UPDATING CIVILITY, PART IV

[Note:  This posting, the previous several postings, and at least the one to follow are a restatement of what has been addressed previously in this blog.  Some of the sentences to come have been provided before but the concern is that other information has been discovered and an update seems appropriate.  The blog has not changed the overall message – that civics education is seriously deficient – but some of the evidence supporting that message needs updating.]

This blog will now venture into addressing civility less from a quantitative perspective – reporting on how many people are rude and how many people storm out of stores because they were treated disrespectfully – to describing the social forces that are producing this less than desired condition.  It will use the language of personal responsibility and citizenship to describe what is happening in this aspect of the nation’s social life.

Many people in this nation are currently concerned with the economy; at least polls seem to indicate that since the financial crisis of 2008, economic issues top voter interest.  Yes, this concern is usually upper most in voters’ minds but given how so many were negatively affected by the Great Recession and its aftereffects, one can hear the anxious stridency among the populous when it comes to jobs and income. 

How are civic concerns intermixed with economic problems?  One can intuitively sense that there is a connection but how exactly do they relate?  To have one see the connection, one needs a workable understanding of the political construct this blog promotes, federation theory.  Remember that a construct is the overall view, and accompanying emotions, about some element of reality.  In terms of civics, that would be over the governmental/political institution of a society. 

Not only does this account want to analyze how economic conditions dispose people to either being civil or not, or how civility affects the economy, but it wants to do it in a way that illustrates how conceived notions of fellow citizens affect how one deals with economic realities.  And, as the last two postings indicate, a key civic concept this account employs and is central to federation theory is the concept of social capital.[1]

This concept hints at a level of meaningful inter-connectiveness among citizens.  While this whole notion will be further developed in subsequent pages of this blog, to be clear, the call here is not about instituting a pie in the sky nirvana or extreme and unrealistic altruism.  Robert D. Putnam's utilization of this idea, social capital, does refer to people looking at their society as something greater than their immediate interests and ambitions, but does not delegitimize those interests. 

Below, this blog will report a great deal about what exactly is being promoted by using the notion of social capital.  Here, the effort is to point out that good citizens are those who embrace social capital as a positive ideal and are willing to seek its qualities in themselves and in their associations and community.

Its opposite would be narcissism and selfishness.  Of course, everyone is entitled to pursue his/her individual goals and interests.  The question is how one balances the demands of one’s ambitions and those of the collectives to which one belongs. 

Many political writings have been about this tension and there exists varied arguments as to what leads to a productive solution to the tension.  Dysfunctional approaches to handling this tension is seen as a key element in determining the levels of incivility that exist within a society.

There are social philosophies that equate economic policy and healthy social arrangements.  For example, promotors of pure market values tend to do that.  Adam Smith, who to many was the father of capitalism, argued that the greater good is achieved by individuals pursuing their individual interests.  The cooperation entailed in providing a wanted good or service within the context of a competitive market, through the “invisible hand,” produces the best results for society in its varied aspects. 

But while capitalism has given nations untold wealth and prosperity, markets do fail and at times will, if unchecked, lead to social detriment.  For example, Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell[2] present a convincing argument, backed by statistical evidence, that excessive narcissism and all of its manifestations were central in creating the conditions that led to the economic crisis initiated by the onset of the near collapse of our financial market back in '08. 

An irrational degree of self-enhancement promoted the excessive materialism and resulting debt which accrued from buying houses beyond people's means to running up credit card charges which placed people in unsustainable positions.  Of course, lending institutions, run by equally narcissistic or purely self-centered motives, fed this monumental irresponsibility.

No, this is not an economic treatise – beyond the expertise of the writer – but here is a take on the relevant developments over the last several decades.  There has been, since the 1980s, an enormous shift of wealth to the upper classes.  Quoting experts Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of Berkeley:  “Over the last generation more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich.  The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind.”[3]

Economies that experience this type of imbalance see consequences detrimental to their overall health.  One consequence tends to be that this inordinate level of income and wealth to the upper class needs to be invested.  At the same time there is a demand gap; i.e., otherwise productive economic activity is hampered by a diminishing ability of the low and middle classes to consume.  When this happens to any meaningful degree, two results can occur. 

One, the excess money (capital) in the hands of the upper class becomes fodder for developing “bubbles;” i.e., ill-conceived investments that heighten asset prices like stocks and real estate when the fundamental economic conditions do not warrant their increases.  And two, the lower classes engage in excessive borrowing to make up for the lost income (to maintain their standards of living).[4]

While these sorts of economic machinations occur, a certain animal spirit is introduced – or more accurately, encouraged – that lead to other irresponsible practices.  In those pre ’08 years, for example, there were also leveraged investment schemes where borrowing was collateralized by assets attained with borrowed money.  These developments progressed in the years leading up to the collapse.

In all of this, one has a lack of investment that generates long-term, needed assets that help develop such productivity enhancing projects (like infrastructure) that create sufficient middle-class employment in the economy.  Hence, a diminishing middle-class occurs.  And all of this is not new; the bubble effect and the excessive leveraging just described were conditions that preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Therefore, what was experienced more recently was a retake, but in a more complex world economy.[5] 

While the ravages of the 2008 collapse did not approach those of the Great Depression, the pain associated with the Great Recession has been real and is still with the nation as segments of its people continue to struggle these many years later.  Only more recently has the nation begun to get long-term unemployment under some level of control.

Whether this account is right or wrong, one did see in the pre-collapse period excessive narcissism based on assumptions created by faulty economic conditions.  The nation spent way over what many of its people were earning (by borrowing on the artificially inflated equity in houses) for a long time.  That time ran out in ’08 and one only hopes that the next folly – some new bubble – does not materialize.

Economically, there are still increasing levels of income and wealth disparity and this trend continues to grow, even after the ’08 collapse.  The use of the concept, social capital, does lead one to see another consequence of this disparity.  In Putnam’s more recent book, Our Kids:  The American Dream in Crisis,[6] he writes about how the disparity has led to a high degree of economic and social segregation among the nation’s economic classes. 

America is not only lacking in social capital, but it is also creating the social dynamics that will make it almost impossible to sustain any social infrastructure that would support it.  Therefore, one can expect in the coming years and decades less public-spirited citizenry, less equality in terms of both economic factors – such as opportunity – and political factors, and less trust and cooperation.  The nation will most likely experience weakening communal bonds and increased animosity among economic segments of the economy.

And this is not limited to how citizens interrelate.  For example, Oliver Bullough describes how it has become the public policy of certain urban areas of this nation to proactively allure money investments by kleptocrats and thieves from around the world.  He highlights the cities of New York and Miami in those pursuits.[7]  What possibly can go wrong?  At a minimum, the social qualities such policy engenders cannot be seen as promoting those values one associates with social capital.

Such policies and the economic activities described above lead to national politics becoming even more strange and antagonistic.  One cannot be surprised if this antagonism adopts a more organized form.  With social media as a resource, one can imagine an organized and militant response by disadvantaged groups.  Seen through this prism, the current political environment with its bizarre undertakings one sees in the news, makes tragic sense.

The point is that the nation is reaping what it sowed; at least one is tempted to see it that way.  And most telling is what Putnam points out: that most Americans are only semi-conscious of these causal developments.  They are simply not being instructed as to these socioeconomic developments.  They know that things are not as good as they used to be, but they have little understanding of what is taking place. 

To illustrate his points, Putnam writes about two kids who live a few miles apart, one a product of an advantaged family, the other of a disadvantaged situation – one can’t even use the term “family” to describe his home life.  Despite their proximity to each other, there is little to no chance they will ever have any contact with each other. 

This is desperately different from the social world Putnam grew up in back in the 1950s.  In that earlier world, his high school had kids from differing social and economic classes.  The level of interaction among the different segments of the student body was healthy and often.  This is not so true today and the level of such interaction is becoming more and more infrequent. 

For one thing, poorer kids are stuck in dysfunctional schools while wealthier kids are more apt to attend private schools.  The “indivisibility” of our nation is becoming a memory.  It needs to address this development by, in part, having its economic metrics account for the cost factors that result from such segregation.  One way it can begin to address this growing dysfunction is by changing what is taught in civics classes:  they can include lessons that describe and explain the sources of such realities.

Civics education has not been responsible for either the economic collapse of 2008 or the class segregation one presently sees growing, but it was, along with many other factors, complicit.  Its content has been devoid of information reflecting what was or is happening.  It has obviously not successfully promoted social capital. 

Such instruction, to the degree it could have been effective, would have promoted a whole array of values that would have questioned many of the assumptions that were being made and that proved or are proving false.  With excessive self-absorption and little to no concern for the general welfare, people were easily led to cast a blind eye on the irresponsible behavior in which many had been and still are engaged. 

For one, those who were/are responsible for this civics content just didn't or don’t want to see what today should seem very clear:  the nation engages in self-defeating courses of action when the general view is limited to self-interest. What is worse, the average American still doesn’t recognize this deficiency to any meaningful degree.

Is the claim here that most Americans don’t care for the common good?  No, it is not.  But the claim here is that there are not enough people who are concerned for the common good; who share enough social capital.  And in that, civics education shares a meaningful amount of the blame for this deficiency.

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[1] As used and defined by the political scientist, Robert Putnam, who defines social capital as a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation; it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions.  See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[2] Jean M. Twenge and W. K. Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York, NY:  Free Press, 2009).

[3] Bog Herbert, “Fast Track to Inequality,” The New York Times, November 1, 2010, accessed May 1, 2019, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02herbert.html? r=1&src=me&ref=homepage.

[4] At the time of this posting, there is current concern over a debt bubble being accrued by large corporations.  Two reports on this development acknowledge the high levels of debt but see it from different perspectives over its potential to result in meaningful damage to the economy.  They are as follows:  Peter Tchir, “Corporate Debt Keeps Piling Up,” Forbes, January 27, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/petertchir/2019/01/27/corporate-debt-keeps-piling-up/#2b1ef1c57910 AND “Should the World Worry about America’s Corporate-/Debt Mountain?” The Economist, March 14, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/03/14/should-the-world-worry-about-americas-corporate-debt-mountain.

[5] See Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat:  A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

[6] Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids:  The American Dream in Crisis (New York, NY:  Simon and Schuster, 2015).

[7] Oliver Bullough, Moneyland:  Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back (London, England:  Profile Publishers, 2019).