On my blog, I recently put together a post - Gas Prices and Politics: Fact vs. Fiction - about higher gas prices and how people are blaming President Obama for it. As I pointed out there, Republicans blaming him for the increase in the price of gasoline (and oil in general) are wrong for the same reason as when Democrats blamed former President Bush back in 2007: the President doesn't really have that much power to influence oil and gasoline prices.
So, if it is true that no such power exists for the leaders of our government to affect the price at the pump (and that is true, as the prices are set more by market factors such as global supply and demand of oil), why is it that people want to lay blame upon our mostly blameless leaders? I struggled with the answer to this question for some time, but I think I have finally hit upon a possible answer: many people, either consciously or not, attribute powers to the President of the United States and Congress that simply do not exist.
And that asks the next obvious question: why do people attribute such powers to our political leaders? Why is it that many of us assign almost god-like abilities to our decidedly non-god-like and wholly fallible authority figures?
I think the answer is multi-faceted and can give some interesting insights into how we think about a lot of things, especially regarding politically oriented topics. In addition, an analysis of this topic can lead us into a deeper discussion of a philosophical concept known as “agency”.
First, I think (somewhat cynically) that there are some, if not many, politicians in government who, either actively or inactively, encourage the notion that they have more power than they are in reality. After all, this is one of the reasons why people vote for candidates running for political office: because they make promises and we expect them to deliver on those promises, whether or not those promises are in any way, shape, or form realistic to achieve. This also goes for the various subsidiaries which surround the government, such as lobbying groups, political action committees, etc. But it’s too easy to stop there.
Second, I think that in many ways we are somewhat hard-wired to make inferences to the existence of things which are not there. In philosophy, this is sometimes referred to as “agency”, where we assign some kind of powers and abilities to an entity through our beliefs about that entity or our behavior towards it. For example, how many of us have been in the middle of some very important work on the computer when suddenly the program crashes? No doubt that many of us then engaged in a certain amount of cursing at (not necessarily about) the computer, as if it could not only hear but understand us. (Aside: my wife works with computers for her career, and she will swear up and down that “they know what we’re thinking”) The computer itself is real enough, but what about the agency which we assign to it?
But when you step back and think about it, it’s downright silly to rant and rave at the computer. The most obvious reason for this is that it simply doesn’t work. Yell at the computer all you want, but that won’t fix the problem; actually trying to solve the relevant hardware and/or software problem will fix things. The other reason is that, let’s face it, at the end of the day the computer is simply a collection of circuits, wire, switches, and assorted electronics. Does it really have a mind with which to interact? The answer, so far with today’s common technology, is a negative, yet for some reason we engage with the computer as if it did have such a mind. And in so doing, we assign agency to the computer.
There are those who make the argument that we have this seeming propensity for the assignment of agency where none exists by virtue of our evolutionary development. The argument goes something along these lines: we evolved to assign agency to unseen entities hiding in the grass which made noises, because – on balance – those of our ancestors who got spooked by such noises and ran, even if no predator made those noises, tended to survive and reproduce more readily than those who always ignored the noises.
Others make a cultural argument for agency by referencing the role of religion in human societies for so long. If God isn’t the ultimate agent, who or what is? Just think about all of the time and energy spent by humanity in praying to God or a plethora of other supernatural entities as if they are people like you and me, not to mention all of the powers attributed to these entities by believers and you’ll get another pretty good grasp of the concept of agency.
But the notion of agency is even more pronounced and deeply-engrained than that. I know that most skeptics/atheists will look at the above examples and think, “Well duh! That’s obvious.” Indeed, many critical thinkers are pretty good about recognizing the often unconscious assignment of agency in cases of religious or paranormal or supernatural kinds of topics, but what about in the case of politics?
Think about these examples: how many of us have a preference for one political party over another? And why is that? Is it because we think that party has the power to “set things right”? Or is it because we fear the opposing party has the power to “screw everything up”? No doubt we all engage in this sort of thinking at least occasionally, and when we do I would challenge us to think about whether or not we are unnecessarily assigning agency where it need not be assigned.
Lastly, I will give my final thoughts about why I personally think many people assign agency, whether it be in the realm of computers, religion, or politics. I think that much of it boils down to one thing: giving us a sense of control of what is essentially uncontrollable. Perhaps this is a way of coping with the uncertainty in the world, because rather than admit the reality that even our most powerful leaders are often quite powerless (and the implication that we, as individuals, have even less power than we thought) against the random nature of the universe, many people would make up a fiction that “they” (insert spooky music) are behind it all and to blame; so if we can only get “them” out of power, then things will automatically get better. From this kind of thinking it is not terribly difficult to enter into what can reasonably be described as the mode of conspiracy mongering, which is a pretty radical example of assigning agency where none exists.
If you find yourself engaging in this mode of thinking, I’ve got a news flash for you: reality doesn’t give a damn what you think; it doesn’t give a damn what I think; it doesn’t give a damn what the President of the United States thinks. And casting blame hither and yon about the price of gasoline will do nothing to change that, just like screaming at your computer won’t make it work any better.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Matt Lowry is a high school & college physics professor with a strong interest in promoting science education, skepticism and critical thinking among his students and the population in general. Towards these ends, he works with the JREF on their educational advisory board, and he also works with a number of grassroots skeptical, pro-science groups. In what little spare time he has, he blogs on these and related subjects at The Skeptical Teacher.