Herbert Spencer’s “From Freedom to Bondage” famously claims that “[T]he more things improve the louder become the exclamations about their badness.” And he offered a bunch of great examples. Inspired by Spencer’s insight, I recently turned to Google Ngram to look at long-run trends for six oft-named expressions of prejudice.
Notice: Four out of six evils – racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia – are now vastly more discussed that they were in early decades. As Spencer would have predicted, it’s clear that all four used to be vastly worse. When they were ubiquitous, people took them for granted. Earlier generations clearly wrote virtually nothing in defense of prejudice. Instead, earlier generations barely talked about it at all.
How would Spencer explain the result for “imperialism”? Well, the Soviet Union aside, imperialism all but disappeared in the mid-70s, when the Portuguese finally abandoned their overseas possessions. The result: While discussion of “imperialism” steeply fell, its been stuck at the level of the 1950s for the last thirty years.
What about “xenophobia”? Objectively speaking, this form of prejudice massively outweighs all the others combined. As I’ve said before, immigration restrictions make Jim Crow laws look mild by comparison. Current immigration laws continue to deprive billions of their basic rights to live and work where they like. Yet even today, we barely discuss the xenophobic attitudes that make immigration restrictions possible. True, there has been a mild upward trend since 1990, but the ratio of words to harm remains miniscule.
I predict that a great conversation about xenophobia will come. Judging by past trends, however, that conversation is going to happen a few decades after open borders arrives.
READER COMMENTS
JFA
Dec 9 2020 at 3:57pm
I’m gonna bet there are probably 2 things going on in the graph that have nothing to do with Spencer’s statement: 1) the origin date of the word (apparently “sexism” or similar words like “sexist” didn’t appear in print until 1968, racism was first noted in 1902) and 2) the people (most of them at least) who write books, particularly up until the recent past, might not have shown much interest in these evils because those authors were least affected by them.
Philo
Dec 10 2020 at 12:09pm
But the reason some of these words weren’t invented till fairly recently is that earlier the phenomena they stand for did not provoke discussion.
JFA
Dec 10 2020 at 12:52pm
Given that Mill published about the subjection of women in the 1850s or 1860s and Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects in 1792, my sense is that people were discussing sexism well before the word “sexism” was applied to it. The same most likely holds for the other terms. But even if you expanded the search terms, my guess is mechanism #2 probably does a lot more work than mechanism #1 in explaining the trends.
KevinDC
Dec 9 2020 at 4:55pm
This general phenomenon was also noticed by Alexis De Tocqueville. When he looked into the history of France leading up to French Revolution, he was struck by the fact that in the decades leading up to the Revolution the conditions of French citizens in general, and the lower classes in particular, had been rising faster than at any time in history, and much more so than they did after the Revolution. As he put it, “the French found their position the more intolerable the better it became.”
nobody.really
Dec 10 2020 at 11:06am
I think Daniel Kahneman remarks on this dynamic in Thinking, Fast and Slow. The basic dynamic is that what people find intolerable is not bad circumstances, but circumstances that conflict with more favorable expectations. We all die; adulthood entails reconciling yourself to this fact. But when someone dies sooner than expected, we’re moved.
American women report feeling less satisfaction today than women reported in the past. Why? Many potential reasons. But at least one reason is that today’s women can envisions a much broader range of opportunities for themselves than women of the past–and therefore have many more opportunities for disappointment. If the only role you see for yourself is as a wife and mother, statistics said that you’ll likely achieve it. If you also envision that you could be president of the United States, statistics say that you probably won’t achieve it.
If I recall correctly, Kahneman analyzed happiness/satisfaction data from urban women and rural women in Switzerland. The rural women reported greater satisfaction–yet year after year, women continued to leave rural areas and flock to cities, not the other way around. How to reconcile the data? Kahneman concluded that data about happiness/satisfaction really reflects data about disparities between lived circumstances and expectations, not about the circumstances themselves. Urbanized women (and the people who chose to move to cities) tended to have higher expectations.
“Sophisticated” people dismiss the power of philosophy. But philosophies help people develop expectations that differ from their lived experiences–and to feel aggrieved when those expectations were not met. The French Revolution, much like the American one, was not triggered by declining circumstances, but by raised (Enlightenment) expectations. And the Russian Revolution? It was manipulated by the Germans in WWI: They packaged up Lenin in a sealed boxcar and shipped him to Russia, in the hope that he would spread his Marxist views and undermine the nation’s willingness to continue fighting. It worked–but the message then spread to the German troops as well, and they also began to balk at continuing the war effort. Few things are as contagious as ideas.
nobody.really
Dec 10 2020 at 11:10am
All of this leads up to the classic joke-that-is-not-a-joke: The secret to a happy marriage is — low expectations.
KevinDC
Dec 10 2020 at 12:16pm
Human happiness is a slippery thing, difficult to define and measure. There’s probably a thousand different dials which, when turned, affect human happiness and many of these dials connect to each other in unintuitive and non-linear ways. That said, I have no doubt that the disparity between expectations and reality is one such dial.
(I’m reminded of a bit from an Australian comedian who was mocking American culture in that way – he was saying things like “You all grew up being told that if you work hard and put your mind to it, you can achieve anything. And that was a lie. You can’t achieve anything, nobody can, don’t put that pressure on yourself…you remember that kid from school? The one who you knew should have been in special ed classes, the one who if he was just one IQ point lower he’d get benefits? He spent his whole life being told that he can achieve anything!“)
Another fairly significant dial, it seems, is people comparing themselves against others. People are less concerned with their absolute level of well being than their relative level, apparently. I remember reading about surveys to the effect of “Assume all prices of all goods and services are constant. Would you rather live in a society where you make $50,000 a year and everyone else makes $25,000 per year, or a society where you make $100,000 per year and everyone else makes $200,000 per year?” For me, the answer was obviously the second scenario, but I was shocked to learn that’s apparently a minority opinion. Most people would rather be the best off person in poor society, than the worst off person in a wealthy society, even if they are also poorer for it as well. To me, this seems borderline psychopathic. It amounts to saying “I’d prefer to live in a world where I get half as much as I otherwise could, as long as I can make sure everyone else gets even less.” Happiness depending on relative wealth is an awful thing, because your “happiness” will be equally benefitted by making someone else worse off as by making yourself better off. And, well, making things worse for other people is almost always easier than making things better for yourself. This probably explains why so many people can seem more interested in pulling others down than in lifting themselves up.
nobody.really
Dec 10 2020 at 2:15pm
Agreed—although I hasten to note that research suggests many things that seem to objectively make most people happier (or sadder), regardless of expectations. Regular human interaction seems to make people happier—even among people who think they’ll be happy moving to giant plots of land in the ex-urbs and thus never having cause to interact with a neighbor. Physical exercise makes people happier—even among people who generally don’t. In contrast, people imagine that if they win the lottery, lose a leg, or get that next promotion, they’ll be much happier or sadder than they currently are—yet research in affective forecasting shows that this is mostly false. But long-term irritants—the creaking door, or the daily commute—really reduce people’s wellbeing, even if they are entirely consistent with people’s expectations. In short, we can predict certain things will make people happier or sadder—even if those things are entirely consistent with expectations.
Genie: I will grant you any wish—but you should know that I will bestow the same wish upon your neighbor, two-fold.
Man holding lamp: Uh … ok, I wish for you to take out one of my eyes.
Yup, social animals care about status. And not just humans—other primates, too. Monkeys will love it when you bring them a grape. But if they see that you’re bringing something better to the other monkeys—apple slices, say—they’ll start throwing the grape back at you.
The NYT published an article trying to explain Trumpism in terms of status envy.
Maybe this attitude is psychopathic. Or maybe it reflects a deep-seated psychology that enables humans to work in social groups: People develop a willingness to sacrifice for a larger group so long as they anticipate that they’ll be accorded the same benefits as other group members. We observe this same behavior in the Ultimatum Game.
Again, research in affective forecasting shows that people’s long-term happiness rarely changes based on whether they get that promotion—yet the contrary belief motivates people to try harder. So perhaps innate systems of false beliefs are adaptive. And ultimately, the human mind evolved to survive and pass on genes to the next generation, not to generate abstract truths.
If I recall correctly, Economist Stephen Landsburg (author of The Armchair Economist, among others) acknowledged that he’d rather be the wealthiest guy in society than the poorest, even if his personal wealth did not change. So there’s that.
KevinDC
Dec 10 2020 at 3:10pm
I’ve read almost everything Landsburg has ever published and I don’t recall him ever saying this. This could be due to a gap in my memory, but I’m not so sure. It sounds like almost the exact opposite of how he usually analyzes things, which is from a broadly consequentialist perspective. From a consequentialist point of view, if you have the option of “your personal wealth will remain fixed, but you can make the rest of society wealthier or poorer,” the obviously correct move from a consequentialist point of view is to increase the wealth of society in general. I do vaguely recall him talking about other people holding such a view, but he was talking about it as an illustration of ideas which are obviously absurd, not professing it as an idea he holds to. I think. Again, my memory might be failing me here, so I won’t swear to it in a court of law, but color me skeptical.
I’m aware that concern about relative status is indeed instinctive in primates, but I’m not sure what you think should follow from that. Humans (and other primates, but I’m just going to focus on humans here) have a variety of instincts and impulses, some of which are pro-social and some are anti-social. So it’s not a foregone conclusion that because you see an impulse widely displayed among primates, that impulse is therefore part of a “deep-seated psychology that enables humans to work in social groups.” Many deep seated psychological traits in people are also destructive towards the end of working in social groups. So merely pointing out that particular trait is part of a “deep seated psychology” doesn’t tell you much. Culture, morality, and the like, are developed in response to this – certain kinds of impulses and instincts which are pro-social are treated as praiseworthy and encouraged, even if they are rare, and other impulses which are anti-social are treated as contemptible and discouraged, even if they are common.
An impulse which says “I would prefer all my neighbors, friends, family, and the whole society around me be massively immiserated, and even for myself to be made worse off in the process, if it means I get to be better off than everyone else”, is a tremendously and disgustingly anti-social impulse. I don’t see how any society could function well that doesn’t treat such an impulse as contemptible. And it’s far from a universal impulse – myself and a sizable minority of people in that kind of poll instinctively think the other option is just obviously correct.
A monkey might be given something they like and are happy to have, and then throw it away if they see another monkey given something they liked more, sure. But in human civilization, that sort of reaction is properly treated like the behavior of a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, and looked down on. Anyone who behaves that way is treated as the object of scorn, not sympathy, and if they tried to defend their behavior by comparing themselves to a chimpanzee, that appeal would be treated as absurd. Lots of psychological traits that are common among primates are also things that civilization depends on rejecting, not accommodating. This concern about relative status seems to be one of them to me, for the reason I mentioned above. If your concern is relative status, then you’ll be indifferent between lifting yourself up and tearing others down – they both have the same effect on your relative status. And since it’s easier to destroy than to build, this attitude will actually encourage people constantly expending energy into trying to pull others down rather than lift themselves up. You can’t build a civilization with that method, but you can definitely ruin one that way.
nobody.really
Dec 10 2020 at 9:39pm
This topic arose during a discussion on his blog. And I was surprised by his response, too—which is why I found it noteworthy. But I may have misunderstood or misremembered.
And yes, I agree that we need not value an instinct just because it appears in nature. But we should ask WHY it appears in nature. Recall G. K. Chesterton’s admonition:
With that thought in mind, I ask why do so many social animals exhibit envy? Does it serve some adaptive function? I acknowledge envy’s shortcomings—but until I have a clearer understanding of its origins, I feel reluctant to condemn it wholeheartedly.
Again, recall the Ultimatum Game. Briefly, you receive a sum (say, $100) on the condition that you (the offeror) offer a share of the sum to another person, and that person (the responder) agrees to accept the share. More specifically, the responder knows all these circumstances, and knows that she has the choice to either accept the share that you offer, or reject it—in which case, neither of you get anything.
What result? Classical economics says that responders should accept any offer. After all, even a one penny gift is better than nothing. But that’s generally not how people behave.
In Westernized, market-oriented societies, responders generally reject offers that differ too much from 50%. And this reaction is so thoroughly understood that offerors rarely make offers of much less than 50%. In short, it appears that people are willing to sacrifice their self-interest merely for the satisfaction of punishing someone who transgresses the social norm of equity. Should we really conclude that this manifestation of envy is anti-social?
KevinDC
Dec 10 2020 at 10:22pm
I agree that Chesterton’s Fence is a worthwhile heuristic. But it’s not a call to simply passively accept what we find – it’s an encouragement to understand something rather than condemning it by default. So when you ask “With that thought in mind, I ask why do so many social animals exhibit envy? Does it serve some adaptive function?” My response is that the concept of envy has in fact been very thoroughly studied, so we don’t need to raise our hands and wonder about it. I’ve yet to encounter any positive arguments that envy serves a pro social adaptive function, and there are many excellent arguments that point to it being anti-social and socially destructive. Certainly enough in my mind that the burden of proof for the social value of envy now on those who would advocate for it, and for them to make an actual positive case for it rather than just say “Chesterton’s Fence! So who knows?!”
And the Ultimatum game, while interesting in its own way, bears little resemblance to the circumstance I was initially describing. The Ultimatum game describes a response wherein people insist that if a windfall comes about, it should be shared equally-ish or not at all. People in the Ultimatum game are, at most, willing to decline to confer a benefit, even to themselves, in the name of fairness. The situation I’m describing is a positive preference on the behalf of (some) people that their own lives be worse than they otherwise would be, as long as they can make sure that the lives of everyone else around them are worse to an ever greater degree. That has very little to do with people’s instincts about how to best share an unexpected windfall. One is an instinct that “we should all benefit equally” and the other is “I’ll make myself worse off as long as I can ensure you’ll be even worse off than that.” It has nothing to do with failing to confer benefits in response to greedy behavior on someone else’s part. There’s a possible pro-social motif to the the first one. The second one, not so much. Or, if you want to argue that there is, just beseeching Chesterton’s Fence won’t do. We already know too much about how that kind of attitude can damage societies to say that.
john hare
Dec 10 2020 at 4:56am
This is where I fall off the wagon. Mutual self interest with an admixture of decency would operate different from hat we have now, but that does not stem from “rights”.
Phil H
Dec 10 2020 at 11:09am
I think what Spencer’s narrative misses is the distinction between the personal and the institutional.
The reason that people didn’t talk as much about, say, sexism in the past was because the idea of actually getting rid of sexism was pretty much unthinkable. It was so deeply embedded in the culture and the institutions that it just didn’t seem possible. The first thing that had to happen was the quest for women’s rights – a legal, political, practical battle.
Only after that was complete did the idea of actually having a society in which women are viewed non-instrumentally and as equals begin to seem like a real option. So, now, in the 21st century, there’s an increased interest in sexism itself.
Similarly with xenophobia. At the moment, no-one thinks it’s really possible that you could get most Americans(/Brits/Chinese/whoever) to think of people from other countries in literally the same way as they think of their compatriots. It just sounds like a silly pipedream, not worth discussing. Once the formal, institutional barriers (national borders) are removed, then the time for tackling personal attitudes towards foreigners will be here.
Jose Pablo
Dec 11 2020 at 1:52pm
Despite the efforts of the best and brightest, it seems that the illness is spreading.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/12/12/the-brothers-of-italy-are-on-a-roll
Time to give up hope?
anonymous
Dec 11 2020 at 7:37pm
Where does this supposed right to “live and work where they like” come from? Are they then free to live and work in your house? No? Is that because of Xenophobia? If not, then what is the principled difference from a sovereign nation’s citizens choosing which people can enter their country, just as you choose who enters your house, and what makes that xenophobia?
Ghatanathoah
Dec 12 2020 at 12:25am
Imagine someone who disliked you bought up a circle of land around where you live and built a large donut-shaped house totally enclosing it so that you had no way of leaving your house without going through theirs. In that case, you would be entitled to walk through their house to get to work. They would not be entitled to put you into permanent house arrest simply by buying a circle of land around your house and building a house on it.
A similar principle applies to immigration. There are lots of citizens in this sovereign nation who would love to give immigrants jobs and rent or sell them a place to live. The problem is that a bunch of people are trying to restrict their fellow citizens’ right to do this, and the immigrants’ right to accept, by claiming they have total control over the public land the immigrants must necessarily travel across to arrive at the privately owned land where their private homes and jobs would be located. They don’t have a right to do this, any more than the hypothetical owner of the donut house around your property has a right to restrict your travel to your own home and workplace.
Jose Pablo
Dec 12 2020 at 10:03am
Are you free to live and work in Ohio, or in Hawaii? So, the Ohioans or Hawaiians don’t have the right to decide which people can enter their states?
Did the native Americans have the right to decide which people could enter their nations?
So, let me understand, this “right to decide which people can enter”:
It applies to your house
But it does not apply to your city or to your state
But it does apply to the country you were born in (is not “your” country, beware of the “category” problems)
It applies after your family entered the country but not before it (the original inhabitants did not have it).
It is very difficult to explain rationally and coherently this “right to decide which people can enter”. Looks suspiciously designed leaving “logic” and history aside.
You seem to have a “category” problem when using “your”. “Your” as in “your country” does not have the same meaning that in “your house” or “your car” as you can easily realize by trying to use any or “your” country assets to your own benefit. “Your” in “your country” is more like in “your girlfriend” or “your religion”
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