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A deeper lens on saving democracy and how to engage · Save Democracy

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  Welcome to Save Democracy.
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  We have a very special guest today.
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  Jay Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of
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  Philosophy and Buddhist Studies, Emeritus at Smith College, Visiting
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  Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, and Professor
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  of Philosophy at Melbourne University.
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  Professor Garfield's research addresses topics in the philosophy of mind,
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  metaphysics, the history of modern Indian philosophy, epistemology,
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  ethics, the nature of normativity, and topics in Buddhist philosophy.
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  He's the author or editor of over 30 books and over 200 articles.
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  Firstly, Jay, can I just say hello.
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  Hello.
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  It's very nice to meet you, Katherine, and very nice to have you with me.
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  I'm really honored to be on your show.
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  Oh, it's an honor to have you here.
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  Thank you, Jay.
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  So just to explain a little bit of an understanding as to why
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  we're having this conversation.
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  So the journey of mindfulness that I've been on for some time, off and on, has
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  led me to get a bit more decluttered around how I see the world, and to
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  also become calmer about how I engage in the world, and also to kind of get
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  a bit of an understanding what's the next best thing for me to focus on.
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  So it helped to get greater clarity.
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  And underneath a lot of the issues in the world are the foundations of
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  what we're all walking on and standing upon, which for many of us is democracy
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  in various states of disrepair.
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  And so I thought I should really turn to this, and to offer an invitation
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  to be on a journey to understand what democracy's really all about, why
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  it's so important, why it's important to the quality of our lives, and if
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  we're not careful, it can slip away.
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  And then also to understand, how to calmly and constructively engage in
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  the world without, you know, getting too knocked sideways by the noise and
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  the fear and the rapid pace of change.
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  and so Jay, just wanted to give a general introduction as to why we wanted
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  to go down this journey with you, and I'm really grateful that you're here.
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  Whatever you'd like to explore.
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  Wow, that's a really interesting set of questions, and a
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  interesting set of problems.
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  I suppose it's worth recalling that when we think about democracy,
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  a lot of people think about democracy in terms of elections.
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  You've got a democratic country if you hold a bunch of elections,
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  and I honestly think that's really mistaking, a minor feature-- Well,
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  not a minor feature, but a feature of democracy for what democracy is.
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  Elections are a mechanism.
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  They're not democracy, in effect.
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  And it's more important, I think, to recognize that democracy means
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  that we're organizing our societies together by the demos, by the people.
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  And it's also important to recognize that what that means is we do that
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  because we think that that form of organization has a legitimating function,
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  and if we lose sight of that process of legitimation, we really start losing
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  sight of what democracy is all about.
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  So for instance, when we have people who are holding public offices and they
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  perform certain kinds of actions, we think those actions are legitimate if
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  they're in accord with laws and statutes, illegitimate if they violate them.
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  But we can also ask a question about laws and statutes.
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  Are they legitimate or are they themselves anti-democratic or somehow, venal?
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  When we do that, we often measure them against the Constitution,
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  either an implicit constitution as in Great Britain or an explicit
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  written constitution such as here in Australia or in the United States.
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  And we think that the function of a constitution, something that we've
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  all kind of assented to, is that it can legitimate or determine the
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  illegitimacy of laws and actions.
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  But then if we ask the question, the very deeper question, what
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  legitimates that constitution?
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  Then we're really up against it.
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  I mean, we could try to tell a sort-- the sort of mythology of the social
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  contract tradition and say that once upon a time, our forebears got
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  together in a jungle and organized a meeting to, to ratify a constitution.
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  That doesn't do very much because, of course, the very fact that some people
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  some time in the past agreed to or might have agreed to something doesn't
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  bind us or legitimate anything now.
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  A constitution gets its legitimacy because of common consent, because we have enough
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  solidarity that we're all behind it.
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  And what that means is that human solidarity is really what's at
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  the base of democratic legitimacy, and we often lose track of that.
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  And I think that when we see democracy in decline, what we're really
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  seeing is solidarity in decline.
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  And sometimes the decline of that solidarity is, we might say, accidental,
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  maybe things are happening so that some people start distrusting others.
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  But it may also be that it's intentional, that those who think that they can benefit
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  from a decline of democracy actually sow divisions and break solidarity.
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  And I think that's what we're seeing in the rise of kind of divisive
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  populism, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and so forth, that we're
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  seeing in so much of the decline of democracy around the world today.
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  Anyway, that's just something that I've been thinking about quite
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  a bit lately, and thinking that when we really ask what's at the
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  basis of a democratic society, it's not a bunch of laws, it's trust.
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  It's mutual trust that builds solidarity, that allows us to think that we're
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  all roughly in the same project.
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  And trust can allow us not only to agree, but it can also allow
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  us to disagree with civility.
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  You and I might disagree about a policy, or we might disagree about the value of
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  a work of art, or we might disagree about the wisdom of a certain kind of practice.
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  We might even disagree about matters of etiquette.
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  But if we trust one another, then we trust one another to engage in
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  discussion and disagreement thoughtfully, responsibly, charitably, and with the
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  goal of resolving problems rather than with the goal of exacerbating them.
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  When trust erodes, democracy erodes.
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  And so very often what we have to ask ourselves if we're trying to
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  preserve democracy or to strengthen a democracy is how we build trust
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  and how we build social solidarity.
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  So you're really pointing to trust and solidarity, and there's just this sense in
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  the way things are for many of us in urban life, in online life, that there's a sort
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  of increasing atomization, and there's less of an inclination towards solidarity
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  in the way our lives operate today.
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  Yep.
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  The way we go about our daily life.
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  There's a sort of epidemic of loneliness, and people exist
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  within bubbles online and offline.
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  People live in gated communities.
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  There seems to be social forces at play that really exacerbate this atomization-
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  Yep
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  … and go directly against what you're talking about of solidarity and trust.
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  A lot of the people I've spoken to talk about the importance of civil
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  society for the health of a democracy, and that it starts in the church
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  hall, and the community center, and forming a group locally, and building
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  networks and, and this again speaks to solidarity and trust because you're
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  mixing with your local community, and they're all different types of people.
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  You're no longer in a bubble, and there's a gradual sort of increasing trust and
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  solidarity by the nature of that effort, no matter how challenging it can be
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  sometimes, you've got a single mission, and you're doing some endeavor together
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  and learning to disagree agreeably.
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  And so I just wanted to speak to this question of how do we rebuild
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  trust and solidarity in the context of an increasing… all the forces
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  going the other way, or at least it seems that way sometimes.
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  I think some of that involves something to which you adverted at the very beginning
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  when you used the word mindfulness, which I'm hearing in part as a kind of
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  attentiveness, and it requires being attentive to what is valuable in our
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  own lives, but also to what is being done to erode trust and solidarity
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  so that we can better resist it.
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  Because a lot of what happens happens below a level of reflective attention
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  and affects us very deeply even though we don't notice what's going on.
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  That's when it's most powerful.
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  An eighth century Buddhist philosopher who I like to work
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  on a lot, Shantideva, argued that moral vice always begins in fear.
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  And so what he was particularly concerned with was fear of death, which leads us
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  to try to strengthen our own egos, to try to find a way to live forever, which
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  leads us to gate our community so that nobody can come in and harm us, which
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  leads us to try to amass as many goods as we can for ourselves and to see life
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  as a zero-sum game, that leads us to make sure we undermine others so they
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  don't become our rivals and so forth.
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  And that fear can be extraordinarily powerful, and that's what
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  really erodes solidarity.
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  And if you pay attention to populist rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that really
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  is aimed at undermining democracy, a great deal of it, if not almost all of
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  it, is devoted to raising levels of fear.
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  Fear of immigrants, fear of crime, fear of change, fear of the decay of
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  a particular kind of moral order or family arrangements, fear of what equity
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  might mean for people who have enjoyed privileged positions and so forth.
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  And it's the cultivation of fear that is the mechanism by means of which opponents
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  of democracy really undermine it.
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  If we don't notice that, if we think that, for instance, a debate about immigration
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  policy is simply a neutral debate about how to manage our borders or a neutral
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  debate about, who should get visas and who shouldn't and that's being engaged in a
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  dispassionate way, we've missed the point.
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  The point is that what's happening is somebody's trying
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  to stoke fear and divide us.
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  If we think that a debate about parental leave and whether we should be offering
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  parental leave to young parents is simply a debate about employment policy
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  rather than an attempt to raise fear about women entering the workplace,
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  then we've missed the point completely.
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  And so I think that it's really important to raise our level of attentiveness to
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  when our emotions are being manipulated and to when our fear is being aroused
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  so that we can say, "Wait a minute, you don't have a right to make me afraid.
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  I'm not going to be afraid of this." And to engage in a kind of resoluteness
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  and a kind of banding together with those who are victimized in various ways
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  by that fear-mongering, to recognize that we are in a common position, all
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  the victims of that sort of rhetoric.
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  I think that's really important.
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  I mean, it sounds, in a way, kind of obvious or kind of silly, but
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  that's really the root of it.
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  When we understand that the root of democracy is in trust and solidarity, and
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  that the fundamental way to attack that is to inspire irrational fear, we've got to
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  be attentive, to the nature of that fear.
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  And so in response to that, we have to cultivate alternative attitudes,
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  attitudes of genuine friendship and solidarity, attitudes of care, for
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  those who are immediately suffering as a part of that, attitudes of a kind of
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  impartiality that doesn't kind of take our own position as somehow privileged.
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  And if we can't do that, then we kind of deserve to lose our democracy
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  because those are the foundations of a democratic order, our very
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  deep psychological attitudes and shared psychological attitudes.
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  That's what really generates this.
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  Doesn't mean agreement about everything, but it does mean the sense that
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  whatever our disagreements, our unity is far more important than that.
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  So when you take the, for instance, the official motto of the United States,
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  something al- almost nobody even reflects on anymore, 'E Pluribus Unum'.
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  It's not that there was one nation out of 13 colonies when that slogan was coined.
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  It was that you get one populace out of diverging views if you've
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  got a basis for unity, and that unity is a sense of shared purpose.
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  That's not to say that there was a shared purpose at that time.
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  A lot of people were enslaved.
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  But it is to say that that was an ideal, and an ideal, I think, worth fighting for.
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  Yes.
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  And you mentioned a key word, which is not easy, impartiality.
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  Yes.
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  And I'm thinking especially in terms of people in the community who may not
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  be consciously spreading fear, may not be consciously trying to manipulate
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  others, but are perhaps being manipulated themselves, and are kind of spokespeople
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  for the fears you talk about because the people behind them, or at least stoking
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  the fear, know which buttons to press.
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  And so there might be this sort of unintentional,
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  unconscious spreading of fear.
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  And if you're facing that in your community, and it's, it's
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  something I'm scared about, frankly.
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  You know, how do I… I mean, it's nice in theory
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  . Yeah.
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  But how do I kind of really try to bring that energy of solidarity
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  underneath all of the noise?
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  When I'm meeting somebody face to face who has very strong views that are
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  very fearful, and I'm trying to kind of find, not privilege my own view-
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  Right
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  … and try to find this impartiality and try to find a kind of meaningful moment where
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  we both see each other's humanity, and perhaps it diffuses any negative energy
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  that may have arisen, and there's this sort of base of solidarity going forward.
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  It's interacting with people who are maybe less conscious than, the
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  fear mongers, but are in effect spreading fear without really
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  realizing that, if that makes sense.
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  Yeah.
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  I think there's a few things to say about that.
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  Quite a few in fact.
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  One is that- Oftentimes what we're looking at in circumstances of that
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  kind are the deliberate cultivation of what Marx felicitously called false
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  consciousness, so that people are being told, that their interests lie in one
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  place where they in fact lie in another.
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  Ex-President of the United States, Harry Truman, once said that you
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  can always count on the American working class to vote against their
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  own interests, and that was because people carefully educated members of
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  that class to misalign their interests and to believe that their interests
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  were always aligned with capital.
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  And sometimes what's necessary in order to begin to build the basis of a conversation
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  is a conversation about what our interests are, what we hope for, what our goals are,
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  and to begin by finding whatever shreds of common ground there are, because it's in
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  discovering those shreds of common ground that you can begin to then address the
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  questions that divide, that divide us.
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  It only makes sense
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  to begin a conversation where we disagree, if we can find out where we agree so
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  that there's some premises that we share.
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  And also, again, to always be aware, as you pointed out, that when we enter
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  conversation, whether it's political conversation, moral conversation,
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  conversation about art, conversation about the weather, that we begin that
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  by suggesting that the conversation is a joint practice, not I giving
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  a lecture to somebody, and not an attempt necessarily to convince
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  anybody that they need to agree.
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  Sometimes when we begin a conversation in the context of disagreement,
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  each party comes in with the view that I win the game if I get the
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  other person to agree with me.
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  And then the goal doesn't become building a relationship, the
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  goal becomes winning a debate.
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  It's extraordinarily important, again, to use your idea about mindfulness, to be
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  attentive to our own tendency to do that.
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  And if I find that I'm in a conversation and what I'm trying to do is win, it might
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  be a good time to take a long, deep breath and say to the other person, "Look," and
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  to say it honestly, "It's not important to me that you agree with me, what I want
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  to do is to understand your perspective, and I'd like you to understand mine"
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  and if we can come away with an understanding of how two people
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  who agree about so much disagree about some particular points,
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  then maybe that will allow us to reflect more deeply on those points.
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  And to continually bring the point of the conversation back to mutual
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  understanding and discovery of common ground rather than trying to win a debate.
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  And I have to say that in much of the world, our politicians, our
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  leaders, even our religious leaders don't always set a good example,
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  for that kind of conversation.
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  Very often, public discourse is set up as debate, whether it's question
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  time in parliament or a debate between candidates or the editorial pages
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  of a newspaper where we find one conservative and one liberal and have
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  them fight about a particular issue.
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  It just goes on again and again and again, and we valorize that kind of
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  gladiatorial approach to discourse.
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  A gladiatorial approach to discourse is a way of generating divisions,
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  reifying them, and perpetuating them rather than a way of, of repair.
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  Repair requires attentiveness and humility, and if we
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  can't speak with humility and attentiveness, then we're hopeless
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  It's worrying
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  because where I sit, in the UK and where I'm from, Australia, if you
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  approach, say, politics for example, with anything other than, "Oh, I've
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  got alligator skin and, you know, I can handle the robustness of the fight, the
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  gladiatorial combat." If you have anything less than that, it's a deficiency.
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  It's perceived as you're unsuited to politics.
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  Yeah.
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  I wanted to speak too about the noise, and I have learnt through my own journey
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  how to cultivate peace in my day, even if I'm in the middle of a lot of demanding,
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  activities, or I'm in a big urban environment or whatever the different
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  contributions are to the noise, or maybe personally I'm going through something.
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  And so I've been able to
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  cultivate that so that I can be very selective about news sources,
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  very selective about what I'm 'consuming', as the Buddhists would
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  say in all the ways that's meant.
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  And I just wondered if you could speak to that, because a lot of our listeners
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  are worried about democratic decline, but they're also affected or part of
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  this modern world, and you constantly hear it again and again, "I just need
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  to, you know, get in a rowboat and snip the rope and drift away because
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  I, I can't cope with this anymore." And especially listening to geopolitics
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  and how things are changing so rapidly, it's so discombobulating for people.
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  And I wondered if you could just speak to the kind of ways
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  in which you can cultivate actual calm and that's a much more
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  nourishing way to look after yourself as you engage, rather than retreating,
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  and just saying, "No thanks. I'm not having anything to do with it."
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  Because we actually need people to be calm and constructive and contribute.
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  So just, yeah, whatever you can share on that front, that'd be great.
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  Yeah.
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  I think one of the things to think about in that context is anger, versus patience.
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  I
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  think anger is the most destructive attitude and the most destructive
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  emotion that we can have.
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  And again, a lot of political discourse is shot through with
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  anger, and anger is often valorized.
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  And anger is often valorized not only, by people in power, but
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  by people whose hearts are, in a
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  certain sense, in the right place.
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  People who are involved in liberation movements, people who are involved in,
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  the defense of the downtrodden will sometimes argue that if you're not angry
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  at injustice, then you really don't care.
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  Now, it's worth thinking about what anger does to us.
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  For all of the people who are listening to this, ask yourself when the last
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  time you said to yourself, "God, I was so angry, I completely lost it.
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  I was really at my best.
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  I was thinking so clearly.
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  I'm so proud of what I did then." Anger is one of those emotions
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  that's always destabilizing.
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  It decreases our ability to think rationally.
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  It causes us to do things that we later have to apologize for.
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  It dims our perception so that we can't hear and see as well.
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  Even if we were to turn to domains of conflict, when you think about,
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  say, somebody studying martial arts, the first thing they're taught is
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  get your emotion out of the conflict.
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  Get your anger out of the conflict, because when you're angry, you
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  don't perceive well, you don't react well, you don't think rationally.
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  We're often encouraged to get angry, sometimes for bad reasons,
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  sometimes for good reasons.
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  I would say always resist that, and if there are stimuli that you know
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  are going to make you angry, then as long as you know they're gonna make
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  you angry, stay away from them or think carefully and slowly, in another
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  frame, about how you could engage with those without becoming angry.
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  Now, that doesn't mean you have to approve of injustice and that
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  you have to approve of wrongdoing.
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  It does mean that your disapproval should take the form of what I like to call
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  righteous indignation rather than anger.
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  The great sixth century Buddhist scholar Buddhaghosa, when talking about the
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  cardinal Buddhist virtues, that we've mentioned earlier, friendship, care,
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  equanimity, being able to rejoice in the welfare of others, pointed out that each
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  of these virtues, and any virtue you can mention, always comes both with a far
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  enemy and a near enemy, to use his terms.
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  So when we talk about friendship, the far enemy might be hostility,
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  but the near enemy is partiality, wanting good for somebody else
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  because it makes me feel good.
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  And one of the things that Buddhaghosa points out is that genuine
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  virtues, whether these are moral virtues, civic virtues, political
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  virtues, are always non-egocentric.
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  But there are always vices lurking around the corner that feel just like
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  they're virtues, but are egocentric.
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  So if I get really angry because injustice makes me feel bad, then
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  the reason for my action is my feeling bad, not the injustice.
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  If I can have indignation with regard to injustice and know that regardless of
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  whether it makes me feel bad or not, it's wrong and ought to be countered, then I
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  can think rationally and dispassionately.
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  So kind of the moral of this story that begins with thinking about anger is to
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  begin by thinking about anger, but then end up thinking about egocentricity.
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  Because the more our moral life is governed by our egocentricity, by how
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  we ourselves feel and react, the less effective we're going to be as agents,
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  whether political agents or moral agents.
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  And the more non-egocentric we can be, the more we can really take others'
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  interests as reasons for action, or more general principles as reasons for
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  action rather than our own interests, the more effective we're going to be.
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  So I think that calm is best found in a kind of relinquishing of egocentricity.
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  Agitation comes when I start thinking too much about my own situation.
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  Shantideva
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  has a beautiful line in Bodhicharyavatara where he says, "All of the ills in the
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  world are caused by people pursuing their own happiness, and all of the
• 26:28
  happiness in the world is caused by people pursuing others' happiness."
• 26:32
  And I think that's really important.
• 26:33
  It says, "Stop being egocentric and you can be an agent for change. Be egocentric,
• 26:38
  and you're going to be an absolutely incompetent moral agent and an incompetent
• 26:43
  political agent." And when we think about the politicians we all despise
• 26:47
  the most, they're the most egocentric
• 26:54
  I love how you pointed to - many things you just said
• 26:59
  - but one I just pull one thread is the, the state it puts you in, and you just
• 27:09
  become less efficacious.
• 27:10
  You lose clarity.
• 27:13
  Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 27:15
  I just wanted to ask you a question.
• 27:17
  This is a little self-indulgent and, uh… But there may be listeners out
• 27:20
  there who know what I'm talking about.
• 27:23
  when you're a person who is a bit of a visual person and you envision different
• 27:29
  futures for society and community and humanity and the planet and, but you dare
• 27:36
  not say them out loud sometimes because,
• 27:41
  they can be quite positive because you can see and you can perceive human potential.
• 27:48
  But you just become a subject of ridicule if you put them to paper, unless you turn
• 27:55
  it into a fictional story of some kind.
• 27:57
  Yeah.
• 27:57
  Or a song.
• 27:58
  And I just wondered if you got any kind of tips for us, you know, people who are
• 28:04
  like that and have this desire, strong desire to project positive visions for
• 28:09
  humanity, but, whoa, it's a hostile environment for that kind of thing.
• 28:14
  Yeah.
• 28:15
  Barack Obama called that the audacity of hope.
• 28:18
  Yes
• 28:19
  … and, when he said that, I thought "you nailed it", right?
• 28:23
  Hope seems audacious.
• 28:25
  It seems to take an enormous amount of courage.
• 28:28
  But I would say we need to have the courage to hope.
• 28:33
  without that, there's really not much point.
• 28:37
  And there are reasons to hope.
• 28:40
  I think that even though we right now live in a point where things have been turning
• 28:46
  pretty bad, if we look at the broad arc of human history, it is a story of progress.
• 28:53
  It's not a story of monotonic progress.
• 28:55
  It doesn't keep progressing all the time.
• 28:57
  It goes up and it goes down.
• 28:59
  But the arc, as Martin Luther King said, even though it's
• 29:04
  long, it bends towards justice.
• 29:06
  And if we can help it bend in that way and have enough hope that
• 29:11
  to think that what we do makes a difference, I think that's useful.
• 29:16
  It's worth remembering that everything we do does leave effects.
• 29:23
  Sometimes the effects seem very local, but ripples that can
• 29:26
  be local can spread very far.
• 29:29
  And if we simply remember that every action we perform, every word that
• 29:35
  we say, every thought that we have is going to have effects, and we can become
• 29:41
  forces for good and forces for progress, or we can become retrograde forces.
• 29:48
  And that's a choice we each have.
• 29:52
  You might sometimes be ridiculed for being audaciously hopeful or, for being,
• 30:01
  generous even.
• 30:03
  But those are things that it's worth being ridiculed for, because when you
• 30:07
  demonstrate those qualities, somebody
• 30:10
  else is looking and says, "I could do that, too." And I
• 30:13
  think that's really important.
• 30:15
  I think that's just extraordinarily important.
• 30:18
  Aristotle puts it beautifully when he says, "How we raise our
• 30:21
  children makes a big difference
• 30:24
  or rather all the difference."
• 30:26
  And he had in mind the examples that we set.
• 30:31
  Well, that's beautiful, Jay.
• 30:35
  That's a beautiful moment, to end on and, really it's been
• 30:39
  very inspiring talking to you.
• 30:40
  Thank you so much for your time.
• 30:41
  Well, thank you, Katherine.
• 30:42
  It's been wonderful speaking with you.
• 30:46
  Bye for now.
• 30:46
  Bye.
• 30:54
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• 30:57
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• 31:03
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