What Makes You So Special?

Tomorrow, I will get on an airplane for the first time since January, since before the world turned upside down. As someone who usually travels often for work and for play, this is an astoundingly long time. I'm eager for the change of scenery, but traveling right now is not something I take lightly. I am geared up with a mask (plus extras, just in case), disinfectant wipes, and lots of hand sanitizer. I will sit as far away from other passengers as humanly possible. I'll try not to touch things, and I'll wash my hands often. I'm fairly confident all will be fine, but it's still a risk.

This morning, as I was preparing for my trip, I heard several news stories that caught my attention: public confrontations over mask rules, customers punching out (and in at least one case, tragically killing) store employees for enforcing a store's mask policy, and even holding up flights by refusing to wear face coverings. I was intrigued, and my anthropology senses were piqued. The intensity and dramatic nature of these clashes seem to signal that something much more is going on than a mere difference of opinion about public health data.

Between Panic Porn and Pandemic Denial

Several well-circulated media pieces have explored the psychological processes that can lead some people to believe that the COVID-19 risk is overblown, or even that the whole pandemic is a complete hoax. On the other side of the issue, pieces have speculated about why some people have a propensity toward panic porn and crisis-mongering. A constant refrain on both sides is: "What on earth is wrong with those people?" In both cases, the problem with "those people" is attributed to their faulty beliefs, lack of accurate information, and blind allegiance to purported experts who, in fact, know nothing. If "they" would only internalize and process "true" information, they would see the light.

But in listening to these news stories, I was drawn in another direction. They led me to reflect less on questions of individual psychology and belief, and more on questions of risk and moral decision-making. And this, in turn, led me to ponder the issue of exceptionalism, how it manifests within contemporary American culture, and the kinds of implications this has in our regular daily lives, especially in the midst of a major health crisis.

Moral Decision-Making

Let me unpack this a bit. Philosophers, psychologists, and social scientists have long sought to understand how and why people make complex decisions that entail moral discernment. There are different ways to think about moral decision making, but most scholars agree that we make moral decisions through intricate (albeit largely unconscious) processes of cognitive and affective deliberation. The general assumption is that, whatever the outcome, these decisions will be intelligible to others (even if they disagree) because we ultimately share the same reality and the same tools for discerning truth and determining risk.

But do we? "Self-interest" or "best judgements" are not always simple or clear cut, nor is pursuing them always available to everyone in the same ways or with the same goods and risks at stake. Here, anthropology offers some insights. In her 1995 book Choosing Unsafe Sex, for example, anthropologist Elisa Sobo explored why some urban African-American women in the US continued to have unprotected sex during the height of the AIDS crisis, despite public awareness campaigns about how condoms can prevent HIV transmission. Public health officials insisted that these women clearly didn't understand the risks involved and they needed more health education.

What Sobo found, though, is that her interlocutors understood very well the risks of getting AIDS and that condoms could reduce those risks: They simply judged other risks to be more acute, and other benefits to be more imperative. Similarly, in Wayward Women (2006), anthropologist Holly Wardlow sought to understand why increasing numbers of young women in New Guinea were leaving their families to become "passenger women" (prostitutes) despite the dangers and intense stigma attached to that path. Her conclusion is that doing so enabled these women to reclaim a sense of ownership over their own sexualities and to escape networks of kin obligation that otherwise limited their life options.

In other words, actions always involve moving both towards and away from potential risks as well as potential goods. What makes certain actions moral actions is that they are contingent on how we value and prioritize those risks and goods as well as the calculi we use for getting there.

Exceptionalism, Risk, and Moral Signaling

This is where the issue of exceptionalism comes in. Exceptionalism is the belief that you (or your group) are fundamentally different than everyone else. And not just different: special. Outstanding. Extraordinary. Rules and consequences don't apply to "the exceptional" the same way they do for others. Exceptionalism signals that you are, precisely, the exception to those rules.

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The exceptional situation of the pandemic sheds new light on exceptionalism as an ideology and its relational consequences. It also sheds light on moral decision-making in the midst of a public health crisis.

Exceptionalism can manifest in individual psychological or personality characteristics, but it is not only a psychological phenomenon. While not entirely unique to the United States, exceptionalism is, in many ways, a particularly American cultural disposition. It is foundational to our national history and is the bedrock of many of our juridical, political, and cultural institutions and traditions. As the "empire of liberty" (Thomas Jefferson) and "shining city on a hill" (Ronald Raegan), America has long thought of itself as the "last best hope on Earth" (Abraham Lincoln) and "leader of the free world," whose values and institutions make it an "indispensable nation" (Madeline Albright).

But more than this, American exceptionalism is inextricable from our country's capitalist foundations: Capitalism (in theory) rewards outstanding creativity, innovation, and hard work with exceptional success. In other words, exceptionalism has been "baked in" to American society and culture from our country's very inception, and it has come to characterize not only how we as Americans think, feel, and behave but also how others around the world view us, as people and as a nation. These characterizations are often far from pretty: loud, obnoxious, entitled, bullying, selfish, materialistic, ruthless. The Ugly American.

At the same time, the ideology of exceptionalism is a powerful engine of innovation, both fueling and reflecting tremendous human accomplishments. The light bulb, the telephone, air conditioning, the polio vaccine, space flight, the iPhone: There is little doubt that Americans have been at the forefront of many of the world's most spectacular scientific and creative advancements (though the degree to which these achievements are the products of individual exceptionalism, or broader local and international structures and relationships that support various kinds of privilege is a question for another time). In America, exceptionalism is the name of the game.

This post is Part 1 of a two-part series. You can find Part 2 here.