(Continued from “It’s a wonderful life,” U.S. political edition, Part I; see “It’s a Wonderful Life,” American Political Edition (Parts I-V) for all five parts combined and revised)
“First,” the angel said, “let’s look at what your country and world would have been like had you not further amended the Constitution after the Bill of Rights.”
“Slavery would not have been legally abolished by the 13th Amendment, nor Congress empowered to enforce its prohibition.
“The 14th Amendment’s transformation of the legal framework of the country would never have occurred. The Dred Scott Decision, which held that no African American, whether free or slave, was an American citizen, would have remained the law of the land. The states’ exemption from the Bill of Rights, which was originally meant to limit only the federal government’s intrusion on state and individual rights, would have persisted, and the protections of the Constitution would have continued not to apply to or restrain state and local governments in any way. African American slaves would have continued to be counted, legally, as 3/5 of a human being.
“The 15th Amendment’s legal guarantee, not to be effectively enforced for a century more, that all citizens, regardless of race, have the right to vote, would not have come into existence.
“The 17th Amendment’s increase in direct democracy, by shifting elections for U.S. Senators from the state legislatures to the people of the state, would not have happened.
“Women might still be denied the vote in some states.
“The increased tardiness and unevenness with which the United States would have dealt with these morally enervating issues would have reduced the human capital of the nation, delaying its fuller liberation and development longer. It would have been a less innovative country, and a less inspiring one to other nations. Resentments would have grown even stronger, divisions even deeper, the problems bred by these defects even more inextricably embedded into the fabric of your society. Those who later depended on the United States as a beacon of liberty would see only a quagmire of exploitation and oppression, either lagging even farther behind the finally pacified continent across the Atlantic it continually claimed superiority to, or, by not being a strong enough nation to lead, leaving that continent to a downward spiral from which it couldn’t escape, impoverishing the world along with it.
“The world would have been a very different place indeed had the United States not become what it became. And while there are those in the world who think that would have been a good thing, sometimes with considerable justification, it most certainly wouldn’t have been a good thing for America, nor, all things considered, for global peace and prosperity.”
“Oh, Angel,” the suicidal faction groaned condescendingly. “First of all, most of us don’t object to Constitutional Amendments, but rather to other increased exercises of federal power without recourse to such amendments. And second of all, many of these things would have come to pass by the choice of individual states, without the federal government imposing them on the states.”
“Slavery wasn’t going anywhere, anytime in the foreseeable future, without the legal and military coercion of the federal government,” replied the angel. “The gradual incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment by successive Supreme Court decisions, which continued into very recent times in our familiar reality (because state and local governments were not universally committed to protecting those rights), would not have occurred, and those states would remain free to disregard those protections. We see even today how fragile they are, at the hands of those who claim most respect for them, in the repetition of the refrain that according due process to those suspected of terrorism reduces the rule of law, a chant that is phenomenally ignorant of what the term ‘rule of law’ means in a Constitutional republic (hint: ignoring it out of convenience, in order to increase conviction rates, is the opposite of what it means).
“As for your other concerns, about increased exercises of federal power not granted by Constitutional amendments, follow me….”
(Continued in “Wonderful Life,” Part III)
(See “It’s a Wonderful Life,” American Political Edition (Parts I-V) for all five parts combined and revised)
(Opening scene: Angels, represented by twinkling stars, are talking about a troubled soul on Earth. They review this soul’s life, and the circumstances that led to its present difficulties….)
It was conceived with great hopes in a simpler time, by a variety of generous parents, and a few original sins. England (via the British Empire), in which modern democracy developed; The Enlightenment, characterized by a fluorescence of rationalistic philosophy; a wide-open new land, with an easily displaced indigenous population; abundant imported and bred slave labor. It developed a grandiose vision for itself, one comprised of the somewhat incompatible “manifest destiny” and protection of liberty, and a faith in its own exceptionalism.
But, as often happens, life presented unforeseen challenges which diverted this soul, the sovereign American People, from its youthful dreams. It gradually was forced to confront its original sins, brutally divided by one of them. Innovations complicated the landscape in which its dreams had been formed. It had to cope with a world comprised of other people with interests of their own, people less convinced of the benevolence of this popular sovereignty than that populace itself was.
But despite this diversion from its original dreams, it was the same soul, peforming many good deeds, born of pragmatism rather than idealism, that were not part of the original plan. It grew to address a changing world, doing what needed to be done to increase the welfare of those who depended on it. It intervened in the home of its parents when brutality racked the latter’s fields and towns, and then watched those parents, unencumbered by youthful dreams, combine the best fruits of their child’s aspirations with the reduced purism that comes from maturity.
But something in the people clung to the purity of youthful dreams, sulking with resistance to adulthood’s demands, an error that sometimes characterizes youth. Just at the point when both the people and their government were on the verge of following the mature wisdom of moderation and adaptation, the dreamer within, childish and narcissistic rather than noble and generous, rebelled, and rent this soul in an internal conflict over whether mature moderation would prevail, or childish purism.
The childish purism rebelled in a moment of crisis, and a large faction of the people said, “Government is not the solution, it’s the problem! The world would be better off without this government we’ve allowed to grow and grow, displacing the purity we had believed in and tried to implement in our youth! We would be better off if we had not allowed the lessons of life to adapt those youthful dreams to the demands of reality!”
And so this soul’s guardian angel decided to show it what the world would have been like without that modern government it now wished dead….
(Continued in “Wonderful Life,” Part II)
Profound lessons come from unexpected quarters. The military, throughout history, has always been a paradoxical social institution, the nexus of the most profound social solidarity but the vehicle of our most violent conflicts; the organization of our basest nature, but the cultivator of our noblest attributes; the realm of brutal action, but the narrative of transcendental philosophies (especially in Eastern philosophies and religions). Therefore, it is appropriate that the most poignant piece of writing I’ve encountered in recent times was an op-ed in today’s Denver Post, describing the ordeal of informing a fallen soldier’s family of the loss of their loved one (http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_16653516).
While the author, Captain Michael Odgers, subtly imports some of the ideological glorification of war that sacrifice facilitates, it is only on the margins of his beautifully written and deeply felt piece. The thrust of the narrative is one of compassion, of feeling the pain of others and taking it on as your own, of knowing that their suffering is our shared burden. I’ve written often that this should form the cornerstone of our national ideology (see, e.g., Our Brothers’ and Sisters’ Keepers). How ironic that the most eloquent expression of the argument should come from the institution that is arguably most biased against it in other spheres of life.
Is the parent’s, the spouse”s, the child’s pain at the loss of their son or daughter, their husband or wife, their mother or father, any less when it occurs in other contexts? Is the compassion that Captain Odgers describes any less appropriate, any less essential, any less necessary to the definition of what it means to be a society?
Not all deaths, even in service to country, occur on the battlefield. Not only do police officers and fire fighters and other rescue workers die in the line of duty, but so do social workers, construction workers, miners, and others making their various contributions to our collective welfare.
But does, or should, our compassion require a down-payment? Must those who have suffered a loss be able to invoke some special claim before they merit our organized and institutionalized moral (and perhaps material) support? Leaving aside the fiscal issues of what we can and can’t afford for the moment, would it be so bad to be a society that cares so much for each and every member that we mobilize such instruments of compassion as Captain Odgers and Chaplain Andy whenever they experience such a loss, or whenver they experience such a need?
I do not deny that we live in a world of limited resources, and that all of our social policies have to be subjected to the cold reality of thorough cost-benefit analyses. But when we engage in those analyses, doesn’t it behoove us to include on the “benefits” side of the ledger the value of institutionalizing assistance for one another when we are in need? We can argue the subtleties within that context, the concerns about “perverse incentives” for instance, but there should be no doubt that what Captain Odgers and Chaplain Andy represent, the institutionalized but absolutely sincere compassion expressed on behalf of a larger society, is a good thing, and it would be just as good a thing in the broader context of a nation (or world) of mutually interdependent and caring human beings, expressing as much goodwill for one another as we possibly can, and making that a cornerstone of who and what we are.
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Few issues, few demands to balance legitimate competing concerns, better illustrate both the subtlety of the challenges we face, and the dysfunctionality of displacing careful and thorough analyses with ideological scripts. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, on Meet the Press, just repeated the familiar right-wing refrain, “why are they more worried about the terrorists rights than about the rights of innocent travelers?” Some on the left (in an echo of Tea Party Liberty Idolatry) like to repeat the refrain, “those who trade liberty for security deserve neither.” Jindal also suggested that searching grandmothers and children at airport security is unnecessary, because they’re not the terrorists. Some on the left, in one of those all-too-common inter-ideological agreements on an oversimplification, insist that such measures are not about security at all, but rather about the exercise of government control and subjugation. (Vincent Carroll echoed that sentiment as applied to what he considers the government assault on Free Speech, as illustrated by, for instance, the opposition to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which protects corporate political speech from legislative restraints: see Freedom & Coherence).
It’s all Bullshit. Really.
Jindal’s refrain about Democrats’ overzealous defense of terrorists’ rights has been repeated in various contexts throughout American history, and has repeatedly been discredited. The very foundation of our system of justice is that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The constant allusion to the presumption of guilt that vests at the moment of being suspected (it is terrorists‘ rights that are being protected, rather than people suspected of terrorism) is as un-American as it gets. It was used to justify Gitmo, which every person I know of who actually visited Gitmo and talked with detainees there recognized held many, many completely innocent people.
The fact is, that despite our procedural bias in favor of protecting the rights of the innocent, we put thousands or tens of thousands of innocent people in jail every year, and some unknown number on Death Row. Violations of civil rights, including excessive violence by police against people who have committed the most minor of infractions, is a constant and real concern. Those on the right who are implicit advocates of decreasing our vigilance against those natural social forces that tend toward a police-state are doing this country an enormous disservice. As Sinclair Lewis said, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross” (there is some debate about the attribution: http://zalandria.wordpress.com/2007/01/13/sinclair-lewis-how-fascism-will-come-to-america-1935/).
On the other hand, the notion that we don’t have to compromise any of what we consider to be the full extent of our liberties and rights to the concerns of mutual security is equally absurd (sorry, folks). The very existence of any system of law enforcement is an intrusion on personal liberty. That’s what laws are: An intrusion on personal liberty. And enforcing them is, inherently, an invasion of privacy, including, to some extent, of the innocent. The vast majority of Americans prefer the slight invasion of privacy associated with airport security measures (at least prior to the implementation of the new, more intrusive measures) than the increased risk of violent death associated with their absence. I do, especially when my seven-year-old daughter is traveling with me.
The issue is not settled by some broad-brushstroke platitude on one side or the other, but rather by understanding: 1) the competing values; 2) the dangers of overemphasis of one or the other of those values; and 3) the cognitive and emotional biases that may play into exaggerating one or the other of those values (e.g., fear of criminal violence playing into an exaggerated predisposition to trade rights for security, or fear of government oppression playing into an exaggerated predisposition to trade security for rights). As in all matters, we are challenged to mobilize the best analyses, with all relevant information in play, and make the best decisions we can on that basis, in service to our values and to human welfare, all things considered.
Both Jindall, and some on the left who are indignant over TSA intrusiveness (in a Facebook thread on a post of the video of the little girl screaming “don’t touch me!” while being physically searched), invoke the refrain that small children and old ladies aren’t the terrorists. The fact is, that the terrorists are adaptable, and that there are those in all demographic categories who can be recruited, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, to carry explosives or other instruments of terrorism across airport security. Without a doubt, the TSA procedures can be better designed, and their treatment of children can be more sensitive to the particular needs involved (i.e., have TSA employees trained in working with children, using techniques that put them at ease). But those current imperfections are not some kind of major scandal. They’re just current imperfections, that we should insist upon refining.
The message is the same message that permeates all of my posts: Don’t reduce the challenges of self-governance to ideological refrains and broad-brushstroke platitudes. Avoid precipitous conclusions driven by political-emotional predispositions. Do the analysis, and recognize that we live in a complex and subtle world, that demands more of us than ideological purity and self-righteous indignation when the presumptions of that purity are violated. The challenge of self-governance is not a trivial one. Let’s stop trivializing it.
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Several developing events on the world stage point to the importance of cultivating and maintaining strong international diplomatic partnerships, built on mutual trust and cooperation.
North Korea, arguably the most militant rogue totalitarian state in the world, is building a nuclear reactor. Despite the blithe but information-deprived popular belief (in some right-wing quarters) to the contrary, bombing North Korea into oblivion would not solve the problem, because any military strike to put an end to North Korea’s nuclear program would create more, and more dangerous, global instability than it resolves, as well as entangle us in another materially and morally enervating military quagmire. However, improved American cooperation with China, for instance, would create more leverage, since China is an vital patron of North Korea.
American soldiers in Afghanistan are trying to convince Afghans that it is the Taliban, not the Americans, who are killing civilians. It’s an object lesson in what is sown by killing civilians (which we had done plenty of, and still do some of). In many wars, even within the morally exceptional context of military objectives, “it’s more important to avoid killing civilians than to succeed in killing the enemy,” as an ABC news correspondent put it. The battles we are fighting now on the international stage (nuclear non-proliferation and anti-terrorism, for instance) depend more on goodwill than on successfully implemented mass violence.
The START II treaty, which the Republican leadership is obstructing (in the form of Jon Kyl, almost certainly at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s direction; http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026673.php), would provide the U.S. once again with the means to secure and verify Russian compliance with nuclear non-proliferation, after a year of a lapse in this cooperative regime due to the sunsetting of START I. Not ratifying it imposes only costs and no benefits, and undermines a gradually improving relationship with a still-militant Russia (which cooperated with the U.S. in Afghanistan, by allowing troops and materials to pass through Russian territory, for instance).
The Cholera outbreak in Haiti points to the humanitarian dimensions of international cooperation, or its absence. Many epidemics don’t respect national borders (e.g., Swine Flu and Avian Flu, harking back to the Global Flu epidemic in the immediate wake of World War II, which killed more people globally than the war did). In fact, the particularly virulent strain of Cholera that broke out in Haiti has now shown up in the United States.
Americans think in insular terms, but live in a world characterized by interdependence, both within our nation, and among nations. Throughout the 20th century, amidst the worst outbreaks of international violence, fledgling but promising seeds of global cooperation emerged, the first (The League of Nations) sabatoged by our isolationist Congress, and the second (The United Nations) sabatoged by our imperialistic tendencies. The United States is, without a doubt, still the world’s hegemon, still the locus of greater international political and military power than any other single nation. It’s time we took that responsibility seriously again.
Despite Vincent Carroll’s predictable lack of appreciation of the value of creating a civil discourse based on some common premises, such as asking ourselves how best to govern ourselves in service to the public interest (which is the same thing as service to the aggregation of our individual interests) (http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_16661510), the pinnacle of free speech is not a balkanized Tower of Babel, in which each ideologue can be exposed only to echoing reinforcements of his own arbitrary views, but rather something that is both coherent and diverse, something that is based on common values but debates, with reason, the means by which to give those values their highest expression.
Some readers might recognize that the title of this post is virtually identical to the title of two others (Liberty & Interdependence, Liberty & Society). The reason for this is the repetition of the theme of the articulation of centrifugal and centripetal social forces, of binding a society together into a coordinated effort to serve mutual interests, and of freeing up its constituent individuals to serve those individual and mutual interests most robustly. Vincent Carroll is yet another spokesperson for the far-right fantasy of a one-sided coin, in which the only concern is maximizing freedom, and there is no concern for contextualizing that freedom in ways which channel it to human benefit. Carroll’s conceptualization of free speech is another incarnation of the far-right’s Hobbesian paradise of the war of all against all, each hunkered down in his own cognitive trench, lobbing ordinance and cultivating deepening, increasingly feral, rage toward those hunkered down in the trenches across the battle line.
It’s not that Jay Rockefeller’s musings, that Carroll cited, didn’t overshoot the mark a bit, or that the challenges of protecting free speech from overzealous government imposition of “coherence” is not a legitimate concern, but rather that Carroll subscribes to, and amplifies, the caricature of a government motivated solely by some nefarious desire to deprive him of his liberties, rather than a government posed with the real challenges of reining in liberties just enough to coordinate their exercise to mutual benefit rather than mutual detriment.
We all know that such reining in is necessary. We all know that we do not want to live in a society in which each is free to do physical violence to others. Most agree that libel and slander laws are okay. Few have difficulties with limiting speech that is designed to incite violence or cause a panic just for fun. Conservatives have been quickest to want to limit student speech on far weaker pretexts (see the famous Supreme Court holdings of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier and Bethel School District v. Fraser, for instance). Everyone, implicitly or explicitly, recognizes that there is a balance to be struck, that where the line is at which it is optimally struck is not automatically crystal clear, and that a legitimate debate must be had to determine where that line belongs.
But blind ideologues like Carroll, who, ironically, love to use the language of an intellectual superiority that they so glaringly lack (calling Rockefeller an “ignoramus,” for instance), live in a fantasy world of oversimplistic absolutes, in which the subtleties of the challenge of governing ourselves don’t exist, and in which an information-and-analysis-stripped “Political Fundamentalism”, comprised of “Constitutional Idolatry”, Liberty Idolatry, and Small Government Idolatry, is all that is required to claim to have answered all questions and won all debates.
Despite the legitimate concerns about laws that potentially constrain political speech that we don’t want government to have the power to constrain, there is also a legitimate concern with the speech-nullifying power of corporate money in political discourse, drowning out dissenting voices with the share magnitude of their own. Free speech is arguably threatened more by less financed voices being overwhelmed by the share magnitude of noise that the better financed voices can generate than by the limiting of the volume that any one voice is given. These are subtleties, and difficult questions, that those who wish to govern ourselves responsibly can’t simply pontificate our of existence.
Despite Carroll’s dismissal of Michael Bennet’s allusion to a semi-mythical era when we rallied around a common discourse, and debated within its context, there is indeed a value to creating a common discourse, to gathering around a single table and discussing issues about which we must strive to arrive at some consensus rather than merely strive to smite one another as perpetual foes. It’s emblematic of his ideological camp that he doesn’t comprehend that value, because he speaks for those who are incapable of recognizing it, who think that the highest good is blind ideological entrenchment, refusal to engage in meaningful dialogue, and complete disregard for the purpose of government and society, which is to serve as vehicles through which free people can work together for their mutual benefit.
Sometimes, I use articles and editorials (and even books) found elsewhere as launching pads for a discourse of my own, or as threads in a synthesis of some kind. But, this time, I just want to make sure that you read this editorial, by William G. Gale of The Brookings Institute: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/30/AR2010073002671.html.
Whether Gale’s analysis is the definitive word on the subject, or whether there are legitimate counterarguments that belong in the mix, one thing is certain: The Tea Party-dominated far-right is blind and deaf to economic analysis, while simultaneously claiming to be the torch-bearers of “fiscal responsibility.” News Flash: There is no fiscal responsibility that is based on economic ignorance (as in to ignore). Choosing blind ideology over sound analyses applied to reliable data according to scientific methodology is the opposite of responsibility.
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While I haven’t yet seen “Waiting for Superman,” Dan Haley’s column in the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/haley/ci_16589185) points to an error in the logic behind most current education reform movements. It is a logical error common in political advocacy of all kinds, from all points on the ideological spectrum: He assumes that an accurate description of the problem is an argument for one proposed solution. If that were the case, then correctly identifying the problem of, for instance, poverty, could be used as an argument for either welfare, welfare reform (such as occurred under Clinton), or the complete elimination of welfare.
Here’s a big problem with the “easier to fire bad teachers” model: There is a certain demand for teachers, and a set of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives to become a teacher. That set of incentives supplies us with the current in-flow of teachers, with the current distribution of quality. Making it easier to fire teachers adds only one new disincentive (because unusually high job security, along with lots of vacation time, have been two of the incentives counterbalancing a relatively low professional salary), without off-setting it with any new incentive. As a result, the average quality of in-coming teachers is likely to be decreased by some unknown degree (particularly since the most talented new teachers are also the ones with the most alternative options available).
Even if removing “bad” teachers worked as advertised, we would be skimming off the worst teachers while diminishing the overall quality of the teacher pool. Furthermore, the removed teachers have to be replaced, increasing demand for teachers, which, in the absence of creating an upward pressure on salaries (which, particularly in Colorado where tax revenues are low and increases require voter approval, are not determined by market forces), creates a downward pressure on quality (you have to fill vacancies with whoever you can get).
The lack of political will to raise revenues for education also debunks the counterargument that pay-for-performance or other increased incentives for quality teachers to enter the profession can or will off-set the increased disincentives, since the money doesn’t exist for any sustainable and substantial pay-for-performance program. Furthermore, few people contemplating entering the teaching profession are unaware of the difficulties in measuring “performance” in a way that would actually reward talent, or of the disincentives pay-for-performance provide to talented teachers contemplating teaching at-risk students.
Even beyond the above-mentioned concerns, I think that removing “bad” teachers is very unlikely to work as advertised. School districts are highly politicized environments, with risk-aversion and avoidance of boat-rocking forming imperatives far stronger than the commitment to provide children with the highest quality education possible. Therefore, teachers who rock the boat or somehow trigger administrators’ risk-aversion sensors (whether justly or unjustly) will be removed at least as frequently as teachers who are actually poor teachers. The evaluation systems for making determinations will become politicized in ways which will allow this to happen. It already does, to the extent possible.
So, the real systemic results of making it easier to remove “bad” teachers is that we remove some exceptionally good ones at a rate approaching if not exceeding the rate at which we remove exceptionally bad ones, and decrease the overall quality of the incoming teacher pool at the same time.
Sometimes, reality is counterintuitive. Simplistic arguments based on “Here’s the problem, and since it’s a problem, this proposed solution must be good,” may persuade those who are easily persuaded, but they don’t replace actually doing the analysis.
In countries where educational performance is superior to that of the United States, it is not due to weaker protections of teachers, but rather to stronger community involvement and cultural commitment to education as a value. The problems with American education are overwhelmingly located outside the schools, and outside the school hours. What we really need to solve our educational problems is a new commitment to expanding the mission of American public education to include more comprehensive guidance to parents and more effort to include the community in the educational mission.
The latter is so far from our current reality that when I strove, on my own time and my own dime, to create a more robust school-community partnership in Jeffco Schools, Superintendent Cindy Stevenson first stonewalled me, and then brusquely brushed me off when I persisted in my efforts. I believe that she doesn’t want a more robust school-community partnership because she doesn’t want the challenge to her autocratic authority that such community participation might imply. While realizing that an N of one is not evidence of any norm, I suspect that her attitude is not unusual, particularly in large urban and suburban school districts.
I am not suggesting that none of the ideas coming from our current education reformers and innovators are good ones. I strongly suspect that when I do watch “Waiting for Superman” I will be impressed by some of the ideas and experiments that have been tried, and frustrated by the politics which have obstructed their implementation and diffusion. Sometimes, as well, ideas that would not work if generally implemented work in specific instances because of the particularly endowed people implementing them. We need ideas that do not require “supermen,” but rather work with the material we currently have, everywhere. In the end, effective education reform is likely to involve a mixture of ideas and approaches, that recognize a variety of challenge and deficiencies.
But if we want to go down the path of real, effective educational reform, we need to stop kicking responsibility down the hierarchy to those who are already overburdened with responsibilities but under empowered to meet them. We need, instead, to place the responsibility where it really belongs: On all of us, on the anti-intellectual culture we have created, and on the ritualistic and ossified school district administrations we have essentially insisted upon by requiring them to compromise education to popular fanaticisms. Until we face these challenges at their roots, education in America will remain sub-par.
(For more general discussions of the need for less reliance on delegation of public responsibility, and more reliance on each person interested in meaningful improvement to start by taking personal responsibility for it, see, e.g., A Call To Minds & Hearts & Souls, A Proposal, The Ultimate Political Challenge, The Voice Beyond Extremes, The Foundational Progressive Agenda, “A Theory of Justice”, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Part 2, and “Messaging” From The Heart of Many Rather Than The Mouth of Few).
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(Formerly titled “Improved Communications Technologies & Techniques + Personal, Organizational & Methodological Discipline = Historic Social Change”).
For those who are serious about working for social progress based on reason and goodwill, despite the momentary resurgence of regressive “Political Fundamentalism”, the confluence of factors is currently conducive to a major paradigm shift. The power of decentralized mass media (“social media”), combined with improvements in our knowledge of relevant disciplines (e.g., cognitive science, microeconomics and game theory, learning theory, complex dynamical systems analysis, network analysis, epistemology and epidemiology, evolutionary ecology, etc.), as a tool for intentional and potentially revolutionary social change, is a theme which requires the weaving together of several separate threads of thought I’ve been developing on this blog.
I’ve posted previously about the processes of cultural evolution and revolution, involving “memes,” groups of memes called “paradigms,” and the revolutionary effects of the accumulation of anomalous memes within a paradigm, leading to “paradigm shifts” (The Politics of Consciousness). And I’ve continued that theme down several avenues, including a discussion of the acceleration of the cultural evolution effectuated by two products of that evolution itself: scientific methodology, and evolving communications and data processing technologies (Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix).
In another, related, series of posts, I’ve written about the power of decentralization for liberating and mobilizing “the genius of the many” (a term for evolving decentralized but coherent sets of memes and paradigms) to an extent never before possible (Wikinomics: The Genius of the Many Unleashed, Tuesday Briefs: The Anti-Empathy Movement & “Crowdfunding”, Counterterrorism: A Model of Centralized Decentralization), itself a product of the processes discussed in the “human social evolutionary ecology” series. (See also http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html). And in two series of posts largely unrelated to these, I discussed the importance of creating a methodology akin to that of science or law for disciplining the development of political beliefs (Ideology v. Methodology, A Proposal, The Elusive Truth), and the importance of each of us truly committed to social change becoming equally committed to individual change, adopting a personal discipline that will make us the most capable and compelling of messengers (“Messaging” From The Heart of Many Rather Than The Mouth of Few). There are some posts, as well, which combine these latter two themes to some extent (The Foundational Progressive Agenda, The Voice Beyond Extremes, The Ultimate Political Challenge).
But, though these disciplines and methodologies, to some extent yet to be developed, are the key to robust sustainable social progress, we do not have to invent either the products or procedures of reason applied to politics from scratch. We have the academic disciplines I listed above (as well as all others) to draw on. I hope that some of my posts have helped to disseminate a glimpse of their relevant fruits, which is as much as any of us can unilaterally accomplish (e.g., The Economic Debate We’re Not Having , The Real Deficit , The Restructuring of the American and Global Economy , The More Subtle & Salient Economic Danger We Currently Face, A comprehensive overview of the immigration issue, Real Education Reform, The Most Vulnerable Americans, The Vital Role of Child, Family, and Community Services).
“The genius of the many” extends the concept of division and coordination of labor to the development of human consciousness; the ecology of memes that transcends the individuals whose brains are its physical medium (see The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia). A simple example of the genius of the many is that if a thousand random people guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, the mean of their guesses will be closer to the correct number than any individual guess, including the one made by the most mathematically capable of doing so.
Ironically, the far-right, relying on caricatures of reality, reduces all progressive thought to a hierarchical top-down “statism,” whereas the philosophy I am espousing is just the opposite: A coordinated bottom-up aggregation. The far-right, conversely, advocates for a tyranny of the lowest common denominator, never mobilizing more genius than the least informed among them is already in possession of, and imposing that state of relative ignorance on all of us in the form of information-stripped public policy.
One academic discipline not only informs the progressive policies we should be seeking to design and implement, but also the challenge of bringing more people on board in the effort to design and implement them. George Lakoff, in The Political Mind, explores the underlying metaphors upon which our minds are structured, the differences between conservative and progressive metaphors, and the techniques of messaging that should be employed to activate the narratives of empathy that exist compartmentalized in almost every mind –including conservatives’ minds– in advocacy of progressive policies. Combined with other advances in cognitive sciences (e.g., Evolutionary Psychology, such as espoused by Stephen Pinker in The Language Instinct and How The Mind Works; Semiotics; Frame Analysis), this body of thought provides an encouraging foundation for accelerating the reproductive success of progressive memes and, by doing so, the coming paradigm shift that will favor them.
If enough of us dedicate ourselves to these personal, organizational, and procedural disciplines, utilizing to as great and effective an extent as possible these new decentralized media of mass communications, then the power of that movement will be unstoppable. I have frequently quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. (“The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice”) and John Maynard Keynes (“[People] will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives”) as a reminder that the momentum of history is on our side. Bigotry and various forms of violence (including institutionalized mutual indifference, and politically organized ignorance) keep rearing their heads and wreaking havoc in the short run, but they are not what defines the historical progression of humanity, which has, overall, been characterized by gradual, inconstant, unequally distributed gains in both prosperity and social justice (and though sustainability has still been woefully insufficiently addressed, there are indications that the momentum of reason will favor it as well, though whether in time to avert disaster remains to be seen).
Those of us who strive to be reasonable people of goodwill are the ones with the wind of time at our back. Those who oppose reason and goodwill are the overabundant debris resisting that wind, stinging and bruising us as we rush through and past them.
Here I am, conveying this matrix of interrelated memes, this paradigm, on a blog, and on Facebook, utilizing the very media that form one component of what I am discussing, in order to discuss it, to disseminate the information and attempt to persuade others to do so as well, and to refine our efforts in accord with these opportunities and lessons. We can see the acceleration of innovation resulting from some of the variables described above in many spheres of life: “Chaos Theory” (aka “complex dynamical systems analysis”) and numerous non-computer-related technological advances that have resulted from it (in fields such as medicine, engineering, meteorology, etc.), fractal geometry, the internet, the computer revolution, wikis, vastly reduced economic transaction costs, vastly accelerated processes in almost every sphere of life.
Social systems, which have been in so many ways so resistent to reduction through scientific methodologies (though not as resistant as conventional wisdom maintains), are opened up in a variety of ways, as themselves comprising the quintessential complex dynamical system, amenable to the new analytic techniques that come with that paradigm. Social systems are a complex network of linkages and impulses across them, triggering cascading state changes among nodes and clusters of interlinked nodes, reverberating, self-amplifying, mutually reinforcing or suppressing, not unlike the brains that provide the physical medium of their primary constituent unit (memes, or cognitions).
I am not suggesting that we now have the magic bullet, the panacea that will resolve all problems and meet all challenges. Nor am I suggesting that our efforts will suddenly yield spectacular results. Even in our accelerating world, dramatic change takes time, and is dramatic only in retrospect. Few people have recognized any non-military revolution at the time it has occurred, but they occur nonetheless, and are marvels to behold once they become apparent.
Past modern historical occidental social revolutions have been partial and cumulative: the Renaissance recovered some of the grace and aesthetic rationality of classical Greece; the Scientific Revolution gave us a robust methodology for improving our knowledge and understanding of nature; the Industrial Revolution gave us new machines of production and distribution; the very recent and equally consequential Computer Revolution created a quantum leap forward in the speed and capacity of data processing and communication.
At some point, whether now or in the future, these accumulating revolutions will embrace aspects of social organization that have remained thus far elusive, advancing with accelerating leaps forward in the liberation and implementation of the genius of the many in service to humanity. We will look back on that threshold as we look back on those that came before, recognizing that it transformed the world to human benefit in ways that were almost unimaginable prior to it. That inevitable threshold will usher in a new standard of human welfare that becomes completely taken for granted by those who enjoy it, which will be an expanding portion of humanity, both geographically and temporally. Whether that moment has come or not, it behooves those of us who want to speed its (sustainable) arrival to work, in individually and collectively disciplined ways, using the cognitive and technological tools at our disposal, to facilitate that transformation.
The world has been changing dramatically, in cumulative and accelerating ways, and will continue to do so. But those changes have provided humanity with a mixed blessing, creating riches beyond belief to all but those born into them, but also tools of violence, oppression, and depletion and destruction of the Earth on which we depend. There are those who would like to barrel blindly forward, ravaging the Earth and prospering on the backs of the suffering of others. And there are those who want to harness the forces we are unleashing, to create the sustainable and just future that all reasonable people of goodwill should strive for. Our ability to organize to that latter end has never been greater. Now, we have only to see if our determination is sufficient to rise to that opportunity.
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I have no idea what motivated the Australian sisters, one of whom died and one of whom survived after a suicide pact at a firing range where they rented the weapons they used on themselves (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16649332). But it is something more than just a bizarre story that grabs our attention, or a private human tragedy made public due to a combination of the circumstances and our own fascination. It is one of the more dramatic expressions of something that is very widespread, and very significant: Human desperation. And of the general challenges we face as a society, the general good we can do together, mitigating human desperation should rank high on the list.
As one commenter on the message board following the Denver Post article said, mental health problems are far more prevalent than most people realize, and the need for better mental health hygiene is nearly universal. All of our social problems are interrelated, usually incubating in troubled childhoods with issues of school truancy or academic failure, child abuse, substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, poverty, and/or mental health issues mixed together in various combinations, reinforcing one another, growing over time.
There are many on the Right who decry “the nanny state,” but we are not enough of a nanny state when it comes to those who most need nannies. We do not invest enough in our children’s welfare –all of our children’s welfare– though the benefits to all of us, let alone those whose lives are essentially saved by being proactive with early interventions, are well worth the investment, and end up saving us not only the suffering inflicted by troubled others, but also the material costs.
The mantra on the Right is that that’s the responsibility of parents. There was a time, just over a century ago, when “child abuse” and domestic violence in general had not yet been defined into existence, because those issues were the family’s business and no one else’s. The more rational and compassionate view is that we all have a responsibility to assist families in meeting theirs. When no families exist to do so, or those that do exist are unable or unwilling to do so, then it is our shared responsibility to step in and assist those innocent souls who some would leave to a life of suffering (and often of inflicting suffering on others, sometimes in ways which perpetuate the cycle of violence and despair across generations). The question should not be whether that is our shared responsibility, but rather how best to meet it.
It doesn’t matter that the sisters in this story were Australian nationals visiting the U.S. No one can deny that we have many like them that are home grown, and that our policies are implicated. On the news last night, there was a story of a woman who has had problems with alcohol abuse, and child abuse of her nine year old daughter, who apparently adored her daughter nonetheless, who was found, along with her daughter, in her running car in the garage of her home, both dead apparently from carbon monoxide poisoning (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16653435). Friends and neighbors said that she loved her daughter too much to “take her with her” if she had wanted to commit suicide, but desperation isn’t that rational, and it’s not hard to imagine that, once the despair made suicide the only option the mother felt she had (if that was indeed the case), that same desperation could easily have made the thought of leaving her adored daughter behind to suffer the consequences as unbearable as life itself had become for her.
In an all-too-common story of deadly domestic violence, an ex-boyfriend, a military veteran, killed the girlfriend who ended their relationship (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16643775). No member of the perpetrator’s family ever showed up for the three-week-long trial, and the mother of the victim said, with compassion, “I expect they were never there for you.” But we should have been. We can reduce the rate at which lives are destroyed by the combination of extreme individualism, a refusal to invest in proactive services (such as mental health service), insanely easy access to weapons and a culture that constantly glorifies violence. The fact that our rates of violent crime are much higher than those of other developed countries suggests that it’s not just the inevitable consequence of individual defects, but the very avoidable consequence of political choices and their cultural consequences.
A man, apparently also with mental health problems, who refused to leave his foreclosed home in Jefferson County not far from where I live required a SWAT team to evict him (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16632232). The combination of economic stresses in this period of economic downturn, and a decrease rather than increase in our commitment to take care of one another, bode ill for the rate at which such events are likely to occur, and the rate at which they are likely to end badly.
There is no shame in evolving as a society to do more to mitigate such desperation, to be there for one another, and to create social institutions which identify, intervene, and offer assistance proactively at the earliest possible stage of the development of such problems. But the newly minted Republican Congressional majority in the House voted not to extend extensions of unemployment assistance (http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_16653692), when about 14.8 million Americans are unemployed (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm).
This commitment to leaving people to fend for themselves is justified by a highly questionable analysis of how to strike the optimal balance between debt and spending, and when to impose austerity v. when not to (http://coloradoconfluence.com/?p=1259). In the long run, investing in proactive human services, that reduce the private and public costs of unaddressed problems and the public costs of expensive reactive policies (e.g., the highest both percentage of population and absolute number of people incarcerated of any nation on Earth) not only increases human welfare, but it also improves our bottom line in the long run.
Those who hide behind the subterfuge that, sure, it’s our shared responsibility, but a responsibility best met through private charity and the decentralized volition of people of goodwill, are engaging in the convenient historical amnesia of how inadequately these needs were met prior to the utilization of government as an agent for meeting them, and how hollow such calls are when there is no private substitute anywhere in sight, capable of meeting these needs at anywhere near the level that government today currently inadequately meets them.
I am all for well-designed government-private sector partnerships, including with churches and other religious institutions, to address these problems. I have no inherent preference for government; just an inherent preference for facing our collective responsibilities to one another rather than finding excuses to shirk them. In fact, I’m a staunch advocate of strengthening our communities, and building greater non-governmental solidarity and mutual support into them, replacing something that has been lost in our forward march into extreme individualism. There are many pieces to the puzzle of addressing our failings as a society; improving the role of government, and integrating that role into the more organic social institutional materials with which government can and should work, is just one set of such pieces.
It’s time to stop the spiral down into cruel insanity, both the cases of individual insanity that we augment with our widespread ideological commitment to hyper-individualistic public policies of mutual indifference and disdain, and the collective insanity that those policies and that attitude are a symptom of.
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