and I've no doubt that I'll profit from the book...
Yet, I am very disturbed by Miller's appeal to TRUST as an ideal of relationships and the notion that I share a COMMON PROJECT ("joint project", e.g., on page 44 ") with my co-citizens. ("trust" is appealed to as an ideal in the global warming chapter; I don't recall if it occurs earlier)
As a pedestrian in EL Paso Texas, I cannot trust the people in cars.
And as a citizen of the USA, I am daily faced with misleading advertisements at every turn.
DO I share a common project with those who provide my internet services? I doubt it. It seems to me that their project is to squeeze all they can out of me, while giving me as little back in return as possible.
And, that seems to characterize many interactions with people who provide the services I truly need.
DO book publishers really attempt to charge a fair price? I doubt it. Book prices have increased much more than wages in the past fifteen years.
Other examples could be found.
This is not a final judgment about Miller's book.
Offhand, and provisionally, the problem seems to be that while I would endorse some notion of doing my fair share in a common effort, I find precious little evidence that such a notion governs the behavior of the richest and most powerful, and thereby shapes the character of the society.
On the other hand, I am heartened when I read such lines as the following (also occurring in Chapter Two, "Compatriots and Foreigners")
"...the enormous growth of US national income in the last quarter of the twentieth century, which did essentially nothing for the poor and mostly benefited those who were not deprived to begin with, should be deemed a failure..."
Given the guidelines of careful academic prose writing (and I don't mean to reject those standards) those lines could not stand alone without the material I have omitted. It is worthwhile now to supply the missing bit from the end:
".. unless no feasible alternatives would have done more for the disadvantaged."
(pp. 46-7)
So the thought is: the enormous growth of income for the wealthiest represented no moral progress--unless one could make out/ defend the claim that if the wealthier had profited less then the poor would have not profited more.---that is to say, Miller is imagining a world where:
the rich did not profit as much as they really did
and
the poor profited more (than they did in the actual world where the rich profited enormously)
The existence of non-existence of that world will determine whether the profits of the wealthy in the US in the last quarter of the twentieth century was justified. Only if such a world was not possible could the growth of income for the wealthiest be considered a good thing.
But doesn't this leave something out? Isn't there the fact that the increase in the wealth of the wealthiest is simultaneously an increase in their power, contributing to an increasing societal myopia about the goals of the society--precisely what makes me grow cold when I hear talk of a common or shared project. The increasing wealth of the wealthy makes it increasingly unlikely in the future that the legitimate expectations and needs of the rest of us will be met.
Trust? Cars? Someone might make a rejoinder to my brief comment above. Don't most cars obey the traffic laws?
Even if that's right, it is still reasonable for me to enter every intersection with caution, and that requires an unpleasant wariness I never experienced as a pedestrian in Europe.
But we can connect this point to my closing one. As the gap between rich and poor increases, the psychological presuppositions which have to be satisfied if you are to successfully appeal, as Miller does, to such notions as "trust" and "a common goal/project" will vanish. People will not be moved by such appeals because they will have become adjusted to an unjust world.
Is that cynicism? I suppose it depends upon the state of the real world. (Cf. the arguments in Wilkerson and Pickett, "The Spirit Level")
An after-thought: my remark about "trust" might be partially mis-guided in the following sense: The chapter on global warming talks about a situation where some agreement among the parties must be reached--otherwise everyone suffers. In such a situation, it might be reasonable to expect that all will accept trust as a value. Yet, even with that legitimate point, the psychological point does not go away.
In any case, these are provisional remarks. Label them under the category: not considered or final thoughts, but merely thoughts I had while reading....
No comments:
Post a Comment