Book Review: "Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason" by William Davies

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason (2018)
William Davies (1976)
252 pages

Donald Trump is not simply a serial liar; he is attempting to murder the very idea of truth, which is even worse,” said Peter Wehner, a former strategic advisor to President George W. Bush …. “Because without truth, a free society cannot operate.
                                                                                      The New York Times, 1 Nov 2019

The first part of Wehner’s comment seems fairly indisputable at this point; even Trump’s supporters tend to concede he is fast and loose with the truth, however little it impacts their support of him. To Wehner’s conclusion, however, that “without truth, a free society cannot operate,” political economist and author William Davies would perhaps argue that truth, in the sense of facts, has actually become, at the very least, insufficient for the successful administration of society.

In his book Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason, Davies claims that the technocratic, science-based structures that have come to undergird Western political philosophy and governments over the past several centuries have lost their effectiveness:

Experts and facts no longer seem capable of settling arguments to the extent that they once did. Objective claims about the economy, society, the human body and nature can no longer be successfully insulated from emotion. (xiv) 

He identifies recent events in the U.S. and Western Europe as in fact revealing a growing shift in the West from a centuries old attempt to rule by “the authority of facts” (xiv) to a reality in which emotions and feelings hold more sway than objective claims.

But, far from lamenting this shift, he finds it encouraging.

Davies dates the origins of “the authority of facts” and the primacy given to dispassionate experts in Western regimes to the 1600’s. Philosophers of the time tied the seemingly unending cycles of destruction from deadly conflagrations such as the Thirty Years War to the dangerously unpredictable emotions in the public space, and specifically to the consequences of fear among a population. They argued that people’s deepest desire is actually freedom from fear – to be able to feel secure in their lives and their future – and specifically that the danger of fear leads to violence:

What makes violence inevitable, Hobbes reasoned, is not so much that certain people are strong and aggressive, but that most people are weak and fearful. If you and I are both afraid of each other, it makes sense for me to attack you, or else risk being attacked first. (40)

In a fictional setting, science fiction writer Cixin Liu has taken this concept to its logical extreme in his Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, which builds on the idea that just such a fear is why we haven’t found evidence of other civilizations beyond Earth. Liu imagines that civilizations that arise in the universe will come to realize the perilousness of their position relative to other, unknown civilizations and become consumed by fear, deciding that the best course of action is to hide their presence from the rest of the universe, and, when they themselves discover evidence of any other civilization, to strike out immediately in a preemptive attack. (A review of the first book in Liu’s trilogy at left, with links from there to reviews of the other two books.

The theme of Liu’s story rests on the reality that civilizations in the universe necessarily exist in stark isolation due to the immense distances involved, and so cannot effectively communicate with one another. Here on Earth, in contrast, by the 1600’s once isolated peoples were becoming enmeshed in economic networks that created the first rudimentary, world-wide communication links – unimaginably slow by today’s standards, but the beginning of a revolutionary transformation. In his work 1493, Charles C. Mann referred to this period as the “great unification” (24, 1493), one initiated by the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and after which "the world’s ecosystems collided and mixed as European vessels carried thousands of spices to new homes across the oceans." (7, 1493; a review at right)

In the West in particular, this global economic expansion was intimately connected to the emerging Scientific Revolution. Historian Yuval Noah Harari explored the symbiosis of these two developments in his engaging book Sapiens, in which he notes that rapid advancements in science enabled European nations to aggressively expand their global reach and markets, which in turn led to economic growth that provided funding to support further work in the sciences and so complete the circle. Thus, Harari writes, “as time went by, the conquest of knowledge and the conquest of territory became ever more tightly intertwined.” (284, Sapiens; a review at left.)


And, according to Davies, this flourishing of the Scientific Revolution in the 1600’s also inspired philosophers seeking to provide security to populations gripped by fear and so prone to violence. These philosophers promoted a shift away from governing approaches and language that triggered people’s emotions, and toward the methods of the Scientific Revolution, hoping “to institutionalize experimental methods of natural science” (48) into the political sphere. They argued for governance built upon experts and knowledge, that is, on the authority of facts; and governments quickly came to embrace these ideas, eager for the stability they promised. The result was a “convergence of political and scientific authority [referred to as] ‘technocracy.’” (53)

The Scientific Revolution, then, provided not only the conceptual basis for the technocratic regimes that have held sway for some three centuries, but also the means for them to expand their reach and dominance across much of the Earth.

But Davies argues that many among the governed in these societies have long realized that the idealized vision of a dispassionate expert – whether in government or even in science – has never truly existed. In the second half of the book he examines the forces that have led to the questioning of support for technocracies, and the rise of what he refers to as a “politics of feeling."

This shift toward a politics of feeling has its origins, according to Davies, in the blurring of the lines between war and peace, which he traces back to Napoleon’s mobilization “of a conscripted, popular army … fueled by nationalist fervor” (129), and against which the earlier, aristocratic approach to fighting was powerless. In order to combat Napoleon effectively, other nations were forced to recreate his methods, mobilizing their populations by “cultivating a similarly popular enthusiasm for war.” (129)

Critically, according to Davies, this approach of public mobilization eventually led to a move away from the concept of publicly shared learnings that had been an ideal of the Scientific Revolution, toward instead intelligence- and information-gathering efforts focused on acquiring and owning data. Over time this ethos spread to the economic sphere, leading to a social and cultural

philosophy [that] respects no clear distinction between the realm of intellectual competition and that of economic competition … the pursuit of wealth, of power, and of truth start to gradually blend into one. (171)

Such a culturally enshrined state of constant competition – of war, effectively – “represents a form of politics where feelings really matter” (119), unavoidably ensnaring even ostensibly impartial governing officials into emotional appeals and reactions.

In fact, the public has come to recognize that “the need [by technocrats practicing evidence-based policy] to create a picture of the world can also be born out of [their] desire to own it.” (59) Davies makes an intriguing analogy between historical colonial discontent and the now familiar lament of people in the fly-over-states of invisibility, writing that:

The cultural and political divisions separating centers of expertise from other sections of their societies have created a [current day] situation with rhetorical echoes of the colonial one, in which methods of science and expertise seem like an arm of some foreign leviathan state. (60)

Recognizing these now increasingly evident consequences for peoples caught up in the competitive cultures fomented by technocratic states, Davies argues for a more sympathetic view of the current public mood. Rejecting disparaging accusations that people vote against their interests or are ignorant of science or facts, he feels that

Reactions against expertise may seem like an irrational rejection of truth itself … [but] they are more often a rejection of the broader political edifice from which society is governed. (29)

And this rejection leads to a desire by the disenfranchised to take control over some aspect of their lives, reflected in the shift toward a “politics of feeling.” (117) Thus, for example, the apparent motivation in the 2016 election to, as the rallying cry put it, burn it to the ground: “Disruption [becomes] an alternative to control.” (20)

Davies finds support for his arguments in recent revelations in neuroscience that blur the stark distinction of the 17th century ideal of mind being separate from feeling, and that instead reveal the predominant impact of our feelings over our thoughts, decisions and actions. The developments in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology Davies refers to have been explored by Robert Wright in his fascinating work Why Buddhism Is True:

From natural selection’s point of view, the whole point of perception is to process information that has relevance to the organism’s Darwinian interests --- that is, to its chances of getting its genes spread. And organisms register this relevance by assigning positive or negative values to the perceived information. We are designed to judge things and to encode those judgments in feelings. (161, Wright; a review at right)

For Davies, these ideas support the intensifying feeling among the public that experts cannot be relied upon to truly dispassionately pursue, identify and reveal truth and facts.

Using examples from recent political and social movements, Davies demonstrates the resulting decline in trust for professionals in a wide range of fields, from politics to the media and the sciences. He notes an attendant rise in “direct democracy” and “the logic of crowds”, with groups mobilized through appeals to their emotions and feelings, “allow[ing] every individual to become (and feel) part of something much larger than themselves.” (7)  Populist leaders have done this masterfully, of course, but Davies points out that an event like the March for Science in 2017 reflects the emergence of a new paradigm even among organizations outside of nationalist movements, an approach that appeals to emotion rather than relying on dry, expert pronouncements.

The effectiveness of using emotion to animate groups of people was explored by the author Eric Hoffer, in his engrossing 1951 treatise The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, in which he identified appeals to emotion – rather than facts or truth – as a common basis, historically, for drawing individuals into “religious movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements.” Although acknowledging that such movements are not all identical, he claimed that “they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness,” and noted in particular that “the frustrated predominate among the early adherents.” (xi-xii, The True Believer; a review at left)

Precisely such frustration, according to Davies, has arisen in recent times from people’s perception of having lost control over their lives, leading to feelings of fear that leaders of movements of all types exploit to mobilize their supporters. He notes, in fact, that “crowds are liable to a vicious circle of fear … [that] produces a rising desire for safety, which autocrats satisfy through making threats toward others.” (16-19)  And, again, such tactics are not confined to autocrats; he notes that the organizers of the March for Science also rallied people around a shared fear, in this case

a series of alarming appointments and policy decisions made by the Trump administration that appeared to threaten the public status and financing of scientific research. (23)

These rallies then, were focused not just on support for science, but in fact became directed protests against Trump and his administration as the ‘enemy.'

Based on our developing understanding of human behavior, and our current political, economic and social situation in the West, Davies concludes that attempts to reverse the shift from technocracy to a politics of feeling are hopeless, doomed to failure. He rejects the calls from Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and their compatriots that we walk back from the developing politics of emotion by “reassert[ing] our commitment to scientific objectivity and institutions” (207), as well as their desire to achieve a “de-escalation of tactics associated with ‘identity politics,’ such as ‘no platforming’ and campus ‘safe-spaces,’ which exclude distressing idea and speakers” (208), disparaging it as “bravado rationalism.”

Certainly Davies has little regard for Pinker’s claims of “how objectively better things are now than in the past,” dismissing such views as requiring “a cold, emotionless look at history.” Instead, he notes “the fallout of modern science and technology includes the gravest dangers facing us today,” and sees “the future of progress” envisioned by “ultra-privileged elites” as one that “cannot be something that includes most people.” (226)

A detailed exploration of Davies’ arguments (if not perhaps an agreement with his conclusions) about the coming dangers if we continue down our current economic and political path has been presented by Yuval Noah Harari in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. There he predicts that the escalating biotech and infotech revolutions will first and foremost benefit members of the upper-class of society, who will, based on these technologies, be able to then further increase their advantage. As I wrote in my review of Harari’s book (linked to at right):

according to Harari, inequality will rise to such unprecedented levels that the current social compacts --- already fragile --- collapse entirely, as the biologically enhanced super-rich isolate themselves ever more completely from the rest of humanity, who will no longer be needed to perform work, and so will discover themselves to have become irrelevant.

To counter this, Davies argues that effective democracy is achieved by embracing a politics of feeling, which will be “organized around vital needs and demands,” citing Black Lives Matter and the Missing Migrants Project as examples of the types of movements “that will likely dominate the twenty-first century, aimed at highlighting inequalities in the defense of life itself.” (225) He dismisses calls that “political institutions should celebrate the aloof, apolitical, unyielding nature of the rational expert,” finding them to imply that “democracy comes second.” (208) Instead of yielding the realm of feelings in politics to demagogues and autocrats, it must be seen as the next stage of democratic governance, one that “could fuel a different version of populism in the West, built on the truthful recognition that many marginalized populations are being physically and mortally harmed by the present model of progress.” (225)

Even someone who shares Harari’s dystopian view of our potential future and sympathizes with Davies’ quite reasonable concerns about “the present model of progress,” however, will likely be left unconvinced by Davies’ prescriptions. His arguments that “fear, pain and resentment” have been ignored by the technocratic regimes of the past several centuries and have now “invaded our politics anew” (226) and should be embraced – rather than shunned – by rationalists, ignore the very real challenges of such a political direction. He doesn’t address, for example, the evident dangers of identity politics, with its tendency to divide people into emotionally and politically splintered camps, creating an all-against-all set of tribes that can struggle to overcome their differences and unite in common cause, even in the presence of seemingly existential threats.

Precisely such challenges have been explored by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their book The Coddling of the American Mind (a review at right), in which they identify and define what they refer to as Three Bad Ideas, or untruths, the second of which – how one feels about an event or situation provides a valid understanding of what has occurred – stands in direct opposition to Davies’ desired direction. Lukianoff and Haidt go on to describe how, for someone conditioned to accept this belief, the feeling that an aggression has occurred means that by definition it has. This leads to the tendency to view any sort of unwelcome behavior or statement in the worst-possible light, defining even accidental and unintentional offenses or aggressions, which leads to the concept of micro-aggressions, a view that apparently no miss-statement – however unintentional it may have been – is too minor to be condemned.

Thus, the risk is that, when ruled by the politics of feeling, a splintering of the citizenry can occur that leads to an autocrat potentially being the last one standing, able to unite a small but sufficient minority by lumping all those splintered groups together as a dangerous “other."

Beyond leaving unaddressed such concerns with incorporating a politics of feeling, Davies also gives little if any concrete indication of what the framework would functionally be if current representative governments transitioned toward a more direct democracy. He calls for more movements like Black Lives Matter and the Missing Migrant Project, but, however beneficial these movements may be for particular causes, simply expanding their model doesn’t constitute in itself a successful government.

That said, Nervous States provides an informative review of the origins of our current, technocratic political and social structures, and the critical challenges they face from populations feeling not only increasingly disenfranchised, but in fact powerless over the direction of their lives and their societies. Davies adds his voice to the growing chorus of those pointing out the unsustainability of our current economic systems, and the political regimes that support them. Even if his prescriptions may seem insufficient, they further the critically necessary conversation on this potentially existential threat.

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Other reviews / information:

In his book, Davies makes an intriguing connection to the opioid crisis, viewing it as the desperate act of people wanting to take control of the one area they feel remains open to them – their own bodies.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf