November 2, 2020
I'm partway through the book "The UpSwing" by Robert Putnam and enjoying the chapters that bring me back to my time at Clark University senior year 1960 when I took a political science class and read similar books. Remember social darwinism the theory that the wealthier therefore more powerful have risen to further the species so the communitarian view that we should also be our brothers keeper went contrary to nature. The libertarian books of Ayn Rand who championed the innovator and industrial leaders and their taker stance. The Organization Man by William Whyte that characterizes the company man as conformist the myth that the society's needs and the rights of the individual are one and the same Herbert Marcuse "One Dimensional Man" wrote "freedom from want at the cost of then independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition". In the Lonely Crowd David Reisman characterizes the other directed versus the inner directed. The other directed fits in while the inner directed emphasizes individual drive, initiative, and competition. When you are driven to see the community and caring and belonging to your group and society as very important the "we" has a the dark side which is conformity to social norms where deviants are punished and ostracized. Soloman Asch did innovative experiments noting that conformity causes many to change their perceptions and deny the reality of their vision. His legacy is summarized in this wikipedia quote "According to Levine (1999), Asch's research has led to four critical ideas that persist in social influence research. First, Asch believed that social interaction reflects the ability of individual people to synthesize information about group norms, the viewpoints of others and their own perceptions of themselves as group members. This point of view has been manifested in at least two important theories (social identity theory and self-categorization theory), and has been a source of inspiration for the work of many social psychologists (See Hardin & Higgins, 1996; Weick & Roberts, 1993). Second, Asch emphasized that independent thought and disagreement among group members is a cornerstone of group functioning. He believed that only by settling our differences with other group members can we actually understand the shortcomings of our own beliefs (Levine, 1999). This notion has been embraced by social scientists like Moscovici, who has pursued this rationale as the basis for his theory of minority influence in group situations, and has also been incorporated into sociocognitive conflict theory.
Asch also believed the relationship between conformity and non-conformity was not as simple as one being the opposite of the other. This was Asch's third influential idea, and he suggested that conformity and resistance might be explained by their own unique social psychological processes. Conformity, for instance, could be a function of how aware a person is that they are being influenced by the group (distortion of perception), the degree to which the person believes that the group consensus is correct (distortion of judgement), and how badly the person wants to be accepted by the group (distortion of action). Although these exact terms have not been directly ported over to the literature, researchers such as Moscovici and Nemeth have adopted the perspective that majority and minority influence are moderated by multiple processes (Levine, 1999). Lastly, Asch suggested that group influence can change how people perceive stimuli (See Asch, 1940 for an example). This is the most obscure of Asch's major ideas, in large part because it has not been cited frequently (Levine, 1999), but is nonetheless important because it speaks to the power of group influence."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Asch
What is remarkable that since his research began others have conducted the same experiments decades later and found that the conformity distortion noted were much less evident maybe explained that the generation of the we group now was generation X. The generation Asch experimented on were the "other directed" (the we) generation (Reisman).
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. who I have mention in a previous blog defended more liberal democracy and state regulated market economy seeking to have a balance between the individual and community. On the other hand Dorothy Dix had a long career of advocacy and writing even arrested again in her seventies advocating for the poor and oppressed yet railing against big government including social security. The I of the oppressed. Martin Luther King from the Birmingham jail wrote about social justice non violent protest and negotiation. "I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Erik Erikson described "Identity crisis' starting typically during adolescence which resonated for a decade from 1958 and morphed into the weness and group identity movements. In the U.S.A. we have our Bill of Rights which emphasizes the individual and we have our responsibilities to each other which may be ignored. Jean Twenge in The Narcissism Epidemic and Generation Me showed for example that students changed in agreement of the statement "I am a very important person" from 12 % in 1950 to 80% in 1990. Her research has been more accepted and shows a trend more to towards narcissism. Bolstering this view is the changes in child rearing with less emphasis of conformity and more towards the child's independence and freedom regardless of his group context and pressure to be a part and contribute. Even data in baby names shows a trend to more individual naming recently.
Putnam starts his book with economic and normative data of the U.S.A. from the Gilded age 1890 to present. He shows that our population has changed from being very self I oriented to a more community we ness and back to the I ness. Our frontier spirit of rugged individualism with community participation of raising the barn was shaken with the World War I and the pandemic of 1918 but back again during the roaring twenties to a more social we ness as we weathered the Great Depression and then fought World War II. This continued through the 1960's but then libertarian and laissez faire attitudes prevails so here we are again with distrust, paranoia, conspiracy, and closed communications preventing dialogue.
So why do I go into detail over these issues of the I/we dichotomy? Our present political and social problems have reached crisis proportions with the pandemic and Trump's presidency. Social media, news feeds, entertainment outlets, commercial appeals for our attention, votes, and money (Daniel Boorstin "The Image") are rampant. Conspiracy paranoid theories are accepted by many without any critical reasoning except the appeal that they could be true and you can't trust the accepted news and science information sources. We against them with the appeal that your conformity to the opposing opinions means your duped! Each side then is the dark side so a proven liar, probable rapist, rabble rouser, misogynist, and probable tax cheat Oh yes, anti-science advocate who is partly responsible for our pandemic chaos and deaths and disabilities is seen positively. He was indicted by the house for quid pro quo. He supports changes environmental rules and ignores the human causes for our climate changes. He compliments autocrats and murderers of their own people, he undermines our alliances. He attacks our health care system without providing any substitute. He has mishandled our public health efforts to deal with this pandemic. He supports right wing conspiracy groups and uses federal agents to suppress and intimidate legitimate social protests. He fires any he can who disagree with him. He places incompetent people in powerful positions to do his bidding and fires them frequently. He uses his office for personal gain. He appears to be attempting to undermine our present election and yet his word is more accepted by many even otherwise intelligent and gifted people! (see article concerning research in psychology of conspiracy theories https://mashable.com/article/qanon-conspiracy-theory-help/) Well, I have mused about this in previous blogs. Maybe these people will be influenced to deny their own senses as in Asch's experiments.
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