"The English Wars"

In two previous posts (here and here), I reflected on English grammatical usage and the contention about it.  The topic is taken up in a May review article in The New Yorker, "The English Wars," by Joan Acocella.  Her essay discusses, in particular, some interesting history of the descriptivist v. prescriptivist tug of war and thus the moral (and political) component of language use.

Ms. Acocella also has a thoughtful critique of Henry Hitchings's new book, noted in one of my previous posts.  Descriptivists, she suggests, may turn out to be prescriptivists as well:  "the most curious flaw in the descriptivists’ reasoning is their failure to notice that it is now they who are doing the prescribing."  This may be curious, but it is not so surprising, is it?  More than just some people -- imagine! -- believe that writing should be clear and unpretentious, even those who say that they are just describing current practice.  Grammar is about usage, and we all tend to like others to follow the virtue of our way.

Suppressing Sympathy

"Being human, their moral sense requires them to manage distress by reinterpreting the situation so as to justify the cruelty or indifference."

This is how James Q. Wilson summarizes in his book The Moral Sense a discussion of the famous experiments by Stanley Milgram.  In those experiments, unsuspecting participants were asked to administer increasing dosages of electrical shock to a subject (really an actor; no one was actually harmed) if the subject answered questions incorrectly.  These words by Mr. Wilson appear in the context of his arguing for an inherent moral knowledge and impulse in humans.

Professor Wilson's point is not Professor Milgram's, namely, that humans will commit despicably horrendous actions against their otherwise closely held moral convictions if they believe that they are aligned with some authority in doing so.  Although this seems true, Mr. Wilson's larger point is that people justify these actions in various ways precisely because they have a moral sense by virtue simply of being human.  One reflection of this moral sense is sympathy.

Mr. Wilson notes that in the experiment, "[f]or most people, only the objections of other people like themselves (that is, like them in being 'ordinary people,' not 'scientists') made them inclined to ignore the instructions of an authority figure" (52).  Authority can be so strong an influence that we need to feel solidarity with others like us and to know that someone is sympathetic to our controversial viewpoint in order, sometimes, to act in accordance with conscience, or our natural moral sense.

But also because a natural human sympathy for the victim butts up against the compulsion many feel at the direction of an authority figure, in all manner of situations we tend to distance ourselves from the victim in order to suppress our sympathy for her, that is, someone with whom we might otherwise identify:  "When we need to reassure ourselves as to the propriety of following orders that require us to inflict pain on others, we denigrate the victims. ... We often attribute to people qualities that make them appear to deserve a fate that has befallen them" (52).  We might call them "scum" or "racists" or "animals" or "deluded religionists" or "backward."  We might assert that they are "doing this to themselves" or "she was asking for it."  Whatever the form of denigration, what occurs is a conscience-alleviating shifting of culpability through a distancing of their persons from ours.  Hence the statement that opened this post:  "Being human, their moral sense requires them to manage distress by reinterpreting the situation so as to justify the cruelty or indifference" (53).

I have recently pondered how other people, regular people, if you will, not just those in experiments or engaged in criminal activity, justify actions such as cruelty or indifference to which outside observers may legitimately object as unethical -- and how routinely this occurs.

For instance, I have friends who work in business.  Many report working in environments of demoralized culture and high turnover.  This combination creates a negative feedback loop of increased demoralization, which leads to more turnover, which leads to increased demoralization, and so on.  Although these firms attract, surprisingly sometimes, talented individuals, most end up leaving.  One friend, who is employed by a small firm of less than 25 people, reports that over the last four years 22 employees have left for one reason or another.  The number leaving per year has been mostly consistent.  If you assume a constant figure of 24 employees at the firm, that comes to 22% turnover on average per year.  Somewhere between 1 out of 5 and 1 out of 4 employees pass through the revolving door each year!

What is most noteworthy, however, is not just the staggering rate of employee turnover but rather the employers' justification for it.  It is always the employee's fault.  It is repeatedly asserted, I am informed, "There's nothing we could have done."  "It just wasn't a good fit."  "She left in order to shorten her commute by 5 minutes; that was really important to her."  "We did all that we could."  Even in the case of terminations, the euphemism is culpability-shifting, or a reluctance to assume full responsibility:  "We had to let her go" -- as if an outside authority compelled them to fire an employee who was disgruntled like all the rest.

A couple of illustrations make the same point.  From horticulture, although many and different types of employee apples are grafted into the firm's tree, it is, my friend is told, that all of the apples went bad, not that there is anything wrong with the tree.  At what point should one rethink that thesis?  From literature, no matter how many people tell the employing emperor that he is naked, he refuses to believe it.  But refusing to believe something does not mean that the proposition is false.

Why do people refuse to suspect that something might be unhealthy with the tree?  Why does the emperor refuse to believe that he is not wearing clothes?  Why does this happen routinely in our daily lives?

If Mr. Wilson is right about human sympathy and the tendency to suppress it, then it is perhaps because deep down, in the recesses of humanity, people are wrestling with a tension:  the impulse of sympathy, on the one hand, to other people whom the first group is hurting and the horrible realization at some level, on the other hand, that they are to blame.  And this realization is too much to bear for an unrepentant heart.

Where does this happen around us?  It does not only occur in exceptional instances, as the workplace illustration above makes clear.

Where does this happen within us?  After all, it is not only someone else's problem.  If we say that it is, we might just have evidence that some other suppression is at work.

Phronēsis, practical virtue, requires each of us to cultivate the natural sympathy with which we may be endowed, to avoid suppressing it unjustly, and to be vigilant to discern -- and quick to repent -- when we fail.

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.

The News

In my post last Friday, I provided a link to a column by Peggy Noonan in which she suggests that discontent in the United States (e.g., a recent "Gallup had a poll showing only 24% of Americans feel we're on the right track as a nation") is not strictly about the economy.  It is not even more broadly discontent with the culture.  It is, most basically, discontent with national character.  As evidence, she highlighted news stories from the past week.  These stories were variously alarming, shameful, embarrassing, and contemptible.  Her use of news stories as evidence for character evaluation brought to mind comments by James Q. Wilson.

Competition and Federalism

"Should governments — of nations, states and towns — compete like business rivals?"

This question opens Greg Mankiw's opinion piece in the Sunday, April 15, print edition of The New York Times.  The column reflects the Harvard professor's perspective, of course, but I found this a fairly even-handed discussion of the subject as it relates in particular to the matter of federalism.  And he approaches it in a somewhat novel way.  After explaining how competition among governments may benefit citizens, he summarizes the economic point in terms of political philosophy:

Whether competition among governments is good or bad comes down to the philosophical questions of what you want government to do and how much you fear government power. If the government’s job is merely to provide services, like roads, schools and courts, competition among governmental producers may be as good a discipline as competition among private producers. But if government’s job is also to remedy many of life’s inequities, you may want a stronger centralized government, unchecked by competition. 

What is noteworthy about this quote and the larger column is not that there exist philosophical differences about the purpose of governments.  Noteworthy, rather, is how the economic notion of competition serves as a helpful heuristic for understanding these political differences.  The point Mr. Mankiw is making is not about what sort of government sponsors a certain type of economic system.  That is well-worn.  His point, instead, it strikes me somewhat afresh, goes the other direction.  It is how one may apply an economic idea as a way of grasping something central about a certain political system.  In the present case, the political system in question is a federalist one, that is, one in which power is shared between a central, national government, on the one side, and discrete, state (and local) governments, on the other.

To be sure, that an economic system can throw light on a political system is not new (hence I say "somewhat novel").  You see that with rote rehearsals of Marxism all the time.  I had not seen it before applied to federalism per se.

Mr. Mankiw's full essay may be found here.

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.)