedom. Nussbaum asserts it includes “deliberately cruel and ugly behavior toward others that is not simply a matter of inadvertence or neglect, or even fear-tinged suspicion, but which involves some active desire to denigrate or humiliate.”

Clearly, Nussbaum is not a naïve utopian. She is acutely aware of how easy it is for even well-meaning people and societies to slip into bad behavior. What is personally encouraging in this is the fact that other people are trying to combine modern science with politics to build a better, more humane and just world.