Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
On Morality in the Post-Enlightenment
This post is a response to the thoughts of cultural historian and social critic Dr. Morris Berman. Visit his blog "Dark Ages America" at www.morrisberman.com.
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Dr. Berman,
I found the following excerpt from your "Asian Road" essay provoking: "The loss of the Enlightenment yardstick of truth to some kind of pervasive amorality would represent a loss far deeper than an economic one, it seems to me. A Confucianized society in which truth is nothing more than expediency is its own kind of prison; “go with the flow” can become its own form of ego, and of repression." I don't know the precise logic, but it somehow resonated with your remark to Margaret Talbot regarding the misconception that technology is "neutral or value-free." The following are my thoughts on some topic, which apparently exists somewhere in between these two:
My opinion is that technology, as a category, is only a means to an end--ie., a tool or craft--and has no moral properties in and of itself. In a slight deviation from your view, I contend that its apparent value-ladenness is born out of its functional relationship with a purpose and accidental relationships with competing purposes. Like most human endeavors, I believe its ultimate (though often not proximate) purpose is to better resolve challenges for biological survival and successful reproduction faced by individuals in their particular ecological and social circumstances. Because some tools tend to be more effective than others, we create and attach ‘values’ to certain tools as a means for sharing (by means of enculturation) knowledge of solutions to common challenges. By adopting these values, we demonstrate (and market) publicly our fitness as a potential mate or friendly ally. Over time, sets of values that, either independently or in concert, tend to result in competitive advantage toward these ends will proliferate and take deep, psychological root in the form of a ‘value system’. By uncompromising adherence to these values, or habits, individuals may be socially rewarded in the form of increased social status (as paragons of virtue or uprightedness), further raising their prospects for finding a quality mate and building advantageous social networks.
So how important has technology become as a part of our modern, American value system? In your blog, I think, you argue convincingly that technology may be inseparable from values. One might even go so far as to say that our valuation of technology is a central aspect of a linear-progressive view of civilization, where the level of our technological advancement is a measure of our success in moving further away from primitive barbarism and asymptotically approach perfection. But is this really such a bad thing? This question, I think, is at the core of the moral subjectivism debate. As I see it, a hardline moral-subjectivist would be obliged to say that it is neither, whereas by maintaining that it is one or the other (good or bad) necessarily implies some kind of universal, objective moral scale.
As evinced by your identification of the “Enlightenment” as the “yardstick of truth”, I suspect you are a case of the latter (and I don’t disagree, even if my evolutionary adaptationist line of reasoning may ring like the “pervasive amorality” of the eastern view, wherein “truth is nothing more than expediency”). Please allow me to distinguish my position:
In the strictly biological-survival context, I assert that ‘morality’ has no meaning in and of itself. Rather, values (in the moral sense) are a psychological construct that encapsulate the value of a given behavior (in the evolutionary biological sense) into a culturally transmissible object, or pattern. For example, in most modern ecological circumstances monogamous pairing is demonstrably more effective strategy for ensuring one’s genetic legacy (for both males and females). But rather than teach our children the importance of genetic legacy and statistically calculated optimal behaviors, we simply extol the virtue of ‘marriage’—and adjudicate harshly if someone questions that such a relationship is anything other than between a man and woman of suitable reproductive age.
What is perhaps most unsettling is that our ‘values’, such as they can be said to exist, are not even about ‘us’. Rather, human behavior is first and foremost about the propagation of genes, for which we humans are but hosts, and values are one of the means by which a gene get us to carry-out behaviors that improves its changes at getting passed on to another generation. In this view, value systems are like, tiny invisible reins with which genes have made us their beasts of burden, tugging us in this direction or that in pursuit of their own selfish, reproductive interests.
And it all worked fine until we found out about it. My contention is that the extraordinary adaptive advantage that intelligence conferred on our ancestors initiated a runaway-effect, where virtually every incremental increase in it was selected for, until finally the system “broke” when we became self-aware, began to ask questions about existence, and learned to probe nature for the answers. By now, many of us have caught a glimpse of the gossamer reins in which we are wrapped, and are questioning if our values truly serve us—ie., help us to comport with God’s plan for us (ie. nature’s laws, whatever you want to call it)—then whom do they serve? Why should “I” serve my genes? Is this question not the essence of the Enlightenment? When we realize that values are the strings by which genetic puppeteers make us dance to their whim, we look at the world and see that we are encased within walls of subjective perception, extravagantly painted over with arbitrary moralism. In confusion, if not terror, we look to the idols of religion and find that they are but pieces of wood and stone painted as Gods. Only then do we look inward and discover that all along we have been but marionettes on a stage. The moral universe was just the triumph of our collective imaginations over reality, useful in the sense that it enabled us to play our parts more convincingly if we believed what we were doing was real.
The Enlightenment project, yet incomplete, is as I see it the slow process by which human society learns the inherent truth of its situation. The Transcendence, will begin when we accept it, and for the first time in our 4.5 billions years of evolutionary history, decide for ourselves what to do next.
In some ways this has already begun, and we are wrestling with its initial questions--indeed, I think your blog spearheads this discussion. For example, in what might be described as a great Nietzschean “inversion of values”, genetic engineering will soon give us the ability to overthrow the dominion of genes, and establish a new world order in which genes are made to serve us. Sometime soon, a team of computer and neuroscientists will imbue a machine with a soul, and when it does we will be pressed to ask ourselves if we want to live alone in our part of the universe. We are literally acquiring the powers of the gods we once believed in, but power without perception leads to entropy and eventually self-destruction. We certainly came close to it during the twentieth century, but the difference is that during the Transcendence we will no longer presume that our continuity is part of the Creator's providence, and thus assured against an untimely end at the mercy of global warming or nuclear war. Rather, we will have accepted that there is no such providence, and all that remains between us and the abyss is what we do today.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Thoughts on what is happening in the Republican Party
Sen. Arlen Specter's announcement that he would be leaving the Republican caucus and joining the Democrats affirms a sense that there is no longer room for moderates in the Grand Old Party. Struggling to make sense of this and troubled at the thought of what this trend might portend for the future of the country, I put the question to a good friend of mine who has time and again showed an uncanny social insight. I wrote to him, "What is going on with the Republicans? Like a dying red giant star, the Republican party appears to be shedding all its outer layers, such that all that remains is its core of dense, degenerate matter. What does this mean? Is this really happening? Is this a good thing?" This was his reply:
"I think the Republican Party is just playing out the logical results of the strategy that brought it to power in the 1990s-2000s. Because of our first-past-the-post system, our political system tends towards two broad national parties, right? Well, there are two models you can
pursue within those broad parties: strong in-group policing, which gives you a more cohesive party when you're in power or weak in-group policing, which gives you a less cohesive party when you're in power.
The Democrats have generally pursued weak in-group policing. This means that people like Joe Lieberman, who campaigned against Obama, aren't ejected from the party. It's harder to get his vote for liberal bills in Congress, but he's one more guy who caucuses with you, he'll vote with you more often than not, etc. So, easier to get into power and stay there, but harder to get stuff done, with a big tent. You have to make more compromises, support Lieberman on some of his less important conservative stuff in order to get his support on
more important liberal stuff, but you also get more votes/seats/etc.
The Republicans have been pursuing strong in-group policing. This means that people like Arlen Specter are kicked out/made non-welcome. In this way, you don't have to make as many compromises with people in your own party in order to get their support, since they probably already support most of what you want to do. This also makes it harder to win elections, win caucusing majorities, etc, because you alienate/kick out people who might be inclined to work with you but aren't 100% aligned with you and your priorities.
To wit: more Democrats voted for Bush's tax cuts than Republicans voted for Obama's stimulus (I think zero did). This works out for the Democrats since, by welcoming lots of outliers/policing weakly, they've won back the Congressional majority they held for most of the 20th century.
Karl Rove worked his way around this by acknowledging that, to win in our system, you need 50%+1 vote. That is, if you can really mobilize your base (strong in-group policing and mobilization), you just need to win over one more guy (find some independent/moderate/whatever and tell him that if he doesn't vote for you, Osama bin Laden will rape his daughters and cut off his head). This worked very well for them: they won a functioning majority, enough to enact pretty much everything they wanted, and they didn't have to make lots of internal compromises.
The problem is, his Permanent Republican Majority was a pretty stupid idea since politics in America are not eternal and unchanging. Interests change, demographics change, etc, so what constitutes that 50+1 will change from election cycle to election cycle - not dramatically but enough so that after an election or two, mobilizing and policing the same group won't produce the same election results. Hence 2006 and 2008.
The Republicans are still in this mode, though. It'll take them a while to get out of it since the losses of their least ideological members (like Specter the opportunist) means that in-group cohesion is even stronger. You're able to compromise a bit and win over 1 when you're at 50%, since you need just one more. But when you're at 40% and need 10%+1 more, you have to compromise a lot, and rigid ideologues are not so likely to do this.
There's also a sense, I think, among many on the Right (not all, but many), that they represent Real America and that liberals/latte drinkers/coasties represent something else - wanna be Europeans, communistsocialistfascists, whatever. They're authentic and we're
not, their "heartland values" and small town folksy charm trumps our big city ways. Mom and apple pie vs gay sex and cocaine, etc. Hard work vs tax and spend welfare babies. Whatever, you get the idea.
So, these last two elections represent flukes. Something happened, can't quite figure it out, but Obama won 8 million more votes than McCain and that can only be explained by concluding that Obama is a really good liar, passing himself off as a loyal American when really he's a secret Muslim Kenyan Indonesian communist fascist, and that McCain was too liberal, what with his amnesty for illegal immigrants and objections to torture. Therefore, the way to win back Americans - true Americans, real Americans who might have been lured to the dark side - is to be truer to "real" American principles, which equal Republican/conservative principles.
With no clear leader of the Republicans, with Bush gone and McCain beat badly, you also leave open the playing field for the guys with the loudest voices, the angriest messages, etc. These guys, like Rush Limbaugh, are hardcore ideologues who are tapping into this notion on
the right that the 2006/2008 elections were really theirs by right, were somehow stolen/snatched from them, and they just need to be angry pissants until America learns its lesson and comes back to them, as it naturally will. Why change when you know you're absolutely right and that your victory is inevitable?
So you've got a structural reason and an ideological reason. I don't think that explains everything (personalities matter, etc), but I think that explains a lot. Is this a good thing? In the short term, yes, I think it's a good thing. It means that the Republicans will continue to alienate moderate voters, making it easier for Democrats to win elections and pass bills. In the long run, it's bad in the sense that the Democrats need an opposition or else they'll become
just as lazy and corrupt as the Republicans did when they had their "permanent majority" in the early aughts. Not that I think the Republican Party will die (even though parties have died in the history of the U.S.) because, as I said, our system tends towards two broad national parties due to structural reasons. If it's not the "Republican Party," there will be some national party that represents most of the interests and ideologies that the Republican Party does today.
The one caveat I'll throw in on the short term prospects is this: the Republicans, as they become ideologically purer, become crazier. This would be fine if there weren't still a lot of people out there who agree with them, many of whom are armed and relish the thought of
resorting to violence at the slightest provocation. Not only did they lose what they thought should have been their election, making Obama a (BLACK SECRET MUSLIM WITH A FOREIGN NAME) illegitimate, but they're being told constantly that Obama will take away their guns, he's a socialist, he wants to put us on a one-world currency, he'll abort all
the babies and make you all get gay married, etc. Oh, I think the latest is that he's setting up re-education camps or something. Now, this is obviously a fringe of a fringe - I mean Glenn Beck, not Newt Gingrich (mostly). But it's still a good-sized fringe, and they'll do some damage (they already have a bit)."
Thank you, Friend. You certainly did not disappoint. Other readers feel free to share your thoughts below.
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