JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, III

 

As of the last posting, this blog was highlighting the role that three mental domains have on decision making, i.e., the domains of the real, ideal, and physiological.  That view of decision making invites a more nuanced and complex basis by which to analyze that mental process.  That is, it is the product of more than immediate perceptions and recognized personal interests, where one engages in considerations that can be and often are quite complex. 

For instance, the choice to act in a certain way might not take place immediately before the act is done and, when the time comes, a change of heart might occur.  This might be a rare occurrence and it would usually be due to some kind of interference, such as a quick change in the situation, how one sees the situation, or an unexpected physical accident of some kind. 

What is important to the assumptions of the liberated federalism construct – what all this concern over decision making is about – is that decisions which result and reflect some ideal domain concern are as important in understanding political behavior as is the decision to act from what people see are the factual elements of a situation.[1]  As with many important aspects of life, political considerations usually carry complicating elements.

          Affecting people in that sort of situation includes several areas of concern.  For example, there has been a growing concern with morality associated with the decisions made by leaders.  First, these decisions will be highly influenced by the environment in which people find themselves.[2]  The natural rights perspective has a notion that individuals are predisposed to make these decisions based on their own analyses of the issues involved and how they affect the decision maker.  As it stands, this is a highly impractical position when the analysis is limited to those factors.

          Why?  For various reasons including the condition that before people understand the importance of making decisions along the lines of political values or social goals, they are inundated with value and goal messages with which they have grown up – their socialization.  These messaging experiences are usually presented by legitimate figures of authority (parents or teachers, for example) and, for the most part, accepted by individuals as “the way things are or should be” and often such “lessons” have staying power.[3]

          But beyond that, to think people are going to put in the time and effort to think of all the relevant factors they need to, in order to arrive at a coherent, logical, and usable decisions or, more generally, develop perspectives of politics or of social reality, irrespective of their immediate interests, is truly unrealistic.  A lot of the aforementioned messaging is stored in a mostly unconscious level of thinking.

Therefore, if the adult world, as presented by parents and teachers, does not provide a set of ideals and an overall construct of political realities (of sufficient complexity), other sources will do so to some extent.  Other sources could possibly include peer groups, in terms of political identification,[4] and mass media.[5]  Of course today there is the influence of social media which is often based on misinformation and salacious content.

          While these sources would not explicitly provide a construct about politics, they influence how people form their basic beliefs, views of reality, and their ideals that people form or accept concerning governance and politics.  That view today, as readily seen on the nightly news reports, would be an anti-intellectual, shallow, and inviable one[6] among significant if not the majority of citizens.  It would be a far cry from the federalist republicanism that characterized the beginnings of the nation.[7]

          Taking a closer look at the ideal domain and how it influences decisions, it contains those messages and desires in the form of values and goals.  They become conscious to people in the form of motivations.[8]  One can deduce from the evidence so far presented that individuals are apt to struggle within themselves as to what is the preferred priority among different desires, especially if conditions make certain optional decisions as mutually exclusive and the options represent different or even opposing desires.

          Choice might mean delaying, postponing, or canceling the quest for certain desires and delaying or eliminating choices that would offer more utility as judged by individuals, or which means fewer negative consequences as measured by standards established in the ideal domain.  Individuals might find real turmoil over deciding between or among challenging desires.  If decisions are made separately from pending realities, and there is a lack of urgency in relation to desired outcomes, then the situations allow more reflective thought.  As such, “thinking ahead” can be very beneficial.

          In less agitated circumstances – say during a classroom discussion – the choices may establish, in high priority areas of concern, more lasting commitments.  These commitments might, in turn, formulate or help develop for individuals the elements of an ideology.  Choices might reflect coherent ideal systems of values and goals.  If these choices are professed strongly by individuals, they, the choices, will be considered seriously in future action decisions.  Here, one can consider this opportunity as experienced in schools as one of schools’ main positive effects.

          These reflected choices can be affected by the socialization processes mentioned above, that people are exposed to, especially during their early years.  These are the years when one is taught the appropriate mores of one’s group.  This process is seen as inevitable.  The question is what set of values and goals people will be exposed to. And a second concern is what opportunities and encouragements they will receive in later life that prompt them to question these basic teachings, for active and engaged citizens should always be disposed to question their beliefs.

          And with that bit of reflection about what goes into decision making, especially those sessions involving decisions relating to governance or politics, that covers what this blogger wished to point out in relation to how federalist ideals and ideas should be treated in civics education.  Therefore, so much for decision making (for now); the next posting will review the main source of content for civics education, that being the discipline of political science.

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[1] For readers who did not read the last posting, the reference here is that decision making is very likely to be affected by assumptions the decider makes.  Those assumptions are readily made due to mental states the decider harbors.  To analyze this process, this blog has identified the three domains of thought which potentially come to bear on any decisions made.  Those domains are the real, the ideal, and the physiological.  For more information, see the last posting, “Judging Liberated Federalism, II.”

[2] Work on this concern for moral leadership has been growing since the early 1990s.  See for example “Moral Leadership:  Meaning, Characteristics and Examples,” Harappa, November 2, 2021, accessed June 14, 2023, https://harappa.education/harappa-diaries/moral-leadership/#:~:text=Maximize%20Growth-,What%20Is%20Moral%20Leadership%3F,ethical%20system%20and%20moral%20purpose. AND more in terms to the initial scholarship in this concept, Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership:  Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992).

[3] “Influences on Moral Development,” Lumen/Adolescent Psychology (n.d.), accessed June 14, 2023, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/adolescent/chapter/influences-on-moral-development/#:~:text=Moral%20development%20is%20strongly%20influenced,%2C%20emotions%2C%20and%20even%20neurodevelopment. AND C. S. Sunai, “Influence of the Home on Social Studies,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, edited by James P. Shaver (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 290-299.

[4] Camila F. S. Campos, Shaun Hargreaves Heap, Fernanda Leite Lopez de Leon, “The Political Influence of Peer Groups:  Experimental Evidence in the Classroom,” Oxford Economic Papers, 69, 4 (October 2017), accessed June 14, 2023, https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/69/4/963/2737463.

[5] Daniel Bergan, Alan Gerber, Dean Karlan, “Effect of Media on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions in the United States,” Innovations for Poverty Action (n.d.), accessed June 14, 2023, https://poverty-action.org/node/6406/pdf.

[6] “Public Highly Critical of State of Political Discourse in the U.S.” Pew Research Center (June 19, 2019), accessed June 14, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/06/19/public-highly-critical-of-state-of-political-discourse-in-the-u-s/.

[7] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998).

[8] Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership.

JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, II

 

In terms of the construct, liberated federalism, the first item of interest to this blogger is the assumptions regarding decision making – that would be decision making in the realm of governance and politics.  And in this vein, the duality mentioned in the last posting between forces that either focus political concerns or studies at local communal levels or at national levels will be highlighted shortly in an upcoming posting.  

But before addressing this duality directly, however, some contextualizing needs to be done.  Specifically, factors of decision-making processes need to be fleshed out.  While this posting will only skim the surface of this topic, one might find the path it paves a bit challenging – hopefully readers will enjoy the scenery.

This synthesis of views – which this blog is currently addressing – between natural rights and critical theory is not totally divorced from the nation’s earlier view, parochial federalism, with its more local orientation.  That orientation stands in contrast with a more nationalistic orientation that the natural rights view assumes, and which is prominent today.  Of note, the natural rights view relies heavily on assumptions posed by behavioral sciences and, with that, an important link to decision making becomes relevant. 

Within that behavioral mode of thought, it is worth noting that most decisions that people make are made to advance one’s interests on the margin and the assumption held here is that reality is more complex and that decisions are based on several cognitive domains not adequately addressed by behaviorist analysis.  Therefore, this aspect of natural rights is judged to be wanting. 

While it is beyond the purpose of this account to present a comprehensive model for decision making, the process of making decisions is seen as one in which individuals weigh several motivating factors at any given time.[1]  And so, before explaining the assumptions entailed here with this synthesis, the importance of decision making should be established and somewhat explained.

In terms of considering mental constructs that pertain to guiding how citizens view governance and politics, the question of how and why people decide to act politically as they do seems to be of central importance.  Decision making is a precursor to all actions excluding actions that are classified as reflex reactions.  That is, before people act, they decide to act, i.e., they are motivated to individually act in a certain fashion.  In turn, people’s motivations vary in terms of intensity and direction.[2] 

Therefore, to get a clear understanding of why people act the way they do, one needs to have an explanation of why they have decided to act in a particular fashion; why they have generated the motivation to act in the ways they do.  What follows is how this blogger has broken down this process – part relies heavily on psychological works of well-regarded scholars and part on self-reflection.

To assume people are merely responding to the conditions facing them in such ways as to marginally advance their interests, as crude behaviorists do, leads one to miscalculate various aspects of those decisions.  That is, it might very well underestimate how these actors weigh the values before them or the priorities these actors place on those values, not to mention the personal histories of similar situations people bring to that point in time.[3]  Granted, a lot of this happens at the subconscious level, but it happens, nonetheless.

Those who study these decision-making sessions write about these miscalculations by those who engage in the politics of various challenging situations; for example, the politics of ethnically diverse nations and how “irrational” behaviors there can and at times are judged to be.  Usually, such studies look at segments of those nations’ populations and have often judged them to be chaotic. 

In those cases, which are often like other sorts of decision-making episodes in challenging situations, the chaos originates not from what the minds read to be the facts of the situations in question.  Instead, people misread how their values are engaged and/or miscalculate the strength of their or of others’ values as they pertain to the situations at hand.

And this description of what is going on is not just the opinion of unsophisticated parties but of experts who find it excessively difficult to predict the behaviors of those populations.  What is called for are closer views and understandings both of what mental processes go into decision making and of what such decisions potentially consider; that can be, as hinted above, a large array of complicated notions, beliefs, habits, desires, fears, and complicated memories. 

It turns out, therefore, that there are numerous factors that go into these acts of deciding to act.  One, as the behaviorists argue, are the conditions of the present situation, or at least, what is perceived from the current situation or from extrinsic factors.[4]  For purposes of identification in this discussion, this set of cognitive elements can be called the real domain.  The real domain is constituted by the theories or paradigms one holds about reality, one’s memories, and one’s current perceptions. 

These elements make themselves usually known in a holistic way in that individuals attempt to create congruence among their substantive components.  Usually upon reflection, often in response to a relevant question, people think in terms of individual elements.  Short of that, the sum of these elements constitutes a holistic picture of what is.

Components or elements that do not “fit” substantively; they offend the logical wholeness of the rest and cause internal discomfort known as dissonance.[5]  In this domain there are the recognitions of all the relevant values and goals people have in life as matters of fact.  These elements – while in themselves belonging to the ideal domain (to be explained below) – add vibrance to any dissonance one might feel in each situation.  It can intensify dissonance and when it is experienced, individuals seek and usually arrive at some accommodation so that the dissonance is lessened.

How?  For one, individuals can abandon their related values or goals or rationalize the perceived inconsistencies in question if the situations allow.  Another option is that they can neglect the inconsistencies, or the affected values or goals can be diminished, if only for the time being, in importance.  This last possibility is often an important attribute of that other domain, the aforementioned ideal domain – that is, those beliefs individuals hold concerning what should or should not be.[6] 

In that other ideal mental domain, people harbor those values and goals in some order of priority which is to some degree (usually when they are fairly high in intensity or in relation to other values and goals) are readily recognized and felt by the individuals in question.[7]

Priority listings are supported by emotions and feelings, which in turn are motivating forces within the perceived mental purviews of individuals.  The substantive elements of the ideal domain are products of decisions themselves.  But unlike the decisions to act, these decisions are made without the consequences of such decisions immediately present.  One can, in a moment of reflection, decide to hold in high regard the desire to do some activity but when the opportunity arises, one can think better of that initial decision.

Ideal decision making is done upon reflection of past experiences, socialized lessons, and formed habits.  Most of the literature discusses the formulation of such ideals as those which are formed because of past rewards and punishments.  Some have commented on the role communal settings have played in the formation of ideals and often take on moralistic status and can be described as duties and obligations. 

And usually, the elements of ideals conform with the way they were developed or attained.  For example, technical values are generally acquired in technical environments; loving values tend to be attained in loving relationships.  The substance of the values and goals not only tend to be congruent with each other, but also with their formulation.

That is, they create patterns of dealing with the entailed emotions, the allegiance to sets of mores – this harkens to that delightful book, Habits of the Heart, by Robert Bellah, et al.[8] – and from the first domain, the real domain, their supportive beliefs – the “habits of the mind.”  All this is sensed not as individual components, but with a comfortable, repeatable wholeness within one’s consciousness – “this is just the way I see things,” or “this is just the way I feel about it.”

Another set of motivations or influences on the decision-making process is the physiological factors.  Here, the elements of this set of factors are not intentional on the part of people.  The elements include the genetic makeup of individuals, the changes, through aging, in the chemical compositions of people, and the social reactions to behaviors that such genetic and chemical compositions encourage. 

These factors or motivations are not chosen by individuals but are the product of given conditions that are present in either affected situations that people confront or exist more or less chronically in their biological makeups.[9]  Of course the other factor that affects this domain is accidental occurrences that have negative physical consequences – from a slip and fall to wartime injuries.  People so afflicted may have had life changing experiences that have affected how they see their worlds, which include mental effects on their real and ideal domains.

So, this account will stop here and simply state that decision making sessions are influenced by what occupies people’s minds in the form of what they “see” as the real (either in the present situations or from what they recollect from their past), what they believe should or should not be – their ideal beliefs – and what the mind recognizes are the physiological conditions or limitations that people’s bodies are experiencing. In the next posting, this account will venture into the time space in which decisions are made.

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[1] For a lighthearted description of this claim, see “Critical Thinking and Decision-Making:  Why Is It So Hard to Make Decisions?” GCF Global (n.d.), accessed June 10, 2023, https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-decisions/1/# AND for a more professional account (involving business related decisions) see Vassundhara Sawhney, “Why Do We Try to Dodge Difficult Decisions?” Ascend (August 19, 2021), accessed June 10, 2023, https://hbr.org/2021/08/why-do-we-try-to-dodge-difficult-decisions AND for a more scholarly account, a bit dated, Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).

[2] Robert Slavin, Educational Psychology:  Theory and Practice (London, England:  Pearson, 2022).

[3] This has been studied from various perspectives.  For example, how others influence people’s decision making, see Vanessa K. Bohn, M. Mhdi Roghanizad, and Amy Z. Xu, “Underestimating Our Influence over Others’ Unethical Behavior and Decisions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 3, accessed June 10, 2023, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167213511825 AND for a more standard account, see Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium:  Ethnicity in International Politics, (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1993).

[4] Slavin, Educational Psychology.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Robert L. Solso, Cognitive Psychology (8^th Edition), (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2007).

[8] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1985/2007).

[9] For example, Bruce Goldman, “Two Minds:  The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women,” Stanford Medicine Magazine (May 22, 2017) accessed June 10, 2023, https://www.google.com/search?q=recent+review+of+moir+and+jessel+brain+sex&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=recent+review+of+moir+and+jessel+brain+sex&aqs=chrome..69i57.20198j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1 AND Anne Moir and David Jessel, Brain Sex:  The Real Difference between Men and Women (New York, NY:  Dell Publishing, 1989).