And I don't believe you can get more than five or so people cooperating effectively without some respected authority keeping them pointed in the same direction.
Well, it will surprise no one that I think this is poppycock. Collective, democratic processes of organization are not easy, but they are possible, and they do exist. Of course, we see many more examples of hierarchical organization in our daily lives, because hierarchy has held sway now for thousands of years. The fact that there are any extant counterexamples at all should go a long way towards supporting the proposition that authority and hierarchy and domination are not immutable facts of human organization and behavior.
Then too, why is it, if authority/hierarchy/domination is so right and natural, that we are constantly presented with examples of human resistance to those forms and tendencies? Slaves revolt, workers organize themselves, sailors mutiny, hippies go back to the land -- every day there are more acts of resistance. Even something as microscopically quotidian as the cubicle worker stealing time from the corporation to check their Facebook points to the fact that a/h/d is in fact artificial and illegitimate. Why else do those in power accumulate so many weapons with which to coerce the people they seek to control? Not only guns and bombs and truncheons, but access to health care and food, and even the language itself are methods of control. Authority that was necessary and useful wouldn't need all that.
I think I'm mentioned before that I think that five axis categorization is pretty much nonsense. But what the hell, I'll say it again.
I pretty much agree. If you want to get things done you need coordination of some sort. The problem arises when the coordination is confused with some sort of intrinsic worth attached to the person coordinating.
OTOH, H-C seems to be objecting to the idea that hierarchies are intrinsically good things. They may be useful, in which case the goodness or badness depends on the ends of the hierarchy, but they are not intrinsically good.
But if I try to envision a world with literally no respect for authority, I can't imagine any functional society that's recognizably human.
Too Heil wit dikshooneries! Spelink moost bee frey fur trens-hoomints!
It might be possible for us to run social coordination off of other instincts than the authority/hierarchy instinct. Drivers might still stay on the right side of the road (in America) because they're worried about harming themselves and others, and not because they instinctively respect the authority of the law.
I haven't read Haidt's thing, but my impression was that he was talking about psychological states than social structures. So it's still possible that you could rig up the social structures you want, but just run them off of other psychological states.
1: Having on more than one occasion been placed at risk of death due to crap coordination between team members I'm not willing to forgo submission to authority. Flat organizations have their place, but only where there is plenty of time to spend in coordination and maintaining the flatness of the organization. If you need to get shit done right now and you don't have the time to hammer out exactly how it's going to be done in a manner that satisfies everyone, you need a single person who gets final say and tells everyone what to do, and you need people who will do what they are told even if they can think of a better way to do it. The person running the show needs to be competent (part of which is listening to subordinates and taking their concerns seriously), but they also need to be genuinely in charge.
A lot of resistance to authority comes from a perception that the people running things aren't competent.
And I don't believe you can get more than five or so people cooperating effectively without some respected authority keeping them pointed in the same direction.
Hmm. I tend to think this is false, but I guess it depends on what you mean by authority. I know, for instance, some large groups of people who, while they have some weak top-down leadership, are mostly anarchic and still manage to get things done. And who on the whole probably have a fair amount of contempt for authority. (Of course, they operate by tedious, redundant, painful committees and elaborate rituals of slow decision making. But they do function.)
An instinct can't be wrong, but only diseased or disguised.
And there is nothing more important to morals, both ours and theirs, than our instincts.
And what is the meaning of ascetic ideals attempts to universalize local, tribal, or personal morals (to appear "clean" or hygenic", unpolluted, the "fair judge") under the mask of reason or science? The Will To Power, of course, the instinct to become Authority.
...This Spake Zarathustra's Ass
I agree with LB, but Helpy-chalk is a philosopher, so I'd better stick with what he says.
If I were arguing from my own mental whatever, I'd point out that doing harm reduction and fairness if pretty much impossible without authority. And, if it is possible without authority, it requires in-group loyalty (and in-group loyalty goes with out-group nut smashing).
I take it that Helpy-Chalk's point isn't that necessary hierarchies are always bad, but that the instinct to defer to authority or to find a comfortable place within a hierarchy is bad. Without that instinct, you can have some sorts of hierarchical organization when it's necessary to get the job done -- you just need to base the legitimacy of the organization on some other moral instinct or claim. No hierarchy for its own sake.
Natilo, this depends on a very narrow definition of authority. Even in a more or less egalitarian set up, people defer to other people on matters they know more about, because nobody knows about everything. Frex, I will entirely defer to the authority of my BiL on anything to do with my boiler, because he's a damn good plumber; the idea of him going into politics, however, freezes my blood.
Essear's examples are the same kind of thing writ large. Some people on the CMS team will be accorded authority in the specific areas they're best at - that is, they'll be trusted to get on with it. Probably some of those people will be project managers, whose proven expertise is keeping things going within budget. The difficulty comes when you start regarding your project managers as a breed apart, whose expertise is in some sense more vital than the experimentalists'.
I think Bave has a useful synthesis of some of the things people are saying.
Put differently: it's often useful to put people in leadership roles. But a healthy organization is one with flexibility, often one where the people in leadership roles rotate frequently and can be replaced quickly if they're not doing what the rest of the organization wants. Conservatives might think this reflects an immoral lack of obedience, but in fact it's much more moral. So I'm inclined to agree with rob to the extent that he's saying something like this; less so if he's saying leadership roles are never useful, which is what LB is arguing against, I think, and not necessarily what rob intended.
and can be replaced quickly if they're not doing what the rest of the organization wants
In a largish organization, how do you tell that they aren't doing what the organization wants? You'd need a structure for choosing representatives to tell what the organization wants, which is a hierarchy. The trick is having authority that has to be open and can be watched by a different, partially overlapping authority.
The trick is having authority that has to be open and can be watched by a different, partially overlapping authority.
Yes.
This was the theory behind the institution of Political Commissars in the early Soviet Union to ensure that representatives in the Councils stayed accountable. That worked out really well.
Helpy-Chalk is quite wrong. Even if categorizing "Authority" as immoral and rejecting it were genuinely possible for some substantial number of human beings -- which I don't believe it is -- this is mainly a recipe for being disorganized in the face of people more organized than you. The satisfaction of being more morally pure and logically bulletproof would be short-lived, and if our age doesn't make this inescapably plain I honestly don't know what it takes.
In any case, if Haidt's contention is really that liberals are indifferent to in-group loyalty, purity or authority, that also doesn't seem right to me (I missed the first Haidt thread). Liberals have a fairly intense shared sense of all three; it's just that they're defined differently, in such a way that they ideally tie in with harm reduction and fairness, and not spoken of explicitly. Hence liberal "authority" tends to see meritocracy and consensus as legitimate and to recognize those parts of tradition that reflect this. "Purity" is disgust at prejudice, unhealthiness, ignorance, hatred and atavism. Racial and racial "in-groups" are secondary to in-groups of education and discourse, to associating with people who get it.
Sophisticated salesmen of right-wing views and policies recognize this, and focus on it. Our era is replete with rhetorical attempts to "peel off" liberal loyalty to these definitions of authority, purity and in-group and enlist them in the disguised service of more "traditional" conceptions of each. During the run-up to the Iraq War, this was part of the function of people like Christopher Hitchens: to make the supposed objectives of the war sound like altruism and the defense of fairness, to emphasize the educated sophistication of those who favored it and the dirty, backward atavism of those who didn't, to make it sound like the defense of rational society against recidivist prejudice and hate and "fascism." (Everybody's fighting "fascism" these days, including the fascists.)
"Even the liberal" commentators like Hitchens sold all of these lines aggressively. And in the case of many liberals, it worked.
Racial and racial "in-groups"
Racial and religious "in-groups"
18 shares my discourse.
20: You're in, Standpipe. We'll fight fascism side by side.
this is mainly a recipe for being disorganized in the face of people more organized than you. The satisfaction of being more morally pure and logically bulletproof would be short-lived
...aahhh
The self-de-politization of the "Left?"
to make it sound like the defense of rational society against recidivist prejudice and hate
Race and Entitlements ...Yglesias
Among white Americans, more ethnocentric voters are more supportive of Social Security and Medicare and less supportive of means-tested social spending....MY
I tried a new shampoo this morning!
Will we get to stand athwart something? I always envied the conservatives' standing-athwart. Not that they put it to good use.
N.B. I have a large stance.
If I stand astride and you stand athwart, we should have the bases covered.
||
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) has apparently been shot in Tucson?!
|>
My impulse is to agree with LB on this issue, but I'm going to have to mull it over.
I have an initial reaction that feels like there's a connection as well as tension between the authority/hierarchy instinct and the reciprocity instinct.
It's an obvious example of reciprocity to have a shared norm around people queuing properly, for example -- people who are at the end of the line don't try to cut in part because they would be treating the people at the front of the line with obvious disrespect.
Similarly there's a moral value to the norm that everybody pays their taxes in terms of both authority and reciprocity.
So I think of hierarchy as not just containing vertical relationships but that there is also value, in terms of maintaining the horizontal relationships to having everybody agree to treat the shared authority with respect.
Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated
Now, however, the power of government is not an emanation of the political power of the citizens. Rather government appears as autonomous, distanced from the citizens because the power of the citizenry is given a sharply different focus:not as political power expressive of the will of engaged citizens but as "political and economic freedom" which ensures that the nation "will be able to unleash the potential of their people and assure their future prosperity." Political involvement is reduced to minimal, anodyne terms: "People everywhere want to say what they think; choose who will govern them; worship as they please; educate their children--male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor." Quietly, economic mobilization is accompanied by a de-emphasis on politics, by a political demobilization.
(Everybody's fighting "fascism" these days, including the fascists.)
Fascism is not the enemy of the PtB anymore, nor is it what they desire. In fascism, the state rules economics, but the state remains separate from finance and commerce.
Yes. First you make fascism the only apparent alternative by feeding the untermenschen (Koch, Rush, Fox) and disappearing the economic Left. You make nationalism and racism and ethnocentrism the enemies, you define homo economicus as the "rational agent". The idea is to make "national" + "socialism" respectively the enemies of the elite left and the enraged right so that are preoccupied with each other and Capital rules the world.
Once the hybrid or dual nature of contemporary state action is understood, it is possible to put in their true light the coupling in NSS of "freedom" and "democracy" with "free enterprise." The porous character that freedom and democracy create in society--"our society must be open," as NSS noted, "to people, ideas, and goods from across the globe"--provides the conditions that enable the economic power generated in the market to easily penetrate and control politics. Freedom and democracy, far from posing a threat to "free enterprise," become its instrument and its justification. And rather than serving as the means for furthering the political project of democratization, the state helps to inter it.
The only weapons useful against "totalitarian democracy" will appear atavistic, irrational, and authoritarian.
27: NPR is now reporting that she's dead. Fuck!
27: You know, when I said in the post that someone had probably linked it in one of the threads, I didn't think it would be a frontpage poster.
3, 11: Let me clarify what I was objecting to. There are two things at work here, the instincts and the social institutions they support. My claim was that the instinct was systematically wrong because it leads us to support institutions that are not as moral as the ones we would support otherwise. So both the instincts and the institutions are bad, and the real root is the problem with the institution.
This doesn't meant that all hierarchies can or should be eliminated overnight. It merely means that to the extent that we reduce them, we are better off.
Underlying all of this my belief that a person is harmed by being in the lower end of the hierarchy. Hierarchies are basically about power and unequal power relationships create fear and reduce autonomy in the people on the downside.
So everyone immediately objects that we will be unable to coordinate action without hierarchy. These conversations always seem to recapitulate the argument between monarchists and democrats in the enlightenment. My only claim at this point is that we can go a lot farther than we do now only coordinating actions using the kind of egalitarian social networks supported by the fairness instinct.
Those of us who work in knowledge-driven industries tend to think of epistemic authority as natural and harmless. If your brother in law knows how to fix a boiler and you don't, you should defer to him. And in simple isolated cases this is perfectly true.
But don't forget that knowledge really is power. And extreme imbalances in knowledge are as pernicious as any other power imbalance. If you get to the point where a very small number of people are the only ones who know how to fix things, you are in trouble.
17: I didn't say it would always work. But, I do think a free press is essential if you have authority.
Those of us who work in knowledge-driven industries tend to think of epistemic authority as natural and harmless.
I agree with harmless, but not natural in the sense of what wil occur.
I really look up to you guys. Like, a lot.
"Purity" is disgust at prejudice, unhealthiness, ignorance, hatred and atavism. Racial and racial "in-groups" are secondary to in-groups of education and discourse, to associating with people who get it
This I don't buy. Liberals may be repulsed by nasty things, but I've never heard any liberal position justified in terms of disgust. The closest I can think of is highlighting the offensiveness of conspicuous consumption: e.g. "Isn't it disgusting that millionaires' cats eat caviar while unemployed orphans starve?".
Haidt is now testing the idea that liberal food rules, like eating vegetarian, local and organic are backed by disgust. I think he'll get a positive result for vegetarianism. I know for me the idea of eating meat creates a visceral sense of disgust.
37
This I don't buy. Liberals may be repulsed by nasty things, but I've never heard any liberal position justified in terms of disgust. ...
There are a lot of references to "obscene wealth" and the like.
And food issues, like vegetarianism, organic food, genetically engineered food, factory farming etc., tend to attract purity type arguments
7
Hmm. I tend to think this is false, but I guess it depends on what you mean by authority. I know, for instance, some large groups of people who, while they have some weak top-down leadership, are mostly anarchic and still manage to get things done. And who on the whole probably have a fair amount of contempt for authority. ...
Because someone who respects their authority in their field gave them a large sum of money (raised by force) to play with.
38: "Testing" makes it sound like he's sneaking bacon into the tofu and the doing the old, "We've secretly replaced the usual coffee with instant coffee" trick.
6
A lot of resistance to authority comes from a perception that the people running things aren't competent.
A lot of resistance comes from people who would prefer to be giving orders rather than taking them. IIRC a study has shown that the personality type that is the most resistant to deferring to authority when in a subordinate position is the most demanding of blind obedience when in a dominant position.
The problems with in-group loyalty and respect for authority arise because they become dominant in people who feel threatened, and most people have bad heuristics for deciding when and by whom they should feel threatened.
Interesting -- my waning vegetarianism is shaped by purity but not by disgust. I'll prefer not to eat the cheese side of a half-pepperoni pizza, and I won't eat Altoids for the gelatin, but I don't have a visceral reaction to learning I've accidentally consumed bacon. (I also eat fish, avidly in all cases except octopus, which I eat with guilty consience.)
Mostly this is my way of saying I'm an unprincipled mess.
The thing in 18 which strikes me as truest is this: this is mainly a recipe for being disorganized in the face of people more organized than you. Which is only a moral argument to the extent that it is a tactical one. So I like the idea, per Bave and R H-C's points, that legitimate authority can be constructed and wielded without resorting to people's authoritarian instincts.
except octopus, which I eat with guilty consience
Because you might be eating a great prognosticator of soccer outcomes?
avidly in all cases except octopus
Some squid are probably equally intelligent.
I don't really understand the line that it's not OK to eat things with fur or feathers, but OK to eat other animals. We have no idea what the world looks and feels like to a cow, or an octopus, or a lobster, or a tuna. We have no idea whether any of the above can suffer, because we have no common reference point with them. If you want to avoid eating animals on moral grounds, rather than economic, I can't see any rational position other than all or nothing.
Yet many of my friends are piscitarian.
37: Liberals may be repulsed by nasty things, but I've never heard any liberal position justified in terms of disgust.
Really? I see racism, homophobia and misogyny attacked in terms of disgust or "squick" routinely.
I have the opposite confusion: I don't see why so many people feel like vegetarianism must be a hard and fast rule, rather than having some word refer to generally trying to minimize meat consumption. Most good habits allow for indulgences, but most people don't think of avoiding meat in those terms.
We have no idea what the world looks and feels like to a cow, or an octopus, or a lobster, or a tuna
I just last night learned that cats don't taste sweet things. I thought that sounded very sad.
49: I think it partly depends on whether your objection to meat-eating is ethically driven -- based for instance on revulsion at the notion of killing animals, or at the way agribusiness is run -- or not.
12: Frex, I will entirely defer to the authority of my BiL on anything to do with my boiler, because he's a damn good plumber;
Well, now we're into a definition of "authority" that is so broad as to be completely meaningless. If I ask someone "is the pizza done yet", and they look in the oven and say "nope, needs a couple more minutes", am I then deferring to their authority? Of course not. Similarly, if you're in a collective organization, and there's division of labor, that doesn't imply that the person who does the books has more authority than the one who orders the eggs.
52
Well, now we're into a definition of "authority" that is so broad as to be completely meaningless. If I ask someone "is the pizza done yet", and they look in the oven and say "nope, needs a couple more minutes", am I then deferring to their authority? Of course not. Similarly, if you're in a collective organization, and there's division of labor, that doesn't imply that the person who does the books has more authority than the one who orders the eggs.
But if you ask the bookkeepper how to account for a certain transaction and then account for it in that way you are in fact deferring to their authority.
It will surprise nobody that I'm on board with Rob & Natilo here. I also suspect, with Tocqueville, that there's something about being a lawyer that selects for and/or inculcates respect for authority.
I think lumping together practical & epistemic authority is somewhat mistaken, here. Epistemic authority can exist purely on the advice model, as when we seek out medicial opinions from doctors. The authority at issue here is quite distinct--the point is that you do what you're told, not because you've become convinced, but because you're told.
Cases where quick and coordinated action are necessary can often work on the advice model, so long as everyone recognizes the exigencies of the situation. On the other hand, it may well be true that, say, standing armies (as opposed to defensive militias or what-have-you) require the acceptance of a fair amount of authority; I'd say so much the worse for standing armies.
A step back for a wider view.
Some years ago (even before encountering Haidt, whose insights I find interesting) I hit upon what seems to me to be a grand unified field theory of liberal vs. conservative politics, which is: If there is a political controversy in which one outcome will tend to reduce or mitigate a difference in power and privilege between two groups (rich/poor, black/white, management/labor, local/immigrant, men/women, christian/other, straight/gay, etc), but the other outcome will tend to maintain or increase the difference in power or privilege, then the first position will be the "liberal" side of the debate and the second will be the "conservative" side. Always. I've never yet found a counterexample.
Later, I read about Haidt's five axes, and Altermeyer's The Authoritarians and this all coalesced. Conservatives are people who just plain like authority. They don't insist on being on top of the hierarchy themselves (though they prefer it to be someone they can more-or-less identify with) but they like for there to be an identifiable pecking order and to know where they fit into it. They tend to be zero-sum thinkers and are uncomfortable with the idea of a game in which no one has to lose.
So, for example, if they find themselves in a world in which health insurance is a privilege that only certain people get to have, that's good, because it means that someone is winning and someone is losing. Then liberals come along and try to change the world so that everybody gets access to health care, and poof, there's one less way to tell the difference between a winner and a loser. Authoritarian-minded people find this inherently disturbing.
I am, here, agreeing with something Jefferson wrote in 1824: "Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."
Conservatives are essentially aristocrats (in the sense of liking aristocracy, I mean, not in the sense of being members of one). The characteristic of aristocracies is that they're self-reinforcing. You're either born into power, or you gain access to it by serving the interests of those who have it. You don't just get an equal shot at it because you're a person; you have to be a proper and deserving sort of person.
It is that sense of authority/hierarchy--treating difference in power and privilege as a good thing in and of itself, and that any existing imbalance should persist as long as possible just because--that I think Mr. Helpy-Chalk is calling immoral. And I agree with him.
This is emphatically not to say there's no place for authority in a more limited sense. The giving and taking of orders in group that's cooperating to achieve some end is necessary when it comes time to cut off debate and settle on a decision. The signaling mechanism of price and the exchange of money is an effective way to distribute value efficiently. But if I made a lot of money last year, that does not mean I have the right to make a lot of money next year, or that my kid automatically deserves a better education and higher starting salary than your kid, or that I should be able to break the law and escape the consequences, etc. That's aristocratic thinking, and it is the opposite of moral.
38: But isn't your disgust with eating meat founded on considerations of harm (animal cruelty, etc.)? I'm a vegetarian who'd love to eat meat were it grown independently of a sentient capacity for suffering. Not that all vegetarians must think similarly, of course.
55: I think it's important not to conflate two divisions: egalitarians/aristocrats and optimists/pessimists (wrt human nature/humanity). I say this as a radical egalitarian* and extreme pessimist about humanity, whose motivations in thinking comprise equal parts Peter Singer/Parfit/GA Cohen and Schopenhauer/Zapffe/Ligotti. I point it out because, for whatever reason, it seems that nearly all philosophical pessimists are also political conservatives (anti-egalitarians), and I'm completely baffled as to why.
*E.g. I'm fine with the oft used reductio "everyone gets the same amount of stuff" (except those with lesser capacities get more) and with speculative egalitarian experiments (mandatory communal parenting, romantic love is inegalitarian, etc.). Also, I'd half-jokingly (but only half) endorse something like: the problem with Stalin/USSR was not the mass killings, but that the mass killings didn't achieve an egalitarian outcome. (I'm not committed to thinking that this was a true goal of Stalin or anyone else in the party, and my capacity for cognitive dissonance is unbounded.)
53: But if you ask the bookkeepper how to account for a certain transaction and then account for it in that way you are in fact deferring to their authority.
Let me reiterate: Only if, as in the examples given, you are using the word "authority" to mean "any unequal distribution of knowledge". Which is one way to look at it, I suppose, but then no one can really be for or against "authority", as it isn't then a political position, but simply a description of an actual state.
So, yes, there is a sense of the word "authority" which is not antithetical to freedom and democracy. But that's not the definition that is being referred to in the original source here, unless I am very much mistaken. Rather, we're talking about the meaning of "authority" that suggests an artificial imposition of control by one person over another. So going back to chris y's example, asking your bil the plumber for plumbing advice is not an example of authority. Following precisely the dictates of the local building authority with respect to the design, construction and maintenance of plumbing, is. To the extent that many of those plumbing regulations are intended to prevent costly and inconvenient damage to a structure, or to prevent harm to the users, they might be confused with democratic principles of human organization. However, to the extent that some of those strictures are put in place to protect the fortunes of entrenched interests at the expense of everyone else, they move into the territory of illegitimate authority.
I'm a vegetarian who'd love to eat meat were it grown independently of a sentient capacity for suffering.
I don't like the taste of meat and wouldn't eat it except that the animals suffer. That's why I won't eat a squirrel.
Squirrel or rabbit. I keep forgetting which one of those can't feel pain.
57
... Following precisely the dictates of the local building authority with respect to the design, construction and maintenance of plumbing, is. To the extent that many of those plumbing regulations are intended to prevent costly and inconvenient damage to a structure, or to prevent harm to the users, they might be confused with democratic principles of human organization. However, to the extent that some of those strictures are put in place to protect the fortunes of entrenched interests at the expense of everyone else, they move into the territory of illegitimate authority.
So what do you do with authority which in this formulation is a mixture of legitimate and illegitimate? Do you respect it or not?
I just saw "How It's Made" on haggis. Maybe vegetarianism is a good idea or maybe looking at a block of lambs' lungs is not a good way to say, "Eat Scottish food."
The debate between nat and Shearer rests on exactly that issue x.trapnel raises in 54: whether practical and epistemic authority are the same. As said before, I'm basically with Shearer here, because knowledge is power.
In the abstract, we can distinguish epistemic from practical authority. There seems to be a clear difference between listening to the opinions of your brother in law the plumber on issues of plumbing and, say, a dalit deferring a brahmin because the dalit is unclean and the brahmin is a priest.
But the issue gets confused by the fact that the plummer has limited epistemic authority in one area, while the brahmin has huge practical authority in all aspects of his society. To match the cases, you would have to look at situations where one individual has as much of a monopoly on information as the brahmin has on social power.
But is there? After all, the reason that the the brahmin is deferred to is knowledge about the world. Cleanliness and purity are real, useful, practical things that the brahmin has knowledge of, in a very similar way that blocked pipes are.
Imagine a kshatriya deferring to a brahmin on the matter of sacrifice. That's epistemic authority. Imagine a kshatriya deferring to a brahmin on the relationship between kingliness and godliness. Epistemic authority, again. And yet obviously essentially massive social power.
(I don't think it is clear that dalits do defer to brahmins in that way either, which rather muddles the matter.)
I think the more important distinction is where you side on the Just World hypothesis.
And I am a pessimist on human nature. Also skeptical of most 'professional' authority, although some people who use lots of math can do things that require more than ~20h of practice.
I try to minimize carbon footprint of my food, which means not much meat, but i don't say i'm 'vegan' because i assocaite that with purity people. Its better than caring about foetuses or the Flag or something though. Putting outdated instincts into pointless or even beneficial stuff is an important goal.
My personal rule for experts is: only trust people who are amatuers (ie have their income from something unrelated.) Though i was thinking abotu search engines algorhythms.
Lots of societies are highly skeptical of authority:
In fascism, the state rules economics, but the state remains separate from finance and commerce.
Juan March, Walter Rohland, and the entire board of directors of IG Farben say: bullshit! Actually-existing fascist states were nothing but the biggest, foulest, corruptest crony-capitalist oligarchies going. 53 types of army truck, all made by slaves, with no compatible parts. You don't think someone was profiting from that? Remind me: what was Matteotti about to reveal when they shot him?
You can tell you're in a Corporative State when you can't tell the State from the Corporation.
Staggering back towards the topic...perhaps the problem is how many different spheres of authority there are. In an ideal society there might be one for every citizen.
I try to minimize carbon footprint of my food...
But the ham won't turn off the tv when it leaves the room.
The debate between nat and Shearer rests on exactly that issue x.trapnel raises in 54: whether practical and epistemic authority are the same. As said before, I'm basically with Shearer here, because knowledge is power.
I don't disagree that knowledge is a form of power. My disagreement is about authority, which I take to be distinct. Knowledge can be power insofar as it both allows the bearer to better achieve their aims, and insofar as it allows them to shape others' actions, but authority is a particular way of exercising power: it means having one's pronouncements taken as conclusive, as ending discussion, as must-be-done. This is typically what states claim for themselves, but also what more-hierarchical organizations do, albeit within limits.
On this view, the method of threats/sanctions/rewards is not the use of authority, although it often depends on the wielder having authority to be effective. The whole point of authority is to preempt even the sort of cost-benefit thinking that threats & rewards invite.
One reason I see epistemic authority as somewhat less troubling than the practical sort is that, A, it rarely demands that it be recognized as such; the choice of whether to treat it as advice or as fiat is typically left to the agent; and B, there's typically a great deal more pluralism and competition among would-be epistemic authorities. That doesn't mean that imbalances in knowledge aren't important! They're very important! I just think that the habit of mind that insists on deference, and the rightness of deference, is less of a danger in the sphere of knowledge than in the sphere of action.
70:Thank you "deference" was the search word I needed
Digby on Phil Agre on deference "Yearning to be Subjects"
And I don't distinguish between types of authority as easily as you. Bush and WMD's, Colin Powell at the UN don't seem different in form or kind than the arguments Krugman makes based on the experience of Japan or comparisons with Izeland and Latvia. We may not accepted Powell's evidence or arguments, but he certainly had them.
"Because I'm boss" is very very rare I think. "Because there needs to be a boss"...isn't that usually an epistemic argument?
Okay, I'm willing to back off somewhat on the claim that epistemic authority is less problematic. I reiterate my core claim, which is that it's extra bad--and this is what's at the core of the Haidt axis--when power or expertise is transformed into authority, because this short-circuits whatever pathways of critical reflection might otherwise moderate its use. In other words, it's bad enough that their respective positions give Bush, Powell, Krugman the power they have to shape facts on the ground and discourse; it's worse when we grant them authority--that is, take their pronouncement as reasons to stop giving the matter further consideration.
Of course, anyone who is against authority will likely also be against excessive inequalities of power, too. But I think the Haidt trait (ooh, rhyme!) at issue isn't about the distribution of power, but about how the subject interprets that power distribution, whether they are inclined to grant those with more, the further privilege of authority. I think our discussions in the archives (too lazy to find) on jury nullification are a good example of (moderate forms of) this, where you see the lawyers naturally lining up on the side of authority.
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I don't really see what this sort of theorizing implies for the practical problem of how groups of people can work together effectively.
And as 18 indicates there are worse things than being a subordinate member of an effective group.
Helpy-Chalk is quite wrong. Even if categorizing "Authority" as immoral and rejecting it were genuinely possible for some substantial number of human beings -- which I don't believe it is -- this is mainly a recipe for being disorganized in the face of people more organized than you. The satisfaction of being more morally pure and logically bulletproof would be short-lived, and if our age doesn't make this inescapably plain I honestly don't know what it takes.
this is mainly a recipe for being disorganized in the face of people more organized than you.
What Nat has been saying is that there are actually many ways of being organized that do not rely on authority or hierarchy, or that are at least intended to minimize it. While there are some weaknesses to these forms, there are also some corresponding strengths, purely at the level of efficacy--in particular, such forms are often better at taking advantage of the group's dispersed knowledge, and at noticing and responding to problems of implementation. Here are some links to stuff our favorite polymath has written that may point you in useful directions, should you be interested in following up.
Yay Cosma.
this is mainly a recipe for being disorganized in the face of people more organized than you.
I haven't quite understood why DS was taking the conversation in this direction in 18: the question wasn't whether top-down hierarchical organization was more or less effective in the accumulation of power than more egalitarian organizational forms.
In 55 (the entirety of which post is correct), Evan says: This is emphatically not to say there's no place for authority in a more limited sense.
But this is precisely what some parties to the debate are saying. What I said in 18 was that liberal and conservative definitions of how legitimate authority is derived differ; Jefferson's Aristocrats and Democrats is a more elegant way of putting it. That the latter limits authority and puts it in perspective does not mean it tosses it overboard wholesale, nor should it. This kind of thinking can quickly divert into abstract speculation about life without "hierarchy," including meritocratic hierarchy, and I'm saying this is on the whole a blind alley. For instance:
74: What Nat has been saying is that there are actually many ways of being organized that do not rely on authority or hierarchy, or that are at least intended to minimize it.
All of which sort of theorizing is very familiar, some of which yields interesting results at small scale in practice. But none of which is practical for accumulating power at any larger scale, and I'm basically sick of the left absenting itself from politics while pretending to itself that theory is a more moral and high-minded substitute. This is disastrous and has produced forty years of disaster and must stop. I am saying stop this. If you don't think you want to be in the game of accumulating power, be prepared for your views on authority to be trod underfoot by the people who are interested.
I'm not interested in accumulating power; I'm interested in dispersing it. I think I do this directly in my job as a teacher, and when I delve into activism, I work the same way.
DS is like to make me cry. But I don't wanna be interesting in accumulating power! Then we will be co-opted! Which is exactly what has happened to the Democratic party, or liberals, in the last 30 or 40 years. Can we stop talking about parties, by the way? This isn't a Democratic/Republican divide, but a corporate/non-corporate one (choose another term for the latter distinction if you like).
Evan's comment is indeed excellent, and if we can work away from Haidt's terms to these:
If there is a political controversy in which one outcome will tend to reduce or mitigate a difference in power and privilege between two groups (rich/poor, black/white, management/labor, local/immigrant, men/women, christian/other, straight/gay, etc), but the other outcome will tend to maintain or increase the difference in power or privilege, then the first position will be the "liberal" side of the debate and the second will be the "conservative" side.
we'll be better served, to my mind. Haidt's terms aren't working for me, man.
I have to say, I'm finding it difficult to know where to enter this thread.
I tend to think of myself as somebody with an undue tendency to respect authority, so my impulse is to feel like my moral intuitions are place to start thinking about -- whether or not I'm convinced that they're correct. But I feel like the description of "authority" that's been made isn't one that I recognize.
So I have a continuing feeling that we need a better definition.
The description on Haidt's website doesn't particularly clarify:
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
Put that way it's almost defined to be a conservative trait.
But I look at myself as somebody who is politically liberal and conservative in my personal behavior in a variety of ways, and there are parts of that description that resonate.
I do think that the ability to lead or follow well are virtues (I don't know whether I'd say that they're moral virtues but they are personalty traits that I respect). But I wouldn't define "leading well" as demanding blind obedience, and I wouldn't think of being a "good follower" as blindly following anybody in a position of authority. For example, I think of both leading and following well as depending upon some sense of shared goals.
Going back to my previous comment, I would also say that, in my intuitions, "respect for legitimate authority and tradition" feel like the same impulse as "respect for formality and dignity." I'm not a formal person, in many ways, but I'm very conscious of not being overly familiar or intrusive on other people's privacy and one of the ways in which that manifests is a sense that it is appropriate in many social interactions with strangers to feel like we each have a role to play and that if other person chooses to stay within that role I will tend to accept that and not try to undermine that role. Which is why I feel like it ends up being a related impulse to "respect for authority."
Again, I would say that if I perceive somebody as abusing their social position I would feel like one of the several reasons why that's obnoxious is because they're violating the social conventions that go along with "authority/respect." They're probably also violating the norms of "reciprocity" and "care" but I really do have a different reaction to somebody who is a poor leader than somebody who is just an asshole. So, in that sense, I would say that my sense of the moral axis isn't based just on obedience, but includes the sense that everybody's social roles carry obligations as well as privileges and that while Rob may see that as, "[R]ecapitulat[ing] the argument between monarchists and democrats in the enlightenment." nothing in this thread convinces me, yet, that this is a harmful sense.
77: Yep, that's pretty much the sort of thing I'm talking about. "Dispersing power" sounds like a nifty and ethically bulletproof theoretical construct... but the left has been batting these around for decades, while the right went about the workaday business of building and supporting a partisan power structure. And on the whole, the latter thus spent decades very effectively, in many areas at many times, out-organizing the left, which is exactly why both teachers and activists are currently so screwed.
78: Part of what happened to the Democrats was that when the onslaught of authoritarian movement conservatism manifested, the left simply didn't adjust. It's still routine for conversations among leftists -- activists, academics, what have you -- to drift toward talking about how we obviously can't get anything done in politics as it is and so: "the revolution, man, how do we get there?" And it's increasingly clear to me that we do this because "the revolution" is permanently abstract, safe to talk about, requiring no commitments or compromises.
80: Would you say that you're objecting to a moral or a practical concern?
That is, do you think that people on, "the left" as you describe them are being led astray by an inappropriate moral instinct (that leads them to reject hierarchy incorrectly) or do you think they're just lazy (or some less pejorative term for not being sufficiently motivated to make change) and the talk about rejecting authority is just a rhetorical gesture?
80.last: It's still routine for conversations among leftists -- activists, academics, what have you -- to drift toward talking about how we obviously can't get anything done in politics as it is and so: "the revolution, man, how do we get there?" And it's increasingly clear to me that we do this because "the revolution" is permanently abstract, safe to talk about, requiring no commitments or compromises.
What? What kind of revolution is this supposed to be? I just need a definition of terms here: are we talking about the abolition of private property (not going to happen)? Or the separation of government from business, i.e. state from corporation? Or an equalization of incomes? Or what?
I'm not scoffing, I just don't know what the goals of the revolution you're referring to are.
"Dispersing power" sounds like a nifty and ethically bulletproof theoretical construct... but the left has been batting these around for decades, while the right went about the workaday business of building and supporting a partisan power structure.
This may or may not be an accurate characterization of "the American left", but globally speaking, there have been a number of fairly successful institutional interventions on behalf of dispersing and minimizing power and/or authority. The "Deepening Democracy" book deals with a few of them, for example. If you are concerned with how police abuse their authority/power in your city, focusing purely on electoral politics is likely to be a mistake, though ignoring electoral politics would also be a mistake.
81: The first leading in to the second, I think.
Right-wing authoritarian personalities often have trouble following a chain of logic through to its end. The left has often been bedeviled by the opposite problem, a mania for the careful calibration of political theory and ethics that becomes all-embracing (and that can even, as many a real-life revolution demonstrated, produce a different form of authoritarianism). Attempts to transmogrify democracy into the wholesale rejection of "hierarchy" and "authority" are, I think, symptomatic of this.
What it feeds into: well, "lazy" is certainly not a term I'd use. Anarchist activists, for example, are often some of the hardest-working people around. "Fearful" is, though. The fear of co-optation is palpable on the left, and though it's not without cause I'd say it's become exaggerated to the point of paralysis. In effect it's become a kind of voluntary self-marginalization -- the self-relegation of the left themselves to restricted and proscribed spheres of political activity, symbolic protest and small-scale activism (or the occasional ineffectual violence of the Black Flaggers).
82: What? What kind of revolution is this supposed to be?
The carefully nonspecific and impracticable kind. In fact when the conversation swings to "the revolution" there will almost always be a total absence of specific detail about what this will mean or how it will be achieved. The term could almost be swapped out with The Rapture or the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
the self-relegation of the left themselves
Oops. Well, I'm in a hurry. Will be back later!
84: The fear of co-optation is palpable on the left, and though it's not without cause I'd say it's become exaggerated to the point of paralysis
Point taken, but let's also remember that there's something very strong in insisting on saying No. As in: No, I will not go there.
the self-relegation of the left themselves to restricted and proscribed spheres of political activity, symbolic protest and small-scale activism
Now you're talking about something slightly different: one reason for the restricted sphere of public demonstrations is the increased police state. Another is the unfortunately too successful media campaign to bill demonstrations as goofy and pathetic, the work of DFHs, among whom one would not like to be seen. The power-mongers have won the PR campaign to a tremendous degree.
I'm not disagreeing with you particularly, by the way. Though I think you dismiss the power of No a bit too readily.
I'm stuck wondering how commitment to one's own authority fits into this structure: how people evaluate their own standing to criticize external authority, and what counts as legitimate or illegitimate standing. That is: do I feel that I have standing to criticize Krugman ideologically (on my own ideological authority); do I have to earn a PhD in econ, or at least do extensive enough reading in the field to convince myself that the degree is unnecessary, in order to criticize him? Can I do it on the basis of my personal experience? I'm trying to construct a model of pure agnosticism about authority and indeed, it doesn't work. Some kind of vessel has to carry the questions you put to authority. But the flip side is that I also can't imagine not doubting my own claims to authority on pretty much any subject, and surely that has political consequences regardless of what I think specifically about other people. I suspect that the two issues are connected.
That helpy-chalk makes convincing arguments. We should make him king.
Lurkey--this is why I think the most important subject for everyone to learn is social epistemology / philosophy of science / sociology of science. Because we can't, to a certain extent, do without epistemic authority, but we can and need to know how to evaluate competing authorities.
90 is smart.
Also I agree with 89. Long live His Helpful-Chalkness!
To go back to the Jefferson quote in 55:
Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles
Can you imagine, if the media dynamic of the last few decades was reversed, and those terms were the ones that actually stuck? Would have been. So. Awesome.
I'm imagining how instead of people on the left describing themselves as Progressive rather than Liberal, the Serviles would have had to start protesting that they should really be considered "Tories" or something.
80: It's still routine for conversations among leftists -- activists, academics, what have you -- to drift toward talking about how we obviously can't get anything done in politics as it is and so: "the revolution, man, how do we get there?"
You need to start hanging around with a better class of leftists. Or, more pointedly, draw a finer distinction between "activists, academics and what have you".
I know a LOT of leftists, and when we're conversing, we NEVER say things like "the revolution, man, how do we get there?" No, instead we actually do things. I suspect that if you're finding yourself in these conversations, it is precisely because you are talking to academics and what have you, and not to actual leftwing activists. If all that activists did was sit around bemoaning our alienation from electoral politics, we'd never get anything done. And yet, we do get things done. Here in the Twin Cities there are dozens of projects happening all the time, from the Indymedia Center website (with quite a bit of original content), to radical bookstores, to collectively-run restaurants, to DIY community bikeshops, to radical theaters, to prisoner support groups, to free food distribution, to free universities, to myriad single-issue groups and coalitions. Leftwing people, especially anarchists, do a huge amount of stuff. And it has real, immediate effects on the communities we live in. As you know, I do lower myself to the point of participating in electoral politics occasionally. Not because I think there's much hope of actually changing anything that way, but because the barriers to entry are fairly low for me, and there's some slim chance it might make a difference. With a very few exceptions however, our political choices right now are between cynical, neoliberal technocrats who are controlled by the corporations, and viciously bigoted fascists who are controlled by the corporations. I'll do what I can as far as harm reduction goes in that arena, but expecting anything positive to come out of it is clearly delusional.
85: Always beware of promises of Candy Mountain.
Long live His Helpful-Chalkness!
You have been a good servant to me so far, south African demon beastie, but to truly prove your worthiness, you must bring me the heads of my enemies.
Also, Heather Morris from Glee.
You all make smart points, but it seems to me that the right answer to whether deference to authority is a good thing or not is "it depends," and that this is in fact the answer that essentially everyone applies in real life.
My extremely strong aversion to abstracted political and moral theory may either be (a) a sign of healthy resistance to authority or (b) a sign that I'm a total moron.
By the way, the guests from the party are still in my basement, being slowly eaten by my dog. That's why there were no comments.
Further to the original topic: I'm perplexed as to why so many people are drawing this false equivalency between instrumental knowledge like plumbing (which is clearly not what Haidt is talking about) and moral authority.
It's one thing to say "you know more about quadratic equations than I do, so I'm going to defer to your thoughts on quadratic equations" and something completely different to say "I believe you have the best answer to the trolley problem, therefore I trust you to run the country."
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... But I don't wanna be interesting in accumulating power! Then we will be co-opted! ...
Well if you think power is sinful you shouldn't complain about not having any.
That's why there were no comments.
... and I thought it was because you insisted that the copyright to any comments be transferred over to you, in order to best exploit the revenue streams and incentivize further party-throwing.
I kid, I kid.
97: But it is what helpy-chalk is talking about. And he's king.
99 is funny.
98 is stupid.
I'll think of something else I'd like to say shortly, I imagine.
97
It's one thing to say "you know more about quadratic equations than I do, so I'm going to defer to your thoughts on quadratic equations" and something completely different to say "I believe you have the best answer to the trolley problem, therefore I trust you to run the country."
I don't think the distinction is clear cut. How should society decide whether to flouridate water, require children to be vaccinated, enact a carbon tax etc? How much deference should be given to expert opinion about such matters?
rob, do you allow your students to grade themselves (or, to be more fair, would you if you could get away with it)? I can see how you see yourself as dispersing power through passing on your accumulated knowledge reserves to your students, but your position as a teacher at a credentialing institution is one of maintaining rather than dispersing authority.
On the other hand, DS, while I share your frustration with the millenarial left, the problem with your position if left unqualified is that it quickly slides into Leninism: "Once we impose the glorious new order, people will be grateful for what we've done to/for them."