Using People as Mascots

Groupthink and the inversion of the 80/20 rule

As a species, we have succeeded greatly in giving value to almost everything. At the same time, we have failed miserably in giving purpose to anything. What do I mean? In the last several years, the single greatest experiment in self-governance that the world has ever seen has glorified victimhood while diminishing achievement; it has elevated grievance while minimizing perseverance; and, it has valorized dependency while attacking ambition.

The national motto of E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one – is as forgotten as the tube television and rotary phone. Declining membership in once-venerable service organizations such as the Elks, Kiwanis, Lions, and Rotary clubs reflects not just a loss of purpose, but also of civic pride. Voluntary group affiliation once based on common interest has been replaced by forced group assignment based on immutable traits, as if everyone within the same identity cluster is interchangeable with everyone else.  

It is a dehumanizing exercise in reductionism that treats people as nothing more than mascots serving the interests of a mediocre segment of society that, unable or unwilling to produce anything of value, has turned performative grifting into a business. The loudest voices in this cultural Balkanization often have no direct connection to whatever people they claim to champion. Because it’s not about the members of the group that is being discussed; it’s about the people doing the talking.  

That was evident in the campus melodramas making the keffiyeh the season’s must-have accessory for every self-respecting leftist fashionista. It happened in the US House, which approved dystopian legislation that would criminalize thoughts. It is evident in how a group called Do No Harm is characterized as heretical for saying that identitarian dogma has no place in medicine or medical education.   

The individual has been erased, replaced by a series of sterile demographic check blocks that purposely ignore every person’s uniqueness. Replaced, too, is any sense of proportion regarding the issues of the day or the ability to prioritize them. The Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule, is meant to improve productivity by shifting energy toward the things that provide the most benefit for the least effort.

The very nature of the principle acknowledges that life is full of unequal distributions: 80% of results come from 20% of effort, 20% of students cause 80% of the problems, and so forth. In this application, however, the rule is being inverted – 80% of energy is spent on the 20% of things on which agreement is the least likely. This is an inversion of the classically liberal society. That norm held that individuals should be free to speak their minds, pursue their self-interests, and, when they can, work with like-minded people to achieve those goals. It was an environment free of outside coercion or sabotage.

The new ideology makes a mockery of the old and works to liberate people from the idea that their lives are their own. There is a reason why not a single dystopian book or movie treats the nuclear family as normal or even desirable. There is a reason why a sense of community is never the norm; it’s always a subversive bunch of characters who have had enough. This is more than soul-crushing authoritarian rule with its boot persistently on the necks of the characters; it’s also authoritarian rule that claims to act in the best interests of the people it is abusing. Does that sound familiar?

The old saying about how a person goes bankrupt – gradually, then suddenly – also applies to freedom. By the time people notice what they have lost, it’s almost impossible to get it back. The societal Overton Window has been pushed so far in one direction, that almost any objection must be framed as extreme. In the current orthodoxy, this is double-plus ungood. It’s the sort of thinking that leads people to believe their babies will be born naked.

Despite the “mostly peaceful” summer of 2020, despite one American city after another taking precautions in case of Trump winning, and despite the recent campus fever and knowing who funded it, the great freakout is over violence that has yet to occur. That same talking point echoes overseas, where a few decades of one-sided political hegemony are being threatened by people who oppose unchecked immigration, a sentiment that’s regarded as a dog whistle for a new fascism.

Again, reductionism, in which anyone noticing that policies are not working is only doing so due to personal moral failings. The issue cannot possibly be the policies themselves. It is apparently beyond the ken of those who would shape our thoughts and beliefs that people are not always willing to do what they’re told, to accept the information they are force-fed, or to ignore that the world around them looks nothing like what was promised.

The country has serious problems and far too many unserious people in decision-making and opinion-shaping roles. Those two cohorts actively conspire to restrict the sort of genuine discussion that is necessary for formulating genuine solutions. There is nothing that the prevailing power structure fears more than people who are told to hate each other realizing that they have more in common than not. Sometimes the political version of the 80/20 rule is more like 70/30 or 60/40. Will the discussion be more productive if it focuses on the 60-80% of things we agree need to be addressed or on the 20-40% of things where neither side can persuade the other?

One undeniable truth of voluntary groups is that no matter how stratified they are, there is an underlying unity of purpose. Ask people to list their top concerns or things they wish to address, and the Venn diagram will show far more overlap than not, creating the conditions for productive discussion. This is the dynamic that powered the service organizations of the old. It has either been forgotten or lost, to our detriment.