Unpredictable Patterns #34: Enemies
The philosophy of enemies, the vacuum of antagonists, agonistic democracies and the best friends
Dear reader,
We are back to our regular scheduled programming, and the Summer Notes are now replaced by more general musings about technology, thinking and philosophy. Summer is slowly passing into autumn, a wonderful time to both put plans in action and reflect, shoring up your energy to accomplish what you want to get done this year. There is something about this back to school moment: planning, goals, ambitions and dreams seem more real and promising - it is a variation on the New Year’s Theme - a chance to start something from scratch. But where New Year’s almost becomes overwhelming with all the plans for the new year, the ”back to school”-opening we get in early autumn is more sober, realistic and focused. If New Year’s asks ”What will you do with this new year ahead of you” with all the anxiety of the blank page, autumn more quietly asks ”what do you want to remember 2021 for?”.
A good question to ponder on brisk autumn walks! But now for something completely different - the value of enemies.
Do you have enemies?
Most of us would probably balk at the ideas that we have enemies. Sure - there may be people who do not like us, and conversely there are certainly people we do not like as well — but are they really enemies? The idea of an enemy seems primitive, violent and almost antiquated: a modern person does not have enemies - they have friends and then perhaps ”critics” or find some people ”difficult” - but enemies? Hardly - that is over the top, isn’t it?
Our polarization is weird that way - our societies seem to divide along fault lines that are absolute and our reactions when we are confronted with our political opponents have become more and more visceral - yet we will not call them enemies. It is as if we fear that naming them enemies actually suggests that there is more value to their position than we would like to admit.
Engaging someone as our enemy is an act of love in reverse - the word ”enemy” can be easily traced back to inimicus - in amicus - a bad friend or someone we actively do not love. Friend - amicus - traces back to amare or love. So when we make someone our enemy we have to show them a respect that we are loath to offer those who disagree with us in political debates today.
Nietzsche - perhaps the most preeminent of the philosophers of enmity - certainly knew that. He writes:
”How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!—and such reverence is a bridge to love.—For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor!”
When we choose our enemies we choose worthy adversaries - and then set out to defeat them in contest. We seek the agon - that fundamental contest that the Greeks knew well - that allows us to grow stronger and learn more about ourselves.
Such is the sad state of our public sphere today, though: it is unable to even carry the basic respect that would allow us to have enemies!
To be fair there are those who argue that the absence of enemies is the absence of irrational emotion in our debates, and that our ideal should be a deliberative democracy where no enemies are possible, because the forms of our arguments have transcended emotion and rage.
Habermasian democracy is conceived along those lines - but there is an alternative put forward by theorists on both the left and the right: an agonistic democracy where positions are clear and contested and the struggle itself is what allows us to reach more and more clarity.
From Chantal Mouffe to William Connolly there are a small set of political theorists that are arguing that agonistic processes - contests where it is less important to win or lose, but where the breaking of views and positions against each-other certainly is done in conflict - are necessary for our democracy to survive, and that the focus on deliberation has crippled us into some kind of poor passive aggressive democratic Noh-plays, where conflict is suppressed and any sign of contest is condemned as populist. Under that model of deliberative democracy the first victim is the enemy - since there is no longer a contest they can participate!
This is a controversial view, and one that can be challenged from many different perspectives - and to be clear, my preference is probably Habermasian deliberative democracy - but I do think that maybe we have underestimated the need for conflict within even that more deliberative framework.
And I definitely think we can benefit from studying the idea of the Enemy.
Plutarch’s enemy as mirror
If we wanted to write a history of the philosophy of enemies, we would probably start with Plutarch. There is one essay in particular that is worth reading in its entirety: How To Profit By One’s Enemies.
In this essay Plutarch digs deep into the uses of enemies and how to frame their actions as benefits. The first, and most obvious benefit, is that if you have enemies you have to proceed with your plans carefully and thoughtfully.
The mental model of an Enemy here resembles the much more impersonal selection pressure in evolutionary biology. An enemy is always present in your analysis of the world, you know that they are just waiting for you to make a mistake and they will seek any opportunity to harm you. This makes you a better person, a wiser person and helps you craft plans and actions that are much more robust and resilient.
Plutarch writes:
”Is this then profitable? Assuredly it is, to have to live circumspectly, to give heed to one’s self, and not to do or say anything carelessly or inconsiderately, but always to keep one’s life unassailable as though under an exact regimen. For the circumspection which thus represses the emotions and keeps the reasoning power within bounds gives practice and purpose in living a life that is fair and free from reproach. For just as states which are chastened by border warfare and continual campaigning become well content with good order and a sound government, so persons who have been compelled on account of enmities to practise soberness of living, to guard against indolence and contemptuousness, and to let some good purpose prompt each act, are insensibly led by force of habit to make no mistakes, and are made orderly in their behaviour, even if reason co-operate but slightly. For when men keep always ready in mind the thought that ’Priam and Priam’s sons would in truth have cause for rejoicing’, it causes them to face about and turn aside and abandon such things as give their enemies occasion for rejoicing and derision.”
You become a better person if you have enemies, and you make better decisions. Plutarch goes so far as to say that our enemies provide us with mirrors that allow us to spot behavior we detest in ourselves, if we just dare ask if we might actually be a little bit like them after all. An enemy becomes a variation on the third person mental model - someone standing beside us, judging our actions and seeking to take advantage of them.
This is another reason that we do not like the idea of enemies, I think - they force us to re-examine our own actions in the light of the condemnation we would hold over our enemies’ heads - and maybe find that we are more like them than we want.
Hollywood has turned this insight into a simple plot device - where the antagonist in the move always says to the hero ”We are just the same you and I” and the hero inevitably says ”We are nothing alike”. This resonates with us because what worse destiny can we imagine than being like the people we detest?
And yet, our enemies may be really important sources of truth:
”Hence Antisthenes was quite right in saying that, as a matter of self-preservation, men have need of true friends or else of ardent enemies; for the first by admonition, and the second by reviling, turn them from error. But since friendship’s voice has nowadays become thin and weak when it comes to frank speaking, while its flattery is voluble and its admonition mute, we have to depend upon our enemies to hear the truth.”
This is a deeply uncomfortable thought - we typically do not enjoy the idea that the people who hate us may do so for a good reason - but it is also an opportunity to really break or test assumptions we make about our own behavior. And that an ardent enemy may be the alternative or complement to a true friend is rough advice. And maybe Plutarch’s observation also holds for our days - maybe friendship’s voice has become thin and weak!
But it seems clear that there is value in surveying all that our enemies say about us and then seek out the truths we may not want to hear. Or better: the reasons they can say those things about us.
Now, that is not to say that we should believe our enemies - their aim is, after all, to harm us. We should not allow them the benefit of the doubt by calling them just ”critics” and taking their criticism at face value (I think the tech industry has a tendency to do this far too much). We should look behind their facile criticisms and understand how it is possible that they can make those criticisms sound plausible or reasonable - that is where the uncomfortable truths are most likely to be found.
”If it is free, you are the product” is a facile criticism that has been elevated to deep insight by virtue of the clever turn of phrase. It is not true - but underneath that criticism is the fact that in some markets your very participation is what makes that market work. Advertising is like that, but it does not mean that you are a product - you are a participant and an active contributor, and that is important.
The enemies of advertising are right in pointing out that user participation in advertising markets is key - and that narrative has gotten lost under the rhetoric of ”free products”. Users benefit tremendously from participating in advertising markets, but being clear about the value of their participation - and the fact that this participation is a choice, made by free agents - would be much more powerful than touting ”free products and services”.
Advertising markets could be cast as examples of collective goods where participation is required from multiple partners, and the result is more value created for all of the parties. It is a plus sum game that helps everyone - and everyone contributes. And maybe advertising markets are markets ultimately are contributive justice problems: is everyone able to participated and contribute in a way that allows them to enjoy the benefits? They are not distributive justice problems - where the question is if everyone is getting a share no matter what they do and calling these products free set up the rhetoric about us users and consumers as passive in a way that hides the much more complex reality.
It is not what our enemies say about us that we should explore, but what makes it possible to say those things about us.
Plutarch’s insight here is fundamental: enemies help us make better decisions and are excellent sources of truths that we would rather shy away from, but that can help us re-define ourselves.
Eco’s cab driver
Enemies also propel us forward. This is not least true in political debates. Umberto Eco has explored this in his brilliant way in the fascinating essay ”Inventing the enemy”.
Eco recounts how he got into a taxi somewhere in the world, and the taxi driver asked him where he was from. Eco replied that he was from Italy, and the taxi driver then proceeded to ask about Italy and where it was and how many people lived there - but finally asked another, very different question:
”Then he asked me who our enemies were. In response to my “ Sorry ?” he explained patiently that he wanted to know who were the people against whom we have fought through the centuries over land claims, ethnic rivalry, border incursions , and so forth. I told him we are not at war with anyone. He explained that he wanted to know who were our historical enemies, those who kill us and whom we kill. I repeated that we don’t have any , that we fought our last war more than half a century ago — starting , moreover, with one enemy and ending with another .”
The cab driver’s question is both ingenious and insightful: it is both a horrible and brutally honest way to understand a country: who do they kill and who kills them? Now, it does not have to be about killing, of course, it can be about attacks of all kinds. Understanding a company or a movement through who their enemies are is a surprisingly effective way to understand them.
And - as Eco notes next - there is a problem with not having any enemies at all:
”Thinking further about the conversation, I have come to the conclusion that one of Italy’s misfortunes over the past sixty years has been the absence of real enemies . The unification of Italy took place thanks to the presence of Austria , or , in the words of Giovanni Berchet , of the irto , increscioso alemanno — the bristling , irksome Teuton.”
Eco the proceeds to make a really important observation that echoes of Plutarch - but with a twist:
”Having an enemy is important not only to define our identity but also to provide us with an obstacle against which to measure our system of values and, in seeking to overcome it, to demonstrate our own worth. So when there is no enemy, we have to invent one .”
This notion - that we have to invent enemies - seems at first ludicrous. Why would we ever want to do that - if we have no enemies, well, then that is a good thing - is it not?
Consider the Internet. Who are the enemies of the Internet? There is no one that will stand up and declare outright that they are opposed to the Internet, and maybe this is one of the reasons that the Internet slowly is losing the very qualities of openness, global connectivity and free speech that once were hailed as its greatest benefits?
Who could be the enemy that would allow all who really care about the Internet to ”measure our system of values” and ”demonstrate our own worth”?
In a sense inventing an enemy is also inventing a narrative. The tension between protagonist and antagonist is what propels a narrative forward - without an enemy most literature would become dull and boring. And here, if nowhere else, we can see how an enemy really allows the hero to shine - and often even the hero knows it. Witness Sherlock Holmes’ description of Moriarty:
”He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized.”
Holmes is proud of his enemy! Who or what could be described as an enemy of the open and free Internet in the same way that Moriarty is described by Holmes? Someone all of us who care about the future of the Internet would be, in a sense, proud to call our enemy?
Increasingly some are answering that question by pointing to the tech companies as a candidate for the role of enemies - and that illustrates another really important point: a story abhors an antagonistic vacuum! If there is no enemy then one will be invented - just as Eco points out.
If you do not know who the enemy is you might be it.
So what?
Enemies are excellent thinking tools, they help us model decisions better and they set out grand narrative tension and conflict. They are mirrors held up to us if we dare look in them. They want our best arguments to make it worthwhile defeating us and urge us on to become the best that we can be. Our public sphere has clear agonistic tendencies, and where deliberative democracy fails, it can only be reconstructed through agonistic mechanisms.
Contest is not the same as hate, however, and enemies are not the same as trolls. Being someone’s enemy requires respect and commitment - and so it is a demanding task for both parties.
Anyone who wants to think in enmity can take some very simple steps to start exploring the web of mental models related to the notion of enemies:
Make a list of your enemies - and explore what they say about you that rings of an underlying if not manifest truth.
Make your decisions with your enemies, thus listed, in mind.
Where an enemy is lacking and you would benefit from them - invent one! Preferably a Moriarty to allow you to be Holmes.
Think about your enemies enemies - who are their enemies and why? What doe they tell you about your enemies?
If you still find the concept distasteful - and you may have good grounds for it - then consider that some of the best friendships out there started as enmity and that making a friend of an enemy may be the highest art of politics.
As always, thank you for reading and let me know any thoughts you have!
Nicklas