It strikes me that one of our many societal challenges is that individuals don’t know how to work with institutions and institutions don’t know how to work with individuals.
This seems a little odd, since, after all, institutions are really just a collection of individuals.
But, having been an individual in many types of institutions, it just doesn’t seem that simple. The individuals who make up an institution can have a huge impact on institutional character, but that’s not all there is to it.
There’s something that happens when a group of people gathers together. Relationship direction, impact, and strength, are not uniform across the group. Patterns of information flow become settled and routine. Ways of thinking or avoiding become comfortable. People across the group have different goals, concerns, and complaints.
The character of the individuals matter, of course, but the character of the institution is unique.
Even the best institutions become bureaucratic, slow-moving, and are prone to failure.
As an individual, then, whether inside or outside the institution, the question becomes how to move the institution – how to change the institution.
As a citizen, an individual must be prepared to influence the institutions of government. As a member of a work or a school environment, an individual must be prepared to influence those communal institutions.
But how does a person do that?
On the other hand, a good institution should be welcoming of being influenced by individuals. A good government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. A good work place ought to want employees who are empowered to bring their best ideas forward, to co-create with together.
Arguably, the failures of our society come down to a problem of corruption in institutions. Who actually believes that government has our best interests at heart? It’s certainly hard to believe that if you’re a black man in American.
Many of our institutions are corrupt. And as individuals we should work to change that.
But corrupt institutions are so hard to move, and we are so tired.
Perhaps there is nothing we can do.
It is only a slice of a solution, but too often, I think, people don’t know how to work with institutions.
I’ve seen too many activists, of all types and at all levels, undertake actions which ultimately hurt their cause by antagonizing their target institution. Some organizations really do have good intentions.Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of times when antagonizing can be a productive way to go, but when did we decide that the best way to make change was to be an a-hole about it?
It’s also important here to be clear about your end goals. Working well with an institution often means playing by that institution’s rules. If your real goal is to disrupt the system, to demonstrate a basic inequity in the way the institution does business, perhaps shutting it down is the best thing to do. Don’t play by the rules if the rules are broken.But if your goal is more practical – if you care more about implementing a policy change than changing the whole system – then perhaps you should learn the institution’s rules, and learn to play by them.On its face, this approach can be more successful – it might result in more tangible changes and outcomes. But the practical-biased among us should be careful – Don’t call a policy change a win if it comes at the cost of accepting basic inequity.
My friend Connie Flanagan reports on her study of 600 US adolescents:
It was adolescents in the least privileged circumstances (whose parents had lower levels of education, whose schools were located in low-income communities, and whose classmates reported few discussions of current events at home) who were more likely to admire the wealthy for making it and contend that people were poor because they lacked motivation or hadn’t applied themselves in school. In fact, the connection between working hard in school and succeeding in life was palpable [for poor kids, whereas privileged students were more likely to cite structural inequalities.]
This is a deeply important fact about the US, one that helps explain the weakness of economic populism. We just had an election in which the Democrats won the segment of voters with postgraduate degrees and the Republicans won the people whose educations stopped at high school–the working class. Connie proposes that more advantaged kids may have more “opportunities to learn about society,” for instance, in more demanding social studies classes or through media. She also thinks that
It may be easier to attend to the structural roots of inequality from a position of advantage since one’s own group is less likely to suffer the consequences of an unequal system. In other words, the freedom to criticize the system reflects, in part, the safety net of privilege.
In contrast, for those youth who remain in schools where half of their classmates will drop out, an ardent commitment to self-reliance and a belief in the efficacy of individual effort may keep them going. The imperative of self-reliance and the lack of safety nets also seem to be messages that they hear at home: it was youth in the least privileged families who were most likely to report that their parents admonished them that they should work twice as hard as others if they wanted to get a job; that people have to create their own opportunities since nobody hands them to you; that they couldn’t blame others for their problems; and that if they didn’t succeed in life, they would have only themselves to blame.
The post disadvantaged youth most likely to credit the rich for their own success appeared first on Peter Levine.
I’ve been making a lot of complaints the last few days. Complaints about the deep injustices of our systems, complaints about how we as a society watch racially-charged tragedies happen again and again and again.
How many more black people need to die before we find solutions?
The Onion had an article a little while back, “Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away,” as if efforts to cure disease can best be measured by the threat to white people. As if.
How many more black people need to die?
I’ve wanted to write a post about solutions for days, but I’ve found it deeply challenging. There are some great solution-oriented posts out there, like Janee Woods’ 12 things white people can do now because of Ferguson.
If you haven’t read that piece yet, you should do that right now.
But I’ve challenged myself to find my own solutions, to identify the actions and inspirations which speak most to me.
It has been challenging.
As I’ve written before, I have no deep expertise in this matter. I know about physics and communication, not about policing and law. What could I possibly know? What could I possibility offer?
Yet this is the challenge that falls to every citizen. We each have expertise in some areas, and a lack of professional knowledge in others. But the work of societal solutions is our collective task and we each must be involved.
If we always defer to the professional experts, we lose the essence of our democracy and miss out on the best solutions. Seriously.
Having no expertise, should I just throw my hands in the air and leave the problem for others to solve? Certainly others have more developed and nuanced views on specific tactics that may be implemented – such as having officers wear body cameras. But that doesn’t mean I have no role in the solution.
That doesn’t mean I can just stand by.
So, here’s a – doubtless incomplete – list of things I’ve come up with that I can do. Me, personally. I no doubt will fail at times, but I will endeavor to do the best I can do. In no particular order:
I have been developing a method for representing moral beliefs as networks of ideas. Various friends have also been contributing to the devel
opment of this approach. So far, we have asked individuals to name their own beliefs, given them back their lists, asked them to note which pairs of beliefs seem connected, and generated network maps of their beliefs and connections. I’ve also asked individuals to share their maps with peers and to consider making changes in response to other people’s arguments. I have mapped the ideas of multiple people as one network. Instead of using surveys, one could interview people or groups about their moral thinking on a given topic and identify the beliefs and connections implied by their speech–or use a rich text, such as a poem, to discover an implicit network map. Major moral theories also have network shapes that can be diagrammed. Virtues, for instance, are important nodes in Aristotle’s conceptual network, and he says that the virtues are all connected by way of one central concept, practical wisdom.
I do not see this network approach as a model of moral thought, an empirical theory about how we actually think, or a normative theory about how we should think. Instead, I see it as a technique of analysis that is relatively neutral with respect to models and theories, yet it does have certain substantive implications.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, there is little clarity or consensus about what defines a theory versus a model. But let me propose two analogies:
Likewise, I would propose that mapping moral networks is a technique with which one can build models and test hypotheses. It is fairly flexible and can accommodate a range of substantive views from both psychology and philosophy. But its relative value (compared to other techniques) varies depending on some assumptions about morality. I’ll compare it to two prevalent alternatives.
First, some moral philosophers construct systematic views. An example would be the sophisticated utilitarianism of Henry Sidgwick (which we could call “utilitarianism 3.0,” if Bentham’s was 1.0, was Mill’s was 2.0). Sidgwick held that there is just one ultimate moral principle: maximizing human happiness. But it generates a set of important moral rules, such as being kind and telling the truth. These precepts, in turn, imply many ordinary moral judgments, such as telling the truth to your mother.
Sidgwick’s structure was mainly philosophical, not empirical. He did not say that everyone is a utilitarian (in fact, he explicitly denied that), but that everyone’s judgments should be consistent with the results of utilitarian reasoning. There was, however, an element of empiricism is his view. He doubted that we can directly apply the utilitarian principle to real cases, which is why subsidiary rules are valuable.
Sidgwick’s structure can be diagrammed as a tree-like network, and that is somewhat illuminating. Individuals’ actual moral networks could also be mapped and compared to Sidgwick’s diagram, as a form of moral assessment. However, if Sidgwick was right, then network analysis has limited value. After all, his proposed network is quite simple, and some of the power of network modeling (e.g., detecting subtle clusters in large fields of data) would be wasted. Thus …
P1. Network techniques become more useful if we presume that real people hold many different structures of moral thought, that a theoretically driven structure like utilitarianism is not necessarily ideal, that some structures are much more complex than Sidgwick’s, and that comparing structures is illuminating.
Second, the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt currently proposes six “moral foundations,” although his theory is subject to testing and improvement, and he is open to finding more than six foundations. One technique he uses is factor analysis. Many individuals are asked many questions about moral topics, and Haidt and colleagues look for unobserved variables (“factors”) that can explain a lot the variance in the answers. In developing statistical models that predict the actual results as a function of a few variables, they seek parsimony and fit. “Parsimony” means that fewer factors are better, but “fit” means that the unobserved variables should explain the actual survey answers without too much error.* Once the data yield statistical factors, Haidt and colleagues consider whether each one names a psychological instinct or emotion that 1) would have value for evolving homo sapiens, so that we would have developed an inborn tendency to embrace it, and 2) are found in many cultures around the world. Now bearing names like “care” and “liberty,” these factors become candidates for moral foundations.
Network analysis could represent Haidt’s model, just as it can represent Sidgwick’s very different conception. Each of Haidt’s foundations would be a central node connected to many concrete beliefs by one-way arrows. However, if Haidt is right, then network analysis is not as valuable a technique as the one he uses, factor analysis. First, network analysis is not nearly as parsimonious. A network map may show hundreds of beliefs clustered to varying degrees. Instead of generating six nameable foundations, a network map might yield fifty somewhat vaguely defined and partly overlapping clusters.
Second, the network method presumes that people’s explicit connections are meaningful. I diagram subjects’ networks using their assertions that their own beliefs are linked–for example, I link A to B when someone thinks that A gives her a reason to think B. But Haidt and colleagues argue that we do not know which beliefs are meaningfully connected. We reach conclusions because of unconscious biases and use reasons as mere rationalizations, gerrymandering our arguments to fit what we want to believe because of the underlying foundations. Sidgwick (like most philosophers) held that in morality, “as in other departments of thought, the primitive spontaneous processes of the mind are mixed with error, which is only to be removed gradually by comprehensive reflection upon the results of these processes.” But Haidt et al. believe that such reflection is basically ineffective, for only the primitive spontaneous processes of the mind really count. If that is the case, than the very items that matter most (the unobserved foundations) will be missing from a network map that is derived from people’s explicit connections. Thus …
P2 Network techniques become more useful if people have many clusters of moral ideas, if important information is lost by seeking parsimonious statistical models, and if reflection on explicit, conscious ideas and connections is valuable.
*Graham, Jesse et al. “Mapping the Moral Domain.” Journal of personality and social psychology 101.2 (2011): 366–385. PMC. Web. 1 Dec. 2014.
The post a method of mapping moral commitments as networks appeared first on Peter Levine.
As negativity continues to swirl around Ferguson, MO and the country at large in the aftermath of the non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson last week, the time is ripe for real and challenging dialogue about how we can transform this energy into something positive. Everyday Democracy program officer Janee Woods wrote a powerful piece for Guernica Magazine in which she says that both punitive justice and restorative justice models are inadequate for healing the deep wounds that racism has caused our country, and advocates instead for rehabilitative justice, saying that “[w]e need to rehabilitate ourselves and our relationships with each other, across differences of perspectives and background, before we can successfully change the way inequitable systems and institutions work.”
We were particularly impressed and inspired by the list of suggestions that Janee offers for those of us grappling with how to move our work and conversations toward the rehabilitation of people and relationships that we need now. We’ve excerpted those suggestions below, but we encourage you to read her piece in its entirety by clicking here.
…We may feel powerless standing in the shadow of institutions, politics and the long history that got us here but that does not mean that we are, in fact, powerless. We know there is power in public protest that demands large scale change but not all of us are ready to engage with the system in that way. Try to develop your power by engaging truthfully with yourself and with neighbors in your community on a smaller scale. The inaugural step toward rehabilitating our humanity is honest communication with those who are near us. In many ways, this might be the hardest step because we must first create spaces where we can come together as individuals with disparate life experiences, diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and varying levels of understanding about the legacy and impact of American racism. And once we come together, we must share a commitment to follow through in learning together and moving to action together. There are many ways you can create the space and structure that allow for this kind of communication and commitment.
Bring people together for conversations that transform conflict into meaningful relationships. Use conversations to Continue reading
“White privilege” can be complex to understand. There certainly seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what it means.
And a lot of that misunderstanding I can appreciate.
For me, the phrase “white privilege” invokes images of royalty lounging about on Roman-style chairs – perhaps with someone feeding them grapes. Or, perhaps, it might conjure images of rich people sitting around drinking tea and speaking in fake British accents. You know, as they do.
For a long time, I couldn’t understand how “white privilege” might apply to me. That wasn’t my life. That wasn’t me.
I’ve had racial slurs used against me. I’ve had violence threatened against me. I have buried my true self out of fear. I have seen things I’d rather not share, and I have experienced things I’d fight like hell to prevent anyone else from experiencing.
So, I wouldn’t call myself privileged.
But, you see, that’s not what white privilege is about.
I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood. A neighborhood with drugs, and crime, and gun shots ringing out every night.
It wasn’t always easy, but I got by. And perhaps, more importantly, I got out.
I got a world class education at schools which weren’t in my district. At schools where kids didn’t carry knifes or guns. Where students weren’t denied access to computers for fear of theft or vandalism. At schools with enriching arts programs and science field trips. Schools which inspired students to think critically and to speak out against injustice.
And no one ever questioned my right to be there.
I had to hide myself in someways, perhaps, but I could hide myself.
The school district where I went to high school recently hired a private detective to investigate whether a a 2nd grade Latina girl was legitimately a resident of the city.
No one ever investigated me.
I went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, and I have been fortunate enough to build a wonderful, middle-class life.
I earned those things, yes, but – it was also easier for me to earn them because I am white.
And make no mistake, “easier” does not mean “easy.” It has been tough at times. I’ve had little handed to me.
But I have still benefited from a system that favors whiteness. The trajectory of my life has been profoundly impacted by the color of my skin.
I am well qualified for my work, of course, but studies show that employers tend to favor resumes from people with “white” sounding names.
How is that fair?
The answer is simple: It is not.
And the real thing is, living in a society that favors whiteness, that makes success more attainable for someone with my skin – well, that’s no a reason to cry reverse racism or to protest every time a thing doesn’t go my way.
Sure, we could fight over the scraps of a society that not only favors whiteness, but which also favors one gender, one sexual orientation, and prefers a certain sort of upbringing and sense of decorum.
But, if anything, the knowledge that being white has made my life easier…just makes me more angry and more committed to real justice.
If my life were the definition of easy, I sure as hell don’t want to see the definition of hard.
It is bad enough that so many people in our country live in poverty, are treated as second class citizens, or are otherwise discriminated against and oppressed. That basic inequity is terrible enough -
But it is unthinkable, conscionable, that there is a systemic regularity behind that inequity. In 2012, 28% of African Americans were living in poverty, compared to about 16% across all races. Black men are less likely to graduate from high school, and are more likely then their white peers to go to prison or to die from homicide.
That systemic, deep, persistent, inequity is the real horror here.
And that is what white privilege is.
