A person will not choose less behavior potential over
more.
A person requires a community in order for it to be
possible for him to engage in human behavior at all.
A community is characterized by a common world, a
language, a structure of social practices, statuses, way of living, choice principles,
and individual members.
To engage in a Deliberate Action is to participate in
a social practice of the community.
Peter Ossorio,
Place, 1998
Unequal Voices Undermine the Hypothesis: The
Inevitable Arc of Social Justice Requires the Possibility of an Equality of Persons.
…government may not suppress political speech
on the basis of the speaker's corporate identity. No sufficient governmental
interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit
corporations.
Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission
I'll warn you in advance. There are many loose ends and considerable uncertainty in what follows.
The tension I want to explore
involves what is public and open to negotiation and what is private and will
not be revealed except under special circumstances. The public can be debated but the private, the hidden, has voice behind the scenes. I'm going to wonder about these two factors: The vastly unequal public voice shaped by money, and the private, hidden voice, shaped by shameful, guilt-ridden or under-examined motive. This effects the playing
field where conflicts of justice are presented and decided. Even if courts and legislatures define the law, the varied public sentiments prepare
the ground for the legal outcome. The Supreme Court’s 2015 decision on marriage
equality would have been unlikely without the acceptance already achieved by a critical mass of individuals with good standing within the
national community.
The sociologist Steven Lukes reminds us that
power involves the ability to control the agenda and establish the public conversation. The vested
interests that shape the public agenda are always in play among individuals who
have their specific and idiosyncratic abilities and dispositions to influence each other. But this is warped when the values in play
are hidden or the power to influence is vastly uneven. The values involved in an individual's negotiations can be hidden in bad-faith or self-deception or unconsciously unexamined. But on a large social scale, political and moral dialog is also distorted by the weight of big-money interests. We all know that money doesn’t just talk, it
screams. It buys the agenda and billboards its propaganda. Currently, the
powers of corporate capitalism are overwhelming in forming the public conversation
and social agenda given corporations now have some of the legal status of “persons” in
regard to “speech”.
Social justice and economic
justice are intrinsically intertwined. A person’s place in the economy is
fundamental in defining their opportunity. Corporate
personhood renders my argument of inevitable
social progress trivial or absurd when corporate interest is in conflict
with social justice. If, on the other hand, the two interests coincide, justice
as enhanced fairness has a much better chance. This restricts the field of
change. To avoid despair, I’m going to table this theme and confine my argument
to circumstances where corporate interests are not in fundamental conflict with
personal liberation. Granted, I’ll have to ignore class based economic
injustice, many of the issues of income inequality, and limit my focus to some
of the cultural conflicts of racism, sexism, religion, and homophobia. This is the paradox of increased
economic injustice during the same historical period that has expanded
educational, housing, and voting rights, normalized homosexuality, and
legalized gay marriage. But tragically, consider how corporate interests can
stifle progress toward equality of health care and accommodations for parents
and the disabled if these enhancements, "entitlements", are too much a threat to
the bottom line. And what of planetary injustice? Do the corporate and political interests concerning climate change establish a generational injustice we will
be hand our children?
The Hypothesis is Limited to the Moral Dialog of
Potentially Equal Players
So with these huge limitations, what else hampers the negotiations and moral dialog of human beings
struggling for increased emancipation and fairness on matters of age, race,
gender, religion, and sexual preference? Where politics is most local, individuals
might have the best chance of being heard by each other. Here the community of
family and neighborhood still counts. Here’s the possible space that big
money, corporate personhood, and gerrymandered conformity might not overwhelm
and fill.
My starting point is the mix
of conflicted alliances we all have. These are the conflicts
that involve the public presentation of our values that affirm our
allegiance to some, while degrading our position with others. When push comes to
shove, who counts the most in my life? Where does my integrity rest and what
compromise can I afford? Are the true colors I show everyone the same? Can I be
authentic and two faced? Here is the dilemma of living on various fronts, some I especially cherish. Is this a potential engine of progress? And is this dynamic
different when our local community is cosmopolitan or homogenous?
All of us are members of
various communities, tempered by the specifics of education, job, profession,
intimate relations, family, etc. Membership
has its privileges but can also be an embarrassment, a source of shame and
guilt. A community’s social practices and accepted manners shift over time.
Consider heartfelt racism, sexism, and homophobia. Or “lighthearted” racist,
sexist, and homophobic banter. What was
once normal, perhaps laudable, becomes reprehensible. In times past, without
second thought, what could be said with friends, family, and professional
associates might still be acceptable in some communities but cause a
double-take and censure in others. Privately, my boorish friends and I might
continue talking the trash that provokes righteous outrage from my wife and children,
and possible firing from my job. Values
and acceptable self-presentations change. What was once public is now private
and a potential embarrassment. Still, for a host of reasons I might continue
this banter with some, careful when family and colleagues are within earshot. It’s
not easy to find new “enlightened” friends, and friends are friends for all
sorts of reasons.
But what does this say about
my values, the priorities that routinely shape my appraisals of self and world?
The public and private nature of what I hold dear can vary irregularly, in both
self-deceptive and self-aware hypocrisy. I might tolerate or overlook conflict,
ambivalence, and contradiction.
We all know there are
judgments we can openly discuss, negotiate, reconsider, and try to reorder in significance.
In self-examination, my prejudices, my pre-judgments, might diminish over time. Then there are those appraisals that I
am reluctant to admit, hold shameful, and will certainly not discuss, at least
not with you. Perhaps I also make significant appraisals unconsciously, unavailable for my introspection. I’ve come to believe this
last group of motives, absent significant psychopathology, is very difficult
to broach and rarely an overriding force, but to the extent it’s
significantly at play, judgment will be compromised. I’ll have return to this
theme.
Let’s focus on the interplay
of the appraisals and values easily available and those that we are reluctant to
acknowledge. The reluctance that I’m interested in is not simply a concern with
social censure but more along the lines of a reluctance to even go there with
myself. This is not the domain of secret glee but of shameful impulse. These
are the matters I don’t want to think about and won’t easily admit. This, I think,
is what the psychodynamic psychotherapies actually explore and map, and where
empathy and safety is key. This is where the public presentation of values I
am reluctant to acknowledge may influence a reappraisal of their significance. This in turn can change the community I prefer to identity with or support. But, in the absence
of “publicity”, unexamined problematic values are a minefield for negotiation.
In the service of exploring these themes, let me introduce "The Psychodynamic Judgment Diagram" as a way of representing the nature and consequences of a person's values and circumstances that are most accessible, those hidden in avoidance, and those truly unconscious.
For simplicity, I’ll refer to
these motivational grouping, these collections of values, as domains or zones one, two,
and three, with one being the easily shared and accessible appraisals, two being the domain I’m reluctant to
acknowledge and three being the
dynamic unconscious.
Notice the connection between
reason and motivational weight. The greater the weight the greater the
motivational priority. But, unfortunately, there is nothing that requires the content with the greatest
weight to be in zone one. People can be reluctant to acknowledge or unconscious
of the actual weights relevant to their appraisals. You can be sure that the
extent people don’t know or acknowledge their priorities, their negotiations may falter
and appear in bad faith.
For now, let’s attend to the
interplay of zone one and two and prepare to ask, “in the privacy of the voting
booth, what values ring loudest”?
Peter Ossorio (2013, p
226-227) identified four “family resemblance” groups of reasons people have for
doing what they do: Hedonics, Prudence, Ethics, and Aesthetics. Briefly,
hedonics involves variations on pleasure, pain, noxiousness, and disgust.
Prudence concerns self-interest, advantage or disadvantage, and what I take to
be good or bad for me. Ethical reasons involve my perspective on right and
wrong, good and bad, justice, fairness, and where duty or obligation occur.
Aesthetics involve how things fit together, artistically, socially, and
intellectually.
These domains of intrinsic
motivation can be complementary, independent, or in conflict. How individuals weigh the relative significance
of these motivations define important aspects of character, their “true
colors”. These patterns of significance,
implemented in various ways, define the “through-lines” of our lives.
What I’d like us to notice is
that domain two, the zone of reluctance, is not, under ordinary circumstance,
open for debate or discussion and is accordingly resistant to negotiated
change. The same holds for domain three, the unconscious, but here the
situation is frozen. Worse, the “dynamic
unconscious” lacks an aesthetic and ethical perspective since ethics and
aesthetics require the ability to engage in Cognizant and Deliberate Action.
Ethics and Aesthetics hinge on choice, even if that choice involves refusal. I
can’t, as a matter of ethical principle, choose the high road over the low road
if I’m not aware there’s a choice, nor can I sit down and refuse to move
further. Similarly, in zone two reluctance, I might refuse to ask for direction
and pretend not to see a fork in the road. And even if I am fully aware of a more ethical
path, my journey might continue along predominately hedonic, prudent, and
aesthetic lines. I’m complicated that
way and so are you. Doing what’s “ethically right” is not always the top
priority.
Back to the question of
getting domain two out into the light of day.
Does the Fork in the Road lead to Degradation or
Accreditation?
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Yogi Berra
A setup for a
thought-experiment: New neighbors move next to an already established family in
the two very different neighborhoods I know well. The first neighborhood is
where I now live, Boston’s South End. I think this is a very fine place, mixed
income but skewing to upper-middle class, racially and ethnically diverse, gay
and lesbian friendly, highly educated. I
feel I belong here. I’m comfortable as I
walk about. The second neighborhood I’d like us to consider is in Gastonia,
North Carolina where I grew up from forth grade through high school. I was mostly happy there, too, and certainly
felt safe and protected. Back then, my
neighborhood, Gardner Park, was all white, very Christian, and as far as I
knew, populated by married heterosexual couples and their children. In 1959,
my family, Jewish, moved to Gastonia from Minneapolis with a group of engineers
and scientists so I didn’t start my life in the late 1950’s American South. I think this move increased Gastonia’s Jewish
population from about 50 families to maybe 52 or 53. For me, the
in-your-face racism, the segregation of water fountains, classrooms, and neighborhoods
was immediately startling. Teachers and
classmates referred to “the niggers cross town” as normal speech. (Not that
the neighborhoods I’d knew in Minneapolis were any less white, nor, for that
matter, less homophobic, but I’d never heard such speech in public or private,
let alone seen water fountains for white or "colored". Being a Yankee and, as it
happened, a Jewish skeptic of religion, my childhood sense of belonging was
mixed. My sense of safety and belonging-while-an-outsider has its history here.
Knowing something of where I
come from provides perspective on my bias. Back to my thought-experiment: Let’s
imagine a householder, a standard heterosexual white guy we’ll call WG, who
with wife and children, lives either in my current neighborhood or in Gastonia.
Keep in mind that WG’s South End neighbors predominately vote as liberal or
progressive Democrats along with a few Greens and a “moderate” Republican or
two sprinkled in. They talk about this
in the dog park. In contrast, the predominately white neighborhoods in Gastonia
vote Republican. In both places, WG fits in as one of the acceptable types and values this and wants it for his family.
Now the new neighbors. First
the South End: In the condo below WG, a mixed race gay couple moves in with
their dog. The couple who moves in above
is a white heterosexual couple who also, as it turns out, have a dog. WG likes dogs. WG and his wife, being the neighborly sort, separately invite each new
couple in for drink and conversation. One more imaginary fact. The new
white heterosexual couple, who outwardly look the same demographic as WG, make clear a significant disrespect for the downstairs neighbors they’ve seen
but not spoken to. They’ve braved the gay South End.
Now the same setup but in
Gastonia. The new white couple expresses concern they weren’t warned before
buying into a mixed race neighborhood. Speaking loudly, without a second thought, WG's new neighbor wondered which of the gay men was the “wife”. So here’s my question. What do
we imagine WG actually feels about his new neighbors? How will he talk to his
wife and children who have witnessed these encounters?
Let’s add another feature to
our thought-experiment. For whatever reason, the gay couple prove, over time,
to be thoughtful, helpful, and friendly. The white couple, not so much.
(Like all bad thought
experiments, we must limit ourselves to these being the only stated facts).
Back to the “psychodynamic
judgment diagram” and a bit more about WG. WG is a middle-aged standard white
guy who reluctantly, zone 2, harbors racist and homophobic feeling. He grew up
that way. OK, let’s be more real. At times, he wisecracks with some of his old
friends in a undeniably racist and homophobe manner. After all, they get the
joke. At home with family, this stuff
rarely crosses his mind, and when it does he’s knows to be silent.
A point of practical theory:
Evidently, some thoughts are more “reluctant-to-self-acknowledge” in some
circumstances than in others. Here’s another assumption about actual empirical
humans. Our different social contexts alter our self-presentation and
disposition, and with this our sense of what is most consciously available. Circumstance
factor into our psychological state and our immediately available configuration
of motivational values. This is relevant to how zone 1 and zone 2 content
shifts, and where one’s sense of degradation and accreditation, a person’s immediate feelings of standing in their relevant communities, serve
to maintain or change what is available for negotiation and moral dialog. What
my family evokes is often significantly different from what I find myself
thinking in my office or with my friends. Circumstances evoke different patterns of a person’s powers and dispositions based on perceived
relevance. I am the same person with everyone, I am always me,
without my self-presentation being necessarily all that consistent when with others. I can be authentic and more than two-faced.
People live in a vast variety
of separate and overlapping communities, cherishing some above others. Family
over neighbor? Neighbor over boss? The
communities people value greatest, where their good standing is vital, are the ones they will
be most reluctant to violate. What is available as zone 1 content, the stuff most personally and publicly accessible, will reasonably be what a person finds most relevant to the social practices that the person’s most valued
communities find acceptable. (But keep firmly in mind that people's integrity
may involve their upholding the values of communities not immediately present
to the eye but held in the heart).
PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER.
Groucho Marx, Telegram to the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills
Deliberate Action
Another point. Deliberate action requires the knowledge of choice. Appraisals as
an aspect of a deliberate action many involve the recognition of both what is to be
done and what is to be avoided. In contrast, zone 2 content tends to be
under-socialized and under-examined and as a result less mindful of alternatives. This content is commonly what a person
fears might be degrading. This is not to suggest that a person is reluctant to privately acknowledge potential self-degrading actions. In fact, the potential to easily know how one can be degraded is central to my hypothesis about social progress. Consider, there are matters I can easily think about but refuse to do, zone 1, and
there are things I don’t want to think about and certainly don’t want to
acknowledge doing, zone 2. This self abrogation is rarely separate from the expectation
of public censure. The avoided thoughts and public actions are shameful. Zone 1 has a place for
the shameful ideas that I will carefully and prudently avoid enacting. I may be
less careful about zone 2. I am making the assumption that there is a good
reason to know what to be careful about one’s nature. There are personal matters we need to understand well enough not to inadvertently act out. I know that I am an animal, sexual and
possessive, but I try to be appropriate in my expression of these desires. The potential and expectation of appropriate Deliberate Action is a fundamental attribute that defines us as Persons. (See, for example Prosser, The Doctrine of The Reasonable Man).
But back to WG. WG, both
North and South, are deliberate actors, whose appraisals follow from their
hedonic, prudential, aesthetic, and ethical perspectives.
Here’s a reasonable bet: WG
in the South End will tell his children and demonstrate though his careful
behavior that their neighbor upstairs provides an example not to follow. It is
less clear what WG in Gastonia will do. He belongs to many communities where
his racism and homophobia is just fine. He wants his children to fit in to this world, too. But he knows times are changing.
Gastonia's WG has less experience with the diversity found in the other WG's neighborhood. This might limit his experienced faith in social change working out OK. Still,
he’s come to enjoy a weekly barbecue with his gay mixed race neighbors even
though he won’t abide their mustard-based sauce. He’s come to recognize their marriage hasn’t cost him a dime. Regarding his homophobia, their sexual lives are no longer part
of his disgusted fascination. His children like them, too, and find their other neighbor a wee bit creepy.
When we talk to our children
and provide them the object lessons of our actions, we are a powerful source of
influence. And we ask ourselves, whose voice are we most comfortable representing? When we engage with friends
and neighbors, and especially when we enter into new relationships, we may have
cause to recognize and reconsider our values. As deliberate actors we have the
potential for an ethical perspective. We may come to appreciate the fairness of
our neighbor’s concerns even if our only gain is their happiness. This doesn’t
mean this will count for more than our other values. But it might, especially
if we know that supporting our neighbor doesn’t put us in a worse
position.
My empathic identification
with my children gives me profound reason to want them to fit in, a prudential
and aesthetic value. My neighbor’s sexual life might still make me squirm but
that may count for less than he’s become my good neighbor deserving his own pleasures and satisfactions. And it turned out his mustard sauce is an acquired taste worth developing.
Does this set the stage for
some social progress? Might it effect my vote or what my children come to see
as reasonable fairness across difference? I think so.
