[Note: Happy Holidays to All!]
This posting continues
the theme of the last posting – entitled “It’s a Rainforrest Out There.” That is, that posting addressed how a polity
needs for its citizens and other residents to share certain motivations to initiate
and sustain a general communal society – a society in which people generally cooperate. Citing Michael Sandel,[1] it identified three types
of motivations toward that end; those being reciprocity, sentiment, and self-fulfillment.
Richard
Dagger’s[2] view concerning the
function communal modes of behaviors play chooses to concentrate on reciprocity
as a baseline motivation that one can count on if the other types fail. The other types are great, but one can
realistically get people to worry about how they will be treated by others
whether those acts are reactions to positive or negative experiences when
either sentiment is missing or lacking, and self-fulfillment is ill-defined or
not appreciated.
Being
able to anticipate an enjoyable treatment or a punitive treatment will get most
people’s attention; they will seek the former and avoid the latter. Therefore, they are apt to behave in ways to solicit
the former and stay clear of the latter.
And the last posting reported what the implications of these reactions are
even when one is observing a group or individual dealing with conflicting interests.
That
is, the last posting delved into what these general dispositions need to confront
in what could possibly be challenging interactions between or among individuals
or groups. While these less than optimal
situations were looked at, the assumption was that generally the overall social
landscape in which they take place is fairly tranquil. It is one that can be described as
cooperative and not experiencing, say, common violence and terror. But what if that is not the case? What if that landscape is characterized by
turmoil?
First,
one needs a comparison. How is one going
to treat a fellow organizational or association-al person – a person one has
joined in a common effort like a fellow citizen – as compared to someone else –
a person, for example, of another country?
Does one place in priority the needs of a co-participant over a foreign person? Intuitively, one is disposed to do so. But is this a blank commitment? If the needs of one of them is not extreme,
but within the normal needs of life, then claims of co-participants will likely
be placed in a higher priority.
This
comparison is important because societal efforts depend on cooperative
relationships especially from co-participants.
Therefore, biased choices in favor of co-participants enhance the
probability – on merely reciprocal grounds – of cooperative results. But that is in normal conditions. If instead, say, a polity is one experiencing
excessive violence, or high levels of terror, or the people live lives that demonstrate
little respect for law and order, then one finds it less likely that any intuitive
priority toward co-participants – fellow citizens – is felt as a viable
motivation.
This
priority to favor co-participants relies on a cooperative social/political
landscape. And when this general sense
is challenged or, in the extreme, evaporates, then other means to secure
general “cooperation” in carrying on the essential societal requisites – such
as cars stopping at red lights – relies, in the main, on exploitation.
In
short, in those cases people do what is necessary out of fear of oppressive police
actions. Of course, this does not only
refer to traffic. It particularly
becomes a contentious issue when what is at stake are those policies having to
do with the distribution of resources. Dagger
writes:
When access to property or wealth or
positions of political power is effectively denied to some members, those
without access will have little choice but to labor for the benefit of those who
dominate their lives – hardly the hallmark of a cooperative enterprise that
gives rise to special rights and obligations among its participants. There is critical edge to the argument from
reciprocity, then, an edge that suggests that fellow citizens in many cases
simply have no moral claim to priority.[3]
That
is, when the choice arises between choosing the interests of a co-participant
and a foreign person, the co-participant has no priority claim when the motivation
is to avoid the punishment of an authoritarian power. And given how basic reciprocity is in
motivating cooperative behavior, one can see how uncooperative such social
landscapes can become.
For the sake of placing such an understanding to everyday American
experience, consider the workplace where the rules of the game either are insufficient
or not respected. How will the workforce
react? No, it will not usually shift
over to violence, but unless a policing regime is put in place, one that can
detect deviance and has the resources to impart hurtful punishments, the
workers will not act or feel they need to act cooperatively.
They
will instead strike out to either advance only personal interests and/or act in
ways that seek revenge for abusive acts of others. The mindset of each abandons any sense of
“we” and only thinks in terms of “I.” Conditions
will definitely devolve beyond sticky or uncomfortable, but reach in what one can,
at least, consider exploitive.
Therefore, if one wants to advance the motivation of co-participants
toward modes of behavior that allow for a cooperative organizational or
association-al arrangement, then a viable rule-based structure and related
processes need to be established and maintained. That entity’s workforce – or citizenry – also
needs to be nurtured so it recognizes the reciprocal relationships that exist.
And
that calls for appropriate – what sociologists might call – system maintenance. That consists of functional socializing and successful
recruitment of personnel that, at least, populate the arrangement with people harboring
a fundamental understanding of what reciprocal relationships are. Of course, this all depends on norms within
the arrangement and can be carried on too far stifling original thought and
innovated proposals. A balance is called
for.
With that basic level of understanding, a leader can work
toward encouraging the other motivations; that is, encouraging positive
sentiments and general understanding that legitimate participation in the arrangement
can advance individual capacities. These
“higher” aims can be considered and acted upon when the foundation is well
entrenched within the realm of the arrangement.
If the arrangement is a polity and the above aims are met,
then it approaches what Dagger refers to as a polity that operates under the
auspices of republican liberalism. This
blog considers such a polity being guided by liberated federalism as it implements
the elements of federation theory.
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