To paraphrase Mark Twain,
everybody talks about social change, but no one does anything about it. Both liberals and conservatives routinely
tell us that they want change. They insist
that once they are in power, everything will be better. Then, once they get there, it is business as
usual.
Consider Donald Trump. He says he will make America great again.
In other words, he will make us more of what we once were. Immigrants will be excluded from our shores,
while manufacturing jobs will return. Nonetheless,
this common sense version of America is merely a variation of a long-standing aspiration.
Consider Hillary
Clinton. She is going to make health
care and education more affordable. She
will also increase the wages of the poor.
Her objective is to do so by making a bloated federal government even
larger. This will supposedly fill gaps
in our national safety net. In other
words, she is a tinkerer, not a revolutionary.
Consider Barack Obama. He was going to give us hope and change. He would march into Washington and
reconstruct it in his own enlightened image.
But what happened? Even when he
had total control over congress, the best he could muster were a collection of
shovel ready jobs and a Gerry-built medical system.
Is this an accident? Is there a reason why major changes seldom transpire? In fact, people, for the most part, energetically
resist significant transformations.
Although they say they want things to be different, when this ensues
they are aghast. Just as soon as they
can, they push back against the unfamiliar.
How many times have we been
told that we should think outside the box?
But when you do, don’t expect kudos.
If what you suggest is really different, you will be told that you are wrong. You say the world is round; well, it is
flat!
For all the talk that we are
rational creatures, we are actually quite emotional. Important decisions are hardly ever made on
the basis of facts and logic. Critical
choices derive far more frequently from deep-seated feelings. Although we may not be aware of our
sub-conscious affects, they habitually override analytical calculations.
Nor is this always bad. If we were too easily swayed by novel
arguments, we would routinely get into serious trouble. We would jump to conclusions that seem to
make sense without realizing that they leave out important facts. With only what is on the surface is considered,
subtle factors get ignored.
Think about ObamaCare. Recall how all those brilliant economists and
healthcare experts figured out, to the penny, who would benefit. Then why did the exchanges that they put in
place fail? Or the deductibles on
insurance policies soar? Or millions of
people lose their full time jobs?
Could the whizzes have been
mistaken? Indeed, how often are the
experts wrong? Did Medicare meet its
cost projections? Did the Soviet Union’s
five-year plans vault its economy ahead of the rest of the world? Did Mao Tse-Tung’s great leap forward bring
progress?
Our emotions put a check on
this sort of arrogance. They are inherently
conservative. The way they may us feel
is based on lessons learned by our communities, our remote ancestors, and
us. Their conclusions are then built into
our guts and genes. They thus incorporate
information, only some of which is conscious.
Hence, were these lessons effortlessly
disregarded, they could not warn of danger. Consider what would happen if we
forgot that fire burns. Imagine if,
despite experiencing terrible pain when, as children, we put our hands in a
flame, we years later did not remember how much this hurt. How long do you think it would be before we
burned ourselves to death?
Traditions and emotions
matter because they provide essential knowledge—and do so tenaciously. Yes, this can slow us down. As a result, they may sometimes prevent us
from making changes that we should make.
Nonetheless, they can also block us from walking off cliffs or too hastily
embracing socialism.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
No comments:
Post a Comment