The rumors are true, I have been granted an award through Substack. They’re giving me $1500. The poor bastards don’t know what they’re doing. Don’t they know I’m just going to cancel this newsletter and run away with the profits?
Just kidding. Really excited to, with these funds, take JAYA TIME to the next level. Thanks to Substack and thanks to all my readers for sticking with me this long!
Today’s edition of JAYA TIME is a version of a previous issue, that was previously stuck behind a paywall. Thought I’d release it to the freeloaders amongst you. It has been slightly edited from the original version. I recorded a narration to go along with it, with some fun sound design.
A couple originals are on their way soon!
Here’s the audio version of what comes below:
Strangers in a Their Own Land, by Arlie Russell Hochschild, was recommended to me by a professor at the J School who knew I was trying to understand American conservatism.
(Thanks, former Marah, for being my book holder-model-person)
This is a book about the right wing. Not the alt-right, not out-and-out white supremacists, although some of Hochschild’s subjects do shade into that category, arguably, especially if we subscribe to the philosophy that everyone who isn’t actively antiracist is, consciously or unconsciously, a white supremacist.
Hochschild, a Berkeley sociologist, famous for investigating how emotions guide behavior, and famous for coining the term “emotional labor,” the meaning of which, she argues, has since spiraled out of control, turns her attention to the heart of Louisiana, to understand why conservatives believe what they do.
What does Hochschild find, as she ventures into the heart of American conservatism?
A mirror world parallel to the one she lives in. It’s not that conservatives don’t feel empathy, but the empathy they feel is, well, directed towards the deserving. It’s directed towards the person who’s been doing their job, who’s been waiting patiently in line. At the end of the line is the American Dream, that mythical pot of gold that everyone desires but few achieve. The empathy is directed towards those who deserve the prize, the patient line-waiters, rather than the upstart punk who skips and jumps to the front.
We know how this story ends: somewhere ugly. Empathy for the deserving turns into sympathy for oneself, who is, of course, endlessly deserving. Sympathy turns into anger at the Other who has cut ahead in line; the anger in turn turns to hatred.
But instead of evaluating the worth of said belief system, like any good anthropologist, Hochschild examines it, to plumb it for deeper meaning. The feeling-rules are what’s important here; the deep-story — the story that these people tell each other and themselves about their values, their moralities, their souls — this dictates their politics, not necessarily material interests.
(It’s what I said back here, right? People don’t just believe things because the things they believe are objectively right; they don’t do the most economically rational thing; otherwise everyone would be a collectivist. People believe things because they want to believe them.)
What the right-wingers in Hochschild’s book are really yearning for the most is an alternative moral structure, one where sympathy for the most disadvantaged in society — poor, Black, queer — is not automatically granted.
The right seeks release from liberal notions of what they should feel — happy for the gay newlywed, sad at the plight of the Syrian refugee, unresentful about paying taxes. … Such rules challenge the emotional core of right-wing belief. (15-6)
And though Hochschild, endlessly responsible, only hints at how even the most strident Fox News-watching conservative could be turned, she does suggest that in order to get anywhere, you’ll need to challenge the fundamentals of the deep-story, the one about the entitlement of others and the worth of oneself, the one that believes all those darn liberals want to do is devalue white Christians and lift up people who deserve the American Dream less. Rather than getting caught up in the inevitable horror of the right-wing belief system, Hochschild implores us to focus on the first part of this equation; the part about how all of this is starts in love, even if that love is self-involved, even if that love ultimately drives us to a very dark place indeed.
The thing is, there’s ample ground here, for leftists.
Hochschild often compares her pet right-wingers to liberals and their deep stories. The liberal deep story is one of empathy, one that is slightly scolding in its desire to redistribute our resources of feelings to the rest of the world, in accordance with how much everyone else deserves it.
It’s honestly pretty weak stuff. And in her description of liberalism, it’s hard to see why anyone would be attracted to it.
Of course, the left is different, but Hochschild — surprising, as I believe she’s firmly in it, or at least adjacent — doesn’t really go into detail about what the left believes.
Here’s what the left-left, that tiny socialist sliver of America, the sleeping beast that is currently being awakened by the siren song of Bernie Sanders, deep-believes:
At first, we are all standing in line, trying to chase that pot of gold. But the dream life, the dream car, dream house with a perfectly manicured lawn and a boat sitting in the driveway — that all moves further away from us the quicker we move towards it, or try to move towards it: it is a mirage, one that disintegrates the more we try to grasp it in our fingers.
Rather than standing in line, one in front of the other, some closer to achieving the goal, some desperately far away, we decide — we wish we could decide, rather — to abandon the American Dream in favor of solidarity with each other. We decide to abandon petty sniping and subterfuge and even resentment, in favor of altruism, mutual aid, love for our comrades. And slowly, the line disintegrates. It becomes a circle, where we all hold hands, where we manifest something beautiful and new and very, very real at the center.
Now, why do I think there’s overlap here, between the deep stories of conservatives and leftists?
Because both are grounded, ultimately, in self-love. Liberalism, I feel, implores you to sympathize and empathize and yes, condescend to your lessers. It does nothing about the structure of the line, the hierarchy between those who have reached the pot of gold and those who will never get their hands on it. But socialism? It asks you to truly love your neighbor, to see the potential they have as your equal. It asks you to love them the way you’d love yourself, and it doesn’t ask you to reallocate your scarce love-resources to another person.
The conservatives want to love themselves, and they resent anyone who tells them they shouldn’t. The good news about socialism is — they don’t have to abandon themselves in favor of someone else. The good news about the left is that we see empathy and love as a resource that multiplies the more you use it; love isn’t a zero sum game.
Can the left story mutate into something ugly as well? Sure. Resentment builds at those who refuse to abandon the line in favor of the circle, those who actively prevent us from circling in comradeship.
But somehow, that seems less toxic than actively holding people back from achieving a mythical salvation, though desperately real to those who believe it.
I have no ideas on how to get the Fox News watching cohort to understand that our deep story is different than liberalism would have them believe. I can’t help but feel that the central barrier, here, is ignorance and silly assumptions that solidarity is just another way to label a bleeding heart. Once they know us, maybe they’d like us, I petulantly argue. But maybe that’s naive.