ENCOURAGING REASONED THINKING

This blog has from time to time addressed the function the subconscious plays in thinking and, more specifically, in political thinking.  Generally, the subconscious can and does play an automatic pilot role.  The mind perceives what the senses take in and if the information does not stir the emotions or is perceived as an out of an expected encounter, the subconscious automatically drums up a response to the condition perceived.  This is what Daniel Kahneman[1] calls System 1 thinking, and it accounts for about 98 percent of the type of thinking people do.

          Therefore, people do not usually engage in reasoned thinking or even reflective thinking.  Most of their thinking can be best described as reflexive thinking.  What’s comforting about reflexive thinking is that it expends little energy.  What expends a good deal of energy is reasoned thinking, the kind this nation’s founding fathers relied upon in their writing of the Constitution.  When one goes about handing the ultimate power of governance to the people, one is not only counting on the ability of the people to think reasonably, but to do so.

          And as this blog has indicated in a prior posting, George Lakoff[2] provides a list of attributes characterizing this more energetic thinking – what Kahneman calls System 2 thinking.  These attributes are:

[I]t is consciously done; universally applies to all people; disembodied in that it is free from perceptions or actions; follows classical logic; is applied unemotionally; reflects neutral-values (i.e., a person can rise above one’s values); is derived from one’s interests; and views reality as logical.[3]

Such thinking can tire a person just thinking about it.  Yet, that is what the nation’s system of governance calls on people to do.

          But they don’t.  And what does that lead to?  Here is what Lakoff regards are the consequences.  Reflexive thinking affects one’s morality, one’s political reality, and how the two intermix.  Those who choose professions that can benefit from such a state – politicians and marketeers – are apt to be aware of it.  They formulate their messaging to cater to the subconscious and accompanying ignorance.  After all, they either want to sell policies or products and their aim is for their listeners to choose them subconsciously.

          In case the politician or marketeer holds to a higher standard, one that counts on the voter or customer to make a reasoned choice in choosing what they are “selling,” they seem to be unaware of the more common practice or deem appeals to the subconscious as beneath them or immoral in some way.  Such conniving they judge to be dishonest.

One can see the work of many ethical politicians, social activists, and journalists as exhibiting a higher approach and federation theory promotes this latter type of politics.  As an aside, while many of the more astute, principled “salespersons” understand this obstacle to their aims, to date there does not seem to be a clear strategy to overcome it.  Oh, there is here and there one who has inordinate charisma who can rally support, but in the main, this does not happen.

          A second consequence is that this reasoned approach tends to commit its practitioners to certain patterns of thought.  Standards and criteria by which to judge behavior and policy become important and not easily discarded.  This stands counter to appealing to reflexive thinking where the immediate rewards and punishments are mostly what are considered, unreflectively, in making decisions.

          And a third consequence, according to Lakoff, is that reasoned thinking understands and feels fulfilled by the inevitable reality of how interconnected people are.  Reflexive thinking simply considers the “me” and his/her immediate interests in any encounters or situations that have a social element attached to them.

          With that bit of insight into how the brain works, what is the responsibility of civics educators?  After all, and it is assumed here, the aim of civics is to promote civic responsibility and such responsibility calls for reasoned thought.  So, as Lakoff puts it, the aim should not be to only to change minds, but to change brains; that is, to change the degree to which an individual relies on reflexive thinking and to more readily opt for reasoned thinking.

          Here is how Lakoff puts it:

But “changing minds” in any deep way always requires changing brains.  Once you understand a bit more about how brains work, you will understand that politics is very much about changing brains – and that it can he highly moral and not the least bit sinister or underhanded …

          We will need to embrace a deep rationality that can take account of, and advantage of, a mind that is largely unconscious, embodied, emotional, empathetic, metaphorical, and only partly universal.  A New Enlightenment would not abandon reason, but rather understand that we are using real reason – embodied reason, reason shaped by our bodies and brains and interactions in the real world, reason incorporating emotion, structured by frames and metaphors and images and symbols, with conscious thought shaped by the vast invisible realm of neural circuitry not accessible to consciousness.[4]

All this needs a more explaining and all that will be provided at some future point.  But what one, who cares about civics education, should draw from this is that the job of an effective civics’ teacher is not just reviewing what the three branches of government are.  He/she needs to delve into how people think.  At some level, this blogger believes, this can be done by that teacher and his/her secondary students.

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[1] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011).

[2] George Lakoff, The Political Mind:  Why You Can’t Understand 21^st-Century American Politics with an 18^th-Century Brain (New York, NY:  Viking, 2008).

[3] Robert Gutierrez, “Hidden Considerations,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics – a blog, January 12, 2018, accessed December 12, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2018/01/hidden-considerations.html .

[4] George Lakoff, The Political Mind:  Why You Can’t Understand 21^st-Century American Politics with an 18^th-Century Brain, 12-14.

CHANGE CONTEXTUAL ELEMENTS

Change in social landscapes can be studied from different perspectives, from different contexts.  One angle to this topic is the human interactions between those engaged in either promoting change, those opposed to it, and between the two camps in a given contested change effort. 

Here the relevant information that provides insight into those dealings can be derived from psychological and sociological studies.  But when one wants to see these encounters from a national or statewide level, political studies seem to be most fruitful.

          One study that takes on this more political perspective is provided by Leslie R. Crutchfield.[1]  “What [she] does is convey qualitative research findings – emanating from her team of researchers – on what has been effective in terms of grass roots activities.  She also indicates what has not been effective.”[2]  Since this blog promotes transformative change for civics education, any reliable knowledge affecting change efforts in large arenas, such as a national effort to change civics curricula, is highly welcomed.

          One of the first claims that Crutchfield reports has to do with the contexts under which more recent efforts have been attempted.  And the first element of those contexts she lists is historical.  That is, various efforts in the latter half of the twentieth century have had their effects. 

That would include civil rights, labor, environment, and feminist movements.  They seemed to have been most virulent during the 1960s and 1970s.  But while the influence of those efforts still has its effects, it must be highly qualified since the current environment has been heavily altered by technological developments.

          With the turn of the century, agents engaged in change have had to accommodate their strategies to the advent and quick application of the digital revolution through the Internet.

Technological innovation ushered Western society into a post-industrial Digital Age and catalyzed the supply chain revolution.  With innovations in sourcing and logistics, suddenly businesses were freed up to purchase inputs from and create their products in almost any nation on earth.  As supply chains opened up, the world turned flat once again, and globalization brought a new world trade order.[3]

Practically, those involved in change – especially if the parties targeted by such efforts are business interests – their concerns can potentially go global.  But even if the most directly affected are private enterprises, the public institutions are not immune and at times become the prime affected parties.  One need only look at the current headlines and be informed of foreign powers influencing domestic elections.

            On a more substantive level, current change efforts need to take into account the “nuts and bolts” issues of the day.  Nationally, an about face took place from a highly progressive thrust that existed in the 1960s and 1970s to a reactionary one of the 1980s and 1990s.  One area of concern provides an overall sense of how this reversed course materialized and continues to do so in everyday politics.

            That would be in the area of incarceration.  In the last four decades there has been an increase of 500 percent in the number of people being sent to some form of imprisonment.  Yet, there has not been that sort of increase in the number of crimes being committed. 

Ironically, for unrelated reasons, both liberal – left of center citizens – and conservatives – right of center citizens – have been cast together fighting this policy.  Of note on this issue, the usually opposing groups Black Lives Matter activists and the Koch brothers have become allies when it comes to the incarceration issue. 

The first group is motivated by their concern over race relations and the inordinate number of African Americans making up that prison population; the second group is motivated by its concern for over-governmental interference in American lives.  This uneasy alliance has brought attention to this national issue. 

And the conservative side of this joint effort brings up another contextual element.  Through the Koch brothers’ and other conservative groups’ actions, a highly organized, national conservative movement has evolved since the year 2000.  Summarily, this movement was given the title Tea Party. 

Their most meaningful accomplishment has been their successful acquisition of a significant number of Congressional seats.  When Republicans control the House of Representatives (as they did from 2011 to 2017), this Tea Party element presents a meaningful factor in being able to secure national or regional change.

This rise of conservatism, which has also been called the alt-right or populist movement, has been combined with the technological advancements mentioned above.  The result has been a potent political force that promises to affect national politics for many years to come.  This force will be addressed in upcoming postings.  But through social media, the alt-right has captured the attention of a significant number of Americans with a virulent conservative message.[4]

Of course, the political atmosphere in a given time will affect not only change processes, but what should be legitimately changed in the first place. 

… [I]t’s important to note that Trump didn’t create the populist movement that ultimately ushered him into office; rather, he shrewdly tapped the anger and disaffection of white working-class voters in coal country and other parts of the United States who felt left behind by a vanishing industrial economy and increasing cultural diversity.[5]

And with that explanatory note, one can find the circular reality of how the current environmental elements are meaningfully interrelated one with the other. 

Political movements – whether they are elements of the political context of change efforts or not – demonstrate that they are indicators of how the polity is divided or polarized at any given time.  They function as the fuel upon which change occurs – whether it is planned or not, whether it is wanted or not, or whether it is beneficial or not.

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[1] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t (Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “Introducing the ‘Grass Root’ Approach,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, April 2, 2019, accessed December 9, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019/04/introducing-grass-root-approach.html .

[3] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t, 5 (Kindle edition).

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

[5] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t, 7 (Kindle edition).

AN ESSENTIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

From time to time, in one’s readings, he/she runs across a particularly moving bit of writing.  This posting starts with such an example:

The vision of autonomy [as has been captured by the US Constitution] incorporated an ideal of community.  Autonomous, rights-bearing individuals would live in groups and collectivities and participate in public life.  Their “happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson knew, required community.  They would know themselves, as individuals and as citizens, through their capacity to construct intentional and voluntary forms of solidarity.  And many, particularly the many in the nineteenth century raised within a powerful Christian culture, interpreted the development of individual capacities as an overarching right, because it enabled one to fulfill a variety of duties to others.  One was obliged then to become an autonomous citizen, so that one could participate usefully in communities.[1]

And in these few words, Hendrick Hartog captures the ironies of a host of what on the surface seems to be contrary realities.  It also gives one a sense of priority.

          In the main, the contrary nature of civil society is one in which individuals to be useful, productive, and proactively engaged in common causes must feel themselves individually vibrant and willful.  But that individuality is important primarily for the sake of the common welfare.  The rights enjoyed by those entities of an association or a communal arrangement are derived from that prerequisite.  It is in that framework that individual rights should be judged and in which they are legitimate.

          To solidify that notion, one can state that the collective – or more fruitfully considered the community – would be engaged in illegitimate action when it sought to deprive or otherwise hamper the exercise of those rights.  Of course, more needs to be explained to contextually place such a relationship in a meaningful consciousness that places or instills imagery to such an arrangement.

          What’s the alternative?  How else can a polity see the relationship between the participants and itself?  What remains is various forms of paternalism ranging from coercive, punitive paternalism (the harsh, unloving parent depicted in so many Victorian novels) to spineless, continuously yielding parents that spoil their off springs.  Of course, one can have a loving parent, but one that holds the reigns within which the child can function. 

In any of these cases, the potentials for the common good – and ultimately the individual good of its participants – will fall woefully short of its potentials.  What Jonah Goldberg calls the “miracle” – the wellspring of assets derived from market economies – counts on individuals feeling free to pursue what they perceive their interests to be.[2]  Yet such a view needs to be within the parameters of communal demands.

          Hartog claims he sees this choice between establishing a polity of citizens with a functional consciousness of rights or forming one of paternalism as being at the heart of whether that polity will be equipped to formulate a populous of free adults.  In turn, this concern defines what constitutes one’s consciousness of constitutional rights. 

And given both the monopoly over coercive means and the access to national assets, a government must lead a polity’s efforts in assuring that the more productive choice is made.  Can anyone, for example, perceive a citizenry having a viable, general consciousness of rights without a sufficiently viable public-school system?  This blogger cannot and probably more than any other factor goes into motivating him to write this blog. 

Yes, when all else fails in addressing a related challenge, a government might be called upon to enact positive laws (insisting on what citizens must do like sending their children to school), but mostly to avoid a paternalistic role, it needs to rely on negative laws and policies (outlining what citizens cannot do like infringe on each other’s rights).  But in either case the trick is:  government must not fall into a regime of policies reflecting a paternal force.  And all this leads to complexities. 

Which ones?  Hartog identifies three types or characterizations:

[There are] three distinct, yet interrelated, ways of characterizing the rights required to secure constitutional aspirations.  The first characterization, and the most familiar, is that of the right as a “trump,” a claim that, once established, triumphs over competing values and claims.  The second, and the most important for a historical understanding of American constitutional rights consciousness, is that of a right as a duty on public authority to undo – to destroy – the structures that maintain hierarchy and oppression.  The third is that a right as a duty to reconstruct itself or its relations to its citizens, or lose legitimacy.  They offer three ways of describing the demand that lies behind the assertion of claimed right.  The first says, “Mine!”  The second says, “Not theirs!”  The third says, “Do what is necessary, or I will never again trust you!”[3]  

Each of these deserves its own treatment and will be, in turn, the subject of future postings.

          But overall, this cited writer gives his readers a sense of how imbedded certain values and attitudes must be within a populous for this tricky business of insuring a compact-al agreement works.  This blogger, as alluded to above, is probably more motivated by his concern over what is damaging that consciousness today.  For him, a key word in the cited quotes above is duty.  Duty seems to be more and more cast in illegitimate lights.  And this condition undermines a lot.  The whole structure – as alluded to by Hartog – depends on these reasoned and emotional commitments.

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[1] Hendrick Hartog, “History of Rights Consciousness,” 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), 11-14, 2. 

[2] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018).

[3] Hendrick Hartog, “History of Rights Consciousness,” 5.

CURRENTLY, HOW WONDERFUL?

On March 23, 2018, this blog posted an entry that reviewed how complex public moral questions can be.  In that posting, “A Category of Complex Issues,” it described how a polity must deal with the free rider problem.  That is the problem in which rational calculations lead some to commit immoral and even illegal acts.  It argues that a view of governance and politics solely based on a natural rights view of such concerns falls short of addressing this overall problem.  In short, that construct does not provide enough reason to be good.

          This posting attempts to pick up on this theme and considers what Richard C. Sinopoli[1] sees in the work of John Locke – the father of the natural rights view – in how it deals with moral questioning.  In so doing, Sinopoli gives his readers a more nuance view of Locke’s writings – more nuanced then one gathers from present day depictions of that 1700s’ philosopher.  This will not be an attempt to sanctify Locke, but to be more accurate in reporting what he judged individual rights to be and how those rights related to moral questions.

          Yes, Locke bases his argument on a view of humans as naturally disposed to seek a dominance over others.  But he sees natural humans capable of being taught or socialized in ways that are conducive to the demands of a just society.  Sinopoli, though, judges Locke’s view of this socializing process as relying on a hedonistic psychology or on self-serving drives in their cruder form.

          Before describing this psychology, it is worth remembering why one does so.  One should note the role calculating appropriate social values and dispositions play in the maintenance of a functioning society or polity.  The writings of enlightened thinkers, though, did not agree fully on this role.  A point of disagreement ranges around the role and the meaning of virtue.

          Locke sees virtue as a restraint on natural tendencies whereas his contemporary writers such as Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid viewed humans as more apt to pursue socially amenable drives such as compassion or benevolence as natural.[2]  Sinopoli points out that Locke did not see the existence of virtue as did classically influenced writers, especially those who wrote in the tradition of Aristotle. 

Instead of natural tendencies or biases, Locke counted on educational experiences to instill the more cooperating, coordinating, and compromising behaviors upon which a polity depends.  He did not favor enforcing such values – even as important as they are.  The government – other than providing the rational deterrent for antisocial behaviors; i.e., coercive punishment – should not play a role in this socializing process. 

That should be left to social entities such as families and churches.  Of course, other communal entities play a role.  They can be social organizations – businesses or labor groups.  But one should remember, that the role of public education was not an issue in Locke’s time since it did not exist outside of orphanages.

          Admittedly, Sinopoli cannot cite one single work in which these Lockean ideas are spelled out.  They are gleaned from a variety of the philosopher’s writings.  If Locke had dedicated one targeted writing effort to these concerns, perhaps he would have explored all these complex implications surrounding his proposals. 

For example, how could a citizenry get together, as individual agents pursuing individual goals, and come up rationally with the necessary supports or rewards to develop such a socializing strategy?  How could they create those entities that would do the necessary work to bend the natural biases of selfish beings – those unsocialized youngsters?  He foreshadowed the work of behavioralists by supporting a system of compassionate rewards and punishments to do the job, but he does not give his readers a how-to account for accomplishing this.

This blog will pick up on this development at some future point, but for now a reaction seem to be appropriate.  First, how realistic is it to depend on self-centered agents mustering the necessary collective understanding and willingness to meet the challenge younger selfish beings impose on society?  Is that not being too optimistic? 

For example, just think of the problems current concerned people have in convincing their fellow citizens of the dangers posed by climate change.  Even that relatively immediate emergency is not enough for many to accept policies that hint at any short-term sacrifices to offset a long-term existential disaster.  In meeting this emergency or in properly socializing a younger generation, humans must have more going for them then a natural selfish bias. 

The fact that humans have been able to establish generally congenial social environments indicates that Hutcheson and Reid were closer to describing human nature.  Also, what one sees developing from an adoption of natural rights thinking is not this communal, cooperative effort to encourage socially minded individuals, but an advancement of a non-communal view. 

This nation’s public and private institutions have shied away from communal social messaging, with certain exceptions here and there.  Consider that in public schools today, one finds a paucity of effort to socialize the young along these concerns – one can argue that an effort to do so has become illegitimate.  The natural rights construct today argues it is up to everyone, individually, to determine his/her views concerning any social responsibilities one might have beyond obeying the law.  A more “everyone has the right to do his/her own thing” prevails.

If the reader doubts this, just consider if the film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” were released today as a featured film – even with a more secular bent – how it would be received.  Probably it would be viewed as an out-of-date sentimental piece of Hollywood fare.  Yes, in a recent Christmas Eve showing it was able to muster about four and half million viewers,[3] but then again, it’s become more of a Christmas tradition for some than a serious bit of art with a practical, serious message.

This blog has argued that Locke’s views have become more individualistic as the years have gone by.  This is seen as a natural development when a people are given a legitimizing rationale for acting self-centered-ly.  As such, the nation’s public schools – be it coercively or compassionately – have more and more drifted away from fulfilling any role in socializing youth as Locke envisioned.  Consequently, many of the current generation has been described as narcissistic and selfish.[4]

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[1] Richard C. Sinopoli, The Foundations of American Citizenship:  Liberalism, the Constitution, and Civic Virtue (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1992).

[2] Gary Wills describes how these writers’ ideas affected Thomas Jefferson and others of the founding era.  See Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018).

[3] Rick Porter, “TV Ratings Sunday:  NFL and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Lead Christmas Eve,” TV by the Numbers, December 25, 2015, accessed December 2, 2019, https://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/daily-ratings/tv-ratings-sunday-dec-24-2017/ .

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

A GOBBLING CONCERN

Here’s hoping everyone’s Thanksgiving was grand.  Really, isn’t Thanksgiving the best?  Family get-togethers (a joyful event for this blogger), a grand meal, no gift-giving (or more accurately, gift-buying) hassle, and even a parade (a spectacle this blogger attended as a child) marks the day.  What more can one ask for?  But now, it’s time to move on and, oh yes, prepare for the next holiday or two.

          And that next family-oriented day or days rely on economic conditions to be what one hopes for.  So, what better time to address the economy.  Of course, that’s a topic this civics-oriented blog looks at from time to time.  One writer this blogger depends on for this area of concern is William K. Tabb.[1]  The last posting citing Tabb is entitled “Are They Misdirected Moves?” and it appeared July 5, 2019.[2]  That posting ended with a foreshadowing that Tabb’s work would be revisited again and here is that next visit.

          Tabb points out that among the American electorate there seem to be two polar opinions concerning the role government plays in the economy.  One is that government meddling – or intrusion – can be best considered opportunities for disasters.  Government proves to be ineffective and surely incompetent.  The little good it might eke out is over-taken by the harm it produces.  Usually, that view is associated with conservative people and, in turn, with those citizens that identify themselves as Republicans.

          The others – the liberals or those associated with the Democratic Party – see market participants as being the “out-of-touch” or shortsighted people who engage in mindless herd behaviors.  They refer to the inevitable, resulting crises that spring up every so often causing serious harm not just to numbers of businesses, but to the lives of real people.  Of course, the most recent example was the 2008-09 financial crisis that turned into the Great Recession. 

They blame market believers for being too self-centered to realize macro forces that lead to the downturns.  Good times lead to over exuberance and over purchasing of investment assets – like stocks or real estate – often with borrowed money.  Result is the makings of bubbles which look like the ultimate solution to securing economic riches.  But bubbles burst.  Here’s Tabb’s description of the last crisis:

There is now a good deal of research that links rapid increase in credit creation in an economy with the likelihood of financial bubbles and busts.  When serious economic crises occur, government intervention on a significant scale is required, as [former FED Chairman] Greenspan was to acknowledge … This suggests the unenviable, but necessary, task of taking away the punch bowl when the party becomes too exuberant.[3]

Here’s a thought, Trump’s trade “war” with China is functioning as not currently taking away the bowl but inserting a leak.  And that leak might be discouraging the irrational exuberance alluded to above.  The closest indicator that might suggest a bubble in the stock market, for example, is or has been forming is stocks’ price to earnings ratio (p/e ratio) indicator.  In 2018 it was getting a bit high, but since then it has significantly dropped. 

Perhaps trade woes had something to do with that.  In any event, the economy presently seems strong without the usual concerning indicators – like inflation – causing much worry.[4]  This blogger is not aware of any significant concern for a forming bubble.  There is the concern among some over corporations borrowing too much money.  This seems to be encouraged by persisting low interest rates – as this blogger has asked before:  is this a bubble-like effect?

But this brings up an important distinction when considering economic issues and trends.  There are production issues and there are financing issues.  One refers to the production of wealth – hence, it being called production issues – and the other fuels production.  And leading Western economies, like the US, have become more centered on the financial end of the equation.  Tabb describes how that end has become dominant.

He writes:

Financialization has become the leading organizing logic of accumulation in Anglo-American-style economies and has had impacts elsewhere to a substantial degree.  In its shortening time horizons of production capital, it allows a redistribution of profits from the realm of production of actual goods and non-financial services to speculator profits and enlarges the sphere in which money is made from money.  Speculating on and manipulating the future value of financial assets implies consequences for citizens.  It increases uncertainty and risk with regard to decisions about financing consumer purchases, homes, education, retirement, and other quality-of-life decisions.[5]

And with those sobering thoughts, this blogger hopes the reader’s holiday goes on unperturbed.

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[1] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time (New York, NY:  Columbia University Press, 2012).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “Are They Misdirected Moves?”, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics – a blog, July 5, 2019, accessed November 28, 2019, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019/07/are-they-misdirected-moves.html .

[3] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time, 6 (Kindle edition).

[4] One should not make investment decisions based on what a blogger might opine – especially when the blogger writes about civics education issues.

[5] William K. Tabb, The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time, 10-11 (Kindle edition).

CONTACT, CONTACT

One instructional program on TV is PBS’s show called NOVA.  This writer can’t claim to be a regular watcher – to his detriment – but from time to time he happens upon one of their broadcasts that catches his interest.  This past week, one did; that episode is entitled “The Violence Paradox.”[1]  One element of the show reminded this blogger of the work of a prominent psychologist, Gordon Allport, and his famous book, The Nature of Prejudice. 

More specifically, the program, while not mentioning Allport or his work (at least this blogger does not recall it does), it did mention a theory that Allport’s work help formulate.  That theory is contact theory.  It was first introduced by government agents as a reaction to what promised to be a violent development; i.e., the desegregation of the armed forces during the Truman administration. 

The NOVA program set out not only to provide insight into the causes of violence, but how knowledge about violence has led to certain remedial programs and strategies.  It points out that overall levels of recorded violence have decreased.  This being the case during a time when the ability of humans to kill each other has increased – or “exploded” – with the technologies of weaponry such as the killing efficiency handheld arms and that of bombs, including nuclear weapons.  In that, the titled paradox exists.

          What this downward trend in actual violence and their related statistics – such as relating to homicides (a decrease of over 90%) – indicate, humans are doing somethings right.  What one of the program’s guest social scientists, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, urges:  people should find out what that is. 

It turns out that not all of that welcomed development emerges from what humans are doing; some have to do with physical evolutionary factors at work.  But for the sake of this posting, this blogger will skip that part of the story and encourage the reader to look up the program online.  What this blog highlights are those human efforts that relate to federation theory.

And that connection draws one back to contact theory.  Simply stated, contact theory postulates that if people of different groups intermingle – it helps if that occurs over common interests or in seeking common goals – people get to know one another.  Once they do, as in the military, then a lot of the baseless fears or misconceptions attached to the others can first be questioned and then mostly dismissed.  But that conclusion gets ahead of the story a bit. 

The first insight derived from applying contact theory is the realization that violence is contagious.  It can be contagious as incidences first might occur in isolation, but they happen in close proximity.  As people perceive these events, some are predisposed to seeing it as part of living.  Or it can be contagious from victimization of prior violence – one wants revenge for violence being inflicted on a relative, a friend, or a fellow gang member.  This naturally leads to a cycle of violence.

Either way, soon an epidemic of violence can erupt.  These phenomena are behavior patterns and are appropriate for social scientific analysis.  Contact theory was first developed in a purely scientific vein – trying to find out what is involved both psychologically and sociologically with outbreaks of violence.  But when social agents – police, social workers, and even educators – want to stem the incidence of violence, this notion of contagion can be helpful and applied to social settings where one sees or seriously suspects that such a contagion is possible.

Some urban areas have organized neighborhood efforts – one national group so organized to assist such efforts is Cure Violence International – that once a number of violent events are noted, street agents go out and start talking to neighborhood resident and seek out what is happening on the streets.  They proactively insert themselves when they see or are informed of a problem or potential problem brewing. 

The effort then has these street agents bringing the potential or actual belligerents to talk to each other.  In this, these agents are trained to implement what contact theory identifies what should be done.  Initially, people might not listen to each other.  They yell their grievance and express how they perceive that the other is responsible for the brouhaha.  They also might communicate they are not going to take it anymore.

 The neutral “peace” worker, though, does listen and tries to verbalize each side’s position in perhaps less angry or antagonistic language.  He/she evaluates how the angry people are behaving – pointing out, for example, that they are not listening to what the other is saying – and works through with appropriate words to get the two parties to at least agree that each is a person. 

Like him/herself, that other person only wants not to be bothered by whatever the concern is and to be respected.  Can’t the other agree that this can be possible for each?  Most often than not, it works out and the belligerents end up shaking hands.  This account oversimplifies the process, but in the main that is what the street agent tries to accomplish.

With significant numbers of these workers on the streets, the number of violent results has decreased in highly volatile, large urban areas.  The worker has worked at establishing a point of contact between the two he/she has identified as the potential violence inflict-or or violence victim.  But contact can be accomplished through various venues. 

The PBS program goes on to hypothesize that one historical development that helped masses of people “contacting” others in an imaginary way, was the expansion of literacy and the availability of the written word.  Therefore, the invention of the printing press and the eventual distribution of written material helped people realize how similar they were to others and encouraged an emotional disposition to feel empathy for others they did not know personally.  The written material allowed them to learn of other peoples’ challenges.

Another study looked at antagonism or lack of understanding between groups that historically have proven to be prone to a great deal of violence.  That would be between religious groups.  When one thinks today of religious violence, one tends to think of the violence in the Islamic lands.  There are others, for example, the violence in recent decades between Muslims and Hindus that characterizes the conflicts between Pakistan and India.  But the problems between the Shiites and Sunni Islamic sects attract most people’s attention today. 

Hidden can be the challenges that Christians face in those areas.  In Iraq an experiment put some to the ideas associated with contact theory to the test.  There, through an effort to mix Christians and Muslims together in soccer teams were tried to see if that contact led to more cordial and interactive results.  To a limited extent it did; perhaps if the experiment continues the effect can not only increase but also become more established.

The PBS show speaks of other developments.  For example, the expanding view of rights seems to have had quite an effect especially if rights are institutionalized.  Here, the US Bill of Rights and the subsequent UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights have had their effects globally to upgrade the general sense as to the importance of life and the liberty necessary to make life meaningful.

This blogger also thinks something that has affected humans’ view about violence and death resulting from violence has to do with the commonality of death.  This possible factor is not derived from contact theory, but this blogger feels it is worth considering.  It seems reasonable that if a people experience a regular dose of death among those who are about them, the perceived value of life would be affected. 

Killing someone doesn’t seem to have the same degree of tragedy generally if the victim stands a good chance of dying shortly from some disease or accident that characterized life in the years prior to modern medicine.  This blogger’s wife tells a family story of how a great uncle in the earlier years of the twentieth century died of a horse biting him on the cheek.  The uncle contracted tetanus – formerly known as lockjaw – and suffered his fate.  Events like that was fairly common.

In any event, the federalist angle to this review of violence and how to avoid it relate to federation theory’s bias toward encouraging contact.  This is augmented with the version of that construct this blog has called liberated federalism.  That version disavows parochial biases, but instead not only tolerates plurality, but encourages it.  Schools, through their curricular choices particularly with civics instruction, can play a very important role in promoting the lessons of contact theory if federation theory guides their curricular choices.

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[1] “The Violence Paradox,” S46/Ep22, NOVA, PBS, broadcast November 20, 2019, accessed November 24, 2019, https://www.thirteen.org/programs/nova/the-violence-paradox-gl0tal/ .