MOSTLY DREARY

Jonah Goldberg provides a way to see societal morality that might sound foreign to some readers.  Here is his take:

What societies decide is right or wrong becomes what is right and wrong for most of the people who live in them.  But I think the lessons of history show that societies can choose poorly – and that this can be proved empirically through facts and reason.  Some cultures are better than others, not because of some gauzy metaphysical claim, but because they allow more people to live happy, prosperous, meaningful lives without harming other people in the processes.  Because this is true, it is incumbent upon all of us to fight for a better society, to defend the hard-learned lessons of human history, and to be grateful for what we have accomplished.[1]

This conservative author goes on to point out that what one would consider a normal life – approaching the material well-being one can find in advanced nations like the US – is a relatively modern development.  At best, according to Goldberg, one can only go back just over three hundred years before any humans began to appreciably improve their state of being.

          Civics educators don’t need to agree with Goldberg, but they are immeasurably helped by becoming knowledgeable of what Goldberg is getting at.  He proposes an argument that, if at all reasonable, should affect how a civics teacher sees his/her subject matter.  This blog wants to review his argument for this purpose – to encourage that sort of reflection on the part of those teachers.

          Goldberg first couches his view against the total history[2] of human existence.  One would think that such a context would take hundreds and hundreds of pages, but it does not.  Why?  Because most of that history – he claims homo sapiens have a history of over 250,000 years – can be viewed as a recurring story.  That is, humans have met with brutish conditions on an ongoing basis for just about all of that time.  “Semi-hairless, upright, nomadic apes foraging and fighting for food.  No change …”[3] over this extended period.  In other words, human existence – its natural state – was a Hobbesian one.

          And what is that?  He describes it as grinding poverty, horrific violence, and, for the individual, a short life.  The estimate is that average life span in pre civilized times was 35 years and that that brevity lasted way beyond the dawn of civilization.[4]  And he points out that such “advancements” such as agriculture did not improve things.  It, agriculture for example, limited diet choices and it introduced strenuous work regimens.  Yet today, things are different.  People live longer and work less strenuously to acquire significantly more enriching things, at least among people who luckily live in those advanced nations.  What happened?

          According to Goldberg, a “Miracle” happened.  The next posting will explain.

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[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018), 5 (Kindle edition).

[2] The term history here is not limited to written history, but the whole past of human existence on the planet.

[3] Ibid., 6 (Kindle edition).

[4] “Medicine and Health,” Stratford Hall, n.d., accessed May 30, 2019, http://www.stratfordhall.org/educational-resources/teacher-resources/medicine-health/ .  Estimates vary, but one needs to remember the prevalence of disease.

AIMING TOWARD GOODNESS

In the last posting, this blog introduced the ideas of Jonah Goldberg.[1]  In a few words, that posting identified Goldberg’s initial arguments of a foundational construct; a construct that in his cited work reviews a rationale for a conservative view of politics.  Here, this posting is interested in datum, the description of reality he uses to build toward his conclusions.  This posting’s writer agrees with Goldberg’s view of what is without promoting his political prescriptions.

          To this point, this blog reported Goldberg’s criteria – in the form of a mental construct – for what a “good” society is: 

a practical, public construct allows for more people to live happy, prosperous, meaningful lives without harming others in their pursuits of these aims; and that the construct should call on the members of the community or collective to fulfill a duty, to be engaged in this pursuit.

This general aim does not call on a society to fulfill a religious or philosophic view of goodness or for it to live out some historically mandated development. 

Instead, it is a day-to-day perspective in which a people live by a practical moral sense of how humans, making up that society, muddle through challenges; how they make the best of life.  What this blog finds most agreeable is that Goldberg argues that this is not the sole responsibility of leaders – be they secular or sectarian – but the responsibility of the whole societal population.  And since, by lack of a mandate, there is no a priori authority to accomplish this basic responsibility, all citizens have a role, the role of an equal partner. 

          What this blog now demands from Goldberg – in order accept his view – is for him to provide a believable sense that this is possible.  Can human society, within itself, behave in such a way that meaningful advances can (and perhaps has) occurred in approaching that ideal.  Once people have discovered this practical view, have they acted, behaved, or conducted their affairs by learning from their experiences?

          Do they, in other words, find it natural to reflect from what they experience, draw reasonable lessons from those experiences, and be able to sufficiently keep in check counterproductive emotions that can block one from seeing objective reality.  This, in turn, begs the question:  can humans, by the limitations of their nature, learn what they need to learn in order to promote a population that meets the above, Goldberg criteria? 

Not only is this blog interested in this question for general purposes – what is human nature? – but the true answer goes a long way in determining what civics education should be about.  Earlier in this blog, the topic of human nature was addressed.  A posting cited the work of Gary Wills and his analysis of how the term unalienable – or inalienable as stated in the Declaration of Independence – is used by the founding generation.  That usage is relevant to this current concern.

The founders believed that if a trait was part of one’s nature, it could not be taken away.  It was, therefore, unalienable.  And what, according to them, marked or described that nature?  Here is what that earlier posting shared of Wills’ writing about the inalienable rights of life and liberty:

[Francis] Hutcheson [Scottish political writer of the 1700s] then divides rights into perfect and imperfect.  The perfect, as essential to the public good, can be defended even with private force.  The first example he gives is the right to life.  The basis of the societal bond is benevolence, and no society can undermine its own fundamental value.  Yet security in the possession of life is not only the basis for all goods one can bestow on others; it is, more important, the necessary precondition for doing good – no man can be benevolent unless he is first alive…

          He asserts the right of liberty on similar grounds:  “As nature has implanted in each man a desire of his own happiness and many tender affections toward others in some nearer relations of life, and granted to each one some understanding and active powers, with a natural right exercise them for the purpose of these natural affections, it is plain each one has a natural right to exert his powers, according to his own judgment and inclination, for these purposes, in all such industry, labor, or amusements as are not hurtful to others in their persons or goods, while no more public interests necessarily require his labors or require that his actions should be under the direction of others.  This right we call natural liberty.[2]

The message, then, is humans are naturally capable of being benevolent, at least according to this strain of thought.  In addition, societies must afford this natural tendency an outlet in order to allow its citizens the necessary mechanism by which to progress.  As such, it cannot be given or taken away; i.e., it is inalienable.

Is that true?  If so, Goldberg’s aim should not be difficult to achieve.  Yet, history has ample examples that benevolence does not seem to be the fallback mode of most people’s behavior.  Ask any parent and he/she will attest that teaching their children to exhibit “good,” benevolent behavior is a challenge in and of itself.

          So, what follows will be reviewing Goldberg’s answer to this question.  Despite his initial tone of positivity, what will follow brings to question Hutchinson’s positive take on how humans want to behave in their natural state.

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[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018).

[2] Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018), 216-217.  Emphasis in the original.