I especially liked this from the end of the Brooks piece:
In other words, we have constructed this great apparatus to fill their minds - with thousands of Ph.D.'s ready to serve. But when it comes to courage, which is the pre-eminent virtue since without it nothing else lasts, we often leave them with the gnawing sense that they really should develop it, though God knows how.
Brooks clearly doesn't get what higher ed is about. I think I'm teaching courage every time I tell a student to think even deeper or to articulate a difficult argument. Remember what Brooks thinks is great teaching? http://www.unfogged.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=2152#004679
(How come everybody but me seems to be able to make hyperlinks in comments?)
Bob, it's no different from making hyperlinks elsewhere. <a href="some web page">some link text</a>
Well, then I think there's something wrong with my browser. It never works for me. test
Oh!
Okay, test1, test 2
(Excuse me, everyone.)
So let's be charitable. Certainly the death of Ethics and Truth is oversold. But wouldn't you say there's something to the decline of the concept of soul, *sexual* morality, and, in general, anything beyond the harm principle? And isn't it also fair to say that the notion of social construction of truth (or rather, poor inferences about what the social construction of truth implies) has infected the discourse of the humanities?
Gosh, I sure would...
Ok, now I've read this piece, and I think the charitable interpretation is the correct one.
Here's Brooks:
She finds all the rules of life there are dissolved: the rules of courtship, the rules of decorum and polite conversation.
The social rules have dissolved because the morality that used to undergird them dissolved long ago.
So the that has dissolved is particualrly the ones undergirding decorum and courtship. Not a huge stretch.
Brooks again:
Wolfe describes a society in which we still have vague notions about good and bad, virtue and vice, but the moral substructure that fits all those concepts together has been washed away.
Again, is this so inaccurate? I would have thought that the relative weakness of comprehensive moral "structures" (provided, perhaps imperfectly, in the past by religion, marxism, or nationalism) is just a characteristic fact about modern western societies.
Sheesh!
I'm not going to read the Brooks, but I would guess that what people find objectionable about noting the "washed away" "moral substructure" is the implicit nostalgic longing for the old substructure--which, to a lot of folks, was oppressive and stultifying--in place of an attempt to join the rest of us in fashioning a way to proceed without it.
Upthread Baa wrote:
So let's be charitable. Certainly the death of Ethics and Truth is oversold. But wouldn't you say there's something to the decline of the concept of soul, *sexual* morality, and, in general, anything beyond the harm principle?
There has been a decline in "sexual morality" in the sense that people tend to give less credence to the socially accepted laundry list of sexual vices and virtues.
That doesn't mean people are less concerned with doing the right thing. People aren't amoral about sex, they just adjudicate morality by different (often more sophisticated) standards. Many college students ask serious questions about sexual ethics and give considerable thought to moral questions like consent, integrity, trust, loyalty, commitment, and equality.
I would hope that we can agree that just because change is for the better doesn't mean it isn't dislocating and anomie-producing. Likewise replacing bad rules with a lack of rules: good, but hard! People seem angry at Wolfe just for making this observation. That's a telling response, I think.
And to your point, ogged, looking back needn't be mere nostalgia (any more than abandoning the past is mere utopianism). If 30 years ago the educated mainstream would not have been familiar with -- oh, say, bukake -- that's just a fact of the world. And I think it's a non-crazy enterprise to ask whether that might have been a good thing. Certainly, one needn't be Dobson or Mackinnon to think this way.
looking back needn't be mere nostalgia
Of course not. You and I are basically in agreement on this stuff; I'm just making a stab at what I think bothers people about Wolfe and Brooks (besides Brooks' mendacity). They sure seem nostalgic.
I'm angry at Wolfe for his ham-handed moralizing. Sure, social upheavals can be stressful and anomie producing. But Wolfe is harumphing about 30-year-old news and passing it off as contemporary social commentary.
But is it old news? That's just the rub. Some things -- 50 year old men dicarding their spouses and takign up with young cookies -- certainly are but can we say the same abotu the totality of Wolfe's observations about the playstation/mainstreaming of porn generation?
And now that I think about it, so what if it's old news! Hell middleclass people being miserable is old news too, and no one attacks Jonathan Franzen!
Well, thanks for the niceness Fontana. I think you overestimate how much the humanities can suck when a) they aren't philosophy, and b) they aren't being done at an elite level. And by suck, I mean the technical definition of "become drunk on the most horrendous witches brew of poorly understood social construction/relativism/what marx or freud would have written if mentally retarded and deprived of oxygen for twleve minutes"." I too, on first reading Closing of the American Mind thought "why waste breath debunking relativism -- only tools believe that." Alas, no. Maybe Wolfe errs in attributes this mindset to a powerhouse institution like Dupont: I haven't read the book. Based on past performance, however, I'd trust Wolfe. His take on 'museum speak' in Man in Full was painfully accurate.
On the soul, I wasn't making the claim that an absence of Christian soul talk is necessarily bad , but rather that it's a fact. [As you perhaps suspect, I personally, am a big fan of folk psychology and think the "shiny gold coin" school of morality highly under-rated, but that's not what at issue here].
Ok, last point. You are surely right to say that there are always norms. But with equal surety, some norms are less comprehensive, provide less guidance, and allow for more chaos/reativity. The norms of business ethics guiding GM in 1950 vs. the tech bubble. Norms were still there, but one could fairly characterize the later as primarily an dissolution of old norms, and not the insitution of new ones, right? And on the direct point, Alisdair Macintyre, Charles Taylor, and Robert Putnum have been dining out on the collapse of "thick" norms and the decline of mediating social institutions for years, so why can't Wolfe? Isn't this some kind of discrimination against right-Hegelians?
some norms are less comprehensive, provide less guidance, and allow for more chaos/reativity
Spoken like a true conservative. Alternatively, new norms might be less constraining with regard to individual action, more respectful of each person's autonomy, and allow for greater freedom. Another way to say: the replacement of "don't walk on the grass" with "don't tell him not to walk on the grass."
Sure, busting norms can be great. I myself benefit *tremendously* from the creativity and lack of constraints initiated by the Enlightenment; I'm delighted to be a biotech dude, not running some hasidic school deep in a shtetl. That's why I'm an American conservative -- wanting to conserve the radicalism of the Declaration of Independence. USA! Holler!
But we've got to recognize the facts: one man's freedom and creativity is another's chaos and lack of ease. And, often, it's the same man. Don't believe me, ask a five year old how he feels about change or about the absence of structure. And, interestingly enoguh, that's another theme from Tom Wolfe...
[and just as an aside I really did mean to link chaos and creativity (that, not relativity, is what my typos conceals) there's good and bad in lack of structure. and just because we like the good, doesn't mean we should overlook the bad.]
We're not agreeing that easily. The simple point I meant to convey with the bit about walking on the grass is that norms really have changed, and not just been discarded. Public scolding "hey mister, don't walk on the grass," and even milder behavior like, "your suit is unbuttoned," are pretty strictly proscribed. That's not simply an increase in liberty, but also a prosription on ways we can interact.
But, a bit more Foucauldianly, the relationship between the discarding of old norms and freedom or creativity isn't always simple. It's a sign of one kind of permissiveness that the country was able to discuss presidential blowjobs, but the fact that it could be discussed was, at the very same time, the mechanism by which presidential blowjobs (which Clinton certainly didn't invent) were subjected to scrutiny and control.
That's why I have to agree with Labs here; one can't just say more or less free; we have shifting configurations of norms.
I don't know much about Wolfe's book, but from what I do, I have two immediate problems with it. First, he seems to be passing it off as a quasi-sociological reading of modern day college students, yet all his reasearch time was spent at six or so northeastern, elite universites. Along the same lines, he seems to have spent an innordinate amout of time amongst greek organizations. I suppose then, I would appreciate it if Wolfe's book was qualified to be a quasi-sociological study of the children of the (most likely) wealthy and elite.
baa,
Perhaps I'm reading this into your arguments, but you seem to be sympathetic to a forced choice argument: either there's "undergirding morality" which delimits behavior, or else one is faced with "chaos/relativity." I'd argue that there is a third option, which Ogged points to, which is immanent self-determination. Perhaps this is what gets to people about Wolfe's view; he points out a decline in formal morality, and (apparantly) is oblivious to new social formations.
Like Safire, much of what Brooks says is intellitgent. I like him more than I like Safire. In further defense of Brooks I'd say he was the ONLY good commentator for PBS during the DNC in Boston, although he overstepped his bounds a bit in questioning Carter and Jimmy gave him what for.
I forgot to add, "My dick is so big, it won't return Spielberg's calls" really really cracked me up.
My dick is so big, it only plays arenas.
the relationship between the discarding of old norms and freedom or creativity isn't always simple.
I'm with you....
It's a sign of one kind of permissiveness that the country was able to discuss presidential blowjobs...
Still with you...
but the fact that it could be discussed was, at the very same time, the mechanism by which presidential blowjobs (which Clinton certainly didn't invent) were subjected to scrutiny and control.
D'oh! So close!
Yes, talking about is mechanism of "scrutiny and control." But it's a pretty wussy method when compared to say, impeaching, or burning at the stake. I think it's just the case that norms now, today, in the US allow more freedoms to women than did norms 50 years ago, or norms in Suadi Arabia. They are more free, full stop. I don't believe you, or anybody, really would deny this. It's practically the best argument for Western culture out there.
So if you'll grant me this, would you grant that *sometimes* increasing freedom increases uncertainty? And that the coefficient of correlation is probably above 0.4? Throw a dog a bone here!
Michael, I fear you'll need to say more about option #3 before I understand it wnoguh to comment!
I'm not convinced that college students suffer from very much anomie or guilt about sex. There's a lot of angst, but most of it is about social acceptance rather than moral goodness.
Baa's right that the harm principle dominates most college students' sexual mores. But the harm principle issues clear moral guidance: "Do what you want, as long as you aren't hurting anyone else. Be supportive and non-judgmental of your peers, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else."
Commonsense morality already provides guidance as to right and wrong behavior: "Don't rape anyone. Keep your promises. Communicate openly. Set and respect personal boundaries. Be responsible about birth control and STDs. Don't poach off your friends. "No" means no. Don't uphold sexist double standards. Don't be homophobic. Call your friends out when they're being sexist/homophobic. Don't be hypocritical. Etc, etc."
It's a little more complicated than "save yourself for marriage"--but not much when you come right down to it.
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