Freakonomics: The Moral Landscape
The Freakonomics guys are presenting a slickly produced series of iTunes podcasts.
On their most recent episode they hung the show on the premise of a new book called, “Faking It.”
The idea is that we lie to get by. They start by interviewing a woman who keeps kosher, except sometimes, when she orders dishes with bacon added — when not at home. She isn’t really faking it because her husband knows, but this is their example.
Next the podcast presents one of Obama’s faking it moments. A big one. Obama had a lunatic pastor whom he called his spiritual advisor; Obama even named one of his books after one of his pastor’s sermons. Obama said he was a devout Christian but the truth was, according to a reporter who examined the subject, that he scarcely went to church. This tidbit was provided not to extend the faking it bit, but to exonerate Obama from the question that pervaded his campaign, “How could you and your wife sit there and listen to…?”
In this enabling scenario, Obama could not admit his non-attendance because it would put in question the genuineness of his beliefs. So, according to the logic and value system of the host, this was a minor case of faking it, because the cost of admitting the truth, that he had never heard Pastor Wright’s rants against America, would be politically costly. (You do wonder if before the birth of his children, when he was attending Wright’s sermons, if Obama did hear the sermons he claimed not to have. Do you doubt it?)
According to this logic, which rescusitates an unpleasant part of the campaign for the sake of chatter rather than insight, it is a minor thing: professing religious belief for advantage. An odd standard. There is also the odd moral equivalence between someone of another religion not observing a dietary law and Obama’s manipulation of religious belief for political advantage. We are back in moral equivalence land — a familiar media landscape.
Although the Freakonomics guys are more interesting than Gladwell, even if of the same stripe — because their ideas lead to some deeply needed irreverence in a conformist America — they then try to cover over uncomfortable truths.
There are real issues here. The issues have to do with social pressure, conformity, the personal impact on character of faking it, and how to determine the acceptable white lie from the character vitiating conformist curtsy to gain personal advantage.
Well, the election is over. It is too bad this unpleasantness needs to be brought up again. In many ways, faking it most pertains to the impetus to gain status and the costs and benefits to society of that impulse . That is, if you want to take the idea as presented seriously at all.
