It Doesn't Matter What It's "Rooted In"

Fruits over Roots

Arguments predicated on a conflation of origin with value abound in political journalism and cultural commentary today. These fallacious claims take as axiomatic that a thing’s history determines its modern utility. The idea is that if something is “rooted in” the bad, if it was born out of problematic intentions or circumstances, then it necessarily perpetuates harm now. This sort of reasoning, although currently in vogue, lacks internal coherence and tends to hide more than it reveals. 

“Roots” discourse particularly pervades coverage of culture war issues. Policing today is racist since the institution is “rooted in” racist slave patrols. Ideas associated with critical race theory must pose a threat because they are “built on” Marxist social philosophy. Words and phrases which conveyed problematic ideas in the past invariably “speak to their history” regardless of their contemporary usage. Religious ideas ought to guide public policy because America was “founded on” Judeo-Christian principles. Ironically, racial supremacist fascists and identity obsessed progressives both emphasize that your baseline human worth is a function of your ancestral roots. The list goes on.

The intuitiveness of the origin-value connection may have something to do with the relationship between durability and functionality. Although there are certainly exceptions, things which have stood the test of time generally fulfill perennial human needs and desires in relatively better ways than their alternatives. Our awareness that time tends to select for usefulness often leads us to assume old businesses, people, and ideas have something special to offer. The word tends here is critical. Longevity correlates with value, but the two are not causally related. Many old businesses and people are corrupt and some of history’s worst ideas still plague us today.

Similarly, the moral valence of a thing’s origin can match that of its current effects. If it emerged from the actions of well-meaning people or uplifting circumstances, it may be beneficial. But this is by no means guaranteed. Well intentioned plans are often counterproductive when implemented. For example, those who argue that professors should issue trigger/content warnings before presenting information which may cause discomfort in class mean well. They want to reduce the possibility students with past trauma experience psychological distress in the classroom. However, perhaps counterintuitively, the available scientific evidence suggests trigger warnings either have no meaningful effect or actually worsen students’ trauma by reinforcing their identification with it. 

The asymmetry runs the other way as well. Some very positive things have atrocious roots. Numerous lifesaving drugs and other medical interventions in use today developed from studies conducted in concentration camps. The philosophy of nonviolent resistance which helped liberate India and inspired the Martin Luther King Jr. was established by Gandhi, a man who leveraged his cultural authority to get married women and underage girls to sleep naked in his bed for the sake of “testing his purity.” 

The conceptual emancipation of value from origin traces back to ancient philosophy. It was revitalized in the eighteenth century by the Scottish philosopher David Hume who famously distinguished “is” from “ought.” In 1902, the great American psychologist William James began a series of lectures on the psychology of religious experience by reminding his listeners that “propositions of value” are independent of “existential judgements.” “Neither judgment can be deduced immediately from the other,” he explained, “They process from diverse intellectual preoccupations, and the mind combines them only by making them first separately, and then adding them together.” Ultimately, James argued, things’ goodness or badness can only be judged by what he calls the empiricist criterion. The standard?  “By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.” 

This is not to say the ideas underlying roots discourse are worthless. The durability-functionality and origin-value correlations function as heuristics, or conceptual tools we use to predict probabilities in the absence of adequate information. We employ these specific heuristics to determine how likely something is to be useful or good when we need to take immediate action or make quick judgements. If we are torn between two products at the store and lack the time or motivation to conduct additional research, we might, in accordance with the durability-functionality heuristic, default to the one produced by the relatively more established company. Likewise, if we haven’t studied the details of an election safety policy and know only that a racist proposed it, we are likely to rely on the origin-value heuristic to ascertain how skeptically we should approach claims about the policy’s contents and implications. 

Heuristics are helpful as guides for making relatively unimportant daily decisions, not as foundations for insightful political commentary or cultural criticism. Roots discourse, by irresponsibly relying on the lie that origin necessarily confers value, ignores the practical necessities and contingencies of the present moment. It privileges vague, emotionally charged fallacies over actionable descriptions of specific details and impacts. It fuels the cultural battles over semantics which inhibit our collective ability to solve tangible problems. 

Arguments from heuristics are not always wrong. To conclude otherwise would be to commit the fallacy under critique. But they are invariably predicated on a form of reasoning which, when routinely applied to complicated matters, produces more falsities and distractions than truths and solutions. We need to hold those responsible for reporting facts accountable when they lazily deliver abstract concoctions instead of researched observations. Political progress depends on accessible information about concrete phenomena, not ideologically tinged columns about how the things of today are somehow magically tainted by their historical instantiations and associations. As William James warned over a century ago, “Dogmatic philosophies have sought for tests for truth which might dispense us from appealing to the future.” We can more productively address social issues if we overcome preoccupations about a thing’s ancestry and emphasize empirical analyses of its current and potential effects in our world. To create a better future, fruits must take precedence over roots.