Buddha deconstructing Star Trek: Politics is church, not shopping

by Eric Schechter

We liberals / progressives can’t understand why we haven’t already won. We know that we’re right. We know that conservative economics has been destroying the economy, the ecosystem, and people’s lives. And we know that most people agree with us on the issues, when asked on an issue by issue basis, if they aren’t asked whether they would call themselves “liberal.” And yet we’ve lost so many elections over the last few decades, and we don’t understand why. And now, when the tide is turning a little, we don’t understand why it isn’t turning faster.

One of the popular explanations is that the conservatives have nothing worthwhile in their ideology, and they have won elections solely by lies, manipulation, dirty tricks. Actually, I will grant that think there is some partial truth in that explanation: the cons have indeed used many lies, manipulation, and dirty tricks. In fact, they do not even see that as dishonorable, because their authoritarian ideology has as a logical consequence the notion that the end justifies the means, and they truly believe in their ends — an unregulated market, etc.

But I cannot believe that deception is the whole explanation. People can only be fooled for so long. I think there is something true and perhaps even something good, somewhere in conservative ideology, something that appeals to many voters, and we liberals / progressives have not understood it very well. But we need to understand it, and perhaps adapt part of it to ourselves. That attitude is supported by a few theorists. I’ve been reading some of their work for a while, and lately I think I’m starting to understand a little of it.

Michael Lerner has been writing on this subject for many years. He says that the religious right grew because the left did not understand our society’s hunger for meaning. People want to see themselves, not as meat robots chasing a buck in an indifferent universe, but as purposeful players in a drama bigger than their own lives. The cons offered them a drama, however mean-spirited it may have been, while the liberals offered nothing but issues and policies and procedures.

Most of us on the left use the terms “liberal” and “progressive” interchangeably, but Lerner does not. He says that although liberals and progressives are both motivated by empathy, and seek to make the world a better place for all, the liberals have badly bungled the attempt because they misunderstood psychology so badly. They have tried to protect the rights of this or that small group or special interest, while neglecting the interest of the community as a whole. Lerner calls himself a progressive, or more precisely a “spiritual progressive.” It is taking me a while to understand what that means, because my own spiritual background is extremely thin; my parents taught me love but they did a rather poor job of transmitting any religion to me. For instance, my father taught me that I was Jewish because “if Hitler were alive today he would want to put me in an oven, no matter how I chose to describe myself.” Well that’s true, but it’s not a very affirming description of Judaism. It doesn’t show me anything that I like about being Jewish.

Here is an example that keeps running through my mind. It’s not Lerner’s words, but I think it’s close to the way he thinks. All of us lefties are sympathetic to the labor movement, in its struggle against unfair management practices. We are distressed to see that membership in labor unions has declined for decades. That can be attributed in part to union-busting legislative tactics of Reagan and subsequent conservative politicians. But that’s not the whole explanation. If that were all, I think we’d see a much greater pushing back. The Reaganites got away with their attacks in part because our culture’s understanding and appreciation of the labor movement has been so weak. I think that labor has lost much of its spirit of comradeship, solidarity, brotherhood, struggle. It has become just one more way to try to improve your own personal isolated individual economic situation, like an insurance policy or a retirement fund, something that you can shop for. After you buy it, you take it home, like a toaster or a lawnmower; it doesn’t increase your interaction with other buyers. I don’t know how that shift in perception has happened. It is subtle. It may have something to do with the language. But it is language outside of what many of us are accustomed to thinking of as politics.

But what really prompted this blog, and supplied me with part of the title of this blog, was a recent article by psychologist / anthropologist Jonathan Haidt. It’s titled What Makes People Vote Republican? You can read the whole thing at this link. I’m going to quote a few excerpts from it below, and then continue my own commentary.

Haidt says that both libertarians (ick!) and liberals are motivated largely along lines described by John Stuart Mill. Individuals come from separateness, to voluntarily enter into a society by contract. We have two chief values or motivations:

• empathy
• fairness

We tend to give very little importance to the other three values mentioned below. Conservatives, on the other hand, have a worldview closer to that described by Emile Durkheim. They did not originate as separate individuals, but were born into an already formed society, an organic whole that seeks to preserve itself through both encouragement and punishment. They give approximately equal weight to five values — the two listed above, plus these three more:

• ingroup / loyalty / tribalism / nationalism
• authority / respect
• purity / sanctity

I’ve been struggling to understand what these three values mean, and it’s not coming easily to me; I’ll admit these last three values are somewhat alien to me. But some of the things Haidt says later in the article intrigued me, and sounded like they might be true, even though I could not entirely understand them:

We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.

… Democrats often seem to think of voters as consumers; they rely on polls to choose a set of policy positions that will convince 51% of the electorate to buy. Most Democrats don’t understand that politics is more like religion than it is like shopping.

Religion and political leadership are so intertwined across eras and cultures because they are about the same thing: performing the miracle of converting unrelated individuals into a group. Durkheim long ago said that God is really society projected up into the heavens, a collective delusion that enables collectives to exist, suppress selfishness, and endure. The three Durkheimian foundations (ingroup, authority, and purity) play a crucial role in most religions. When they are banished entirely from political life, what remains is a nation of individuals striving to maximize utility while respecting the rules. What remains is a cold but fair social contract, which can easily degenerate into a nation of shoppers.

The Democrats must find a way to close the sacredness gap that goes beyond occasional and strategic uses of the words “God” and “faith.” But if Durkheim is right, then sacredness is really about society and its collective concerns. God is useful but not necessary. The Democrats could close much of the gap if they simply learned to see society not just as a collection of individuals—each with a panoply of rights–but as an entity in itself, an entity that needs some tending and caring. Our national motto is e pluribus unum (“from many, one”). Whenever Democrats support policies that weaken the integrity and identity of the collective (such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, and immigration), they show that they care more about pluribus than unum. They widen the sacredness gap.

I think Haidt is saying something important here. A nation of shoppers is definitely not what we want to be. Consumerism isolates us from one another, and does not nurture any feeling of community or civic involvement.

I’ve been struggling to find examples that make sense to me and to other liberals / progressives. Lakoff says that we’re all biconceptuals — that we all are able to understand the other side’s view through at least some examples. Lakoff’s favorite example is the movie Rambo; he says if you can understand that movie, then you have some understanding of how conservatives think.

I think my own favorite example is the television series Star Trek. It is a conservative worldview idealized to look good. The crew of the starship Enterprise trusts the captain and never questions his orders or hesitates to obey them. The captain is so perfectly brilliant and benevolent that their loyalty is justified. They are proud to serve under him; they see it as a great honor. There is a joy in obedience and belonging, if you trust and believe in a system that you feel yourself to be a part of. There is joy in being part of an entity that is larger than yourself, an entity that seems good and wholesome to you. So that would seem to illustrate the ingroup and authority motivations. I’m still not sure about the purity / sanctity motivation of conservatives. Would that be illustrated by the fact that the crew of the Enterprise want to be sure their boots are polished and their uniforms are unwrinkled? I’ll admit I’m reaching here.

The conservatives would like to see their world as Star Trek writ large. The authoritarian chain of command creates a leader who should not be questioned. Dissent is unpatriotic. (That’s their view, not mine.)

I’ll admit, I used to love Star Trek. I swallowed the whole premise. I would have gladly served under such a perfect captain. But now I see the fallacy. No captain is so flawless that he does not need checks and balances. Today I question not only the police state that our civilian society has become, but also the very idea of hierarchical authority even in the military.

In his book The Age of Fallibility, George Soros says that a desire for certainty is the Achilles heel of the open society. Political truth cannot be objective like the truth of physics or chemistry, but people are uncomfortable with uncertainty, and so they are seduced by dogma. I think we need to learn to live with uncertainty, rather than try to escape from it. Life is a little like riding on a surfboard. You might prefer to stand on solid ground, but really there is none; life is inherently as uncertain as the ocean. Decades ago, Alan Watts wrote books on Zen Buddhism for westerners, and one of them was titled The Wisdom of Insecurity; that is the wisdom we need. Buddha taught us to forego attachment and to question everything. He said “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

To what extent is our society ready to understand Buddha’s teachings?

And does this mean that we must forgo the great joys of obedience and belonging in a social organization that one believes in? No, but I think we must learn to relocate that joy, and question its source.

The first relocation step is to recognize that organizations can go astray, and to transfer the joy of belonging from a social organization to an idea. A Christian example of this would be a person who recognizes that any particular church must inevitably have an imperfect understanding of Christ. This person finds The Answer and its joy, not in a church, but in Christ Himself. Obey the social organization (e.g., church) as long as it appears to follow the path dictated by your conscience; but abandon the church when it deviates from your conscience.

A second relocation step is to recognize that even your own understanding of ideas is sure to be imperfect. Thus, you must always question even your own ideas. Try not to let them become rigid or fixed, nor overly complex with details and stories, nor overly simplistic with formulas. If you believe in “God is Love,” then in my opinion you’ve made things unnecessarily complicated; you could omit two of those words, and then don’t be sure that you know what the third one means either.

Personally, I believe in empathy and love, which are simple and vague ideas; I am trying to commit my life to the development of empathy and love and their consequences. It’s not a self-sacrificing commitment, because I find that my pursuit of that development is more gratifying than anything else. It might appear to be not a full time commitment, because I do devote some of my time to taking care of my own needs; but you must care for any tool if you want it to work well for you. I am filled with joy (ooh, it’s hard to talk about this mushy stuff) just from the thought of how I am involved in that commitment. It gives me a feeling of belonging and obedience. But I recognize that it is a commitment that I will never fully understand, though my understanding may improve as time passes.

I suspect that there is a third relocation step, one that I haven’t begun to see yet, that relocates the joy even further. It might even be that the joy is an internal emotion that one can learn to turn on, recognizing one’s oneness with the universe or something like that. Actually, that last sentence sounds contradictory to me: “an internal emotion that one can learn to turn on” sounds decidedly selfish and cynical, and quite the opposite of oneness with the universe. Perhaps the failure is in our language; perhaps words cannot express what I’m hypothesizing. I haven’t actually read very much on Buddhism, by the way; most of what I’ve tried to read on the subject seemed to me as though it were written in the wrong language.

TAP-ping into Restorative Justice: Continuing the Legacy of Harmon Wray

By Tamara A. Losel

Harmon Wray

It was a little more than a year ago, in late July 2007, when Nashville lost a true civic hero who dedicated 40 years of his life in selfless service to prisoners and the transformation of the criminal justice system. Harmon L. Wray (1946–2007) inspired all who came into contact with him – students at Vanderbilt Divinity School where he directed the Faith and Criminal Justice program; inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution whom he considered family; and his broad circle of friends, colleagues, and loved ones in the social justice community. As an organizer, teacher, writer and speaker, Harmon focused his work on capital punishment, the privatization of prisons for profit, the growth of the prison industrial complex, racism in the criminal justice system, and the meaning of restorative justice in America.

Harmon was a co-founder of the ‘Riverbend class’ – a program begun in 2003 that brought Vanderbilt Divinity students together with inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security prison for theological and political discussion. Harmon also co-founded and volunteered in a number of organizations including the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK) and the Restorative Justice Coalition of Tennessee.

In the last year and a half of his life, Harmon was also an active participant in TAP’s Doing Justly project. Harmon’s engagement with Doing Justly brought light and focus to the efforts of the steering committee during its formative stages. His passion and determination inspired Doing Justly’s upcoming experiential learning project (scheduled to launch in February 2009): a class involving students, faith workers, social service providers and service recipients throughout Nashville with the goal of increasing action for economic justice. The Doing Justly project and the ongoing coordination of the Riverbend class by TAP board chair Dan Joranko (and others) are two ways in which TAP honors the life and work of Harmon Wray.

And to continue Harmon’s legacy, TAP is dedicating this issue of the newsletter to the principles and practices of Restorative Justice, a field that Harmon knew well, and in fact, helped shape in the region. In this article, TAP will explore some of Harmon’s writings on the subject, drawing a link between the baseline values of restorative justice and the TAP motto, “We’re All in This Together.”

Restorative Justice: A New Way of Thinking about Wrongdoing

Restorative Justice is an alternative framework for thinking about ways to make our criminal justice system less retributive and more rehabilitative or restorative. In the Western legal system, crime is defined as an act against the state (rather than an individual or group), so victims are left out of the justice process with no voice and no opportunity to get questions answered or to heal. ‘Justice’ is then meted out in punishments to the offender. In delivering ‘justice,’ judges, attorneys and policy makers in the legal system pursue questions like: what laws have been broken? Who did it? And what do they deserve? Conversely, proponents of restorative justice ask: who has been hurt? What are their needs? Whose obligations are these? Who else has a stake in the situation? And what is the appropriate process to involve stakeholders in an effort to put things right? (Zehr 38)

Restorative justice is about making things right first and foremost for the victim, but also for whole communities in a holistic way. To make things right, RJ focuses on the needs of the victim, the offender, the families of both parties and the community. This expansion of the circle of stakeholders (from just the government and offender to the victim and community) shows that crime has a wider impact than what is currently being addressed in the legal system. All stakeholders are encouraged to be involved in the process of making things right, according to the principals of restorative justice.

The RJ movement began in America in the 1970s “…by a handful of people dreaming of doing justice differently” (Zehr 61). Architects of the field (many of them from the Mennonite tradition) viewed crime as a tear in the web of relationships, the web of interconnectedness, and they experimented with victim-offender encounters that laid the groundwork for later programs. Yet while our American movement dates back to the 1970s, the real roots of restorative justice come from ancient cultures and traditions that are “as deep as human history and as wide as the world community” (Zehr 61). Such cultures include Native North Americans and the Maori of New Zealand, among others.

To summarize the requisite functions of restorative justice:

1. Victims’ needs must be addressed
2. Offenders or wrongdoers must admit to some level of responsibility for their offense, name and acknowledge the wrongdoing, and understand the consequences of their actions or learn to empathize with victims
3. Those affected by the offense should be involved in the process in a way that makes sense for all

Questions that Restorative Justice Asks

In a 1999 article in New World Outlook (a magazine of the United Methodist Church), Harmon Wray elucidated the differences between restorative and retributive justice by laying out these thought-provoking questions:

• Who is the real victim of a crime? Is it the state, as in our present criminal justice system? Or is it the person whose body, soul or property was violated?
• What is real accountability? Is it “taking your punishment” or taking responsibility for restitution – for making the situation right, insofar as possible?
• Can a people who have been violated and oppressed “forgive and forget”? Or does healing and reconciliation require remembering, truth telling, repenting and forgiving?
• Can we change people by intentionally inflicting pain upon them? Or will they change if they have reason to hope for a better life?
• What socioeconomic conditions help generate crime and violence in our communities and result in many offenders being victims as well? How can we transform our poor communities and erase economic inequality?
• Who has the most at stake in determining what it takes to make things right after a crime has been committed? Should the decision-makers be a group of lawyers or the victim and the victimizer?
• How do we want criminals to change? Do we want them to be determined not to get caught next time (the likeliest result of a punitive approach)? Or do we want them to develop an internal self-discipline to control their behavior?
• Where violations of human rights have been committed by those in power, how can this truth be told and publicly acknowledged?

Goals and Objectives of Restorative Justice

Harmon’s questions helped bring shape to a field with a wide range of applications. Because it can often be difficult to know where to begin in tackling the problems of crime and violence in our society, practitioners have written goals and objectives for RJ programs. Overarching goals are to: put key decisions into the hands of those most affected by crime; make justice more healing and, ideally, more transformative; and reduce the likelihood of future offenses (recidivism). To achieve these goals, victims have to be involved in the process and come out of it satisfied. Offenders have to understand how their actions affected other people, and take responsibility for those actions. The outcomes of the program have to have repaired the harms done and addressed the reasons for the offense. Finally, victim and offender may gain a sense of ‘closure’ and be re-integrated into the community (Zehr 37).

Harmon’s restorative justice approach was comprehensive in its re-design of our justice system. In his critique in the New World Outlook, he addressed the problems of the prison industrial complex (with over 2 million men and women incarcerated in America – some say as many as 3 million), and proposed better ways to foster economic and social development:

To begin with, the present boom in incarceration should be brought to a screeching halt. Policymakers ought to declare a moratorium on prison construction and a diversion of funds into probation and parole programs. They should sharply reduce caseloads and greatly increase the level of supervision and support of those on probation and parole. Other government revenues presently eaten up by prison building and operating budgets should be diverted to public education, drug and alcohol treatment, affordable housing, early intervention with struggling families and at-risk children, and living-wage job development. Adequate funding for such programs would greatly reduce the factors that contribute to crime. Poor and remote counties should refuse to let state and federal governments and private companies persuade them that the prison construction somehow is community economic development. Prisons are damaging to the spirit and gradually destroy community. (Wray, Jul/Aug 1999, New World Outlook, pg. 8)

“We’re All in This Together” – a Restorative Justice Value

TAP’s motto, “We’re All in This Together,” expresses a core value of restorative justice. If restorative justice provides a new way of looking at wrongdoing, then underneath that wrongdoing is an assumption that we are all interconnected. TAP acts on the value of interconnection by working with organizations and groups to develop a common vision and common message for a just, sustainable future in Tennessee. The goal is to facilitate shifts in ‘worldview’ – the culture’s norms or predominant beliefs – from that of rugged individualism to collective action for social change. Restorative justice provides a concrete way to think about pursuing equity and justice within the theory and practice of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. TAP is grateful to Harmon Wray for bringing this revolutionary framework to the organization.

TAP has a fund in Harmon’s name, dedicated to continuing the Vanderbilt – Riverbend classes that he started. 100% of all donations to the fund will be used to buy books for the inmates. Please make a contribution to this worthy program! Checks made out to Tennessee Alliance for Progress (with Harmon Wray Textbook Fund written on the subject line) may be mailed to: P.O. Box 60338, Nashville, TN 37206. Donations may also be made here.

Tamara Ambar Losel is a TAP board member and the Executive Director of the Nashville Conflict Resolution Center.

MORAL POLITICS reduced to 5 pages

by Eric Schechter (TAP webmaster)

What first gained linguist George Lakoff widespread attention in the progressive community was his short 2004 book, Don’t Think of an Elephant. He has written some other books since then, and I think his writing style has moved toward a more general audience. His most recent book, Thinking Points, may be his most readable so far, and it combines many new ideas with restatements of many of his best earlier ideas; it is the one that I would recommend to most Lakoff beginners. (By the way, it is available for free download at http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/thinkingpoints.) I’m eagerly awaiting his new book, The Political Mind, coming out in early June 2008.

Lakoff had already been writing about the cognitive semantics of politics for years before Elephant. I’ve just recently been reading parts of his much longer 1996 book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (admittedly not all of it; I’m a slow reader). That book is devoted entirely to the dichotomy between the two political viewpoints. I can’t say it’s fun — its writing style is not much more exciting than that of a dictionary. On the other hand, a dictionary is enormously informative, and I was greatly informed by Moral Politics. My new understandings may soon enter the revisions that I am constantly making in my political essay web page. Below is my summary of this book, combined with a few of my own reactions.

If you don’t know the term “cognitive semantics,” think of Lakoff as a psychologist. His breakthroughs are as deep and profound as Freud’s. Freud talked about how people were unaware of some of their own motivations, particularly sexual ones. Freud got some of it right and some of it wrong, but at any rate Freud made our society more consciously aware of our sexual motivations. In an analogous fashion, Lakoff makes us more consciously aware of our political motivations.

People are sometimes motivated partly by what they think is practical (e.g., economically efficient), but to a much greater extent politics is motivated by systems of morality — i.e., what people believe is “the right thing to do.” But most people adhere to a moral system, in both their actions and their voting, without being fully aware of what that moral system is; it may be something quite different from what they think it is. Consequently, they argue from the gut while believing that they are arguing logically. This kind of “rational debate” is not likely to change anyone’s mind, any more than you can persuade someone to change his or her favorite flavor of ice cream.

Moreover, liberals and conservatives have drastically different moral systems, far more different than they realize. Admittedly, some people have mixed values — liberal on some issues and conservative on other issues — and are labeled “centrists” or “biconceptuals.” But many people are mostly liberal or mostly conservative, because the many liberal ideas all have a shared theme, and the many conservative ideas all have a shared theme. And those mostly-liberal and mostly-conservative people can’t agree on much of anything, because their systems of “right” and “wrong” are nearly opposites. Indeed, each of them may see the other as evil.

What are those “shared themes”? That’s what Lakoff’s book, Moral Politics, is mostly about. Lakoff devotes hundreds of pages to extensive description and examples of the dichotomy between liberal and conservative; but I will sum it up my impression of it all with just two indicative sentences:

Progressives / liberals see themselves as nurturing and their opponents as bullying.

Conservatives see themselves as disciplining and their opponents as coddling.

The point here is that nurturing (a virtue) is nearly the same thing as coddling (a vice), while disciplining (supposedly a virtue) is nearly the same as bullying (a vice); thus the two camps are nearly opposite. They differ, not so much in perception of factual events, as in the assignment of significance to those events. The dichotomy determines not only the answers to yes-or-no questions (e.g., are you in favor of increasing or decreasing the military budget?), but even the meaning of words (e.g., does “freedom” mean freedom from toxins in our foods, or does it mean freedom from regulations in the production of foods?).

The two moral systems — nurturing or discipling — can be found in families, the first interpersonal relationship system we experience in our lives. Lakoff sees that as primal and says that we experience other interpersonal relationships metaphorically in terms of the family. Our view of human nature determines what we believe will motivate people. Our attitude about welfare or prisons is much like our attitude about cookies or spankings. Admittedly, some biconceptuals choose different answers in the home and in politics, but the questions are essentially the same.

Each of the two moral systems (nurturing or disciplining) is internally self-consistent; there is no way to find a contradiction in it (with one possible, arcane exception noted below). Thus, there is no purely logical or objective way to say that one moral system is right and the other is wrong; one can only choose morality from within one of the moral systems.

Lakoff worked hard to stay “neutral” throughout all of parts I through V of the book, to simply describe the two moral systems and not say which one is “correct.” He largely succeeded for hundreds of pages (though there were a couple of times where I thought he slipped up and a slight wisp of his bias crept into his writing). The book is written in a nearly symmetric fashion, as though each of the two systems is equally valid. That notion is supported by the symmetry of the terms “left wing” and “right wing” in our language.

THE END OF THE BOOK.

But the book is in six parts, and in Part VI Lakoff finally says, okay, those are balanced descriptions of the two systems, but personally I’m a liberal, and here’s why. He attempts to do this while still standing outside the two moral systems; he claims that he is not arguing from his gut like the rest of us. I think he partly succeeds, since he is more conscious and articulate about these matters than most of us are.

In Chapter 20 he lists five reasons for being a liberal, though he only numbers the first three. The last two are barely mentioned, because, as he says, they have been widely discussed elsewhere in the literature. But his first three reasons have not, and so he explains them in detail in Chapters 21, 22, and 23. I’ll try to summarize all five to the best of my understanding, which admittedly is imperfect.

(1) A study of childrearing. We don’t know for certain what motivates adults, but we have a pretty good understanding of childrearing, because researchers have been studying it for decades. The only people who still advocate the disciplining approach are conservatives like James Dobson, whose only credentials are their own conservative interpretation of the bible. Virtually all the experts who have done the research and studied the results are agreed that the nurturing approach works well and the disciplining approach doesn’t. If that’s true for children, why should it be any different for adults?

(2) A study of how the brain works. The conservative view is entirely dependent on the assumption that reality is objective, that things can be determined in absolutes, and that there are no alternatives to consider. Without that principle the entire authoritarian conservative system falls apart. But modern cognitive science shows that that objective reality does not exist, except perhaps for a few simple basics in physics and chemistry. Facts cannot be separated from their interpretations, and the interpretations depend on the worldview of the subjective observer. This point is difficult to understand — I might even call it arcane — but it’s the closest I’ve seen to a logical and factual disproof of conservatism. To the extent that cognitive science disproves the existence of absolute objective reality, to that extent conservatives lose a crucial leg of their belief system. (Just guessing from the title, I wonder if this idea is close to the topic of Lakoff’s new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain, coming out in June 2008.)

(3) Theory becoming detached from evidence. (This one is subtler, and I’m not sure if I’ve understood it right, but I’ll try.) Our worldviews are abstractions of our experiences. We take our concrete experiences of the world and turn them into abstract descriptions and explanations of the world. But abstract ideas can be seductive. (I know that better than most — I’m a professor of mathematics.) If we fall in love with an abstract idea, and neglect to look at the evidence of concrete experience, our idea may go astray and become unrealistic. The conservative discipliner is more prone to that kind of error than the liberal nurturer, for this reason: The nurturing system attaches a high priority to empathy. A nurturer must share some of the feelings of the person being nurtured, and consequently the nurturer will be aware of the effects he or she has on the person being nurtured. The discipliner, on the other hand, has greater emotional distance from the person being disciplined, and consequently the discipliner may end up with a very inaccurate perception of what effects he or she actually has on the person being disciplined.

And then there are two more reasons that Lakoff mentions but doesn’t discuss in detail:

(4) Ecological reasons. The conservative system attaches little importance to our shared “commons” — both the natural ecosystem and our artificial structures (e.g., the levees of New Orleans, and the bridges and roads all across our country). Consequently those things are deteriorating. Indeed, if we continue for much longer with our present conservative system, life on earth will become extinct. But that fact in itself does not necessarily motivate a conservative. It is difficult to convince anyone of facts that are contrary to their beliefs; but even if you do manage to convince a conservative that conservatism is destroying the world, his or her reaction might be, “yes, well I guess that is an unfortunate consequence of doing what is right. Nevertheless, we must stoically push on and continue to do what we believe is right.” — Actually, pragmatism is beginning to win out over ideology; both Newt Gingrich and John McCain have recently strayed from the conservative pack and made statements about how we must fight against global warming.

(5) Humanitarian reasons. The conservative economic system perpetuates systemic poverty and makes a large portion of humanity miserable. At least, that’s how we liberals see things. But I think that Lakoff erred in including this item on his list. The conservative believes that poverty is not a systemic matter, but rather a personal matter, a consequence of laziness. Thus, humanitarianism is not “objective” or “neutral”; it is internal to the liberal morality system. I do want to end poverty, and I do believe that poverty is perpetuated by the current conservative economic system, but those assertions are consequences, not causes, of the fact that my values and beliefs are liberal ones.

By the way, I reject the metaphor of left/right symmetry, at least in my own mind (it’s hard to avoid it in conversation). Instead I see progressives as “awakened,” and I am hoping that we are beginning an era of a great awakening.

Okay, I still need to continue working on understanding all this stuff better, but I’m also ready to begin working on the next question: How do we convert more people from conservatism to progressivism? That won’t easy; as I’ve said, it’s as irrational as trying to convert people to a different favorite flavor of ice cream. And by “convert” I mean “persuade”; I am not interested in manipulating or brainwashing. Right now I have very little idea about how to carry out this persuasion process, but check back with me in a few months. Maybe by then I’ll have some ideas and opinions about this question.

Here are the two ideas I have so far:

(i) Most of us are biconceptuals, to some degree; both the nurturing and disciplining systems have tracks already in our minds. If we repeat an idea over and over, its track gets strengthened, like deepening a rut in a dirt road. The conservative news media make use of that fact when they repeat, over and over again, phrases that implicitly contain the conservative worldview as assumptions. We need to strengthen the progressive track. For example, that’s why I have a bumper sticker that says “we’re all in this together.”

(ii) I’m encouraged by the “arcane” idea that I mentioned earlier. The conservative belief system depends on its own exclusivity — its own ignorance of the structure or even the existence of alternative ideological systems. It requires authority to function, and that authority crumbles in the presence of alternative belief systems. The crumbling doesn’t require that the alternative be considered correct; the crumbling will occur even if the alternative is merely acknowledged as coherent. (The liberal system does not depend on exclusivity in that fashion — indeed, we thrive on considering alternatives.) So merely persuading conservatives that we liberals do have a coherent ideology, and are not just madmen raving at random, would be enough to win the day for us. Here’s a sweet trojan horse for our age: let’s invite our opponents to free seminars on “understanding our differences.” Or create movies and other works of art that illustrate the coherence of the progressive worldview. Can it really be that easy? No, probably not; probably I’ve misunderstood something here. But it’s something to think about.

The Progressive Era – Time For A Revival

by Gene TeSelle

Recently I have been looking into the Progressive Era, because for the churches a hundred-year anniversary is coming up. In 1908 the Federal Council of Churches was organized, and at that time it adopted, without dissent, a statement that came to be called “the Social Creed of the churches.”

This document dealt with issues of labor and industry that are still with us, and many Protestants have felt that a “new Social Creed” is needed for the hundredth anniversary. The United Methodists have drafted one that is in song form, especially appropriate for our post-print era. The Presbyterians have drafted what is basically an adaptation and expansion of the 1908 document, and it is to be voted on at the General Assembly in June, 2008. The National Council of Churches (successor to the Federal Council) has already adopted a slightly different version.

We cannot help noting the similarities between 1908 and 2008. Inequalities of income and wealth in the U.S. are now greater than they have been since the “Gilded Age” of the late nineteenth century. Corporate and government scandals are approaching the same level, too. There seems to be something about American enterprise that encourages sharp dealing and political corruption.

There are also significant differences. Back then, the two major political parties were quite diverse, regionally and ideologically. Progressive leaders emerged from both the Democrats and the Republicans. And of course the Populists and then the Socialists had strength at the polls. Now the parties are much more homogeneous, diametrically opposed on most issues.

Furthermore, the problems addressed by the Social Creed were national in scope. Because these problems could not be solved adequately at the local or state level, new kinds of federal legislation were advocated and eventually adopted. In our own day we see a further broadening of scope as the much-celebrated globalization of the economy brings all the workers of the world into potential competition with each other and requires a new kind of global response.

Just because there are similar problems, it does not mean that they will be addressed any more effectively than a hundred years ago. And by “addressing” I mean a number of different things – awareness, public agitation, theoretical proposals, legislation introduced, passed, signed, and upheld by the Supreme Court.

The Progressive agenda took at least three decades to be realized during the New Deal, and since that time we have seen it not only expanded but whittled away or repealed or silently subverted, not only by Republican administrations but by Democratic.

That’s why it is important to be aware that it happened slowly and through struggle, not all at once.

In the course of looking at the Progressive Era I have arrived at a generalization, or a theory, or a thesis: that it happened in three phases. This may be typical of reform movements, and if so it may be instructive for us today.

1. The period from the Civil War to the turn of the century saw a growth in industrial capacity, the size of corporations, and opportunities for employers to put new pressures on industrial and railroad workers, farmers, and small businesses.

We know especially about Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879), Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890), and Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? (1897). Many people credited Henry George with turning them around. These and other writings altered the framework within which people looked at social problems.

This first phase, from 1880 to 1900, did not bring much change; its importance was in raising consciousness, outlining often utopian solutions, and demonstrating that those affected were ready to organize and express their indignation, often militantly.

2. The second phase began around 1900. The reform agenda that had been building since the 1880s became effective when new political leaders caught the public’s attention and captured its loyalties – Robert La Follette, a Republican; William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat; and especially Theodore Roosevelt, a maverick who was sidelined into the office of Vice-President to keep him out of trouble but soon became President after the assassination of McKinley. And then Woodrow Wilson, who began as a Southern conservative, adopted the progressive agenda. His candidacy in 1912 helped Southerners think more positively about that agenda. His election was the beginning of a party realignment in which the Democrats became more progressive and the Republicans more conservative.

In addition, the new mass-circulation periodicals brought investigative and advocacy journalism to a high pitch, which helped radicalize the moralistic middle class. They had their heyday during the Roosevelt administration, whose reforms were fueled by stories in the popular press, even though he also coined the term “muckrakers” to criticize them (as a political strategy, we should note). Upton Sinclair, whose novel The Jungle was an instant sensation in 1906 and led within months to the passage of the Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug Acts, reflected later in the same year that he had aimed at the public’s heart but by accident hit it in the stomach (Cosmopolitan, October 1906).

There is a long list of legislative achievements during the Progressive Era, as well as four constitutional amendments: income tax, direct election of senators, prohibition, and woman suffrage. But many of the new laws were overturned by a conservative Supreme Court; the list of the Court’s decisions is amazing and disappointing.

3. Now the third phase: discovery of what the legislative program could not do. It was a time of cultural innovation of many kinds, in art and architecture, poetry, a revolt against middle class morality, a development of alternative communities. It was also the time when Christianity saw the growth not only of the Social Gospel but of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, as well as fundamentalism and millennialism. Obviously politics did not satisfy all needs. There are a number of books that deal with this “cultural” aspect of the Progressive Era, the latest of which is Michael McGerr’s A Fierce Discontent (2002).

As we try to frame a progressive vision for our own time, these lessons are probably worth pondering. A vision, even a utopian vision, seems to be necessary. But it does not get translated into legislation without organized movements – or without leaders who have high visibility as symbols of those movements. And we need to be reminded, finally, that any legislative accomplishments are likely to be limited, perhaps even ambivalent in their impacts. That’s why cultural movements must also have a place, and it may often turn out that we find our fulfillment there rather than in the political world.

Progressive Thought 10/22: Hearts and Minds

(notes by Eric Schechter)

We discussed the preface, introduction, and most of the first two chapters of Lakoff’s Thinking Points. Here are some excerpts from the preface and the first chapter: “This handbook is not about quick-and-dirty, short-term fixes to immediate tactical problems. It is about long-term strategy, a strategy for returning America to its progressive ideals. … All over America, progressives are finding their voices. We hope this handbook will help you find yours. … This book is not about winning and losing elections. It is about winning and losing hearts and minds.”

Here are a few high points from our discussion:

In the preface, Lakoff mentions that “slogans and spin mostly don’t work for progressives.” We should emphasize the word “mostly” in that sentence. Slogans can work if they’re chosen carefully, to reflect deep framing. TAP has adopted the slogan “We’re all in this together,” and we think that slogan will work, but it activates very deep framing.

Lakoff mentions that issues are only secondary in electoral politics, and are used symbolically as indicators of deeper things. Lakoff lists five of those deeper things: values, connection, authenticity, trust, and identity. I vaguely understand those five things, but I would like to understand them better, and know better how they differ from each other.

We talked some about biconceptualism. Lakoff gives Rambo as an example of a conservative worldview that can be understood by most progressives. We discussed other examples from popular culture: Star Trek, war movies, cowboy movies, vigilante movies.

At our next session we’ll continue, with the rest of Chapter 2, and perhaps all of Chapters 3 and 4.

Progressive Thought 10/8: the larger issues of Jena 6

The following summary of our meeting was published in The Tennessean on October 9:

TAP meeting assesses the larger issues of Jena 6
by Angela Patterson

On Oct. 8, The Tennessee Alliance for Progress held a discussion group at Eastwood Christian Church in East Nashville. The topic: what does Jena 6 tell us about racism in America? How does racism play out in the criminal justice system? How can whites and all minority groups come together against racism and prejudice?

I was intrigued by the fact the group, which has both white and African American members, saw that there were bigger issues behind the Louisiana case that sparked national attention. This has been an ongoing discussion through minority media outlets since the Sept. 20 march— what does the jailing of six black boys in a small Southern town say about racism in our society?

Well, it says a few things, according to responses from the group:

1) that blatant racism still exists in this country, (which I personally believe was a surprise to many in this country);

2) that there’s an obvious disconnect between white and black communities and the media outlets that serve them, and that’s why many white people were completely unaware of this case and issues it brought forward;

3) that the criminalization of children is a real issue, and that there are disparities within the criminal justice system;

4) and that people, particularly young people, were moved to mobilize on this issue because it resonated with them. Whether they felt it was their chance to participate in a modern-day civil rights push, or because they had friends or family who could’ve easily been one of the Jena 6, they related to this real-life situation.

But I think there’s one more element that wasn’t necessarily voiced: People are tired of it, and they’re not going to simply take it anymore.

People of color are tired of hearing stories like the one of Jena 6 via talk radio, or e-mail forwards, or phone calls with friends, and not knowing what to do—or worse, feeling like they were powerless to do anything. But then here came this one case. This was a chance to stand up, not only for those six boys, but all the men, women and children who’ve been unfairly treated at some point, and tell the nation that there is still a problem here. I think it’s especially true for those who are of my generation (mid 20s and younger), who’ve quietly dealt with these issues, and now we had the chance to not only be heard, but also have our words actually make a difference.

So here’s the million-dollar question: It’s clear there’s a problem with racism, but what do we do about it?

The response of one member was that there should be more unity among minority groups. If Hispanic and Asian leaders had united with black leaders on the Jena 6 issue, perhaps it would’ve been viewed as both the racial and human rights issue that it was.

And I agree with her. But the obstacle to that kind of unity, as another member suggested, is that we don’t take the time to really get to know one another’s communities. We’re still a very segregated society, and it’s going to take years—and lots of forward-thinking people— to change that. As the woman said: “An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere; an injustice to anyone is an injustice to everyone”; I think it’ll take my generation and the ones after mine to fully realize the truth of that statement.

One man said many had suggested to him the problem with racism and most of society’s ills start in the home. But what if the home is part of the problem? What if parents aren’t truly being parents? Or worse, what if the parents are the ones teaching the racism? Then what?

As one woman said, you have to redefine what home is.

And I think this is what it’s all come to: We have to return to the “it takes a village” philosophy. People don’t want to make the sacrifice or bear the responsibility of being responsible for more than their own, but our society’s reached a point where we can no longer be individualistic in thought or action. As one member said: “things are only going to change when there’s an alliance of values and of communities.”

Why the bumper sticker?

by Eric Schechter.

Some people think that bumper stickers aren’t very effective, but I disagree. I urge you to buy several copies of TAP’s bumper sticker, for yourself, your family, and your friends. I’ll explain why.

A friend of mine is the editor of a 2-page employee newsletter at her place of work. When she heard of TAP’s slogan, “We’re all in this together,” she liked it, and so she added it to her newsletter; it’s now been in several issues. It appears inconspicuously in small print, in a box, about halfway down the leftmost column of the back page. It’s not related to her line of work — at least, not any more than it is related to my work or anyone else’s.

And the result? She has started hearing the phrase “we’re all in this together” popping up in employee conversations. Not in a big, conspicuous way, but simply as a part of their everyday thinking. We’ll never meet most of the people who see your bumper sticker, so we can’t be sure about its effect, but I’m guessing it must be similar to that of the newsletter.

The slogan “we’re all in this together” has been around for many years; everyone has heard it before. But we’re trying to reinforce that slogan, to strengthen its pathways in people’s brains, to make it a bigger part of people’s everyday unconscious awareness.

You might say this is a slightly elitist thing to do: We want to encourage other people to think like us. All right, call it elitist if you like, but I’m not ashamed of it. I may be a liberal, but I’m not a wishy-washy liberal — I am not a cultural relativist — I do not believe that all viewpoints and opinions are equally valid. I prefer the progressive future of “we’re all in this together” to the conservative present of “you’re on your own,” and I’m willing to work for it.

Repetition does work. That’s the idea of television advertisements and conservative propaganda, and they have the advantage of using lots of money to place their message widely. They need that advantage, to have any hope of getting the public to accept a message that is contrary to the public’s hearts and minds. We have the advantage of pushing a message that people like. Our car bumpers are free advertising space; let’s put them to good use.

TAP adopted the slogan “we’re all in this together” largely because of Paul Waldman’s May 2006 discussion of it. (He also gave a nice talk about it; see this video.) It’s not a specialized message, like “replace your incandescent bulbs with fluorescent ones.” It’s a message of deep framing, perhaps the deepest of all, and it simultaneously confronts all our different problems — war, poverty, global warming, peak oil, pollution, degradation of the ecosystem, what have you.

At the root of all our politics is our view of human nature. The conservatives are such pessimists — they believe that humans are motivated only by fear and greed. We progressives, on the other hand, see that people want to be part of something bigger, that security is found in a caring community more than in a gated community. Our assumptions about human nature affect our politics, economics, and everything else. To heal the world, we must spread the spirit of cooperation, and hope that it spreads far beyond our own reach. That begins by making the language of cooperation a part of our everyday speech.

Please join our efforts.

Progressive Thought 9/24: Be the red pill

Here is the premise for the 9/24 meeting: In the film “The Matrix” the perceived world is an illusion generated by a computer that everyone’s plugged into, and reality (of which none are aware) is very different. Early in the movie, the main character is offered a choice to take a blue pill and continue his dreaming existence, or to take a red pill and wake up. He takes the red pill, gets hip to reality, and joins the resistance. The illusion of The Matrix is an apt metaphor for the 24/7 Faux News spin cycle too many are caught in. To bring progressive social change, we must find ways to communicate like Red Pills and help others awaken from corporatist illusions and to the better reality that awaits. Susan and Eric will start off the discussion, but where it leads is up to you — we want to hear from all the Red Pills! (By the way, pictured at right is a miniature copy of the sign Eric prepared, to carry with him at the peace rally on Sept 21.)

And here are some notes Susan took at the meeting, supplemented slightly by Eric:

13 people attended. We watched a portion of The Matrix (summarized above). A good group discussion followed.

The awakening in the film “The Matrix” can be used as a metaphor for any kind of awakening — e.g., some people have seen it as a metaphor for finding Jesus. The film itself does not make explicit references to anything in our world; thus it is not entirely clear what the makers of the film meant it as a metaphor, if anything. However, it is worth noting that immediately after the three Matrix films, the next film made by the same people was “V for Vendetta,” a story about a revolutionary overthrow of a totalitarian regime much like the one that some of us now believe we are living under.

People in the group wondered how we can wake up, and awaken others, given the corporate control of the media. One suggestion was to turn off the TV. But this may not be realistic, so we need to at least question what we see and hear. — Turn off TV and turn on the computer, the internet holds wisdom provided one has been taught critical thinking and can avoid the “fractionalization” trap — i.e., the trap of listening only to people who agree with what we already believe (a trap similar to that of issue silos).

Folks were asked to briefly define “What is a Progressive, or what is Progressivism?” Sampling of responses:

• “Peaceful agenda, conservative (as in frugal, not wasteful) economic policy”;
• “Informed, intelligent, beneficient approach to being all that we can be”;
• “Progressing toward something that is diverse and positive”
• “Movement toward a perfect world, theoretical socialist core values”
• “Responsible passion for the greater good”
• “We’re all in this together”

We also got into some discussion of what “conservative” means. Some people associated it with “conservation,” certainly a good thing. Others associated it with laissez-faire economics, which is perhaps a bad thing; but we didn’t really discuss our feelings about that.

Progressive Thought 9/10: The language of war

Scott Ritter, former US Marine and former UN weapons inspector, has written a book called Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. We watched a few minutes of him being interviewed about this book, and then we discussed how we use the language of war in the peace movement — e.g., “fighting against the military-industrial complex.”

How I Dodged the Draft 40 Years Ago

by Eric Schechter.

I think my story is still relevant, and it becomes more relevant as I come to understand it better. We don’t have a legally compelling draft at present, but we do have an economic draft: many young people see few options open to them, and choose the military option without understanding it well enough.

My story has changed through repeated telling. First it was a funny anecdote; then it was a noble statement of principles; finally it is becoming a sociological analysis.

THE FUNNY ANECDOTE. When I was in college, I experimented with drugs and I did some strange things. One of those things was that I wrote a letter to my draft board, just to be friendly. I wrote “I feel sorry for President Nixon. He must have had a very unhappy childhood — why else would he want to bomb all those Cambodians?”

More odd than the message was my medium: I didn’t use paper. I figured that the people working on the draft board must live very drab and painful lives, and they deserved a little cheering up. Honestly. So I took a colorful empty box from a children’s breakfast cereal, split it open to access the blank inside surface, and wrote my letter there. I don’t remember whether I wrote the letter in pen or in crayon. The box showed some cartoon characters called The Banana Splits. I’m now unable to find a picture of that cereal box on the web, but you can see some other Banana Splits pictures at http://www.banana-splits-show.com/.

Anyway, my draft board classified me as 4-F (unfit for service). That was a happy outcome for me, because I had begun to worry how much longer my student deferment would last. My draft board also phoned my parents and expressed their condolences for my evident insanity. Looking back on it, though, I think maybe it was one of the most sane things I’ve ever done in my life. The people on the draft board were the crazy ones.

I’ve been telling this story for a while, and some people have pointed out to me that I got off lucky. Most draft boards were much less tolerant, much more punitive than mine. They would have drafted my sorry ass immediately, as punishment for such foolishness and disrespect. Most draft boards believed mental aberration should be punished, not coddled as an illness.

NOBLE PRINCIPLES. Even as a deranged teenager, I already believed that Nixon’s reasons for killing were not good ones. Looking at the whole thing now, with detachment, I find myself espousing this principle:

I’m not a pacifist. I would kill without hesitation, if I were sure that I had good reasons. But killing is a terribly serious thing; it’s something you should never do unless you’re absolutely certain that you have clear reasons. And you can’t abdicate to someone else the responsibility for deciding whether your reasons are sufficient.

I haven’t studied the other wars enough to be sure about them, but I do know that we never were given clear reasons for the Viet Nam war or the Iraq wars.

However, my noble principle wouldn’t get me a deferment. According to the US government, you can only be a conscientious objector by being opposed to participation in all wars. Apparently the military want to discourage young people from thinking about this matter.

I also object to the military system of authority (but this objection wouldn’t qualify me for a deferment either). Being in the military is a strange kind of job, very different from other jobs. When you’re in the military, you’re not allowed to quit until your boss says so. You have to do whatever your boss says, even if it’s something that doesn’t make sense, even if it’s something that appears to be a crime. If you refuse or question your orders, you end up in prison. In other words, when you join the military, you are surrendering all your decision-making to someone else. That’s not quite like selling your soul to the devil; it’s more like selling your soul to a complete stranger.

I can’t understand why anyone would do that. I’d like to believe that, given a choice, I would choose prison or even death, rather than serve as an unconscious killing machine. Better to have no life at all, than to have a life being used for evil. Fortunately for me, I’ve never had to face that choice. Not yet, anyway.

SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS. My friend Cynthia knows me better than I know myself. When I told her all my noble principles, she said “You’d like to remember it that way, wouldn’t you? But I’ll bet you weren’t all that rational when you were a teenager.”

And of course, she’s right. A few teenagers were able to figure things out, but most of us — including me — didn’t really understand a lot of what was going on, in the war or in our own lives. We were preoccupied with love and/or sex, both of which were hard to come by. Where did I get my iconoclastic inclination? I didn’t figure it out all on my own.

And I didn’t get it from my parents, either. My parents grew up under Roosevelt’s New Deal, and so they taught me that government can be good. One of my father’s proudest possessions was a photo of him shaking hands with LBJ, after my father’s work in planning low-cost housing, a part of LBJ’s “Great Society.” If my parents had any misgivings about the government, they never mentioned them to me. And my parents treated me so respectfully that I never felt much need to rebel against them.

As a youth, when I saw “Question Authority” on a bumper sticker, I didn’t really know what it meant; I simply thought it was a funny thing to say — you know, like “question gravity” or “question bananas.”

Indeed, I was a big fan of the television series Star Trek. Have you ever watched that? The crew of the Starship Enterprise would do anything their captain said — they would follow him into the jaws of hell, or even precede him there — because they trusted his wisdom. The captain of the starship could do no wrong; he would never make a strategic or ethical error. With a wise leader like that, you didn’t need checks and balances. It was very a seductive myth.

What enlightened me was my peers. I was fortunate enough to have friends who had discovered the counterculture, and they introduced me to it. I can remember hanging around with them during summer vacations in high school. We would sprawl on some threadbare throw rugs on the concrete floor of someone’s cool basement, and look at R. Crumb comic books showing hippies being chased by big beefy bullies, while we listened over and over to the Beatles and the sound track from “Hair.” And the song “Mister Blue,” by Tom Paxton, will stick in my mind forever. If you don’t know that one, look at its lyrics at (for instance) http://www.mydfz.com/Paxton/lyrics/mrblue.htm.

The comic books and music didn’t bring me a full understanding of what was going on. I still couldn’t have articulated my beliefs; I couldn’t have begun to write a sophisticated essay to get myself classified as a conscientious objector. But the counterculture did its most important job: I came to understand — not in my head, but in my gut — that authority can be questioned. Once you’ve felt that, you can’t forget it or deny it, and you won’t want to.

There’s a lesson in this for us today, though I’m not sure of its details. We need to spread the counterculture, the idea of questioning authority. I’m not sure how we can do that best. I guess there is no “best” — we just need to experiment, and do it in lots of ways.