................................................................................................................................................................................
Conservative - Liberal
Individual - Environment
Internal - External
................................................................................................................................................................................
[...] when it comes to the cause of human suffering, liberals tend to believe in exterior causes, whereas conservatives tend to believe in interior causes.
That is, if an individual is suffering, the typical liberal tends to blame external social institutions (if you are poor it is because you are oppressed by society), whereas the typical conservative tends to blame internal factors (you are poor because you are lazy).
Thus, the liberal recommends exterior social interventions: redistribute the wealth, change social institutions so that they produce fairer outcomes, evenly slice the economic pie, aim for equality for all.
The typical conservative recommends that we instil family values, demand that individuals assume more responsibility for themselves, tighten up slack moral standards (often by embracing traditional religious values), encourage a work ethic, reward achievement, and so on.
The important point is that the first step toward an integral politics that unites the best of liberal and conservative is to recognize that both the interior quadrants and exterior quadrants are equally real and important.
We consequently must address both interior factors (values, meaning, morals, the development of consciousness) and exterior factors (economic conditions, material well-being, technological advance, social safety net, environment) - in short, a truly integral politics would emphasize both interior development and exterior development.
[Ken Wilber]
A Theory of Everything, p.84
................................................................................................................................................................................
I would say that the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.
When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it", this is the ‘it’ to which they refer. Conservative positions on gays, guns, god, and immigration must be understood as means to achieve one kind of morally ordered society. When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label ‘elitist’. But how can Democrats learn to see - let alone respect - a moral order they regard as narrow-minded, racist, and dumb?
I [...] began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.
In several large internet surveys, my collaborators Jesse Graham, Brian Nosek and I have found that people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all 5 foundations more or less equally.
We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equaliser, with 5 slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans.
The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.
The Democrats must find a way to close the sacredness gap that goes beyond occasional and strategic uses of the words ‘God’ and ‘faith’. But if Durkheim is right, then sacredness is really about society and its collective concerns. God is useful but not necessary.
The Democrats could close much of the gap if they simply learned to see society not just as a collection of individuals - each with a panoply of rights - but as an entity in itself, an entity that needs some tending and caring. Our national motto is e pluribus unum ("from many, one").
Whenever Democrats support policies that weaken the integrity and identity of the collective (such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, and immigration), they show that they care more about pluribus than unum. They widen the sacredness gap.
[Jonathan Haidt]
What Makes People Vote Repulican?
................................................................................................................................................................................
What I think happens however, in most political debates that polarise
around these issues, is that people differ on which aspect of causation
needs emphasising in any given situation. It is the legitimacy of the emphasis on interior/exterior factors that is often
questioned.
We can see that a more integral approach would be to recognize that
in most real life policy debates there are both interior and exterior
factors at play.
Which factors are the most pressing and need to be
focussed on and solved is what any mature debate should be about. (Of
course we need to trust one another that we are all trying to make
society less miserable and not scheming to further the interests of a
special group).
When people get very attached to an identity of being either
a liberal or a conservative they become unable to objectively assess
these factors. They habitually emphasise their preferred side of the
argument and thus render true dialogue extremely difficult.
[Marc Pontin]
'Beyond Left and Right 1'
................................................................................................................................................................................
[...] whereas only a maniac from the right would pretend that the behaviour
of certain banks did not contribute to the present global downturn, a
diminishing number of figures on the left seem willing to concede that
excessive personal or national debt (with very little to show for its
accumulation) were another cause of the same. Bad banks driven by bad
capitalism are the only causes of our calamity.
Oddly enough, the recent batch of left-wing doom and conspiracy
books, from those of Russell Brand and Owen Jones to the more serious
and informed Mason, point to a unified worldview. This sees human beings
in democracies not as people with free will and unimaginable potential,
but as inanimate beings to whom things are done.
If you have
over-borrowed, then some mean lender made you borrow. If you are an
individual, a loan company will have been to blame; if you are a nation,
then the fault is Germany’s.
[Douglas Murray]
'Paul Mason's Postcapitalism is proof that the left is out of ideas'
................................................................................................................................................................................
[...] conservatives are more fearful by their nature.
A DNA analysis of 13,000 Australians found that liberals and conservatives had marked difference in genes that related to neurotransmitter functioning, particularly glutamate and serotonin, both of which are involved in the brain's response to threat and fear.
[Ed West]
The Diversity Illusion, p. 251 (Notes, #132)
................................................................................................................................................................................
Why has evil been such a hard concept for many on the left to accept?
The basic agenda of the left is to change external conditions. But what
if the problem is internal? What if the real problem is the cussedness
of human beings?
[Thomas Sowell]
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
Lines and Circles
The Colour Wheel
The Colour Spiral
Everything is Connected
Scale
A Higher Power
A Healthy Body
A Healthy Environment
Go Your Own Way
You ought to be more like me
Individual + Villager = Balance
Rights and Responsibilities
Addiction: the Long and Short of it
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Addiction: the Short and the Long of It
1. As an individual problem
2. As an environmental problem
We must ask ourselves: what is the wisest way to view it?
To answer this question, we must first know our goals. What kind of society do we want? For example, someone who desires an unbalanced society in which the few exploit the many will suggest different solutions to someone who desires a more level playing field. As a collective, our goals must be based on consensus. Our wisdom, and our solutions, then spring from these goals.
This isn't to suggest that the goals we settle on, and the wisdom we let guide us, are always going to be healthy for us; at an individual or collective level. Many of us chase goals that are decidedly unhealthy. Collectively we are currently driven by the wisdom of commerce, which is healthy for corporations, but unhealthy for human beings. Each of us must look in our hearts to decide how it is we want the world to be. It is here that true wisdom resides.
Perhaps how we view addiction depends on our understanding of what it is. One way of looking at it is to place emphasis on the object of the addiction. This approach focuses on 'addicts' and 'addictive substances.' It is what we could call the narrow, or short-sighted, approach. We focus on the immediate problem, the stimulus. Yet if our focus remains here then we risk overlooking the cause of that stimulus. To use a cycling analogy, it is akin to fixing a puncture in your bicycle inner-tube, yet overlooking the thorn that is stuck in your tyre. You have solved the immediate problem (the hole that let out the air has been patched), but have failed to address the cause (the thorn that caused the hole remains in your tyre). Thus, in time, the problem will reoccur.
All things can be approached with either a short or a long view. Which view we tend to take depends on the type of person we are, and whatever biases we may have picked up over the years. Thus, one view is, in itself, no better or worse than the other, in much the same way that a square is no better than a circle. However, in a certain context one view may serve us better than the other; just as a circle makes a better wheel, and a square makes a better brick. Of course, we can take either view in any given situation. But what type of person we are will determine which mindset we tend towards. Some are naturally biased towards the long view, some towards the short. Clues to this can be found in labels like 'men of action' and 'men of words,' amongst other terms. Taking the long-view is like standing atop a mountain; from such a height we are able to see how all things fit together - how the river winds around the forest; how the city streets form a geometric pattern. But what we cannot see are the details. The cracks in the pavement; the stones on the riverbed; the insects in the grass. The short-view is to be found at the bottom of the mountain. From here we can see all of those details. But we don't see how anything fits together. These views complement each other, and together they provide a full picture.
In taking the short-view we are able to devise short-term solutions. One of the good things about such answers is that they are quick. The short-view is decisive; if your boat is on fire then you jump into the water. It may strike you later that there could be predators around, or that you may freeze. The moment required a decisive decision - weighing up your options could have cost you your life. Thus, in this context, a short view was favourable. When looking at the issue of addiction, the short-view takes the first things that it gets to along the line of causality - the substance and the addict - and it looks for solutions at this level. It comes up with ideas like the following; prohibiting certain substances; urging restraint and self-control; criminalising addicts; support-groups; and so on. All are short-term solutions, and may have varying degrees of success in the short-term. They are the patch on the inner-tube. Patch the hole and no more air can escape: take the substance away and no-one can get addicted to it. Logical and effective. For a while.
The long-view travels further along the chain of causality. If it works its way back far enough it may begin to realise that an addict is not an isolated individual; and if it goes further it may see that addiction is not an isolated problem. It may see that it shares a root with a lot of other seemingly unrelated problems. And that most of these problems stem from a dysfunctional environment. The problem for the long-view is always where to draw the line; where to stop chasing that endless chain of causes. Wisdom may well dictate this line.
To state it one more time: there are two ways in which we can view addiction:1. As an individual problem (short-view)
2. As an environmental problem (long-view)
It is natural for a long-view to see the environment and the short-view to see the object within the environment. One sees forest, the other trees. Both are important. But which will offer you the best solution to achieve your goal? And what is your goal?
................................................................................................................................................................................
A common form of empty explanation is the appeal to what I have called 'dormative principles' [...]
There is a coda [...] to Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire, and in this coda, we see on the stage a medieval oral doctoral examination. The examiners ask the candidate why opium puts people to sleep. The candidate triumphantly answers, 'Because, learned doctors, it contains a dormitive principle.'
We can imagine the candidate spending the rest of his life fractioning opium in a biochemistry lab and succesively identifying in which fraction the so-called dormitive principle remained.
A better answer to the doctor's question would involve, not the opium alone, but a relationship between the opium and the people.
[Gregory Bateson]
Mind and Nature, P. 97-8
................................................................................................................................................................................
One reason people are suffering today to an almost intolerable degree is that their umediated suffering has no conscious connection with its archetypal ground.
Cut off from that ground they feel they are alone, and their suffering become meaningless.
They do not realize that what they are suffering exists within creation itself, and that the gods and goddesses of religion and mythology have been there before.
The agony of their suffering is caused by hubris, which Jung describes as "the overweening pride --- of individual consciousness, which must necessarily collide with [the eternal truths] and lead to the catastrophic destruction of the individual."
[Marion Woodman]
Addiction to Perfection, p. 134
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
The Pyramid
It's in my DNA
A Healthy Environment
Beggars and Choosers
Digging Deeper
Individual v Environment
Fear Visions
................................................................................................................................................................................
Negative - Positive
Deflation - Inflation
Earth - Sky
................................................................................................................................................................................
Our culture is drowning us in negativity.
Take Eastenders (a.k.a. 'Arguments in London'). In showing us a near-constant stream of arguments and conflict it makes us more likely to interact with each other in this way. Whilst we may consciously recognise that these are only fictional characters - and extreme characters at that - we cannot control the unconscious affect that these characters are having upon us.
So whilst we may watch it in an ironic or detached way, we are not able to fully immunize ourselves from its effects. It is like ironically swallowing a glassful of poison. We can be as detached as we like from the action, but it will still have its way with us regardless. By watching we are putting ourselves into a toxic environment. The fact that we are aware of its toxicity does nothing to lessen its effects.
We often create things as 'critiques' so that we can examine the pathology (hold the wound up to the light), but it may be that in creating these visions we are actually - in an indirect way - breathing life into them.
It is entirely possible - and likely - that
critiques and parodies - these things that serve up our fears in a
palatable manner - are actually making the realisation of these fears
more likely.
We will come to see that the ways in which we tell stories - through film, and TV - affect us in ways in which we currently do not recognise.
The visions that we create, create the reality that we live in. In this way, we mould our own reality. In constantly immersing ourselves in our fears, we lend power to them. They become self-fulfilling prophesies. What we focus on, we draw nearer to.
What do we want to focus on?
................................................................................................................................................................................
A living philosophy must be based upon unity - oneness - inseparability and interdependence. It must have love as its motive instead of fear. It must see the good in man and not look upon him as sinful and evil.
The world becomes what the world thinks. It thinks of man as sinful and evil and he has become what his own thoughts have made him. He has made a world of hate and fear, and where hate is love cannot be.
[Lao Russell]
God Will Work With You But Not For You, p. 213-14
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
Guiding Fiction
Imagine something better
Re-write It
Hell in a basket
Projecting a Shadow
Giving and Receiving
Negative Space
Positive Space
Negative - Positive
Deflation - Inflation
Earth - Sky
................................................................................................................................................................................
Our culture is drowning us in negativity. Take Eastenders (a.k.a. 'Arguments in London'). In showing us a near-constant stream of arguments and conflict it makes us more likely to interact with each other in this way. Whilst we may consciously recognise that these are only fictional characters - and extreme characters at that - we cannot control the unconscious affect that these characters are having upon us.
So whilst we may watch it in an ironic or detached way, we are not able to fully immunize ourselves from its effects. It is like ironically swallowing a glassful of poison. We can be as detached as we like from the action, but it will still have its way with us regardless. By watching we are putting ourselves into a toxic environment. The fact that we are aware of its toxicity does nothing to lessen its effects.
We often create things as 'critiques' so that we can examine the pathology (hold the wound up to the light), but it may be that in creating these visions we are actually - in an indirect way - breathing life into them.
It is entirely possible - and likely - that
critiques and parodies - these things that serve up our fears in a
palatable manner - are actually making the realisation of these fears
more likely. We will come to see that the ways in which we tell stories - through film, and TV - affect us in ways in which we currently do not recognise.
The visions that we create, create the reality that we live in. In this way, we mould our own reality. In constantly immersing ourselves in our fears, we lend power to them. They become self-fulfilling prophesies. What we focus on, we draw nearer to.
What do we want to focus on?
................................................................................................................................................................................
A living philosophy must be based upon unity - oneness - inseparability and interdependence. It must have love as its motive instead of fear. It must see the good in man and not look upon him as sinful and evil.
The world becomes what the world thinks. It thinks of man as sinful and evil and he has become what his own thoughts have made him. He has made a world of hate and fear, and where hate is love cannot be.
[Lao Russell]
God Will Work With You But Not For You, p. 213-14
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
Guiding Fiction
Imagine something better
Re-write It
Hell in a basket
Projecting a Shadow
Giving and Receiving
Negative Space
Positive Space
Individual / Collective
Individual - Collective
Libertarian - Authoritarian
Part - Whole
Member - Category
Concrete - Abstract
Process - State
Becoming - Being
Chaos - Order
In Balinese society, on the other hand, we find an entirely different state of affairs. Neither the individual nor the village is concerned to maximize any simple variable. Rather, they would seem to be concerned to maximize something which we may call stability [...]
When they speak as members of the village council, the players by hypothesis are interested in maintaining the steady state of the system - that is, in preventing the maximization of any simple variable the excessive increase of which would produce irreversible change. In their daily life, however, they are still engaged in simple competitive strategies.
[Gregory Bateson]
Steps to an Ecology of Mind ('Bali: The Value System of a Steady State'), p.124-5
As members of a village we always have the balance of the village in mind, even if only unconsciously. The steady state of the village - the system of which we are a part - is our ultimate concern, running beneath all individual concerns. We know it must be this way because the village is our ecosystem, and we understand that our continued well-being goes hand in hand with that of our environment. The individual good is always, in the last, housed within the greater good.
Our village is a balanced system, acting as an effective container for all of the various needs of each of its individual members. In a steady system, the maximization of any single variable will lead to an imbalance in the system. In terms of our village, this means that if the needs of a single villager were to be prioritized over the rest, then the harmony of our village would be upset. Thus, the maximization of any single variable (any individual interest) is prevented. Individual concerns are always secondary to communal concerns. The individual is always checked in favour of the village.
So whilst we remain an individual, we must also be a villager; these two roles work to balance each other. Individual concerns must always be balanced by communal concerns.
However, we must question how sustainable rampant individualism is. It may be that the role of villager provided us with an important balance, something that all of us who have evolved beyond village life now miss. The communal aspect points us towards something larger than ourselves; invests us in something beyond our own constricting borders. If we decide that this is important, then perhaps it is time to think about how we can rebuild our villages, and regain our balance.
If the social [...] is considered more comprehensive and important than the individual [...], one can justify sacrificing the well-being of the individual for the sake of the well-being of the whole.
In modern political terms, this approach is known as fascism (though state socialism has often behaved in the same way).
Because some radical ecologists suggest that ecosystem are more important than individuals (human or otherwise), modernist critics often label radical environmentalists and spiritually-oriented deep ecologists as ecofascists.
[Michael E. Zimmerman]
'Ken Wilber's Critique of Ecological Spirituality'
Innovations become irreversibly adopted into the on-going system without being tested for long-time viability; and necessary changes are resisted by the core of conservative individuals without any assurance that these particular changes are the ones to resist.
Individual comfort and discomfort become the only criteria for choice of social change and the basic contrast of logical typing between member and the category is forgotten until new discomforts are (inevitably) created by the new state of affairs.
Fear of individual death and grief propose that it would be 'good' to eliminate epidemic disease and only after 100 years of preventive medicine do we discover that the population is overgrown. And so on.
[Gregory Bateson]
Mind and Nature, p. 238
It is for this fundamentally non-metaphysical reason that the individual cannot be sacrificed to the exigencies of social and political convenience, as those who live in western democracies have painfully come to realize:
the “world-constructing capacity” of the individual must be respected and honored as something sovereign, lest the forces of chaos or complexity re-attain the upper hand, or the state rigidify and doom itself.
Religious stories, occupying the necessarily metaphorical space at the base of our cultures of belief, provide the foundation for the dogmatic concepts and action patterns that structure our social interactions, and stabilize the territories that we all share.
More importantly, however, functional religious systems ensure that our shared beliefs are predicated on a concept of the individual that makes respect for the capacity of courageous, creative individual action in the face of complexity the most fundamental and ineradicable of values.
Creative exploratory action in the face of anomaly and chaos generates, sustains and renews the world.
[Jordan B. Peterson]
‘Complexity Management Theory: Motivation for Ideological Rigidity and Social Conflict’, in Cortex, December 2002, p. 453
Related posts:-
Order and Chaos
Top-down / Bottom-up
A Higher Power
You or The Work
Lost Tribe
Negative Space
Entitlement is essentially the conversation, "What's in it for me?" It expresses a scarcity mentality, and the economist tells us that only what is scarce has value.
Entitlement is the outcome of a patriarchal culture [...] if we create a context of fear, fault, and retribution, then we will focus on protecting ourselves, which plants the seed of entitlement.
The cost of entitlement is that it is an escape from accountability and soft on commitment. It gets in the way of authentic citizenship.
The weakness in the dominant view of accountability is that it thinks people can be held accountable. That we can force people to be accountable. Despite the fact that it sells easily, it is an illusion to believe that retribution, incentives, legislation, new standards, and tough consequences will cause accountability.
This illusion is what creates entitlement - and worse, it drives us apart; it does not bring us together. It turns neighbour against neighbour. It denies that we are our brother's keeper. Every colonial and autocratic regime rises to power by turning citizens against each other.
Accountability is the willingness to care for the well-being of the whole; commitment is the willingness to make a promise with no expectation of return.
[Peter Block]
Community, p.70-71
................................................................................................................................................................................
Related posts:-
Rights and Responsibility
Ownership
Beggars and Choosers
Projecting a Shadow
Fear Visions
Full Spectrum
A Mature Society?
Carry Each Other
Know Your Place
Positive Space
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)