But this just for background, what want I want to write about here is the experience I had writing the application, because I feel it illustrates and supports constructivist concepts of a „narrative self“ which I like a lot.

So, the work was going well, given that I had been removed from the academic world for so long it was surprisingly easy to compose something like a scientific text again for the ten-page exposé. I even had profoundly happy moments doing that sitting in a beach restaurant with internet access in Zanzibar and did not regret to spend that time outside of the water at all. So I had plenty of time for the last step — a simple one-page motivational letter, detailing why I want to get a Ph.D., what motivation is behind my activism, and why I want to be in that specific organization.

Now that should be easy enough, done something like that many times, but for some reason I took the invitation to sum up the core themes of my life in a few sentences. After all, a Ph.D. is a serious time commitment for some crucial years in life. And that proved quite challenging. Which maybe has something to do with my life situation right now — my „big story“ for this year is basically „new experiences, step-by-step decisions, follow your guts“ (even though I think I did a lot of planning ahead compared to other „world travelers“ which I still don’t really see myself as). And it has also been pretty clear for me from the start that I want something more solid and stable to grow out of this.

Which it has, and that’s maybe the thing: my task was to make explicit this evolved feeling which actually led me to take the decision to go back to Freiburg for a Ph.D.. And thus to collect together the strands of sometimes random and isolated experiences of this year. It took me some writing, going away from it for some days, rewriting, and so on (and some feedback from friends and family what doesn’t sound like it makes a lot of sense yet, or what sounds too abstract) to come to a story that I feel at home in. And now the fascinating discovery is: having written this story feels astonishingly good, and has taken on a meaning for me way beyond the original purpose. I feel how it energizes me for the tasks which lie ahead in the next months, and helps to focus my thoughts and reflexions and guide my decisions.

Bottom line: I think we should all write or tell about our „big life story“ every now and then. But we certainly should also have the times of creative chaos in between, where this life story can change, so it doesn’t turn from support and guidance into prison.

I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth.

Simplifying to the extreme I define post-modern as incredulity toward the metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences; but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of ligitimation corresponds most notably the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university function which in part relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great voyages, its great goal (Jean-Francois Lyotard. The Post-modern Condition, 1977).

He obviously has both the Marxist Left’s („emancipation of the […] working subject“) and the economical right’s („creation of wealth“) holy cows under attack there.

I also like the author’s summary:

Lyotard regards as metanarrative all philosophical and social conceptions that proceed from the possibility of arriving at a general understanding of the world and society—a scientific understanding which could then provide the basis for consciously changing the world. Lyotard firmly rejects any such conception.

I would very much underline the word general understanding here, though — otherwise the impulse becomes nihilistic, a fate which apparently some, but certainly not all, post-modern thinkers have suffered.

The author first turns to the political past of the post-modernists:

A cursory investigation of the roots of many leading figures in the post-modernist movement reveals at some point either membership in, or, at very least, close contact with Stalinist or left-wing radical organisations. […] The further degeneration and move to the right on the part of Stalinism in the post-war period, the party’s crimes in relation to Algeria and Vietnam, the betrayal of the radicalised student and workers‘ movement in 1968, and finally the collapse of the Soviet block were crucial in spreading disillusionment and disorientation and catapulting a part of the intelligentsia to the right.

A good summary of what that means is quoted, interestingly, from Czech President Vaclav Havel:

The fall of Communism can be regarded as a sign that modern thought—based on the premise that the world is objectively knowable, and that the knowledge so obtained can be absolutely generalised—has come to a final crisis (quoted in Intellectual Impostures, p. 181).

The more or less parallel experience of the fascist / nazi cruelties plausibly contributed to a disillusionment with the concept of history as a progressive process.

Of course, this should not and did not make most thinkers of post-modernism unpolitical Foucault is quoted with an explanation of the possibilities for political action and „resistance“ after abandoning the big meta-narratives:

“There is no locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case.”

Together with Deleuze, Guattari and Lyotard, Foucault emphasised the necessity of developing micro-politics and micro-struggles. Such a strategy has an obvious appeal to advocates of single-issue type politics: separatists and nationalists of every shade, environmentalists, feminists, and so on.

So far, all this makes a lot of sense to me. But I am equally fascinated with the promise of an alternative, to be found in the idea of „dialectics“, a word right now even harder for me to fill with meaning than the term „post-modern“. I do like the phrase of a „relative relativism“ a lot, though:

“We communists are also relativists, but our relativism in not absolute, but relative.… Comrade Chuzhak argues not according to Heraclitus, who asserted that everything flows, everything changes, but according to Zeno, who proposed that it is impossible to step into the same stream twice, for ‘everything flows, everything changes.‘ Heraclitus was a dialectician, while Zeno was a metaphysical relativist. In the camp of bourgeois scholars there are now very many such relativists” (Aleksander Voronsky, Art as the Cognition of Life. p. 107).

Unfortunately, the article fails to provide any insight into what exactly a „relative relativism“ could look like, but to pursue that concept will still be on my intellectual agenda for the year to come. Exciting!

PS: The article I’m citing from is actually a book review, but obviously goes way beyond that with a line of argument of it’s own. The parts describing the books content are again quite predictable and boring, and I suppose so is the book (Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont).

I liked watching the first few classes of Robert Sapolsky’s „Human Behavioral Evolution“ course at Stanford from 2010, which are available for free on iTunes U (yes, you need iTunes). Even though the pointedness and entertainment of his arguments can be a little too much for a European audience, I highly recommend it for everybody who wants to fill in gaps in his or her understanding of evolution. And for people who consider themselves solid on the basics, I recommend a 20-minute summary of the criticism of evolutionary biology, at least as it is perceived and used by the public. I’m talking about the last 20 minutes, starting at 1:14, of the lecture 3 — Behavioral Evolution II (April 2, 2010). Here is a brief summary:

Sapolsky argues that evolutionary theories are criticized in three basic assumptions that they rest on, which he calls:

• Heritability (of behavioral traits)
• Adaptiveness (of every feature of organisms)
• Gradualism (of the evolutionary process)

The main problem with the heritability assumption is, of course, that things are very muddy on the actual genetic/molecular level if you try to point to genes that are causal to certain behavioral trends. But (as I would add) this could be dismissed as a temporary problem, waiting for advances in the science involved. Nobody doubts the general role of the brain in causing our behavior just because our knowledge of the brain regions and processes involved is still very rudimentary.

Much more important to me, then, is the critique of the adaptiveness assumption. It has been argued (and Sapolsky himself is mostly convinced, as am I) that many observable features of organisms (including many behavioral features) are merely „spandrels“ (from architecture as „space between arches“), meaning they are there only as unavoidable by-products of something that evolution is really about. This has, for instance, been famously shown for the evolution of human chins as a by-product of our „shortened muzzle“, after interesting theories on the adaptive value of chins had been put forward. And that leads to another important critique of the adaptiveness arguments: They are mostly what Sapolsky calls „Just-So-Story-Contests“ — finding the most convincing story to explain why something is (and has to be) the way it is.

What was really new to me was the argument against the assumed gradual way in which evolution takes place, and which is the foundation of the famous idea that small advantages pay off over time. Actually, there is evidence pointing towards a more stepwise evolution, long phases of relative stability interrupted by short, drastic episodes of change, a theory called „punctuated equilibrium“. As a result, the element of constant competition which feature so centrally in our „narrative of evolution“ has to be revised, with its importance reduced drastically. And that’s quite a revolution, especially to the layperson’s perception of (social) evolution.

And I’m very happy that in this context he even discusses the political side of evolutionary theories of (human) behavior. Coincidentally, the dominant model of evolution, focussed on constant competition, was put forward by a number of white southern (US) male researchers, while the challenges and modifications come from researchers from the more politically liberal North-East of the US, called „Marxist“ by Sapolsky. And he mentions sociobiologists form the former Soviet Union who have developed models of evolution more focussed on the interaction with difficult external living conditions rather than the competition within a species, called „abiotic selection“. Whoever wants to claim that science is just progressing on its path of objective truth, with random imperfections that will be smoothed out over time, good luck

The range of social issues he mentions which are justified as „natural“ through the dominant understanding of evolution is broad, from male domination to social hierarchies, aggression and sexual coercion.

I am very impressed that somebody who so obviously enjoys looking at human behavior through the evolution glasses sides on most points with the critics who argue for keeping the researchers own interests, world-view and ideology in mind, and who modify the dominant image of evolution in ways that very much change the implications for our (human) social life that are commonly drawn. And I’m very curious how he will live up to that standard in the classes to come.

It has so many important things to say about science, culture, and psychology that I believe it should be on every psychologist’s and non-psychologist’s bookshelf, but one part I like to refer non-psychologists to most frequently is about „relativism“, or as I prefer to say: Constructivism.

These are actually two parts, one on „epistemological relativism“ and one on „values relativism“, which have an insightful aside on motivation as an intermezzo, which I have omitted here.

If culture forms mind, and if minds make such value judgments, are we not locked into an inescapable relativism? We had better examine what this might mean. It is the epistemological side of relativism, rather than the evaluative, that must concern us first. Is what we know „absolute,“ or is it always relative to some perspective, some point of view? Is there an „aboriginal reality,“ or as Nelson Goodman would put it, is reality a construction?[31] Most thinking people today would opt for some mild perspectival position. But very few are prepared to abandon the notion of a singular aboriginal reality altogether. Indeed, Carol Feldman has even proposed a would-be human universal whose principal thesis is that we endow the conclusions of our cognitive reckonings with a special, „external“ ontological status.[32] Our thoughts, so to speak, are „in here.“ Our conclusions are „out there.“ She calls this altogether human failing „ontic dumping,“ and she has never had to look far for instantiations of her universal. Yet, in most human interaction, „realities“ are the results of prolonged and intricate processes of construction and negotiation deeply imbedded in the culture.

Are the consequences of practicing such constructivism and of recognizing that we do so as dire as they are made to seem? Does such a practice really lead to an „anything goes“ relativism? Constructivism’s basic claim is simply that knowledge is „right“ or „wrong“ in light of the perspective we have chosen to assume. Rights and wrongs of this kind–however well we can test them–do not sum to absolute truths and falsities. The best we can hope for is that we be aware of our own perspective and those of others when we make our claims of „rightness“ and „wrongness.“ Put this way, constructivism hardly seems exotic at all. It is what legal scholars refer to as „the interpretive turn,“ or as one of them put it, a turning away from „authoritative meaning.“

Richard Rorty, in his exploration of the consequences of pragmatism, argues that interpretivism is part of a deep, slow movement to strip philosophy of its „foundational“ status.[33] He characterizes pragmatism–and the view that I have been expressing falls into that category–as „simply anti-essentialism applied to notions like ‚truth,‘ ‚knowledge,‘ ‚language,‘ ‚morality‘ and other similar objects of philosophical theorizing,“ and he illustrates it by reference to William James’s definition of the „true“ as „what is good in the way of belief.“ In support of James, Rorty remarks, „his point is that it is of no use being told that truth is ‚correspondence with reality‘ … One can, to be sure, pair off bits of what one takes the world to be in such a way that the sentences one believes have internal structures isomorphic to relations between things in the
world.“ But once one goes beyond such simple statements as „the cat is on the mat“ and begins dealing with universals or hypotheticals or theories, such pairings become „messy and ad hoc.“ Such pairing exercises help very little in determining „why or whether our present view of the world is, roughly, the one we should hold.“ To push such an exercise to the limit, Rorty rightly insists, is „to want truth to have an essence,“ to be true in some absolute sense. But to say something useful about truth, he goes on, is to „explore practice rather than theory … action rather than contemplation.“ Abstract statements like „History is the story of the class struggle“ are not to be judged by limiting oneself to questions like „Does that assertion get it right?“ Pragmatic, perspectival questions would be more in order: „What would it be like to believe that?“ or „What would I be committing myself to if I believed that?“ And this is very far from the kind of Kantian essentialism that searches for principles that establish the defining essence of „knowledge“ or „representation“ or „rationality.„[34]

Let me illustrate with a little case study. We want to know more about intellectual prowess. So we decide, unthinkingly, to use school performance as our measure for assessing „it“ and predicting „its“ development. After all, where intellectual prowess is concerned, school performance is of the essence. Then, in the light of our chosen perspective, Blacks in America have less „prowess“ than Whites, who in their turn have slightly less than Asians. What kind of finding is that, asks the pragmatic critic? If goodwill prevails in the ensuing debate, a process of what can only be called deconstructing and reconstructing will occur. What does school performance mean, and how does it relate to other forms of performance? And about intellectual prowess, what does „it“ mean? Is it singular or plural, and may not its very definition depend upon some subtle process by which a culture selects certain traits to honor, reward, and cultivate–as Howard Gardner has proposed?[35] Or, viewed politically, has school performance itself been rigged by choice of curriculum in such a way as to legitimize the offspring of the „haves“ while marginalizing those of the „have nots“? Very soon, the issue of what „intellectual prowess“ is will be replaced by questions of how we wish to use the concept in the light of a variety of circumstances–political, social, economic, even scientific.

That is a typical constructivist debate and a typical pragmatic procedure for resolving it. Is it relativism? Is it the dreaded form of relativism where every belief is as good as every other? Does anybody really hold such a view, or is relativism, rather, something conjured up by essentialist philosophers to shore up their faith in the „unvarnished truth“–an imaginary playmate forever assigned the role of spoiler in the game of pure reason? I think Rorty is right when he says that relativism is not the stumbling block for constructivism and pragmatism. Asking the pragmatist’s questions–How does this view affect my view of the world or my commitments to it?–surely does not lead to „anything goes.“ It may lead to an unpacking of presuppositions, the better to explore one’s commitments.

In his thoughtful book The Predicament of Culture, James Clifford notes that cultures, if they ever were homogeneous, are no longer so, and that the study of anthropology perforce becomes an instrument in the management of diversity.[36] It may even be the case that arguments from essences and from „aboriginal reality,“ by cloaking tradition with the mantle of „reality,“ are means for creating cultural stagnation and alienation. (p. 24–27)

[…]

Both the irrationalist and the rationalist approaches to values miss one crucial point: values inhere in commitment to „ways of life,“ and ways of life in their complex interaction constitute a culture. We neither shoot our values from the hip, choice-situation by choice-situation, nor are they the product of isolated individuals with strong drives and compelling neuroses. Rather, they are communal and consequential in terms of our relations to a cultural community. They fulfill functions for us in that community. The values underlying a way of life, as Charles Taylor points out, are only lightly open to „radical reflection.„[40] They become incorporated in one’s self identity and, at the same time, they locate one in a culture. To the degree that a culture, in Sapir’s sense, is not „spurious,“ the value commitments of its members provide either the basis for the satisfactory conduct of a way of life or, at least, a basis for negotiation.[41]

But the pluralism of modem life and the rapid changes it imposes, one can argue, create conflicts in commitment, conflicts in values, and therefore conflicts about the „rightness“ of various claims to knowledge about values. We simply do not know how to predict the „future of commitment“ under these circumstances. But it is whimsical to suppose that, under present world conditions, a dogged insistence upon the notion of „absolute value“ will make the uncertainties go away. All one can hope for is a viable pluralism backed by a willingness to negotiate differences in world-view.

Which leads directly to one last general point I must make-one further reason why I believe that a cultural psychology such as I am proposing need not fret about the specter of relativism. It concerns open-mindedness–whether in politics, science, literature, philosophy, or the arts. I take open-mindedness to be a willingness to construe knowledge and values from multiple perspectives without loss of commitment to one’s own values. Open-mindedness is the keystone of what we call a democratic culture. We have learned, with much pain, that democratic culture is neither divinely ordained nor is it to be taken for granted as perennially durable. Like all cultures, it is premised upon values that generate distinctive ways of life and corresponding conceptions of reality. Though it values the refreshments of surprise, it is not always proof against the shocks that open-mindedness sometimes inflicts. Its very open-mindedness generates its own enemies, for there is surely a biological constraint on appetites for novelty. I take the constructivism of cultural psychology to be a profound expression of democratic culture.[42] It demands that we be conscious of how we come to our knowledge and as conscious as we can be about the values that lead us to our perspectives. It asks that we be accountable for how and what we know. But it does not insist that there is only one way of constructing meaning, or one right way. It is based upon values that, I believe, fit it best to deal with the changes and disruptions that have become so much a feature of modern life. (pp. 29–30)

Notes

31. See Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters, for a well-argued
statement of the philosophical foundations of this position.

32. Carol Fleisher Feldman, „Thought from Language: The Linguistic Construction of Cognitive Representations,“ in Jerome Bruner and Helen Haste, eds., Making Sense: The Child’s Construction of the World (London: Methuen, 1987).

33. Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972–1980
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).

34. Richard Rorty, „Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism,“ in
Consequences of Pragmatism. Quotations from p. 162ff.

35. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

36. James Clifford, The Predicament ofCulture: Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988).

40. Taylor, Sources of the Self.

41. Edward Sapir, „Culture, Genuine and Spurious,“ in Culture,
Language and Personality: Selected Essays, ed. David G. Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 78–119.

42. B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1972).

What I like especially is that the argument doesn’t stop where many constructivist arguments unfortunately do stop, at convincingly dismantling our usual essentialist view of reality, but also has a very convincing alternative way of dealing with things, what it calls the „pragmatist’s question“.

I bought it in Palo Alto before my real traveling started, and it has lasted me well into the second quarter of this year, of course as frequent visitors of my blog know with another big and some small readings in between.

Once again, my generally high esteem of artists‘ late work was reinforced — while the original book is funny, the later books are far better. I laughed my hardest reading the second last one, „So Long and Thanks for All the Fish“, and the last one, „Mostly Harmless“, apart from still being very funny, I found most insightful. That despite how I just read on Wikipedia the author himself describing this book as „bleak“, and saying he had a very bad year when he wrote it. I suppose that tells us something about the relationship between art and happiness…

Anyway, here are just some examples of important topics of life made understandable with the help of absurdity, Science-Fiction at its best.

Let’s start with Astrology, explained by a modern (you could say cynical) Astrologer, and en passant Parliamentary Democracy, Psychology and maybe life itself…

„I know that astrology isn’t a science,“ said Gail. „Of course it isn’t. It’s just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what’s that strange thing you British play?“

„Er, cricket? Self-loathing?“

„Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don’t make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It’s just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It’s like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that’s now been taken away and hidden. The graphite’s not important. It’s just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology’s nothing to do with astronomy. It’s just to do with people thinking about people.“

In a similar vain, and maybe taking that thought one step further, we get a cosmology for Constructivism (or at least you can look at it like that)…

The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.

It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you try and realize that a little later, after you’ve realized that everything you’ve realized up to that moment is not true.

The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn’t actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did.

The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn’t mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home.

Please feel free to blither now.

Next up, a painfully accurate description of the history (and in many ways present working) of scientific Psychology:

Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the processes of evolution discovered, certain drawbacks.

Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else which thinks at least as logically as it does. The easiest way to fool a completely logical robot is to feed it the same stimulus sequence over and over again so it gets locked in a loop. This was best demonstrated by the famous Herring Sandwich experiments conducted millennia ago at MISPWOSO (The MaxiMegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious).

A robot was programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches. This was actually the most difficult part of the whole experiment. Once the robot had been programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches, a herring sandwich was placed in front of it. Whereupon the robot thought to itself, „Ah! A herring sandwich! I like herring sandwiches.“

It would then bend over and scoop up the herring sandwich in its herring sandwich scoop, and then straighten up again. Unfortunately for the robot, it was fashioned in such a way that the action of straightening up caused the herring sandwich to slip straight back off its herring sandwich scoop and fall on to the floor in front of the robot. Whereupon the robot thought to itself, „Ah! A herring sandwich…, etc., and repeated the same action over and over and over again. The only thing that prevented the herring sandwich from getting bored with the whole damn business and crawling off in search of other ways of passing the time was that the herring sandwich, being just a bit of dead fish between a couple of slices of bread, was marginally less alert to what was going on than was the robot.

The scientists at the Institute thus discovered the driving force behind all change, development and innovation in life, which was this: herring sandwiches. They published a paper to this effect, which was widely criticized as being extremely stupid. They checked their figures and realized that what they had actually discovered was „boredom“, or rather, the practical function of boredom. In a fever of excitement they then went on to discover other emotions, Like „irritability“, „depression“, „reluctance“, „ickiness“ and so on. The next big breakthrough came when they stopped using herring sandwiches, whereupon a whole welter of new emotions became suddenly available to them for study, such as „relief“, „joy“, „friskiness“, „appetite“, „satisfaction“, and most important of all, the desire for „happiness“. This was the biggest breakthrough of all.

Vast wodges of complex computer code governing robot behaviour in all possible contingencies could be replaced very simply. All that robots needed was the capacity to be either bored or happy, and a few conditions that needed to be satisfied in order to bring those states about. They would then work the rest out for themselves.

Also one of my favorites, and very suitable to the recent debate about (former) Pope John Paul II’s Beatification:

He had discovered that the reason for the carnival atmosphere on Saquo-Pilia Hensha was that the local people were celebrating the annual feast of the Assumption of St Antwelm. St Antwelm had been, during his lifetime, a great and popular king who had made a great and popular assumption. What King Antwelm had assumed was that what everybody wanted, all other things being equal, was to be happy and enjoy themselves and have the best possible time together. On his death he had willed his entire personal fortune to financing an annual festival to remind everyone of this, with lots of good food and dancing and very silly games like Hunt the Wocket. His Assumption had been such a brilliantly good one that he was made into a saint for it. Not only that, but all the people who had previously been made saints for doing things like being stoned to death in a thoroughly miserable way or living upside down in barrels of dung were instantly demoted and were now thought to be rather embarrassing.

So much for the more or less deep thoughts. Here’s something that became relevant to me in trying to get the concept of definite (e.g. „the“) and indefinite (e.g. „a“) articles across to people who’s native language doesn’t feature articles at all:

Ford shouted in Arthur’s ear, „Where did he say we were going?“

„He said something about a King,“ shouted Arthur in return, holding on desperately.

„What King?“

„That’s what I said. He just said the King.“

„I didn’t know there was a the King,“ shouted Ford.

„Nor did I,“ shouted Arthur back.

I’ll finish with two little quotes that are well worth becoming aphorisms (and which I have, accordingly, added to my growing Quotes Collection). The first can be seen as relevant to psychological practice, but certainly at least as much to a traveller in different cultures like myself:

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training. — Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Mostly Harmless, p. 742, 1992

And the second, which has the beauty and limitation of perspectivist thought in a nutshell:

“I think we have different value systems” – “Well, mine’s better” – “That’s according to your… oh, never mind.” — Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Mostly Harmless, p. 772, 1992

The first one deals with power of the masses, and why they so often don’t use it:

NOTHING appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of EGYPT, or the emperor of ROME, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion.

Wow! After elaborating this opinion into opinions of interest and right, the latter again in right to power and right to property, the quote finishes with a paragraph about the relationship between power and property that absolutely stunned me, because I feel it anticipates much of what my „NeuerPlan“ line of thinking criticizes in our modern Capitalism-Democracies:

A Government may endure for several ages, though the balance of power, and the balance of property do not coincide. This chiefly happens, where any rank or order of the state has acquired a large share in the property; but from the original constitution of the government, has no share in the power. Under what pretence would any individual of that order assume authority in public affairs? As men are commonly much attached to their ancient government, it is not to be expected, that the public would ever favour such usurpations. But where the original constitution allows any share of power, though small, to an order of men, who possess a large share of the property, it is easy for them gradually to stretch their authority, and bring the balance of power to coincide with that of property.

Apart from the obvious implications concerning, e.g., the upper 1%‚s political influence, I think this can be easily extended to make understandable how corporations extended their reach from the beginnings of this legal institution to the elimination of restrictions on their spending in political campaigns in the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

PS: Concerning the first quote, I find a small comment on the original post quite interesting, as well as a link provided there:

This leaves open, of course, how anyone, subject or mamaluke, learns the opinions of their fellows regarding rights and interests; but this is one thing public political action is for.

Humility is not an end result of spiritual practices and denials. Humility is not an achievement, it is not a virtue to be cultivated. A virtue that is cultivated ceases to be a virtue, for then it is merely another form of achievement, a record to be made. A cultivated virtue is not the abnegation of the self, but a negative assertion of the self. […] You cannot become humble. The very becoming is the continuation of self-importance, which conceals itself in the practice of a virtue. How strong is our will to succeed, to become!

That makes a lot of sense to me, and is actually what I observe a lot in the practice of meditation and spirituality in the west. At the same time, it clearly leaves the question: If you realize you are not humble right now, and are told there is no way of becoming humble, what can you do?

To me, while I acknowledge that from a purely logical point of view this is indeed a paradox, there is a solution in viewing our mental and emotional activity on two levels — that what our primary thoughts and feelings are, and our thoughts and feelings about these. The realization came to me in attempts at meditation, and at quieting my mind. I realized I could not do that, but I could at least be quiet about that, not have the second order reprimands on top of the incessant flow of first order thoughts and feelings. Now, of course, the magic is that the moment I realized that, the first order thoughts and feelings do begin to be more quiet also.

I believe and feel it works the same also for the other qualities that we aspire for — I cannot make myself be accepting of everything, but I can start immediately by being accepting of not being accepting. I cannot make myself humble — but I can be humble about the fact of not being humble. And so on. And for me, that really feels like how I understand Krishnamurti: it’s not a process of becoming, it starts with a sensation of realization that is its own fulfillment, even though of course it leads to a slow process of change on the first level of mind and emotion.

As a closing remark: Only in writing this I realized how close the title I chose is to what Gestalt Psychology calls the „Paradoxical Theory of Change“, which in more worldly but also maybe more complicated terms basically says the same thing: In order to change, we have to first accept what is.

In dieser Falle sehe ich z.B. die an sich gute Idee einer „Positiven Psychologie“ gefangen, und nehme eine solche Individualisierung von gesellschaftlichen Problemen auch im Alltag oft war. Umso schöner, dass der soziale Konstruktionismus dafür (mit Wurzeln in Foucault) gute Antworten hat. Hier aus einem Artikel in einem Journal der Sozialen Arbeit:

While the social constructionist recognizes that there are multiple views of reality, all constructions are not equal. One of the reasons they are not equal has to do with power, a dynamic generally neglected in social work practice (Hasenfeld, 1987).

Und in der Sozialen Arbeit gibt es auch praktische Ansätze zu diesem Problem:

Consciousness-raising is not an effort to deny the experience of oppressed people. To the contrary, it speaks to the development of a more empowering narrative. It helps clients expand their narratives (the stories they tell themselves) to include an understanding of their personal experiences in terms of the political experience of all those in their ascribed category. This expanded awareness is a „critical“ consciousness, one which submits their experience to analysis, one which involves collaborating with others to work against the vested interests of more powerful groups. It is not a „naive“ consciousness, one which locates the blame in individual inadequacy, nor a „magical“ one that accepts what is as fate or God’s will (Friere, 1974).

Der Schlüssel liegt also darin, die Konstruktionen eben nicht in den einzelnen Köpfen zu verorten, sondern als soziales Phänomen zu verstehen, und das Augenmerk darauf zu richten, wer die Macht hat, die sozialen „Wahrheiten“ zu bestimmen.

Zum Abschuss noch ein Zitat, das die Problematik von Konstruktion und Macht schön auf den Punkt bringt:

The problem isn’t Mr. Charlie; it’s what Mr. Charlie has done to your mind. — Jones, R. (1971). Proving blacks inferior. Black World, 4–19.

Wir müssen die Art ändern, wie wir darüber reden. Bisher haben wir so darüber geredet, dass es nur eine Alternative zu geben schien: Man darf kein Fleisch mehr essen. Aber es gibt eine Menge Menschen, die sich nicht vorstellen können, Vegetarier zu werden. Und ich verstehe das. Zum Beispiel weiß ich, dass es unendlich viele hungrige Kinder auf der Welt gibt, denen man mit Spenden helfen könnte; trotzdem kaufe ich weiter überflüssige Konsumgüter, statt zu spenden. Das ist zwar scheinheilig – aber scheinheilig zu sein ist eben auch menschlich. Die Frage ist: Können wir es besser machen als bisher?

Das schmerzt, aber ich sehe es auch so: Die absolute moralische Reinheit gibt es einfach nicht. Und ich glaube, es ist einer der größten Gefahren des Veganismus, zu denken, man könne doch irgendwie leben, ohne Leid zu verursachen, und sei es auf eine recht passive und indirekte Weise. Ungefähr so, als käme jemand auf die Idee, man müsse die Bergpredigt einfach wörtlich leben, und alles sei gut.

Und dann finde ich sehr gut, wie er einerseits auf pragmatische Lösungen für die aktuell drängende Situation pocht, und andererseits für einen grundlegenden philosophischen Diskurs offen bleibt.

Ob wir es grundsätzlich in Ordnung finden, Fleisch zu essen, ist eine beinah hypothetische Frage angesichts der Tatsache, dass 99 Prozent unseres Fleisches aus Massentierhaltung stammen, in der die Tiere auf eine Weise dahinvegetieren, die viele von uns verwerflich finden. Wenn Sie mich also fragen, ob ich das Töten von Tieren falsch oder richtig finde, wüsste ich nicht mal genau, was antworten. Was ich aber genau weiß, ist, dass es falsch ist, was wir derzeit machen.

Auch seine Aussagen zum Thema Veganismus finde ich erstaunlich ehrlich:

ZEIT: Wenn es Ihnen nicht um die grundsätzliche Frage des Tiertötens geht, sondern um die Massentierhaltung, warum plädiert Ihr Buch dann nur für Vegetarismus und nicht gleich für Veganismus? Das tierquälerische System der Aufzucht, Haltung und Schlachtung ist schließlich dasselbe, ob für Fleisch, Eier oder Milch.

Foer: Es ist dasselbe. Allerdings war ich bei Beginn meiner Arbeit mit vielen Themen wie Milchwirtschaft und Legehennenhaltung nicht vertraut; ich kam eigentlich erst dahin, als ich mich schon mitten im Buch befand, und dann hätte ich ein ganz neues Feld aufmachen müssen. Das wäre ja fast ein zweites Buch.

Zum Abschluss ein kleiner Dialog, den ich auch schon oft mit Fleischessern hatte. Und selbst etwas ganz ähnliches zu sagen pflege:

Ein Freund von mir hat gesagt, ich würde ja gern mit dem Fleischessen aufhören, aber wenn meine Großmutter mich einlädt, gibt es immer Roastbeef, das esse ich so gern. Ich hab ihm gesagt: Dann iss das Roastbeef! Aber iss kein Fleisch mehr in Restaurants oder bei McDonald’s. Darauf antworten manche: Aber das ist doch scheinheilig. – Okay, dann sei eben scheinheilig! Das Ziel ist ja nicht, ethisch rein zu sein, sondern die Welt besser zu machen.

Ermutigend und traurig zugleich.

PS: Wer wie ich nicht das ganze Buch lesen möchte, dem sei ein NYTimes-Magazin-Artikel ans Herz gelegt, den man glaube ich durchaus als Zusammenfassung verstehen kann.

Ich bin richtig begeistert von der klaren Argumentationsführung, die Gabriel (oder ein kluger Praktikant …) da zeigt. Besonders froh bin ich, dass die historische Dimension der Eugenik-Aspekte, die seine Aussagen durchziehen, aufgezeigt wird. Und dass diese Frage als der eigentliche Kern der Auseinandersetzung identifiziert wird. Und auf dieser Ebene wird klar, wie unmöglich seine Aussagen sind, und dass es kaum etwas gibt, was zur SPD weniger passen könnte. Für mich ist das allerdings dennoch kein Beispiel für moralischen Verfall, sondern vielmehr dafür, wie man sich intellektuell „verrennen“ kann, wenn man sich in komplexen sozialen Fragen vom „logischen Dreisatz“ leiten lässt (wie Sarrazin selbst das nennt). Und damit letztlich für eine überrationalisierte Gesellschaft und vor allem Wissenschaft.

Offen bleibt allerdings, was mit der anderen Lesart zu tun ist, die seine Migrantenkritik ins Zentrum stellt, und die es meiner Meinung nach ist, die ihm breiten Zuspruch von Stammtischen und ähnlichen sozialen Institutionen bringt. Wie weit muss man den Ressentiments in der deutschen Bevölkerung entgegenkommen? Wie kann man vermeiden, Migranten in der einen oder anderen Richtung zu passiven Objekten zu machen? Ließe sich mit Migrantenvertreter_innen irgendwie ein Diskurs über gegenseitige Integrationsbedingungen führen? Praktische Fragen, bei denen wie ich bereits kurz ausgeführt habe für mich die Klärung der „wahren“ Ursachen der bestehenden Probleme nicht unbedingt hilfreich sein muss.

Zum Abschluss möchte ich ein besonders krasses Zitat von Sarrazin und die angemessen krasse Erwiderung Gabriels zitieren, auch als Lustmacher zur Lektüre des ganzen Textes. Es geht um die „Fragestellung“ nach dem Zusammenhang von „genetischer Qualität“ und Fortpflanzung:

Es gibt also reale Erfahrungen mit den Allmachtsfantasien einer Politik, die meint, die besseren Menschen schaffen zu können. Thilo Sarrazin ist gewiss kein Rassist, aber obwohl er freimütig die Urheber dieser Bevölkerungstheorien zitiert und für sich in Anspruch nimmt, ist ihm diese historische Einordnung keine Zeile wert. Stattdessen formuliert er: »In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts gab es immer mehr Angriffe auf die Fragestellung. Diese Attacken waren letztlich Ausdruck von Wertungen, die gewisse Fragen als unzulässig verwarfen. Aber sie waren nicht empirisch begründet.« (S. 353) Wie weit muss man sich intellektuell verirren, um die Ereignisse in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts vollständig auszublenden, obwohl sie natürlich der grauenhafteste »empirische Befund« waren, den man für die Unzulässigkeit derartiger »Fragestellungen« finden kann. Das Grundgesetz ist ja – den Nürnberger Ärzteprozess noch vor Augen – gerade gegen diese Verbindung der sozialen mit der genetischen Frage geschrieben worden.

Übrigens sammeln sich auf der Seite der ZEIT im Moment 148 Seiten (!) mit Kommentaren, großteils positiv bezüglich Gabriels Argumentation. Beruhigend. Auch wenn es eine Menge zensierter Kommentare gibt, deren Inhalt man nur erahnen kann.