By Stephen Stofka

October 6, 2024

This week’s letter is about Golden Age voters. There are two types:

1. those who think that the past was better than the current age,
2. those who believe that the future will be better than the current age

The first type are deteriorationists. The more common term is pessimists. The second type is what 19^th century writers called perfectibilians, or perfectionists. I will discuss the first type in this week’s letter and continue with the  second type in next week’s letter.

The concept of a Golden Age is a framework of interpretation. What’s that? Imagine two voters who witness an event, like the TV coverage of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Let’s say that both voters have a similar recognition of the event, meaning that both voters acknowledge that the event happened. (Many times, voters do not share this critical first step, acknowledging that an event happened). Interpretation assigns context to an impression, the raw sensory data we receive, to provide an understanding of the event.

An impression like a sight or sound may happen in an instant. Through technology we can slow that instant down to a sequence of still pictures or an audio playback. It is here that we may reassess our initial impression. Director and writer Michael Antonioni explored this theme in his 1966 movie Blow Up (Spoiler alert in the notes).  In baseball, umpires may overturn a called out when slow motion instant replay reveals that the runner’s foot touched the base a microsecond before the baseball entered the baseman’s mitt.

Interpretation is the active construction of a story surrounding the impression. The sound of several sharp cracks in the air. That’s the impression. Fireworks or gunshots? That’s the story. We think it was fireworks and we relax. Then we hear screams following the sharp cracks. Fireworks or gunshots? The sequence of impressions causes us to change the story. We reinterpret the initial sounds as gunshots and look for cover. Many of can reach consensus over an immediate and short sequence of impressions. We are less likely to tell similar stories when there is a complicated sequence of events over time.

Three weeks ago, I wrote about the shortcuts we take to make decisions. Daniel Kahneman wrote an entire book Thinking Fast and Slow about our use of these heuristics. As related events unfold, our interpretations of events becomes a Tower of Babel, the Biblical origin story for the thousands of languages that humans have evolved. As interpretations multiply, interpretive frameworks help to coalesce the many into the few. Some frameworks like conspiracy theories satisfy our innate drive to understand the cause of a particular event like 9-11 or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Central to many conspiracy theories are intention, design and collaboration. They do not include randomness, hubris and human folly.

Many popular love songs longingly remember a Golden Age in a couple’s relationship. Some older people look back with nostalgia on the 1950s as a time of American values and prosperity. The earliest writings of human history imagine an idyllic era in the past. A paradise was corrupted by humans and the result is a fallen world. In the 8^th century BCE, the Greek poet Hesiod imagined human history as a succession of ages of decline after a Golden Age. Egyptian literature tells of a paradise where gods and humans lived together. Some accounts imagine an idyllic paradise ruined by a single human act. The Bible tells the story of a Garden of Eden where all wants were satisfied until Eve was tempted to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Her hubris and disobedience caused God to evict her and Adam from the garden paradise. The Greek myth of Pandora’s box echoes that theme. When Pandora disobeys and opens a box she is told not to open, all known evils are unleashed upon the world.

Some voters interpret current events within this context. There was a time in the past when certain values were cherished and practiced by many good people, they believe. New ideas have taken hold of the country’s institutions and corrupted people’s virtues. Someone gains prominence and power by promising to restore the country to a more virtuous or prosperous state. A key word is again. In 1979, Khomeini returned from exile to restore Islamic virtue and practice to Iran. In 1933, Adolph Hitler promised to restore dignity to the German people and restore the lands held by the Germanic tribes in antiquity. In 2016, Donald Trump promised to restore traditional American virtues and lead an army of supporters to make America great again. Three very different people and circumstances who used the appeal of again.

For this type of voter, restore and again are key words. They rally supporters of policies regarding hot button issues like abortion. Example: in 2016, Donald Trump had the support of legislators and religious groups who wanted to restore the abortion issue to the states. These key words help join a group of voters who share a similar outlook. Next week, I will look at those voters who look to the future as they interpret current events.

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Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Spoiler alert!!!! – In the 1966 movie Blow Up, an expanded photo of a scene in a park reveals a murder taking place in the background.