Chapter Nine: A Model Leader

Abstract

Reinforced by the previous ethnography-driven discussion, the theory turns to the political systems in US and Europe. Why have these systems rather accelerated than prevented the rise of simplex society, as epitomized in Trump’s post-truth presidency. Don Handelman’s pair of model and mirror in rituals comes in handy.

The dwindling mediation between progressives and conservatives testifies to sedimented simplication. Politics has become ritual. Democrats distend their experiential frame toward the globe, so the best leader would be the one mirroring all. Republicans have their sphere contracted, so they elect a model they want to become. The so-called culture wars, science wars, the rise of post-fact, conspiracy and antivax theories, and the anti-conformist distrust of elites point to a divergence between ‘Stick to the facts, no belief’ and ‘Only belief, distrust facts’. It follows generations of simplication that left intuition untrained.

The chapter counteracts the tendency by demonstrating that Democrats and Republicans complement each other as halves after the split. Each misses what the other has. The interrelation and dynamic of mutual learning are obvious in a tensorial and matrixial world, but no longer in a vectorial one. To rehumanize is to speciate.

A shadow hung over Part I. Of orange hue. In 2016 he surprised himself for being elected president of the US. Four years later he almost surprised everyone. Because he managed something of a feat. Embodying what has already gone down in history as the most surreal four years of US democracy, he became the prime candidate to succeed himself. What was his trick? He enacted the worst version of himself. He told every possible half-truth, ventured the bluntest mistake, excluded at will.¹ He counted on getting away with it. Normalize the vice. The craziest prediction about his presidency turned out to have sold him short. That is the answer.

The main surprise, from which the rest of the argument follows, has to do with his election being the outcome of democracy. How could this man have become president when catering only for a small minority of businessmen? The latter usually vote for someone like themselves, but why did poor people in the US vote for someone born in a rich family who has nothing but contempt for those not as lucky as himself?

The reason I propose is precisely this social chasm they experience. He could be their model. Many poor Americans vote for a person they want to be. Because they believe in the American dream that they too someday can be successful. Some want to be like him in every detail, untouchable, terribly affluent, married to a pinup with arrogantly behaving offspring, and able to blurt out at will, after a pressing of the lips and a rising of the chin below downcast eyes: ‘You’re fired!’ The democratic system has long relied on the political reticence of the silent majority. The masses were to trust in an upper layer of intellectuals that know best. And they did, leaving decision-making up to the experts representing them and exposing the rare quack. The collective erred on the safe side because intuited the dark matter of complex systems. What happened in the meanwhile? Their Socratic wisdom of knowing not to know made no sense once the system and its inventors they invested belief in began to show failure.² Democratic election cannot deal with such limit conditions. It cannot reinvent the system.

What does simplex society imply politically? In the cultural void left by distrust, futility and disconnection, a populist provides something to trust and believe in, restores a sense of impact with every word said, and has constructed a story that meaningfully connects with feelings of discontent. The deeper the discontent the more effervescent the eruption of the imaginary. Think of conspiracy theories, about reptilian machinations, Islamophobic or racist, that stood no chance on public fora a decade or two ago. Verification and critical doubt could counter the delusion. In a simplex society, however, the members do not communicate frames to compare these critically and decide on the most viable one in a sphere. They ‘inform’ the public about their opinions. They perform their identity. Votes and ideological choices attain a ritual character. Identity politics it is called. And so the theory of rituals can apply to political behavior.

Model versus mirror. I vote for someone I wanna be versus I vote for someone like me. The pair of model and mirror derives from Don Handelman’s two types of rituals, and of public events in general.³ Rites of passage initiate participants into a model of the person one should become, whereas annual ceremonies mirror the current situation in society, often magnified to facilitate catharsis, as in carnival. When personal comments on social media can substitute for private conversations, we are living in a society where communication has increasingly become a public event. Handelman’s theory thus finds extra salience. Model and mirror are two ways of performing. They do not blend. Gone is democracy’s ultimate intention of finding in mediation the policy that will make society as a whole prosper and preserve life.

On average a Democrat vote seems to mirror the candidate: ‘I can picture that person to be more or less like me, I’ll vote for her.’ The Republican Party can count on model-voters: ‘Yeah, I want to be like him, so I vote for him.’ That is my hypothesis, based on ‘post-truth’ simplex society transforming politics into ritual. I have no survey to prove it, since the hypothesis concerns a largely unconscious disposition. I invite the readers to look at their familiar political system from an unfamiliar angle like an ethnographer would. They might imagine what post-truth does to people. What does systematic disconnection of meaning from feeling in society do to the mind? If you have no trustworthy basis to verify claims, new criteria arise such as the feeling a simplex frame gives (e.g., the release of energy by threatening to kick a foreigner out). A model clear enough to plead allegiance to gratifies the uprooted. Just as the most conservative in Christianity and Islam retrieve belonging by having their puritan values amend the law (e.g., abortion in southern US states, Indonesia)⁴ modern democracy has become an identity to progressives rather than a frame discussed in terms of its viability. Due to identity politics in a fragmenting society, democracy itself risks to look partisan, to evolve from a forum housing many views to one representing about half of the population and marginalizing the rest, leaving them disgruntled.

Democrats should benefit most from a democratic system. Republicans have the advantage of collecting model-votes on top of their mirror-votes. The latter come from the rich, conservative class mirrored by the president. Another advantage for someone mobilizing model-voters is that ‘who the voter wants to be’ can be stretched. Once in power, the star can teach the voter about wicked but authentically star-like things the model implies. What you get away with only makes you stronger. In sharp contrast, someone counting on my mirror-vote cannot risk to step out of line in a way I never would. Say ‘Grab them by…’ and you will lose my Democrat vote.

Post-knowledge society blurs the distinction between model and mirror. Who will know whether a representation does mirror reality or rather models it according to one’s wishes? The leader’s model of American opportunity simplicates the harsh reality of class disparity and racism. A simplex society disadvantages politicians striving in their speech for an accurate reflection of the multilayered situation. Nuances signal lack of purchase; exaggerations suggest clarity and when communicated by a leader become self-fulfilling prophecies. With every bridge too far, the craziest aspects of the model get normalized and for that reason seem to mirror reality better than the mainstream version learned at school. Presenting the worst version of himself, he could not have done better. A predatory grumpy man makes for anti-establishment heroism in the American ‘modern family’ (thinking of the popular TV show with that name). Some mirror-voters among the poor that distrusted him before, have come to accept him in all his deficiencies to add their votes to those of the modelists, the already converted.

Model-voting is counterintuitive for social scientists. They assume mirroring to be the default position, not only because that is probably what they as academic democrats themselves do, but because it would be a logical, statistical emanation of how the political system is constituted.⁵ A parliament should more or less be representative of the entire population, in ideas if not in sociocultural background, because in a well-functioning democracy people can choose people like themselves. Voter and voted belong to the same constituency. More clearly than constituency-based parliamentary elections, the race for US presidency reveals what people really choose when they can.⁶

To understand model-voting requires an effort in empathy. Model-voters (who I want to be) do not have the same expectations of leadership as mirror-voters (who is like me). For many model-voters, life has been too unrewarding and their confidence too profoundly shaken to believe in someone resembling themselves socially. They cannot picture such a person as leader, or as their leader, even if that person shares their background and could understand them best. They choose someone else, someone they could dream to become, hence entirely different from what they are now.

People do not necessarily aspire to what is good for them. My list of inspiring models comprises Jim Morrison for his body and voice, Ian Curtis for his lyrics and dance, and Jimi Hendrix for too much I care to sum up here. Without the luck of an education and a career, I would not have reached the age of 29, nor have had kids or would have entertained you with this booklet. Many poor vote for a role model rather than for a candidate who could really understand their situation. Politicians being so uncommon in ambition as to sincerely wanting to help the poor, better have the looks, the dress (not sandals) and the biography enticing enough to identify with.

Realization of one’s dire situation is necessary before the voter makes choices in his or her own interest. Realizing that the situation is not unique and one is not alone: class consciousness Marx called it. He deemed its promotion key for starting a revolution in the interest of the many. Equally important is possession of the tools through education or other means to believe that one can do something structural about the situation. Until those two conditions are fulfilled a world government may not be the best plan to save the planet. Given the uneven level of education, welfare and prospects on the planet, the most likely world government today would be staunchly rightist. I am not just thinking of extremely conservative model-voters in the US or the nationalist regime in India. The purity of the sharia sought by IS and the Taliban illustrates the model that many disadvantaged and excluded cling to by lack of alternative. Dreaming of reversing a structurally unequal situation leads to an ideal unattainable unless through the ultimate sacrifice.

The extent to which the US presidential elections stir emotions across the world should be applauded. The unsure outcome of the contest between two parties, like two clubs with a long tradition and large following in soccer, is a welcome corrective to the fixity of simplex society. Yet, my hypothesis about mirror and model raises a problem for democracy as the ancient Greeks conceived it. Their elected majorities decided what is best.⁷ Of course, democracy notoriously holds the seeds of its own demise, by allowing antidemocratic parties,⁸ but I am claiming a flaw in its application. The Athenian idea of democracy was not meant for voters with very unequal life standards. (Athens formed an independent polis at the time; it had only the male citizens with similar backgrounds enfranchised, which precluded women, people with unrepaid debts and the slaves that far outnumbered any category.) Without glaring inequality throwing half of the population into cognitive dissonance, voters could have concentrated on the politician representing their interests and idea of the future. The fragmentation through bubbles and simplex frames sets back the original democratic project of taking the pulse of society and empirically connecting with dynamic reality. The play of model and mirror worsens the disconnection.

As “Chapter Eight: Healer or King” argued, democratic elections juxtapose parties like frames in a matrix, with one coming out as the winner. The choice between frames being made, time is deemed ripe for the vector: power. Any election, debate and poll, any headline, critique and scandal, is interpreted in terms of the zero-sum game: whatever one party wins automatically signifies loss for the other(s). The matrix does not question the zero-sum game, namely that all parties suffer humiliation repeatedly, which sows the seeds of revenge against the other party rather than against the system that lures them into this game. A tensor includes that third dimension of life-sensing as a variable. It allows for a political system ensuring non-zero winning through mutual learning (not just coalition and compromise) and subsequent evolution.

Democratic election in simplex society looks like a pageant, crowning not the candidate with the greatest capacity but with the most likes. What modelist and mirrorist have in common is a focus on the person. Both fuel the media’s sensationalism about the politicians’ private lives. Another commonality is the absence of frameshift. The leader represents an ideology, a fixed idea. This obstructs the evolution from person-oriented to issue-oriented democracy. If all community members can make decisions in consensus, case by case and on a regular basis, for example, via smart digital monitoring, the elected leader’s democratic value would be cut to size.

In speech, some of the more famous Republicans have been notoriously coarse in their choice of words. Does the historically charged meaning of terms elude them? I doubt it. They know how to provoke Democrats and gain popularity with anti-Democrats. They know exactly how to irritate mirror-voters, who assume that speech mirrors what the politician thinks. A remark about ‘tribal wars in Africa’ will stir antiracist sentiments. Model-voters scoff at the protester’s outrage. ‘I was not serious’ is an excuse those voters accept, because models imply a margin of deviation the supporter has to tolerate. In liberal-democrat circles, the excuse would never work; the buffoonery among peers is not tolerated. It is seen as inaccurate mirroring of reality. A politician caught on such unconstraint will have damaged his or her reputation.

Democrats catering for mirror-voters take a risk. They may come across as haughty, and most of all, as pretending that their speech is frameless. I may wish to conclude otherwise, but the claim of one’s ideology mirroring reality looks like a simplex for denying to be just another model offering a perspective. It can become a sophisticated type of simplex. Anyone should be commended for detecting a simplex, for instance racist or colonialist speech. However, prohibition will not change the racist’s or colonialist frame. He or she may experience the prohibition as a simplex in its own right manipulating affect. Sanctioning the use of certain words irrespective of context denies humans the momentary lapse of reason as well as their variable sensitivity to nuance. Whatever a person has said at a particular moment in time is supposed to be what he or she is, essentially, continually: ‘Sorry, the deed mirrors the person.’ Mirrorism automatically classifies deeds as intentional: ‘You made a mistake? No, recognize that these words are you, intending the words.’ Mirroring spares us going through the trouble of endless communications for verification. Was your wording a lapse of reason? Automatic attribution of intention is the intellectual’s simplex in the face of complexity. Whereas modelists have their ‘gut feeling’ about someone’s (‘leftist’) frame, mirrorists claim objectivity irrespective of frame.⁹ To one simplex another.

Extreme rightists claim that their uncouth speech should be tolerated in a democracy for being an opinion expressed in mere words. Mirrorists rightly retort that words are deeds. In our analytical terms, a racist statement affects life by activating a frame in a sphere of the network. Mirrorists in turn must examine how their speech affects life. Reprovals of certain behaviors lest naïve viewers imitate (indeed mirror) them overlook that there is a great deal of acting in modeling. Word-policing tries to do justice to lived history, but will not persuade model-voters to change their minds. To forbid certain expressions regardless of context presumes that words without context are possible. The claim of a timeless position without perspective denies the treacherously simple formula to the sound of which Ludwig Wittgenstein buried metaphysics: meaning is use. The user navigates from one language game to the next, one frame to the next. Deny that and you start a fire. After breaking through a couple of walls since “Chapter Two: Frameshift”, we have reached a ditch of fire. There awaits a last heavy task.

No matter how well you and I analyze what is going on, indeed provide the very mirror of nature, for example, in scientific evidence about climate change and about a negative evolution of human affect, we have done nothing to improve the situation. Not a mirror but a model is needed at the stage of action. This Democrats can learn from Republicans. What good is it to enumerate the tipping points of a crisis in climate and economy, when all the mirroring does is to give reason for despair? A model dares to make the leap from mirrored reality to what is not there yet but might be. A tensor which opens up the frames of the matrix to the test of life, having them rooted in the future of the species, gives direction and energizes. Its degrees of freedom, each a dimension that humans can be aware of and decide to fill in at a certain time and place, link up a sphere’s frames with the sources of production, and us with the survival of the species. The tensor speciates and in that sense humanizes.