Congressman Vance McAllister admitted Thursday to voting against legislation in the U.S. House anticipating he would get a political contribution for his vote. A Republican from Swartz [LA], McAllister spoke about the matter as an example of how “money controls Washington” and how work on Capitol Hill is a “steady cycle of voting for fundraising and money instead of voting for what is right.”

Rep. McAllister actually added that someone told him, “Vote no and you will get a $1,200 check from the Heritage Foundation. If you vote yes, you will get a $1,000 check from some environmental impact group.” Those specific figures suggest quid pro quo corruption, which is illegal and should be formally investigated. But let’s assume that Mr. McAllister was making that part up for color, and the real story was more typical. No one offered the congressman $1,000 for a vote, but he (or an adviser) calculated that if he voted a certain way, he would be more likely to raise money from a given interest. According to the Supreme Court, that kind of influence is not corrupt, which is why I would denounce the Court’s understanding of fundamental ethics.

Conceptually, it might be helpful to understand our campaign finance system as a gift economy.  The anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss discovered that market exchanges are not the only systems that work at large scale and that permit the circulation of goods. It’s also possible to have a whole system (or a subsystem) built on gifts. People give things to each other, and they may do so for non-altruistic reasons–prestige, favor, or an expectation that they will obtain gifts as a result. But there is no prior agreement to reciprocate a gift with something of equal value. In fact, having a prior agreement makes it not a gift.

For instance (as I blogged years ago), Beowulf depicts a gift economy. The hero learns that Hrothgar, king of the Danes, is suffering from the scourges of a monster, so, unbidden, he sails to Denmark to offer his services. After he has killed Grendel (a whole day after, in fact–see line 1784), Hrothgar allows him to choose treasures from his store; Beowulf is “paid and recompensed completely” (2145). The hero sails home and gives everything he has received to his king, Hygelac (2148). Hygelac responds by giving Beowulf an ancient sword, land, hides, and a hall and throne.

None of this is negotiated in advance. As Hrothgar tells Beowulf (in Seamus Heaney’s translation):

For as long as I rule this far-flung land
treasures will change hands and each side will treat
the other with gifts; across the gannet’s bath,
over the broad sea, whorled prows will bring
presents and tokens. (1859-63)

That is all very appealing and noble, but the worthiness of a gift economy depends on what is given. In Beowulf, wives are gifts (see 2017), which is not so good for them. In our Capitol Hill culture, the money it takes to get elected and the votes cast on public policies are treated as gifts. Only if lobbyists are so gauche as to negotiate them as quid pro quo exchanges may they be banned. It is a medieval system–and not in a good way.

The post campaign finance as a corrupt gift economy appeared first on Peter Levine.

I recently finished George Elliot’s Middlemarch, a “penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832.”

Spoiler alert: All the characters are fools.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought when I began.

A work of historical fiction written more than 50 years after it takes place, Middlemarch is narrated by an undefined voice whose wisdom of hindsight makes all impulsive missteps seem glaring errors.

It is no surprise when Fred, the young ne’er-do-well who’s old enough to be a man but as irresponsible as a boy, is unable to pay back a loan he felt sure he’d find a way to resolve. It is no surprise when the young heroine Dorthea finds dissatisfaction in her marriage to a much older man. It is no surprise when Lydgate, a young doctor making enemies of the establishment, finds himself deeply in debt after marrying a nice, but high maintenance girl. It is no surprise.

Reading the book is rather like watching a horror movie and yelling, “Don’t open the door!” to the hapless girl who’s bound to open the door. As the audience, we know the killer is back there, but the girl opens the door anyway. It is no surprise.

All the characters are fools. They always open the door.

At first this bothered me. Why couldn’t these characters stop themselves from doing and saying things they would obviously regret? Alas, all the characters are fools. I can’t abide fools.

But, I suppose, we are all fools.

I certainly can’t claim to have never spoken rashly or miscalculated my path. Hindsight is 20/20, and knowing exactly how someone else is experiencing a moment – through the gift of an omniscient narrator – is certainly helpful in knowing how to respond.

Perhaps I judge these characters too harshly – they were doing the best the could in the moment, while I analyzed from a safe distance away.

As the book went on, however, I began to notice something. Nearly every time a character made an important decision or had a critical interaction, Elliot described how it was in his/her nature to act that way.

Proud, humble, foolish, or wise, character choices came down to a question of intrinsic nature.

Such a way of thinking is anathema to a full embracing of free will – to the belief that we not only are free to make our own choices, but that we have the capacity to change those choices at will.

I found myself rooting for characters to change their nature – to act beyond the path they’d laid out for themselves.

But, alas.

One of the most distressing parts of the book comes when Bulstrode, who’d come into come into his fortune through misdeeds and deception, faces a critical moment: the man who’d been blackmailing him over his dark past arrives in need of medical attention.

Bullstrode, now a fine, upstanding, religious man who’d worked hard to put his past behind him, starts out resolute – a good man would provide the best care regardless of a distaste for the afflicted. He calls the doctor.

As the treatment goes on, however, and the blackmailer shows signs of improving – Bullstrode waivers. This man has the power to destroy him. As this debate rages on, I found myself yearning for Bullstrode to make the choice he knew was right, to side with the better angels of his nature.

But the man has the power to destroy him. Bullstrode waivers. Bullstrode kills. Full of justifications and explanations, Bullstrode murders his blackmailer. It is no surprise. It’s in his nature.

Of course, justice being essential to any good Victorian novel, the truth of Bullstrode’s past comes out anyway. Bullstrode is disgraced. Bullstrode is destroyed.

In perhaps the most moving part of the book, Mrs. Bullstrode is now faced with a decision: stand by her husband or abandon him? She is a good woman. Everyone thinks she should leave him.

Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal. But this [woman] had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a year of life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her – now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him.

She stands by him. It is no surprise. It is in her nature.

The book goes on. Stories resolve themselves. Characters maintain their natures. Even Fred, who finally grows up enough to be a sensible man, continues to lose money on horses. It’s in his nature.

The characters grow. Their lives improve. But their natures stay the same.

The best we can do, it seems, is to accept our natures and understand the natures of those around us. Only then can we fools find some wisdom.

I enjoyed talking for an hour this morning with WPFW’s Josephine Reed. The audio of that show is archived here. (Look for the Thursday, June 12 edition of “On the Margin.”)

At 2 pm Eastern today, I’ll be talking about the book for another hour–almost all Q&A and discussion time–on the NCDD “confab”. [You can check out this page for graphics and text comments from that discussion.]

The post talking about We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For appeared first on Peter Levine.

“Just look at all these beautiful people I could get know!” a man exclaimed outside Gate 8, Terminal A of San Jose International Airport last night.

He waved his hands in the air, twirling in a circle and gesturing emphatically at the various individuals, families, friends, and colleagues who slouched around, eyes fixed online or in a book.

He gave a fist bump to an elderly man passing in a wheel chair. He made the rounds, shaking hands and introducing himself as he went.

A few minutes earlier, this enthusiastic gentleman been greeted joyously by another man, sitting a socially acceptable distance from me along the terminal wall. “Hey man, there you are!” He’d exclaimed, “Join me, have a seat!”

But Enthusiasm didn’t want to have a seat. He wanted to meet all the people.

Enthusiasm was quite drunk.

I’d assumed that my wall neighbor, a man with a balding head, an impressively robust beard, and a laid-back but thoughtful vibe, knew Enthusiasm. His manner of greeting seemed to indicate so.

But, I learned, Thoughtful didn’t know Enthusiasm. They’d met over a drink at the terminal bar – Thoughtful having taken his leave an hour before. “You’ve definitely outpaced me,” commented Thoughful, whose friendliness could have been natural or lightly beverage-induced.

Our flight was about to board as this interaction occurred, so I assumed I’d never see Enthusiasm nor Thoughtful again. I hardly thought I’d remember the moment at all.

But there was a problem with the plane. We spent the next hour in the terminal.

Enthusiasm was particularly taken with my wall neighbor on the other side – a young woman who seemed equally friendly, thoughtful, and skeptical about the interaction. She was a writer, as it turned out, with a passion for fiction. She seemed to view the world – or at least this small slice of it – as an explorer might: interacting, yes, but carefully observing.

So there we sat – Enthusiasm, Thoughtful, Explorer, and I, waiting for our plane to board.

Enthusiasm, whose occupation seemed to involve large scale HVAC planning, declared that today he’d been a Technical God. He’d been in town, he explained. to resolve a client’s technical difficulties. In an effort to describe to his airport audience the scope of this company’s air system, he effortlessly completed some calculations before gesturing so wildly he knocked himself over. He lolled about on the floor before finishing his story, which I’ll admit to having missed the finer points of, but it’s denouement was that he ultimately resolved the issue. He was a Technical God.

No wonder he was so enthusiastic.

Later, as Thoughtful described his work teaching High School English to young people who were primarily children of immigrant farm workers, Enthusiasm found himself continually falling over for a quick rest on my shoulder.

Thoughtful, a Canadian by birth and accent, pointed out that the number of children living in poverty in the United States is larger than the entire population of Canada.

Thoughtful advised Explorer that she shouldn’t settle professionally. If she wanted to write fiction, she should write fiction. Another job to pay the bills would only detract from that.

Enthusiasm went back to mingling with the terminal guests. Introducing himself to anyone who would listen.

I wondered if I ought to scorn Enthusiasm. Public drunkenness is generally frowned upon, public displays of social affection even more so. Should I be displeased that this man, too out of his wits to properly control his own motor function, continually rested his hand gravely on my should or found himself leaning against me when he’d been aiming for the wall?

Perhaps I should have found this behavior most disreputable, but to be honest, it didn’t bother me.

It was a very public setting, with little chance of things going too awry, but more than that, Enthusiasm was really just…enthusiastic. This 57-year-old man who found himself crawling around on the airport floor while professing his philosophical beliefs, simply wanted to meet people and to talk to them. He wanted to experience the moment through interaction with others. He wanted to know each person’s story – though he couldn’t seem to remember it for very long. He wanted to celebrate existence and co-existence, and he wanted those around him to feel the unbridled joy which had overtaken him.
In a world where many of us focus on our own narrow lives, breaking our vows of silence to strangers only for simple comments such as a pleasant good morning or a request for time, it was refreshing to see someone who so genuinely wanted to interact with everyone around him.Socially unacceptable, perhaps, but laudable all the same.