Vol. 3 No. 3 (July 2004)
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/
"Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-- Margaret Mead
CONTENTS
Talking
Points: Redefining personal responsibility
Wit
and Wisdom: Bush cancels 2004 election
Check
It Out: Tracking down urban legends
Featured
Article: James Hoag on global power relations
Quoted!
Dick Cheney on the floor of the Senate
Happenings:
ATLA presentation; Talking Politics workshop
Endorsements:
L. Hunter Lovins
Get
Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
TALKING POINTS
The phrase "personal responsibility" or "individual
responsibility" has often been taken by the Left as code for conservative
policies that reinforce the divide between the haves and the have-nots. That's
not surprising: the Right routinely invokes the phrase to imply that government
should not do much to help ordinary people, who should rather just help
themselves.
This is not the kind of "individual responsibility" I am interested
in here. But nor am I talking about the apparent alternative: abdicating
personal responsibility by trusting a cadre of elites to promote our best
interests through a variety of social programs and policies. Instead, I'm
advocating an understanding of individual responsibility that goes beyond such
traditional formulations, which tend to be more politically divisive than they
are constructive.
Viewed another way, individual responsibility is the privilege and
obligation exercised by citizens when they critically examine the spoken and
unspoken assumptions of any leader, institution, or corporate entity who would
presume to have their interests at heart. That's a demanding task, to be
sure, but one we must continually undertake if we are to preserve the
democratic ideals upon which our nation was founded.
The political and commercial mass markets of our culture - advertisers,
politicians, the media - spoon-feed their constituencies with technologically
slick, but intellectually and morally simplistic, pabulum. They seek to
condition us to act as sheep - to turn over to them our money, our votes, our
leisure hours our loyalty. Yet the masters of these markets are abetted by
their target audiences! They thrive on our own personal interests, our
unacknowledged biases, our deep-rooted desires - for these are what give the
culture industry, and its leaders, the power to shape our perceptions and
influence our behavior.
Individual responsibility, then, is a challenge to greater self-awareness and
heightened skepticism when it comes to the countless entities that seek and
demand our allegiance. To place too much of our collective faith in
individual leaders, representative organizations, or belief systems themselves
is to abdicate this fundamental human responsibility; it is likewise to
impoverish the minds and imaginations of future generations.
The corporate world supplies countless object lessons in how simplified or
misleading beliefs can come to dominate collective thinking. It's common, for
example, for popular culture to represent corporations in evolutionary terms,
as "organisms" seeking to survive and thrive in their given
environment. We should see this characterization for what it is, however: a
metaphor held over from 19th-century Social Darwinism. The metaphor of the
"corporate organism" suggests, dangerously, that it is
"natural" for corporate entities to eliminate workplace protections,
to reduce salaries and benefits, to lay off thousands of workers, to circumvent
environmental laws, and to crush smaller competitors. These strategies, we are
told, are simply a means of guaranteeing survival in a competitive, capitalist
economy. As it is in nature, so it is in business: only the strong survive.
Clearly, this metaphor is no longer adequate, for it confuses the natural and
the social, and conceals the ways in which governments protect corporations
from real competition. Corporations exist only because governments permit them
to do so. The legal, regulatory, and economic environment in which corporations
are born, live, compete, reproduce, and die is one created by human societies.
In a democracy, then, this means that corporations can only do what we the
people permit them to do.
Moreover, the Social Darwinist metaphor implies that morality does not have a
place in corporate behavior - a dangerous idea in an age when individual
rights, environmental resources, and traditional social patterns are under
increasing pressure from global capitalism.
There are some lessons to be learned here from the "lost generation"
of the early 20th century. No generation, perhaps, better understood the
need for greater individual responsibility than this cast of critically-minded
rebels who founded the literary and artistic movement of the 1920s and 30s
known as "modernism," with its explicit injunction against the
mingling of politics and art. Advanced by intellectuals from around the
globe, and typified by experimental artistic forms, modernism critiqued
middle-class complacency, cultural dependency on mass media, and the rapidly
growing pop-culture industry - what had become, in lieu of orthodox religion, a
new "opiate" for the senses.
Perhaps that's why nobody reads modernist poetry these days - it's just too
damn much work. "Art for art's sake" neither encouraged people to see
art as merely decorative, without purpose, nor was it intent upon making a
sacred fetish of art. This movement was, however, producing art that would have
radical cognitive benefits by encouraging self-reflection, heightening
awareness, and kindling creative thought, so that all might see the world and
its cultures more keenly and more critically. When Wallace Stevens, for
example, wrote "
Modernism, then, offered a challenge to the intellect and a spur to
individual responsibility that is just as crucial today. That challenge was
not just to our leaders, not just to a political or cultural "elite."
The challenge was to individuals, to demand greater intellectual breadth and
philosophical depth, to be examples of the rational faculty available to all.
In its emphasis on the unorthodox, in its attempt to unsettle perception and
disorient the senses, the modernist movement was anti-authoritarian and
anti-totalitarian in spirit. Modernist writers, artists, and thinkers sought to
expand the popular perception of what constituted human "family,"
seeing it based not on genetic kinship, but on something larger - call it the
human spirit, basic humanitarian principles, the capacity to reason, or
something else. Human relationships were held to be sacred, in contrast to corporate,
institutional, or political interests.
Given the conditions and contentions of our current political climate, we would
do well to reconsider what the exercise of one's individual responsibility
should mean, quite independently of the slogans and policies it has become
associated with. Among other things, it means questioning the sense of a
militarized "war on terror" based on the fear of such spectral
entities as "gathering forces" and "evil-doers." It means
resisting the perversion of language by which a "Patriot Act" divests
individuals of their civil liberties, by which the "Clear Skies"
initiative eases air-pollution regulations, and by which the "Healthy
Forests" initiative makes it easier to log old-growth forests. It means
educating ourselves about history and culture, so that we can better keep our
own cultural and historical moment in perspective. It means all this, and much
more.
Daily besieged as we are by individuals and organizations seeking our
allegiance, skepticism is our best defense, and our best opportunity to
preserve our autonomy in a world increasingly shaped by institutional thought.
As individuals, we have not only the right to do so, but the responsibility.
-- Stephanie Hawkins
2004 Presidential Election Canceled
Bush Cites National Security Concerns, Inconvenience
"
Although the U.S. Constitution expressly mandates that presidential elections
be held every four years, a little-known clause in the USA Patriot Act, which
Congress hastily approved in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, gives
the sitting president the option to cancel a presidential election and remain
in office indefinitely if he deems it in the national interest."
-- By Daniel Kurtzman. Read more.
CHECK IT OUT
Heard a story you think might be true, but seems apocryphal? Been wondering
about those rumors you heard back in middle school? Satisfy your curiosity by
visiting the "Urban Legends Reference Pages" at http://www.snopes.com/. From
food to politics to music, Snopes.com has the answers -- or at least they can
explain why there are no clear answers.
For example, are the following true or false?
1. The nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie" is a
coded reference to the Black Plague.
2. The middle name of President Harry Truman was just the letter 'S.'
3. The last piece of music played by the Titanic's band was "Nearer My God
to Thee."
4. Photograph shows Senator John Kerry at a 1970 anti-war rally with Jane
Fonda.
5. Catherine the Great was crushed to death while attempting intercourse with a
horse.
Answers (excerpted):
1. False. "Although folklorists have been
collecting and setting down in print bits of oral tradition such as nursery
rhymes and fairy tales for hundreds of years, the earliest print appearance of
'Ring Around the Rosie' did not occur until the publication of Kate Greenaway's
Mother Goose or The Old Nursery Rhymes in 1881. For the "plague"
explanation of 'Ring Around the Rosie' to be true, we have to believe that
children were reciting this nursery rhyme continuously for over five centuries,
yet not one person in that five hundred year span found it popular enough to
merit writing it down."
2. True. "Unable to decide between a middle name honoring Harry's
maternal grandfather (Solomon Young) or his paternal grandfather (Anderson
Shipp[e] Truman), John and Martha opted not to give little Harry a middle name
at all and settled on something that could represent either grandparent: the
letter 'S' by itself."
3. Undetermined. "None of the gallant band members survived the
sinking, but their memories are sure to survive as long as the Titanic is a
subject of interest, for one of the endlessly debated pieces of Titanic
minutiae concerns the identity of the final song played by the band just before
the ship began its final plunge beneath the waves. Part of the fascination with
this subject undoubtedly stems from the fact that the question is ultimately
unanswerable, since none of the band members lived to talk, and accounts from surviving
passengers and crew members are unreliable and contradictory. With no other
evidence available to us, the identity of that final song will remain an
eternal mystery."
4. True. "This picture comes from a rally held by the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an anti-war group with which Kerry was
affiliated, held in
5. False. "Catherine the Great actually died alone, and she died of
natural causes. On the morning of 5 November 1796, Catherine arose, drank
coffee, and sat down to write. About three hours later her chamberlain, curious
that he had not been summoned as usual, found her barely conscious on the floor
of a closet adjacent to her bedroom. As her servant summoned help, Catherine
lapsed into an unconsciousness from which she never awakened and died at 9:45
PM the next day. An autopsy conducted the next day determined the cause of
death to be a cerebral hemorrhage."
Whether you're trying to win a
bet or make a point, or just wasting time, Snopes.com might help. Check it out.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from "A Global Power Shift in the Making,"
by James F. Hoag, Jr., Editor of Foreign Affairs. The article appears in the
July/August, 2004, edition of that journal.
"The transfer of
power from West to East is gathering pace and soon will dramatically change the
context for dealing with international challenges - as well as the challenges
themselves. Many in the West are already aware of
"
Click here to read the
whole article.
QUOTED!
"F--- yourself." -- Vice President Dick Cheney, to Senator
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), on the floor of the Senate, in response to criticism of
Halliburton's war profiteering. As quoted in The Economist. Other media
outlets reported the comment variously as "Go f--- yourself,"
"F--- you," and "F--- off." The Vice President's Office
would confirm only that there had been "a frank exchange of views."
HAPPENINGS
ATLA Presentation -- On July 7, Commonweal Institute Fellow David
Johnson spoke at the annual convention of the Association of Trial Lawyers of
America. His remarks (simultaneously hard-hitting and humorous, and available
at www.commonwealinstitute.org/ATLAremarks.htm) concerned the
Right's ongoing assault on trial lawyers and tort law.
"My research shows that 'tort reform' is actually just
one part of a broader, coordinated, ideological 'movement' that consists of a
network of hundreds of 'conservative' organizations, all receiving funding from
a core group of wealthy donors…..
"Trial lawyers haven't been taking this lying down. You have been fighting
back, making your case, lobbying, explaining the value of consumer protections,
etc. But where in the past you were often successful, now something seems to
have changed, and your response just doesn't seem to be working very well
anymore. You are losing ground…..
"The environment of public attitudes has been influenced and manipulated
by these powerful organs of right-wing persuasion, and operating as if that
environment still supported YOU is no longer realistic. In fact, they'll mock
you as being touchy-feely."
Talking Politics Workshop
-- On July 31, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in
ENDORSEMENTS
"Developing effective messages that speak to specific constituencies
remains one of the critical tasks facing all think tanks today. As the founder
of two think tanks, I am well aware of the challenges that arise when you
propose to combine activism with lofty ideas. What does it matter how good our
ideas are, if we can't speak in ways that broad-based, diverse constituencies
understand? Concepts like Natural Capitalism aren't easy to communicate. As
Commonweal Institute develops ideas and implements new, creative strategies for
communicating moderate and progressive concepts, we'll all benefit." -- L.
Hunter Lovins, Co-Chair of the Natural Capitalism Group of The Global
Academy
GET INVOLVED
If you agree with L. Hunter Lovins (see above), there are a number of ways you
can help the Commonweal Institute achieve its goals.
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© 2004 The Commonweal Institute
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