Abstract
Ambiguity and uncertainty are discomforting, even frightening, so people love simple and certain accounts of how the world works. This desire runs deep; and it can be useful. But it is also potentially dangerous for democracy. Democracy needs citizens who have the capacity to deal well with the complexity and ambiguity inherent in community life and governance. Unfortunately, democratic politics, particularly populist rhetoric, often appeals to, and thereby potentially nurtures, our love for and dependence on simple stories. Populist politics, while ostensibly democratic and empowering, may thus undercut the development of a capacity that the ethical and effective exercise of democratic power demands.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Notable exceptions include Lorraine Besser, who is crafting a naturalist eadaimonic virtue ethics (Besser-Jones 2014), and Talbot Brewer, who has argued for a virtue ethics rooted in ideas of the good, but which is eudaimonic to the extent that it recognizes the role played by the pursuit of the good in human thriving (Brewer 2009).
References
Besser-Jones, Lorraine. 2014. Eudaimonic ethics: The philosophy and psychology of living well. New York: Routledge.
Brewer, Talbot. 2009. The retrieval of ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brothers, Doris. 2003. Clutching at certainty: Thoughts on the coercive grip of cult-like groups. Group 27 (2/3): 79–88.
Burtt, Shelley. 1990. The good citizen’s psyche: On the psychology of civic virtue. Polity 23 (1): 23–38.
Chater, Nick, and Paul Vitanyi. 2003. Simplicity: A unifying principle in cognitive science? Trends in Cognitive Science 7 (1): 19–22.
Chozick, Amy. 2019. With ‘Talking to Strangers,’ Malcolm Gladwell goes dark. New York Times, August 30. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/business/malcolm-gladwell-talking-to-strangers.html. Accessed August 2020.
Cillizza, Chris. 2020. Bernie Sanders’ disastrous answer on 60 Minutes. CNN, February 24. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/24/politics/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-2020/index.html. Accessed August 2020.
Clark, Sherman J. 2014. The juror, the citizen, and the human being: The presumption of innocence and the burden of judgment. Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (2): 421–429.
———. 2019a. An apology for lawyers: Socrates and the ethics of persuasion. Michigan Law Review 117 (6): 1001–1018.
———. 2019b. The city and the soul: Character and thriving in law and politics. Michigan Journal of Law Reform 53 (2): 417–445.
Conway, Lucian-Gideon, III, Laura Janelle Gornick, Chelsea Burfeind, Paul Mandella, Andrea Kuenzli, Shannon C. Houck, and Deven Theresa Fullerton. 2012. Does complex or simple rhetoric win elections? An integrative complexity analysis of U.S. presidential campaigns. Political Psychology 33 (5): 599–618.
Favreau, Jon. 2014. Three lessons in storytelling. Amsterdam BKB Lecture, September 14. https://nimd.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Three-lessons-in-storytelling_Jon-Favreau-English-1.pdf. Accessed August 2020.
Flaherty, Colleen. 2019. A double-edged sword. Inside Higher Ed, June 28. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/28/elizabeth-warren-has-been-criticized-and-praised-sounding-professor. Accessed August 2020.
Forbes, Steve, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer, and Stephen Moore. 2017. Why are Republicans making tax reform so hard? New York Times, April 19.
Friedman, Thomas. 2020. How to defeat Trump and catch a frisbee. New York Times, January 22. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/opinion/trump-democrats-impeachment.html. Accessed August 2020.
Friesen, Justin P., Troy H. Campbell, and Aaron C. Kay. 2015. The psychological advantage of unfalsifiability: The appeal of untestable religious and political ideologies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (3): 515–529.
Frost, Robert. 1923. The Star-splitter. In New Hampshire: A poem with notes and grace notes, 27–30. New York: H. Holt and Company.
Galston, William A. 2007. Pluralism and civic virtue. Social Theory and Practice 33 (4): 625–635.
Gladwell, Malcolm. 2019. Talking to strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know. New York: Little, Brown.
Glueck, Katie, and Jonathan Martin. 2019. Working-class voters are sticking by ‘Common Joe.’ New York Times, November 20. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/us/politics/joe-biden-working-class.html. Accessed August 2020.
Hart, Roderick P., and Jay P. Childers. 2004. Verbal certainty in American politics: An overview and extension. Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 (3): 516–535.
Heine, Steven J., Travis Proulx, and Kathleen D. Vohs. 2006. The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10 (2): 88–110.
Hicks, Joshua A., and Laura A. King. 2009. Meaning in life as a subjective judgment and a lived experience. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3 (4): 638–653.
Hogg, Michael A. 2014. From uncertainty to extremism: Social categorization and identity processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science 23 (5): 338–342.
Hulse, Carl. 2020. McConnell, with majority at risk, returns to an old target: Obama. New York Times, May 12. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/mitch-mcconnell-obama-rivalry.html. Accessed August 2020.
Jacobson, Louis. 2020. The stump speech analyzer: Bernie Sanders. Politifact, January 23. https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/jan/23/stump-speech-analyzer-bernie-sanders/. Accessed August 2020.
Kruglanski, Arie W., and Donna M. Webster. 1996. Motivated closing of the mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘Freezing’. Psychological Review 103 (2): 263–283.
Lyons, Kristen E., and Simona Ghetti. 2013. I don’t want to pick! Introspection on uncertainty supports early strategic behavior. Child Development 84 (2): 726–736.
Mariotti, Renato. 2019. There’s a simple term for what Trump did and Democrats should stick with it. Politico, November 25. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/25/trump-impeachment-democrats-073540. Accessed August 2020.
McGregor, Ian, Mark P. Zanna, John G. Holmes, and Steven J. Spencer. 2001. Compensatory conviction in the face of personal uncertainty: Going to extremes and being oneself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80 (3): 472–488.
Milbank, Dana. 2011. Obama, lost in thought. Washington Post, April 26. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-lost-in-thought/2011/04/26/AF0FrwsE_story.html. Accessed August 2020.
Neuberg, Steven L., and Jason T. Newsome. 1993. Personal need for structure: Individual differences in the desire for simple structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65 (1): 113–131.
Sanders, Mitchell S. 2001. Uncertainty and turnout. Political Analysis 9 (1): 45–57.
Silver, Nate. 2012. The simple case for saying that Obama is favored. New York Times, November 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/us/politics/the-simple-case-for-saying-obama-is-the-favorite.html. Accessed August 2020.
Thompson, Suzanne C., and Aris S. Janigian. 1988. Life schemes: A framework for understanding the search for meaning. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 7 (2/3): 260–280.
Tormala, Zakary L., and Richard E. Petty. 2004. Source credibility and attitude certainty: A metacognitive analysis of resistance to persuasion. Journal of Consumer Psychology 14 (4): 427–442.
Walzer, Michael. 1974. Civility and civic virtue in contemporary America. Social Research 41 (4): 593–611.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Clark, S.J. (2022). Certain Simple Stories. In: Peterson, G.R., Berhow, M.C., Tsakiridis, G. (eds) Engaging Populism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05785-4_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05785-4_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-05784-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-05785-4
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)