Category: Psychology

The scientific study of the nature, functioning, and development of the human mind

Democracy within social justice movements

My friend Stu sent me a long article about the functioning of social justice movements of the Occupy / Arab Spring variety, discussing how their efforts at being internally democratic work.

Much of it is of interest, but this passage made me think of the climate movement especially:

When the anarchist participation prevented the Trotskyists, Real Democracy activists, and other grassroots politicians from producing the sort of unitary demands and manifestos that the general assembly had earlier vetoed, the Commission was broken up into a dozen sub-commissions. Every single day, in multiple sub-commissions, the grassroots politicians made the same proposals that had been defeated the day before, until one meeting when none of their opponents were present. The demands were passed through the commission and subsequently ratified by the general assembly, which ratified nearly every proposal passed before it.

Social movements suffer from extreme forms of some of the problems of traditional representational democracy. Participants lack training, time to do research, and support from experts. Procedures designed to (a) make good decisions (b) through participatory means are imperfect and often feel tedious and frustrating to participants. There is no ideal way to deal with situations where a plurality of people have reached general consensus, but smaller groups have principled and fundamental objections to the most favoured popular course.

“Grass on the other side is greener” thinking about democracy makes me wonder about alternatives like an agenda-setting vanguard or movements governed principally by a charismatic leader. As I have argued before, the virtue of democracy is more in mandating restraint than in necessarily making good decisions.

That might be as good as we can do when it comes to governing nation states. Whether popular movements pursuing environmental or social justice objectives can do better is an open question.

John Green on his often-banned book

I have written before about banned books.

In this video, a contemporary author discusses the experience of having his novel banned for containing apparently mature content:

His closer — about deferring to librarians to make such judgments – differs from the more common narrative that rejects such curation entirely.

Explaining Trump

The often disturbing spectacle of the rise of Donald Trump as a leading Republican contendor in the presidential race prompts many emotional and analytical responses: about the long decline of America as a superpower since 1945, about the dysfunctional features of party politics and American politics in particular, and about the chasm between quality information on one side and public policy and (especially) public opinion on the other.

Many interpret the Trump phenomenon in terms of disaffected voters, as this passage from The Economist describes:

The reason evangelicals vote for Mr Trump has little to do with faith or specifics of policy. It is more a question of attitude. A study by the RAND Corporation, a think-tank, has found that the most reliable way to tell whether a Republican voter was going to support Mr Trump was whether he agreed with the statement: “People like me don’t have any say about what government does.” Trump voters feel voiceless, and whatever attributes Mr Trump lacks, he has a voice. He lends it to them, to express their grievances and their aspirations for greatness, and they love it.

All this at a time when people are prosperous and governments are making easy choices, at least compared with what is likely in coming decades because of our criminal unwillingness to stop burning fossil fuels.

We had better hope that worsening global conditions eventually have a rallying effect, rather than prompting a scramble of every state, region, and ideology for itself.

Divestment discussed by the Governing Council

U of T: the President and the Governing Council

U of T President Meric Gertler’s decision to reject fossil fuel divestment in favour of ESG screening was formally presented to the Governing Council today.

UofT350.org held a rally outside, and Gertler’s remarks were followed both by questions from governors and a five minute presentation from Graham Henry, a second-year law student who has been deeply involved in the divestment campaign and spoke against the president’s choice.

In the questions (which came before Graham’s remarks), most of those who spoke commended the decision. One even thanked the president on behalf of steelworkers in the fossil fuel industry. A couple had limited questions about timelines, and one spoke out clearly in favour of divestment.

I was disappointed that what I see as the central issue never came up: the implications of further investment in long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure. Many people mentioned the 1.5 ˚C warming limit from the Paris Agreement, but nobody drew the contrast with the billions of dollars the fossil fuel industry continues to invest in projects that only make sense if we intend to warm the planet by much, much more. The issue, therefore, is less that the conduct of the fossil fuel industry in the past has been severely injurious to people all over the world (though it has) and more that their future plans are catastrophic for people everywhere, ecosystems, and all the life we know about in the universe.

President Gertler criticized divestment as empty symbolism, less meaningful than having U of T’s secretive and unaccountable financial managers in the U of T Asset Management Corporation adopt some new screening criteria. The symbolism with the potential to be highly meaningful would have been pointing out the reality that the fossil fuel industry has no long-term future, or at least none compatible with planetary safety.

If U of T had come out to say that investors everywhere are behaving dangerously and irrationally by continuing to fund fossil fuel development, it could have had a positive impact all over the world. By saying instead that climate change creates some minor financial and ethical issues which can be addressed through existing processes, U of T is fuelling our collective complacency in the face of a slowly-unfolding but nearly unstoppable catastrophe.

U of T’s investments are burning up the futures of their students, but with this decision such conduct has become just one of many minor factors to be considered by financial experts behind closed doors.

UofT350.org

From the perspective of UofT350.org, the group needs to decide what the most plausible strategy is for reversing this decision and what tactics would support that outcome. It also needs to do some deeper thinking about what the group is for, now that divestment has become an even more unlikely prospect. People have very different ideas — for instance, about ‘intersectionality’ as a strategy for success versus a rabbit hole of distraction (this connects to a broader debate about climate change as a leftist versus a pan-ideological issue). There’s also the question of what can be accomplished via protest tactics, particularly when confronting a conservative institution with strong constituencies favouring the status quo and skilled at using cover from superficial actions to placate those who care slightly.

Working on climate change activism generally requires experiencing failure over and over, and in the face of an ever-worsening crisis. How can we do that (a) while continuing to reach out to moderates and decision-makers and (b) changing real-world outcomes, rather than becoming an increasingly radicalized and angry sub-population who are easy to dismiss, ignore, or undermine with trivial policy changes?

Metrics of activist success

The fossil fuel divestment campaign at the University of Toronto is still dealing with the disappointment of President Gertler announcing such an uninspiring response to the social injury and financial risk associated with fossil fuel investments.

One early response from the campaign was to hold a creative direct action outside Simcoe Hall, home to the Office of the President and the Governing Council.

The action made me think about different ways in which acts undertaken to provoke social or political change can be evaluated. At least two possibilities come to mind: evaluation in terms of the subjective experience of participants, and evaluation in terms of the effect on the thinking or behaviour of the mass public or elite decision-makers.

Subjective experiences (AKA “feelings”) are not trivial. I think the biggest challenge activist groups face is maintaining the health and motivation of their members and key organizers. Indeed, when it comes to big marches like the People’s Climate March and March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate I have reached the conclusion that they are more important in terms of energizing participants than in terms of changing public opinion. Not least, this is because the media tends to wildly under-report them.

That being said, I think activism by definition is an effort to change how the world works and that doing that requires changing the thinking and behaviour of the mass public and decision-makers. To be effective in that, we need to think hard about why people believe what they believe and make the choices they make, and what kinds of interventions can change those things. As activists resolutely focused on achieving positive change, we need to focus on producing good outcomes which would not have happened without us.

From the second perspective, I am less confident about how productive the action outside Simcoe Hall was. For the random student wandering by – or the random administrator listening through their window – did it improve the odds of them supporting fossil fuel divestment? The more militant members of the campaign often talk about “building power”, but we ultimately cannot force the administration to do anything. We need to convince them, which takes us back to serious strategic thinking about how to change the beliefs and behaviours of non-activists.

Managing volunteers

I am finding myself frustrated with the primary challenge associated with trying to produce political change using groups of volunteers, which I would judge to be maintaining accountability and motivation. If the groups aspire to be democratic, that brings a set of challenges too. (The third biggest challenge is probably avoiding and managing interpersonal conflicts.) Still, I think the greatest challenge is the tendency of volunteers to abandon projects half-finished and informally vacate positions of responsibility which they have sought (without handing them over to others in an effective way).

One potential solution is to move from volunteers to employees. This arguably gives you more oversight, perhaps makes them feel more responsible, and allows those who couldn’t normally afford to work so much for free the opportunity to pay their rent, etc. There are lots of effective staff-run NGOs (from the Pembina Institute to Environmental Defence), and taking on a few staff is often an aspiration for any serious group.

Regardless, most people who contribute their labour to grassroots-style environmental groups do so as volunteers, and it’s the effective or ineffective recruitment, retention, and management of volunteers that largely determines an organization’s effectiveness. The other main factor is the competence of key organizers, who must themselves be recruited, retained, and managed.

It’s often tempting to imagine a group in which all members are and remain strongly committed, and who manifest that commitment in consistent and professional work. It’s certainly logically possible that a group could have rules and a formal structure that encourages participation of this sort and diverts the less committed to other organizations that are also doing good work. Such a group could limit the amount of resources that need to be devoted to fundraising, and avoid the hassles, limitations, and democratic challenges of formal incorporation.

The time commitments would have to be manageable – to limit the main problem that afflicts key organizers.

Another question is how to effectively brand such a group and define its role. Being independent would cost the support of organizations with pre-existing name recognition and bases of support, but it would also allow for more of an experimental structure.

Fick on leaving the Marines

I left the Corps because I had become a reluctant warrior. Many Marines reminded me of gladiators. They had that mysterious quality that allows some men to strap on greaves and a breastplate and wade into the gore. I respected, admired, and emulated them, but I could never be like them. I could kill when killing was called for, and I got hooked on the rush of combat as much as any man did. But I couldn’t make the conscious choice to put myself in that position again and again throughout my professional life. Great Marine commanders, like all great warriors, are able to kill that which they love most — their men. It’s a fundamental law of warfare. Twice I had cheated it. I couldn’t tempt fate again.

Fick, Nathaniel. One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer. Houghton Mifflin; Boston. 2005. p. 364 (hardcover)

Fick on the mask of command

“Sir, what the fuck were the commanders thinking, sending us in there with no armor to clear a fucking town? We could have all been killed, and for what? We’re sitting in the same goddamn field we were in last night, as if nothing had happened, except we got the shit shot out of us and lost a great team leader.”

I walked a fine line. As an officer, I couldn’t badmouth decisions the way a lance corporal could. Even as a lowly first lieutenant, I simply had too much rank, too much authority and influence. It would be disloyal and insubordinate, a transgression both moral and legal. At the same time, though, to smile in the face of stupidity and say something about liberating the Iraqi people or living up to the example of Iwo Jima and Hue City would neuter me in the eyes of the men. Men shrink in combat to little circles of trust: us versus them. A platoon that puts its commander in the “them” category is a dangerous place to be. Every young officer learns the difference between legal authority and moral authority. Legal authority is worn on the collar — the gold and silver rank insignia that garner salutes and the title “sir.” It doesn’t win firefights. Moral authority is the legitimacy granted to a leader who knows his job and cares about his men. In combat, I learned to rely on moral authority much more than on legal authority.

So I conceded part of the Marine’s statement. “That was bullshit, bad tactics. After all the artillery prep and with the air escort, no one expected that ambush to happen. We were all wrong. I can’t speak for the battalion, but I can tell you that will never happen again in this platoon.” I paused and locked eyes with the Marine to be sure he knew I wasn’t just talking. “I’m sorry about Pappy. I don’t know if we’ll be fighting for another three days, three weeks, or three months, but I can tell you one thing. We have to learn from what we do right and what we do wrong, then move on. There were twenty-three of us, back to back. Now there are twenty-two. We have to get each other home in one piece.”

The Marine nodded, accepting this line of reasoning. Strong combat leadership is never by committee. Platoon commanders must command, and command in battle isn’t based on consensus. It’s based on consent. Any leader wields only as much authority and influence as is conferred by the consent of those he leads. The Marines allowed me to be their commander, and they could revoke their permission at any time.

Fick, Nathaniel. One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer. Houghton Mifflin; Boston. 2005. p. 276 (hardcover)

Memory under fire

At company headquarters the captain had no further instructions for me — just settle in for the night and be ready to move in the morning — so I returned to the platoon. By now, the Marines had hacked sleeping holes from the soft dirt and had begun the daily routine of security, cleaning weapons, eating, cleaning feet, and sleeping.

And storytelling. Every fight is refought afterward. Sometimes quietly, sometimes boisterously; sometimes with laughs, sometimes with tears. The telling and retelling are important. Platoons have institutional memory. They learn, and they change. Most of that learning happens after a firefight. Some officers squelched the stories, considering them unprofessional and distracting. I encouraged them, as psychological unburdening and as improvised classrooms where we sharpened our blades for the next fight.

But something about the retelling unnerved me, too. Faith in our senses is what anchors us to sanity. Once, in college, I went cross-country skiing during a snowstorm. As I crossed an open meadow, the blanket of snow on the ground merged with the snow falling from the sky. With no horizon and no depth perception, I got vertigo. A twig poking through the snow near my feet looked the same as another skier hundreds of yards away. My head spun, and I had to sit down.

Combat is a form of vertigo. I was trained to thrive on chaos, but nothing prepared me for the fear of doubting my own senses. Frequently, I found that my memory of a firefight was just that — mine. Afterward, five Marines told five different stories. I remembered turning left off the dirt road onto a paved street running west through Al Gharraf. I saw fire coming from buildings to the right and remembered a drag race of four or five kilometers out to the highway. That was my memory, my accepted truth of what had happened.

But the map showed the distance was only about fifteen hundred meters, less than half of what I’d estimated. Some in the platoon remembered armed men standing to our left as we made the turn; I never saw them. The domed mosque was burned into my memory, but only Colbert and Wright could remember seeing it as I described it. Person was adamant that we had driven across a bridge during our sprint to the highway. Not one other person in the platoon remembered a bridge, but there it was on the map.

Fick, Nathaniel. One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer. Houghton Mifflin; Boston. 2005. p. 219 (hardcover)