An Atheist Invocation

The universe is an empty thing, bound and developing according to the logic of its nature, but devoid of mind, consciousness, or purpose. In this mindless universe, living things evolved from replicating chemicals, and these living things evolved a new thing – purpose, will, desire. Because replicators with a sense of purpose were often more successful at leaving prosperous progeny than those without one.

One of these species of replicators is our own. And we have evolved so many purposes, goals, desires. Some time ago, long before we were human, we discovered that we could accomplish some of those goals better if we worked together – and we developed community, solidarity. But others of us love to place their personal goals above the goals of others – to dominate the community in their selfish greed.

I celebrate the solidarity of our human species that lets us, alone in an empty universe, work together for our common, noble goals, and overcome the powerful few who would set their selfish, private goals above the good of the community, and I celebrate the human, compassionate spirit that gives us the strength to fight, and overcome, the forces that would oppress us.

Madness foisted

Does anybody remember when Kleenex boxes just had a hole in the top to get the tissue out, and didn't have a slotted piece of plastic film glued around the hole to hold the next sheet in position?  Why did they change this?  Did anybody have a real problem getting the next tissue out of the old boxes?  Seriously?  The old boxes were simple, and about as cheap as they could be.  The new boxes are probably cheap, too, but making a box and gluing a sheet of plastic in it MUST be at least a little more expensive than just making the box, and it is more harmful to the environment to use the extra material, especially a non-biodegradable, petroleum-based plastic. Why?

Another of my pet peeves is coffee cup lids.  I drank coffee on the go for many years when the cups had simple, tearably-thin plastic lids with no holes to drink through.  I never had a problem getting my coffee out (improvising a sipping hole if-and-when I needed one), nor did any of the other coffee drinkers I knew.  But over time, all the coffee shops started providing (and ONLY providing) much heavier lids (more material) that couldn't easily have custom holes torn in them - but had a PERMANENT sipper hole.  The main function of these sipper holes seems to have been to dribble coffee everywhere (usually all over your clothes) while you were walking to your destination with the cup.  After several decades of this madness, some coffee shops started realizing that this was a problem for their customers.  Their solution was to provide ANOTHER thick, heavy piece of plastic to temporarily plug the unnecessary hole in the unnecessarily thick plastic lid.

The theoretical justification of the capitalist marketplace is that it "puts the consumer first" because they have sovereignty over their purchasing decisions, and producers compete to satisfy the sovereign customer.  But the only feedback is the purchasing decision, which comes LONG after the production decision has been made (and after many prior purchasing/production decisions, such as deciding on expensive retooling of factories).  But I don't think consumers were ever clamoring for plastic tissue-holders in Kleenex boxes, or thicker coffee cup lids with permanent sipping holes, and I doubt that many consumers ever made the choices of buying or not buying tissue or coffee based on these features.  These were unnecessary and irrational choices made by producers and foisted on consumers due to the inefficiency of a feedback mechanism so feeble as to be virtually non-existent.

I dream of a more rational economic system in which production decisions could me made deliberatively and collectively in a broad-based social process, and not in isolation and secret by competing cabals of producers, to be "voted on" after the fact by individual consumers acting even more in isolation and faced with limited and complexly aggregated purchasing options.

But, hey, maybe its just me that's gone mad, and not the rest of the world.  Who knows?

Occupy Wall Street

They re-occupied Wall Street, yesterday. The mainstream media seems to be largely blacking it out, and it's hard to tell exactly what is happening. The crowd in photos looks smaller than some Occupy internet sites have claimed. I suspect the forces of the City of New York, and possibly the Federal Government, will come down on them like a ton of bricks - certainly if they pitch tents, or seem to be assembling in too much strength. I suspect the near-certainty of this will keep a lot of prudent potential protesters away. Still, the mere fact that this is happening causes profound emotion to well up from my heart to my tearing eyes.

I love the Occupy movement with a surprising, deep intensity. It is the source of much frustration, true. But the sins of the Occupiers are those of naivete, mostly. Their strengths are hope, inclusion, solidarity, love, and pure heart. Compare this to a mainstream culture based on self-interest, greed, hypocrisy, and the exercise of naked power. Not much choice, is there?

I do not know how to go about building a better world. As U.S. and global political and economic centers grow stronger, more concentrated, and more adamantly resistant to change, I grow less and less certain that it is even possible. But I do know that whatever limited powers of intellect, knowledge, ability I may possess, I'd rather throw them on the side of love and hope than greed, aggression, and repression. I know which side I'm on.

My favorite Occupy chant expresses, I think, both the sometimes childlike innocence of the movement, and its enthusiasm and unlimited, but unselfish, ambition:

"Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Main Street.
Occupy EVERYWHERE and NEVER GIVE IT BACK."

 

The Common Good

Robert Dahl, in Democracy and its Critics, has a section late in the book where he considers at length the concept of the common good.  I had always suspected that the idea of the common good could be little more than  a reification – an concept that, given the huge diversity of human interests, could have no real content behind it.  While reading the Dahl chapter, I found myself musing on whether a conception of the common good, consistent with pluralist values, could be found.  My resulting thought experiment follows.

Take any particular polity or demos as a given.  This is not a restrictive criterion, because the process can be repeated for any given (other) demos.  Do a Senian partial ordering of people’s conceptions of the good.  (Realize that the process – discussion, dialogue – will change the constellation of preferences with which people start the process.)  By a “Senian” partial ordering, I mean a ranking of preferences such as Amartya Sen often mentions in The Idea of Justice, which he conceives essentially as in Social Choice Theory, but he frequently observes that even if we can’t get a complete ordering, so that we have a complete social ranking of all possible alternatives, sometimes we may have a clear definition (e.g., consensus) with respect to a partial ordering, and in many cases that may be, if not “good enough” at least good enough to be of some practical use.

A Senian partial ranking would mean that consensus, or near consensus on some items had become apparent.  (For instance, all may value that the community is prosperous, that child mortality rates be low, that the drinking water be clean…)  Is it enough?  Can consensus be improved?  Consider the other (non-consensual) issues.  Can some of them be packaged or bundled in such a way that the bundle will be at least acquiesced to by consensus (ranked as preferred or indifferent by all; opposed by none).  Is this, now, enough?  “Enough” means can the rest of the items be left to individuals or subgroups to pursue or decide autonomously for themselves.

If not, then no definition of “common good” applies to the group, and the only option is power politics in which different subgroups (whether minority or majority) try to dominate others.   Of course, another option available to each group is to try to sway public opinion.  The situation is dynamic.  Over time a sense of the common good may become meaningful where none was before.  Or a prior conception of the good could become no longer consensual.

Note that for this not to be arbitrary, the demos must be inclusive of all who will be bound by its decisions, and consensus must be real, e.g., not based hidden dominations like of husband over wife or boss over employee.  If there are such de facto dominations, the question of hegemonic ideas or false consciousness arises, whereby domination is so habitual that it is internalized and appears as free will on behalf of the dominated.  Obviously, situations like this are always disputable and hard to prove.

My use of the term “near consensus” also raises issues.  If people are to be excluded from consideration in a consensus process for determining the common good, there must be a “good reason” other than simple minority status, e.g., mental illness, (literal) immaturity, intentional perversity (“anything everybody else wants, I will reject”).  People with a manifest desire to dominate others, who will not accept any conception of “the good” that does not include their domination, would be another example.  Obviously such exclusions are also disputable, and the “good reason” hard to prove.

The problem of people affected by decisions of the demos, but not included in the demos, cannot always be solved (even in a thought experiment) by extending the demos.  One example is the “good” of future generations.  I don’t see any way around this other than to say that justice demands that members of the demos consider, to the best of their ability, what the wishes of those others would be, were they to be somehow included.

Remember, this is a thought experiment, and not something that could necessarily be implemented to actually define “the common good”.  But it might be argued that a legislative procedure modeled on these ideas would tend to produce legislation consistent with the underlying concept of “the good” that would have been so discovered.  Particularly if debate around proposed legislation was allowed to be open, broad and free-ranging.