The Bending Arc of the Moral Universe

I'm of the opinion that the story of history has been toward progress and that we can reasonably predict that progress to continue into the future. Critics will point out setbacks (e.g. recent increases in violence toward Asian Americans or increases in crime rates). Could these represent reversals? Sure, but the historical data are noisy, and we regularly witness short-term blips revert to the trend line of the historic mean. Short-term variability does not negate the long-term trend. 

When I say it's a safe bet that things will continue to get better, I am not saying that will happen on its own without effort. Somehow people think that the work that goes into making progress happen is outside of my prediction. It's not. I'm predicting that people will continue to put in the work because that is entangled in the historic data as well. A lack of complacency is a part of my model. 

I could be wrong. Social science is probabilistic.

Exclusive vs. Inclusive Solidarities

Solidarity is a necessary part of healthy human existence. We are animals and need food, water, etc., but what defines us is our radically social nature so we also need to be connected to other individuals.

When that belonging is tribal, it insists on a kind of primary identity--a master status--that must do the heavy lifting of generating solidarity. For it to work sufficiently, it demands a lot and does so at the unvarying expense of the other. In other words, it's about exclusive solidarity: we feel cohesive by othering and even dehumanizing "them." For example, being an American citizen does this for many people. For it to work, "American citizen" must be defined by an other, most notably "illegal aliens." The political implications can be very harmful to undocumented peoples.

An alternative, and one that has until recently dominated modern life, is to allow people to have multiple identities, each doing relatively little of the heavy lifting of generating solidarity. The social benefit of this is that the diversity of identities is overlapping. This limits the externalized costs of generating solidarity and allows for more overall inclusive solidarity. For example, some are white and some are Evangelical Protestant, but some people of color are also Evangelical Protestants, prompting (at least in theory) such adherents to temper any animus toward those who are not white.

To put it succinctly, overarching identities do exclusive belonging and externalize the cost of that solidarity generation on the other; intersecting identities do inclusive belonging and limit the costs of solidarity generation.

Two major, open questions are (1) whether inclusive solidarity is as socially efficient as exclusive solidarity and, indeed, (2) whether inclusive solidarity is even socially sufficient. 

A Problem of Scale: Why Civility, Kindness, and Politeness Can Never Save the World

There is a lot of talk these days about the state of civil and political discourse in the United States. The basic claim of many in varying ways is that we must return to civility, that kindness will save us all. It's generally a centerist claim. These are people who claim to be moderates or independents. I think they are fundamentally wrong. Let me elaborate.

Let's start with Emergence Theory. Basically, Emergence Theory says that phenomena emerge from complexity. I think the best example is our own intelligence. We used to think that intelligence was a brute force kind of thing, that having lots and lots of neurons in our brains made us smart in the same way that a computer chip with lots and lots of transistors was more powerful. Cognitive science and computer science are both coming to the same conclusion, though, that it's not the number of neurons but the overwhelming number of connections between those neurons out of which intelligence (and maybe even consciousness, whatever that is) emerges unpredictably out of the complexity of those interconnections. Physics has its own version of this in which the characteristics of the material world at our macro material world emerge out of the complexity of things at the micro or quantum level. Though sociologists and other social scientists rarely use the term, we do have our own version of Emergence Theory. It's what many of us spend the first week of intro-level courses trying to convince undergraduates of, namely that we cannot understand social structure simply by understanding individuals. In other words, society is more than the sum total of the agency of countless individuals.

What does any of this have to do with being civil or kind? Well, if I understand the centerists' argument, it essentially claims that good behavior at the individual level will trickle up to good institutions and structures. For example, if I, a white man, am courteous, polite, and even kind to a black man, this will somehow solve racism. The political version goes something along the lines of, if the Democrat and the Republican family members are able to have a civil conversation at the Thanksgiving table, this will somehow lead to Congress being functional and productive. All of this is, of course, bullshit. It is oversimplification--at best. We would all be better to embrace complexity. It may not be as reassuring as the simplistic centerist understanding, but it's the path to improvement.

Explanation vs. Justification

I wanted to get some thoughts down on this, mostly for future reference. People often confuse explanation for justification. I remember wrestling with this myself as an undergraduate sociology major. In particular, I struggled in my Crime and Deviance course to reconcile the sociological explanation for the family annihilator phenomenon, in which typically men murder their wives and children and then (usually) kill themselves. Scientific understanding felt like a defense or apology from my moralistic worldview. A more recent example can be seen in the academic and journalistic attempts to explain Trump-voters, especially white, rural, working-class folks. See works by Vance, Hochschild, and Wuthnow. I've had an oddly similar reaction as in my undergrad days, that these explanations seem dangerously close to moral justifications. Importantly, this need not be the case. It is entirely consistent simultaneously to have objective scientific explanation and to retain the ability to find the outcomes subjectively morally repugnant. I can understand why some men do violence while still condemning it. I can understand why rural, working-class whites feel aggrieved while still labeling them wrong. Too often, I think sociology, the social sciences more broadly, and the academe overall are derided by those who cannot make this distinction between explanation and justification, understanding and apology. Being able to articulate this to the public--and to ourselves--can only help our cause.

A Sociologist Does Philosophy

Over the last couple weeks, I've taken a bit of a dive into philosophy. Honestly, it's not something that I knew much about in any detail other than in broad outlines. In particular, I binged on many videos from The School of Life and CrashCourse YouTube channels. I found it quite gratifying and intriguing. I also reminded myself why I am decidedly an empiricist. I think that there is a lot in philosophy, even among the ancients, that is remarkably relevant to the present.

Yet Another Post about Safety Pins

A few days after the election, my wife and I took my daughter to the Atlanta Zoo--and I wore a safety pin on my shirt. ICYMI:

• Dear White People, Your Safety Pins Are Embarrassing
• Weighing the Symbolic Value of the Safety Pin
• Safety Pins, Awareness Ribbons, and the Challenges of New Symbols
• Safety Pins and Being an Ally

Philip Cohen had a nice retort:

How much energy are we planning to spend criticizing people for failing to show their solidarity according to our expectations?

— Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) November 13, 2016

For the record, I think all four of the posts linked above raise important and valid points; all of them also err in the same way: they fail to acknowledge the radicalness of symbolic interactionism.

Symbolic interactionism, briefly stated, is the sociological theoretical perspective through which we recognize that "society" is the sum of individual, face-to-face interactions where people define and negotiate "meaning" through symbols. So, what is a symbol, you might be asking? A symbol is any relatively concrete thing that stands in for an abstract idea. Each and every pixel, letter, and word in this blog post is a symbol. The compression waves emanating from my mouth as sounds are symbols. A flag is a symbol. Indeed, a safety pin can be a symbol. In intro-level classes, I like to use pink-as-feminine as an example. Imagine you have a baby boy, dress it in pink, and introduce him to your parents. You can imagine that most parents would, at the very least, question this. You and your parents would be contesting symbolic (i.e. the color pink) meaning (i.e. masculinity/femininity). That meaning would then be negotiated with other symbols (i.e. words spoken and/or written). Typically, there would be some kind of resolution, even if only to acknowledge intractability.

The same people who argue that a safety pin is "just a symbol" would undoubtedly not make the same argument that the collection of letters, N-I-G-G-E-R are "just symbols." No, they would rightly understand the symbolic importance of the N-word, and it's power to reify and reproduce the cultural and structural impediments to equality for people of color. The same is true, in this case, of a safety pin. Words, as symbols, are powerful. The symbolic/practical bifurcation is a false dichotomy; the two are inextricably linked.

Granted, practical measures are sometimes more costly or risky than the symbolic, but often, what people present as "practical" is actually symbolic. The Civil Rights Movement gives many examples. Consider marching down a street. Many encountered violence for doing this simple action, but the action itself was not practical in that it could not directly affect change; it is definitionally symbolic--and people have died and survived by such symbols.

Let's go back to the zoo. I wore a safety pin. I saw several older white men there wearing "Make America Great Again" caps. They were doing symbolism as much as I was. They all were the objects of another symbol given off by me, a dirty look. It may not be directly material, but it is real and, quite literally, meaningful.

The Secular is a Branch of Protestantism

I just listened to the most recent podcast from The Religious Studies Project, a discussion about secularism with Donovan Schaefer. Schaefer introduced an interesting perspective (between 13:03 and 16:33):

…Secularism is itself a particular iteration of Protestant Christianity, that we have the version of secularism that we have because we are an offshoot of a cultural/historical context that defined religion in a particular way…. It's precisely because we see religion as something that is potentially private, individualized, and belief-oriented that religion is something that can be relegated to the private sphere and therefore secularized according to the conventional definition….  Religion gets defined as something that is personal rather than corporate…. All of these details of Protestantism…make up the coordinates of what eventually becomes secularism…. Secularism as something that Christianity does in exactly the same way that…you would talk about the great schisms—Orthodoxy from Catcholicism, Protestantism from Catholicism—and then also could locate secularism as, in a sense, another schism, as another permutation of Christianity that is part of the story of Christianity as a world religion (emphasis added). 

In the sociology of religion, secularization is generally framed as a break from religion; in this framing, however, secularization is the continuation of religion. Cool stuff!

A Theory of Art: The Consumption of Music as Control

As I've written before on this blog (here and here), I am a fan of metal musics. Often, though, I am forced to defend myself to those who claim that metal is all about hate, misogyny, anger, death, etc. It occurred to me that no one ever seems to force fans of the blues to defend their tastes as being depressive, melancholic, or acedic. It got me thinking.

It is cliche to talk about the blues helping to assuage the feeling of the depression. To say that artistic expression is cathartic is overly simplistic. More accurately, I propose that artistic expression and appreciation are purposeful indulgences in emotions and behaviors intended to exact (at least the perception of) control over that which threatens personal or social harm. A bluesman plays the blues to reclaim himself from the depression wrought by privation. The metalhead plays metal to acknowledge and subdue the experience of hate and anger brought on by marginalization. Similarly, the skydiver jumps out of a plane not to celebrate suicide but to champion our control over death, and a thrill-seeker rides a roller coaster to embrace life, not to be reckless with it.

I wonder if we could extend this to video games, particularly violent video games, or to pornography. To some extent, perhaps all consumption of media amounts to an agential program of control.

Further Thought on The Assassination of Truth

Just a quick follow-up on yesterday's post. The movie JFK, I think, nearly perfectly reflects the postmodern angst through its almost un-followable overlapping narratives. I dare you to make sense of it.

The Assassination of Truth

I submit to you my contribution to the cacophony of JFK-assassination-anniversary-related stuff.

When we teach social theory, we inevitably have to wrestle with the dreaded "P" word: postmodernism. It's a tricky theory, even for the highly educated, so it can be daunting. Most students want a birthday for the postmodern era. I think the best we can do is to say that it was mid-twentieth century. I think a good candidate for a more specific date, however, would be today's date: 22 November 1963. I like to claim 31 October 1517 as the birthday for the modern era. When Luther posted his 95 Theses on the church door, he was unwittingly setting into motion a set of events that would come to demarcate modernism. Flash forward 446 years, and we see that forward progress shattered. My claim here is that the shooting of JFK made starkly evident the fact that there was no longer a single Truth; there were now many truths, and our lives, once intimately interconnected, were now fragmented in ways that could not be undone. There were several accounts of the events, most of which were irreconcilable, and there were several photographs and films of the events from different perspectives. Let me be clear that I am not arguing that shooting so horrific that it caused some kind of existential crisis. Instead, the transition into the postmodern era was driven by an unraveling of the plausibility structure underpinning the shared story on which people had previous agreed (or, more accurately, had been coerced into accepting). Technology probably played an important role. In both Dealey Plaza that day and in public life more generally, there were more cameras, more open mics, quicker news wires. The public's general rejection of the official story of the assassination can be read in part as the decline in trust of institutional narratives; people simply weren't willing to swallow wholesale what they were told by the government or their churches or their parents.

One reaction against the official narrative is to embrace alternative narratives. Conspiracy theories are attempts to recast the postmodern inconsistency in traditional modernist terms. There aren't multiple truths or narratives; there is one narrative that has been hidden. In the transition from the modern to the postmodern, the semblance of The Truth, inexplicably absent, can be pretended in the conspiracy theory. Ironically, the seeming incongruity of conspiracy theories is the last vestige of modernist congruence.

See here and here for my previous posts on conspiracy theories.

Religion and the AgSIT Model of Genre

I'm currently reading Jennifer Lena's Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music with my senior-level Religion thru Music students. So far, it's living up to much of its hype. I'll likely reserve a full review for a later post. I do have one major critique so far:

Lena argues that it's exceedingly difficult to identify currently existing avant-garde genres because they're both fleeting and indistinguishable from contemporaneous creative circles that don't meet her definition of avant-garde. Perhaps, I would argue, that is because avant-garde genres never "really" exist at all but are only retrospectively created as part of the mythology generated around a genre, written largely during the industry-based phase and then completed and canonized during the traditionalist phase. It is much the same as religions looking back on their early, formative, or proto- periods and depositing meaning upon events that were meaningless or even dissonant at the time. For example, one can see that the historic Jesus' death was a real bummer for his most devoted followers, but this group decided only later that his death was actually profoundly meaningful; sense-making is always retroactive. (From the sociological agnostic perspective, it is really inconsequential whether there was a preceding and divine meaning for the event.)

While discussing this with my class, I realized, in fact, that religions seem to follow Lena's AgSIT genre trajectory pretty faithfully (pun definitely intended). Religions begin (or not) in an avant-garde phase that is loosely organized, with uncertain ideals, and are quite innovative (even if derivative); they may then become a Scene with better organization, well-formed ideals, and established borders; they may then become Industry-based which, while not corporate in nature, is isomorphic in its bureaucracy; and finally, they may then become Traditionalist, studied, supported, and actively endowed. This looks kind of like (a modified version of) Church-Sect Theory in which NRM's or sects coalesce, establish a regional or local prominence, gather respectability as a Church, and then wither into obsolescence as a denomination. It's not perfect, but it's worth exploring.

A Social Theory of Money

A totem is an object that takes an abstraction and makes it concrete. Le Durk wrote about how one tribe of Aboriginal Australians took the abstract idea of "our group" and made in concrete with the depiction of an emu, for example. In the United States, we wrap up the abstract sentiment of "freedom" and the distant memory of the blood of fallen patriots in the American flag. I think that we can see that money is a totem as well. Yes, money is a symbol for value, but that's not what I mean. Instead, money takes the abstract feelings of organic solidarity (from a complex division of labor) and puts them in a concrete, tangible form. Holding coins and paper money, seeing it, smelling it, even hearing it, all remind us in some unconscious way about our integration with the group.

In bartering systems of the past, no shared symbol of cohesion existed like this. A cow was a cow, and magic beans were magic beans. The means of exchange were inherently valuable and, thus, had no capacity for the symbolic. The political economy of these types of societies, however, were much less complex (i.e. had simpler and less fragmented divisions of labor); in other words, the mechanical solidarity that dominated such groups was insufficiently abstract to necessitate a totem. Increasingly today, minted money is being replaced with virtual monies (e.g. credit/debit cards and Bitcoin), which are incapable of serving the same totemic function since they are themselves abstractions. I wonder what the consequences might be of an increasingly abstract political economy that is no longer supported by a concrete symbol.