Enlightenment

Elon Musk (center) and Grimes (right) at the Met Gala

Early in his book Enlightenment Now, author Steven Pinker bemoans the cognitive abilities of the human species.  "People are by nature illiterate and innumerate, quantifying the world by 'one, two, many' and by rough guesstimates," he writes.  "They generalize from paltry samples," he continues, "namely their own experience, and they reason by stereotype, projecting the typical traits of a group onto any individual that belongs to it."

Pinker goes on to catalog many other shortcomings of our species and of our minds.  "For every misfortune they seek a scapegoat," he claims, and "People demonize those they disagree with, attributing differences of opinion to stupidity and dishonesty."

As a example, we were recently scrawling through our Facebook feed, and saw a post that simply read, "Elon Musk is an asshole."  No further explanation was offered, no reason for the condemnation was provided.  Did she recently buy a Tesla which turned out to be a lemon?  Does she think space exploration should best be left to nation-states and not private corporations?  Does she disagree with Musk's recent warnings about artificial intelligence?  Or does she resent the fact that he's apparently now dating the musician Grimes?

Grimes at The Earl, Rocktober 2011

We may never know, but apparently the poster disagreed with something about Musk, demonized the person and not the position or statement with which she disagreed, and then publicly attacked the individual, not the individual's statement, attitude, or position.  This, Pinker would argue, is the very barrier that enlightenment needs to overcome in order to help the human race.

But before we cast the first stone, or fall into the same error and attack the Facebook poster and not her mistake, we have to admit we're guilty of the same thing.  In this blog and in other media, we've insulted and disparaged right-wing politicians with whom we've disagreed, claiming they were stupid or uninformed or worse.  And then we've taken that perceived trait and cast in on all members of the very large group of people who vote differently than we do, or view politics differently than us, or think differently than we do.

To be sure, we're not saying that they're right, or even that they have a point.  We're saying that it's very unenlightened to call the individuals stupid and otherwise demonize them, and then to project those traits onto their entire group.  Did we learn nothing from Hillary's "basket of deplorables" comment?

There are deplorable people in the so-called alt-right, and fascism and racism are deplorable.  But it's also wrong to label all those who disagree with us as "deplorable," just as the labels and prejudices they project on our side are equally - and almost assuredly more - wrong.

We've never met Elon Musk, and it's possible that he is, in fact, an asshole.  We don't know.  But if so, it's not because he's dating Grimes.  That part's cool.