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Finally got the chance to read @RobertTalisse's "Overdoing Democracy."
It's a good book! Quick summary, and a couple thoughts:
The cool political-philosophy move is the point that insofar as we need some version of *deliberative* democracy for political legitimacy... (1/9)
It's a good book! Quick summary, and a couple thoughts:
The cool political-philosophy move is the point that insofar as we need some version of *deliberative* democracy for political legitimacy... (1/9)
...(as opposed to say, merely voting w/o discussion and constant engagement) there's an internal tendency for democratic politics to expand it's reach. This leads to *political saturation*, wherein every activity gets inflected with politics.
Now layer on the fact that...
Now layer on the fact that...
...technological improvements have steadily increased our lifestyle choices, people have increasingly *socially sorted* into politically homogenous communities. Since group deliberation amongst likeminded people tends to lead them to more extreme views, wham!—polarization. But...
...as people get more polarized, the deliberative exchange of reasons that gives democracy its legitimacy gets increasingly undermined. Upshot: Democracy has in-built tendencies toward its own overdoing, and hence undoing. Solution: find and make spaces for *non*political...
...civic engagement, to recover our "civic friendship" and ability to engage deliberatively.
There's a lot to like here. Three questions:
Q1: Is the technological-driver story right? According to @RobertDPutnam and @shaylynromney in The Upswing, polarization fell and then...
There's a lot to like here. Three questions:
Q1: Is the technological-driver story right? According to @RobertDPutnam and @shaylynromney in The Upswing, polarization fell and then...
...rose dramatically across the 20th century, in lock-step with economic inequality and (indeed!) civic disengagement, whereas I'd assume (is this true?) the expanding-choices given by technology were more or less constantly rising.
Q2: I've been convinced by Bowling Alone...
Q2: I've been convinced by Bowling Alone...
...(etc.) that nonpolitical civic engagement really is an important factor here—but is there really any hope of a large-scale increase in here without some large external factor (like the Great Depression or WWII) driving it?
Q3: The acct of group polarization is largely...
Q3: The acct of group polarization is largely...
...a standard irrationalist one, with the main evidence for irrational effects of agreement being the fact that people become more extreme when they learn of the opinions of others *even when no arguments are presented*. But that's not evidence of irrationality—learning that...
...people you trust believe X is *evidence* for X ( https://www.kevindorst.com/stranger_apologies/pandemic-polarization-is-reasonable). So why not substitute a more rationalist narrative for the causes of polarization? That would only help, I think, in making the case for civic friendship and democratic sympathy.
