A number of years ago, Tim Shriver was talking about the Dignity Index to a big figure in the media industry. The man listened politely to our plans for reducing contempt and then said, “Good luck. You’re up against a two trillion-dollar industry.”
It’s true. There is a contempt industrial complex that pits us against each other so it can gain wealth, fame, and power. So, what hope do we have?
First, we acknowledge that contempt is a fierce and powerful force. It can divide and destroy families, communities, and countries. But contempt has a secret weakness. Contempt is ugly – so it has to pretend it is a virtuous force that fights for good. When we expose contempt, and see it directly without its excuses and disguises, we’re turned off, and we turn away.
Exposing contempt works because it activates the basic goodness and decency of human beings. If we see someone suffering, we want to end it. If we see someone being cruel, we want to stop it. That’s why people using contempt have to create a phony story – so they can keep our conscience on the sidelines. But if we can expose the contempt, sympathy moves to the people who act with dignity, and moral power can turn into political power.
That’s the first way to expose contempt – focus on the optics. The second way is to focus on tactics – how the industry uses contempt to manipulate us.
It starts with this: The prime cause of contempt is emotional pain. If we have more emotional pain than we can bear, we find someone to blame, and we throw our pain on them. That’s contempt: “Those disgusting people – it’s all their fault!”
And there are two main sources of emotional pain – one source comes naturally from the inevitable losses and disappointments of life. But another source is the emotional pain intentionally inflicted on us by people who want to stir up our pain and exploit it. They tell their audience, “Those people hate you. They look down on you. They mock what you love!”
Then, after stirring up our pain, they offer to soothe the pain – with contempt. Contempt is a powerful emotion – it’s a mood-enhancer, an energy-booster, and a pain reliever. So, it eases the pain the media personality just stirred up. It’s a great business: they sell us the message that stirs up the pain. Then they sell us contempt to relieve the pain. It’s an endless back and forth between “those people hate you; they’re ruining everything!” and “Those people are disgusting; let’s crush them!” It gets us addicted and keeps us coming back. But that’s not the only way we get manipulated.
One of our greatest drives as humans is the drive to belong – and not only to belong, but to rise up in the group. People can do outrageous things to gain stature in the group. This is deep in our genes. We’re primates. Even people who seem to be intelligent, sophisticated human beings are sometimes not very sophisticated at all – they’re just ambitious people locked in a battle to be the top ape.
So, when the conflict entrepreneurs want to maximize their ability to manipulate us with contempt, they stir up a large group’s contempt for another large group. It’s a bid to make contempt a requirement for group belonging, and if they can do that, then they’ve made contempt as big a need as human belonging itself. At that point, to gain stature in the group, people compete aggressively for how much contempt they can show for the other group.
When a culture of contempt reaches that scale, leaders can easily manipulate members to express their contempt in ways that deliver wealth, fame, and power.
So, how do we oppose this?
We expose contempt. We expose the picture of contempt. We expose the process of contempt. And the first person we need to expose, and the first audience we need to expose it to – is us. Let’s not fool ourselves. We are not in the stadium seats watching the bad guys do bad things out on the field. We’re on the field ourselves. We’re the players. We get pulled into contempt all the time, and we pull others in too. The next time a friend invites you into a conversation about how bad “those people” are – notice how hard it is to resist. Sometimes, it might feel impossible. But let’s not forget how it can change the game when people come together and support each other because they’ve created a new culture – a dignity culture where we don’t inflict emotional pain on each other, and we don’t generate contempt for each other, and we don’t require contempt to belong to each other.
It’s a long process, but we’ve begun. Let’s go.
Tom
