Du Bois, Double-Consciousness, and a Lingering Problem

W. E. B. Du Bois gave eloquent expression to a personal and socio-cultural tension at the beginning of the twentieth century that is simultaneously a reality that many of us have felt at one time or another, or perhaps even constantly.  When Du Bois described the central problem of the new century for black Americans as being that of the color-line, he also articulated the challenge of negotiating different worlds, allegiances, and identities as that of double-consciousness:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (The Souls of Black Folk, p. 5)

Du Bois has in mind a particular historical struggle.  For Du Bois, this double-consciousness was the distinct self-perception, or group perception, of being on the one hand black and on the other hand Americans.  If we can frame the tension that he identifies more generally, we might describe it as the unsettling difficulty of standing at the same time in more than one tradition.

Bergson on Mechanism and Vitalism in WWI

Why is the tendency so strong for us to argue against our opponents by dehumanizing them?  This tendency finds expression as much in daily domestic life situations with family members or professional contexts with co-workers as it does on a wider, often political, stage.  The French philosopher Henri Bergson contrasts “vitalism” and “mechanism” in cultural and national terms.  His patriotic alignment with and encouragement of the French cause in World War I against Germany led him to characterize the ethos of those two countries in strikingly opposing ways. I am struck, among the features of Bergson's interpretation of the contrasting civilizational forces, by the way in which he vilifies his enemy by dehumanizing him.

Joyce's Achievement in Dubliners

In the 13 June 2014 article "James Joyce's 'Dubliners' still worth celebrating 100 years later" in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the author notes:

Joyce used his collection's 15 stories to piteously examine how life in his native city — provincial, intolerant, hypocritical and awash in drink — had deformed its politically frustrated, economically backward and spiritually bankrupt residents.

This captures well the sense I got from re-reading the full collection of Joyce's short stories.

Lear: The "Abused Nature" "Of This Child-Changed Father"

One of the great pleasures in reading literature is to discover a few sentences or lines that are so rich with significance that they simultaneously do two things.  On the one hand, they deepen the narrative, play, or poem as it advances, and, on the other hand, radiate, and encapsulate, the work’s broader meaning and concerns.

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Act 4, scene 7, lines 16-19, Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia meets her father and becomes overwhelmed by his state of affairs:  his dementia and his abandonment -- more than that, his abuse and rejection -- by his other two elder daughters Goneril and Regan.  Cordelia interrupts her speech with an apostrophe to the “kind gods,” and she prays that Lear may be healed.

CORDELIA                                           O, you kind gods,
Cure this great breach in his abusèd nature!
Th’ untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up,
Of this child-changèd father!

-- King Lear, IV.vii.16-19

The short passage is pregnant with significance, especially double meanings.

First, “abused nature” refers most immediately to his madness (i.e., insanity).  Cordelia finds his unmooring from reality to be particularly pitied.  These are his “untuned and jarring senses.” At the same time, the “abused nature” signifies the natural relationship of father and daughter that Goneril and Regan have “abused” in not patiently caring for their aging, ailing father and in their acute hostility toward him. This is also, as much as the dementia, the “breach” in his natural constitution:  as a person of sound mind and as a father of (falsely) doting daughters.  Ironically, it was Cordelia who in Act 1 affirmed her love for Lear “as are right fit” (1.1.107) and “according to my [natural filial] bond” (1.1.102), yet whom Lear rejected, abused, by disowning and banishing from the kingdom. 

"Lear and Cordelia," Ford Madox Brown, 1848

Second, the other petition in Cordelia’s prayer is for the gods to “wind up,” or to mend or fix, the senses (the mental, perceptual, and emotional capacities) of this “child-changed father.”  The image may be one of a chiming clock, “untuned and jarring,” imprecise in reflection of reality (as a clock that needs to be wound) and jarring in the sound it makes as a result of its chiming at the wrong time. Lear himself variously lashes out and speaks nonsense because of the two factors that so plague him:  his failing mental capacities and his shattered family relationships with his children.  He is, both because of his own banishment of Cordelia and because of Goneril’s and Regan’s essential “banishment” of him, a “child-changed father.”

This passage, then, echoes succinctly a key, overarching, tragic irony of the play. Lear himself, because of his combined natural, hasty, manic disposition and his increasing dementia, rejects genuine affection where it was to be found (Cordelia) and is himself rejected by false affection where he chose, in his foolish pursuit of public professions, to believe it was true (Goneril and Regan).  Cordelia perceives and feels deeply the tragedy of Lear’s losing himself and his ties to his daughters, both of which are abuses to his nature.

Empathy in Kafka and in Life

Franz Kafka’s fantastic stories of “The Metamorphosis” and “A Country Doctor” present a narrative world that not only assumes the reader’s suspension of disbelief but also requires it.  The stories require it in order to generate in readers appropriate empathy with the characters. These two acts -- (1) the willingness to engage in the narrative world and (2) the resulting emotional engagement with the characters in their relational contexts -- enable literature to foster empathy with others in a way that transcends the constraints imposed by relational life outside of literature. “The Metamorphosis” in particular facilitates in the reader a transformation of understanding by narrating Gregor Samsa’s transformation of being.

Talk to Them

I am currently reading a book by two MIT professors, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, about poverty.  The book is Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.  It is a good read, and it seeks to cut through some of the major ideological divides.  The poles are often referred to as those of Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs, who argues that more foreign aid can eliminate poverty traps around the globe, and New York University's William Easterly, who argues that aid hurts more than helps because it prevents necessary self-agency, undermines and corrupts local institutions, and hinders the proper functioning of market forces (see pp. 3-4).  All of these authors, Banerjee and Duflo included, have a different, sometimes competing way of assessing and fighting global poverty.

Enter a different sort of prescription for tackling poverty, which so often disproportionately disadvantages children:  talking.

"The Power of Talking to Your Baby" is the title of a short post entry by Tina Rosenberg in yesterday's New York Times Opinionator section.  The entire post is worth reading.  But I'll reproduce the main points of the research she reports.  In prior posts (here, here, here, and here), I have touched on poverty and economic class differences. The research that Ms. Rosenberg discusses is noteworthy because it, like some of my prior posts, highlights the correlation of aspects of family life to poverty.

All parents gave their children directives like “Put away your toy!” or “Don’t eat that!” But interaction was more likely to stop there for parents on welfare, while as a family’s income and educational levels rose, those interactions were more likely to be just the beginning.

The disparity was staggering. Children whose families were on welfare heard about 600 words per hour. Working-class children heard 1,200 words per hour, and children from professional families heard 2,100 words. By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment than a child from a professional family. And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school. TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental.

Hart and Risley later wrote that children’s level of language development starts to level off when it matches that of their parents — so a language deficit is passed down through generations. They found that parents talk much more to girls than to boys (perhaps because girls are more sociable, or because it is Mom who does most of the care, and parents talk more to children of their gender). This might explain why young, poor boys have particular trouble in school. And they argued that the disparities in word usage correlated so closely with academic success that kids born to families on welfare do worse than professional-class children entirely because their parents talk to them less. In other words, if everyone talked to their young children the same amount, there would be no racial or socioeconomic gap at all. (Some other researchers say that while word count is extremely important, it can’t be the only factor.)

This raises a number of questions, and much could be said even before those questions are answered.  I am suspicious, for instance, that early-age word usage by parents accounts entirely for later academic success disparities among students. I think it may be one reason, and may be an important one.

More generally, the notion that talking to one's children in their earliest years might have long-term effects would seem to be as intuitive and obvious as it is apparently lacking in many homes.  Getting some families to talk more to their children, however, will not be as simple as informing them that it is important to do so.  This is not a quick fix.  Background challenges involving the social structure of these welfare children's home, particularly the single-parent nature of so many of them, will also be necessary.

I have not read the full paper by Professors Hart and Risley, but it would be interesting to know whether they also examine the correlation of decreased word use to children in single-parent homes.  Does word use go up or down depending on the household's marital structure, in other words?  If it goes down in single-parent homes relative to two-parent homes, then this study would be additional evidence that family structure, as well as what takes place within it, has a predictive effect on the presence and prevalence of poverty in the United States.

This study from the 1990s is stimulating, but it is only one window into a complex problem.

Ancient Greek Tragedies and Our Own

I have been rereading some ancient Greek tragedies, and I am impressed by how relevant their themes remain, especially for our struggles in families and societies.

Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 9: Universal Impulse

In a prior post in which I reflected on James Q. Wilson's book The Moral Sense, I drew attention to the universal impulse in moral sentiment that he identifies:  "The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise -- and occasionally the application -- of the view that all people, and not just one’s own kind, are entitled to fair treatment" (191).  Because it is so remarkable, and because it has such sweeping implications, it is worth probing further this topic about the development of universalism in moral thinking and practice.

We can begin by focusing on a question that Prof. Wilson himself poses:  "How can we explain the great expansion of the boundaries within which the moral sense operates?  How, in particular, can we explain why we believe that moral rules ought to have universal applicability?  This aspiration toward the universal is the chief feature of the moral history of mankind" (194).  Indeed.

Professor Wilson suggests that the long development of consensual marriage, particularly in northwestern Europe, helps to provide a key, but not the only, component of an explanation.

The link between the two, consensual marriage and universal moral applicability, may not be immediately apparent.  The tie, however, is the parallel development in northwestern Europe of individualism.  What is the connection?

Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 7: Family

Why are the nature and structure of family life so heatedly debated?

This question can often be overshadowed by the rancor of contemporary disputes about family matters (such as cohabitation or marriage and wealth), but it is important to ask.  It is a question that arises in my mind frequently.  I wonder if exploring an answer to it might lay the groundwork for more constructive and less rancorous dialogue about these substantive topics than we sometimes have.

James Q. Wilson's discussion of the family, which occurs in a different context that is not about moral debate per se, may help us to pose an answer to this question.

Quite simply, one reason the nature and structure of family life are so heatedly debated, it seems to me, is because "[t]he family is a continuous locus of reciprocal obligations that constitute an unending school for moral instruction" (The Moral Sense, 162-63).  The fabric of the family ineluctably shapes the fabric of its members' morality.

Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 6: Sociability

In Part II of his book The Moral Sense, James Q. Wilson discusses the sources of the four moral sentiments that he explores in Part I.  Those sentiments are sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty.  The sources of these virtues that he takes up are also four in number:  the nature of humans as a social animal, the family, gender differences, and the modern impulse toward moral universalism.  A common theme across each of the four chapters on these sources is sociability:  “The mechanism underlying human moral conduct is the desire for attachment or affiliation” (127).

Terminating 2 at 20

Exercising her right to choose ... to kill her twins.

I ran across a disturbing opinion column from one week ago about a woman in Florida who was pregnant with twins.  "Was."  She is pregnant no longer.

No, she was not a sad victim of urban violence -- but her twins were.  She terminated them at twenty weeks of gestation.  She ended their lives half-way through her pregnancy.  Why?  For the supremely sensible reason that ... she just didn't want them, and she felt nothing for her twin children.

The website on which the column appears is littered with annoying political ads, and the column itself ends with an appeal to "the church" that may not make sense to readers or even follow from the text that precedes it.  But what the column does do well is to bring to attention how commonplace this sort of ending of innocent life is in the United States.

It also prompts questions in my mind about what sort of person possesses such a psychological and emotional disposition that she does not think twice about killing the two twin children who are so visibly alive and growing in her womb.  What really causes a person to feel and act that way?

Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 3a: Fairness

Part three of my series on James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense is well-timed.  In a recent post, I observed that current disputes about tax policy in the U.S. are at bottom disputes about competing understandings of fairness.  In another post, I noted complications in the advocacy and practice of tolerance, which also turns on rival versions of fairness.  This matter, fairness, is the second of the four key moral senses that Prof. Wilson discusses.  In his hands, just as in my earlier posts, it turns out to be more complex than we might first assume.

Most helpful in this chapter I found to be a taxonomy of fairness.  Professor Wilson identifies three conceptions of fairness: 

1. equity:  proportionate contributions yield proportionate outcomes on the merits
2. reciprocity:  proportionate exchanges
3. impartiality:  a "fair hearing"

Lists visually reinforce to my mind their content; however, for all of their reinforcing benefits, they are usually not sufficiently expansive to provide more workable definitions of terms.  This Prof. Wilson does in the following summary, which is still admirably succinct:

The human sense of fairness appears to embody three related but distinct concepts.  First, equity:  People who are equal with respect to contributions should be equal with respect to outcomes.  Second, reciprocity:  People who have given something to you are entitled to something back.  Third, impartiality:  People who judge another person ought to be disinterested, free of favoritism, and observant of rules agreed upon in advance. (70)

This taxonomy outlined by Professor Wilson is not the final word on fairness.  It is, however, one of the clearest and most useful that I have encountered.  It is helpful as a heuristic.  Immediately following his summary explanation of these conceptions, Prof. Wilson suggests the source of them, namely, the relationship between parent and child:

I suggest that these principles have their source in the parent-child relationship, wherein a concern for fair shares, fair play, and fair judgments arises out of the desire to bond with others.  All three principles are rational in a social and revolutionary sense, in that they are useful in minimizing conflict and enhancing cooperation. (70)

What could be lost in his neat trifold scheme is the natural sociability that various conceptions of fairness all reflect:  "a concern for fair shares, fair play, and fair judgments arises out of the desire to bond with others" and helps with "minimizing conflict" (my emphasis).  Typically when unfairness of whatever variety exists, relational friction also exists.

Perhaps this point is so obvious that it actually needs to be underscored.  Our being mindful of it will help us to be more attuned to dynamics in our own interpersonal relationships.  Conflict occurs when one senses unfairness.  When there is conflict between two parties, a likely reason is that one of them believes that he has been treated unfairly.

As crucial as recognizing this is to assessing what may be a reason for interpersonal conflict, a sense of unfairness, it still masks the reason behind the cause of the conflict -- that is, what caused the cause.  And if Prof. Wilson is right, the original source, that Ursource, as it were, is not unfairness per se but the desire to bond with others.

How would our relationships be improved, or more quickly reconciled, if when unfairness is felt or claimed we kept in mind this underlying desire to bond?

Consider this as an example.  If my brother becomes miffed because he believes that I favored my sister with a more expensive birthday gift than his, or because I spent less time visiting him than her, the proximate cause of his being miffed is unfairness.  In particular, he believes there is unfairness due to inequity.  Both he and our sister are equally my siblings.  They have contributed a proportionate amount of "siblingness" to my life.  Therefore, my brother reasons, he ought to receive a proportionate recognition of his sibling contribution.

But it would be too shallow to end the analysis there.  Is my brother ultimately interested in the gift or the giver?  Is he finally concerned with a perceived inequity, the unequal token (the gift, the visit) to my sister of my sibling affection for her relative to him?  Or is he concerned with the affection itself?  Does he most want a pricier gift or a longer visit per se, or does he most want me?  He is ultimately concerned to be reassured that I, his brother, as a person, view him with the same love and affection with which he views me.  He wishes to confirm, and in this way advance and deepen, the bond with me.

Here we have discovered an additional element in the relational fairness mix:  reciprocity.  In this example reciprocity is closely tied to equity.  My brother has given to me sibling affection, and he wishes to receive back like affection, an amount proportionate to his contribution, not for affection's sake but insofar as it seals, or authenticates, the sibling bond that we share.  

In short, my brother's protests of unfairness reflect less a concern with unfairness itself than a concern with our relationship.  He wishes our relational connection to be acknowledged in a similar gift or visitation (equity) and returned through zealous commitment to one another (reciprocity).  Fairness is not only about the law court; it also pervades the family room.

Being cognizant of this fact will, or should, help us practically in our own relationship situations.  The payoff may be clearer discernment of why conflict has arisen with someone.  Maybe, with a fuller understanding of the forms that fairness can take, we can avoid some conflicts entirely by taking measures to preempt feelings of unfairness.  We may even be able, positively, to cultivate our own sense of fairness and to practice it in our lives so that this is the result:  that other people will naturally characterize the relational bond that we have with them as solid, and that they attribute it to our concern for fair shares, fair play, and fair judgments.

Professor Wilson's interest is not only what fairness is but also how we make determinations about what is fair.  The two, as my example demonstrates, are intimately connected to each other.  In the next post, a follow-up to this one, I will turn my attention to our appraisals about what is fair in relation to property ownership.

Conjugal Haves and Have-nots

In Sunday's The New York Times on July 15 appeared an article by Jason DeParle on "the way family structure deepens class divides."  Among the observations is that children in two-parent homes tend to fare better than children in single-parent homes.

Much of this faring well is understood in the article economically:  "striking changes in family structure [in the U.S. over recent decades] have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility."  Mr. DeParle continues, albeit in a somewhat attention-grabbing, Marx-related way of articulating these descriptive trends:

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns -- as opposed to changes in individual earnings -- may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality.  Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

This is empirically revealing and helpful data for informed debate.  But is marriage really "confined" to one segment of society in the sense that it is out of reach, or in the sense that a man and woman who wish to marry are not permitted to do so?

It may be the case, as Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, says, that “[i]t is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged.”  So the main question in my mind is, Why are not people marrying who might stand to benefit in numerous ways by so doing?

Education level is cited as a factor correlated to one's state of marriage and parenthood.  The more educated a woman is, the less likely she is to have a child out of wedlock.   A racial correlation exists but is decreasing.  Multiple factors are interrelated, to be sure.  I wonder, however, if the view of one of the subjects of Mr. DeParle's story about income levels and family structure is closest to the mark:  “I’m in this position because of decisions I made.” 

These are not the words of a privileged outsider looking in on someone less wealthy.  These are not the words of controversial sociologist Charles Murray, who argues in his most recent book that moral decline is responsible for matrimonial decline.  (That book is reviewed in the NYT and WSJ; also available are a chat with readers, an op-ed, and summary essay.)  These are the words of someone who is actually and personally affected -- by the decisions that she says that she made.

All of this brings to mind a topic from a previous post on poverty.  In it, I reproduced a statement by Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution.  His main point in recent Congressional testimony is that certain behavior is an extremely accurate predictor of adult poverty or, alternately, of general economic success:  "Young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success -- complete at least a high school education, work full time, and wait until age 21 and get married before having a baby."

Consider these statements from the article in the Times, which are congruous with Mr. Haskin's remarks:

• "Nearly half the unmarried parents living together at a child’s birth split up within five years."
• "Marital decline compounds economic woes, since it leaves the needy to struggle alone."
• "Forty years ago, the top and middle income thirds had virtually identical family patterns: more than 95 percent of households with children in either tier had two parents in the home. Since then the groups have diverged, according to [two researchers] Mr. Western and Ms. Shollenberger: 88 percent at the top have two parents, but just 71 percent do in the middle." [A different but related research finding is depicted in the nearby chart.]
• "While many studies have found that children of single parents are more likely to grow up poor, less is known about their chances of advancement as adults. But there are suggestions that the absence of a father in the house makes it harder for children to climb the economic ladder."

In other previous posts (two in May, here and here; and one in April), I also commented on family matters.

Upon continuing reflection, two important considerations occur to me.  One is that the heightened contemporary concern about income discrepancy among Americans, the so-called haves and have-nots, may be legitimate, but it may need to be examined and discussed from a wider perspective than purely monetary differences.  Mr. DeParle's article serviceably suggests that conjugal differences are related to income differences.  To put a finer point on the broader perspective that may be required, increasingly cultural or lifestyle or -- may we actually say it -- moral differences, too, must be brought into the conversation about differences in income levels.

In addition, our examinations and analyses will benefit if we can move beyond the passive victim explanation (i.e., "Those people over there wholly did this to me!").  We may not be able to be content either with the opposite, active agent explanation (i.e., "You did this completely to yourself!").  The proper weighting of these two reasons for a certain state of affairs may be difficult in general to quantify.  Neither may be the whole story.  Both, however, passive and active, object and subject, victim and agent, explanations are relevant.  Still, in the public debate, more room than currently seems popularly acceptable may need to be made at the table for the this-is-a-result-of-your-choices element.

In so saying, I do not wish to be misunderstood.  Environmental factors beyond one's control do often influence the opportunities (or the perception one has of opportunities) about which one may make active decisions and in light of which one may pursue certain goals.  Examples may include being born into a family in a violent neighborhood, which entails pressures that limit educational possibilities, or being born to a parent who has few inhibitions, which leads to destructive effects that harm the child.

However, it seems equally obvious that individuals do, by and large, voluntarily if not always deliberately make decisions that have undesirable consequences for themselves.  Individuals are not forced but rather choose whether or not to be married.  They choose whether or not to behave in such a way that they may have children out of wedlock at a certain age.  They choose whether or not to commit themselves to the laborious task of reconciling with a spouse in the wake of the contentious situations that arise in a marriage rather than divorcing.  They even choose whether to (behave in such a way as to) complete at least a high school education or to seek full-time employment.  All of these bear on one's financial prospects, income level, and upward mobility.

Why is this view, that an individual's decisions may bear on one's financial situation and that these decisions may be moral in nature, controversial?  Let me offer a few suggestions.

First, a possible reason is the nation's drift in culture, or character.

In the article in the Times, Mr. DeParle remarks, "Across Middle America, single motherhood has moved from an anomaly to a norm with head-turning speed."  The language of anomaly and norm reflects not just frequency of occurrence in the culture, as in a move from uncommon to common, but also a moral acceptance of single motherhood in the culture, as in a move from not acceptable to acceptable.  If single motherhood does not carry the same social stigma, then that is because single motherhood is not viewed with the same moral disapprobation as previously.  Whether this is because divorce, too, is more common and less stigmatized that earlier, or because reproductive technology is more accessible to more people, or because the sheer number of single parents makes it hard for people who know single parents to be critical of them, or even because being critical itself is frowned upon -- all of these things reflect both changing behaviors and a changing attitude toward matters of morality.

Answers to questions -- and the questions themselves -- are different.  What shape should a nuclear family take?  What sort of commitment does one actually make in marriage?  What is marriage?  What sort of family structure both is appropriate to and should best foster becoming a parent and discharging that loving, sacrificial duty?  If I wish to be a mother but marriageable men are hard to come by, perhaps because men lack the desired and necessary moral qualities or character, should I go it alone through a means like sperm donorship and in vitro fertilization?  A positive answer assumes that one has the means to pay for the technological procedure.

Or in the case of many inner cities, where poverty and violence are more common, if I have the same desire for a child and find few or no marriageable men not only because of the previous reasons but also because they are unemployed or incarcerated or dead, do I just have a child with my current boyfriend outside of marriage?  This potential answer, of course, assumes something about the permissibility of pre-marital sex, itself a moral topic about which society's public moral opinion has changed.  Pre-marital sex used to be frowned upon; now it is expected. 

The family is a sphere of life that is inherently moral in nature.  In families we confront the messiness of human relationships; we realize the power of human sexuality, which connects us most intimately with another human; we find our notions of and capacities for commitment, sympathy, fairness, patience, and self-control tested.  Insofar as marriage is integral to family structure, which inescapably entails these things, marriage also, and any conception or pursuit of it, is moral in nature. 

This drift, first of individual behavior in community and then society's view of it, involves unavoidably the social conception of what is in fact moral.  I mean "what is in fact moral" in the sense both of what is a moral matter and what is the proper way in which one ought to think or act about a particular matter.  Both have broadly changed.
 

Second, and closely related, this morphed view of what is moral does not include cultural "lifestyles" or has relativized them.  For this reason, so-called lifestyle choices are deemed irrelevant to the morality inherent in the income debate.  To introduce them is to make a contested move.

If it is controversial that an individual's decisions may bear on one's financial situation and that these decisions may be moral in nature, then this may be because activities like pre-marital sex, cohabitation, and single-parenthood are not viewed as moral matters.  Where they are viewed as moral matters, they tend, as I have suggested, to be viewed as equally morally acceptable alternatives to abstinence, marriage as a conjugal union, and two-parent households.  This shapes politically correct debate.  These behaviors, in other words, are either off-limits (because they not seen as ethical in nature) or accepted (because ethical standards have been flattened).  It is perhaps because they are accepted that they are off-limits.  Certain family-related behavior is not illegitimate, but criticizing another lifestyle is impermissible.  "You just don't do that these days."  This is the new morality.

The nature of the family and its role in the social fabric used to be expected; now raising questions about variations from that previous expectation is frowned upon. 

Third, accompanying the drift in the nation's culture and its reconfiguration of what is moral has been a greater abdication of individual responsibility and a tendency to assign blame to other agents.

In a previous post, I drew attention to a suggestion made by Roger Scruton about his perception of growing ingratitude.  According to his (quite sensible) view, when one receives something by grace, gratitude follows; when one receives something by justice, ingratitude follows.  Grace is understood as an undeserved gift; justice is understood as an expected right.

In American society over the last fifty years (and even longer), more citizens receive monetary assistance of some kind from the federal government in greater amounts than in previous generations.  These distributions are made in the name of justice.  The discourse about them focuses on the distributions, and often prejudges them, as rights, a supposed right to health care, for instance.  They are even referred to in the federal budget as "entitlements."  Slowly and sometimes not-so-subtly the culture's assumptions about its own nature shift in this direction, too.  The way in which I think about what I have in life, or should have in life, increasingly includes a component of that which I expect to receive from others owing to a form of justice.

Entailed in this evolving mentality is a diminished, although not obliterated, sense of individual responsibility and local community.  Entailed also, on the other hand, is a magnified, although not total, sense of third-party (often state) responsibility for the national community.  When I do not have what I expect to have by right (and often I may confuse what I wish to have and what I ought to have by certain just deserts), I find fault with some third party.  I blame someone else.  This is usually the third party that I believe is supposed to guarantee my rights (the state).  It also often is the entity that I believe is preventing me from receiving what I suppose, whether by desire or justice, is now rightfully mine (the state and/or an economic system or a party or an industry or a company or a person).

How does this relate to conjugal haves and have-nots?  Recall that the discussion about income discrepancies in the United States generally takes place at the level of those who have agency, those who earn X and those who earn Y.  This is helpful to recall because the argument that I am trying to make is a moral one, namely, that an individual's decisions may bear on one's financial situation and that these decisions may be moral in nature.  When we speak of rights or what ought to be the case, we are squarely in the moral sphere.  Assigning blame is a moral action and reflects a moral judgment.

A curious irony exists.  The fact of disparity in income levels is presented as a moral issue (e.g., "I am not receiving what I ought to receive"), but it is often also seen as illegitimate and prejudicial to explain that disparity by way of other moral issues (e.g., the consequences of individual moral choices and habits some of which relate to family and sexuality).  Put the other way around, why is it legitimate to cast the disparity in income levels among persons in society as driven by immorality (greed, exploitation, cronyism) but illegitimate to offer as a contributing factor other forms of immorality (lack of self-control, failures of duty, infidelity)?

I suspect that one answer, not far off the mark, is that the former immorality (greed, exploitation, cronyism) is committed by other agents but the latter (lack of self-control, failures of duty, infidelity) are committed by the persons with the lower income levels who claim to be hurt by the greedy, exploiting cronies.

What we find, then, is a propensity to criticize but not an openness to be criticized.  We can "call out" other people's immorality, but we cannot bear to have them call out our own.  We moralize selectively.  Whether this is perhaps another moral shift in culture, or just intrinsic to human nature, it is strikingly reflected in contemporary American individual character, at least at the level of public debate.

Why is a moral understanding of the matter important?  What is gained by identifying morality as involved in the descriptive relationship between marital and parental situation, on the one hand, and financial situation, on the other?

One benefit is that a moral understanding allows us consistently to hold together both passive and active causes of the income gap.  Not only may an individual in some sense be on the short receiving end of some other group's morally dubious actions, but also individuals are in a real sense active agents in producing their own financial state of affairs.   The former covers the "I'm not receiving what I ought to receive" notion; the latter covers the "these are some of the consequences of your individual moral choices and habits" idea.  When we see both elements as moral, we may open up to better view than if we do not the nature of the problem, its origins, and potential remedies.

A second benefit is that we can thereby more acutely perceive the effect of the morality of public culture on public debate -- and we can talk more openly about that effect.

Public culture, what is accepted within a community, does imply notions of personhood and society to which persons and society should aim.  These are goals of the group, and as goals they function as constraining norms.  In this way we see that public culture influences behavior, which leads to consequences both for persons and for the group.

This is a significant observation that is all too often dismissed when it is claimed that culture is neutral.  Usually that happens when culture is influencing ideas and behavior in the way that a partisan likes.  In Justice as Fairness, John Rawls, the towering figure of modern political liberalism, writes:  "We suppose, as a general fact of commonsense political sociology, that those who grow up in a well-ordered society will, in good part, form their conception of themselves as citizens from the public culture and from the conceptions of persons and society implicit in it" (122).  Political liberals and conservatives both understand this "general fact":  Culture's influence is always operative; that influence is powerful; and it powerfully influences identity and morals.

If the current debate about the sources of income gaps and class stratification is lopsidedly moral, namely, to the passive/victim/environmental explanation, then the lopsidedness itself says something noteworthy about the morals of the culture that the nature of the debate reflects.  Less cumbersomely put, the focus of the debate reflects the prevailing moral disposition of the culture.  In this case, the moral disposition may be a decided shift to rights-based thinking, enlarging statist institutions, moral blame-shifting, and ingratitude.  Whether this is entirely accurate, we should, at the very least, pause to ponder whether how people conceive of themselves and of society is true to other moral sentiments that we may have (we might not be consistent), or that it may be legitimate to have (we might not have a monopoly on morality).

In writing this, specifically about a possible marked shift of this sort, I wish to be clear.  I am speaking of the broad culture, not of every individual.  Indeed, as we will remember, the lead subject in Mr. DeParle's article says of her situation:  “I’m in this position because of decisions I made.”   

I do hope that these reflections add some balance to what I see as an uneven public debate.  The element of individual responsibility is not only marginalized in the media; it is also frequently vilified or scorned, as are those who suggest it.  In asking why some moral elements are permitted in public discourse and others are not, I am not only pointing out an inconsistency; I am also suggesting that something valuable is lost in our understanding of real social situations like marriage and sexual behavior.  That something valuable but lost is recognition of a more holistic moral dimension that is inherent in social life.

A tad more than a $6,300 fine

This article in today's The New York Times about a Chinese woman's pregnancy and the government's decision to execute her child touches on some topics I raised in previous posts this month (first here and then here).

Initiative in the Poverty Debate

These days, questions about justice, particularly that nebulous but ubiquitous term social justice, turn in my hearing mostly on the basic structure of life in the United States.  It is a structure, it is claimed, that in its very fabric is unjust.  Therefore, the unjust social fabric ineluctably results in inherently unequal opportunities, not to mention also unequal outcomes.  A case in point, frequently offered as Exhibit A, is poverty.

Without discussing now the philosophical postulates about justice that this prevailing view reflects, I was struck by a report of Congressional testimony that was given last week on the subject of poverty.  The Wall Street Journal reproduces in today's edition the following remarks by Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution. (The Brookings Institution is generally considered a center-left think tank in Washington, D.C.)  Mr. Haskins's point:  certain behavior is an extremely accurate predictor of adult poverty or, alternately, general economic success.

His testimony does not deny environmental challenges (and one should readily admit them), but it does underscore, more than I believe is often acknowledged in philosophical and policy debates, the key role of individual responsibility.  (We might say communal responsibility for its individuals.)  This effort, as he describes it, seems to me to have at least one unifying moral quality:  discipline, or self-control.  Specifically, it is the self-control required in pursuing education, work, and family.

Whatever one may think of Mr. Haskins's view, the Census data that he provides must be part of the ongoing political, economic, and moral debate.  (The full transcript of his Senate testimony may be found here.)

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ron Haskins testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, June 5:

I want to emphasize the importance of individual initiative in reducing poverty and promoting economic success. Young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success—complete at least a high school education, work full time, and wait until age 21 and get married before having a baby. Based on an analysis of Census data, people who followed all three of these rules had only a 2% chance of being in poverty and a 72% chance of joining the middle class (defined as above $55,000 in 2010). These numbers were almost precisely reversed for people who violated all three rules, elevating their chance of being poor to 77% and reducing their chance of making the middle class to 4%.

Individual effort and good decisions about the big events in life are more important than government programs. Call it blaming the victim if you like, but decisions made by individuals are paramount in the fight to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in America. The nation's struggle to expand opportunity will continue to be an uphill battle if young people do not learn to make better decisions about their future.

A version of this article appeared June 11, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Notable & Quotable.

Safe, Legal, and Targeted

Is it morally permissible to terminate a human life based upon that life-holder's sex (male or female) as long as the decision to terminate is free rather than forced?

This is essentially the question that was voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday.  Technically, the question was the legality, not the morality, but never mind since those are confused in promulgating legislation that is supposed to reflect society's sense of justice, or what is right, which is to say what is moral.  Congress took up the question of selective abortion -- i.e., the termination of the life -- of a healthy and developing human fetus based on sex, especially if the baby is female.

The answer that Congress gave in its procedural way was yes.  Freedom of one's individual will is so important, evidently, that it allows one legally to discriminate lethally against another.  Free termination of a life based upon sex discrimination is legally permissible.  The message of the government, then, is that it is morally acceptable in the United States.

Perhaps reflecting home country bias, forced and frequently selective termination as practiced, for example, in China and India, is, however, not acceptable -- in fact it is condemnable -- according to U.S. standards.  This practice in China and India is commonly called gendercide, or female foeticide.  The definition includes the deliberate determination to commit the killing act.  Whether one party is forced or free, a deliberate determination to kill an innocent is made.

Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton has said that this termination of a female life based on the fact that the child is female should be stopped:

Obviously, there’s work to be done in both India and China, because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still overwhelmingly high, and unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl children simply because they’d rather have a boy.

So has the typically ineffective United Nations.

This raises a number of moral questions that relate to very practical considerations of wisdom:

• Should one's individual freedom of decision be held in such high esteem that the state entrenches lethal sexual discrimination of females?
• Could one legitimately call these targeted killings?
• Why is the practice in one country acceptable but not in another?
• What is the real "war on women"?

Out in the Open

Today President Obama publicly affirmed his support for same-sex marriage.  His position has been an open secret for some time.

Moral Julia

In his op-ed piece "The Party of Julia" in yesterday's The New York Times, Ross Douthat analyzes "the policy vision and philosophical premises" of the president for persons and the nation as he seeks re-election -- inasmuch as that vision is depicted in the White House's new slideshow about its composite everywoman "Julia":

The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.

Noteworthy is not just the absence of an explicit and stable family structure; it is the absence of any family member not merely incidental to the story of family's replacement by government in the narrative of an individual's life.

In previous posts, in February and in April, I have observed the challenges of family structure in contemporary life and the difficulties that those challenges may pose for civic life.  I am not alone in discerning these trends.  Indeed, Mr. Douthat suggests that, while the president's vision may involve some inherent "condescension," "in an increasingly atomized society, where communities and families are weaker than ever before, such a vision may have more appeal — to both genders — than many of the conservatives mocking the slide show might like to believe."

This all brought to mind George Lakoff's book Moral Politics (1996).  In it the UC Berkeley professor seeks to help readers, but especially liberal readers, understand the cognitively systemic ways in which people think about morality and politics.  For him the two are intimately related.

At the heart of Mr. Lakoff's analysis is the family.  His thesis, in a nutshell, is that how one conceives of the nuclear family and its moral structure and function, so one conceives of the central government and its policy structure and function.  The systems of one's moral reasoning apply both to family and to government, and the cognitive conceptual metaphor that links them is the family.  A cognitive mapping occurs whereby what one expects of one's family one expects of one's government:  the government as family and what it should be. 

Professor Lakoff uses this idea of moral reasoning -- informed as it is by family-based metaphors that characterize the moral systems of two different family models -- to explain his view of the differences between so-called "liberals" and "conservatives" in American political life.  Without getting into the details of Mr. Lakoff's argument (which is immensely compelling but not above critique), the connection between it and the president's vision for government through Julia's dependence on it as a surrogate parent should be readily discernible.  The mapping of family onto government is overt.

Last month, the president met with his outgoing Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on the controversial subject of missile defense in eastern Europe.  The U.S. president was overheard by a hot microphone saying, "This is my last election.  After my election, I have more flexibility."  The not-so-subtle message was that unconstrained by political (voter) accountability he could move things aggressively in new directions.  Mr. Medvedev replied, "I understand ... I will transmit this information to Vladimir [Putin], and I stand with you."

Based on "The Life of Julia" and Mr. Douthat's assessment of its implicit and explicit philosophical and political trajectory, one wonders whether the chief executive's apparent intention to stretch U.S. government policy in new directions also applies to both the family and liberal egalitarianism per se.

Turkle: "The Flight From Conversation"

The Sunday, April 22, opinion contribution in The New York Times by Sherry Turkle, "The Flight From Conversation," largely reproduces in writing main themes from her February TED talk, which I noted and provided a link to in a prior post.

(Recent, related posts are found here and here.)

"Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"

That is the question that Stephen Marche asks and seeks to answer in his article by the same name in the May issue of The Atlantic:  "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"  The essay is in a similar vein to my two previous posts on new media (here and here).  And so it is worth drawing attention to it.  Among Mr. Marche's concluding thoughts are these:

Rising narcissism isn’t so much a trend as the trend behind all other trends. ... And loneliness and narcissism are intimately connected ... The connection is fundamental. Narcissism is the flip side of loneliness, and either condition is a fighting retreat from the messy reality of other people.

A considerable part of Facebook’s appeal stems from its miraculous fusion of distance with intimacy, or the illusion of distance with the illusion of intimacy. Our online communities become engines of self-image, and self-image becomes the engine of community. The real danger with Facebook is not that it allows us to isolate ourselves, but that by mixing our appetite for isolation with our vanity, it threatens to alter the very nature of solitude. ...

 ...the very magic of the new machines, the efficiency and elegance with which they serve us, obscures what isn’t being served: everything that matters. What Facebook has revealed about human nature—and this is not a minor revelation—is that a connection is not the same thing as a bond, and that instant and total connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity. Solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are. Facebook denies us a pleasure whose profundity we had underestimated: the chance to forget about ourselves for a while, the chance to disconnect.

These and related observations are not new to many of us.  But it is encouraging to see the more consistent highlighting of a real problem that is sometimes brushed off as Luddite lunacy.  Real relationships, self-reflection, salutary solitude, cultivation of confidants -- these are central to humanity and a healthy pursuit of life.  The substitution of these things through the use of technology is an important facet of contemporary life that we ignore to our peril.