Many determining factors
that affect the ability of a society or, more specifically, a polity to meet
its challenges need to be balanced. Some,
if not many, of a polity’s elements or attributes are often in conflict. For example, should citizens support the aims
of one neighbor or that of another when those aims are in conflict? Should the use of one of their properties be
used in a way that bothers or more seriously infringes on the aesthetics of
another is just one possible conflict.
In
a related notion, this blog has reported what are the motivations that lead people
to be communal despite these conflicts. Michael
Sandel offers three types or sources of motivations: reciprocity, sentiment, and personal self-fulfillment.[1] How they function in a landscape
of turmoil – at times in the extreme – is worth knowing and worth teaching
civics students.
The question becomes relevant as a polity goes about its
business. Those situations will arise
when commitments and other determining conditions will be in contention. Richard Dagger offers the following: in one’s concern over reciprocity and
sentiment there can be an issue or development when one needs to choose between
the interests of neighbors and those of people in some foreign land.
How
should one choose? Intuitively, one will
side with those whom one has an association – such as fellow citizens. Of course, considerations over the issue in
question are important. For example, is
the survival of a foreign population at odds with some convenience or
inconvenience of a more local population?
Then perhaps the moral and prudent choice is to side with the foreigner. One can only ascribe weights to such factors
and not look for hard and fast rules of thumb that say, for example, “citizens
of my country always come first.”[2]
This
posting aims to further Dagger’s analysis.
In his review of Sandel’s “motivations,” Dagger points out some very
important practicalities. Yes, when one
joins in a social arrangement, be it a social group, a legal, or a political
arrangement, one usually does so to advance personal interests. This is legitimate if, once joined, one is
true to the provisions of the agreement that sets up the arrangement. If the arrangement reflects the attributes of
a true partnership, then the arrangement is an association.
But
in general, whether the arrangement is a partnership or not, one has a
legitimate bias for parochial relationships.
This is not only wise in pursuing mutual aims, but natural. One has a natural affinity for the familiar[3] and that strongly pertains
to political concerns. But does that not
pose a challenge for the liberated version of federalism?
To
remind the reader, this blog has argued against an earlier version of
federalism to which this nation ascribed; that being parochial/traditional
federalism. As Andrew Marantz points out,
this nation was created by white men for white men.[4] But even they seemed to think at some
idealistic level that this was not right either morally or practically. In any event, their written covenants and
compacts – at least, at the national level – did not proclaim such ownership
for that group.
Instead,
those documents proclaim the opposite.
They proclaim an equality among the populous. This blogger has been taught that even the
gender discrepancies in law were justified – or more accurately, rationalized –
as not being instances of inequality, but of attempts to maintain the cohesion
of families.
That
lesson is considered with a jaundiced eye, but the thinking was that the father
spoke for the family or household in his voting, in his ownership of property,
and in his position in the community. Of
course, this did not satisfy the provisions of federalism unless one defined
women as deficient or equivalent to children.
This could not stand, given the overall rationale of federalism and its provisions
for equality.
But
this goes a bit astray. The concern here
is the function the above motivations play in maintaining and advancing a
polity – a society. Reciprocity – even
where there is no sentiment or understanding of the needs of self-fulfillment –
calls for one to cooperate and make nice with those close by. Afterall, one depends on those people most
immediately to derive the advantages one enjoys by being a member of an
arrangement. But the concern becomes
that when things don’t go swimmingly with these cohorts, what sustains the
bonds?
The
first basic response to this possibility – occurring from time to time in
everyone’s life – is the self-awareness that in one’s modes of behavior the
inevitable contention needs a strategy.
“This is how I handle a debate with my neighbor, my partner, my
customer, my fellow city dweller, my fellow state resident, my fellow
countryperson, or my fellow inhabitant of the planet.” At each level the bonds vary, and this is no
small matter. It affects what specific
strategy is employed. But when one
realizes that a strategy is needed that is a big step.
Short
of a strategy – which, by the way, can adjust given the factors involved – one
is apt to react without thought and be short-sighted. Emotions will hold sway and resulting
behaviors are apt to be regrettable. And
this can be consequential in furthering relationships; after all, at the reciprocal
stage, reciprocities are bound to be aimed back at a person who acts impulsively.
Also,
strategies allow one to take into account the nature of a relationship. Is it with a neighbor or a professional cohort? Is it with a fellow worker, an anonymous person,
or with a known person? Is it with a
superior or an underling? Is it in
person or over the phone or through a letter exchange? These and other factors might affect what
leads to effective intercourse.
And,
according to Dagger, each reflects decisions over the priority one places on
the issue or on the other party. And
here, still holding to the basic level of reciprocity, one places different
levels of priority on who the other party is and what the issue is. This can become complex and unstable given
the elements of not only the other parties and situations, but on what is
happening in one’s life.
All
of this falls within the assumption that conditions within the polity are
sufficiently stable and peaceful. The
next posting will look at the issues Dagger points out when this assumption
does not hold. This is more than an academic
concern. As this blog has mentioned –
without taking a position as to who is right or wrong or who is responsible or
victimized – the current mood of the nation has, of late, shifted. Today one cannot make assumptions of
stability as to the general political landscape under which such contentions might
and do occur.
[1]
Richard Dagger, Civic
Virtue: Rights, Citizenship, and
Republican Liberalism (New York, NY:
Oxford, 1997).
[2] For a more developed description of this line of
thought, see Robert Gutierrez, “Balancing Act over Us/Theming, Gravitas: A Voice for Civics – a blog, April 10,
2018, accessed December 19, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2018/04/balancing-act-over-ustheming.html .
[3]
Robert M.
Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
(New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2017.
[4]
Andrew Marantz, Anti-social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the
Hijacking of the American Conversation (New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2019).
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