tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6596299044042681072024-02-08T02:11:37.311-08:00The Right TwigsPreliminary thinking about philosophy, books, music, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-21897814585515268862013-06-04T04:02:00.001-07:002013-06-04T04:02:18.734-07:00Work in Utopia Workshop<span id="docs-internal-guid-29f66149-0ed5-58ed-8feb-257938496187"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Work in Utopia</span></div>
<br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">915am-530pm, 4 July 2013, FASS meeting room 2, Lancaster University</span></div>
<br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ideals aren’t enough: we need realistic assessments of possibilities and immediate tactics too. But ideals are necessary, because without them we can’t evaluate possibilities or form goals for our tactics. This one-day workshop at Lancaster University will consider ideals for work (what we do to make a living): what work would or will or should be in utopia. Should there be any work, or is it a curse from which we should free ourselves? How should work be distributed? How should appealing, autonomous, high-status work, or menial, grim, low-status work, be distributed? How should our working lives be organised - in hierarchies, democracies, by individual contract? What is the ideal of craftsmanship worth? What is the right relationship between work and education? between work and self-development? between work and play? between work at home and work outside it? Speakers will consider representations of utopian work, real-world prefiguring of utopian work, normative argument about the goods and evils of work, and the uses of utopianism for thinking about these issues.</span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speakers: Professor Stephen Bevan (The Work Foundation), Dr Sam Clark (Lancaster), Dr Sarah Hitchen (Lancaster), Philipp Jeandree (Goldsmiths), Professor Ruth Kinna (Loughborough), Professor Andrew Sayer (Lancaster).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Free and open to all, thanks to funding from the Royal Institute of Philosophy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Further information and RSVP: sam.clark@lancaster.ac.uk</span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span><br />Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-11443238119093437592013-03-12T05:05:00.001-07:002013-03-12T05:05:14.729-07:00Lessons learnedThe main result of being linked to (as my post on GTA pay, below, was by the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association) is loads of spam comments.<br />
<br />
I've therefore put a word-verification task into the comment form in the hope that I'll be able to stop moderating spam.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-88820445992791274862012-06-29T13:46:00.001-07:002012-06-29T13:46:06.322-07:00HiatusJust making the obvious official: I'm not finding time to write anything here, and I have a very busy summer ahead, so I'm going to put this blog on the back burner for a while. I'll probably put up occasional notes and links, and I hope to return to more regular and substantial blogging eventually, but for the next few months there won't be much to see here.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-58107645268772815752012-06-07T05:12:00.001-07:002012-06-07T05:12:12.954-07:00GTA payThe British Postgraduate Philosophy Association has published a <a href="http://www.bppa-online.org/node/41">survey</a> of GTAs' working hours which suggests that many UK institutions, including Lancaster, pay their GTAs less than minimum wage in real terms.<br />
<br />
I was first startled by this, and then ashamed that I hadn't done more, in my role as Part I Convenor (and therefore our GTAs' line-manager) to check with them how much work they were actually doing.<br />
<br />
Brian Leiter <a href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/06/graduating-teaching-assistant-pay-in-the-uk-and-ireland.html">posted</a> about this, and got a little bit of discussion, including from me:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span lang="EN-US">I convene part I philosophy at Lancaster,
one of the intitutions picked out by the BPPA as paying less than minimum wage
in real terms, and I therefore manage the excellent group of teaching
assistants who are being paid so badly. I have several responses to this
survey:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">1) I agree that GTAs are underpaid and
generally undervalued, and I’m pleased to have some extra ammunition for
arguing that case with the people who set wages and conditions at Lancaster. I
hope the UCU and other unions will also do some pushing here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">2) I find the results worrying in a
different way. Working backwards from a real pay less than £6.08/hr and our
official rate of pay and hours (2 hours of prep for every hour in the
classroom), a GTA doing 3 seminars/week would have to be doing about 6 hours of
prep and marking per seminar, per week, to be getting less than minimum wage.
Someone doing 6 hours per group per week is not working efficiently, and needs
training and mentoring. I’m unhappy that my GTAs are overworking to this
extent, and while I do not believe that amount of preparation is necessary for
the teaching we ask them to do, I clearly need to do more here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">3) There’s a tension in how we understand
GTA work. Traditionally in UK universities, it’s a valuable apprenticeship in
university teaching offered as part of postgraduate training, on the assumption
that our students plan an academic career. Pay isn’t the central point, and we
rely on our GTAs to be enthusiastic amateurs who do the work for its own sake
and for career-development purposes, not just to put food on the table. But UK
universities increasingly rely on professional adjuncts including GTAs to
deliver first-year and other undergraduate teaching, and adjunct teaching is
turning into a career, or a substitute for one. The UK is following a path
already taken by the US in this, of course. If that’s what being a GTA is, then
it ought to be paid and supported far better, and be far less precarious, than
it is. But I’m not convinced that the way to make that case is to advocate
increasing hourly pay, or adding an extra hour or two of prep. Why shouldn’t
being a GTA be a proper part-time job with a salary?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[2nd comment]</div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Addendum: It’s been pointed out to me by one
of Lancaster's GTAs, Sarah Hitchin, that prep time includes marking every 5
weeks, so my claim in (2) that an average 6 hours of prep per week per seminar
is inefficient work isn’t fair. What I intended as the main point of (2) – that
I and probably others who manage GTAs need to do more to monitor and help them
to avoid overwork, as well as to push for better pay – stands, though.</span></blockquote>
Some further calculations:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>Over a 5-week period of teaching 3 groups, we
pay:</b></span></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">15 taught hours = 45 paid hours </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">15 hours of seminars leaves 30 paid hours for prep (= reading,
planning), marking, and admin (= attending plagiarism and standardisation
meetings, office hours, email, physically getting coursework to and from
Gillian, etc.).</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">2 hours per week lectures = 10 hours lectures leaves 20 hours
for prep, marking, admin</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">2 hours a week prep (total, not per seminar) = 10 hours prep
leaves 10 hours for marking</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">10 hours to mark 45 pieces of coursework = less than 15 minutes
per piece (which isn’t enough, obviously)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">no time at all for admin</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
This is clearly inadequate. At this rate of pay, a GTA would either have to skimp on the work, or - much more likely - allow themselves to be exploited.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>Over a 5-week period with 3 groups, to be
paid minimum wage in real terms, i.e. £6.08 per hour’s actual work:</b></span></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">total pay = £41.55 x 15 hours = £623.25</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">divided by £6.08 = 102.5 hours (= 20.5 hours per week)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">15 hours of seminars leaves 87.5 hours for prep and marking</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">2 hours per week lectures = 10 hours lectures leaves 77.5 hours
for prep and marking</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Guesswork from here on:</li>
<li>4 further hours per week prep and admin = 20 hours leaves 55.5 hours for marking</li>
<li>55.5 hours to mark 45 pieces of coursework = nearly 1¼ hours per
piece</li>
<li>So to be paid <i>less</i> than minimum wage, some or all of marking, prep and admin are taking even <i>longer</i> than these estimates.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Comment: more than an hour to mark a 1,500-word piece of coursework strikes me as excessive. I realise that this includes preparation (e.g. reading) for the marking as a whole and some double-checking and returning to borderline cases, but I do think there's room for training and mentoring to speed this up. It takes me about an hour to mark and write extensive comments on a 5,000-word third-year essay, for comparison. I'm more experienced than most (not all) of our first-year tutors, but I don't have some special magic talent for marking fast, I've just learned to do it efficiently.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
More detail still: the PHIL100 coursework isn't all essays: it's (1) a close reading exercise; (2) 'critical thinking', i.e. formal and semi-formal logic exercises plus a short essay; (3) a bibliography; (4) an essay. My experience of marking samples for standardisation is that (1) and especially (2) are quick to mark, (3) rather slow, (4) middling. If that's true for others, this suggests that the average of 1¼ hours per piece includes the bibliography (3) taking a lot more than that each. Perhaps that coursework needs to be redesigned.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>A first sketch of a more realistic rate of pay, again for 3 seminar groups over 5 weeks:</b></div>
<div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">15 taught hours</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">attend 2 lectures/week = 10 hours</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">PREP: 4 hours/week prep including reading, planning, office
hour, email = 20 hours</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">MARKING: ½ hr for each of 45 pieces of coursework,
plus 2-3 hours for standardisation, plus 2-3 hours for plagiarism cases,
plus a bit of leeway = 30 hours</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">= 75 hours total actual work (15 hours or 2 days per week)</span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">= Rate of pay of 5 hours per taught hour
(compare our current rate of 3/1)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b>A pie-in-the-sky idea: </b>Why shouldn't being a GTA be a proper part-time job pro-rata on the official salary scale, with benefits?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-47990645168544512312012-06-03T09:51:00.003-07:002012-06-03T09:51:29.591-07:00Poetry newsObviously <i>The Onion </i>is great in general, but<i> </i><a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/shadows-meet-the-clouds-gray-on-gray-like-dusty-ch,28355/">this</a> is something like a work of genius.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-67692378083409238532012-06-03T03:47:00.003-07:002012-06-03T08:37:19.303-07:00Paul Fussell is deadNYT obituary <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/books/paul-fussell-literary-scholar-and-critic-is-dead-at-88.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1">here</a>. His most famous book is <i>The Great War & Modern Memory</i>, but <i>Wartime</i>, which is about the second rather than the first World War, is the one I'll remember him for. It pushed me into thinking that I should write about war and soldiers (my 'Under the Mountain' is forthcoming in <i>Res Publica</i>); just as importantly, it suggested that I was allowed to write in the way I wanted to, rather than the professional academic way I believed I had to.<br />
<br />
UPDATE: <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Paul-Fussell-Memories-of-a/132038/">Jay Winter</a> in the <i>Chronicle of Higher Education.</i>Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-12887133998634166092012-06-03T03:40:00.001-07:002012-06-03T03:41:12.826-07:00Civic Health TalksThe series of talks I organised is now done. I recorded them, with their question-periods; click on the talk titles below to listen or download.<br />
<br />
1. <a href="http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/about/staff/edyvane/">Derek Edyvane</a>, <a href="http://archive.org/details/CivicHealthDerekEdyvaneOnCivicVitalityCivicHealth">'Civic Health & Civic Vitality'</a><br />
2. <a href="http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/ppr/profiles/Sam-Clark/">Sam Clark</a>, <a href="http://archive.org/details/CivicHealthSamClarkOnGoodWork">'Good Work'</a><br />
3. <a href="http://www.york.ac.uk/politics/our-staff/kerri-woods/">Kerri Woods</a>, <a href="http://archive.org/details/CivicHealthKerriWoodsOnSolidarityVulnerabilityCivicHealth">'Solidarity, Vulnerability, & Civic Health'</a><br />
4. <a href="http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/john.f.o'neill/">John O'Neill</a>, <a href="http://archive.org/details/CivicHealthJohnOneillOnLivingWellWithinLimits">'Living Well Within Limits'</a><br />
<br />
I'm glad I did this, even though it was quite a lot of work and stress - I'd slightly forgotten what it was like to fret about whether anyone's going to turn up to the play or gig I'm promoting. Thanks again to all the speakers.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-1512650687664217082012-05-19T08:20:00.002-07:002012-05-19T08:25:06.309-07:00Adventures in public philosophyI was in the <a href="http://www.thespurriergatecentre.com/">Spurriergate Centre</a> in York today for lunch, and remembered that I'd tried and failed to engage them in philosophical conversation a while ago. Here's the letter I sent them:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">Dear Spurriergate Centre,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">I visited your café on Sunday 7 November with my wife and son. We enjoyed our drinks and food, and reading your website suggests that you do admirable community and social justice work.</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">However, while we were in the café, there was a video playing on continuous loop on a large screen. It offered an argument about the creation of the universe. I think you’re doing yourselves no favours showing it, because it’s a very bad argument.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">The argument was as follows:</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">There are only three possible explanations for the existence of the universe:</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">a) it created itself;</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">b) it has existed eternally; or</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">c) it was created.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">a) was dismissed as impossible, because ‘nothing comes from nothing’ and ‘the first law of thermodynamics forbids the creation of energy’</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">b) was said to have been disproved by Einstein and Hubble</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">c) was then interpreted as the claim that the universe was created by an ‘eternally existing'</span> <span lang="EN-US">being with ‘superior knowledge’ and ‘no matter’</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">The rest of the video then illustrated passages from <i>Genesis</i>.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">There are several things wrong with this argument.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">In the first place, (a), (b), and (c) aren’t the only possibilities: Maybe this universe grew from a seed produced by another universe, like a plant. Maybe the universe continually expands, contracts, and then expands again in a new big bang.</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">In the second place, the argument against option (a) doesn’t work: the first law of thermodynamics and other natural laws are features of the created universe. They don’t tell us anything about how universes are created.</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">In the third place, on the argument against option (b): you don’t get to cherry-pick just the bits of science you like. If you accept Einstein, what reason have you to reject the paleontological, genetic and other evidence that animals weren’t all created at the same time in their current forms? But if that’s true, Genesis is false.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">In the fourth place, the argument for option (c) contradicts the argument against option (a): if the first law of thermodynamics applies to universe-creation (as the argument against (a) requires) it also forbids the creation of energy by this being of superior knowledge. Where did the matter/energy for the universe come from, if it can’t be created?</span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">In the fifth place, even if option (c) is the best, and the universe was created, that doesn’t show that it was created by a being with the characteristics stated. Why only one being? Coral reefs, for example, are complex and beautiful things created by large numbers of simple creatures with no plan at all. Why ‘superior knowledge’? Why shouldn’t the universe have been created by accident? Or by unconscious processes? Why ‘eternally existing’? Why shouldn’t the creator itself have been created by a previous creator, itself created by another one, and so on? Maybe universe-creation is a craft like traditional boatbuilding: honed by generations of makers, none of them particularly clever or powerful in themselves, each relying on gradually accumulated wisdom and inherited tools.</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">None of these are original counter-arguments – most of them are in David Hume’s <i>Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion</i> (first published in 1779).</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">I don’t mean, by objecting to your video, to denigrate your faith or work. But respect for others requires telling them when you think they’re wrong. And I think you’re wrong here.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">Best Wishes,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">Dr Sam Clark</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span lang="EN-US">Lecturer in Philosophy, Lancaster University.</span></blockquote>
And here's their eventual reply:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">HI Sam</span><br />
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">thank you for your message, I shall pass it on to our pastoral manager.</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">regards</span><br />
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Jesper Sorensen, </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Centre Manager</span> </blockquote>
Philosopher 0, public 1.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-19942997303779867882012-05-17T14:45:00.000-07:002012-05-17T14:45:21.968-07:00Fame<a href="http://looksphilosophical.tumblr.com/post/23180587568/im-sam-clark-and-i-teach-moral-and-political">...at last</a>. The site - looks philosophical - is fascinating.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-62541401574453857572012-05-08T12:46:00.000-07:002012-05-08T12:46:11.119-07:00Author, authorMy friend Ryan Shirlow has written a <a href="http://www.ryanshirlow.co.uk/">novel</a>. Buy now so you can say you were into him before he sold out.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-5456294117370445372012-05-08T12:24:00.002-07:002012-05-08T12:24:44.126-07:00Maurice Sendak is dead<em>Where the Wild Things Are</em> is one of my and my son's favourite books; I just read it to him, for the hundredth or thousandth time, yesterday. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/maurice-sendak-childrens-author-dies-at-83.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1">New York Times obituary</a> contains the unbeatable description of that book's Max as a 'pocket Odysseus'.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-37879153737495200892012-04-25T10:48:00.000-07:002012-04-25T10:48:20.603-07:00Civic Health LecturesI've organised a series of public talks on the idea of civic health:<br />
<br />
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<b>Civic health: four public lectures on living well together</b><br />
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What is a sick society, and what would a healthy society be? What relations does civic health require between citizens? What must citizens be or do or have to live well together? What does the current civic health agenda in politics have to say about these questions, and is it adequate?<br />
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Visiting and local philosophers will reflect on these questions in this series of free public lectures, organised by the Department of Politics, Philosophy, & Religion at Lancaster University and funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy.<br />
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Schedule:<br />
1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>730pm, 9 May: Dr Derek Edyvane, University of Leeds: ‘Civic Health & Civic Vitality’<br />
2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>730pm, 16 May: Dr Sam Clark, Lancaster University: ‘Good Work’<br />
3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>730pm, 23 May: Dr Kerri Woods, University of York: ‘Solidarity, Vulnerability, & Civic Health’<br />
4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>730pm, 30 May: Professor John O’Neill, Manchester University: ‘Living Well Within Limits’<br />
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Venue: The Storey, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster<br />
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Free & open to all<br />
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<br />Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-83613393359555276812012-04-20T12:51:00.001-07:002012-04-20T12:52:37.800-07:00Chris Watson interviewWorthwhile interview with sound-recordist/sound-artist Chris Watson, whose <em>Weather Report</em> is one of my favourite records of the last few years:<br />
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<embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="file=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chriswatson.net%2Fswf%2FTheColourOfSound.flv&autostart=false&plugins=viral-1d" height="350" src="http://www.chriswatson.net/swf/player-viral.swf" width="400"></embed><br />
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Apart from Watson's appealing joy in his work, this is interesting to me because of his focus on trained perception and its pleasures and risks.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-62354163832757236782012-04-17T16:29:00.000-07:002012-04-17T16:29:54.128-07:00A former self speaks 2: another sketch utopiaI've found<a href="http://therighttwigs.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/former-self-speaks-sketch-utopia.html"> another one</a>...<br />
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Rint: a utopia<br />
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<div class="MsoBodyText">I first met Josef Rint in a shanty-town in old Bombay. His door - soldered together out of roadsigns - was the fourth I’d banged on that morning, I was sweating in the orange community-service bomber-jacket the supervisor’d given me, and I was beginning to think that vee-jail couldn’t be that bad. I’d been caught with six gees of knock-off anti-depressants, only a few days before the medbiz’s exclusivity ran out, and the expert-system’d plea-bargained me down to ‘volunteering’ to do this Red Cross survey. The option was a year subjective in a monchrome virtual space. A year to me, two hours to everyone else. But just try getting health insurance after your metabolics’ve been amped that high.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> I flicked a mozzy off the scratched screen of my clipboard, and banged on the door again, just as Rint yanked it open. He looked like Karl Marx after years of solvent abuse, and I could’ve snapped him in two – I was big then too, but it used to be muscle – but he still made me feel like some tribal beggar kid. We looked at each other. The clipboard booted up, and I started out – “Good morning. I wonder if you’d mind if I asked you a few questions. It won’t take long.” – as if this guy had anything to do beyond going and getting his hand-out at the reprocessor station. He shrugged, asked me in. We sat down on a couple of cushions made from salvaged bubblewrap, and he made tea. Not chai, black tea made by pouring boiling water on leaves. Tasted like engine oil, but I didn’t like to say.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> I can’t remember how we got talking, but by the time the clipboard crashed the second time, and the shadow of the supertower out in the bay’d covered the whole shanty town, and I was almost getting a taste for the tea, we were like old schoolfriends at a reunion. Rint invited me back for the next day. Said he had a story to tell me.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> I signed off with the supervisor, went to the bank to pick up that month’s trust money, got the usual lecture from the manager – an old friend of my father’s – and headed back to my flat. I spent the evening drinking cheap beer and faking survey results, and I was there at Rint’s door good and early next morning, only a little hung over. This is his story:</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText">After the old Europe fell to bits, there were thousands of places like the one Rint grew up in – microrepublics, back-to-nature citadels, strong-man chiefdoms. His was some sort of neo-Marxist mir, a fishing-in-the-morning, criticism-in-the-afternoon commune. He mostly remembered dinners with the whole village, like a cross between a union-meeting and a barquiz – “I ask our younger comrades – what is commodity fetishism?”</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> He never told me exactly where it was – security habits die hard – but I’m guessing Bohemia somewhere. The short version is, that the commune were tough guys – Rint knew judo and could field-strip an AK blindfold by the time he was eight – but that they still got smashed by some raiders, and Rint and three other teens found themselves, with nothing but what they’d managed to grab while running, heading north in bitter, mountainous country.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> So far, this could be any of a thousand stories, most of them never told. Plenty started again with less. There’s a guy bossing half of what used to be Poland who started with the same. But most of the lost people just quietly died.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> Rint’s story’s different because of what he and his friends found in the mountains. This is the place where you’re going to stop believing me, but I’ll swear to this at least – Rint believed what he told me, and I’m telling it to you just the same.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText">It was Rint’s sister Jana who spotted it first. The gate – a shimmering between two pines in a hanging valley. No big deal for someone brought up on blockbuster special effects, but plenty for someone who’s idea of light entertainment was Battleship Potempkin projected onto a sheet in the refectory. They moved up to it two-by-two, ready to give covering fire, the way they’d been taught. Rint, Onza and Jana had AKs, big blunt Sascha had a beaten-up SA80. He went forward first, stepped into the shimmering, and disappeared without fuss. Jana yelled and charged after him, to vanish the same. Rint had to pick Onza up by his webbing and throw him through, before he took a breath and followed. He told me, ashamed, that he thought of running and forgetting it.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> On the other side, the world had changed. Same splintered mountains, even the same saddleback peak they’d been heading for, but a thicker forest – pine, feathered moss ground-cover, bilberries, ‘shrooms – and where there’d been an abandoned village slumping down the valley side, three terraces of garden surrounded a low, white, windowless dome. They only had a few seconds to wonder before the hum they’d been hearing turned out to be the sound of engines.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> Three vehicles were splashing along the middle of the shallow stream at the bottom of the valley, two trikes and what Rint called a baba-yaga house – a two-storey caravan on beetle-like legs. All were the same plastic white as the dome. Rint and the others did what they knew to do – dived for cover, guessed the distance and set their sights, and tried to secure a line of retreat, but the shimmer was gone. A white bird hovered over their position, nearly drawing fire from Sascha.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> The vehicles pulled up, and there was a pause. Rint watched through field-glasses as two bulky, copper-tanned women got off the trikes and stared up at their position. One pulled a book out of a thigh-pocket and peered into it, before shutting it again, shrugging, and yelling, in oddly-accented english - “Hey comrades, if we’ve got a beef, why don’t we play chess for it or something? There’s no need for the guns.” I don’t know if it was “comrades” or “chess” that got Rint and the others, but after a whispered argument, Rint put down his AK, stood up and walked a little way down the hill to meet one of the women coming up.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> She was taller than him, shaven-headed, and some of the bulk was the white, much pocketed boiler-suit she was wearing. The first thing she said was to ask Rint if he was OK, did he need some food? Rint told me this leaning forward, frowning, trying to get it across just how important that was. Positions reversed, he’d have assumed they were an ambush. This woman’s first worry was for him. He nodded without thinking – their rations had run out the day before, they’d been living off berries – and she passed him a crumbling block of something rich-smelling before sitting crosslegged on a stump and watching him stuff his face. Rint backed far enough to throw three-quarters of the block up the slope to his friends. He and the woman looked each other over.</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"> Rint was not a big guy when I knew him or ever, and I imagine him eighteen, scrawny and filthy from days in the wild, Russian-surplus webbing over home-woven jacket and trousers, ancient boots. He must’ve looked like the tramp you ignore in the street. The woman grimaced, then suggested they come down to the house to get clean and eat more. <i><o:p></o:p></i></div><!--EndFragment-->Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-73920684096225169792012-03-31T13:31:00.000-07:002012-03-31T13:31:55.268-07:00Self-monitoring<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I recently took part in a study of mood and sleep patterns (the EMOTE project). This involved a week of wearing an activity monitor and being prompted by text ten times a day to fill in a questionaire (what were you thinking when you got the text? How happy are you right now? To what extent is your mood under your control right now? etc.). I was in the control group—the real concern is people with bipolar disorder or fibromyalgia—so I wasn’t expected to produce anything terribly exciting. Nor did I: my mood varies slightly and predictably in step with my blood-sugar and blood-caffeine levels. The most interesting result for me was recognising that I mostly live in accordance with John Stuart Mill’s advice:</span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span lang="EN-US">Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken <i>en passant</i></span><span lang="EN-US">, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. (<i>Autobiography</i></span><span lang="EN-US"> chapter 5).</span></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I am generally a pretty calm and positive person, but I rarely think about my own mood (apart from ‘a coffee will perk me up’) and I found having my attention repeatedly drawn to my own state of mind disconcerting. Excessive self-consciousness, I’m inclined to think with Mill, is risky.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But the oddity of Mill’s advice is that he gives it in the paradigm case of extreme self-consciousness: an autobiography. In its strong form, it’s advice which could only be authoritatively given by someone who ignored it (as, in a smaller way, is this post).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">There are weaker forms, which are perhaps what Mill meant: continuous self-consciousness would be bad, but there are appropriate times for turning one’s attention on oneself, and appropriate amounts of self-monitoring. Ten times a day is too much. Once in a lifetime, taking stock near its end, might be right.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But the sort of person who might write an autobiography—not me—perhaps needs to be thinking much more about her own states and moods at the time, if she’s to recall and make sense of them later. And again, that might be risky.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Bonus: some of my answers to ‘what were you thinking when you got the text?’</span></div><div class="ListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0cm;"></div><ul><li>‘In what way is Ed Milliband like Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit)?’</li>
<li>About helicopter parenting</li>
<li>How to teach a seminar on workplace democracy</li>
<li>Watching my son be fascinated by geese</li>
<li>‘I fancy a beer’</li>
<li>Time to put Hal to bed</li>
<li><a href="http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/08/deadwood_and_to.html">‘I tell you what: I may have fucked my life up flatter than hammered shit, but I stand before you today beholden to no human cocksucker.’</a></li>
<li>About the children’s book author Judith Kerr</li>
<li>About the pleasures of repetition</li>
<li>‘Mmm, ice-cream’</li>
<li>Watching my son dance, thinking I should play him more dance music</li>
<li>About the meaning of the term ‘harbouring’</li>
<li>‘If I get enough work done this afternoon, I could take tomorrow morning off’</li>
<li>What is the past tense of ‘cast’?</li>
<li>Is my son ever going to go down for his nap?</li>
<li>‘Amazing sunset’</li>
<li>‘Time to light the fire’</li>
<li>About virtue ethics</li>
<li>About communally-organised childcare</li>
<li>‘Mmm, noodles’</li>
<li>‘It would be really nice to be able to cycle into work’</li>
<li>How to make coleslaw</li>
<li>About how to organise essay-planning tutorials next week</li>
<li>About how to deal with a student plagiarism case</li>
<li>About modernist architecture</li>
<li>About how to deal with a failing student</li>
<li>Nothing much—walking to stretch my legs</li>
<li>About irony in utopias</li>
<li>About how to deal with a problem student</li>
<li>About government in an online society</li>
<li>Is Derrida worth reading?</li>
<li>‘Beautiful evening’</li>
<li>About gender in utopias</li>
<li>‘I stayed up too late last night’</li>
<li>About how to gently tell a supervisee that her dissertation draft is very weak</li>
<li>About moving house</li>
<li>About the book I’m writing</li>
</ul><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-69574451744267318512012-03-31T13:07:00.002-07:002012-03-31T13:08:15.141-07:00mic check[...stumbles over ashy drifts of old lecture handouts ... blows dust off lectern ... clicks laser-pointer a few times, without effect ... 'um... is this thing on?']<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GRHdPv6o6oc" width="420"></iframe>Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-81334939311966999392012-03-13T08:17:00.000-07:002012-03-13T08:17:15.019-07:00Linking will continue until morale improvesI am clearly failing to write anything substantive for this blog at the moment, let alone the book drafts I promised. This term has been an effort, for a variety of reasons, but posts that don't just consist of near-contextless links will appear soon. Fairly soon. Probably.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-55756518766115228252012-03-13T08:13:00.000-07:002012-03-13T08:13:04.837-07:005 Lessons of fieldwork<a href="http://zoecormack.blogspot.com/2012/03/five-things-i-knew-by-didnt-fully.html">From Zoe Cormack</a>.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-27927324862362287592012-02-14T02:22:00.003-08:002012-02-14T02:23:00.277-08:00Capitalism book drafts: placeholderFailed to get a draft finished last week; will probably fail this week too. Normal service will be resumed soon, I hope.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-79777080627800597632012-02-08T09:50:00.000-08:002012-02-08T09:50:11.220-08:00Glenn McDonald's daughter is cool<a href="http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=356">Here</a>.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-20369037019592545572012-02-07T10:47:00.001-08:002012-02-07T10:47:41.371-08:00Free music: Summons of Shining RuinsWhy do I love <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/rb104">music that goes ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo</a> so much?Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-46066100461815637402012-02-03T05:11:00.000-08:002012-02-03T05:11:58.775-08:00Capitalism book drafts: Ownership<h1>3 Ownership</h1><div class="MsoNormal">One of the revolutionary features of capitalism is individual ownership: the concentration of rights over things including land and labour, and the creation of a new right to sell, in one legal individual. This creates the distinctive capitalist form of inequality: some own much and others own only the labour of their own bodies, which they must sell to survive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This chapter describes and criticises a rights-based justification for individual ownership. The defence is that unequal ownership is the result of legitimate acquisitions and transfers of property in the past. To change it, we would therefore need to violate the rights of owners. In later chapters, we will pursue the alternative defence that unequal ownership is justified by its results, rather than by its history.</div><h2>3.1From the State of Nature to Individual Ownership</h2><div class="MsoNormal">The social contract tradition offers a way of thinking critically about our form of life by asking, If this didn’t exist, what reason would there be to create it? We discover or imagine a ‘state of nature’ which lacks some interesting feature of our form of life; we consider what reasons there would be to move out of the state of nature by creating it; and if they’re good reasons, we take that as a justification for it. Reasons to start are taken as reasons to continue. Hobbes, for example, thinks about the justification of State power by thinking about our reasons to create the State out of anarchy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The seventeenth-century philosopher, doctor, and political organizer John Locke offered a social contract justification of individual ownership, and we’ll follow him in our investigation of our current regime of property. There are three stages to his argument: the state of nature without individual ownership; legitimate acquisition of property by individuals; and the development of material inequality.</div><h3>3.1.1 The State of Nature</h3><div class="MsoNormal">Locke’s state of nature is a state of political equality, natural law, and common ownership of the Earth. First, no-one has any natural authority, and so kings and other authorities must be made rather than found. Second, the natural law tradition is the long-standing idea that there are some things that humans can know we should do, without their being asserted by State or divine authority, just by reasoning from our natural situation. Locke’s version of natural law is a duty to preserve human life in oneself and in others, from which he derives universal rights to resist threats like tyrants and thieves, to punish wrongdoers, and to make a living. Third, the land and its fruits begin as everyone’s property. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">These are position statements in the political conflicts of Locke’s time and place: James II is not the latest inheritor of the one branch of humanity with natural authority and ownership of the Earth, he’s just a human being with no more natural rights than anyone else. But they are also fundamental claims about what would be needed to justify political authority, the State’s monopoly on violence, and individual ownership.</div><div class="MsoNormal">That third problem is, How can we legitimately get from commons to our regime of unequal individual ownership? Locke’s answer is in two stages. </div><h3>3.1.2 Working Land</h3><div class="MsoNormal">Humans acquire property in land by working on it to make a living. After walking for days, I come to a piece of fertile land. I cut down trees to make a cabin. I dig out stumps and rocks. I plough and sow seed. I keep the birds off. By the time I’m ready to cut the corn, we might think, the corn is <i>mine</i>. And, Locke claims, so is the land improved by my work on it. By acting on the land to fulfil my duty and right to get the food and shelter I need to live, I’ve taken that land out of common ownership and made it my property. Before I came, you would have had just as much right to settle here as I did, but now I have a right to keep you out, and you have a duty to keep walking.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But acquisition by work is only legitimate within limits. I have a duty to preserve human life, not just my own life, and so my work for my own survival may not compromise others’. Locke states two constraints on acquisition. First, I must leave ‘as much and as good’ available for others to work. There needs to be more fertile land over the next hill for you who are walking into the wilderness behind me. Second, I may not take more than I can use. There’s to be no waste, nothing left to rot uneaten. If I put up a fence round ten thousand acres, anyone may legitimately tear it down and start to plough and sow for their own livelihood. However, others’ consent is not a constraint on acquisition: I don’t need to ask the permission of any or all of the other commoners before I start to farm.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is an attractive idea, but also a difficult one to defend. <i>Why</i> should working create ownership? What is the route by which my effort turns into particular rights to keep others off a piece of land and to keep its fruits for myself?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The work is mine—it’s my effort, my planning and sweat—and that self-ownership spreads into what I mix it with.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">That’s what Locke says, and it’s proved a powerful idea for thinkers from Marxists to right-wing libertarians. For many Marxists [need a particular example name here], what’s wrong with work under capitalism is that workers own their labour, and therefore own what they make with it, but the capitalist takes some of it as profit. Exploitation is theft. For Robert Nozick, what’s wrong with redistribution of wealth is that citizens own their labour, and therefore own what they makes with it, but the State takes some of it as tax. Taxation is theft. For both, the root of ownership is self-ownership.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Self-ownership is having over myself, my body and action, the rights that a master legally has over a chattel slave. But even if everyone does or should own herself in this sense, it’s not clear why that ownership extends to what she acts on. Mixing owned things with unowned or commonly-owned things doesn’t normally extend ownership. If I mix my rice into the village cooking-pot, I haven’t taken our stew out of common ownership, I’ve given the rice into it. Why not think the same way about the land I improve, that I’ve made the commons better for all?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Perhaps working extends the self into the world? What I labour on becomes me, and moves into the protection of my self-ownership.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">That’s appealing, but no easier to understand. As a maker myself—not a farmer but a writer—I certainly identify with and want to claim rights over what I make. I can know and care about it as much as I know and care about my own self. But it isn’t me in the literal sense: I can abandon it, and it will continue to exist when I’m dead. The land outlasts any farmer, and authors hope that our books will outlive us. ‘Hear what the Earth says: —</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Mine and yours;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Mine, not yours.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Earth endures;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Stars abide—</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Shine down in the old sea;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Old are the shores;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">But where are old men?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">I who have seen much,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">Such have I never seen.’</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><i>Perhaps ownership is a matter of what people deserve: the worker deserves ownership rights as a reward for effort; the lazy who don’t work don’t deserve to eat what others grew or enjoy what others sweated over. The state of nature is a meritocracy of effort, where work gets its just reward.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">Locke hints at this when he says that God made the Earth for ‘the use of the Industrious and Rational’, and when he repeatedly insists that almost all of the value of cultivated land comes from the work invested in it not from unimproved nature. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">Any of these justifications, and others, might be refined and defended further. At minimum, the idea that work creates ownership draws on some powerful stories and moral emotions: the covered wagon heading out into the wilderness stuffed with seeds and tools, the Mayflower pilgrims, the spacecraft bound for Mars. The sense of meritocratic justice, that we should get the results of our efforts. It’s an attractive idea even if an unclear one.</div><h3>3.1.3 Markets & Merit</h3><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">Suppose that we can eventually make sense of acquisition by work. Even then, we haven’t got to our own regime of individual ownership. If I own the land and its fruits because I work on it for my living, then I own it only as long as I continue to work and live there. This gets us usufruct property but not permanent property: rights to use and to exclude others so long as I am actually using and occupying, but no rights to transfer to others. No inheritance, no landlords, no shareholders. When I die, the land is back in the commons. If I leave, whoever takes over the work now owns the land, so I can’t lease it out and live somewhere else on rent payments. There are no rights to a share of production or control for other people who live somewhere else, either. Those who don’t work here don’t own here.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">Locke’s problem is, How can we legitimately get from commons to our unequal individual ownership? So far, we’ve got only to usufruct. The second stage of his two-stage answer aims to make the final move, but is fragmentary and flawed. Rather than pursue it in detail, I’ll suggest what we we need to add to acquisition by work to get there, and what it costs.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">To get from usufruct to our individual ownership, we need to add markets and their supporting rights and technologies. The right to produce surplus goods—that is, goods beyond what I can use and enjoy. The right to exchange those goods for others’ surplus, made easier by money as a medium of exchange—that is, the right to sell. The right to own things on which I have not worked—or, equivalently, the liability to be sold to. The right to sell rights themselves, by taking money for the use of my property, for example by tenants who farm my land and give me some of their produce in return. What we need to add to our rights of acquisition through work is rights of transfer, and adding these rights has large consequences.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">Markets create inequalities. Usufruct property-holders will differ in their success at farming, in the productivity of their different pieces of land in different climates, in their luck with weather and disease. But the differences will be limited by the similar levels of work they can put in, as equal human beings, and by the lack of motivation to produce a surplus. What’s the point, if anything over what my family can eat will be left to rot in the ground? Rights to transfer allow those small differences to be entrenched and magnified. If I can sell a surplus, and use the money to hire others to work land for me, to produce more surplus, my advantages snowball. If I can leave my estate to my children, they start with a great advantage over others who walk into the wilderness with nothing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">Markets also detach ownership from work. Part of the attraction of Locke’s account of acquisition was the meritocracy of effort it imples: I get what I work for. But the children who inherit my farm haven’t worked on it, they’ve been given it. Still more, if their grandfather got rich in currency speculation, and they and I live off the interest on his capital, our rewards have nothing to do with our work. Humans have powerful cognitive biases in favour of thinking that people deserve what they get, regardless of its source, but this is clearly false under capitalism, if desert is proportional to effort. Many rich people did not work hard for their wealth, or at least no harder than some poor people. Capitalism is not a meritocracy.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">How worrying you should find this depends on how attractive you found Locke’s work-based account of property-acquisition. If you think that legitimate ownership comes from work, then in consistency you should reject our capitalist regime of individual ownership, in which transfer rather than acquisition is all-important.</div><h2>3.2 Levellers</h2><div class="MsoNormal">A consistent believer in justification of ownership by work would be a leveller. Under capitalism, ownership is highly unequal and unrelated to work. Levellers, first, want to reclaim land and other goods which are ‘owned’ on paper, but unworked, for the commons, and to be taken back out of the commons by people who work it for their livelihood. Locke’s contemporary levellers invaded park and waste land ‘owned’ by aristocratic landlords to clear, dig and plant. Our contemporaries might, with the same justification, reclaim their factories and neighbourhoods. Second, levellers imagine a world of free commoners making a living in roughly-equal self-sufficient smallholdings in place of our world of vastly unequal and transferable estates.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>But that world would be impoverished by comparison with ours. Market societies create wealth.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">True. But that’s a different argument, which we’ll consider in later chapters. The point here is that Locke’s attempt at a social contract justification of individual ownership fails. If we need reasons to start to have reasons to continue, we haven’t found reasons to continue. Humans living in Locke’s state of nature of political equality, natural law, and common ownership might create usufruct property in owner-occupied smallholdings, but would not create our regime of property. So, perhaps we should reject it.</div>Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-74009292476981498292012-02-01T11:33:00.000-08:002012-02-01T11:33:51.331-08:00Philip Glass on Sesame Street<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ch-R1aIM-C0" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
'In the Night Garden' really has nothing on this. Hat tip: <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/philip_glass_composes_for_sesame_street_1979.html">Open Culture</a>.Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-60795544783321253452012-01-29T12:53:00.001-08:002012-01-29T12:53:56.293-08:00Random philosophical anti-monarchism factGilbert Ryle turned down a knighthood in 1965, according to the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/honours-list/9039882/People-who-snubbed-honours-from-the-Queen-in-full.html">Telegraph</a> (they actually describe those who turn down honours as having 'snubbed the queen', of course).Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-659629904404268107.post-60887180685129711872012-01-26T02:24:00.000-08:002012-01-26T03:12:32.134-08:00Capitalism book drafts: Freedom<h1>2. Freedom</h1><div class="MsoNormal">Freedom is valuable. To be a slave, to be imprisoned, to be constrained by social convention or trapped by your own past, to be unfree in any of a wide range of other more or less subtle ways, is terrible. The felt demand for freedom can be transformative and overwhelming. The former slave Frederick Douglass writes:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 14.2pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition which tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trumpet of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm;">So, we should ask: What is the relation between capitalism and freedom? This is a pressing question for us, because if capitalism realizes this ‘beautiful, needful thing’, that’s a very strong ethical argument in its favour. And if it does not – if it leaves us without freedom or even enslaves us – that’s a very strong ethical argument against it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We might hope to answer this question by saying what freedom is, and then investigating whether capitalism provides it. But it isn’t clear what freedom is. Is poverty lack of freedom, for example? For Amartya Sen, freedom is the means, opportunities, and capacities to achieve central human ways of being and doing, from getting enough to eat, to appearing in public without threat or shame, to having a voice in communal decision-making. To be poor is to lack some or all of these, and poverty is therefore lack of freedom. But Friedrich Hayek distinguishes between freedom and the powers needed to make use of it. For Hayek, poor people are just as free as rich ones, even though they can do less with their freedom. Someone who will have to sleep rough tonight, because she doesn’t have money or friends, either <i>lacks the freedom</i> to sleep warm and safe, or is free but <i>without means</i> to do so.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We can’t resolve this dispute by discovering the real or original meaning of the word ‘freedom’. It doesn’t have a real meaning, just multiple uses, and its original uses are no guide to its current ones. We don’t discover anything about the Pope’s views on contraception by noting that one root meaning of ‘catholic’ is ‘universal’.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Instead, we should recognise that ‘freedom’ means many different things, ask which of them is most valuable, and see whether capitalism realizes these most valuable freedoms. This chapter considers the value of three different regimes of freedom in relation to capitalism. </div><h2>2.1 Hayek’s Regime of Liberty</h2><div class="MsoNormal">Hayek argues that the most valuable freedom is <i>liberty</i>, which is just <i>not being coerced</i>. Coercion is the use of power, by some other human being, to make you act on their will rather than your own. The forces of circumstance and nature, including your own nature, are not coercion. So, liberty is not <i>actually getting </i>what you want. You can freely try and fail through mere bad luck. It’s not <i>self-command</i>. You can be free but weak-willed or confused. Contra Sen, it’s not <i>power </i>or<i> wealth </i>or<i> capacity</i>. You can be free without the internal or external means to get what you want. It’s not having a <i>range of possibilities </i>to choose between. In Hayek’s example, the climber who sees only one way of getting off the mountain alive is free, even though she has only one path into the future. It’s not <i>political freedom</i>, having a say in communal decision-making. You can have liberty in a dictatorship. (We’ll return to this last point in a later chapter.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hayek’s vision of the best form of life is a regime of liberty in which everyone has the status of free person, not slave. Each person is a protected member of the community with the rights gained by Roman slaves at manumission: immunity from arbitrary arrest, the right to work at whatever she desires, the right to movement according to her own choice, and the right to own property. This status is a private sphere of uncoerced action defined by the State’s public rule-governed use of coercion. Property, for example, is a sphere of rights to use things, created and defended by State-mandated contracts, courts, and force. This form of life is the life of individuals striving against circumstance and nature to get what they want, by their own efforts and by uncoerced agreement with others. Their striving doesn’t always succeed, but they succeed or fail as free people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is an idealized picture of capitalism: Hayekian liberty defended by a rule-governed State.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is a common argument that capitalism is freedom because it’s human nature, and non-capitalism is interference with that nature. N<span lang="EN-US">on-capitalist forms of life are therefore thought to need special justification, where capitalism doesn’t. It’s thought to be the human default, and to exert a gravitational pull which distorts attempts at other ways of organizing ourselves. </span>That argument is a mistake, and Hayek doesn’t make it.<span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">First, if any human social form is natural, it’s anarchy. For most of the time there have been humans, we lived in small, nomadic, egalitarian bands connected by kinship and friendship. We divided labour by gender and age. We had no property except a few personal items and no trade except gift-exchange. We had no formal authorities or institutional centres of power. We organized our collective lives by negotiation, social pressure, temporary enthusiasm for individual initiatives, and shared ritual. That’s how humans lived for perhaps 90,000 years before some of us took up agriculture sometime around 10,000 BCE. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Second, slavery is commonplace in more recent human history. Every one of us is descended both from slaves and from slave-holders. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For both reasons, Hayek’s liberty is a recent and incomplete achievement, not a default. Both anarchy and slavery are centres of gravity in human nature which pull away from it. Hayek know this, and is clear that capitalist liberty depends on State interference and limitation of liberty. The private sphere is defined and sustained by State action, and it’s no accident that capitalism and the modern nation-state arise together in recent history. </div><h2>2.2 The Value of Freedoms</h2><div class="MsoNormal">But why think that liberty is worth having? We might say that it’s valuable just in itself, but that would have the strange consequence that it would be equally valuable for creatures who could do nothing with it. Dandelions pursue sunlight and water, but have no use for property, so liberty is of no value to them. Liberty must therefore be valuable for what it does to us, not just what it is. It’s beautiful and needful <i>for humans</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is how Hayek defends the value of liberty: it’s needed to live and make progress in a world we don’t fully understand. If we knew everything about human nature, society, and the future, we’d have no need for liberty, because we could see what would be best to do. But without such perfect knowledge we have to rely on experimentation. Different individuals make different uses of their liberty to try out various possibilities; the failures are abandoned or die off; the successes grow and are copied. Gradually, we develop a form of life, a set of habits and institutions, which expresses what we’ve learned about how to survive in our circumstances. Trial and error in practice comes first. Theory incompletely follows. The great mistake of forms of life which don’t provide liberty is their quixotic attempt to theorise and plan for the unknown future instead of adapt to it by multiple experiment. In the twentieth century, liberal societies displayed their superiority to centrally-planned ones by outliving them, and they did so by trying out many plans at once, rather than applying one five-year plan from the top down. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If liberty is valuable, its value is as a means to the gradual progress of knowledge in practice about how to live.</div><h2>2.3 The Regime of Real Possibility</h2><div class="MsoNormal">That means that if some other freedom creates more progress than liberty does, we ought to adopt it instead. Liberty is the absence of coercion, not the actual opportunity or means to do what you want, so you could have liberty and still not be able to do it. You might want to experiment with self-sufficient communal living, but be unable to make the attempt because there’s no free land, and your group lacks the money to buy it. You might want to experiment with the potential of your musical talent, but have to work long tiring shifts to pay rent. You might have an idea for greener transport, but have no capital to invest in developing it. An increase in opportunities, by a distribution of means to take them, would therefore make more experiments possible. If the value of liberty is its necessity for experiment, then real possibility, based in the wider distribution of means like money, is more valuable. So, we should redistribute wealth to maximise the number and range of experiments. If everyone has some possibility of trying new things, more experiments will be made than if only a few have it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>But some people pursue their artistic talent while working long tiring shifts.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course, but how many more would be able to pursue their talent without that necessity? How much more would those who struggled on have been able to do without it? The argument isn’t that progress is impossible without these extra possibilities, it’s that we’d get more progress with them than without.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>But redistributing wealth just moves opportunity from some to others. It doesn’t create more opportunity.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That would be true if the number and range of experiments were proportional only to the means available, and had nothing to do with the number of people they’re distributed across. But why think that? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A rich person – Paris Hilton, say – has the means to pursue more experiments than she’ll ever imagine, desire, or have time for. Transferring some of her money to the musician, communards and inventor increases the <i>number</i> of experiments carried out, and therefore creates more possibilities for progress.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Neither is the <i>range</i> of different experiments proportional only to the means available. If all the means are concentrated in one class or group, their similarities and mutual emulation will limit what’s tried to a narrow range of possibilities. Transferring some of Paris Hilton’s money to someone very unlike her increases the range of experiments attempted.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>But how do we know that the people we transfer means to will make good use of their new possibilities?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We don’t. But we don’t know that about the few who have the means now, either.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This regime of real possibility, created by distribution of means to experiment, could happen under capitalism. One form of it is universal basic income: every adult citizen gets a guaranteed income to use as she chooses, funded from taxation, so higher earners will pay more in tax than they get from the UBI, but everyone will have some means for experiment. But my brief here is not to make detailed policy proposals, it’s to argue that the demand for freedom, if based on the good of progress it produces, is a demand for real possibility not just liberty. My argument is the progressive effect of everyone really being free to pursue her own experiments. Its result is a freedom-based demand for redistribution of means, and therefore of possibilities, rather than an egalitarian demand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>But this destroys autonomy and independence. It turns free strivers into slavish clients of the redistributive State</i>.</div><h2>2.3 The Regime of Flourishing</h2><div class="MsoNormal">This last criticism is a move from a defence of liberty out of what it does <i>for</i> us to a defence out of what it does <i>to </i>us. Lack of liberty is supposed to weaken and corrupt. Liberty is supposed to cultivate an admirable independence. Frederick Douglass would have agreed that <i>slavery</i> corrupts. The condition of subordination creates fear, cringing self-abjection, self-hatred, retreat into alcoholism and other forms of inner escape, and reactive violence, often against oneself or other subordinates. It destroys important elements of human flourishing, including self-love, self-command, and the ability to look other people in the eye and stand with them, or up to them, as an equal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Manumission from slavery to liberty is a great good in that it removes these sources of corruption, but it doesn’t remove all sources of corruption. Advertising distorts desire the way fat and salt distorts appetite. Bad education misshapes our capacities of self-understanding and self-command. The examples of wealth-as-success offered to us by capitalism misdirect our efforts and admiration. There are many ways a life can go badly in a regime of liberty. So, if the argument for liberty is that it removes some sources of corruption, the same argument applies even more strongly to regimes which remove other sources. If the argument for liberty is that it makes us better, the same argument applies even more strongly to regimes which make us better still.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
The conditions of flourishing, of living fully and well as a human being, are far more complex and demanding than just being left alone in a private sphere. They may include the education of desire, perception, and self-understanding; the resources to support oneself without having to become menial and cringing; mutually-transformative friendship.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We’ll return to the nature and conditions of flourishing in later chapters. For the moment, the moral to draw is that it is not obvious that capitalism’s regime of liberty is best for us. If we care about what freedoms do for us and to us, we need to pursue more and different freedoms than Hayek’s liberty.</div>Sam Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09705125505111284597noreply@blogger.com0