The Death of Ethical Integrity?

I hope not

Today, one of my favourite writers,

Katherine Brodsky

, wrote a note,

I just don't get it. For years I've been told that how mad people are that the media has been lying to them. How much they care about critical thinking and being fact-based. How much they resented partisanship. And yet those same people have now blindly tuned in to utter charlatans, liars, and grifters as their source of "truth."

Absurd claims get accepted as true with zero verification, and all the the things that they (often rightfully) were upset that the media and institutions were doing...now they turn a blind eye to when it's THEIR media and their politicians.

Seems to me like there's a more than zero possibility that they were never interested in truth in the first place. They just wanted their own spin.

I share Katharine’s frustration. Deeply, intensely, viscerally. I am now a week into my month’s break from “doomscrolling”, by which I mean from keeping up with the public discourse around the rapidly shifting news cycle. This is, largely, what I consider myself to do. Look at the ways in which different groups of people are thinking and talking about the rapidly moving news cycle in the arena of culture and politics and think about how those of us who care about consistently liberal principles and what is true can navigate the new minefields that seem to spring up every other day. There is already evidence that this is doing my health the world of good. There is something so horribly toxic about online discussion right now and entering into them is likely to leave one with a feeling of despair and futility.

What is so dispiriting and makes me fantasise about living on a desert island accompanied only by dogs is, as Katharine says, the utter disregard for truth and ethical consistency coming from people we have good reason to think can do better and should do better.

Some people are just not very bright or have brains that are very good at some things but making or even recognising evidence-based, reasoned arguments is not one of them. They did not choose to lack this faculty and when entering into a discussion with such an individual and their lack of it becomes apparent, it is best to just exit the conversation politely. The best we can hope for, from them, is that they will come to recognise that this is not something they can do and stop attempting to do it. I am not being snobbish. I am well-aware that my own brain hits a wall when trying to engage with even very basic spatial reasoning (this may be connected to my aphantasia) and consequently I recommend any tourists asking for directions in the city where I have lived for 50 years to ask somebody else.

Other people absolutely have the capacity to engage in reasoned, evidence-based and ethically consistent argument but openly decline to do so on philosophical principle. They are epistemological and moral relativists who believe that ‘correspondence with reality’ is just one model of truth and ethical principles do not need to be held consistently. If ‘pure’ postmodernists, they believe all sincerely held values and principles are entitled to be considered of equal value but, often, that we need to push aside rational, empirical and liberal ones to give ‘other ways of knowing’ and other moral frameworks a fair hearing in the spirit of ‘decolonisation’. Alternatively, they might be philosophical pragmatists with a specific end goal in mind and believe that truth claims should be adjusted to whatever is useful to that goal and ethical principles relatively applied in favour of their own goals or special interest group. They are often social or religious conservatives but not invariably and this strain of thought has also been found among radical feminists. ‘New Age’ hippyish thinkers may also fit this description as they assert their scepticism of science and reason and ethical consistency via their iphones and insist that everybody has their own truth while sunning their perineums with allegedly healing crystals stuffed in various orifices. These all fall under the ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ umbrella and the best response to them I have ever seen was provided by Steven Pinker. When invited to debate the value of reason with someone who was sceptical of it. he said something like, “Then why are we here? Why don’t we settle this issue with an arm-wrestle or beauty competition?”

Conversations with those who cannot or will not make arguments based on evidence, reason and consistent liberal principles are frustrating, certainly, but they do not induce the intense disappointment that comes from engaging with people who can and have done so, but are now choosing not to.

This is always something that consistent liberals who care about what is true have to be aware of. The principles of liberalism, critical thinking, evidence-based epistemology and the value of viewpoint diversity can be and are used by people who value none of those things, but who are in a position where the dominant moral orthodoxy is not their own. The problem was summed up neatly by Frank Herbert,

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

We always have to expect that some proportion of people espousing liberal principles and a concern for truth are not, in fact, concerned with either, but simply want a different kind of authoritarianism based on a different flavour of bullshit. Nevertheless, it is deeply disappointing to see people who have given every indication of being principled and consistent and who have made such good and strong arguments against the authoritarian tactics of the culturally dominant Critical Social Justice (woke) movement appear to entirely lose all respect for what is true, what is reasonable and what is consistently principled.

There are those who once convincingly pointed out the cult-like conformity of adherents to the movement and requirements to make formulaic affirmations of its tenets and the reasons we should be alarmed by this, but who are now behaving in precisely the same way in obeisance to the MAGA movement.

Many people incisively addressed the motte and bailey moves of the woke when they demanded people affirm beliefs like “All white people are racist” and ‘Trans women can straightforwardly be accepted as women in every situation” and, when challenged, moved to a claim that ‘woke’ was just about being aware of and concerned about racism and other bigotries. Some of them now endorse the seizure and removal of individuals on US soil to mega-prisons abroad that more closely resemble concentration camps without any due process to determine that they are not law-abiding American citizens with every right to be there, but when challenged on the ethics of this, claim that this is simply the ‘deportation’ of illegal and criminal immigrants back to their homeland.

Many of those who tackled disingenuous claims like “We just want social justice? Why do you hate social justice?” well by pointing out that nearly everybody wants social justice but we don’t all think the Critical Social Justice movement offers that have then been seen saying “Trump just wants to end the war in Ukraine. Why do you want war to continue?” while being completely deaf to those pointing out that everybody wants the war to end, but seemingly we differ on whether we want that to happen with the victory of the invading country or the invaded one. This would seem to be quite a significant point in the matter.

The mental gymnastics used in apologism for the chaotic trade war launched by the Trump administration (now fortunately somewhat walked back) followed this formula typically used to describe the woke left so closely that it would be amusing if it were not so alarming.

1. Markets and businesses are going to thrive on all this. Claims to the contrary are just the commie left hating on capitalism and fair competition as usual.

2. Well, some fluctuations are inevitable in a period of transition. It’s nothing.

3. Yes, of course the stock market has plummeted and small businesses are running into supply issues, but this is Trump’s brilliant 4D chess strategy. It’s going to be great. You’ll see.

4. Look, we put far too much emphasis on having money and being able to buy things. You should be ashamed of your materialist greed and embrace the opportunity for reconnecting with what is truly meaningful. (Eat the rich? Capitalism bad now? You will own nothing and be happy?)

Some of those who once argued well that the cancellation of individuals for open criticism or off-colour jokes about the Critical Social Justice movement was not a matter of ‘criticism’ and ‘accountability’ but the authoritarian suppression of freedom of belief and speech now seem to be very much in favour of getting people fired and subjected to social media pile-ons for expressing similar disapprobation of the Trump administration.

A not insignificant number of those who made good arguments in defence of science in the context of false claims about the nature of biological sex and about the need for rigorous empirical research when it comes to issues like the prevalence of institutional racism now appear to be fully on-board with uncritically accepting that vaccines cause autism and other anti-scientific woo and assertions that practically every institutional failing that can be imagined is due to the prevalence of “DEI hires.”

Many who once argued passionately and well for the importance of viewpoint diversity in universities for reasons of academic freedom and the production of knowledge via robust debate now appear to be fully in favour of the authoritarian stamping out of any ideas that could be considered woke via an alarmingly vague and broad definition of ‘wokeness’ rather than taking the opportunity to defeat it via that process of academic freedom and robust debate.

Frankly, a significant proportion of the anti-woke who gave every indication of having liberal principles and a genuine concern for what is true have either lost all integrity or never had any in the first place.

Excuses cannot be made for you that you simply lack the ability to make evidence-based, well-reasoned and consistently principled arguments through no fault of your own, because we know you can. We saw you do it very well when it came to the people with whom you disagreed. Nor is this merely a matter of differing political views and modes of analysis that exist among the anti-woke and are respect-worthy and can be discussed and debated productively. All of those differences, including profound ones about policies on addressing illegal immigration, the responsibility or not of the US to involve itself in foreign wars, the benefits of free trade vs protectionist tariffs and how precisely to tackle the cultural hegemony of Critical Social Justice in universities and schools can be argued for in consistent and principled ways without resorting to the very fallacies, dishonesties, utter disregard for what is true and hyper-partisan propagandistic bullshit that you have identified and addressed so well when it was presented by the woke.

I name no names because I still, perhaps naively, hold out hopes that some of you whom I have held in esteem will return to your senses and to consistently upholding the evidence-based epistemology, critical thinking, consistently liberal principles and ability to engage in civil and reasoned debate that you have espoused so well. Please.