Before I get into analyzing the specifics of what I think the longer term issues are [I shall delve] into a necessary preliminary [to make] my overall worldview of history and society explicit.
The first of these is that I view history as progressing, though not necessarily to an end point. This is not dissimilar to Kant's notion of crooked wood, things get generally better in the long run but not every given change is for the better, sometimes we regress.
That said, I don't necessarily believe that every aspect of life is necessarily getting better at the same time, sometimes a regression can be necessary for progress in other areas. For instance, I think many aspects of modern life are probably alienating people from the kind of sense of community that people in past eras enjoyed, and this is an inevitable consequence of the limits of modern technology and social organization. However, given longer lifespans and that now the vast majority of children reach adulthood I don't see how you can really make an argument that things have gotten worse. After all, you have to have life to render judgment, a society that lets more people live is better within reasonable limits (maximizing population to the point where no one has more than the bare minimum to live would be an example of an unreasonable stretch).
So you can call it what you will, divine will, a learning process, historical forces, conscious human choice, social evolution, or whatever else makes sense in your worldview, but I think it is hard to deny that there is some kind of progress to history, it's not simply relative nor is it a matter of conforming to known rules. We're progressing towards an unknown future that will be better than today, though we have to be careful not to fool ourselves into taking a step backwards or deceiving ourselves into thinking we know exactly where we're supposed to go. If we knew that, someone would have got there already.
[Edits made for clarity. Credit to g cross for catching it.]
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
A Fictional History from the Future
[For an explanation of this posts purpose see this post and this second post explaining the observer.]
The 21st century opened with one of the most atrocious terrorist attacks of all time, which occurred on September 11, 2001. This was an attack motivated and conducted by a reactionary Islamist ideology and organization called al Qaeda. This organization was a radically decentralized network wholly independent of state control, its emergence was the first sign that the monopoly of the state on international politics had decisively ended. While it would be many years before the more general proliferation of networks of comparable scope and influence, the general outline of the future success of this form of social organization could be seen in this first, evil pioneer. The attack itself, which still remains among the largest and most destructive terrorist attacks of all time, caused relatively little physical damage, at least when compared to the devastation elicited by the response to it. However, the social and cultural scars ran much deeper than the physical damage. Despite the essentially social and cultural nature of the attack and the motivation behind it the US government acted in a state-centric matter. Rather than seeking to engage and defeat its opponent in the social and ideological sphere in which al Qaeda existed, operated and acted, the US instead conducted invasions of two states in an attempt to destroy al Qaeda's material base of support. This approach would prove ultimately futile, though it did succeed in shifting the focus of what was then called the “war on terror” into Asia, and it would be some time before the US, or other states, would realize their inability to counter this form of threat and develop institutions capable of effectively countering them.
The 21st century opened with one of the most atrocious terrorist attacks of all time, which occurred on September 11, 2001. This was an attack motivated and conducted by a reactionary Islamist ideology and organization called al Qaeda. This organization was a radically decentralized network wholly independent of state control, its emergence was the first sign that the monopoly of the state on international politics had decisively ended. While it would be many years before the more general proliferation of networks of comparable scope and influence, the general outline of the future success of this form of social organization could be seen in this first, evil pioneer. The attack itself, which still remains among the largest and most destructive terrorist attacks of all time, caused relatively little physical damage, at least when compared to the devastation elicited by the response to it. However, the social and cultural scars ran much deeper than the physical damage. Despite the essentially social and cultural nature of the attack and the motivation behind it the US government acted in a state-centric matter. Rather than seeking to engage and defeat its opponent in the social and ideological sphere in which al Qaeda existed, operated and acted, the US instead conducted invasions of two states in an attempt to destroy al Qaeda's material base of support. This approach would prove ultimately futile, though it did succeed in shifting the focus of what was then called the “war on terror” into Asia, and it would be some time before the US, or other states, would realize their inability to counter this form of threat and develop institutions capable of effectively countering them.
The Future Perspective
The following account is a view of the contemporary era through a fictionalized observer. Its purpose is to attempt to perceive current political action in terms of its long term consequences rather than in terms of immediate effects. The piece is meant to be a quick introduction to the early 21st century that would be similar to a brief introduction that you could find today on a history website, wikipedia, or perhaps high school history textbook. At times the language will be a little over technical, my fictional observer would have the use of terminology to reflect a new fictional reality that would be readily accessible to readers, terminology that would only confuse things more if I invented it myself.
The observer is imagined as a future American from what I consider a plausible outcome of current struggles. The setting isn't meant as a prediction, I am choosing extrapolations from trends I think will play a large role in how our society develops but I can make no claims about what likely outcomes of these trends will be, this is simply a selection of what I regard as many possible contingent outcomes. Some aspects of the society this observer lives in I consider quite likely, the breakdown of the strong image of state vs. private that dominates today I consider inevitable for instance. Other outcomes I throw in to reflect the unpredictable nature of historical development, I don't consider a Great Moral Revival that redefines the relation of religion, morality, society and social norms likely for instance; though given the crisis of religious and moral identity today I consider this not impossible.
This is an America that has become one of the big four global powers but not the dominant one of those four. The writer sees this relative decline as highly regrettable and can't help a few criticisms of us due to this decline. Non-state actors play a more significant role in this world, the observer considers their rise as one of the more significant developments whose importance was not fully recognized today. Our two primary contested political identities, capitalism vs. communism and democracy vs. authoritarianism, are considered somewhat quaint by this observer, similar to how we view religious identity and politics today (when was the last time anyone talked about Christendom as a major political division but people were fighting and dying over this mere decades before democracy vs. authoritarianism, and the loosely linked concept of nationalism, swept these ideas away). Still important today but not defining in anything other than some marginal perspectives. There has also been a general moral revival where religion has more fully engaged with modern philosophy and ethics to take a more explicitly ecumenical turn and explicitly rejected much of the sectarian tendencies of today. This has lead to religion having a much more deep and pervasive influence than it does today with the social breakdown of our day being ascribed to our narrower outlook and inability to engage our beliefs with broader social change. This is a religion more of flexibility, interpretation and worldview than it is one of eternal prescribed rules.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Governor Christie Might Be Smarter than I Thought
Apparently Governor Christie has decided to review the tunnel project. A combination of outrage by public officials and that he has become the days most excoriated man in the blogosphere (or at least by Paul Krugman, who is particularly good at excoriating people) may have something to do with this, not necessarily in even proportions. I'm giving him a 40% chance of getting the tunnel without a dime having to show up in the official New Jersey budget.
[Hat Tip: Free Exchange for the 40% rule(delay in editing this due to me not remembering where I first saw it)]
[Hat Tip: Free Exchange for the 40% rule(delay in editing this due to me not remembering where I first saw it)]
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Voter Disgust, Political Alienation, and My Crazy Approach To My Part In Doing Something About It
Matt Bai has an interesting article in the NY Times today about the disgust voters feel towards politicians. The emphasis is that it's not about policy, it's about a feeling of a deeper societal ailment. As for politicians:
This seems to be an accurate description of how voters feel and not a bad explanation of why the electorate seems to be voting little on issues but high on the idea of throwing the bums out. As disgust with both parties rises there are more independents and people feel increasingly alienated from the two political parties.
The problem is, this attitude doesn't lead to a solution. There's little reason to think politicians are either better or worse than they've been before. This is a constant, not something that has changed. There's also little reason to believe that people have changed in a way that would make society ungovernable or lead to the breakdown of civil society. So electing politicians who promise to change the government or clean out the corruption won't get us anywhere, these aspects aren't really different from the past, it's something else.
I think that something else is the lack of a real political vision, and perhaps even more deeply a need for an updated view of ethics and morality, for the modern world. Neither of our political parties seems to have any real vision for the future. The Democrats just seem confused, they have a lot of technical answers to current problems and mutter some vague base pleasing phrases about the rich and the power of corporations but I can't really tell where they see the country in thirty years. The Republicans seem stuck in the 1980s and have a political strategy that resembles Weekend at Bernies, rather than facing the what they need to do today they're trying to justify their policies by shouting SOCIALISM! loud enough to distract people from the fact that the Soviet Union is in fact dead and rotted.
So what to do about this? Both parties ultimately seem stuck in the last century, the Democrats just because they don't really know where to go now and seem content tinkering with the system and the Republicans because they enjoyed the party so much that they're not willing to admit the reason for it is gone. Part of the problem is that the political philosophy that touches the broad part of the electorate seems woefully out of date and says little about modern problems. The struggles of democracy vs fascism or capitalism vs communism just don't really seem to reflect our problems. Plenty of people try to use these old frames but it seems forced.
There is of course some wonderful work being done in academia on political philosophies and approaches. But I don't see a mass political movement arising out of social constructivism or neo-liberal institutionalism, these just aren't those kinds of philosophies. Social democracy seems to work pretty well but even that is fairly technical in tone and doesn't resonate well with an American audience anyway.
The only way forward is to develop a real candidate for a mass political movement. It's been done before, the Conservative movement got started this way relatively recently. You have to go back a bit further for liberalism but that has similar characteristics.
I'm going to take a shot at getting this ball rolling, just for fun. My goal will be to take a bird's eye view of the problems facing the world today and ground this into some kind of coherent narrative. My approach will be eccentric, I'm doing this because I enjoy this kind of thing, not because I expect it to go anywhere, as well as because I believe it's just not right to complain about something when you're not willing to take a stab at fixing it.
I'm sure there's plenty of other examples of people who've tried to do this. Popular political books are a weak point of mine, aside from the news I avoid buying anything I think will be dated in 10 years. I also have to admit theory isn't my strong suit, I prefer to ground myself in more practical questions and history. These two things may turn out to be advantages to thinking of something original, I'm not discouraged by all the great work I'm ignoring and I'm not too tightly bound in existing theoretical perspectives, only aware of the basic outlines and a by no means complete smattering of the great books on the subject.
My first step in tackling this myself will be the most eccentric, but something I've done before. Something that has always struck me is that looking back through history it's all about broad social forces, the rise of the middle class, desires for westward expansion; things like that. It's not at all like the day to day politics focused on personality and narrow policies. To try to get at some of that broader, more systemic thought I'll be attempting to write a fictionalized account of a future history of the early 21st century. The goal is to withdraw myself from the accepted wisdom of today by writing from an artificial perspective. The point is so that I can try to look at what is happening that is part of the broad sweep of history and what are the isolated footnotes that only a specialist would know about in 50 years.
Once this eccentric part is completed I'll start trying to tackle broad issue areas. The goal will be to identify what are the big problems facing us and what are pathways out. I won't be trying to give detailed policies or a data rich analysis, this is about a general take and trying to figure out what the longer term options are rather than detailing specific steps.
From these individual problems I'll be taking a look at I'll be trying to formulate a view that can tie them all together. What should a modern society look like? How should we be reacting to global re-balancing? What is causing modern social breakdown, and what can be done?
At the end of this, you'll have my answers on how to approach these questions. I can't say that I'm even attempting to tackle these things in a systematic way to claim that I'll be right about them. But at the end I should have a loosely articulated and semi-coherent view on how to approach these things.
I know I'm biting off more than I can chew, and possibly chasing some readers away. This won't take over the blog, it will just be a piece here and there as I complete it. Anyway, wish me luck.
These voters did not hate politicians. They simply saw both parties, along with the news media and big business, as symptoms of the larger societal ailment. And this underlying perception, that politicians in Washington conduct themselves just as childishly and with the same lack of accountability as the students throwing chicken casserole in the lunchroom, may well be the principal emotion behind the electorate’s propensity to vote out whoever holds power.
This seems to be an accurate description of how voters feel and not a bad explanation of why the electorate seems to be voting little on issues but high on the idea of throwing the bums out. As disgust with both parties rises there are more independents and people feel increasingly alienated from the two political parties.
The problem is, this attitude doesn't lead to a solution. There's little reason to think politicians are either better or worse than they've been before. This is a constant, not something that has changed. There's also little reason to believe that people have changed in a way that would make society ungovernable or lead to the breakdown of civil society. So electing politicians who promise to change the government or clean out the corruption won't get us anywhere, these aspects aren't really different from the past, it's something else.
I think that something else is the lack of a real political vision, and perhaps even more deeply a need for an updated view of ethics and morality, for the modern world. Neither of our political parties seems to have any real vision for the future. The Democrats just seem confused, they have a lot of technical answers to current problems and mutter some vague base pleasing phrases about the rich and the power of corporations but I can't really tell where they see the country in thirty years. The Republicans seem stuck in the 1980s and have a political strategy that resembles Weekend at Bernies, rather than facing the what they need to do today they're trying to justify their policies by shouting SOCIALISM! loud enough to distract people from the fact that the Soviet Union is in fact dead and rotted.
So what to do about this? Both parties ultimately seem stuck in the last century, the Democrats just because they don't really know where to go now and seem content tinkering with the system and the Republicans because they enjoyed the party so much that they're not willing to admit the reason for it is gone. Part of the problem is that the political philosophy that touches the broad part of the electorate seems woefully out of date and says little about modern problems. The struggles of democracy vs fascism or capitalism vs communism just don't really seem to reflect our problems. Plenty of people try to use these old frames but it seems forced.
There is of course some wonderful work being done in academia on political philosophies and approaches. But I don't see a mass political movement arising out of social constructivism or neo-liberal institutionalism, these just aren't those kinds of philosophies. Social democracy seems to work pretty well but even that is fairly technical in tone and doesn't resonate well with an American audience anyway.
The only way forward is to develop a real candidate for a mass political movement. It's been done before, the Conservative movement got started this way relatively recently. You have to go back a bit further for liberalism but that has similar characteristics.
I'm going to take a shot at getting this ball rolling, just for fun. My goal will be to take a bird's eye view of the problems facing the world today and ground this into some kind of coherent narrative. My approach will be eccentric, I'm doing this because I enjoy this kind of thing, not because I expect it to go anywhere, as well as because I believe it's just not right to complain about something when you're not willing to take a stab at fixing it.
I'm sure there's plenty of other examples of people who've tried to do this. Popular political books are a weak point of mine, aside from the news I avoid buying anything I think will be dated in 10 years. I also have to admit theory isn't my strong suit, I prefer to ground myself in more practical questions and history. These two things may turn out to be advantages to thinking of something original, I'm not discouraged by all the great work I'm ignoring and I'm not too tightly bound in existing theoretical perspectives, only aware of the basic outlines and a by no means complete smattering of the great books on the subject.
My first step in tackling this myself will be the most eccentric, but something I've done before. Something that has always struck me is that looking back through history it's all about broad social forces, the rise of the middle class, desires for westward expansion; things like that. It's not at all like the day to day politics focused on personality and narrow policies. To try to get at some of that broader, more systemic thought I'll be attempting to write a fictionalized account of a future history of the early 21st century. The goal is to withdraw myself from the accepted wisdom of today by writing from an artificial perspective. The point is so that I can try to look at what is happening that is part of the broad sweep of history and what are the isolated footnotes that only a specialist would know about in 50 years.
Once this eccentric part is completed I'll start trying to tackle broad issue areas. The goal will be to identify what are the big problems facing us and what are pathways out. I won't be trying to give detailed policies or a data rich analysis, this is about a general take and trying to figure out what the longer term options are rather than detailing specific steps.
From these individual problems I'll be taking a look at I'll be trying to formulate a view that can tie them all together. What should a modern society look like? How should we be reacting to global re-balancing? What is causing modern social breakdown, and what can be done?
At the end of this, you'll have my answers on how to approach these questions. I can't say that I'm even attempting to tackle these things in a systematic way to claim that I'll be right about them. But at the end I should have a loosely articulated and semi-coherent view on how to approach these things.
I know I'm biting off more than I can chew, and possibly chasing some readers away. This won't take over the blog, it will just be a piece here and there as I complete it. Anyway, wish me luck.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Is Some Religious Belief in the US Nationalism in Disguise?
[Edit: I hated the original title and meant to edit it after posting when something better occurred to me, still not thrilled with it but it's more on message.]
Ross Douthat has an intriguing blog post exploring some of the findings from the widely talked about Pew Forum findings on the religious knowledge of Americans. It's worth reading, it discusses how religious faith can be lived rather than being academic knowledge but that some religious teachings are essential, basic knowledge.
What I was left wondering at the end though, was what this has to say about the exceptionally high level or religious identification in the US relative to Europe? Perhaps at the root of this, religious identification serves a different cultural purpose here than it does in other western nations. What I specifically have in mind is that in a country that officially eschews a cultural nationalism in favor of a more universal and accessible civic nationalism religious identification may be fulfilling the same emotional and social identification needs that more traditional nationalism does elsewhere. If this is a correct frame, a certain portion of those that self-identify as religious could more accurately be described as traditional nationalists alienated in a society that condemns nativism and insists on universal, rather than particular, values. This group would hold little real attachment to religious beliefs and doctrine and would instead have a religious belief system that is more akin to nationalism found in other western nations than it is to either traditional American nationalism, the religious belief system of more traditionally religious Americans, or the religious belief systems of other western nations.
I won't pretend to have an answer to this, it's just a question this debate has raised in my mind.
Ross Douthat has an intriguing blog post exploring some of the findings from the widely talked about Pew Forum findings on the religious knowledge of Americans. It's worth reading, it discusses how religious faith can be lived rather than being academic knowledge but that some religious teachings are essential, basic knowledge.
What I was left wondering at the end though, was what this has to say about the exceptionally high level or religious identification in the US relative to Europe? Perhaps at the root of this, religious identification serves a different cultural purpose here than it does in other western nations. What I specifically have in mind is that in a country that officially eschews a cultural nationalism in favor of a more universal and accessible civic nationalism religious identification may be fulfilling the same emotional and social identification needs that more traditional nationalism does elsewhere. If this is a correct frame, a certain portion of those that self-identify as religious could more accurately be described as traditional nationalists alienated in a society that condemns nativism and insists on universal, rather than particular, values. This group would hold little real attachment to religious beliefs and doctrine and would instead have a religious belief system that is more akin to nationalism found in other western nations than it is to either traditional American nationalism, the religious belief system of more traditionally religious Americans, or the religious belief systems of other western nations.
I won't pretend to have an answer to this, it's just a question this debate has raised in my mind.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Influence Peddling and What's Different about Government Today
Just finished reading Bob Herbert's most recent column on John Boehner. His major criticism is over Boehner's influence peddling and the influence of money on his politics, in particular this line:
I'm not sure this is an example of "democracy-destroying money." If my memory serves me correctly men that would be rather more popular with the Bob Herbert's of the world were also well known for their influence peddling, Lyndon Johnson comes to mind as having a reputation for this. The form of this influence peddling was likely different, decades separate them, but I doubt the dynamics of influence peddling have changed that much.
This isn't to say that I have no problems with money and politics. But as much as it angers voters this back room (or in this case front foyer) influence peddling hasn't ever really been in any way "democracy-destroying," its simply the slightly sordid way that things actually get done. The proper check on this is that if it begins to thwart the public will and to harm the country angry voters can throw the bums out.
Money becomes "democracy-destroying" when it disrupts the process of the public learning of how their officials are acting to provide rents to the politically connected and then throwing the bums out. Its not the back room trading of money and influence that is "democracy-destroying" but the ability of money and influence to shape public opinion and prevent less wealthy or connected voices from being heard that is potentially "democracy-destroying."
The amount of democracy-destroying money that manages to make its way into the sleazy environs of what is now known as Boehner Land has increased to a staggering degree.
I'm not sure this is an example of "democracy-destroying money." If my memory serves me correctly men that would be rather more popular with the Bob Herbert's of the world were also well known for their influence peddling, Lyndon Johnson comes to mind as having a reputation for this. The form of this influence peddling was likely different, decades separate them, but I doubt the dynamics of influence peddling have changed that much.
This isn't to say that I have no problems with money and politics. But as much as it angers voters this back room (or in this case front foyer) influence peddling hasn't ever really been in any way "democracy-destroying," its simply the slightly sordid way that things actually get done. The proper check on this is that if it begins to thwart the public will and to harm the country angry voters can throw the bums out.
Money becomes "democracy-destroying" when it disrupts the process of the public learning of how their officials are acting to provide rents to the politically connected and then throwing the bums out. Its not the back room trading of money and influence that is "democracy-destroying" but the ability of money and influence to shape public opinion and prevent less wealthy or connected voices from being heard that is potentially "democracy-destroying."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)