How Reclining Your Seat on an Airplane Explains Conservative Cruelty

The clearest evidence that humanity is not inclined toward altruistic behavior can be found in the frequency with which people recline their seat when flying. By putting your seat back you increase your marginal comfort on board an airplane. Since airplanes are deeply uncomfortable places to be, this seems like a reasonable decision to make; however, the choice to make your own situation more comfortable comes at the cost of the person seated behind you. When you recline your seat you reduce the already highly limited leg space available to the person in that seat. Thus, the choice of whether or not to put your seat back is a deeply ethical issue. The ethical question at the heart of the decision is should you maximize your own personal comfort even if it comes at the expense of someone else?

I do not have any quantifiable evidence of what percentage of people put their seat back, but based on the anecdotal evidence of having taken approximately 50-60 flights over the past decade, the number of people who recline their seat seems to be considerably higher than the number that do not. Probably very few of the people reclining their seat have thought about the decision in ethical terms. Indeed, likely few of them spent much time if any thinking about the decision at all or took into consideration the way in which their choice would affect the comfort of the person behind them.

The evidence of reclining one’s seat on airplanes is that people are not motivated by altruism, but deep self-interest. The claim that people seek to maximize their own interests is one of the foundational arguments of economics and is central to capitalism as an ideology. Unlike orthodox economists, I do not think humanity is inherently motivated solely by self-interest. Indeed, people frequently act altruistically, especially toward people with whom they have a relationship. I would suggest that such behavior as putting your seat back on an airplane at the expense of the person behind you is the consequence of capitalist socialization. We have embedded the idea of self-interest and personal comfort and view the flight as a consumer. Having paid a great deal of money to be in that seat, surely one is entitled to be as comfortable as possible even if that means reducing the comfort of someone else.

The essential conceit of economics is that the discipline is removed from ethics; that it provides models of how the economy ought to behave and describes how it actually does. As such, economists claim an amoral discipline. It is not concerned with the consequences of capitalism, only explaining how it might work better (where working better is defined by how capital can more efficiently dispossess and exploit its workers and consumers). There are a lot of implications as a result of this complete failure by economists to address ethics, but one of the more tangible, everyday consequences has been a society increasingly built on selfishness. To support conservatism one has to be either a sociopath or completely inured to the effects of one’s actions. Most people are not actually sociopaths, but have been conditioned not to feel empathy toward strangers. Such dissociation is necessary to function in a world where hundreds of millions are at risk from warfare and billions from poverty and disease. Indeed, we live in a world where it is virtually impossible to purchase basic goods without participating in the severe exploitation and even enslavement of workers.

Neoliberalism has exacerbated the consequences of this human tendency toward localization and self-interest because it is premised on globalization while it has also exacerbated the destruction of the pillars of community that had previously moderated some of the worst excesses of self-interest. The long history of warfare, factionalism and racism make stark the limitations of pre-neoliberal community, but neoliberalism has gotten rid of the local and left us with a cold, harsh global. Thus, the basic structures that made life liveable and meaningful have been destroyed in the pursuit of economic growth. The technocrats who have benefited, locked into their amoral worldview as they are, are incapable of recognizing what the failure even is.

Because we have been taught not to recognize economic and political questions as being primarily concerned with ethics, we find the Democratic leadership such as Nancy Pelosi furiously opposing universal healthcare even though many thousands will die as a result. For politicians such as Pelosi, who are wealthy and receive large donations from interest groups opposed to improving American healthcare, the self-interest is obvious and the cruelty comprehensible though not forgivable. The example of reclining one’s seat in an airplane, however, points to the smaller, pettier self-interests upon which conservatism has been able to prey and thrive. It is with the healthcare debate that these issues are laid most bare. Sometimes the selfishness is expressed directly, as seen in demands as to why should one’s hard-earned money go to support the healthcare of someone else (with the implication that the individual benefiting is less deserving, after all if they were deserving they would not need the financial assistance). Similar views are expressed in attitudes against welfare recipients regarded as living off the government instead of getting a job. When race and immigration are added to the mix, the resentments become more explicit and when economic anxiety is introduced the stew is at risk of becoming truly toxic. Though sometimes racism is stated explicitly, often it is expressed in more subtle language – such as the white homeowner who “has nothing against black people,” but is concerned about his or her property value.

It has been this deeply ingrained selfishness on which conservatism depends. No one particularly wants to pay taxes and are happy to starve the government of funds right up until the programs they happen to use personally are cut and then they are enraged, but still don’t want to pay taxes. The great challenge for conservatism in the 1960s was how to dismantle popular programs created by the New Deal without completely discrediting conservative Republicanism. The story of how this was accomplished is a long and complicated one, but human selfishness was crucial in allowing Reaganism/Thatcherism to happen.

The central objective for the left ought to be the formation of a local community that can also strive toward internationalist ideals. More importantly, we need to reject amoral economics and demand politicians whose actions are guided by altruism and whose worldview is deeply informed by a strong, coherent ethical philosophy.

And stop reclining your seat on airplanes.

Some Thoughts on Eighteenth-Century Degeneration Theory and anti-Arab Racism Today

When Europeans began to interact with what they termed the Orient (essentially anything Ottoman empire and east plus Egypt) in the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth centuries, they were struck by the evidence of once great civilizations. The achievements in disciplines such as architecture, mathematics and literature were impressive. Yet, as far as the Europeans were concerned, these once great Islamic and Hindu nations had declined and become poor reflections of their previous selves. The Europeans, thus, asked themselves why had this decline occurred? The solution to this conundrum was degeneration theory, which posited that humanity’s natural state is toward decline and the “Orient’s” decline was the result of corrupt rule by despots (there was a significant theological element to degeneration theory, which I won’t go into here).

Though the orientalists regarded Asiatic societies as having degenerated to their current state, they did not generally view the past civilizations as having been culturally or intellectual equal to that of Europe. As the philologist William Jones put it:

Whoever travels in Asia, especially if he is conversant with the literature of the countries through which he passes, must naturally remark the superiority of European talent; the observation is indeed as old as Alexander; and though, we cannot agree with the sage preceptor of the ambitious prince, that ‘the Asiaticks were born to be slaves’, yet the Athenian poet seems to be perfectly in the right, when he represents Europe as a sovereign princess and Asia as her handmaid.

The result of the combination of degeneration theory and belief that non-Europeans were innately inferior to Europeans was two-fold. Firstly, Europeans were morally justified to intervene in the affairs of Asiatic states and peoples. This formed the basis of the moral argument made in favour of colonialism—the enlightened Europeans had a moral imperative to impose themselves on inferior and degenerated societies because the end result of European colonial and economic endeavours would be the elevation of these societies.

Secondly, though European intervention was essential, Asiatic societies lacked crucial racial qualities that would allow them to develop societies equal to those found in Europe; therefore, the interventions needed to be tailored to the ethnic realities of the society in question. Hence, the direct relationship between orientalist research and colonialism, because the orientalists sought to understand the past, “golden ages” of oriental cultures so that they could then seek to guide these states back to their previous state.

These views first articulated in the eighteenth century were put into practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the consequences are continuing to be felt. Examples of this include that the Indian caste system was constructed and codified as much by the British imperial governments as Indian history or Hindu theology. Similarly, in Africa the ethnic categories of “Tutsi” and “Hutu” were essentially invented by twentieth-century Belgian and German colonial administrators who took what had previously been social categories and transformed them into racial ones. There are similar examples of destructive interventions into preexisting social structures in every colonized state as imperial administrators sought to impose an external order on cultures they did not understand (a trend that lives on in neocolonial disasters, as seen by the utter failure of the Iraq occupation, which American policies caused the formation of Islamic State and the complete destruction of Iraq and rather than the liberal democracy that the Bush administration claimed would be the outcome of the invasion).

All of this leads us to what stimulated these meditations regarding European imperialist thought. The recently hired columnist by the New York Times Bret Stephens debuted with an article that has inspired a great deal of criticism due to its climate skepticism; however as bad as his climate skepticism is, his anti-Arab racism is perhaps even more problematic (e.g. this column: in which Stephens called Arab antisemitism a “disease of the mind”). Writing for the media watchdog FAIR, Adam Johnson described Stephens’ views as fringe; however, the real problem is that I do not believe Stephens’ opinions to be fringe. As Johnson demonstrates, Stephens’ arguments, whether racist or anti-science, are still regarded as within the bounds of acceptable discourse. While Stephens expresses his racism more baldly than a liberal interventionist (say Hillary Clinton) does, the underlying assumptions of the cultural/ethnic superiority of the West is shared by both far right neoconservatives and liberal interventionists. Moreover, this anti-Arab racism is directly descended from the degeneration theories of the eighteenth century and the white man’s burden of the nineteenth. Indeed, the entire Iraq War was framed around notions of democratization and its failure blamed on the supposedly despotic nature of Islamic culture. The “West” is obligated to intervene in Middle Eastern countries because it is the only way to bring about Western liberal democracy, but liberal democracy is also apparently anathema to Islam.

The fundamental failure of contemporary international politics is that we have refused to acknowledge the consequences of colonialism. These consequences include the destructive ethnic divisions created by imperial powers’ arbitrary establishment of borders, invention and codification of ethnic groups, imposition of European laws and morals, massive displacement of people, forced labour and genocides. But, the colonial legacy lives on in intellectual history as well. The degeneration theory served to justify colonialism. When intervention failed to Europeanize the colonized peoples, the conclusion was not to blame colonialism, but the colonized. We have remained committed to a worldview that considers much of the world to be culturally inferior and, thus, incapable of obtaining the liberal, capitalist democracies that the same Western exceptionalist worldview ignorantly presumes to be the societal ideal. Thus, we are left with the tautology where military intervention is constantly advocated and the resulting catastrophes only serve to justify even more devastating intervention.

The Nihilism of Neoliberalism

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
-Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski

When Francis Fukuyama infamously declared the end of history he was right, though likely not in the way he intended. The collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to signify the victory of capitalism, but, in fact, marked the very opposite. Without communism as a counterweight, capitalism has become ever more vicious and corrupt. What we have been left with is a deeply nihilistic present.

As the film-maker Adam Curtis has argued, the late capitalist “West” has taken on many of the features of late communist USSR. Curtis has adopted the term “hypernormalisation”—coined by Alex Yurchak to describe the last days of the Soviet Union when everyone knew the system was failing and no one believed in it anymore, yet persisted because they did not see an alternative. They could not imagine a different future and, therefore, they could not imagine a future at all. The post-communist world is small-minded and bereft of imagination. Of bureaucrats, politicians and political operatives who cannot imagine a future. The development of humanity has reached its apex, the end of its progression, with liberal democracy and capitalism. From such a point-of-view, there is nothing better to be found in the future and self-delusions of the greatness of the present have to be clung to. Thus, as Hillary Clinton proclaimed during her campaign, America is already great. The suffering of millions under the conditions of capitalism and the increasing hopelessness of the future for many be damned.

The last two years have made stark the implications of neoliberal nihilism for anyone willing to view the situation honestly. Brexit, Donald Trump, the possibility of President Marine Le Pen. These are the direct consequence of this nihilism and can only be halted from the left. As the widespread indifference and complicity by the so-called center as fascism rose to power in the 1920s and 1930s demonstrate, the center will cannot offer solutions. Indeed, as the repeated interventions by the neo-imperialist American government in support of far-right military coups against democratically elected leftist governments show, not only will the center not meaningfully oppose fascism, it is only too happy to bring it about. One only needs to observe the vicious destruction by the liberal establishment of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or the slanderous assaults against Bernie Sanders in the US. These attacks have come even though Sanders, Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon are the only real hope that the “West” has against a fascist future. The neoliberal “left” of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Tony Blair cannot imagine a future and, thus, condemn the world to nihilistic despair. Since the neoliberals can only offer a nihilistic nothingness, they are irrelevant. Unlike neoliberalism, the Right and the Left both offer visions of the future and it is between these competing visions that the present elections are really about, though few have really grasped this yet or realized what this means.

The future imagined by the Right has been clearly articulated in the best-selling novel Soumission by the right wing French novelist and would-be intellectual Michel Houellebecq. In the novel Houellebecq foresees a future in which France has become, to use a word popular among internet neo-nazis, cucked by Muslims. Political correctness and tolerance has the consequence, for Houellebecq, of the destruction of French culture by Islam. Thus, the novel ends with the protagonist converting to Islam along with many of his colleagues as non-Muslims become barred from academic posts. The version of Islam represented in the novel is one of the cruelty of sharia law and an imagined hedonism of polygamy and child brides. Thus, the toleration and cosmopolitan ambitions of the European Union result in the “destruction” of France.

It is against this threat, imagined and absurd though it is, that the nationalists represented by Marine Le Pen fight. They see politics as a battle to save the Christian world. Thus, we can understand the immediacy of their politics and the radicalness of their intentions. The nationalist far right is not wedded to the fantasy of liberal democracy and, therefore, accept authoritarianism if that will protect them from the dark future of their imagination. Of course, the corrupt kleptocracy that will result if these nationalists obtain power will mean that the future they bring will be one every bit as grim as the one their supporters imagine they are protecting themselves against.

The Left, on the other hand, offers an actual alternative. In rejecting capitalist destruction, the Left demands a future centered on principles of human dignity and equality. The ambitions of the current representatives of the left are rather small. Healthcare-for-all, a living wage, bankers who are not allowed to destroy the economy and get a trillion dollar bailout and multi-million dollar bonuses for their trouble. Yet even this very limited and insufficient agenda is derided as unfeasible and is beyond the imagination of the nihilists. A healthcare system accessible to all is seen by those such as Hillary Clinton as something that will never, ever happen and her proclamation of such is celebrated as pragmatic. Is it any wonder that Donald Trump, despite his buffoonery and obvious meanness is now president?

With the first round of the French presidential elections tomorrow I see a few possible scenarios listed from least likely to most likely:

  1. Jean-Luc Mélenchon makes it through the first round, wins in the second and is able to enact enough of his leftist agenda to prevent France from its final descent into fascism.
  2. Jean-Luc Mélenchon makes it through the first round, wins the second and is completely stymied by forces of the French establishment. A likely result is Marine Le Pen is elected in the next election.
  3. Marine Le Pen wins the election.
  4. Emmanuel Macron is elected and continues to press forward with nihilistic neoliberalism and the National Front sweeps to power in the following elections.

Trump is still the guy who puts ketchup on his overcooked steak

A month ago the liberal internet banded together to mock Donald Trump’s steak preferences after it was revealed that he eats steak well-done and with ketchup. That he has the palette of a six year old was major news for some reason even though we’ve known for decades that he is giant, orange manchild. What was significant to me was not the details regarding Trump’s eating habits, but that people really cared and why. The incident gets to the real heart of why the liberal media hate Trump so much. It isn’t that he is a racist, because they could make peace with that. It isn’t that he has been accused multiple times of sexual assault, because they could make peace with that too. It is that he embarrasses them. Trump is the ultimate ugly American. He is proudly unilingual (and hardly even that), barely literate, and stunningly ignorant. Moreover, his years on The Apprentice mean that many people in both the US and around the world know him primarily as a reality TV star, which is the most gauche form of American entertainment. The liberal media doesn’t care if their politicians are inhuman monsters, as Ezra Klein’s constant fawning articles about how smart Paul Ryan is demonstrate. What they want is a president who represents the cosmopolitan hopes of neoliberalism. Barack Obama was the perfect president for this because he so perfectly represents this dream. Handsome, worldly, articulate, well-educated, and appropriately read, Obama could travel the world and coastal liberals did not have to live in constant fear that he would say something embarrassing.

Trump is never going to be anything other than the vulgar loudmouth who has made blatant the truths about American politics that had long been kept hidden under the surface. He has, however, stumbled upon the one way to get complements from the elites whom he claims to despise, but whose good words he desperately craves. The one thing the media will always line up in support of is an American president bombing the shit out of a foreign country on spurious grounds and the early signs with regard to Syria are that they will not disappoint.

Similarly, the usual suspects in the House:

And of course Nancy Pelosi

Trump is the same incompetent buffoon who couldn’t manage to repeal a bill that his entire party spent eight years promising to repeal. Every American military intervention has been a disaster and Syria, already a disaster, will not be saved by the United States. But at least Trump will look presidential because apparently all you have to do to look presidential is kill some foreigners.