Another scandal crashes and burns...

Reblogged from charles' log:

Source: Politics USA

Author: Jason Easley

"The latest Republican Obama scandal is starting to fall apart too. The IRS didn’t just target conservative groups. They also questioned the tax exempt status of liberal groups too.

In 2012, The Chicago Tribune reported on the IRS denying tax exempt status to a liberal political group,

The IRS announced in May and June that it took the actions against two groups defined as tax-exempt under the…

Read more… 535 more words

It looks like the IRS was not just targeting conservative groups, but was targeting political action groups who may have been violating the tax exemption guidelines. If the IRS wasn’t targeting conservatives, but trying to deal with the surge of dark money groups applying for tax exempt status, this story takes on an entirely different context. Reuters has obtained part of a yet to be released report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) that confirms that the IRS was targeting groups on the left and right who focused their activities on advocating for expanding or limiting of the size of the government. The report also states that the screening process was not influenced by the Obama administration, and that none of the groups screened were denied tax exempt status. Without the claims of a partisan witch hunt against conservative groups, this latest Republican fueled Obama scandal is set to lose all of its sizzle. The real reason why Republicans are desperately trying to drum up a scandal here is because they don’t want the IRS forcing their dark money groups to pay taxes. The IRS is threatening their Citizens United fueled political slush fund, and Republicans want it to stop. Republicans are trying to bully the IRS into backing off. It turns out that Obama isn’t Richard Nixon after all. He wasn’t using the IRS to attack his enemies. In their own bungling way, the IRS was trying to deal with the problems caused by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. First, Benghazi crashes and burns, and now the IRS scandal could be fading fast. Republicans will pull from their usual “Obama scandal” playbook and hold lots of hearings, but thing looks to be on the fast track to nowhere. Congressional Republicans will try their best, but the IRS “scandal” could backfire and end up making the case for why we need to get rid of Citizens United ASAP.“

Conservative-Minded Authoritarianism & Liberal-Minded Anarchism

Someone once made the argument to me that there was a particular bias in social science research. The argument was based on the anecdotal evidence of the research this person had come across I suppose by way of what was reported in the media and maybe the blogosphere. His observation was that researchers had focused their studies more on conservatism than liberalism.

It would be surprising if there weren’t any biases such as this or something similar. More social scientists and scientists in geneal identify as liberals than as conservatives (and I’m sure that even the conservatives in this field are relatively liberal-minded). It does make sense that liberals and the liberal-minded would be greatly curious about those so different from their own attitude and worldview, especially considering that liberal-mindedness strongly correlates to open-minded curiosity.

Nonetheless, I doubt that curiosity is a zero sum game. A curious-minded person would probably be just as interested in liberalism as conservatism. Besides, most research I’ve seen in this area tends to simultaneously test for both sides of the political spectrum. I suspect it is rare research that would only study conservatism while entirely ignoring liberalism.

The bias I might see along these lines is more in the media reporting. The right-wing has caught the public imagination since the homegrown right-wing terrorism made itself violently known in the 1990s and especially since 9/11 brought the foreign right-wing terrorism to the attention of Americans. During the Cold War, the media focused on left-wingers while ignoring right-wingers. But the Cold War has been over for more than two decades now. With fundamentalist terrorism, Americans are learning new respect for Godlessness, despite its former association with the Communist Threat.

There is a more direct bias that is pertinent to the original hypothesis. Ever since the world wars, social scientists have been obsessed with authoritarianism. That was the era when right-wing fascism came to power. Many people escaped fascism by coming to America. The social scientists among these refugees were quite intently focused on understanding right-wing authoritarianism in the hopes of preventing its return.

There is good reason that authoritarianism has become associated with the right-wing and from there associated with conservatism. Indeed, there is a correlation in the American population between these three. The question is whether this correlation implies a causal link or is it merely an issue of historical conditions. At least for decades now, conservatism has attracted right-wing authoritarians into its ranks, seemingly as an intentional seeking of alliances by movement conservatives and GOP strategists, whether or not they fully appreciated the psychological profile of their allies. Some (e.g., Corey Robin) theorize that this is more than a temporary and circumstantial connection.

Here is the key point for me.

An authoritarian type can be either right-wing or left-wing; the reason for this is because right-wing and left-wing are more about ideology (and rhetoric) than psychology. An authoritarian type can be a conservative or anyone who is conservative-minded, the commonality of social conservatism being a reason political alliance are so easy to form. An authoritarian can even be a liberal, just as long as they are fairly conservative-minded or not too strongly liberal-minded in all ways. I’m fairly sure the one thing an authoritarian can’t be is liberal-minded, pretty much by the very definition of liberal-minded traits (which have a strong correlation to liberalism itself)

This is where its important to clarify a point. Liberalism correlates to liberal-mindedness and conservatism correlates to conservative-mindedness. However, there are still a significant number of conservative-minded liberals (and left-wingers) along with liberal-minded conservatives (and right-wingers).

Another clarification needs to be made. Fascist statists are right-wingers and communist statists are left-wingers. This is a distinction of ideology (specifically economic ideology), but there is no clear distinction when it comes to their personalities. Both kinds of radical ideologues tend to be authoritarian and, more significantly, conservative-minded. When looking at authoritarian states, including communism, the thing that stands out to me is they are against all forms of social liberalism and liberal-mindedness (and all that leans in that direction or is conducive towards it): social democracy, multiculturalism, feminism, gay rights, free speech, free press, free intellectual inquiry, free artistic expression, freedom to assemble and protest, etc etc.

This points toward the knot of confusion and so we can now disentangle the most interesting strand of bias. With my explanation so far, I hope it is beginning to be clarified why mainstream notions of liberalism aren’t an equivalent category to mainstream notions of conservatism. To nail it down, let me offer a little refresher on traits theory.

Traits exist on a spectrum with most people being closer to the midpoint than to the extremes. The typical person has some range of comfort and ability that might include to some extent both sides of the spectrum, although there will tend to be a natural resting point that an individual returns to. The extreme cases remain important for they demonstrate traits in their purest form.

Two separate traits correlate to liberalism and conservatism. Respectively, they are Openness and Conscientiousness. They are completely separate traits and so how an individual tests on one measure has no effect on how they test on the other. This can create the not unusual situation of a person measuring high on both the liberal-minded trait and the conservative-minded trait or else low on both.

I propose this as an explanation for why liberal-mindedness hasn’t been studied as fully. Most scientists, academics, college students, activists, politicians, journalists and reporters who identify as liberal probably don’t measure extremely high on Openness while also measuring low on Conscientiousness. It is true that most self-identified liberals measure relatively higher on the liberal-minded trait of Openness, but those who are highly motivated and self-disciplined enough to go to college, pursue politics and/or succeed in a professional career wouldn’t measure low on the conservative-minded trait of Conscientiousness.

Based on this, one would assume that, in respectable mainstream society, there would be a disproportionately small percentage of extreme liberals or even just people who are consistently liberal across all traits. This is predictable based on how Conscientiosness is described in the research literature. Conscientiousness is the single greatest indicator of social success (i.e., success by other people’s standards and according to the status quo). This would explain why professionally established and economically successful artists tend to have higher ratings on Conscientiousness, despite this conservative-minded trait being low among art students. I would speculate that there is a connection to why the most innovative and genius (i.e., unconventional) artists often remain poor and unknown in their own lifetimes.

In an outwardly success-oriented society, conservative-minded conscientiousness is given central priority. However, at the same time, it makes for a bias in all aspects of such a society, including research on psychological traits:

http://www.siop.org/tip/backissues/tipoct98/4collins.aspx

“Let it not be misunderstood, conscientiousness is recognizably an important predictor of performance and many other organizational outcomes (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991; Ones & Viswesvaran, 1996). But is it possible that this continued and concentrated focus on the validity of conscientiousness may overshadow other perhaps stronger personality predictors of job performance? Could it be that a plateau has been reached, and the time has come to move beyond conscientiousness in search of other predictor discoveries?”

Those who are extremely liberal-minded tend to have lots of social issues. Along with lacking success-orientation, they tend to be less healthy and more prone to becoming criminals (i.e., breaking laws and generally not being obedient and subservient). However, there being seen as criminals by society is the very same reason they are less likely to commit immoral acts that are the norm for a society or demanded by authority figures. So, high conscientious conservative-minded types are more likely to do horrific things and be successful at it, just as long as it meets standards of social approval. High conscientiousness, for example, will lead one to make sure the trains run efficiently in order to bring the enemies of the state to the concentration camps.

This is what irritates me. The conservative-minded project onto the liberal-minded their own conservative-minded predilections. The strongly liberal-minded will never make for good authoritarians. They may be losers who are alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, sexual deviants, etc. They may even be terrorists of the anarchistic variety. But they won’t be authoritarians or not very successful authoritarians.

The anarchism angle is what intrigues me most of all. That seems like the polar opposite of authoritarianism. Even conservatives seem to understand that. More than the over orderliness and oppression of authoritarians, what conservatives fear more than anything from liberals is that they will undermine conservative order by undermining moral authority and social hierarchy. Liberals will only ever be authoritarians to the degree they are or become conservative-minded.

I wish liberals would be criticized for their actual faults and weaknesses, instead of being blamed for what goes against their own nature. And to return to the original point of this post, I don’t know about researchers who are self-identified liberals, but I think it unfair to blame their supposed liberal-mindedness for their heavy focus on conservative-mindedness, assuming such a biased focus even exists. If anything, the conservative-mindedness (relatively higher conscientiousness) should be blamed for their having ignored the fullest and most extreme expressions of liberal-mindedness.

We’ve already had decades of extensive research on authoritarianism. Let us check out the polar opposite side of things. Definitely, I’d like to see some insightful research on anarchism.

—

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/per.795/abstract

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty-Humility_Facet_of_the_HEXACO_Model_of_Personality

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910001182

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911005046

http://www.psycontent.com/content/r86104550w030g0l/

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/per.845/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224540903365364#.UY1v4Eqd6So

http://www2.uni-jena.de/svw/igc/SS_09/workshop%20Duckitt/supplementary%20readings/Duckitt%20&%20Sibley%20submitted.pdf

http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2012-19403-001

http://www.jasoncollins.org/2011/06/the-evolution-of-conscientiousness/

http://www.academia.edu/153692/Evaluating_Five_Factor_Theory_and_social_investment_perspectives_on_personality_trait_development

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656611000997

What Is Empathy? And What Good Is It?

Empathy has been a central concern of mine for most of my life.

Many conservatives talk about empathy being limited or somehow weak and unworthy, maybe even dangerous such as the allegation of sympathizing with terrorists. I’ve never understood this.

—

Maybe conservatives have issues with their own ability to empathize, but my empathy is often on overdrive and my entire sense of identity, my entire sense of morality and humanity is rooted in it. If anything, my problem is too much empathy or too strongly felt empathy. This isn’t to say it is about empathy making me a better person. It’s simply doesn’t fit what conservatives describe in their own vision of human nature driven by naked self-interest and ruthless Social Darwinism or else driven by a sinful fallen nature.

To be fair, most average conservatives genuinely want more emphasis to be put on family, religion, community and civic duty (also, ethnic culture for some). But even these average conservatives seem to be motivated by the same basic belief of having little faith in a greater capacity for empathy beyond the narrow confines of group identity (however the in-group and out-group are defined).

I would make a clarification to which conservatives aren’t likely to admit. Conservatives seem to recognize that liberal-minded empathy doesn’t have the narrowness, xenophobia and parochial quality that is more common to the conservative-minded expression of empathy. If they didn’t understand this, they wouldn’t wouldn’t worry so much about liberals sympathizing too strongly with the enemies, foreigners, diverse cultures, criminals, drug addicts, the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden, along with others deemed to be social inferiors and social unworthies.

So, it’s more that conservatives think people should willingly choose to limit their empathy or have society, specifically the political and economic system, intentionally constrain the effect of empathy to the small-scale, especially families and churches or private individual interests such as charity. In the place of empathy, they think we should prioritize something better to guide the moral order: principles, faith, rules, merit, etc. It’s not that they dislike empathy, but they can’t imagine a morally good world that is centered on a broader vision of empathy (i.e., a morally good world centered on a core liberal value).

I wouldn’t argue that there are no problems with empathy. It is apparent, to grossly understate the problem, that the human race on the large-scale has yet to get the knack for fundamentally caring about and for all people or even most people, as true in wealthy countries as poor, as true in oppressive states as in capitalist countries. It is the reason why civilization is failing and probably will continue to fail for sometime, assuming it will ever succeed.

My main disagreement with conservatives is that they believe civilization is better off without worrying about all that namby-pamby stuff of peace, love and understanding. From their perspective, the problem is too much emotional concern, too much softness, too much forgiveness. From my perspective, such obvious cynicism (and the realpolitik that goes with it) is mind-blowing, heart-wrenching and soul-despairing.

—

By the way, I hope it is obvious that liberal-mindedness and conservative-mindedness aren’t equivalent too or necessarily even strongly correlated to the two party system. I suppose it’s likely that most Republican political activists and elites would measure strongly on conservative-minded traits, but I honestly doubt that many Democratic political activists and elites would measure strongly on liberal-minded traits.

I’m not sure that liberal-minded traits are more rare. It might be something about liberal-minded traits not being as effective for seeking and gaining positions of power and authority, wealth and prestige. The regimented power structure of hierarchical big government (like big business) is fundamentally unattractive and contrary to liberal-mindedness, not to say it is impossible for a liberal-minded person to succeed under such circumstances, just difficult and less probable. Besides, to the degree they succeeded was most likely to the degree they sacrificed and undermined their liberal-mindedness.

In a conservative social system, even when some liberal values and/or rhetoric has been incorporated, it is a lose/lose scenario for the liberal-minded. To win according to conservatism automatically means to lose according to liberalism, although I’m not sure the opposite is true in the same way or to the same extent (since liberalism on principle is about accepting and allowing to the greatest degree possible for what is different, including conservatism), but I’d love to test my hypothesis one day if we ever finally create a liberal social system.

—

I was looking at research on empathy, motivated by my speculations on empathetic imagination. This combination of empathy and imagination is key to understanding liberal-mindedness. But it isn’t as simple as conservatives lacking empathy

The research does show a correlation between the abilities of empathy and imagination. Seeing this kind of research is what originally led me to coining the term empathetic imagination. Other research shows that empathy is negatively correlated to analytical thinking. It is difficult to empathize and analyze at the same time. As a side note, this makes me wonder about the possible negative correlation between imagination and analysis (which might be related to the opposing traits of optimism and pessimism, the research showing the former having greater capacity for change and the latter having greater capacity for accurate present assessment; just a side thought).

Leaving it at that is unsatisfying because this generalizes too much about all people. What makes psychology interesting to me is how much difference and diversity exists within human nature. So, are these kinds of attributes fully and always opposing and contradictory? Do they inevitably suppress the activity of the other?

Yes, it is no doubt challenging to simultaneously empathize and analyze (or imagine and analyze). But, I’d have to offer strong doubt to it being impossible. Based on still other research, one would presume that some people might be better at it than others.

On a personal level, I notice how closely linked are my own abilities to empathize and analyze (and imagine). I don’t know that I do them precisely at the same time and in concert, but I find it easy to quickly and smoothly switch back and forth so as to feel seamless. I couldn’t say whether this is an inborn ability or learned. It does seem to me that I was less analytical when young. I’ve become more analytical without, as far as I can tell, sacrificing my empathic tendencies. The two are closely tied together for me, at least in my own experience according to my own self-observations for whatever that is worth.

I feel my way into ideas in the way I feel my way into the experience of others. This intuition doesn’t seem inherently irrational, although it is or has an element of the non-rational. My intuition is one of the main tools I use in ascertaining rationality. With it, I sense the connections and compare them with alternative possibilities and interpretations. I don’t see how analysis would be possible without some minimal basic functioning of intuition. Something has to be perceived first before it can be analyzed (indeed Myers-Briggs theorizes intuition as one of two perceiving functions — sensation being the other — which offers the information to the judging functions, and also Myers-Briggs research has shown intuition to be strongly and positively correlated to intellectuality and IQ).

To complicate things, all of these factors (intellectuality, imagination, intuition, empathy) share the common positive correlation to certain well-researched traits. The specific trait I have in mind is the thin boundary type which I will discuss further after looking at some intriguing examples of how empathy can play out in diverse ways.

—

I was reading about how empathy manifests or not among those with different psychiatric disorders (read here for a summary).

For example, it has been theorized that psychopaths and autistics are mirror opposites. Psychopaths have impaired affective/emotional empathy, but may have unimpaired cognitive empathy. Even if they perfectly understand people (their beliefs, thoughts, motivations, etc) on an intellectual level, they won’t express much sympathy or compassion (especially to distress). Autistics have impaired cognitive empathy, but may have unimpaired affective/emotional empathy. They are strongly affected by the psychological state of others (especially distress), even though they have a hard time of understanding others. So, a psychopath can relate better to others than an autistic and also more likely to harm others, a dangerous combination.

My mom has suggested that I might have aspergers. I don’t know if that is true, but the empathy aspect fits.

I’ve always been extremely socially sensitive while, when younger, I was nearly a lost cause in terms of being socially oblivious and clueless. As a child, I was just as happy playing by myself as playing with other kids. I also had a language learning disability which is common for autistics and less so for aspergers, usually just a delay that can be remedied with therapy as was the case with me. My learning disability caused me to have delayed reading and permanent memory issues, specifically word recall, but I’m above average IQ. My above average IQ particularly related to high level of visuospatial skills which is a common trait of autistics.

This is interesting to consider as I see myself as extremely empathetic. Since childhood, I’ve overcompensated in many ways. I’ve become obsessed with communicating and with understanding human behavior. I still have social awkwardness and shyness, but it for damn sure ain’t because of a lack of raw empathy. My emotional empathy is always keen. As for my cognitive empathy, it has caught up at this point and now is, at least in some ways, far above average.

I haven’t thought of myself as having aspergers. I have developed a strongly intuitive sense of what makes people tick. If I have aspergers, I must have massively developed my cognitive empathy. I’ve had social issues, but the subjective sense takes no effort whatsoever. It is easy for me to read people these days, although the fact that I’m so self-consciously obsessed about it is probably a clue. Assuming I have aspergers, it must be mild which gives me immense empathy for those with severe autism. My mom worked with many severe autistics in public schools and her descriptions are very sad in some cases.

My brothers have told my mom that they suspect something like aspergers in themselves. My oldest brother had learning difficulties, although not with language, and my second oldest brother was diagnosed with anxiety disorder which might have been a misdiagnosis since aspergers don’t deal well with social stress (I’ve seen one of his anxiety attacks and I immediately recognized it as something I had experienced as well). All three of us have been socially challenged and have been on anti-depressants which could be a secondary result of the other issues.

Autistics have strong empathic distress with weak empathic concern (as a result of the impaired cognitive empathy) which causes social awkwardness and dysfunction. People are more likely to irritate or stress out an autistic than draw out a response of sympathy and compassion or even normal sociability and friendliness. This social distress is exacerbated with observing other people in pain which causes them to want to avoid the situation rather than offer help. However, when they understand someone’s state of mind, empathic concern is expressed normally.

Autistics lack a strong sense of Theory of Mind and can’t easily identify emotions even in themselves, much less in others, despite feeling emotions strongly. Empathizing is relational and so there is a close connection between self-awareness and social-awareness. Some theorize that autism may be an extreme male profile of neural functioning. What differentiates the genders is that men tend to have a smaller corpus callosum and so fewer connections between the two hemispheres. So, one might expect that men and autistics would have more difficulty than average with empathizing while analyzing or using both in concert by easily and quickly switching back and forth… or something like that.

—

This then brings me to the aforementioned boundary types, originally articulated by Ernest Hartmann.

Conservatives and men (also masculine women) have on average thicker boundaries than liberals and women (also effeminate men). This is the basis of calling the Republicans the daddy party and the Democrats the mommy party, and it is a fact that the two parties respectively have disproportionate numbers of men and women. I’m not sure about what research might have been done on autism and Hartmann’s boundary types, but I do know that most diagnosed autistics are male.

Also, there has been a long debate about whether women have greater empathy than men or rather whether the differences observed are inborn or learned. I’d see this as related to the debate about whether liberals (i.e., self-identified liberals and the liberal-minded) have greater empathy than conservatives (i.e., self-identified conservatives and the conservative-minded). Is it a matter of the degree or the kind of empathy?

The research I’ve seen is that there is a difference in when and how empathy is used. It is significant that more men are conservatives than liberals and more conservatives are men than women, and likewise with conservatives and thick boundaries. To be something like a surgeon or a judge requires one to clearly demarcate empathy from analysis, something thick boundary types are good at doing and something conservatives idealize. Not just demarcate, though; also, be able to shut off. A surgeon doesn’t want empathy to be within consciousness at all while slicing into someone.

To completely or even partly shut empathy off at will is not a strong talent for liberals and thin boundary types. On the other side, when a conservative or thick boundary type is in empathy mode, the very opposite probably happens and if so they’d have less access than liberals to analysis. Everyone to some degree suppresses analysis while empathizing and suppresses empathy while analyzing, but not everyone does it equally nor does everyone value it equally and seek to develop it further.

That is my own hypothesis. It is supported by the data I’ve seen so far, but it is too early to declare exactly what the difference is being shown.

—

The complicating factor for me is first and foremost personal.

As someone possibly with aspergers, my empathy may be far from the norm. Then again, those diagnosed with aspergers and autism have been increasing which either means the condition is increasing or the diagnosis is increasing. Maybe aspergers is on a continuum of normalcy, human nature normally containing a range of potential traits, behaviors and psychological profiles.

The angle of aspergers and autism confuses my thinking.  I suspect thin boundary is more closely related to affective empathy for that is the actual component of empathy that allows one to feel what another is feeling, to viscerally know another’s experience. Thin boundary types have a harder time distinguishing their own experience and identity from those they are around, especially in close relationships. Autistics and aspergers includes this affective empathy, above average in fact. On the other hand, these conditions also includes underdeveloped cognitive empathy which causes dysfunction in the affective empathy.

I’m not sure what any of that means. Are such people thin boundary types or thick boundary types? Is autism an extreme male psychological profile? Is this just an oddity that is irrelevant in trying to understand how empathy normally operates?

—

To continue with the personal, I’ll use the example of my dad to clarify the conservative mindset.

He is one of the most morally genuine people I know. He sits around worrying about being a good person. He is no fundy. He doesn’t take the Bible literally. But he takes his religion very seriously. He does his best to walk the talk. Minus the religiosity, my own nature is close to his. One of the biggest differences is that he is much more social than I. He is more outwardly good and successful, according to the standards of society. He loves to have a role to play, especially the role of authority figure, and he plays that role well; but he is also more willing to submit to authority without question or irritation. He has little problem with sticking to the rules and conforming to expectations.

My dad might win the prize for being the least socially dysfunctional person in my immediate family. And I probably could win the prize for being the most socially dysfunctional. So much for the greatness of my valuing empathy; empathy plus dysfunction just creates dysfunctional empathy, well damn. Unlike his liberal children, he never had any major social issues at any point in his life. He says he is shy, but he has even overcome that and it is entirely unnoticeable to an outside observer. He has held many leadership positions, including in various churches.

Despite his arguing for empathy being limited, he uses what empathy he has in a socially beneficial way, although his empathy has much less of an emotional quality than my own, maybe more of a sense of moral rule-following that an uncertain relationship to empathy as emotional concern. His empathy is probably average, at least for a conservative, maybe more cognitive empathy than affective empathy. He even is fairly humble which helps his empathy express relatively well, considering how confident he is able to act when needed. He is proof that basic levels of empathy are all that are required for being a generally good person, good citizen, and good Christian; at least according to conservative social norms.

It’s true that he doesn’t spend as much time imagining the lives of and identifying with those who have fallen on hard times. And it’s true that he is more likely to blame people for the hard times they find themselves in. He has never experienced bad times to any great extent and so it’s not part of his personal sense of reality. Nonetheless, he’ll volunteer at the local soup kitchen and he’ll donate large amounts of money to organizations that help those in need. I’d put it this way. Empathy for him is more of a luxury than a necessity. It’s a good thing to have for charity, but it’s useless for the real work of life: business, leadership, etc. It’s just something to contemplate in one’s free time after a hard day’s work or in retirement after a life of hard work and success

He is a standard conservative in prizing pragmatism or rather the rhetoric of pragmatism, the question being pragmatism to what end. Whatever empathy he might lack relative to bleeding heart liberals, he makes up for it with practical action toward his conservative-minded goals. He is a man of action and authority, the ideal of conservatives. If all or just most conservatives were like my dad, the world probably would be a decent place, although the problems would still exist if in more mild form.

—

I was having a discussion with my dad about religion.

My dad is in a Bible group. Because he is now living here in this liberal college town, he has been forced to deal with more liberals, including in his Bible group, than he has become accustomed to from having spent 20 years in South Carolina. There is one particular liberal view with which he has been struggling: the value of giving freely without limiting one’s charity to moralizing judgment and expectation.

He is coming around to awakening to how truly radical is Jesus’ message. It can’t be limited to conservative morality. Jesus didn’t demand people be good conservatives, good Christians or good anything before he offered help and healing. This is mind-blowing to him. I’ve been pointing out to him this fact about Jesus’ teachings for years, but he just didn’t get it. The idea of a radical Jesus didn’t fit into his conservative Christian worldview. Conservative Christians believe Jesus is good and radicals are bad. So, how can Jesus be both good and radical?

Jesus wasn’t interested in saving the social order, promoting family values, punishing wrongdoers, and forcing the troubled to be responsible citizens. My dad’s sense of honesty disallows him from dismissing this realization. So, he has to put it into terms he can understand.

He spoke of first-order effects and second-order effects. I suppose he is using terminology from business management, his area of primary expertise, or maybe from economics, an area of secondary expertise.

I’m not sure how this might relate to conservatism and liberalism, but I immediately saw a connection to the distinction between Confucianism and Taoism. Jesus is infinitely closer to being a Taoist than to being a Confucian. There are two quotes from the Tao Te Ching that reminded me of this first order idea:

If powerful men and women
could remain centered in the Tao,
all things would be in harmony.
The world would become a paradise.
All people would be at peace,
and the law would be written in their hearts.

In this first quote, what is described is the person embodying the first order principle. Jesus didn’t seek to enforce his own beliefs, values and worldview. Jesus, whether or not he was the Christ, was not a Christian and wasn’t seeking to advocate for a Christian moral order, much less a conservative social order. And the second quote:

The Master doesn’t try to be powerful;
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.

This describes the first order type as opposed to the second order type.

A Confucian is a particular type of conservative which is why Chinese Communism being based on Confucianism always has had a conservative hierarchical social order with a conservative moral order. The Chinese Communists, like the Soviet Union Communists, were illiberal and anti-liberal to the extreme in being against free thought and freedom of choice, against intellectuals and artists, against homosexuals and other perceived deviants. I don’t know that the Taoist position was the polar opposite of liberalism, but it certainly wasn’t against liberalism. Taoists believed that order didn’t need to be enforced.

This could be fit into one aspect of conservatism and liberalism. Conservatives believe individuals will fail if not for external social order. Liberals believe individuals are inherently good or otherwise have great potential, although not necessarily the utopian perfectionism that conservatives fear in their worst nightmares.

I was struggling to fit all these ideas together. I intuit a resonance among them, but I’m far from certain. I sense there is a very powerful reason for why the conservative mind can so easily overlook this first order way of thinking. The powerful reason I suspect ties into empathy somehow. A larger sense of empathy is not necessary for Confucianism. Like American conservatives, Confucians limited empathy to the group, especially in terms of basing the social order on the family. Also, American and Confucian conservatives love ritual as symbolic expression and public enactment of social order.

Empathy, specifically in its fullest manifestation, is like a solvent to thick boundaries. It loosens the bonds and lets loose what was bounded. Taoism is about flow. But Taoism doesn’t oppose Confucianism in the way I hypothesize liberalism doesn’t oppose conservatism. Taoists understand that, even in flowing, boundaries are necessary. Taoists want balance, similar to how liberals want inclusion. It’s BOTH Yin AND Yang, not EITHER Yin OR Yang.

—

Empathy is a strange thing. I don’t fully understand it and I’m sure I never will. Nonetheless, I value it and aspire toward it.

That is the important part, in my mind and heart. Just to care, to know it all matters, that each and every person matters. Empathy is the very thing that allows us to, in the end, see us all as humans and as equals. We ultimately aren’t liberals and conservatives. We are immense, if not infinite, potential.

Despite my dysfunction, despite the dysfunction of others, despite the dysfunction of all of society, there is something fundamentally worthy and good within humanity and within the world. That is what I’d like to believe. that is what I choose to believe.

That is my moral vision.

Regional Stereotypes For Fun and Profit

Further data showing regions to more or less conform to their cultural stereotypes. For the fun of it, I’ll oversimplify and exaggerate the conclusions:

• Upper Midwesterners are conservative-minded progressives and socialists who are healthy in mind and body.
• Appalachians are rightwing-minded regressives and corporatists who are unhealthy in mind and body.

Where Are the Country’s Least Happy and Healthy Americans? New Studies Reveal America’s “Sadness Belt”
By Melanie Foley

Gallup and Healthways recently released their annual Well-Being Index for 2012, and Appalachia was found once again to be home to some of the least healthy and happy Americans. The most striking result of last year’s Well-Being Index is that while the happiest states are spread throughout the country, the lowest ranking states are all clustered in Central and Southern Appalachia, and the region’s neighboring states.

Why Is Socialism Doing So Darn Well in Deep-Red North Dakota?
By Les Leopold

North Dakota is the very definition of a red state. It voted 58 percent to 39 percent for Romney over Obama, and its statehouse and senate have a total of 104 Republicans and only 47 Democrats. The Republican super-majority is so conservative it recently passed the nation’s most severe anti-abortion resolution – a measure that declares a fertilized human egg has the same right to life as a fully formed person.

But North Dakota is also red in another sense: it fully supports its state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND), a socialist relic that exists nowhere else in America. Why is financial socialism still alive in North Dakota? Why haven’t the North Dakotan free-market crusaders slain it dead?

Because it works.

In 1919, the Non-Partisan League, a vibrant populist organization, won a majority in the legislature and voted the bank into existence. The goal was to free North Dakota farmers from impoverishing debt dependence on the big banks in the Twin Cities, Chicago and New York. More than 90 years later, this state-owned bank is thriving as it helps the state’s community banks, businesses, consumers and students obtain loans at reasonable rates. It also delivers a handsome profit to its owners — the 700,000 residents of North Dakota. In 2011, the BND provided more than $70 million to the state’s coffers. Extrapolate that profit-per-person to a big state like California and you’re looking at an extra $3.8 billion a year in state revenues that could be used to fund education and infrastructure.

 

The US Senate: Where Democracy Goes to Die

Reblogged from Corey Robin:

Every once in a while I teach constitutional law, and when I do, I pose to my students the following question: What if the Senate apportioned votes not on the basis of states but on the basis of race? That is, rather than each state getting two votes in the Senate, what if each racial or ethnic group listed in the US Census got two votes instead?

Read more… 1,551 more words

This is the kind of stating the obvious that we should hear more of, but most people are trapped in the status quo reality tunnel. Our supposedly democratic system isn't particularly democratic and wasn't designed to be.

Trinity In Mind: Rhetoric & Metaphor, Imaginal & Archetypal

Story. Culture. Knowledge.

Two elements: pattern and communication. What are the patterns of our communications along with the patterns of cognition and experience underlying them? How do we communicate these patterns when our very attempt is enmeshed in them?

It’s not just an issue of rhetoric and metaphor. It’s a stepping back and looking for a pathway to higher ground. A meta-language maybe is needed, but not meta in a way of making language abstract and detached. Death can’t speak for life.

I’ve never been in love with language. This could be seen as a flaw of mine as a self-identified writer. Admittedly, language is sort of important to writing. What I appreciate is communication, the essence and the impetus thereof, the desire to express, to be heard and possibly understood.

I have nothing against language. It just is what it is. My lack of love isn’t a hate; it’s a wariness. I’ve often found too superficial writers who’ve fallen in love with language. There can be a trap in linguistic narcissism. Even great writers can get caught up in their own cleverness. In these cases, it’s not always clear they’ve fallen in love with language itself or just the sound of their own voices.

Compelling language takes more than catchy phrasing and aesthetic sensibility. A writer or any other user of language has to first and foremost have something worthy of being shared and to be given voice. Language, however rarely, can touch something deeper. Then language isn’t just language.

It’s not the writer that matters, but the Other that is speaking through the writer. This deeper level is the imaginal and archetypal, the creative source.

Along with my lack of verbal romance, I have other ‘failings’ as well.

I’m prone to anti-climactic conclusions. This is because most of life feels anticlimactic to me. What can I say, I write what I know. The anti-climactic relates to another ‘failing’.

I’m also prone to a passive voice. Every writing manual I’ve read warns against this, but good advice never stopped me. It seems to me that a passive voice communicates something an active voice can’t, and that something obviously isn’t readily accepted by modern mainstream society or at least the English-speaking portions.

An active voice requires someone or something that takes action, but as I see it not all or even most of life involves action that is willed, directed or otherwise caused by actors. Still, the active voice is rooted in traditional storytelling. The question is: Are there other stories to tell and/or other ways to tell stories?

Our language determines our reality. So, what consensus reality is being reinforced by writing manuals? I’m not arguing against standard English writing. Certainly, I’m not arguing against compelling language and the active voice is more compelling; rather, I’m considering what we are being compelled by and toward.

The standard of compelling shouldn’t be its own justification. A soap opera is compelling. In fact, the average soap opera is more compelling to the average person than the greatest of art. Most people are compelled, usually mindlessly, by ideas and beliefs, metaphors and narratives that aren’t necessarily of much worthiness.

How do we judge worthiness? What is good writing versus what is great art? Does ‘good’ writing imply communication that is moral and true, whatever that might mean? What exactly is good and bad about the active versus the passive voices?

The most dangerous part about rhetoric is that we forget it’s rhetoric and mistake it for reality.

Trinity In Mind: Story, Culture, Knowledge

Story. Culture. Knowledge.

These three are the Trinity of my mind, of my personal reality.

I always return to these, but not usually at the same time. They all connect, though.

Culture and knowledge are how we typically speak of story without realizing it. Story interests me the most, in some ways. It’s because story can so easily be dismissed as mere entertainment that it has so much power.

Knowledge and story are at the heart of culture. They give form and expression. Culture is an ephemeral thing by itself. It’s normally invisible, until we seek out our sense of identity. Maybe more than anything, culture encapsulates our reality tunnel.

Story and culture determine what we consider to be knowledge and how we go about looking for it. They frame our sense of truth and reality. As such, they mediate the complex relationship between belief and knowledge.

I love knowledge, or rather I love truth, more than anything. I always have. I don’t know why truth matters, but I just know it does, know in my heart more than in my mind. I want to know the truth of everything  just because I do. It’s not so much the knowledge itself, but the sense of knowing; or else, when lacking, the ache to know, the intuition of something to be known.

I’ve come to realize, however, that story gets at truth like nothing else. Truth can feel impotent at times.  Truth needs story in the way lungs need air. People are convinced by story, not truth. A story that expresses truth is a force to be reckoned with.

I’m less clear about culture. It’s such a strange thing. I don’t know that I care about culture in and of itself, but I’ve come to understand that culture is what makes it all happen on the collective level. We don’t have culture. We are culture. It’s the whole fish in water scenario. We live and breathe culture.

I feel like I can never fully explain why these three things are so compelling to my mind. I’m not sure why it is so difficult to speak about all of this. Story becomes mere entertainment or otherwise a personal interest. Culture is simplified to notions about race and nationality. Knowledge gets reduced to factoids and data points. The profound nature behind them gets lost.

I wish I could write about these in a way that conveyed the depth of my sense of them… but you either grok them or not, I suppose.

The Law

The individual is shorthand for the collective.

The lone person a mythical creature whose myth is told by the sound of echoes, a voice in search of a body, vibration becoming form. The self-willed actor caught in a web woven by fate, the strands of the web being strings with no puppet master.

Any single thing a convergence of forces, empty of substance, form a formality. Life is nature acting, lifeforms and lifeworlds being the ancient habits of instinct.

The collective is longhand for the creative void.

The Mechanized City

I just left a meeting at the place I work, City of Iowa City Parking Department. The management of the department and of the city have been planning for future developments to improve the downtown area, some of which will eventually alter my job. It’s interesting to see the functioning of government from a slightly inside perspective.

Being a liberal city, the government here is very obsessed about such things as transparency and providing optimal services. There is some bureaucracy involved, but not as much since it’s a smaller population, not even large by Iowa standards. Also, surprising to some people, I’ve observed how Parking management doesn’t seem overly focused on profit-making, despite Parking being the only department that actually makes a profit. Everything is about serving the public. They take their role as civil servants very seriously.

(Although not focused on the profit of the parking department, they are focused on overall tax revenue. So, the ‘public’ in question particularly includes anyone involved in the downtown economy. The downtown business association — going by a different name these days — is directly involved in such city decisions. As such, the city is very focused on the profit of downtown businesses and thus the happiness of prospective customers.)

I’ve wondered about some of the recent changes, as I get to see much of it firsthand with my job. I’m a parking ramp cashier. I started out working in an empty lot that had no ticket spitter or even gates. Everything was done manually and it was a bit chaotic. Over the years, they keep adding new elements to parking such as building new ramps and now putting in self-pay stations. Eventually, my job will be replaced by what they call and ambassador position which then be my new job. Being an ambassador means I won’t be stuck in a booth and my job description will involve more customer service of the ambulatory variety, i.e., going to the customers when they have problems and generally being out and about doing what needs to be done.

They’ve invested massive amounts of money into technology. Along with self-pay stations, they have cameras everywhere and they are looking into various other possibilities: new meter systems with more options such as paying by smartphone, license plate reading machines, etc. One idea is that they might save money in the long run because they’ve let recidivism decrease the number of employees, but I doubt that can be a very central goal since they are spending such a vast amount of money in the process. I suspect they could run the parking department very cheaply with almost no technology at all.

It’s not really about money. It’s about information. Technology means data can be collected, stored, organized, and analyzed. Also, it is data that can be provided to the public as part of the services offered such as maps showing where open parking is at any moment or where a bus is at any moment.

The future is all about information. It’s not data for the sake of data as might be seen in the bureaucracy of a more authoritarian government. It’s all data with a specific purpose, the idea of a smoothly running machine, an entire city mechanized. Some might find that disturbing, maybe even dystopian. As for me, I’m just a curious observer.

Conservative Focus on the Negative

Considering ideological predispositions, there is one study I came across that I’ve never focused on before. I realized it allows for useful perspective on a particular distinction and on general confusion.

The study had to do with what people focus upon. The conclusion of the results was that conservatives spend more time focusing on that which they perceive as negative whereas liberals spend more time focusing on that which they perceive as positive. Now, that is beyond interesting.

It makes sense according to other research.

Conservatives are shown to on average have a higher fear/disgust reesponse. It’s easy to see this just by observing politics where conservatives often have long lists of all the things they are against. This was obvious with the Tea Party. It can lead liberals to calling them obstructionists.

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be drawn toward the new and different, toward possibility and change. Liberals often push visions of hope wtih optimism and expectation about what good can be achieved. This was heard particularly in Obama’s first campaign. But conservatives see it as naive and moreso dangerously naive.

Liberals point out the positive results being blocked by conservatives. And conservatives complain about the negative results they fear from the agenda liberals push.

This made me wonder about the debate on the nature of conservatism. Is conservatism most fundamentally about defending tradition against change? Or is conservatism more primarily motivated by reaction to what it is against?

This could appear like simply a difference of emphasis, but it is an emphasis that might make a world of difference. A difference of emphasis could cause a drastic difference in political behavior and policy. This is what Corey Robin argues in his theory of reactionary onservatism. He actually argues that it goes past just emphasis, and he makes this argument by pointing how contemporary explanations of conservatism don’t fit the actual ideological history of conservatism.

What is intriguing about Corey Robin’s argument is that I don’t think he is claiming or even implying that conservatives are necessarily trying to be deceptive. Most conservatives probably believe the narrative told of conservatism as traditionalism.

The disconnect maybe just comes from the typical human challenge of self-awareness and self-understanding. Often, outsiders have more perspective to objectively assess a group or movement. This would be true for liberals as well, and I’d love to see a non-liberal write an equally compelling analysis of liberalism.

I have no desire to repeat Corey Robin’s argument here. Instead, I’ll follow a recent line of thought I’ve had about popular entertainment. What many see as liberal entertainment I’d argue is actually conservative in the reactionary sense. Two examples of this are film noir and action movies.

The argument for these genres being liberal is that authority figures often aren’t the heroes, sometimes the authority figures are challenged by or even disrespected by the heroes who not unusually are lone vigilantes. Furthermore, these movies often glorify what traditionalist-identifying conservatives claim to be against: sex, violence, etc.

The argument for reactionary conservatism, however, brings forth an explanation that seems to be confirmed by the study I mentioned above. These movies are conservative precisely for the reason that they are obsessively focused on all the issues that cause conservatives to feel fear or disgust. They are being invoked in presenting a sense of moral order or the need for renewal of moral order, even if only manifest in the hero fighting the good fight or standing by his personal principles.

This is where the confusion is brought to the surface. At least for conservatives, the best way to see what they are about is by looking at what they are against. Film noir and action movies probably will tell you more about conservatism than even the most scholarly tome written by a conservative thinker.