To Think Anew and Act Anew

Part Two: Understanding our Divided Reality

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

This is the second in the series “To Think Anew and Act Anew,” addressing liberal democratic beliefs and current sociopolitical counter-currents, with implications for cultural and educational institutions, including libraries. If you haven’t already, read the first of this series. A third article will address “To Think and to Act Anew” within the context of librarianship.

The struggle of today, is not altogether for today—it is for a vast future also.

-Abraham Lincoln, First Annual Message to Congress, 1861

Lincoln may be the perfect embodiment in a time of crisis of our nation’s Enlightenment inheritance of individual rights, due process (even if he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War), freedom of expression, and constitutional checks and balances—a form of political liberalism (based in philosophical liberalism) that has endured the trials of almost two and half centuries. Debates about the relative importance of “democratic norms” versus “republican structures” are ultimately not important against the backdrop of this great achievement, of a democratic republic lasting and renewing itself across that “long duree.” However, the new challenges before us are ones of kind, and not degree, and these challenges have implications for all epistemic institutions, including universities, and libraries, and the people who work in them and the communities who depend on them. Thinking again of Lincoln’s vision of the “vast future”, and reflecting on how we might think anew and act anew in meeting those challenges, is our great test of the present.

One of the great hazards of our current time, as it is with any collection of generations in a national community with a shared history, is our belief that we are now fundamentally different as human beings even with the drastically different circumstances in which we now find ourselves. The proliferating commentary on politics, cultural change, generational differences (from Baby Boomers to Gen X to Millennials to Gen Z and now to Gen Alpha), gender divides, technological tectonic shifts with artificial intelligence, and breakdowns in common sense-making abilities across a broader public, suggest to me that our fragmented culture no longer allows us to forge a common future together—one that honors diversity of ethnicity, faith, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, social class, educational level, profession, occupation, and geographical ties. But the often-unacknowledged need is diversity of thought and perspective amongst the other “diversities.” Our common identity as a creedal nation—dedicated to liberal Enlightenment ideals of individual rights, due process and the rule of law, freedom of thought and expression—depends upon that vital diversity of thought, in order to renew itself, but that heritage is now only part of the background noise of our fractured discourse.

Now the cacophony of a hyper-democratized information environment tests our ability to discuss, relate, and engage with others in pluralistic good faith. The great vault of words and enacted visions of Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Susan B. Anthony, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, John F. and Robert F. Kennedy Sr., Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, and many others not in high leadership positions, who have forged a better future for all Americans, is still open to all of us when we are too caught up in the distractions and perturbations of the present time. We are not unique in facing crises—our American experiment has seen an unending series of them, interwoven with periods of greater stability and relative harmony in seeing more clearly the progress toward a “more perfect union” imagined by the founding generation who wrote the Constitution, our guiding blueprint for self-governance.

Even with these important continuities across generations and the crises and ongoing democratic debates binding all generations, however, we now need to understand better the epistemic crisis facing us that makes democratic self-governance challenging—and that challenge is intertwined with the truth-seeking mission of our epistemic institutions. This new understanding may enable us to have better conversations, to ground ourselves more in reality and a sense of shared facts, to learn both individual and collective humility, and reduce the affective polarization that grips the public discourse. Living out democratic norms together is one step to rebuilding trust in those with whom we disagree, and also in renewing our institutions, rather than seeking to destroy them, but instead, reforming them as part of “thinking and acting anew.”

A New Voice

One important new voice whose thinking I find invaluable in the current epistemic crisis is that of the British philosopher Dan Williams. As Americans, we should have learned to shed our parochialism and see ourselves through outsiders’ eyes (D.H. Lawrence and Charles Dickens come to mind, with the grander example of Tocqueville in the background, watching American habits and mores emerge early). In his Conspicuous Cognition substack, Williams has written cogently about misinformation, conspiracy theories, and media narratives that affect popular discourse—all topics which librarians and all academics should be interested in as inquirers into truth and scholarly credibility, and learners at a high level of professionalism. His article “America’s Epistemological Crisis”, exemplifies his nuanced thinking about the epistemic divisions afflicting our society in politics and in the larger discourse.

Williams’ core method in this article is to peel back the layers of confusion surrounding the “bothsidesism” of different realities which different political parties—the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe—follow in pitting themselves against each other in their struggle for power. He draws on a significant article by political scientist Jeffrey Friedman which delineates the “naïve realism” adopted by these two tribes in American life. He describes the “naïve realism”, as Friedman does, as the illusion that individuals and group have about their direct possession of unmediated truth in a complicated society, about policies, agendas, trustworthiness of experts, even collections of evidence and facts. Such an illusion draws on the landmark work of Walter Lippman, who described how most citizens construct “pseudo-environments” for themselves, based on the very partial information available to them, or their inability to grapple with the complexities of democratic governance. The result is that individuals and groups mistake their very partial understandings and beliefs as unmediated “truth”, and act accordingly.

For Friedman, and to a large degree for Williams, there are two different orders of “naïve realism” operating in the American population. The first-order “naïve realism” is found most commonly among the Red Tribe (Republicans, many conservatives), who rely on “commonsense” of the people, a form of epistemic populism, to understand reality. Experts and elites—and certainly, in recent years—scientists, establishment institutions, and the much-maligned “mainstream media”—are distrusted in favor of what one can see and observe directly as part of a very reductive individual interpretation or framing. This “naïve realism” contrasts sharply with the third-order “naïve realism” of the Blue Tribe (Democrats, many progressives), which elevates experts, scholars, scientists, in an often unquestioning manner, and which in turn demeans the “commonsense” of the wider public. Again, this epistemic divide in recent years has exposed the fault lines in our culture, over matters large and small—COVID policies, policing and racial prejudice, election denialism, climate change and its pace, gender ideology, affirmative action, abortion and reproductive rights, and of course, immigration and national sovereignty.

While Williams agrees partially with Friedman’s analysis of how these two “naïve realisms” function in our society—in how they affect politics and public discourse, especially, he is not in total agreement with Friedman that these two types of belief formation are equally meritorious or that charitable understanding must be extended to both of them in equal measure because of some nods to “post-truth.” Williams points out the fallacies of the Blue Tribe in its unquestioning devotion to fallible experts and scientists, but points to a graver, much more sobering problem: the floodtide of conspiracism and falsehoods in the media ecosystem—and especially into the Rightwing media outlets—that affect Red Tribe’s perceptions, making their “pseudo-environments” totally closed to additional evidence. In effect, the colloquially labelled “echo chambers” of the Red Tribe exemplify what Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute called “epistemic closure”, in a prophetic blog article written in 2010, about his conservative compatriots who spent too much time reading and listening to only rightwing media outlets.

These are large generalizations, to be sure, and Williams describes his account only as a high-level sketch of how the epistemic crisis has developed over several decades. A useful counterpoint is the “Hidden Tribes” report from More in Common, which based on survey data, posits seven different tribes, ranging from “progressive activists” to “devoted conservatives,” with gradations of belief and commitment on various issues in between—and a larger group in the middle comprising the “Exhausted Majority.” But even this more nuanced description of political and cultural divides refers to the intense affective polarization at play, the lack of social trust across groups, and the inability of many citizens to know what to believe or think about the country’s very complex challenges. The fracturing into competing “realities” congeals into distortions, misperceptions, and too often, an unmooring from shared facts that make dialogue and self-governance possible.

The Epistemic Crisis in Culture and Politics

Williams’ account of the American epistemic divide may provide one compelling explanation of our predicament as a society that now has fractured with competing depictions of reality in different tribe members’ heads. In a country founded on Enlightenment ideas and ensuing practices—for individual rights, due process in an adversarial legal system, freedom of thought and expression, checks and balances in formal constitutional arrangements, and an individual and collective self-improvement through science and epistemic institutions such as universities—how do we overcome this divide with these two factions pitted against each other for power and control? How do we sustain Lincoln’s belief in the “vast future” for coming generations?

We will first have to acknowledge there are indeed two “reality distortion zones”, corresponding to the two modes of “naïve realism” described by Friedman and Williams—not just one. Many of us dedicated to heterodox, dissenting, divergent, and often contrarian viewpoints set against the prevailing liberal, or more often, progressive monoculture of the academy are rightfully concerned about the myriad infringements on academic and intellectual freedom, viewpoint diversity, and the censoriousness that results in punishments of individual scholars and cancellations of events, amply documented in FIRE’s Scholars under Fire and Disinvitations databases. We are concerned, with very good reason, about the corruption of scholarship and inquiry by activists who advance agendas not in the spirit of disinterested truth-seeking, but in the manner of ideologues unrestrained by sound scholarly methods and values. We see the harms done by recruitment and hiring of only like-minded scholars through formulaic diversity statements and continued trainings about questionable practices about identity, and divisive doctrines about implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotype threat, that are not empirical. In general, we see threats to empiricism as a great barrier that we must overcome.

However, enlarging the aperture of concern will surely reveal the other “reality distortion zone.” If the Blue Tribe controls many of our elite institutions, including many of our higher education institutions and professional associations, the Red Tribe, in many cases, has amplified “commonsense reality” in the larger discourse to such a degree that calls for more specific interventions in the professional work of individual faculty—their academic freedom in the classroom—may result in minute surveillance of faculty teaching practices. The suspicion and distrust of all “elite” institutions has also become an enduring trait of the Red Tribe--with the irony of somehow ignoring “elite” conservative or rightwing institutions such as the Federalist Society, the largely conservative Supreme Court, the Teneo Network, the Marble Freedom Trust, the NatCons (National Conservatives), the Claremont Institute, the formulators of Project 2025, the very large conservative media ecosystem itself, and some very transactional tech entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley.

These rightwing or populist-authoritarian elite institutions and individuals have created their own reality distortion zone in supposedly supporting the citizenry at large rather than different subtribes of conservative activism, often masquerading as the new “populism.” The Red Tribe’s “commonsense” notions, by themselves, also cannot address the serious debates about climate change; about waves of pandemic infection, or current concerns about bird flu, that may engulf us in the future after the politicized divides of the last one; or about the nuances of artificial intelligence and its implications for the future of work and meaning in a profession, and other very challenging problems.

We need thoughtful individuals, groups, and definitely experts and scholars, from across both political tribes, to elevate these challenging discussions, in combination with a broader public, who in turn need more reliable information sources, better civic education, increased scientific and statistical literacy, more knowledge of our own history and political system, some grasp of world affairs and the international economic system, some ability with critical reasoning in assessing probabilities, and some ability to assess the relative merits and trustworthiness of experts. True viewpoint diversity can only flourish with a healthier civil discourse across these differences, but surely a more knowledge-based discourse will help the flourishing.

This is truly an enormous agenda, in remedying these gaps. There should be reciprocal respect here wherever possible between scholars invested in the public sphere, and citizens learning through public programming offered by epistemic institutions—rather than only the clanging and shouting of “influencers” on social media and in the public sphere generally. In effect, there needs to be a new “public scholarship” agenda that transcends these divisions. Both Red and Blue tribes need to transcend their limitations in order to renew our epistemic institutions, rather than each tribe continuing down its own path even further into “epistemic closure”, and not listening to and hearing each other. To think and act anew is already an imperative for responsible citizenship and will become more so.

Terrible Simplifiers and the Promise of Epistemic Liberalism

Prophetic voices from outside our country, from the nineteenth century, soon after Lincoln’s time and the great conflict that he led the nation through, warned of consequences of new strands of thought with totalizing premises, inherited strangely enough from another part of the Enlightenment. The great Swiss historian Jacob Burkhardt, in an 1889 letter, referred to “terrible simplifiers,” describing his fears of what the 20^th century would bring, with totalizing demagogues and regimes, the hyper-rational autocrats who would demand to remake societies according to mathematical diktats rather than organic leadership. This was obviously a prophecy well fulfilled with the rise of various forms of fascism and communism just a few decades after Burkhardt wrote the letter. The signature trait of these demagogues, as foretold by Burkhardt, was simplification, no understanding of, or interest in, the complexities of human society and human behavior, to build perfectly ordered cultures of obedient workers or devotees of “blood and soil” traditions.

According to this interpretation of Burkhardt, the “terrible simplifiers” are individuals

who would release us from the agonies of ambiguity, relativity, judgment, and decision by offering us ways to follow and commands to obey that could be accepted without the efforts of continual reflection and the balancing of values against one another. The terrible simplifiers came with a vengeance in the twentieth century, and the history of our times is essentially the story of the damage they have done to fundamental decencies and that atmosphere of civility within which orderly community life is possible. Whether we think of the terrible simplifiers as the Communist revolutionaries or the Nazi reactionaries and the establishments that each created, or the more recent simplifiers who are unconcerned with ideas or values and are simply interested in the achievement, possession, and manipulation of power as an end in itself, the problem is the same. How can we rescue what remains of civilization and sanity from the forces, human and institutional, that scorn constructive dialogue and attempt to simplify life by removing from it all elements of doubt, comparison of relative values, and above all thoughtful and humane participation by the ordinary person in the risks and choices of civilized communication? ¹

We should readily be able to point out the “terrible simplifiers” on both sides of the political and culture wars of the present, but too often we in heterodox circles point out only too easily the dangers of the woke identitarian Left in the academy and leading cultural institutions, while muting our concerns about the rising populist authoritarian Right, a global phenomenon amply documented by Applebaum and others.

The downstream consequences of amorphous Critical Theory-derived ideology in the academy are well-known. These include the meta-constructs of the oppressor-oppression dichotomy; the sacralization of minority identities; the concept creep of “harm” into language and the resulting language-policing; the metastasizing of the original theory of intersectionality into over-ingenious combinations of racial, gender, sexual, occupational, and geographical identities as a way of accounting for uniqueness of individuals; and the convenient falsifications of history regarding “settler-colonialism” across the world in hugely different contexts. This farrago of unempirical and therefore questionable ideas is all very crude and constitutes its own group “pseudo-environment” with a gloss of Theory patched over it, while appearing to explain individuals and how human societies should be organized or, in some cases, made purer under diktat.

For example, a very current, and totally empirical, investigation of well-intentioned trainings that takes parts of these several identitarian ideas and coalesces them into DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) precepts, conducted by Lee Jussim and others, shows that such trainings have no positive impact, and in reality, may turn those involved against each other, with more division and suspicion than before the trainings occurred. The “hostile attribution bias” is the result for trainings and pedagogies that especially use an anti-oppressive framing, with more racial prejudice, authoritarian policing, punitive interventions, and even more focus on anti-oppressive interventions at the end of a cycle. To say the least, this study suggests a form of thought control and illiberal coercion among some forms of DEI training. This an excellent example of “terrible simplification” at work in dealing with the complexities of human identity, with real human beings as subjects.

However, terrible simplifiers are at work on the populist Right as well. In the media ecosystem that Dan Williams aptly describes as saturated with falsehoods and conspiracy theories, the failings of the mainstream press are well-known and often commented on, and those flaws of gaps in coverage, missing context, and mistaken facts are well-described by reasonably objective viewers—and corrections of facts and changes in emphasis and context are often made by responsible editors in the mainstream press. At least some professional standards are still possible there. As Williams explains, however, the media ecosystem runs now according to the “marketplace of rationalizations”, whereby viewers and readers are looking for rationalizations or justifications for their beliefs, their priors—the “demand side”-- and there are many suppliers among media outlets who compete with each other for attention, for clicks and views, to supply the most compelling, outraging, entertaining, amusing, or algorithmically addictive consumption by viewers and readers to confirm their “priors.”

For many citizens, “influencers” replace the so-called “mainstream press” —with podcasters and social media entrepreneurs, with no knowledge or expertise, assuming primacy because of their vibes, visual and aural appeal, and freedom from facts and empirical reality. This combination of effects creates what social psychologist Jay van Bavel calls the “funhouse mirror” unreality of social media, where a small group of entrepreneurs and “influencers” create illusions for everyone else watching or lurking. Similarly, information scientist and human-computer interaction specialist Kate Starbird and others have described the “influencer culture” associated with rightwing populism as a form of improv theatre: the use of memes and images, exciting storylines, trolling opponents in politics or the media, callins from live audiences, and a dynamic colorful experience with a few memorable themes in “storytelling”, with facts and alternative explanations for complex issues receding into the background. The “influencer culture” entertains even as it distorts, flattens, and simplifies.

That confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and tribal signaling in general exists in human beings should not surprise us. That it exists at such scale and in such accelerated form in a polluted information environment should give us pause. Democratic self-governance is hugely challenged by an information environment marked by entertainment or constant self-titillation with tidbits of decontextualized information, data, memes, or “narratives” and unreliable sources, rather than reliable ones based on professional and ethical standards. Without professionally written and carefully investigated news stories that help readers think more carefully and consider various points of view, we have an enormous problem just in the opportunity costs of attention and time wasted on distracting and unreliable (though entertaining) sources rather than reliable ones. Incentive structures now are working strongly against reliable and accurate sources and experts.

The rightwing media ecosystem is the greatest offender in not following journalistic norms that at least aim for these better goals of journalism—and the result is less informed viewers and readers. Economist Dean Baker, based on Ipsos/Reuters polling preceding the recent election, identified an actively misinformed public, mostly in the Red Tribe. In turn, he pointed out the same polling data tracking true and false responses to a survey based on official government sources on inflation, immigration, and crime to fellow economist Brad DeLong, who describes the “broken media ecosystem” which perpetuated misunderstandings and misperceptions about basic facts regarding the economy and immigration in the election. A large concern about accuracy of information also comes from Nieman Lab researchers, who point out the increasingly partisan divide about basic facts and external reality itself. A recent Pew Research report also confirms that members of the Red Tribe, along with young voters, increasingly get their news from unfiltered social media platforms rather than mainstream journalism, whereas Blue Tribe members still continue to read more from what we can still call mainstream media outlets (liberal and conservative). Media consumption preferences are increasingly divided and partisan, and while reflecting Williams’ “marketplace of rationalizations”—the demand side--are also very likely further deepening the epistemic crisis.

Another, and related feature, is the rise of conservative or populist activists with agendas for control and overthrowing what they see as the total grip of woke progressives within leading cultural institutions. While that grip is undeniable in many instances, the hyper partisanship in the other direction is integral to the populist Right’s own reality distortion zone. Their agendas coalesce most strongly in the Project 2025 blueprint for the next administration, especially in provisions there for changing accreditation standards for colleges and universities to force their own kind of thought control instead of reforming those standards with faculty governance committees that will reflect the full range of perspectives within disciplines and on campuses. In addition, calls for establishing a new online American Academy funded by taxing the endowments of existing private institutions shows little understanding of how the best parts of higher learning should work—grappling with others, as a community of learners and scholars, with complexities of history, politics, economics, international conflicts, cultures, languages, and literatures—instead of starting another credentialing cartel. The intention to simplify is obvious in such initiatives—and these agendas amplify the populist right’s own reality distortion zone.

Alternatives such as centers for citizenship and civic dialogue at some universities, and the foundations of liberal education (University of Florida, UNC-Chapel Hill, Ohio State) and at least some elements of classic liberal arts at the new University of Austin, hew more closely to promoting diversity of thought and transcending reality distortion zones of both the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe.

Returning to (and Renewing) the Liberal Faith

The reality distortion zones present us with a false binary. We can choose to participate in one or another out of incentives of one kind or another, for group solidarity and tribalism, for career prospects, to self-censor and not attempt to grapple with our own priors and predilections—but we have before us another option firmly rooted in the best traditions of this country. We can instead choose epistemic liberalism—that tradition that values diversity of thought, free expression, human dignity, individual rights as part of a community, and the willingness to self-correct and become better citizens. These core principles live in the great repository of speeches, public statements, and letters of our best leaders and thinkers, here in the U.S., and in other liberal democracies. From Jefferson and Madison, to Lincoln; from John Stuart Mill to Karl Popper to Jonathan Rauch to Anne Applebaum, the liberal democratic faith is our best hope for transcending “terrible simplifications,” promoted by determined ideologues and “influencers” with no sense of proportion or degree, and the reality distortion zones they create, and that are, on both sides, illiberal, stultifying, and monocultural.

One of the most clarifying articles that summarizes various forms of liberalism is Emily Chamlee-Wright’s “The Four Corners of Liberalism.” This explanation illuminates how various strands of liberalism (political, economic, cultural, and epistemic) grew out of Enlightenment thought to form a tapestry of meaning, and a map for anchoring oneself, for those searching for their own place in sociopolitical reality, as professionals, and as citizens. Chamlee-Wright describes “epistemic liberalism” in this way:

The third corner of liberalism—what I call epistemic liberalism—represents the formal rules and informal norms that invite the open exchange of ideas and sustain the collaborative effort to seek truth. Freedom of speech is an essential starting point. But epistemic liberalism goes further, carrying with it expectations of honesty and an obligation to exercise critical reason. It demands that we abide by recognized standards of evidence and subject our arguments to the scrutiny of others. When people insist that universities adhere to the principle of academic freedom, that college campuses promote the open and fearless exchange of ideas, they are giving voice to this corner of the liberal project.

The great challenge—and opportunity—for scholars and citizens alike is to strive to live up to this standard of critical reason used well in the public square, in our debates, our writing, our conversations with those with whom we disagree, and our ongoing willingness to live with these norms as part of the ongoing American experiment in democracy. Intellectual and academic freedom are vital in this conception of liberalism, but fallibilism and freeing ourselves from the certitudes and simplifications of the reality distortion zones is the key method and attitude in making epistemic liberalism a reality.

I think of Abraham Lincoln as a monumental figure in the country’s through line of epistemic liberalism—evolving in his beliefs with new evidence, living through terrible doubts and uncertainties in the middle of the Civil War, and keeping his faith in the core ideas of the Founders and in his own principles. His speech given in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, before becoming President, sums up his core convictions and his faith in liberal democracy:

Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south -- let all Americans -- let all lovers of liberty everywhere -- join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.

Thinking and acting anew means re-establishing contact with the realities of our common life, as best we can determine them, with a determination for truth-seeking tempered by individual and collective humility.

In his first Inaugural Address, just on the precipice of the Civil War, Lincoln said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” We shall now see whether the epistemic breach in our own time can be healed to avoid a new and imponderable conflict, and restore the trust needed to be fellow citizens in both word and deed.

1. Meserve, Harry. (1974). “Prescription for Sanity,” Journal of Religion and Health, v. 13, 225-228.

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