PROUD TO BE US

This blog promotes two social/political attributes:  social capital and civic humanism.  Isaac Kramnick writes of civic humanism: 

… civic humanism conceives of man as a political being whose realization of self occurs only through participation in public life, through active citizenship in a republic.  The virtuous man is concerned primarily with the public good, res publica, or commonweal, not with private or selfish ends.[1]

While such a notion is probably pleasant for any good citizen to hear, there are two concerns. 

One, why would anyone be so motivated?  Two, in a time when the dominant political view, the natural rights construct, ignores any such sense of virtuousness, what promotes civic humanism in modern American life?  Yes, the natural rights’ view does not preclude an individual from harboring such a belief, but it does not encourage it.

          This blog has commented on motivation, especially as it leads to good citizenship.  After all, if a main concern of civics education is to encourage students to lead good, civic lives, the question of motivation is obvious.  This is particularly important in modern life where so much of social reality is dealing with faceless entities – government, large corporations, populous urban environments.  The personal touch to public affairs is quite prominent in its absence. 

When no one in an extended environment seems to know how one behaves or, for the most part, cares, it is hard enough to promote law abiding behavior.  Here, the notion of civic humanism calls not only for obeying the law but dedicating a significant part of one’s life to res publica, the commonwealth.  Wow!

Now, this blog supports, as opposed to natural rights, federation theory.  This latter theory, as described in this blog, calls on citizens to abide by the standard of civic humanism, at least, as an ideal.  In turn, that leads to actively “teaching,” in civics classes, values and arranging content that extolls this virtue. 

The blog has explained that this need not be through propaganda techniques, but through open-ended questioning in which students strive to solve relevant issues.  The support manifests itself through the topics and questions such a curriculum utilizes.  And, yes, through such a curriculum a student can reject civic humanism but is called upon to justify such a position.

But the challenge remains:  what motivates one to be receptive to such a value.  Richard Dagger[2] reports on this question.  He shares with his readers the concerns of Michael Sandel who identifies three sources for such a motivation. 

The first is for people to feel a sense that one needs a healthy social order – a society that, if not a commonwealth, is one where citizens readily obey the law and abide by its norms.  If citizens meet their needs, such as securing a reasonable job, then they are disposed to have positive judgements of their society. 

This includes every individual, in a spirit of reciprocity, to go along; to do his/her part.  This might call for occasional sacrifices as one fulfills duties associated with citizenship.  Yes, there is the problem of the free-rider, but in a healthy society this is kept to a minimum.  And that minimum does not solely depend on policing.  If social harmony overly depends on coercive, police powers, that society will find the financial expense for cooperation to be prohibitive.

The second has to do with the residue of living in a functional republic.  That is, going about doing the things one does and be able to do them with reasonable success, one generally will develop sentimental ties with those he/she interacts.  From that, a person will generalize that good feeling and extend the sentiment to the population.  He/she will develop an emotional disposition to promote that society or nation.  It feels good to positively support such a commonwealth. 

This might reach a level in which obligations or duties are accepted more readily.  One might be ready to sacrifice for the homeland or the state or the community in which one resides.  The sentiment might take the following form:  “These are my folks!”

The third source of motivation reminds one of Maslow’s highest order of needs.  That is self-actualization.  Those familiar with Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model know that the sixth level, a level few attain, is self-actualization.  To be so motivated one needs to know oneself so well that he/she realizes what one really wants out of life. 

Not what one wants for other reasons, like impressing one’s neighbor, but what stems from one’s nature.  As Psychology Today puts it:  self-actualization “represents growth of an individual toward fulfillment of the highest needs; those for meaning in life, in particular.”[3]  Sandel believes a civic humanistic disposition is part of being human; i.e., to desire promoting one’s society, one’s culture, one’s community.

In the last posting, this blog reported on the natural human tendency to being tribal.  It turns out that the hypothalamus produces a hormone, oxytocin, which is instrumental in biasing one in favor of those people one is taught to believe belong to “Us.”  It further encourages one to be biased against “Them.”  That posting described this natural fact as promoting prejudicial beliefs and that civics education should actively counter this Us/Theming when it comes to prejudicial judgements and behaviors.

But is there a positive side to this phenomenon?  Is the hormone the basis by which a person is motivated toward finding fulfillment in holding one’s people, nation, community as an extension of oneself?  By so doing, does that sense lead one to define who he/she is by the positive roles he/she plays to further the legitimate interests of that greater social entity?  If so, one can see substance to Sandel’s third source of motivation.

This topic will be picked up in the next posting.  Turns out, Sandel’s idea, as appealing as it is, does have its critic.  The next posting will review that criticism and determine, in terms of federation theory, how motivation should be treated in an ideal civics education curriculum.

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[1] Isaac Kramnick, “John Locke and Liberal Constitutionalism,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume I:  The Colonial Era through Reconstruction, ed. Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 98.

[2] Richard Dagger, Civic Virtue:  Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (New York, NY:  Oxford, 1997).

[3] “The Theory of Self-Actualization,” Psychology Today, August 13, 2013, accessed April 5, 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-and-psychopathology/201308/the-theory-self-actualization.

WHO GOES THERE?

Perhaps one has heard the bit of common wisdom that prejudices are not inherited, they are not inbred, they are learned.  This writer wants to believe this notion without any qualifications.  The problem, though, is that this whole business of “Us-vs.-Them” is a bit more complicated than just attributing it to socializing hateful messages to young people.

          One neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolsky, writes on this very issue.  Here is an excerpt:

As it’s been said … “There are two kinds of people in the world:  those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.”  There are more of the first.  And it is vastly consequential when people are divided into Us and Them, in-group and out-group, “the people” (i.e., our kind) and the Other … The brain fault lines dividing Us from Them [can be shown through a] discussion of oxytocin ... [T]he hormone prompts trust, generosity, and cooperation toward Us but crappier behavior toward Them – more preemptive aggression in economic play, more advocacy of sacrificing Them (but not Us) for the greater good.  Oxytocin exaggerates Us/Them-ing.[1]

What seems to be going on is that there is an inbred bias toward tribalism.  That parochial bias was probably useful in pre-civilization days when, due to scarcity, protecting one group’s resources was vital to the survival of a tribe.  Those groups so armed with oxytocin were successful, those not so armed were not so successful.

          But a hormone cannot distinguish between people.  The bias might be inbred, but the target is learned.  And, by wishing for more efficiency and, in turn, the efficiency a tribe can attain by trading and cooperating with other tribes – and later, with other peoples, nations, and leagues of nations – an economic motivation was introduced to corral this bias under some control.  That is, because it has proved so profitable, humans marched toward global, economic arrangements.  This march progressed from trading with those nearby toward those far away.

          At times, these arrangements were set up by exploitive relations.  This was probably most clearly done in the age of colonization.  Led by the European powers, 1500s onward, efficiencies were had by stealing the resources of others.  Under such a system, an Us-vs.-Them view was functional to seek that system’s immediate ends.  Unfortunately, though, it sowed the seeds for increasing levels of antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited and, then, among the exploiters.  History is full of wars between and among colonial powers.

          This historical trend became evermore destructive.  Ironically, heavily influenced by the ever-increasing economic viabilities of this global trend, monies were available to “advance” the military capabilities of these exploiting actors.  These capabilities took a prodigious leap with the development of industrial modes of production.  One of the first indication of how destructive industrial weaponry is was the American Civil War.  That war took the fighting from open fields to urban areas.  The death rates rose substantially and included many non-combatants.

          Then, a few years later, there was World War I (18 million deaths) and World War II (50 to 80 million deaths).  In addition, the very economies of the warring nations were being devasted.  World War II practically destroyed the manufacturing facilities of Europe.  In other words, the very motivations that promoted exploitation were being attacked.  Exploitation, via both the rationale of economic advantage and demonizing the Them was undermined.

          Hence, the post-World War II movement toward a globalized economy materialized.  There have also been policies, especially among Western nations, to mature beyond Us-vs.-Them thinking.  This, for a non-prejudicial person, is a welcomed development, but one does need to remember:  there is that natural bias toward Us/Theming. 

The point here is:  it doesn’t help to underestimate this bias.  All that is needed for this ugly aspect of human nature to show itself is to have reverses in a nation’s economic conditions.  To wit, currently, there is an apparent rise in nationalism – a type of Us/Theming.  This writer believes that this is not a trend emanating out of nowhere. 

He sees it resulting from the Great Recession and developments negatively affecting some groups who have suffered from globalization.  Specifically, those groups are former manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs due to cheap, competitive workers in developing countries.  Another group has been miners – particularly of coal – where economic trends and concerns for the environment have lowered the demand for those minerals.

So, while the point that prejudices are learned is correct when it is applied to who gets victimized, it does not apply to people’s predispositions to develop prejudices.  Therefore, and this lesson is important to civics education, an enlightened people needs to be proactive in meeting the challenge of prejudicial thinking.  Not all that is natural is best or even good.

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[1] Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017), 387-389 (Kindle edition).  Oxytocin is a hormone.  It is produced by the hypothalamus, in the brain, and emitted by the pituitary gland. This is an important hormone during the childbirth process and assists the male reproduction function.