CRITIQUE OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, VI

 

To continue with this blog’s critique of the natural rights view, the dominant view of governance and politics in the US, this posting begins with highlighting that view’s emphasis on individualism.  In that vein, this posting addresses two areas of concern regarding how the natural rights view falls short in accounting for the needs of a multicultural nation and the indifference natural rights advocates demonstrate when it comes to socializing students to those values and goals associated with the nation’s constitutional moral view.

As for the first concern, individualism is so central that it has a significant influence on the nation’s cultural character.  And its favored analytical model, the political systems model, suffers from a certain level of obliviousness regarding the varied cultural perspectives that might be present in a given polity and are surely present in the US. 

This is unfortunate in that this view took dominance in the late 1940s from the parochial/traditional federalist view that was instrumental in establishing the extreme ethnocentric antagonism regarding non-European descendants in America.  And this is particularly true of the descendants of former slaves, the African American population in this country.[1] 

But more generally, the whole concern is heightened in importance since the American nation is made up of many ethnic groups and that number is increasing all the time.  For the first time, in 2045, western European descendants will not be a majority of the American population.[2]  Yet the processes that must be addressed to formulate a sufficiently cohesive enough nation out of such diversity have been given short attention.

That includes the attention this situation garnered by much of the social science analysis that was prominent until the end of the last century.[3]  As Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, suggests, this has been addressed by a scholarly literature – in terms of African Americans – to a certain degree, but a lot more has to be written, described, and explained to  provide the American public a more accurate account as to the treatment of these various cultural groups. 

The problem is that to greater degrees than what reductionist studies indicate,[4] internal, ethnic/racial conflicts are based on issues that transcend institutional arrangements based on behaviorist concerns over rewards and punishments.  A lot of this has to do with how people in the US define who they are – that falls under people’s sense of identity. 

And along with this, one seems to be currently facing certain political advocacy, which is gaining currency, that proposes the elimination in American classrooms of closer analyses of past acts of discrimination and prejudice.[5]  Usually, the basis of such moves is said to avoid indoctrination.  This seems intuitively questionable since indoctrination is usually accomplished not by entertaining various views, but by eliminating them – as the proposed policing seems to seek.

Finally, this critique, on another issue, needs to address a distinguishing attribute of the natural rights approach to education.  That is what Jeffrey Reiman brought up in the mid-1990s, that the natural rights perspective can be said not to have a moral requirement concerning morally questionable conditions.  In arguing in favor of scientific objectivism, natural rights advocates shun away from moralistic judgments.  Here, the interest is in the morality surrounding subjugation.[6] 

As Richard Hofstadter points out in his criticism of progressive education and its bias toward such objectivism in education, people left to their own judgment to determine all of their values and goals, become subject, if not to adult subjugation, then to peer subjugation.  Why?  Because the notion that individual people will consider every value and goal alternative before formulating a comprehensive value and goal system is not convincing. 

When one thinks about the effort involved in such endeavors, one can see how daunting it would be.  Students need a more targeted concern to provide the necessary motivation to be so engaged.  And unless motivated by some external need, one is apt to accept an available value and goal system.  If a parent/adult system is withheld from the child, the peer group culture will fill the vacuum.

That is what has been happening in large measure in contemporary American life and why there has arisen a youth culture that has been noted in the past as being anti-social and aggressive.[7]  The predisposition of youth is to be self-absorbed and short-sighted and has through the years sought out different ways to express itself through a recurring process. 

Each generation seems to devise an alternate way by which young people fall under the lure of prevailing values and goals that their youth culture highlights.  For one to currently understand how youth grapple with the world in 2023, one has to see how they are apparently linked to technology.

 

Today, youth culture is impossible without technology. Kids and teens do everything online. They use tech to entertain, shop, study, get academic help like at top-custom-writing.com, interact with peers, work, etc. Therefore, technology plays a key role in their lives.[8]

 

And it is with that backdrop that social media has grown and exerts its effects.  These effects have drawn the attention of mental and physical health experts.  For example,

 

Peer acceptance is a big thing for adolescents, and many of them care about their image as much as a politician running for office, and to them it can feel as serious.  Add to that the fact that kids today are getting actual polling data on how much people like them or their appearance via things like “likes.”  It’s enough to turn anyone’s head.  Who wouldn’t want to make herself look cooler if she can?  So kids can spend hours pruning their online identities, trying to project an idealized image.  Teenage girls sort through hundreds of photos, agonizing over which ones to post online.  Boys compete for attention by trying to out-gross one other, pushing the envelope as much as they can in the already disinhibited atmosphere online.  Kids gang up on each other.

            Adolescents have always been doing this, but with the advent of social media they are faced with more opportunities – and more traps – than ever before.  When kids scroll through their feeds and see how great everyone seems, it only adds to the pressure.  We’re used to worrying about the impractical ideals that photoshopped magazine models give to our kids, but what happens when the kid next door is photoshopped, too?  Even more confusing, what about when your own profile doesn’t really represent the person that you feel like you are on the inside?[9]

 

And may this blogger add, it seems common these days of hearing about some young person, usually a girl, committing suicide over some interaction on social media.

That is what has been happening in large measure in contemporary American life and why there has arisen a youth culture that has been noted as being anti-social and, in its way, aggressive.  The predisposition of youth is to tend to be self-absorbed and short-sighted.  And while the exact form in which these less than desirable social behaviors manifest themselves, immaturity is and will be an ongoing challenge for the adult world, especially for parents and teachers.[10]

While this might not be such a straight-forward claim – apparently, there are some nuances involved with this state – still the following is noted,

 

In a foundational 2008 paper, Jean Twenge …  and her colleagues reviewed 85 studies that surveyed more than 16,000 students between 1979 and 2006 … The researchers found that college students were becoming more narcissistic – by a full 30 percent from 1982 to around 2006.[11]

 

Their need for adult guidance, even if that guidance is determined to be subjugation, is essential for the happiness of the youth at present and in their upcoming adulthood years.

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[1] Isabel Wilkerson, in her recent book, Caste, argues that the dominant culture in the US established and has maintained a caste system regarding the black population in the country.  See Isabel Wilkerson, Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents (New York, NY:  Random House, 2020).

[2] William H. Frey, “The US Will Become ‘Minority White’ in 2045, Census Projects,” Brookings (September 10, 2018), accessed February 24, 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/.

[3] Daniel P. Moynihan, Pandaemonium:  Ethnicity in International Politics (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1993).

[4] That being studies that employ positivist/scientific protocols which by design limit attention to lists of variables or factors.  This approach can be compared to more holistic approaches that usually count on narratives.

[5] Under the argument that certain instruction of past practices, ones one can, for example, associate with slavery or discrimination, are attempts at indoctrination have been claimed.  The position here is that indoctrination is not promoted with including opinions and arguments, but with their exclusions.  Students should be exposed to as many opinions and accountings of the past as teachers can reasonably present in the classroom setting.

[6] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarian Debate, edited by Cornelius F. Delaney (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield Publisher, Inc., 1994).

[7] James A. Robinson and Roger Majak, “The Theory of Decision-Making,” in Contemporary Political Analysis, edited by J. C. Charlesworth (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1967).

[8] Sean Schmidt, “Modern Culture of the Youth:  Do You Know It Well?,” River Beats Dance (n.d.), accessed February 22, 2023, https://riverbeats.life/modern-culture-of-the-youth-do-you-know-it-well-2023/#:~:text=Today%2C%20youth%20culture%20is%20impossible,key%20role%20in%20their%20lives.

[9] Rachel Ehmke, “How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers,” Child Mind Institute (n.d.) accessed February 22, 2023, https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/.  This site goes on to describe the manner and prevalence of cyberbullying that occurs today.  The news often reports of some teenager committing suicide over what social media has posted about that youth.

[10] Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022).

[11] Kira M. Newman, “The Surprisingly Boring Truth about Millennials and Narcissism,” Greater Good Magazine (January 17, 2018), https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_surprisingly_boring_truth_about_millennials_and_narcissism.

CRITIQUE OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, V

 

This blog is in the midst of critiquing the natural rights view, the dominant view of governance and politics in the US and as such, the guiding construct that civics education employs to determine its content.  A concern of central importance to this critique, and one in which the dysfunctional nature of the natural rights construct is felt, is in its discouragement of the development of associations in political as well as social settings.

          Again, as with other aspects of this construct, its emphasis on individualism, people are encouraged to regard their own interests as paramount and to the exclusion of any meaningful concern for communal interests.  And with that, its bias to pursue those personal interests, one finds a degradation of what this blogger calls the three “C’s”:  community, collaboration, and cooperation. 

The message tends to be that if one must engage politically, it is to advance one’s self-interests.  Acting politically or even socially, individually or in groups, people are not depicted as engaging in processes to advance truly collective needs, wants, or ambitions.  That is, the collective activity does not transcend the individual beyond that person’s immediate needs and wants.  Regarding this, here is what the late Robert H. Wiebe wrote in the mid-1990s,

 

Its focus, modern society’s atomized individuals, has penetrated the farthest into American culture, and among the alternatives still lively in the 1990s its critique envisages the most profound changes.  Although the ties between democracy and the individual have been matters of discussion throughout the 20^th century, until well after mid-century almost no one challenged the individual’s right to the central place … Two late-20^th-century key words popularly linked with democracy – meritocracy and the market – celebrate the lone achiever and lone decision-maker respectively.[1]

 

Is this bias growing or being tamed since Wiebe wrote these words?  Of late, here is a summary statement from a leading medical institution,

 

Americans usually view every person as a self-sufficient individual, and this idea is important to understanding the American value system. Everyone is their own person, not a representative of a family, community, or any other group.

You may view this as rather selfish and egotistical, or as a welcomed freedom from the restraints of family, community, social class, etc. Yet, this self-centered attitude prevails in American culture—placing the most importance on the individual, not the group.

Likewise, … Americans do not like to think of themselves as being dependent upon others or as others being dependent upon them. This can affect the boundaries placed on personal relationships, which starts with friendships.[2]

 

Not exactly a clarion call for the three C’s.

          This cultural predisposition among Americans makes it difficult to build political and social associations.  An interesting comparative study, one in which the researcher compared, within one nation, two geographic areas in which one is more communal and the other more individualistic, is offered by Robert Putnam.  He studied the civic behavior of Italians and the factors that led to the viability of regional governmental structures.

He noted that the factors of collective behavior in the form of associational arrangements had been crucial towards one of the regions experiencing significantly higher levels of viability and success.  He writes about the socializing effect such arrangements contribute, how they bolster common shared values and symbols of unity, and how they encourage social trust.

This assists in the development of “social capital” – a civil, societal quality characterized as having an active citizenry which is motivated by a public spirit and egalitarian political values, as one would find in a civic community.  In his study, he describes the northern regions of Italy having higher levels of this social capital.[3]  Yet in subsequent writing, Putnam warns that the US is shifting away from enjoying healthy levels of that quality.[4]

In its stead, Americans have shifted to a citizenry which is atomized.

 

In his 1995 essay, sociologist Robert Putnam warned of the increasing atomization of American society. The institutions of American social capital, he wrote, are on the decline: Attendance at public forums, religious groups, civic organizations, and even his eponymous bowling leagues have been steadily declining since the … heyday of the 1950s American suburban community. The social fabric of America is coming apart on the neighborhood level, wrote Putnam—and it’s only going to get worse.

Unfortunately, it seems Putnam was on to something. In a report …economist Joe Cortright tracks the decline of American social capital over the past 40 years not simply in terms of membership to voluntary organizations, but also through the relationships Americans have with their geographical neighbors. Data used in the report from the General Social Survey doesn’t paint a pretty picture: According to Cortright, the degree to which Americans trust one another is at a 40-year low.

It’s not only trust, but actual relationships, too: Americans now are less likely than ever before to "socialize regularly" with their neighbors. This is the case even in large cities, where you might expect proximity to breed familiarity; the Washington Post notes that population density in major American cities dropped rapidly as primarily white, well-off citizens fled for the extra room (and distance) of the suburbs during the 1950s.[5]

 

Not only has this made it more difficult to develop the social capital that Putnam writes of, but it has made it counterproductive to many aims that Americans share.

          It has made it more difficult to formulate effective interest groups among like-minded Americans.  In their individualism, they hold public officials in contempt for the gaps they feel between their individual demands and government policy without the seemingly necessary resources to accomplish effective demand articulation to the system.

          As Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell point out, interest articulation and interest aggregation are important functions to the political system.[6]  These functions must be met by the actions of collectives, not individuals.  The net result is frustration by many in the citizenry for the apparent inaction of government.

          The next posting will add to this notion of discouraged association, but before ending this posting, this blogger would add that an interesting development seems to be happening.  That is, within the radical right, to varying degrees, certain efforts to organize armed groups have been progressing.  One needs to think only of the January 6^th insurrection event to note this.  It will be of interest to follow these efforts and note how strongly such groupings are able to maintain loyalty among those groups’ memberships.[7]

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[1] Robert H. Wiebe, Self Rule:  A Cultural History of American Democracy (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 245-250 (emphasis in the original).

[2] “Individualism,” Partners Healthcare, (n.d.) – Founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital – accessed February 18, 2023, https://pips.partners.org/life-in-the-united-states/american-culture/individualism.aspx#:~:text=Americans%20usually%20view%20every%20person,community%2C%20or%20any%20other%20group. See more at: https://pips.partners.org/life-in-the-united-states/american-culture/individualism.aspx#sthash.K0bgEruW.dpuf.

[3] Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work:  Civic Tradition in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1993).

[4] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[5] Jared Keller, “Americans Are Staying as Far Away from Each Other as Possible,” Pacific Standard (June 14, 2017), accessed February 19, 2023, https://psmag.com/social-justice/americans-are-staying-as-far-away-from-each-other-as-possible.  For another book further expanding this theme, see 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), dated but worth it.

[6] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966).

[7] According to one source, roughly three in eight individuals arrested as a result of the January 6^th riot have pled guilty.  Is this telling of a significant level of regret in participating in such an event?  Time will tell.  See Alexander Allin, “Just before Jan. 6 Hearing, 3 Capitol Rioters Express Regret, Ask for Mercy (January 9, 2022), accessed February 19, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jan-hearing-capitol-rioters-express-regret-mercy/story?id=85290390.