debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

13.5.06

Accounting For Tastes

Some recent posts at Pandagon have got me thinking about what it means to say we don't understand something. By "understand," I'm referring to something deeper than just intellectual acquiescence to a proposition. I'm talking about really grasping what it means for something to be true, to be able to see the world through it -- to "grok" it, in Robert Heinlein's expression.

I think there are at least three ways you can say that you don't understand something. I'll refer to them as "conservative," "liberal," and "leftist" because they have certain resonances with those political traditions. But all three play a role in any reasonable approach to life, and hence are used by people from all over the political spectrum.

The conservative way of saying "I don't understand" is a demand for an explanation. The burden of proof is placed on the person making a claim that you don't understand -- show me how what you're saying can make sense, or I'll assume it actually doesn't make sense. This way of saying you don't understand is useful in calling people out on their unquestioned assumptions, forcing them to think about why they think what they do, and whether it really is justifiable. It can reframe the discussion, depriving supporters of the status quo of the presumption of legitimacy. Note that this is a rhetorical gambit, not a logical proof. Treated as a logical proof, it slips into the fallacious Argument from Incredulity. Made as a legitimate rhetorical gambit, it requires us to be open to the possibility that our interlocutor will succeed in getting us to understand their position.

The leftist way of saying "I don't understand" is a plea for help and an admission of ignorance -- "I know it in my head, but don't feel it in my gut." To use a less politically charged example, this is the type of "I don't understand" that I would use in asking somebody to explain the Monty Hall problem to me. I accept that switching doors is the best strategy, but I don't really comprehend why. I would do fine if someone offered me a classic Monty Hall deal, but without real understanding I would fail if presented with a variant form. In political matters, the leftist "I don't know" is an important skill for members of dominant groups to cultivate in their interactions with members of oppressed groups. A commitment to an abstract rule of justice, and taking oppressed groups at their word about what changes will help them, is good as far as it goes. But to be a really effective ally, some understanding of their situation is invaluable.

Perhaps the trickiest form of saying "I don't understand" is the one I label liberal -- "I want to share my experience and understand yours." It's this liberal "I don't know" that the commenters at Pandagon have been struggling with in their discussions of choosing whether to have children. How do you get people to understand your position without suggesting that their position is illegitimate? How can you understand multiple positions while still adhering strongly to your own?

Commenter The Magpie Herself offers one easy out, when she tells Amanda Marcotte that her list of reasons for not being a parent is unimportant -- all that matters is that she doesn't want children. This response to the liberal dilemma is common in the classical liberal tradition, including economics- and behavioralism-influenced social science. Differences are chalked up to inscrutable variations in taste, which cannot be legitimately or feasibly be queried further.

While "there's no accounting for tastes" works well enough for relatively trivial questions like chocolate versus vanilla ice cream, and can be useful in shutting up irritating critics, it does a disservice to deeply held convictions when it's applied universally. Choices about parenthood link deeply into a person's identity and way of relating to the world. I don't think it's productive to put an understanding of such issues permanently off limits. Unfortunately I don't have a good answer for how to manage a genuine liberal quest for understanding. Perhaps one key element is trust -- trust that your interlocutors are genuinely asking the liberal question and will settle for "no accounting for tastes" should your explanation fail, rather than slipping over into the conservative question.

Stentor Danielson, 23:06, ,

11.5.06

In Which I Give Up On The Other Republicans

An open letter to Howard Dean:

Chairman Dean,

Your failure, and the failure of the Democratic Party under your leadership, to stand up for the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans is deeply shameful. At a time when the party should be articulating a clear progressive vision, you have been more concerned about pandering to the bigotry of the right wing. As a heterosexual man with a conscience, I find your efforts on this issue disappointing at best.

When you were chosen as Chairman, I hoped your experiences as Governor of Vermont had taught you how important it is to give enthusiastic and uncompromising support to LGBTQ Americans. Instead, you have sold them out.

I will save my vote for a party with an actual progressive agenda.

Sincerely,

Stentor Danielson

The Democrats' spinelessness covers a broad range of issues, from the environment ("status quo now!") to foreign policy ("we were for it before we were against it") to immigration ("what massive series of protests?"). But the gay rights issue is the one that really gets my goat. Not because it's necessarily the most important issue, but because it's the easiest. Environmental policy, for example, is hard, because you have to navigate through a host of institutional complexities and scientific uncertainties to work out a system that reliably safeguards nature. But the next few steps that can be taken on a political/legal level with regard to gay rights are clear once you recognize the moral imperative to support LGBTQ people: come out affirmatively in support of marriage equality, and adding sexual orientation and gender identity to antidiscrimination laws. That's all I'm asking. Don't bury it behind a lot of talk about the importance of traditional families. Don't cop out by saying it should be decided at the state level (as if the Democratic Party doesn't run candidates for state-level offices).

Stentor Danielson, 19:20, ,

What Common Good?

John Halpin and Ruy Texiera have a proposal out for the much-sought-after coherent progressive vision. In a nutshell, their message to voters is that progressives believe that government should pursue the common good. I could quibble with various elements of it (e.g. the downplaying of progressive freedom issues, and the vulnerability to being reframed as nanny-state-ism), but I basically agree with the premise. However, I think there's one big hole, on both a conceptual and a strategic level:

How do we decide what constitutes the common good?

Halpin and Texiera seem to take the common good as a relatively straightforward and consensual concept. They work on the assumption that we know what the common good is, so the only choice is whether you think government ought to be in the business of pursuing it. But in fact there are widely diverging conceptions of the common good. Different people have different visions of what's good for society as a whole.

Perhaps more importantly, the public has a right to be skeptical of pronouncements that government will work for the common good. Halpin and Texiera cite various polls to show that the public supports the common good principle. But that does not at all mean that they will therefore support any self-proclaimed leader or expert who claims to serve the common good. They will want to know what good, and how we know that it's common.

I think this is a key failing in the quest for a progressive identity (or perhaps a sad case of etymology-as-destiny, given the technocratic orientation of the original Rooseveltian progressives). Democracy and the grassroots is not just a matter of electioneering. It's about making the public involved in the making and implementing of policy after the election. That's the only way to get the public to trust progressives who claim to be acting in the public interest.

Stentor Danielson, 05:06, ,

Focus On The Costs

I think that one of the major factors inhibiting the progress of environmentalism (as well as other progressive social movements) is the prevalence of the "costs" paradigm.

The costs paradigm presents sustainability as a cost to society. Anti-environmentalists take this to be an argument against environmental protection, while environmentalists argue that either costs are morally necessary, or the costs of failing to take action will be greater in the long run. The costs paradigm presents environmentally friendly actions as burdens for society to bear -- land placed off-limits, scrubbers to install, less effective ingredients to use, economic growth foregone, meat and out-of-season produce given up. There's a certain psychological appeal to the ascetic discipline the costs paradigm demands, and the seriousness of the costs seems to honor the seriousness of the current environmental crisis. The costs paradigm's vision is of an unfortunate set of ecological limits, which society must be jury-rigged to avoid crossing.

Cultural Theory argues that environmentalism is really about commitment to a certain way of organizing social life, not just about responding to objective environmental threats. Typically this point is expressed in a way that makes environmentalists look bad -- they're just using environmental issues as a stick to get us to share their vision of the good life. This may be part of the reason that so many environmentalists buy into the costs paradigm. The costs paradigm sounds rational, and it allows environmentalists to say "look, we love modern society too, but unfortunately we have to make some concessions to environmental limits."

But the costs paradigm is depressing, and it invites people to say "it's not worth it." The costs paradigm is happily promoted by anti-environmentalists, because when the crisis isn't immediate (as it was in the 60s and 70s) the costs paradigm helps to defend the status quo. Environmentalism needs to shift the public conception of environmental issues toward a positive vision of a sustainable society. We do, in fact, need the kind of thoroughgoing change in how society is organized that Cultural Theory sees lying behind environmentalism. A reconfigured society would fit comfortably into the environment we have, "naturally" pursuing ends that don't conflict with nature's limits rather than having to be deliberately held back from its desires. Think of it as a matter of learning to make aloo gobi (a vegetarian dish that stands on its own), rather than always buying veggieburgers (an omnivorous dish with the meat swapped out). We need to talk about positive solutions, rather than asking how high of costs we're willing to bear.

This is not to say that there will be no costs associated with sustainability. The transition from our current society to a sustainability-oriented one, in particular, will bring costs. But it's a mistake to see environmentalism as fundamentally about costs, about limits on what we could do if it weren't for nature's fragility.

Stentor Danielson, 00:20, ,

10.5.06

Where Are The Aliens?

Alex Steffen links to Geoffrey Miller's explanation for the Fermi Paradox: if there are aliens out there, why haven't any of them contacted us? Miller's argument, in a nutshell, is that any civilization advanced enough to build an interstellar spaceship is also advanced enough to build an interstellar space ship video game, and the latter is easier and more fun. So the aliens haven't contacted us because they're all playing Xbox (or because they spent so much time playing Xbox that they forgot to have sex and died out).

The Xbox hypothesis (which actually rests on some interesting ideas about fitness versus crude proxies for fitness) may well explain the fate of some alien civilizations. But both the original hypothesis and Miller's resolution make a huge assumption: that exploring the universe is an obviously good and rational thing for a civilization to do, if it can. But while wanderlust may be an important feature of modern Western culture, I see no reason to assume it as an interplanetary universal.

What we really need to ask is: why would a species start exploring the universe? Particularly at the early stages, space travel is likely to be a hugely expensive and difficult undertaking -- so a small shift in alien psychology or social organization could nip it in the bud. Why wouldn't they be happy staying at home? And if they're playing Xbox at home, what of it? Evolution is an explanation of a factual process, not a moral imperative (although it's certainly tempting to blur that line, in order to give the imprimatur of scientific proof to one's moral convictions). Going out in a bang of Halo-induced extasy is no more irrational than an individual dying peacefully after a good life.

But even if the long-term perpetuation of the species is of value, it's not necessarily irrational for a species to eschew space travel. Going to other planets could invite conflict with other civilizations (perhaps ending in nuclear annhialation of one side), or dangerous invasive species or diseases being brought back to the home planet. Or there could be major domestic consequences -- perhaps space travel diverts precious resources from more pressing problems, or requires an oppressive hierarchical social structure that the aliens find intolerable. This is not to say that these are conclusive arguments against space exploration by humans. But they are plausible enough that only a small difference in the aliens' psychology (their attitude to risk, their facility for certain types of social organization, etc) would make them conclusive for the aliens. Evolution is a shortsighted satisficing, not farsighted optimizing, process. So we have no reason to think that human psychology is average for what an intelligent species would evolve, as opposed to being an outlier (and this is assuming that humans will eventually explore space -- a prospect I find a bit dubious).

Stentor Danielson, 04:21, ,