I had an interesting experience this afternoon.  While browsing at a local bookstore, I lingered for a while in the current-events section.  It’s always fun to see the latest polemic du jour, and I was not disappointed with the selection of throw-away titles that promised to tell the “real truth” about the Iraq war or the Bush administration or the decline of Western civilization or the fallibility of journalists or … well, you get the point.

The current-events titles are housed opposite the store’s modest selection of gay-themed books.  I do not generally pay much attention to the “gay and lesbian interests” section, since there is a certain disappointing predicatability to the subject-matter, but I did happen to observe the store’s other patrons as they browsed those shelves.

The ten minutes or so I spent with one eye on the current-events books and the other on the gay-and-lesbian-section patrons certainly provided fodder for reflection.  Most people tended to pass through the section on their way to some other part of the store.  However, those who explored the gay-themed books seemed skittish, as if they didn’t want to be seen as looking too intently at those books.  They seemed to be watching out for those who might be watching them, much more so than those browsing, e.g., the religious fiction section.

Maybe it’s a function of living in socially conservative West Michigan; there are defined and unambiguous limits to what this community finds acceptable in terms of the expression of one’s sexuality — although signs abound that perhaps a more libertarian streak is starting to infuse the otherwise stolidly conservative facade of pious Grand Rapids.

But it was interesting, nevertheless, that those inclined to look for gay-themed books appeared sensitive to be seen as looking for gay-themed books. 

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it; my interest was originally caught by an alterna-teen walking slowly up and down the aisle, so maybe I am just applying a social template that has no firm basis in reality.  Perhaps.

Whatever the case, I’ve now got something else to think about.

Off and on over the last four years, I have participated in online political simulations — either based on some sort of Web forum, or through Yahoo! Groups.  I was originally attracted to the idea because I thought the sims would provide an interesting counterpoint to the conventional wisdom of political scientists, about the structure and organization of governments and communities.  It seemed to me, when I first enrolled, that sims were a real-life learning lab, where the lessons of rational-actor theory, respect for the rule of law, and other pleasant nostrums of political theory would be on full display for confirmation and further analysis.

Well, I did learn a few things.  And now that a strange situation has developed in three of the four sims in which I’m presently enrolled, it seems an opportune time to reflect on my experiences in virtual government.

Lesson No. 1 — Hobbes was apparently more correct than Rousseau.  The Hobbesian theory that people lived “nasty, brutish and short” lives in a hellish state of nature, and the evolutionary biological traits that would result from such an environment, are on display in these simulations.  Barring strong leadership by people explicity committed to procedural fairness equally applied to friend and foe, sims tend to devolve into macho posturing, barbed witticisms and take-no-prisoners grudge matches dominated by the most socially aggressive.  Cooperation is not the default behavior, even among those interested in participating in a simulated government.

Real-life parallel:  The blogosphere and its counterparts in magazines, newspapers and cable TV.

Lesson No. 2 — When actions have no practicable consequences against people encountered in the real world, actors tend to treat others as if they lack basic moral standing.  It is amazing to see how living, breathing humans are routinely denigrated and even demonized simply because of disagreements over politics or tactics.  Even people in the same ideological cohort can enage in this behavior against co-partisans (where, in fact, it is often even more bitter than cross-ideological castigation).  Since we don’t see Bob the Evil Democratic Villanous Baby-Killer as Neighbor Bob, it’s easy to treat him as the next incarnation of Josef Stalin.  But we forget that Bob is a person and not a straw-man.  And the rapidity and apparent facility with which our memory is purged of Bob’s personhood is scary.  Well and truly scary.

Real-life parallel:  The Holocaust, and other instruments of mass extermination, especially in the context of German social guilt.

Lesson No. 3 — Rationality is optional, but loyalty is not.  It is strange that in a political simulation, where argumentation should be of paramount importance, the laws of logic are apparently suspended in service to ideology or personal loyalty.  In fact, informed discussion is often dismissed as being excessively intellectual (and hence snobbish or condescending), and when someone is losing an argument, ad hominems and irrational re-directions become the rule of the day.  Quite simply, among a distressingly large majority of simulation participants, rationality is not a virtue to be cultivated, but rather an obstacle to be overcome, and the degree to which rationality is honored is dependent on a person’s loyalty to the leader of a faction (and ultimately, to that leader’s commitment to logic).

Real-life parallel:  MoveOn.org and most of the dogmatic, hard-core Left, and certain hard-right Catholic sedevacantists.

Lesson No. 4 — Ideological certitude is the leading cause of the breakdown in the social order.  The populations of simulations tend to fall quickly into cliques based on ideology.  No surprise there.  However, within each clique, there is a tendency for a second-level distinction to arise, based on each person’s comfort level with aggressive tactics.  Those who prefer open conversation, procedural fairness, and civility are usually branded “moderates” (or “damn moderates”) and marginalized in a pole-dominated caucus.  Thus, the hard-core leftists and the hard-core rightists are engaged in a fight to the death, while in the middle live those few who, despite their support for liberal or conservative policy positions, are nevertheless considered disloyal for their openness to debate and fair play.  Ideology divides us, but within an ideology, disagreement over tactics is the operative friction, and as such, the moderating forces within an ideology are often marginalized.  The predictable end result is excessive polarization.

Real-life parallel:  The active leadership of the pro-life and pro-choice movements.

Lesson No. 5 — The good of the many is relevant only when the good of the self is satisfied seriatim; conversely, if an otherwise beneficial policy is proposed but it leads to some sort of loss to the self (either in terms of power, or of face), it will be vehemently opposed.  I have seen the exact same simulation-rules changes be supported and then opposed opposed by the main political caucuses depending solely on which held majority status.  Never mind whether the proposed change was good for the simulation; if it threatened the self, however defined, then it was a bad proposal that must be opposed at all costs.

Real-life parallel:  Major reform efforts centered around Congress (e.g., campaign finance and lobbyist reform initiatives).

There are other aspects to this, of course.  And I learned exactly the opposite, in the long run, of what I anticipated — I came to realize that despite man’s inherently social nature, our tendency is to hunt in packs that are heirarchically organized and committed to some core mythology that admits to no internal dissent, either in tactics or in belief.

Kinda like al Qaeda, except they’re the bad guys and so aren’t like us at all.  Or something like that.

Even in the United States, among educated people (including some I’ve verified as having real-life doctoral degrees), sim participants too often demonstrate the breakdown in social cohesion that is so often excoriated when practiced by Islamofascist terrorists yet is rationalized away when practiced by themselves.

Of course, it remains an open question whether sim participants adequately mirror the population at large.  I should hope not — some of what I’ve seen over the years has been downright bone-chillingly evil — yet a survey of the popular culture, from Jerry Springer to Hollywood divorces to the average college freshman classroom, suggests that even if the sample is deviant from the population … it’s probably not by much.

I used to be optimistic about human nature, but no longer.  I used to think that we’d find some way to overcome our ignorance and our prejudice to arrive at a glorious and better tomorrow for mankind.  Now, I’m skeptical.  Perhaps my sojurns in virtual democracy have made me more cynical, or perhaps they’ve opened my eyes a bit about the nature of my fellow citizens. 

Either way … the experience has been sobering.

Ahh, the Olympics.

A symbol of human solidarity in a world rent by bloody factionalism. A chance to see athleticism at its most pure and noble and inspiring. A forum for non-violent and friendly competition among nation-states. An opportunity for the talking-head glitterati to inadvertently demonstrate that the emperor of cultural correctness wears no clothes.

I refer, with that last observation, to NBC’s preferred term of reference for this year’s host city.

I gritted my teeth but dealt with the last round of this nonsense, when the enlightened beautiful people on TV spoke of the events in “Bar-THAY-low-nah,” as if Katie Couric and her perky band of multi-culti misfits were heirs to the aristocracy of Castille.

But “Torino?” In the English-speaking world, the Italian city hosting the present Olympiad is called “Turin.”

Granted: In Italian, the city is called “Torino.” But proper speakers of English don’t call it that, any more than we call Venice “Venezia” or Florence “Firenze” or Rome “Roma” (or even “Urbs,” to be extra-special sophisticated).

This exaggerated cosmopolitanism is especially grating when it panders to the desperate need of some to be perceived as culturally sensitive. And so the teetotalers of toleration mimic the speech patterns of indigenous peoples (even if they’re just Italians) in order to appear more educated and more tolerant than the rubes in Red State America.

Newsflash to NBC: Having your correspondents pronounce foreign place-names in unusual ways is not a sign of enlightenment — rather, it is a caricature of smarter-than-thou liberal journalism on open display. When addressing an English-speaking audience, it’s generally advisable to communicate in English.

I do, however, concede some limits on a relentless Anglicization of foreign words. We do not, for example, generally refer to the last leader of Imperial Germany as “Emperor William II” or even as “King Bill” – we quite properly call him Kaiser Wilhelm. Nor do most people ask for a “croy-SANT” with their morning coffee and “horz da vorz” before their evening meal. And we often, legitimately, flit between “czar” and “tsar” in reference to the male monarchs of Russia, and between “Beijing” and “Peking” depending on whether we’re referring to the capital city of China or the delicious meal of duck named after it.

But “Turin” is well-established in English usage (think of the Shroud of Turin), more so than “Torino.” Ask most Americans to define “Torino,” and you may well find more people thinking it’s a defunct car model from the 1970s instead of the venerable Italian city that it is.

I will not watch the 2006 Olympics, for no other reason than because I’m disgusted with NBC’s assault upon the language. Silly? Perhaps. But one must draw the line somewhere, and protesting the corruption of conventional English syntax is no less absurd than pretending that figure skating is actually a sport.

This afternoon, I stopped at the local outlet of a major national retailer.  My purpose: To return a book I had purchased a few days ago, that I forgot that I already owned.

I assumed that this would be a relatively painless operation.  The book was unopened and in perfect condition, I had a receipt for the original cash transaction, and the item was purchased three days prior.  Sounds like an easy transaction for the folks behind the service counter, right?

Wrong.

The middle-aged, disgruntled service clerk was clearly not happy with me.  She said the store doesn’t normally doesn’t return books, because people might read them before returning them.  Fair enough; but if people want to read books without owning them, wouldn’t a library card be easier?

She even had to call her manager — a young man who looked like a teenager moonlighting from his true calling as the lead angstmeister for an emo band — who examined the book and approved the transaction.  After telling the clerk about what to look for from customers who might be scamming the system.  Point taken, should I ever want to pull one over on “big retail.”

OK; we all know that even routine customer-service transactions can sometimes have a glitch.  But as I think about my experience this afternoon, I cannot help but to recall my five years’ experience as a retail clerk for a major regional retailer.  I worked behind the service counter during a time in the chain’s history when it wanted to have a Nordstromesque customer-service reputation.  So, we’d take just about anything, and we clerks were trained to “just say yes.”

So we said yes … so some very strange transactions, sometimes.  Like the day I accepted a return on a 15-year-old automatic garage door.  The customer had saved his box and his receipt, and I was so impressed that I agreed to refund him in full.  And management was delighted that we took care of the customer.  Or like our policy to accept any-or-no identification on farm payroll checks presented by migrant workers (we had contracts to always honor checks with most of the large commercial farms in the area).  No ID?  No problem; we cashed their checks with a smile.

I noted, in passing, that my former employer recently changed its return and check-cashing policies.  Now, you need to have receipts within 30 days, perfect merchandise, and you must swear a blood oath to never shop anywhere else before the store will even consider issuing a “merchandise credit.”

What a change in 10 years!

I understand the frustrations of retail.  I really do.  But when former paragons of excellent customer service fall into the trap of assuming that every customer is a potential perpetrator of retail fraud, we lose something as a culture.

But hey, at least I got my refund.