Rational Philosophy

On the logic or otherwise of war, protest, and reaction.

Today’s current events drew me to think about the philosophy of conflict in all its forms. Further reports of the violent and brutal repression of protests in Kenya, sparked by a reaction against the election results there, university protests against the Catholic church in Rome, Canadian condemnation (through its torture watch list) of inhumane detention and interrogation techniques being used by the US government, and the growing call for shoring up the economy with a stimulus package.

(Putting the economic stimulus package on this list may seem odd. But I deliberately want to stretch the idea of conflict to include “intervention” since it seems to me that the concept of conflict may be subordinate to the concept of intervention. (Another story I could have used as an example discusses Google’s philanthropic appendage — Google.org.))

The Kenyan troubles provide two philosophical questions: Can we logically and rationally examine whether violent protest is justified and under what conditions? And, secondly, can we logically and rationally examine whether harsh and violent suppression of protest is justified and, if so, under what conditions?

Emotionally, if we sense that a group has been wronged, we tend to sympathize with it in its protests. And if the protests meet with harsh suppression, we may even tend to sympathize with some level of violence on the part of the protesters. (This is why Ghandi’s philosophy of passive resistance caused such a stir and continues to stand out in people’s minds. It struck us as odd.) Conversely, if we feel that the group hasn’t been wronged in proportion to the protest, and that general order and safety is threatened by the protesters, we tend to sympathize with the use of some force (short of unwarranted violence) in maintaining order. I realize I’m not speaking for all of society in saying this, but just painting an emotional picture.

Rationally, though, can we justify violent protests or violent action against protests?

The student protests in Rome against the Catholic church raise a similar question without the violence. The Italian protests revolve around some of the incumbent Pope’s ill-chosen and perhaps ill-meant words.

And Canada’s arm’s-length but telling criticism of the US’s recent human rights record by putting the US on its torture watch list provides an example of confrontation that is charged because of the statement it makes rather than the mechanism it employs.

Which brings us to the sluggish economy and the growing support for some kind of stimulus package. Action, reaction. Situation, confrontation.

The concepts involved in confrontation seem to be 1. dissatisfaction with the status quo, and 2. judgment that it is right to act to effect some change to the status quo.

A conscious actors, human beings have gone beyond the simple response to stimuli that governs the actions of non-conscious creatures. Consciousness gives us the power to act against a stimulated response. In other words, we may be dissatisfied with a situation but decide to do nothing to change it. When an animal is moved to anger, it’s natural response may be to act aggressively. As human beings we can choose to act on this response or not.

As to the concept of dissatisfaction, we cannot control it. An adverse situation will either lead to dissatisfaction or it won’t.

Then there’s the question of whether it is right to confront the situation that has caused our disatissfaction, and how we judge this.

To put it simply, in the non-conscious world it is always right to respond according to the stimulus. Whereas, in the conscious world, it may not be right to respond to the stimulus.

The Fed and the politicians concerned about the slump must judge whether it is wiser in the long term to stimulate the economy than to leave it alone. The judgment on whether to confront the slowing economy should rightly take into account the long term economic impact. A confrontation based only on short term fears about a recession would be misguided.

In Rome, the protesters seem to have forgotten about the value of freedom of speech by forcing the Pope to cancel his visit. Their confrontation seems to be based simply on short term anger at his visit rather than long term consideration of what’s best for the country. Perhaps they’d do more for separation of church and state by letting the sinister Ratzinger visit and countering his dubious social theories with elegant rebuttals.

But what of the philosophy of violent protest or suppression of violent protest? Again, it seems that, however abhorrent violence may be, the long term good or ill to society of violence must be weighed against the ill to society of the status quo. From the perspective of the good of humanity it was right and good for the nations of Europe and the US to fight the Nazis. The long term good to the world warranted the violence and loss of life incurred.

In Kenya, is more being gained through the protests than would be gained without them? If I understand the situation, the Kenyan protesters are confronting not just the election of a president they don’t like, but the suspicion of electoral fraud. In which case, for them, the very basis of civilized society is at stake. In which case, if they have good reason for their suspicions, it seems that their confrontation, meeting violence with violence if need be could be judged to be warranted.

Which is not to say that peaceful means of protest in Kenya or elsewhere should be disregarded or abandoned as either weak or ineffective. Far from it. As Ghandi showed, sometimes non-violence can be far more dramatic and dramatically effective than violence.

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Or “will the real statistic please stand up.”

Last week I found myself both defending Giuliani against critics that he’d lied to make his case against socialized medicine and criticizing him for using selective statistics. Now I feel compelled to criticize N. Gregory Mankiw for criticizing the use of healthcare statistics, not because his criticisms are wrong, but because he couches his arguments in cool economic terms rather than political terms and doesn’t follow them through to a logical conclusion.

In his ‘economic view‘ N. Gregory Mankiw goes beyond economics in the subtext of his comments about healthcare statistics to tease up matters of broader political sway.  The gist of Mankiw’s argument is that Canadian health stats are better than American health stats not because the Canadian health system is better, but because Americans are more violent, fatter, and more promiscuous as teens. (Ra! Ra! America!) He also says that many of the 47 million uninsured aren’t citizens and that a nationalized healthcare system wouldn’t change this. And finally that healthcare costs should be rising on a per capita basis — this is progress.

Mankiw reasons that a new healthcare system won’t make Americans less violent, thinner, nor less promiscuous (nor, one presumes, less likely to immigrate illegally). Ipso facto — no need to nationalize the healthcare system.

(Note to self: contact Mankiw to see whether he would be willing to fill out my tax return.)

What Mankiw doesn’t conclude is that America, being relatively more violent, fat, and promiscuous than its northern neighbor may have a few things to learn from Canada about how to become safer and healthier. And who knows, in the process we may even decide that we like the idea of socialized medicine.

This is a bit of a tangent, but whenever I think about socialized medicine I think about the private road that leads to my mother’s house. The road (really more of a short dirt track) serves several houses. The houses jointly share responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of the road. Inevitably, the road is a pitted, potholed liability, unpassably muddy on foot when it rains (which, where my mother lives, is often).

All of the good things about a good system of socialized medicine can be encapsulated by thinking about what a wonderful thing it would be if the local council were to take over responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of that little stretch of road. And all of the pitfalls of privatized medicine can be encapsulated in an exaggerated way by thinking about what would happen if every road needed to be maintained by the people living or working along its route…

N. Gregory Mankiw’s intelligence and sophistry brought to mind another piece today, one that also traffics in sobering statistics. I imagine that Mr. Mankiw (a professor of economics at Harvard, former adviser to President Bush and adviser to Mitt Romney) received a bang-up education, or at least a comprehensive education. (Although in Mr. Mankiw’s case it seems that a good education can’t teach one everything.) But the country today faces, and has for some time, an educational crisis. America’s system of public education, something that only the most die-hard of conservatives seem to itch to want to dispense with, needs care and attention. Education can’t solve every social and economic problem, but one can be certain that without a good educational system our chances of solving the social and economic problems of the future will be much hindered.