Groupthink and Good Writing

One of the countless benefits of good friends is that they send you stuff to read. They know you well enough to know both what you take pleasure in and what you need. Take for instance an article recommendation today from my buddy Winn Collier.

It’s entitled “The Enemies of Writing” and is by George Packer, a writer for The Atlantic. If you like writing (especially journalism, but applicable to all genres) and if you are trying to make sense of current times, you should read the whole article yourself. But here are some highlights.

The subtitle gives you the basic direction: “A writer who’s afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.” He argues, surprisingly enough, that one of the enemies of writing is belonging. More specifically, belonging to a group, one that expects you, as writer, to be its representative, promoter (read ‘propagandist’), and defender.

Packer recognizes the attraction and benefits of belonging, but thinks it dangerous for both writers and readers when it entails conformity and groupthink:

When we open a book or click on an article, the first thing we want to know is which group the writer belongs to. The group might be a political faction, an ethnicity or a sexuality, a literary clique. The answer makes reading a lot simpler. It tells us what to expect from the writer’s work, and even what to think of it. Groups save us a lot of trouble by doing our thinking for us.

And he sees what happens when a writer is thought to be straying from group orthodoxy. Activists often hate their enemies, but they hate even more anyone from their side who is seen as a traitor (it doesn’t take much) — and they know how to deal with traitors. Writers in our culture do not presently much need to fear government censorship, but they rightly fear the censoriousness of the group with which they are identified, online and in print:

It’s the fear of moral judgment, public shaming, social ridicule, and ostracism. It’s the fear of landing on the wrong side of whatever group matters to you. An orthodoxy enforced by social pressure can be more powerful than official ideology….

It can be more powerful because it becomes internalized:

Fear breeds self-censorship, and self-censorship is more insidious than the state-imposed kind, because it’s a surer way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfettered mind. A writer can still write while hiding from the thought police. But a writer who carries the thought police around in his head, who always feels compelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my terminology correct? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my enemies? Could it get me ratioed on Twitter? — that writer’s words will soon become lifeless.

Packer worries about his writing students at Yale. He finds them bright and hard working, but also finds they want always “to write from a position of moral certainty. This was where they felt strongest and safest…. They were attracted to subjects about which they’d already made up their minds.”

Packer says a lot more, ending his piece with a somewhat Romantic paean to doubt and complexity and individualism over certainty and conformity — the former all safe things to prefer. I feel a certain conformity in his own disquisition against conformity. (I want to ask him if he thinks profundity is as important as complexity.) And yet I also feel the force of his argument and the need to query my own writing and thinking in light of it.

To what extent am I simply a shill for my ‘group(s)’? If I identify my group as “reflective Christianity (more or less orthodox),” does that identification lead me to stifle my own individualism and creativity (high Romantic values) in order to stay on the right side of both group and God? If internet shaming is bad, hell is reputed to be even worse. But, then, what do I really believe about hell? (Short version: very complex!) And who will be upset if I say?

(And what about the fact that I taught at Christian colleges for almost forty years, with faith statements and life-style covenants I signed on to? Did I support every jot and tittle? I gave up pipe-smoking for crying out loud, a beloved pleasure. Was I just being a wimp?)

If you are either a writer or a serious reader, look at Packer’s article. I think you’ll find it illuminating. And you’ll nod in agreement when he describes your ideological enemies. But be careful, you might also find it, as I did, a bit convicting.