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“Congress enacted several laws which focused on people with disabilities. Most of these laws authorized services to help
"cure" what are considered "ailments" within individuals who have disabilities in order to increase national production and decrease welfare spending. The few recent laws seeking to provide rights and remedies to people with disabilities have consistently failed to recognize them as complete citizens, acknowledging them only as "flawed" individuals not at fault for shortcomings that society must endure.”
Tetlock also has an unscientific point to make, which is that "we as a society would be better off if participants in policy debates stated their beliefs in testable forms "-that is, as probabilities-"monitored their forecasting performance , and honored their reputational bets." He thinks that we're suffering from our primitive attraction to deterministic, overconfident hedgehogs. It's true that the only thing the electronic media like better than a hedgehog is two hedgehogs who don't agree. Tetlock notes , sadly, a point that Richard Posner has made about these kinds of public intellectuals , which is that most of them are dealing in "solidarity" goods, not "credence" goods. Their analyses and predictions are tailored to make their ideological brethren feel good -more white swans for the white-swan camp. A prediction, in this context, is just an exclamation point added to an analysis.
Liberals want to hear that whatever conservatives are up to is bound to go badly; when the argument gets more nuanced, they change the channel. On radio and television and the editorial page, the line between expertise and advocacy is very blurry, and pundits behave exactly the way Tetlock says they will. Bush
Administration loyalists say that their predictions about postwar Iraq were correct, just a little off on timing; pro-invasion liberals who are now trying to dissociate themselves from an adventure gone bad insist that though they may have sounded a false alarm, they erred "in the right direction"-not really a mistake at all.
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(Diana Chang, Sheryl Pankhurst, Matthew Schneer, and Daniel Schreiner, Monitoring and State Improvement Planning
Division Recovery Act Facilitators “MSIP ARRA Monitoring and Technical Assistance” leadershipmega-confreg.tadnet.org/.../original_S3-105-ARRA_Technical-RAF.ppt)
Financial support for a physical asset or structure needed for the operation of a larger enterprise. Therefore, infrastructure investments include support for tangible assets or structures such as roads, public buildings (including schools), mass transit systems, water and sewage systems, communication and utility systems and other assets or structures that provide a reliable flow of products and services essential to the defense and economic security of the United States, the smooth functioning of government at all levels, and society as a whole. However, an infrastructure investment does not include “minor remodeling ” as defined in 34 CFR §77.1(c).’
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Universal design is defined as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without need for adaptation or specialized design.” While the concept emerged primarily with regard to disability issues, universal design strives to be a broad-spectrum solution that helps everyone, including elderly people, people with strollers, pregnant women, and children, in addition to people with disabilities. Its goal is to remove physical barriers and create a more inclusive environment. The purpose of this paper is to inform World Bank task team leaders about the benefits of universal design and to recommend ways in which universal design can be integrated as a component in projects of the World Bank. It presents the applications of universal design particularly in infrastructure with the focus on transport, urban development, water and sanitation, education, health, and ICT sectors, as well as post-conflict and natural disaster situations. Specific factors in projects such as procurement and evaluation criteria are not addressed in this context. There are compelling reasons for the World Bank to adopt universal design. First, the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD), which came into force in May 2008, has provisions for universal design. Article 2 of the CRPD defines universal design and Article 9 urges State Parties to enhance accessibility in physical environments. The convention includes a high proportion of developing countries and is expected to increase demand for Bank support for its implementation and for ensuring accessibility on Bank financed projects. Secondly, universal design is essential for inclusive development, a core component of the World Bank’s mission for poverty reduction and the achievement of
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Inclusive development recognizes diversity and aims at involving everybody into the development process. Universal design accommodates physical and sensory diversity among people. It promotes social inclusion of particularly those who have been traditionally marginalized due to their functional limitations, by enhancing access to essential services and economic opportunities. While the World Bank currently has no policy regarding design criteria for any of its projects, universal design could be adopted by the World Bank because it is the design concept which is most cost-effective, flexible, and inclusive . It is cost-effective because universal design requires additional costs of approximately one percent if incorporated from the outset of a project. On the other hand, not incorporating universal design can incur significant human and opportunity costs due to inaccessibility. Also, universal design is flexible and can be adopted in each local case, as it is not a standard which is definitive and specific. It is meant to be universally acceptable and usable by the population that will use the specific built environment or products, and thus it is dependent on the local culture. This also indicates the inclusive nature of universal design, in that the designing process should be participatory and consultative.
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1.01 Today, inclusive development is a critical agenda at the World Bank as well as in international development circles.
Benefits of development have not equally reached everyone; lack of attention to diversity, and deliberate and structural social exclusion have contributed to create and foster marginalization of certain groups. There is no way that the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can be achieved without including these most vulnerable groups, and there is no sustainable development without inclusive development. 1 Inclusive and sustainable globalization is a core vision of the
World Bank to overcome poverty, and to create individual opportunity and hope. 2 1.02 Universal design supports this agenda by removing physical barriers – one of the major barriers to social inclusion. For those who have limited capacities such as people with disabilities, elderly, etc., public facilities and services are often physically inaccessible. Universal design developed through the recognition that a large part of the world’s population is not easily accommodated within the standard model upon which public spaces and buildings are based. 3 It aims at accommodating diversity of people’s capacities and needs, and thus improving people’s access to opportunities and promoting their participation in society. 1.03
Given the large amount of funds the World Bank provides for infrastructure, including transport, Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), school buildings, water and sanitation facilities, etc., incorporating universal design into its projects will greatly enhance aid efficiency. By not focusing on universal design aspects, the World Bank loses the opportunity to include the maximum number of user groups in the project. It is cost-effective as well, in that the costs incurred constitute a small fraction of the total project when incorporated from the beginning of the project design. On the other hand, including universal design in the post-design process becomes a major cost factor.
1.04 Unlike national development agencies, there is no mandate for specific design approaches or concepts in Bank projects. Some national development agencies require specific accessibility standards. For instance, projects funded by the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) must follow architectural accessibility guidelines that are required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) unless there are country standards for accessibility. There are sometimes conflicts between these requirements and the culture of the developing country where the project is funded. On the other hand, these requirements can bring about social change because including accessible design concepts can change ideas about disability and architecture.
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Paul
, Jane Harrigan & John Toye, Economics Professors- University of Reading, Manchester, and Sussex,
, Aid and Power: the World Bank and policy-based lending, volume 1, p. xxvii
To sum up, the Bank’s reviewed poverty agenda which has been pursued since the publication of the 1990 World
Development Report must count as the Bank’s most heartening initiative since the fist edition of Aid and Power went to press. During the Presidency of Lewis Preston, the Bank has transformed itself from a tardy follower (or sometimes outright critic) of the poverty agenda into a clear leader of important initiatives being taken worldwide to combat both longterm structural poverty and the conjunctural poverty which arises from shakeouts in the public sector and other adverse effects of particular structural adjustment policies. Even for this edition of Aid and Power , it has not been possible to evaluate the effect of this change of direction on levels of poverty. But certainly at the level of inputs, the Bank’s project design and use of policy conditions are now much better attuned to the relief of poverty than they ever were before.
Ngaire
, International Relations Fellow – University College, Oxford,
, The World Bank: Structure and Policies, eds. C.
Gilbert & D. Vines, p. 135
Although the United States has a uniquely influential position within the Bank, it does not enjoy full control over the institution’s nature and activities. Indeed , if the United States had control over the organization or indeed was perceived to, the
Bank would be of little use to the United States. As two scholars of international relations write: “powerful states structure such organizations to further their own interests but must do so in a way that induces weaker states to participate.” To be effective, the World Bank relies on the participation of most states in the world. Such participation, in turn, requires continued belief in the Bank’s “legitimacy”: the perception by its members that the agency not only has a particular technical expertise but also that it has a certain degree of independence, a genuinely international character and that it acts in a rule-based way rather than according to US discretionary judgments.
James
, Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School ,
edition, Violence: Reflections on Our
Deadliest Epidemic, p. 195-196
The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as
World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those caused by genocide--or about eight million per year, 1935-1945), the
Indonesian massacre of 1965-1966 (perhaps 575,000 deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other wordS, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period.
This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.
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5.01 This paper has demonstrated that universal design is a relevant internationally accepted design concept, worthy of consideration for adoption by the World Bank for use in its projects. Adoption by the World Bank does not necessarily mean a hard and fast mandate. However, as part of its duty of due diligence, under the CRPD, the World Bank might seriously consider whether it can or will adopt some design concept or approach which will integrate the human rights of people with disabilities and universal design into its projects. 5.02 Another reason for adopting universal design is to promote poverty reduction as mandated in the MDGs. People with disabilities, women, children and elderly persons are likely to be the poorest of the poor. By adopting universal design, the World Bank could take one more step in beginning to alleviate poverty.
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Key considerations in implementing universal design are: • Incorporate universal design from the outset as an essential component of the project in order to minimize the additional cost. Adaptations of the existing built environment will cost far more. • Establish participatory mechanisms for universal design in a specific project. Universal design is localenvironment specific, and may not be transferred from one region or country to another. Seek input from local community users including people with disabilities, women, and elders. Contact Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs) if any. •
Educate designers, builders, and users about the purpose and benefit of universal design so that they find good solutions to problems. • Include a universal design component into procurement. • Identify macro level inter-sectoral relationships to avoid deficient work. The project should take into account universal design in an integrated manner, which involves a wide range of sectors. Creating accessibility in an inaccessible space will not enhance total access. • Identify regional or country accessibility standards and anti-discrimination legislation. While participation and consultation with local stakeholders is essential, projects should comply with local accessibility standards and anti-discrimination legislation whenever available. •
Conform to a specific framework and sectoral requirements of the CRPD.
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WASHINGTON — A coalition of business leaders, budget experts and former politicians launched a $25 million campaign yesterday to build political support for a far-reaching plan to raise taxes, cut popular retirement programs and tame the national debt. With anxiety rising over a major budget mess looming in January, the campaign — dubbed "Fix the Debt" — is founded on the notion that the moment is finally at hand when policymakers will be forced to compromise on an ambitious debt-reduction strategy. After nearly three years of bipartisan negotiations, the broad outlines of that strategy are clear, the group's leaders said during a news conference at the National Press Club: Raise more money through a simplified tax code and spend less on Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the primary drivers of future borrowing. "Everyone knows in their hearts and their minds what has to be done," said Democratic former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who is chairing the group with former New Hampshire
Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican. The goal of the campaign is to "create a safe environment where it's not only good policy, but good politics as well." The campaign was founded by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of
Wyoming. The two men led an independent fiscal commission that in 2010 produced a $4 trillion debt-reduction framework that has won praise from politicians across the political spectrum. But the Bowles-Simpson plan never won the explicit backing of President Barack Obama or GOP leaders and therefore never gained real traction in Congress. The campaign plans to launch a social media drive to persuade lawmakers to approve a plan similar to the Bowles-Simpson framework by
July 4, 2013 — replacing $600 billion in abrupt tax hikes and sharp spending cuts that are otherwise set to take effect in January.
So the minute that someone says, well, defense is the top constitutional obligation of the federal government and therefore it should be protected regardless, and we should make our deficit reduction out of other accounts. If we start a conversation in those terms, then a big constituency is going to come up and say let's protect Social Security, or let's protect college loans for students because that's our future after all. Or let's protect science research or infrastructural development , and you get the idea pretty soon you've lost the spirit of shared sacrifice that I think is essential if we're going to have any hope of reducing the deficit in the coming years. So that's the basic motivation. We're not probably going to reduce the deficit effectively, and therefore strengthen our long-term economy and the foundation for our long-term military power, if we don't establish a spirit of shared sacrifice.
Moody’s just came out and said, great job, USA, you get to keep your AAA rating. For now. This follows Fitch, which earlier said more or less that they were still reviewing the US rating, a process that could take through August. They didn’t promise they’d keep a AAA rating at the end of the process, but called the debt deal “a step in the right direction.” Now the big shoe dangling is
S&P, which is really on the hook, having sounded the loudest warning about a downgrade. The size of the debt deal doesn’t seem to hit the $4 trillion mark S&P has said would be necessary to keep a AAA rating. My prediction? They’ll issue a similar placeholder statement soonish. Meanwhile, let’s hear what Moody’s has to say: Moody’s Investors Service has confirmed the
Aaa government bond rating of the United States following the raising of the statutory debt limit on August 2. The rating outlook is now negative. Moody’s placed the rating on review for possible downgrade on July 13 due to the small but rising probability of a default on the government’s debt obligations because of a failure to increase the debt limit. The initial increase of the debt limit by $900 billion and the commitment to raise it by a further $1.2-1.5 trillion by yearend have virtually eliminated the risk of such a default, prompting the confirmation of the rating at Aaa. In confirming the Aaa rating, Moody’s also recognized that today’s agreement is a first step toward achieving the long-term fiscal consolidation needed to maintain the US government debt metrics within Aaa parameters over the long run. The legislation calls for $917 billion in specific spending cuts over the next decade and established a congressional committee charged with making recommendations for achieving a further $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the same time period. In the absence of the committee reaching an agreement, automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion would become effective. In assigning a negative outlook to the rating, Moody’s indicated, however, that there would be a risk of downgrade if (1) there is a weakening in fiscal discipline in the coming year ; (2) further fiscal consolidation measures
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1 are not adopted in 2013; (3) the economic outlook deteriorates significantly; or (4) there is an appreciable rise in the US government’s funding costs over and above what is currently expected.
If Moody’s downgrades and if S & P further downgrades U.S. credit ratings, this would move the United States out of the exclusive club of AAA-rated nations, and throw into question the privileged status of U.S. Treasury securities as a safe haven for global investors.
Any significant flight from Treasuries would raise Treasury bond rates, with crippling consequences for the economy. A 1-percentage point increase in rates would raise Treasury debt payments by $1 trillion over the next decade, wiping out the benefits of all the budget cuts enacted by Congress last year.
The dynamics of such a process may prove to be devastating, moving the U.S. federal government onto a path of sovereign downgrades that accelerates an already worsening fiscal situation. Greece here we come.
[Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe and chairman of the Board of
Trustees of the Italian Institute for International Affairs (IAI) in Rome. He served as IAI president from 1979 to 2001. Until
2009, he also occupied the position of executive vice chairman of the Council for the United States and Italy, which he cofounded in 1983. His areas of expertise include transatlantic relations, European integration and nuclear non-proliferation, with particular focus on nuclear science and technology. A Post-Secular World? DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2011.571015
Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request Permissions Published in: journal Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2 April 2011 , pages 117 - 130 Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year Download PDF Download PDF (~357 KB) View Related
Articles To cite this Article: Merlini, Cesare 'A Post-Secular World?', Survival, 53:2, 117 – 130]
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive selfinterest and rejection of outside interference would likely be amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and
Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.
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, 2/12/20
, “America’s Subterranean Malaise”, http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/02/infrastructure?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fbl%2Famericanssubterraneanmalais e
SALON‘s Will Doig had a nice piece last week riffing off a common theme: why does it take so long and cost so much for
America to complete infrastructure projects when China seems to complete them in mere months for a fraction of the cost? On
Dec. 31, the Chinese capital opened a new subway line and greatly expanded two others. This year it plans to open four more. A total of eight new lines are under construction. The city started expanding the system in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, and has kept pushing forward ever since. In 2001 it had 33 miles of track. Today it has 231.Meanwhile, when you hear the completion dates for big U.S. transit projects you often have to calculate your age to figure out if you’ll still be alive. Los Angeles’s Westside subway extension is set to be finished in 2036. Just five years ago, New York’s Second Avenue Subway was supposed to be done by 2020, a goal that seems laughable now. The sub-headline of Mr Doig’s story promises suggestions for dealing with this problem, but the actual article focuses more on explaining why infrastructure projects take so much longer in America than they do in China. Bureaucracy, lack of money, politics and potential interference with existing infrastructure are the most convincing explanations he offers, although mismanagement and America’s deeper concern for things like private property rights and working conditions surely play a role, too. The Atlantic’s David Lepeska has some related thoughts on why New York’s Second Avenue subway line, which won’t be completed for years, is costing $1.7 billion per kilometre. He notes that such high-priced transport is not endemic in America: Washington, DC’s Silver Line is considerably cheaper per kilometre (partly because much of it is being built above ground) and light-rail projects in Minneapolis and Denver were comparative bargains. Slate’s Matt Yglesias, meanwhile, argues that Mr Doig and others who compare New York’s subway costs with China’s are missing the point. “The real issue Americans should be pondering is why our big infrastructure projects are so much slower and more costly than comparable projects in Europe or Japan,” he writes. After all, “even expensive projects in big, old, rich cities like London and Amsterdam come in far cheaper than a New York subway project.” This is indeed the right question to be asking, but the answers don’t come easily. American politicians often blame labour unions, but these are generally stronger in Europe than in the US. Benjamin
Kabak, a blogger whom Mr Lepeska recommends, offers some theories. Alon Levy, a blogger whom we’ve linked to before, has a particularly interesting idea: he thinks the business culture and organisational structure of New York’s Metropolitan Transit
Authority could be part of the problem. Mr Levy says the MTA’s in-house team managing infrastructure projects is probably too small and the agency could be too reliant on outside consultants.
THE high cost of providing and maintaining infrastructure for sprawling development hurts taxpayers and contributes to the fiscal crises facing many Colorado local governments. Sprawling development does not generate enough tax revenue to cover the costs it incurs on local municipalities to provide new infrastructure and public services. Local governments and their taxpayers end up footing the bill to provide public services to sprawling developments. Research by Colorado State
University found that in Colorado, “dispersed rural residential development costs county governments and schools $1.65 in service expenditures for every dollar of tax revenue generated.” Additionally, the cost to provide public infrastructure and services for a specific population in new sprawling development is higher than to service that same population in a smart
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1 growth or infill development. Sprawling and “leapfrog” developments (those built far away from the current urban area) tend to be dispersed across the land, requiring longer public roads and water and sewer lines to provide service. Such developments also impose higher costs on police and fire departments and schools. Research from around Colorado demonstrates the high fiscal cost of sprawl relative to compact development: • Research conducted by the Denver Regional
Council of Governments (DRCOG) in the planning process for the Metro Vision 2020 update found that sprawling development would cost Denver-area governments $4.3 billion more in infrastructure costs than compact smart growth through 2020. • DRCOG found that a 12-square-mile expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary around Denver to accommodate additional sprawling growth would cost taxpayers $293 million dollars, $30 million of which would be subsidized by the region as a whole. • University of Colorado at Denver researchers determined that future sprawling development in Delta, Mesa, Montrose, and Ouray Counties would cost taxpayers and local governments $80 million more than smart growth development between 2000 and 2025. • New research from the Center for Colorado Policy Studies at the
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs points to infill development and increased residential densities as important factors contributing to the substantial savings in infrastructure costs in Colorado Springs between 1980 and 2000. • A
Federal Transit Administration report conducted by the Transit Cooperative Research Program estimates that smart growth would save the Denver-Boulder-Greeley area $4 billion in road and highway construction over 25 years—a savings of 21 percent. The costs of building and servicing infrastructure for new sprawling development is ultimately subsidized by the whole community. Local government generally bills the cost of new services and infrastructure on an average basis, rather than an incremental basis. That is, new costs are spread evenly among all taxpayers rather than charged only to those who generate the costs. This is, in effect, a subsidy from the whole community to new development. Existing residents, who were sufficiently served by the established infrastructure, must pay a share of the costly new infrastructure required to meet the expected demand of newcomers.
Barry
is a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies for the Brookings Institution and Sveta
is a Research
Assistant at the Brookings Institution, October 20
, “Innovations in U.S. Infrastructure Financing: An Evaluation”, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/10/20%20infrastructure%20financing%20bosworth%20milusheva
/1020_infrastructure_financing_bosworth_milusheva.pdf
Their data are limited to public sector investments in transportation and water infrastructure, and do not include estimates of the stock of capital. The share of total public capital investments covered by the CBO data has fallen from about 45 percent in 1960 to 30 percent in 2007. The most important forms of excluded public capital are equipment, buildings, and power; but the CBO definition is closer to the definition of infrastructure used in most research studies. The CBO analysis illustrates two important aspects of infrastructure expenditures. First O&M represents more than half of the total spending on infrastructure, and in some areas, such as mass transit and aviation, the proportion is two-thirds or greater.
Infrastructure systems involve much greater costs than just the initial investment to build them. They involve major commitments to future operating and repair costs that need to be funded on an ongoing basis. The inclusion of O&M thus highlights a fundamental problem of infrastructure in the United States: the failure to maintain the investments on a timely and efficient basis. There is an underlying bias in the funding of infrastructure in that ‘free money’ (federal grants) is available for new capital investments, but state and local governments must finance the vast bulk of their own O&M costs.
Not surprisingly, the result is excess investments in facilities that local governments are not prepared to maintain. In those cases where federal funding is available for maintenance, the amounts are limited and beset by perverse incentives. O&M has represented only 8 percent of total federal grants since 2000. There is a federal program for bridge repair, the
Highway Bridge Program (HPB), but priority is given to states with the worst rating of bridge conditions–hardly an incentive for timely maintenance.
Federal agencies and the Congress face several challenges in determining the appropriate levels of and effective approaches to infrastructure investment. First, there is a general lack of accurate, consistent information on the existing infrastructure and its future needs. For example, in some cases, the current information may not distinguish between genuine needs and “wish lists.” In other cases, the information may not identify all the needs. In addition, federal agencies have not taken a consistent approach to analyzing the costs and benefits of potential infrastructure projects, which would help in setting priorities and determining noncapital alternatives. Moreover, until recently, agencies have not been required
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1 to relate their planned infrastructure spending to their missions and goals, so evaluating these plans has presented a challenge to agencies and the Congress. Finally, the federal budget structure does not prompt explicit debate about infrastructure spending that is intended to have long-term benefits. Overcoming these impediments will not be easy.
Recent guidance by the Office of Management and Budget and legislation such as the Government Performance and
Results Act may provide interim steps toward doing so. However, these steps might not go far enough toward improving infrastructure investments because spending decisions are made by a variety of agencies and levels of government that have differing goals and missions. In order to better coordinate these investments to meet national, regional, and local goals and ensure that they are mutually supportive, it is crucial that agencies throughout the government reduce inefficiencies in their current investments and analyze potential investments to identify those that achieve the greatest benefits in the most costeffective manner.
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Michael
, Professor of Disability Studies @ University of Greenwich,
, “Capitalism, Disability and Ideology: A
Materialist Critique of the Normalization Principle”, http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/archiveuk/Oliver-cap-dis-ideol.pdf;
AB
At the outset, I should say two things. I have no particular interest in the history of normalization and therefore, I am not attempting to provide a revisionist history of it. Neither do I think that normalization, or social role valorization as it has become in its reincarnation, has much to offer in developing a social theory of disability. I am interested however in the oppression of disabled people in capitalist societies and what normalization does, or rather does not say about it. This interest has led me to begin to sketch out what a social theory of disability might look like (Oliver 1990) .For me, all social theory must be judged on three inter-related elements: its adequacy in describing experience; its ability to explain experience; and finally, its potential to transform experience. My own theorizing on disability is located in Marxist political economy which, I would argue offers a much more adequate basis for describing and explaining experience than does normalization theory which is based upon interactionist and functionalist sociology. In fact I would go further and argue that the social theory that underpins Marxist political economy has far greater transformative potential in eradicating the oppression that disabled people face throughout the world than the interactionist and functionalist theories that underpin normalization ever can have.
And I will go even further than that and argue that already this theory has had a far greater influence on the struggles that disabled people are themselves currently engaged in to remove the chains of that oppression than normalization which is, at best a bystander in these struggles, and at worst part of the process of oppression itself . In presenting this argument, I will begin by articulating my own theoretical position based upon Marxist political economy and hereinafter referred to as materialist theory. I will then demonstrate the inadequacies of normalization theory's explanation of the rise of the institution before going on to provide a critique of the ideology which underpins it. Next, I will take issue with the argument that normalization has been successful because it is based upon
'experience'. Finally I will look at what both normalization and materialist theories say about change, having briefly described the appalling material conditions under which disabled people live throughout the world. Before proceeding further, it is perhaps necessary to explain the use of terminology in this chapter. Underpinning it is a materialist view of society; to say that the category disability is produced by capitalist society in a particular form implies a particular world view. Within this world view, the production of the category disability is no different from the production of motor cars or hamburgers. Each has an industry, whether it be the car, fast food or human service industry. Each industry has a workforce which has a vested interest in producing their product in particular ways and in exerting as much control over the process of production as possible. Producing a materialist theory of disability The production of disability therefore is nothing more or less than a set of activities specifically geared towards producing a good - the category disability - supported by a range of political actions which create the conditions to allow these productive activities to take place and underpinned by a discourse which gives legitimacy to the whole enterprise. As to the specifics of the terminology used in this discourse, I use the term disabled people generically and refuse to divide the group in terms of medical conditions, functional limitation or severity of impairment. For me disabled people are defined in terms of three criteria; (i) they have an impairment; (ii) they experience oppression as a consequence; and (c) they identify themselves as a disabled person. Using the generic term does not mean that I do not recognise differences in experience within the group but that in exploring this we should start from the ways oppression differentially impacts on different groups of people rather than with differences in experience among individuals with different impairments. I agree that my own initial outlining of a materialist theory of disability (Oliver
1990) did not specifically include an examination of the oppression that people with learning difficulties face (and I use this particular term throughout my paper because it is the one democratic and accountable organisations of people with learning difficulties insist on). Nevertheless I agree that "For a rigorous theory of disability to emerge which begins to examine all disability in a materialist account, an analysis of normalization must be included". (Chappell 1992.38) Attempting to incorporate normalization in a materialist account however, does not mean that I believe that, beyond the descriptive, it is of much use.
Based as it is upon functionalist and interactionist sociology, whose defects are well known
(Gouldner1970), it offers no satisfactory explanation of why disabled people are oppressed in capitalist societies and no strategy for liberating us from the chains of that oppression. Political economy, on the other hand, suggests that all phenomena (including social categories) are produced by the economic and social forces of capitalism itself . The forms in which they are produced are ultimately dependent upon their relationship to the economy (Marx 1913) .Hence, the
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1 category disability is produced in the particular form it appears by these very economic and social forces. Further, it is produced as an economic problem because of changes in the nature of work and the needs of the labour market within capitalism. "The speed of factory work, the enforced discipline, the time-keeping and production norms -all these were a highly unfavourable change from the slower, more self-determined methods of work into which many handicapped people had been integrated" . (Ryan and Thomas 1980.101) The economy, through both the operation of the labour market and the social organisation of work, plays a key role in producing the category disability and in determining societal responses to disabled people. In order to explain this further, it is necessary to return to the crucial question of what is meant by political economy. The following is a generally agreed definition of political economy, "The study of the interrelationships between the polity, economy and society, or more specifically, the reciprocal influences among government the economy, social classes, state and, status groups. The central problem of the political economy perspective is the manner in which the economy and polity interact in a relationship of reciprocal causation affecting the distribution of social goods". (Estes et al
1982) The central problem with such an agreed definition is that it is an explanation which can be incorporated into pluralist visions of society as a consensus emerging out of the interests of various groups and social forces and indeed, this explanation has been encapsulated in a recent book on disability "A person's position in society affects the type and severity of physical disability one is likely to experience and more importantly the likelihood that he or she is likely to receive rehabilitation services. Indeed, the political economy of a community dictates what debilitating health conditions will be produced, how and under what circumstances they will be defined, and ultimately who will receive the services". (Albrecht
(1992.14) This quote lays out the way in which Albrecht pursues his argument in three parts. The first part shows how the kind of society people live in influences the kinds of disability that are produced, notably how the mode of production creates particular kinds of impairments. Further, he traces the ways in which the mode of production influences social interpretation and the meanings of disability and he also demonstrates how, in industrial societies, rehabilitation, like all other goods and services is transformed into a commodity. The second part of the argument shows how intermediate social institutions in America, such as the legal, the political and welfare systems contribute to the specific way in which disability is produced and their role in the transformation of rehabilitation into a commodity. The final part considers what this may mean in terms of future developments in social policy and what effects it may have on the lives of disabled people. It is difficult to disagree with this formulation at the descriptive level but the problem with this pluralist version of political economy is that the structure of capitalist America itself goes unexamined as does the crucial role that the capitalist economy plays in. shaping the experience of groups and individuals. Exactly the same criticism can be levelled at normalization theory. Devaluation according to normalization theory is a universal cognitive process and economic and social conditions are only relevant to who gets devalued. Political economy, as it is used here, takes a particular theoretical view of society; one which sees the economy as the crucial, and ultimately determining factor, in structuring the lives of groups and individuals. Further, while the relationship between various groups and the economy may differ in qualitative ways, the underlying structural relationship remains. "The convergence and interaction of liberating forces at work in society against racism, sexism, ageism and economic imperialism are all oppressive 'isms' and built-in responses of a society that considers certain groups inferior. All are rooted in the social-economic structures of society . All deprive certain groups of status, the right to control their own lives and destinies with the end result of powerlessness. All have resulted in economic and social discrimination. All rob (American) society of the energies and involvement of creative persons who are needed to make our society just and humane. All have brought on individual alienation, despair, hostility, and anomie". (Walton 1979.9) Hence the oppression that disabled people face is rooted in the economic and social structures of capitalism.
And this oppression is structured by racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism and disablism which is endemic to all capitalist societies and cannot be explained away as a universal cognitive process . To explain this further it is necessary to go back to the roots of capitalism itself . Disabled people and the rise of capitalism Whatever the fate of disabled people before the advent of capitalist society and whatever their fate will be in the brave new world of the twenty first century, with its coming we suffered economic and social exclusion. As a consequence of this exclusion disability was produced in a particular form; as an individual problem requiring medical treatment. At the heart of this exclusion was the institution -something on which we would all agree. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, institutions proliferated in all industrial societies (Rothman 1971) but to describe this, as Wolfensberger does, as 'momentum without rationale' (p3) is patently absurd. The French Marxist, Louis Althusser (1971), suggested that all capitalist societies are faced with the problem of social control and they resolve this by a combination of repressive and ideological mechanisms.
The reason for the success of the institution was simple; it combines these mechanisms almost perfectly. It is repressive in that all those who either cannot or will not conform to the norms and discipline of capitalist society can be removed from it. It is ideological in that it stands as a visible monument for all those who currently conform but may not continue to do so -if you do not behave, the institution awaits you. It is for this reason that the institution has been successful. Its presence perfectly meets capitalism's needs for discipline and control (Foucault 1972). It is also the reason why, despite the fact that the defects of institutions have been known for the 200 years that they have existed, they
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1 have remained unaddressed. Indeed, the principle of 'less eligibility' was central to the rise of the institution. It is simply not true to say that we have only known of their defects in recent years because, if this were the case, they would then not have been performing their ideological control function. Day trips to institutions, which originated in the 1850's not the 1950's, were precisely for this purpose; to demonstrate how awful they were for the purposes of social control, not to educate the public about their reform (p8).
[Alex, Director of the Centre for European Studies at King’s College, The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl
Marx, 2004 pg. 196-197]
Capitalism has not changed its spots. It is still based on the exploitation of the working class, and liable to constant crises.
The conclusion that Marx drew from this analysis, that the working class must overthrow the system and replace it with a classless society, is even more urgent now than in his day. For the military rivalries which are the form increasingly assumed by competition between capitals now threaten the very survival of the planet. As Marx’s centenary approached, the fires of war flickered across the globe—in Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, Kampuchea, southern Africa, the Horn of Africa,
Afghanistan and the South Atlantic. The accumulation of vast armouries of nuclear destruction by the superpowers, missilerattling in the Kremlin, talk of ‘limited’ and ‘protracted’ nuclear war in Washington—these cast a shadow over the whole of humanity. Socialist revolution is an imperative if we are to change a world in the grip of economic depression and war fever, a world where 30 million rot on Western dole queues and 800 million go hungry in the Third World. To that extent, Marx’s ideas are more relevant today than they were 100 years ago. Capitalism has tightened its grip of iron on every portion of the planet since 1883, and is rotten-ripe for destruction, whether at its own hands through nuclear war, or at the hands of the working class. The choice is between workers’ power or the ‘common ruination of the contending classes’—between socialism or barbarism. Many people who genuinely wish to do something to remedy the present state of the world believe that this stress on the working class is much too narrow. The existence of nuclear weapons threatens everyone, whether workers or capitalists or whatever. Should not all classes be involved in remedying a problem which affects them all? What this ignores is that what Edward Thompson has called ‘exterminism’— the vast and competing military apparatuses which control the arms race—is an essential part of the working of capitalism today. No sane capitalist desires a nuclear war (although some insane ones who believe that such a war would be the prelude to the Second Coming now hold positions of influence in Washington). But sane or insane, every capitalist is part of an economic system which is bound up with military competition between nationstates.
Only a class with the interest and power to do away with capitalism can halt the march to Armageddon. Marx always conceived of the working class as the class whose own selfemancipation would also be the liberation of the rest of humanity. The socialist revolution to whose cause he devoted his life can only be, at one and the same time, the emancipation of the working class and the liberation of all the oppressed and exploited sections of society. Those who accept the truth of Marx’s views cannot rest content with a mere intellectual commitment.
There are all too many of this sort around, Marxists content to live off the intellectual credit of Capital, as Trotsky described them. We cannot simply observe the world but must throw ourselves, as Marx did, into the practical task of building a revolutionary party amid the life and struggles of the working class. ‘The philosophers have interpreted the world,’ wrote Marx,
‘the point, however, is to change it.’ If Marxism is correct, then we must act on it.
Bernard E.
is chair of the political science department and professor of law at The University of Chicago,
10/13/
, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-streets-political-disobedience/#more-108081,
“Occupy Wall Street’s Political Disobedience”; AB
Our language has not yet caught up with the political phenomenon that is emerging in Zuccotti Park and spreading across the nation, though it is clear that a political paradigm shift is taking place before our very eyes. It’s time to begin to name and in naming, to better understand this moment. So let me propose some words: “political disobedience.” Occupy Wall
Street is best understood, I would suggest, as a new form of what could be called “political disobedience,” as opposed to civil disobedience, that fundamentally rejects the political and ideological landscape that we inherited from the Cold War.
Civil disobedience accepted the legitimacy of political institutions, but resisted the moral authority of resulting laws.
Political disobedience, by contrast, resists the very way in which we are governed: it resists the structure of partisan politics, the demand for policy reforms, the call for party identification, and the very ideologies that dominated the post-
War period. Occupy Wall Street, which identifies itself as a “leaderless resistance movement with people of many … political persuasions,” is politically disobedient precisely in refusing to articulate policy demands or to embrace old ideologies. Those who incessantly want to impose demands on the movement may show good will and generosity, but fail to understand that the resistance movement is precisely about disobeying that kind of political maneuver. Similarly, those who want to push an ideology onto these new forms of political disobedience, like Slavoj Zizek or Raymond Lotta, are missing the point of the resistance. When Zizek complained last August, writing about the European protesters in the
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London Review of Books, that we’ve entered a “post-ideological era” where “opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst,” he failed to understand that these movements are precisely about resisting the old ideologies. It’s not that they couldn’t articulate them; it’s that they are actively resisting them — they are being politically disobedient. And when Zizek now declares at Zuccotti Park “that our basic message is ‘We are allowed to think about alternatives’ . . . What social organization can replace capitalism?” ― again, he is missing a central axis of this new form of political resistance.
One way to understand the emerging disobedience is to see it as a refusal to engage these sorts of worn-out ideologies rooted in the Cold War. The key point here is that the Cold War’s ideological divide — with the Chicago Boys at one end and the Maoists at the other — merely served as a weapon in this country for the financial and political elite: the ploy, in the United States, was to demonize the chimera of a controlled economy (that of the former Soviet Union or China, for example) in order to prop up the illusion of a free market and to legitimize the fantasy of less regulation — of what was euphemistically called “deregulation.” By reinvigorating the myth of free markets, the financial and political architects of our economy over the past three plus decades — both Republicans and Democrats — were able to disguise massive redistribution toward the richest by claiming they were simply “deregulating” when all along they were actually reregulating to the benefit of their largest campaign donors. This ideological fog blinded the American people to the pervasive regulatory mechanisms that are necessary to organize a colossal late-modern economy and that necessarily distribute wealth throughout society — and in this country, that quietly redistributed massive amounts of wealth to the richest 1 percent. Many of the voices at Occupy Wall Street accuse political ideology on both sides, on the side of free markets but also on the side of big government, for serving the few at the expense of the other 99 percent — for paving the way to an entrenched permissive regulatory system that “privatizes gains and socializes losses.”The central point, of course, is that it takes both a big government and the illusion of free markets to achieve such massive redistribution. If you take a look at the tattered posters at Zuccotti Park, you’ll see that many are intensely anti-government and just as many stridently oppose big government. Occupy Wall Street is surely right in holding the old ideologies to account. The truth is, as I’ve argued in a book, “The Illusion of Free Markets,” and recently in Harper’s magazine, there never have been and never will be free markets.
All markets are man-made, constructed, regulated and administered by often-complex mechanisms that necessarily distribute wealth — that inevitably distribute wealth — in large and small ways. Tax incentives for domestic oil production and lower capital gains rates are obvious illustrations. But there are all kinds of more minute rules and regulations surrounding our wheat pits, stock markets and economic exchanges that have significant wealth effects: limits on retail buyers flipping shares after an I.P.O., rulings allowing exchanges to cut communication to non-member dealers, fixed prices in extended after-hour trading, even the advent of options markets. The mere existence of a privately chartered organization like the Chicago Board of Trade, which required the state of Illinois to criminalize and forcibly shut down competing bucket shops, has huge redistributional wealth effects on farmers and consumers — and, of course, bankers, brokers and dealers. The semantic games — the talk of deregulation rather than reregulation — would have been entertaining had it not been for their devastating effects. As the sociologist Douglas Massey minutely documents in “Categorically Unequal,” after decades of improvement, the income gap between the richest and poorest in this country has dramatically widened since the 1970s, resulting in what social scientists now refer to as U-curve of increasing inequality. Recent reports from the Census Bureau confirm this, with new evidence last month that
“the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.” Today, 27 percent of African-Americans and 26 percent of Hispanics in this country — more than 1 in 4 — live in poverty; and 1 in 9
African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated. It’s these outcomes that have pushed so many in
New York City and across the nation to this new form of political disobedience. It’s a new type of resistance to politics tout court — to making policy demands, to playing the political games, to partisan politics, to old-fashioned ideology. It bears a similarity to what Michel Foucault referred to as “critique:” resistance to being governed “in this manner,” or what he dubbed “voluntary insubordination” or, better yet, as a word play on the famous expression of Etienne de la Boétie,
“voluntary unservitude.” If this concept of “political disobedience” is accurate and resonates, then Occupy Wall Street will continue to resist making a handful of policy demands because it would have little effect on the constant regulations that redistribute wealth to the top. The movement will also continue to resist Cold War ideologies from Friedrich Hayek to
Maoism — as well as their pale imitations and sequels, from the Chicago School 2.0 to Alain Badiou and Zizek’s attempt to shoehorn all political resistance into a “communist hypothesis.”On this account, the fundamental choice is no longer the ideological one we were indoctrinated to believe — between free markets and controlled economies — but rather a continuous choice between kinds of regulation and how they distribute wealth in society. There is, in the end, no “realistic alternative,” nor any “utopian project” that can avoid the pervasive regulatory mechanisms that are necessary to organize a complex late-modern economy — and that’s the point. The vast and distributive regulatory framework will neither disappear with deregulation, nor with the withering of a socialist state. What is required is constant vigilance of all the micro and macro rules that permeate our markets, our contracts, our tax codes, our banking regulations, our property laws
— in sum, all the ordinary, often mundane, but frequently invisible forms of laws and regulations that are required to organize and maintain a colossal economy in the 21st-century and that constantly distribute wealth and resources. In the end, if the concept of “political disobedience” accurately captures this new political paradigm, then the resistance movement needs to occupy Zuccotti Park because levels of social inequality and the number of children in poverty are intolerable. Or, to put it another way, the movement needs to resist partisan politics and worn-out ideologies because the outcomes have become simply unacceptable. The Volcker rule, debt relief for working Americans, a tax on the wealthy — those might help, but they represent no more than a few drops in the bucket of regulations that distribute and redistribute wealth and resources in this country every minute of every day. Ultimately, what matters to the politically disobedient is the kind of society we live in, not a handful of policy demands.
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Michael
, Professor of Disability Studies @ University of Greenwich that has a disability,
, “Capitalism,
Disability and Ideology: A Materialist Critique of the Normalization Principle”, http://disabilitystudies.leeds.ac.uk/files/archiveuk/Oliver-cap-dis-ideol.pdf; AB
Social and individual transformations are inextricably linked. However , in materialist theory individuals must transform themselves through collective action, not be transformed by others who know what's best for them or what's best for society.
Empowerment is a collective process of transformation on which the powerless embark as part of the struggle to resist the oppression of others, as part of their demands to be included, and/or to articulate their own views of the world.
Central to this struggle is the recognition by the powerless that they are oppressed; first articulated in respect of disability by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation in the 1970s and more recently been given a theoretical reformulation within 'oppression theory' more generally (Abberley 1987). Normalization theory sees improving human services as a major platform for improving the quality of life for disabled people and indeed much time and energy is devoted to precisely this. Wolfensberger's position on this is unequivocal; he is vehemently opposed to services provided by institutions but has spent much of his working life developing and improving community based services. As I suggested earlier, this is because he views community based services as radically different from institutional ones in that they are not part of the social control apparatus of the state. While his position on community based human services may be unequivocal, it is certainly contradictory. In the paper he gave at the international disability conference in Bristol in 1987, he came very close to taking a materialist position on all human services, not simply institutional ones, when he argued that their real purpose (latent function) was to provide employment for the middle classes and in order to continue to do that
"...merely enlarging the human service empire is not sufficient to meet all the requirements that a postprimary production economy poses. In addition, one has to make all the services that do exist as unproductive as possible - indeed one has to make them counterproductive if at all possible, so that they create dependency, and so that they create impaired people rather than habilitate them". (Wolfensberger 1988.34) The problem with this formulation is that it mistakes the symptom for the problem. If human services under capitalism are part of the state apparatus of social control as materialist theory would argue, the reason they employ the middle classes is simple; they are not the groups who pose a threat to capitalism and therefore, they do not need to be controlled, but instead can become agents for the control of others . It is precisely for this reason that the demands of disabled people allover the world are not, any longer, for improvements in existing services but control over them. And further, their struggles around welfare issues are about producing and controlling their own services through centres for independent living, direct payments to enable them to purchase these services for themselves and peer counselling to enable them to develop the necessary skills and support to meet their own self-defined individual and collective needs. This is not an anti welfare or anti human services position but one which raises fundamental issues of
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1 who is in control and in whose interest? In looking at the issue of political change, within normalization theory it is difficult to find anything beyond descriptions of the kinds of things devalued people should be entitled to. How to achieve these entitlements at the political level is not really discussed although Wolfensberger confidently asserts that if we want to valorize someone's social roles "...we know from social science what the overarching strategies are through which this can be accomplished if that is what one wants to pursue". (Wolfensberger 1994.96) I don't know what social science he is referring to but I have to say that I know very few social scientists who are, any longer, convinced that the concept of social roles has very much value to the development of social theory let alone for the promotion of political action. Not only are
Talcott Parsons and Erving Goffman dead in a material sense but so are their products; the macro and micro versions of role theory. One can only assume from normalization writings that political change will be a gift from the powerful to powerless once they have come to a true understanding of disability through exposure to the teachings of normalization and social role valorization. Nowhere does normalization acknowledge that "...the conviction that one's group is worth fighting for has to come at least partly from within. The alternative is to wait passively for the advantaged group to confer limited equality which does not essentially alter the status quo, and which it may be motivated to avoid". (Dalley 1992.128) Again, materialist theory is much more upfront about political change . It will only be achieved through struggle, and that struggles will be by oppressed groups themselves against the forces that oppress them . In order to do this it is necessary for oppressed groups to organise collectively to confront this oppression. That inevitably means confrontation and conflict with powerful groups, interests and structures for there are few examples in human history of people willingly giving up power to others. As far as disabled people are concerned, we have seen over the past fifteen years disabled people coming together to organise themselves as a movement at local, national and international levels. In Britain, for example, in order to harness this growing consciousness of disabled people, to provide a platform to articulate the re-definition of the problem of disability and to give a focus to the campaigns for independent living and against discrimination, the British
Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP) was formed in 1981 and its success in the subsequent decade is entirely an achievement of disabled people themselves (Hasler 1993). Its conception and subsequent development have been achieved without extensive financial support from Government or from traditional organisations for disabled people.
On the contrary, the BCODP was criticised from the start as being elitist, isolationist, unrepresentative, and Marxist by a collection of unrepresentative people with abilities, right and left wing academics, isolated and elitist staff and management of traditional organisations and many professionals whose very careers were bound up with keeping disabled people dependent. Yet despite these attacks, BCODP has gone from strength to strength, now representing over 90 organisations of disabled people and 300,000 disabled individuals. These initiatives not only established BCODP as the only representative voice of disabled people in Britain but by its very success it stimulated an ever growing number of disabled people to adopt a disabled identity. Similar stories of the rise of the disability movement could be told from other parts of both the developing and the developed world. With this growing sense of a collective, political identity has developed the selfconfidence not simply to ask for the necessary changes but to demand them and to use a whole range of tactics including direct action and civil disobedience. What's more, this movement is democratic arid accountable to disabled people themselves (Dreidger 1988 Oliver 1990 Davis 1993) and its collective voice is demanding that we be included in our societies everywhere by ending the oppression that confronts us, not by offering us and our oppressors normalization or social role valorization programmes. In this paper I have argued that normalization as a social theory is inadequate in that it does not describe experience satisfactorily, its explanation of why disabled have the kinds of experiences they do is wholly inadequate, and its potential for transforming those experiences to something better is limited. It is not only those unsympathetic to normalization who question its future, however. "What does normalization now have to do in order to be a positive force for change in the 1990's. The answer may lie in going back to its roots and realigning itself in relation to other sociological theories". (Brown and smith 1992.176) hether such a realignment, even with materialist theory, is likely to resuscitate normalization is itself doubtful, because what is at stake is a vision of the kind of society we would like to live in. Normalization theory offers disabled people the opportunity to be given valued social roles in an unequal society which values some roles more than others. Materialist social theory offers disabled people the opportunity to transform their own lives and in so doing to transform the society in which they live into one in which all roles are valued. As a disabled person
I know which of those choices I prefer and I also know which most of the disabled people I meet prefer.
Pamela
, PhD. Associate Professor of Sociology, Assistant Research Professor at the University at Albany, SUNY
School of Public Health and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Women and Government, Summer
,
“Disability Oppression in the Contemporary U. S. Capitalist Workplace”, Science Society, Vol. 67, No. 2, 136-159; AB
UNTIL RECENTLY, DISABILITY WAS VIEWED as a property - a physical, mental, even spiritual fault - of an
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1 individual human being. Historically, this notion has underpinned social policies that have aimed at everything from extermination to re- habilitation of people with disabilities. Even rehabilitation , however, commonly has amounted to little more than preparing people with disabilities to function in social milieux, such as workplaces , to which they often had been denied access (Albrecht, 1992). In the 1970s and 1980s, the property definition of disability came under decisive attack. Disability activists, who were then breaking through multiple barriers, and disability scholars, who were then remaking the field of disability studies, fought for a relational defini- tion of disability. They sometimes acknowledged impairment in in- dividuals, but they located disability, as such, in the limitations im- posed upon individuals as they interacted with the social, including the built, environment. For example, these activists and scholars viewed traditionally low rates of labor force participation among people with disabilities as the consequence not of any deficiency of skills or capabilities but of the prevalence of barriers and discriminatory practices. This definitional breakthrough formed the basis for what is some- times called the social model of disability oppression (e.g., Abberley, 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 1995;
Albrecht, 1992, 1997; Albrecht and Bury, 2001; Charlton, 1998; Corker, 1993, 1998; Deegan, 1985; Finkelstein, 1980,
1993a, 1993b; Hahn, 1988, 1991, 1997; Hasler, 1993; Morris, 1991; Oliver, 1990, 1993, 1996; Russell, 1998; Shakespeare,
1992, 1994; Shakespeare and Watson, 1997, 2001; Stroman, 1982; Wendell, 1989, 1996), which, although questioned in part by some disability schol- ars (e.g., Crow, 1996; Dowse, 2001; French, 1993; Gleeson, 1997; Higgins, 1992; Hughes and Paterson, 1997; Humphrey, 2000; Scotch and Schriner, 1997; Williams, 2001), is now dominant in disability studies.
Recently, the social model has given rise to political-economic studies of disability oppression (Albrecht, 1992; Albrecht and Bury, 2001; Albrecht and Verbrugge, 2000; Charlton, 1998; Finkelstein, 1980; Oliver, 1990, 1996; Russell, 1998;
Stone, 1984; to situate these within the wider field of disability studies, see Williams, 2001), which have focused on the historical exclusion of people with disabilities from employment in capitalist societies. Capitalism, the general argument goes, created factory produc- tion, which separated home and workplace and segregated people with disabilities from family members who entered the waged labor force. Over time, the worth of individuals became tethered to new capitalist work roles. Although this historical change did not create pejorative attitudes toward people with disabilities - in Medieval
Eu-rope, for example, disability was often equated with demonic posses- sion - it provided such attitudes with new impetus and rationales: people with disabilities were devalued as abnormal and unfit for work (see Livneh, 1982). Charlton (1998) has emphasized the uneven impact on people with disabilities of capitalist development around the world. At one pole, capitalist accumulation has engendered the wealth to allow some families the luxury of caring for people with disabilities and occa- sioned the rise of private and public charities to care for still others. At the other pole, capitalism has created a reserve army of labor (Marx, 1964, Chapter XXV), the lowest sector of which includes a disproportionate number of people with disabilities who are more often than not outside the mainstream of society and its production process .
Most recently, as social contracts protecting the least-well- off collapse globally, people who are considered abnormal, includ- ing people with disabilities, find themselves increasingly excluded and oppressed (this position is argued in
Russell, 1998). While recent political-economic analyses of disability have illu- minated the historical sources and trajectory of disability oppression, such analyses have yet to offer systematic research on recent efforts to break down barriers to employment for people with disabilities in the richest capitalist societies.
In the United States, for example, dis- ability advocates and activists helped push through the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which outlawed various barriers to employment for people with disabilities.1 The ADA, at least formally, outfitted people with disabilities with a range of important civil rights. In employment, the ADA prohibited workplace discrimination and mandated workplace alterations, called "reasonable accommoda- tions," to enable employees with disabilities to perform their work roles on a par with others. The role of capital in the passage of the ADA was complex. On the one hand, the
ADA did not grow out of campaigns of corporate leaders, such as those that certain historians (Kolko, 1963; Sklar, 1988;
Weinstein, 1968) have detected behind national legislation, begin ning with the Progressive Era. On the other hand, although particu- lar companies and economic sectors objected to segments of the ADA - Greyhound, for example, fought hard to avoid having to redesign its buses to accommodate passengers or drivers with disabilities, the insurance industry successfully blocked equal access to health insur- ance for people with disabilities, and national small business coali- tions opposed meaningful penalties for noncompliance and stringent enforcement of the law (Parke, 1995, Chapter VI) - corporate capi- tal did not mount any general opposition to the ADA. This reflects the particular political conjuncture and process that gave birth to the ADA. First, corporate capital easily viewed the ADA as consistent with its general interests.
The law was first proposed and eventually drafted by the National Council on Disability (NCD) , a for- mally independent body charged with overseeing Federal disability policies, all of whose members at the time had been appointed by the corporate-friendly Reagan administration. The NCD suggested that the ADA, by promising to eliminate employment barriers, would lessen the need for social support programs for people with disabilities. The NCD thus couched its initiative in the anti-welfare, government-off-our- backs rhetoric of the day. Moreover, corporate capital, with produc- tion and marketing operations spanning the country and beyond, eas- ily viewed the ADA, which would set a single national standard for disability policy, as a potential advance over the farrago of local, state, and federal regulations that had grown up in recent decades in re- sponse to the demands of disability advocates and activists. Replacing this patchwork with a
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1 well-tailored coverall was another stated objec- tive of the NCD when it initially called for an ADA. Second, even if anyone had been inclined to try to mount one, the times were not propitious for a full-blown attack on the ADA. The disability rights movement, which had been gaining momentum for decades, was suddenly galvanized by the introduction into Congress of the ADA. For the first time ever, disability advocates and activists found their forces concentrated in a single national effort. While disability advocates were vigorously lobbying legislators and paraple- gic activists were crawling up the Capitol steps and chaining them- selves into the Rotunda, opposition to the ADA became increasingly difficult, even embarrassing. In the end, the ADA passed overwhelmingly (91 to 6 in the Sen- ate, 377 to 28 in the House)
(Parke, 1995). This consensus was made possible by, among other things, papering over actual and potential points of social conflict with vague language that left them unresolved. This effectively delayed such conflicts to the implementation phase of the ADA, when the national coalition of forces that constituted the disability rights movement might recede, either from the exhaustion of the battle or the exhilaration of the victory, or might fragment into smaller coalitions pursuing narrower issues. Capital, both at the level of national politics and at the level of local workplaces, might then be better able to assert its power and mold the ADA to its interests. This article extends existing political-economic analyses of disabil- ity oppression through an examination of interviews with employees with disabilities in the implementation phase of the
ADA. The voices of these ordinary working people seldom have been heard in the pub- lic discourse on disability rights.
What these employees report here is a common experience of alienation and harassment at work. Since this study's sample was drawn from a large state civil service system with a long history of policies against discrimination against people with disabilities, and since employees with disabilities generally have fared much better in the public than in the private sector
(Bruyère, 2000), this study provides a best-case view of the conditions faced by employees with disabilities in the contemporary U. S. capitalist workplace.
Michael
, Professor of Disability Studies @ University of Greenwich,
, “Capitalism, Disability and Ideology:
A Materialist Critique of the Normalization Principle”, http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/archiveuk/Oliver-cap-disideol.pdf; AB
A materialist approach to this would suggest, as does the French philosopher Foucault (1973) , that the way we talk about the world and the way we experience it are inextricably linked -the names we give to things shapes our experience of them and our experience of things in the world influences the names we give to them. Hence our practices of normalizing people and normalizing services both constructs and maintains the normal/abnormal dichotomy. It is becoming clear that the social structures of late capitalist societies cannot be discussed in a discourse of normality/abnormality, because what characterises them is difference; differences based on gender, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, abilities, religious beliefs, wealth, age, access or non-access to work and so on. And in societies founded on oppression, these differences cross cut and intersect each other in ways they we haven't even begun to properly understand, let alone try to resolve (Zarb and Oliver 1993). The concept of simultaneous oppression (Stuart 1993) may offer a more adequate way of understanding differences within the generic category of disability. Certainly people are beginning to talk about their experience in this way. "As a black disabled women, I cannot compartmentalise or separate aspects of my identity in this way. The collective experience of my race, disability and gender are what shape and inform my life". (Hill1994.7) Kirsten Hearn provides a poignant account of how disabled lesbians and gay men are excluded from all their potential communities. Firstly, "The severely able-bodied community and straight disabled community virtually ignored our campaign". (Hearn 1991.30) and,
"Issues of equality are not fashionable for the majority of the severely able-bodied, white, middle-class lesbian and gay communities. (Hearn 1991.33) The point that I am making is that the discourse of normalization (whatever the intent of its major proponents and however badly they feel it has been misused by its disciples} can never adequately describe or explain societies characterised by difference because of its reductionist views of both humanity and society. Individual and group differences cannot be described solely in terms of the normality/abnormality dichotomy and inegalitarian social structures cannot be explained by reference only to valued and devalued social roles. Normalization can also never serve to transform peoples lives; a point to which I shall return.
Pamela
, PhD. Associate Professor of Sociology, Assistant Research Professor at the University at Albany, SUNY
School of Public Health and a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Women and Government, Summer
,
“Disability Oppression in the Contemporary U. S. Capitalist Workplace”, Science Society, Vol. 67, No. 2, 136-159; AB
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1
This study of the ADA's implementation phase makes clear that employees with disabilities often are hired and retained less for their value as producers than for their value as symbols. As producers, they typically are undervalued; as symbols, they provide employers with the appearance of responsiveness to disability advocates, ad- herence to stated policies, or compliance with laws. Contemporary work organizations, as Acker (1990) famously underscored, com- monly operate with a notion of an ideal employee. Sometimes ex- plicitly but more often implicitly, this ideal is a white, able-bodied male, against which non-whites, women, and people with disabili- ties are invidiously compared. Individuals who do not fit the ideal get hired, but disproportionately in lower-level jobs and often as tokens. The concentration of employees with disabilities at the bot- tom of the occupational structure is consistently revealed by employ- ment data, and tokenism seems to account in many cases for their hiring and retention. Capital not only often undervalues the labor of employees with disabilities, but commonly treats such employees as an unreasonable drain on revenues . This can be seen most clearly in the area of accommodations. Capital, which of course admits no universal right to employment, admits no necessity to design and organize production processes to accommodate all possible employees, including employ- ees with disabilities.
In this context, accommodations, even the "reasonable accommo- dations" required under the ADA, are easily viewed not
21s necessary measures for realizing the potential of the labor force but as unneces- sary costs. As a colleague and I have reported elsewhere (Harlan and Robert, 1998), employers use a variety of subterfuges to prevent em- ployees with disabilities from requesting accommodations. Ultimately the least likely type of accommodation to be granted is any that might be perceived by able-bodied employees as equally useful to them. Thus, requests for more flexible work schedules or relief from mandatory overtime routinely get denied. Granting such requests could easily snowball into numerous requests from able- bodied employees for comparable accommodations. More funda- mentally, granting such requests would threaten to expose the con- tingent character of the workplace routines that capital imposes on its employees. Ultimately, granting such requests could potentially lay bare the arbitrary nature of capitalist authority. It is thus no won- der that, as one employee with a disability explained, "They [employ- ers] don't want to set a precedent" (42). In the capitalist context of competitive labor markets and job hierarchies, of course, even undervalued and token employees can be perceived as threatening by co-workers and supervisors. If, as is known, white males can feel threatened by the prospect of minori- ties or women performing comparable or higher-level jobs, consider how easy it is for able-bodied employees to feel threatened by the prospect of employees with disabilities doing comparable work. Some alienation and harassment of employees with disabilities doubtless stems from workplace enactment of wider cultural patterns, but much is due to the competitive nature of the capitalist workplace itself. Alienating and harassing employees with disabilities is a way of effec- tively sidelining them in the competitive struggle. Still, not all employees with disabilities are harassed to the same degree. The incidence and intensity of harassment clearly varies by individual. Harassment may be episodic and mild, or continuous and severe.
Many factors, from the idiosyncrasies of whether particular co-workers or supervisors seem to like or dislike a particular employee with a disability to the generalities of cultural prejudices against cer- tain types of disabilities, clearly influence this variation. But one factor emerged so frequently in the interviews for this study that it merits special mention: the degree to which co-workers or supervisors held employees with disabilities responsible for their disabilities or their symptoms.
Some interviewees, especially those recovering from drug or alcohol addiction or struggling with HIV/ AIDS, reported being blamed for their disabilities by co-workers or supervisors. But even when interviewees were not explicitly blamed for their own disabilities, they frequently were blamed for making too much of them. All else equal, employees with disabilities or symp- toms for which they were perceived to be responsible experienced a higher level of harassment than employees with disabilities or symp- toms for which they were not perceived to be responsible. This reflects the hegemony of the capitalist ideology of individual responsibility. This ideology, which abstracts the qualities of individu- als from the social, political, and economic context in which they emerge, is convenient for everyone except the faulted individuals.
Through this ideological lens, members of historically oppressed groups are held responsible for their own oppression; and when they seek equal treatment, they typically are accused of seeking "special treatment." By focusing attention and ire on such groups, the ideol- ogy of individual responsibility helps deflect attention from the spe- cial treatment enjoyed by capital through exploitative relations of production. At a more concrete level, this ideology shifts the onus for behavior toward employees with disabilities, and away from capi- tal and its agents. Rather than it being assumed that they are entitled to equal treatment, employees with disabilities often are expected to prove their right to such treatment.
Paradoxically, this often means that they should simply accept, without complaint, whatever treatment comes their way
Overall, alienation and harassment of employees with disabili- ties, regardless of how widespread and offensive, are readily tolerated by the various supervisory levels within workplaces. Partly because of their low value as token workers, little or nothing typically is done when employees with disabilities report being harassed. Those in charge commonly trivialize such reports as unimportant, dismiss them as emanating from inveterate complainers, or deflect them as con- cerning issues about which no one can do much of anything. What- ever the response, the employer tolerates the harassment and sends the message to employees with disabilities that they should tolerate it too. Throughout the implementation phase of the ADA, such toler- ance has not just prevailed within workplaces. It also has extended to the top of the political system. As Colker
(1999) showed in great detail, the federal courts had by the time of her study turned the ADA into "a windfall for
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1 defendants," that is, for capital, which had pre- vailed in more than 93% of the ADA employment discrimination cases brought against it, and in 84% of those cases that were appealed. Measured by their lack of success as plaintiffs, Colker found employ- ees with disabilities comparable only to prisoners seeking protection of their rights. Tolerance of unequal treatment of employees with disabilities at the political top, of course, has facilitated continued tolerance of discrimination in workplaces. Capital's recovery of much of what it at least formally and poten- tially stood to lose under the ADA has been facilitated by the level- ing off, even downturn, of the disability rights movement since the passage of the legislation in 1991. According to one count (Barnartt, Schriner, and Scotch, 2001), the number of disability protests in the United
States, which averaged almost 43 a year in the first half of the 1990s (1990-1994), dropped only slightly to 41 a year in the second half of the 1990s (1995 through July 26, 1999). Such a count, how- ever, tells us nothing about the number of participants and their level of organization and militancy. More importantly, it overlooks that the passage of the ADA robbed the disability rights movement of a light- ning rod that concentrated its forces , as never before or since, in a single, sustained, national movement.6 In any event, capital has met little resistance to its ability to mold the outcome of the
ADA during the implementation phase. The pat- tern here is reminiscent of Marx's well-known discussion of the work- ing day (Capital, Volume I, Chapter X), where he described the many "small thefts of capital" during the implementation of the
Ten Hour Act. There, capital's efforts to recover what it had lost from the cap- ping of hours of work were facilitated by the disintegration of the Chartist movement. These widely divergent examples underscore the critical importance of continuing social and political struggle in de- termining the outcome of social reform. Any legislative act is just that, a single event that occurs in the midst of an ongoing struggle. Overcoming disability oppression in the contemporary U. S. capitalist workplace would require a continuing, militant and national movement of disability advocates and activists. Such a movement could garner support from a wide spectrum of workers. Winning equal treatment of employees with disabilities - some of the most undervalued of all employees - would bolster all workers' demands for equal treatment.
Fully accommodating employees with disabili- ties would lay bare the contingent and arbitrary nature of capital's domination of the production process. These realities give demands for equality and accommodation for people with disabilities an im- portant role in any struggle for humane and democratically con- trolled workplaces.
Both groups can also be criticised for taking a
somewhat naive view of the political process
in that their campaigning is based upon three assumptions: that evidence must be produced to show the chronic financial circumstances of disabled people; that proposals for a national disability income must be properly costed to show that the burden on the economy will be marginal; and that sustained pressure must be mounted to hammer these points home to the political decision-makers.' This approach
has been called `the social administration approach' and has been criticised for its assumptions about consensual values, rational decision-making, its unproblematic view of the State and its failure to acknowledge, let alone consider the role of, ideology
. Perhaps the only thing that can be said in its favour is that If the empiricist study of consensual solutions to defined social problems did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it: democratic welfare capitalism presupposes the social administration approach
. (Taylor-Gooby &Dale, 1981, p. 15)
What the income approach to disability fails to understand
, therefore, is that political decisions are not made on the strength of particular cases, but in ways whereby the capitalist system itself benefits, regardless of the appearance of consensual values concerning the need for a national disability income. The establishment of such a scheme implies the paying of one group of people a sufficient income for not working to enable them to have a quality of life comparable to another group of people who do work. This, of course, has enormous implications for any system which requires its members to produce sufficient goods and services to sustain the material life of the population, and indeed for its ideological underpinnings which emphasise the value of those who do work and denigrates those who do not.
In short, the fundamental question of whether a national disability income is achievable within capitalism has never been addressed
. It is this failure to address fundamental issues which has brought criticism of both DIG and the
Disability Alliance from the more `populist' organisation, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS). The two major criticisms of this approach are that it concentrates on a symptom (i.e. the poverty of disabled people) rather than the cause (i.e. the oppression of disabled people by society),
and that both organisations have moved away from representing disabled people and instead presenting an `expert' view of the problem.
The logical conclusion to this approach, according to this analysis, is to make things worse, not better.
Thus in practice the Alliance's assessment plans, developed logically from the narrow incomes approach, can be seen to increase the isolation and oppression of physically impaired people. We would be required to sit alone under observation on one side of the table, while facing us on the other side, social administrators would sit together in panels. We would be passive, nervous, deferential, careful not to upset the panel: in short, showing all the psychological attributes commonly associated with disability. It would be the social administrators who would gain strength, support and confidence from colleagues on the panel. A token number of the more privileged physically impaired people might be included, as they are in the Alliance .
But the whole approach would reinforce the historical and traditional situation whereby physically impaired people are made dependent upon the thinking and decisions of others
. (UPIAS, 1976, p. 18)
This debate about `expert or `mass' representation in respect of pressure group activity has continued into the 1980s, with Townsend (1986) claiming that these groups can only be `representative' in certain senses. But what they can do is commit themselves unreservedly to the interests of millions of poor people, call representative injustices to public
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1 notice and exchange blow with blow in an expert struggle with the Government over the effects, implications and constitutional niceties of policy. (Townsend, 1986, p. v) But like UPIAS before it, BCODP denies the claims of such groups to be representative in any sense, suggests that expert representation can only be counterproductive and argues that the only way forward is to fully involve disabled people in their own political movement. If this analysis is correct, then it is, perhaps, fortunate that a national disability income is likely to be unachievable within capitalist society.
The crucial issue from a political point of view, however, is whether the traditional, single-issue, pressure group campaign for a national disability income is, any longer, a relevant tactic for the post-capitalist world to which we are moving. The following sections will suggest that the politics of disablement can only be properly understood as part of the new social movements which are a part of post-capitalist society and that this casts severe doubt on the relevance of single-issue pressure group politics.
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1
,
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that our ethicopolitical responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global capitalism and its obscene naturalization/anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world. Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture — with all its pieties concerning ‘multiculturalist’ etiquette — Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called ‘radically incorrect’ in the sense that it breaks with these types of positions and focuses instead on the very organizing principles of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedevilled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and Mouffe, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say , the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism (i .e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marx’s central insight that in order to create a universal global system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its construction through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose ‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the world’s population. In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgement in a neutral marketplace. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded ‘life-chances’ cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and nameless ( viz, the patronizing reference to the
‘developing world’. And Zizek’s point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalism’s profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale. While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizek’s universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or to reduce the status of the abject Other to that of a ‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.
Ravi
, Harvard Law and Canadian disability rights activist, Summer
, “The Politics of the Disability
Rights Movements”, http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue31/malhot31.htm; AB
At their very root, contemporary disability rights movements have as their goal the empowerment of disabled people. This is hardly a surprise as disabled people today remain among the most marginal of citizens in the United States, as well as in other leading Western industrialized countries. By every statistical measure known to sociologists, whether it is poverty levels, unemployment rates or levels of education, disabled people score very poorly. Even after years of a boom economy, disabled people remain disproportionately unemployed and impoverished. This goal of empowerment, however, is undermined by the fact that disablement is still widely perceived, even on the left, as a personal problem fundamentally caused by the individual's medical impairment. The medical impairment is seen as the primary cause for the disabled individual's lack of success. The disability rights movements, however, are predicated on the notion that it is the structural and attitudinal barriers in capitalist society that are the fundamental cause for the discrimination and oppression faced by disabled peop le. In this framework, disabled people are handicapped by the systemic lack of wheelchair access to public services, the failure of educational institutions and employers to make materials available in alternative formats for blind and visually impaired people, and the intricate bureaucracy that disabled people must navigate in order to get essential
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1 services such as income support and medical services. Hence, attention needs to be redirected from the medical impairment or medical model of disablement to the social-political issues that underpin disability oppression . In other words, the first step in the liberation of disabled people is a fundamental paradigm shift.
[MARTA RUSSELL AND RAVI MALHOTRA; Writer on the political, social and economic aspects of disablement AND Malhotra-B.A. Joint Honours, Political Science/Law (Carleton), M.A. International
Affairs (Carleton), LL.B. (Ottawa), LL.M. (Harvard), S.J.D. (University of Toronto), of the Bar of Ontario, Associate
Professor. “CAPITALISM AND DISABILITY”; Socialist Register, Vol. 38]
Historical materialism provides a theoretical base from which to explain these ¶ conditions and outcomes
.
Under feudalism, economic exploitation was direct and ¶ political, made possible by the feudal concentration of land ownership.
While a ¶ few owners reaped the surplus, many living on their estates worked for subsistence ¶ and disabled people were able to participate in this economy to varying ¶ degrees.13
Notwithstanding religious superstition about disabled people during the ¶ Middle Ages, and significant persecution of them, the rural production process ¶ that predominated prior to the Industrial Revolution permitted many disabled ¶ people to make a genuine contribution to daily economic life.14
¶
With the advent of capitalism, people were no longer tied to the land, but they
212 SOCIALIST REGISTER 2002 ¶ were forced to find work that would pay a wage — or starve
; and as production ¶ became industrialized people’s bodies were increasingly valued for their ability to ¶ function like machines. Bosses could push non-disabled workers to produce at ¶ ever increasing rates of speed. Factory discipline, time-keeping and production ¶ norms broke with the slower, more self-determined and flexible work pattern ¶ into which many disabled people had been integrated.15 As work became more ¶ rationalized, requiring precise mechanical movements of the body, repeated in ¶ quicker succession, impaired persons — the deaf or blind, and those with mobility ¶ difficulties — were seen as — and, without job accommodations to meet their ¶ impairments, were — less ‘fit’ to do the tasks required of factory workers, and ¶ were increasingly excluded from paid employment.16
And so ‘the operation of the labour market in the nineteenth century effectively depressed handicapped people ¶ of all kinds to the bottom of the market’.17
¶ Industrial capitalism thus created not only a class of proletarians but also a new ¶ class of ‘disabled’ who did not conform to the standard worker’s body and whose ¶ labour-power was effectively erased, excluded from paid work
.18 As a result, ¶ disabled persons came to be regarded as a social problem and a justification
¶ emerged for segregating them out of mainstream life and into a variety of institutions
, ¶ including workhouses, asylums, prisons, colonies and special schools
.19
¶ Exclusion was further rationalized by Social
Darwinists, who used biology to ¶ argue that heredity — race and genes — prevailed over the class and economic ¶ issues raised by Marx and others
. Just as the
‘inferior’ weren’t meant to survive
¶ in nature, they were not meant to survive in a competitive society
. Legislation, ¶ influenced by
Social Darwinism and eugenics theory, was enacted in a number ¶ of jurisdictions for the involuntary sterilization of disabled people.20 Advocates of ¶ eugenics such as Galton,
Dugdale and Goddard propagated the myth that there ¶ was an inevitable genetic link between physical and mental impairments and ¶ crime and unemployment.21 This was also linked to influential theories of racial ¶ superiority, according to which the birth of disabled children should be regarded ¶ as a threat to racial purity.22 In the notorious Buck v.
Bell decision of 1927, the ¶ US Supreme Court upheld the legality of the forced sterilization of disabled ¶ people
. At the extreme, Nazi Germany determined that disabled individuals were ¶ an economic burden and exterminated tens of thousands of them
.23 But even in ¶ ‘democratic’ America bean-counting logic prevailed: by 1938, thirty-three ¶ American states had sterilization laws and between 1921 and 1964 over 63,000 ¶ disabled people were involuntarily sterilized
in a pseudo-scientific effort to ¶ prevent the births of disabled offspring and save on social costs.24 Whether or not ¶ codified into law, the sterilization of disabled people was common in a number ¶ of countries in the first half of the twentieth century, including Britain, ¶ Denmark,
Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada.25
(Rob, Heartland Community College, “The Postmodern Turn in Disability Studies,” Atenea, Vol. 25, No. 1.)
I see at least two limitations here. First, disability studies hopes to repair the status of disabled people within the framework of a global capitalist system
. The politics suggested in Thomson’s work are at every point underwritten by notions of identity that are distinctly capitalist ways of knowing
. Further, she underestimates the trenchant capacity for exploitation and oppression that capitalism fosters and needs.
In fact, disability studies currently aims for the disabled to be slightly less exploited or, at worst, to join the ranks of exploiter, all of which seems incommensurate with a truly radical politics.
Second,
Disability Studies currently suffers from the logics of localization and particularization, which are also capitalist ways of knowing.
In Empire Hardt and Negri write, In the decades of the current crisis of the communist, socialist, and liberal Left that has followed the 1960s, a large portion of critical thought, both in the dominant countries of capitalist development and in the subordinated ones, has sought to recompose sites of resistance that are founded on the identities of social subjects or national and regional groups, often grounding political analysis on the localization of struggles. (44)
This localist position
, Hardt and Negri maintain, must be critiqued, as must the “the social machines that create and recreate the identities and differences that are understood to be local ” (45). Currently, the political project of disability studies suffers from the localization of struggles
, which effectively prevents the plights of the disabled in overdeveloped areas of the world
, say, from ever being theorized next to those of the disabled in disadvantaged areas. This is not to say, however, that disability studies does not enjoy a productive crosscontinental communication, for while clearly disability theorists in the US and abroad influence each other intellectually, as yet no political project has been posited linking the concerns of the disabled worldwide
. 3 T his lack is coterminous with currently insufficient accounts in disability studies of the complex sets of social relations determined by capitalist modes of production. At the heart of the matter, though, is a general abstraction of “disability” from its materiality
—from its rootedness in
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1 daily life—and it is here that we must begin to make amends.
Little is made
, for example, of the “near total [economic] dependency” of the disabled and how that corresponds to the transformation in modes of production from agrarian to industrial, creating a workforce of interested individuals competing to sell their wage labor
(Nibert 70). Or, for example, on how the concentration and centralization of wealth under capitalism underwrites the ideologies of the free individual while making increasingly difficult the possibility of self-reliance, social mobility, or true, lived equality
(Nibert 75-76). To this end, I find promise in the works of
Lennard J. Davis. In “Constructing Normalcy,” Davis too focuses on norms and analyzes the historical “invention” of “normalcy” in the nineteenth century.4 He locates the advent of body norms in industrialization and the concomitant set of practices and discourses linked to late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century notions of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and criminality. Whereas before industrialization in the Western world, Davis asserts, images of the ideal body are bound to divinity and artistic traditions working to visualize the gods’ bodies, processes of modernization establish a link between the body and industry and eventually result in the formulation of a “common man”
(11). The pre-modern ideal body is the divine body and thus “not attainable by a human” (10); the assertion of an “average” or “normal” body, rationalized, Davis suggests, by the field of statistics and then disciplined and enforced by medico-scientific fields like eugenics, “implies that the majority of the population must or should somehow be part of the norm” (13). The establishment of a “norm,” then, divides bodies into standard and nonstandard categories. This new knowledge in the nineteenth century that bodies can be normed and standardized, according to Davis, carries with it harsh consequences. Davis emphasizes the consequences of one particular field legitimated by modernity— fingerprinting. Modern systems of fingerprinting for personal identification are founded on the notion that physical traits could be inherited, and fingerprints themselves were often thought to be physical marks of parentage. The fingerprint, then, suggests a body’s identity, which, Davis concludes, “coincides with its [the body’s] essence and cannot be altered by moral, artistic, or human will” (15). He writes, By this logic, the person enters into an identical relationship with the body, the body forms the identity, and the identity is unchangeable and indelible as one’s place on the normal curve. For our purposes, then, this fingerprinting of the body means that the marks of physical difference become synonymous with the identity of the person. (15) With this new discourse on the body in place, deviance from the norm soon can be identified with weakness, uselessness, and criminality. Thus suddenly and quite easily in the nineteenth century, “criminals, the poor, and people with disabilities might be mentioned in the same breath” (17). Davis picks up this idea again in his more recent book, Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions. This time, however, he ties the construction of normalcy more explicitly to social relations overdetermined by capitalist divisions of labor. Once again he draws upon “knowledge” rationalized by the field of statistics, which, he claims, following the logic of capitalism severed notions of equality among citizens from ethical considerations and placed them more fully within quasi-scientific considerations. Using Habermas’s delineation of the fundamental paradox in Enlightenment thinking between the philosophical/ethical goal of establishing societies of equality, freedom, and liberty and capitalism’s drive to distribute wealth unequally, Davis traces how advances in math and science were used to rationalize this paradox. Statistics, which could posit the bell curve as a natural law, “proved” that the distribution of wealth must also fall along this same curve. Thus, “the very theory that allows the individual to be instantiated in the collective on an equal basis also allows for wealth to be unequally distributed” (111). Davis writes further that Once the ethical notion [of equality] is reconditioned by the statistical one, the notion of equality is transformed. Indeed, the operative notion of equality, especially as it applies to the working classes, is really one of interchangeability. As the average man can be constructed, so can the average worker. All working bodies are equal to all other working bodies because they are interchangeable. This interchangeability, particularly in nineteenth-century factories, means that workers’ bodies are conceptualized as identical. So the term “able-bodied” workers came to be interchangeable with able-bodied citizens. This ideological module has obvious references to the issue of disability. (111) Thus, in Bending Over Backwards
Davis begins the much needed project in humanities-based disability studies of delineating how capitalism overdetermines social relations, bodily norms, and human ways of knowing. His work, like Hennessy’s in feminist studies, begins to theorize materiality as not just discursive and normative. While his theories are certainly open to critique—he consistently narrows his focus to deafness, which might suggest another instance of the localization of struggles—Davis steadfastly refuses to allow mere representations of disability to be the object of study.5 This aspect of Davis’s theories initiates, I believe, a truly progressive project. While Davis is among the best-known disability studies scholars, his conceptual framework is certainly not representative of the field as a whole. Indeed, Davis even repeatedly praises the work done by scholars like Thomson.
Ultimately, I attribute this to the postmodern turn in theory, generally, and in disability studies, particularly, which would make causality problematic and unfashionable. Do I support a return to some of the nastier consequences of modernism’s totalizing logic? Of course not. What I propose
, however, is a full and sustained critique of the limits of postmodern projects.
Specifically, I want us to acknowledge, as Hardt and Negri and Hennessy suggest in various ways, how the localizing tendencies of postmodern thought effectively occlude the possibility of radical structural change
. As Jameson writes, the unforeseeable return of narrative as the narrative of the end of narratives, this return of history in the midst of the prognosis of the de mise of historical telos, suggests … the way in which virtually any observation about the present can be mobilized in the very search for the present itself and pressed into service as a symptom and an index of the deeper logic of the postmodern, which imperceptibly turns into its own theory and theory of itself
. How could it be otherwise when there no longer exists any such “deeper logic” for the surface to manifest and when the symptom has become its own disease (and vice versa, no doubt)? (Postmodernism xii)
The time has come for disability studies to cease mobilizing its historicization in a search for the present—which ultimately is what cultural materialist projects undertake—and begin indexing
what in A Singular Modernity Jameson refers to as an “ ontology of the present.” The time has come for disability studies to enact a truly radical project first by critiquing capitalist ways of knowing and then by recovering a Utopian narrative outside of the current structures of oppression and exploitation.
Capitalism makes all people “bend over backwards”; a truly radical disability studies can help us acknowledge that.
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(James Overboe, PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, “‘Difference in
Itself’: Validating Disabled People’s Lived Experience,”
http://a.parsons.edu/~nesrin/thesis/research/differenceinitself.pdf )
Fourth, according to Deleuze (1994), difference has been relegated to the separation of ‘this’ from ‘that’ according to the need to categorize. There is a distribution of difference that is entirely dependent on representation. For example, most disabled people would be primarily classified as disabled persons, which separates them from others with the exception of other disabled people. Although they would also be cross-referenced under the terms sex, race, age, education, employment and familial position the category of disability overshadows all other categories that are indexed. Yet sometimes disabled people do not fit neatly into these categories. For example, initially I was judged to be abnormal in comparison to the ablebodied population (Foucault, 1980). In some ways I could accept this designation because I was classified (albeit negatively) as having cerebral palsy which gave me a sense of ‘identity’ (albeit devalued) and ‘place’ (albeit marginal).
However, an incident in my life began my questioning the classification of people. While undergoing a physical examination the head orthopaedic surgeon told the observing medical students that I failed to reach the recovery levels expected of cerebral palsy patients. I was shattered because not only was I not ‘normal’ but now I was also judged to be a
‘freak’ among people who experience cerebral palsy. In terms of cerebral palsy or able-bodied embodiment there was no prior template from which I came. It could be argued that I was born into a family that through genetics and socialization left me with some sort of ‘blueprint’ to follow. But, as I have argued, the representation of disability often negated my lived experience that includes my genetic background as well as my familial influence. Moreover, it is not a given that a family will provide a supportive environment for
disabled people as the Latimer case illustrates. The difference between my upbringing and that of Tracy Latimer stems from my family’s willingness to validate my lived experience. The classification of disability and, more specifically, cerebral palsy derived from the ‘desire’ of society to impose a category upon me. After I overcame the uncertainty and the fear of being ‘different for itself’ (to use
Deleuze’s term) with no category with which to anchor my existence or no place to belong, I felt a sense of freedom because I was released from the restrictions of the ability/disability categories. It was only then that I was able to validate my experience of cerebral palsy (I realize that the term ‘cerebral palsy’ is a restrictive category itself, but presently I do not have a language that adequately describes my experience). But no matter how detrimental the devaluation of a disabled sensibility, the temptation to be safe and fall back on the familiar ability/disability continuum and its understandings is seductive. Thus for me there is an on-going struggle to escape these understandings that to some extent are embedded in my lived experience. I feel the risk in applying ‘difference in itself’ will be beneficial to myself and others in my interaction with them. Hopefully, both myself and others will be able to shed our preconceived notions about ableism. Perhaps
Nietzsche was right. Speaking of the notion of ‘Eternal Recurrence’, Philip Kain (1996: 138–9) argues that the ‘new heaven’ is not an escape from the suffering of this world. You must see and interpret the world in a different way. Based on his own experience, Nietzsche believes that we need to embrace illness and have it no other way . Through illness
Nietzsche hopes to create new meaning. While I do not necessarily associate disability with illness I realize that both physical manifestations are considered to be negations of able-bodiedness. Therefore, I feel that Kain’s (1996) interpretation of Nietzsche has pertinence for validating a disabled sensibility. No longer will we be considered the negation of a ‘quality’ life. No longer will we be considered heroic representations to be put on a pedestal. Nor will we be vilified or pitied as representations of what can go wrong with humanity’s fragile existence. Our experience of disability must be embraced in order for there to be the creation of a new meaning of life.
, professor of philosophy at Santa Clara, 20
[Philip J., “Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of Existence,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 33 (2007), 49-63]
Why is it best never to have been born? Because all we can expect as human beings is to suffer. Yet, still, this is not precisely the problem. As Nietzsche tells us in On the Genealogy of Morals, human beings can live with suffering. What they cannot live with is meaningless suffering—suffering for no reason at all (GM III:28). In Nietzsche's view we are
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"surrounded by a fearful void . . ." (GM III:28; cf. WP 55). We live in an empty, meaningless cosmos. We cannot look into reality without being overcome. Indeed, in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche even suggests that "it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish . . ." (BGE 39; cf. WP 822). And it was not just intellectual reflection that led Nietzsche to a belief in the horror of existence. He lived it himself.2 In a letter of
April 10, 1888, he writes: "Around 1876 my health grew worse. . . . There were extremely painful and obstinate headaches which exhausted all my strength. They increased over long years, to reach a climax at which pain was habitual, so that any given year contained for me two hundred days of pain. . . . My specialty was to endure the extremity of pain . . . with complete lucidity for two or three days in succession, with continuous vomiting of mucus."3 In Nietzsche contra Wagner, he tells us how significant this suffering was for him: I have often asked myself whether I am not much more deeply indebted to the hardest years of my life than to any others. . . . And as to my prolonged illness, [End P0age 49] do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it!—To it, I owe even my philosophy. . . . Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of the spirit. . . . Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths. . . . (NCW
"Epilogue") Nietzsche's belief in the horror of existence is largely, if not completely, overlooked by most scholars.4 I hope to show that it had a profound effect on his thought, indeed, that he cannot be adequately understood without seeing the centrality of this concept. To begin to understand its importance, let us consider three different visions of the human condition. The first holds that we live in a benign cosmos. It is as if it were purposively planned for us and we for it. We fit, we belong, we are at home in this cosmos. We are confirmed and reinforced by it. Our natural response is a desire to know it and thus to appreciate our fit into it. Let us call this the designed cosmos. Roughly speaking, this is the traditional view held by most philosophers from Plato and Aristotle through the medievals. And for the most part it has disappeared in the modern world—few really believe in it anymore. The second vision backs off from the assumptions required by the first.
This view started with Francis Bacon, if not before, and it is the view of most moderns. Here the cosmos is neither alien nor designed for us. It is neither terrifying nor benign. The cosmos is neutral and, most importantly, malleable. Human beings must come to understand the cosmos through science and control it through technology. We must make it fit us. It does not fit us by design. We must work on it, transform it, and mold it into a place where we can be at home. We must create our own place. For these modern thinkers, we end up with more than the ancients and medievals had. We end up with a fit like they had, but we get the added satisfaction of bringing it about ourselves, accomplishing it through our own endeavor, individuality, and freedom. Let us call this the perfectible cosmos. The third vision takes the cosmos to be alien. It was not designed for human beings at all; nor were they designed for it. We just do not fit. We do not belong. And we never will.
The cosmos is horrible, terrifying, and we will never surmount this fact. It is a place where human beings suffer for no reason at all. It is best never to have been born. Let us call this the horrific cosmos. This is Nietzsche's view. Nietzsche simply dismisses the designed cosmos, which few believe in anymore anyway (WP 12a). On the other hand, Nietzsche takes the perfectible cosmos very seriously. He resists it with every fiber of his being.5 For Nietzsche, we must stop wasting time and energy hoping to change things, improve them, make progress (see, e.g., WP 40, 90, 684)—the outlook of liberals, socialists, and even Christians, all of whom Nietzsche tends to lump together and excoriate. For [End Page 50]
Nietzsche, we cannot reduce suffering, and to keep hoping that we can will simply weaken us. Instead, we must conceal an alien and terrifying cosmos if we hope to live in it. And we must develop the strength to do so. We must toughen ourselves.
We need more suffering, not less. It has "created all enhancements of man so far . . ." (BGE 225, 44; WP 957; GM II:7). If we look deeply into the essence of things, into the horror of existence, Nietzsche thinks we will be overwhelmed— paralyzed. Like Hamlet we will not be able to act, because we will see that action cannot change the eternal nature of things
(BT 7). We must see, Nietzsche says, that "a profound illusion . . . first saw the light of the world in the person of Socrates: the unshakeable faith that thought . . . can penetrate the deepest abysses of being, and that thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it. This sublime metaphysical illusion accompanies science as an instinct . . ." (BT
15). In Nietzsche's view, we cannot change things. Instead, with Hamlet we should "feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that [we] should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint" (BT 7; cf. TI "Anti-Nature," 6). Knowledge of the horror of existence kills action—which requires distance and illusion. The horror and meaninglessness of existence must be veiled if we are to live and act. What we must do, Nietzsche thinks, is construct a meaning for suffering. Suffering we can handle.
Meaningless suffering, suffering for no reason at all, we cannot handle. So we give suffering a meaning. We invent a meaning. We create an illusion. The Greeks constructed gods for whom wars and other forms of suffering were festival plays and thus an occasion to be celebrated by the poets. Christians imagine a God for whom suffering is punishment for sin (GM II:7; cf. D 78). One might find all this unacceptable. After all, isn't it just obvious that we can change things, reduce suffering, improve existence, and make progress? Isn't it just obvious that modern science and technology have done so? Isn't it just absurd for Nietzsche to reject the possibility of significant change? Hasn't such change already occurred? Well, perhaps not. Even modern environmentalists might resist all this obviousness. They might respond in a rather Nietzschean vein that technology may have caused as many problems as it has solved. The advocate of the
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1 perfectible cosmos, on the other hand, would no doubt counter such Nietzschean pessimism by arguing that even if technology does cause some problems, the solution to those problems can only come from better technology. Honesty requires us to admit, however, that this is merely a hope, not something for which we already have evidence, not something that it is absurd to doubt—not at all something obvious. Further technology may or may not improve things. The widespread use of antibiotics seems to have done a miraculous job of improving our health and reducing suffering, but we are also discovering that such antibiotics give rise to even more powerful bacteria that are immune to those [End Page 51] antibiotics. We have largely eliminated diseases like cholera, smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, but we have produced cancer and heart disease. We can cure syphilis and gonorrhea, but we now have AIDS. Even if we could show that it will be possible to continuously reduce suffering, it is very unlikely that we will ever eliminate it. If that is so, then it remains a real question whether it is not better to face suffering, use it as a discipline, perhaps even increase it, so as to toughen ourselves, rather than let it weaken us, allow it to dominate us, by continually hoping to overcome it. But whatever we think about the possibility of reducing suffering, the question may well become moot. Nietzsche tells a story: "Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of 'world history,' but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die" (TL 1, 79). Whatever progress we might think we are making in reducing suffering, whatever change we think we are bringing about, it may all amount to nothing more than a brief and accidental moment in biological time, whose imminent disappearance will finally confirm the horror and meaninglessness of existence. The disagreement here is not so much about the quantity of suffering that we can expect to find in the world but, rather, its nature. For proponents of the designed cosmos, suffering is basically accidental. It is not fundamental or central to life. It is not a necessary part of the nature of things. It does not make up the essence of existence. We must develop virtue, and then we can basically expect to fit and be at home in the cosmos. For the proponents of a perfectible cosmos, suffering is neither essential nor unessential.
The cosmos is neutral. We must work on it to reduce suffering. We must bring about our own fit. For Nietzsche, even if we can change this or that, even if we can reduce suffering here and there, what cannot be changed for human beings is that suffering is fundamental and central to life. The very nature of things, the very essence of existence, means suffering.
Moreover, it means meaningless suffering—suffering for no reason at all. That cannot be changed—it can only be concealed.
20
(Aydan, Prof of Humanities and Soc Sciences @ Istanbul Technical Institute, “Nietzsche and the Later
Wittgenstein: An Offense to the Quest for Another World” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 26)
The craving for absolutely general specifications results in doing metaphysics. Unlike Wittgenstein, Nietzsche provides an account of how this craving arises. The creation of the two worlds such as apparent and real world, conditioned and unconditioned world, being and becoming is the creation of the ressentiment of metaphysicians. Nietzsche says, "to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for a world that makes one suffer: the ressentiment of metaphysicians against actuality is here creative" (WP III 579). Escaping from this world because there is grief in it results in asceticism. [End Page 61] Paying respect to the ascetic ideal is longing for the world that is pure and denaturalized.
Craving for frictionless surfaces, for a transcendental, pure, true, ideal, perfect world, is the result of the ressentiment of metaphysicans who suffer in this world. Metaphysicians do not affirm this world as it is, and this paves the way for many explanatory theories in philosophy. In criticizing a philosopher who pays homage to the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche says, "he wants to escape from torture" (GM III 6). The traditional philosopher or the ascetic priest continues to repeat, "'My kingdom is not of this world'" (GM III 10). This is a longing for another world in which one does not suffer. It is to escape from this world; to create another illusory, fictitious, false world. This longing for "the truth" of a world in which one does not suffer is the desire for a world of constancy. It is supposed that contradiction, change, and deception are the causes of suffering; in other words, the senses deceive; it is from the senses that all misfortunes come; reason corrects the errors; therefore reason is the road to the constant. In sum, this world is an error; the world as it ought to be exists. This will to truth, this quest for another world, this desire for the world as it ought to be, is the result of unproductive thinking. It is unproductive because it is the result of avoiding the creation of the world as it ought to be. According to Nietzsche, the will to truth is "the impotence of the will to create" (WP III 585). Metaphysicians end up with the creation of the "true" world in contrast to the actual, changeable, deceptive, self-contradictory world. They try to discover the true, transcendental world that is already there rather than creating a world for themselves. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the transcendental world is the "denaturalized world" (WP III 586). The way out of the circle created by the ressentiment of metaphysicians is the will to life rather than the will to truth. The will to truth can be overcome only through a Dionysian relationship to existence. This is the way to a new philosophy, which in Wittgenstein's terms aims "to show the fly the way out of the fly-
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1 bottle" (PI §309).
Sadegh
, doctoral candidate in Middle Eastern politics and previously worked as a journalist based in the United
Arab Emirates, 20
Salomé argues that after his conception of the eternal recurrence Nietzsche became transfigured. His contradictions were not only heightened to an unbearable degree but he became irreparably torn between an unbridled loathing and an equally powerful desire to embrace the eternal recurrence of the same.
[lxviii] Salomé concludes that madness was the only logical possibility for such a fractured and tormented soul. But these ad hominem remarks miss the point. Nietzsche’s credo that
‘Pain does not count as an objection to life’ flies in the face of Salomé’s diagnosis.
[lxix] Rather than circumventing or merely resigning oneself to suffer existence interminably à la Schopenhauer, the task is to assimilate this very pain and suffering that has destroyed and crippled so many; the ‘free spirit’ is to ‘adopt a child’s attitude towards what used to constitute the seriousness of existence.’ [lxx] The most solemn concepts of ‘God’ and ‘sin’ ‘will seem no more important to us than a child’s toy and a child’s pain seem to an old man, – and perhaps “the old man” will then need another toy and another pain, – still enough of a child, an eternal child!’ [lxxi] This new existential comportment of the self evinces what is most essential in Nietzsche’s conception of the tragic. Nietzsche’s distinct and profound understanding of the tragedy of existence is perhaps the deepest of the chasms separating him from his predecessor Arthur Schopenhauer, and is visible as early as his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). For Nietzsche it is a matter not of reconciliation or resignation, but as we have seen, of redemption immanently procured. ‘The type of a spirit that takes into itself and redeems the contradictions and questionable aspects of existence…Dionysus versus the ‘Crucified’: there you have the antithesis. It is not a difference in regard to their martyrdom – it is a difference in the meaning of it.
[7] Life itself, its eternal fruitfulness and recurrence, creates torment, destruction, the will to annihilation…One will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering: [8] whether a Christian meaning or a tragic meaning. In the former case, it is supposed to be the path to a holy existence; in the latter case, being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: [9] he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it. The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction.’ [lxxii] What separates the ‘Christian’ [10] from the tragic man is what they take to be the meaning of their suffering and its significance within the greater scheme of things.
For Nietzsche once again this is a matter of incorporation. The metabolism of the ‘Christian’ is unable to digest ‘the contradictions and questionable aspects of existence’ so he strives to negate this world and to seek salvation in another residing in ‘the beyond’. For the tragic man ‘adventure, danger and even pain…become a necessity’.
[lxxiii] The tragic hero, the exemplar being Sophocles’ Oedipus, is defined by the free acceptance of his determination by fate. Heroically bearing the truth of one’s finitude is an act of affirmation that allows him to achieve something like authenticity, or even better, sovereign empowerment. Conclusion For Nietzsche, the doctrine of eternal recurrence stands opposed to the Day of
Judgment, when eternal bliss and damnation will be handed down from on high.
[lxxiv] ‘Have I been understood? –
Dionysus against the Crucified…’ [lxxv] The Wiederkunft or ‘Second Coming’ of the spirit of great health, the overhuman, redeems mankind from two millennia of enslavement under the yoke of vengefulness and bad conscience. With the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, God was ‘paying himself back’. God was ‘the only one able to redeem man from what, to znew affirmative praxis through his incorporation of the eternal recurrence of the same. Man’s redemption ceases to be beyond his grasp and that is why Nietzsche holds the Dionysian ideal of the eternal recurrence to be antithetical to the Day of Judgement: when man emerges as truly sovereign he becomes entitled to judge for himself.
[lxxvii] The Dionysian philosopher flatly repudiates the loathsome desire for time’s end. The eternal recurrence of the same becomes synonymous with ‘the innocence of becoming’.
[lxxviii] Each time our life repeats itself just as it was a thousand times before. But with each repetition we are different; each time we have incorporated the lessons of the previous recurrence, but have forgotten it in our innocence. This in turn affects the repetition of the same. Everything is the same and yet we have changed, which provokes everything to thus be renewed and invested with a novelty which had been absent hitherto. Upon the arrival of the final figuration of the overhuman the condemnation of man and existence itself will be banished once and for all – the overhuman will partake in his own redemption and thereby become ‘the meaning of the earth.’
[lxxix] Only now does the final metamorphosis proclaimed by Zarathustra take hold: the lion becomes a child.
[lxxx] The overman, guardian of the sacred ‘Yes’, wills his own will in the creation of new values so as to emerge a circulus vitiosus deus; [11] what Nietzsche calls elsewhere ‘the Roman Caesar with Christ’s soul.’ [lxxxi] Error, falsehood, delusion, the passions etc… are not to be blindly swept aside – they are the stuff of knowledge and the well-spring of human civilization. The efforts of instrumental
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1 reason to placate and deprive nature of its abundance and vivacity are a road to nowhere, a veritable cul-de-sac. Its advocacy of an anthropomorphic and lopsided vision acts as merely another mask for the insatiable striving of the human organism as it assimilates alien forces in the quest for stable and secure conditions for the production and reproduction of life. Human beings however are moving apace toward self-destruction as they continue to live in thraldom to resentiment and bad conscience. Nietzsche admonishes us to cultivate counterdispositions in order to undercut the malign drives and habits responsible for the preponderance of those values which hasten and ensure the degeneration of the most vital and life-affirming instincts.
[lxxxii] These cultural configurations must be defanged and set upon a new course. Nietzsche sees the doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same as this possibility. It is to endow the earth with a new centre of gravity, breaking it out of its aimless stupor and select the composition of future (over)humanity. This task is not for the faint of heart. He tells us that we must first deracinate from each one of our souls every trace of compassion and pity before we will be able to proceed. It seems, almost despite himself Nietzsche has transposed an incarnation of the Day of Judgement into the immanent flow of time. ‘Damnation’ is stripped of the eternal – those not up to the challenge are instead assured their extinction – while those ‘free spirits’ who manage to incorporate the eternal recurrence will steer the course along which future generations will continue to develop and build: ‘Future history: more and more this thought will be victorious – and those who do not believe in it must ultimately die out in accordance with their nature! Only those who consider their existence to be capable of eternal repetition will remain: with such ones, though, a state is possible which no utopian has yet reached!’ [lxxxiii]
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Tom
, not THE Shakespeare, this guy has a PhD, a disability, and is a knighted sociologist,
,
“DISABILITY, IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE”, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Shakespeare/Chap6.pdf;
AB
Traditional approaches to disability, highlighted above, could be considered to be essentialist. Differences, biological and sometimes psychological, separate disabled people from non-disabled people. Social approaches counter this essentialism by demonstrating how it is exclusionary policies, environmental barriers and a process of social oppression which create the category of disability. This is a social constructionist analysis. For example, it is suggested that the experience of disability varies at different times and in different cultural contexts. Political strategies focus on barrier removal. But between and within this dichotomy of essentialism and social constructionism there are debates which have been explored by feminists and queer theorists, and still await Disability Studies. For example, despite the seeming social constructionism, there is an inherent essentialism within disability politics, and indeed in the idea of disability identity. The celebration of disability pride is the celebration of difference, and the acceptance of difference: it is about subverting negative valuation and reclaiming disability.
Nietzsche suggests: ` A species comes to be, at type becomes fixed, in the long fight against essentially constant adverse conditions' (Nietzsche, 1990, p.199). This means that what does not kill you, makes you strong . It also means, accepting a category created by others , revelling in abnormality, celebrating the margins .
While the social model is social constructionist, the social oppression model can slide into essentialism. While the disability movement seeks inclusion and integration, it also celebrates difference . The margins are a good place to speak from, and there is a cost to coming into the mainstream. But celebrating and identifying in difference can be risky - for example, recuperating the term `cripple': `The dangerous intimacy between subjectification and subjection needs careful calibration' (Riley, 1988, p.17). The work of Helen Liggett (1988) shows the risks of reinforcing the categorisation of disabled people as a separate group. I think there is a tension in the essentialism within the disability movement and disability studies, and it is one that parallels difficulties experienced within other identity politics: for example, problems for gay and lesbian and feminist theory and politics. Todd Girlin suggests: `For all the talk about the social construction of knowledge, identity politics de facto seems to slide towards the premise that social groups have essential identities' (Girlin,
1994, p.153]. This may be an example of the opposed priorities of theory and practice. As I have suggested, theoretical sophistication may not be appropriate to the needs of social movements: `Post-structuralism's attack on essentialism and the
"decentering of the subject" came into conflict with thinking and practice rooted in the standpoint of women or the experience of gays' (Calhoun, 1990, p.15). In practice, social constructionism may not be as politically effective as essentialism, due to a lack of rhetorical power. Some have asked why they should deconstruct their own identities when the oppressors identities are still so strong, and questioned what social constructionism can offer them: `Social constructionism was an ambiguous ally in the attempt to oppose the devaluing of various identities' (Calhoun, 1990, p.16). There are also contradictions internal to the political strategies, for example with the clash between the social model and the minority group notions of disability. While they are often conflated, I would argue that there are differences, and looking at the difference between British and international disability politics indicates some of these. There are in fact two, contradictory goals of disability politics: firstly, demolish the processes which disable; second defend disabled people. Carol Vance
(1989) suggests that the lesbian and gay movement faces a parallel dilemma. Lesbian and gay historians have attempted to trace a history of lesbian and gay people, while social constructionist theorists have shown that there is no continuity, and that same sex activity has different meanings in different times and places. As historians begin to reconstruct the disability experience, I believe they will face similar difficulties. It is only in the late twentieth century that gayness, or disability, have been celebrated with pride. Denise Riley has taken a similar approach to the history of the category `woman', seemingly an essential identity, but in fact just as socially constructed as sexuality. It is a problem for feminist politics which she confronts, not just for historians: from a post-structuralist perspective, she does not have much faith in the coherence of identities: `The impermanence of collective identities in general is a pressing problem for any emancipatory movement which launches itself on the appeal to solidarity, to the common cause of a new group being, or an ignored group identity' (Riley, 1988, p. 16). Another example of the way these debates are relevant to disability is the debate about the role of identity after the dissolution of disabling barriers. If there are benefits to disability identity, if it is a source of
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1 strength and pride, will it persist in the utopian world where there are not barriers or oppressive processes? Is there a difference beyond oppression? Is there something about having an impairment, as opposed to being disabled, which will persist and will unite disabled people? There may be major differences here between disability, and race/ gender/ sexuality.
Crude dichotomies between social constructionism and essentialism are perhaps not particularly helpful, as Diana Fuss
(1989) argues. Social constructionism can itself be quite determinist and fixed. At other times, in the rejection of biological thinking as essentialist, it can become idealist and totally decentred. Judith Butler (1990) has explored the essentialism inherent in social constructionist positions in gender, and the danger of reifying the subject. While feminists have attacked
Foucault for seemingly writing out the possibilities of resistance, she develops a complex analysis which nevertheless offers some benefits to those exploring identity politics. For her, the subject is discursively constituted, but agency is possible. She describes identities as self-representations, as "fictions" that are neither fixed not stable. For example, in her view, gender centres on performativity, and she is especially interested in the marginal and transgressive actors who create themselves. Personally, I find Butler's work opaque and difficult, but I am certain it could be useful in developing beyond some of the paradoxes of disability identity (Sawicki, 1994, is a good starting point for these debates). Let me now consider more closely this issue of difference. One of the dangers of the essentialism highlighted above, is that it provides a simplistic reductionism, an `us and them' approach. While this is comforting and secure, it offers risks. As an example, I would suggest an article by disability activist Alan Holdsworth, in which he developed a polemic about allies and oppressors, dividing the non-disabled world into professional oppressors, liberal oppressors and allies (Holdsworth, 1993).
In my view, this was unhelpful, because it reduced political agency and identity to a unilinear choice. Disabled people, by virtue of having experienced disablement, were good, and non-disabled people could only be counted as good in very specific circumstances.
(James Overboe, PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, “‘Difference in
Itself’: Validating Disabled People’s Lived Experience,”
http://a.parsons.edu/~nesrin/thesis/research/differenceinitself.pdf )
The rhetoric of equality of rights is a cornerstone of identity politics movements with its liberal individualistic embodiment.
By arguing that disabled people must demand equality of rights for themselves, supporters of ‘equality of rights’ deny the
‘lived experience’ of disabled people. For example, Bickenbach (1993: 163) argues that disabled people may have the
‘equal right’ to enter government offices, but if these offices are not accessible then many of us cannot exercise our ‘equal rights’. The obtaining of equal rights that maintains the systemic discrimination against disabled people does not resolve problems for us . It only exacerbates them . In respect of ‘identity in concept’ Deleuze (1994: 266) writes, ‘To restore difference in thought is to untie this first knot which consists of representing difference through the identity of the concept and the thinking subject.’ Applying Deleuze’s insights to disability I believe that by untying this knot that garrottes our lived experience and imposes an identity on us, we can begin to rid ourselves of the twin concepts of ableism and extreme liberal individualism that often lead others to see us as an abomination. Rather than an ‘equality of rights’ based on identity politics, I call for an ‘equality of condition’ that validates both a disabled embodiment and sensibility. Our physical, mental and emotional manifestations of disability as well as the social, political, moral and physical environment will continue to have an impact upon us. But shifting the notion of an identity which is devalued to a lived experience that is validated causes a change in approach. No longer would we be ‘done to’, and ‘done for’, or even ‘done with’ as so often
within non-disabled and extreme liberal individualism parameters and with the restrictions of an ableist sensibility. The shedding of the illusion of identity allows for our ‘lived experience’ to come to the forefront. Thus our
‘lived experience’ would be an integral part of the atmosphere and tone for any change within our lives and our interaction with others, whether they be disabled or non-disabled.
Joanne
, University of New South Wales, 20
[ The Journal of Nietzsche Studies Spring/Autumn]
In Twilight of the Idols , Nietzsche opposes to a belief in free will what I will attempt to argue is his own—admittedly underdeveloped—notion of agency, in terms of an “innocence of becoming.” That it refers us to a mode of agency is by no
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1 means obvious, and, indeed, in some lights it appears to involve more a suspension of agency—rather like the ordinary concept of innocence that precedes it. What is remarkable about the innocence of becoming, and what makes it particularly useful for a rethinking of political agency post-9/11, is that it complicates conventional assumptions about the relation between innocence and agency by coupling freedom with fatalism. The understanding of agency that emerges from this meditation on innocence (conceived as an agnosticism about good and evil) is more modest than most, to be sure, dwelling as it does within the interstices of events that the individual cannot control. But perhaps such a subtle conception of agency is needed in the present, particularly restricted political context. Perhaps, in other words, and to echo Nietzsche, the greatest events emerge from the quietest stirrings of thought ( Z :2 “Of Great Events”). If, for Nietzsche, agency is embedded within a notion of innocence already shifted from its everyday [End Page 74] context, then our conception of agency must also be transfigured and strange. My hope is that through it we might begin to think about innocents as capable of thought and action and of citizens as not always already imbued with guilt insofar as they act politically (i.e., agitate, criticize, or demonstrate). Nietzsche’s genealogy of our common concept of free will shows it to be intimately connected with notions of guilt. He argues in TI , for instance, that the attribution of free will is motivated by a desire to find someone accountable for one’s grievances: what he calls the “instinct for punishing and judging” (
TI “Errors” 7). We find free will where we want to find guilt and exact revenge: and thus free will is often the first premise of any argument for punishment.
Identifying free will in another allows us to locate an offending action, attribute it to the conscience of the perpetrator, and finally, extract from them a penalty or debt (Schuld). To talk of free will, then, is a complex expression of cruelty: of an intention to find fault and to punish it. Nietzsche’s rearticulation, in GM , of the social contract myth had already emphasized the integral connection between the development of moral agency and punishment. Moreover, Nietzsche argues that the socialization of the individual involves developing an attitude of self-hatred, or guilt, achieved by means of the internalization of an instinct for cruelty that would otherwise have been indulged in relation to an external object ( GM
II:16). The individual is cultivated through a painful process of self-alienation and -punishment. One earns the right to make promises only after having endured a regime of discipline and cruelty, wherein one part of the self subdues and subjects another part of the self to it. Thus is generated a vicious circle of self-hatred, guilt, debt, and punishment of the other, otherwise known as society, the judicial system, and moral law.
,
Professor of Women’s Studies @ UC Santa Cruz, 19
[Wendy, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late
Modernity pg. 66-70]
Liberalism contains from its inception a generalized incitement to what Nietzsche terms ressentiment, the moralizing revenge of the powerless,"the triumph of the weak as weak. "22 This incitement to ressentitnent inheres in two related constitutive paradoxes of liberalism: that between individual liberty and social egalitarianism, a paradox which produces failure turned to recrimination by the subordinated, and guilt turned to resentment by the "successful"; and that between the individualism that legitimates liberalism and the cultural homogeneity required by its commitment to political universality, a paradox which stimulates the articulation of politically significant differences on the one hand, and the suppression of them on the other, and which offers a form of articulation that presses against the limits of universalist discourse even while that which is being articulated seeks to be harbored withinincluded inthe terms of that universalism. Premising itself on the natural equality of human beings, liberalism makes a political promise of universal individual freedom in order to arrive at social equality, or achieve a civilized retrieval of the equality postulated in the state of nature. It is the tension between the promises of individualistic liberty and the requisites of equality that yields ressentiment in one of two directions, depending on the way in which the paradox is brokered. A strong commitment to freedom vitiates the fulfillment of the equality promise and breeds ressentiment as welfare state liberalism --- attenuations of the unmitigated license of the rich and powerful on behalf of the "disadvantaged." Conversely, a strong commitment to equality, requiring heavy state interventionism and economic redistribution, attenuates the commitment to freedom and breeds ressentiment expressed as neoconservative antistatism, racism, charges of reverse racism, and so forth. However, it is not only the tension between freedom and equality but the prior presumption of the self-reliant and self-made capacities of liberal subjects, conjoined with their unavowed dependence on and construction by a variety of social relations and forces, that makes all liberal subjects, and not only markedly disenfranchised ones, vulnerable to ressentiment: it is their situatedness within power, their production by power, and liberal discourse's denial of this situatedness and production that cast the liberal subject into failure, the failure to make itself in the context of a discourse in which its selfmaking is assumed, indeed, is its assumed nature. This failure, which Nietzsche calls suffering, must either find a reason within itself (which redoubles the failure) or a site of external blame upon which to avenge its hurt and redistribute its pain. Here is Nietzsche's account of this moment
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1 in the production of ressentiment: For every sufferer instinctively seeks a cause for his suffering, more exactly, an agent; still more specifically, a guilty agent who is susceptible to suffering in short, some living thing upon which he can, on some pretext or other, vent his affects, actually or in effigy . . . . This ... constitutes the actual physiological cause of ressentiment, vengefulness, and the like: a desire to deaden pain by means of affects, . . . to deaden, by means of a more violent emotion of any kind, a tormenting, secret pain that is becoming unendurable, and to drive it out of consciousness at least for the moment: for that one requires an affect, as savage an affect as possible, and, in order to excite that, any pretext at all.
Ressentiment in this context is a triple achievement: it produces an affect (rage, righteousness) that overwhelms the hurt; it produces a culprit responsible for the hurt; and it produces a site of revenge to displace the hurt (a place to inflict hurt as the sufferer has been hurt). Together these operations both ameliorate (in Nietzsche's term, "anaesthetize") and externalize what is otherwise "unendurable." In a culture already streaked with the pathos of ressentiment for the reasons just discussed, there are several distinctive characteristics of late modern postindustrial societies that accelerate and expand the conditions of its production. My listing will necessarily be highly schematic: First, the phenomenon William Connolly names
"increased global contingency", combines with the expanding pervasiveness and complexity of domination by capital and bureaucratic state and social networks to create an unparalleled individual powerlessness over the fate and direction of one's own life, intensifying the experiences of impotence, dependence, and gratitude inherent in liberal capitalist orders and constitutive of ressentiment.24 Second, the steady desacralization of all regions of life -- what Weber called disenchantment, what Nietzsche called the death of god would seem to add yet another reversal to Nietzsche's genealogy of ressenti;nent as perpetually available to "alternation of direction." In Nietzsche's account, the ascetic priest deployed notions of "guilt, sin, sinfulness, depravity, damnation" to "direct the ressentiment of the less severely afflicted sternly back upon themselves . . . and in this way exploit[ed] the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of selfdiscipline, selfsurveillance, and selfovercoming. "25 However, the desacralizing tendencies of late modernity undermine the efficacy of this deployment and turn suffering's need for exculpation back toward a site of external agency.26 Third, the increased fragmentation, if not disintegration, of all forms of association not organized until recently by the commodities marketcommunities, churches, familiesand the ubiquitousness of the classificatory, individuating schemes of disciplinary society, combine to produce an utterly unrelieved individual, one without insulation from the inevitable failure entailed in liberalism's individualistic construction27 In short, the characteristics of late modern secular society, in which individuals are buffeted and controlled by global configurations of disciplinary and capitalist power of extraordinary proportions, and are at the same time nakedly individuated, stripped of reprieve from relentless exposure and accountability for themselves, together add up to an incitement to ressentiment that might have stunned even the finest philosopher of its occasions and logics Starkly accountable yet dramatically impotent, the late modern liberal subject quite literally seethes with ressentiment. Enter politicized identity, now conceivable in part as both product of and reaction to this condition, where
"reaction" acquires the meaning Nietzsche ascribed to it: namely, an effect of domination that reiterates impotence, a substitute for action, for power, for selfaffirmation that reinscribes incapacity, powerlessness, and rejection. For Nietzsche, ressentiment itself is rooted in reaction -- the substitution of reasons, norms, and ethics for deeds -- and he suggests that not only moral systems but identities themselves take their bearings in this reaction. As Tracy Strong reads this element of
Nietzsche's thought: Identity ... does not consist of an active component, but is reaction to something outside; action in itself; with its inevitable self-assertive qualities, must then become something evil, since it is identified with that against which one is reacting. The will to power of slave morality must constantly reassert that which gives definition to the slave: the pain he suffers by being in the world. Hence any attempt to escape that pain will merely result in the reaffirmation of painful structures. If the "cause" of ressentitnent is suffering, its "creative deed" is the reworking of this pain into a negative form of action, the "imaginary revenge" of what Nietzsche terms "natures denied the true reaction, that of deeds."29 This revenge is achieved through the imposition of suffering "on whatever does not feel wrath and displeasure as he does”30
(accomplished especially through the production of guilt), through the establishment of suffering as the measure of social virtue, and through casting strength and good fortune ("privilege," as we say today) as self-recriminating, as its own indictment in a culture of suffering: "it is disgraceful to be fortunate, there is too much misery.”31 But in its attempt to displace its suffering, identity structured by ressentiment at the same time becomes invested in its own subjection. This investment lies not only in its discovery of a site of blame for its hurt will, not only in its acquisition of recognition through its history of subjection (a recognition predicated on injury, now righteously revalued), but also in the satisfactions of revenge, which ceaselessly reenact even as they redistribute the injuries of marginalization and subordination in a liberal discursive order that alternately denies the very possibility of these things and blames those who experience them for their own condition. Identity politics structured by ressentiment reverse without subverting this blaming structure: they do not subject to critique the sovereign subject of accountability that liberal individualism presupposes, nor the economy of inclusion and exclusion that liberal universalism establishes. Thus, politicized identity that presents itself as a selfaffirmation now appears as the opposite, as predicated on and requiring its sustained rejection by a "hostile external world."32
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Senior Lecturer in Law, University of London, March 20
, SYMPOSIUM: NIETZCHE
AND LEGAL THEORY (PART II): THE COMPANY OF PRIESTS: MEANINGLESSNESS, SUFFERING AND
COMPASSION IN THE THOUGHTS OF NIETZSCHE AND LEVINAS, Cardozo Law Review
In relation to the classical philosophical problem posed by suffering there is, as the two quotes above indicate, an intriguing common emphasis on meaninglessness in the works of Nietzsche and Levinas, which renders fertile the reading together of their two distinct philosophies. The difference is that for Levinas, the acknowledgement of the meaninglessness of suffering without resentment is only the "least one can say." Indeed, Nietzsche exposed man's denial of absurd suffering "only" in order to support his case against the sentimentalism of Christian ethics and deontological and utilitarian moralities, which either attribute meaning to suffering or seek to rid life of it, ultimately denying life itself - for to live is also to suffer .
Levinas, on the other hand, argued the inevitability of events of senseless suffering breaching from within the hermeneutically ordered world of meaning. Moreover, he viewed this as proof of the inevitability of the idea of infinity in a non-metaphysical sense, for it is "included" into the finite world of being as what cannot be matched by experience or representation, leaving a surplus of awe, astonishment, obsession. Immanence, therefore, is all there is, but to that we add that it cannot cease undergoing the idea of infinity, like an ill man who undergoes his condition. In Levinas' ethical discourse, infinity gets expressed in the "face of the other" and is transformed into obsession with providing succors for meaningless suffering. Suffering, left to its own devices, ridicules experience by always being "too much." In turn, it takes another being that comes to the rescue, thinking itself "infinitely responsible" for all the suffering it encounters, for suffering to be given an appropriate response .
With this quasi-transcendental possibility in mind, this paper introduces and critically analyzes Nietzsche's notion of "affirmative compassion," as distinct from moral pity and, gradually, suggests the need for its reformulation as both an instance of will to power and as submission to the ethical imperative to care for the other. Given the un-saintly reputation of Nietzsche, however, the paper cannot but begin by paying tribute to his famous critique of pity, that "morbid emotion" that accompanies the denial of the senselessness of suffering and ultimately compels the nihilistic rejection of life itself. This is done in the first section in which I basically report on my law students' take on
Nietzsche in the context of a course on medical law and moral reasoning. In sum, I report that Nietzsche's ideas help one critique the extensions of [*1277] traditional legal doctrines of responsibility for man-made harm - sustained by the beliefs in the causal understanding of the world, in moral autonomy and agency - in relation to litigation that raises questions over the meaning of, and standard of care for, suffering that no one has caused. These doctrinal extensions are, arguably, instances of a hypertrophy of legal consciousness, indicating lack of understanding of the chaotic nature of the world of human affects in the face of absurd suffering and denial of the passion, obsession and delirium that correlate to the disequilibrium, meaninglessness and anarchy of suffering. In this connection, I offer a number of examples, often involving judgments that concern kinds of beings that blatantly manifest this senselessness, ranging from insensate beings in coma to the unborn. In the second section, I examine Nietzsche's views on how meaningless suffering affects the man of power.
Because of Nietzsche's conviction that cruelty and indifference are no longer options for contemporary man, I focus on
Nietzsche's formulation of a "noble compassion" that would be "affirmative" or "life-enhancing" - compassion within a meaningless universe. Such compassion is part of the becoming of beings with a "surplus of power," as opposed to morally submissive or hedonistic beings. Crucially, this is compassion that does not relinquish self-love in the process, and does not lead to the self becoming physically or emotionally "contaminated" by the suffering it witnesses .
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Philip J.
, PhD, professor of philosophy at Santa Clara University, 20
, The British Journal for the History of
Philosophy, Nietzsche, Virtue, and the Horror of Existence, ProQuest
Suppose that you can, as Aristotle suggests, look back over your life as a whole and feel that it was a good one – a happy one. Would that make you want to live it again? Would you at the moment in which you feel that your life was a happy one also ‘crave nothing more fervently’ than to live it again? What if your life was a joyous life or a proud life? It is quite clear isn’t it that you could have a very positive attitude toward your life, and not at all want to live it again? In fact, wouldn’t the prospect of eternal repetition, if the idea grew upon you and gained possession of you, begin to sap even the best life of its attractiveness? Wouldn’t the expectation of eternal repetition make anything less appealing? Wouldn’t it empty your life of its significance and meaning? Most commentators seem to assume that the only life we could expect anyone to want to live again would be a good life. That makes no sense at all to me. On the other hand, most would assume that a life of intense pain and suffering is not at all the sort of life it makes any sense to want to live again. I think Nietzsche was able to see that a life of intense pain and suffering is perhaps the only life it really makes sense to want to live again . This requires explanation. For years Nietzsche was ill, suffering intense migraines, nausea and vomiting. Often he was unable to work and confined to bed. He fought this. He tried everything. He sought a better climate. He watched his diet fanatically. He experimented with medicines. Nothing worked. He could not improve his condition. His suffering was out of his control. It dominated his life and determined his every activity. He was overpowered by it. There was no freedom or dignity here. He became a slave to his illness. He was subjugated by it. What was he to do? At the beginning of the essay, ‘Concerning the
Sublime,’ Schiller wrote: “nothing is so beneath the dignity of a human being as to suffer violence . . . whoever cowardly suffers it, tosses his humanity aside . . . Every human being finds himself in this position. He is surrounded by countless forces, all superior to him and all playing the master over him . . . If he can no longer oppose physical forces with a corresponding physical force, then nothing else remains for him to do to avoid suffering violence than to do completely away with a relation so deleterious to him and to destroy conceptually a brute force that he in fact must endure. However, to destroy a force conceptually means nothing other than to submit to it voluntarily.”39 While Nietzsche does not go about it in the way Schiller had in mind, nevertheless, this is exactly what Nietzsche does. What was he to do about his suffering?
What was he to do about the fact that it came to dominate every moment of his life? What was he to do about the fact that it was robbing him of all freedom and dignity? What was he to do about this subjugation and slavery? He decided to submit to it voluntarily. He decided to accept it fully. He decided that he would not change a single detail of his life, not one moment of pain. He decided to love his fate . At the prospect of living his life over again, over again an infinite number of times, without the slightest change, with every detail of suffering and pain, he was ready to say, ‘Well then! Once more!’’40 He could not change his life anyway. This way he broke the psychological stranglehold it had over him. He ended his subjugation. He put himself in charge. He turned all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’. Everything that was going to happen in his life, he accepted, he chose, he willed. He became sovereign over his life. There was no way to overcome his illness except by embracing it.
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(Philip J, Professor of philosophy at University of Santa Clara, "Nietzsche, Eternal Recurrence, and the Horror of
Existence," the Journal of Nietzsche Studies, muse, AD: 7/6/09)
We have seen that in Nietzsche's opinion we cannot bear meaningless suffering and so we give it a meaning. Christianity, for example, explains it as punishment for sin. Eternal recurrence, however, would certainly seem to plunge us back into meaningless suffering (WP 55). It implies that suffering just happens, it repeats eternally, it is fated. There is no plan, no purpose, no reason for it. Eternal recurrence would seem to rub our noses in meaningless suffering. In one sense this is perfectly correct. And Nietzsche does want to accept as much meaninglessness and suffering as he can bear (BGE 39, 225;
WP 585a). Nevertheless, we must see that there is meaning here—it is just that it lies precisely in the meaninglessness.
Embracing eternal recurrence means imposing suffering on oneself, meaningless suffering, suffering that just happens, suffering for no reason at all. But at the very same time, this creates the innocence of existence. The meaninglessness of suffering means the innocence of suffering. That is the new meaning that suffering is given. Suffering no longer has its old meaning. Suffering no longer has the meaning Christianity gave to it. Suffering can no longer be seen as punishment. There is no longer any guilt. There is no longer any sin. One is no longer accountable (TI "Errors" 8; HH 99). If suffering just returns eternally, if even the slightest change is impossible, how can one be to blame for it? How can one be responsible? It can be none of our doing. We are innocent. This itself could explain why one would be able to embrace eternal recurrence, love every detail of one's life, not wish to change a single moment of suffering. One would be embracing one's own innocence. One would be loving one's own redemption from guilt. Eternal recurrence brings the Übermensch as close as possible to the truth, meaninglessness, the void, but it does not go all the way or it would crush even the Übermensch.
Eternal recurrence gives the Übermensch meaning. It eliminates emptiness. It fills the void. With what? It fills it with something totally familiar and completely known; with something that is in no way new, different, or strange; with something that is not at all frightening. It fills the void with one's own life—repeated eternally. It is true that this life is a life of suffering, but (given the horror of existence) suffering cannot be avoided anyway, and at least suffering has been stripped of any surplus suffering brought about by concepts of sin, punishment, or guilt. It has been reduced to a life of innocence. Moreover, as Nietzsche has said, it is only meaningless suffering that is the problem. If given a meaning, even suffering becomes something we can seek (GM III:28). Eternal recurrence, the fatedness of suffering, its meaningless repetition, makes our suffering innocent. That might well be reason enough to embrace it. Or, although we may not be able to embrace it ourselves, I think we can at least see why Nietzsche might—and even why it might make sense for him to do so. [End Page 59] Eternal recurrence also gives suffering another meaning. If one is able to embrace eternal recurrence, if one is able to turn all "it was" into a "thus I willed it," then one not only reduces suffering to physical suffering, breaks its psychological stranglehold, and eliminates surplus suffering related to guilt, but one may even in a sense reduce suffering below the level of physical suffering. One does not do this as the liberal, socialist, or Christian would, by changing the world to reduce suffering. In Nietzsche's opinion that is impossible, and, indeed, eternal recurrence of the same rules it out—at least as any sort of final achievement.
23 Rather, physical suffering is reduced by treating it as a test, a discipline, a training, which brings one greater power. One might think of an athlete who engages in more and more strenuous activity, accepts greater and greater pain, handles it better and better, and sees this as a sign of greater strength, as a sign of increased ability. Pain and suffering are turned into empowerment. Indeed, it is possible to love such suffering as a sign of increased power. One craves pain—"more pain! more pain!" (GM III:20). And the more suffering one can bear, the stronger one becomes. If suffering is self-imposed, if the point is to break the psychological stranglehold it has over us, if the point is to turn suffering into empowerment, use it as a discipline to gain greater strength, then it would be entirely inappropriate for us to feel sorry for the sufferer. To take pity on the sufferer either would demonstrate an ignorance of the process the sufferer is engaged in, what the sufferer is attempting to accomplish through suffering, or would show a lack of respect for the sufferer's suffering (GS 338; D 135). To pity the sufferer, to wish the sufferer did not have to go through such suffering, would demean the sufferer and the whole process of attempting to gain greater strength through such suffering. Let us try again to put ourselves in Nietzsche's place. He has suffered for years. He has suffered intensely for years. He has come to realize that he cannot end this suffering. He cannot even reduce it significantly. But he has finally been able to break the psychological stranglehold it has had over him. He is able to accept it. He wills it. He would not change the slightest detail.
He is able to love it. And this increases his strength. How, then, would he respond to our pity? Very likely, he would be offended. He would think we were patronizing him. He would not want us around. He would perceive us as trying to rob him of the strength he had achieved, subjugate him again to his suffering, strip him of his dignity. He would be disgusted with our attempt to be do-gooders, our attempt to impose our own meaning on his suffering (treating it as something to pity and to lessen) in opposition to the meaning he has succeeded in imposing on it.
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(E.M, Romanian Philosopher, Prof of Philosophy at Andrei Saguna, 1934, On the Heights of Despair, p. 6-7,
AD: 7/7/09)
I am: therefore the world is meaningless. What meaning is there in the tragic suffering of a man for whom everything is ultimately nothing and whose only law in this world is agony? If the world tolerates somebody like me, this can only mean that the blots on me the so-called sun of life are so large that in time they will obscure its light. Life’s beastliness trampled me under foot and oppressed me, clipped my wings in full flight and stole all my rightful joys. 1 the enthusiastic zeal and mad passion I put into becoming a brilliant individual, the demonic charm I adopted to gain an aura in the future, and the energy I spent on an organic, glamorous, inner rebirth, all proved weaker than the beastly brutality and irrationality of this world, which poured into me all its reserves of negativity and poison. Life is impossible at high temperatures. That’s why I have reached the conclusion that anguished people, whose inner dynamism is so intense that it reaches paroxysm, and who cannot accept normal temperatures, are doomed to 1 fall. The destruction of those who live unusual lives is an aspect of life's demonism, but it is also an aspect of its insufficiency, which explains why life is the privilege of mediocre people.
Only mediocrities live at life's normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life. I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony. You complain that people are mean, vengeful, ungrateful, and hypocritical? I propose the agony method to rid you of all these imperfections. Apply it to every generation and its effects will soon be evident. Maybe in this way I too could become useful to mankind! Bring every man to the agony of life's last moments by whip, fire, or injections, and through terrible torture he will undergo the great purification afforded by a vision of death. Then free him and let him run in a fright until he falls exhausted. I warrant you that the effect is incomparably greater than any obtained through normal means. If I could, I would drive the entire world to agony to achieve a radical purification of life; I would set a fire burning insidiously at the roots of life, not to destroy them but to give them a new and different sap, a new heat. The fire I would set to the world would not bring ruin but cosmic transfiguration. In this way life would adjust to higher temperatures and would cease to be an environment propitious to mediocrity. And maybe in this dream, death too would cease to be immanent in life.
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Stephen
, Ph.D, Political Science Professor at the University of Milwaukee,
, “Disability and Federalism: Comparing Different Approaches to Full
Participation”, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=q5F8Oqks7oUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Disab ility+and+Federalism:+Comparing+Different+Approaches+to+Full+Participation&ots=vhr2r60Sh2&sig=yknyDwNkcNyX66RQv7Zyl-ahnNQ#v=onepage&q&f=true
Questions about policy coordination invariably raise issues about implementing disability policies from an intergovernmental, rather than centralized national, arrangement . Unlike Western European nations, the US system utilizes a more decentralized, yet interdependent, policy system to serve people with disabilities.
67 This system, while generally consistent with American principles of governance through a federal system where powers are shared between the national government and the states, does not guarantee effective policy at every turn. Decentralization provides the potential for more locally , rather than centrally, designed policy efforts that can be more responsive to locally-defined problems and more appropriately tailored to local conditions.
The American states, therefore, can serve as laboratories for policy "experiments' 1 through which effective policy implementation strategies can be identified and then shared back with the other states . Conversely, greater centralization is more likely to provide consistent services and benefits across the states, at least with regard to establishing minimal levels. These tensions have been rife since the formation of the United States and will remain so long as the democratic system remains based upon a federal, power-sharing model of governance. The persistent questions in the context of disability policy is determining which programs and services are best provided at which level of governance and how state and national programs can be more effectively coordinated and mutually reinforcing. These questions are ongoing in disability policy and will continue to be the focus of policy debates and plans for system reform.
– Editor of the Free Congress Family, Law & Democracy Report and the author of The Politics of Direct Democracy (Patrick B., 07/29,
“CapitolBeakOK: Transportation Federalism -- and Flexibility -- Proposed in New Bill from Coburn, Lankford,” http://lankford.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=756&Itemid=100023)
In his statement, sent to CapitolBeatOK, Sen. Coburn said, “Washington’s addiction to spending has bankrupted the
Highway Trust Fund. For years, lower-priority projects like earmarks have crowded out important priorities in our states, such as repairing crumbling roads and bridges. “Instead of burdening states and micromanaging local transportation decisions from Washington, states like Oklahoma should be free to choose how their transportation dollars are spent. I have no doubt that Oklahoma’s Transportation Director Gary Ridley will do a much better job deciding how Oklahoma’s transportation dollars are spent than bureaucrats and politicians in Washington.” Lankford applauded Coburn's leadership in the matter, observing, “This has been one of my top priorities since coming to Congress, and I’m happy to join Senator
Coburn in this effort. This bill is a giant step for states by increasing transportation flexibility while improving efficiency.
“By allowing states to opt-out of the federal bureaucracy, they will be able to take more control of their own resources. It will free Oklahoma to keep our own federal gas taxes and to fund new projects at our own discretion.” Joel Kintsel, executive vice president at OCPA, told CapitolBeatOK, "I am so proud of the leadership shown by Senator Coburn and
Congressman Lankford. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a broader effort by Congress to return to federalism and withdraw from areas of activity rightfully belonging to the States.
” Sen. McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president, said, “As a Federalist, I have long advocated that states should retain the right to keep the revenue from gas taxes paid by drivers in their own state. This bill would allow for this to happen and prevent Arizonans from returning their hard earned money to Washington. Arizonans have always received 95 cents or less for every dollar they pay federal gas taxes.
This continues to be unacceptable, and for that reason I am a proud supported of the State Highway Flexibility Act.” Sen.
Vitter asserted, “It’s very apparent how badly Congress can mismanage tax dollars, especially the Highway Trust fund which has needed to be bailed out three times since 2008. The states know their transportation needs better than Congress, so let’s put them in the driver’s seat to manage their own gas tax.” Hatch contended, “The federal government’s one-sizefits all transportation policies and mandates are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and causing inexcusable delays in the construction of highways, bridges and roads in Utah and across the nation.
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– Assistant Professor, Northwestern University School of Law (Steven G., December, “Reflections on United States v. Lopez: ‘A GOVERNMENT
OF LIMITED AND ENUMERATED POWERS’: IN DEFENSE OF UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ,” Lexis)
Small state federalism is a big part of what keeps the peace in countries like the United States and Switzerland. It is a big part of the reason why we do not have a Bosnia or a Northern Ireland or a Basque country or a Chechnya or a Corsica or a
Quebec problem. 51 American federalism in the end is not a trivial matter or a quaint historical anachronism. Americanstyle federalism is a thriving and vital institutional arrangement - partly planned by the Framers, partly the accident of history - and it prevents violence and war . It prevents religious warfare, it prevents secessionist warfare, and it prevents racial warfare. It is part of the reason why democratic majoritarianism in the United States has not produced violence or secession for 130 years, unlike the situation for example, in England, France, Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, Cyprus, or Spain. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that is more important or that has done more to promote peace, prosperity, and freedom than the federal structure of that great document. There is nothing in the U.S.
Constitution that should absorb more completely the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Secretary of the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, Testimony of Rita M.
Landgraf Before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, http://dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/admin/files/oraltestimony.pdf)
I do not believe, it is enough for us to be in mere compliance with the Americans with Disability Ac t and the Olmstead ruling, but we, as state leaders, must embrace the intent of the law beyond the compliance and embed inclusion and the benefits of diversity as a core value . We must engage our partners across the federal, state and local governments, and be inclusive of individuals with disabilities as we develop best practice policy and implementation . This is not merely meeting the objectives of enforcement or a settlement agreement . It is about systemic reform that enables services to meet the desires of the market to live ordinary lives with identified supports . Our state and federal systems need to ensure that our services adhere to these goals that many of us take for granted . We know that States, CMS, and disability advocates are beginning to evolve to a new understanding of the “Olmstead Community Integration Mandate.”
The fundamental question is about “how government resources can support a quality of life for people with significant disabilities (eligible for Medicaid funding) that enhances full community participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency ?” Today, in Delaware, it is a value that we are committed to extending across the state through meaningful systemic reform that promotes integration of individuals with disabilities in our society . Our Governor, Gov. Jack Markell, is committed to this priority, bringing the full weight of his office and the political will to accomplish this restructuring. However, the Delaware system has not evolved dramatically since the passage of ADA in 1990 and since the
1999 reaffirmation of the Integration Mandate by the Olmstead ruling. For decades in Delaware, the State has had an overreliance on facility-based care and options within community have been limited to mid- to small-group living homes. Far too many individuals were placed in institutions and remained there for extended periods. Since 2009, under the Markell administration, we have focused on shifting our resources and our delivery strategy to a community-first focus. Community should be the norm not the exception. The level of reform , Delaware is addressing for individuals with serious persistent mental illness is seen, by us, as the prototype for all with disabilities and the aging population in need of supports. It begins with a simple, but powerful expectation : Individuals with disabilities can live in their own home, have meaningful employment and be ordinary Delawareans. They may require some level of support, but those supports need to be provided that effectively foster independence and fully engage participation in society. A pivotal benchmark for Delaware to excel in our commitment to meaningful reform is the July 6, 2011, settlement agreement between the State and the U.S. Department of Justice which resolved a three-year investigation of the Delaware Psychiatric Center. More importantly, the agreement became the blueprint for how Delaware would provide mental health services to individuals with severe and persistent mental illness, and creates the prototype for systemic reform across the government, in support of all individuals with disabilities . In order to comply with the agreement, the State must prevent unnecessary institutionalization by offering agreed upon community-based services to the target population , a subset of individuals with SPMI
(serious, persistent mental illness) who are at the highest risk of unnecessary institutionalization and the development of upgraded community supports and services. We want to make this State a leader in mental health services, and the USDOJ shares that vision. Given the fiscal challenges, the need for smarter budgeting, smarter spending, and smarter management must take center stage if we are to achieve meaningful integration. We need to embrace the philosophy of community-based living, but without the rebalancing and flexibility of the funding system, the system will remain vulnerable to stagnation and erosion. DHSS is focused on the development of a quality assurance program that incentivizes based on outcomes as they relate to the promises of
Olmstead/ADA and not funds for volume. As a State, we are focused not only on supporting individuals moving out of DPC and into the community, but are actively assessing all within our state facilities and asking if they want to return to their community and are assisting them to do so. The underlying support for full community participation must be a focus on financial capability and advancing “economic self-sufficiency.” The Olmstead Community
Integration Mandate compels us to attack poverty and financial instability through financial coaching as part of an individual’s Medicaid support plan. In
Delaware, we will use our government infrastructure to reset the focus to change thinking and behavior about financial capability through an integrated system of supports that enhance financial empowerment skills and outcomes. I believe we need ADA/Olmstead ambassadors throughout the states to promote the premise behind the civil rights movement and institute a broad education campaign. States must incorporate this awareness throughout the delivery system and in all areas of the Cabinet to fully support the civil rights of individuals with disabilities as a core value.
http://www.ncd.gov/publications/2007/07262007#toc6
“ While the A mericans with D isabilities A ct has helped , there must be better enforcement and far higher fines to go along with it.”133
“ Either the Federal Government is going to have to have ADA people in each state with the power to write warning violation letters or write a federal ticket or District level ticket in a violation, with fines. Or the Federal Government is going to have to mandate States to enforce the ADA. Then if they do not, a complaint can be filed against the state .”134
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Abstract: With the passage of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996,
America experienced a reemergence of the “new federalist” policies that began during the presidency of Richard Nixon and blossomed under Ronald Regan. Defined primarily by its emphasis on “devolving” federal influence over social policies to the states, the new federalism of the mid-1990s gave state governments more freedom to decide how to manage and implement social programs while simultaneously increasing pressure on state officials to make those programs work. An obvious effect of this move to shift power away from the federal government to the state level was the pushing of states to the forefront of the debates surrounding social policies. Rather than continuing to sing backup to the federal government’s lead, the states now had a greater role in determining the course of some of the most long-standing controversies in modern-American political history. The devolution of authority from the federal government to the states not only opened a door for state governments to have a greater say in policy choices, it also offered a situation for analyzing all fifty states as they respond to the same policy mandate during the same period of time. This rare occurrence in which the American states were opened up as a laboratory for policy analysis on the same set of policy choices within the same time period offers a chance to see not only the impact federal policy has across the states, but it enables a look into the specific political activities of state governments in the quest to shape policy outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine what effect governmental institutions have on the outcomes of policy within the states. More specifically, I will seek to assess what impact – if any – state executive offices have on determining policy outcomes. By going beyond studies that only focus on demographic influences on welfare policy outcomes, I hope to fill a significant gap that exists in the literature surrounding welfare reform, and that is what occurs between the devolution of responsibility of welfare policy from the federal government and the outcomes that result. Likewise, although there have been studies examining different determinants of welfare policy across the states, these studies do not take into account the role state executives play in shaping outcomes.
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(Geoffrey Walker TC Beirne School of Law [, “Rediscovering the Advantages of Federalism,” Australian Law Journal,
1999 p. 1-25 accessed 7/10/08 from http://202.14.81.34/Senate/pubs/pops/pop35/c02.pdf)
The fifth advantage I want to put before you is that federalism is a protection of liberty. I mentioned earlier that a federal structure protects citizens from oppression or exploitation on the part of state governments, through the right of exit. But federalism is also a shield against arbitrary central government. Thomas Jefferson was very emphatic about that, so was Lord Bryce, who said that
‘federalism prevents the rise of a despotic central government, absorbing other powers, and menacing the private liberties of the citizen.’27 The late Geoffrey Sawer of the Australian National University in Canberra was a very distinguished constitutional lawyer. Although he was definitely no friend of federalism, he did have to admit that federalism was, in itself, a protection of individual liberty. Even in its rather battered condition, Australian federalism has proved its worth in this respect. For example, it was the premiers and other state political leaders who led the struggle against the 1991 political broadcasts ban. In fact, the New
South Wales government was a plaintiff in the successful High Court challenge to that legislation, and that decision, I would suggest, was the perhaps the greatest advance in Australian political liberty since federation.
(Sylvester Petro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, Spring, p. 480)
However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway – “I believe in only one thing: liberty.” And it is always well to bear in mind David Hume’s observation: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit .
Formula-determined block grants to states are, at least, designed to leave important decisions to local authorities. But the formulas used to allocate the money shape infrastructure planning in a remarkably block-headed manner. Cost-benefit studies are almost entirely lacking. Federal guidelines for new construction tend to reflect politics rather than anything else.
States tend to use federal money as a substitute for local spending, rather than to supplement or leverage it. The
Government Accountability Office estimates that substitution has risen substantially since the 1980s, and increases particularly when states get into budget difficulties. From 1998 to 2002, a period during which economic fortunes were generally deteriorating, state and local transport investment declined by 4% while federal investment rose by 40%. State and local shrinkage is almost certainly worse now.
[Daniel J. Mitchell, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, 9/25/07, “SCHIP’S Perverse Incentives,” Cato, http://www.cato-atliberty.org/schips-perverse-incentives/] aw
Picking the worst government program would be a huge challenge, but picking the worst funding system is much easier.
Programs involving joint federal-state funding contain built-in incentives to expand the size of government because politicians at either level can buy more votes by expanding the program, knowing that they only have to pay (depending on the formula) a share of the cost. In other words, lawmakers can promise $1 worth of goodies for, say, 50 cents. This is one of the reasons why Medicaid is a fiscal disaster. It’s also why welfare reform was a step in the right direction (the old system funneled more money to states when they added more people on the dole, creating a terrible incentive system).
Unfortunately, politicians generally make things worse rather than better, and a Wall Street Journal editorial (sub only) shows how the SCHIP program is encouraging more government:
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Ryan
07
Indeed, the historic progression of the various models of federalism that informed Supreme Court interpretation over the twentieth century reflects a pendulum-like attempt to achieve the proper balance between underlying federalism values, each model perhaps overcompensating for the excesses of its predecessor.15 After the Great Depression crippled the capacity of state and local governments to cope with unprecedented levels of social and economic despair, the Supreme
Court adopted a model of federalism that exalted the problem-solving value at the expense of the check-and-balance value to approve pragmatic New Deal legislative programs that expanded federal jurisdiction into traditionally local arenas.
Cooperative federalism, the predominant model of federalism since World War II, recovers some of the balance through a partnership-based approach to regulation in areas of interjurisdictional overlap, allowing state and federal governments to take responsibility for interlocking components of a collaborative regulatory program. However, cooperative federalism has also been criticized as an overly pragmatic model that insufficiently protects anti-tyranny values.16 Responding to concerns that cooperative federalism is, at best, undertheorized (and at worst, more coercive than collaborative), the New
Federalism reestablishes the supremacy of the check-and-balance value over all others in an effort to bolster the line between state and federal authority against pressures (some perhaps political, others genuinely interjurisdictional) that would blur the boundary.
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LARRY E.
GMU Foundation Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
BRUCE H.
Associate Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
(“LLCs, LLPs AND THE EVOLVING CORPORATE FORM: A
Symposium Sponsored by the Unviersity of Colorado Law Review: UNIFORM LAWS, MODEL LAWS AND LIMITED LIABILITY
COMPANIES” FALL, 1995 66 U. Colo. L. Rev. 947)
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws ("NCCUSL") has long been an accepted part of the legal landscape. It proposes statutes in every area of the law that it believes should be adopted verbatim by every state, and its proposals often receive serious consideration. The attention its proposals receive is a function of both lawyers' deference to NCCUSL as an organization, and their assumption that diversity of state laws creates serious problems that need to be solved either by uniform state laws or by federal laws. So NCCUSL's recent proposal of a Uniform Limited Liability Company Act ("ULLCA"), n1 the main subject of this article, was welcomed as a solution to the perceived problem of excessive variation among state limited liability company ("LLC") statutes. n2 There are, however, reasons to be cautious in greeting ULLCA. NCCUSL issues a large number of proposals which are not, and should not be, widely adopted because the proposals deal with issues on which there is no clear public interest in uniformity. n3 Moreover, despite their apparent chaos, LLC statutes already have become uniform without [*948] NCCUSL's prodding on issues for which uniformity is important. n4
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/f/federalg.asp)
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT [federal government] or federation, government of a union of states in which sovereignty is divided between a central authority and component state authorities. A federation differs from a confederation in that the central power acts directly upon individuals as well as upon states, thus creating the problem of dual allegiance. Substantial power over matters affecting the people as a whole, such as external affairs, commerce, coinage, and the maintenance of military forces, are usually granted to the central government. Nevertheless, retention of jurisdiction over local affairs by states is compatible with the federal system and makes allowance for local feelings. The chief political problem of a federal system of government is likely to be the allocation of sovereignty
,
because the need for unity among the federating states may conflict with their desire for autonomy.
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[“State Revenue Tops Forecasts as U.S. Governors Reduce Spending” By William Selway : William Selway, a Bloomberg News reporter, is responsible for coverage of municipal finance and state and local government. Selway, a
University of Arizona graduate, has been with Bloomberg News in San Francisco since 2000, where he covered technology in the wake of the Internet bubble's collapse, the recall of Governor Gray Davis, and the fight over gay marriage, among other stories. His stories have won awards from groups including the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the New York
Press Club and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Before joining Bloomberg, he worked at Dow Jones, the Bond Buyer and AFX News. on June 12, 2012 : http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-12/state-revenue-topsforecasts-as-u-dot-s-dot-governors-reduce-spending]
Most U.S. states are collecting more revenue than they forecast this year as the economy recovers, reducing budget deficits that have persisted in the nation’s capitals since the recession. Thirty-one states collected more than they expected when drafting budgets for the current fiscal year, which ends this month in most states, according to a report released today by the National Governors Association.
Still, state leaders moved to slow the growth of spending in the coming year, reflecting uncertainty about the economy, the report found. “State fiscal conditions are continuing to improve in fiscal 2013, although many state budgets are not fully back to pre-recession levels,” according to the report. U.S. states are slowly recovering from the 18-month recession that ended three years ago, which forced them to cut back on spending on education, welfare and transportation projects as tax collections tumbled. The need to balance budgets, often mandated by state constitutions, exerted a drag on the economy. With tax collections improving, only eight states were forced to close a collective $1.7 billion of deficits that emerged in the budgets in the middle of the year, the fewest since the recession.
Budget Shortfalls For 2013, the difference between what states will collect and what they were poised to spend narrowed to
$30.6 billion from $68.1 billion in the previous 12 months, according to the report. Nineteen faced such shortfalls, down from 27 a year earlier. Governors proposed increasing spending by a total of 2.2 percent to $682.7 billion, a reduction from the previous two years and about half the 4.1 percent projected jump in their revenue. “Despite some improvements in state budgets since the depths of the recession, state budget growth is still significantly below average, growing at less than half the average rate of growth of the past few decades,” said Scott Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which worked with the Washington-based governors group, in a statement. Proposed spending increases for the coming year varied. New Jersey proposed the biggest, a 7.2 percent jump, followed by California and
Oregon, with jumps of 7 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively, according to the report. Texas, Alabama and Alaska were among the nine states still proposing cuts, according to the report. Public Employees The diminished deficits reduced pressure on public employees and local governments. Eleven states, including California, Maryland and Massachusetts, considered dismissing workers in the coming year, down from 15 that did so in the current year. Fourteen states, among them Ohio and Pennsylvania, proposed paring back aid to localities, down from 17 states a year earlier. The gains in tax collections haven’t eliminated fiscal strains in statehouses, including the cost of providing health care under Medicaid, which has increased as a result of joblessness and rising medical bills. States’ financial stability may be threatened by a slowdown in the economy, federal budget cuts or tax-law changes, said Dan Crippen, the executive director of the governors’ group.
“Everywhere you look, there’s uncertainty for the fiscal position of states,” he said in an interview. Debt Crisis Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said this month that the economy is at risk from
Europe’s debt crisis and the prospect of federal budget tightening in the U.S. Last month, U.S. employers also added workers at the slowest pace in a year, pushing up the unemployment rate and raising renewed concerns about the pace of growth. Even with increases proposed for the 2013 budget year, spending would still be $4.6 billion below the 2008 peak. Half of the proposed budgets that were below their peak from five years before, according to the governor’s report. “States remain cautious about the strength of the national economic recovery,” according to the report. “State budgets reflect a national economy in which growth is slow and not as robust as in previous recoveries, yet overall state fiscal improvement is occurring.”
, Thomas Gais, director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and James Fossett, directs the
Rockefeller Institute's research program in bioethics and federalism and is an associate professor of public administration and public health at the University at Albany, 7/18/2005, Chap. 15, Federalism and the Executive Branch, http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/federalism/2005-federalism_and_the_excutive_branch.pdf, TB
State fiscal capacities have grown markedly in recent decades. States greatly increased their reliance on sales and income taxes since the 1950s and decreased their dependence on property taxes, which had always been politically difficult to raise.
The development of a broad-based and growing tax base meant that states could sustain their own spending priorities,even in the aftermath of severe federal budget cuts, as they did in the 1980s.48 States could even compensate for chronic federal underfunding. Since the early 1990s, for example, federal environmental grants changed little in real terms, despite the growth of state responsibilities. States responded by increasing their own spending, to the point that they now pay about 80 percent of the costs of federal environmental programs.49
Their greater political, administrative, and fiscal capacities have led many states to fashion their own policy responses to major problems. In the 1980s, states were on the forefront of efforts to deal with worker dislocation and retraining, when federal officials paid little attention to such issues.50 Interest in economic development has sometimes led states to take on novel functions,such as California’s decision in 2004 to fund stem cell research in order to draw academic researchers and biotech businesses unhappy with the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal research grants. States showed leadership in energy policies in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 2000s—the most recent years in response to electricity reliability problems, environmental concerns, and energy price spikes.51 Some states have even addressed the problem of global
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1 warming, while the federal government has done little, despite all the theoretical reasons that one would expect states to ignore such an issue.52 The openness and capacities of state political institutions, combined with the growth of federal involvement in so many domestic issues, produced by the late twentieth century an extremely dynamic, less constrained system of federalism—one in which it would be difficult to identify any major domestic policy issue in the United States that has not penetrated both federal and state political agendas. Federal and state governments may be more than ever
“different agents and trustees of the people.” But one would be hard put to identify their “different purposes.
Meanwhile, states and local governments are contributing massively to transportation funding already, just as Ms.
Schweitzer asks them to. I studied Oregon and Illinois a year and a half ago and found that only about a quarter of Oregon’s
Department of Transportation budget comes from Washington; about a third of Illinois’ comes from the national capital.
What about those profligate transit agencies that are egged on by the federal government’s wasteful spending? Their operations spending comes from local, state, and fare revenues — not Washington. And expansion projects — especially the big ones — are mostly financed by local revenues, like dedicated sales taxes that voters across the country have approved repeatedly over the past twenty years. The six largest transit expansion projects currently receiving or proposed to receive funding from the Obama Administration this year each rely on the federal government to contribute less than 43% of total costs. Perhaps Detroit would have paid for the People Mover even if it had had to use its own revenues to do so.
Now, even if we were to recognize the high level of devolution of power and funds that currently does exist in the U.S., some might still argue that the federal government exercises too much power. Its distribution formula for fuel tax revenues results in certain states getting more money than their drivers contributed (“donor” states) and certain states getting less
(“donee” states). Why not simply allow states to collect their own revenues and spend money as they wish? Why should
Washington be engaged in this discussion at all?
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Miller, 98
The history of the Tenth Amendment is an appropriate starting point in the development of substantive federalism. For a long period of time, the Tenth Amendment operated as nothing more than a plain statement of the obvious that afforded little protection to the states. 249 In the aftermath of Garcia, state sovereignty was left to the political processes. 250 Tenth
Amendment power was reborn in New York v. United States when the Court held that Congress could not commandeer the states' legislative function. 251 This protection is decreed no matter how strong the federal interest in the legislation may be. 252 Protections over state sovereignty were expanded again in the 1996 Term when the Court invalidated certain portions of the Brady Act. 253 According to Printz, Congress cannot force the states' executive branches to enact federal regulatory programs regardless of the federal interest involved. 254 Whenever the structural framework of dual sovereignty is compromised, the Tenth Amendment steps in to prevent a usurpation of federalism. 255 Printz and New York held that
Congress was incapable of commanding the states to take a course of action that it could not undertake directly. 256 But what happens if Congress breaches the Tenth Amendment through an Article I power like the Spending Clause? Do the
Court's enunciated protections extend to Article I? These are the questions that the theory of substantive federalism answers. The restraint on Article I began, to large extent, in Garcia when Justice O'Connor predicted that the Commerce power would be affirmatively limited [*191] by state autonomy. 257 The door was further opened in New York when the plenary nature of the Commerce Clause was labeled as "subversive" to the interests of state sovereignty. 258 United States v. Lopez put the first nail in the coffin when it struck down an exercise of the Commerce power as going so far as to approach a "police power of the sort retained by the States." 259 The Commerce Clause, in other words, authorizes control over interstate commerce, but does not authorize regulation of the states. 260 Seminole Tribe, however, lends the greatest support to the substantive federalism theory. The Eleventh Amendment -- a core guardian of state sovereign interests 261 -- withstands any attempt by Congress to pierce the shield of federalism with Article I. 262 Similar to the Tenth Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment once provided little protection to the states when Congress flexed its Article I muscle. 263 Along with the strengthening of the Eleventh Amendment, New York and Printz add to the growth of federalism and the devolution of unrestricted congressional power. The same 5-4 majority 264 has written the opinions in New York, Lopez,
Seminole Tribe, and Printz, and it is only a matter of time before the rationale in Seminole Tribe is extended to the Tenth
Amendment as a limit on the Spending Clause. 265 Substantive federalism presents the argument that the Tenth
Amendment will be used in much the same manner as the Eleventh Amendment was used in Seminole Tribe. If a core principle of state sovereignty will be encroached upon by an Article I power, the Tenth Amendment prohibits the intrusion.
266 On the other side of the coin, Congress must look to the Tenth Amendment and ask whether its proposed legislation will impinge upon principles of federalism. If substantive federalism can operate to block congressional action under the
Commerce Clause, then it can also curtail the Spending power.
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The use of compacts over the years shows an uneven pattern. Although compact growth has varied notably by decade, states have continued to propose, discuss, and enact bi-state, regional, and nationwide compacts. Thus, even on the basis of this preliminary investigation, it is possible to say that interstate compacts continue to be a viable instrument of cooperation and offer a potential tool for problem resolution between states in the federal system today. Many state officials across the country seem to see the compact as a feasible method of taking interstate actions that cover functions from environmental protection to transportation regulation, from provision of services to criminal justice activities, and from the traditional areas of boundary resolution to regulation of rivers and river resources. In addition, continuing cross-state metropolitanization necessitates interstate agreements, especially for transportation in those areas. These findings donot suggest, however, that we will witness "constant discovery of genuinely novel applications" of compacts. 52 All states are members of one or more compacts, and they cover a variety of fields. It is more likely that we will see "Council of State
Governments, The Book of States, 1976-77, p. 573. at Dartmouth College Library on July 18, 2012 http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from
From the time the nation was formed, the scope of interstate compacts has changed significantly. Compacts began as border devices, but since the 1920s, they have been principally regional in scope. After 1920, border compacts outnumbered other types only in the 1970s, while nationwide compacts showed a steady increase until the 1970s. The creation of commissions or agencies by compacts has changed gradually over the years. Until the 1970s, the majority of compacts did not have these agencies. Only in the last two decades have the majority of compacts utilized such agencies. The functions of compacts have also changed since the beginning of the United States. Designed initially to deal with boundary problems, this type of compact has declined from over 70 percent of the earliest enactments to less than 1 percent of the most recent. Rivermanagement and river-waters compacts made up from onefourth to one half of those enacted until their use decreased during the last decade. Industrial or business-oriented compacts have hovered around 10 percent of the total in any given year. Because of a change in categorization, comparisons are less distinct for the last two decades; however, compacts designed for transportation and environmental issues are a large share of the recent total. The most compacts enacted were the forty-five passed between 1960 and 1969 (4.5 per year) and twenty-two between 1955 and 1959 (5.5 per year).
Certainly, the decades of the 1970s and 1980s do not match those numbers. On the other hand, the fact that fortytwo have been enacted and twenty others proposed since 1970 indicates that state officials continue to regard the interstate compact as a feasible instrument of interstate action. Simply on the basis of numbers, compacts should not be ignored.
In recent years, states have relied more frequently on formal multi-state regional and national compacts to cooperate in settling shared problems (Welch and Clark 1973; Florestano 1994). As more states join compacts, this mechanismÕs potential to solve major national problems becomes greater. Since the early 1990s, state leaders have called for greater cooperation and coordination among states in the design of common policies as a means to forestall further erosion of state power to the national government (Bowman 2002). Indeed, it is only a short leap from there to begin thinking of national compacts as potential alternatives to federal legislation. These cooperative actions empower the states, vis-ˆ-vis the national govern- ment, generating what Daniel Elazar called Òfederalism without WashingtonÓ (quoted in Krane 2002,
23). Compacts that are national in scopeÑthat is, compact membership open to all statesÑoffer an ideal point from which to consider the question of interstate cooperation. In this article, we explore the role that interstate compacts play in rebalancing the federal system. Our analy- ses assess the factors that cause states to join interstate compacts, focusing on state capacity, politics, and vertical and horizontal forces. Our results suggest that each of these factors plays a role in generating compact participation
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arp.sagepub.com, American Society for Public
Administration
Van Slyke (2003) interviews New York state and county public managers in social ser- vice programs and finds inconsistent use of competitive bidding among the agencies. Barriers to competition exist both inside and outside of the government and include such concerns as the public agencies’lack of staff and resources to develop competition, antici- pated market unavailability and the resultant unwillingness to utilize competitive bidding, and political pressure from lawmakers elected and officials who are lobbied by nonprofit executives and advocacy groups (Van Slyke, 2003).
Meanwhile, Smith and Lipsky (1993, p. 173) point out the common presence of “-mutual back-scratching”between nonprofits and government service agencies for advocating and developing programs. Social service agencies frequently perceive their nonprofit counterparts as goal sharing partners who influence legislators and elected officials to make favorable decisions for their programs (Kettl, 1993). Moreover, nonprofit executives are often invited into public agencies’rule- or policy-making processes to provide input (Smith & Lipsky, 1993).
Richard Rothstein , research associate of the Economic Policy Institute, 19 98 , “When States Spend More” lexis
Liberals and progressives have generally believed that shifting federal authority for social programs to the states will typically lead to a "race to the bottom" as states try to attract business and keep taxes down by cutting expenditures and regulations [see Mary Graham, "Why States Can Do More," page 63]. But a common trend of the last quarter century has also been a race to the top in which state policies can become more generous over time and even rival those of the federal government.
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Gralla (Reporter for Reuters) 6/11/12
(Joan, “California likely will need to cut spending more: S&P,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-california-spidUSBRE85A11120120611)
(Reuters) - California's $15.7 billion deficit is about 30 percent of the total gap all states face in the coming fiscal year, Standard &
Poor's said in a report on Monday, saying the state likely will have to cut spending further to balance the 2013 fiscal budget. State spending as a share of California's total economy is the lowest in 39 years. But the state's tax revenue system is "dysfunctional" and California relies heavily on volatile personal income tax collections, which are expected to total 63 percent of general fund revenue in 2013, S&P said. California's economy "remains depressed and its revenue recovery is sluggish" three years after the
Great Recession ended, the credit agency added.
Morton (Associated with the Los Angeles Times) 6/11/12
(Laura, “Budget culprit is California tax code, ratings agency says,” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/californiapolitics/2012/06/california-budget-taxes.html)
While Gov. Jerry Brown and top Democratic lawmakers haggle over spending cuts this week, Standard & Poor's said Monday that they're missing the core problem leading to California's budget crisis. The root of the budget morass, the ratings agency said, is the state's tax code. Tax revenue has grown more slowly and become increasingly unreliable, thanks in part to the state's heavy reliance on taxing the wealthy. Standard & Poor's estimated that income taxes on the richest 1% gave the state 11% of its general fund revenues in 2010, up from 2.7% in 1979. Brown's tax proposal, which he hopes voters approve in November, could make revenue even more unreliable because it would raise the tax rate on wealthy residents, the report said. Still, the ratings agency described it as an "emergency measure of sorts" that may be needed to balance the budget. Standard & Poor's concerns about the state's tax code echoes those voiced by the legislative analyst's office, which provides nonpartisan budget advice to lawmakers. In its report, the ratings agency painted a bleak picture of a state struggling to reboot its economy after the recession and wrestling with budget problems unique in their size and complexity. Standard & Poor's also downplayed a central line of criticism from
Republicans, saying overspending is not driving the state's problems. "We don't see the state's existing spending level as the key source of its budget distress," the report said. "In fact, the state is currently spending less as a share of its economy than it has at any point in the past 39 years." Looming in the background is California's overburdened pension system. Although the problem contributes "little if anything to its current budget predicament," the report said, it could eventually drag down the state's credit rating.
Ponick (Writing on investing, politics, music, and theater for the Washington Times Communities) 7/11/ 12
(Terry, “Is California America’s Greece?” http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/morning-marketmaven/2012/jul/11/california-americas-greece/)
WASHINGTON, July 11, 2012 – We move from this column’s unexpected joust with global warmists to another metaphorical solar flare—this time, one that’s erupting in California. According to CNBC, the city of San Bernardino will file for bankruptcy protection: “Chapter 9 bankruptcy would give San Bernardino an opportunity to restructure its battered finances, city staff said during a webcast of the city council meeting.” If San Bernardino goes through with this intended action, it would become the third
California municipality to file for bankruptcy. Additional municipalities are in the on-deck circle. This is very possibly the beginning of the municipal domino effect in the nation’s biggest state as the piper finally demands to be paid. Arguably,
California’s epic profligacy has turned it into America’s version of Greece—and given its sheer size and population, maybe
America’s Spain and Italy as well. Via clever gerrymandering and mid- 1990s chicanery by Al Gore and company to jam pile new immigrants as rapidly as possible onto the voting rolls, California turned permanently socialist-Democrat over the last twenty years or so, gerrymandered to the hilt to assure a permanent leftist majority in its government. The state, once the comfortable abode of conservative saint Ronald Reagan (and even Dick Nixon), now very strongly resembles modern Greece in its addiction to deficit spending on extravagant projects (like the bullet train to nowhere) and its inability to facew reality. Like much of our troubled country today, California government is strongly influenced by the perpetual adolescents who now, as aging Boomers, create mountains of unfunded governmental fantasies with the aim of making themselves feel morally superior. Unfortunately, the bill for their profligacy is staggering—not the least of which is their looming early retirement and pension tsunami.
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Semler (Professor of the Government Department at Sacramento State University) 20 05
(Michael, “Financing California’s Infrastructure,” http://www.csus.edu/calst/government_affairs/reports/financing_california.pdf,
December 2005)
As entrepreneurs, investors, and residents observe, prudent investment in California’s infrastructure impacts everyone.
Whenever governments, like private firms, make capital investments, jobs are created and opportunities exist for further economic growth and productivity. The magnitude and type of employment opportunities created vary depending on the nature of the capital project. As in the private sector, some investments produce goods that generate substantially more employment and economic growth (as measured by increases in gross domestic product). Obviously, large public-sector construction and renovation projects have a direct impact on employment in the construction industry and in secondary or dependent industries. These activities also stimulate the creation of additional jobs (induced employment) in other industries, e.g. retail merchants, financial services, and tourism. These activities help make everyone wealthier. In addition, investment in upgrading or renewing existing public facilities avoids negative economic effects that can result from a deteriorating infrastructure. Absent investment in adequate communication, water, and educational resources, for example, private sector employment opportunities cannot exist.
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Doug Hagmann Staff Writer The planned re-election of Obama, revolutionary style 5/8/12 http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/46516
The information? It began on Wednesday, 2 May 2012 with a 45-minute interview on TruNews with Rick Wiles when I first disclosed the information I received the previous week from my source. The information I relayed “went viral,” as they say, across the internet.? To support the statements I made during that interview, I am showing my handwritten notes taken contemporaneously during our conversation. My notes consist of two pages and are, at various points, admittedly difficult to decipher. I ask that points not be deducted for my penmanship given the time of the morning which they were taken.?
According to my source, there is talk among the highest levels of the uppermost echelon of the Department of Homeland
Security, which he describes as effectively under the control of Barack Hussein Obama. During this call, he said that the
DHS is actively preparing for massive social unrest inside the United States. He then corrected himself, stating that “a civil war” is the more appropriate term. Certain elements of the government are not only expecting and preparing for it, they are actually facilitating it,” stated my source.? “The DHS takes their marching orders from the Obama administration, from
Obama himself, but mostly from his un-appointed czars. And Jarrett, especially Valerie Jarrett. Don’t think for a minute that the administration is doing anything to stabilize events in the U.S. They are revolutionaries, and revolutionaries thrive on chaos,” he added.? My source stated that he has not seen things this bad since he began working within DHS. “It’s like they [DHS agency heads] don’t care about what the American people see or feel about what the DHS agencies are doing.
They figure that if the average American will put up with being “sexually groped and nuked” just to fly, they’ll accept almost anything. “That’s why their actions are becoming more overt. “It’s in your face and the brass actually chuckle about it” said my source.? New
Information? Astounded by the information my source provided “going viral,” I spoke to him again early Sunday morning. This was a scheduled telephone call (as noted on page 2 of my notes) based on a high level meeting of DHS personnel that was scheduled for and took place in Chantilly,
Virginia, on Saturday, 5 May 2012. He hoped to provide me with more information to supplement that which he already given. Although he was not personally present, his source was. While he would not say who was at the meeting on Saturday or give its precise location, he said that the many of the names would be recognizable. He spoke to his source late Saturday night.? I contacted him on his cellular phone early Sunday morning to get the promised update.? “Geez, nice job on getting the word out about what’s really going on at DHS and in this administration,” were the first words out of his mouth, followed by “thanks a lot.” I asked him why he would be thanking me. “I just wanna’ tell you that I’m going to have to hire someone to start my car, and
I’m surely not going for any rides in small planes in the immediate future,” he said with a bit of nervous laughter. “I hope no one finds out who I am or it’s going to be more than my pension I’ll have to worry about.”? “I can tell you word is getting out that people are starting to wake up, which is causing a lot of ‘pissed off brass.’ I can’t tell if they are more desperate or upset about the exposure, but the tone is starting to become a lot more tense. I hope that we’re having something to do with that,” he added.? With that, he provided me with additional information to supplement that which he already given me on 25 April. For clarity purposes, I have combined the information together from both contacts. The following information includes the updated information provided to me Sunday morning.? Obama the revolutionary? Metaphorically speaking, there’s a revolution going on in the U.S., propped up by three legs. Economic chaos, chaos through racial division, and chaos through class division, all joined by one core element: Barack Hussein Obama and his stable of unelected czars. Obama is using the lessons learned in 1968 as the template for 2012, and many of those who were active in the late 1960s are now calling the shots for 2012.? “The Obama administration and many of the un-elected ‘czars,’ either directly or indirectly, are engaged in covert activities with the occupy movement, various labor protests, and other subversive activities inside the U.S.,” stated my source. Using untracked campaign funds, they are paying people to infiltrate the various movements to cause physical destruction of property and disrupt commerce. That began last year, but has increased ten-fold already this year,” stated this source. He added that they are using some lower level DHS agents to make the payments under the context of tracking subversives, but they are the unwitting subversives. “It’s like Fast & Furious” but in the social realm,” he added.? “Obama is using some high profile people as pawns to foment the revolution. I heard several times through very credible sources that [Louis]
Farrakhan is on the CIA payroll. Other have been named as well, but I’m not prepared to identify them yet. Farrakhan is to coordinate the Blacks and the Muslims to prepare for riots this summer, using any means necessary.”? “Mentioned at the meeting Saturday were methods to use pawns to simulate the rioting in the Arab Spring countries, but to the benefit of this administration. A controlled chaos thing,” stated my source. They envision rioting starting in the urban areas first, such as
New York and other major cities, followed by a disruption of business and commerce. This will allow the DHS to mobilize their various teams into the streets of America without objection of the people,” stated my source.? “They want to restrict travel, if not through high energy prices, then by checkpoints and curfews mandated by rioting and unrest. They understand we are the most well-armed nation in the world, yet they are aware of our vulnerabilities and intend to fully exploit them,” he added. The whole purpose is to keep Obama in office for another term, no matter how unpopular he is, as he is not finished changing our country from a Constitutional Republic. This is the run-up to the 2012 elections, or perhaps causing enough chaos to delay them - indefinitely.”
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Teresa
, PhD and is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the Professional Writing and Communication
Major at SMSU, March
, http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED384038.pdf, “Resisting Ethical Paralysis: A Postmodern Critique of
Ethics”; AB
Patricia Bizzell argues that inquiry into ethics and English studies is paralyzed by our view that "the imposition of ideological agendas...[is]...morally questionable," yet "our moral sensibility motivates us to promote particular ideological agendas, or if you prefer, particular ethical positions" (1). She notes that the field is caught is this dilemma because its
'postmodern skepticism forces us to acknowledge that there are no universal values , yet we as teachers and scholars want a subject position that will allow us to appeal to some standards even if they are not universal. The question this dilemma raises is how can the field of rhetoric and composition conceive of ethics in a postmodern manner and still allow for moral agency and authority. However, it is not only the fluid's move to postmodernism that challenges our concepts of and desires for moral agency. Our personal, public, and disciplinary experiences with moral debate also hinder us from making a thorough inquiry into the relationship between ethics and our field. Bizzell notes that we have difficulty with this issue because we believe it is wrong to impose an ideology or moral agenda on others. But why is our understanding of moral debate limited to understanding it as an imposition of moral agendas? Why don't we view the question of ethics as an opportunity for discussion and collaborative creation of values'? Part of the reason we don't think about ethics in these terms is because the dominant political culture is caught up in the imposition of moral codes and agendas not discussion.
There are many ways to characterize the ethical perspective we find both in our culture at large as well as in the liberal enlightenment culture of most English departments. Arnold I. Davidson labels it as an Anglo-American view.
According to Davidson, such a view understands ethics as a system of foundational or universal premises that generate moral codes. In moral philosophy, this perspective is often called a deontological view. Deontological ethical systems (of which there are many) can be characterized by their adherence to one universal rule which is used to generate moral codes.
The Kantian Categorical Imperative is one such deontological system which rests on the universal premise that one can discover the right thing to do by imagining oneself to be the sovereign of the world. Each act of the sovereign would become a universal law for the world . For instance, if one were angry at another and wanted to strike them, one would first have to think whether or not he/she would want this as a rule for the world. In other words, every time someone got angry at me or another, theywould strike that person. Would I want to live in a world where people were allowed to strike each other out of anger? No, I would not, so according to the Kantian Categorical Imperative, it is morally wrong to strike people out of anger. The problem with a deontological view or an Anglo-American view of ethics is not that the universal principles are hurtful in and of themselves. Certainly, Kant's principle could be used to prohibit violence which most of us would agree is a good thing. The real problem with such systems is that they impose what Jaqueline Martinez refers to as ethical rhetorics. That is to say that what is good, right, or of value is decided on prior to any rhetorical discussion or inquiry. This lack of discussion means that the abstract values of an ethical rhetoric are not tied to contextual constraints.
By creating values outside a rhetorical context, an ethical rhetoric precludes these values from discussion, so in a specific context, the moral agent is only left with two choices: stick to the Categorical Imperative and be "moral" or violate the imperative and be "immoral." The subject position of the moral agent as well as his or her ability to create values in context are ignored. The ethical agent is put in a position where he or she must simply con -ant to follow or not to follow the ethical choice being presented to him or her by the rhetor or particular ethical system. To get a better sense of how the consequences of an ethical rhetoric create paralysis and violence in moral debate , it is useful to turn to Alasdair
MacIntyre's After Virtue. Maclntyre notes that the most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreement (6). Not only is contemporary moral utterance characterized by disagreement, but
Maclntyre also points out that there seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement and therefore no end to such arguments (6).
Joshua
, Prof. of Psychology @ Harvard University, November
, “The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very
Bad Truth About Morality And What To Do About It”; http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagreene/files/dissertation_0.pdf; AB
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Moral realism is the theoretical expression of the Stone Age moral psychology with which we are saddled. It is an illusion that exacerbates conflict and promotes misunderstanding. If I want things to be one way and you want things to be some other way, we might be able to reach some sort of compromise. But, if I want things to be one way, and if I believe that the way I want things is not merely the way I want things but also the way things ought to be, and if I believe further that it’s just plain to see that my way is the way things ought to be and that anyone who says otherwise must be outright lying or willfully refusing to see the truth, and if you want things to be some other way and you’re just as 14 I do not wish to suggest any sort of “group selectionism” according to which human moral psychology evolved to make life go well for small groups of people
. My claim is simply that insofar as human moral psychology does work well for small communities, it does not work nearly as well in the modern context. I also do not wish to suggest that all scaling up leads to trouble. The case for the scale problem in morality rests on the details concerning moral psychology and not on some generic argument of the form “We no longer live in the environment in which X evolved; therefore we must change X.”
234 convinced of the rightness of your position as I am of mine, then what chance do we have of reaching a reasonable compromise? I see you as an errant child, someone who has lost the way, someone who wasn’t paying attention on the day right and wrong were explained, or, perhaps, as someone who was paying attention but who, for whatever inexplicable reason, has chosen to cast aside what is right and good in favor of that which is base and evil. And you, of course, see me in a similar light. I attempt to argue with you and am amazed at your obtuseness.
The words I speak so clearly reveal the truth, and yet you persist in your wrongheaded ways. And you are similarly perplexed by me and my stubbornness . Haidt (2001, pg. 823) summarizes the social-intuitionist take on ordinary moral discourse: The bitterness, futility, and selfrighteousness of most moral arguments can now be explicated. In a debate on abortion, politics , consensual incest, or on what my friend did to your friend, both sides believe that their positions are based on reasoning about the facts and issues involved (the wag-the-dog illusion ).
Both sides present what they take to be excellent arguments in support of their positions.
Both sides expect the other side to be responsive to such reasons (the wag-the-other-dog’s-tail illusion). When the other side fails to be affected by such good reasons, each side concludes that the other side must be insincere, closed-minded, or even devious …. In this way the culture wars over issues such as homosexuality and abortion can generate morally motivated players on both sides who 235 believe that their opponents are not morally motivated (Haidt & Hersh, 2001, Robinson, Keltner, Ward, & Ross, 1995). A mess, indeed. But how to clean it up? Must we resign ourselves to a world of endless conflict and misunderstanding?
Haidt (Pg. 823) suggests a shift in tactics: Moral reasoning may have little persuasive power in conflict situations, but the social intuitionist model says that moral reasoning can be effective in influencing people before a conflict arises… If one can get the other person to see the issue in a new way, perhaps by reframing a problem to trigger new intuitions, then one can influence others with one’s words. This, however, does not get to the heart of the problem. It is a gesture toward more subtle, less explosive forms of moral warfare, not peace.
Moreover, it is a lesson that most professional moral communicators have already learned from experience. No surprise that novels, plays, metaphors, and anecdotes are more effective means of propaganda than philosophical arguments and statistics. (I’ve never stayed in a hotel room that came furnished with a copy of Kant’s Grundlegung .) As Haidt suggests, a better understanding of moral psychology may be used to further one’s own moral agenda—a good or bad thing depending on the agenda in question. But I propose instead that we use our understanding 236 of moral psychology to transcend our ordinary modes of moral discourse rather than to operate more effectively within them .15 Once again, the enemy, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, is moral realism. Conflicts of interest may be inevitable, but they need not be exacerbated by people’s unflagging confidence that they’re right and that their opponents are wrong .
The solution, then, is to get rid of realist thinking and to start by getting rid of realist language. Speak only in terms that make the subjective nature of value plain. Instead of saying that capital punishment is wrong say that you are opposed to it. Say that it is an ineffective deterrent, difficult to implement in a colorblind fashion, and likely to lead to irreversible mistakes. And then say no more . Instead of saying that eating animals is wrong and a form of murder, say that you are opposed to eating animals because you wish to alleviate suffering and you believe that this practice causes much unnecessary suffering. Instead of saying that gay marriage undermines “family values,” say that it undermines your family’s values, that it is against the teachings of your religion, etc
. (Obviously some people will have an easier time with this transition than others. This is an important point to be explored later in Chapter 5.) Speaking in this way is honest, requires no false metaphysical commitments, and should make 15 Haidt (Pg. 829) does make some suggestions that are similar in spirit to, though more moderate than, my own. He proposes, quite plausibly, that various forms of structured, active engagement with moral issues, learning to see moral issues from different viewpoints, may improve people’s moral thinking, especially young people’s. 237 discussions of moral matters much more fruitful and, at the very least, shorter. When someone makes a claim about how he feels; what he wants, values, or cares about; or what he is or is not willing to accept in a negotiation, there is, in the absence of realist interlocutors, nothing to dispute. When someone makes a putative statement of fact, there is often much to dispute, but in a purely factual discussion there is a decent chance that genuine evidence can be brought to bear on the issue, resolving it in favor of one party or another or, failing that, demonstrating to both parties that the evidence is inconclusive.16 Even where differences of value and/or factual disagreements persist, such a mode of discourse is likely to lead to increased mutual understanding and less exasperating huffing and puffing. The language of moral realism is sufficiently rich to provide a reasonable sounding justification for just about anything a society would actually want to do. Even terrorists (or “freedom fighters,” depending on your point of view) can justify their actions in terms that sound eerily similar to those used by their victims in other contexts.
Because there is no fact of the matter about what’s right or wrong, no true moral theory, there is no neutral ground from which to sort out the putatively true moral claims from the ones that simply ring true to some people.
Thus, the language of moral realism makes an excellent smoke screen for aggressive or otherwise anti-social behavior, a smoke screen that is so effective 16 People on opposite sides of a practical issue will often have a hard time agreeing on the facts, but I suspect that this is because the “facts” in such cases are not really purely factual but rather mixed up with evaluative matters as well . 238 it can, and usually does, fool those who employ it. A nation with economic incentives to take over a neighbor’s territory can claim that the neighboring territory really belongs to their nation and that they have a right to it. One might go so far as to say that nations require the language of moral realism to marshal popular support for aggressive actions. Has a military aggressor ever not claimed a moral right to carry out its plans? Has a nation ever been moved to war by leaders who said, “It
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1 would be good for us economically, and we can get away with it, so why not ?” As Roger Fisher says in Basic Negotiating Strategy (1971,
Pg. 110), “Governments are not like bank robbers. People ask ‘What ought I do?’ not ‘What can I get away with?’” Arthur Schlesinger (1971) concurs:
“National interest has a self-limiting factor. It cannot, unless transformed by an injection of moral righteousness, produce ideological crusades for unlimited objectives.” As does Kenneth Thompson (1985, pg. 5): “Foreign policy tends to be articulated in moral terms, even in most authoritarian regimes.” As noted above, moral realists naturally interpret the actions and opinions of their (realist) opponents as products of a surreptitious disregard for morality. They see things this way because, to them, the moral truth that has been disregarded by their opponents is so self-evident that only one who willfully disregards morality’s requirements could think and act as their opponents do. People who are evil, people who believe that their actions are wrong and carry on just the same, are native to Hollywood movies and children’s books, but in real life (and good books and films) such characters are few and their influence is negligible. (See Section 5.2.3.) In the real world, the vast majority of avoidable 239 suffering is caused by people who think they have the moral truth on their side.
Teresa
, PhD and is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the Professional Writing and Communication
Major at SMSU, March
, http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED384038.pdf, “Resisting Ethical Paralysis: A Postmodern Critique of
Ethics”; AB
Finally, since the rhetor's the argument began, those in the issue have no way to weigh the merits of each position. The audience simply has to choose what side to take. Even if the audience tries to create its own position, it is unlikely to be heard in the din of assertion and counterassertion occurring between the pro-lifers and pro-choicers. In the end, ethical rhetorics privilege moral victory and moral rightness over the process of moral agreement. W e carry the violence created by these ethical rhetorics with us and become paralyzed in the face of them.
We have a sense whether through postmodernism, intuition, or some other means that ethical rhetoric’s are misguided but instead of finding a new way to talk about ethics we retreat to a position of liberal individualism where everyone has a "right" to his or her position. By making this retreat, we condemn ourselves to a paralyzing moral relativism -- if everyone is right or has a right to her/his position, how can we come to any moral agreement? By letting every position stand, by not trying to come to any moral agreement, we create an environment in which groups of people with similar positions will band together to aggressively advocate their side just as the pro-lifers and pro-choicers have done. In this way, we reinscribe ethical rhetorics' power over us.
Liberal individualism's inability to help us create consensus or move in this mine field of positions suggests that ethical rhetorics -- even though appalling to Us are the only route to moral agency. In trying to get out of an ethical rhetoric frame, we are caught in a vicious circle which leaves us to ask: How do we embark on moral discussions? How do we come to moral agreement? How can we live ethical lives? My paper won't answer these questions or offer a solution to the paralysis and violence that can come about when incommensurable moral positions face off in public, private, or disciplinary arenas.
However, by employing Foucault's ethical analytic, I can point to subjectivity theory as an area of inquiry that might help us address some of these problems. Foucault deconstructs the Anglo-Americanview of ethics by positioning moral codes, moral actions, and ethics all under the historically contingent label "morals" and redefining ethics as the relationship one ought to have with oneself which he calls the "rapport 'a soi." Foucault explains that the rapport 'a soi "determines how the individual is supposed to constitute himself as a moral subject of his own actions" (352). According to Davidson, some philosophers have found Foucault's definition of ethics to be "idiosyncratic." However, as Davidson points out, this definition allows Foucault to "isolate a distinctive stratum of analysis typically overlooked" by moral sociologists who consider people's moral behavior and moral philosophers who work towards creating an ethics that will generate and justify a set of moral codes (226). What Foucault's view does for us is to encourage us to start an inquiry into ethics not by labeling various positions as ethical or unethical and not by asking the question how can moral rightness be proved, but rather his view encourages us to ask: How have I constructed myself as a moral agent? How do you construct yourself as a moral agent? What parts of you and I are relegated to the concern of moral conduct (352)? How are you and I invited or incited to recognize our moral obligations (353)? What do you and I do to make ourselves ethical (354)? Who do we aspire to be so that we behave in a moral way (355)? These questions allow us to interrogate the agent behind the moral debate at a moment prior to debates over moral codes thus allowing us to identify the contextmotivating the debate as well as the moral agent's motivating values and beliefs. If we ask these questions of all the participants of the abortion debate including speakers and hearers we can begin to understand the subject positions of each side. Rather than encouraging a process of further disidentification between participants, an inquiry into how these participants have constructed themselves as moral agents can offer a path toward some identification and understanding before the debate/discussion starts. However,
Foucault is only a start his view of ethics points to inquiry into subjectivity theory as a way of understanding and perhaps strategically responding to the paralysis and violence created by contemporary forms of moral debate.
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Louiza
(PhD International Relations) March
Against Ethics? Iconographies of Enmity and Acts of Obligation in Carl Schmitt’s Theory of the
Partisan” http://www.louizaodysseos.org.uk/resources/Odysseos+ISA+2008+Against+Ethics.pdf
A third objection, still, has to do with the imposition of particular kind of monism: despite the lip-service to plurality, taken from the market (Kalyvas 1999), ‘liberal pluralism is in fact not in the least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding monism, the monism of humanity’ (Rasch 2003: 136). Similarly, current universalist perspectives, while praising
‘customary’ or cultural differences, think of them ‘but as ethical or aesthetic material for a unified polychromatic culture – a new singularity born of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents’ (Brennan 2003: 41). One oft-discussed disciplining effect is that, politically, the ethics of a universal humanity shows little tolerance for what is regarded as
‘intolerant’ politics, which is any politics that moves in opposition to its ideals, rendering political opposition to it illegitimate (Rasch 2003: 136). This is compounded by the fact that liberal ethical discourses are also defined by a claim to their own exception and superiority. They naturalise the historical origins of liberal societies, which are no longer regarded as ‘contingently established and historically conditioned forms of organization’ ; rather, they ‘become the universal standard against which other societies are judged . Those found wanting are banished, as outlaws, from the civilized world. Ironically, one of the signs of their outlaw status is their insistence on autonomy, on sovereignty’ (ibid.:
141; cf. Donnelly 1998). Most importantly, and related to this concern, there is the relation of the concept of humanity to ‘the other’, and to war and violence . In its historical location, the humanity concept had critical purchase against aristocratic prerogatives; yet its utilisation by liberal ethical discourses within a philosophy of an ‘absolute humanity’, Schmitt feared, could bring about new and unimaginable modes of exclusion (1996a, 2003, 2004/2007): By virtue of its universality and abstract normativity, it has no localizable polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside. Does humanity embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no barbarians outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? (Rasch 2003: 135). ‘Humanity as such’,
Schmitt noted, ‘cannot wage war because it has no enemy’, (1996a: 54), indicating that humanity ‘is a polemical word that negates its opposite’ (Kennedy
1998: 94; emphasis added). In The Concept of the Political Schmitt argued that humanity ‘excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being’ (1996a: 54). However, in his 1950 book with an international focus, The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt noted how only when
‘man appeared to be the embodiment of absolute humanity, did the other side of this concept appear in the form of a new enemy: the inhuman’ (2003a: 104). It becomes apparent that, historically examined, the concept of humanity engenders a return to a ‘discriminatory concept of war’, by which Schmitt meant that it reintroduces the legitimacy and need for substantive causes of justice in war (Schmitt 2003b: 37-52). This in turn disallows the notion of justus hostis, of a ‘just enemy’ – explored in section three – associated with the notion of non-discriminatory interstate war which took the shape of guerre en forme (Schmitt 2003a: 142-144). The concept of humanity, therefore, shatters the formal concept of justus hostis, allowing the enemy to now be designated substantively as an enemy of humanity as such. This leaves the enemy of humanity with no value and open to dehumanisation and political and physical annihilation (Schmitt
2004: 67). In discussing the League of Nations, Schmitt highlights that, compared to the kinds of wars that can be waged on behalf of humanity, the interstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they were bracketed by the neutral Great Powers and were completely legal procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (Schmitt 2003a: 186). Enemies of humanity cannot be considered ‘just and equal’. Moreover, they cannot claim neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the call to be for or against humanity or its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or defend oneself, in the sense we understand this right to have existed in the international law of Europe (the jus publicum
Europeaum). Such a denial of self-defence and resistance ‘can presage a dreadful nihilistic destruction of all law’ (ibid.: 187). When the enemy is not accorded a procedural justice and formal equality, the notion that peace can be made with him is unacceptable, as Schmitt detailed through his study of the
League of Nations, which had declared the abolition of war, but in rescinding the concept of neutrality only succeeded in the ‘dissolution of “peace”’
(ibid.: 246 ). It is with the dissolution of peace that total wars of annihilation become possible, where ‘the other’ cannot be assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not longer taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and inhuman, where ‘the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally consumed without remainder’ (Rasch 2003: 137).
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As a political principle, then, authority conflicts with Arendt's basic convictions as to what authentic politics is (namely, something that occurs only in "the egalitarian order of persuasion").92 How to explain the impression that she mourns its passing? This impression is created, in part, by her citing the decline in authority as one element in the constellation thai made the totalitarian seizure of power possible.** But—and this is a point overlooked by her communitarian admirers as well as her liberal critics—while the demise of authority creates clear dangers (it is, she says, "tantamount to the loss of the groundwork of the world"), it also creates unprecedented opportunities.'*4 The loss of authority, according to Arendt,
"does not entail, at least not necessarily, the loss of the human capacity for building, preserving, and caring for a world that can survive us and remain a fit place to live for those who come after us.**' Indeed, it may be that this loss makes a new, stronger form of "care for the world' possible.
The principle of authority created stability by providing the political order in the West with a certain kind of foundation* ArendtTs project in "What Is Authority,7" is to specify the nature of this foundation and to show why it is no longer possible. Hence, the real question of the essay is "what was authority” Placed in the context of Arendtts political thought as a whole, the essay makes a strong case for relief at the passing of authority. The overarching argument is that while authority may have provided a ground for theory and practice from the Romans up to the Enlightenment, it is only with its demis e that the "elementary problems of human living-together " once more come into view.91 The central role played by the concept of authority in Western political thought contributes mightily to the perversion of our concepts of political action , power, judgment, and freedom. By tracing the opening and closure of what could be called the "epoch of author-ity," Arendt points us toward a postauthoritarian concept of the political.What, then, was authority? In answering this question, Arendt insists (in proper Heideggerian, historicist mode) that we avoid any appeal to ahistorical generalization. What is in question is not "authority in general" but "a very specific concept of authority that has been dominant in our history."98 What is the nature of this "specific concept," and whete did it come from? According to Arendt, the concept of authority operative in our tradition is one that legitimates the political order by reference to some transcendent, extrapolitical force . This specification is clarified by the contrast between authoritarian and tyrannical forms of government, a contrast liberalism tends to obscure: "The difference between tyranny and authoritarian government has always been that the tyrant rules in accordance with his own will and interest, whereas even the most draconic authoritarian government is bound by laws . Its acts are tested by a axle which was made either not by man at all, as in the case of the law of nature of Civl's Commandments or the Platonic ideas, or at least not by those actually in power. The source of authority in authoritarian government is always a force external and superior to its own power; it is always this source, this external force which transcends the political realm, from which the authorities derive their "authority," that is, their legitimacy, and against which their power can he checked .*' The principle of authority demands, in short, that human affairs "be subjected to the domination of something outside their rea lm* It is only upon the supposition of some such transcendent, dominating force that authoritarian regimes (in the strict sense) are possible. Which is to say, simply, that our concept of authority is, at its heart, metaphysical. Authority presupposes metaphysics' two-world theory; its demise, moreover, is inseparable from the closure of metaphysical rationality as traced by Nietzsche and Heidegger. To the question What was authority? then, the short answer is metaphysics. That the
"epoch of authority" and what Heidegger called the "epoch o( metaphysics" are roughly coextensive is borne out by the genealogical dimension of
Arendt's inquiry. The kind of "public-political world" brought into being by the notion of authority did not always exist: as Arendt notes, the word and concept are Roman in origin. Even more important is the fact that "neither the Greek language nor the varied political experiences of Greek history show any knowledge of authority and the kind of rule it implies/'102 The Greeks did not recognize the relation of rulership as a political relation, since it inevitably implied force and violence (prepolitical modes of interaction). T he idea that there could be a hierarchy not based on force or violence, and which would be accepted by both rulers and ruled as just and binding, was an idea that had to be introduced into Greek political discourse, precisely against the experience of the fidis. According to Arendt, this introduction (subsequently built on by the Romans and Christianity) was performed by Plato and Aristotle. Arendt view's the Platonic-Aristotelian attempt to "introduce something akin to authority into the public life of the Greek polis" as fraught with paradox. Authority "implies an obedience in which men retain their freedom. Yet the various examples of rulership available to Plato and Aristotle in the public and private spheres all framed relation* predicated upon the denial of freedom.
The tyrant, the general the household head, the master of slaves; taken individually, each provided a model of unquestionable authority, yet none could be said to preserve either the public sphere or the freedom of citizens. Thus, the concept of rule had to be introduced by some other means, which preserved at least the appearance of freely given obedience. The "other means/' of course, was the rule of reason, an innovation through which the "Socratic school" transferred the compelling force of truth from the sphere of theoretical insight or logical demonstration to the realm of human affairs.
Reason provided a nonviolent (and hence "legitimate") principle of coercion, which enabled Greek thought to rise above persuasion (a clearly inadequate means, as illustrated by the trial of Socrates) without resorting to despotism. But in order for reason to rule, it had to be demonstrated that the genuine standards for human conduct transcended the realm of human affairs, and were available only to those capable of contemplative "seeing"; that is, philosophers. Such a demonstration is undertaken by Plato in the Republic;
"nowhere else," Arendt writes, "has Greek thinking so closely approached the concept of authority."k)6 The Platonic-Aristotelian turn to reason as a way
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1 of introducing the idea of rule into the political sphere is laden with implications for our tradition. As Arendt states it, "The consequences of expecting reason to develop into an instrument of coercion perhaps have been no less decisive for the tradition of West-ern philosophy than the tradition of Western politics/'30' Politically, this appeal entails splitting thought off from action and creating a hierarchical relation be-tween the two. Rationality ceases to be a doxastic capacity exercised by the actor in the context of plurality . It becomes, instead, the monopoly of the "thinking class" (in Plato, those by nature suited to the contemplative life). One reason the Republic is paradigmatic for the Western concept of authority is that in Plato's Utopia this class is not, strictly speaking, a ruling class. The ruler in the Republic is neither a group nor an individual, but a set of transcendent standards . Such standards – the sine qua non of genuine authoritarian rule – are available only to the mind’s eye, a kind of sight not possessed by the hoi polloi. The ‘philosopher-kings’ are in fact, selfless instruments to whom true Being is revealed, and who translate this moment of vision into standards for the realm of humaffairs. The question of whether reason reveals that which is “just by nature” to an intellectual elite or (as the
Enlightenment would have it) to all is less fundamental than the peculiar relation this appeal institutes between first and practical philosophy. The Platonic politicization of reason creates a relation of derivation between “general” and “special metaphysics, ontology and practical (ethical or political) philosophy. The "authoritarian appeal" to metaphysical rationality made by Plato has two key effects. Firs, it disentagles thought from action, firmly coupling reason to the unseen realm of the universal ; second, through the idea of transcendent standards, it attributes a prescriptive power to though such that it
"rules over" action. The splitting oft of thought into action accomplished by the Platonic move is, if not the origin, clearly the institutionalization of the theory/practice distinction. This distinction is irreducibly metaphysical insofar as it rests upon what Heidegger terms a "technical" interpretation of though and action. From Plato forward, action is viewed primarly as a means to an end, as he production of an effect. Thought, on the other hand, is stripped of its purely contemplative (useless) status and is functionalized: its primary role, qua theory, is to guide action by the rational security of first principles and the positing of ends accordance with these principles. For metaphysical rationality (as Schurmann notes), action is essentially teleocratic and though is essentially foundational. The latter's job is to secure the truth with which the former may be brought into accord. The Platonic appeal to transcendent standards - to the "authority" of reason as a "legitimate principle of coercion" - established the familiar pattern wherein action proceeds from and is legitimated by a grounding, extrapolitical
"first" revealed by reason. Within the field of metaphysical rationality, then, action is delineated as the practico-political effectuation of the philosophical. Yet despite Plato's success in articulating a new configuration of though and action, his attempt to introduce "something akin to authority" into the political sphere suffered from significant weakness. Arendt describes Plato's predicament: The trouble with coercion through reason, however, is that only the few are subject to it, so that the problem arises of how to assure that the many, the people who in their very multiple compose the body politic, can be submitted to the same truth Here, to be sure, some other means of coercion must be found , and here again coercion through violence must be avoided it political life as the Greeks understood it is not to be destroyed. This is the central predicament of Plato's political philosophy and has remained a predicament of all attempts to establish a tyranny ol reason.
Plato solved this predicament by introducing (at the end of the Republic) a myth about rewards and punishments to be meted our in the hereafter.. Christianity is notable tor the way it appropriates both Plato's " invisible spiritual yard' sticks " and the myth of otherworldly sanctions, a combination which proved so powerful that even the thoroughly enlightened and secular revolutionaries of the eighteenth century felt compelled to cite the tear of hell as an indispensable grounding for the maintenance of social order,"' It was after all, through religion and belief in the hereafter that the authoritarian positing of transcendent yardsticks for human affairs became a political fact of the first order, successfully establishing what had previously been viewed as the negation of the political relation (authority or hierarchy) as its essence. In Arendt's view, authority and religion, in combination with tradition, formed a tremendously powerful and resiliant "ground work" tor pre modern European civilization.118 She sees the relative stability of the West asa function of the mutually reinforcing elements of this constellation, an “amalgamation”" thai first attained its political perfection with the
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The paper ends with a discussion of obligation. Outlining the contours of a notion of political, rather, than ethical obligation, however, may require some explicit distancing from the now-familiar accounts that have oriented critical
‘ethical’ endeavours for some time. So we ask again the ethical question which has haunted us: from whence does obligation originate? Were we to be still enthralled by a Levinasian or generally any ‘other-beholden’ thought of being
‘hostage’ to the other, we might say that the face to face encounter installs obligation before representation, knowledge and other ‘Greek’ relationalities (Levinas 1989: 76–77; Odysseos 2007a: 132-151). Caputo, however, warns us off this kind of commitment to a notion of perfectible or total obligation. He asks that we recognise that ‘one is always inside/outside obligation, on its margins. On the threshold of foolishness. Almost a perfect fool for the Other. But not quite; nothing is perfect’ (1993: 126). The laudable but impossible perfectibility of ethics and ethical obligation to the other must be rethought. This is because ‘one is hostage of the Other, but one also keeps an army, just in case’ (ibid.). Caputo is not speaking as a political realist in this apparently funny comment. He is pointing, I suggest, to the centrality of politics and enmity. Obligation is not to the other alone ; it is also to the radical possibility of openness of political order, which allows self and other to be ‘determined otherwise’ (Prozorov 2007a). Analytically, we also want to know the tactics and subjective effects of being directed towards enforced freedom. In this way, we might articulate a political and concrete act obligation that is inextricably tied to freedom that is not ‘enforced’, that is not produced for us, or as ‘us’.
Joshua
, Prof. of Psychology @ Harvard University, November
, “The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very
Bad Truth About Morality And What To Do About It”; http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagreene/files/dissertation_0.pdf; AB
No surprise that novels, plays, metaphors, and anecdotes are more effective means of propaganda than philosophical arguments and statistics. (I’ve never stayed in a hotel room that came furnished with a copy of Kant’s
Grundlegung .) As Haidt suggests, a better understanding of moral psychology may be used to further one’s own moral agenda—a good or bad thing depending on the agenda in question. But I propose instead that we use our understanding
236 of moral psychology to transcend our ordinary modes of moral discourse rather than to operate more effectively within them .15 Once again, the enemy, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, is moral realism. Conflicts of interest may be inevitable, but they need not be exacerbated by people’s unflagging confidence that they’re right and that their opponents are wrong.
The solution, then, is to get rid of realist thinking and to start by getting rid of realist language. Speak only in terms that make the subjective nature of value plain. Instead of saying that capital punishment is wrong say that you are opposed to it. Say that it is an ineffective deterrent, difficult to implement in a colorblind fashion, and likely to lead to irreversible mistakes. And then say no more . Instead of saying that eating animals is wrong and a form of murder, say that you are opposed to eating animals because you wish to alleviate suffering and you believe that this practice causes much unnecessary suffering. Instead of saying that gay marriage undermines
“family values,” say that it undermines your family’s values, that it is against the teachings of your religion, etc
. (Obviously some people will have an easier time with this transition than others. This is an important point to be explored later in Chapter 5.) Speaking in this way is honest, requires no false metaphysical commitments, and should make 15 Haidt (Pg. 829) does make some suggestions that are similar in spirit to, though more moderate than, my own. He proposes, quite plausibly, that various forms of structured, active engagement with moral issues, learning to see moral issues from different viewpoints, may improve people’s moral thinking, especially young people’s. 237 discussions of moral matters much more fruitful and, at the very least, shorter. When someone makes a claim about how he feels; what he wants, values, or cares about; or what he is or is not willing to accept in a negotiation, there is, in the absence of realist interlocutors, nothing to dispute.
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In The Concept of the Political Schmitt had already indicted the increased usage of the terminology of ‘humanity’ by both theorists and institutional actors such as the League of Nations (1996a). His initial critique allows us to illuminate four distinct criticisms against contemporary world politics’ ethical recourse to the discourse of humanity (cf. Odysseos 2007b).
The first objection arises from the location of this discourse in the liberal universe of values. By using the discourse of humanity, the project of a universal ethics reverberates with the nineteenth century ‘ringing proclamations of disinterested liberal principle’ (Gowan 2003: 53) through which ‘liberalism quite successfully conceals its politics, which is the politics of getting rid of politics’ (Dyzenhaus 1998: 14). For Schmitt, the focus of liberal modernity on moral questions aims to ignore or surpass questions of conflict altogether: it is therefore ‘the battle against the political - as
Schmitt defines the political’, in terms of the permanency of social antagonism in politics (Sax 2002: 501). The second criticism argues that ‘humanity is not a political concept, and no political entity corresponds to it. The eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the privileges accompanying it’ (Schmitt 1996a: 55). Outside of this historical location, where does it find concrete expression but in the politics of a politically neutral ‘international community’ which acts, we are assured, in the interest of humanity? (cf. Blair
1999). The ‘international community is coextensive with humanity…[it] possesses the inherent right to impose its will…and to punish its violation, not because of a treaty, or a pact or a covenant, but because of an international need’, a need which it can only determine as the ‘secularized “church” of “common humanity”’ (Rasch 2003: 137, citing James
Brown Scott).2 A third objection, still, has to do with the imposition of particular kind of monism: despite the lip-service to plurality, taken from the market (Kalyvas 1999), ‘liberal pluralism is in fact not in the least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding monism, the monism of humanity’ (Rasch 2003: 136). Similarly, current universalist perspectives, while praising ‘customary’ or cultural differences, think of them ‘but as ethical or aesthetic material for a unified polychromatic culture – a new singularity born of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents’ (Brennan 2003: 41). One oftdiscussed disciplining effect is that, politically, the ethics of a universal humanity shows little tolerance for what is regarded as ‘intolerant’ politics, which is any politics that moves in opposition to its ideals , rendering political opposition to it illegitimate (Rasch 2003: 136). This is compounded by the fact that liberal ethical discourses are also defined by a claim to their own exception and superiority. They naturalise the historical origins of liberal societies, which are no longer regarded as ‘contingently established and historically conditioned forms of organization’; rather, they
‘become the universal standard against which other societies are judged. Those found wanting are banished, as outlaws, from the civilized world. Ironically, one of the signs of their outlaw status is their insistence on autonomy, on sovereignty’
(ibid.: 141; cf. Donnelly 1998).
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(Paul, TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Brisbane, “From disability to ability: changing the phrasing of the debate,” Disability & Society Vol. 21, No. 2, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.654985.)
Arguably the word ‘disabled’ has developed to support an ableist ideology. The labling of a person as disabled placed them in a category separate from the ablebodied population. This separating arguably contributed to the ableist ideology of exclusion and oppression. The use of the term ‘disability’ arguably portrays people with impairments as the binary opposite of people without impairments. Describing one normative state by relation to another can result in one normative state being regarded as inferior or undesirable. For example, de Beauvoir (1976) has argued that men are absolute human type and women are described as the polar opposite. de Beauvoir argues that men are the positive and the neutral and women are portrayed as the other (1976, 15). Through adopting the term ‘disabled’ it could be argued that some in members of society will use similar reasoning to de Beauvoir to discount persons with disabilities. Many people without impairments regard their corporeal state as the natural and correct state of being. Disabilities are seen to be different or the opposite of ablebodied, and accordingly regarded as something unfortunate and negative. The use of the prefix ‘dis’ arguably reinforces this erroneous understanding. While disability scholars have used the term ‘disabled person’ to politicise the causes of disablement, the actual word ‘disability’ was not developed by the disability community. The concept of politicising the causes of disablement, such as the social model, is a powerful model that explains how impairment is turned into a disability by the actions of the non-impaired majority. I argue that the notion of politicising disability should remain but the language should alter to explain this concept. The problem is that the term ‘disabled’, even when appropriated by the disability community, continues to serve ableist prejudices (Davis 1995, xv). To understand how the word ‘disabled’ serves two causes (ableist ideology and the disability community), it is critical to understand what is meant by the term
‘disability’. The term ‘disabled’ is associated with a period where society discounted the value and contributions of people with impairments. The Webster OnLine Dictionary (n.d.) defines ‘disability’ to mean: ‘The condition of being unable to perform as a consequence of physical or mental unfitness; “reading disability”; “hearing impairment”’. This meaning of
‘disability’ does not embrace the perception of disability under the social model. The definition of ‘disability’ in the
Webster Dictionary entirely reflects the medical model as the meaning regards the person’s different ability is the cause of the disability rather than barriers created by society and society’s failure to take positive steps to ensure human rights are realised. The meaning of ‘disability’ reflects the notion that the person with a different ability is the opposite of ‘able’. It could be argued that the prefix of ‘dis’ is even stronger than being the polar opposite. Historically, the term ‘dis’ has some very negative connotations. In Roman mythology, the word ‘Dis’ was in usage as an alternate label for Hades; and in
Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the term ‘Dis’ was the name of the city that separated the fifth and sixth circles of Hell and was also used as an alternate name for Lucifer (Durling, Martinez, and Turner 1996, 111). Rather than just representing the opposite of something, the word ‘dis’ arguably represents something stronger such as undesirable or perhaps even something evil. The use of the prefix ‘dis’ to distinguish between people with different abilities attracts a substantial amount of negative history. The medical model regarded people with impairment as something negative needing remedial interventions (Harpur and Bales 2010; Stein 2007). Perhaps the use of the prefix ‘dis’ was justifiable under this model.
Under the social model the term ‘disability’ was not ideal, but considering the level of negativity with the previous labels the use of the term ‘disability’ was arguably an improvement. Society has now advanced and is far more accepting of persons with disabilities. Accordingly this paper argues that the time is right for disability advocates to refrain from describing able discrimination by a negative reference to a corporeal state that person does not have. There is no need to describe a person with different abilities by reference to what they are not.
[Paul, TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Brisbane, “From disability to ability: changing the phrasing of the debate,” Disability & Society Vol. 21, No. 2]
It is important for disability scholarship to deconstruct the threads of social commonality and divergence (Thomas 1999).
How do we theorise difference? The categories of male and female are separated by definite biological boundaries.
Disabled and able-bodied categories in contrast are not natural but are constructed by society (Corker and Shakespeare
2002). For example, when does a limp or poor eyesight become a disability? When society decides that the abnormality is sufficient to be labelled disabled. How can people with emerging disabilities advocate when many of their impairments do not come within society’s traditional perception of disabilities (Fox and Kin 2004)? Should arbitrary lines exclude those
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1 whose different abilities are not defined by the disability industry as disabled? For deconstructionists, the process of categorising people reflects imbedded values and social constructions (Thomas 2004). What do these categories mean for advocacy? Through focusing upon how ableism denies people their human rights and not focusing upon the category of disability, advocacy has the potential of significantly expanding the debate. Ableism emphasises the idea that everyone will become impacted by ability discrimination at some point in their lives. The temporary nature of ‘normalcy’ has been explored in detail by Davis (2002). Davis argues that ethically the ‘dismodern body’ contains care of the body, care for the body and caring about the body (2002, 27–28). Through these three caring areas people are required to view issues through the dichotomy of impairment and normalcy. Davis argues that impairment is the reality for most people and that normalcy is a fantasy. People are more likely to have some form of dependence (Davis 2002, 31). Bodies are rarely ‘normal’ and independence is transient. Even where a person has no dependents, they are not truly ‘normal’ but in a state best described as temporarily able-bodied. As a consequence Davis argues that humans ‘exist in varying degrees of imperfection’ (2002,
105). Davis argues for the value that legal protections offered to any class be offered to all classes (2002, 30). In essence,
Davis encourages scholars to move away from categories of disability and start to focus upon interventions that focus upon abilities rather than upon disabilities. The focusing on the denial of human rights based upon abilities has the potential of expanding the stakeholders involved in the same struggle. Advocacy fighting against disability discrimination focuses upon helping a group of people who have impairments categorised as disabled. Advocacy fighting against discrimination focused upon ability, however, does not limit the beneficiaries of the advocacy to an artificial category of people. Many people in the community can confront discrimination based upon their abilities, which would not regard themselves or be categorised as disabled. For example, children have different abilities due to their age, pregnant women have different abilities due to their pregnancy, the elderly have different abilities caused by their aging bodies, people involved in workplace accidents may have temporary injuries, and the list goes on. What is significant about the people with different abilities in the previous list is that most would not regard themselves as disabled. If disability rights advocates phrased their arguments in terms of ableism, and thus render a greater number of people in the community stakeholders and beneficiaries of government interventions, then this increase in numbers could increase the strength of the advocacy.
Through focusing upon different abilities, rather than upon disabilities, advocacy has the potential of identifying greater public policy benefits for interventions. For example, if disability rights advocates were advocating for wheelchairaccessible buildings, then this debate only impacts upon a small portion of the population. If the issue was turned to focus upon ramps or lifts to ensure all persons with limited ability could access the buildings, then this could involve parental groups fighting for parents ability to push babies in strollers, women’s groups advocating for the rights of pregnant women, groups representing the elderly who have limited abilities and industrial association who may have members with temporary impairments. If policy-makers assess the impact of reforms upon persons with disabilities, then this will benefit only a small group in society (see, however, Stein 2003, who argues that many reforms aimed at benefiting persons with disabilities may be economically neutral or actually benefit other groups in society). If the focus was upon all people who have abilities that differ from the norm, then the economic cost/benefit analysis of any reforms would significantly alter. Under the current model, interventions to assist people with disabilities are targeted at a relatively small group. If the focus was upon assisting any person with different abilities then the number of beneficiaries from architectural or other interventions would increase. The difference between utilising the label of ‘disability discrimination’ or ‘ableism’ is that disability discrimination unnaturally limits the focus to persons with disabilities. Focusing upon ableism, however, creates the possibility that the debate can be expanded and include other stakeholders and thus increase the impact of advocacy focused on avoiding ableism.
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Barbara
Colette
, Department of Psychology @ University of Potsdam,
, http://uwf.edu/smathews/documents/changingnegattitdestwdphysdisanovaexperimental.pdf, “Changing Negative Attitudes
Towards Persons with Physical Disabilities: An Experimental Intervention”; AB
Today there are numerous laws and norms to ensure equal treatment of people with disabilities, and we live in a society that takes pride in its tolerance and integration. Therefore, open antipathy or dislike towards people who are physically different is no longer socially desirable. However, feelings of discomfort, rejection or fear during interaction with a disabled person are still prevalent, accompanied by misconceptions about the behaviour, personality and achievement potential of the disabled (Seifert & Bergmann, 1983). As social psychological research on prejudice and stereotypes suggests, such reservations cannot be overcome solely by legal regulations and integration policies . Instead, measures are required that target individuals’ cognitions, emotions, and behaviours towards the physically disabled. The present study presents an intervention designed to change attitudes towards the physically disabled in adolescents. Negative attitudes towards people with disabilities begin to emerge early in the process of development. Young children already categorize people into disabled and nondisabled and favour the nondisabled (Maras, 1993; Richardson, Hastorf, Goodman, & Dornbusch, 1961).
Lee and Rodda (1994) stress that false beliefs about disability that are acquired in childhood are due to a ‘pervasive sociocultural conditioning’ (p. 231). Th e existing social and cultural norms are geared towards achieving and maintaining beauty, youth and fitness of the body. In the media, disabled people are portrayed as sick, suffering, looking for help and having special needs (Ruffner, 1990). They are unable to conform to the cultural norms and therefore marginalized in society.
Kathleen
is an American politician currently serving as the 21st Secretary of Health and Human Services, July
26 th
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/07/20120726c.html, “Statement by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the 22nd Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act”; AB
While many positive changes came about after the ADA was enacted, people with disabilities continued to face a serious obstacle in accessing health insurance because they were excluded due to pre-existing conditions. The health care law, the
Affordable Care Act, knocks down that barrier by ending discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. The elimination of that practice will benefit countless people with disabilities, their families, and their communities, throughout their lives. To help our country find common solutions to the challenges of community living, regardless of age or disability, I announced in April the creation of the new Administration for Community Living (ACL). ACL combines what was the Administration on Aging, the Office on Disability and the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental
Disabilities into a single agency. As a single agency, ACL has the expertise and resources to support cross-cutting initiatives while maintaining efforts focused on the unique needs of people with disabilities and seniors. In addition to the creation of this important new agency, our Office for Civil Rights continues to play a critical role in protecting the ADA rights of individuals to access state and local health care and social services free without discrimination on the basis of their disability and to live in their own homes and communities rather than institutions. Our goal is for all Americans, including people with disabilities, to live healthier, more prosperous, and more productive lives.
Sandra
, Professor @ University of Arizona,
, “Transportation Patterns and Problems of People with
Disabilities”, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11420/; AB
Transportation is an extremely important policy issue for those with disabilities. People with disabilities have consistently described how transportation barriers affect their lives in important ways. Over the last two decades the National
Organization on Disability (NOD) has sponsored three successive Harris polls with people with disabilities, and respondents in each survey have reported that transportation issues are a crucial concern. In the last survey, undertaken in
2004, just under a third of those with disabilities reported that inadequate transportation was a problem for them ;
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1 of those individuals, over half said it was a major problem. The more severe the disability of the respondent was, the more serious were the reported transportation problems (National Organization on Disability-Harris Interactive, 2004). However, the policy debates over the local transportation needs of these travelers often revolve around dichotomies that may be misleading —arguing over the role of buses compared with the role of paratransit, for example. Moreover, these debates often focus on some topics at the expense of other equally important issues. For example, there is a legitimate concern about ensuring that people with disabilities receive the services mandated by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA), but most of the transportation needs of these travelers are not addressed at all by the ADA. Colored by this perspective, many policy analyses ignore the fact that most travelers with disabilities , as is true for travelers in the world at large, make the majority of their trips in private vehicles and rely heavily on walking to facilitate their use of all modes of travel . A narrow policy focus tends to limit discussions of the barriers to both auto use and pedestrian travel while slighting the connection between transportation programs and other important policy initiatives, from land use planning to human and medical service delivery.
Greg, Professor of Political Science at Salisbury State University “What Causes war?: An introduction to theories of international conflict” pg. 9
Two warnings need to be issued at this point. First, while we have been using a single variable explanation of war merely for the sake of simplicity, multivariate explanations of war are likely to be much more powerful. Since social and political behaviors are extremely complex, they are almost never explainable through a single factor. Decades of research have led most analysts to reject monocausal explanations of war. For instance, international relations theorist J. David Singer suggests that we ought to move away from the concept of “causality” since it has become associated with the search for a single cause of war; we should instead redirect our activities toward discovering “explanations”—a term that implies multiple causes of war, but also a certain element of randomness or chance in their occurrence.
Gregg C.
, Trace R&D Center @ University of Wisconsin-Madison, 5/6/
, http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/whats_ud/whats_ud.htm, “Universal Design... What It Is and What It Isn't”; AB
Universal design has two major components: Designing products so that they are flexible enough that they can be directly used (without requiring any assistive technologies or modifications) by people with the widest range of abilities and circumstances as is commercially practical given current materials, technologies, and knowledge; and Designing products so that they are compatible with the assistive technologies that might be used by those who cannot efficiently access and use the products directly. There are NO universal designs; there are NO universally designed products. Universal design is a process, which yields products (devices, environments, systems, and processes), which are usable by and useful to the widest possible range of people. It is not possible , however, to create a product, which is usable by everyone or under all circumstances.
There are, for instance, people who simultaneously are deaf-blind, have cerebral palsy, and have severe cognitive impairments. We do not currently know how we would design a personal transportation system, which could be independently used by an individual with such a combination of impairments. This is rather an extreme case, but it goes to make the point.
(Mike and Gerry, professor of disability studies at the university of Greenwich, policy analyst at the disability rights commission in the UK, “The Politics of Disability: a new approach.”)
Using what she calls "an interpretive approach", based on the work of Foucault, Liggett takes her criticisms further than this and argues that the politics of disability is structured by certain discursive practices. Thus the minority group approach . . . is double-edged because it means enlarging the discursive practices which participate in the constitution of disability. In other words, the price of becoming politically active on their own behalf is accepting the consequences of defining disability within new perspectives, which have their own priorities and needs. The new perspectives then become involved in disciplining; disability. (Liggett, 1988, p. 271) Thus, accepting disabled people as a minority group also involves the
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1 accepting of the disabled-nondisabled distinction; accepting the `normalising' society. This has implications for disabled people seeking to gain control over their own lives for . . . in order to participate in their own management disabled people have to participate as disabled. Even among the politically active, the price of being heard is understanding that it is the disabled who are speaking. (Liggett, 1988, p. 273)
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Sandra
, Professor @ University of Arizona,
, “Transportation Patterns and Problems of People with
Disabilities”, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11420/; AB
This paper addresses local ground transportation; beyond its scope are issues of air, sea, and intercity travel for people with disabilities. It has three major sections. The following section gives an overview of the travel patterns of people with disabilities, highlighting the problems that they face with various modes of travel and the crucial role of both walking and private vehicles in their mobility—whether or not they drive. The next major section, the third in this paper, examines the community transportation resources provided to travelers with disabilities by public transportation systems, other public and nonprofit agencies, and the private sector. The final section suggests that more and better accessible transportation is a necessary but not a sufficient resource for overcoming the multiple barriers faced by most people with disabilities .
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(Center for an Accessible Society, “The American’s with Disabilities Act”, March, http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/ada/index.html)
Ten years after the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, this landmark federal law has proved a remarkable success, defying the gloom and doom predictions of many members of Congress that the law, designed to open up American society to its 54 million citizens with disabilities, would bankrupt the economy. At the same time however, the law has not fully delivered on its keys promises to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities in the workplace and in public accommodations. The ADA has profoundly changed how society views and accommodates its citizens with disabilities. Universal design -- the practice of designing products, buildings and public spaces and programs to be usable by the greatest number of people -- has helped create a society where curb cuts, ramps, lifts on buses, and other access designs are increasingly common.
In the process, we have discovered that an accessible society is good for everyone, not just people with disabilities. Curb cuts designed for wheelchair users are also used by people with baby carriages, delivery people, and people on skateboards and roller blades. With the Baby Boom generation poised to enter the population of seniors, the number of Americans needing access and universal design will grow enormously. The ADA has created a more inclusive climate where companies, institutions, and organizations are reaching out far more often to people with disabilities. Colleges and universities, for example, now accommodate more people with disabilities than they did before ADA, even though they have been obligated by law for nearly 25 years to make their campus and classrooms accessible.
Since the passage of the ADA in 1990, NCD has continually reviewed the implementation of the ADA to determine its effectiveness in advancing the civil rights of Americans with disabilities.
NCD’s 1992 report, Wilderness Accessibility for People with
Disabilities, examined the ADA’s interplay with the Wilderness Act and other relevant federal policies and regulations. In 1993, NCD issued ADA Watch
- Year One and Furthering the Goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act Through Disability Policy Research in the 1990s. In 19 95 , NCD released
The Americans with Disabilities Act: Ensuring Equal Access to the American Dream and Voices of Freedom: Americans
Speak Out on the ADA, which provided the perspectives and recommendations from people across the country regarding their experiences with the Act. The reports concluded that five years after the ADA, dramatic improvements in the lives of Americans with disabilities had occurred throughout the country . Five years later, NCD issued Promises to
Keep: A Decade of Federal Enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This report focused on the effectiveness of federal enforcement of the ADA and made recommendations for improvement of federal implementation and enforcement of the law . In 2002, NCD issued Supreme Court Decisions Interpreting the ADA. NCD published in 2003 The Application of the ADA to the Internet and the World Wide Web. In 2003 and 2004, NCD issued a series of policy briefs and final report entitled Righting the ADA, which examined problematic U.S. Supreme Court ADA decisions and proposed the ADA Restoration Act of 2004. In addition, NCD has commented on the ADA in its annual Progress Reports, several amicus briefs, and other position papers. It has been 15 years since the enactment of the ADA, and while it is clear that the legislation has assisted countless people , there are still major obstacles that prevent equal access for people with disabilities.
But the question remains: just how much has the ADA impacted the lives of Americans with disabilities?
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Ivonne
, Florida State University, 5/16/
[“Accessing Transit as Universal Design”, Journal of
Planning Literature 2008, Sage Journals, http://jpl.sagepub.com/content/23/1/4.full.pdf+html]AB
Metropolitan planning organizations and regional transit authorities are poised to tackle this issue by becoming mobility managers of traditional and nontraditional transit services that expand mobility choices for all (TCRP 1999). This implies
“costeffective public transit solutions for low-density areas that can address the travel needs of high-income and highmobility seniors while at the same time addressing the travel needs of low-income and low-mobility seniors” (Burkhardt,
McGavock, and Nelson 2002, 44). Lack of funding and reluctance to change transit to fit users’ needs (rather than the current practice of fitting users to transit) are major roadblocks for which multiple studies and research, commissioned by the TCRP, offer guidance for addressing and overcoming (TCRP 1997, 2000). Although a review of this research is outside the purview of this article, it would suffice to say that TCRP literature converges on a paradigm shift along the line described here as UD of transit. 9 Time will tell whether cities, transit authorities, and the Federal Transit Administration will fully embrace the paradigm. However, some progress in this direction has started to occur.
Doris
, Professor @ New Jersey Institute of Technology
Frieda
, disability rights activist and mathematics professor, December 15 th
, “The Disability Rights Movement”, pg. 65; AB
In the intervening years between the 1977 signing of the regulations for Section 504 and the 1990 passage of the ADA, disability leaders concentrated on the courts to ensure enforcement of Section 504. The evolution of federal laws and litigation that provided access to transportation for the disability population epitomizes the Section 504 struggle of those who sought integration- as opposed to those who favored continued segregation-of people with disabilities .
Section 504 in effect mandated that all recipients of federal funds mainstream people with disabilities. Transcending the particulars of the case, the 1977 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Lloyd v. Illinois Regional Transportation
Authoritys6 created a precedent for people with disabilities and their organizations to sue federal agencies and recipients of federal funds to enforce Section504. Although Southeastern Community College v. Daviss7 was not a transportation case, this 1979 decision had a profound effect on Sec- tion 504 transportation lawsuits. Frances Davis, a severely hard-of-hearing licensed practical nurse, was denied entrance to Southeastern Community College'S asso- ciate degree nursing program because ofher disability. ofSection504,toinsistthatfunctionalhear- ing was essential for acceptance into the nursing program.
The college argued that extensive modifications would be necessary for Davis to participate safely in the pro- gram or to practice the nursing profession. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the college against Davis, deciding that the ac- commodation to provide equal opportunity constituted affirmative action, so Section 504-a nondiscrimination, not an affirma- tive action, statute-was inapplicable. The fact that one hundred and fifty hard-of- hearing and deaf nurses were already work- ing for the federal government according to a 1976 Civil Service Commission survey would have supported
Davis's contention that she could work safely as a nurse.S8 Not introduced in the original lawsuit, however, this statistic could not be used by the plain- tiff on appeal. Davis) the first Section 504 case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, es- tablished a disappointing precedent for dis- ability lawyers because the suit set the stage for the 1981 APTA transportation decision.
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Sandra
, Professor @ University of Arizona,
, “Transportation Patterns and Problems of People with
Disabilities”, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11420/; AB
In 2000 just over 8 percent of those ages 5 to 20 years, 19.2 percent of those ages 21 to 64 years, and 41.9 percent of those ages 65 years and over reported some level of disability (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). As is well known, the older people are, the more likely they are to report a disability and the more severe it is likely to be; for example, 40 percent of those ages 65 to 69 with a disability reported that their disability was severe, whereas over 60 percent of those ages 80 and over who reported a disability reported that their disability was severe (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). Unfortunately, knowing that a person has a disability, even if it is severe, does not tell us whether that person faces significant mobility constraints . As a result, it is difficult to clearly link disability rates to specific mobility problems. For example, a significant number of people with disabilities so serious that they cannot walk far or use public transit can and do drive
(Rosenbloom, 1982; OECD, 2001). On the other hand, some people have such severe disabilities that they cannot leave their houses without substantial assistance, which may mean that their transportation concerns are secondary to the other barriers they face. Moreover, barriers to mobility have complicated causes. The 2004 NOD-Harris Interactive poll found that almost two-thirds of all the people with disabilities who reported major transportation problems had annual incomes below $35,000. For those with higher incomes, reported transportation problems dropped markedly, as did the differences in transportation problems between those with and without disabilities (National Organization on Disability-Harris
Interactive, 2004 [computed from Table 6c]). Earlier work found the same patterns; both the U.S. Congressional Budget
Office (U.S. CBO, 1979) and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Aging (1970) concluded that almost all transportation problems among the elderly or those of any age with disabilities were related to income alone; reported transportation problems dropped drastically with rising income, even controlling for age, physical disability, and health status. Of course, income may well be related to the severity of personal disability but probably not in a linear fashion. Overall, we have limited information on the travel patterns of people with disabilities . The data that we do have tend not to differentiate travel by the degree of severity of a person’s disability, household income, driver’s license possession, car ownership, and other significant variables that might affect mobility—such as sex and age. However, two major studies give us some background information: a 1994 disability supplement to the annual National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and a 2002 congressionally mandated study undertaken by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics of the U.S. Department of
Transportation. In addition, we have some useful data on the patterns of older drivers facing declining driving skills because of increasing illness or disability. These studies are discussed below.
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In this chapter and in the six preceding chapters I have examined a number of structures and factors which have some connection with the war system. There is much more that could be said about any one of these structures, and other factors which could be examined.
Here I wish to note one important point: attention should not be focussed on one single factor to the exclusion of others.
This is often done for example by some Marxists who look only at capitalism as a root of war and other social problems, and by some feminists who attribute most problems to patriarchy.
The danger of monocausal explanations is that they may lead to an inadequate political practice. The ‘revolution’ may be followed by the persistence or even expansion of many problems which were not addressed by the single-factor perspective.
The one connecting feature which I perceive in the structures underlying war is an unequal distribution of power. This unequal distribution is socially organised in many different ways, such as in the large-scale structures for state administration, in capitalist ownership, in male domination within families and elsewhere, in control over knowledge by experts, and in the use of force by the military. Furthermore, these different systems of power are interconnected. They often support each other, and sometimes conflict. This means that the struggle against war can and must be undertaken at many different levels. It ranges from struggles to undermine state power to struggles to undermine racism, sexism and other forms of domination at the level of the individual and the local community. Furthermore, the different struggles need to be linked together. That is the motivation for analysing the roots of war and developing strategies for grassroots movements to uproot them
B.)
(Roland, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland “Discourse and Human Agency”
Contemporary Political Theory. Avenel: Mar 2003.Vol. 2, Iss. 1; pg. 25)
A conceptualization of human agency cannot be based on a parsimonious proposition, a one-sentence statement that captures something like an authentic nature of human agency. There is no essence to human agency, no core that can be brought down to a lowest common denominator, that will crystallize one day in a long sought after magic formula. A search for such an elusive centre would freeze a specific image of human agency to the detriment of all others. The dangers of such a totalizing position have been well rehearsed. Foucault (1982, 209), for instance, believes that a theory of power is unable to provide the basis for analytical work, for it assumes a prior objectification of the very power dynamics the theory is trying to assess. Bourdieu (1998, 25) speaks of the 'imperialism of the universal' and List (1993, 11) warns us of an approach that 'subsumes, or, rather, pretends to be able to subsume everything into one concept, one theory, one position.'
Such a master discourse, she claims, inevitably oppresses everything that does not fit into its particular view of the world.
What, then, is the alternative to anchoring an understanding of human agency in a foundationalist master narrative? How to ground critique, actions, norms and life itself if there are no universal values that can enable such a process of grounding?
Various authors have advanced convincing suggestions. Consider the following three examples: de Certeau (1990, 51) attempts to avoid totalitarian thought by grounding his position not in a systematic theory, but in 'operational schemes.' A theory is a method of delineation. It freezes what should be understood in its fluidity. An understanding of operational schemes, by contrast, recognizes that events should be assessed in their changing dimensions. Rather than trying to determine what an event is, such an approach maps the contours within which events are incessantly constituted and reconstituted. Or, expressed in de Certeau's terminology, one must comprehend forms of action in the context of their regulatory environment. Butler (1992, 3-7) speaks of contingent foundations. Like de Certeau, she too believes that the
Foucaultean recognition that power pervades all aspects of society, including the position of the critic, does not necessarily lead into a nihilistic abyss. It merely shows that political closure occurs through attempts to establish foundational norms that lie beyond power. Likewise, to reopen this political domain is not to do away with foundations as such, but to acknowledge their contingent character, to illuminate what they authorize, exclude and foreclose. One must come to terms with how the subject and its agency are constituted and framed by specific regimes of power. However, this is not the end of human agency. Quite to the contrary. Butler (1992, 12-14) argues persuasively that 'the constituted character of the subject is the very precondition of its agency.' To appreciate the practical relevance of this claim, one must investigate the
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1 possibilities for agency that arise out of existing webs of power and discourse. One must scrutinize how social change can be brought about by a reworking of the power regimes that constitute our subjectivity (Butler, 1992, 13). Deleuze and
Guattari (1996, 3-25, 377) go a step further. Opting for the rhizome, they reject all forms of foundations, structures, roots or trees. The latter three, they say, has dominated much of the Western thought. A tree is a hierarchical system in which ones becomes two, in which everything can be traced back to the same origin. Roots and radicles may shatter the linear unity of knowledge, but they hold on to a contrived system of thought, to an image of the world in which the multiple always goes back to a centred and higher unity. The brain, by contrast, is not rooted, does not strive for a central point. It functions like a subterranean rhizome. It grows sideways, has multiple entryways and exits. It has no beginning or end, only a middle, from where it expands and overspills. Any point of the rhizome, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize, is connected to any other. It is a multiplicity without hierarchies, units or fix points to anchor thought. There are only lines, magnitudes, dimensions, plateaus, and they are always in motion. To travel along these lines and dimensions is to engage in nomad thought, to travel along axis of difference, rather than identity. Nomad thought, says one of Deleuze's feminist interpreters, 'combines coherence with mobility,' it is 'a creative sort of becoming, a performative metaphor that allows for otherwise unlikely encounters and unsuspected sources of interaction of experience and of knowledge' (Braidotti, 1994, 21). The extent to which this form of thinking constitutes a grounding process may be left open to question. Judging from Deleuze's own work it is clear, however, that the exploration of difference and multiplicities does not prevent him from taking positions for or against specific political issues. What he does forgo, however, is a central authorial voice -- to the benefit of a polyphonic array of whispers and shouts.
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Jane
, Urban Research Centre @ University Western Syndney,
"Universal Design: Is it Accessible?” Multi,
Vol. 1, No. 2.
The major disadvantage of taking the legislative route is that it has a focus on people with a disability. The benefits for others are lost in the quest to meet the requirements of regulations. Legislation encourages designers to think in terms of specialised designs—the very notion universal design is trying to prevent . From the designers’ creative perspective, regulations are not welcome because they remove opportunities for creative thought . The needs of people with a disability become just a nother legal problem . Legislation, codes and rules cannot cover all situations and events. When legislation is devised, every eventuality cannot be predicted and accounted for. Consequently, legislation can lead to mistakes, inequities, and poor design for everyone, not just people with a disability . Legislation sets design standards at a point in time and is counter-intuitive to the concept of continuously improving designs through an evolutionary process – one of the basic tenets of universal design . As each new design is implemented, it can be evaluated in practice and improvements incorporated into the next version. The alternative to legislation is education, but it is unlikely to be the guiding light of universal design in the near future.
Jane
, Urban Research Centre @ University Western Syndney,
"Universal Design: Is it Accessible?” Multi,
Vol. 1, No. 2.
At the same conference we heard the results of two research projects that focused on consumers and their preparation, or lack thereof, for ageing lifestyles. “Universal design” failed to register with consumers who had little, if any, idea of what it meant. This indicates that the term is still regarded as jargon and in marketing terms, lacks a brand. We also heard that consumers rarely purchase products based on efficacy alone because desirability is the key to making a sale. A product, therefore, labelled as a “disability” product has no appeal, even to people with a disability . The conclusions drawn were that the term “universal design” should be abandoned because it will have no appeal to consumers (or designers) regardless of how efficacious it is proven to be. (Wylde, 2008; Bright, 2008) Clearly those who wish to continue the promotion of universal design in its original form are in a fix. Lack of understanding and misusing “universal design” has created a void in which “accessibility” and “disability” now reside. As such, it has evolved from a process to a product; a disability product. This was unintentional, but we cannot turn back time. Universal design is a synonym for “disabled” design in the hearts and minds of disability rights activists, legislators and designers alike. From my perspective, the universal design movement has three choices. The first is to let the term “universal design” remain a synonym for “accessible design” for people with a disability, and make the best of the regulatory route. The second choice is to continue the fight for recognition of the original concept as designs for the whole of the population, and to work harder on branding and education. The third option is to give up the nomenclature battle but not the cause, and develop another “brand” that will carry forward the concepts of designing universally. I fear that the benefits of the conceptual process underpinning universal design will be lost unless the movement becomes more strategic about promoting and developing its own form and function. Perhaps the time has come for a “product recall”.
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TH
Is my confidence in experts completely misplaced? I think not. Tetlock's sample suffers from severe selection bias. He deliberately asked relatively difficult and controversial questions. As his methodological appendix explains, questions had to "Pass the 'don't bother me too often with dumb questions' test." Dumb according to who?
When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latter’s total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors.
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1
Tetlock also asks quite a few questions that are controversial among the experts themselves.4 If his goal were solely to distinguish better and worse experts, this would be fine. Since Tetlock also wants to evaluate the predictive ability of the average expert, however, there is a simple reason to worry about the inclusion of controversial questions: When experts sharply disagree on a topic, then by definition, the average expert cannot do well.
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Dartmouth 2012
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When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If, contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latter’s total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors.
[Defense Analyst in Washington DC, December Michael, The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning,
Survival, Volume 48, Number 4]
But handling even this weaker form of uncertainty is still quite challenging. If not sufficiently bounded, a high degree of variability in planning factors can exact a significant price on planning. The complexity presented by great variability strains the cognitive abilities of even the most sophisticated decision-makers.15 And even a robust decision-making process sensitive to cognitive limitations necessarily sacrifices depth of analysis for breadth as variability and complexity grows. It should follow, then, that in planning under conditions of risk, variability in strategic calculation should be carefully tailored to available analytic and decision processes. Why is this important? What harm can an imbalance between complexity and cognitive or analytic capacity in strategic planning bring? Stated simply, where analysis is silent or inadequate, the personal beliefs of decision-makers fill the void. As political scientist Richard Betts found in a study of strategic surprise, in 'an environment that lacks clarity, abounds with conflicting data, and allows no time for rigorous assessment of sources and validity, ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation… The greater the ambiguity, the greater the impact of preconceptions.'16 The decision-making environment that Betts describes here is one of political-military crisis, not long-term strategic planning. But a strategist who sees uncertainty as the central fact of his environment brings upon himself some of the pathologies of crisis decision-making. He invites ambiguity, takes conflicting data for granted and substitutes a priori scepticism about the validity of prediction for time pressure as a rationale for discounting the importance of analytic rigour. It is important not to exaggerate the extent to which data and 'rigorous assessment' can illuminate strategic choices. Ambiguity is a fact of life, and scepticism of analysis is necessary. Accordingly, the intuition and judgement of decision-makers will always be vital to strategy, and attempting to subordinate those factors to some formulaic, deterministic decision-making model would be both undesirable and unrealistic . All the same, there is danger in the opposite extreme as well. Without careful analysis of what is relatively likely and what is relatively unlikely, what will be the possible bases for strategic choices? A decision-maker with no faith in prediction is left with little more than a set of worst-case scenarios and his existing beliefs about the world to confront the choices before him.
Those beliefs may be more or less well founded, but if they are not made explicit and subject to analysis and debate regarding their application to particular strategic contexts, they remain only beliefs and premises, rather than rational judgements. Even at their best, such decisions are likely to be poorly understood by the organisations charged with their implementation. At
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1 their worst, such decisions may be poorly understood by the decision-makers themselves.
Danil
, Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at ASU, Ph.D. in Geological Sciences,
Cornell University, Roger Pielke, Professor in the Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado, and Mojdeh
Keykhah, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Global Environmental Assessment Project, Risk Analysis, August 2003 , An International
Journal, Vol. 23, Issue 4, Blackwell synergy
All decisions include some informal assessment of probabilities. If one lives on a flood plain it would probably be foolish to devote enormous resources to protecting against asteroid impacts. Thus, vulnerability management is implicitly underlain by some sense of what is reasonable and what is not. We might term this sense "naïve expectation," in that it is not informed by sophisticated quantitative predictions about specific risks. Rather, it may be informed by history, by general scientific insight (e.g., floods occur on flood plains), by judgment acquired through personal experience, by personal priorities (e.g., "any risk to my child is too much risk"), or other means. So our point is not that vulnerability is divorced from probability, but that vulnerability management does not depend on precise predictive quantification of specific future events or classes of events.In spite of these well-documented cases, the focus in the climate change debate seeks ever more accurate quantification of unverifiable greenhouse risks through predictive science. As we have argued elsewhere, such an approach likely fosters gridlock and inaction; meanwhile, climate-related losses mount around the world.
(3)
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– Professor of Law, USC
(Leonard, 12 Hofstra L. Rev. 723, AG)
All systems of morality, however transcendental, rest ultimately on utilitarian self interest (i.e., on personal need/want fulfillment), because those who fashion such systems, like those who accept or reject them, cannot escape their own humanness. The physically controllable acts of each individual 221 are the choice of that individual, though all of the consequences may not be foreseen or desired. 222 Behavior choices are necessarily determined by the experience, feelings, habits, and attitudes; the concerns and beliefs; the needs and wants -- in short, by the ultimate self interest -- of the individual. 223
Fellow, Lowy Institute for International Policy, Senior Fellow, Centre for Independent Studies
(Owen, Power and civilization, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-15353301.html, AG)
Performance is the test. Asked directly by a Western interviewer, "In principle, do you believe in one standard of human rights and free expression?", Lee immediately answers, "Look, it is not a matter of principle but of practice." This might appear to represent a simple and rather crude pragmatism. But in its context it might also be interpreted as an appreciation of the fundamental point made by Max Weber that, in politics, it is "the ethic of responsibility" rather than "the ethic of absolute ends" that is appropriate. While an individual is free to treat human rights as absolute, to be observed whatever the cost, governments must always weigh consequences and the competing claims of other ends. So once they enter the realm of politics, human rights have to take their place in a hierarchy of interests, including such basic things as national security and the promotion of prosperity. Their place in that hierarchy will vary with circumstances, but no responsible government will ever be able to put them always at the top and treat them as inviolable and over-riding. The cost of implementing and promoting them will always have to be considered.
– Prof Politics, Princeton (George, The Inner Ocean, p 12)
The state (or some other agent) may kill some (or allow them to be killed), if the only alternative is letting every-one die. It is the right to life which most prominently figures in thinking about desperate situations .
I cannot see any resolution but to heed the precept that "numbers count." Just as one may prefer saving one's own life to saving that of another when both cannot be saved, so a third parry—let us say, the state—can (perhaps must) choose to save the greater number of lives and at the cost of the lesser number, when there is otherwise no hope for either group.
,
(Douglas Den and
Douglas, “Reading Nozick”, p. 244)
Rand has spoken of the ultimate end as the standard by which all other ends are evaluated. When the ends to be evaluated are chosen ones the ultimate end is the standard for moral evaluation. Life as the sort of thing a living entity is, then, is the ultimate standard of value; and since only human beings are capable of choosing their ends, it is the life as a human beingman's life qua man-that is the standard for moral evaluation.
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Considering anencephalic infants "dead" or "close enough to death" instills in the public a fear that other individuals very near death also will be declared dead and will be killed for the sake of procuring their organs . If the UAGA or state statutes are amended to require anencephalic infants to become organ donors, it is believed that other individuals with neural tube anomolies or debilitating cognitive deficiencies also may be forced to become organ donors before their natural deaths. Specifically, the " slippery slope" would lead most directly to those infants born with hydroencephaly and microencephaly as becoming forced organ donors. This position could then extend to other groups of people similarly situate d who possess only limited cognitive functioning or who arguably lack a "valid" interest in life , including death row inmates, adults in a permanently vegetative state, individuals with Alzheimer's disease, [*] or incompetent individuals with terminal illnesses. n41
To declare as dead many of these groups whom the general population perceive to be very much alive could jeopardize the ethical integrity of the medical profession and decrease public trust in medicine. Many individuals also would become even more skeptical of organ donation. While some groups have tried to minimize the fear of a slippery slope by arguing that "safeguards" would prevent groups of individuals other than anencephalic infants from being affected by an amendment to the UDDA, any "safeguard" would not be sufficient. Once "very fine distinctions [are made] regarding the dying," n44 the risk of descending down the slippery slope becomes significant.
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Most striking about the campus lefts response to September 11 was its refusal to ask these questions. Its appeals to
"international law" were naive. It exaggerated the likely negative consequences of a military response, but failed to consider the consequences of failing to act decisively against terrorism . In the best of all imaginable worlds, it might be possible to defeat al-Qaeda without using force and without dealing with corrupt regimes and political forces like the
Northern Alliance. But in this world it is not possible . And this, alas, is the only world that exists . To be politically responsible is to engage this world and to consider the choices that it presents. To refuse to do this is to evade responsibility. Such a stance may indicate a sincere refusal of unsavory choices. But it should never be mistaken for a serious political commitment.
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(
To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation—just as it would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects, in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand them without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and reduce our sense of urgency. Yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we are as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished.
We are left with uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in a state of uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster our resolve in spite of our awareness that the life of the species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass—of “the basic power of the universe”—and of a means by which man could release that energy altered the relationship between [humans] and the source of [their] life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the life of the human species doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than, that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the frame of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to ourselves.
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1
Frustrated with the ethic of "preserving every existence, no matter how worthless ," Dr. Alfred Hoche in 1920 wrote, expectantly: " A new age will arrive--operating with a higher morality and with great sacrifice--which will actually give up the requirements of an exaggerated humanism and overvaluation of mere existence ." 8 Issues in Law & Med. at 265. Euthanasia proponents of our day, too, seek with great zeal to usher in a new age. They speak , in words echoing from a distant age, that it is cruel to deprive those who are suffering from their desired means to peace and freedom from pain . Like Binding, they scold: "Not granting release by gentle death to the incurable who long for it: this is no longer sympathy, but rather its opposite." Id. at 254. The early promoters of euthanasia appeared to be sincere in their belief in the virtues of merciful death. Today's promoters of physician-assisted suicide may also be sincere, but it is a sincerity born of an unpardonable carelessness. Unlike their predecessors, euthanasia proponents today have the benefit of the lesson of history, which has taught the true nature of physicianassisted killing as a false compassion and a perversion of mercy. History warns that the institution of assisted-death gravely threatens to undermine th e foundational ethic of [*30] the medical profession and the paramount principle of the equal dignity and inherent worth of every human person.
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Ivonne
,
, Florida State University, 5/16/2008[“Accessing Transit as Universal Design”, Journal of
Planning Literature
, Sage Journals, http://jpl.sagepub.com/content/23/1/4.full.pdf+html]AB
In the United States, metropolitan planning organizations under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of
1991 and subsequent reauthorizations are mandated to address these issues in Metropolitan Transportation Plans specifically focused on pedestrian and transit mobility and ADA-mandated accessibility. Yet funding shortages limit the capacity of many transit agencies to adequately meet these mandates. 8 Furthermore, the notion that all users benefit from transit that meets the needs of Americans aged 65 and older, whose population is estimated to increase 80% by the year
2025, has encountered both skeptical and optimistic assessments. Giuliano’s (2004, 204) research finds that rather than shifting to transit, older people “prefer automobile travel and compensate for physical limitations by traveling less.” Her research also “suggests caution in considering more transit environments as a mobility strategy for the elderly,” since the transit service will have to be very high quality and mimic the car to effectively attract the elderly to transit (p. 204).
Similarly, Rosenbloom (2003) asserts that older Americans prefer to drive and that restructuring transit and development patterns will provide more travel choices but not necessarily cause older drivers to switch to walking and transit for the majority of their trips.
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