Inoculation Through Creating Common Wisdom Narratives

I am fascinated with how we human beings create narratives or stories, and then derive our meanings from them. In politics, this manifests in several different ways, one of the most obvious being how a “narrative” is created by any successful candidacy for high political office (Obama the Reformer, McCain the Mavrick, Biden the Good Ole’ boy, Palin the Outsider). Such political narratives are not about the issues, they do not act upon us through reason, and they rarely share a deep connection with any particular causes. They work upon the human soul through primarily emotional means. We identify with the narrative.

There is another aspect of the practice of narrative and meaning making in the political sphere, and that is that “Common Wisdom” can be manipulated and created through narrative. While some are able to maintain enough doubt of such Common Wisdom that it does not become ossified, for many humans that represents too much effort. Once they accept something about Common Wisdom is true, it tends to remain true unless contradicted in an extremely obvious way. When such Common Wisdom is contradicted in a way that cannot be ignored, it is a traumatic event for those who held that such Common Wisdom was true. Reactions to such a contradiction of Common Wisdom often include denial, loss of faith/hope/trust, and a trend of attacking those who are contradicting the truth of the Common Wisdom.

This is what I think is currently happening within the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church outside the United States, as they wrestle with the contradiction of the Common Wisdom that pedophilia among the RC Priesthood was only an “American Catholic Problem” (I don’t want to launch into a discussion of clergy misconduct or the Roman Catholic Church, I’m just using an example of what I’m focusing on from the current media).

The bread and butter of most Public Relations and Lobbying firms the world over is the creation and manipulation of Common Wisdom narratives. Some political activist and campaign organizations have excelled at the creation and manipulation of Common Wisdom narratives, and others have tried and been largely unskilled at it. As I have been pondering the uses of Common Wisdom narratives in politics (and then using that lens to see the uses we humans make of such practices of creating and manipulating Common Wisdom narratives in our daily lives), I have seen a particular trend I had not noticed before.

The creation of Common Wisdom narratives can be used as an inoculation, or a vaccine about a truth or facts that you would rather not be noticed about your political campaign/party/movement. Let me give you an example.

The common theme through most of the recent judicial appointment hearings from the Republican side has been the issue of “activist judges” who “legislate from the bench.” They have attempted, with some success, to cast a net over all Democratic appointments that such judges have a tendency to ignore settled law and precedent to cast rulings that are in-tune with the judge’s personal and political views. This theme has overshadowed every other issue, and how “activist” a judge is has become a litmus test that Democratic nominees to the bench have to prove themselves against.

And yet, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, many of the recent Republican appointments to the bench have been extremely activist, and more than willing to legislate from the bench. The Citizen’s United case being a recent and blatant example of a Supreme Court dominated by Republican nominees exercising judicial activism to overturn settled law and precedent. But the idea that Republican nominees could be acting as “activist judges” goes against the narrative in our current politics, because Common Wisdom has settled that it is the Democrats who appoint activist judges, not Republicans, right?

Since the Citizen’s United case I have heard left-wing politicians and pundits beating their head against the metaphorical wall over this contradiction (especially in light of the intention in the upcoming supreme court nomination fight for Republicans to continue the narrative that Democratic nominees are all “activist judges”). Rationally, it is relatively easy to make the case that the Common Wisdom is inaccurate or at least inadequate in this case… but they have had almost no traction in making that case to the American People.

What struck me is that, by creating the Common Wisdom narrative that judges nominated by the Democratic Party were the only “activist judges”, the Republicans have inoculated themselves against that criticism… and that they can depend on that inoculation unless the contradiction becomes much more blatantly obvious than it is today.

This political tool works both ways (although I think Republicans and Conservatives are more effective at it than Democrats, for reasons I will end with). One example is the Common Wisdom narrative that the Democratic Party is the “Party of Peace” and the Republicans are the “Party of War”. Both the Republicans and Democrats promote this particular bit of Common Wisdom (with different valences and intents). The effect of it in the last political election was to give Barrack Obama the image of being a peacemaker and even a borderline pacifist (in Republican valence that translates as weak and anti-military), when in reality he is and has shown himself to be mildly hawkish when it comes to the use of military force. The contradiction between the Common Wisdom narrative of President Obama as the leader of the “Peace Party” led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year in office, in the same month that he announced a large expansion of the War in Afghanistan. While some on the far-left have run into the contradiction between Obama’s hawkish nature and the image created by the Common Wisdom narrative on the left of the “Party of Peace” and reacted in dismay and loss of faith/hope/trust, for most of President Obama’s supporters that Common Wisdom narrative about peace has served to inoculate the President around the issue of the wars.

I do believe that such Common Wisdom has a greater and more lasting effect on the right of American politics than on the left, and I attribute that to different understandings of the makeup of reality within those two poles of our political spectrum. I perceive that the right pole of our politics operates primarily with a fixed view of reality, where truth is knowable… whereas the left side of our politics operates with a more fluid view of reality where truth is harder to discern. As such, I believe that on the right, Common Wisdom narratives are likely to be trusted longer, but if and when they are contradicted in ways that cannot be denied (such as the Common Wisdom about the morality of religiously motivated politicians and the rash of sex and ethics scandals among them… perhaps the beginning of a new Common Wisdom narrative… we will see) the right tends to be more easily disillusioned by the loss of faith/hope/trust in those politicians. The left tends to hold Common Wisdom narratives with more doubt than the right, but they also accept their being proved wrong with less loss of faith/hope/trust.

There are two primary exceptions to this spectrum analysis I am making on how the political right and left react to Common Wisdom narratives and their eventual contradiction. The first is that, activists and others at either far end of the political spectrum have far more in common with each other than with the more moderate elements of their own political movements, at least emotionally and motivationally. In my experience, the most dedicated activists, be they Tea Party Patriots or vehement environmentalists, be they right or left, are both operating from a fixed sense of reality and a belief in a fully known Truth (with a capital T). As such, they are the least likely to question their Common Wisdom narratives, and the more likely to react with loss of faith/hope/trust if that Common Wisdom narrative is ever successfully contradicted.

The second exception is most professional lobbyists, advertising execs, and Public Relations persons. In my experience, the vast majority of these individuals are profoundly and perhaps negatively post-modernist… where truth is ultimately unknowable but can be created and manipulated for purposes of themselves or their clients. As a post-modernist myself, I am aware of the danger and ethical issues inherent in intentionally manipulating Common Wisdom narratives for purposes… I catch myself moving in that direction from time to time. My answer to that danger is to try to be clear that I am speaking for myself and from my perspective and lens only, not for others.

But if you think about it… if you take all advertising, most modern media, much of politics, and even how image is managed by corporate and individual public relations firms, we live in a world and in a reality that is constructed of such Common Wisdom narratives. It is hardly surprising that, in my opinion, we follow this trend of constructing Common Wisdom narratives in our own lives, in our churches, in our families, and within our own skins. Perhaps our seeing this trend in our politics can allow us to see it more clearly in our daily lives. Or perhaps this trend in our politics is just a reflection of a basic part of human nature, the creation of Common Wisdom narratives.

Yours in Faith,

David