AFTERMATH, II

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

The last posting of this blog highlighted the role television plays in promoting the natural rights’ view of reality, especially political reality.  Relying on the work of Neil Postman and his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death,[1] Postman expresses little regard for TV and sees it as a counterproductive media that furthers among the viewing public shallow perceptions regarding social/political relations. 

While this blogger alluded to a more guarded agreement with Postman, a recent CNN broadcast convinced him that he should further qualify his opinion regarding this critique of TV.  Beginning in the 1960s, broadcast networks did attempt to become more nuanced and reflective of real human interactions – both with their dramas and comedies. 

The list of more socially responsible programming could be found and included such shows as All in the Family, Law and Order, LA Law, and the like.  This blogger also referred to cable programming as broadcasting responsible attempts to depict reflective themes that touch upon current social issues.  But overall, Postman makes a legitimate evaluation of that medium.

Since that time, another medium has fallen on the American public – that of social media.  It has demonstrated a gross irresponsibility but with the profound difference from TV in that it is not run by a handful of media executives but is the product of millions of people posting all sorts of content – including blogs.  

And someone who threw himself into investigating this world of social media is Andrew Marantz.  This blog has commented on his work earlier, but here, it presents his thoughts from the perspective of the historical role social media seems to be filling regarding the dialectic struggle between federalist thought and the natural rights view. 

To begin, Marantz reveals his political slant by claiming, not so controversially, that the US was created to serve the interests of white men. [2]  Despite that, those white men – in sufficient numbers – idealistically recognized that such a racist foundation was neither right (on moral grounds) nor practical. 

This posting is not claiming they established a just environment, but that they put in writing – in the US Constitution and other legal documents – the provision of a legal requirement establishing and respecting equality.  No, it did not guarantee in practice that the nation would follow suit, but it did express this value as an espoused, legal value.  That element in its constitutional formula put in place a standard, vis-à-vis the nation’s social, political, and economic realms, that everyone was to have equal access to justice.[3] 

And it is in these realms that social media is today playing a significant role.  Given this backdrop, one can gauge the effects that media is having.  That is, through handheld devices, there has been a steady diet of irresponsible messaging – and that includes by and directed to young people.  The harm is of such magnitude that civics teachers should incorporate these shenanigans as lesson topics to be highlighted and investigated by students. 

For example, that media is full of false “news” coverage – at times totally made up – that casts, usually left-of-center proposals, as not only imprudent but right down illegal, unpatriotic, or otherwise immoral.  In addition, it often feels free to cast false accusations at individuals its authors find “targetable” for some social or political reasons.

Marantz cites President John F. Kennedy as saying that people are disposed to accept simple information that supports what they already believe but that upon further thought, have proven to be sober enough to reconsider and proceed prudently.  But what if there is what Marantz describes as an accelerant? 

That is, what if the time between being initially exposed to such information and the time people respond to it is drastically shortened?  It leads to behaviors by people who would have acted differently if they had had the time to reflect what those information sources were spewing.  The likelihood of imprudent behavior, therefore, is highly magnified.

That is the role social media is playing in many of the nation’s current debates over its policy options.  In effect, social media is affecting the good sense of many people who then do not take the time to soberly regard the information with which they are being bombarded.

How does this newer technology cause this disruption?  It provides an outlet – on a global scale – to messaging in written and visual form without any or limited gatekeeping.  Yes, this blog is an example, and its blogger is thankful for the opportunity to continue what he did professionally as a hobby that he enjoys.  Hopefully, the reader does not judge his efforts as irresponsible.  But of course, across the board, through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., responsibility has not characterized how too many participants have used this opportunity.

Instead, many – who unfortunately exhibit the necessary skills – have seen it as an opportunity to make, irresponsibly, a buck through setups that allot to them advertising funds that make their way into their pockets.  Nothing is wrong with finding ways to make some money if those ways do not hurt or otherwise counter the common good.  That is how federalist values judge such behavior.  But what too many are doing today, by any meaningful standard, does hurt the common good. 

That is, if the aim is to disrupt the political or economic conditions for the sake of being disruptive or to promote a political/economic agenda by dishonest means or claims, the welfare of the American people is being negatively affected.  And with a bit of irony, the work of such parties seemingly transpires without any aim or goal in sight.  Disruption is sought for its own sake.  In such cases, one can judge such activities, at best, as indifferent to the common good but too often, it turns out, are in opposition to it.

          Has anyone been hurt?  The first casualties have been various industries.  They include journalism, publishing, advertising, and political consulting.  And here, their efforts reflect a give and take relationship in which such activity affects these industries; the industries respond and that, through various creative means, plays into further disruptions.  Oftentimes, such back and forth is unpredictable and will shortly be further described.

          Initial targets also included what at another time was called the silent majority.  For those too young to remember, that was the portion of the population that was/is mostly the frustrated middle class of conservative, religious oriented (usually evangelical) groups, and also some of those dispossessed workers who have lost their jobs/income to low-income nations.  In short, it is those people who have been frustrated by the changes the nation has seen since the 1980s.

          And this new media, at least parts of it, talk to those people on a continuous basis.  In addition, those who perpetrate its messaging have been successful in utilizing a language to which these disgruntled people listen.  It has incorporated entertaining messaging, often with humor, as it issues misinformation that matches what that audience wants to hear and see.  Marantz comments on that effect,

 

Then, swiftly, came the unthinkable:  smart, well-meaning people unable to distinguish simple truth from viral misinformation; [in 2017] a pop-culture punch line ascending to the presidency; neo-Nazis marching, unmasked, through several American cities.  This wasn’t the kind of disruption anyone had envisioned.  There had been a serious miscalculation.[4]

 

Whether this is the product of miscalculations or the result of extensive planning, the results are tangibly harmful to the comity of this polity.  And in addition, technology provides even more assistance to this mischief in its use of algorithms.  That is, these messages become targeted to those who want to hear them and avoid those who don’t.

          For those readers who want to look further into this development, this blogger can recommend Marantz’ book.  He conveys a well-rounded view of the social media world by describing how the various programming is produced and what motivates their producers.  He details their politics both in terms of their programming and in their other modes of political behaviors.  It turns out that there is a social media community of its producers and consumers, and the producers have become expert in exploiting it, the media, and the community.

The next posting will end this account of social media by commenting on examples of political messaging by right-of-center advocates who are more formally produced.  The aim of this blogger is not to be partisan, but to further describe how the age of natural rights dominance has/is, through its advocates, discovered newer ways to manifest and strengthen itself.

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[1] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1986).

[2] Andrew Marantz, Anti-social:  Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation (New York, NY:  Penguin Random House, 2019).

[3] This standard took time to be established and that time was marked with various conflicts including a civil war.  Its full statement was not accomplished until the ratifications of the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution.

[4] Ibid., 4.

AFTERMATH, I

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

In the narrative this blog is sharing – that of how federalist values and beliefs have played out in the American experience – it was in the post World War II years when federalism lost its dominance in American political culture.  That dominance was replaced by the natural rights view.  This blog has made extensive comment on the significance of that “turn.”  It has also alluded to the judgement that that turn’s effects have only increased in the ensuing years, although the strength of the natural rights view has ebbed and flowed as cultural elements tend to do.

          Central to the natural rights view is an intense sense of individualism.  This blogger has noticed that of late, various TV pundits have referred to this excessive individualism as just a matter of fact eliciting no controversy – it is just an accepted factual claim.  But that state has its developmental history in the years since the late 1940s.  If one investigates those developments, one finds numerous trends assisting this overall makeover.

          To this view of individualism, an invention would greatly cement and further the influences that were moving the popular culture away from the concerns of community with its levels of cooperation and collaboration.  Along with the influences this blog outlined in recent postings about a national economy and political/social individualism, the nation was profoundly affected by television.

          The late Neil Postman[1] provides a timely account of the effects of television in his 1986 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.  He addresses the way in which TV by the1980s was able to take hold of the popular mindset by having various influences on the American political scene.  From his book, he offers:

 

Our conversation about nature and about ourselves [is] conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible and convenient to employ.  We do not see nature as “it” is but only as our languages are.  And our languages are our media.  Our media are our metaphors.  Our metaphors create the control of our culture.[2]

 

In short, the metaphor – in this case TV – dictates how a people view reality and define their expectations of not only that reality but also of that culture.

          Postman writes about the effects of television:  “I believe the epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist.”[3]  Written exposition, which was the major method of communication coming into the mid-20^th century, demands analysis and inferential thinking skills.  In addition, the written media demands a culture which promotes a reflective and useful presentation of information in its discourse of reality.

          In that vein, he relates how America was different in the nineteenth century, despite the transcendental and then pragmatic biases.  In point of fact, America was, prior to TV, a book and pamphlet reading nation.  Postman describes,

 

Public business was channeled into and expressed through print, which became the model, the metaphor and the measure of all discourse.  The resonance [defined as the power of influencing thought and action] of the lineal, analytical structure of print, and in particular, of expository prose, could be felt everywhere.[4]

 

The television culture, on the other hand, is bombarded by a constant stream of useless, disconnected information.

          This “peek-a-boo” form of discourse is ubiquitous with “only one pervasive voice – the voice of entertainment.”[5]  Image media of television demands passivity as the viewer is presented a discontinuous, trivial reality.  While Postman gives many examples of the pervasiveness of this entertainment outlook, the example most relevant here is in his chapter entitled, “Teaching as an Amusing Activity.”

          As elsewhere, the character of the media determines the character of the activity.  In terms of schooling, the activity is formulating the curriculum.  What is most frightening about Postman’s argument is that the cited dangers seem to be accepted as innovative education.  He argues that educational television follows TV’s commandment:  no prerequisites, no perplexity, and avoidance of exposition.  This renders it impossible for any affected curriculum to look at any issue responsibly.

          To the argument that holds that TV allows educators the ability to present studied materials dramatically, he cites research that questions the notion that learning takes place when material is presented in dramatic style.  He sums up the effects of curriculum based on TV as follows:

 

And in the end, what will the students have learned?  They will … have learned something about [the subject matter].  Mainly, they will have learned that learning is a form of entertainment or, more precisely, that anything worth learning can take the form of an entertainment, and ought to.[6]

         

In conclusion, on the effects of TV, not only does the nation suffer from a self-indulgent population, but one that lacks the ability to reflect effectively.  Television has helped inflict the nation with a perceptional perspective that tends to thwart the ability to assess the short sightedness of the current, prevailing individualism.  Instead, TV caters to the consumerism and the self-indulgence by presenting a standard by which too many Americans judge reality.

          And that basis of judgement leads one to consider the role social media plays today and is the topic of the next posting.  Of course, since Postman’s book was published, changes have beset TV.  There has been the explosion of cable TV and now there is streaming.  While some of these changes tweak the claims one finds above – e.g., cable has provided more thought-provoking programming – the main points Postman makes are judged by this blogger to be still valid.

          In sum, that effect that TV has rendered and the other developments this blog’s narrative has described, has been a history of a steady drift away from the federalist, communitarian origins of the nation.  In its stead has been a growing centralization of political and economic power.  In addition, a dysfunctional individualism has grown in the local vacuum created by the centralization of power (more on this to come).  And with that, the nation is primed for the effects of those handheld devices – the cell phones with their links to online social media.

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[1] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1986).

[2] Ibid., 15.

[3] Ibid., 27.

[4] Ibid., 41. 

[5] Ibid., 80.

[6] Ibid., 154 (emphasis added).

THE TURN

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

Can one attribute American political culture’s adoption of the natural rights view to pragmatism?  Of course not.  What that philosophy did do was to provide a line of thought and reasoning that undermined a more directed sense that Americans should be a federated population.  Instead, it casts, as ideal, a populous being able to put aside the binding obligations such a federation demands – that one cannot be simply justified in catering to one’s sense of what works with one’s beliefs, emotions, interests, and station in life.

          Instead, it upgrades one’s proclivities, biases, and tastes – what makes one feel good – to justify most chosen options or desired options one might pick or harbor.  Through the work of the pragmatists, such as William James, their ideas were first introduced to US culture in the late 1800s and took significant hold on many Americans.  And as the twentieth century began and progressed, those more individualistic notions helped make acceptable more laissez faire views in the economy. 

Under a capitalist regime, one can let go, without any guilt, of any responsibilities toward the fate of workers, consumers, or small level producers.  This indifference mirrors the main tenets of the natural rights view and, at the same time, served the interests of large corporations so they could conduct their businesses to maximize their profits.

          Now to apply these notions to the new economic world that the global corporations introduced, one can see how communal arrangements lost or had diminished their reliance on people fulfilling their federated duties and responsibilities.  And also, their dominance led to a path:  economic activity experienced fast economic growth, followed by a skewed mal distribution of income, and eventual collapse as the resulting imbalances resulted in global depression. 

Such a progression seemed, in hindsight, as simply an inevitable result given that actors just pragmatically furthered their individual interests.  It led to highly irresponsible activities that were unsustainable given economic realities.  These activities included exploiting workers, abusing consumers, and crushing competition wherever possible.  Included in such activities were reckless investment strategies that created unsustainable “bubbles” such as in the stock market, and most of that was repeated in the early years of the current century.

When that stock market bubble eventually burst in 1929 (and in 2008) and investors lost billions of dollars, the world faced catastrophic consequences as businesses went bankrupt and millions of jobs were lost.  Spurred by the crisis of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was confronted with a decision.

Was he going to first steer federal policy to create industrial associations, communities of interests within each industry, as called for under the National Recovery Act?  Or was he going to empower governmental, central planners to set national economic policy?  This was not a policy position based on personal pragmaticism, a la James, but on a national mandated program that would rely on a hefty level of pragmaticism but at a national level. 

That decision was never made, for it was World War II that ended the depression before a comprehensive economic policy was established.  But, despite this injection of huge federal spending, creation of millions of jobs, and healthy levels of consumption – all to fight the enemy – the nation was left with a change of heart. 

And a good part of that newer perspective was an orientation to look to Washington, D.C. for solutions and more of an amoral view of governmental policies.  That newer view shed concerns for the partnering nature of citizenship and instead, in pragmatic style, sought for what “worked” in the immediate challenge the polity faced at any given time.  And that took shape, economically, with the default policy of liberal, Keynesian economics. 

This approach called for governmental actions which first manipulated fiscal policy and later monetary policy to promote economic growth (a compromise acceptable to all competing parties).  Such an approach relieved the government from making judgments about the aims of any competing interests.  Like a professional unattached mechanic – catering to some degree to pragmatic notions – the central government could raise and lower government spending, taxes, and money supply to get desired results. 

While how much raising and lowering was not immediately evident, experience could provide better answers as these tools were utilized and evaluated as time went by.  But that ability would place enormous power in the hands of the bureaucrats of the central government.[1] 

In that, local institutions became less powerful because they were not able to meet the demands of citizenry; they were less able to make authoritative decisions concerning the interests of average citizens.[2]  As a consequence, in this vacuum, there arose the anonymity of the individual and the general legitimacy of radical individualism.

 

Individual versus State is as false an antithesis today as it ever was.  The State grows on what it gives to the individual as it does so on what it takes from competing social relationships – family, labor union, profession, local community, and church.

          And the individual cannot but find a kink of vicarious strength in what is granted to the State.  For is he not himself a part of the State?  Is he not a fraction of the sovereign?  And is he not adding to his political status as a citizen what he subtracts from his economic, religious, and cultural statuses in society?

          He is; and in this fractional political majesty the individual finds not only compensation for the frustrations and insecurities to which he is heir in mass society but also the intoxicating sense of collective freedom.[3]

 

As Nisbet goes on to explain, the State becomes more in charge of the larger concerns at the expense of the influence of associations and local governments, and there remains no one involved in addressing smaller, day-to-day concerns.

          These latter concerns are numerous and in total are significant to Americans’ everyday lives.  They include the issues involved with civility or such matters as whether children are benefitting from well financed communal programs.

 

We have tended to miss the subtler but infinitely more potent threats bound up with diminution of authorities and allegiances in the smaller areas of association and with the centralization and standardization of power that takes place in the name of, and on behalf of, the people.[4]

 

The people, as a result, lose control of the major issues while feeling little to no restraints over their individual prerogatives in conducting their personal – person-to-person – lives.

This includes how they interact within their families and among their acquaintances.  With this newfound anonymity, the communal restraints of the past are dismissed and then forgotten.  Or, stated in other words, the drift toward obsessive individualism becomes pervasive and legitimates a sense of “do your thing” without any sense of obligation or duty to the federated union.

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[1] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

[2] Ibid. AND Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community:  A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (San Francisco, CA:  Institute of Contemporary Studies, 1990).

[3] Nisbet, The Quest for Community, 228.

[4] Ibid., 229.

A PRAGMATIC TURN

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

So, as the last posting claims, Americans, as the 1800s came to an end, entertained the notion by Charles Darwin that life was merely the daily struggle for survival.  Of course, those who held traditional views, many of them defined by religious beliefs, were not going to take that lying down.  Many in that field would launch major counterattacks that would first belittle the implications of Darwin’s findings, but eventually organized more formal responses.

          Among them – of probably most note – were active efforts to prevent this survivalist messaging from becoming part of America’s subject matter in its schools, culminating with the famous Scopes trials of the 1920s.  But all of this did not prevent what many considered a more common diffusion of this impulsive and shallow mode of thinking.  This thinking was particularly acute among segments of the population usually in larger cities such as New York and Chicago. 

But more needs to be clarified regarding William James’ analysis and how it culminated in a new philosophic approach known as pragmatism.  Again, relying on Allen C. Guelzo’s work, the central notion of James’ reasoning was that if one could not attribute any design or master plan to nature other than one of randomness entailed with the battle for survival among organic life – called natural selection – there was no reason to deny one from imposing one’s personal patterns on that reality.  That is, one person’s views were as good as anyone else’s views.

Guelzo describes this newer approach:

 

James knew that … people choose to believe, not what is strictly true, but what turns out to be most convenient to their inclinations, or in evolutionary terms, what is more convenient to their survival or prosperity.  So long as there is no absolute proof to the contrary and as long as someone is not just blowing bubbles, the believer is perfectly justified in indulging a belief in God, and equally so with the unbeliever, who in the absence of the same proofs, may indulge a will not to believe in God.[1]

 

Here, one needs to stop and consider.  An event happens, say an election.  The official loser claims that the election was rigged.  His/her supporters wish, a la James, to believe in the loser’s claim.  While one cannot prove that the claim is not true, one cannot prove it is. 

Since the system needs to accept one or the other possibility – was it rigged or not – the system sets up a process that aims to avoid such cheating, but then assigns the courts to determine whether any claim to such cheating took place.  The courts, then, establish the burden of proof on those parties claiming the cheating took place (in most instances, it is difficult or impossible to prove something did not take place).

To prove that it did – this seems to be the only way to accommodate such claims – calls for observable evidence that people engaged in some sort of activity such as producing false ballots, tampering with the machinery of voting booths and counting facilities, or some such action.  Yet when the claims are not proved, but the accuser persists in those claims, what happens? 

Legally nothing, but the political cost can be high and undermine the entire legitimacy of the process and of the system itself – isn’t that what is happening in the American polity today?  Regardless, what sounds innocuous in James’s argument, as illustrated by this election example, can be quite harmful. 

In this case, that harm is to the legitimacy of a political system, but with some imagination, one can think about how such thinking can affect a society in various ways.  For example, one can think of the irresponsible trends the nation experienced in the years leading up to the Great Depression.  The Roaring ’20s were well named.

James continues.  Since people have to adopt beliefs in all sorts of things, there is no a priori reason to rely exclusively on scientific findings.  For various reasons, one can cite less confidence about what science provides at any given time.  For one thing, reality changes and findings can become no longer valid, or results are limited by some factor or other – one sees this currently with what one hears should be done concerning the COVID pandemic. 

Picking up on the thoughts of Chauncey Wright, Oliver Wendall Holmes, and Charles Sanders Peirce, James, with the above notions, spells out the basic ideas and ideals of pragmaticism.  Whether this newer approach builds upon or diminishes the effects of the Enlightenment and scientific thinking, one can interpret the effects in various ways.  On the one hand, it furthered a secular mode of thinking but as just illustrated, it undermined the basic legitimacy of scientific findings.

How?  Well, it offered a philosophic basis by which to ignore science – at least to some degree.  In that sense, it questions the epistemology of science.  It gives permission to upgrade one’s “beliefs” (as opposed to knowledge) and, therefore, provides a platform to legitimate doubt.  The function of thinking, according to Peirce, in Darwinian terms, is to develop habits so that one acts in such ways to secure survival.  Nothing is more practical.

This flew in the face of both theology and science since both sought/seek truth in theoretic terms – those abstract explanations for why the real is real.  But, in terms of pragmaticism, truth lies in the results one experiences in reality – what works or doesn’t work.  And this seemed highly congruent with how people normally think.  Here, a common standard of truth is what results in profit – that is, a betterment in one’s condition.

In this pursuit, to be honest, one’s “temperament” plays a central role that science and theology ignore.  This lays the foundation for relativity, not in natural science, but in popular culture.  What works – no, what works best – becomes the standard for truth.  Therefore, beliefs, say a belief in the existence of God, solves many concerns and fears.  If it works for someone, then why not?  Go ahead and believe. 

To broaden this view, pragmatists argue that this sense of truth prevails in the universe.  This is exemplified by society.  There, policies by the various entities, including government, are the product of calculations.  If an entity acts one-way, certain consequences will likely occur.  Those outcomes can be measured as to their viability and consequences. 

Law, especially criminal law, in a very practical way, weighs in on those calculations.  Therefore, to be law-abiding is not a moral concern, but a transactional concern.  One obeys laws not to be good or even right.  One does so to avoid paying the costs of being caught.  If it works for a person to avoid the costs of being caught by thinking in moral terms, that’s fine too – “whatever works.”

Why was James attracted to such thinking?  One can speculate as to his family stories – which Guelzo reviews – and his and everyone else’s experience with the Civil War with all of its costs, emotionally and otherwise.  There, justifications – from both sides – often cited religious rationales. 

It seems God was on both sides of that conflict, according to the respective apologist one cites.  One can detect, in James’ work, his personal stake in these ideas, mostly from a therapeutic perspective. In other words, his pragmaticism functioned to allow him to process all the unimaginable pain the nation experienced.

Yet, as Guelzo points out, James never addresses why people initially seek the truth.  The search for truth often leads to sad outcomes as in the Civil War and its casualties.  Some hint, for example, that Abraham Lincoln, given the moral stakes involved, was resigned to see the war take place.[2]  But that reflects what this blogger finds most damaging with the pragmatist argument. 

History seems to indicate that one can generalize certain modes of behavior among citizenries that promote societal health and longevity.  The fact that the world’s religions seem to copy each other in terms of moral principles bolsters that claim, albeit their interpretations of those principles can vary – example, some justifying slavery. 

If pragmatism, with all its experimentation – the type in which people seek what works – ends up discovering the same conclusions, perhaps that will accrue to people as a plus, i.e., a sense of ownership as to what is moral.  But that route can prove to be highly costly. 

What one can take away from James and the pragmatists is their formula by which traditional moral standards and thinking could be put aside without much guidance as to what – to any degree of specificity – is good or bad, right or wrong.  And that could and did sacrifice a federalist/republican mindset that undergirded the nation’s constitutional framework.  What could go wrong?

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 130.

[2] For example, Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1999).

THE “BIRTH” OF PSYCHOLOGY

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

The last posting gave the reader a thumbnail summary of the Progressive and New Deal eras and attempted to make the point that between the two, Americans expressed an adoption of a consumerist view toward governance.  And as one takes this shift into account, one can readily see a move away from federal relationships between and among Americans and their government to a natural rights view in defining those relationships. 

They – many of them – ceased seeing themselves as mutual partners of the polity to that of consumers of governmental services.  This shift has proven to be fundamental and highly consequential.  To understand its significance or implication, one needs to have some understanding as to why it was motivated to happen.  And for that, while not offering a complete account, one needs to revisit the 1800s.

Of all things, a biological discovery seems to have had an inordinate influence on changing America’s view of all social relationships including political ones.  With Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, the basic religious, theological assumptions of Americans came to be seriously questioned. 

While among typical Americans, the book became a subject of humor (common images of monkey relatives); among intellectuals, it became immersed in serious questioning of various topics and issues.  Is there a god?  Is there free will?  Is life just a material reality deprived of any spiritual importance or existence?  If current life is the product of a long, evolving process, what does that mean in terms of how old the earth is?  All of these questions brought biblical accounts into question.

Allen C. Guelzo[1] brings his readers a short, but insightful summary of how intellectuals reacted to this 1859 book.  He identifies those who initially took on these concerns.  The interested reader can look up those intellectuals – mostly theologians – who led in this questioning.  They include Crawford Howell Toy, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Augustus Briggs, and Walter Rauschenbusch.  Here is a snippet of Guelzo’s description:

 

[With the backdrop of the rise of corporate power], [f]or the 22 million people who inhabited American cities, crowding into festering tenements, there was precious little in the way of public community or organic society.

          But to Social Darwinists [i.e., the social application of Darwin’s ideas], … that was not a problem because there were no mystic, spiritual ties to bind families and communities together; and to the great captains of Gilded Age industry, this was just what nature had ordained.  When William H. Vanderbilt was asked by an incredulous reporter about what the public would say about his most recent corporate shenanigans, he replied, “The public be damned.”[2]

 

          But Guelzo places the bulk of his account on the work and life of William James.  Beyond providing a review of James’ family background – an interesting and telling story – Guelzo highlights this intellectual’s contribution to this ongoing reaction to Darwin.  And in this, one needs to mention the influence of Charles Sanders Peirce.  Here is a rundown of his, James’, main points. 

          To begin, there might be free will or not, but if one believes there is, that is enough to give one a positive sense of oneself.  With that, one can function with confidence as one meets his/her challenges or opportunities.  As a result, one enjoys a sense of freedom and a – at least – perceived moral life.  And these ideas encouraged James to pick up the study of the mind – what would become known as psychology – which at the time had not even been named.

          This interest seemed to grow from his studies in theology and philosophy.  And, in turn, both of those fields were based on introspection or the study, in fancy language, of one’s consciousness, an outgrowth of self-absorption.  And at the same time, from abroad, an interest in psychology was taking root in Germany but not from a spiritual angle.  There, the study zeroed in on how stimulation affected mental and physical capacities.

          Another source from abroad was what this blog has referred to before, the “common-sense” philosophy from Scotland.  There, such writers as Alexander Bain and John Stuart Mill reconceptualized thinking as merely ideas about things as opposed to perceived moral qualities of moral objects.  This was more in line with Darwin’s description of survival as a battle within a physical environment sans any outer-world forces or qualities.

          All of this suggested that psychology could and should be a legitimate physical science and subjected to scientific methods of measuring variables or factors and attempting to make predictable conclusions about a world in which survival of the fittest is studied.

          Finally, in 1890, James had his hefty work, Principles of Psychology, published.  And in that work, one finds the influence of another thinker – one featured earlier in this blog – Jonathan Edwards.  Guelzo describes this as follows,

 

… the Principles were actually at some moment reminiscent of a great many of Edwards’s approaches and ideas.  James argued that minds were not assemblies of independent faculties that met like a committee for thinking, but more like a stream of consciousness.  “Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits,” James wrote.  “No state of consciousness is permanent or independent like a ‘faculty’.  Instead, consciousness is always generating novelties and appropriating and fusing all kinds of experience.”  The ultimate purpose served by this stream of consciousness was evolutionary.  The mind, James argued, was an organ, evolved for a use, which was to ensure survival.[3]

 

And that consciousness can be analogized as a stage upon which a variety of options is reviewed and evaluated as one considers what to do.  Under such a view, one can entertain the idea of a complex – not an all-or-nothing – sphere of choice.

The possibility of entertaining novelties undermined the notion of a simple, calculating mind that merely figured out rewards or benefits and punishments or costs.  And, in that, life is a succession of encountering things, not as stagnant realities, but in things becoming or “in the making.”

With that, this blog will give the reader a bit of time to consider the worth of James’ contribution.  There is still more to report from his work, but one, at this point, might project where this is going and how federalist values and beliefs might be challenged in some ways and enhanced in others.  Either way, what remains, to this blogger, is a bit surprising.  The next posting will conclude this William James presentation. 

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005).  For a more detailed account of James and other pragmatists, see Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001). 

[2] Guelzo, The American Mind, Part II, 118-119.

[3] Ibid., 129.