Climate Denial and American Voluntarism

November 4, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images

At the GOP convention in August, Mitt Romney’s cavalier dismissal of global warming got the intended laughs. Today, it seems less funny.

Here’s the transcript:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the
oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.

In two short sentences, Romney gives us the broader context for the denial of global warming: the denial of society itself.  He echoes Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

This doesn’t mean that there are no groups beyond the family.  But those larger groups are valid only because individuals, consciously and voluntarily, chose to create them. This way of thinking about the relation between individuals and groups has long been an underlying principle of American thought. Claude Fischer, in Made in America calls it “voluntarism” – the idea that the only legitimate groups are the ones that people voluntarily form or join.*  The individual has a strong obligation to those groups and their members, but he has little or no obligation towards groups and people he did not choose. 

That is a moral position. It tells us what is morally O.K., and what is not.  If I did not choose to join a group, I make no claims on the people in that group, and it is wrong for them – whether as individuals or as an organized group, even a government – to make any claim upon me.

That moral position also shapes the conservative view of reality, particularly about our connectedness to other people and to the environment. Ideas about what is right determine ideas about what is true.  The conservative rejects non-voluntary connections as illegitimate, but he also denies that these connections exist. If what I do affects someone else, that person has some claim upon me; but unless I voluntarily enter into that relationship, that claim is morally wrong. So in order to remain free of that claim, I must believe that what I do does not affect others, at least not in any harmful way.

It’s easy to maintain that belief when the thing being affected is not an individual or family but a large and vague entity like “society” or “the environment.” My single action could not possibly make a difference to something so large. To make a difference, I must willingly join with many other people. Then I will acknowledge how our small individual acts – one vote, one small donation, one act of charity, etc. – add up to a large effect. That effect is what we intended. But if we separately, individually, drive a lot in our SUVs, use mega-amounts of electricity, and so on, we deny that these acts can add up to any unintended effect on the planet. 

As Fischer says, voluntarism is characteristically American. So is the denial of global warming.  The incident at a recent Romney rally illustrates both (a video is here). 

When a protester yells out the question, “What about climate?” Romney stands there, grinning but silent, and the crowd starts chanting, “USA, USA.” The message is clear: we don’t talk about climate change; we’re Americans.
-------------------------------------

*Two earlier Socioblog posts on voluntarism are here and here.

Brooklyn – Gas and Hoodies

November 3, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

This was the page one photo in the Times yesterday.

(Click on the picture for a larger view.)

I love the “only in New York” aspect.  A gas station in Williamsburg.* An orthodox Jew arguing with a White dude, each with a backup guy.  A Hasid taking a cell-phone photo of a cop.   Black guys in hoodies, beefy White guys in hoodies, Jews in hoodies. Cars jammed in at every angle. And the cops patiently trying to cool things down.** (It’s Williamsburg, but there are no hipsters.  They don’t own cars.)

---------------------------
* The $4.19.9 a gallon is not price gouging.  That’s what gas costs in Brooklyn even when there’s no hurricane.  In New Jersey, it’s fifty cents cheaper, but they don’t have any right now.)

** That’s probably a large part of what cops do.  Maybe Peter Moskos will comment.

Halloween Follow-up

November 1, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

(This is an update to yesterday’s post about Halloween greed.) 

It turns out, there’s a nice Halloween field experiment I was unaware of (Diener, et. al, JPSP, 1976).  Here’s the setup.  On Halloween, a woman answers the door and invites the trick-or-treaters in.  She tells them to “take one,” and then leaves the room leaving the bowl of candy and a bowl of nickels and pennies.*  Overall (27 houses, 1300 kids) most kids (69%) took one.   But conditions mattered.

In one experimental manipulation, the woman either asked the kids who they were and where they lived or she allowed them to be anonymous.  Experimenters also noted whether the kids were trick-or-treating alone or in groups.  For some groups, the woman designated the smallest kid in the group as being in charge of making sure that kids took only one.   All these variables made a difference.  

The greatest rate of cheating (80%) occurred when the smallest child was designated as responsible but everyone was anonymous.  Diener reasoned that with responsibility shifted to the smallest link, the other kids would feel freer to break the rule. 

Those who did cheat usually took only an additional one to three candies.  But of those who did grab more than what was offered, 20% took both candy and coins.   Unfortunately, the Snickers study is not like the marshmallow study, so we don’t know where those greediest kids are now.
----------------
* Adjusting for inflation that would be closer to dimes and quarters, maybe even half-dollars.

HT: PsyBlog

Trick or Treat and The Street

October 31, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

Why do the Wall Street super-rich seem so dissatisfied.  As a non-rich person, I like to think that I’d feel very satisfied if I had tens of millions of dollars or more; that I wouldn’t spend long days doing whatever it is that hedge funders or derivativistas do just to supersize my wealth; that I wouldn’t be disgruntled that my bonus from Goldman was a measly $11 million when the guy down the hall got $14 million?*  (I actually heard such a story from someone who knows.)  What could I do with $14 million that I couldn’t do with $11 million?

Obviously, my thinking about this was all wrong, and Halloween two years ago showed me why. 

We took a little tour of the building to see what people on other floors were doing.  (One family on thirteen made an elaborate haunted house out in the hallway.)  We left the basket of candy on a small table outside our apartment.

As I was coming back to my apartment, I saw two boys of twelve or so standing over our table scooping the candy bars into their bags.  They saw me, turned and ran past.  When I got to the door, I saw that the basket was empty except for a couple of Almond Joys. They had probably done this at other apartments in addition to whatever they got by knocking on doors. 

Could anyone actually eat that much candy? Probably not. This was not about the inherent pleasure of Snickers. It was some sort of competitive game, and the candy was just a way of keeping score.  Satisfaction came not from eating the candy but from the thrill of skirting the rules to get a lot of it and then from just having a lot of it for the sake of having it, or at least having more of it than other kids.

Are they any different from the super-rich? Well, yes. These twelve-year olds would not claim that what they do is virtuous or that it benefits all kidkind or that hyperglycemia, for want of a better word, is good. 

Maybe Wall St. should start giving bonuses in the form of Snickers, or better yet, lower-value currency like Necco Wafers and tiny boxes of Sun-Maid raisins.  (More on candy rates of exchange here.)

----------------------------

* This earlier post argues that greed is not so much  personal as institutional.  Its sources lie not in the traits of the traders but in the structure of  the Street.