This post covers Ross Douthat’s column on “The Myth of
Cosmopolitanism” (2016). As you'll see, it's about tribalism as much as
cosmopolitanism.
Tribalism, like most isms, is not an ism unto itself; it's
become an alternative to other isms. The comparisons I mostly see are about
tribalism versus globalism, or versus cosmopolitanism (which is a kind of
globalism). I also see contrasts between nationalism and globalism, as well as
between populism and globalism — but, in TIMN, nationalism is a modern kind of
tribalism. So is populism, though populism implies a belief in government (+I)
solutions as well. So we are back to tribalism versus globalism as the most
common comparison.
What is significant for my efforts is that these comparisons
fit TIMN: Tribalism is obviously an expression of the T form. Globalism — the
alternative that comes up most often — is a function of the +M and +N forms;
for economic and other kinds of globalism reflect the spread of market (+M) and
network (+N) forces around the world. Much the same can be said of
cosmopolitanism.
According to my browsing, the New York Times is doing much better than other newspapers at regularly
calling attention to the tribalism afoot in our country, and comparing it to
other isms. Its regular columnists, notably David Brooks and Ross Douthat on
the right, Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman on the left, have been fairly
effective at doing so, starting a few years ago.
A good example of NYT's attentiveness to the tribal form is
Douthat’s “The Myth of Cosmopolitanism” (2016). In it he makes a rarely made
but insightful point: some presumed cosmopolitans are really camouflaged
tribalists.
He opens with an observation about the spread of tribalism
in our country that is still a bit alarming but no longer unusual to encounter
— tribalism is increasingly in conflict with the internationalism, globalism,
and cosmopolitanism that have long been transcendent. Quite so. But then he
turns a knife — he questions the validity of the cosmopolitanism that some
elites claim for themselves:
"… From now on the great
political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists,
nativists and globalists. From now on the loyalties that matter will be
narrowly tribal — Make America Great Again, this blessed plot, this earth, this
realm, this England — or multicultural and cosmopolitan.
"Well, maybe. But describing
the division this way has one great flaw. It gives the elite side of the debate
(the side that does most of the describing) too much credit for being truly
cosmopolitan."
Here's why he says that many of today's presumptuous elite
cosmopolitans — notably, Davos men — are like tribalists who comprise a tribal
cohort much like any other:
"They have their own
distinctive worldview (basically liberal Christianity without Christ), their
own common educational experience, their own shared values and assumptions
(social psychologists call these WEIRD — for Western, Educated, Industrialized,
Rich and Democratic), and of course their own outgroups (evangelicals, Little
Englanders) to fear, pity and despise. And like any tribal cohort they seek
comfort and familiarity: From London to Paris to New York, each Western “global
city” (like each “global university”) is increasingly interchangeable, so that
wherever the citizen of the world travels he already feels at home.
“Indeed elite tribalism is actively
encouraged by the technologies of globalization, the ease of travel and
communication. Distance and separation force encounter and immersion, which is
why the age of empire made cosmopolitans as well as chauvinists — sometimes out
of the same people. (There is more genuine cosmopolitanism in Rudyard Kipling
and T. E. Lawrence and Richard Francis Burton than in a hundred Davos
sessions.)"
After noting there is nothing necessarily wrong with this,
he turns to make sharp points about the downsides of these elites thinking and
behaving like tribes, while denying they are so:
"But it’s a problem that our
tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe:
because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and
Trumpistas and Marine Le Pen voters see them.
"They can’t see that what
feels diverse on the inside can still seem like an aristocracy to the excluded,
who look at cities like London and see, as Peter Mandler wrote for Dissent
after the Brexit vote, “a nearly hereditary professional caste of lawyers,
journalists, publicists, and intellectuals, an increasingly hereditary caste of
politicians, tight coteries of cultural movers-and-shakers richly sponsored by
multinational corporations.” …
"They can’t see that their
vision of history’s arc bending inexorably away from tribe and creed and
nation-state looks to outsiders like something familiar from eras past: A
powerful caste’s self-serving explanation for why it alone deserves to rule the
world."
And thus many upper-class elites who preen like
forward-looking progressive globalists turn out to be little more than clannish
aristocratic cronies who can be as tribal as the people they look down on.
To read for yourself, go here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-cosmopolitanism.html
[I posted an earlier write-up of this reading on my Facebook
page, on April 14.]
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