The Philosopher Made For TV
John Rawls Spoke For His Time
As we move beyond broadcast television, we will move beyond the philosophy of vicarious egalitarianism. More than anyone, John Rawls spoke for this philosophy.
Rawls’ most famous concept is The Veil of Ignorance — the idea that to project yourself into the position people of different capabilities, culture, core beliefs, or circumstances is the pinnacle of justice.
This concept was not sold to ordinary man until the modern world. Ordinary man has empathy for his family, his community, and real individuals surrounding him. He does not have empathy for the abstract other — until the invention of the television set.
Rawls described his Veil of Ignorance in A Theory of Justice in 1971, a year after NBC Nightly News first aired. It was the height of broadcast television, a high-production value monoculture scripted daily to suit egalitarian tastes. Through the television screen, Americans could vicariously live the lives of others. Not just through the daily news, but sitcoms, documentaries, and period pieces. Sit on the couch, turn on the TV, and feel the Veil of Ignorance wash over you.
These vicarious narratives are not organic. They were constructed piecewise by producers trained to dramatically pull you in. Cast a fishing hook with the ideal bait for the target audience., then reel them in at a rapid pace, pulling them deeper and deeper into the narrativized life of someone on the other side of the world. Every piece of this script is optimized: selectively picking facts, making up entire worlds, culminating in the most addictive of narratives.
With a routine like that, what American wouldn’t be addicted to the Veil of Ignorance? Every night you sat down and experienced someone else’s life. Often, you lived multiple lives per night. The Veil of Ignorance became a routine of technology. With conditioning like that, how could anyone stand up to Rawls?
But these lives were carefully constructed fakes. Screenwriting logic dictated the precise plot beats to lure someone in and keep them there. Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance is better described as a Matrix of Ignorance.
Portray an actual life — full of real customs, storylines, decisions, and consequences — and there’s no way Americans relate. Live, in-person television started this downfall. It was the first deviation from the narrative hook. It pierced the Veil of Ignorance live from the scene.
Social media hammered the nail in the coffin. It fed pieces of context to be interpreted and reinterpreted by anyone, anywhere. It fed raw images, personalities, shower thoughts and ideologies. The stream of consumable information was no longer limited to vicarious experiences to indwell in.
Social media tore the Veil of Ignorance to shreds by presenting real opinions. Anyone who engages with social media naturally engages as a distinct individual. Most social media platforms have a comments section, where you and thousands of others can comment as a distinct person, outside of a piece of content. Now, you can get countless examples of people whose fundamental values and abilities could never be interchanged with yours in the click of a button. And by scrolling down to the comments section you can view the full kaleidoscope of difference in individual value and values.
John Rawls died in 2002. He barely lived to see 9/11. He didn’t get to see social networks, personalized algorithms, or artificial intelligence. I would like to think he died happy, with a final vindication.
I cannot blame Rawls for his egalitarian legacy. He was a philosopher whose logic embodied the medium of his era. Television created a consensus of egalitarian politics. Rawls was the sharpest of its messengers.
Nonetheless, I’m glad that era is over. Let’s lift the Veil of Ignorance and admit that we are not the same.
I'd offer that Rawls greatest contribution was something else, his idea about how to evaluate and design a fair system. It had much to do with the veil of ignorance, but in an entirely different way. And strangely enough, I first discovered this idea in a Dr. Who episode, where the Dr uses this strategy to create a viable peace plan between two sides who were sworn enemies.
The idea is basically that you have to create a plan, system, model or reach a decision that you'd be satisfied with, if you have no idea which outcome you'll be getting. The veil of ignorance in this case keeps the parties from arguing entirely from "their side" since they don't know which side they'll end up getting.
While it clearly has limitations and isn't applicable in every situation, this principle has amazing power in terms of changing one's perspective on the goal or purpose of negotiations.
How would you like your country to be in the future (forget the world) if you didn't know which person you would be in it?
Does that question, whether it even makes sense, really depend upon the type of media in that future world?
Economically speaking at least, can't we still think in terms of maximizing the general welfare? Not just as it relates to the ideal distribution of income, keeping in mind the very real trade-off that will always between issues of distribution and the total amount to be distributed. But equally as it relates to the varieties of lifestyles and opportunities available to people of different talents and abilities.
Suppose for instance that you are a person of no special talent, as you likely will be given that the overwhelming majority of people in any society necessarily are, thanks to the Bell Curve. That being the case, would you rather be born into a society roughly like the one we live in today, or one with other additional and quite different possibilities for ordinary working- and middle-class people? Like this one to take a concrete example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
As long as we think that there might be other, better possibilities for living for ordinary people, I think the veil of ignorance will remain a quite useful way to think about questions of this kind.
But maybe I misunderstand what you are trying to say? I probably am.