Harris, Trump, and the Future of Our Culture
A year ago, Vice President Harris was asked how she defined culture. She gave a convoluted response, and claimed culture involved joy, feelings in the moment, and, oddly, emerged “in the morning.” Unsurprisingly, she was criticized by the right for word salad.
Of course, when it comes to incoherent rambling, former President Trump is an award winner. Does this mean those on the right were hypocritical for attacking Harris for something that their guy is guilty of even more? Not necessarily. To understand why, we need to understand the current culture of politics in the US.
First, though, let’s specify what we mean by culture. UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge, works by dividing human knowledge into three categories or vectors. First, there is the “objective knowledge” of the natural sciences. Second, there is the “subjective knowledge” of the human psyche. And, third, there is the “intersubjective knowledge” of cultural collectives.
Culture, then, is a particular kind of collective knowing. In UTOK, we capitalize it to be clear about exactly what we are referencing when we are using the term. Capital ‘C’ Culture refers to the large-scale systems of justification that function to legitimize what is and what ought to be for groups (i.e., religions, nations, companies, etc.).
From this broad definition, we can see that different groups have different justification systems that operate on different rules. Politics is about obtaining influence in government, and US presidential elections are about getting 270 or more electoral votes to become the next president.
Justification systems involve both networks of reasons and motivations toward particular outcomes. As such, they can be guided by very different elements. Modern-day politics in the US have become awash in irony to the degree that politicians are like actors in a sitcom. A sitcom places people in situations that pits the characters’ motives against their perceived reality in an ironic way, and then we watch and laugh as they try to match the two.
Of course, unlike sitcoms, electing officials to political positions can have massive real-world consequences. Nonetheless, the political process is now very much akin to sitcoms in that there is little concern for truth, accuracy, intellectual integrity, depth of analysis, and so on. Instead, the justifications of the participants are simply determined by the situation.
And the situation is structured by one motivated outcome, which is to spark their herd on election day, and invalidate the other team. Concerns about truth, accuracy, and the overall good of the country are, generally speaking, no longer significant factors in modern politics.
This is why modern politicians can’t really be hypocrites; ironically, being hypocritical is part of the job description. No one intuitively understands this fact about modern politics better than Trump.
Personally, I have largely checked out of politics. I describe myself as a “radical moderate,” a term I am adopting from Greg Thomas. I voted for Harris because I am a never Trumper. I see him as a narcissist without shame who is a threat to the basic structure of the system* (see here for why Jan. 6 should disqualify Trump).
The reason I no longer identify with either the side of the political spectrum is simple. As I lay out in UTOK: The Unified Theory of Knowledge, I am oriented toward the transcendental values of goodness, truth, and beauty. I see modern politics as a sitcom that has given up on these higher ideals. Instead, it is a language game devoted to motivating one herd of people against another herd to put certain people in power.
Trump makes clearer than anyone that this is what modern politics is about, and the fact that we have at least a 50% chance of reelecting him makes clear that modern politics is corrupt. To the extent that modern politics reduces to the motivation for power and influence regardless of the genuine valuing truth, beauty, or goodness, then the future of our Culture is at significant risk.
What does this mean? For me, at least, it is clear we are collectively lost when it comes to specifying what is and what ought to be. We need to realign with what is true and good. And I believe I have found one such path with UTOK.
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*Here are some essays on Trump when he first appeared on the political scene:
Trump: A Psychosocial Analysis
