I just started reading a book titled Achieving Our Country, by Richard Rorty. I came upon it after Googling something like “tech reading list” and finding a post titled A 2017 Tech Worker Reading List. Most of the books in this list directly address some question regarding our increasingly tech-dominated society. This made Achieving Our Country stand out to me, as it’s a more general discussion of the American political scene.

Achieving Our Country cover

Though published nearly twenty years ago, this book has seen renewed interest since the election of our current president, as it has been noted that some of Rorty’s ideas are prescient of the conditions which allowed for Trump’s election. I’m still in the early portions of the book, but it’s already clear to me that the book is way more than just a diagnosis of America’s political dynamics. Rather, it is a call for liberal intellectuals to find a new notion of nationalism.

For Rorty, the association of nationalism with “simpleminded militaristic chauvinism” should not be so definitive. I really like the opening line: “National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.” If we reject nationalism because we so closely associate it with injustices of the past, then we potentially lose a key tool for working against these injustices as a country.

I’m interested in what Rorty’s recentering of national pride might mean to those working in tech today. While it’s true that having an apathy/disdain for our country’s current political system is not a mindset unique to tech, I think in tech it is particularly prevalent, if not celebrated, for a number of reasons:

  • the pay is good, so a lot of people can afford not to care.
  • there’s a narrative that tech is making the world a better place, so even if one does care about society, it might be tempting to believe that one has done one’s part by simply working in tech.
  • if there is any industry that can compete with the federal government for having impact on the greatest scale, it would be tech.
  • tech can not only match the government’s scale, but also push change much rapidly. A refrain I’ve come upon in a few places is of the sort: “while politicians talk about what the solution should be, the engineers simply build it”.

These reasons come together to explain what some call the “Silicon Valley secessionist” mindset: namely, that those in tech can give up on trying to effect change through the democratic process, and focus instead on directly engineering solutions which do not require the consensus of a large, irrational body of people.

Our current democracy is certainly dysfunctional, and it may be that democracy by nature always has a chaotic, inefficient component. However, I think much of the news in the last few years shows that tech cannot be so confident of itself being a force for good either. Whether it’s the delivery of fake news, the loss of jobs to automation, or the leveraging of unaware consumers’ personal data for profit, the list of infractions made by an idealistic industry has ballooned as of late.

A question that’s been on my mind a lot recently is what a more democratically engaged tech industry would look like. It would be naive to think that those in tech just need to be more hopeful about what the democratic process can achieve, and that good things will follow. What’s cool about Rorty’s writing is that he acknowledges the many negativities associated with nationalism, but then points out how letting oneself feel jaded about our political system’s failings is not an innocent act. Basically that, yes, there’s a ton of upsetting news churned out every day, but it’s not enough to process this news and be satisfied that showing disdain for the government distances you from its terrible actions.

Cynicism is an important tool for staying vigilant against injustice veiled with rosy intentions, but it’s fundamentally destructive. Without a constructive counterpart, the trench only gets dug deeper. Rorty’s interest in realigning our notions of nationalism is exciting, because it’s exactly the sort of constructive alternative that can inspire the tech industry to look for solutions which work with our democracy, rather than solutions which go around it.

In writing the last two paragraphs, I realize that they really go beyond tech and can apply to many of us who feel hopeless about American civic life. Given the generality of Rorty’s work, this makes total sense. My choice to focus on tech is not because I think it is the only industry that can do better by absorbing some of Rorty’s ideas. It is simply one important example of this, and also an example that is more specific to my experience.

I’m excited for whatever ideas will get conjured up as I keep reading Achieving Our Country!