[lbo-talk] Re: gorgeous moscow subway stations

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Apr 20 13:15:50 PDT 2005


Kelley:
> to your commeents. Though your comments don't strike me as pertinent to
the
> lives of the people who I was talking about.

I guess when we start talking about people we know well, "explanation" takes a hike and "rationalization" sets in. So that is perhaps a good reason for not bringing personal stuff into a discussion.

I suspect that you used my posting on the aesthetic aspects of the man made landscape in the US to address a different issue I expressed elsewhere - namely my ranting about the Boobus Americanus (pardon the HK Mencken reference). I guess speaking unfavorably about "common people" does not sail well on this list and in the progressive circles in general.

However, I find such that such populism utterly stifles any discussion and attempt at an explanation. Such stifling is done in several ways. One is by escaping to the abstract which consists of assigning the blame for individual behavior to some abstraction - the "system" "capitalism" the "devil" and so on. Another one is escaping to the personal which consists bringing personal details as attenuating circumstances to exonerate individual behavior. Still another one is ordinary ad hominem which consists on questioning the motives or integrity of the person questioning individual behavior.

However, none of these brings us any closer to understand why people do things they do. Why do they vote ostensibly against their economic interests? Why do they join the Army knowing that they will be ordered to kill people who never posed any threat to them? Why do they intensely hate people whom they have never known or met? Why are they stuck in a rut when nothing seems to hold them from changing their lives?

I think these are important questions, yet much of the sociology that I encountered obfuscates them rather than answering and falls into one of the populist mythologies I just mentioned. It does not explain but rationalizes and excuses, or alternatively blames.

To be sure, I am not particularly interested in blaming people for doing what I would not. Living in the wilderness and surviving by hunting and fishing is not exactly my cup of tea, nor is living in a farming community without electricity and using horse buggy for transportation. Religion of all sorts is a belly laugh for me. So is identity politics, which is a form of secular religion. However, I do not reproach people who pursue any of these activities, unless of course they reproach me for mine, or try to impose their views or lifestyles on me.

In the current political climate in the US of A, I feel that certain views, ideals, courses of action and life styles are being forced fed to me. I also feel that I and people like me are considered public enemies by folks who do not like my life style and my preferences, and some of them would not mind to get rid of me altogether for not knowing what they do. I do not think that people who hold such views or feelings come from a single social class or that everyone from a single social class holds these views or feelings - but I see certain correlations or likelihoods if you will. Hence my HL Mencken ranting.

Having said that, however, I am also interested in explaining why people do what they do, especially when what they do seems to fly against their own well being. I use the word 'explaining" in the way it is used in science rather than in social commentary of political discourse, and the ability to predict rather than post hoc rationalize - or perhaps take rationalizations submitted by others (including the subjects themselves) for explanations.

An example of such explanation is George Lakoff's theory of "moral politics" or people using moral metaphors to understand politics and guide their political choices. The theory makes predictions about political based on the explaining factors (concepts of morality), and thus explains facts by a cause and effect model, rather than post hoc rationalizing known outcomes. Those explanation may eventually prove wrong, but that is another story. Another good sociological explanation is the work of Stanley Katz on criminal behavior in which he explains that behavior by status seeking among peer groups that share anti-social norms. Or the work of Oscar Lewis explaining the mutual reinforcement of dysfunctional communities and self-defeating norms of behavior (which is a rather complex notion of causality).

However, I see little value in "explaining" i.e. casting human behavior in moral terms that either condemn or condone it. Examples range from "they chose to be evil and lazy" to "poor fellas deserve our pity because they have to walk uphill to work/school both ways" and to "what they do is absolutely justified because 'the system' gives them a raw deal." These are excuses not explanations.

So to summarize, please do not take what I say on this list personally. When I rant, I rant about something I saw or heard earlier around me to express my frustration, rather than to put down or criticize anyone on this list (if I do not like certain postings I say so, or simply ignore them if I feel that my comment my ignite an irrational diatribe). When I try to explain things, I view these explanations as pertaining to all human beings (whether it's true of false), including myself - nothing personal.

Wojtek



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