This Week:

Quote of the Week

Defining My Terms: “IC” and “SC”

What Is “Morality Politics”?

Fantasy Versus Reality in Review
Succeeding in Failure: Part IV in the “Fantasy Versus Reality” Series
Fantasy Versus Reality: A Social and Cooperative Alternative

Greetings,

Sorry it's been so long, but the final part of the “Fantasy Versus Reality” series that I started in January is here this week, and I think it was worth the wait.  This whole series relies heavily on ideas that I began to develop in two previous Nygaard Notes serieses: The “Left, Right, Center” series in issues #111-114, and the “Beyond Good and Evil” series in issues #174, 176, and 177.  New readers (new readers with lots of time for reading, that is) may wish to go to the website and read those series.  Or, you can wait for my book to come out someday, since all of this will probably be in there, with footnotes and stuff.

Even with a double issue, there's no room for more this week.  Sorry about the short editor's notes lately.  But, I guess the whole newsletter is sort of an editor's note, isn't it?

Welcome to the new readers this week!  I don't know how you people find the Notes, but I look forward to hearing what you think.  And that goes for you old readers, too!

Solidarity,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

In her wonderful book, “Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy,” author Kristin Luker sketches out a few of the realities of a single, teenaged mother named Michelle, her baby David, and the baby's father, a low-skilled laborer whose low wages make marriage virtually impossible.  After painting a vivid picture of the complex and difficult reality in which these three people's lives intersect, Luker reminds us that

“We owe them our clearest thinking.  In trying to find a way to better their lives and the lives of others like them, American society will have to confront some hard choices – choices that it would be easier to avoid facing.  But to give these young people anything less than the nation's best effort would be a tragedy.  For better or worse, they are America's future.”

Defining My Terms: “IC” and “SC”

As I spelled out in Nygaard Notes numbers 111-114, and formalized in NN number 160, I no longer use the political terms “left” and “right” to refer to ideologies in the United States.  Since I won't rely on them extensively in this issue, I thought I should explain what I mean by the terms I do use, which are “IC” and “SC.”

When referring to so-called “right-wing” or “conservative” elements (or whatever you want to call the people currently running the country), I use the letters “IC,” which stand for “Individualist and Competitive.”  For them, the world is a tough place, and every individual has to compete for survival.  They value things like Free Markets, Toughness and Survival, Opportunity, and unfettered Liberty.  IC adherents tend to think dualistically and in absolute moralistic terms.  This causes them to speak in terms of “right or wrong” and “good or evil.”  They tend to discount context and complexity, preferring to think in terms of individual “choice” and “decisions.”  They like to think that “social problems” are nothing more than the result of a lot of individual's bad decisions, or of their immorality.

For the “Left” or “progressive” elements in the world, I use the letters “SC,” which stand for  “Social and Cooperative.”  Adherents of the SC philosophy tend to place a higher value on Solidarity than they do on unfettered Liberty, they value Justice over Opportunity, Compassion over Toughness and Survival, and Democracy over Free Markets.  SC adherents tend to think more in terms of “systems,” and less in terms of individual “morality,” so they tend to be less judgmental.  For them, context and complexity are fundamental to any analysis of issues, since human behavior is the result of individual choices that shape, and are shaped by, the various contexts in which they live.

So, when you see the letters “IC” and “SC,” that's what I mean.  It's not as simple as “left” and “right!”

What Is “Morality Politics”?

Public policies relating to things like sex, drugs, crime, and so forth are often lumped together under the term “morality politics.”  What does that mean?

According to scholar Dana McGrath of George Washington University, “The generally agreed upon characteristics of morality policy and its politics include: ‘clashes of first principle,' or conflicts over deeply-held beliefs about what is ‘right' and what is ‘wrong,' technically simple and salient issues, and high citizen participation.”

There was a great example in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) on February 28th illustrating what I think is meant by “morality politics.”  The article was about former state Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke announcing her candidacy for Congress in Minnesota's Sixth District.  In the second-to-last paragraph, we read: “Yecke said that if elected, she would like to specialize on educational and telecommunications issues.  Supporters at the news conference gave her the loudest applause when she told them she was against abortion and gay marriage and favored preserving traditions such as the words ‘under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance.”

As has become standard in gatherings of Republicans in recent years, the “loudest applause” comes at the mention of “morality politics” issues such as abortion, anything to do with sexuality, and religion.  Such issues take on a much larger importance than the small number of people directly involved, as in the current case of Terry Schiavo.  It's a matter of “principle,” it's symbolic of “the kind of nation we want to be,” and it's simple: She's either alive or she's dead.

In the world of morality politics, then, issues are always simple, or made to seem so.   It is often made to appear as if there is a simple choice between two opposing things:  alive or dead, virgin or slut, heaven or hell.  Basically, things are either “right” or “wrong.”  And politicians love issues that appear simple, since that allows them to propose simple “solutions.”  Whether they are effective or not is secondary, as I think is illustrated clearly in the cases I looked at extensively in the first three parts of this “Fantasy Vs. Reality” series, where I looked at the tragic failures of “Abstinence-Only” sex education, “Just Say No” drug education, and “Boot Camps” for juvenile offenders. (I'll review them later in this issue.)

The problem is, life is not simple.  Not your life, not my life, not the lives of pregnant teenagers, not life in general.  Actually, that's only one problem with making policy based on someone's “morality.”  The rest of this issue is about some other problems with this type of thinking.

Fantasy Versus Reality in Review

In the first three parts of my “Fantasy Versus Reality” series, back in January, I gave the details on three public policy areas that pertain to U.S. teens.  I explained how the approaches put forward by the Individualist and Competitive elements in our society have failed miserably.  Here's a brief summary:

* “Abstinence-Only” sex education does not reduce the incidence of sexually-transmitted infections among teens, nor does it bring about a lower incidence of HIV/AIDS among teens, nor does it reduce the number of  unintended pregnancies and abortions among the country's young people.  Neither does it seem to have much effect on when kids start having sex, something which seems to be a big part of the motivation for these programs.

* The Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, program does not reduce rates of drug abuse among our youth.  Neither, by the way, do other school-based drug prevention programs for adolescents that are based on scare tactics, zero tolerance, and the “Just Say No” approach.

* So called “boot camps” for juvenile offenders do not deter crime.  In fact, they may increase crime.  They do not save money for the corrections system.  They do not “build character and self-discipline.”  They do not, in short, do anything they were promised and hoped to do.

I'm happy to say that, as I write this, the boot camp idea seems to be fading, for a variety of reasons.  The DARE program, on the other hand, is still operating in 70-80 percent of the nation's school districts, and federal efforts to promote (and fund) “Abstinence-Only” sex education are increasing.

Succeeding in Failure: Part IV in the “Fantasy Versus Reality” Series

In the previous article I documented how the Individualist and Competitive (IC) policies of dealing with teen sex, teen drug use, and teen crime don't work.  That is, how they have failed and are failing to accomplish what they promise to accomplish.  Yet they continue to have broad support, or at least to be widely used.  Why?  Unless we believe that the people supporting them are all crazy – which I do not believe – then there must be some important ways in which these policies DO work.

I think there are three ways in which these “failed” policies are seen to be successful by their proponents.  1. They allow many voters to shift responsibility for social problems onto “others;” 2. They act as powerful social controls, and; 3. They reinforce a certain moral system.  Let's take each one in turn, looking first at how it serves the IC agenda.  In the following article I will explain briefly how these issues might be dealt with using a Social and Cooperative approach.

Shifting Responsibility

Our culture emphasizes an ideal of “Freedom,” or “Liberty” that is so extreme that it leaves out any notion of Responsibility, a concept that is essential if we don't want “freedom” to degenerate into unbounded license.  In the world of George W. Bush and other promoters of the myriad “morality” policies that I've been talking about, each individual is alone responsible for his or her decisions.  Whatever problems an individual has, in this view, are the result of some sort of moral failing on the part of the individual, whether it be “bad decisions” or “lack of self-discipline” or “weakness” or something else.

And if an individual “fails” repeatedly, then it can be said that the individual is “bad” – that is, essentially bad, or evil – and there is no help for them.  In this view, the only responsibility that the larger community – family, school, government – shoulders is the responsibility to tell people what is right and wrong, and then to reward them if they do “right” and punish them if they do “wrong.”  The fault AND the responsibility for the transgression lies with that individual and that individual alone.

As Dana McGrath of George Washington University put it in a presentation at the International Women's Policy Research Conference in June of 2003, “By constructing the problems that teen mothers, for example, face as the result of ‘bad choices' rather than preexisting economic or cultural disparities, the government and the larger public can escape any responsibility for creating and perpetuating social inequalities.”

So the average citizen, and the average policy-maker, has an interest in framing social problems as personal moral failings.  Then they can say, “It's not my problem!”  That's an important part of why some of these failed “morality policies” continue to be popular.  It's easy to sell a policy that lets most people off the hook entirely.

Social Control

At the heart of IC morality is the idea that morality is absolute and it can and should be articulated and enforced by some authority.  And who is the “authority?”  This is not a simple question, but let's look at how it plays out in practice.  In the case of the anti-drug DARE Program, the “facts” presented about drugs are taught to children by uniformed police officers.  The Family Council on Drug Awareness (not a supporter of the DARE Program) maintains that “DARE has a hidden agenda.  DARE is more than just a thinly-veiled public relations device for the police department.  It is a propaganda tool that indoctrinates children in the politics of the Drug War, and a hidden lobbying strategy to increase police budgets.”

They might be right.  Certainly there are powerful political constituencies that support the idea of a militarized and repressive “War on Drugs” and the large military and police budgets that necessarily go with that territory.  It's not uncommon, when looking at the research about DARE,  to see that the arguments in favor of continuing the program are based more on how good it is for the police than for the kids.

A good example is a major study done in my state by the Minnesota Prevention Resource Center (“Minnesota DARE Evaluated”).  The study “affirmed DARE's remarkable popularity and support in communities throughout the state.”  But it found that support for the program is “not grounded in people's belief that DARE is effective in preventing alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use.  Rather, support is based on the belief that the program's impact can be seen in improved student perceptions of police, better police understanding of students and improved relationships between police and the community.”

Certainly there are powerful constituencies that want greater acceptance of a heavy police presence in the schools (and most other places.)  Consider, in this light, the official DARE website, where we find an article that points out, “When not in a classroom teaching, each DARE officer is a roving, armed, uniformed, radio-equipped officer in the school.  Given that many school population's number in the thousands of students per school, schools are communities of their own.  DARE officers protect those communities.”  Or, one could say, they give certain influential people the feeling that something is being “protected” from somebody.

The Minnesota study tells us that “Some studies report that the symbolic value of police and school working together is a powerful affirmation of traditional values and an important aspect of the program.”  Perhaps support for such “traditional values” explains the fact that “88 percent of ...survey respondents agreed with the statement, ‘Even if there is no scientific evidence that DARE works, I would still support it.'” That's a remarkable finding, as it indicates that the country's largest “anti-drug” program may not be primarily about “drugs” at all.

So, in the case of DARE, the program fails on the grounds upon which it was based (reduction in drug abuse), yet it succeeds in reinforcing a particular form of social control that is based in coercive enforcement of the values of the largely white, largely Christian population in this country, whose values we are to understand are “traditional values.”

Enforcing A Moral System

SC adherents tend to want to shape social policy in the service of getting certain results that can be measured or seen, such as a decline in rates of drug abuse, crime, or unwanted pregnancy.  For IC people, such measurable results may or may not be important, but one thing that is important is that a policy reinforces their moral system.

For example, “Abstinence-Only” sex education has not been shown to result in more teens abstaining from sex.  But what it does do is to send a powerful message about what is “right” and what is “wrong” when it comes to human sexuality.  IC educators, parents, and others insist that any expression of human sexuality outside of the context of procreation within marriage is wrong, and that discussion of anything else is “controversial.”  Therefore, teachers legitimately fear attack if they stray from the preferred “morality.”  Here is McGrath again, explaining the result:

“Sex education curriculum is often self-censored in this way, and with the only federal model being upheld based in a strict-abstinence-only message, even modest discussion of such subjects [as sexual pleasure, masturbation, homosexuality or abortion] may be rejected as extreme. [T]he result is that those messages and behaviors objected to or marginalized by some members of the larger society get omitted [from the sex ed curriculum].  The effect is far from devoid of a message, however, as the official silence on abortion, homosexuality and masturbation serves to reinforce a codification of deviance and shame around these topics and the students who have engaged in any of these practices, while at the same time normalizing and naturalizing heterosexual, procreative sexual practice.”

As the IC agenda spreads beyond sex, drugs, and crime into all areas of life, what can be expected to be “normalized and naturalized” will be the so-called “traditional values” that just happen to be favored by those in power. 

It is thus not surprising that so many “failed” policies continue to survive, and even to grow in influence.  While they may not do what they promise to do, they do allow most people to evade responsibility for what are in large part social problems, while at the same time reinforcing a system of social control that fits well with an authoritarian moral system that is favored by those at the top of the power structure in this country.

Fantasy Versus Reality: A Social and Cooperative Alternative

For someone with a Social and Cooperative (SC) worldview, the world – including the world of teenagers – is a complicated place.  The SC person sees the roots of human behavior as a complex mix of factors, of which morality is only one.  The factors include the interior world of psychology, spirituality, genetic makeup, mental processes, and so forth, as well as the outer world of economics, religion, education, nutrition, social supports, and so forth.  In this world, it is assumed that human decision-making is complex and varied, and that the context in which an individual is raised and in which he/she acts has a profound impact on the decisions that are made.

SC thinking separates the concepts of fault and responsibility, and that's important.  An individual may be at fault for a transgression, and they should bear the consequences, but it is understood at the same time that responsibility for the transgression extends far beyond that individual.  It is understood that all of us who have together created or perpetuated the culture which forms the context for the decision share in that responsibility, to the extent that we understand it and can do something about it.

For example, if a person living in poverty engages in robbery, they should be brought to justice.  At the same time, if we know that there is a correlation between poverty and robbery, then part of the responsibility for that robbery falls upon all of us who allow, or promote, policies that increase poverty.  Society is not to “blame” for the robbery, but all of us have some responsibility for changing the conditions that lead to more robberies.  You could substitute “terrorism” for “robberies,” and see the same picture in a different light.

Why “Fantasy Versus Reality?”

I decided to call this series the “Fantasy Versus Reality” series for a couple of reasons.  One reason is contained in the previous article: I think the “morality policies” favored by the President and many of his supporters have been sold on false pretenses.  I don't think they are really expected to get the results – reductions in unwanted pregnancies, reductions in drug use, reductions in crime – that we have been told they are meant to get.  I think the official arguments are fantasies, and the reality is that a different agenda motivates these initiatives.  So, that's one way in which “fantasy” and “reality” butt heads in the realm of “morality politics.”  But there is another, more fundamental, point to make.

I consider a policy based on total prevention of certain behaviors to be a fantasy.  Consider “drug” use, for example (by which I mean the use of mood-altering chemicals).  In his groundbreaking 1972 book “The Natural Mind,” botanist and drug researcher Andrew Weil states that “The use of drugs to alter consciousness...has been a feature of human life in all places on the earth and in all ages of history.”  If this is “reality” – and I think it is – then any policy aimed at “zero tolerance” is a fantasy.  And to the extent that such universal behavior is criminalized and suppressed, it is a dangerous fantasy.

How about sex in human societies?  That's certainly universal.  Researcher Judith Levine says that “Around the globe most people begin to engage in sexual intercourse or its equivalent homosexual intimacies during their teen years.”  If that is “reality” – and I think it is – then an “Abstinence-Only” approach to teen sex is also a fantasy.  And, to the extent that large numbers of kids are shamed and sanctioned, in service to this fantasy, because their sexual experiences or sexual feelings are “wrong,” then it, too, is a dangerous and life-negating fantasy.

Am I saying that teen drug use or teen sex is without problems, or that whatever kids do is OK?  No, I'm not.  What I am saying is that kids are people who make decisions, and that the job of adults – acting as parents, or as teachers, or as political leaders – is to help and guide our kids to make good decisions in the context of their actual lives.  That is different than the behaviorist “reward and punishment” approach favored by the IC group.

And that is the essence of the difference between the IC approach to educating teens and the SC approach.  Where the IC approach is based in “right and wrong,” the SC approach is based on  “good decision-making.”  And the SC approach, unlike the IC approach, understands that teenagers make decisions in the context of their lives, so big changes in teen behavior are not likely unless we do what we can to change the context.  And that means acknowledging the importance of such things as social inequalities, power relations, economic opportunity, and on and on.

Basing policy on the SC ideology would result in very different outcomes.  Most fundamentally, the policies would be positive, based as they are on the belief that people – teens included – are bundles of goodness waiting to unfold, and the job of society is to unleash that human potential.  The IC approach, in contrast, is based on the idea that people are bundles of badness – sinners, if you will – and that the job of society is to control and suppress that badness.  One is based in this world, and affirms the beauty of human life.  The other is based in another world, and focuses on  human shortcomings.

The reality is that sometimes kids do things that adults don't like.  The fantasy is that if we tell them not to, they won't.  Our policies should reflect reality while supporting and guiding our kids to make the best decisions they can.