AN “INCREMENTAL” ETHOS

 

Of late, this blog reported on a distinction that psychologist Carol S. Dweck has made in how people view intelligence.  People tend to see intelligence as a given trait in terms of how much they have – entity theory – or as a malleable trait one can work on and increase – incremental theory.[1]  The last posting suggested that this basic distinction – how people see intelligence – can and does influence how people approach civic concerns.

          That posting, in passing, suggested that people who adopt an entity view might very easily attribute intelligence levels to inherited biological factors and further be attributed to such conditions of birth such as race, nationality, gender, or similar factors.  One should be clear here; there is no evidence to support such general attributions people make in their efforts to cast people they don’t like as “them” as opposed to “us.”  And included in such castigation is that “they” are not smart enough.

            This sort of thinking, in whatever guise it takes, hits directly, in a negative way, on federation theory in that it questions equality.  Here is a definition one can use for equality:  Equality is a social quality based on the belief that despite inequality in talent, wealth, health or other assets, it calls for equal consideration of all persons’ well-being, that all have an equal right to maintain their dignity and integrity as individual persons.  

What Dweck offers is an argument that varying levels of intelligence are mostly not determinant.  Sure, some people are blessed with exceptional intelligence.  Surely this blogger is not in Albert Einstein’s league when it comes to physics, or Pablo Picasso’s when it comes to art, or Chris Rock’s when it comes to humor, etc.  But he and most people are within ranges of intelligence that allow for meaningful interaction when it comes to governance and politics.

And this would be further enhanced by a population that believes intelligence is not a given trait in terms of how much one has, but a trait that one can improve on to meet the challenges one faces either individually or as a member of a political association.  The trick is to find out how that improvement occurs. 

Unfortunately, for the purposes here, those “hows” vary according to the challenges one faces.  Therefore, there is no set pattern in how to approach these efforts, but there are general modes of problem solving or investigation one can learn that, given the challenge, can be utilized to advance one’s intelligence given a particular area of concern.

So, for example, such instructional models, usually denoted as inquiry models, can be employed and they lend themselves to an incremental approach to intelligence.  These models are usually forms of the scientific method[2] or some process in which students apply a more logic-based activity such as the jurisprudential inquiry approach.[3] 

But short of those models, essentialist instruction (usually associated with recall objectives) can also be more friendly to this incremental view.  For example, Robert M. Gagne’s model, while essentialist in nature, strives for students to reflect on the material teachers present.

This deserves a bit more explanation.  In summary, here is what Robert Gagne called conditions of learning – five of them – and nine progressive levels or “steps” in which students can advance and engage with school subject content.  The conditions are: 

 

·       Verbal information which consists of knowledge claims one finds among various sources of subject information and can be interrelated with other information in meaningful ways. 

·       Intellectual skills are those abilities students can develop by which they process knowledge such as forming hierarchies, contextualizing relevant, new information, or acquiring information that adds distinctive attributes to what is being studied among other skills. 

·       Cognitive strategies consist of analytic abilities in which students can break down sets of information that assist in exposing problems, the problems themselves, or the information needed to solve those problems. 

·       Motor skills are those behavioral steps that students develop and, through practice, improve upon in which they tackle challenging academic issues. 

·       Attitudes are those sentiments students need to motivate themselves to address the material that classroom instruction presents to them.

 

Hopefully, readers can appreciate how these concerns draw educators beyond just seeing teaching as presenting content for the sake of students to recall that content.

And as for the levels or steps, they are: 

 

Level 1:  Reception (or capturing the attention of students),

Level 2:  Setting expectations (or students being informed about what they are to learn and why they are to learn it),

Level 3:  Relevant retrieval (or calling on students to recall what they know and is helpful in meeting a lesson’s objectives),

Level 4:  Targeted or selective perception (or presenting new information that students are to learn with an array of aids such as visuals, examples, discussions),

Level 5:  Verbal encoding (or presentation of the new information in a variety of language presentations such as graphics or case studies),

Level 6:  Responding (or student presentation of new information in various communicative approaches such as tests, demonstrations, interpretations – perhaps artistic productions),

Level 7:  Evaluative reinforcement (or teaching agents providing students with feedback as to the proficiency students demonstrate with the goal to improve on student performance),

Level 8:  Evaluative assessment (or determination of how well students have learned the content), and

Level 9:  Enriching the retained information (or have students transfer learned content to novel or real-life situations that do not totally match information learned but need to be adjusted or nuanced to be applicable).[4]

 

This is a far cry from a teacher presenting information and students committing information to memory, which is how essentialist instruction usually transpires.

          The point is that incremental approaches are out there and Dweck offers data that supports the belief that this view of intelligence is the more accurate way to view student potential.  Hopefully, for the sake of students and for the sake of approaching governance and politics from a federalist perspective, teachers will opt for strategies reflecting incremental understanding of intelligence, leaving behind strategies that entity theory encourages.

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[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] For example, see Molly S. Bolger, Jordan B. Osness, Julia S. Gouvea, and Alexandra C. Cooper, Jennifer Momsen, “Supporting Scientific Practice through Model-Based Inquiry:  A Students’-Eye View of Grappling with Data, Uncertainty, and Community in a Laboratory Experience,” ASCB/Life Science Education, October 22, 2021, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0128.

[3] For example, see Muhammad Japar and Dimi Nur Fadhillah, “Do We Need to Learn about Human Rights Values?,” Atlantis Press, 2018, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  25891038.pdf.

[4] For example, see “Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction,” Information Technology/University of Florida (n.d.), accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://citt.ufl.edu/resources/the-learning-process/designing-the-learning-experience/gagnes-9-events-of-instruction/.

ENTITY OR INCREMENTAL

 

If readers are of the mind, think back to middle school (or if you are as old as this blogger, think back to junior high).  Ask: is intelligence or how well they did at school the product of inborn intelligence or from figuring out how that learning game was played?  American psychologist, Carol S. Dweck, argues that this basic distinction in how people see intelligence plays a big role in how likely individual students will perform at that level of instruction.  And, consequently, how they will be likely to experience success from that point on when it comes to schooling.[1]

          This blog last addressed Dweck’s work in a posting, “A Middle School Challenge,” back in 2019.[2]  It reports how this psychologist labels each view.  The “I’m just smart or I am not” view is given the name entity theory, while “I just have to figure out how to learn this stuff” view is named incremental theory.  She claims these two views or theories prevail among students.  Students tend to see intelligence either one way or the other.

The first, entity theory, sees intelligence as a given amount a person has from birth.  The more one has, the easier it is to learn new material or content.  It is judged to be a fixed, tangible, or concrete quality, and is part of what makes a person who he/she is.  People either have it or they don’t.

On the other hand, the other view, incremental theory, Dweck describes as malleable, changeable through effort, and has a dynamic quality.  In short, in this second view, people can become smarter or more intelligent.  Yes, it calls for people to work at it, but such challenges take on a puzzle quality and have a higher likelihood of being experienced in positive ways.  And making mistakes in the process can even be given a positive slant since they are opportunities to advance learning.

Asking middle school students, through her research, Dweck found that “entity” students tended to agree with the following statements:

 

“The main thing I want when I do my schoolwork is to show how good I am at it.”

“I mostly like schoolwork that I can do perfectly without any mistakes.”

“I have to admit that sometimes I would rather do well in a class than learn a lot.”[3]

 

Whereas incremental students were likely to agree with:

 

“I like schoolwork that I’ll learn from even if I make a lot of mistakes.”

“It’s much more important to me to know new things in my classes than it is to get the best grades.”

“I like schoolwork best when it makes me think hard.”[4]

 

Ask any teacher which set of biases they wished their students shared, and this blogger believes they would overwhelmingly want their students to see schoolwork and learning through the “incremental” lens as reflected in the above quotes. 

Yet, this blogger believes that most teachers do not see this distinction being based, at least in part, on how their students view or understand intelligence.  As a matter of fact, he also believes that many, if not most, teachers share in the entity theory of intelligence themselves.  If true, this can be detrimental in many ways, including ones in which they – and their students in upcoming years – view civic concerns.

For example, if intelligence is a set element of one’s makeup, is it determined by biological factors?  Can those factors be related to such classifications as race, gender, nationality, and the like?  While the emphasis of this posting is not on these concerns; in passing, they seemed worth considering.

But overall, incremental students consistently chose options reflecting exhortation of effort.  While entity students tended to choose, when it came to schoolwork, options of avoidance, alternative options to study and work such as avoiding subjects or courses, and even entertained cheating on tests.  Incremental students were more apt to seek out the challenges involved.  The next posting will apply these distinctions to the concerns of civics more directly.

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[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Middle School Challenge,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, October 11, 2019, accessed February 3, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_10_06_archive.html.

[3] Dweck, Self-Theories, 33.

[4] Ibid., 33.

AN ARRAY OF DISPOSITIONS

 

The last posting referred to certain points this blog has made through the years.  More specifically, those points describe the political/cultural landscape that the political scientist, Daniel Elazar, describes.[1]  Here is how this blog (with some editing) reported on Elazar’s contribution, back in 2011:

 

Daniel Elazar's study of American political dispositions identified these three subcultures. They are the individualistic, the moralistic, and the traditional. The origins of these distinctive cultural dispositions can almost be traced to the earliest colonial period. Highly affected by the economic diversity that sprang up from the colonies in the northern, New England region to the plantation-based economies of the southern colonies, the subcultures of each of the three regions [New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern] reflected the social realities emerging from these diverse economic conditions.

Robert Putnam found these diverse political ideas, ideals, and beliefs surviving in the nation’s more current times.[2] Elazar claims that the distinct cultural dispositions stretched westward in mostly three parallel layers of states. The trend is not perfect; for example, while the traditional subculture of the south moved westward, its expansion was mostly limited to the former Confederate States [and ends at the western border of Texas plus Arizona and New Mexico].

Mostly stretching westward from first the mid-Atlantic colonies and then the resulting states, overall, the individualistic subculture is the most dominant today as it mirrors the marketplace perspective. [This blog has made the argument that that dominance was first exerted in the years just after World War II replacing a more moralistic bias that prevailed.]  Today, the nation’s political culture is well ensconced in the natural rights construct that is dominant in our nation's school curricula. Why? Because it best reflects the nation’s capitalist biases.[3]

 

 

This general description, as presented in this blog, was further supported by the thoughts of the Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana.[4] He argued that American history saw a religious outlook among Americans that began with a strict Calvinist belief that evolved into a more genteel transcendental perspective. Those competing moral views helped develop or at least co-existed with the above described three distinct political subcultures.

To be clear, none of these perspectives held or hold total allegiance among the American population at any time.  That includes the thinking and feelings of Americans today.  For example, the Republican Party base today is described as holding a Christian nationalist perspective among its MAGA[5] advocates.  Readers can pass judgment as to the validity of that claim.  But to the extent it is true, one can classify such thinking as a form of parochial/traditionalist thought.

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[1] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism:  A View from the States (New York, NY:  Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966).

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

[3] Robert Gutierrez, “Individualistic Political Subculture,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, July 18 or 19, 2011).  This posting is no longer found in the blog’s archive feature.

[4] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Annals of America, vol. 13 (originally published in 1911) (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britanica, 1968), The Annals of America, vol. 13, 277-288.

[5] Make America Great Again.

OH, OHIO

 

One might argue that a chief challenging reality to the values and aims of federalist thinking is bigness.  If to be federated means a populous shares a sense of partnership, then large social/political arrangements undermine the supposed interpersonal requisites that such a sense would intuitively demand.  One is more apt to federate with others who see the world through similar lenses, and geographic settings would affect the level of “usness” one would presuppose to be necessary.

          In retrospect, probably from the beginnings of the American republic, its fate was sown-in in the treaty with Great Britain to end the Revolutionary War.  Mostly through the American minister, John Adams, the resulting treaty with Great Britain ceded the American nation just about all of the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.  Of particular interest to this posting is the expansion of land north of the Ohio River or what would become to be known as the Northwest Territory.

          A nation that didn’t even exist before the war was now a significantly large one.  And while on paper that seemed just about unprecedented, it left that nation with a demanding challenge – how does one extend control over that vast expanse?  And here, what would be considered as an added challenge, an extended post-war economic depression, turned out to be a motivator for people to behave in just the way this expansion challenge needed them to behave.

          Here is what the historian, David McCullough, describes took place:

 

Unprecedented financial panic had gripped the new nation since the end of the Revolutionary War.  The resources and credit of the government were exhausted.  Money, in the form of scrip issued by the government, was nearly worthless.  The scrip the veterans received as compensation for their service was worth no more than ten cents on the dollar.  Trade was at a standstill.  In Massachusetts the situation was worst of all.  Farmers were being imprisoned for debt.  Only a few months earlier, an armed rebellion led by poor Massachusetts farmer and war veteran named Daniel Shays had to be put down by a force of loyal militia commanded by General Tupper.

            As it was, the severe economic depression that followed the war would last longer even than the war.  But out west now there was land to be as never imagined – vast land, rich land where there was “no end to the beauty and plenty” – that could be made available to veterans at a bargain price in compensation for their service.  West was opportunity.  West was the future.[1]

 

And this opportunity and how it was exploited portrays a number of the attributes of the prevailing construct among the American population having to do with governance and politics.

          As this blog has argued, that construct can be given the name parochial/traditional federalism.  Yes, it ascribed to sustaining a federated populous but mostly only among the nation’s Western European descendants (including the recent immigrants from that area).  It excluded blacks and indigenous peoples.  While indigenous people’s rights were mostly neglected in the process by which the Northwest Territory was incorporated into the American system, there was an element of the process that addressed the rights of blacks.

          And this concern was also extended to other demographic classifications.  McCullough explains:

 

It was intended that this ordinance, now called the Northwest Ordinance, should stipulate that in the whole of the territory there would be absolute freedom of religion and particular emphasis on education, matters New Englanders considered fundamental to a just and admirable society.

 

Most importantly, there was to be no slavery.  In the plan for the creation of a new state northwest of the Ohio River, the proposition put forth by Rufus Putnam [war hero who led the Ohio Company of Associates] and others at the time of the Newburgh Resolution, total exclusion of slavery was an essential.

 

As would be observed by historians long afterward, the Northwest Ordinance was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life.[2]

 

And a couple of points should be emphasized.  One, this area would initially be inhabited by migrating New Englanders.  And two, various states would eventually be formed in this area and all of them were organized and developed under a culturally federalist mind set.

          Initially, the New England base was to be highly Calvinist and as such highly based on covenantal thinking in the formulation of political arrangements.  As the political scientist, Daniel Elazar, points out, the northern stretch of states as one moves from east to west in the US can be considered an extension of New England’s moralistic political subculture. 

That is, it highlights the moral bases of governance.  That view more specifically emphasizes the interests of a commonwealth, that governments are to advance the public interests, that the polities are to have very low tolerance of corruption, and that citizens have a duty to participate in politics.[3]  And these characteristics became common among the New England colonies and then states from the time of their earliest settlement and extended westward among the northernmost layer of states.

As for the landmass in question, it is sufficient to list the states that eventually were formed in this territory.  They are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Significant shoreline on the Great Lakes would prove to be of economic advantage to these states.  This became particularly true with the building of the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, and opened trade lanes out to the Atlantic Ocean via the port of New York.

Of course, these developments were done with concerns over the “Indian menace.”  Among the indigenous peoples a certain belief prevailed, that “considered the Ohio country their rightful, God-granted domain.”[4]  This aspect of the American expansion – of its parochial character – deserves its own separate analysis.

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[1] David McCullough, The Pioneers:  The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 2019), 8.  Historical claims in this posting rely on this source.

[2] Ibid., 12.

[3] “Explaining Policy Difference Using Political Culture,” West Texas A&M University, n.d., accessed January 27, 2024, URL:  https://www.google.com/search?q=elazar+moralistic+political+culture&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=elazar%27s+moralistic&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCECEYqwIyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgcIAhAhGKsCMgcIAxAhGKsCMgcIBBAhGKsC0gEJMTQxMThqMGo5qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.  It should be noted, most of the states making up the Northwest Territory would eventually morph into the individualistic mindset except for Michigan and Wisconsin that remained moralistic.

[4] McCullough, The Pioneers, 7.

LEGITIMATE LIMITS ON RIGHTS

 

The last posting, relying on the work of Charles Taylor,[1] made the argument that a radical or near radical belief in rights – that one can do what one wants to do – is relatively short lived.  This is due to the disposition of people holding this view.  That is, especially in societies where such beliefs become common, those people have license to behave in ways that undermine or prove to be destructive of societal institutions that protect or advance rights to begin with. 

For example, people so disposed might very well undermine family ties for selfish ends which in turn seriously weaken the emotional bonds that a family would otherwise have.  If that became common behavior, the institution of family would be threatened and not able to function as a caring and nurturing relationship. 

One can think of other societal arrangements that could similarly be threatened such as businesses, educational entities, and governmental agencies and their authorizing statutes.  People, since these connections are mostly preserved through norms, don’t give them much thought until they are threatened and then are left with a “what’s going on here?” sort of reaction.

To take up Taylor’s argument, he cites Thomas Hobbes and Hobbes’ point out that people seek life to basically prolong their desire to be agents of desire.  And here is an extension of what life is or why it is sought to be continued.  Taylor explains:

 

Social theories require a conception of the properly human life which is such that we are not assured it by simply being alive, but it must be developed and it can fail to be developed; on this basis they can argue that society or a certain form of society is the essential condition of this development.[2]

 

So, what is meant by a right to life that is not a list of detached rights (speech, religion, movement, employment, etc.), but a holistic state.  A state where the societal arrangement exists in which a sentimental life – a life in which one can have the cherished right to feel both physically and emotionally – can exist and prosper?

          To be clearer:  If one restricts this concern over rights to the right to merely continue breathing or staying alive, then addressing the more life defining concerns – how one socializes, how one expresses his/her talents and proclivities, how one seeks importance and fulfilling one’s social ambitions and obligations – one is limiting such concerns to manifestations of specific rights being supported or by being threatened.  By doing so, one dismisses their underpinnings, i.e., the social mechanisms and structures that promote such rights and what supports them.

          But when the emphasis is on societal processes geared to identify and promote such concerns, the wherewithal by which the necessary social mechanisms and structures not only are recognized but their continuance becomes more likely by assisting them to function viably.  If ignored or even debased, they go wanting to the extent they become nonfunctional, at least to a level where societal health is affected negatively.  

One can even visualize, if not cite specific examples, where such dysfunction becomes fatal to a polity or system of governance (for example, one can argue, the former Soviet Union of Russia was such a case).  And here one can legitimately consider the apparent dysfunctions of the American system that many commentators are warning has become of great concern or worry.

          A more encompassing view of rights strays one away from emphasizing rights individually, such as property rights (e.g., right to contract), but toward quality-of-life rights (e.g., right to profess independent convictions).  As a matter of fact, the former type of right, irrespective of John Locke’s view, is not essential to viable living.

 See, for example, communal societies from all the way back to the paleolithic hunting clans to the Inca empire, and even to commune living in China today.  Ironically, the right to life is better secured in these communal settings than in many individually based societies (Taylor compares China with Chile or one can compare it currently with El Salvador and Jamaica, ranked one and two in murder rates[3]).

But before one lists Taylor as a defender of collectivist countries such as Communist China, he adds:

 

But the real point is this:  supposing a proponent of the right to property were to admit that the above was true – that the right to property does not as such secure life – would he [or she] change his [/her] mind?  And the answer is, in the vast majority of cases, no.  For what is at stake for [that person] is not just life, but life in freedom.  My life is safe in a Chinese commune, he [or she] might agree, but that is so long as I keep quiet and do not profess heterodox opinions; otherwise the risks are very great.  Private property is seen as essential, because it is thought to be an essential part of a life of genuine independence.[4]

 

That is, not as an independently considered right.  And in this, such a defender of natural rights might recognize the irony involved.  Generally recognized rights – however they might be viewed as separate qualities – ultimately rely on the social landscape where they are manifested and possibly challenged.

          And even more contextualized as to what the immediate environs are – in a family, at school, at the workplace, in the town square or the shopping mall – it becomes a question of capacity.  Can one exercise rights within these settings?  The answer, it turns out, they cannot be limited to those settings, but “only develops within an entire civilization.”[5]  Taylor goes on: 

 

Think of the developments of art, philosophy, theology, science, of the evolving practices of politics and social organization, which have contributed to the historic birth of this aspiration to freedom, to making this ideal of autonomy a comprehensible goal men [and women] can aim at – something which is in their universe of potential aspiration (and it is not yet so for all men [or women], and may never be). …

            I am arguing that the free individual of the West is only what he [/she] is by virtue of the whole society and civilization which brought him [or her] to be and nourishes him [or her]; that our families can only form us up to this capacity and these aspirations because they are set in this civilization; and that a family alone outside of this context – the old patriarchal family – was a quite different animal which never tended these horizons.  And I want to claim finally that all this creates a significant obligation to belong for whoever would affirm the value of freedom; this includes all those who want to assert rights either to this freedom or for its sake.[6]

 

So, the final message Taylor puts forth seems clear. 

That is, if one wants one’s rights respected, one needs to depend on a healthy social environment.  In the modern age, that would be a healthy national polity that enjoys its ability to carry out functional processes and sustain functional structures.  That, in turn, relies on a populous that is willingly satisfying the norms, duties, and obligations upon which a healthy polity relies.

Further, in a system which honors individual rights, most of those duty-bound behaviors count on voluntary compliance.  So, the irony lives on to the extent a populous is willing to “play ball.”  Or as Taylor states it:  “… we exercise a fuller freedom if we can help determine the shape of this society and culture.  And this we can only do through instruments of common decision.”[7]

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[1] Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, eds. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 29-50. 

[2] Ibid., 39.

[3] “Murder Rate by Country,” Data Panda, n.d., accessed January 25, 2024, URL:  https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/murder-rate-by-country.

[4] Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, 41.  Emphasis added.

[5] Ibid., 43.

[6] Ibid. 43-46.

[7] Ibid. 47.

RIGHTS RELY ON LIMITS

[This posting is subject to further editing.]

Ironies abound in life.  According to the philosopher, Charles Taylor, probably no more important irony exists than that which has to do with basic rights.[1]  Specifically, he finds that the basic belief in a natural rights view – the claim that every individual has the right to do what that person wishes to do as long as that person does not deprive that right to others – to be false. 

How?  By living one’s life through such a credo and utilizing it, if one so chooses to undermine the bonds that hold a society together, to the degree it is successful, that person is undermining the necessary prerequisites for such a society to survive and therefore protect such rights.  The position of this blog is that this nation is on the road to proving Taylor correct.

Why would a person wish to do that?  Perhaps the wish is not directly to fulfil that aim, but instead for things – behaviors or conditions – that prove to be destructive of those bonds irrespective of one’s motives or understandings.  In this case, it is the results that count.  And those behaviors or conditions can have the antisocial consequences about which Taylor warns his audience. 

Examples might include when one might choose to engage in legal but harmful practices such as being disrespectful of others’ religious practices or practicing business activities that disregard the living standards of employees.  The number of examples one might sight is countless.

This blog with this posting revisits this Taylor argument that was initially posted in 2019[2] (interested readers can check on that previous posting by using the archive feature).  As described, Taylor presents a reasonable argument that traces how the quality of justice would be subjected to abuse in a society where atomism becomes prevalent.  Atomism is the belief that a form of individualism should hold rights as primary especially as expressed or acted upon when a person strives to satisfy self-defined ends. 

That earlier posting ends with the following:

 

In terms of when it is legitimate to exercise natural rights in pursuing self-centered interests, that would be in securing justice.  Why?  A total answer would probably constitute a whole other argument and another posting.  Suffice it to write, justice is advanced by an adversarial system where the parties are free to pursue their interests.  Advocacy for those interests should be allowed to be pursued unfettered as long as the procedural rules of the proceedings are respected.[3]

 

But here lies the basis of the irony one can associate with this concern.  Justice is not just a value associated with natural rights but with federalism, as a mental construct relating to ideal governance and politics, as well.  Perhaps both trains of thought, natural rights and federalism, approach the quality from different points of view and hence the duality of meaning. 

Federalism sees it as a precondition that motivates one to join a union – an associated arrangement – and become part of a grand partnership.  On the other hand, the natural rights view sees it as guaranteeing or protecting one’s rights especially as they come into conflict with the rights of others.

          And in this a basic distinction can and should be made.  The “partnership” view tends to demand a more wholistic sense of what rights are.  Yes, one can innumerate basic rights – speech, movement, religion, association, etc. – but they can be more readily seen, within a federalist perspective, as expressions of a free life or of the right to life. 

On the other hand, the natural rights view seems to beg for a more granular approach and relating to these individual rights it becomes more important to innumerate and treat them as separate claims.  As such, they are seen more legalistically than culturally, more from a contractual view than a compact-al view.  And by so doing, rights lose the advantage of being considered as a quality-of-life attribute.

          Federalism holds all of these more specific rights as being more readily assumed or included in what one is referring to, they are a full package or an element of life one associates with a life of quality.  As such, they can take on a more basic sense of what it means to be federated, that is, it defines a quality necessary for a viable life. 

This federalist sense is also needed to maintain the health of a society and of its polity in that to be so concerned among a citizenry means one has a populous, to meaningful degree, sharing a sense that they are in it together.  Taylor describes this distinction:

 

How would it do for a scientist [for example] to say, “Well, I have respected his right to life, it is other rights (free movement, exercise of his profession, etc.) which I have violated?  For the separation in this context is absurd.  True, we do sometimes enumerate these and other rights.  But the right to life could never have been understood as excluding all these activities, as a right just to biological non-death in a coma.  It is incomprehensible how anyone could assert a right to life meaning just this, “Who calls that living?”[4] 

           

Robert Novick, as Taylor describes his argument, represents the natural rights’ side of this disagreement.  He holds that such a view as expressed by Taylor is misguided.  He, Novick, uses an example to illustrate his point.  That is, individuals have the right to dispose of their possessions as they individually wish without any sense or establishment of bonds to society or to other citizens, and, in addition, this ability is commonsensical. 

Taylor retorts that this claim is insufficient.  It doesn’t establish the level of self-sufficiency that individuals would need to secure – establish and maintain – if the institutional structures that needed to exist in allowing for such a disposal were disregarded.  And that level of reliance on such structures can be extended to just about all sorts of behaviors individuals might wish to enact.

            Of course, this back and forth is conducted on a philosophical plane.  At a more cultural level and in how this issue affects current day politics, a good deal of rhetoric, at least to this blogger’s ear, reflects Novick’s argument or view.  If one logically breaks down what is commonly bantered about, Novick’s treatment of rights seem to handily prevail among American discourse – Americans tend to speak of rights as a list of sacred prerogatives.   

That messaging seems to assume one has little to no reliance on the importance of those institutional structures, much less any appreciation of what supports them and allows them to function.  Any reference to those structures is usually couched in delegitimizing language.  When was the last time that the reader heard someone refer to regulatory agencies, for example, in a positive way?

Currently, for example, the Supreme Court is considering to rule in such a way that will debase the ability of government to regulate the actions of corporations by shifting that function from regulatory agencies to unelected jurists.[5]  These are the type of issues one should strive to insert a federated/partnership perspective – particularly in how that perspective addresses the health and even survival of the polity as it is constituted.

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[1] Charles Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, eds. Shlomo Avineri and Avner de-Shalit (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 29-50.

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Derivation for the Sake of Justice,” a posting, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics – blog, 2019, accessed January 20, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_09_29_archive.html.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Taylor, “Atomism,” in Communitarianism and Individualism, 38.

[5] See Allison Frankel, “U. S. Supreme Court Just Gave Federal Agencies a Big Reason to Worry,” Reuters (June 30, 2022), accessed January 20, 2024, URL:  https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-just-gave-federal-agencies-big-reason-worry-2022-06-30/ AND Melissa Quinn, “Supreme Court Signals Openness to Curtailing Federal Regulatory Power in Potentially Major Shift,” CBS News, (January 17,2024), accessed January 20, 2024, URL:  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-chevron-deference-oral-arguments-federal-regulations/.  Yes, Americans don’t elect regulators, but they do elect those who hire them.