Can we get practical? Is utilitarianism the basis of our society? (And fixing our House)

Writing this during the month after D-Day commemorations, I want to start by linking to a fine essay about how the world changed after World War II, spreading (more widely, though unevenly) the notion and reality of a largely educated and comfortable and free middle class, a dream and partial reality that Karl Marx never imagined possible... 

...only the world then changed then again, when the 6000 year disease of oligarchy began re-asserting itself, dissolving the social contract set up by the Greatest Generation and - ironically - reviving Marx from the dustbin where middle-class society had tossed him. 

The author of that article is slightly to the left of my "Maher-Liberalism," but makes strong points - sometimes citing me - about why today's oligarchy never does anything practical to benefit the ill-educated whites who are their ground troops in a re-ignited confederacy. 

As in the 1860s, and every other phase of the ongoing U.S. Civil War, those poor whites are propelled far more by resentment and revenge, than they are by practical considerations. Especially resentment of every 'nerdy' or fact-using profession... those high IQ stoopid people derided by an Ivy League graduate with a fake-folksy accent. 

Hatred of the very same professions who created all the wealth and technologies and social advances that 'made America great.' The same nerds - from science to law to medicine to journalism, teaching and civil service, all the way to the civil servants and officer corps - who block re-imposition of feudalism.

The Weekly Sift essay includes my comparisons of Asimov's psychohistory to the astonishingly effective sci fi self-preventing prophecies of Karl Marx.

Science fiction authors tend to notice such things. Which is why most of us lean mostly-progressive. Very few of us speak up for a return to those 60 centuries of lobotomized feudal oppression, the way that Orson Scott Card does, with utter-dogmatic repetitiveness. In fact, the unfairly-maligned Robert Heinlein's most vehement denunciations were aimed at America's recurring dalliance with fascist racism, aristocratism and anti-intellectual rage.

I say all that, even though I am also unabashed in pointing out - now and then - the countless, loony tactical errors - often driven by egoistic sanctimony - that cripple the partisans of progress. Errors that keep giving varied versions of fascism yet another chance, then another...

No, we can only serve future generations if we are practical about our tactics and designs, re-assessing what works and building the sort of broad coalitions that defeated naziism and Stalinism and Klanism. And so...

== Points about utilitarianism ... ==

1) The Enlightenment Experiment (EE) of the last 300 years involved many, many theoretical discussions of ethics… and almost none of them interest me! Because I know that I am a delusional ape, transfixed by ornate-sounding incantations! Indeed I have seen what delusional incantations have done in the past, even when well-intended.  

I care about outcomes, especially those that increase the likelihood that this ape’s descendants will deal with all the hifalutin quandaries and questions and big-matters, far better than I can. 

Even utilitarianism – which comes closest – misses the mark with the cliché phrase ‘greatest good for the greatest number.’

Whose good? By whose standards? 

2) What the Enlightenment Experiment has accomplished that is of pragmatic utility is providing systems that maximize critical input from an ever-widening pool of perceptual participants! 

This broadening of empowered input reduced the greatest crime of feudalism… waste of talent.  It also led (barely just in time) maximizing discovery of delusional errors. 

These two endeavors resulted in by far the most successful – by any measure – civilization in all history. And the most self-critical, with millions determined not to repeat mistakes of past generations. And to denounce every new one!

3) This expansion of empowered participation required more than simply feeding and educating more children, expanding inclusive rights, flattening hierarchies and encouraging criticism. 

It also required the creation of systemically regulated. Arenas within which creative adversaries can compete. But that means replacing the brutal forms of competition seen in nature and in feudalism with regulated competition - like how sports leagues operate in tightly umpired ways that maximize positive sum outcomes, by reducing cheating and minimizing blood on the floor.

 (Nature also uses competition and is fecundly creative - it made us. But Nature's competitive creativity is also spectacularly bloody and inefficient. Regulated arenas seem capable of getting competition's benefits in much more positive sum and gentler ways.)

These highly-creative arenas of ritual competition are markets, democracy, science courts and (as I just said) sports. (Some might add journalism). I describe the process here: "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition." (This early version appeared as the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000.)

As I said, by regulating competition to keep it flat, open, fair, these arenas become positive sum. But maintaining them and suppressing the recurring poison of cheating requires constant attention, fine tuning and hard work

Cynics claim that this dynamic may have worked well for a while (the Rooseveltean social contract) and somewhat for 250 years, but it cannot be maintained: 

“Once the technological/ developmental gap is sufficiently large those dynamics which operate largely under our control and in our favor can quickly change, and former allies become the new masters”. 

But I answer twofold:

1- Yes the odds have always been against the Enlightenment Experiment! Human nature pushes toward the feudalism trap and escapes are rare.

2- Despite that, there is NO such cause effect imperative or automatic outcome! 

Oh, sure, there is always an attractor, in each of the arenas, for cheaters to find ways around the rules, often conniving together. The feudal attractor state is driven by primitive male reproductive strategies that pervade not just Homo sapiens but nearly all species...

And yet, so? Preventing that failure mode is one of the jobs of open, enlightenment politics… sincere negotiation of the incentives and regulations that keep those arena playing fields ever-more flat-fair-creative. Indeed, for feudalism to be restored, the world oligarchy’s top priority must be to destroy “politics” as a means of deliberative negotiated problem solving, especially in the United States.  

And boy, that plot has been successful! So far!

What many neglect is the long history of successful efforts to control and stymie that attractor tendency... 

...including the way that YOU and YOUR VALUES fit into it all, since you are a product of the most extensive propaganda campaign ever waged. Called Hollywood.  

I find it bizarre how many folks - bright ones - seem addicted to the smug notion that "I and just a few others invented suspicion of authority!"

Not. You suckled your values from the teat of Hollywood, same as all your neighbors.  See Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood. So let's fight for that Enlightenment Experiment that may give our heirs the stars! 

Just have some calm sense of proportion, will ya? Gandhi and MLK and Franklin and Douglass weren't just righteous... they were tacticians!  They built coalitions.

== Making at least one house democratic ==

Want the simplest and best and easiest U.S. congressional reforms that aren’t to be found in Polemical Judo?

1.)  Repeal the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act. It permanently set the maximum number of members in the House of Representatives at 435. Hence a lot of the distortions in proportional representation, since each state gets at least one representative.

2.)  Then legalize a Wyoming Rule, where the number of representatives each state gets is proportional to the population of the least populous state (aka Wyoming with 578,803) which gets one representative. California (population 39,237,836) gets 68 representatives, an increase of 16 over its current 52. That increases the total number of representatives to 573.

3.) This would take just a majority law, needing no amendments.

4.)  Then, more ambitiously, also make both the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states (both have more population than Wyoming). DC would get one representative and Puerto Rico would get 6, further increasing House membership to 580.

A decent contractor can expand the hall of congress to seat the additional reps and provide them office space - or these reps can work remotely based on seniority (which is how they assign office space anyways). Have you seen how cramped the UK House of Commons is?

This would also reduce some (not all) of the obscene distortions to proportional representation in the electoral college.

This Washington Post article by constitutional scholar Danielle Allen - ‘The House was supposed to grow with population. It didn’t. Let’s fix that’ offers arguments for the same change that are less partisan, more mature and grownup. And those reasons should suffice! The author’s point? Historically this enlargement would actually be consistent with the framers’ original intent! Which was clearly stated in many places.  

I am less calm and mature and perhaps more angry. The Confederacy has an inherent advantage in the Senate already. It should nt in the House, where every citizen's vote should have equal value.

Period.

Violence, War and an Improving World - Part I: The Pinker Effect

A while ago I offered up an in-depth exploration of the mythic system of modern science fiction, as illustrated in James Cameron's epic film Avatar, exposing how a very healthy reflex (cultural self-criticism) all-too often sours into something much less wholesome -- a mythology that western civilization is not improvable.  That our society's inherent vileness merits only self-loathing and despair.

Ironically, some of the most sincere voices in film and fiction, who push messages of progress, are instead undermining it by encouraging cynical gloom. Take my esteemed colleague in the craft of creating worlds, Charles Stross, whose popular blog is often on target when it comes to listing phenomena that push against any hope for continuing our Western Democratic Scientific Enlightenment. The failure modes that he lists are daunting and mostly very real... and tell only half the story...  

The other half -- how we got the freedom and other goodies that are in peril, in the first place -- almost never comes up, nor the many, many countervailing forces that we might use - as our ancestors used them - to keep the Enlightenment Experiment going.

Why this obsession with downer news? Well, for one thing, dire warnings are more useful than polyanna-pangloss-happy ravings! If I must choose - zero-sum - between extremes, then please do have the cynics come sit next to me! 

But zero-sum is deeply stupid and self-defeating. As is stylish cynicism, over the long run. Diagnosing a disease is most effective when it is accompanied by a confident determination to take action. And that, in turn, requires some sense of the body's strengths, as well as its weaknesses.

In this new series, I plan to show how this same syndrome  pervades academia and popular punditry. The overall result has been a shattering of confidence in our ability to improve, giving comfort to those who see no reason to improve, at all.

== The worst sin: admitting good news == 

Among the most important books of our era is Harvard psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) which presents voluminous statistical and other evidence to show that the cynical catechisms of both left and right are specious. 

The crux: there is enough good news in human affairs to merit some cautious optimism. As overall per-capita rates of violence plummet, worldwide (though not in hellish trouble spots)… as poverty declines and ever-larger fractions of the world’s children bring school books back to homes with electricity, clean water and plentiful food… and as ever increasing numbers of girls feel empowered over their own lives… the real question boils down to: 

“Why is such good news anathema — even rage-inducing — among zealots at all ends of the political spectrum?”

To be clear, Pinker and his supporters have never said “there has been some progress — therefore let’s all relax.” 

But that is what so many hear. And that perception is, in its own right, deeply sick.

The fear on the left is that any admission of real progress will sap the intensity of our passion to save the world. The dread on the right is even more intense -- that Pinker’s statistics will show past liberal and progressive efforts were, in large measure, responsible for this tentatively good news. 

Now please, look over those two sentences again. Don't skim. They are blatantly true, and reveal stunning psychoses spanning our so-called political “spectrum.” In fact, both sides are functionally insane. Especially liberals, for not seeing the simple sales-pitch they could start using:

“You see? Progressivism works! We’re halfway there! Of course, if we don’t double down and fix the rest, all of our hard-won gains will be lost and we’ll all die! But Pinker’s statistics show it’s possible! So yay Pinker. And let’s embrace optimism. Step up, with confidence, spurn the gloomists and naysayers, and double down on progress!”

That is what a few pragmatist liberals (the only sane political bloc left in the U.S.) do say! But at the far-left (very different from “liberals”) -- even the possibility of an agenda based on confidence and optimism is utterly anathema. And thus, they play into the hands of the even-more-sick right.

== Attacking Pinker ==

Pinker’s statistics are hard to refute, so how do the paladins of pessimism respond? In this article by John Gray from The Guardian - Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war -  Mr. Gray argues with deceitful tricks and outright lies. 

He starts by pointing out that Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Voltaire — while demanding freedom for the common man, and definitions of citizenship an order of magnitude more inclusive than before — also muttered some statements that seem racist or bigoted or sexist, to modern ears. How monstrously vile…

... by which I mean vile of Gray. In judging sages of the past, the rule must be “did they try hard to push our horizons of inclusion wider than the assumptions under which they had been raised?” If they fought to enlarge tolerance and opportunity beyond what men and women of their times took for granted, then yes, they were heroes of “enlightenment” and not hypocrites, as manipulative cynics like Mr. Gray would have you believe.  

But let’s elaborate on that point, since it seems difficult for many to grasp. Should Abraham Lincoln be “outed” for sharing some racial stereotypes of his own upbringing and era? Sure, look at them in cold light. But also take the word of Frederick Douglass who observed such inconsistencies up close, in the most dramatic case where an imperfect hero ultimately delivered the goods, however deep his imperfections:

“Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.” 

                   -Frederick Douglass 

Am I too harsh on Mr. Gray, for his assertion that enlightenment thinkers should have made leaps to perfection, instead of pushing humanity and humanism forward by incremental stages? (Increments far greater than all the cynics, like Mr. Gray, have ever accomplished, combined?) 

No, if anything I am being gentle, especially after Gray's loathsome trickery was quintupled — when he tried to fob off onto the Enlightenment all blame for Hitler and Stalin!

“You would never know, from reading Pinker, that Nazi “scientific racism” was based in theories whose intellectual pedigree goes back to Enlightenment thinkers such as the prominent Victorian psychologist and eugenicist Francis Galton. Such links between Enlightenment thinking and 20th-century barbarism are, for Pinker, merely aberrations, distortions of a pristine teaching that is innocent of any crime: the atrocities that have been carried out in its name come from misinterpreting the true gospel, or its corruption by alien influences. The childish simplicity of this way of thinking is reminiscent of Christians who ask how a religion of love could possibly be involved in the Inquisition. In each case it is pointless to argue the point, since what is at stake is an article of faith.”

Grrrr.  The number of calumnies in just those sentences is beyond count. And that wasn’t even the whole paragraph! 

Anyone who correlates Nazism and Stalinism - two fiercely repressive state religions and pyramidal-authoritarian despotisms - with anything other than a pair of frontal assaults by romanticism against the tolerant diversity of enlightenment empiricism, is either a supreme delusion-artist or an outright propagandist. The fact that actual scientists fled both the Nazi and the Communist hells as fact as they could, lending all their fiber to strengthening the democratic west, just might suggest that Germany and the USSR were using the term “scientific” as an incantation, far removed from the real thing. The very thing that their befuddled modern analogues -- romantics like Mr. Gray -- also confuse. 

Indeed, it was western science that utterly demolished the rationalizations used by those despotisms for their insane thuggery, as well as engendering the fecund creativity that allowed free citizenries to surge forward, leaving both fanatical religions in a cloud of dust.

In Nazism, Stalinism and subsequent ‘isms' we see howls of rage aimed directly at enlightenment. Those who currently denounce democratic decadence — ranging from ISIS to the rising plutocratic oligarchy's court apologists like Gray and Leo Strauss and Francis Fukayama — all rationalize that the experiment in citizen sovereignty is doomed to collapse from inherent contradictions, despite it having achieved — in two centuries — far more than all other social systems across all continents and 6000 years.  Combined.

 Hitler and Stalin openly declared contempt for our experiment and eagerness to end it, using methods rooted in the feudal satrapies that dominated human affairs across those 60 centuries. Trying to pin them on our enlightenment is an act of legerdemain so staggeringly dishonest as to win Mr. Gray a place in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

== Other calumnies ==

Likewise, Gray's notion that Enlightenment’s defenders deny the efficacy of the atom bomb at deterring war. Um? Of course deterrence played a role! But if this window of relative peace is to become permanent, we had better use it to make peace a habit. And despite your snarking, Mr. Gray, just talk to the millions of young people graduating from the world’s universities, every year, to see that altruism and empathy are spreading!  And that nearly all of your assertions are diametrically opposite to true.

Oh, but he goes on, and makes one actual, true statement: “If great powers have avoided direct armed conflict, they have fought one another in many proxy wars.”  

Yep!  Enlightenment is not a light switch.This is no fairy tale.  Justice and happy endings aren't guaranteed.  Martin Luther King Jr. did not promise the path would be linear, but an "arc" that will sweep toward justice only if most (not all) of us pull on it, like gravity.  

 Let me avow something that might (at first glance, please the mad Straussian neocons out there and upset goody-goody lefties, by admitting that some older, rougher tools were needed, in order to get us to these (tentatively) better days. Particularly a “pax” imperium — Pax Americana. And, like all such empires, PA made some awful, thuggish mistakes. Fewer than any other “pax” across 6000 years! PA presents history with a vastly better ratio of good deeds to bad, and Mr. Gray does not dare meet my offer of a wager over that. He knows I would own his house. 

But yes, we have stuff to atone-for.

Nevertheless, the defense umbrella of Pax Americana allowed half of Europe (and later all of it), much of Asia, and nearly all of the Western Hemisphere to spend the last 70 years allocating far, far lower fractions of their national wealth to armies and defense than any other peoples, across all of time. 

Please read again that last sentence and let it sink in. Across all of time, nations generally devoted half of their national wealth to war or defense, almost anywhere you look. Half. 

What was the average under Pax Americana? Two percent of GDP — that is how much the NATO countries are currently arguing over. A pittance that would be hilarious, if folks from any other era showed up to offer comment. 

The exception? The USA, which for a human lifespan has carried the more “normal” defense burden, protecting trade and general peace. And thereby empowered other nations to prosper. These aren’t just assertions. Refute them, if you can! (In the form, of a wager please: put real money on it.) You cannot.

Oh, but then, after dipping into a half-truth, Mr. Gray dives right back into full-lies. “While it is true that war has changed, it has not become less destructive.” 

Dang. Just dang. Um, has he watched even one historical documentary, ever, of any kind? Notice that Gray does not even try to back this up.  He armwaves assertions. He is the Fox News of cynicism.

Is his screed without value? In fact, Mr. Gray raised many cavils and modern problems.  We do live in a world still wracked with awful conflicts. The USA can hardly preach a pure morality tale while we have the world’s highest incarceration rates. And the oligarchic putsch that has deliberately re-ignited the American Civil War — destroying politics as a means of negotiated problem solving — is an act of treason that threatens to eviscerate the nation’s heart, its ability to deal with a future of onrushing change.  These and a myriad other vexing challenges merit our determined attention and passionately militant response!

Only please dig this, Mr. Gray.  It is not your relentlessly deliberate cheating and lying that I find despicable, but your intensely evident aim to denounce and undermine our belief that problems can be solved. By denying that any of our past efforts ever have solved any.

It is the jibbering insanity of today’s Far-Left, which makes that extremum (not moderate liberals) almost 10% as crazy as today’s Entire-Right.

Yes, that crazy.

==


Continue to Part II: Is Conflict Necessary for Human Advancement?