The Shrinkening

A political movement captures the moment, striking a decisive blow. It's utterly demoralizing to the opposition. All of their efforts and arguments have come to nothing. It's hard to shake the feeling that this is a permanent new reality.

They decide to disengage. If society at large is so sick, so broken, that it goes down this immoral path willingly, they can just withdraw from society. They'll join together with likeminded others in smaller communities, walled off (literally or metaphorically) from the madness outside.

Although it sounds like the defeated left at the moment, it also describes conservatives in 2015 after Obergefell v. Hedges, the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry.

Many on the religious right saw that moment as a tipping point in the broader cultural shift away from traditional Christian values. Some conservative commentators, most prominently Rod Dreher at the National Review, suggested that rather than trying to "win" the culture wars at large, Christians should withdraw into "intentional communities" where they could live out their values and raise their children uncontaminated by progressive ideas.

Dreher called it The Benedict Option after (a misinterpretation of) the efforts of St. Benedict in the 6th century to form a new social order independent of the society around it. He apparently hit on the idea after reading (and misinterpreting) a single sentence in a book by philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.

MacIntyre was not amused.

Though the term itself has mostly fallen out of use, the Benedict Option had a real and lasting impact on deflated post-Obergefell religious conservatives, inspiring a surge in religious homeschooling and enrollment in classical Christian schools. Colleges like New Saint Andrews in Idaho and Hillsdale in Michigan started marketing themselves as places to resist secular culture. A few towns like Ave Maria, Florida and other existing intentional religious communities were held up as examples of what was possible.

Now it may be the left's turn to shrink their circles of concern and action.

Fool me twice

The second election of Trump has brought out a disillusionment with national politics on the left that dwarfs even the second election of George W. Bush. Sure, some are shaking themselves off, "taking a hard look in the mirror," and gearing up for 2026 and 2028. Others are so serious about moving to Europe that they've switched from Duolingo to Rosetta Stone.

But a third cohort has my intrigued attention. They lack the fukkit of the leavers, but also can no longer locate in themselves the essential fuel of those gearing up for next time: the liberal delusion that if we just tweak this and nudge that, by cracky, we can do it!

Most in this third cohort care deeply about people. But also, and this is important: they have no remaining confidence in our capacity to think well in our millions.

Echoing the Benedict Option, these liberals are turning away from national life to focus their better-world building in a more walkable radius.

Making an actual difference

Most of us over 30 were raised on impossible promises of our own power: Every vote counts. Sign this petition, save the whales. You can make a difference. Save the planet, put on a sweater. They're all true in their way, all representations of the very real power of collective action, recast as a hero's journey for you.

They are also pretty lies. They keep us feeling good, trudging forward, buying toilet paper, not shooting CEOs. But many have begun to feel that, despite the happy talk, our contributions to the world at that scale are a rounding error well behind the decimal from nothing.

And when the pointlessness sets up housekeeping in many blue chests the way it did after this election, and some plan the next fight while others renew their passports, still others are undertaking a serious and meaningful contraction of their circles of concern.

Reapportioning our giveadamn

For most of my adulthood, I have arguably cared too much about our national life and not enough about my more immediate communities. I know too much about the president and Congress, but I don't even know the names of my reps in the state capitol, the people representing the tangible patch of land that I live and play and work in. I don't know the name or party or record of the mayor of the suburb in which I live and work. I know exactly one school board member because we locked horns over curriculum 10 years ago.

It gets worse. For 17 years I have lived in a subdivision of 200 homes with very little turnover. Yet I know the names of perhaps five percent of those neighbors. I have listened to entire three-hour meetings of House subcommittees, not to mention countless presidential press conferences, but I've attended exactly one HOA meeting and one school board meeting in 17 years.

That's not natural.

I mean that in an evolutionary sense. We evolved to know and care about people in our small bands of 15 to 20. We have the neural architecture to enlarge that circle of concern (by one famous estimate) to about 150. Beyond that, we start to get cognitive and emotional strain, a decline in relationship quality, social fragmentation (i.e. culture war), increased loneliness and isolation. Add the anxiety that comes from hyper-awareness of every tragedy and threat on the planet and you have...the modern world.

Residents of the Roman Empire tended to identify with local polities, if that, and to have little knowledge or concern of the adventures of the empire in which they incidentally lived. Landholders in feudal Europe neither knew nor cared what happened in the king's court yesterday. The same is true of present-day India and China, where individuals often identify more strongly with smaller polities or sub-national identities—regions, states, ethnic groups, cities—than the nation as a whole.

It's mostly in the West of the past 200-ish years that large consolidated nation-states began to occupy the attention of their citizens in the way we live today, and mostly when their taxes or military service were needed. Only then was the identity of "American" or "Italian" or "Austro-Hungarian" suddenly urgently impressed upon the hoi polloi, with pledges of allegiance and flag salutes in the classroom and weird military displays erupting at every large public gathering.

Is it time to knock that off—to bring at least a greater portion of our attention and giveadamn down to the local level, where we actually live and can have an impact?

Flipping the 80-20

This isn't a call to balkanization, replacing the US with a sackful of loosely-connected principalities like the Holy Roman Empire. There's still a government in Washington, and I still send my taxes. But maybe we can drop the pretense that my obsessive, caffeinated stare and $5 donation are vital to the national functioning. Flip the 80-20. Be done with the pledges and salutes and injection of militarism into high school football games. Instead, I'll go to a school board meeting. Drop by the farmer's market. Spend most of my electoral attention at the bottom of the ballot, and wonder how my vote for County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor might affect "upballot" races. Glance at the national news now and then, but read the local paper—I mean very local, the wet one in my driveway—front to back.

You might think a local focus would lead to more polarization as we de-emphasize the big canvas and huddle with those around us. But it's much easier to demonize and label large abstracted Others than the neighbors you see at Publix.

In July 2019, The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California conducted an experiment by removing national politics from its opinion pages for one month, aiming to reduce political polarization by concentrating on local issues. A team of researchers found evidence that it worked—there was measurably less polarization among the readers of the paper at the end of that month. Less time spent confronting big national abstractions led to a decreased tendency to clump people into teams and issues into colors. They had spent a month thinking about concerns closer to the level we are evolved for. I'd imagine their mental health was better, too.

Those national issues aren't always separate from the local. One of the issues I'm most concerned with in the near future is the promise of mass deportations, and the indiscriminate nature of such things, and the vigilantism that will accompany it, and the human suffering it will entail. I could call my congresspeople and sign petitions, all the usual ineffectual thoughts and prayers aimed at the faraway throne. Or I can take time now to learn how to protect the many families at risk within three miles of my front door.

I think it's a refocus worth considering.