I concluded Volume 4 by decrying modern society's "increasing belief that we are entitled to pursue our pleasures without hindrance." The segue into Volume 5's two articles may not be as clear to you as it is to me, but here they are.
The first is Patrick Deneen's Rational Control. While I enjoy and appreciate many of Deneen's writings, his attacks on individualism make me nervous, as I've said before. But I think I may be beginning to understand his point of view better, as being not so much in favor of collectivism and state control as in recognizing the need to make our me-first, me-only, me-now self-indulgence subservient to the needs of the community, particularly the community of family and neighbors. In this I can agree with him wholeheartedly.In this essay Deneen speaks of "rational controls," by which he means, "the replacement of virtue by automated controls that act on our behalf in ways that would be virtuous if we were to have effected those same outcomes voluntarily." Quoting Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield,
What is rational control? In the brand new building where I work at Harvard, the lights go on and off, the shades go up and down, and the toilets flush automatically. Rational control has replaced individual virtue, which is subject to vagaries and may not be active or awake. As instruments of rational control, the seatbelts in your car are inferior to airbags because the former you have to buckle on your own and the latter save you without your having to lift a finger. These examples are small matters of convenience, but they add up. As intrusions into your privacy, your own control over your life, and your virtue, they also add up. In their very minuteness, they reveal the comprehensiveness of rational control.
Pardon the following extensive quotations, but Deneen says it better than I could abstract. The emphasis is my own, however.
[O]n this question of individual responsibility for virtuous action, vs. forms of automatic "rational control," lies one of the true and decisive dividing lines between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives as a general rule hold that individuals can and should be responsible for their own actions—whether virtuous acts of generosity (hence their preference for philanthropy rather than taxation) or individual culpability (why they are tougher on criminals)—while liberals emphasize the social dimension of obligations and responsibilities. In a recent book entitled Unjust Deserts, its authors Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly argue that the accumulated wealth and accomplishments of our society are the consequence of the collective accomplishment of generations of humans, and that all contemporary enrichment of society rests on the shoulders of a common inheritance. Thus, no individual "deserves" what he or she earns—since they have not really achieved anything on their own at all—and all living humans should benefit from this common inheritance through widespread income redistribution.
While I’m not prepared to sign aboard the redistibutionist bandwagon...I find myself thinking that there is something deeply conservative to the liberal side of the argument. Whatever conservatism is—and it is many things these days—to my mind it is a defense of the idea of an organic social fabric that needs conserving and defending against the depredations of modern liberal anthropology, politics, and economics. Such conservatism—Burke’s conservatism—takes a dim view toward individualism. It has a high regard for the idea of generational inheritance and obligations. Such conservatism understands that an individualistic form of liberalism threatens the viability of community—its educative features, including and especially those that teach us forms of obligation and common care, as well as the limits upon our individual will, our greed and ambition. Liberalism was premised most fundamentally upon the liberation of individuals from the confines...of such communities, and conservatism was born of the effort to thwart this undermining of the res publica.
Yet, our contemporary conservatives are the most ardent defenders of individualism and our liberals are the proponents of a more social and even socialized understanding. This reversal is not only because of the intervention of Communism—of course that’s of central importance—but, I would argue, because of liberalism’s introduction of "rational control" as the means of achieving some of the very social ends that might once have been similar to those pursued by a Burkean conservative. Liberalism seeks to put acts of social justice on "auto-pilot," above all because the form of society that [has] helped make liberalism ascendent relies upon a profound weakening of any sense of social solidarity or understanding of generational gratitude and responsibility. In liberating us from the confines of community, the immediate, instinctive and palpable sense of a community was replaced by a generalized, abstract and generally theoretical vision of Society. Having liberated us from the confines of community, now we are freed to care for the universal "community" of humankind—except that there is no such community. Any such care cannot be cultivated, but must be achieved by forms of "rational control." Indeed, in making their case for the generational inheritance of social forms of knowledge, Alperovitz and Daly cite innumerable academic studies proving the inherited sources of collective human knowledge, whereas in a Burkean community, our inheritance would be obvious in the lessons we learn at the feet of our grandfathers and father, in the kitchen beside our grandmothers and mother. In such a community, you don’t need a book to understand the inherited nature of knowledge...but the doing of a thing learned and taught from one generation to the next.
What liberals seek are the effects of virtue without its causes or the conditions that make it possible. Liberalism was born of a deep and pervasive mistrust of paternalism...but it ends with a grotesque version of paternalism without fathers. We inhabit a society in which lights are turned off, in which shades are lowered and toilets are flushed, but in which we effect none of these actions, and in which we are not required to even think why we would take such actions. We act socially without socialization; responsible actions are effected albeit without responsibility.
Modern conservatives should understand that their defense of individual responsibility is ultimately a defense of the communal, the source of a cultivation in virtue. Virtue is never the accomplishment of any one individual—I will agree with Alperovitz and Daly to this extent—but it is enacted and fostered by individuals, in concert with a healthy community of continuity, memory, and gratitude. Conservatives should properly understand the nature of their own commitments to the role and place of the individual...as humans between the beasts and the gods, formed by and in communities and responsible ultimately for passing along the goods of those lessons learned to a new generation.
As long as this post is already, I can't resist adding Broken Window Theory Validated? from Tim at Random Observations, because in my mind it is linked with both Deneen's article and the mindset that leads to the destructive pursuit of pleasure. Even if the link seems tenuous to you, the article he quotes is instructive, and the comments that follow are interesting as well.
In as series of studies, researchers found that in the presence of disorder or minor illegal acts (graffiti, littering, illegal fireworks, supermarket carts not returned to their proper places), people were much more likely to commit, not only similar offensive acts, but also more serious crimes, such as theft, than when such evidence of disorder was not present.
The final experiments involved leaving an envelope hanging out of a mailbox with a €5 note visible in the window where the address normally appears. When the mailbox was clean, 13 per cent of passers-by stole the envelope. When graffiti was applied to the box, this proportion went up to 27 per cent. When the graffiti was removed and litter placed around the box, the proportion of thefts was 25 per cent.
The researchers conclude: "The most likely interpretation of these results is, as before, that one disorder (graffiti or littering) actually fostered a new disorder (stealing) by weakening the goal of acting appropriately."
And from the comments:
I wonder how that applies to low speed limits. Does seeing a lot of people breaking the speed limit tell people that breaking the law is okay?
For me, yes. If I'm in a zone labeled "55" (thus implying you should really be driving about 52 to be on the safe side) and everyone is driving 60-65, I drive at the prevailing speed. Outliers (far faster, far slower) are, I've been led to believe, a major cause of accidents. So I believe it's better to choose safety over legality.
I actually have wrestled with this at times.
And with that, I'll go attend to the obvious evidence that leaving a few things out after returning from a trip has worse consequences over a three-week span than one dirty dish.You leave one dirty dish on the kitchen counter on Monday, and by Tuesday, it's been joined by 10 of its friends. By Wednesday, the adjoining room has been infected with old newspapers and homework. Thursday rolls around and you'd be ashamed for company to come over. Friday...well...you'd be worried OSHA might stop by.
