Monthly Archives: December 2015

is hope an intellectual virtue (or a virtue at all)?

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Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently that the “black political tradition is essentially hopeful,” yet the historical record gives many indications that injustice is tenacious and unlikely to yield. That means that a historian or a political analyst deeply cognizant of history should not be committed to hope:

A writer wedded to “hope” is ultimately divorced from “truth.” Two creeds can’t occupy the same place at the same time. If your writing must be hopeful, then there’s only room for the kind of evidence which verifies your premise. The practice of history can’t help there. Thus writers who commit themselves to only writing hopeful things, are committing themselves to the ahistorical, to the mythical, to the hagiography of humanity itself. I can’t write that way—because I can’t study that way. I have to be open to things falling apart. Indeed, much of our history is the story of things just not working out.

Coates is critical of “only writing hopeful things” and of assuming that “your writing must be hopeful.” He is not saying: abandon all hope, you who enter into historical thought. But he is distinguishing the cultivation of hope from the pursuit of truth. If hope emerges from truth, that is a matter of sheer chance and not to be counted on.

I have argued, more generally, that truth, justice toward others, and inner psychological wellbeing are distinct goods.* It would be wonderful if they could fit together neatly, and even better if each caused the others. That would be the case in a universe constructed by an omnipotent and just creator, which is why the Bible says things like “the truth will make you free.” But I see no particular reason to believe that truth will make you happy or just, that justice will make you happy or truthful, or that happiness will make you truthful or just. In many situations, knowing the full truth just causes sorrow and paralysis; committing fully to justice requires sorrow and untruth. In my view, all three goals are estimable, but they conflict, and that is one reason it is so hard to live well. This position is consistent with Coates’ admiration for both the truth-telling historian and the hope-instilling tradition of Black politics in the US.

In the previous paragraph, I wrote about happiness in contrast to justice and truth, dropping the word “hope.” For some, hope is a form or close relative of happiness. But one can debate whether hope is a good at all. Neither the classical Greeks nor the ancient Indian thinkers thought that it was. Hannah Arendt observed that “Greek antiquity ignored [faith and hope] altogether, discounting the keeping of faith as a very uncommon and not too important virtue and counting hope among the evils of illusion in Pandora’s box” (The Human Condition, p. 247.).

Indeed, a Stoic or a Buddhist can endorse a strong argument against hope. First, hope is a thought about the future, but wisdom lies in fully experiencing the present, which alone is real. Like nostalgia and regret, hope is a source of irrational disquiet.

Second, hope is about matters beyond our control. For instance, it makes no sense for me to “hope” that I will answer a question honestly. If I am an honest person, I will just answer it honestly. To hope about our own actions is to renounce responsibility. By the same token, we ought to spend no energy hoping that others will be honest–or otherwise ethical–because that is beyond our control. They will do what they will do, and we should respond in the best possible way.

Third, we should not make hope the precondition of acting right, for that is moral weakness. We must do right regardless of the odds of things turning out well.

Most pre-Christian thinkers of the Mediterranean and Northern India ignored or opposed hope. Christians then turned hope into one of the three greatest virtues. That made sense because of their theistic commitments. Indeed, hope is closely connected to faith and charity because it is faith in the Creator’s charity or grace that (alone) substantiates hope in a world of evident suffering.

Arendt was a non-Christian author who thought that the Christian concept of hope had been a positive contribution, related to her own core virtue of amor mundi–love of the world. Notwithstanding the Stoic and Buddhist arguments against hope, and notwithstanding the real tensions between hope and truth that Coates explores–hope could be a virtue. It could be a virtue if it is a resource that human beings need in order to act well. Then instilling hope increases the odds of good action, just as giving people courage does.

In both Stoicism and at least some classical Indian thought, quietism is a common theme. The wise person accepts what is–in which case, hope is irrelevant and distracting. But activists must think about more than the present. They must form plans, which requires estimating the probability of success. When the probability approaches zero, it is time to form a new plan. That means that hope is a rational precondition of action.

And possibly hope is an intrinsic virtue. By Act IV, Scene 1 of King Lear, Edgar has already suffered much, having been cast out of his family and society and onto the wild heath. He convinces himself that he can still be happy because he can still have hope (“esperance”):

Yet better thus, and known to be contemn’d,
Than still contemn’d and flatter’d. To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts. 2255

Immediately following these lines–in a perfect illustration of tragic irony–Edgar’s father stumbles into view. We have watched his eyes being deliberately thumb-wrenched out of their sockets, and now we see him “Enter …, led by an Old Man.” Edgar cries:

But who comes here?
My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Life would not yield to age.

It was not true that Edgar had seen the worst or that the subsequent changes would be for the better. Things were about to get much worse. And things ultimately get worse for all of us. Yet it was better for Edgar to have those moments on the heath than not to have had them. It was to his credit that he could forgive and “embrace” life. He chose to describe his state as hope, and that seems praiseworthy. Hope wasn’t an accurate prediction of the future but rather a choice and a disposition.

To return to the beginning: I agree with Coates that history is not hope-instilling and that the rigorous empirical historian should not go looking for hope in the record of the past. At the same time, a human being who manages to be hopeful seems to be praiseworthy and a gift to others. The historian is a human being, and like all of us, must navigate these two inconsistent values.

*See also: on hope as an intellectual virtue (with the opposite thesis from today’s post); unhappiness and injustice are different problems; why we wish that goodness brought happiness, and why that is not so; three truths and a question about happiness; and all that matters is equanimity, community, and truth.

citizens at work: how small groups address large-scale problems

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(Orlando) I am on my way home from a meeting of the Florida Partnership for Civic Learning. I’d like to argue that it exemplifies citizens’ work. To be sure, it has a specific mission: improving civic education in Florida’s k-12 schools. And it enlists a specific kind of person: professionals in k12 schools, ed schools, and state agencies, all of whom participate in the effort as part of their jobs. It thus differs in significant ways from a group of miners forming a union or volunteers fixing a neighborhood park. (I can spot k12 teachers and ed-school professors from 500 yards away, due to some ineffable mix of demographics, fashion/accessories, and ways of navigating the physical world). Still, the essential features of this group would apply to different issues and different people.

Using the terms I summarize in this 10-minute video, groups of effective citizens seriously ask the question, “What should we do?” That question implies a deep consideration of values, of facts and constraints, and of strategies. The group not only discusses (deliberates), but also takes collective action (collaborates) and learns from the results of its own actions. Finally, it is attentive to relationships both within the group and with outsiders. It specifically promotes civic relationships, which imply certain values–such as mutual respect and accountability–without relying on personal friendships or financial ties. Because the fundamental question is “What we should do (about some large question)?” the group is satisfied neither with just doing something by itself that has limited effects nor with wishing or hoping that someone else acts. It finds leverage over larger systems.

Without going into details about the Florida Partnership or its current work, I would argue that it embodies all the key words in the previous paragraph. The question for the Partnership is “What should we do to improve civic learning for all Florida students?” The main value-questions include: “What is important for a citizen to learn and know?”, “What rights/obligations do schools have to educate citizens?” and “What constitutes just outcomes for the population of students across the state?” Participants discuss extensive factual information: 7th grade civics test scores for every student in the state, detailed survey data on students’ values and behaviors, and information on the effectiveness of various programs. At this particular meeting, we looked at regression models that predicted test scores, elaborate maps of schools that surpassed expectations, toplines from surveys, and qualitative reports from some of those schools. Participants spent time building relationships among themselves and with other actors. Finally, the group considered a whole range of strategies, from working with elementary reading organizations to changing course requirements in state colleges.

Nothing is perfect, but I think we did a good job of avoiding these classic pitfalls:

  1. Turning everything into a communications problem, a problem of “getting the word out.” In an era of constant marketing and propaganda, it seems to come as second nature to focus on “messaging.” But rarely is the main problem that lots of people believe the wrong things. And even when they do, communicating is challenging in a very crowded media environment. Smart groups communicate as they need to but don’t overemphasize its importance.
  2. Imagining phantom agents. It’s a constant temptation to imagine–or hope–that someone else will solve a problem. Someone else’s actions may indeed be essential. For instance, it may take the state legislature to improve civics. But then the question becomes: How can we influence the legislature? The “we” has to be concrete and real: an actual list of individuals who know what to do next. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
  3. Oscillating between the trivial and the utopian. I have often observed groups jump back and forth between the ends of a spectrum of practicality. At one moment, they will convince themselves that a given problem cannot be solved without changing the whole political/economic system. At another moment, they will talk about making one presentation at someone else’s small-scale meeting. To make a substantial difference, you have to find space between those extremes.
  4. Operating at only one level of power. According to the train of thinking inaugurated by Steven Lukes and John Gaventa in the 1970s, power operates at several levels. There is explicit power: the power to do something (such as require a statewide civics test or grade an individual kid). There is the power to set agendas. There is power over other people’s preferences and values. And there is power to affect who uses the other forms of power. Truly effective citizen groups think at all these levels.
  5. Losing the moral questions in data. We have civics test scores for every 7th grader in Florida, and my colleagues have analyzed those data in several illuminating ways (geospatially, demographically, even qualitatively). But it is fundamentally a moral question what to measure on a 7th grade civics test. It is also a moral question whether the state should test students, and what consequences should follow from success or failure on a test. Finally, given a distribution of real test scores, it is a moral question what to do next. Should you devote all your resources to serving the lowest-scorers? Raise the median? Reward the high-scorers? In an age of positivism, we tend to be better at analyzing the data than at reasoning about what the data imply morally. But good groups hold philosophically diverse and productive explicit discussions of the moral issues.
  6. Losing sight of either the short-term or the long-term. Really effective citizen groups achieve short-term victories with an eye to building momentum and winning longer-term victories later. The two mistakes to avoid are looking only for easy “wins” that don’t create momentum or working directly on long-term problems without having enough people or money to sustain the effort.

new chapter on generational trends in US politics

(Orlando, FL) I was asked to write a chapter about the US for an international book about “youth disaffection with politics.” I looked at 40-year trends in more than 20 survey questions, ranging from trust in government to support for government programs to turnout. I really did not find evidence of “youth disaffection” in the US. All Americans are pretty alienated, but it isn’t a generational pattern. Most of the trends I looked at aren’t generational at all–they rise and fall with recent news and events.

My chapter is mainly an argument against thinking of alienation from politics and government in generational terms, at least for the US. I even venture that a generational framework is generally problematic. It distracts attention from the most important phenomenon, which is the stubborn replication of the same inequalities from decade to decade. I am for studying and supporting youth, but not because today’s youth are different in some fundamental way from their predecessors. Rather, institutions should finally treat a new generation better so that we begin to see some meaningful differences.

See “Youth Disaffection with Politics: The US Case,” in Pedro Pérez Herrero (ed.) Desaffección política y gobernabilidad: el reto politíco (Madrid: Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Estudios Latinamericanos, 2015), pp. 45-60. See also the Millennials and politics and Letter to a Young Political Reformer.

nonprofit outreach boosts turnout

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Yesterday, I wrote that higher education has limited capacity to improve economic mobility in the US, and our greatest contribution is to help understand and promote the policies that would increase justice. Right on cue, my colleagues at CIRCLE announced a new report they helped Nonprofit Vote to write. It shows that nonprofits are effective when they conduct nonpartisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts for the people who come to them seeking services.

Nonprofit Vote calls this strategy “reverse door knocking,” because instead of canvassing highly disadvantaged people, you talk to them about voting when they knock on your organization’s door.

CIRCLE helped to document the positive impact in several different ways. Here is one. The graph shows the turnout (based on actual voting records) of people who were registered at participating nonprofits versus those who were registered in other ways. The categories are different levels of propensity to vote, as calculated by the firm Catalist, which usually advises campaigns on whom to target. If you’re a low-propensity registered voter who was registered through one of the participating nonprofits, you had an 18% chance of actually voting in 2014, ten points higher than if you were a registered voter with the same propensity but you didn’t receive outreach from a nonprofit.

nonprofit

The analysis also shows strong effects on young people.

to what extent can colleges promote upward mobility?

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The expectation is widespread that colleges should provide pathways to prosperity and success for individuals–and also make the distribution of wealth and power in the whole society more fair and equitable. Higher education seems to have that potential because it does promote upward mobility for individuals. Even if you are born in the bottom fifth of the income distribution, if you attain a college degree, your chances of staying in the bottom fifth are only 1 in 10.

But the results at the national scale are disappointing. Only a few (14.5%) of children born in the bottom quintile complete a four-year degree. The pressure for higher education to promote economic mobility better comes from various quarters–conservative governors angry that college degrees aren’t aligned with employers’ needs, technocratic liberals in the Obama administration trying to push down college costs, and campus activists demanding that student populations be representative of the national population in terms of race and social class.

The pressure is understandable, and much of it is valid, but we must squarely face the reasons that higher education does not promote mobility if we want to improve results.

College graduates represent the upper strata of society. About 40% of US adults hold college degrees, and they increasingly fill the top 40% of the slots in the whole socioeconomic hierarchy. That is why it is good advice to an individual student to complete college. Four-year colleges intentionally prepare their students to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, business leaders, and teachers, not bus drivers, receptionists, or construction workers. That’s what they offer; that is what they’re for. It means that the alumni body, almost by definition, will not represent the socioeconomic profile of the country.

The alumni could, however, represent the racial and gender diversity of the country if race and class were decoupled. And the alumni could come from economically representative backgrounds. Half of college students could be raised in homes below the median income, even though, as alumni, they would occupy the top 40% of the socioeconomic scale. That would imply a great deal of upward mobility, and it’s one criterion of justice (justice as an equal chance to succeed).

The barriers, however, are serious. One obstacle is that we don’t have an expanding middle class. Adjusted for inflation, the median US family earned $54,000 in 2014, about $4,000 less than in 1999. If families in the middle are becoming worse off, then upward mobility for some implies downward mobility for others.

That zero-sum model is an oversimplification, but there really are only so many jobs for lawyers, doctors, engineers, and corporate executives. Families who already stand in the top 40% will fight tooth and nail to keep their own kids in that tier instead of trading their spot with someone from further down the hierarchy. They will spend whatever they must on housing, k-12 education, and extracurriculars; apply whatever pressure they need on their alma maters; and take full advantage of their social networks to keep their kids ahead of the median. They may value both racial and socieconomic diversity as educational assets, but not to the extent that they are willing to give up a spot at a top college to someone else’s kid. And it is highly implausible that raising their consciousness about injustice will change their behavior. I can think of no comparable outcome in human history. People at the bottom of hierarchies do achieve change by obtaining power, but not by making the people at the top feel bad.

We might think that by investing in human capital, we could expand the middle class and make space for more people above a real income of $54,000. To some extent, that is both possible and important. But my sense is that left-of-center economists are now criticizing the human capital thesis. Yes, individuals who have more valuable skills, more elite social networks, and more cultural capital will beat out the competition for desirable jobs, which is why a college degree predicts high earnings. But raising the proportion of people with college degrees–as we have done–does not make the society more equitable, because other factors are increasing inequality. Prime suspects are deregulation, capital mobility, and monopoly power.

Finally, at the individual level, a person must move a long way from the levels of financial, human, social, and cultural capital available at the bottom of the economic hierarchy to reach the levels that are expected for candidates for great jobs. It is implausible that you can move nearly far enough during four years that start at age 18. To the extent that higher education is a path to upward economic mobility, it is near the last mile of that path. Colleges and universities compete for applicants from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds who have already received unusual support from families, community groups, and k12 schools. Colleges can play a useful role by a) being aggressive about finding these applicants, the ones who are ready to move the last mile, and by b) serving such students well. But they are not going to get disadvantaged kids 80% of the way. They offer too little, too late.

These are reasons that higher education is unlikely to make more than a modest dent in the inequality problem. To address that problem in a serious way, we need different economic policies. In a different political-economic climate, colleges and universities could do their jobs (educating students and producing knowledge) with less injustice. Given the reality, I believe our top priority is to understand the inequality problem better and to make the knowledge that we produce more politically significant. I don’t mean only economic research and policy advocacy but also normative inquiry, cultural critique, social experimentation, public dialogue, and a range of other research-related activities. Meanwhile, we must deal with an unjust context as ethically as we can, which means handling matters like admissions, hiring, and retention thoughtfully  while also acknowledging the inadequacy of these responses to the underlying problem.

[PS: I read later today that “colleges themselves are responsible for about 5 percent of the variation in students’ earnings later in life,” which reinforces my argument here.]