IX of X. Sense and Consequence - The Sociological Imagination
This entry was posted on 3/4/2008 9:37 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
2 March 2008
IX of X. Sense and Consequence - The Sociological Imagination
In Bernard Phillips and David Christner's essay, "Manifesto for Deep Democracy: Social Science Transforming Society," they write of the problems of this century, explaining that "efforts to solve problems have often led to worse problems" and the "overall situation appears to be increasingly problematic as fundamental problems continue to escalate". Problems they list include everything from pollution to income disparity to the general fear of our future survival and that of our next generations.
Their solution?
Through a combination of "extraordinary language", "deep democracy", an evolutionary worldview, and the scientific method, they propose a paradigm for a solution to the current crisis:
"Indeed, with language and the scientific method the human being has the capacity for infinite development, as illustrated by the continuing development of scientific knowledge. This incredible potential applies to each of us as individuals, just as it applies to the institution of science within society."
Phillips and Christner identify the "bureaucratic way of life" as the principal culprit for all these problems. Not only is it "at the heart of escalating problems" but also it "is powerful enough to trump the broad ideals of the scientific method....as a result scientists remain unable to penetrate very far into the complex problems that they face at this time in history."
To counter the bureaucratic, they propose "deep democracy":
" 'Deep democracy' reaches beyond the political institution and has to do with our overall way of life within all of our institutions. Within the institution of science it calls for all of us learning to use the scientific method in our everyday lives. Within our family, friendship groups, religious groups and organizations, it calls on all of us to treat one another as equals...Within the economic institution it calld for effective efforts to end poverty and a halt to the worldwide increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This idea for deep democracy joins with the call within all world religions for seeing the individual human being as having ultimate worth, and treating her accordingly."
In what sounds more like mental agility than sociological imagination, they quote C. Wright Mills:
"The sociological imagination[...] It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self - and to see the relations between the two (1959:7)"
But where Phillips and Christner's article aligns with hyphenation theory is in their citation of Alvin W. Gouldner, from his article, "The Politics of Mind: Reflections on Flack's Review of The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology":
"The pursuit of...understanding...can not promise that men...with their everyday language and understanding, will always be capable of further understanding and of liberating themselves. At decisive points the ordinary language and conventional understandings fail and must be transcended. It is essentially the task of the social sciences...to create new and 'extraordinary' languages, to help men learn to speak them, and to mediate between the deficient understandings of ordinary language and the different and liberating perspectives of the extraordinary languages of social theory (1972:16)"
Indeed, hyphenation is liberation to truth and accuracy in accounting for the reality of our present. Technology and virtuality everyday effect electronically mediated lives that is part of the collective experience today.
Interestingly, Phillips and Christner incorporate Eastern philosophy (in 'careful' doses) to their paradigm, using deep democracy and karate as metaphors for an "East-West strategy in everyday life" and the equation of raised aspirations and fulfillment:
"Karate...can help us to understand some of the concrete implications of Buddhism and thus, help Western readers to understand how to employ an East-West strategy in everyday life."
Point of correction here and just plain courteous respect to Buddhists:
Phillips and Christner would do well to understand one thing if it is the only thing they understand about the East - you do not employ the East, nor its philosophy, religion, and thought to a strategy, just as you would the scientific method to an hypothesis. Buddhism in particular and Eastern philosophy in general, as well as Eastern precepts, are ways of life. They are a worldview qua worldview - as a vision through which to observe, act, engage, and to experience.
Thousands of years of knowledge against a couple hundred years notwithstanding, if you endeavour to take the East 'piecemeal' as you would any other Western thought, do not bother, because you only take away and transmogrify it into a sham and defile it in your careless 'action'...
Ironically, Phillips and Christner quote Alexander Pope that "A little learning is a dangerous thing" and they take nothing away from that. Why quote someone if you do not even heed their advice, and rather fall to the very error the quote warns against?
To learn a minutia about another culture and generalize that as the culture in toto - well, you do not need common sense to know that it is a big mistake, huge...and this is a significant part of the problem with America today...
"By keeping aspirations and fulfillment close together we point toward the East, and continuing to raise both of them we point to the West."
Of course, their fatal flaw here is their oversight in an entire culture and a body of knowledge spanning thousands of years - still with hidden scrolls and texts yet to be discovered - in an all too neat solution just as neat as their simplistic culprit - 'the bureaucratic way of life'...
I do agree with them in their call for "an alternative worldview" although I do not think their 'evolutionary worldview' is the solution:
"In our own case it is an evolutionary worldview that promises to guide all of us to narrow our aspirations-fulfillment gap, to help us make progress on our visible problems, and to enable scientists to move toward their ideals."
First of all:
Scientists have no use for 'ideals' as such. They deal in the concrete world of facts, reason, and method. Ideals belong to the realm of theory and philosophy and not the praxis required in science and scientific experimentation and research.
Second:
Narrowing the 'aspirations-fulfillment gap' is not the solution.
Interject some common sense here:
You want to achieve "A" but are prevented from doing so, so you redirect your aim to something else altogether - an ersatz fragment of "A" - rather than remove the obstacle.
This is nothing but nonsense and antiquated, to boot.
Again, common sense:
Anyone alive today must realize the magnitude of electronic technologies. E-technologies are omnipresent and they effectively mediate for the individual a transcendence over traditional limitations of time, space, geography, and normative dualities and obstacles. I have stated this in countless other blogs, but it is worth repeating.
Hyphenation is potentiality of potentiality and transcendence over erstwhile realities and normative assumed limitations. It is the current state of reality-virtuality that is experienced in a myriad of ways and simultaneously by individuals almost as seamlessly as breathing. It is the new language necessitated by our new electronic technologies and the new spheres of multiple reality-virtuality/virtuality-reality they mediate and that every individual utilizes in living experience. It is a clarion call to the doxa to account accurately and therefore, truthfully to the present to come one step closer to collective relevance in time, multiplicity, and direction...
Evolutinary worldviews and multiple sum games are part of the erstwhile doxa. Maintaining the rickety structure of an outdated language to push for change is to call for help after you have been already rescued. Pushing forward blindly, you end up replicating where you are already in excess, and overlook where you are in tremendous deficit, further worsening the problem.
In effect, Phillips and Christner fall prey to what they caution against in the beginning of their essay, "efforts to solve problems have often led to worse problems".
One saving grace in their paper is in their conclusion:
"Yet we have faith in the infinite potential of us human beings."
Hyphenation goes a level above potential to potentiality of potentiality, a far more potent source of creativity that individuals are realizing, materializing, and mediating through electronic technologies and entrepreneurial creativity...
Indeed, it is potential at the core of our solutions and the individual's initiative to appropriate an effective difference for himself and his fellow man...
Overall, Phillips and Christner write a rather compelling methodology to combat the current social ills. The flaw in their call for transforming society is their failure in recognizing that society is transforming already and individuals are enabling their own 'aspiration fulfillment'. Beyond this, individuals are mediating their own transcendence over traditional limitations of time, space, and geography, and by extension, metaphoricallly surpassing erstwhile and obsolete limitations to creativity and imagination. Where Phillips and Christner write in terms of potential, hyphenation covers potentiality and accounts for the individual's ability simultaneously to juggle multiple spheres of virtuality-reality and reality-virtuality with seamless ease, speed, and agility.
We are at two very different levels of remove...the proper call here is to expand the dialogue and bring the doxa collectively 'on the same page'...
