All we need is hate

1 Universal tolerance considered harmful to society

Given that hating out-groups is so effective in practice, and that friendly liberal democracies seem to be struggling right now to be internally respectful enough to make good decisions in mutual interest, I must also consider the possibility that choosing someone for us to hate might be optimal in terms of providing cohesion to the us that does the hating. If hating an out-group leads to everyone else rallying together, then maybe the society of those that remain in the in-group is better off, because they can govern themselves effectively.

When would this happen? When would a society be better off with an out-group to hate? Would the in-group always slide into authoritarianism for the remaining members of the group, or could the increment in their well-being counterbalance the decrement in the well-being of the out-group? Would an enlightened governor find an enemy for us to hate because that would produce the greatest good for the greatest number?

This is not my preferred world to imagine. I, myself, struggle for a world without enemies (or where the only enemies are abstractions), but I cannot be sure that this is optimal; maybe my agenda for peace and love will only be enacted if my fellow citizens have the spur of hate. Maybe by being too squeamish to choose an enemy, I am dooming us all to a world of ineffective governance and poor decisions.

In which case, is it better to have a great hate? To give up on the peace and love part? Is the best ROI on collective action, collective action against something, and we cannot afford the luxury of inferior collective action?

2 Universal tolerance considered harmful to tolerance

Enemies seem to be helpful to motivate mass action, which suggests a utilitarian case for treating people as instrumental targets of hate.

If we believe that much of human dysfunction is systemic, and that most people could be on the same side, should we remain silent on that in favour of making enemies of the individuals within that system? Should we in fact behave as if they are irredeemable in order to motivate our allies to action, thereby making pawns of both in-group and out-group?

The case here would be: If, in fact, in a democratic society, the only messages that “win” in the free exchange of ideas, that motivate people into action, are the ones that depend on fear and caricature, then rather than let bad ideas win, one is beholden to propagate “good” ideas via fear, or “bad” ideas will win.

I am not a fan of this hypothesis, instinctually, although that does not make it wrong.

Some research on these lines is summarized in Bowles (2011):

The parasitic liberalism thesis, advanced in many variants over the past two centuries, holds that markets and other institutions endorsed by liberals depend on family-based, religious and other traditional social norms that are endangered by these very institutions. Liberal society thus fails Rawls’ test of “stability:” it does not “generate its own supportive moral attitudes.” (Rawls, (1971):399). It is often countered that, by comparison to other allocation mechanisms, markets economize on virtue, meaning that “Market-like arrangements reduce the need for compassion, patriotism, brotherly love, and cultural solidarity” (Schultze, (1977):18). But because enforceable contracts do not cover all that matters in economic exchanges, the proper functioning of markets nonetheless depends critically on social and moral preferences such as reciprocity, a strong work ethic, trust and a commitment to ethical behaviour. The same is true with even greater force of other institutions, with the result that: “no social system can work …in which everyone is …guided by nothing except his own …utilitarian ends” (Schumpeter, (1950):448). Consistent with the parasitic liberalism thesis, experimental evidence suggests that while the “moral sentiments” underpinning the workings of markets and other institutions are common in most human populations (Camerer and Fehr, (2004)), market-based incentives that appeal to self-interest tend to compromise individual preferences for fairness and public generosity (Bowles, (2008), Bowles and Hwang, (2008).) If incentives that appeal to the material interests reduce the salience of ethical motives on which the functioning of markets and other institutions depend, does the cultural dynamic of liberal society then lead eventually to economic dysfunction, instability and collapse?

Note that this idea is completely compatible with the idea that one might engage with any individual personally and persuade them through reasonable, constructive dialogue; the question is rather about whether mass dynamics will wash out individual action at the population scale.

3 Dog-whistling peace and respect

There is a possibility that even movements concerned with enlightened engagement and tolerance should still spread by fear and intolerance. In that version, we have an outer circle, and an inner circle. In the outer circle, we are intolerant, conspiratorial, we talk about kleptocrats and/or deep state etc, we are firebrands who rail against the oppression of some other, and use that xenophobic/bigoted message as the vector to deliver our recruitment payload. Then, once the target minions are engaged and invested, we do a switcharoo and reveal that the real plan is to spread tolerance and understanding.

That is, we are dog-whistling tolerance by mentioning secretly tolerant attitudes that our backers will understand, but that the general public will safely interpret as intolerant and blameful?

Once again, I do not love this idea, because for me it seems fundamentally immoral to treat humans instrumentally.

Also, there is an elitist assumption here. While “we” elites long for peace and respect, this argument goes, the lumpenproletariat need to be tricked into it by hate and fear.

But are my qualms about this just performative moral purity when a real change-agent would do what it takes to bring about positive change? In this scenario, if I have a message about universal tolerance and reasonableness, but insist on propagating it by tolerant and reasonable means, which will fail in the face of less tolerant ideas, then I am throttling my own message of tolerance in the cradle by failing to spread it through fear and bigotry. I am, that is, being vegan, in focussing on the means at (potentially) the expense of the ends.

Connection: Symbolic insurrections.

See also the simulacra model. Recall

…what it means to say “There’s a lion across the river”[…]

Level 1

There’s a lion across the river.

Level 2

I don’t want to go (or have other people go) across the river.

Level 3

I’m with the popular kids who are too cool to go across the river.

Level 4

A firm stance against trans-river expansionism focus-grouped well with undecided voters in my constituency.

If public discourse is about influencing public engagement via “level 4” messaging, which is about recruiting people to engage with things, then maybe we should not be interpreting it as contentful, but as a pure recruiting funnel to actual content, and then judging it based on which actual content people were eventually recruited to.

4 Shared hates bond more strongly than shared loves

I do not know how well these studies replicate or generalize, but there are papers quantifying the cliché that nothing unites us like a shared enemy (Bosson et al. 2006; Weaver and Bosson 2011).

5 Selection pressure and banal evil

If there is an identifiable figurehead individual or group of some out-group and they really are doing something widely agreed upon as bad (e.g. genocide) then we might find it easy to coordinate on combating them. World War II had this vibe.

This suggests to me that we might experience selection pressure towards the propagation of inequities that we cannot find a hateful anthropomorphic adversary to blame for. Confusingly diffuse and systemic inequities are difficult to rally against, and even there we find it easier to address them if we can turn systemic inequities into personal ones. Who is the bad guy in the tragedy of the commons? Can the graziers more effectively share their pasture if they are united against Big Agriculture?

6 Optimal investment of tolerance capital

Suppose the parochial altruism theories (Bernhard, Fischbacher, and Fehr 2006; Boyd and Richerson 1999; Choi and Bowles 2007; Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life 2006; Hetzer and Sornette 2013; van den Bergh and Gowdy 2009) are good models of human generosity. To a rough approximation, they explain how we have attained, not universal generosity, but rather preferential generosity towards the in-group at the expense of the out-group. If every scrap of cooperation is gleaned from the carcass of hate, then we might think about it as a resource that we need to optimally husband, use and re-invest.

7 Optimizing enemies

a.k.a. If the devil does not exist it becomes necessary to invent him

“Biggest us, smallest them” is a mantra of campaigners for social change. If we must choose an enemy to mobilize the public against, can we minimise harm by choosing the smallest feasible group? Or one who will likely weather the storm alright? Or one upon whom vilification will have the smallest negative effects? Or who consent to be scapegoats for a vengeful public? By its nature, this grim utilitarian calculus must be carried out in private, I assume.

This suggests another alternative: Abstract enemies, can they do the job? Can we make do with hating the sin, not the sinner?

As an atheist I find this tricky. Am I in a position to advocate the use of a devil, when I do not believe in one? Is it more honest to single out an out-group made of flesh-and-blood humans, or can we make do with “the patriarchy” or “the system”, or Moloch, or yes, good old Satan?

8 Weaknesses of intolerance

How does this argument that we need to manufacture enemies potentially fall apart?

9 Incoming

A troubling example, for me, which has arisen in practice.

Let us say that you and I are debating whether a symbolic corporate diversity program is tokenistic or not and you are doubtful about said program, but I think it is great. If you critique this intervention by discussing the weak evidential base, then it sounds like you are opposed to diversity and equity as ends. If you critique the intervention by asserting that this type of program arose from HR departments attempting to preserve an inequitable status quo (Dobbin and Kalev 2021) then it looks like I am for diversity. This does not change the evidential base, but it changes how the argument is likely to be received, by switching it from “will this thing do what we want?” to “Are we allies against a nefarious third party?”

This technique absolutely works on me, despite my resistance to the premises. I doubt HR departments are smart enough to proactively think up a diabolical strategy of ineffectual and mediocre interventions designed to hamstring real progress, or even that they are particularly invested in doing so. I also doubt that they could conspiratorially coordinate on or communicate that strategy. It is way more likely that mediocre, performative attempts to make the world better arise because people are just generally incompetent when their incentives are not aligned with the outcomes they are trying to achieve. I believe all that because of considered reasoning, but in general ascribing to malice what could be ascribed to incompetence is great at motivating me to take action. It is not exciting to righteously take down the unjust if the unjust is an emergent epiphenomenon instead of, say, an actual Hitler. And this is probably why conflict theories prosper in the marketplace of ideas.

10 The moral

I am not a fan of hatred as a means for bringing about peace and harmony, but it seems to me to be an empirical question about whether it is the most effective alternative, and whether other strategies are evolutionarily stable in the presence of hatred-based organizing.

These are some arguments for social-engineering-based blaming and scapegoating, and maybe they are better than my sentiment that society “should” operate through mutually respectful dialogue. Maybe the only way I can have my precious mutually respectful dialogue and respect is in the lee of sheltering blame.

I am not passionate about that strategy, and I am not yet persuaded to pursue it. Maybe I’ll be shown to be a fool, and the only way most of us get to heaven is by stepping on the bodies of those bastards we send to hell. I am part of the problem if my moral daintiness keeps me from doing whatever it takes to make sure someone else takes that fall instead of my people.

11 References