Nobel Prize-winning
economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was wondering aloud in his
blog the other
day: What is it about the editorial writers of the Wall Street
Journal that made them look more like characters from Tom
Tomorrow's This Modern World than, well, journalists?
"All of this is par for the course," he mused.
"All of this is par for the course," he mused.
“The WSJ editorial page has been like this for 35 years. Nonetheless, it
got me wondering: what do these people really believe? I mean, they're not
stupid—life would be a lot easier if they
were. So they know they're not telling the truth. But they obviously believe
that their dishonesty serves a higher truth—one
that is, in effect, told only to Inner Party members, while the Outer Party
makes do with prolefeed. The question is, what is that higher truth? What do
these people really believe in?”
The people commenting on his blog piece come up with the usual
suspects: money , power, greed, ambition—slavery,
even. But that's an oversimple response that really misses the point: As a
journalist—as a guy who has to punch the
keys of his word-processor, and who knows how difficult it is to actually write
anything worth reading—Krugman really wants
to know, how can you grind out untruths day after day after day without your
head exploding?
He's asking the wrong question—although it's a good one, and one I used to ponder myself when I'd try to read a Globe and Mail editorial. I don't ask that question any more because I'm pretty sure now that editorial writers live in what pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty called a "post-philosophical culture", where the truth about what you do means less than what you think you're doing. They're long past something you might think of as "knowing that you're lying, but carrying on for some higher purpose".
The question we should be asking sounds rhetorical but cuts closer to what matters: "Who do these people think they are? What do they think they're doing?" They obviously feel beyond of honesty and dishonesty, truth and lies, or "higher truths". They've made what Rorty referred to as "the slow and painful choice between alternative self-images". To understand them (without merely dismissing them as insane) we need to know how they see themselves.
First off, they see themselves as carrying on their end of an argument in defense of Western Civilization. Every day, every editorial, they're in a fight. Argument is not intellectual process, but warfare; their very existence is at stake and so they will use any argument they can not to lose; even arguments they don't believe themselves, so long as they are arguments their opponents can't adequately respond to. They're not in the game to advance any new ideas, push the conversation to a higher plane or any of that crap; they're trying simply to advance a knock-down antithesis. Concluding the discussion is when the other guy shuts up or walks away. That's a WSJ editorial.
A piece of writing like that is less about the truth or falsehood of some a philosophical position than it is the presentation of a psychological profile—you've met a guy like this in every workplace; at every drunken party and in every philosophy seminar: Smart but isolated, resentful, pugnacious, blinkered, lacking sympathetic imagination, susceptible to the Nuremberg Defense. In short, damaged goods.
Even so, not to feel at least rationally dishonest when you pile what Krugman would argue as falsehood on top of falsehood takes an especial discipline: The ability to ignore about 99% of reality and be unmoved by it. So a philosophical notion of truth doesn't really enter into it—it isn't lying if you have your eyes screwed firmly tight. This is a religious skill, so we'll add one more idea to the self-image: they see themselves in a holy war as well.
So to sum up: WSJ editorial writers are a particular character type we've all met—the incommensurable made flesh. They see themselves in a no-holds-barred defense of business culture; and they will use any argument they can to bring the conversation to a close. Rather than being blatantly false, their arguments mostly simply ignore any reality that stands in their way. God is also on their side.
But their self-image? Simple: They are centurions, and they're trying to save Rome from the barbarians. Remember that the next time you read them; it'll make sense of what until now may have seemed merely nonsensical.
He's asking the wrong question—although it's a good one, and one I used to ponder myself when I'd try to read a Globe and Mail editorial. I don't ask that question any more because I'm pretty sure now that editorial writers live in what pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty called a "post-philosophical culture", where the truth about what you do means less than what you think you're doing. They're long past something you might think of as "knowing that you're lying, but carrying on for some higher purpose".
The question we should be asking sounds rhetorical but cuts closer to what matters: "Who do these people think they are? What do they think they're doing?" They obviously feel beyond of honesty and dishonesty, truth and lies, or "higher truths". They've made what Rorty referred to as "the slow and painful choice between alternative self-images". To understand them (without merely dismissing them as insane) we need to know how they see themselves.
First off, they see themselves as carrying on their end of an argument in defense of Western Civilization. Every day, every editorial, they're in a fight. Argument is not intellectual process, but warfare; their very existence is at stake and so they will use any argument they can not to lose; even arguments they don't believe themselves, so long as they are arguments their opponents can't adequately respond to. They're not in the game to advance any new ideas, push the conversation to a higher plane or any of that crap; they're trying simply to advance a knock-down antithesis. Concluding the discussion is when the other guy shuts up or walks away. That's a WSJ editorial.
A piece of writing like that is less about the truth or falsehood of some a philosophical position than it is the presentation of a psychological profile—you've met a guy like this in every workplace; at every drunken party and in every philosophy seminar: Smart but isolated, resentful, pugnacious, blinkered, lacking sympathetic imagination, susceptible to the Nuremberg Defense. In short, damaged goods.
Even so, not to feel at least rationally dishonest when you pile what Krugman would argue as falsehood on top of falsehood takes an especial discipline: The ability to ignore about 99% of reality and be unmoved by it. So a philosophical notion of truth doesn't really enter into it—it isn't lying if you have your eyes screwed firmly tight. This is a religious skill, so we'll add one more idea to the self-image: they see themselves in a holy war as well.
So to sum up: WSJ editorial writers are a particular character type we've all met—the incommensurable made flesh. They see themselves in a no-holds-barred defense of business culture; and they will use any argument they can to bring the conversation to a close. Rather than being blatantly false, their arguments mostly simply ignore any reality that stands in their way. God is also on their side.
But their self-image? Simple: They are centurions, and they're trying to save Rome from the barbarians. Remember that the next time you read them; it'll make sense of what until now may have seemed merely nonsensical.
Learning Curve, July 8, 2009
