At the Webster University campus in St. Louis there is an interesting and radical student organization which calls itself COUNTERBALANCE. Among other things it has a mailing list for interested Webster students (and I'm quite sure former Webster students would be welcomed). The group takes a self-named and recognized "radical" perspective and even has a list of fundamental principles which it holds. It is rather closely related to the Green Party's values, though has its own independence.
I have been a member of the counterbalance e-mail list for some time and like to read what it says, but I come from a quite different, if often overlapping, set of values from counterbalance. A recent piece posted by a counterbalance member raised lots of memories for me and helped me set into perspective my own position.
The dilemma I've had for some years now is that the position I find myself deeply attracted to is simply not in the mainstream of left-wing values at this time in history. Being on the outside of dominant values has never been news for me and never, in itself alone, a reason to back away. Nor is it now.
First a comment on this "mainstream" word. The true mainstream, the masses of people in the world, hold a value system of materialism and relatively unthinkingness which I have deplored all my life and worked against both as a professor in the classroom and as an activist in the political arena.
But within the political left there has grown up a set of values of universal equality OF FACT, not opportunity alone, and equality of persons whether or not people have different qualities, drives and energies. This sense of equality and a sense of what is called "justice" which goes along with it has become the dominant watchword of the political left. I find myself moving farther and farther away from such a set of values, which, earlier on attracted me to some degree.
The areas where I run into disagreement, or at least think I do, with the common view of self-styled "progressives" comes in two areas:
That people are often LIKELY to be quite limited by the social structures around them, and that people are generally profoundly influenced and shaped by their history seems true without question to me. That it then follows that the individual is powerless, or that the individual is then dependant on the good will of the "good" people, the champions of equality of fact (rather than equality of opportunity), is, for me, a very dangerous and unacceptable view.
Many of you have had classes with me in which I have students read the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene from Dostoevsky's THE BROTHER KARAMAZOV. I find the problematic well stated there. The Grand Inquisitor sees himself as a great humanitarian. He takes the responsibility for determining value for the masses of individuals who don't care to take that responsibility themselves, and thus GIVES them the life he chooses. He himself, however, and his caste, are those who decide the nature of good and evil and bear the responsibility for getting it for the masses who would prefer to just follow.
As Dostoevsky chooses to present the returning Jesus Christ whom the Inquisitor in talking to, Jesus has offered a doctrine of personal freedom and the Inquisitor has subverted this.
That's fairly much the way I see the issue today. Which is more important:
They may at times be perfectly consistent. When they are not then I'm a one who simply values the less popular value of individual freedom. The difficult question is just how much are the two values in conflict. I think the current dominant leftist positions of so-called equality and so-called justice see these as not significantly in conflict. I tend to see them as mainly in conflict. In any case, the dominant values of so-called progressives are toward so-called justice and so-called equality. My own are profoundly toward the freedom AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY of the individual for his or her life and value.
There are difficult issues which separate me from these people with whom I have a lot in common, and I am in no way sure I am always right. I get the strong sense they have absolutely no doubt about their own rectitude and they have the fire and fervor I see in religious movements, something I have little interest in or respect for. I lean strongly toward my values but am still deeply puzzled by many of the complexities involved.
These differences and difficulties I can't deal with here and hope to do
more in the future. I've stood by silently for too long. Not 100%
silent. I have two papers in my web site, both of which I've presented at
public meetings in the few years, which try to challenge some of this
leftist status-quoism and to present a case for something different. You
may find those at:
My page dealing with our moral (alleged) obligations toward distant others, that is, those not within our relatively personal circle of friends and family.
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At the moment, however, the post which the counterbalance student posted brought back lots of fond memories. In the 1960s I had discovered the work of Frances Moore Lappe via her book DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET. I used some of her work in my classes, especially in my critical thinking course. Finally in the late 70s there was pressure on faculty to formalize such uses and get permission of publishers and authors to even use articles in the classroom. I contacted Lappe and after a while an acquaintance developed which led to us holding a huge "FOOD CONFERENCE" at Webster University around 1980. Lappe came to give the key note address and completely filled the 1000 seats of the Loretto Hilton theater. We had a dinner in her honor at The Sunshine Inn, a vegetarian restaurant 1/2 owned by a graduate of Webster University and they served a new version of a strawberry-tofu pie. In the next edition of Diet For A Small Planet Lappe pointed out that she was on the lecture circuit a great deal and surprisingly had lots of fairly bad meals considering her most popular book (at that time) was this cookbook. But, the then went on in the preface to celebrate Sunshine Inn's strawberry tofu pie as a culinary hit of her speaking tour eating. Unfortunately the restaurant is now out of business, but, curiously, another WU grad, a philosophy major, purchased the restaurant and has turned it into a fairly successful Caribbean restaurant.
========================= and some few quotes and some Corbett commentary:
The source for the article which the counterbalance member cited may
be found here.
Los Angeles Times
June 27, 2001
Commentary
People, Not Technology, Are the Key to Ending Hunger
The debate over biotechnology is a tragic distraction.
By Frances Moore Lappe
Lappe says:
Hunger, I learned, is the result of economic "givens" we ourselves have created, assumptions and structures that actively generate scarcity from plenty. Today this is more, not less, true...
---------------------
We're still asking the wrong question. Not only is there already enough food in the world, but as long as we are only talking about food -- how best to produce it -- we'll never end hunger or create the communities and food safety we want.
We must ask instead: How do we build communities in tune with nature's wisdom in which no one, anywhere, has to worry about putting food -- safe, healthy food -- on the table? Asking this question takes us far beyond food. It takes us to the heart of democracy itself, to whose voices are heard in matters of land, seeds, credit, employment, trade and food safety..
==========================
I find those positions of Lappe much less attractive than their seeming utopianism make them sound. A world of plenty and no one has unmet basic needs. The great architects of society hand on a silver platter all that the masses need.
It all sounds so dreadfully boring and, given the enormous history of the masses who, as Martin Heidegger argues in Being and Time, will, if it is possible "take things easy and make things easy" such a paternalistic world just isn't very attractive.
There is a relatively little known (and highly criticized) posthumously published novel by Albert Camus called A HAPPY DEATH. (I am using it in a course I'm teaching this coming fall.) It is about a person who wants to become an individual and control his own life. But, he sees the need to earn a living is the major block. To do so he must make many compromises and in so doing he loses too much of his individualism. Without giving away the plot but only the philosophical notion -- he "solves" the money problem and then he seems "free to be free." But his "freedom" in material comfort turns out to be boring, leading to the title of the novel.
What is the highest of values? Today the so-called progressives cite it as equality and justice and even democracy (a very curious notion of democracy I must say). My own is individual freedom and responsibility, even at the cost of everything else. This is a very difficult and radical choice. I speak of it only for me, but I worry that those believing themselves "progressive" and caring take up the banners of equality and justice without challenging these values against anything other than a single enemy: the dominance of the current capitalist ruling class. I think there are other alternatives and some of them are in no way enemies of those people who wish to be free.
I would welcome discussion. My worry is, of course, that this value of individualism and responsibility is just too unattractive to most to even bother discussing it. No matter. I keep trying to find discussants.
Bob Corbett
Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu
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