Therapeutic Dualism

 

To Live in Denial

 

            Last month I reflected a bit on psychological theory regarding narcissism.  According to one prominent theory as to the etiology of narcissism, the condition arises because people fail to make a sufficiently good adjustment to reality.  Now, this failure supposedly occurs in toddlerhood, somewhere between ten and thirty months of age.  So, the theory is fraught with evidentiary problems.  How do we explore the unconscious minds of two-year-olds?  Nevertheless, it sounds plausible.  If persons don’t come to terms with the real world, they may fall victim to the “narcissistic lie,” the unconscious belief, “I am worthless unless . . .”  No matter how someone completes that sentence, it is a lie, and it undermines a person’s psychic life.

            So far, so good.  I’ve said nothing controversial.  But I think there are other ways to live in denial of reality, and some of them currently receive much social support and professional psychological approval.  If I say these ways of thinking deny reality, and because they deny reality they pose a threat to persons’ well-being, I will be a target of criticism.  (Or I would be if anyone read this blog.  Since I took down Castles, my readership has fallen to zero.)

            Current dogma holds that gender is independent of sex.  That is, a person’s sex is determined by biology, but a person’s gender is a social construct.  Much discussion or debate of these topics is clouded by imprecise language.  We use “man” or “woman” as labels for both sex and gender.  It would be better if we had one set of terms for biology and another for gender.  Since we don’t have clear terminology, we need to let individuals define for themselves what they mean when they self-identify.  So says current dogma.

            For example, each person has the right to choose her or his self-identifying pronoun.  It is routine in many places, including many university settings, for persons to include her or his chosen set of pronouns when signing into an online discussion.  Another example: recent commercial advertisements for certain drugs (drugs used to treat sexually transmitted diseases) include a disclaimer, warning that the drug is not helpful for “persons assigned female at birth.”  That is, the drug is ineffective against the disease for persons whose sex (biology) is female, even if that person’s gender (social construction) is male.

            What is going on here?  The root, I think, is a kind of anthropological dualism.  I call it “therapeutic dualism.”  Anthropological dualisms have a long history in western philosophy.  In Platonic dualism, the real person is the soul, and the body is a moral and epistemological distraction.  In Cartesian dualism, the real person is the conscious rational mind, and the body is an irrelevant machine. Platonic and Cartesian dualism have greatly influenced our culture, in the past and to this day.  Each has certain attractive features, but on the whole I think they deform our understanding of human existence.  I think the same is true of therapeutic dualism.

            Therapeutic dualism says the real person is the heart, and the body is a tool the heart uses to express itself.  Notice that all three dualisms deny that the body is the real person.

            There are different aspects of therapeutic dualism.  Borrowing from Marxist social analysis, therapeutic dualism rejects Cartesian dualism, because a person is not her conscious rational mind.  Rather, a person’s thinking and action represent the interests of her social class.  For Marx, social class always represented economic interests, but therapeutic dualists don’t affirm that bit.  Social classes form around gender, race, ethnicity, religious, and other identities (and economic interests, but that’s just one factor).  Therapeutic dualism analyses persons in terms of intersectionality.  A person would be the product of many factors: gender, age, race, religion, and so on.  The person’s biological sex might be included, but maybe not.

            Borrowing from Freudian theory, therapeutic dualism says a person’s “heart” (my term) is largely a product of unconscious, and sometimes repressed, desires.  Sexual desires are especially important, but other deep drives also contribute to one’s true being.  Freud himself thought we have a drive toward death.  Therapeutic dualists could buy that idea, but they don’t have to.

            According to therapeutic dualism, persons need to get in touch with their true nature, especially their sexual nature.  But be careful.  A person’s sexual nature refers to his gender, not his sex.  Sexual natures vary.  Some people feel sexual attraction to persons of the same gender, some to the other gender, and some to both.  Borrowing again from Freud, therapeutic dualism warns that if social rules force people to deny their true sexual nature, psychological problems will result.  Some will repress their desires, with the result that they aren’t consciously aware of them.  Some will fall victim to depression and suicidal ideation.  And so on.

            Now there must be some socially imposed limits to sexual expression.  Therapeutic dualism almost always includes the utilitarian slogan: so long as no one gets hurt.  Should people have multiple sexual partners?  So long as no one gets hurt.  Should persons practice chastity?  So long as no one gets hurt.  Should persons expect and demand fidelity from sexual partners?  Only if no one gets hurt.

            Therapeutic dualism also borrows from Nietzsche and his notion of “will to power.”  The true self, according to Nietzsche, is not the conscious rational mind, but a deep drive to assert oneself.  This is why, in therapeutic dualism, every person has the right to choose his or her gender and the pronouns other people should use when addressing him or her.

            There are points of ambivalence and inconsistency in therapeutic dualism.  Should adults enjoy sexual relationships with children?  Therapeutic dualists routinely say no.  Someone will get hurt, they say, the child.  So there should be social restraints on sexual behavior.

            (As an aside: where’s the evidence for this belief?  How do we know man/boy relationships are harmful?  In the ancient world, e.g., Plato’s Symposium, we find a very different view.  Should we say: we know such relationships are harmful because of psychological studies?  Were those studies neutrally designed?  There were psychological studies of the harmfulness of gay parenting in the 1950s and 1960s.  But those studies are now discredited, because they were designed under the assumption that homosexuality was deviant.  What we need, someone might say, are neutrally designed studies that ask what harms arise from man/boy sex, studies that start with the assumption that all love is good love.)

            The Nietzsche aspect of therapeutic dualism says a person’s gender is what he wills it to be.  But the Freudian part says a person’s sexual nature derives from deep, unconscious drives.  Therapeutic dualism tries to have it both ways.  A person’s true sexual nature is unchosen.  He or she should explore within the self to discover it.  Apparently, even school age children should be exploring their feelings to discover their sexual nature.  Otherwise, they will be subject to repression and worse.  At the same time, each child has the right to assert their own will in this regard; no one has authority to tell a girl that she is a girl or a boy that he is a boy.  Nietzsche would applaud the honesty of such self-assertion.

            As with Platonic and Cartesian dualisms, there are intriguing features of therapeutic dualism.  There are bits that sound right.  But the dogma is not true.  Though it currently shapes our culture—and for all I know it may shape our culture for hundreds of years, like Cartesianism, or thousands of years, like Platonism—it deforms our understanding of human nature.  Saying why will take another essay.

Rapprochement With Reality

 

Toward Optimal Frustration

 

            I am not a psychologist.  But I have long believed that moral philosophers ought to pay attention to psychology.  We shouldn’t endorse everything psychologists say—that would be impossible, since various theories of psychology contradict each other—yet at the same time we can learn from them.  Three decades ago, working on my dissertation (Learning to Love: Philosophy and Moral Progress), I read M. Scott Peck, The People of the Lie, to gain insight into narcissism.  Of course, my reading from 1991 may not represent current psychological theory about narcissism.  I’m not particularly concerned.  Peck’s description of the “narcissistic lie” is more important than his speculations about spirits and possession.

            Narcissism is a condition—in the 90s it was called a disorder; I don’t know if DSM still uses that term—marked by excessive concern for the self.  This doesn’t mean narcissists are conventionally selfish.  They may be; that is, they may consistently seek their own interests above their neighbors’ interests.  But narcissism can express itself in outward behavior that might be called “unselfish.”  Some narcissists are compelled to be “good people,” often in conventional ways.  But the internal push that drives them to be good is a concern for the self.

            As is often the case, psychologists theorize that narcissism has roots in childhood, in this case between ten and twenty-five months of age.  Behold the toddler!  After repeated failures, he has overcome gravity by learning to walk.  His omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient Mother (supplemented by other caregivers, but to the toddler the various caregivers may amount to just one super-being) watches over him to provide his needs and prevent injuries.  Sadly, of course, some infants suffer neglect even before toddlerhood, neglect which may cause serious psychological damage, but we are now imagining the fortunate child who benefits from good parenting.

            Nevertheless, a storm crashes into the life of our happy new walker.  No matter what Mom or other caregivers do, the toddler must come to terms with unhappy reality.  It turns out that Mom is not omnipresent; sometimes the child has to wait.  The Caregiver does not have the power to prevent all injuries.  Sometime in toddlerhood, or in the years soon after, the child discovers that Mom is not perfectly wise or all-knowing.  The toddler conquered gravity when she learned to walk.  But she will never learn to fly.

            There is no way around these realities.  Psychologists theorize that all children at this early age will experience frustration.  Frustration arises when the world does not conform to the egoistic beliefs and desires of the child.  (We note that psychology here speculates about the beliefs and desires of children younger than two years.  Do we really know that very young children regard their caregivers as all-powerful, perfectly wise, and always present?  I think we can gain insight from psychological theory while holding to skepticism about some of its claims.) 

            All children must be frustrated at this stage in their lives.  When frustration goes well, the child learns to accept the limitations of the world.  Sometimes, though, the child comes to believe that there is something wrong with her.  As Peck puts it, the narcissist believes the “narcissistic lie,” which says, “I am worthless unless . . .”  Of course, the theory says this belief is often unconscious.  You don’t meet many three and four-year-old children who verbalize self-destructive beliefs.  But the belief may be there anyway.

            There are variations of the lie.   “I am worthless unless I find a substitute Mommy.”  This version can play out in adult narcissism in the person who covers over his sense of worthlessness by sexual conquests.  “I am worthless unless I am successful.”  This narcissist moves from one economic or artistic success to another; each success brings a brief thrill, but the underlying need is unmet.  “I am worthless unless I am good.”  Here the narcissist may be conventionally and obsessively moral—or at least obedient to rules.  In every case, the real problem is not the presenting behavior but the lie. 

            To avoid the lie, we need to be “optimally frustrated.”  Remember, there is no way to avoid the rapprochement with reality.  A good parent will gently and repeatedly expose the child to limitations.  Sometimes we let Baby cry; Daddy or Mommy will come in a bit.  Baby bumps her head, and we offer sympathy, but we don’t “fix it.”  If the child is optimally frustrated, she will come to believe—not just consciously, but deep down—that the world is both a good place and difficult place, and that she can navigate that world.

            Now, I think there is a parallel between optimal frustration in regard to narcissism and Freud’s theory of human society expressed in Civilization and Its Discontents.  I am by no means endorsing all of Freud’s speculations about human development.  I’m not an atheist, and I think Freud’s rejection of God is facile and poorly argued.  Nevertheless, again we may learn from psychology.

            Much human unhappiness and social discord is produced, Freud thought, by the conflict between individual persons’ desires (often unconscious and repressed) and society’s rules for interpersonal interaction.  An individual has desires for sex, recognition, power, and other things (luxury, fame, etc.).  But no society can allow individuals to pursue these desires freely.  Society must have rules of behavior so we can live together in relative peace.  Over time we have trained ourselves in rules—some necessary and healthy, others based on fantasies—often to such an extreme that we repress the desires themselves.

            I am not interested in most of the details of Freud’s theory.  The main point, the place where his theory parallels Peck’s exposition of narcissism theory, is that individual persons must come to terms with reality.  The world is not the way we want it to be.  We cannot, by a stroke of magic or magical thinking, make the world conform to our desires.  We can learn to navigate the world, and we can live happy lives, but to do so we must experience frustration.

            I plan to say more about this in my next post.

           

 

New Projects

 

What to write?

 

            Yesterday I sent the “final” draft of Understanding Hope to Wipf & Stock.  They will probably find errors, but after corrections the published version will be almost identical to the draft I sent them.  Their author guidelines are emphatic: no substantive edits after this!  Coming after books about love (my dissertation), civility, and faith, Understanding Hope will probably be my last philosophy book. 

            I’ll retire from college teaching soon; a year or two, maybe three.  I want to turn my attention to fiction.  First step: I noticed that Wipf & Stock has a fiction imprint.  Would they be interested in (re)publishing Buying the Bangkok Girl?  When CamCat Publishing bought out SynergEbooks, they kept my fantasy adventure story, The Heart of the Sea, on their menu of titles, but they dumped Bangkok Girl because of its subject matter, sex trafficking.  CamCat returned copyright to me, and I am free to find a new publisher.  If Wipf & Stock isn’t interested, I’ll look elsewhere.

            Second step: I’ve been editing Castles, with input from Sarah and her siblings.  It’s a long story, so it should be published in three parts.  The editing has really only started; much work remains to get Castles ready for publication.  Most importantly, the ending needs sharpening.  Sarah has planned another sibling retreat later this month.  I hope Gary and Dawn have ideas.

            Third step: well, that’s the question.  The first draft of Castles was completed in 2015.  The tumults of life have interfered—Karen’s cancer and death, meeting and marrying Sarah, a split in the church, new teaching responsibilities, faculty clerking, new church responsibilities—I haven’t written new fiction for five years.  What should I write next?

            There’s no shortage of possible projects.  In 2016 I began a sequel to Bangkok Girl, but when Karen’s cancer resurfaced, I lost energy for it.  A file on my computer labeled “Apple Two” is ready for me to pick it back up.  I have ideas and a few paragraphs for a Christmas “ghost” story (stealing and adapting ideas from Dickens).  Reading tales from A Thousand and One Nights for Honors 290 sparked ideas for a 21^st century Aladdin story; I have a few notes on my computer for that too.  Covid-19 reinforced an idea I’ve had for an Oregon located post-apocalypse story, and it also gave me the germ of a computers-after-humans story.

            Just listing fiction projects increases my desire to get to it.  Retirement?  Not yet.  I’m committed to teaching and serving as faculty clerk.  God has called me to my work as a teacher; to borrow phrases from Robert Frost: I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.

A radical idea

 

A Plan to Make Reparations for Slavery in America

 

            Slavery was practiced in the territory which is now the United States from 1619 until 1865.  The abolition of slavery in 1865 made millions of Africans and/or their descendants into American citizens.  The former slaves rejoiced to gain freedom, but most of them were treated as second class citizens.  Segregated housing, discrimination in education, employment discrimination, “separate but equal” exclusionary laws, exploitive lending practices, discriminatory housing policies, race-based voting restrictions, and other factors made life in America after the Civil War much harder for blacks than whites.

            No one can reasonably dispute these facts.  America’s foundational political rhetoric (“all men are created equal”) does not change the facts.  Nor can we hide from the results of our history.  Though we have made real progress against racism, there remains a wide gap of inequality between white and black Americans.  The lingering effects of slavery, segregation, and discrimination show up in a variety of ways, such as incarceration rates, teenage pregnancy rates, differential access to medical care, family disintegration, and overall wealth.

            Let’s look at that last indicator, wealth.  According to a Brookings study, in 2016 the typical white family in America had a net worth of $171,000 while the typical black family had $17,150.  If those numbers seem surprisingly low, remember we are talking about median wealth, the middle of the range.  The average wealth of white families is much higher—about $1 million and the average wealth of black families is about $138.000—because the wealth of very rich people greatly increases the average.  Either way, whether comparing median wealth or average wealth, white families have much, much more wealth; seven to ten times as much.  And since wealth is passed from one generation to the next, disparities of wealth persist over time.  Further, since richer people tend to invest more of their wealth, the wealth gap between the top and the bottom tends to grow over time.   Even if we could guarantee equal income for whites and blacks beginning tomorrow (impossible, given education disparities and other factors relevant to income), the inequality of wealth would continue for generations.

            Given these facts, some people have raised the question of reparations.  The argument is fairly straightforward: Since the government of the United States and the governments of the various states contributed to this vast wealth gap by overt, unjust, and discriminatory policies, those governments ought now to try to repair the gap.

            Reparations proposals are controversial, to put it mildly.  I am not going to address the many arguments and counterarguments in this debate.  I will point out that the U.S. did adopt a reparations policy for Japanese Americans who were unjustly imprisoned in internment camps during World War 2. 

            American injustices inflicted on African Americans present a vastly greater problem than the internment camps, which lasted only four years and affected roughly 120,000 persons rather than millions.  It is the enormous scale of the damage inflicted by slavery and generations of discrimination that makes reparations to black Americans hard to imagine.  How can we “pay back” such an incalculable debt?  Would a symbolic repayment merely insult the memory of past generations?

I have a suggestion to make.  First, though, a little background.

Consider the U.S. treatment of Native Americans.  Without recounting history extensively, I think we can agree that European Americans treated First Nations people as abominably as we treated African Americans.  U.S. policy toward Native Americans was to take their land, kill any who resisted the theft of their land, and try to civilize them by forcing them to adopt European culture, language and government.  In the last decades of the 20^th century, U.S. policy moved away from cultural imperialism.  Our courts have ruled that by law we must treat native tribes as real nations; after all, the U.S. government agreed to treaty after treaty with them. 

Thus, native tribes have an advantage, when compared to the descendants of slaves: official recognition as independent tribal entities.  And in many states this has conferred a practical advantage to the tribes in regard to gambling.  Most states legally prohibit or restrict casino style gambling.  (Nevada is an obvious exception; that state has long used gambling to create its unique tourist industry.)  Since the tribes have independent status, they are able to authorize casino gambling even in states that prohibit or restrict gambling.  In recent decades tribal casinos have become a familiar aspect of American life; there are more than 500 such operations.

Just to be clear: I disapprove of gambling.  There is good evidence that gambling is addictive.  Gambling straightforwardly encourages greed.  Gambling, like other addictions, harms families and children.  Gambling exacerbates problems of poverty.  Nevertheless, I submit that tribal casinos have actually benefited native tribes.  In effect, tribal casinos transfer wealth from their customers (mostly white Americans) to the tribal governments that sponsor them.  In a rough and ready way, tribal casinos make reparations to the tribes.  Native tribes document which persons are actual members of the tribes, so the financial benefits of the casinos are shared primarily with those who suffer from the historical injustice of American Indian policy.  It’s possible that tribal casinos also confer a psychological benefit to Native Americans, in that tribal governments control the casinos.  “That (the casino) belongs to us.”

Another clarification: I am not expressing approval of any particular casino or its management.  I have no inside knowledge, but I would not be surprised if there were disputes between tribal officials and casino operators; there may well be disputes over casino policies between tribal members and their officials.

            Now, with tribal casino gambling as a model, I propose a way for the U.S. government to make reparations to African Americans who suffer the enduring effects of slavery.  It starts with some facts about Major League Baseball.

            First, Major League Baseball (hereafter, MLB) is a unique industry in America.  Due to a 1922 Supreme Court decision, which was reaffirmed in the 1950s and again in 1972, MLB is not subject to most anti-trust legislation.  I’m leaving out lots of legal details here, but the result been that MLB enjoys legal advantages unknown in any other business.

            Second, in recent decades, MLB has proven to be wildly successful financially.  This is shown by the market value of the various MLB franchises more than their annual profit/loss statements.  In 2019 Forbes Magazine estimated the value of the New York Yankees at $5 billion, with the value of the other 29 teams somewhere below the Yankees.  Further, the value of these franchises has been increasing rapidly over the last three decades.  George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973 for $8.7 million; the value of the franchise has increased almost 1000 times in less than 50 years.  The growth in value reflects national and regional television contracts and many subsidiary businesses.  This year, 2021, MLB announced that if it expands to two new cities (such an expansion has been publicly rumored for years, and there are active would-be ownership groups in multiple cities), the new teams would each have to pay $2.2 billion to the league as an expansion fee.  Any new team (in Portland, some of us hope) will instantly have a market value over $3 billion.  In most cases, MLB franchises also benefit from city and county governments that use tax money to pay for state of the art baseball stadiums, a practice which greatly increases the value of MLB teams.

            Here’s my proposal.  The U.S. government should nationalize Major League Baseball and transform the various franchises (32 of them, after expansion) in semi-private corporations.  Ownership rights would be given, in equal shares, to American citizens descended from persons enslaved in the U.S. before 1865.

1.     Cost?  The U.S. would pay current ownership a fair rate.  Let’s say each franchise was worth $5 billion.  32 franchises = $160 billion price tag.  Compared to COVID-19 stimulus legislation, this is not much.

2.     Semi-private corporations?  Undoubtedly, each team would need a management team.  The owners would elect directors, similar to the way stockholders of publicly traded corporations elect board members and officers.  The legislation to nationalize MLB would establish rules and goals for the 32 new corporations.

3.     The owners of the teams would be Americans who can show they descended from slaves.  Some black Americans would not be eligible to be MLB owners; for example, Barack Obama would not qualify, since his African father immigrated to the U.S. long after 1865.  Just as Native American tribes do not acknowledge every person who claims to belong to the tribe, the stockholders in the new corporations would want to good evidence before granting voting rights to applicants.

4.     Numbers?  There are approximately 42 million African Americans in the U.S.  Some of them, like Mr. Obama, would not qualify as stockholders in MLB.  Others may not apply for shares; perhaps they don’t trust the government or they hate baseball or they would rather get direct payments or . . .  Let’s say 32 million black Americans stepped forward to claim stock.  That’s one million stockholders for each franchise.  The nationalizing legislation might limit the number of shares for each franchise to one million.

5.     White owners?  I’m sure there are Americans who are direct descendants of slaves who look white and identify as white.  (If you go back 4 generations, you have 16 great-great grandparents.  If one was a slave, you’re a direct descendant of a slave.)  I suspect that the owners of the MLB franchises will adopt rules to give preference to African Americans who have a higher percentage of slave ancestry. 

 

I do NOT offer this proposal as “solution” to the vast wealth gap between black and white Americans.  At best it is a partial solution, a tool.

I’m confident my proposal has weaknesses, and I can’t fix them, because I don’t know what they are.  You, dear reader, can help with that.  How would you improve my proposal?

           

           

 

Thoughts on Opening Day

 

Hope: Mariners, Pears, and More

 

            I became a baseball fan in 1967, the year Jim Lonborg, Carl Yastrzemski and the Red Sox won an improbable pennant before losing to Bob Gibson and the Cardinals in the World Series.  In 1969 the American League added the Seattle Pilots and I immediately adopted them as my new “favorite team.”  The Pilots were terrible, finishing with a 64-98 record.  They played in a run-down minor league stadium, drew poorly, and lost money.  After one season, the Pilots flew away to Milwaukee to become the Brewers.  I went back to rooting for the Red Sox and added the Cincinnati Reds as “my” team in the National League in 1970.  To my delight, in 1975 my favored teams met in the World Series, with the Reds winning in seven games.  I didn’t realize how rare and wonderful an event the 75 series would be.

            Threatened by a possible lawsuit from the city of Seattle, the American League expanded again to the Northwest in 1977.  I’ve been a Mariners fan since then, through good and (mostly) bad.  In 44 seasons the Mariners have gained the playoffs just four times: 1995, 1997, 2000, and 2001, four playoff teams in a seven year span.  Other than that, nothing.  They won the first round of the playoffs (what is called the Divisional Series) three times, but they have never won the league championship series—so, of course, they have never played in the World Series.  Even in 2001, when the Mariners fielded a truly excellent team, with a final record of 116-46, they fell to the Yankees in the ALCS.

            And 2001 was the last.  The Mariners have missed the playoffs 19 straight seasons, a longer drought than any other team in baseball—and football, and basketball, and hockey.  Of all the teams in the four most popular sports in America, the Mariners have the most consistent record of mediocrity (coming close to the playoffs three times), punctuated by periods of ineptitude.

            Back in the 80s, the Mariners were consistently horrible.  They never managed a winning season until 1992.  So, on the bright side: the 19 recent years of mediocrity haven’t been quite as bad as the early years.  The dark side: I’m nineteen years older than I was the last time the M’s enjoyed a playoff series, and I won’t live forever.  Will I and other Mariner fans be forever frustrated?

            My baseball fandom—and frustration—has another layer.  I am the “owner” of a team, the Peshastin Pears, in the Expansion Fantasy League.  The EFL is a wonderful of my friend, Ron Mock, and it thrives through the efforts of Dave Votaw (our league computer wizard) and our younger owners (Ryan Mock, Jamie Johnson, Mark Johnson), who give lots of time to maintaining the league website, writing almost daily updates throughout the season, and explaining the rules to less observant owners like me.  I won’t go into many details—we have free agent drafts, rookie drafts, Rule 5 drafts, trades, a salary cap, and so on—but the result is delightful. 

            Except that I never win.  I’ve been in the league for at least fifteen years, and the Pears have never finished above third.  Mark Weinert, who had the wisdom to draft Mike Trout in the rookie draft one year, has won the EFL three or four times.  Ron’s “Old Detroit Wolverines” have won, John Johnson’s “Haviland Dragons” have won, Mark Johnson has won, and so on.  But never the Pears.  (Dave Votaw has also been a league member from the beginning without taking a title.  His team is the “Cottage Cheese.”  Perhaps our problem stems from our team names?  Are foods too gentle to win fantasy baseball?)

            And now a new year is upon us.  The 2021 major league baseball season started last Thursday.  The Mariners took two of three games from the San Francisco Giants, so they’ve started well.  But every baseball fan knows three games is a mere blip in a season that lasts until October.  Mariner fans appreciate the start, but our expectations haven’t changed.  We know, based on good sabermetric reasons, that the Mariners will probably not be contenders.

            Things are much worse for the Pears.  Two of my best players (Victor Robles and the marvelous Juan Soto) have yet to play at all, because the Washington Nationals are in a Covid hiatus.  My top pitcher, Jack Flaherty, failed miserably on opening day.  I’ve had relief pitchers give up multiple runs in short outings.  My position players who have played have failed to hit.  After the first weekend, the Pears are 0-4.  I’m confident, of course, that things will get better; my team will not be spectacularly bad.  It’s supposed to be a good team.  I probably won’t win, but the Pears probably will win many games.  Possibly, the Pears can win the league.

            Probably, possibly.  As long as there is a possibility, I can hope that the Mariners will win, maybe even contend for a playoff berth.  I can hope my fantasy players will enjoy productive, healthy seasons.

            Hope involves desire and a certain belief, i.e. that the desired outcome is at least possible.  When a hope is no longer possible it is a wish.  (I might wish the Mariners had won the pennant in 2001, but I can’t hope that they did.)  Obviously, there is much more to be said about hope, which is why I’ve written Understanding Hope.  Wipf and Stock has agreed to publish; the book should be out later this year.

            Baseball hopes add zest to life.  Even Mariner mediocrity crushes my hopes year after year, I come back for more.  Who knows?  Maybe this year.

            There are other hopes, far more important than baseball hopes.  The weekend just past brought more than the beginning of a new baseball season.  We celebrated Easter. 

1 Corinthians 15:20: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

This hope is at the center of life.  Jesus, who taught us love, compassion, faithfulness, kindness, honesty—in fact, all the virtues—died on a cross, rejected by us sinners.  But he rose from the dead and defeated our rejection.  He is the first to be raised, and he promises to raise all who believe in him.  The kingdom Jesus preached will come—not by trampling its enemies, but by resurrection.

Come, Lord Jesus!

A Review Essay

 

Why a Conservative Might Agree with Bernie Sanders

 

            Today’s Oregonian included the following lead to a story:

 

A group of Democratic senators is urging President Joe Biden to support recurring direct payments to lower-income Americans, arguing that regular, additional cash assistance is necessary until the economy fully recovers from the pandemic-induced downturn.

 

            The story goes on to give details of the proposal advanced by Senators Bernie Sanders, Ron Wyden, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren, among others—politicians we usually label as “liberals.”  I am not a liberal.  On some issues, such as capital punishment or war, I am a radical.  On others, e.g. abortion, I am a conservative.  But on this issue I think conservative capitalists like me should agree with Senator Sanders; at least, we might come close to agreeing.

            According to the newspaper, the liberal senators included few details in their proposal.  They don’t say how long the recurring direct payments would last.  They leave “lower-income” undefined.  Given the close balance in Congress between Democrats and Republicans, it is very unlikely their idea will go anywhere.  Not this year, anyway.

            In the long run, though, something like Bernie Sanders’ direct payment scheme will come to pass.  I explained why in a series of essays on the moral question of work in 2015.  Here are the salient points.

            From “Work, Part 1”:

The “moral law of labor” (revised): Every person who is able ought to work.

 

I said above that Paul’s words express a very nearly universal belief about work.  Not just in the first century, and not just in the West.  I’m confident that the positive moral value of labor is a universal judgment found in every culture throughout human history. 

 

From “Work, Part 2”:

Let’s return to the moral law of labor.  Can we imagine a culture that denied it?  I believe that today we can, and I will explain later.  But for most of human history it seemed obvious to everybody that people needed to work.  Therefore, every culture has had a moral preference for labor over idleness.

            Why?  Why have we always believed that people have to work?  The saying I cited above (which occurs twice in Proverbs, an indication of its importance in the minds of the ancient sages) points to the reason, an explanation obvious to everyone in the ancient world.  If you don’t work, scarcity will overtake you. 

Remember Paul’s words to Titus, which I cited in part one of this essay.  He wanted Christians to work in order to “provide for daily necessities.”  We all recognize that people have needs.  Human life is impossible if these needs are not met.  For all human history (until very recently, as I will explain) it has seemed obvious that many human needs can only be met through human labor.  And it has seemed obvious that we need to work hard; in the story of the fall (Genesis 3) God tells Adam that he will wrest his living from the ground by the sweat of his brow.  We hear echoes of an agricultural society in both Genesis and Proverbs, but the value of hard work was just as plain in pre-agricultural hunting or gathering societies.  Mercantile and industrial societies experienced the same truth.  Throughout human history, for most people in most societies, the margin for error was small.  A bad hunt, a bad harvest, a bad year with fishing nets, a plague of locusts, a plague of germs, an earthquake—peasants (i.e. most people) always lived close to economic catastrophe.  People needed to work hard to gain even a small edge against starvation.

 

From “Work, Part 3”:

The excess productivity of labor can be used in a variety of ways.  In ancient Egypt, the pharaohs decided to devote millions of man-hours of labor to construct pyramids.  In a very real sense, pyramids were physical instantiations of the excess productive capacity of Egypt’s agricultural economy.  In economic terms, we could say that some of the excess production of Egypt was “saved” and turned into “capital.”  That capital was then used to build temples and pyramids, and to support armies and a priestly class.  Egypt was hardly unique, economically speaking.  Ruling classes in civilizations around the world directed “capital”—in every case made possible by the excess production of those who labor to make necessities—to be used to create palaces, cities, roads, statues, prisons, libraries, navies, opera houses, and so on: in short, all the paraphernalia of civilization. 

Occasionally, sometimes by accident, capital was used in a way that increased productivity.  We can call this investment.  Suppose a ruler commands that human capital be used to build not a statue to his own glory but a road connecting parts of his territory.  A road, by making transportation speedier and safer, probably increases productivity in that country.  Absent natural or human caused disasters, a ruling class that consistently invested capital (saved labor) toward increasing productivity would, in a few generations, rule over a very wealthy state.  Unfortunately, rulers all around the world have burned up most capital rather than investing it; they do this primarily through war.

 

Also from “Part 3”:

Invested capital makes labor more productive. More and more, the production of goods relies on capital, not labor.  And there is apparently no necessary limit to productivity.  At one time, a farmer could feed his family and one other family.  Today, a handful of farmers can feed thousands.  There is no reason that in some tomorrow a small number of protein technicians could feed everybody.

            The “moral law of labor” says that everybody should work.  But there have always been a few people who are able to work but don’t.  Historically we have labeled them as “dilettantes,” “lazy,” “parasites,” and so on.  In current economic theory we call them “free riders.”  Notice the tone of moral disapproval.

            Some of the non-workers are independently wealthy.  They inherit so much capital that they need not work.  In popular myth, such “wastrels” fritter away their capital and come to a bad end.  In reality, plenty of independently wealthy people show enough wisdom to trust their financial advisors and live, either modestly or extravagantly, on the profits of their investments.  Given the productivity of capital, I predict that the number of wealthy non-workers will grow.

            Some of the non-workers live at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in social welfare states.  In any country that has a sufficiently generous system of social welfare, there will be some people who choose not to work.  Given the choice between very low wage jobs and welfare, they take welfare.  These are the “free-riders.”  Economists worry that too many of them will create a drag on economic growth.  Perhaps they will.  But in the long run, the productive power of capital will increase the overall carrying capacity of national economies, to the point where the free-rider problem disappears.  I predict that in the long run the policy question will not be how to get those at the bottom to work; rather, the question will be how to get sufficient money into their hands so that they can buy things.  A capitalist economy needs consumers.

I suggest the truth is this: people do not have to work to get the “daily necessities.”  Capital is far more productive than humanity ever guessed until recently.  As capital becomes responsible for producing a greater and greater share of the things we really need, more and more human jobs are devoted to creating non-necessary goods.  We become educators and novelists.  We invent new computer games.  We write blogs.  A tiny fraction of those blogs become commercial successes; most of them earn no money.

            In the future, that is what people will do.  They will “work,” if they choose to, at an ever-increasing palette of non-necessary jobs.  Only a minority will have the privilege of laboring at jobs that produce necessities.  Mostly, that group will consist of computer specialists, who tell the robots what people want to buy for Christmas.

 

            And from “Work, Part 4”:

Objection: even if it were possible for capital to produce our daily necessities, our market economy requires that people work.  Saving and investing capital is only half of a capitalist economy.  Production has to be balanced by consumption.  A capitalist system produces goods only in the hope that people will buy them, so consumers need to have incomes.  If people don’t work, how will they have income to buy products?

Reply: we will need to invent ways of putting purchasing power into the hands of people who don’t work.  Exactly what those ways will be, I don’t know.  But already modern economies have found ways to chip away at John Smith’s order (for the Jamestown colony in 1608): “He that will not work shall not eat.”

Today we think it unremarkable that many people live as many years after “retiring” as they did “working.”  We should remind ourselves how unusual, historically speaking, that is.  Historically, most people worked until they were too ill, often dying.  Invested capital has made our economy so productive that we can afford to have millions of unemployed consumers.  We have adapted our thinking to this unprecedented situation by telling ourselves that retired people have “earned” the income they spend; thus, their condition doesn’t really violate the moral rule: all people who are able should work.

But that’s just false.  “Retired” people violate the moral law of labor just as much as the traditional independently wealthy “dilettante.”  The point is this: in both cases we have people who do not work or work only when they choose, and yet they have access to purchasing power so they can buy things in the market.  And people who live on state support—through food stamps, disability payments, and other social security payments—are yet another group of people who do not work and yet have money to spend.

We need to get used to this idea.  For a market system of production and consumption to work, those who buy things have to have money to spend on the goods produced.  If, as I predict, many will not be able to participate in producing goods, they will need to be given purchasing power even if they don’t work.

This idea outrages many of us, precisely because it finally abandons the moral law of labor. It says that people ought to have money to spend in the market even if they didn’t earn it.  I can’t pretend to make the notion easy to swallow.  But maybe it will help if we look at production and consumption from the point of view of the 1%.

Very wealthy people own much of the means of production; in many cases their “work” consists of managing investments of capital.  They look down on the economy from lofty financial heights.  Some of them “earn” enormous amounts of money simply by leveraging other people’s money.  But sometimes things go wrong.  When things go badly wrong, we call it a recession.  And when the economy goes into a recession, very wealthy people discover it is in their interests to “get the economy moving again.”  Policy makers search for ways to encourage consumer spending in the face of low consumer confidence.  Many economists point out that the most effective way for government policy to encourage consumer spending is to increase expenditures on food stamps; almost as effective is spending more on unemployment benefits.  These measures put money into the hands of people at the bottom, people who will almost certainly spend it quickly.  I’m confident you see the point: The people at the top need to recognize that it is in their interest to put purchasing power in the hands of people at the bottom.  It doesn’t’ matter whether those people have earned it.  It’s good for everybody if they have it.

 

 

 

 

Concerned for Civility

 

The Political Opponent

 

            I published The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics in 2012.  On the basis of a philosophical analysis of civility in our culture, I predicted that incivility would increase.  Sadly—very sadly—I was right.

            In recent years, especially in the election/pandemic year of 2020, fewer and fewer Americans are willing or able to regard their political opponents as reasonable people.  We read, watch, and listen to news sources that reinforce our beliefs.  Opinion pollsters report that more and more people regard the other side not merely as wrong, but as evil.  Increasingly people buy into what I called the “logic of intolerance” in 2012.

1.     Truth is of infinite (at least, very great) importance.

2.     We know the lies of the liars (our political enemies).

3.     Therefore, we have a duty of intolerance.

Far from listening to the other side or learning from them, people who are trapped by the logic of intolerance want to silence or destroy or ostracize the enemy.  It is easy for such people to think: the lies of the enemy are both evil and dangerous; we must never give an inch lest they implicate us in their horrible deeds.

Imagine a national convention of an abortion rights group.  Suppose it was suggested that the organizers invite thoughtful anti-abortion people to attend and explain their views.  Conversely, imagine a parallel convention of a right to life group and a proposal that pro-choice people be invited to participate.  What would be the responses?  Quite likely, the proposals would be shouted down.  We already know what they think.  We can’t possibly listen to the propaganda of patriarchal monsters who would steal a woman’s right to her own body.  On the other side: We must never abandon the weakest and most helpless human beings.

In the abortion debate both sides claim to defend genuinely important values, personal autonomy and human life.  They are defending Truth with a capital T.  Unfortunately, contemporary political debate in the United States finds capital T Truth almost everywhere.  And so we have a duty of intolerance.  We can’t listen to those who disagree with us about the election of 2020, immigration policy, climate change (whether it is real or what to do about it), the coronavirus, and other matters.

I am NOT suggesting that such policy questions are unimportant.  We need to recognize that some policy questions are more important than others, and we need to give special care to the most important ones.  Nor am I saying that all views are equally likely to be true.  We will not build civility through relativism.

Nevertheless, we need to listen to the other side.  We need to learn from the other side.  No matter how sure we are of our political positions, we should be able to endorse a different argument.

1.     I am not omniscient, and my political opponent knows stuff I don’t know.

2.     More complete knowledge of a political problem almost always leads to better decisions.

3.     Therefore, my political opponent’s knowledge is a resource for better decision-making, and my political opponent is also a resource for better decisions.

4.     Therefore, I should treat my opponent as a good thing, a gift to be treasured.

 

Someone could skeptically refer to recent events.  Are we really to regard the rioters who stormed the capitol as valuable political opponents?  Are we really to listen and learn from Mr. Trump’s supporters, who believe the 2020 election was stolen?

In response, I might ask: what will happen if we refuse to listen?

Members of the mob that broke into the capitol, stole property, threatened congresspeople, and injured and killed police officers January 6 should be prosecuted, and in due course they will be.  But the rioters were only the tip of the iceberg of Trump voters, some 74 million of them.  It’s safe to say that many of those millions believe Trump’s baseless claims of fraud.  Can we simply ignore them?  Should we let ourselves believe we already know why they supported Trump?  What price might we pay if we do not listen?

In 2016 I quit the Republican party because it accepted Mr. Trump as its candidate.  Obviously, then, I think there are times when persons need to take a stand against wrong decisions.  But that does not mean giving into the logic of intolerance.  Even in quitting the party, I continued to listen to its leaders, including Mr. Trump.

Dear fellow American, do not think of your political opponent as evil.  Whether she is Democrat, Republican, or something else, think of her as an ally in our experiment in self-government.