tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48839384824693523562024-03-12T20:10:31.903-07:00Our evolving | gary e. davis | berkeleygary e. davis<br>
<a href="http://gedavis.com/comment.html">contact</a>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-79524376996102219942023-10-14T21:23:00.016-07:002023-10-27T21:33:22.522-07:00wishful thinking about the Hamas-Israel conflict<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
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Ongoing crises in the news make my immersions in value theory seem foolish: <i>as if</i> care for principle, better distinctions, and compassionate reasoning can have effective merit. Nevertheless, I trek onward.
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Here’s a <a href="https://nyti.ms/3ZTuOWC#permid=128445231"><u>comment I posted</u></a> tonight at the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/opinion/israel-gaza-united-nations.html?smid=url-share"><i><u>NY Times</i> article</u></a> by
UN General Secretary Guterres (quoting some key phrases he uses):<blockquote>
If global society will make and keep real that there <i>must be</i> an “international community” (not just global society alluding to the notion)—if <i>We</i> will hold sacred “each other’s humanity”—then we can make “UN resolutions” and “international law” effective, by demanding that our national leaders make the UN an effective institution during crises.
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Collaborative political leadership can cause “our common humanity” to lead regional conflicts toward equitable prosperity on shared grounds.
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But it calls for citizens to elect enlightened leadership, and for leadership to educate citizens adequately about how the world really works, such that We can work well only if respect for each other’s humanity is sacred.
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All developed nations are partly responsible for the interminable struggle of Palestinians to have their own state.
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Israel must show leadership which makes constructive relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations work for a durable two-state solution, led by Palestinians and Israel in partnership. And the solution must honor the idea of the UN as beacon of human rights and humanity.
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Humanity will not survive—and can indeed disappear!—without a principle-based international order which works. (This, by the way, is why Putin must lose.)
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There can be no security for our children’s futures without effective democratic authority by reason of the principle-based international order that is really effective. </blockquote>
And <a href="https://nyti.ms/3M2eP37#permid=128446969"><u>I added</u></a>, at Tom Friedman’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/international-world/israel-hamas-war.html?smid=url-share"><u>article</u></a> on the conflict: <blockquote>
A partnership of Israel, Arab nations, and Palestinians in their new state can altogether re-build Gaza to make it a jewel of the Middle East, while the medieval theocracy in Iran shrivels away due to the Iranian people's securing of democracy.
<br><br>
And Vladimir the Great is forgotten. Democracy prevails in China. The UN Security Council prudently uses military force to protect developing nations' paths to democracy.
<br><br>
Global warming is reversed. Fusion power makes prosperity flourish in harmony with biodiversity....
<br><br>
This is how it must be. Our heirs deserve it.</blockquote>
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-359347837330767492023-09-23T13:33:00.010-07:002023-10-10T10:29:02.455-07:00supreme leader: democratic constitutionality<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
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I want to share the letter I wrote to the Editor of <i>The Atlantic</i> magazine where I praised his article on General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose explicit “constitutional patriotism” expresses that strict fidelity to democratic constitutionality protects against autocratic exploitation of military power.
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There is “supreme leader”ship located in (distributed through) the three estates of (1) jurisprudential “divining” of implicit lawfulness, which yields to (2) Congressional action, which yields to (3) valid electoral legitimation.
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Dear Mr. Goldberg,
<br><br>
Your extensive <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/general-mark-milley-trump-coup/675375/">article on General Milley</a> is so outstanding in so many regards! But one dimension is especially important to this philosophical subscriber of many years: the sense of constitutional patriotism which General Milley exemplifies.
<br><br>
We usually regard constitutionality as a political principle, rather than a military principle. But General Milley demonstrates exactly what the post-1945 world order is about, and this importance cannot be overestimated, relative to the dangers of autocracies and dictatorships.
<br><br>
Essentially important—which political thinkers may miss—is that the <i>form</i> of institutional credibility, distinct from substance (which may change due to amendment and jurisprudential precedent) is the nature of constitutionality. One may be rightly against Second Amendment Originalism, but that's within the sacred institution of constitutionality and the reign of fair procedure for deliberative amendment (and—one should add—in light of public education which causes amendment to be truly democratic).
<br><br>
We talk of a "rules-based international order," but that's essentially a <i>principle</i>-based international order: The rules may change, but only (at best) <b>by principle of fair procedure</b>. The procedural nature of constitutional government and deliberative change is the "machine" of fair human progress, apart from the substantive issues which may be addressed by fair procedure.
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General Milley's dramatically committed fidelity to constitutionality exemplifies why there has been the notion of American Exceptionalism for the sake of collaborative global political leadership: The principled and deliberative character of due process and fair procedure pertains to the fairness and stability of global collaboration which is the only way to keep the world out of war—and the only way to effectively address planetary issues resisted by corporate greed and autocratic avarice.
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A leading political philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, has developed and advocated for decades a conception of democracy as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_patriotism">constitutional patriotism</a>." Academic writers have addressed this as a political principle, not as a military principle. But Habermas's work—like no other—entails that <b>constitutional patriotism is the best conception of military authority</b>.
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Habermas is still alive, albeit 94 years old. A proper appreciation of what philosophy can contribute to humanity—moral and demographic—would be to highlight for U.S. readers the career of Habermas, now while he's alive, rather than as obituary.
<br><br>
Indeed, the North Atlantic Alliance hinges on the U.S.-German alliance whose best philosophical understanding has been expressed by Habermas's life-long endeavor to articulate a trans-Atlantic (globally applicable) comprehension of democratic reason.
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The idea of the United Nations was implicitly that a constitutional patriotism could prevail among nations—notwithstanding the impotence caused by a Security Council that has apparently no way to remove a permanent member that is a war criminal.
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The principle of constitutional patriotism stands as the great idea of humanity which has kept the world out of major war for 75 years. The value of constitutional patriotism is among the greatest ideas and achievements of humanity.
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General Milley deserves the appreciation which you've displayed. But the notion of constitutional patriotism also deserves appreciation. Though General Milley exemplifies how the "credibility of the institution"—that concept—works for the sustainability of Our humanity, one conception is supreme leader: authentically constitutional authority.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-71020349352912950072023-07-29T20:56:00.008-07:002023-08-13T16:33:14.180-07:00anomie of ordinary luck in a time of heat and war<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
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I’m unremarkably lucky among persons not living with intense heat or war. As a news junkie, I regularly feel gratitude and depressing sadness —and anger: How many Ukrainian civilians must die before a conspiracy of confidantes arrests Putin and sends him to The Hague?
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After a Ukrainian drone recently hit the Crimean Bridge, Putin went on TV to declare, with hardened jaw, that the “act of terrorism” which killed “two innocent civilians” and which was “cruel” justified retaliation, presumably through more Russian missiles, having already killed many innocent civilians in Ukraine.
<br><br>
The dictator has a mentality worthy of Hitler. Maybe the only option is<br>
to snuff the beast, knowing that such nobility would also bring death<br>
to the hero, but merely two, to save thousands of Ukrainians, maybe<br>
tens of thousands.
<br><br>
Countering good and evil has become so trite, one might forget that the difference is tragically real. Unfortunate enough is the valiant war of medical science against malignant biology. The contest between demo-<br>
cracy and autocracy is a war against malignant power.
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I can easily feel that conceptual venturing is a kind of useless luxury, even though I’ve done what I can over the decades to care and to support educational excellence.
<br><br>
Instituting reliable humanity is an intergenerational commitment, investment, and engagement, just as the luck we’ve had is due to the same which our ancestors gave.
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Devotion to actualization of the best ideas, living for want of better humanity, and loving to be alive makes bearing witness worthwhile.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-51987717567344693472023-02-06T14:51:00.007-08:002023-02-06T19:10:47.302-08:00staying oriented by the better sense of Our humanity<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
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It’s not that <i>my</i> sense is “the” better sense because it’s basically mine. Rather, prospecting all manner of issues for decades results in—has derived—a “simple” sense of Our humanity which seems better than any other sense I’ve found—which I assert here in hope that—inasmuch as I’m misguided—senses better than mine will come my way!
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To be brief, I’ll divide my supposedly better sense into three modes: <font color="#c60">global</font>, <font color="#c60">discursive</font>, and <font color="#c60">life cyclic</font>; and simply allude to how they differ.
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A <font color="#c60"><b>global sense</b></font> was expressed to President Biden last month (<i>as if</i>, you know), which I turned into a Web page with added comment: “<u><a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/n14/n01.html">for wholly flourishing humanity</a></u>.” That was supplemented by <u><a href="https://nyti.ms/3wWK9rV#permid=123017552">a comment last night</a></u> at Tom Friedman’s recent column about the Ukraine war.
<br><br>
A <font color="#c60"><b>discursive sense</b></font> is expressed by <u><a href="https://twitter.com/GEDavisBerkeley/status/1622300069545537536">two recent comments</a></u> at the <i>Times</i> in praise of the integral place of <u><a href="https://cohering.net/ca4/c414.13.html">humanities in better lives</a></u>, which I generalize to a sense of university leadership, which I <u><a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/10/ecology.html">expressed here in 2021</a></u>.
<br><br>
A <font color="#c60"><b>life cyclic sense</b></font> is expressed by the inevitable <u><a href="https://cohering.net/ca43/g7/g01.html">singularity of enjoying</a></u> my open horizon of <u><a href="https://cohering.net/ca3/cp16.html">conceptual prospecting</a></u>, a tr<b><i>o</i></b>pical jetstream of appealing futurity of Our humanity, by gradually constellating manifold engagements—creative, analytical, and pragmatic—including better understanding genuine relatability, individuation of authentic happiness, enriching appreciability (i.e., ability to appreciate), “capturing” creativity as such (not possible, but the venture can be highly fruitful), venturing high-scale conceptions (pragmatically motivated), and learning through the Flow (the “process”) of it all.
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I expect to elaborate the themes of that previous paragraph soon.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-89412290116849342422022-03-16T15:33:00.031-07:002023-01-29T21:26:09.235-08:00overcoming negate-ive ("Dialectical") thinking<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr />
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‘Dialectic’, in the modern sense (not Socratic), names an approach to thinking about differences as primarily oppositions. The opposition is resolved through synthesis which transcends the opposition. Typically, opposition is understood negatively: “A is opposed to B” is the same as <br />
“A = not B” or A is the negation of B.
<br /><br />
The appeal of this arises in two ways: <br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A person (or party) finds oneself in a disturbing condition of opposition to something, and thinks of this dialectically, i.e., as a challenge of getting beyond the opposition through “synthesis” of some kind (“situated transcendence,” for example: <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-life-of-imagination/9780231189088">ch. 7 here</a>). </li><li>One comes to a disturbing situation already thinking dialectically, so the disturbance is understood oppositionally (e.g., disagreement; or alienation which objectifies the other). </li></ul>
But the etymological <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dialectic">history of the notion</a> isn’t dialectical in any sense,<br />
not even in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method">the Socratic sense</a>, which pertains to a conception of pedagogical debate.
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The history of the notion (as textual legacy) <i>begins</i> with Socrates (i.e., Plato’s discursive <i>character</i>), but the notion <i>evolves</i>, and that evolution is beyond dialectical understanding.
<br /><br />
The modern sense of ‘dialectic’ is pre-evolutionary (typically neo-Hegelian), while evolution is a modern, progressive notion, actually beyond the biological sense of natural-selective changes, which are not progressive, except inasmuch as a notion of intelligence (e.g., advancing complexity, advancing appreciability) is mapped into ecological conditions.
<br /><br />
Though the modern notion of dialectics <i>responds</i> to the preceding modern interest in progress or social progressivity (and individual prosperity), typical of European modernity, the sense of progress is thereby <i>made</i> dialectical, not discerned as already dialectical. That is,<br />
the conception of progress is conceived as dialectical.
<br /><br />
But the conception of progress has evolved too, in a way which is historical in a non-dialectical sense, in terms of varyng notions of high culture across civilizations, then through the emergence of European modernity around the beginning of the second millennium CE.
<br /><br />
So, the modern notion of dialectics is unwittingly immersed in an evolution of notions of pedagogy, progress, history, and evolving which the notion of dialectics (I would argue) cannot comprehend in its own terms, basically because differentiation in intelligent life isn’t basically oppositional.
<br /><br />
For example, being male isn’t basically about <i>not</i> being female (though the anthropology of paternalism—paradigmatically <i>religious</i>; or “warranted” by classical religions—shows otherwise, pathogenically so). Being a child isn’t basically about <i>not</i> yet being an adult (though the anthropology of family shows otherwise, disciplinarily so). Disagreeing with you isn’t basically about opposing you (though common practice is otherwise, divisively so).
<br /><br />
The “isn’t” there is differential, not oppositional, because in each kind of case the oppositional condition is ununwitting <i>concealment</i> of the real difference (a complexity which is beyond oppositional understanding), i.e., oppositioning is an unwitting degrading of the other—unwitting inasmuch as it’s an <i>underdevelopment</i> of one’s comprehension of difference, an <i>immaturity</i> of understanding the other.
<br /><br />
Therefore, a conception of developmental difference aptly <i>affirms</i> the developmental relativity of opposition; and, I would argue, aptly <i>frames</i> the opposition as a developmental immaturity.
<br /><br />
Of course, opposition is often required, but as a derivative, supplement-<br />
ary, maybe extreme mode of taking exception to a situation: being drawn into a defensive stance toward an aggressive, regressed mode of adversarial relations that doesn’t allow peaceful resolution.
<br /><br />
Because human life is developmental, i.e., <a href="https://gedavis.com/ci/c4/02.01c4.html">lifeworldliness</a> is intrinsically developmental, <i>willful</i> opposition (i.e., insistance on the validity of one’s opposition) is best regarded as an educational (or clinical) kind of issue, i.e., a framing which calls for more sophistication (or therapeutic efficacy) by the wlllfully opposed other.
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So, dialectic thinking, relative to Our evolving (involving pedagogical, progressive, and historical sensibility) is a notion <i>of</i> evolving thought, which is individually developmental, thus culturally developmental or poltically developmental.
<br /><br />
An articulable developmental-evolutionary relativity of conceptuality includes an evolution of dialectics which dissolves into the evolution of thinking about differences. Dialectical thinking (in the modern sense) is an evolutionarily immature era of thinking about individuation (education, pedagogy) and culture (progressivity, history). This is easily demonstrable in terms of the etymology of ‘dialectic’, which I’ll address later.
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For now, I want to emphasize that the immaturity of understanding differences easily becomes pathological, e.g., in common instances of regarding a person’s criticism as the expressions of an enemy. Or one’s inability to understand the other makes the other an alien, as if diseased.
<br /><br />
A stunning version of this is pathological narcissism, which accuses the adversarial other of dispositions which are actually one’s own. For example, Donald Trump “found” “hoaxes” all around him, but was deeply involved in deceiving (and thereby exploiting) others. Vladimir Putin sees NATO designing to colonize Russia, when actually Putin designs to colonize non-Russian slavic nations. He sees aspirations of empire by a “West” that actually mirrors his own desire to lead a Russian empire.
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In the post-WW-I period, Carl Schmitt developed a “political theology” which understands the political world as composed of “friends” and “enemies”—and justified that in theological terms. Many German academics of the period found Schmitt very persuasive, and his work was popular in the university during the Nazi period.
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In contemporary China, there is strong interest in Carl Schmitt’s thinking in relation to warranting the entitlement of neo-Maosist socialism in neo-Confucian terms which pretends to entail a calling for global greatness which must regard the U.S. so adversarially that the U.S. becomes an enemy (albeit one with which China depends for trade).
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The “warrant” of autocracy <i>needs</i> to regard democracy as an enemy, while the warrant of democracy regards autocracy as a tragedy which deserves humane emancipation into the fair world—into the principle-based international order which evolved after WW-II.
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A few days ago, I responded to an article by a well-known professor of public policy—a“leftie,” he calls himself—who severely misunderstands the historical <i>unimportance</i> of Putin’s regressed, deluded despotism toward Ukraine, where I concluded in part that: <blockquote>
A Dialectic of history is invalid: a depressive position, if not ultimately nihilistic. [The professor is extremely pessimistic, finding Putin’s invasion vastly corroborative of the professor’s pessimism about global democratic promise, which <i>motivates</i> his advice for oppositional activism within democratic societies.] Progress does not originate from transcending conflict. Good lives are not based on prevailing over trauma. The latter is the exception that proves the basis of our lives in potential we already always embodied.
<br /><br>
Progress originates from keeping fidelity to the long arc of our evolving potential, which has indeed seen the triumph of<br />
"the better angels of our nature" (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJBYTB/">Steven Pinker</a>)—especially inasmuch as educators keep primacy of potential proven by healing adversity—and opinion leaders write to secure constructive thinking as the precursor and motive for critique, not constructiveness as a supplement, dependent on emergence of adversity to motivate progress.
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History amply proves that aspiration for fair flourishing prevails over predatory power, notwithstanding the periods<br />
of horror that we must make never again occur. </blockquote>
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-45999250854708699372022-03-01T11:49:00.005-08:002022-03-01T12:57:30.839-08:00better humanity through better being<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
This day, Our humane planet—the True humanity of Us—continues<br>
an historic show of coordinated global response to the invasion<br>
of Ukraine, whose men are fighting to death for their democracy.<br>
Whatever the outcome, this March marks a milestone in Our decade.
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Yet, anyone’s life transcends the world’s news of the day, even the era. Each Ukrainian suffers <i>singularly</i> and hopes singularly, as well as <i>with</i> family and with neighbors, all born of a life whose depth of promise and resilience preceded this crisis, and which will sustain recovery singularly, thus in solidarities, friendships, and intimacies.
<br><br>
Meanwhile, journalists are risking their lives to bring the story home<br>
to tranquil readers and viewers by highlighting the tears and desperation of specific others there.
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A singular life is so heartrending or inspiring because empathy is one with one. We who care <i>want</i> to find ourselves <i>there</i> being with them in spirit, which finds intimacy in friendship, friendship in solidarity, and solidarity in civil life.
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May the best of humanity prevail.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-44890000622509486512021-10-29T14:08:00.042-07:002023-01-29T13:03:57.893-08:00 for a Literary university in a democratic ecology<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr />
<div style="text-align: right;"><i>for someone engaged with “scholarly work on ecology<br> and literary modernism” </i></div><br /><a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/what-universities-owe-democracy"><i>What Universities Owe Democracy</i></a>, by John Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels et al. (Oct. 2021), inspires (for me) an idea of interplay wider than conceptions of the university and democracy:
<br /><br />
Literary understanding <—> the university <—> democracy <—> ecological understanding.
<br /><br />
Moreover, the interplay isn’t linear. Literary <—> democracy; <br>
university <—> ecology; and Literary <—> ecology are equally relevant.
<br /><br />
Indeed, a rich appreciation of ecological thinking—highly humanistic thinking—can contribute importantly to the university <—> ecology interface (which is absent from Daniels et al.’s book).
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Usefully, though, they advance four foci, i.e., “four distinct functions of American higher education that are key to liberal democracy: social mobility, citizenship education, the stewardship of facts, and the cultivation of pluralistic, diverse communities” {publisher’s description].
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Unfortunately, Johns Hopkins isn’t located in a “Red” state region where higher education systems might significantly advance “Blue” electoral trends, thanks to progressively more-activist higher education systems.
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However, there are over 100 post-secondary institutions in and near Maryland. What’s Johns Hopkins’s exemplarity in their region? Is their engagement in the Maryland region exemplary? Can Johns Hopkins’s engagement with the Maryland region be regarded as a model that is transposable across regions?
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This is not as distant from highly humanistic interests of Literary appreciation as might first appear, because Literary appreciation is axial for humanities, and humanities are foundational for humanistic literacy, social care, and educational leadership in public life.
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A keynote for social mobility must be that education increases employability across its region by enabling higher adaptability and growth of flexible thinking (early childhood through college), coordinated with relevant occupational programs in community colleges. The research university c0llaborates in regional flourishing (individual, cultural, and social) across post-secondary systems; and advances excellent teaching for pre-K through 12 schools.
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I have a fabulative hope that the university (generically speaking) regards its School of Education as the center of campus, rather than marginalizing the profession as, in effect, an adjunct school.
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“Stewardship of facts” is essentially a matter of what stewardship is to be. At what scale and diverse ways can we best advance fidelity to humanistic interests, prevailing over technocentric interests?
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That humanism is best conceived in the broadest <i>and</i> most authentic sense, which spans more than—but at least—the conception of “Modern Languages and Literatures” (a typical academic department rubric) which is the contemporary version of what was classically called philology. A 21<sup>st</sup> century conception of interdisciplinary studies might best be appreciated as a broadly and deeply humanistic philology. (I have that kind of fantasy in mind when I capitalize ‘literary’).
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“Cultivation of communities” reminds me of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674179498/">Martha Nussbaum</a>’s (and <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2013/09/cultivating-humanity.html">Jürgen Habermas's</a>) longstanding advocacy of “cultivating humanity” (including intrinsic values of Literary studies, of course).
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The heart of educational excellence for children is a home/school partnership of “<a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2006/07/parenting-as-concerted-cultivation.html">concerted cultivation</a>” that enables, rather than “instructs” or trains. (Teaching excellence is a dramatic art that inspires and engages, far more than representing views and disseminating information.)
<br /><br />
How many scholarly graduate programs focus on building teaching excellence? I’ve never heard of one. How many PhDs love teaching? <i>Many</i>, surely; but that won’t get anybody tenure!
<br /><br />
How many municipal school districts afford incentives for teaching excellence (and small class sizes)? (Pre-college teachers in some nations have the esteem and salary of professors in the U.S., most of whom in the U.S. are hardly even teachers, in a memorable sense.)
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Often in the university, progressive practicality of educational leadership in humanities is overshadowed by want of release to do research that warrants tenure; then research funding that allows release from lecturing.
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Within an academic department, the politics of that can get remarkable: competition between faculty members for T.A. funds that relieves the professor from classroom time (making the lecture hall more cost effective); competition for research funds, which can cause resentments between specialists who “know” that their work is more deserving than that of the “colleague” who gets the funding.
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Such political economic conflicts echo analogous conflicts within academic senates, relative to university budget processes—which nowadays see humanities programs sidelined by attrition.
<br /><br />
UC Berkeley used to have separate Rhetoric and Comp. Lit. departments; now they’re combined into one. Many institutions now combine philosophy and religion <i>back</i> into one department (as they were classically). Community colleges sometimes lump all of the humanities into a single, scaled-down “Humanities” department, as supplement to occupational training programs that are well funded by surrounding businesses in need of technical skills.
<br /><br />
Well, <i>OK!</i>: Make all of the A.A. degrees <i>highly</i> appreciative of the humanism that makes careers and old age fulfilling.
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Within departments, politics comes home in the reality that the political is essentially a private matter: In particular, latent sexism and latent racism unwittingly beg for ways through which constructive engagement with “colleagues” can be <i>both</i> functional and, <i>maybe</i>, provide teachable moments for gradually overcoming distorted feeling.
<br /><br />
The challenge and dynamics of constructive engagement in the academic department mirrors similar challenges in the entire world of work, as well as for neighborhood and municipal prospects for community-oriented citizenship.
<br /><br />
At the town/gown interface, academic vanity can evince perceptions of elitism in “ordinary” society (and resentment of university territorial creep into city areas)—while woke anti-sexism and anti-racism in academia mirror the challenge of gaining teachable moments in everyday life.
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So, how does constructive engagement work, such that effective job relations can also heal implicit sexism and implicit racism?
<br /><br />
It’s difficult—and beyond the scope of my present “political” discussion (which I would <i>love</i> to detail; I’ve deleted a lot at this point, to later flesh out separately).
<br /><br />
But persons who think that what’s political is primarily what’s public are näive. Any professional politician knows that all politics advances privately. Of <i>course</i>, political life is composed of public spheres. But the <i>origin</i> of political interest, meaning, change, and advance is constituted interpersonally, showing at high altitude as the pointillistic trending that is only accessible statistically.
<br /><br />
So, how can we best understand the intimacy of political change?
<br /><br />
How does one best heal the dramas of phoniness through teaching as a way of life?
<br /><br />
Cultivating humanity is at least a matter of time: <i>giving</i> time to astute attention, to long-term valuation, to <a href="https://discursive-living.blogspot.com/2018/05/reasoning.html">astute reasoning</a>; giving time to dissolving distortions relative to preserving and advancing genuine working relations.
<br /><br />
Constructive engagement is also the basis for <i>de</i>-constructive engagement (emancipatory interest). It’s not about negating the other’s <i>capability</i> to distinguish their own distortions from shared interest in good relations. It’s at least about advancing respect for each other; and sustaining appreciation of the other’s self-investment in advancing integrity.
<br /><br />
In the humanities, the paradigm is constructive engagement with a text: <i>good faith reading</i> by default (until that’s <i>rationally</i> unsustainable)—especially regarding the “alien” text: <i>enowning</i> the experience-distant text or “too complex” text—or appreciating ordinary interaction as text (persona vis-à-vis personality; conscious personality/ implicit self; distorted view/admirable values).
<br /><br />
Indeed, Derrida’s theme of writing-in-speech could be tenably read as caring about interpersonal/self differences in ordinary communicative interaction as text. (That’s not obvious, but I can detail the view. Also, I would argue that speech act theory is essentially about the <i>rhetoric</i> of “how to do things with words,” paradigmatically in scenic interaction, i.e., oneself as performing a situationally-relative satisfaction of interest that presumes an implicit <a href="https://cohering.net/ca42/sp05.html">self/interpersonal difference</a> in sense of selfidentity [<a href="https://erealism.blogspot.com/2010/02/selfidentity.html">lack of hyphen intended</a>).
<br /><br />
But self-reflective learning through the other/text calls for patient fidelity to the work of working <i>with</i> the other (and not being undone by therapeutic intimations).
<br /><br />
What has become of slow reading? What has become of careful listening? What has become of thinking <i>with</i> another through texts, as if that is an intimate time with “you” in mind?
<br /><br />
Such questions may seem odd, but literary work at heart is an intimate engagement.
<br /><br />
The stewardship we need includes a feeling for good faith reading of the literal other <i>person</i> in interpersonal interaction, modeled in literary reading as potential intimacy of being with each other through letters—and care is the heart of heartfulness—<i>having</i> and <i>giving</i> time for concerted cultivation (be it <i>of</i> individuation, for scholarship, as parenting, in political life…).
<br /><br />
Time for genuine teaching through really being “here” together is at heart a kind of learning <i>together</i>: A hallmark of master teaching is modeling the learning process interactively, as if the teacher is learning newly, but with “you”—you who may be a receptive text, made receptive to your venture of letting the text speak to you in an enriching way—which, of course, doesn’t ensure accuracy of reading, but surely fruitfulness of learning individuates sensibility.
<br /><br />
Alas, professors professing views—in which their career reputations are invested—are as susceptible to sustaining <i>discursive</i> <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20111215112455382">misprision</a> (when youthfully establishing their early career ) as are students inevitably misreading relative to their stage of development. <blockquote> <i>discursive misprision</i>: Desire to develop one’s own “voice” can tend to turn the other’s text into a mirror of one’s own stage of discovery, somewhat regardless of what the other / text intended to convey. The author/other becomes a fiction drawn into mirroring the reader’s re-authoring of the text as merely “itself” received. </blockquote>
So, what about the “ecology” of all that?: the scale of cultural ecology in interdisciplinary humanities; the scale of social ecology in regional communities; and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28137">the <i>developmental</i> scale of human ecology</a> in growing up (or outgrowing distortions) in indviduation which is attuned to the holism of one’s current stage of self-actualizing capability?
<br /><br />
The potential philological ecology of the university—enlightening, emancipatory, and therapeutic (?)—might be a wondrous thing to entertain in detail (an <a href="https://cohering.net/ca4/c415.06D.html">extensive topograpahy</a>), engaging learners fully in the ecology of humanity, where learning never ends (even in the novelty of anticipating old age reconciliations), across the whole scale of mindfulness which can—through a fully humanistic university in its regioning—more authentically enable social life to be fairly (even beautifully) flourishing.
<br /><br />
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-39857194310043351912021-10-15T11:49:00.016-07:002021-10-30T14:51:58.564-07:00It Just Is: The City, Life<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
Late night, looking at the S.F. lights (for the “millionth” time, from<br>
my spot in the Berkeley hills), I realized <i>again</i> that there never was any Purpose to It All.
<br><br>
No news <i>here</i>. The City—the urban kluge—gradually emerged (like brains in nature) for specific functional efficiencies: roads, lights, buildings, which altogether implied no conception of aggregate consequentiality (e.g., neighborhood, traffic congestion, inspired community, crime, deterioration of infrastructure, spectacular architectures oblivious of adjacent ugliness).
<br><br>
Unlike nature, which adjusts itself ecologically, the structural City forces upon itself unadaptability to consequences that its opportunistic humans are compelled to face.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Again, no news <i>here</i>.
<br><br>
Days go by, centuries go by. Members of now forgotten empires never saw themselves emerging as empire, never saw the slow motion of decline as transition to a new era by default.
<br><br>
Centuries later, the historians that came along—writing about mere decades earlier—are overridden by conceptions of trans-historical evolving that never knew itself until storied.
<br><br>
Tomorrow sees another episode in an indiscernible self-storiation of humanity, <i>of</i> Earthanity that has no plot, no expectable ending—save that the Sun will inflate, four billion years away, to engulf Earth, eons <i>after</i>
the Sun’s inflated heat burns away all prospects of life (Mercury everywhere), before consuming the remains.
<br><br>
“The post-humans left Earth”—Their post-biological story will recount—<br>
to wherever it is that The Story of a “little” region of the galaxy allows continuing Self-design.
<br><br>
Always, the purposes of life are merely those we make, which aggregate without design, except inasmuch as We set parameters on interplays of purposes.
<br><br>
All sense of ultimate Purpose is merely a “higher,” telic cohering of those we make, which sometimes appeal widely enough to become sacred, firstly by supernatural fabulation, then by creative conception of Our evolving.
<br><br>
The truth of intelligent design creationism is that Our intelligence may creatively design Purpose and Value and Meaning—which, by the way, makes the shimmering pointillism of City lights and towering designs beyond black Bay water spectacular.
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-35661047604519761242021-02-05T15:32:00.002-08:002021-02-05T15:33:48.626-08:00democratic life involves perpetual renewal,in small degrees<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
The point of transition to a new governmental era performs a constitutionally derivative <a href="https://gedavis.com/ac/005.00ac.html">act of re-Founding</a> that idealizes citizen commitment to their part in making the new era real.
<br><br>
A normal response is that one doesn’t have the time to honor such promise.
<br><br>
That suits the capitalist world well, as its under-monetized demands of work time commonly deny folks freedom for a high degree of citizen presence—even denying folks time for good attention to reliable news, little time for self-directed learning, little time for enriching friendships and sustaining neighborhood, even denying us time for good family, good-enough parenting. (The capitalist world spends heavily to prevent legislation of fair minimum wages.)
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
In pure democracy—an organizational level or very local citizen level—it’s ideal that <i>every</i> participant is qualified to lead the organization, but gathered persons choose one to represent all or to lead, because leading usually requires singular coordinative attention. But ideally, everyone is qualified to be chosen.
<br><br>
Scaling such an idea to the level of a regional government, the ideal becomes fantasy: that each citizen is highly competent for deciding who will represent “our” shared interests because <i>each citizen is competent</i> to <b>be</b> that representative or presiding lead.
<br><br>
But the Founders road to “a more perfect union” was realistic, though exclusive (not even populist among “white” men), about selecting the elect. This evolved, of course (with great struggle), but the ideal of universal competence was not even imagined.
<br><br>
Centuries later, We, the people, plod on, thanks to specialization and complex systemicity. “We” deserves to be, <i>because we say so</i>, though the “fathers” of the Constitution also couldn’t imagine how bricolagically vast Our national ecology could become.
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-87454821144411791172021-02-03T20:02:00.010-08:002021-03-11T14:08:46.049-08:00people, nation, nationality, nationalism, transnationalism<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr><br>
Persons commonly use ‘people’ in the sense of ‘persons’, but a person isn’t primarily one of the people or a member of some people, understood as <i>the</i> people or a people. A person among persons is an individual among individuals. Indeed, the first recorded use of ‘people’ (i.e., the item of English) was a sense of “human beings not individually known or considered as individuals” (<i>Merriam-Webster Unabridged</i>).
<br><br>
Indigenous persons didn’t originally understand themselves as a people (i.e., one variety of a <i>European</i> general kind); rather, they were Navajo, Inuit, Mongolian, Persian, Gallic, or Angle, etc.: a self-determinative singularity, conceived as a distributed language family or regional version of The Family.
<br><br>
The <i>English</i> notion of people has its first known use in the 13th century, followed by first known use of ‘nation” in the 14th century, meaning the same as nationality, emergent through Middle English from the Latin <i>ambiguity</i> of ‘natio’: birth, race, people; and earlier Latin ‘gnatus’: to be born, like Latin ‘gignere’: to beget.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
The notion of national<b>ism</b> didn’t arise for another half millennium, 400 years after European discovery of “The New World” caused a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Americas">German cartographer in 1507 to call it all “America,” </a> in honor of the explorer Americus Vespucius, in the cartographer’s book that was widely read in Europe.
<br><br>
The global emergence of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism"> nationalist movements</a> began with the British colonies in America, as self-determinative <i>founding</i>, spreading to France and elsewhere. That’s quite different from the 20th century advent of a people in an existing nation becoming passionately ideological and ethnically exclusive about their existing nationality.
<br><br>
Thus, a distinction between <i>genuine</i> and ungenuine nationalism is easy to make: Nationalism as founding of nationality or later honoring that founding (and celebrating one’s nationality relative to its founding and history) is different from amplifying a given nationalism as an exclusive ethnic politics.<blockquote>
[Importantly, race is originally a term of kinship lineage. ‘Race’ came to English in the 16th century as “the descendants of a common ancestor: a family, a tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same...ancestral class or kind“ (<i>M-W. Unabridged</i>).
<br><br>
Biologistic notions of racism turn up in the early 20th century, surely due to distorted 19th century Darwinism applied to distorted notions of ethnic entitlement.
<br><br>
So, deeply ancestral notions of “blood relatives” become biologized; and deeply agrarian notions of belonging to a land become biologistically soiled.] </blockquote>
The character of U.S. nationality is Constitutional. The gathering of colonies into states unified by a ratified Constitution is <i>all</i> that U.S. nationality is. In principle, the U.S. “American” sense of nationality is “blind” to ethnic differences because citizenship or resident status isn’t ethnically defined. In effect, non-ethnic constitutional citizenship is trans-ethnic. Due appreciation of ethnic difference belongs to cultural society, not the national political order.
<br><br>
A transnational, global conception of united nations depends on an admirable, practical, and historically valid sense of ‘nation’, not only for global political life and law, but for generative senses of nationality—of national, trans-ethnic identity—across continental regions that can serve governmental union for territories of a people.
<br><br>
So, notions of <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/04/interregionality.html">transnationalism</a> in political theory are vital for understanding collaborative political life. This includes the challenge of finding constructive balance between the virtues of <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/02/challenge.html">humanistic union and the confederational character of global internationality</a>. (In my view, by the way, Jürgen Habermas’s notion of “post-national constellation” should be seen relative to <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/04/europe2020.html">inter-<i>trans</i>national understanding</a> which doesn’t try to antedate the importance of nationality.)
<br><br><hr>
next—> <a href="https://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2021/02/challenge.html">the challenge of humanistic union for the confederated planet</a>
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-42363149211695605472021-02-01T20:49:00.012-08:002021-02-05T10:07:20.942-08:00the challenge of humanistic unionfor the confederated planet<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
A challenge of confederacy exists in the U.S. which traces back to the conception of our Constitution: states’ rights.
<br><br>
The admirable idea is that grassroots democracy calls for local freedom for shaping regional policy; regional freedom for national policy.
<br><br>
Great-scale frustrations of that are expressed in the European Union’s challenge to respect intra-E.U. sovereignties while trying to find a unifying basis for constitutionalizing a United States of Europe—an idea which may never be actualized, but an idea which is very integral to E.U. evolution.
<br><br>
The challenging idea of <i>e pluribus unum</i>—from the many, One—is also integral to the future of African union, and—more abstractly—for international associations strapped with sustaining and advancing manifold global dynamics (e.g., the WTO vs. China) fruitfully—with telic cohering, I like to say.
<br><br>
The G-7, the G-20, and the U.N. Security Council all face the challenge of constructiveness among sovereignties. Persons live with that challenge among friends, colleagues, and neighbors.
<br><br>
All in all, We want what expresses our flourishing, even Our evolving, durably.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
The U.S. is a constitutional confederacy that asserts <i>partial</i> supremacy of its national (federated, federal) government in relation to states. Confusion of partial states’ rights with desire for regional sovereignty led to the American Civil War, when the U.S. lacked a Constitutional sense of union that could prevail effectively over primitive capitalist predation (whose lineage was patrilineal estates—lords of the land—under monarchy).
<br><br>
Echoes of that haunt avaricious global capitalism that patronizes the supposed efficiencies of provincial politics.
<br><br>
In provincial states, legacies of entitled domination are postured in a rhetoric of mere “freedom” which wants to “conserve” traditions of regional self-determination, as if class domination (and racism) are marginal problems that states are entitled to resolve at a pace that suits hegemonic class leisure.
<br><br>
So, mirror on the wall (internetted humanity), who’s the fairest of them all? (Apparently, it’s the Scandinavians, <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores">according to Freedom House</a>.)
<br><br>
Distorted senses of entitlement have been transposed into ideologies of nationalist sovereignty as long as there has been specifically “national” aspiration (since the late 18th century).
<br><br>
Now, national sovereignty is annulled by Our belonging in shared humanity: Shared human rights are intrinsic to human life, and We share the reality of no Planet B: the reality of hot Earth, international divisiveness fueled by economic hardship, and national conflict lacking conceptions of pluralism which respect everybody’s integrity because humanity is integral to every ethnicity. (Also, Elon Musk, <i>news</i>: Mars doesn’t have enough magnetic field to hold a terraformed atmosphere that’s habitable.)
<br><br>
At a conceptual level—which I won’t pursue here—are issues of organizational complexity (e.g., manageable innovation among semi-autonomous units); legislating among respected differences of preferred policies (i.e., political bipartisanship); and neighborhoods endeavoring to sustain democratic communities:
<br><br>
How can constructive union among self-interested parties be designed, implemented, and durably managed? How can differentiated identity or identity-in-difference be fruitfully understood? How does a genuine plurality belong together in the same <i>something</i>: same locality, same culture, region, nation, planet?
<br><br>
So, the challenge of confederate union in the U.S. is a continental example of what is analogously present across the scale of our human being.
<br><br>
Now, leading nations welcome the advent of the Biden administration. But there’s no time for a honeymoon in a global pandemic.
<br><br>
Biden and the Democrats are pressing an economic “relief” package of legislation that takes a long view toward the global economy, beyond short-viewed national relief, to invest in durable economic recovery that gels with collaborative global leadership in public health, climate change, and transnational economic fairness.
<br><br>
If the “unionists” (Bidenists) succeed, “confederates” (Trumpist Republicans) will lose in the 2022 elections. Also losing will be predatory capitalism: They face the burden of fair taxation and more-coordinated global regulation for the sake of public goods.
<br><br>
If the unionists of Europe succeed, autocratic regimes will lose popular appeal. If the democrats in Africa and south/east Asia succeed, militarist autocracy will lose credibility.
<br><br>
My Americanism isn’t nationalistic. It’s humanistic relative to the continent that sustains me. I want to advocate for exemplarities, but without connoting American Exceptionalism (though surviving Trumpism is surely worth admiration). I hope for progress in international relations thanks to restoration of U.S. commitment to collaborative leadership.
<br><br>
The unfolding story of Biden’s era—his engagement in bipartisanship for the sake of “unity”—designs to show a “power of our example,” first by turning inward: showing states and localities how trustworthy government can actually be pragmatically progressive.
<br><br>
In upcoming weeks, I want to prospect Biden’s sense of democratic society in some detail, in light of his avowal that “words matter,” that “one’s word” matters. Next, I want to enrich a conception of American humanity in terms of a specific conception of better humanity which is trans-cultural and committed to Our shared value of bettering humanity: that of our children, our neighborhoods, and so on.
<br><br>
We each and all want wholly flourishing life <i>actually</i>. We want ecologically flourishing humanity <i>durably</i>.
<br><br><hr>
next—> <a href="https://gedavis.com/ac/005.00ac.html">Biden’s and my democratic society</a>
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-81374962819250772382020-08-28T21:12:00.009-07:002020-10-19T00:25:20.324-07:00for a world beyond throwaway words<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr />
This is part 2 of the project “<a href="https://gedavis.com/ci/004ci.html">being an American (with conceptual issues)</a>”
<hr /><br />
In pre-recorded presentations for the Democratic National Convention, the week of August 17, historian Jon Meacham, Michelle Obama, and Barack Obama were obviously <i>not</i> speaking spontaneously. Likewise for Joe Biden, the final night.
<br /><br />
Yet, the engagement with us was more than wanting to be heard heart-<br />
fully, more than assuring the viewer that they cared deeply about our politics; and that you should care about electing Biden.
<br /><br />
Who took to heart the <i>words they chose</i>? Indeed, who will long remember the themes they invoked?
<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>
Was it merely that they used some important themes for the instru-<br />
mental interest in motivating your vote? Or was it—as you expect I want to stress—that it was <i>the themes that mattered</i>?
<br /><br />
Do you feel a little unease at <i>my</i> pretense of wanting to find memorable significance in presentations that, like lives themselves, come along, go away, and are soon forgotten? Is taking “things so seriously” embarrassing?
<br /><br />
It’s easy enough to feel high minded to contend that electing Biden is instrumental for <i>ideas</i>, not the converse. No surprise: Inspirational rhetoric is normal politics, instrumental, as normal politics is traditionally frivolous outside the halls of power (which are truly instrumentalist, where “principle” is likely a tool for public relations).
<br /><br />
Traditions of normal politics provide great cases for not taking politics too seriously, because theater is theater.
<br /><br />
So, too, for time-pressured lives: Who’s got <i>time</i> for taking much to heart? Who’s got the patience for persons like me (or the DNC Four, I’ll call them) who want us to make our lives thoughtful?
<br /><br />
“Everything is theater”? marketing?
<br /><br />
“Only naïfs avow otherwise”?
<br /><br />
<i>So</i> goes the cynical normalcy of politics that political renewal is about—only to be soon forgotten in the face of the next political season’s opportunities.
<br /><br />
A good politics cannot emerge without determination that <i>it is to be</i> about what matters, thereby sustaining action <i>oriented</i> by what matters, advancing <i>specific</i> values that are highly worth prevalence (not spouting a nebulous avowal of “values” as mask for reactionary opportunism).
<br /><br />
A good politics is not about itself. A good politics is instrumental to cultivating community.
<br /><br />
The <i>person</i> in contention for election is instrumental to why elections matter and <i>how we best hold dear</i> what matters for the sake of renewing and sustaining the <i>shared worlds</i> that advance being well, advance public good, and advance community.
<br /><br />
The care that the DNC Four placed in their choices of words deserves to be taken to heart as <i>exemplary</i> of what political appeal at its best <i>is</i>.
<br /><br />
<i>What if</i> their words implicitly claim to capture what a good politics <i>is to be</i> for Democrats—if we will <i>let it be</i>?
<br /><br />
What follows, if one insists that their words were not about a mere show of care with heartful appeals merely to motivate your vote through memorable affect?
<br /><br />
What if they’re presumed to be appealing <i>rigorously</i>, albeit comfortably, to what <i>should</i> truly matter for good, well-shared ways of life?
<br /><br />
You know they put intensive care into their choices of words and the design of presentation. Anyone <i>would</i>, for a much-anticipated display. But who fastens onto the words as <i>concepts</i> that are The Point, not just a means?
<br /><br />
Like choreography of amazing dance, the design of wording may dis-<br />
appear in the appeal of performance, where intricacies of excellence are soon forgotten, except by the critics.
<br /><br />
Excellent performance would have you entranced in every moment, losing yourself in the flow of it all.
<br /><br />
Michelle looks you in the eye. Jon Meacham levels with you in gentle but fierce determination. Barack sees you frankly, jaded but with genuine bonding. Joe is integrity incarnate.
<br /><br />
They’re <i>exemplars</i> of our humanity, and we easily recognize them as that, as kindreds—as <i>admirable</i> exemplars, which is what <i>virtue</i> is: admirable exemplarity.
<br /><br />
The genuine voice implicitly appeals for the mattering words that only live lastingly by really orienting lives. We should want to give <i>words</i> virtuous lives, by the exemplarity of their employment and the admirability of their efficacy.
<br /><br />
That virtue is a potential for conceptual orientation that virtuous words promise, thus trope.
<br /><br />
“Word,” urban street advice used to close.
<br /><br />
You “keep your word,” because the word is worth keeping.
<br /><br />
So much contemporary American poetry is <i>simply</i> worded not because the ideas are idiomatic, nor that the message is some Splendor Of The Simple. Rather, the American idiom expresses how common terms may matter <i>profoundly</i>. Words we <i>hold sacred</i> draw lives into better mapping.
<br /><br />
The words that matter <i>stand</i> for lives that matter, and keep the promise of good lives near to heart.
<br /><br />
A keynote of what makes literary art canonical is a work’s effective mapping of landscapes—verbal topographies—that instill gravities to words worth lasting orientation of sensibility.
<br /><br />
A politics of words that matter, kept orienting well and for good, is very much what democracy is for.
<br /><br /><hr />
next—> <a href="https://gedavis.com/ac/002ac.html">enlightened being</a><hr /><br /><br />
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-84695191898540918692020-05-14T14:33:00.000-07:002020-05-14T15:03:50.272-07:00“genius” on the street<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
Quote marks: so-called.
<br><br>
It’s certainly so-called in journalism. David Brooks did a column 11 years ago (I’m an obsessive archivist) that’s typical, titled “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html">Genius: The Modern View</a>.” He riffs off a couple of books about building expertise through practice and persistence, focusing especially on child development. Alas, you <i>too</i> can someday be called a “genius.”
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Let us “picture how a typical genius might develop.” Thank the gods for science that can smooth out individuality in the name of clarifying the typical.
<br><br>
The aim is less about lasting achievement than gaining “some sense of distinction” (which celebrities enjoy, typically).
<br><br>
Oh, to have “a glimpse of an enchanted circle she might someday join”—to <i>belong</i> among the elite!
<br><br>
Last year, the <i>NYTimes</i> did a series called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/visionaries">Visionaries</a>,” which was actually about entrepreneurs and innovation within standard careers.
<br><br>
Everything is relative: If you’re old enough to know how <i>boring</i> pop music was in the early ‘60s, you’d agree that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was a genius. (If you haven’t seen “<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fVJw3V1S82lI3QHauFJ0jz4BFhRIZjKx/view">Love & Mercy</a>,” <i>do</i>).
<br><br>
The MacArthur Foundation avoids the journalist’s labeling of its Fellowships as “genius grants” because “it connotes a singular characteristic of intellectual prowess.”
<br><br>
That certainly pertains to literary critic Harold Bloom, who received a MacArthur grant.
<br><br>
Bloom takes to heart that there <i>is</i> literary genius and definitely goes for hallmarking canonical prowess (his favored notion is “capaciousness”). <br>
He notes, near the beginning of his 800+ page <i>Genius</i>, 2001: “Genius is no longer a term much favored by scholars, so many of whom have become cultural levelers quite immune from awe” (p. 7).
<br><br>
What the MacArthur Foundation awards is what’s likely to be found: high creativity: <blockquote>
“The people we seek to support,” the <a href="https://www.macfound.org/fellows-faq/">Foundation notes</a>, “express many other important qualities: ability to transcend traditional boundaries, willingness to take risks, persistence in the face of personal and conceptual obstacles, capacity to synthesize disparate ideas and approaches.” </blockquote>
That’s what creativity researchers in psychology now call “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1316649024/">big-C creativity</a>” (ch. 7). That’s what Robert and Michelle Root-Berstein were identifying 20 years ago in their popular <i>Sparks of Genius: the thirteen thinking tools</i>: observing, imaging, abstracting, recognizing patterns, forming patterns, analogizing, body thinking, empathizing, dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming, and synthesizing.
<br><br>
Yet, there is a history of searching for awesome singularity and showing it: In classical intimations of so-called “divinity” in poetic possession; in challenging leading paradigms in science to an unprecedented degree; in divining original conceptuality that hallmarks the history of philosophy (where one’s proper name names an historically singular creativity—a genus of thinking).
<br><br>
Though “our confusions about canonical standards for genius are now institutionalized confusions…,” notes Bloom (<i>Genius</i>: 2), there <i>are</i> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465021255/"><i>Extraordinary Minds</i></a> (Howard Gardner), born from the classical aspiration for perfectibility—to near the gods—which was generative for cultural advancement (by chasing an ever-receding horizon). Now, overtly futurist thinking in conceptual inquiry can advance evolutionary theory<br>
(I would prospect).
<br><br>
Fantastical desires for perfection mirror engagement with advancing fundamentals of one’s domain of work. Odysseys into the highest aspirations exemplify <i>human</i> nature advancing itself by conceiving how we <i>can</i> be—<i>some</i>day—and thereby [re]<i>conceiving</i> Our “nature” relative to <a href="https://cohering.net/ca4/c413.10g.html">primordial ventures</a>.
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-4493139566538309812020-05-09T21:58:00.000-07:002020-05-22T22:12:33.198-07:00VE Day in a pandemic<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
Yesterday’s VE Day observance caused me to recall that American isolationism after WW-I led to the League of Nations failing. There’s an epochal lesson in that, re: the Trumpist withdrawal from collaborative global relations in the face of mounting severities: tipping points in climate risk, desperation-driven militarism, the current pandemic.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
Had the League succeeded, there <i>likely</i> would have been some pre-1929 creation of global financial market ensurance, like the Bretton Woods Agreement after WW-II, because market crashes are as old as modernity itself (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_market_crashes_and_bear_markets">1907, 1901</a>, 1896, 1893,…1637). Quite probably, the Crash of 1929, with a strong League of Nations, would not have undermined the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Plan">Young Plan</a> that was to relieve pressure on Germany’s difficulty with reparations; and allowed a successful Lusanne Conference, 1932 (which was cancelled). German animus toward the Versailles Treaty would have been substantially weakened, thus undermining the appeal of Hitler, in the wake of merely another recession, with evident light at the end of the global financial tunnel. Germany would have been able to form a government in early 1933 without Hitler. But, if Hitler had come to power anyway, a strong League of Nations could have ensured consolidated diplomacy (with effective sanctions) to prevent rearmament.
<br><br>
The idea of there never having been WW-II, never having been the Holocaust, inspires imagination.
<br><br>
But pointlessly—except to remind me, or whomever, that foreseeing calamity and preventing it is feasible, with effective leadership.
<br><br>
Woodrow Wilson sought to continue the Progressivism of Teddy Roosevelt. FDR sought to continue the Progressivism of Wilson—so much so, that we now think of the New Deal as the heart of Democratic Progressivism’s history. In the middle of the war, a frail FDR fashioned the G.I. Bill of Rights that financially engineered prosperity of the 1950s.
<br><br>
Soon after Hitler invaded Poland, Churchill spent three weeks at the White House. Historians say that a tight bond of brotherhood matured in those weeks. Imagine FDR’s infectious grin and undauntable enthusiasm when he wheeled himself into Churchill’s bedroom one night to share his <i>eurika</i> ideas for a United Nations. A United Nations!!—which would prevent all future wars.
<br><br>
Churchill was just out of his bath: a dripping wet, regularly-inebriated obesity. “<i>Sorry</i>!,” FDR said (or to that effect). Churchill replied: “The Prime Minister of Britain has nothing to hide from the President of the United States.”
<br><br>
And so it came to pass that the English alliance saved the West—after pushing more Atlantic boys onto French beaches than the German boys had bullets.
<br><br>
After FDR’s death, Eleanor Roosevelt led the formation of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
<br><br>
But the stupid dialectic of incipient Cold War disarmed the Security Council’s potential for progressive leadership.
<br><br>
A low share of <i>Homo sapiens</i> is composed of socialized animals wielding gigantic toys for their predatory aims, unable to imagine diplomatic means of satisfaction—adult children funded by oligarchic avarice addicted to fossil fuels (Earth’s eonic rot), now driving hundreds of <i>millions</i> of lives into <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/pandemic-could-mean-260-million-people-worldwide-marching-toward-starvation">hothouse famines</a> and derivative refugee migrations (by stealing “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/molecule-made-us-crisis/">fossil water</a>”) because ideologies of capitalist power discount lives, thus made expendable for the sake of greed.
<br><br>
The current pandemic is an implicit prophecy that Extinction Level Events can be suites of disaster, unless collaborative global leadership returns. The prospect is credible that climate apocalypse will induce regular resource-scarce wars, if not bio-weaponized scourges across the planet.
<br><br>
Humanity owes an inestimable degree of thanks for visionary leadership that understands the necessity of sustainably progressive planetary thinking—collaborative global leadership that can secure the coming generations of our children.
<br><br>
But collaborative leadership won’t return if activist groups fail to anchor their futures to prospects for government that ensures implementation of the Paris Accords, ensures U.N. efficacy, institutes an effective global regime of public health leadership, and relies on intelligence that sees beyond predatory campaigns of divisiveness that aim to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/09/politics/us-leadership-coronavirus-intl/index.html">keep oligarchic entitlement effective</a>.
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-74077820479225788372020-02-29T00:27:00.001-08:002020-02-29T00:30:56.622-08:00originalism as phony approach to constitutionality<hr />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<br />
This week’s <i>NYTimes Magazine</i> article on juristic originalism, “<a href="https://nyti.ms/2wUtN7D">How Will Trump’s Supreme Court Remake America?</a>,” seems to provide a definitive context for thinking about Constitutional interpretation.
<br /><br />
The title is misleading in that the article is not really concerned with consequences of the given SCOTUS bench, but rather with conceptual issues of originalism. Ms. Bazelon’s long article is a fabulous mix of anecdote, references to keynotes of legal theory (largely undiscussed, but made available in one set of links), emphasis of central themes of originalist controversy, and synopses of some past SCOTUS decisions. (Particularly interesting is that there is recently-available evidence which decisively undermines the gun libertarianism of the NRA: The Founders and their ratifying contemporaries had <i>only</i> military concerns in mind.)
<br /><br />
I was eager to comment, but what can be useful in 1500 characters or less about a very elaborate discussion of legal hermeneutics?
<br /><br />
So, I made my comment a diluted version of detailed dwelling with the article, which my eventual comments would <i>implicitly</i> trope or allegorize: I copied every fleeting phrase and paragraph segment that essentially pertained to the article’s examination of originalism, for and against, and grouped it all into 13 foci. Then, I <a href="https://nyti.ms/2vh0gEI#permid=105520471">posted a distilled version</a>.
<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>
I’m not now going to do a detailed discussion of the 13 foci, but this posting is a promissory note for detailed discussion soon, re: </span><br />
<ul><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<li>Framer’s intent</li>
<li>Framer’s sense of institutional system</li>
<li>facts of stable historical decision precedent (<i>stare decisis</i>)</li>
<li>Constitution as living institutionality</li>
<li>--------------</li>
<li>purpose of the law</li>
<li>interpreting law purposefully</li>
<li>interpreting law knowledgeably</li>
<li>interpreting law contextually</li>
<li>interpreting law consequentially</li>
<li>--------------</li>
<li>applying Framer’s meaning</li>
<li>liberty: right of decision; right to reasoned action</li>
<li>“motivated reasoning”</li>
<li>ideologicality of originalism</li>
</span></ul>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<br />
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-53085716933942402142020-01-24T23:50:00.000-08:002020-01-25T12:29:06.230-08:00journalism of integrity for educational leadership<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
The day of Jim Lehrer’s death, the PBS <i>News Hour</i> posted an excellent article on the site, “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/remembering-jim-lehrer">Remembering Jim Lehrer</a>.” Note midway down, right sidebar, “Jim Lehrer’s Rules.” Today, there were <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-newshour-family-remembers-jim-lehrer">on-camera remembrances</a>. (It’s much better to see the video than to read the transcript.)
<br><br>
Mr. Lehrer’s exemplarity is worthy of lasting admiration, and the public virtue of journalistic integrity is essential to our humanity.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
An overarching theme of the <i>News Hour</i>’s marking of Mr. Lehrer’s passing away is that it’s not mere remembrance, but validation of his continuing model, mentoring, and lead as “north star” (Judy Woodruff’s avowal). Over and over, staff and friends are affirming that Mr Lehrer remains alive as the standard for journalism that he led.
<br><br><hr><br>
It seems to me that excellent journalism is largely a thankless job, in the sense that incredible work may go into developing a story before it’s printed or broadcast, only to presume a few minutes of others’ time for reading or to view, then on to the next story. (Thank goodness for long-sighted archives of excellent work—and inquiring minds who note stories for future reference).
<br><br>
In our accelerating 24/7 news cycle, young talent may feel good reason to not persist with aspirations in journalism, especially with the accelerating demise of local venues. Future shock has no end of new ways to emerge.
<br><br>
We all could be well reminded of the importance of local journalism for the creation and sustaining of a good locality, especially inasmuch as The Good Society is really just a composite of its localities.
<br><br>
So, it’s vital that there be durable standard bearers that inspire, as well as to be effectively standard.
<br><br>
The range and depth of the <i>News Hour</i> is so consistently excellent that one might almost take it for granted, like taking some excellent part of one’s own life for granted.
<br><br>
I wish and hope that the <i>News Hour</i> has all of the funding that they could ever want, secured forever. There ought to be a Jim Lehrer endowment for journalism that becomes rich.
<br><br>
I wish and hope that journalistic excellence prevails over the awful commonality of news seeming to be largely a vehicle for advertising, rather than ads sponsoring excellent journalism. (So good that Judy Woodruff came back from a home shopping network. [That’s a joke Mr. Lehrer made to Ms. Woodruff when she left CNN.])
<br><br>
I want to see more appreciation of the civic virtue that journalism serves, but more: appreciation of the educational leadership that journalism, in principle, is.
<br><br>
We often regard journalism as means of being well informed. But if you look at the structure of in-depth reporting—its engagement with background, explication, and linking to analyses—it is educational at its core, not just as a support to a democratic ethos (the “Fourth Estate”), but as a matter of cultivating our humanity, teaching us to be well, teaching us why to inquire largely, how to think newly; and insisting that we advance community.
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-29035963236326180072019-12-11T23:44:00.000-08:002019-12-12T22:40:41.626-08:00for progressive engagement with corporate concentration<hr /><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<br />
An article today in the <i>NYTimes</i> about progressively engaging corporate concentration showcases resourcefulness that 21<sup>st</sup> century democratic politics needs: “<a href="https://nyti.ms/36iVtiA">America’s Top Foundations Bankroll Attack on Big Tech</a>,” by <a href="https://www.axios.com/authors/dmccabe">David McCabe</a>.
<br /><br />
But its fabulous mix of efforts—constructive, critical, and oppositional—don’t intend to be considered in an integrative way. Progressive politics requires prospecting such ways while needing new kinds of resources.
<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>
Public opposition should need to be oriented by adequate knowledge, and critique should serve constructive engagements.
<br /><br />
A self-underming aspect of social movements during the last century has been inadequate understanding of how good government works. And a self-undermining aspect of academic thought has been an inadequate understanding of how to bring the public into durable progress.
<br /><br />
Efforts to find solutions to corporate concentration should need to preserve the consumer benefits that economies of scale gain through efficiencies.
<br /><br />
On the one hand, vast social networking of public opinion has created a corporate sensitivity to market conditions that is different from the situation of monopoly that caused much anti-trust law. On the other hand, more aggressive enforcement of existing antitrust regulations probably annuls some needs for new kinds of solutions to concentration.
<br /><br />
Education alone does a lot to constrain concentration. McCabe’s article gives good examples of that: pilot projects, grassroots organization, and “corporate campaigns designed to influence the public narrative on corporate concentration.”
<br /><br />
But the scale of educational leadership is the entire ecology of society, from mass media to senses of good government as devotedly educational (Congresspersons with constituents, Executive leadership, jurisprudential explanation.)
<br /><br />
Capitalist support for GOP disinterest in supporting public educational excellence can be undone through well-established channels, if progressive political action through normal channels and fair taxation can prevail.
<br /><br />
A challenge for the community of scholars is to advance the conception of academic community through interdisciplinary research and pilot project collaborations. The notion of “think tank” is merely a satellite sense of collaborative inquiry within the university itself.
<br /><br />
McCabe indicates some “dense [issues] of law and economics” that call for translation into practicable public form and dedicated educational attention. The <i>New York Times</i> is exemplary here in bringing academic insight into public light. Other media should need to build the sophistication of their audience (and cultivate advertisers who see opportunity in better audience).
<br /><br />
But that’s no more effective than a culture of reading and private time made available for that—which is contrary to the consumerist ethos of the marketing mind.
<br /><br />
One quoted foundation official avows that “you need an ecosystem,… a community of people who generally share the same values but who, among themselves, may even have different approaches to the issues.”<br />
But the context of Movement creation there occludes the larger ecology of education, research, and good government that consortiums of foundations, universities, dedicated organizations, and grassroots efforts must aim to sustain.
<br /><br />
So, that’s the horizon I had in mind when I commented at McCabe’s article that “the community of scholars in all of this faces issues of conception that must be translatable into progressively pragmatic policies, as well as public engagement. A massive public mandate itself isn’t going to evince difficult solutions vis-à-vis complex political economics.”
<br /><br />
My comment continued: “Yet, ‘building political might’ is vital, obviously. But….Old notions of opposition and critique are ultimately self-undermining if they’re not supplements to knowledge-based solutions with expert translation into practice. … So much ‘progressive’ talk is still caught in the last century (e.g., ‘democratic socialism’).
<br /><br />
democratic socialism? The notion whitewashes the ecology of progressive pragmatic thinking, in my view.
<br /><br />
At McCabe’s article I was obscure due to limited space when I noted that “…’critical looks’ and public debate must serve educational leadership about working well.”
<br /><br />
working well: What works well and what, relative to progressive pragmatics, <i>is</i> “working well,” as such, relative to the adequately ecological thinking.
<br /><br />
“Nebulous notions of ‘taking on the power’ of corporate concentration is a music of naïveté to corporate lobbyists,” I concluded.
<br /><br />
The good society is an endlessly debatable notion, but everyone would agree that <i>that</i> is what we all want, in some sense—indeed, a sense oriented by endless prospecting of what that is, and inquiry and devotion to being well, and devotion to advancing community, all ideally cohering through education, local organization, research, and good government.
<br><br>
</span>
gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-31829585890987583602019-09-11T14:36:00.001-07:002019-09-17T23:49:48.964-07:00a venture in progressive pragmatism<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
I want to enter here my comment at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/books/review/the-education-of-an-idealist-samantha-power.html">Tom Friedman’s review</a> of Samantha Powers’ <i>The Education of an Idealist</i> because it encapsulates my sense of politics.
<blockquote>
Friedman’s review provides a fine excursion into what progressive pragmatism is.
<br><br>
We commonly counterpose “Progressivism” with “Conservatism,” but the basic dyad is idealism and realism that remains highly aspirational. That is a hallmark of America: progressive pragmatism.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>
A fault of rank-and-file Conservatism is that it’s not yet realistic enough: Potential for enabling the mature autonomy of others—nations, groups, individuals—is integral to good government, as much as is securing shared traditions. Democracy is an always-unfinished project which requires educational leadership for constructive futures, in light of which valuable pasts are re-framed. Futures do not originate from pasts.
<br><br>
A keynote of leadership is exemplarity. Obama’s Cairo speech was integral to the Arab Spring which led to the Tunisian example.
<br><br>
Would an early U.S. intervention into Syria have caused U.S. blame for the flood of refugees into Europe, as well as becoming a proxy war with Putinism? A strong case can be made for Obama’s choice of battles. The menace of Putinism is stark.
<br><br>
We should realize that democracy is a learning process that its people have to learn to sustain. Iraq is better off now than otherwise. It can become a model for Iran's maturity beyond theocracy.
</blockquote>
<br><br>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-56230399383823499732019-04-21T22:29:00.000-07:002019-12-12T12:45:23.310-08:00prefacing a detailed sense of humanistic ecopolitics<hr /><br />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
I responded to Joseph Stiglitz’s article at the <i>NYTimes</i>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/opinion/sunday/progressive-capitalism.html#permid=100111103">on progressivism</a>, then posted <i>further</i> response, re: one of several replies to me (bottom of that). I sought to respond to another replier (joseph parmetler), but the “Comments” feature closed before I could post it. So, that’s below (with formatting additions not available at the <i>NYTimes</i>):<blockquote>
The issues are complex. I’m sure—I <i>know</i>—that Mr. Stiglitz’s position is more sophisticated than an article can convey—and far beyond my layman’s sense of economics.
<br />
<br />
Fair tax policy surely should “support education, health care...,” but there are approaches to government which are about more than support. They enable: Policy needs to be creative, progressive, not just fair and equitable—but that too! Democracy is a way of building futures. Progressive politics <i>is</i> about <i>conserving</i> cherished values by advancing them.
<br />
<br /><a name='more'></a>
But the ethos of regulation is nebulous: Is it seeking homeostasis (stable market, which business likes)? Stiglitz wouldn’t basically advocate that. But why focus on “regulation”?
<br />
<br />
Is regulation to become “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684829754/">Commanding Heights</a>,” which has been the legacy of Keynesian policy (creeping into statist paternalism which suppresses innovation)?
<br />
<br />
Teaching provides a good metaphor: Remediating someone is not yet educating them. (It’s creating educability.) Instructing (directing) someone is not enabling.
<br />
<br />
Enabling, facilitating, is truly educating. Master teachers know this. Leading minds in business regard leadership as an educational mission. Congresspersons should need to be educators of their constituents (about complexity, prudence, the long view, etc.), not just be service providers (and necessary advocates for justice). <br />
<br />
A conception of enabling society can be about a progressive pragmatism—which also embodies our most cherished values.</blockquote>
But my critical attitude is not a general objection to Mr. Stiglitz’s thinking (he being a Nobel Laureate, after all). I meant to be usefully thoughtful. Stiglitz has a complex approach to “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231152140/">creating the learning society</a>” that I admire (and whose macro-mathematical sophistication is inaccessible to me).
<br /><br />
In his <i>NYTimes</i> article (and <a href="https://nyti.ms/2ZncMwz">earlier discussion this week</a> with Andrew Sorkin), he’s briefly helping recent Democratic talk about “socialist” ideas gain a sense that’s fair, both to their progressivism (without falling back into antedated notions of socialism) and fair to his upcoming book on “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324004215/">progressive capitalism</a>.” However, I found that his way of distinguishing present times from past was largely viewed from the past; so, he seemed to undermine his good intentions. <br /><br /> I have a detailed notion of enablative society to share—thanks to the work of others (to be duly credited)—but which lacks the complementary economic sophistication that Stiglitz exemplifies. It also is not premised on the neo-Neoliberal, neo-welfarist notion of “<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/15vkOznY8kK4oxDM9gOp9pinte0mtHkUo/view">enabling state</a>.” My project involves: </span><div>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;"> an ethic of care, engaged with enabling and remediating;</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">an approach to how persons who highly value enhancing humanity may come to identify with that engagement;</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">a conception of concerted cultivation, from parenting through educational excellence to highly humanistic cultural thinking; and</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">a conception of enablative leadership in progressive politics. </span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"> I don’t understand notions of enabling primarily as governmental, rather as cultural. A provisional model of <i>societal</i> cultivation of humanity (<i>containing</i> enablative political notions) might be what emerged from the 1990s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198287976/">quality-of-life research</a> of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum that became <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674072359/">the capabilist approach</a> to human development, <a href="https://hd-ca.org/thematic-groups">broadly conceived</a>.
<br /><br />
</span></div>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-27185143951458224332018-10-12T14:10:00.001-07:002018-10-30T19:47:04.608-07:00oakland note about constitutional law<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
<br>
A seed—for an oak, let’s say—is to be known through the growth that results. No two oaks look alike because environmental happenstance is different for each. <i>The origin provides for un-templated adaptation.</i> The seed is a <i>potential for generativity</i> whose exact result cannot be predicted by analysis of the genome. Mutation happens <i>and survives</i> because mutation can be adaptive. Genomes that allow for adaptive mutation are superior to genomes that do not.
<br><br>
So, too, for constitutional law. A constitution initiates rules for a game of political evolution that also provides for changing the rules as time requires. There is evolution, and a point in that evolution—an era, let’s say—becomes the basis for understanding the beginning which has evolved.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>Ultimately, there are no origins, as the lineage of humanity—of being—traces back into an indiscernible genesis from an incomprehensible Beginning.
<br><br>
<i>So,</i> that’s an effusive preface for asserting that originalism in constitutional jurisprudence is invalid.
<br><br>
Today, a professor of law provides a <a href="https://nyti.ms/2Cag4dg">rationale for originalism</a> that I easily debunked.
<blockquote>
Mr. McDonald, a SCOTUS nomination is such a big deal <i>because</i> “the American people are [not to be] robbed of their ability to have a say about the rules that dictate how they live.”
<br><br>
“Our nation’s founders would blanch to see how different the court is today from their conception of it” <i>because</i> the American people have Constitutionally evolved a history of interests that have settled into institutions far more concerned about relationship to existing law than was available when the Founders set up parameters for shaping and implementing law.
<br><br>
As America is now a highly advanced nation of laws, it’s necessary that the SCOTUS have an importance that wasn’t focal before there was so much law by which to orient our social lives.
<br><br>
The history that has taken American constitutionalism beyond the vision of our Founders is the extended “Assertion” of American will, across generations, that has given to existing law the orienting importance that it now has.
<br><br>
The Founders were not establishing the 18th century as the basis for the future. They were establishing the basis for living futures constitutionally—through a constitutionality which would stay alive to make the history of America evolve, not settle in a given era. [link to <a href="https://nyti.ms/2CbkWid#permid=28994871">comment at the <i>Times</i></a>] <br>
———————————<br>
<i>Oct. 30 update:</i> I see that the esteemed American historian Joseph Ellis would agree, finding any claim about a Constitutional basis for <a href="https://nyti.ms/2CPjylH">originalism to be a “…‘fiction,</a>’ easily discovered by any judge who cares to see it.”]</blockquote>
Indeed, if Justice Kavanaugh is as <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-am-an-independent-impartial-judge-1538695822">devoted to “the American rule of law</a>” as he avows, then he’s not an originalist. (I hereby predict—as I have in comments at numerous news articles, the past few weeks—that Justice Kavanaugh will become a swing vote—i.e. [non-U.S. readers], sometimes ”Conservative,” sometimes ”Liberal”.)
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-64688261087201397192018-05-17T23:45:00.000-07:002018-05-22T23:13:06.076-07:00identity mirroring compels viral-ity among filter bubbles<hr />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">This is § <b>d</b> of “<a href="http://gedavis.com/gt/003gt.html">Section <b>3</b>: Fake views exploit the appeal of valid drama</a>.”
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A message (posting, Tweet, Instagram, etc.) “goes viral” by media users who are seeing their earlier choices of source preferred via “Likes,” “Follows,” and clicks that have unwittingly caused a data profile of preferences. News/views feeds imply (or trope) a sphere of source value that altogether (across sources) mirrors one’s online identity or medial personality that has been built through “Likes,” etc. Thereby, duplicitous sources employ their access to data archives to play into “potential pathways of influence, from increasing cynicism and apathy to encouraging extremism“ (<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=10cU-6lg3b7BWbSaoG7Z9KLMPqfIPAjBk">source A</a>) <i>inasmuch as</i> identity comfort prevails over interest in validity. Frivolous and casual attention is easier than astute and deliberative attention:
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<blockquote><a name='more'></a>
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">“[P]eople prefer information that confirms their preexisting attitudes (<b>selective exposure</b>), view information consistent with their preexisting beliefs as more persuasive than dissonant information (<b>confirmation bias</b>), and are inclined to accept information that pleases them (<b>desirability bias</b>). Prior partisan and ideological beliefs might prevent acceptance of fact checking of a given fake [views] story.“ [A]</span></blockquote>
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Virality happens among identity-mirroring filter bubbles, like a trending froth that variably: </span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">fails to question credibility of information in interpersonal relations; and transposes that to texts. </span><span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><blockquote>
“Individuals tend not to question the credibility of information unless it violates their preconceptions or they are incentivized to do so....Moreover, they are more likely to accept familiar information as true. There is thus a risk that repeating false information, even in a fact-checking context, may increase an individual's likelihood of accepting it as true....[P]eople tend to remember information, or how they feel about it, while forgetting the context within which they encountered it.“ [A]<br><br>
That pertains, again, to: <br>
• <b>selective exposure</b>: preferring information that confirms preexisting attitudes<br>
• <b>confirmation bias</b>: viewing information consistent with preexisting beliefs as more persuasive than dissonant information. </blockquote>
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<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">fails to be active about sociocentrism in interpersonal relations; and transposes that to texts.
<blockquote>
“People also tend to align their beliefs with the values of their community..... [M]ediation of fake [views] via social media might accentuate its effect because of the implicit endorsement that comes with sharing.” [A] </blockquote>
</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #0e0b6b;">fails to distinguish dramatic value (pleasuring oneself) and validity of the pleasure. Substituting ‘views’ for ‘news’ here:<blockquote>
“The key takeaway is really that content that <i>arouses strong emotions</i> spreads further, faster, more deeply, and more broadly on Twitter....Fake [views] ... consistently reach a larger audience, <i>and</i> it tunnels much deeper into social networks than real [views] do....[F]alsehoods [are] 70 percent more likely to get retweeted than accurate news’” (<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yi4NO6kVUUVC8UO-AH5LDWHBka1x7FNP">source B</a>).<br><br>
That pertains, again, to:<br>
• <b>desirability bias</b>: being inclined to accept information that pleases.</blockquote>
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</ul>
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In these respects, at least, a filter bubble is an egoistically self-identical value sphere, rather than a value sphere that fairly distinguishes (1) frivolous and casual hope for awesome novelty and (2) attentive and deliberative interest.
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I believe that one’s predispositions toward interpersonal relations are transferred to personified text: Frivolous and casual dispositions toward texts mirror frivolous and casual dispositions toward others in one’s life, with whom one shares. Duplicitous sources play into one’s general comfort with frivolous and casual interest, such that what’s shared/retweeted sustains frivolous and casual interest toward others, which “warrants” frivolous and casual regard for validity.
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There is no statistical evidence that the media platforms, as such, cause that.
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<blockquote>
“The massive differences in how true and false news spreads on Twitter cannot be explained by the presence of bots,” Aral told me [the author of <i>The Atlantic</i> article (B)—about <i>Science</i> research about Twitter]....[A]utomated bots were spreading false news—but they were retweeting it at the same rate that they retweeted accurate information. [But...] It can both be the case that (1) over the whole 10-year data set, bots don’t favor false propaganda and (2) in a recent subset of cases, botnets have been strategically deployed to spread the reach of false propaganda claims,” said Dave Karpf, a political scientist at George Washington University, in an email.” [B]</blockquote>
Inasmuch as virality is broad (one posting disseminates to very many followers) “there is empirical evidence that misinformation is as likely to go viral as reliable [views] on both Facebook and Twitter” [A]. But inasmuch as a posting is shared or retweeted (recursive virality or “depth” of dissemination), false information is “likely to be retweeted more frequently and more rapidly than true information, especially when the information involves politics“ [A]. “A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does.” [B]. This wouldn’t be because persons want falsehood to be spread; rather the dramatic value of the content compels interest and sharing.
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Thereby, aggregate trending of interaction (not system factors) give networks emergent properties that trace back to self-identical dispositions toward others, thus toward information. A “social network” gains emergent character due to aggregate action, not systems behavior.
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“Homogeneous social networks, in turn, reduce tolerance for alternative views, amplify attitudinal polarization, boost the likelihood of accepting ideologically compatible news[/views], and increase closure to new information. Dislike of the ‘other side’ (affective polarization) has also risen. These trends have created a context in which fake news /views], can attract a mass audience” [A].</blockquote>
The network (personified as "reducing," "amplifying," "boosting," and "increasing") merely mirrors emergent sociality, and can be exploited inasmuch as trending is based in frivolous and casual engagement with oneself, others, and pretenses of validity.
<br><br><hr>Next: Section 3e: “<a href="http://gedavis.com/bt/001bt.html">“<i>my</i> space, my <i>time</i>”: smartly defining one’s medial sphere</a>”<hr>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-31607464577047084612018-05-16T14:26:00.000-07:002018-05-22T23:12:27.093-07:00fake views as narrative mode of fakery throughout markets<hr />
<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">This is § <b>c</b> of “<a href="http://gedavis.com/gt/003gt.html">Section <b>3</b>: Fake views exploit the appeal of valid drama</a>.”
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The “genre” of fake news tropes a more general issue of fakery in media—”junk media,” <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/junk-news">it’s called</a>, which is hardly new: Unreliable sourcing (“the more general problem of misinformation” [<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/10cU-6lg3b7BWbSaoG7Z9KLMPqfIPAjBk/view">source A</a>]) is as old as “tabloid” press, now commonly as “low-quality information online” [A]. Media “vehicles” have been serving dramatically hyped content/products for as long as there has been marketing.
<br><br><a name='more'></a>For decades, entertainment media (overt dramas, comedy, mystery, etc.) have been basically vehicles for pre-sold advertising for which the video program is segmented to afford the “breaks”—even TV network news programs survive by adapting themselves as show business. (Fears about <i>ABC World News</i> when ABC was to be bought by Disney have been actualized: David Muir is The Talent [the well-coifed hunk] who has to be plopped into the middle of catastrophes from time to time, so that he seems to be a journalist, though all he does is play “David Muir is here.” And all TV anchors, looking warmly into the camera, are “so glad to see you,” because that maps into viewer opinion that one is so glad to see them, because there is always “breaking news, right now, as we speak. So, <i>stay</i> with us—.” And don’t we all need a break.)
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So, entrepreneurial and corporate mapping of fakery into political marketing and scamming merges itself into a consumer normality that easily accepts hype as ordinary fare. “Of <i>course</i>, there is no reliability and truth.” Just <i>that</i> “warrants” naturalizing entertainment. “If everything is hype, what’s the problem?” Validity surrenders to taste (or truthiness, whatever).
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Therefore, the public can be predisposed to regard high-standard media as just more posturing in a world where even that becomes hype. Ergo, Trumpland: Map common fakery onto high-standard media to “discredit unsympathetic news stories” [A] and delegitimize incriminating criticism that is based in high standards of evidence, analysis, and evaluation. That is especially effective for annulling the complexity (thus ambiguity) of controversial issues for the sake of grooming one’s political “base” to feel comfortable with “blue collar” literacy, provincialism, xenophobia, etc. “Everything is marketing, baby.” Even international treaties, human rights, yadda, yadda.
<br><br><hr>Next: Section 3d: “<a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2018/05/bubbles.html">identity mirroring compels viral-ity among filter bubbles</a>”<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-36460154739674584102018-05-15T12:46:00.000-07:002018-05-22T23:09:26.993-07:00“fake news”<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
<hr>This is § <b>a</b> of “<a href="http://gedavis.com/gt/003gt.html">Section <b>3</b>: Fake views exploit the appeal of valid drama</a>.”
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news: “a report of a recent event, new information, fresh tidings” (<i>Merriam-Webster Unabridged</i> online).
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But that standard definition doesn’t indicate the most defining aspect of news: the report or the information is allegedly <i>important</i>. Reporting as news implies a claim of urgency. The report is not only confidently evidential, but the <i>act of reporting</i> can be credibly postured as a sharing of importance or urgency about something confidently evidential (not just dramatically appealing). The medium may posture itself as a reliable source of importance, thus being a <i>news</i> medium.<br><br><a name='more'></a><blockquote>
(<i>Implicit</i> to a report of news is a distinction between facticity and factuality, though the two are commonly confused. Both are confidently evidential, but factuality pertains to formal certifiability by replicable method.
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Facticity pertains to reliable assertability based on common knowledge or informal determination, such as the multiple source standard in journalism, or reliable eyewitness accounting.
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We normally have good reason to regard facticity as so-called “factuality.”
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At best, an assertion can be methodically established in a formally-recountable way—be scientifically valid—but that’s not usually feasible.
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And scientificity is commonly not absolute certainty. It’s, at best, significant assertability relative to a statistical confidence level in terms of methodic apprehensibility.)</blockquote>
A report may be new information, but isn’t important. New information that’s not regarded as important isn’t news. Proffering importance is essential for a news claim about information.
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A report may not be new information, but it’s important. That’s not news. That’s a reminder of what’s known to be important.
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A news claim that is mistakenly false is not thereby fakery. But the source exposes its claim to credibility. Found to be doing a false report, the source either corrects its implicit claim to being a credible source, or it loses credibility as a voice of importance.
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Not-yet-exposed false reporting (postured as valid reporting) that knows that it’s invalid expresses fakery. Fakery is not unwittingly false reporting; it’s false reporting that willfully postures itself and its medium as reliable source of important new information.
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So, “fake news” is a numinous notion because it has no definite sense alone, but gains sense in context.
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Importantly (if not urgently) postured narrative may be true, but it’s not news, not valuable. A phony pretense of urgency for true reports is fake news in that sense. News as show business (video media such as <i>ABC World News</i>) is primarily concerned with capturing and sustaining attention between pre-sold ads.
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Importantly postured narrative may be untrue, but dramatically appealing—tantilizing, but fictional—and not claiming to be documentary revelation. We love to entertain (and to be entertained by) narrative that <i>postures itself as fictional</i> “news.” Docudrama plays with the difference appealingly. Parody and satire play with relativities of validity. Calling any of that fake news is silly.
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Importantly postured narrative may be true and <i>contain</i> news, but is conveyed through opinion (urgency of evaluative posture) that is not merely reportorial. So, the news is <i>framed</i>. The frame may imply principled (good faith) regard for audience or unprincipled regard (e.g., being propagandistic).
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Calling informed <i>opinion</i> news is a misnomer that should distinguish what’s news <i>in</i> the opinion from the evaluative commentary. The opinion piece itself isn’t fake news. But opinion that depends on false information is invalid opinion, no matter how deserving of the principled stance toward that information.
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The journal <i>Science</i> recently published a review of the academic literature on “fake news,” bylined by 16 authors, which viewed “the defining element of fake news to be the intent and processes of the publisher” [March 2018; hereafter: <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=10cU-6lg3b7BWbSaoG7Z9KLMPqfIPAjBk">source A</a>; or “[A]” after a quote]. “We define ‘fake news’ to be fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent.” Note that the definition merges the difference between action (“fabricated...mimics...media...in form...”) and content of action (“...information...content...”). Fakery enacts a <i>kind of relationship</i> (ungenuine) which has a kind of content (false). This may seem obvious, but the difference implies three kinds of validity claim: facticity (or factual—”truth functional,” in semantics); transparency (or genuineness; “intent”); and standards-bearing (normativity; “organizational process”). “Fake-news outlets, in turn, lack the news media's editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information” [A].
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A typology suggests itself: “Fake news overlaps with other information disorders, such as misinformation (false or misleading information) and disinformation (false information that is purposely spread to deceive people)” [A]. Beyond that: One study included in the <i>Science</i> review—a comprehensive study of Twitter over its entire history, up to 2017 (a <i>statistical</i> study which is the keynote of that issue of <i>Science</i>)—is criticized for “blur[ring] together a wide range of false information: outright lies, urban legends, hoaxes, spoofs, falsehoods, and ‘fake news’” (<i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, March 2018; hereafter: <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yi4NO6kVUUVC8UO-AH5LDWHBka1x7FNP">source B</a> or “[B]”)
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But the <i>Science</i> review doesn’t suggest a discret typology.
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An interesting <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=106l2Bf-VBAwBg6dvwkrcX06d-fp5Ukdx">study from 2017</a>, which the <i>Science</i> review doesn’t cite, examined use of the rubric ‘fake news’ in 34 articles between 2003 and 2017, from which the authors derived a twofold typology (“low-to-high intention to deceive” vs. “low-to-high level of facticity”) covering six varieties of narrative: news satire, news parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising, and propaganda.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iR7pOfzwsto/Wvs3cGN-qiI/AAAAAAAABxo/Xieqa93FLZweaSWezI8lWVFq9IIBOjExQCLcBGAs/s1600/typology.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iR7pOfzwsto/Wvs3cGN-qiI/AAAAAAAABxo/Xieqa93FLZweaSWezI8lWVFq9IIBOjExQCLcBGAs/s320/typology.jpeg" width="320" height="124" data-original-width="1212" data-original-height="470" /></a></div><center>Click image for larger view.</center><br>
That typology is congruent with the <i>Science</i> study. The entirety of this can be articulated in terms of degrees of 3-fold validity, as basis for evaluating narratives analytically. Those modes of validity correspond to components of speech acts: intention of action, “locutionary” (referential, content), and illocutionary (interpersonal, appeal). Instrumental effect (informing, instructing—misleading, manipulating) is understood in speech act theory as “perlocutionary effect.” I don’t mean to get into linguistic analysis, but the correlation of issues of “fake news” narrative with aspects of linguistic acts in general (intent [genuiness], relationality [appropriateness], and reference [factuality]) can be useful.
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A malicious effect (perlocutionary, rhetorical, and instrumental<i><b>ist</b></i> effect) of news fakery (in form and content) is to undermine the credibility of media that are mimiced, i.e., having not only a misleading potential, relative to its own content, but a de-legitimating effect relative to the media that are mimiced. Being unreliable, news fakery is doubly unethical in its dramatic appeal: “...[T]he intersection of misinformation and mimicry of traditional news media...is parasitic on standard news outlets, simultaneously benefiting from and undermining their credibility” [A].
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An astute critical sense of narrative can involve not only the pragmatics of communication, but the instrumentalism of the dramactional frame, i.e., the self-concealing intent, backgrounding a rhetoric of appeal, that delegitimizes its kindred “theater.”
<br><br><hr>Next: Section 3b: “<a href="http://coherings.blogspot.com/2018/05/dramatic.html">feeling for story: dramatic appeal (value) in emotional novelty</a>”<hr>
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-90992858768997023692017-03-21T21:19:00.002-07:002021-12-11T18:28:09.615-08:00Habermas and the global metropolitan lattice<span style="color: #0e0b6b;">
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Today, Jürgen Habermas again rightly stresses <a href="https://socialeurope.eu/pulling-cart-mire-renewed-case-european-solidarity">need for greater German solidarity</a> with the EU Project. Obviously, “the increasing functional interdependence of a more and more integrated world society” causes need for new ways to understand cooperation, coordination, and collaboration.
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But he steers away from appeals for more bilateral relations that, in his view, “will drive the European countries even farther apart.” But perhaps arrays of bilateral relations can be coordinated more constructively within <a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/04/europe2020.html">the Europe2020 Project</a> than more-centralized coordinations.
<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Does greater intra-regional and inter-regional pluralism have advantages over centralization? Though I’m a “No Brexit” person, I recognize that part of the appeal of Brexit is gaining better chances for more flexible bilateral relations. Evidently, “Brussels”’s difficulty accomodating that reached a breaking point for the British economy. (The immigration problem reflects a sense of limited “carrying capacity” of the British economy that would, perhaps, increase with more advantageous global economic relations that the EU order inhibits. Valid or not, that’s a British sentiment that is echoed by evolving trade relations globally.)
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“The institutionalization of closer cooperation” can have various geometries: centric (centripetal and centrifugal) or lattice-like, i.e., networking in partnership coordinated ways. Some political voices think that the character of globalization makes innovation in “lateral” networks promising in ways that centralized, “vertical” coordination is inhibiting. The degree to which this is true requires prospecting the idea on the ground, i.e., in actual bilateral and multi-lateral partnerships, which is partly what Brexit is about.
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Such prospecting belongs to all economic regions: South America as much as to Europe; southeast Asia as much as to North America. The European dilemma of continental prosperity is part of ongoing global experimentation that every region has a stake in, as to what's working, what's not working. This involves facilitations by the IMF that can’t be EU-centric; supervisions by the World Trade Organization of arrangements in which intra-EU regions play outside of the euro area; and so on.
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The “problems that can be addressed only in France itself” and the problems that can only be addressed in each other European region that are resisting greater centralization involve intra-regional networks with international investments (e.g., community-based economic recovery through inter-regional cooperations) that may, to some degree, annul EU-centralizing parameters.
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Economic options need facilitations more than re-distributions (or: distributions should be well-defined relative to local and regional initiatives). This kind of thinking has been part of IMF requirements for funding and German requirements of regional austerity: The localities need to innovate by their own initiative, developed locally, inter-locally, and so on. National problems live in <i>global</i> networks whose hubs are metropolitan regions, not national boundaries. There is need for more flexible ways of managing metropolitan-regional relations relative to the global environment.
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Where’s the vision of flexible network development that so many regions sorely need? It's a global question.
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The “mutual dependence on each other” that Habermas rightly emphasizes happens, to a greater and greater degree, in lattices of metropolitan relationships, not “wheels” of governmental centralization, i.e., Brussels-based coordinations. Indeed, Brussels itself takes an aptly de-centralizing view toward EU development.
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That’s one great reason why Habermas’s communicative theory of society is so important! It’s essentially grounding politics in ostensible relationships. It doesn’t, of itself, imply greater centralization of communications, leadership, and social evolution! (Habermas’s work academically complements real EU development very well! The problem seems to be that Habermas wants a more statist EU model than his conceptual work can be read to suggest.)
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Prospects of the “attractive and credible perspective for shaping Europe” belong to the global network of inter-metropolitan relations that don’t operate relative to national borders, being at once intra-national, cross-national, and international.
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Educational political leadership must become more imaginative at local and regional levels about inter-local, inter-regional partnerships. cooperations, and collaborations in their metro-regional contexts. The Vision of Europe must emerge from innovative economic practices, which become institutionalized in accord with fair norms, not engineering economic growth defined by given institutional arrangements. The Vision of Europe must emerge from the ground, which calls for local leadership, across the board, to get creative with how inter-regional initiatives, engagements, facilitations, and commitments can contribute to continental prosperity.
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That, by the way, is how the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement emerged.
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complementary discussions:<br /><ul>
<li><a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/04/europe2020.html">Habermas and the international EU as it is</a> (already cited at the top, re: “Europe2020”)</li>
<li><a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/04/sustainable-global-growth-as.html">sustainable global growth as international focus</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/04/interregionality.html">How does inter-regionality evolve?</a></li>
</ul>
These discussions will become part of a re-written (vastly revised) project on “<a href="http://gedavis.com/jh/jheu.html">Habermas and the EU</a>” later this year.
</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4883938482469352356.post-38701934323055706932017-03-18T14:05:00.000-07:002017-12-25T19:55:18.642-08:00educational leadership for continental union<span style="color: #0e0b6b;"><hr>
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“…Berlin’s failure to seize a new European initiative of 'real solidarity' and European financial redistribution would, [Habermas] warned, bring down the union. ‘We don’t have much time,’ <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/habermas-warns-on-eu-integration-without-renewed-german-push-1.3014608">warned the 87-year-old</a>…”
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The elusiveness of international solidarity in the EU has haunted Habermas' conceptual work, as well as haunting prospects for "political integration" (an EU Constitutional Order?). But the heart of the issue is peculiar to each nation: How to understand one's deeply historical ethnicity (linguistic nationality, regionality) as congruent with a euro-based continental region that “should” become a continental community.
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What is “being European” apart from a market? A provincial citizen asks: Why be “European” other than supporting a euro-based market?
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Continental community cannot be legislated. Scholars of Habermas’s work may tend to forget that his work has always been about the grassroots origin of society through its communicative flourishing.
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But reason for high-scale community is only as good as one's sense of scale of one's own belonging. This is a local issue in every locality (then regional issue in every region). It could be that the future of the Union as continental community is a matter of creative educational leadership in all localities and at all social levels. Especially needed is a conception of political leadership (at all levels) that is educational.
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This continues my interest in <a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-solidarity-culturally-based-not.html">issues of solidarity</a> and <a href="http://ourevolving.blogspot.com/2017/03/metroregionality.html">global condition of continentalism</a>.
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</span>gary e. davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09876167242748081399noreply@blogger.com