Across Scale, Space and Time
All men are created equal. There was the hypocrisy. America 1776.
That key moral claim stared the founding fathers in their faces as they turned a blind eye to its true implications - because slavery was too important a piece of the economy.
But this post isn’t about slavery.
It’s about how you conquer things like slavery.
Abraham Lincoln, a giant gawky man with hands too big, arms too long, pants too short. He would be the man who would, in the eyes of the country, remove the thinly-veiled moral neutrality that slavery seemed to hold and untangle the stated contradiction.
The way he did it was not by delivering an impassioned moral plea from behind a podium. He understood that the moral idealists who wanted abolition tomorrow would not be effective, and would fail in their mission.
“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.” - Lincoln
He worked on understanding the worldview of the people whose minds he needed to change. He took his time and maneuvered himself, as a politician does, into a position where the argument was not merely a moral one - but more importantly, a pragmatic one.
It required a bloody civil war. The author of ‘On Grand Strategy’ John Lewis Gaddis writes:
“He saw that a civil war which he’d allowed to be forced upon him - might also permit the American state, tainted by slavery, to save it’s soul.”
During the war, he waited for the right time to finally become an abolitionist - arming recently freed slaves to fight against the Confederates. Under this guise of military strategy, he forced the Southerners to do the same while maintaining a political detachment from the moral implications of his decision. He knew that he would need the respect and support of the people in the South to rebuild a united America.
This strategy, along with the necessary military success, allowed him to declare from a position of strength: “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honourable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.” - Lincoln
This brilliant strategic move, allowed him to smuggle in the emancipation under a guise of military necessity. Upon winning the war, he could unveil the moral victory that underpinned it.
He was strong-willed, without being wilful. Righteous without being self-righteous. Moral, without being moralistic.
He mastered scale, space and time.
Scale: He understood that he needed to gradually expand the edges of the Overton window - allowing practicality and common sense to lead the charge instead of emotion and unfettered ambition.
Space: He used the space of the battlefield to make his political moves, understanding the cultural context he was living in.
Time: He knew how to wait, when to act and where to seek reassurance.
When we look at the moral crises facing us today, are our leaders thinking about scale, space and time? It appears to me that we spend too much of our time signaling our virtue by shouting moral claims at the top of our lungs or on the front of our social media accounts. We don’t spend nearly enough time thinking strategically about how to shift public opinion effectively.
I believe in the war of ideas, I do. I believe that is how we move humanity forward. But it requires patience, humility and a realistic expectation about what it takes to change someone’s mind. It requires pragmatism.
Across Scale, Space and Time.