|
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
Digging dignity 
| | Back when I was in junior high, to "rank out" somebody was to put them down. In those days I won at bottom-caste bingo, being among the worst achievers at academics, sports, popularity and getting girls. I guess I did okay at geekiness, but all my ham radio friends were either old guys or out of town. |
| | Being a nobody — or worse, being somebody known for being nobody, which is worse than being invisible — is an experience that sticks with you. |
| | Dignity is more encompassing than Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. It's the missing link that restored will yield an electoral mandate that heralds an historic extension of "liberty and justice for all." |
| | The politics of dignity puts the "We" back in "We the People." It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian philosophies, breaking the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s. |
| | A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It makes a woman¹s right to choose and gays' right to marry self-evident. It proclaims everyone's right to a sustainable environment. |
| | The disparate interest groups that make up the Democratic Party will not be able to unite until they have identified their common foe. That foe is not conservatives or conservatism. It is indignity. |
| | Where Robert comes from is the heart of the nurturant model of family, politics and society that is also at the core of liberal (now rebranded progressive) thinking. I fear he will find his case at severe odds with the strict father model behind conservative thinking, and will scratch like fingernails on the chalkboards of conservative minds, even as it enlarges the body of liberal literature. |
| | It would help, however, for those on the right, to visit the subject of rankism (if not indignity); because rankism has been central to conservative value systems for a long time. It is the one thing I've never liked about conservative politics and rhetoric, even as I've always liked certain conservative principles (e.g. personal responsibility, liberty, thrift, minimal government). Maybe, as the Bush administrartion flounders and the 2008 election approaches, it's a good time to visit the subject. |
| | George Lakoff began exploring deeper political differences when he heard Dan Quayle, uttering the words of conservative thinker and speechwriter William Kristol, say "Why should the best people be punished?" Quayle and Kristol were referring to progressive taxation, by which higher incomes are taxed at progressively higher rates. The line drew applause from the Republican audience. It drew a gasp from Lakoff, a lifelong liberal Democrat. He wondered, What makes some people better than others? What makes taxation punishment? He had no idea. Then he thought, "Hey, I'm a cognitive linguist! It's my job to find out!" So he did that, and found that both conservatives and liberals employ nation-as-family metaphors, and that these metaphors shape their thinking and rhetoric. The difference is that conservatives and liberals have different idealized models of the family. Lakoff explains, |
| | In a strict father family, you need a strict father because there's evil out there in the world and you've got to protect the family from evil, and mommy can't do it. Second, you need a strict father because there's competition in the world—there will always be competition—there will always be winners, there will always be losers—and you don't want to be a loser. You need a strict father to be a winner. Third: kids are born bad, they just want to do what they want to do, they want to do whatever feels good, they don¹t do what¹s right. There's an absolute right, there¹s an absolute wrong, and you need a strict father to teach him right from wrong, and mommy ain't strict enough. |
| | So how do you teach a kid right from wrong? There's only one way. Punishment when they do wrong painful enough, it's got to be painful, so that the kids will have an incentive to discipline themselves internally so they'll do right and not wrong. And the punishment has to be painful, but Dobson turns out to be one of the more advanced thinkers here. He says there is absolutely no reason to hit a child below the age of 18 months. The other guys say birth. But he's the advanced one. |
| | If the child learns discipline—that's the only way you produce moral beings is by this form of discipline—if the child learns discipline there's a wonderful secondary effect, because then the child can go out in the world, seek their self-interest and become prosperous. Now, why is it moral to go out in the world and seek your self-interest? And the answer is very clear in Dobson. It has to do with capitalism, with free market capitalism. Adam Smith says if everybody seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand, as a law of nature. This is natural. The way to do good in the world is by seeking your own profit. So the good people are the people who are disciplined enough to go out, seek their own profit, and become prosperous. |
| | What¹s bad? When you get in their way. If you get in their way—suppose you're not trying to seek your own self interest. Suppose you want to help other people. You're going to get in the way of people who are legitimately seeking their own profit. And there's a name for you, if you're a conservative, conservatives have a name, it's called a "do-gooder." Any of those people out here know any do-gooders? [laughter] Tom DeLay called George Soros a do-gooder a few weeks ago. Do-gooders like MoveOn and Tom DeLay [sic]. |
| | Now. There's a logic here, the logic is suppose you're not prosperous. That means you¹re not disciplined. If you're not disciplined, you can't be moral, so you deserve your poverty. |
| | What does this mean applied to society, to government? It says, social programs are all immoral. Immoral. Why? They give people things they haven¹t earned, taking away their incentive to be disciplined and hence their incentive to be moral. Who are the good people? We now answer the Dan Quayle question. The good people are the people who have been disciplined and become prosperous. What is punishment? Taxing them by taking away their incentive to make more money. QED. You can see the Dan Quayle logic. It's not just Dan Quayle, it¹s the conservative logic that Kristol is laying out. |
| | And this is behind all of the conservative ideas about cutting the budget, starving the beast and getting deficits. Why do you want deficits? Because there¹s no money for social programs. This is a poor country, no more money, we have nothing in the budget for this. Lots for the war, but nothing in the budget for social programs. And they're immoral and we should cut them. |
| | There¹s another part of this which has to do with what I'll call the moral order. There's an idea that some people are better than other people—the people who are disciplined and moral. They should be the wealthy powerful people. And in the world there's a hierarchy. God above man—there¹s a hierarchy of morality paired with power. God above man, adults above children, men above nature, Western culture above non-Western culture, America above other countries. And then men above women, straights above gays, whites above non-whites, Christians above non-Christians. It's historical. God made the world in this way and it's right that we should have this power structure historically because it's moral. That is part of what conservative ideology is about. And that is behind all of what we¹re seeing now in this country. |
| | Now, George isn't saying this is consevative policy, in the conscious sense of that term. He's saying it's the unconscious stuff behind conservative thinking, which yields conservative policy and speech. |
| | What is the other model that came out? The nurturing parent model? It says you run a family like this: There are two parents and they're equal. Gender is not a factor here. Second, their job is to nurture their kids and to raise their kids to be nurturers of others. What is nurturance? Two things. Empathy, connection. You have to know what those things mean—and responsibility. You have to take care of yourself. You can't take care of someone else if you¹re not taking care of yourself. And you have to be responsible to others. And you teach your kids empathy and responsibility for themselves and others. It¹s the opposite of permissive parenting — the very opposite. |
| | And from this you can see all progressive values following immediately. One, you care about your kids, you empathize with them, you want to protect them. We have worker protection, consumer protection, environmental protection—safety nets. Progressive values. You care about your kids, you want them to be treated fairly—fairness is one of our values, as is equality. You care about your kids. You want them to be happy and fulfilled in life. Happiness is a moral value. Why? Because if you¹re an unhappy person, you¹re not going to want other people to be happier than you are, and you won¹t empathize. And this is something the Dalai Lama is very clear about, he has a book called Happiness. Why is the Buddha smiling? Very clear. To be a compassionate person you have to be happy enough so that you want other people to be happy. You can¹t be miserable and be a compassionate person, really. Happiness is a moral requirement. Fulfillment in life is a moral requirement and it¹s something you want for your kids. But to be fulfilled in life, your kids will have to be free. You can¹t be fulfilled without freedom. To be free you have to have opportunity. To have opportunity you need broad prosperity. Those are your values. |
| | You live in a community. What kind? You don¹t want a strict father community where a leader tells you what to do or else, you want a nurturing community where leaders care about you, are responsible to the community, where people care about each other and are responsible to each other. That¹s what a nurturing community is about. And that community requires cooperation. Cooperation requires trust, trust requires honesty and openness. Those are our values. Period. Straight-out, those are the progressive values. |
| | The problem with the metaphor of nation as family (which serves both conservatives and liberals), is that it centers responsibility with the government. In this respect, I think both conservatives and liberals are off-base. The presence of the Net in the world has changed the primary conditions in which these metaphors operate. |
| | For example, responsibility for some purely governmental activities — such as data collection and research — is shifting, out to individual citizens. Rita Katz, for example, is the subject of glowing stories in both the lefty New Yorker and the righty National Review, because she and her researchers are proving indispensible in hunting down terrorists through their online activities. |
| | But all this is a long digression away from the original subject of this post: humiliation as a nasty but normative behavior. |
| | Humiliation of others has long been a form of sport — so much that I wonder if it's an immutable aspect of human nature, even to the degree it might be an evolutionary requirement. I dunno. |
| | I do know it's unpleasant for the lowly-ranked, and I'm sure it's bad for society as well. |
| | We need less of it. And for working toward that I'm that I'm glad Robert Fuller is doing the heavy lifting. Check his stuff out. |
6/6/6
| | It means nothing. Sorry about that. Just trying to help here. |
There are responses to this message:Re: Tuesday, June 6, 2006, Jonathan Peterson, 6/7/06; 2:02:28 PM Re: Tuesday, June 6, 2006, Geoff, 6/7/06; 9:25:24 AM Lakoff, Robert Fuller, 6/7/06; 4:32:07 AM Dignity, manifestdignity, 6/6/06; 11:39:55 PM Re: Tuesday, June 6, 2006, Adam Fields, 6/6/06; 6:47:13 PM
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
