Psychology and the Strategies of Climate Action

The world is facing an existential crisis in the form of anthropogenic climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a report in October 2018 that we have approximately 12 years to take action to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – even a 0.5 degree Celsius increase beyond that level, the report suggests, would significantly worsen the risk of droughts, floods, extreme heat, crop failures, famine, and poverty for millions of people. A number of countries have started to take some action to reduce emissions and sequester carbon, but much more action is needed, as the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere continues to increase every year. In May 2019, measurements of CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii showed them exceeding 415 parts per million for the first time not just in recorded human history, but since Homo Sapiens has existed as a species, and perhaps even since the genus Homo emerged roughly 2 million years ago. In order to reverse these concerning trends, a big shift in the way we live our lives needs to occur, and it needs to occur quickly. So what hope do we have of achieving this shift? In this article, I will examine the scope and features of the problem and how these interact with our psychology, with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of a variety of climate action strategies. I will conclude with a summary of what I believe to be key points for effective action.

As noted, the effects of Climate Change on the planet are likely to be devastating, both for its human inhabitants, and for the long-term viability of its ecosystems. Despite the dire circumstances and the many challenges, there is still hope. In particular, it is heartening to note that adequate solutions to the crisis already exist, and that the difficulty lies only in them being widely implemented. Project Drawdown, one of the world’s leading resources for climate solutions, identifies 80 existing technologies or activities, which, if implemented together, would achieve the needed decline in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, thus effectively putting an end to the crisis. These solutions are many and varied, and include the construction of on-shore wind farms, reductions in food waste, the widespread uptake of a plant-rich diet, the education of girls and women, the construction of solar farms, and increased reliance on public mass transit. So what chance do we have of implementing these solutions? To answer this question, we need to explore the roadblocks, the sources of inertia, and the active resistance to their implementation.

The first source of resistance to climate action is often argued to be public scepticism about the existence of climate change, and/or public scepticism that climate change, if it’s occurring at all, is caused by human activity. This argument faces two problems: (1) the public’s widespread endorsement of climate science, the anthropogenic origin of climate change, and the public’s desire for drastic climate action, as consistently shown in opinion polls; and (2) the lack of any meaningful relationship between public opinion and public policy in any domain.

With regard to the public’s belief in the scientific consensus on climate change, recent polls in the United States show that 70% of the population think climate change is happening right now, about 60% think it is caused by human activity, and, even among Trump voters, 60% support regulating the pollution that causes global warming, and 78% support building renewable energy on public land – with even higher percentages for the population at large. In Australia, a recent Lowy institute poll found that 89% of people thought climate change was an issue that should be addressed, with 71% of those agreeing with the statement “global warming is a serious and pressing problem [and] we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.” Similar findings are found across the world, with particularly high concern in Europe, and in much of the developing world, which will be hit hardest by the effects of climate change.

With regard to the effects of public opinion on public policy, it is already clear from the data presented above that there is no alignment between what the public believes and wants, and what their governments are doing. As noted, sixty-three percent of Australians want “steps to be taken now, even if this involves significant costs.” In contrast, successive federal and state governments have overseen a 51% increase in quarterly carbon emissions over 1990 levels from 1990 to 2008, a 32% increase over 1990 levels for the period 2008 to 2013, and an upward growth trend again to a 40% increase over 1990 levels as of June 2018. And all of this is, of course, much greater than Australia’s already generous Kyoto target of an 8% increase over the period 1990 to 2008 – not to mention the much stricter targets that followed in subsequent accords. These results simply show what is known in many other domains: the public does not shape public policy, but rather it is shaped by wealthy corporate investors, who restrict the policy choices on offer to the public at elections (see my previous article on this here).

These facts about the first purported barrier to implementation of climate solutions has important implications for climate action. First, persuasion of climate change deniers should not be seen as a viable climate action strategy. Climate change deniers are a shrinking minority, and given the politically polarised nature of climate beliefs, such persuasion attempts are not particularly likely to bring about attitude change in any case. More importantly, though, debate between climate change believers and climate change deniers is a distraction. Even if every climate change denier could be convinced about the science behind global warming and the need for rapid action, their opinions would have no direct effect on public policy, because the public’s desires are routinely ignored by policymakers. More significantly still, such attempts at persuasion often rapidly escalate into heated conflict, which creates division and discord, when what is sorely needed is a united front, with actions directed towards real solutions, and toward the real sources of the roadblocks, inertia, and resistance to climate change mitigation.

Another commonly cited barrier to needed action is a general apathy, or even antipathy, in the population to any change that could negatively impact on current lifestyles, or that could fundamentally alter the status quo. The polls already cited cast doubt on these claims; an apathetic or oppositional public would not advocate for “taking steps now even if this involves significant costs”. Also casting doubt are many positive changes being made by many people at an individual level, including in composting, recycling, and dumping practices; water usage and drought mitigation efforts; the widespread uptake of re-usable coffee cups and biodegradable cutlery; and the rapid proliferation of plant-based dieting habits. In the United States, for example, the sale of plant-based foods grew by 8.1% between 2016 and 2017, in the context of a 0.2% decrease in overall food consumption, and worldwide sales of non-dairy milk alternatives grew by over 100% between 2009 and 2015. These trends do not suggest an apathetic public incapable of change, but rather point to the existence of a significant sub-section of the population motivated to radically alter their behaviour for the common good, without government intervention or legislative change of any kind.

While these are hopeful developments, the fact that a large portion of the population have not made these changes cannot be disregarded. Why is it that a populace who report wanting drastic action do not take that action themselves? First, the financial and other constraints on the less privileged sectors of the population are undoubtedly a factor, as there are considerable costs to instituting any change to one’s routines, purchasing habits, or diet – for example, composting requires equipment, time, and skills, and plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy are often far more expensive. Beyond these issues, however, is almost certainly a sense of hopelessness (rather than apathy or antipathy), alongside a lack of belief that one’s actions can realistically make a difference. It’s worth bearing in mind that this is not an irrational point of view to hold; individual changes in behaviour are mere blips within the margin of normal variation and have zero effect on overall mean levels of carbon emissions – so much so, that a person who eats meat for three meals a day but convinces a hundred other people not to eat any meat is a more effective (and perhaps more moral) climate activist than one who has achieved a net negative carbon footprint, but never attempts to convince others to do the same.

A lack of belief in the effectiveness of one’s individual actions – and the hopelessness that can arise from that lack of belief – is also not an irrational point of view to hold in another sense: individual actions are not the real cause of the problem, and therefore changing them is unlikely to be a real solution. While it is well-known that climate change is being caused by over-consumption, squandering of resources, poor agricultural practices, entrenched and out-dated infrastructure, and so forth, what is less commonly acknowledged is that these patterns are fundamentally built into the global economic system. Capitalist economies emphasize ever-expanding profits, never-ending economic growth, and continual consumption, all of which produce the above ills for the environment. This modern cycle of continuous production and continuous consumption emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. With the advance of manufacturing technology, it became possible to create goods in such quantities as to cover the basic needs of the entire population, and to begin the production of more indulgent “consumer goods”. Soon after, industrialists began to worry about the “problem of overproduction”; not on pragmatic or moral grounds, but because market saturation meant falling sales and decreased profits. In a system driven by needs, the problem would have been overcome by reducing production levels to those necessary to sustain the population. In the profit-driven system as it existed then, and as it exists today, the problem was overcome by doing the opposite: devising strategies to increase consumption, in order to sell more. Planned obsolescence was the main strategy used; first one of physical obsolescence – where a good is made to break sooner so that it needs to be replaced – and then later one of psychological obsolescence – where fashion trends are created, and advertising is used to sell products on the basis of their ostensible modernity relative to previous generations of almost identical products. As planned, these strategies created a system of constant and increasing consumption, such that upwards of 20% of the global economy is now geared towards marketing and fostering psychological obsolescence, and a greater percentage still is geared towards surplus production. In such a system, waste is encouraged, superseded products are dumped into the environment, and greenhouse gases from industrial manufacturing, energy production, and transportation of goods continue to be emitted at ever-increasing levels. In such a system, the average citizen’s sense that action is futile is unsurprising.

So how can action to counter these systemic issues be inspired in the face of such a sense of futility? The first step is to see the problem for what it is, and to help others to see it for what it is: a problem that is caused not by individuals, or climate change deniers, or an apathetic population, but rather by the economic system we’ve created. This realisation opens up a clear goal for effective action: the economic system itself needs to be changed. With a clear goal comes a clearer sense of purpose, and clearer means to assess effectiveness and progress. Identifying system change as the goal of climate action also constrains the choice of effective strategies. Political lobbying, carbon credit schemes, incentivising the uptake of renewable energy technologies, etc. might have some effect in the short-term, but they are unlikely to be ultimately successful, because they don’t fundamentally alter the problem of overproduction and overconsumption, which are at the heart of the climate crisis. Instead of such conventional strategies, history tells us that system change requires the mobilisation of a mass social movement, which can give rise to new structures, and novel ways of organizing a future green economy. It is at this point that the technologies identified by Project Drawdown can be widely implemented.

Having recognized mobilization of a mass social movement as a viable, and desirable, strategy, attention can then be turned to how best to bring about such a movement. Psychology tells us that social movements of this sort emerge and grow when (a) they’re constructed around shared goals and a shared opinion; (b) participants in the movement are motivated by a sense of moral urgency; and (c) participants feel their actions are likely to make a difference. The first two criteria have almost certainly already been met; there is a shared opinion that drastic climate action is necessary, and there is a sense of moral urgency that means that other concerns, such as cost, are being de-emphasized. The third criterion – the sense of efficacy in action – appears not to have been met, however, and it is almost certainly this that poses the greatest difficulties for generating and maintaining a social movement. Nonetheless, the solutions to this lack of perceived efficacy are many, but an easy one is simply to consider that what humanity faces is a sort of Pascal’s Wager: in the absence of any action, the dire circumstances will definitely come to pass, but given some action – however minimal – there is at least a chance – however small – that the catastrophe can be averted. Framed in this way it is very clear that action is a much better option than inaction. The effective step then is always to take action, and hope – and efficacy – can be maintained by reminding oneself, and others, of this simple point. Furthermore, efficacy is a self-perpetuating phenomenon, such that increased action breeds increased efficacy. The goal for climate activism then is to inspire action on a small-scale until it is self-sustaining, and until the sense of efficacy is given the chance to grow from the movement’s successes. At that point, the deeper goals of system change and carbon drawdown can be achieved.

These ideas are not inconsistent with many of the already existing climate action movements. The School Strike for Climate grew from shared opinion, moral urgency, and a sense that doing something was better than doing nothing, and it has as its goal a radical shift in the carbon economy. The Extinction Rebellion grew from similar roots. Its goals are explicitly to inspire a mass social movement to bring about carbon drawdown, and/or to change the system. Tactically, it promotes civil disobedience and economic and social disruption to achieve these goals. Having taken part in an Extinction Rebellion protest, it certainly felt like its strategy is broadly on the right track: the movement is bound by a set of well-considered principles, it is compassionate and supportive, and it is well-organised. I have to admit to being somewhat ambivalent about the specific tactic of disrupting traffic and the lives of ordinary citizens – while it is true that disorder and mass arrests foster moral urgency and increase the costs of inaction to systems of power, there is a risk of fracturing the sense of shared opinion that could arise, and of alienating potential allies. Nonetheless, disruption and civil disobedience of various kinds are undoubtedly valuable tactics in the strategic toolkit, and will likely help the movement grow if deployed carefully and thoughtfully. Overall, it certainly seems that if anything is going to solve the climate crisis, it is global mass movements of this type.

In sum then, if you’re considering taking action on climate change: (1) try not to get too caught up in debates with climate deniers; (2) make changes in your own behaviour, but always favour collective action over individual action; (3) keep Pascal’s Wager in mind when everything feels futile; (4) try and engage with others who share your concern and your sense of moral urgency; and (5) consider joining one of the broad social movements that are emerging around the globe.

And never forget: there is always hope.

Crime Control in a Humane Society

In the previous post, I discussed the possibility that cooperation and pro-sociality were deeply embedded in human evolutionary history. Alongside this more positive take on human nature, I also pointed to a good deal of evidence that human beings also have the capacity for egocentrism and for the pursuit of unbridled self-interest. Among the evidence for this capacity for selfishness is the ubiquitous emergence across time and across cultures of acts that can be defined as criminal – that is, acts that go against formally defined (legal) codes of conduct, often to the detriment of other people. In this post, I would like to explore the extent to which criminal behaviour is a fundamental part of human nature. I will outline broad theories of crime in Psychology and Criminology, and examine how these relate to our nature. In particular, I will focus on whether human beings need to be prevented from engaging in criminal behaviour by punishment, containment etc. as a result of a fundamentally selfish nature, or whether human beings are drawn to criminal behaviour through social and environmental pressures, thus suggesting a more pro-social or neutral nature that can nonetheless be corrupted. I will finish by proposing ways in which the criminal justice system could be transformed, in order for it to be consistent with human nature, while also achieving goals of justice for all and protection of the community.

In order to investigate the fundamental underpinnings of criminal behaviour, it is important first to have an appropriate working definition of crime, which can constrain and inform our understanding of the processes that give rise to that behaviour, and of how that behaviour can be controlled. Most attempts at defining crime begin by outlining its relationship with deviance, where deviance is defined as any behaviour that departs, in a statistical sense, from social norms or expectations. Crime, then, is often defined as a form of deviance, as most crimes are statistically deviant forms of behaviour; murder, assault, or fraud, for example, are typically only perpetrated by a small sub-section of the population. While there is a general relationship between crime and deviance, it is important not to go too far and treat them as equivalent concepts, as some behaviours can be deviant but not criminal – for example, cis-gender male “cross-dressing” is statistically infrequent, but is not a crime anywhere in the western world – and some behaviours can be criminal but not deviant – for example, marijuana use is defined as a crime in many jurisdictions, but is often found to have been tried at least once by a majority of the adult population. As such, crime is usually a form of deviance, but is not always, and deviance can be criminal, but in most cases is not. Deriving a working definition of crime therefore requires going beyond a simple study of its relationship to deviance.

In going beyond a deviance-based definition of crime, criminologists typically analyse the historical processes by which different behaviours came to be understood as criminal. In so doing, it turns out that all criminal behaviour was characterized as such in one of three ways: based on consensus within a group, based on conflict between different groups, or based on some form of moral entrepreneurship. When a behaviour is defined as criminal based on consensus, this entails that all or most people in a society will view that behaviour as repugnant, or in violation of the moral standards of that society. Murder is one such crime, where there are very few who would disagree that killing another human being is a violation of our deepest sense of morality.

When a behaviour is defined as criminal based on conflict, this is to say that those who hold political power wield that power within the criminal code in such a way as to protect their own interests over the interests of the less powerful. In this way, behaviour is labelled as criminal not so much because the behaviour is universally thought to be repugnant or immoral, but rather because a ruling class has criminalized the behaviour of a less privileged class, in order to protect their own higher status. There are countless examples across the world of behaviours being added to criminal codes in this way, but one of the clearest concerns the way in which marijuana possession, distribution, and use became illegal, first in the United States and then across the world. In the early 20th Century, the hemp plant was grown relatively widely, and marijuana was used relatively commonly as a recreational drug. In the 1930s, however, the spread of the ‘decorticator’ (a machine for stripping bark, skin, leaves or other parts off a plant) meant that hemp became a very cheap substitute for paper. This then led to disquiet among wood pulping and paper mill operators and investors, whose profits would likely be greatly reduced if hemp production expanded any further. As such, these operators and investors (including notable people in the newspaper and chemical industry such as William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Mellon, and the DuPont family) began a campaign to link marijuana use to violent crime, and thus to have it criminalized – successfully. The tobacco industry has also been at the forefront of maintaining the criminal status of marijuana use, as marijuana is relatively easy to grow compared to tobacco, and has fewer known side-effects. In this way, marijuana possession, use and distribution came to be defined as criminal, based largely on the intervention of powerful corporations and their officeholders acting in their own interests.

Finally, behaviours can be defined as criminal as a result of some form of moral entrepreneurship. This typically involves a powerful group campaigning for the criminalization of particular behaviours because members of that group hold particular moral convictions, opinions or preferences. In this case, the act of defining a behaviour as criminal does not protect the interests of the powerful, but rather flows directly from the fact that their social status gives them the power to frame the criminal code in line with their attitudes. A clear example in many jurisdictions in the western world (including in Australia) is the Catholic Church’s campaigning for the continued criminalization of abortion. Abortion is viewed as a right rather than a crime by the majority of the population in many jurisdictions, but remains a crime in many of those jurisdictions because powerful groups campaign for its continued inclusion in criminal statutes on the basis of personally held spiritual or moral beliefs. In most of these cases, the criminalization of abortion does not benefit the status interests of the powerful group campaigning for it, but rather simply aligns with their own values, which then come to be enshrined in law because of the relative power they hold.

So where does all this leave us with regard to defining crime? In order to derive a working definition, we must, first, recognise the generally deviant nature of most criminal behaviour. Second, we must integrate the insights derived from historical analyses of the processes by which certain behaviour became criminalized. Third we must include the role of criminal codes in delineating criminal behaviour from non-criminal behaviour. And, finally, we must take into account the consequences that are defined in criminal codes for violating them, including stigma, and the loss of freedom and social status, as these give the violation of criminal codes a special kind of significance that other non-criminal violations do not have. Combining these insights, then, we can define crime as: a violation of societal rules of behaviour, which results in a variety of defined social sanctions, as interpreted and expressed by the criminal law, which reflects public opinion, traditional values, and the viewpoint of the people who hold social and political power, often for the purpose of protecting their own self-interest. As such, crime is multi-faceted, but has relatively universal key features, most notably that (a) it always involves the violation of societal rules, and (b) there is a special significance afforded to criminal rule violations that is not afforded to other similar, non-criminal violations. This then entails that a science of crime, emerging from Criminology and Psychology, is a science of when and why societal rules will be violated despite the social consequences that result from that violation.

In attempting to answer the question of when and why societal rules will be violated – and thus when and why people will engage in crime – four main approaches have emerged in Criminology and Psychology: Choice approaches, Trait approaches, Social Structure approaches, and Social Process approaches. Choice approaches assume that criminals are rational actors who freely choose to engage in crime. Potential offenders choose to commit crimes or not based on a cost-benefit analysis, in which they consider personal (e.g., money, revenge, thrills, entertainment) and situational (e.g., target availability, security measures, police presence) factors, as well as the risk of apprehension, seriousness of expected punishment, value of the criminal enterprise, ability to succeed and need for criminal gain. Choice approaches argue that anyone could commit a crime given the right personal and situational circumstances, and therefore implicitly (or sometimes explicitly) assume that human beings have a tendency toward selfish gain unless curtailed by other costs to the self. As such, choice approaches suggest that crime is best controlled by punishment and deterrence, as without these the costs of engaging in crime would not be high enough to mitigate against the fundamental selfishness that could motivate any one of us to engage in crime.

There is some evidence in favour of Choice approaches. First, it is well known that crime can be deterred by increased punishment. It is also known that, when interviewed, people who have committed crimes will admit to having chosen targets of crime based on availability, likelihood of success, size of expected gain, and probability of arrest or incarceration. For example, the high rate at which drug dealers are robbed relative to other members of society is likely due to the fact that drug dealers often carry large amounts of money (i.e., the rate of return from a robbery is likely to be high), they are unlikely to report the robbery to police (i.e., the likelihood of arrest is low), and they are common in areas where would-be robbers operate (i.e., they are more easily accessible and available than other potential, high-value targets). This suggests that rational choice does indeed come into play in the criminal enterprise. Importantly, however, most of the evidence points to its role after an offender has decided to commit a crime; what is less clear is whether rational choice plays any role in the decision to commit a crime in the first place. It could very well be that the distal causes of crime have no relation to rational choice, but rather come about either through social and environmental pressure, or because some individuals have an in-built tendency for crime. Overall, Choice approaches do well in explaining how specific targets might be chosen when a decision to commit a crime has been made, but do less well in explaining whether someone will commit a crime at all. And, importantly, this lack of ultimate explanatory power means that Choice approaches do not provide much in the way of insight into our fundamental nature.

Trait approaches to crime argue that there are biological reasons why human beings in general, or certain individuals specifically, are likely to engage in crime. These approaches focus on biochemistry, neurophysiology, evolution, and genetics. There is some evidence that certain patterns of biochemistry are associated with crime; for example, higher testosterone is associated with more aggression and therefore higher rates of crime, while lower levels of the neurotransmitter monoamine oxidase in children who have been abused is associated with anti-social behaviour, including criminal behaviour. Similarly, mental health conditions that may have a biochemical substrate, such as ADHD, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, have been linked to crime. With regard to neurophysiology, it is well known that many crimes, but particularly crimes of passion, are associated with decreased functioning in executive areas of the brain; that is, in those areas responsible for impulse control, moral reasoning, and general self-regulation. Evolutionary models of crime generally focus on sex differences in crime, based on the fact that the rate of crime in males is often up to 9 times greater than that in females. Cheater theory, for example, proposes that undesirable males (those who are unlikely to offer parental support to females who they are pursuing) have to resort to deception, and illegal acquisition of resources to impress females, such that deception and criminal behaviour arise from male intrasexual competition. Finally, twin studies suggest that there might be a genetic component to crime, in that monozygotic (identical) twins have more similar criminal histories than do dizygotic (fraternal) twins.

While Trait approaches have accumulated an impressive array of findings with regard to the biological basis of crime, the evidence underlying these findings is often quite poor. First, in all cases the evidence is correlational; that is, we know that crime and some biological features are associated, but we have no evidence that the biological features are the cause of crime. Second, many of the correlations are between some biological process and some behavioural tendency, rather than between the biological process and crime itself. The clearest example in this category is the relationship between executive dysfunction and increased risk-taking; it may be that executive dysfunction is associated with crime through an increased desire for thrill-seeking and risk-taking, but we also know that increased risk-taking need not necessarily result in crime (it may result in something as innocuous as riding a rollercoaster). In such cases then, there is a possible biological tendency, but there is then likely an environmental trigger that leads the tendency to manifest in criminal behaviour specifically. With regard to evolutionary theories such as Cheater theory, these necessarily rely on constructing a narrative for a past event (i.e., the evolution of a criminal tendency), which means the core causal aspects of the theory can never be directly tested. And, finally, with regard to evidence for the genetic basis of crime, studies in this area (a) rely on correlational research; (b) often explore relationships between genes and traits that may or may not be necessary for criminal behaviour (e.g., risk-taking); and (c) only indicate the heritability of particular traits in the context of specific environmental influences, such that heritability estimates for criminal behaviour can vary wildly to the degree that the environment varies. Overall, Trait approaches may indicate that there is a biological basis to crime, deeply embedded in our nature, but the evidence is equivocal. What Trait approaches perhaps indicate more clearly is that some individuals will likely be more predisposed to crime from birth, but that environmental and other influences will play a large role in the emergence of actual criminal behaviour later in life. Trait theories, therefore, suggest that we are unlikely to be characterized at the species-level by selfish and antisocial tendencies, but rather that some of us may have these tendencies to a greater degree than others.

Social Structure theories suggest that almost all crime is a result of stratified societies where some people control resources and power and others do not. Under such conditions a ‘culture of poverty’ is said to develop among the less powerful (i.e., the poor), which is characterized by apathy, cynicism, helplessness, and mistrust of institutions. The violation of societal rules that characterizes crime then emerges from feelings of disconnection from the political bodies that make the rules, and from a drive to satisfy basic needs – such as food, safety, shelter, stability etc. – which are inaccessible because of low social and economic status. One particularly prominent Social Structure theory, Strain theory, elaborates on these ideas. It proposes that stratification of society, which results in poverty, causes feelings of inadequacy and a siege mentality among the poor. Despite this siege mentality, the poor are thought to remain loyal to the values of the dominant (so-called ‘middle class’) culture, including (in addition to their basic needs) desires for such things as employment, money and material possessions. When those basic needs and ‘middle-class’ desires cannot be met because of a lack of resources or access to suitable opportunities, feelings of strain and frustration will result. Then, antisocial and criminal acts are thought to arise as a means to achieve success and also to relieve feelings of strain. In this way, crime can become enduring as long as the strain endures, and therefore as long as the poverty and social stratification endures.

Like Trait theories, Social Structure theories rely heavily on correlational data to test their core proposals, suggesting some caution is required when making conclusions about causal paths. Nonetheless, Social Structure theories have a weight of historical evidence behind them. First, one of the strongest and most reliable predictors of crime is relative deprivation – that is, one’s psychological sense of being disadvantaged socially or economically compared to others in one’s society. Second, measures of objective wealth inequality (such as the gini coefficient) are good predictors of crime rates across the world. Third, crime rates track income and wealth inequality across time, even for crimes such as murder, sexual assault, domestic violence etc., which do not immediately appear to be directly related to poverty or the inability to satisfy basic social and economic needs. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, social groups that were characterized by high rates of crime in the past – such as the Irish in the United States, and various migrant communities in Australia – have become less crime-ridden as they achieve greater access to resources and opportunities previously afforded only to the dominant, higher status groups in their societies. This latter point indicates that any shared genetic inheritance that may characterize particular groups and that may predispose those groups to crime (for which there is little if any evidence anyway) can be overcome by increasing economic equality and diffusing social power more widely. As such, whatever predisposition for selfishness and crime that human beings may have in their nature, or that individual human beings may have in their genetic make-up, is not necessarily deeply rooted.

In the same vein, Social Process theories suggest that criminal behaviour arises from socialization and social influence. The precise ways in which this socialization occurs is explained in different ways in different theories, but all Social Process theories suggest that there is likely no in-built tendency for crime in any one of us, or in the species as a whole. Labelling theory, for example, proposes that crime often results from stigmatizing children for certain kinds of behaviour, which would otherwise remain only mildly deviant and relatively unproblematic. The stigmatization is thought to lead to a person being labelled as delinquent, which in turn leads them to self-label as delinquent. Once a person has self-labelled, they will then be likely to take on attitudes and roles that reflect that assumption, eliciting a deeper commitment to deviance. Once a person is committed to deviance they will be more likely to join a criminal gang which reactively or deliberately create social norms in opposition to the dominant culture; from there, it’s a small step to entrenched criminality. Social Process theories, then, treat human beings as a blank slate of sorts, where crime results from the social environment, including parents, peers, teachers, and society more broadly.

Social Process theories have the advantage over other crime approaches of being testable under controlled experimental conditions. For example, experiments have shown that stigmatizing someone causes that person to negatively self-label and to conform to attitudes and behaviours associated with the label. Social Process theories also have an advantage over Social Structure theories specifically, in being able to explain those crimes that do not result from social or economic deprivation, such as white-collar crimes. Nonetheless, Social Process theories often fall short of the broader goal of explaining the causes of crime both within the individual and beyond the individual, as they do not take seriously some of the biological influences apparent in Trait approach research, and they do not adequately address the large-scale social character of most crime. Overall, Social Process theories imply that human nature is neither good nor evil, and that any one of us could be influenced to engage in antisocial criminal acts given the right social and environmental circumstances.

So what does all this tell us about crime and human nature? Taken together, these four major approaches to crime suggest a few important things. First, they suggest that most crime seems to result from social stratification and from the strain felt by people affected by poverty. Second, they suggest that there are probably some biological underpinnings to criminal behaviour, but that these are unlikely to be at the species-level – rather at the individual level – and they are unlikely to be associated with crime per se – rather with behavioural tendencies, such as risk-taking or impulse control, that could manifest in any number of (non-criminal) ways. Third, they suggest that there are social influences on crime beyond those of social stratification, such as stigmatization, self-labelling, and conformity to antisocial norms. And finally, they suggest that crime can be rational, in that an individual can be more or less likely to engage in a particular crime as a function of an internal cost-benefit analysis. This all suggests that most crime results from social and environmental forces, but that there may be a sub-set of crimes that arise from genetic, biochemical or neurophysiological causes, which may interact with the social causes and with rational decision processes, or which may act on their own to bring about criminal behaviour in particular people and not in others. Crime then is only minimally related to a fundamentally selfish nature that needs to be controlled, and then most likely only in a small sub-set of people.

In light of this view of crime and human nature, it is possible now to reflect on what a society can do to most effectively control crime, while also living up to principles of justice, community protection, and collective well-being [1]. The existing criminal justice system in much of the western world prescribes public order control, policing (i.e., surveillance, threat of punishment), punishment, and incarceration for the purpose of public protection (i.e., separating delinquent or dangerous individuals from the rest of the population). This system is based primarily on a Choice approach to crime, which, as discussed above, assumes some inherent selfishness in all of us, which needs to be controlled through increasing the costs of engaging in crime. It seems, however, that inherent selfishness is not a primary cause of criminal behaviour, and that rational choice only comes into play once a decision has been made to engage in crime. As such, the current system could be largely ineffective in achieving its own aims, perhaps diverting crime from some areas into others, without actually controlling it or protecting the community at large. Worse still, it is well known that punishment decreases intrinsic motivation NOT to engage in the punished behaviour (in a phenomenon known as the ‘Overjustification Effect’), which means that a system based on increasing costs for engaging in crime could actually be having the opposite effect of encouraging law-breaking in the longer term.

The current system for controlling crime is therefore not the most effective, given human psychology and the likely causes of crime. Taking a more reasoned approach based on what the study of crime tells us about human nature, the most effective strategy for controlling crime would likely involve decreasing social stratification, diffusing power from more powerful groups to the society at large, and eliminating intergroup rivalries based around social or economic status differences. Historically this strategy has proven to be highly effective. More can be done, however, as there remain areas rife with poverty, which continue to be highly prone to crime. Decreasing social stratification could be achieved through better education, better health care, more access to social services and welfare, and, most importantly, through the democratization of the economic sphere, where power remains highly centralized (in corporations and in the hands of small numbers of extremely wealthy investors). This latter strategy would lead to greater fairness (which is a reason in itself for pursuing it), but also to more opportunity for a larger proportion of the population, thus decreasing strain and the likelihood that people will engage in criminal behaviour to satisfy their basic needs.

Beyond decreasing social stratification, a more effective system for controlling crime could also change attitudes towards stigmatized groups, and prevent the reactive emergence of antisocial norms. This would also decrease labelling and self-labelling, and therefore conformity to antisocial norms should they arise. Changing attitudes towards stigmatized groups could be achieved, as with the poverty reduction strategies discussed above, with better education, more access to social services and welfare for those groups, and again through the democratization of the economic sphere. In this case, democratization would likely engender decreased intergroup competition – because status differences are often at the heart of such competition – and therefore less discrimination and derogation of others, including of those engaging in statistically deviant but harmless behaviours.

If after instituting these higher level social changes there remained a group of people who continued to engage in crime, as some of the Trait approach literature suggests might be the case, the next best strategy for crime control would be rehabilitation. At present, incarceration is geared towards punishment, but what evidence there is on rehabilitation suggests that rehabilitation programs can be very successful if implemented properly and if administered in conjunction with post-rehabilitation and post-incarceration welfare procedures. Changing prisons from places where people who have committed a crime are punished to places where people who have committed a crime are given a second chance would also encourage easier reintegration into society after a program is completed. This would also almost certainly decrease rates of recidivism.

If after rehabilitation had been attempted, there still remained a sub-set of offenders who posed a risk to society, then incarceration for public protection could potentially be justified as a last resort. This sub-set of offenders would represent the small portion of the population who possessed some deeply entrenched antisocial behavioural tendencies, possibly for biological reasons or possibly as a result of social or environmental causes that are difficult to reverse. In these cases, rehabilitation should never be abandoned as an option, but insofar as rehabilitation were ineffective, public protection and community well-being become the primary concerns. Prisons then would function as rehabilitation centres, but also as institutions responsible for the separation from the community of offenders deemed likely to re-offend. In this role, prisons also then have a responsibility for the care of those incarcerated, whose human rights must always be respected, such that punishment of any kind should not feature in such institutions.

Overall, then, a new criminal justice system based around what we know about crime and human nature would first focus on decreasing inequality and the concentration of power in some groups at the expense of others, as the primary causes of most crime. Destigmatizing particular groups and statistically deviant behaviours could then also be attempted, as a way of preventing the emergence of, and conformity with, antisocial norms. Rehabilitation should then be attempted with those people who continued to engage in crime despite the greater equality and decreased stigmatization brought about by the larger scale changes to the social structure. Finally, as a last resort, the small sub-set of offenders who proved difficult or impossible to rehabilitate could be separated from the community, purely for the purpose of public protection, and only for as long as they continued to pose a risk. Should a criminal justice system of this sort be developed and implemented, we would have come a long way to living up to the principles of justice for all, community well-being, and public protection that such a system is supposed to promote. We would also be much closer to realising a better, fairer, and safer society, in which crime would be a rare aberration; a society in which all would be in a better position to reach their full potential.

[1] The first way in which a society could humanely control crime would be to have a fairer system for classifying behaviours as criminal. In practice, this means classifying particular behaviours as criminal only by consensus, rather than through processes of conflict between groups or through moral entrepreneurship, both of which unfairly promote the interests or beliefs of more powerful groups over those of less powerful groups. This would result in more freedom and more opportunity for the less advantaged, whose everyday lives are currently (and arbitrarily) criminalized to a large degree (for example, illicit drug users in impoverished areas).

Selfishness and Prosociality in Human Nature

In the previous post, I discussed the process of Moral Discovery, and how it can inform the kind of social change that we would like to see brought about. Once we have come to a decision about what form of social change we consider to be desirable (and moral), we then tend to evaluate whether we believe this form of social change would be feasible. In so doing, we typically invoke an intuitive notion of human nature; that is, an understanding of the inherent features of the human condition that would allow for certain outcomes, but would bar or preclude others. In the first post on this blog, I discussed the human need or otherwise for rules and hierarchy to avoid chaos. In this post, I would like to discuss the human tendency for selfishness/egocentrism versus pro-sociality/cooperativeness, and what this can tell us about the feasibility of a fairer form of social organization.

Human societies all require some degree of cooperation for their adequate functioning. People need to work together to grow food, build dwellings, make decisions, raise and educate children, invent new technologies, and so forth. The degree to which human beings are selfish vs cooperative, however, will determine the way in which this cooperation will be realised. If human beings are inherently self-interested, then it will likely be necessary to force cooperation through coercive means; by increasing costs to the individual for not cooperating (e.g., through punishment) or by increasing rewards for cooperating (e.g., through monetary incentives). If, on the other hand, human beings are relatively pro-social and cooperative then coercive structures can be minimized, and people will be intrinsically motivated to work together for the benefit of others and for the collective. A fairer society, in which centralized control was diminished, would therefore only be feasible if human beings were relatively more pro-social than they were selfish.

At first glance, things don’t look promising for inherent human pro-sociality. Clearly human beings engage in selfish acts all the time; they steal, cheat, appropriate, invade, pillage, and hoard resources to the detriment of others. Even in less extreme cases than these, people seek to maximize their own advantage at the expense of any competitors. Every time we buy something - be it groceries, a car, a house - the seller’s goal is to squeeze as much out of the buyer as they are willing to give, and, on the buyer’s part, to make the seller give the item away for less than it’s worth. As a passenger in a taxi, for example, you stare at the fare counter willing it to stay low, while the driver, your direct competitor, wills it to continue rising. Every time we do our tax returns, we try to gain back as much money as we can, thus depriving the broader society, and those less needy, of essential services and benefits. And, every time an investor puts money into a company, a stock, or even into superannuation, they expect returns greater than they put in, otherwise most will be fully prepared to extract their contribution irrespective of the consequences -- which could be as severe as bankruptcy for other investors, the loss of jobs for workers, or even a stock market crash and a financial crisis.

Beyond these anecdotal examples of human selfishness, arguments for its innateness can also be derived more convincingly from evolutionary theory. From a Darwinian perspective, genes survive because they bring about advantages to those organisms that possess them. Genes, therefore, survive by being better competitors than other genes, and one way in which genes can be better competitors is to actively promote their self-interest over the interests of other genes. In this way, selfish genes lead to selfish individuals, who have in-built behavioural tendencies to favour their collection of genes over the collection of genes of other individuals. In this sense, a gene would not exist at all if it were not self-interested, because a selfless gene would die out in favour of the genes it was favouring over itself. Similarly, an individual organism would not survive long if it ignored its own self-interest for the benefit of another, more selfish individual. It seems then that selfishness is rooted firmly in simple principles of differential mortality, at the heart of Darwinian evolution.

With such a strong initial case for human selfishness and egocentrism, it seems unlikely that much could be said in favour of a more pro-social and cooperative view of humanity. Counterintuitively perhaps, the evidence for this more positive side of human beings is also very strong. Every day of our lives, each and every one of us will do something for another person, with little motivation for personal gain or advantage. We share our ideas and knowledge every time we communicate with another person. We buy presents for our nearest and dearest simply to make them feel valued. We give food to our children and to our friends to ensure that they are not only sustained, but also fulfilled. We build hospitals to tend to the sick; we protest injustices wrought on others to the detriment of ourselves; we cooperate to build super structures that may never benefit us personally; we give blood and organs to save the lives of strangers; and we donate literally billions of dollars and countless unpaid hours to charity every year. Anecdotally then, human beings appear to be at least as pro-social as they are selfish.

Can a deeper argument for the innateness of pro-sociality and cooperativeness be made however? The dominant evolutionary analysis of cooperation treats it is an outcome of the selfishness of our genes, thus providing only equivocal and contingent support for in-built pro-sociality. Specifically, it is argued that genes that appear to be cooperating with other genes are still in fact looking out for their own self-interest. First, individuals are thought to favour kin - close genetic relations - over others, thus increasing the chance that copies of their own genes shared with these kin will be selected and passed on to future generations. Second, cooperation is argued to be largely based on a form of reciprocity, in which costs to oneself are tracked relative to benefits derived from others, such that any great disparity in favour of another will eventually lead to the breakdown of cooperation, and a reinstitution of overt selfishness. And finally, there is thought to be a strong tendency to harshly punish those who cheat, such that the costs of the cheater’s selfish behaviour will outweigh the benefits they can derive from cheating; again suggesting that cooperation comes about from others protecting their own self-interest. In general, then, the dominant evolutionary analysis argues for a kind of neoliberal biological economics where individual selfishness can lead to collective good.

There is, however, a less well-known evolutionary account of cooperation and pro-sociality, which relies less on assumptions about selfish genes. This account, which can be traced back to the work of Peter Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid, proposes that pro-sociality is a central feature of the living world, and is in fact a key driver of evolutionary change. He points to the fact that many of the most successful species are those that most effectively cooperate, including many rodents, herd animals such as wildebeest and zebras, schooling fish, flocking birds, and the social insects. He points to the symbiotic relationships of fungi and many plants, coral and algae, and of course to the global cooperative enterprise of human beings. He suggests that individuals that cooperate will have a distinct advantage over those that do not, leading to the eventual decline of selfish urges and selfish behaviour, and the increasing proliferation of pro-social species through evolutionary time. In its more modern guise, this would be to argue for cooperative rather than selfish genes, where any genes that were too good at individual competition would be weeded out at the expense of more efficient cooperative genes, which would gain an advantage directly from their ability to work with, rather than against, other genes.

Evidence for the driving force of cooperation in evolution can also be seen in recent work on major evolutionary transitions. Szatmary and Maynard Smith identify six major transitions since the beginning of life on Earth, all of which can be seen as developments towards greater cooperation. The first was a change from individual replicators to populations of replicators. At the beginning of life, a molecule arose that had the ability to make copies of itself, which allowed for cumulative change across generations necessary for evolution. This first replicating molecule lived alone and then competed with all its offspring, who then competed with their offspring and so on. At some point, some of the molecules began to work together to create more complex collections of genes, which allowed for the development of phenotypes; that is, of body structures beyond the simple replicating molecules from which they were descended. In working together, these molecules - now genes - were able to outcompete their solitary-living relatives, such that all replicators today live in colonies, which we refer to as the genome. It was the ability to cooperate at this early stage that provided a selective advantage over the purely selfish single replicators.

The second major transition was from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells. Again, this change involved different types of organisms working together to form a more complex cell that could fulfill multiple functions. The cell nucleus, chloroplasts, mitochondria, ribosomes and many other eukaryotic organelles are thought to be descendants of free-living prokaryotic ancestors, that came together to perform their functions for the good of the cell and all its genes. Again, their ability to cooperate provided a key selective advantage over their more self-interested counterparts.

The third major transition was from asexual clones to sexual populations. There are many debates about exactly what the advantage of sexual reproduction is, but one of its key features is the coming together of distinct collections of genes housed in separate individuals in order to create a new individual. At the point of meiosis - when the sexual cells are being created through what amounts to halving of the genetic material - individual genes can be thought of as being in competition with one another to be passed on to the next generation. Despite this competition, the cooperative spirit of sexual reproduction persists, thus again suggesting its selective advantage relative to more selfish asexual cloning.

The fourth major transition was from protists - single-celled eukaryotic precursors of plants, animals and fungi - to complex organisms. This was the beginning of multicellularity, when sponges, with differentiated cells living in colonies, came into being. Multicellularity allowed for an even more complex array of phenotypes than was ever before possible. Organisms were no longer constrained to live their lives as microscopic cells floating in isolation from all other organisms, feeding themselves through direct assimilation of nutrients via their cell walls. Instead, by working together, they could fill multiple new ecological niches, and develop an ever more diverse array of lifestyles.

The fifth major transition is where we first see what is most commonly thought of as true cooperation: unrelated individuals began to band together to live in colonies. This can be seen in coral reefs, in blooms of jellyfish, in schools of fish, and in herding mammals such as gazelles or bison. The key advantage of colonial living is the dispersal of responsibility and of risk, with greater numbers of eyes and ears searching for food and identifying predators. Despite the more intense competition for resources engendered by colonial living, this cooperative lifestyle became widespread, and can be seen in all the multicellular kingdoms of life.

The sixth and final transition was that from primate groups to human societies. Here we see a form of social organization unrivaled in scale and complexity anywhere else in biology. Individual human beings from all corners of the planet can get together and help one another in multiple ways at almost any time, they can make collective decisions, and they can overlook their apparent differences to achieve all the advancements that define human history. At this point in the evolutionary journey, then, the degree of cooperation becomes quite startling, as all the cooperative tendencies arising from each of the transitions have accumulated; when we reach human society, there is a recursive hierarchy of cooperation being built on top of cooperation, on top of cooperation, and so forth, going right back to the beginning of life.

Taking this lesser-known view of the evolution of pro-sociality, then, it becomes clear that cooperation is deeply rooted in our genetic inheritance, from the earliest molecular replicators working together, right up to globalized human societies of the 21st century. Obviously, this does not mean that we can dismiss our selfish tendencies, as these are apparent in the countless examples outlined earlier, but nor should we unthinkingly endorse the view that there is something privileged about selfishness in our evolutionary story; selfishness and cooperation are at least equally important in what made us human. Having said this, the true test of which social structures are feasible will come through trial and error, and through experimenting with ones that emphasize fairness and equality, the diffusion of power, and the dismantling of hierarchy. At this point, though, I think it is fair to conclude that nothing in our nature should preclude at least some further advancement towards these goals.

Consciousness-Raising and Moral Discovery

In a previous post, I discussed the importance for progressive social change of questioning our intuitions about the world. This process is one of ‘consciousness-raising’; specifically of becoming aware of the structures in which we live; noticing that these structures are neither eternal nor of divine or other sacred providence; and recognizing that all social arrangements can be challenged on the basis of their adherence or otherwise to principles of justice. This final point - whether current social arrangements adhere to principles of justice - assumes the existence of a relatively universal set of moral principles across human beings, which can be logically derived, and confidently asserted. In this post, I would like to explore the extent to which this assumption holds, and thereby come to an understanding of human moral reasoning in general, and where it might lead us in future.

Plainly, moral systems differ across cultures, and they have shifted across time; after all, we no longer burn witches, hang, draw and quarter criminals, or fight duels to the death to prove our honour. These facts have led some to argue that morality is relativistic, and thus free to vary without bounds as a function of the social, cultural and historical circumstances present at the time. That is, moral principles just happen to be what they are because of historical accident, but, given an alternate course of events, these principles could have been entirely, and arbitrarily, otherwise. In other words, the answer to the question “why is action X wrong?” would simply be “action X is wrong because our culture or society, as it is now, has decided it is wrong”.

From the point of view of progressive social change, this is an incredibly depressing conclusion to draw (which, of course, does not necessarily mean it is incorrect). This extreme relativist perspective assumes that there are no constraints on what different human beings will deem moral, and that there is no shared basis for moral argument. From this it follows that all moral discourse can simply end with any participant asserting “this is what I believe” without argument, to which others would simply have to respond “if you think it is so, then it is so for you”. Social change could not be achieved through consciousness-raising, as there is no specific or defined consciousness to raise, but rather only subjective opinions about what is right and wrong, situated entirely in time and place. There would also be little that could be thought of as “progress”, as progress requires a constrained trajectory, and a general trend over time. Instead, morality would shift in what would appear to be a random fashion, both across different societies and from the past into the future. Any attempts at moral change would be like a weathervane, pointing in the direction of the prevailing cultural winds, but then chaotically blown this way and that whenever conditions changed.

An alternate perspective is one that accepts the empirical reality of cultural variability in morality and moral codes, but still searches for any universal moral principles that might exist. This perspective looks deeper than the surface rules of behaviour that appear to vary so much across human societies, and instead assumes, until proven otherwise, that each of these rules is an outcome of more fundamental principles that do not vary across the species. Evidence for this view can be gleaned, first, from the observation that there appears to be a discernible trajectory in moral codes across time, rather than unbounded chaos. A look at history (at least in the modern period) suggests quite strongly that moral reasoning has trended towards greater thought for the common good, more and more equality across groups and individuals, and a broadening of human rights to include more of us than ever before. This indicates that there is a channel constraining the development of our moral sense across time, allowing it to go in particular directions, and not in others.

Second, this universalist perspective can point to the fact that moral arguments are almost universally intelligible to all human beings, even where parties disagree on what is right and wrong, thus implying a shared moral sense. That is, even if we don’t agree with someone about the moral legitimacy of their opinions or their actions, we can understand how they came to hold the view they hold. For example, debates over the abolition of slavery in the United States in the early to mid 19th century invoked similar moral principles whether the proponent was in the abolitionist or the anti-abolitionist camp. The abolitionists sought to demonstrate that holding a person in servitude was inherently wrong, because human beings, irrespective of race or other characteristics, had an inalienable right to freedom, and to live in security and happiness. Similarly, the anti-abolitionists invoked the well-being of the slaves, but instead argued that slavery was more moral than working for a wage (the likely fate of emancipated slaves in a post-slavery society), because a master who owns a person will better look after that person than one who simply rents them for a short period - just as we take better care of a car we own than one we borrow. Laying these arguments out very articulately, prominent anti-abolitionist George Fitzhugh wrote that “three-hundred thousand of the emancipated starved to death in Ireland in a single season […] whilst slaves in all ages and in all countries have been comfortably fed, clad and housed […] for he is too valuable to have his health or strength endangered.” As wrong or disingenuous as these arguments appear to our modern sensibilities, they are still comprehensible to us, and cannot be merely dismissed as gibberish or incoherent rambling.

Similarly, the universality of moral principles can be seen in the way in which human beings feel the need to justify their actions to others, and the relative uniformity of the justifications we seem to invoke. Most obviously, all major powers throughout history have framed their self-interested behaviour in terms of some form of benevolent or benign intent. The British in India spoke of bringing civilization to the savages. Hitler justified the invasion of the Sudetenland on the basis that he was protecting the Germans who lived there from the Czechs. Imperial Japan claimed to be occupying Manchuria in the 1930s in order to bring “earthly paradise” to the Chinese. The United States invaded South Vietnam - killing approximately 3 million people between 1958 and 1975 - to protect its people from “internal aggression” (i.e., peasant collectives arising out of the National Liberation Front, which was extremely popular with the local population) and to “bring freedom and democracy”. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1978 to protect Afghans from Islamic extremists. The Australian government removed indigenous children from their families in order to civilize them… and the list goes on. In each case, morally questionable actions are justified on the basis of some higher moral principle; again, suggesting some deep moral sense, universal to the species.

Assuming that human beings possess a universal moral sense of this sort, it is necessary then to provide an account of the variability that is patently obvious across cultures. An analogy from the study of language is helpful. Like moral reasoning, the fundamentals of language appear to be universal across the species, alongside relatively surface-level differences across different languages and language groups. The study of language therefore differentiates between Principles - rules of syntax that are universal to all human languages - and Parameters - rules of syntax that vary across languages, such that they can be either present or absent (i.e., the parameter can be switched on or off). Principles of language are part of human genetic endowment, and all languages will be constrained by them. Parameters are also genetically determined, but whether they are turned on or off is regulated by the linguistic environment in which a child develops. Similarly, there are likely to be Principles of Morality; that is, universal rules of behaviour across the species, that collectively form the boundaries of permissible moral codes. There are also likely to be Parameters of Morality; that is, rules of behaviour that can be switched on or off as a function of cultural and social learning, thus determining cultural variability in moral codes. Together, the Principles and Parameters of morality would function to account for the deep structure of human moral reasoning, as well as its more surface-level cultural, individual, and temporal variability.

A “Principles and Parameters” perspective on morality logically entails various facts with regard to the trajectory of moral reasoning through time, and the process of consciousness-raising in progressive social movements. Assuming that there are deep principles embedded within the human moral reasoning system, as argued above, it follows that moral progress comes about through a process of discovering those principles; that is, through a process of Moral Discovery. As a first step, the principles must be uncovered through critical thought about the structures of the world, how those structures function, and what they mean for human lives. As a second step, the principles, once discovered, will come to be seen in their broader context, relative to each other, and in relation to the structures of human societies. This will lead to a recognition of the inconsistencies between the principles and the way the world functions, which can engender further moral discovery, as well as motivated attempts to reduce inconsistencies between the nature of the social structures and the principles. Within this framework, consciousness-raising is a process of coming to discover and understand the fundamentals of our moral nature, and adjusting the parameters in order to bring them to their clearest fruition. It is important to note the appropriateness of the term “discovery” here: as with scientific discovery, critical thought leads to the derivation of principles, which are constrained by the reality of the system being explored, which then constrains the possible trajectories of understanding - or in the case of moral reasoning, the possible trajectories for future moral progress. This should be heartening for progressive social movements. Within this framework, consciousness-raising is not a process of persuading people through arbitrary and context-dependent arguments that a certain action or social structure is moral or not, but rather it is a process of helping others discover the principles of their own moral system for themselves, whatever those principles might turn out to be. This is surely an easier task, and one that is more likely to lead to the kind of change envisaged by progressive social movements.

So what might the future of moral discovery hold? As with other discoveries, it is hard to pre-judge, but certain strains of progress will no doubt continue on their existing paths, and others will become obvious as we learn more about ourselves and our moral principles. Third-wave feminism is likely to continue dismantling patriarchal institutions, and to continue its efforts towards decreasing the gap between men and women, in opportunities, wages, and other freedoms. In particular, the moral force of strikes over equal pay - such as occurred in Iceland in October 2016, when women left work 14% earlier than usual to protest against 14% lower wages than men - seems undeniable. Moral arguments for environmental protection have also become more prominent in recent years. The Yasunidos movement in Ecuador, for example, has seen indigenous people petitioning to keep coal and oil from being extracted and burnt for fuel, and the Cochabamba confrontations in Bolivia in 2001 have seen success in preventing the privatization of water resources. Both of these movements invoked the collective good of the planet, and the rights of self-determination of indigenous people as inalienable moral principles. Animal rights movements will also certainly continue to grow in size, as the expansion of the moral circle from humans to other sentient beings seems hard to argue against once the moral principles that guide us have been critically appraised. This will likely entail granting human rights to the Great Apes, and the widespread adoption of vegetarianism and veganism. Similarly, it seems reasonable to predict that a children/teenagers’ movement of some form will arise in schools, as these are quite totalitarian institutions, whose extreme need for obedience and conformity seems quite at odds with our moral senses (in fact, I’ve long been surprised that a children’s or teenagers’ movement hasn’t yet arisen). In the longer term, I think a deeper appreciation of the unjust nature of the wage system, and the corporate concentration of wealth and power will likely come about, of which we can see inklings in the Occupy movements and protests at the Davos conferences. And in the still longer term, I have hope that the process of Moral Discovery will do away with all forms of oppression, persecution, exploitation, abuse, aggression, violence, etc… provided our species survives long enough to achieve these grand aims.

The Proud History of Women in Progressive Social Movements

I decided to write this article as an homage to International Women’s Day, and particularly to a number of historically important women who, I think, should be better known in the mainstream. I also think it’s important to emphasize just what a proud history women in general have in progressive social movements relative to men, and how this can inform our efforts in promoting progressive change into the future.

As the starting point for this article, I’m going to state upfront a belief I’ve had for quite some time: women are, on average, better human beings than men. When we think about our (largely in-built and universal) moral code, almost every one of the values that it captures is traditionally more strongly associated with women. I think it’s also fair to say that, on average, women live up to almost every one of those values to a greater degree than men ever have. Our moral code as human beings is based on a set of principles that can broadly be summarised as something like “it’s important to consider the interests of others before acting, and we should treat others at least as well as, if not better than, the way we would like to be treated”. Some logical corollaries of these principles are things like cooperation, altruism, equality, respect for individual agency, freedom from oppression, non-violence, and so forth. Logical opposites of these principles are things like competition, self-interest, hierarchy, infringement on individual liberty, oppression, violence, and so forth. Historically and to the present day, every one of the corollaries of our moral principles is far more likely to be seen in women, and every one of their opposites is far more likely to be seen in men. Women engage in far less crime than men, and particularly in far less violent crime than men, as we see tragically every day in the statistics on domestic violence. Women are far more likely to favour cooperative social policy than men, with the percentage of women supporting universal health care, welfare measures, aged care, and the rights of minority groups almost always outstripping the percentage of men. Women are far more likely to vote for progressive political parties, and far less likely to vote for far-right, jingoistic political parties than men. Women are far less likely to be dictators and despots, to engage in genocide, or to slaughter, torture, rape, maim and kill than men are. And women are far less likely to support Donald Trump than men are.

Looking to historical social movements, it is also apparent that women have almost always been associated with the most progressive (“left-wing”) factions of those movements, and have advocated more inclusive and more universally beneficial social changes than their male counterparts. Early trades unions, for example, were exclusively male institutions, despite both men and women being victims of the owners and managers for whom they worked. These same trades unions, in the US, the UK, Australia and elsewhere, were also notoriously racist, openly excluding non-white men and women, and fighting only for the rights of white working men - as can be seen in the White Australia Policy, initially championed by the Labor Party and many of the unions it represented. Women’s organisations, on the other hand, were, more often than not, explicitly inclusive, commonly inviting minority women as natural allies, and fighting for causes beyond those that directly affected their female members. Women’s organisations - such as the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, founded in the 1830’s to protect the rights of female textile workers in Massachusetts, or the Syndicalist Women’s Union, founded in Germany in the 1920’s to push for the rights of the wives of working men - often joined actions initiated by the male-dominated unions. These organisations also typically advocated for the advancement of other social causes, such as the abolition of slavery, the rights of native people, universal education irrespective of social class, and the rights of LGBTQI people. Despite some of their prejudices, the male-dominated organisations certainly still have much to be proud of in past struggles for human rights, but the women’s organisations should be seen, I think, as a model of the inclusivity, broad scope, and cooperative endeavour needed for achieving progressive social change.

Within these women’s organisations and beyond them, there are also many individual women who embody the inclusivity and universalist orientation necessary for the success of progressive social movements. They span the gamut from early feminists, through 19th and early 20th century factory workers, to modern-day revolutionaries and human rights activists. Most of them are unknown to history, often because patriarchical structures suppressed their achievements, but also simply because the most important figures through history typically emerge from the mass of the population where they work tirelessly in anonymity. A few, though, are known to us, if still quite obscurely. For this article, I have chosen to highlight four of these women - Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Beecher, Rosa Luxemburg, and Emma Goldman - who, I think, should be better known for their achievements in advancing the status of women, but also for their advocacy of universal principles of justice, irrespective of gender, race, class, or sexual orientation. These are just some of the women, among many, whose lives we should be celebrating on this International Women’s Day.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English author and very early advocate of women’s rights. She is best known for writing a history of the French Revolution, a number of novels and children’s books, and particularly for writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, in which she argues that men and women are born equal, but made unequal by the lack of education afforded to women. She was a vocal opponent of monarchy and hereditary privilege, and an early supporter of republicanism. She wrote extensively on the need to educate girls, and on the virtues of rational thought in solving society’s ills. Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 and died in 1797.

In her own words:

• On the objectification and treatment of women by men: “I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.”
• On liberty: “The birthright of man […] is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact, and the continued existence of that compact.”
• On hierarchy, equality and charity: “Man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he is born, [which prevents him from] discovering that true happiness arises from the friendship and intimacy which can only be enjoyed by equals; and that charity is […] an intercourse of good offices and mutual benefits, founded on respect for justice and humanity.”
• On universal education: “The good effects resulting from attention to education will ever be very confined, […] till education becomes a grand national concern.”

Catharine Beecher

Catharine Beecher was an American teacher, particularly known for her promotion of universal education, irrespective of gender or social class. Some of her views on the role of women in society, and the form that she believed education should take would seem outdated, or even regressive, today, but she took very principled and progressive views on the education of girls, and on the rights of native Americans. She helped found many schools in the US mid-west, was a critic of slavery, and opposed the ‘Indian Removal Bill’ instituted by US President Andrew Jackson, which legalised the transfer of Native Americans from their own lands onto distant reservations. In opposing that legislation, she led the first national campaign on the part of women in the United States. Catharine Beecher was born in 1800 and died in 1878.

In her own words:

• On the education of girls: “If all females were not only well-educated themselves, but were prepared to communicate in an easy manner their stores of knowledge to others, the face of society would be speedily changed.”
• On women’s rights: “It is the right and duty of every woman to employ the power of organization and agitation in order to gain those advantages which are given to the one sex and unjustly withheld from the other.”
• On Native American rights: “If [the Indian Removal Bill] is permitted to take effect, the Indians are no longer independent nations, but are slaves, at the sovereign disposal of the whites, who will legislate for them. […] Should they be driven to the west, a fate no less cruel awaits them there, where they lose even the last sad hope of reposing from their oppressions in the sepulchers of their fathers, and beneath their native soil.”

Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist economist, revolutionary and social theorist. She was a key figure in the libertarian left-wing of the Marxist movement. Though often quite ideologically driven, she espoused a form of social organisation based on diffusion of power among trades unions, rather than the centralized party control favoured by mainstream Marxist-Leninists. She believed in the complete liberation of the entire working class, including all ethnic minorities. She opposed the First World War as an imperialist war of aggression, and fought against conscription of German soldiers, for which she was imprisoned. She also sharply criticized the Bolshevik October revolution of 1917, after initially having expressed optimism about the toppling of the Tsar in the February revolution of the same year. Rosa Luxemburg was born in 1871. She was murdered by government forces during the German revolution of 1919.

In her own words:

• On the Bolshevik coup: “Public control is indispensably necessary. Otherwise the exchange of experiences remains only with the closed circle of the officials of the new regime. Corruption becomes inevitable […] The only way to rebirth is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy and public opinion. It is rule by terror which demoralizes.”
• On the subjugation of women: “Behind the throne and the altar, as behind the political enslavement of the female sex, lurk today the most brutal and evil representatives of exploitation. The monarchy and disenfranchisement of women have taken their place among the most important tools of domination.”
• On imperialism and the First World War: “Imperialist bestiality has been let loose to devastate the fields of Europe. It is our hope, our flesh and blood, which is falling in swathes like corn under the sickle.”

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was a political activist and a prolific writer. She was particularly concerned with the rights of women, and of the working class. She wrote extensively against the senseless violence of the First World War, and against the Bolshevik takeover of Russia after the October revolution. She travelled to Spain during the Spanish Civil War to support the anarchist revolution that was spreading through Catalonia, Aragon and Andalucia. She was an early advocate of birth control, and wrote articles in support of homosexuality (at a time when this was otherwise unheard of), Palestinian rights, atheism, democracy, and free speech. She consistently denounced the ill-treatment of prisoners and the unequal power relations inherent in traditional marriage. She believed that all forms of centralized power - including the state, organised religion, and capitalist corporations - were illegitimate unless they were able to prove that their structures resulted in a greater good for the majority. She was imprisoned many times for her writings and for her public lectures, which often attracted crowds of thousands. Emma Goldman was born in Russia in 1869, and died in Toronto in 1940.

In her own words:

• On the rights of women: “Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of submission and slavery.”
• On prisons and crime: “Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an emaciated, deformed, willess, shipwrecked crew of humanity, their hopes crushed, all their natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only possibility of existence.”
• On homosexuality and gender: “It is a great tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”

Questioning the Seemingly Obvious (with anecdotes from my dating life)

All progressive social change comes about, first, through questioning the assumptions that maintain the status quo. A society is, in essence, just a system of assumptions about the way the world works, the consequence of which is the set of social structures that define that society. Where one group is seen to be lower status than another, it is because that society maintains a set of assumptions that results in the perceived legitimacy of the status difference between the two groups. In order to dismantle the status differences, it is therefore necessary, first, to question the assumptions that allow the status difference to exist, and then to propose and enact more humane alternatives. This process is one that is typically framed as one of ‘consciousness raising’; that is, of becoming aware (and helping others to become aware) of the beliefs about one’s relations with others that one takes for granted. Often the process is not an easy one, as it requires us to think outside ourselves, question things that seem obvious, and consider the very nature of the world and ourselves as human beings. It is worth going to the effort, however, as it is only through this process that the structures that allowed slavery, the subjugation of women, the inhumane conditions of the poor and working class, and every other historical social ill, were changed, and continue to be changed.

In previous posts, I have attempted to challenge some of the assumptions that govern our world. I have tried to argue for the possibility of bringing about a more free society, where status differences are kept to a minimum, and power is diffuse rather than concentrated. When proposing such things, my arguments are often met with such assertions as: “a society can’t function without a leader”; “status differences just reflect the reality of differences in the work that people do”; “the only way to get necessary work done is through some form of coercion, or monetary incentive”; “true democracy can never work, because some people will never be capable of understanding complex problems and will never make rational decisions” etc. All of these are assumptions that, I believe, can be questioned, and indeed, SHOULD be questioned, if we want to make the world a better place for more people. Rather than question these assumptions directly here, though, I thought I would take a more lighthearted approach, and simply demonstrate, through some anecdotes about my dating experiences, how much we take for granted in our interactions with others. From this, I hope that any readers will take home the key message that what seems obvious is not necessarily so, and that questioning our assumptions leads us to see the world in a whole new light (one that has the potential to be the basis for a better world).

In what follows, I will be describing thoughts I had when I was dating someone six years ago (when I used to engage in such youthful pursuits). So a bit of context: we met at a hen’s night, and then really hit it off at the wedding that followed.  At the end of the wedding, I left without getting her phone number, but then I thought “bugger this, I’m going to go back and ask her for her number”, which I did and she gave it to me. I messaged her not long after, and we organised to go on our first date. 

For our first date, we decided to go to a Thai restaurant. As I got ready to meet her, I started to think more deeply about what we were doing. Here I was, trimming my beard in just the right way, because somehow the length and shape of this vestige of primate fur would make me more appealing to her. I was also festooning my body with the fur of other mammals (as well as some other materials originally developed in a chemistry lab somewhere), coloured in various ways that I deemed “went well together”. I then put some slimy paste on my head, roughed up my hair, and thought “this particular configuration of hairs, partly messy but also with subtle structure like a Jackson Pollack, should give me success in bringing her closer to me”. I then splashed myself with some whale blubber extract infused with various fragrances originally evolved to attract insects, because I knew I could fool her that this was actually how I smelled.

For her part, at the same time, she was also smearing her body with various substances, and enacting a number of other odd rituals. She had decided, as our society at large has apparently decided, that darkening and lengthening one’s protective eyelid hairs would really get my heart racing (and, I guess, she probably wasn’t wrong). She had also decided that she should wear an undergarment made of some kind of mesh material, like a butterfly net, but with patterns embedded within it. Rather than covering her buttocks with the mesh, however, she chose a variety with a strip that sat between her buttocks, because apparently she didn’t want me to be able see that she was wearing any undergarments at all… which seemed odd, given the intricacy of the butterfly net at the front.  She then made herself substantially taller, by covering her feet with dark, moulded cow-hide, out of which protruded, from the underside of each heel, a mini stilt. She proved herself quite proficient at moving about on the mini stilts, which presumably was part of her attempt to impress me, like a form of amateur acrobatics… When I saw this later in the night, I made sure she knew I was suitably captivated. She also rubbed a heated cylinder along the length of her hair in order to ensure that it would take on a more acceptable linear form… perhaps because geometrically straight lines are easier on the eye than unpredictable, chaotic semi-circles, particularly when it comes to lengths of dead skin cells dangling from our scalps.

At the allocated time, we met at the restaurant, and ordered food and drinks. We then regaled each other with tales of our own lives, discussing what we had been like in our less developed, juvenile forms. We also told each other various anecdotes designed, explicitly or implicitly, to elicit a sort of upward tightening at the corner of the lips, and a rhythmic exhalation of air, sometimes voiced repetitively and in rapid succession with the phoneme “ha!”. This was sometimes accompanied by the phrase “that’s pretty funny” or a variant thereof… because forcing someone into these involuntary actions is apparently attractive.

As we ate, I couldn’t help thinking how it was odd that dates were almost always focussed around food. After all, eating is the first part of the digestive process, where you place nutrients into the upper part of your oesophagus, for it to eventually be absorbed by the body, and the waste expelled. It seemed odd to me that we would be so comfortable sharing this aspect of our bodily systems so early in our courtship, when the only conclusion one could draw from witnessing it is that later the person opposite me was going to do a poo, and our dinner, so romantically shared, would be flushed away with so many others… why, I thought, are we so happy to show others this end of the process, but not the other end, when they are inextricably linked?

As the first date wound down, we walked around the city together. I started to feel pressure to show her that I was interested by clasping the digits of my front paws around hers, obviously. I also started to think “maybe I should touch the outer membranes of my mouth against the outer membranes of her mouth” to really show her that I was serious… I also hesitated, though, because I knew that if during the membrane touching I inserted my taste organ too far down her oesophageal opening, she may think I was coming on a bit too strong… because apparently you can’t have someone taste the dinner you just shared when it’s already inside you (which incidentally was another reminder, for me, of the poo she would later be doing)… I went in for the kiss, but tried not to go for too much tongue, and then I bid her farewell for the evening.

About a week later, for our second date, she invited me to a friend’s birthday party. She picked me up and we went to the party together. As I got into the car, I again felt pressure to share with her that I was interested, so I placed my hand on her thigh as she drove, and she caressed it to ensure that I knew that I didn’t have to remove it, and to ensure that I knew that she hadn’t misinterpreted it as an attempt to ascertain the particular variety of material she chose to wear on this occasion. We arrived at the party, and she introduced me to her friends. She looked happy to be able to parade me around to her nearest and dearest, as if to say “I brought this, do you think it goes well with my life?”

As the festivities got under way, I stood in the corner holding her hand, and watched everyone enjoying themselves. Someone brought out a cake, and proceeded to stick wax cylinders into the frosting, which were then set ablaze. We all huddled around and ritually chanted, indicating our happiness that the Earth had made exactly 25 revolutions around the Sun since the birthday girl exited her mother’s uterus. The birthday girl then blew out the fire atop her cake, and we all cheered that the blaze had been extinguished, after which we proceeded to slap our palms together in apparent triumph. After this, the birthday girl began to rip colourful sheets of flattened tree pulp from a number of boxes which she had been given by all those in attendance. The colourful sheets were clearly attempts to conceal the contents of the boxes… because lying by omission is an important part of showing someone you’re happy that they have survived an extra year.

On our third date, we decided to go to the botanic gardens. We again organised to begin the process of digesting our food together, and decided it would be nice to meet not long before the darkness of night descended upon us. We watched as the sun slipped behind the horizon, and noted the many colours produced by the diffraction of light through the atmosphere… this was the essence of romance, I thought, because perceiving many wavelengths of light simultaneously at the point at which the Sun disappears from sight… does… something… in our brains. We kissed and lay down, and she placed her head in the nook created by the joining of my arm to my chest. We lay in this position – her listening to all of my cardiac chambers contracting with increasing speed and me stroking her impeccably geometrically linear hair – for an hour or more. She began to feel cold, so I removed my jacket and placed it around her shoulders, as a sign that I valued her so much that I deemed her worthy of the energy clinging to the inside of the jacket, that I had earlier produced for myself. I held her tight, further emphasizing that I understood the laws of thermodynamics and therefore cared about the entropy she had just been experiencing. We both started to feel a sense of oneness at this moment – as the transfer of energy from one entity to another would predictably engender – and we decided to walk together, arm in arm, into our future… which lasted a few months, at which point we broke up.

Through these anecdotes, silly though they are, I hope to have shown that our day-to-day interactions are riddled with assumptions that, when questioned, may lead us to see the world in a whole different light. Some things we do seem obvious, and the rituals that form part of our culture seem objectively important and meaningful, but with a bit of a questioning that apparent objectivity and obviousness can come crashing down. Sometimes the result is relatively inconsequential (for example, when everyone who reads this article decides that they should never go on a date with me), but at other times, the results can change the world. Always question, always look for new ways to see the world, and we can make real progress towards a better future.

Electoral Politics and Voting in Australia

With the July 2nd Federal election looming large in Australia, the airwaves, and the internet and print media have become engulfed with the usual onslaught of political advertisements, commentary, sound bites, ‘gotcha’ moments, and everything else that characterises modern election campaigns. In amongst these messages, there have been a number of calls to action (particularly from the mainstream political ‘left’), telling us how important it is to get out to vote and to enact our democratic rights, which are both a privilege and a responsibility. Prominent among these has been Waleed Aly’s passionate plea to the 500,000 Australians between the ages of 18 and 24 who are not enrolled to vote, asking them “what are you thinking?” when it is within their grasp to “completely change the outcome of this election” if they just went out and enrolled. Implicit in these messages is the assertion that we can change Australia for the better, if only we work within the political system, and take the election and its options seriously, which young Australians do not appear to be doing. A few questions arise, however: Is it really that important to take elections seriously and to vote? Do average voters really have the power that they are being made out to have? And, are elections in Australia and other western democracies really vehicles for progressive social change as is assumed? In answering these questions, I will argue that a belief in the importance of elections could in fact hamper positive long-term change. At the same time, however, I will argue that your vote can make a difference, and will outline (for what it’s worth) what I plan to do on election day.

In order to answer the questions posed above, it is necessary to explore how the political system in western parliamentary democracies, such as that found in Australia, actually functions. In the idealized model, elections represent those occasions when the population comes together to choose, from amongst their number, those representatives who best capture their own views, and who will most forcefully fight for their interests. The population is assumed to be fully informed on all issues, and their voting decisions are outcomes of compromises between all possible positions on all possible issues that confront the nation at that time and into the future. The Median Voter Model (MVM) – which probably best captures this idealized view in the Political Science literature – suggests that political parties form around blocks of voters with similar views, and that political parties will emerge to represent all the blocks across the entire political spectrum of views within the society. Over the longer term, the political parties are thought to converge around the ‘median voter’; that is, the hypothetical person who best captures the centre of the political spectrum, and who represents the point of most equal and fair compromise between the views of the population as a whole. From the MVM perspective, parliaments are truly democratic, and embody what a population believes on all important issues at the time of an election.

Mainstream discourse on elections implicitly (or explicitly) assumes the MVM to be a true and accurate portrayal of the functioning of parliamentary democracies, such as Australia’s. Politicians regularly appeal to the “average Australian” when announcing policy platforms; political commentators grumble that this or that legislative change will not be to the liking of “middle Australia”, and governments commonly claim to have achieved a democratic mandate for change after winning an election. The evidence for the MVM is not strong, however. First, its assumption that the population is fully informed on all issues is not only implausible, but demonstrably false. Second, confidence in political parties in Australia is quite low, with as few as 31% of Australians believing that political parties represent them (e.g., Martin, 2011). Third, members of the Australian parliament are not drawn proportionally from the different classes that make up the Australian population, with politicians being more likely to have attended private school, more likely to have attended university, more likely to own property, less likely to have been beneficiaries of (low SES) welfare provisions, and generally more likely to be wealthy than the average Australian. Finally, and most importantly, it is well known that the political establishment and the population – and by extension the ‘median voter’ – differ markedly on a whole range of issues, including health and education funding (the population typically wants more); support for overseas military intervention (the population typically wants less); support for climate change mitigation (the population typically wants more); and support for same-sex marriage (the population is strongly in favour), amongst many others. These points all undermine the MVM as an accurate and parsimonious account of elections and the political system in Australia.

An alternate model to the MVM is the Investment Theory of Party Competition (ITPC). The ITPC suggests that public policy arises not from competition for the median voter as the MVM suggests, but rather emerges from competition between business interests. Investors are thought to coalesce around political parties, and invest in them, as vehicles to protect and drive their interests. Those issues on which the groups of investors agree will be uncontested and invisible to the population, irrespective of the population’s interest in those issues. On those issues on which groups of investors disagree there will be fierce competition, again irrespective of the population’s interest or otherwise in those issues.

Within the ITPC, the interests of investors are thought to frame and constrain public policy throughout the life of any government that gains a majority. The population, however, only plays any significant role during election campaigns. Voters do not frame or constrain public policy, but they must be appealed to during elections, and therefore political parties must court them for their votes, which they typically do with issues that do not affect the core business interests of the investors that they represent. Capital-intensive industries – that is, those with lower labour costs and more capital investment – are able to court voters with higher wages, better working conditions, more progressive social policy, and can align themselves with unions, because these do not affect their core business interests. Labour-intensive industries – that is, those with higher labour costs and less capital investment – on the other hand, are unable to court voters with these same policies, because anything that increases the cost of labour will have strong negative effects on the profitability of these industries. As such, labour-intensive industries, and the political parties that represent them, commonly compete with rival parties on “values”, and induce fear, patriotism, and other such devices to court voters. In Australia, though the boundaries can be quite fluid, capital-intensive industries have typically supported the Labor Party, and labour-intensive industries have typically supported the Liberal Party (see, for example, AEC records on political donations).

The evidence for the ITPC, unlike the MVM, is quite strong (though admittedly no study that I am aware of has been conducted in the Australian context). First, the ITPC makes no prior assumptions about the degree to which voters are informed or otherwise, as the consequences of information flow in a money-run political system are peripheral, because the population is made to be largely peripheral. Second, the ITPC is entirely consistent with the class differences that exist between members of parliament and the general population. Third, the ITPC provides a plausible explanation for the emergence of the two-party systems common in western democracies, suggesting that they are an outcome of a deep schism in the interests of capital-intensive and labour-intensive industries. Third, various studies in the United States and in Europe have shown that public policy aligns strongly with the opinions of those at the top of the income ladder, and becomes increasingly divergent as you descend to the lowest rungs. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, careful research into the outcome of presidential elections in the United States, from the 1933 ‘New Deal’ election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, provides direct support for the ITPC. This research tracks the views of investors, their relationships with party figures, and the money that flowed to the Democratic and Republican Parties in each election, and shows that public policy, and the results of the elections, largely arise from an interplay of these factors. The ITPC appears to explain existing political systems well, particularly those, such as Australia’s, where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a privileged few.

So where does this leave us with regard to the importance of voting in elections in Australia? Assuming that the ITPC provides an accurate portrayal of the functioning of the political system in Australia, a few points logically follow. First, the political parties on offer, particularly the two major parties, are unlikely to represent anywhere near the views of the electorate. From this it follows that the decision for many Australians on election day will be how to choose the least bad option from those they are being offered. This could go some way to explaining the disengagement of young Australians (and should, perhaps, be taken into account by anyone who ever feels like blaming other groups – particularly disaffected groups of less privileged people who have been made to focus on their own, often ethnocentric, interests – for the government we end up with after an election[1]).

It also follows from the ITPC that the way in which the population in Australia votes likely has very little impact on public policy, and is unlikely to lead to large-scale positive social change. Taking a historical perspective, it is quite clear that parliaments are in fact very conservative institutions, and rarely, if ever, lead the way in effecting change – a fact predicted by the ITPC. The history of slavery, workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBTIQ rights, environmental action, and so on, shows that progressive social change arises from movements in the population, and that legislative changes follow much later, if at all.

Following from this point, the ITPC predicts that social change of the most progressive and revolutionary kind cannot occur until the power of investors to control the political process is curtailed. This could take various forms, the most obvious of which is the formation of trade unions embedded in the working population, something which has been attempted with some success in the past. In the long-term, however, only dismantling institutions in which power is concentrated, and democratizing them, is likely to lead to public policy that represents the views of the population. Minor parties can and do arise to challenge the political establishment (the Greens are the most obvious contemporary example in Australia), but their success can only be limited in the long-term. In the first instance, these parties will be ignored and will not have the resources to promote themselves or their policies. If they are able to survive this initial period, they will then become threatening to the political establishment, and will become targets for attack. If they are able to survive these attacks and establish themselves as a legitimate political force, they will become attractive to investors, who will begin to court them, invest in them, such that their policy positions will gradually start to reflect the views of those investors (a process that I think is beginning to play out at this moment with the Greens, and that can be seen in the history of the Labor party). If by some miracle, a party such as this survives with its values intact and wins government, then other means are available to concentrated power to undermine legislative changes. Large amounts of money can be invested in further attack campaigns (as occurred for the Carbon tax), prices on monopolized goods and services can be increased[2] (as occurred in Venezuela when the Chavez government enacted mildly progressive social policies), or investment capital can be moved across state borders, thus destroying the national economy (as occurred in Bolivia in the face of land reforms). Only the democratization of concentrated private power, and the spreading of wealth outside the hands of a few can truly lead to a political system that represents the views of its population.

In light of these points, it is perhaps not as clear as is often assumed, by Waleed Aly and others, that enrolling to vote, and voting in the upcoming election is as important as it is made out to be. By focussing all our attention on the election, and who we should vote for, when these actions will likely have little long-term effect, and will, for most, be a choice between a bad option and a worse option, we may in fact be distracting ourselves from what history has taught us: positive change comes about through mass popular movement, through the creation of solidarity among diverse groups with diverse interests, and through the dismantling of institutions of concentrated power. Positive social change comes about through working together, outside of the electoral cycle and outside of the political system, not through elections or through voting for candidates whose policy positions we have little impact on. Elections – though a privilege, given the long and violent struggles by past generations for the franchise – are not that important if the goal is to bring about progressive social change.

Having said all this, I want to finish by emphasizing that I do not believe that voting in the upcoming election is completely unimportant. The differences between the parties on some issues are very real, and will have very real consequences for people’s lives. The Greens’ positions on asylum seekers, climate change action, violence against women, and penalty rates, for example, are far more humane, and will be of far greater benefit to a greater number of people, than anything on offer by the Liberal or Labor Parties. These differences matter.  These differences particularly matter if you live in a marginal seat, where your vote can determine the outcome of the election. These differences also particularly matter in the senate, where your vote can determine how much the more destructive policies of whichever major party forms government can be curtailed. For what it’s worth, I will be voting informally (i.e., “donkey voting”) in the House of Representatives, and preferencing the Greens in the Senate. The safe Liberal seat in which I live means I can get away with a protest vote, and allows me to live up to what I really believe in. In the Senate, however, where my vote really matters, I do not want to see the more destructive elements of the political establishment gaining unbridled power, and I want to see progressive amendments made to any legislation that comes before that House. Whatever you decide to do on the 2nd of July, remember that your ability to bring about positive change extends well beyond your vote on that one day every 3-4 years.

[1] It is always a good idea to remember that, when systematically surveyed, Australians mostly hold quite socially progressive, and socially democratic views in most policy domains. It is also worth remembering that vulnerable, disaffected, less educated people are not the cause of the sickening policies (e.g., toward asylum seekers, women, indigenous Australians etc.) enacted by the government, and that with a bit of positive engagement (rather than the all-too-common comments about these people’s stupidity), we could all in fact be allies in the fight against the real oppressors who hold social, economic, and political power.

[2] When economists and business leaders predict increasing costs after some policy change that they are not fond of (for example, increases in electricity bills after the introduction of the carbon tax), I often think that these should be taken not as predictions, but rather as threats.

Liebster Award

The Goat Track to Freedom has been nominated for a Liebster Award by Vincent from Life is Frightening. Thanks, Vinny! The Liebster Award is a peer-nomination scheme that gives bloggers the opportunity to recommend other blogs they like.

Should they accept the nomination, bloggers are required (not a popular word on The Goat Track to Freedom, with its connotations of authority and domination) to share 11 random facts about themselves, answer 11 questions posed by their nominator, and then ask 11 questions of the bloggers they nominate. Given that I've only posted one article so far, I'm taking this as a proxy "About Me" section, and also as an opportunity to live up to some of the goals of The Goat Track to Freedom; creating connections between people and linking to other valuable resources that provide a similar perspective. It's also an opportunity to write something a bit more lighthearted than what would usually appear on this site.

11 Random Facts

1. I often ponder the deeper meaning of signs. For example, signs that say “Please put litter in the bin” create a paradox, because as soon as it’s in the bin, it ceases to be litter. I’ve considered emailing Stephen Hawking about this.

2. When I see road signs that say “Slow Point, 20kms/hr”, I point at them really slowly. If you actually try and point at 20kms/hr, it’s actually quite fast for pointing, so I usually aim for between 3 and 5 kms/hr.

3. I took a picture of a digital clock at 11:11am on the 11th of November, 2011. It reminds me of Asch’s famous line length study.

4. Everyone in my phone contact list is designated by a ridiculous nickname. Almost none of them know this.

5. I was born in Hong Kong, but despite appearances, I’m not actually Chinese.

6. I’m kinda scared of objects with irregular patterns of closely-spaced holes... I mean, how gross is this?

7. The capital of France is Paris.

8. I speak French, which means I know that many French terms adopted into English sound far less romantic when translated. For example, “pot pourri” literally means “rotten pot”, “crème brûlée” is French for “burnt cream”, and “cul-de-sac” means “arse of bag”. 

9. When I go to conferences, it often strikes me that there’s a disproportionate number of cul-de-sacs in academia, particularly at the level of Professor.

10. One of my favourite things in life is immersing myself in a crowd (e.g., at a protest or sporting event), and feeling the collective buzz of being surrounded by your fellow men and women. When Australia beat Uruguay on penalties in 2005 to qualify for the World Cup, I felt that collective buzz so strongly that I hugged about 15-20 random sweaty men. I hope each of them cherishes each of those moments of love as much as I do, even if it’s only the pungent aroma of their pheromones that keeps the memories alive.

11. Related to random fact 10, I discovered just the other day (at the Australia vs. Oman match in Sydney) why you should always book tickets to sporting events at the same time as your friends. If you don’t, not only will you not be sitting with your friends, but the Ticketek staff – no doubt laughing from their corporate boxes above (boo hierarchy!) – will turn you into a social pariah by allocating you a seat literally all alone (see diagram below). Imagine the sea of humanity around you, that collective buzz of the crowd, so near, yet so far... Imagine the loneliness as the Mexican wave passes around you but not through you... Imagine the stigma as everyone cheers and you sit awkwardly clapping, silently crying, desperately wanting to connect as the first goal goes in, but always only having that cold, hard plastic you’re sitting on to comfort you. Always book tickets at the same time as your friends.

11 Questions and my Answers 

1. What’s one thing that makes your life less shit?
Those signs in dog parks that say “pick up after your dog”... I think they make everyone’s life/shoes less shit.

2. If you could choose one person in the world to make a guest post on your blog, who would it be, and why?
Definitely Noam Chomsky, because then everyone could see how much he steals his ideas from me. Also, I think he might have a few other marginally interesting insights into world affairs.

3. If you weren’t blogging about what you blog about now, what would you be blogging about instead?
Probably the deeper meaning of signs. I have long wanted to do a feature article on the diversity of wet floor sign designs.

4. I’m good thanks – how are you?
Pretty good, but I could go a goat curry, with a side of freedom.

5. What do you most like about keeping a blog?
The incredible fame.

6. What’s the most annoying thing about blogging?
The paparazzi camped in my front courtyard.

7. What’s the most annoying thing about you?
How photogenic I am in gossip magazines... at least that’s what Kristen Stewart said when I asked her that question in bed last night.

8. Which band would you choose to write the soundtrack to your blog?
One Direction, because all goat tracks lead in one direction: towards freedom.

9. What is the capital of Madagascar? (this one is going to be very easy for the BBC blog)
Antananananananarivo... I never remember how many “na’s” there are and where to stop... like banananananananana.

10. If your blog were to make a significant change to the world, what would that change be?
Ideally, I would like my blog to lead to the complete collapse of the current system, to be replaced by a utopia characterised by complete liberty, peace, love, compassion, and the flourishing of art, science and culture. Failing that, I’d be happy if there were a 0.0001% increase in people saying “hey look, there’s a goat track!”

11. Life is frightening – what frightens you most?
I find this stylised depiction of what happens to your baby if you install his/her baby seat over the airbag quite frightening... The materialisation of that giant boomerang between the red (presumably blood-soaked?) baby and the airbag seems particularly concerning.

And to end on a more serious note, I find the degree to which our society endorses and promotes hierarchy and domination quite frightening.

My nominations

-The Only Adrienne - for being my Honours student... but also for being pretty funny (the pressure's on).
-Rethinking the Job Culture - for helping us rethink the job culture, and ask the question "why work?"

My questions for them

1.    Will you join the coming revolution?

2.    How do you feel about objects with irregular patterns of closely-spaced holes?

3.    Who is your favourite philosopher and why?

4.    Why do you blog?

5.    What do you hate most about blogging?

6.    How much is that doggy in the window?

7.    What random but interesting fact about the world have you learnt since the beginning of 2015?

8.    Who or what inspired you to start a blog?

9.    What’s the best pun you’ve ever come up with?

10.    What issue do you think most urgently needs to be addressed in the world today?

11.    Do you think freedom will necessarily lead to chaos? Why or why not?

And that's all folks! Don't worry, the next article (on Education, coming very soon) will be far more serious.

Freedom and Chaos

Centralized authority is a defining feature of Western liberal democracies, such as Australia. These societies are by no means totalitarian, but power within their institutions remains concentrated in the hands of a privileged few. In Australia, the government is run by the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet, corporations are under the direction of a CEO and a board of directors, universities are run by a Vice-Chancellor and an executive council, schools are run by a principal and a committee of executive teachers, and so forth. In each case, decision-making resides in an authority, which has the power to control the fate of the institution and the fate of those whose outcomes are bound up in the institution (e.g., citizens, workers, consumers, students etc.).

The legitimacy of these structures of authority is rarely questioned by those in power, for the obvious reason that existing institutions would cease to be “existing institutions” if they undermined themselves. These institutions also actively sustain themselves by propagating the belief that authority is not simply legitimate, but that it is in fact necessary for the proper functioning of the society. From an early age, children are taught that it is important to listen to and follow the instructions of their elders and parents, to defer to the powers that be, and to respect institutionalized authorities such as teachers, police officers, judges, and the offices of the Prime Minister, and the Governor-General. From these messages, children learn that others know better, and that there exists a class of intelligent and benevolent rulers who can protect them from “the rage and trampling of the bewildered herd”, as prominent public intellectual Walter Lippmann described the general population. Through the media, the population is further taught that authorities exist to protect them from external threats (such as “boat people” and other dangerous enemies), and to guide progress towards a better future (in the words of former US President Harry Truman, “where there is no leadership, society stands still”). If authority were to dissipate for whatever reason, people have been led to believe that society would naturally “descend into anarchy” until authorities “restore order” by “cracking down hard” and re-asserting themselves (ABC news, describing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005). Within this dominant and pervasive framework, authority is equated with order, and freedom from authority is equated with chaos[1].

A question that naturally arises from this framework – which is rarely argued, but more commonly asserted or assumed – is whether freedom from authority necessarily entails a descent into disorder and chaos. Anecdotally, there appears to be no reason to equate the two concepts, despite the widespread acceptance of their association. Almost all the day-to-day interactions between people occur without domination by one party over the other and without formal structures of authority to manage those interactions, yet these interactions almost never end in stagnation or irresolvable impasse. The end of feudalism, slavery, absolutism, apartheid, and the continuing struggles to end domination of women by men, and of workers by their bosses are all characterized by challenges to structures of authority, and all have resulted in a better world, rather than a worse one. And the goat track – that potent symbol of bottom-up co-ordination that is the central metaphor of this blog – also implies that authority is not a necessary precursor to stability and structure.

At a more theoretical level, the same conclusions follow. A state of freedom – characterized by respect for the dignity of the individual, individual agency free of coercion, and distributed power – need not be equated with disorder, because there exist natural constraints – emanating from our shared experience of living in the same world and our shared characteristics as human beings – that limit the range of possible outcomes, guiding us away from absolute, unstructured chaos. At a very basic level, all human beings share the same universe – with the same physical laws – and the same planet – with the same manifestations of those laws. More meaningfully, all human beings share the same basic biology. We all (with a few exceptions) have two arms and two legs, a head, a heart, and the same set of internal organs. We all (again with a few exceptions) have a desire for survival, a need for food, a need for oxygen, and a genetic heritage that determines to a large extent how we will develop across our lifespans.

More meaningfully still, all human beings share the same basic cognitive structures and the same basic psychology. We all (again with marginal exceptions) have a social reasoning system, which allows us to interpret and react to the norms and customs that shape our community.  We also all have a ‘theory of mind’ system, which allows us to respond appropriately to, and with consideration for, the thoughts and feelings of those around us. We also all have a related moral reasoning system, which allows us to consider right and wrong and to make decisions with regard to the complex interplay of the conflicting interests of members of our community. Together, these physical, biological and psychological constraints definitively restrict the range of choices that we would conceivably make about how to organize our societies should existing structures of domination be dismantled, thus reducing the probability of utter chaos.

Of these constraints, the psychological constraints are the most important. The social reasoning, ‘theory of mind’, and moral reasoning systems each allow for coordinated action among individuals, which is the basis for orderly outcomes in the absence of authority. The social reasoning system provides us with the ability to learn, interpret, react to, and shape the norms and customs of the communities in which we live. When we come to identify with those around us – that is, to see ourselves as sharing commonalities and as being emotionally connected to our peers – we feel a strong need to reach consensus, and to decrease differences between ourselves and others. We become motivated to develop shared norms and customs, and to follow those shared norms and customs for their own sake. We develop symbols that define us as a collective, and we seek reassurance and validation from others. These near-universal human features suggest that coordinated action could win out over independent, competitive, or conflictual action, thus conceivably promoting stability and harmony over “anarchy” and mayhem when structures of authority are absent.

The ‘theory of mind’ system allows individuals to understand one another’s thoughts and feelings, and, importantly, to feel empathy for one another. By feeling one another’s feelings, human beings can truly experience the world from the point of view of another, and thereby make decisions in light of the interests of others.  In a practical sense, empathy is fundamental to cooperation, and to the desire to negotiate and to compromise in the face of conflict. The ‘theory of mind’ system constrains those choices that people are likely to make, and allows collectively beneficial outcomes to be achieved, again, in the absence of coercive authority.

Moral reasoning in human beings is less well understood, but like ‘theory of mind’ processes, it appears to be a human universal fundamental to coordinated action, and, as such, to be a buffer against chaos. Moral codes vary across communities and cultures, but at a basic level these moral codes share important features, and are mutually intelligible across communities and cultures. As argued by David Hume in the 18th century, and more recently by John Rawls in his Theory of Justice, it appears that human beings have an innate moral sense. When we behave in ways that could be seen as “wrong”, we feel a strong need to justify our behaviour in terms of higher ideals. It is rare for someone who acts purely in their own self-interest to justify those actions by saying simply that they wanted to engage in those actions. It’s even rarer still for someone who is questioned about the moral basis of their actions to fail to understand the question, or to respond in a way that the questioner is unable to understand[2]. Even the most unequivocally self-interested and destructive acts in history have always been justified in terms of a higher ideal. Hitler’s invasion of Poland was conducted to save the German people; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was carried out to bring “earthly paradise” to the Chinese people; the colonization of India was part of Britain’s civilizing mission, carried out for the benefit of the pitiable natives; and, in more recent times, the United States’ invasion of Iraq was carried out to bring democracy to the Middle East (once arguments about Weapons of Mass Destruction were conveniently forgotten). In each case, the moral argument is universally intelligible, and allows for counter-argument, for discussion, and, importantly, for a consensus to be reached on what is best for all, and on the kind of society that is most just. Again, the shared moral sense allows for the possibility that harmonious relations could arise under conditions of freedom.

These three cognitive systems (among others) form part of our fundamental human nature, an understanding of which, as Noam Chomsky has observed, is the basis of all arguments for and against the feasibility of particular forms of social organisation. The science of human nature is in its infancy, and further systematic investigation of the extent and limits of our nature is necessary before we can definitively differentiate between what is feasible and what is purely utopian. In the meantime, it is reasonable to tentatively conclude that what we currently know about our fundamental nature does not preclude the possibility that a society could function in the absence of concentrated power. We have tendencies towards collective, co-ordinated and pro-social enterprise, which exist alongside certain tendencies toward personal self-interest and egotism. It is within our control to foster the former tendencies and suppress the latter, and to create a society that is more just, more free, and functions in the interests of all its citizens. History provides us with one hopeful example of this kind of society, which, like our shared psychology, hints at the possibility that freedom from domination and harmony among equals can exist side by side. It seems apt to close this discussion of freedom and chaos with the admiring words of George Orwell describing this society – Anarchist Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) – in his Homage to Catalonia:

“When one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle [...] Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Senor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’ [the polite form of ‘you’ in Spanish]; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenas dias’. Tipping was forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy [...] All of this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

[1] Nowhere is this implied equivalence more apparent than in the use of the term “anarchy” itself: “anarchy” literally means “without leader/ruler”, but it is more commonly used to mean a state of disorder where functioning institutions have broken down.

[2] As I’ve remarked to friends, no one has ever tried to justify murder by saying “I killed that person because Hungarian sausages are less aerodynamic than an annoyed moose.”