Thinking in packages
Garvey, John
THINKING IN PACKAGES COULD OUR OPPONENTS BE LIKE OURSELVES? THERE IS A grave problem which faces those of us who care about ideas. (Notice how I have gathered us all together in a noble little...
...A woman who knew that I opposed the war in Vietnam was shocked to learn that I opposed abortion, because in her package-deal way of thinking a person who opposed war must be in favor of abortion...
...It makes me think that everyone - every anarchist, libertarian, conservative, radical, and socialist - ought to take a vow of emotional poverty where ideas are concerned...
...The problem is that people on my side of this life and death question do the same sort of thing...
...I not only disagree with that view...
...It has to do not so much with ideas as with the way we relate-to them...
...Erasmus once wrote about one aspect of this universal problem: "There is great obscurity in many matters, and man suffers from this almost congenital disease, that he will not give in once a controversy is started, and after he is warmed up he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...
...The assumption was that those crazy hawks enjoyed destruction, that they had a romance going with Armageddon...
...They are signals to people we often don't know very well, which we send through the space between us to let them know what to expect of us, and we are delighted when their response is approving: it means they are our sort...
...They couldn't have an honestly different view of the world, a different reading of the same facts...
...We do this whether we are on the left or right...
...Our ideas are like clan totems or old school ties...
...We should not allow ourselves the luxury of thinking that our ideas have anything at all to do with our decency...
...He thought that their decisions were profoundly wrong, and he let them know that...
...We have an investment in our ideas which has nothing to do with the particular worth of our ideas...
...I have noticed that people who disagree with me assume all sorts of things I not only have not said, but which I definitely do not believe...
...One problem I have always had with Dr...
...I am putting this as mildly as I can...
...The left is assumed by its enemies to be predictable, and so is the right...
...We assume that no other vision of the world could possibly have anything to recommend it, which keeps us from having to examine our own assumptions very closely...
...His life was a lived disagreement - but he always assumed that he was talking to a human being, one loved by God...
...Strangelove, much as I enjoyed it, was the sickly consolation it gave to liberals with all of its easy targets...
...They - our ideological opponents - couldn't honestly believe that unless we met and overtook the Soviets weapons for weapon, we would be faced with a situation in which we might really be forced to accept the domination of a group of people who believe that the Gulag is the proper answer to dissent...
...They are wrong, I think...
...JOHN GARVEY...
...If we see it as a personal possession we are on the wrong track...
...As a possession it is something we have to get rid of...
...But it is too easy, too self-satisfying, to assume that our own motives in this argument are pure while our opponents are indecent...
...They must have had a dreadful relationship with their fathers, or they must have been sexually confused...
...Our ideas become tokens which we shove across the table at one another during conversations to show who we are...
...a Christian perception is meant to go out from itself...
...What I have noticed at long last, after years of doing all the wrong things, is embarrassing...
...Left and right are both pretty predictable, nearly tribal, and ideas and opinions are frequently waved around as signs of respectability within the tribe, as if language had nothing to do with exploring, or with moving towards a truth in a tentative way, or with being doubtful, or with taking a chance at the edge - which means being willing not only to be wrong, because the only thing at stake here is not whether an opinion falls into the true or false column, but also takes into account the possibility that your opponent is a human being as richly complicated and oddly formed as you are...
...we wouldn't be cowed so easily, and it seems naive to suppose that they are that much unlike us...
...They assume that I believe the Soviet Union to be basically trustworthy and decent, not at all bad politically...
...Notice how I have gathered us all together in a noble little bunch...
...they assume that I do not object to totalitarianism, and in fact have some sneaky attachment to it, and that I think of America as the world's greatest evil...
...We should realize that Matthew 25 applies to our judgments: the Jeast of the brethren includes our opponents...
...Genocide and child molestation are closed issues, I think...
...If we have the right opinion about something, it means that we ourselves must be basically good folks...
...and the other side of this is that those who do not share our feelings on any particular subject are indecent, even perverse...
...I also believe that to accept it as a tactical necessity means assuming something which is morally indefensible: the military use of civilian populations, and the willingness to hold them hostage to possible annihilation...
...That does not make your opponent right...
...I think that if it does not kill me off, it will kill my children or grandchildren...
...It is something I have been paying attention to in a half-conscious way ever since I first started arguing with people, but it has only recently surfaced in all its silly array, probably because Ronald Reagan was elected president...
...It is wrong not to be passionate about the things we care for deeply...
...Because I agree with them, I tend to forgive them more easily for the moves which, coming from the other side, properly infuriate me...
...Or it may keep them from being killed - at the expense of other people's children and grandchildren...
...But to think of those whose disagreements with us are deep as indecent or base is to put ourselves under the same judgment...
...We assume an ulterior motive, which handily keeps us from having to consider seriously the possibility that our opponents could be right...
...Both sides are right too often...
...They must have a darker reason, something to do with their being anal sorts...
...JOHN GARVEYts...
...I believe, for example, that the arms race is suicidal and that it is almost certainly bound to end in such destruction as the world has never seen...
...Even where we believe that there is no room for debate, we must have compassion - which means suffering with, which means understanding how a person could arrive at the place where he is - and we must realize that we share the disease of the heart which allows people to wound one another in the name of truth...
...We tend to think that our ideas make us decent...
...And we assume that our' having the right idea, which is usually projected at people who already agree with us anyway, ought to gain us support, applause, and moral approval...
...The point is not to become less committed, or to assume that all ideas are of equal merit, but to be as clear as we can about our own motives, and to approach those who disagree with us the way Woolman did...
...If Matthew 25 is right and what is done to the least human being is done to Christ, then capital punishment, abortion, the notion of a war in which whole populations may be destroyed, and the idea that hunger is in some circumstances acceptable, are all under a terrible judgment...
...I disagree with a view of the world which can envision a situation in which our superior strength will force our enemies to back down...
...If they bat our tokens back at us with a cool stare or, more politely, through careful disagreement, our first impulse is often to assume that their motive for doing so must be base...
...One must firmly believe that there are ideas beyond decent debate...
...but to think that they are simply base (or even complicatedly base) involves us in doing several false things...
...Even if those who defend the arms race as a necessary evil were right in their predictions, I would have to oppose them...
...I feel as strongly about nuclear war as I do about abortion, and find it difficult to have much sympathy with defenders of capital punishment...
...And by offering package deals we make it all easier for ourselves...
...The Quaker saint John Woolman opposed slaveholders and the men who were about to make the Revolutionary War...
...An idea must bear fruit...
Vol. 108 • November 1981 • No. 20
