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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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

By David McElroy · July 18, 2013

Rodney King

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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Briefly

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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