No, Rodney King, people in this country can’t just ‘all get along’

By David McElroy · July 18, 2013

Every time there’s a national controversy in which race plays a part, there are calls for people to come together, be reasonable and agree on “common sense solutions.”

“Can’t we all get along?” was the line from the late Rodney King that I always associate with this sentiment. The people who say different forms of this line mean well. They think that if we’ll all just “play nice” and love each other, the world will be a better place. But the bad news is that, no, we can’t get along. The delusion that we can get along — by agreeing to “one best way” for everyone — leads us to lie to ourselves and sets us up to be disappointed again and again.

So am I saying there’s no hope for race relations? Actually, I’m saying something far broader. This point isn’t really about race. It’s about intelligent and well-meaning people who disagree about fundamental principles — in ways that are never going to change.

No matter how intelligent and well-meaning people are, they’re always going to come to radically different conclusions about what’s true, what’s right and how society’s rules should be structured. Even before you factor in all the people who aren’t bright and don’t have goodwill, there’s no way we can all agree.

This is why the “one size fits all” nature of majoritarian political systems is always going to leave many millions of people angry and feeling oppressed. Even if you don’t understand the moral case for self-sovereignty, consider this the pragmatic case. As long as the majority have the power to give you orders and take your money, you are going to end up in a minority which doesn’t get its way at some point.

On every controversial issue, there are many good, well-meaning and intelligent people on each side, even though the common reaction is to write off people on the other side as stupid, ignorant or evil. Progressives do it to conservatives. Conservatives do it to progressives. Pretty much everybody does it to libertarians. (And libertarians have an unfortunate tendency to look down on the intelligence of those who “don’t get it.”)

Look at the vitriol between those on different sides of the George Zimmerman trial. (Take a look at the comments on my article Monday about the outcome as an example.) The people on different sides are sure that they’re right. They’re sure that the people on the other side are wrong. Even when I laid out the case that both men made mistakes and should share blame, the partisans don’t want to hear that. They only want to hear that what they already believe is true, so they find reasons to keep believing that. There tends to be venom for those on the other side.

Traditional thinking about this says that we just need a “marketplace of ideas” and the best idea wins, but I think that’s pure fiction. Everything about socialism was a lousy idea, yet this country has slowly adopted piece after piece of its principles over the last hundred years. It’s a pipe dream to think that the best ideas win — or that we’re so smart and persuasive that we can convince others of our “truth.”

For the most part, “objective truth” ends up meaning “the things that my friends and I agree are true.” I believe objective truth exists — and there are some things that I certainly accept as true — but I believe what I believe for my own reasons. You believe what you believe about truth for your own reasons, too. Only one version of truth can be right, of course, but if we could somehow know all objective truth, I’m sure that we would see that different ones of us have understoond different bits and pieces of it correctly.

So what does the search for truth have to do with politics or how society is structured? Everyone seems to want one perfect answer to everything — and pretty much everyone is convinced that the world would be just fine if everyone else would adopt his or her beliefs. (Those who don’t think they have all the answers exist, of course, but they’re in a tiny minority.)

So we argue and evangelize, sometimes finding other people who agree with us. We form political parties or groups of one kind or another. And we’re smug in our belief that we’re the ones who have the truth — and we battle against other people who are equally clear that they’re right and we’re wrong.

So when it comes to how we structure the rules of society, we have two choices. We can either admit that we all want our own very different outcomes and find ways to structure society so we can all have a shot at what we want or we can accept that some dominant power group is always going to get its way and the rest will simply have to live with the rules they dictate. Those are the only honest choices.

So you can keep trying to angrily talk everyone into agreeing with your “obvious” truth — and continue being angry and disappointed when the majority choose things you believe are wrong — or you can consider that maybe you should be working for a decentralized system of competitive governance that allows different ones of us to live in places with very different rules.

One way to think of this change is to think of startup cities. If new companies can come and go — and die when they’re unsuccessful — why can’t new cities emerge that are established on different sets of rules? Why can’t those who favor conservative ideas about the world start their own cities and attract those who want to live by those rules. Guns can be freely available and everybody would know to be nice, because the neighbor might be packing. Why can’t those who favor progressive left ideas start their own cities and attract those who want to live that way? Guns could be banned from the beginning and nobody would move there who wasn’t OK with that.

There are dozens (or hundreds) of different ways to structure the rules of cities. Some people might want to voluntarily live under religious rules. Some might want very libertarian rules. Some might want all sorts of variations. Why not let these variations compete for residents — customers, really — and see which ones work in actual use?

The things that are obvious to me are nonsense to you — and vice versa. Why should I be required to live under the rules that you and your friends think are obviously best? Why should you be required to live under my rules? Why can’t we go our own separate ways? Why can’t we ditch the old concept of the indivisible nation-state and make the individual sovereign instead — and allow those sovereign individuals the right to voluntarily enter into agreements with others about how to live?

We’re not ever going to all agree on the right set of rules. We’re not all going to get along. We’re going to keep disagreeing and acting as though those who disagree with us are idiots and evil people. Why can’t we work toward a system that accepts that as a starting point and structures itself so that we can all have a shot at getting what we want — so we’ll have a better chance of living in peace?

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Why are children unhappier today than in the past? And why are today’s teens at least five times as likely to be clinically depressed as teens of 50 years ago? In this sobering article for Psychology Today, a research psychologist argues that children are being deprived of the opportunity to play on their own and take responsibility for themselves. Peter Gray is a professor at Boston College who specializes in the role of play in child development. He blames “coercive schooling” and the rise of additional adult-directed activities for taking away children’s sense of autonomy and self-ownership. Gray says this leads to anxiety and depression. I went through a very traditional system of schooling, but today’s children have even less control of their time than I did. Parents who think they are helping their children by controlling their time and giving them so many well-meaning activities are hurting them instead.

If you get here from Flipboard, you might have noticed that many of the keywords with which Flipboard tags my stories are horribly inaccurate. I’ve reported this to Flipboard, but the system is automated — and there’s nothing I can do about it. If I happen to mention something in an article, the automated algorithm at Flipboard often randomly picks that extraneous item as a tag. The article above, for instance, is about making personal changes inside yourself. I compared it to the process of renovating a crumbling old house which has been abandoned, so the Flipboard software thinks the article is about home flooring. Another recent article mentioned Tom Hanks — though it was about something entirely different — so the software tagged it as being about Hanks. So if you end up here expecting to read about flooring or about Tom Hanks, I apologize. I’m aware of the issue, but it’s a Flipboard problem beyond my control. I’ll keep looking for a way to change it if I can.

Do antidepressants work? It depends on who you ask and what standards you use. But a new Danish study concludes we just don’t know. There’s no question antidepressants make chemical changes in the brain, but the truth is that doctors don’t know enough about those brain processes to do anything more than try certain drugs and see what they do. The Danish study says that if antidepressants do help, the effects are tiny. I know plenty of people who swear they couldn’t live without their antidepressants, but the more I study about the root causes of depression, the more I suspect the placebo effect is what’s going on. Although some studies suggest these drugs have slight positive effects for some people, others argue that the positive effects are tiny — and that they cause more deaths than can be explained. There’s nothing wrong with using any drug that helps with something wrong with us — especially short term — but I’m coming to suspect that whatever good SSRIs and similar drugs do comes from masking our underlying issues, not fixing them. Denial is popular with humans, so it will be no surprise if this eventually turns out to be true.

Your brain has almost certainly tricked you into making bad romantic choices. A California psychology professor writes in Psychology Today that there are four things our brains do that cause trouble: 1) We think we know what we want — but we don’t. I’ve seen this in myself and if you haven’t seen it yet, you will. The things I wanted in a mate when I was young are completely different from what the mature version of myself wants. 2) We like more choices — as many as possible. We tend to believe that more choices lead to a better selection in all sorts of areas, but the truth is that too many choices tend to lead to the paralysis of failure to choose. 3) We try to be rational by “keeping our options open.” We’re scared to make the choices we need to make, because we’re scared of doing the wrong thing. This keeps us trapped in bad situations — and better choices eventually disappear. 4) We stay with the wrong people, because we don’t want our effort to go to waste. I’ve done this. Maybe you have, too. On several occasions, I’ve stayed in a relationship that I knew was dead and needed to end. At this point in my life, I know to trust my gut. It’s a lot smarter about most things than my conscious brain.

I just noticed that I’m approaching 3,000 subscribers for this site again. Although I’ve had plenty of individual days with far higher readership, the core of any site is those readers who are interested enough to subscribe and keep coming back. In the days when I wrote about politics, I hit 3,000 subscribers at my peak, but once I shifted focus, those subscribers started dropping like flies. These days, the readership numbers are still lower than they were when I wrote about politics, but I think it’s a better quality reader — people who are interested in something more important to long-term happiness than politics will ever be. I don’t know if I’ll hit 30,000 readers in one day anytime soon — as I did one day years ago when Rush Limbaugh and several conservative commentators linked to me — but I appreciate those of you who keep coming back again and again. I can’t thank you individually — and I don’t even know who you are — but I want you to know that I really appreciate you.

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