Amanda Marcotte has a very interesting post up at Pandagon today, in which she deconstructs political purity demands (e.g., Obama didn’t achieve single-payer as part of health-care reform, so therefore he is just as bad as McCain would have been, and in 2012, I may as well vote for the Republican candidate even though I consider myself a Democrat) as essentially deriving from unbridled control-freakism. Here analysis is very detailed and well-considered, and I urge you to go read it there for the full political implications.
What I do want to treat in a little more detail here is her diagnosis and prescription for keeping this tendency from getting the best of you:
[T]he illusion of control ironically diminishes your power in the world. Time spent chasing phantoms is time not spent doing the hard work of trying to exert influence.
This is a very important insight not just for dealing with political reality, but for dealing with personal and professional reality. For example, there is a vocal contingent of highly disgruntled NIH grant applicants who—when they have trouble getting their grants funded in this admittedly very difficult fiscal climate—rant and rave about how the peer review system that is the basis for allocating limited available funds is “corrupt” and “broken” and demand “immediate reform” (see here for an illustrative recent example). As Amanda points out, this time spent chasing phantoms does nothing but distract attention and divert effort from doing the hard work of trying to understand how things really work and doing your best to achieve your goals int he context of that well-formed understanding of reality.
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Freerefill
August 15, 2011 at 2:11 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
In short: no sense crying over spilled milk?
Katharine
August 15, 2011 at 3:00 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
MBA means Muddle-Brained Asshole.
strange gods before me
August 15, 2011 at 4:56 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Amanda has mentioned Terror Management Theory before, which I suspect she is attempting to draw from here, but I’m not sure she’s doing it right. Mortality salience might increase group identification as a means of reestablishing the illusion of control, which we may reasonably expect would result in Democratic cohesion. But it might do more to increase ideological identification instead, which might cause the discontent to try being lefter-than-thou. To be honest I just don’t know which effect would be stronger.
And changing the language around a concept is one means of exerting some real influence, however minor. She uses the modifier “dramatic effect”, which is fair enough; changing language isn’t a panacea. But it can do a little to tilt the odds more in one’s favor, which ought to be something she endorses. It’s like she found an arguably useful argument from TMT and decided to aim it at all her usual targets.
CoR
August 16, 2011 at 8:42 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
This particular comment from the Extramural Nexus blog scares the shit out of me:
“I’ve been on study sections since the early 1960s and can only conclude that current funding trends are going to lose us a generation of investigators.”
Fucking hell.
DrugMonkey
August 17, 2011 at 1:24 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Methinks that comment was a trifle overwrought, Cackle. We are going to do best if the pool of PIs shrinks. No doubt about that. But I don’t see where a particular generation will be extinguished. Some youngsters will make it and some established folks will fade away. Some in the geezertariat will emeritize a few years earlier than planned. And the NIH extramural will muddle through..
Athena Andreadis
August 17, 2011 at 12:18 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
If you continue to set this in the good ol’ “the deserving best win” context, you will keep saying the same (invalid) things over and over about a system that no longer applies.
The NIH methods worked when funding levels were at 30%. 7% funding is a totally different ball game. While you and DrugMonkey continue to be among the lucky few, congratulations — and remember what Niemöller said when your luck runs out.
DrugMonkey
August 17, 2011 at 2:52 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The only one placing this in the context of success defining who is “deserving” is you, AA.
Batocchio
August 18, 2011 at 1:49 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ranting can give some cathartic relief, and/or a temporary sense of control, solidarity or comfort. But there’s positive ranting, and then there’s flinging your own feces and rolling in them. The I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home attitude you and Marcotte describe can quickly become toxic, and counterproductive to stated goals. That said, I suspect this type of voter elevates politicians rather than viewing them as means to an ends, as hired employees who must be pressured to do the right thing. And a smaller subset might be more into politics for the psycho-drama than to achieve progress on specific goals. (Betrayed again! Who could have foreseen it? Time for another purity pity party!)
Eric Paulsen
August 19, 2011 at 2:31 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
…Obama didn’t achieve single-payer as part of health-care reform, so therefore he is just as bad as McCain would have been, and in 2012, I may as well vote for the Republican candidate even though I consider myself a Democrat…
Okay, wow. I’ve voted Democratic ever since my first election back in 84 and consider myself more liberal NOW than I was back then and I have NEVER heard any of my Democratic leaning friend even come close to saying anything so nonsensical. See I remember when we were the Democratic party before we let the Rethugs re-brand us as the Democrat party – before we spinelessly let them re-brand us. I was among the first to rail against the Administrations gutless abandonment of single payer as even a bargaining chip, but then to take the government option off the table in favor of shackling us to the private insurance vultures…gutless, gutless, gutless. But certainly not as bad as a president McCain would have been. Damn close though. Obama’s idea of bi-partisanship seems to be having a Repug hold one of your butt cheeks and a Democrat hold the other while letting the corporate sector make sweet, sweet love to you. All that and never even a reach around.
But vote Republican? Not even if you proved to me it was a surefire cure for cancer! I may vote Green or Socialist or ANY party that espouses REAL progressive values – but I would NEVER vote Republican. Not ever. And if the ‘Democrat’ party wants my vote back then they can show me they remember who they were, and become that party again.
PS: ‘so therefore’ is redundant.
Pierce R. Butler
August 19, 2011 at 2:33 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
D’s & R’s identical? No.
Answering to the same paymasters? Yes.
One Link Leads to Another « Grumpy rumblings of the untenured
August 20, 2011 at 3:10 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] has an interesting idea about the illusion of control and making real change, building from initial comments on politics and extending them into work life. Go read and [...]