Meritocracy vs. Solidarity

This is quite a topic. To begin with, compare and contrast the following five quotes.

(1) Bryan Caplan quotes Harford on peer sanctions/ostracism for "acting white":

[A]s long as African Americans remain disadvantaged and clustered together in ghettos, a black student who studies hard is acquiring the ability to escape from poverty, crime, and deprivation - and from those around him. That may not be popular. People don't like to see their friends developing escape plans; even the option to escape makes us nervous.

[There are] analogues of "acting white" in communities as diverse as the British working class (that certainly matches my experience at school), Italian immigrants in Boston's West End, the Maori of New Zealand, and... Japan's lowest caste.

(2) Caplan adds:

This all sounds great, until you realize that there are plenty of cultures that don't work this way! Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were part of the working class when they arrived. But almost all of the social pressure in Jewish culture was to do well in school and make a better life, not remain in the working class. The same goes for earlier waves of Asian immigration. Japanese-American gardeners of the sixties encouraged the next generation to do well in school and move up; that's why I've haven't heard anyone talk about a "Japanese gardener" for twenty years, even though they were ubiquitous when I was a kid.

(3) Cf. Russell Arben Fox's communitarian perspective:

Read the church's "Black Value System" that Rev. Wright and TUCC uses, and see how he connects the disavowal of middleclassness to a disavowal of the meritocratic (and thus always at least potentially elitist and nonparticipatory and undemocratic) values which hold sway in a capitalist state like our, a state determined above all to discover the most talented individuals out there, and enable (and encourage) them to professionally and socially make lifestyle choices so as to seal themselves off from the rest of their community.

(4) From the linked PDF:

The highest level of achievement for any Black person must be a contribution of substance to the strength and continuity of the Black Community.

(5) Cf. H.E. Baber's The Multicultural Mystique:

White privilege is the privilege of self-invention. Immigrants and members of ethnic minorities do not have that luxury. Even when they are not locked out of the mainstream by discrimination and economic disadvantage, multiculturalist notions of authenticity, role obligation and group loyalty dog them.

Communitarianism creeps me out. It's so oppressive to discourage people from developing their own talents or pursuing their own dreams; to bind them forever to whatever local "community" they happened to be born into -- however parochial, intolerant, and limiting.

I'm so incredibly grateful to be where I am now, to have the opportunity to dedicate my life to the discipline of philosophy; I can't even begin to imagine being nearly so happy doing anything else. The academic philosophical community is the first to which I've felt that I truly belong. But if I had been born a Maori, if my skin were a darker shade, then suddenly I would have been obliged to remain with my ethnic community instead? *shudder*

That's not to defend any kind of egoism, of course. I certainly think we ought to care about more than just our own self-interest, and strive to make the world a better place. But there are any number of ways to do that, some of which may be better or worse suited to our individual talents and temperaments. The world is a big place, and we needn't limit our attention to the little corner of it that we're born into. Utilitarian benevolence sits better with liberalism than communitarianism, it seems to me.

Moreover, I'm not even a pure individualist. I think that self-chosen communities can matter a great deal, and their collective achievements may even outweigh the individual interests of their members. But this only holds insofar as the members endorse it; unchosen communities are not automatically trumps.

So, count me in favour of meritocracy and the upward-mobility (though not the crass materialism) of "middleclassness". Count me in favour of "elitism", understood as the claim that some ways of life are better than others, tempered by the cosmopolitan insistence that the best forms of life not be closed to anyone merely due to the circumstances of their birth. (Sadly, this demand is yet to be met. Much more still needs to be done to enable humanity. But entrenching class divisions in the name of "solidarity" is not the place to start. We should want as many people as possible to join the creative classes -- to vacate the working class and its culture, not hold people there and reinforce it.) Count me in favour of liberalism.

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Is Ignorance So Terrible?

Susan Jacoby laments:

nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

I'm not sure about this. Members of the intellectualist tribe may signal their cultural loyalties by affirming the great need for bilingualism, Shakespeare, learning a musical instrument, and knowledge of geography, history, astronomy and evolutionary theory. These are all fine things, and enriching in their own way, but I'm not convinced that any one of them is vital for ordinary people living ordinary lives. Why would it be "necessary" for average Joe to know the location of Iraq? He's not the one making decisions over there. Or, again, it's easy to poke fun at those who are ignorant of basic astronomical facts, but the intrinsic importance of this is less apparent than the symbolic effect -- drawing our attention to a cultural gap. (I'm reminded of the snob's favourite pastime: constructing lists of books that "every educated person must read".)

As Brandon says, we are all ignorant of a great many things. Moreover, "It is not a crime, or a sin, or a shame, or even a misfortune, to be ignorant of something. It is merely an opportunity." Now, I do think it is important to always recognize the opportunity for further knowledge as an opportunity. We should celebrate and value learning as such. But there are so many things to be learnt, we cannot hope to pursue every one of them. Further, some opportunities for learning will excite us more than others. So, given limited time and resources, it doesn't seem so inappropriate for one to simply disregard some fields as not one's concern. We ought to respect and value others' expertise in an area, of course, but that need not translate into any great desire on our own part to emulate them. There needn't be anything anti-intellectual about this.

I would say there are two broad cases in which the untroubled ignorance Jacoby laments is genuinely problematic. One is general anti-intellectualism, i.e. an attitude which positively denigrates learning, or at least does not recognize it as broadly desirable (an 'imperfect duty', if you will). Think of Huckabee boasting about how he 'majored in miracles, not math'.

The second case is when particular knowledge is required to inform one's decisions, but the "anti-rationalist" feels licensed to think and act from a position of ignorance instead. This is where worries about public policy debates come in. Many political partisans are simply 'bullshitters', in the Frankfurtian sense that they demonstrate a complete lack of concern for whether their claims are true. Others are dogmatists, so convinced of their own righteousness that, again, evidence and careful reasoning go out the window. This pollution of the public sphere is, I believe, the height of (common) evil (and it really is imperative that this be more widely recognized).

Private morality is not demanding, but politics is. Those who enter the public sphere, or seek to exert political influence, have an obligation to contribute constructively to the decision-making process. This holds especially for journalists, pundits and other "shapers" of public opinion, but even ordinary citizens have some obligation to become minimally informed before they vote. (Though it remains an open question whether ordinary people have any obligation to act as citizens in the first place. If one were to refrain from ever voting or influencing others by voicing a political opinion, one's personal ignorance might not matter in the slightest.)

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WWSD?

Interesting post from Mark Rowlands at Secular Philosophy:

To a considerable extent it is society that has decided what is and what is not emotionally aberrant. What you should and should not feel when your most cherished beliefs are attacked is, in part, socially determined, and so what you actually do or do not feel is, to a considerable though not exhaustive extent, socially constructed. This is a theme brilliantly explored by J.M. Coetzee in various novels, most notably The Lives of Animals. And, for one reason or another, our society has determined that emotional outpourings of a sort that would be regarded as aberrant in the case of other beliefs are perfectly legitimate in the case of religious beliefs...

Part of what is involved in being an adult – part of the wonder of growing up – is being both able and willing to have one’s beliefs subjected to critical examination without existentially shrivelling in the process. If society discourages us from this by making us believe that extraordinary outpourings of emotion are OK in connection with certain beliefs rather than others, then society is simply trying to prolong our childhood. And if anyone doubts, or is interested in, the rise and rise of infantilization in contemporary society, I heartily recommend Michael Bywater’s Big Babies.

If Christians ask themselves ‘what would Jesus do?’ philosophers should, it seems, ask themselves, ‘What would Socrates do?’ It’s a long time since I read any of the Platonic dialogues, but if my memory is not deceiving me, Thrasymachus didn’t break down when Socrates cast doubt on his claim that ‘justice is the advantage of the stronger.’ But even if he had, I don’t think it would have stopped Socrates.

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Merry Christmas!

A puzzling thing about America is that some people seem to think that Christmas is an exclusively Christian holiday, such that anyone who celebrates it is ipso facto celebrating the religion. So we hear "Happy Holidays" and similarly bland, neutral greetings. It's very boring. I heartily recommend that you join the rest of the Western world and treat Christmas as a cultural celebration that anyone can partake in.

Stephen Law has a nice post that highlights the value of community rituals and traditions. He concludes:

Christmas is a celebration of peace and love, and a time to think of others, especially those less fortunate. It is a time at which we come together, at which we feel solidarity and empathy with the rest of humanity. But of course these are values and aspirations that can be shared by non-Christians too. Much of the true meaning of Christmas is open to everyone, whatever their religious beliefs.

I'm suspicious of the idea that there's any one "true meaning" for a cultural tradition like Christmas. It's presumably going to mean different things to different people, and I don't see that anyone has the authority to impose their preferred conception on anyone else. Cultural significance and shared meaning are socially constructed in the strongest sense: it's up to us to make of them what we will. If you imbue the holiday with great religious significance, that's fine. If you don't -- if you just cherish the opportunity to spend time with loved ones, and to participate in tree-decoration, gift-giving, and other fun rituals passed along through the generations -- that's fine too. The meaning(s) of Christmas emerge, bottom-up, from how we choose to conceive of it. To think otherwise is the same fallacy as thinking that dictionaries fix what words mean (and don't get me started on grammar rulebooks!). There is no such top-down authority. "Prescriptivists" might like to boss others around, but we're not obliged to listen to the petty authoritarians.

I leave you with the greatest Xmas song ever:

Have yourself a merry merry Christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin'
While you're drinkin' down your wine

And remember, you can still join the UNICEF Facebook Chain, here.

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'Misfit' is a relative term

Some commenters here complain about how "Social misfits are really rife in philosophy." It can certainly be discomforting when the people around you do not share your social norms and expectations. But isn't it a bit quick to just assume that it's their fault (and so call them 'jerks', 'boors' and so forth)? Lack of fit is a symmetrical relation, after all. Consider the following complaint:

How many times as a female professor have I gone out to dinner parties with visiting speakers where there were several philosopher’s wives present (my other colleagues mostly being males), where the entire dinner table conversation was devoted to philosophical issues that excluded them? As a woman, I or perhaps simply as someone socialized to be more polite and empathetic, I face the choice then: should I try to join in with “the guys” and prove my mettle, thus ignoring half the people present at the table, or should I attempt to be more congenial and polite and talk to the women?

Now, from my perspective, the whole point of a bunch of philosophers going out to dinner with a visiting speaker is to discuss philosophy. That's what they're there for. To complain that "the entire dinner table conversation was devoted to philosophical issues" seems as bizarre to me as complaining that the entire seminar was dedicated to philosophy when some of the students might rather have discussed the local sports team. The problem does not necessarily lie with the topic of conversation; it could just be that the sports fans are in the wrong place.

More generally, it's nice to accommodate people and make them feel comfortable. But given that the lack of fit between 'nerds' and 'normals' is symmetrical, it's not clear why the norms of the latter group should always take precedence. I mean, there's no surer way to make me uncomfortable than to put me in a situation where one is expected to engage in small talk. That's just a fact about me and how I relate to others. Many people (outside of academia) seem to be just the opposite: uncomfortable with serious discussion, comfortable with small talk. That's a fact about them and how they relate to others. Each of these two personality types may find it difficult to relate to the other. Objectively speaking, that's the end of the story. But in practice the extroverts are socially dominant, so they lay fault on the nerds and introverts for failing to conform to their preferred (arbitrary) norms. What they don't seem to realize is that they are equally failing to conform to our preferred norms.

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Biased Accommodations

As a society we tend to be much more accommodating of some commitments (e.g. religious or familial) than others (hobbies, etc.). Is this fair? Infinite Injury offers an example from UC Berkeley:

The clear sense these rules convey is that the instructor is expected to bend their rules if they might create difficulty or hardship for someone who wishes to respect a religious obligation but that a student who is going to be absent for some other extra-curricular activity undertakes a greater obligation if they want to miss class. Now one might justify such a policy on the grounds that some athletes or musicians are going to be out of town on a large number of dates or that religion is more important to people. However, it would be easy to give every student a certain number of absences they can exercise using the easier standard and there are many students who are more casual about the religious observances they ask to be excused for then athletes are about their games...

The things that we [non-believers] may really really care about get no accommodation while just someone has a ridiculous belief about some historical event we have to bend over to accommodate them. Now I fully understand that the potential for religious discrimination is great but if we weren’t implicitly endorsing religion as something more important than say a rocketry hobby we would use some fully neutral policy that gave everyone the chance to do what they really cared about.

That seems exactly right to me. For a more controversial example, then, consider the view that we ("society", i.e. employers and institutions) ought to make a special effort to accommodate those who choose to raise children. I'm sympathetic to this view. But is it biased? Why is the choice to raise children more worthy of accommodation than the choice to write a novel or compose a symphony in one's spare time? Perhaps we ought to be more accommodating in general, not singling out 'family support' as a uniquely worthy form of support. Fairer, perhaps, to enable individuals to pursue whatever projects are most important to them -- and for many this will happen to be childrearing, but for others it may not.

What is the best argument for singling out childcare? (I would look for consequentialist considerations, e.g. the impact that parenting has on the next generation. But let's bracket that for now.) Feminists sometimes claim that lack of support for women who want to both work and raise children is sexist. But it isn't entirely clear why this is so. (We can't always get everything we want. That's an annoying fact of life, not necessarily a sign of oppression.) Back to II:

The arguments given about the problems for women with babies in academia all focused on the extra time and energy women put into childcare. Now if women put more effort into children simply because they find raising children more rewarding (relative to men) the fact more women than men drop out to raise children is actually the desired outcome. It’s what would result from perfectly fair mutually beneficial trades. On the other hand if you think that the extra effort women put into childrearing isn’t the result of fair deals then the target should be on encouraging women to put less effort into childrearing, not making the unfair division of labor slightly less bad for women.

And a thought-provoking analogy:

Men are underrepresented in K-12 teaching. The reason most men abandon teaching is the difficulty of taking a high paying job in business and being a teacher. Therefore we should provide special benefits and accommodations to let men teach while still working as businessmen in the day. Obviously this argument is fallacious. If people are leaving some profession because they’ve found a better offer they don’t deserve special treatment as a result and it should only be fixed if luring them back provides a good value. Thus whether or not this is a leak we should be plugging is an empirical economic question and it’s only in the face of real data on marginal costs and productivities that we can answer whether or not we should address the ‘problem’.

Perhaps childrearing and religion are presupposed as normal components of the good life, and so it is thought that they should not be subject to trade-offs in the manner of our (other) chosen values. Writing a novel is a choice you make, and a somewhat peculiar one at that; having kids, on the other hand, is simply par for the course in a 'normal' life. This difference in normality may be thought to underwrite the special obligation to accommodate the one choice more than the other. But why should normality matter?

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Job Sharing

Academic careers can be difficult to reconcile with family life. The job market is tough enough for a single philosopher -- the chances of a couple securing work at the same institution are generally very slim. So, that sucks.

The best solution I've heard of is 'job sharing', which is just what it sounds like: two people, one job. It's a great deal for the institution: the couple applicant may have twice as many areas of specialization and teaching competence than usual, for example. And they may be expected to do twice as much research -- or perhaps even more, since each of the two individuals has only half the usual teaching load to bear. Yet they cost only a single salary.

Why does this not happen more often? Do you think job sharing is likely to become more common in future?

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Why Coffee Shops?

Assuming that expressions of cultural incomprehension fall under the 'et cetera' component of this blog's purview, let me ask: why do people like to meet in commercial places (coffee shops, bars, etc.)? It seems to me like a double cost: firstly, the environment is intrinsically less pleasant than elsewhere (cf. a comfy private lounge, or stroll through the park), and then - to add insult to injury - one is expected to waste money on consumables whether one really wants them or not.

Maybe the idea is that most people really like the consumables. That'd be fine, I'd happily endure a cramped and noisy coffee shop for the sake of a caffeine-craving friend. My worry is just that there seems to be a social norm that people should meet in such places, and so a group of people might end up meeting there merely due to the norm and not because anyone actually prefers this location over non-commercial alternatives. "Meeting for coffee" is the expected behaviour. I'd rather invite people for a stroll in the park, but they might think that weird. Depending on my mood, that may or may not bother me, but it seems like the sort of thing that would deter many people from socializing in a way that they'd actually enjoy more. (Whether there really are "many people" who share my idiosyncratic tastes here is, of course, another question!)

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Against Dressing Up

Fashionable or fancy appearance has no intrinsic value. The only value is to make yourself look comparatively better than others. If everyone dressed up, no-one would be any better off than if all had stuck to casual attire. In fact, everyone would be worse off, because less comfortable, not to mention the wasted time and effort. It's a mere rat race, so those who put effort into their appearance impose externalities on those who don't (by making them look worse). That's obviously bad, and there is no general benefit to justify imposing this costly transfer of status. So, we may conclude, it is immoral to 'dress up', follow fashion, put much effort into your appearance, etc.

N.B. This complaint does not extend to basic hygiene, since that is a non-comparative value: a world full of smelly people really is worse, in a way that a world of unkempt people is not.

Possible objections: I see two ways one might rebut the claim of 'no general benefit' here:

1. Insist that mere appearance is a non-comparative value after all. (Apparently cosmetic surgery gives lasting satisfaction, unlike most luxury purchases which people soon adjust to. This at least suggests it isn't comparison to one's recently past self that one values here. But it may still be the comparison to other people.) I remain skeptical.

2. Appeal to status pluralism. If some people care more about appearances than others, then maybe those who care can obtain great subjective benefits while the rest of us don't much care about the imposed "cost" of looking worse in comparison. I'm sympathetic to this line of thought -- the only flaw is that it ignores the run-on consequences: other people think appearances matter even if we don't, and so may treat us worse, and we certainly care about that.

Absent any more convincing objections, we seem led to the conclusion that caring for appearances is indeed a mere 'rat race', or Prisoner's Dilemma, such that deliberators in the Original Position (behind the veil of ignorance) would make a collective agreement not to start down that track. Is there anything to stop me drawing the convenient conclusion that dressing up is not just tiresome, but unjust?

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YouTube Feminism

This is an important discussion (hat-tip):

They point out that hateful, sex-obsessed trolls may intimidate women (and others) out of participating in the online public sphere -- which effectively amounts to cultural disenfranchisement. This is a really serious issue, so it's good to see it highlighted.

I found one section a bit jarring, though. The Resident claims that the trolls sound like guys who won't "get laid", and Emergency Cheese adds that they might need to try "a different tactic" -- all of which just seems to reinforce the lamentable assumption that the measure of a man is how many women he can trick into sleeping with him. Maybe they were just being pragmatic, and tapping in to the trolls' existing sex-obsession may be one way to get them to behave less hatefully. But still, as long as we're talking about disturbing cultural trends, I think the sex-obsession itself is another problem.

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Untouchable

There's an interesting article in the latest Canterbury magazine (vol.4 no.1) about Penni Cushman's research on male primary school teachers. The entrenched sexism in play here is so blatant and pernicious that I'm amazed the issue doesn't receive more attention (especially among those who care about social justice and gender equality). As Cushman says:

It's frightening what men have to deal with in schools now. They don't want to touch children and they're afraid of being alone with a child. A climate of mistrust around male teachers has been created and that puts a lot of stress on men in schools and creates confusion among children.

Her survey of male teachers [PDF] uncovered an "overriding sense of hopelessness and regret" about the social norms governing their contact with children. As one teacher wrote:

It is sad that I feel I can’t put my arms round a child to comfort them the way a female teacher or parent does.

Indeed. Worse than sad, I'd say, the underlying gender norms and social attitudes are downright immoral. Cushman summarizes the findings:

Although there were teachers among the survey respondents and focus group participants who set aside the ‘no touch’ policies, they were very much a minority. Most teachers chose to endure the concomitant anxiety and humiliation associated with avoidance of touch rather than engage in practices that left them vulnerable. The resultant hands-off behaviour is, of course, the very behaviour advocated in the code of practice. However, adherence to these NZEI guidelines was seen by some teachers to be invoking ‘paranoia’, and there was fear that the children themselves might develop an unreasonable suspicion of male teachers. Despite the suggestion in the code of practice that teachers explain why they cannot respond to physical contact, most males did not heed this advice, or were unaware of it. As one pointed out, how, exactly, does a male teacher explain to children that because of his gender he is untouchable?

See also: A Climate of Fear.

N.B. This is in a New Zealand context -- I'm not sure whether other countries are quite so bad.

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Patriotism and Tough Love

Jason Kuznicki compares conceptions of 'patriotism':

Today, the word “patriot” can scarcely be distinguished from the word “nationalist;” a patriot is above all one who is loyal to his government, his country, and his fellow citizens... For most Enlightenment thinkers, to be a patriot was to favor the people of the country rather than the country’s rulers.

Given the simple definition of 'patriotism' as "love of country", I think the real problem lies not with the popular interpretation of 'country', but of 'love'. Too many Americans think that loving their country means coddling it, ignoring its faults, and proclaiming its virtue without regard for reality. Unsurprisingly, this produces a spoilt brat. But surely genuine love would not be so predictably destructive. Real patriots appreciate the great potential inherent in their country, and hope to nurture this and make it a reality. They stand by their country in hard times, not in the pretense that it is faultless, but in the faith that it can redeem itself.

(As Blar noted, the full version of the famous phrase is: "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right.")

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Perpetuating Gender Norms

Brit Brogaard, summarizing Elizabeth Minnich, writes:

[T]he problem of the status of women in philosophy... wouldn't have been solved if there were 50% women but the 50% felt pressured to behave like men and do male-style philosophy.

While I agree in part (see below), I don't like the implication that there is a particular way that "men" behave, or a peculiarly "male style" of philosophy (or anything else, for that matter). Such labels risk perpetuating existing gender norms, which impose oppressive expectations on men and women alike.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that women shouldn't be forced into becoming analytic metaphysicians, or participating in "the 'old-boy's' network of drinking & smoking and forming bonds", as a precondition for career success in philosophy. But my objection is that it's not essentially a gender issue. Nobody -- male or female -- should have to conform to a parochial mould.

The virtue of "difference feminism" is that it casts a critical eye on previously unquestioned norms, exposing their parochial nature. This is hugely valuable. But while the lens of gender may prove a useful investigative instrument in this regard, it may distort our subsequent evaluations if we're not careful. Uncritical relativism should be avoided -- for example, if logic and violence are gendered as "male", that doesn't make either illogic or violence defensible. Gender is fundamentally irrelevant; the underlying norms should be assessed on their own merits. And if found to be unreasonable, they shouldn't be imposed on anyone.

Related posts: on affirmative action in academia, the liberal case against "diversity", and indirect or "implicit" discrimination.

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The Multicultural Mystique

Let me recommend H.E. Baber's The Multicultural Mystique: the liberal case against diversity. The book's core argument is as follows:

Multiculturalism restricts individual freedom. Because it renders characteristics that are ascribed and immutable salient and imposes scripts on individuals in virtue of them, it restricts the freedom of individuals to be “treated as individuals.”

No one is completely free to invent himself. There are countless characteristics we have that are ascribed and immutable, including sex, race and ancestry, height, handedness and sexual orientation. The aim of liberals, for whom individual freedom is of paramount importance, is to minimize the extent to which such unchosen characteristics affect the way in which people’s lives go — the way in which they are perceived and treated, the way in which they are supposed to behave, and the range of options open to them. Multiculturalism, because it promotes the salience of race and ancestry, and scripts ethnic identity, is therefore inconsistent with liberalism.

I must admit that I'm antecedently disposed to agree. But I still found it an eye-opening read, especially Baber's analysis of white privilege as non-salience:

Going native, at least temporarily, has always been an option for privileged white Americans, from anthropologists studying exotic cultures as participant-observers to journalists embedded with native families to report on their doings, and no one ever suggests that those who manage to go native permanently are inauthentic or self-hating. White privilege is the privilege of self-invention. Immigrants and members of ethnic minorities do not have that luxury. Even when they are not locked out of the mainstream by discrimination and economic disadvantage, multiculturalist notions of authenticity, role obligation and group loyalty dog them.

Baber acknowledges the tension between individual liberty and cultural preservation, but comes down firmly in favour of the former. If few informed young adults would wish to remain Amish, too bad for the culture; it's no excuse to stunt their education and deprive them of the choice. (N.B. Baber assumes that only individual preference satisfaction has real value. It would be interesting to consider whether "communitarian" alternatives are defensible. But I guess that would go beyond the book's scope as expounding "the liberal case against diversity.")

It's worth noting here that Baber's case rests on a particular conception of liberalism, according to which "individual freedom in the interests of desire-satisfaction is the supreme value." Alternative forms of liberalism might be grounded on the ideal of political neutrality between comprehensive moral doctrines (making the Amish dilemma rather more difficult!), though Baber appears to dismiss this alongside "namby-pamby relativis[m]". A bit more detail here would have been nice -- but again, a single book can't cover everything.

What this book does cover, it does extremely well. Throughout, Baber reminds us that "there is no guarantee of a pre-established harmony between individuals’ interests and aspirations and cultural expectations." It seems obvious, once she puts it like that, but the point is too often neglected in multiculturalist discourse. Whenever people make claims about "what the _____ community want", it's worth bearing in mind that there will inevitably be internal dissent. All we've really been told is what the cultural elite want. And if that involves oppressing sub-cultures and unheard individuals, we should surely think twice before "respecting" those preferences.

A final point worth highlighting: drawing on Richard Thompson Ford, Baber identifies a contradiction at the core of common appeals to 'group rights', i.e. when a person claims special exemption from the usual rules in virtue of her group identity (and not just individual liberty more generally):

On the one hand their supporters made out that their behavior was harmless: a matter of self-expression that had no significant consequences for anyone else. On the other hand supporters claimed that it was specially protected on cultural or religious grounds--in which case it was not a mere matter of self-expression that had no significant consequences for anyone else but had import for other [group members].

By granting a special exemption for Muslim schoolgirls to wear headscarves, we affirm that this is part of what it is to be Muslim. It is a slap in the face to other Muslim women who contest those norms, and who would not accept this as an accurate characterization of their (desired) culture. As Baber quotes Ford, to grant such group rights "would be an intervention in the long-standing debate among [group members] about empowerment strategies and norms of identity and identification... A right to group difference may be experienced as meddlesome at best and oppressive at worst even by some members of the group that the rights regime ostensibly benefits."

But enough for one blog post -- do read the whole thing. (And drop a comment with your thoughts!)

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Introverts

I think the greatest (non-academic) article ever published is Jonathan Rauch's Caring for your introvert. An excerpt:

Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.

Classic. Anyway, I bring this up again because The Atlantic have just published a new interview with Rauch on the same topic. I was especially interested by the discussion of "small talk", i.e. content-free speech for the sake of socializing rather than actually saying anything worthwhile. (He notes earlier in the interview, "so little of what most people say is actually worth hearing.") I've always found that difficult. Anyway, over to Rauch:

Yeah, I marvel at Michael who can always somehow turn the conversation right over effortlessly and keep it going even when what he says is not necessarily profound or interesting. What he comes up with is perfectly tuned to the sense and flow of the conversation. But it's not words that are particularly intended to convey ideas or mean things. It's words that socialize — that simply continue the conversation. It's chit-chat. I have no gift for that. I have to think about what to say next, and sometimes I can't think fast enough and end up saying something stupid. Or sometimes I just come up dry and the conversation kind of ends for while until I can think of another topic. This is why it's work for me. It takes positive cognition on my part. I think that's probably a core introvert characteristic that you and I have in common and which can probably be distinguished from shyness per se — that small talk takes conscious effort and is very hard work. There's nothing small about small talk if you're an introvert. But we're good at big talk.

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