One of the universals of our time is that both sides of the political battlefront insist that they are on the side of reason and logic, while the other guys are for feelings and emotion.
For instance conservatives offer the constitution and limited government as the acme of logic and reason, while the left with their "living constitution" are just trying to legislate their feelings. But liberals regard "nationalism" as a tribal atavism that appeals to clan loyalty, while ignoring the reality of centuries, millennia, of patriarchal and racial hegemony and domination.
In reality there has been a two-century-long argument about reason vs. emotion that is best represented by the two intellectual movements we call the Age of Reason and the Romantic Rebellion.
Crudely, the Age of Reason argued that wouldn't it be nice if we could all get together and discuss things rationally rather than through religious fanaticism, and the Romantics argued that all the important things come not from reason but creative inspiration.
Very good, you reply. But what do "scientists say?" Thank you senator. I'm glad you asked.
I am presently reading Matt Ridley's 1996 book The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. In it he assembles a ton of science on cooperation, starting with the question of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the development of the winning Tit-For-Tat strategy for iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
Well, it turns out that there is something better than Tit-for-Tat, which assumes you know nothing about the other person beyond their actions in the game. In fact when humans are acting in the world they are not going blind, but know the other person's reputation. And humans are very good at looking at another person's face and judging their honesty and reliability.
In other words, interpersonal relations are not just a question of the rational interplay of actions, but are guided by emotional and instinctive judgements.
The point of all this is that cultural values like the reputation for honesty and virtue are not just the detritus of the age of superstition or leftovers from Newtonian mechanics, but real, ongoing cultural goods that make human life better, both materially and spiritually, and also reduce the negative stuff of conflict and mayhem. Successful societies feature these cultural values and habits.
So, to get straight to the political point, the left's attack on all these so-called "bourgeois virtues" is something that goes against "science." But you knew that.
OK. So what is the bottom line here? I think that it is to change the basic world-view of our time and illuminate that the problem we are called to solve is not to battle against hegemony and injustice but to promote trust and virtue. The "science" of human behavior seems to suggest that, once you have rolled back gross domination and hegemony then you can dial back the force and allow a hundred flowers of trust and virtue to bloom, because trust and virtue are incredibly beneficial to humans, both individually and collectively.
And we need to look again at "who benefits." When the problem to be solved is hegemony and domination then, of course, the key problem is "who rules," who brings the right force to bear so that hegemony and domination are rolled back. But when the problem is to give space and opportunity to trust and virtue then the question of "who rules" recedes into the background and the individual development of character and virtue comes to the forefront. The culture of "who rules" obviously is the culture of a group that wants to be a ruling class. The culture of character and virtue is the culture of people that want to contribute individually to the whole, not as master, nor as slave, but as a responsible or creative person devoted to contribution and competence rather than dominance.
The point of the culture of competence, of trust and virtue, is that it is not necessarily logical and reasonable, but emotional. For whatever we determine by intellect and by reason we implement by habit and training so that it becomes "second nature."
Only, of course, it is reason and consciousness that is "second nature" and instinct and emotion and the unconsciousness that are the first nature.
For instance conservatives offer the constitution and limited government as the acme of logic and reason, while the left with their "living constitution" are just trying to legislate their feelings. But liberals regard "nationalism" as a tribal atavism that appeals to clan loyalty, while ignoring the reality of centuries, millennia, of patriarchal and racial hegemony and domination.
In reality there has been a two-century-long argument about reason vs. emotion that is best represented by the two intellectual movements we call the Age of Reason and the Romantic Rebellion.
Crudely, the Age of Reason argued that wouldn't it be nice if we could all get together and discuss things rationally rather than through religious fanaticism, and the Romantics argued that all the important things come not from reason but creative inspiration.
Very good, you reply. But what do "scientists say?" Thank you senator. I'm glad you asked.
I am presently reading Matt Ridley's 1996 book The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. In it he assembles a ton of science on cooperation, starting with the question of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the development of the winning Tit-For-Tat strategy for iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
Well, it turns out that there is something better than Tit-for-Tat, which assumes you know nothing about the other person beyond their actions in the game. In fact when humans are acting in the world they are not going blind, but know the other person's reputation. And humans are very good at looking at another person's face and judging their honesty and reliability.
In other words, interpersonal relations are not just a question of the rational interplay of actions, but are guided by emotional and instinctive judgements.
The point of all this is that cultural values like the reputation for honesty and virtue are not just the detritus of the age of superstition or leftovers from Newtonian mechanics, but real, ongoing cultural goods that make human life better, both materially and spiritually, and also reduce the negative stuff of conflict and mayhem. Successful societies feature these cultural values and habits.
So, to get straight to the political point, the left's attack on all these so-called "bourgeois virtues" is something that goes against "science." But you knew that.
OK. So what is the bottom line here? I think that it is to change the basic world-view of our time and illuminate that the problem we are called to solve is not to battle against hegemony and injustice but to promote trust and virtue. The "science" of human behavior seems to suggest that, once you have rolled back gross domination and hegemony then you can dial back the force and allow a hundred flowers of trust and virtue to bloom, because trust and virtue are incredibly beneficial to humans, both individually and collectively.
And we need to look again at "who benefits." When the problem to be solved is hegemony and domination then, of course, the key problem is "who rules," who brings the right force to bear so that hegemony and domination are rolled back. But when the problem is to give space and opportunity to trust and virtue then the question of "who rules" recedes into the background and the individual development of character and virtue comes to the forefront. The culture of "who rules" obviously is the culture of a group that wants to be a ruling class. The culture of character and virtue is the culture of people that want to contribute individually to the whole, not as master, nor as slave, but as a responsible or creative person devoted to contribution and competence rather than dominance.
The point of the culture of competence, of trust and virtue, is that it is not necessarily logical and reasonable, but emotional. For whatever we determine by intellect and by reason we implement by habit and training so that it becomes "second nature."
Only, of course, it is reason and consciousness that is "second nature" and instinct and emotion and the unconsciousness that are the first nature.
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