Chardonnay and Neetch-O's: The Political Philosophy of Nordhaus and Shellenberger
I got my hopes up a little when, in his contribution to this discussion, David Roberts advised us to address S&N’s politics, rather than their policies, which, he characterizes as thin gruel. Sadly, he then immediately lapses into the small politics of the environmental movement, defending environmentalists against the authors’ woos (sp?) attack. Roberts paints a picture of environmentalists as just the kind of Nietzschean ubermenschen S&N are hoping for – robust, independent entrepreneurs far from wicked Washington. All this does is cede the underlying ground to the duo, conceding that nothing but such a politics is valid. FRAMING ALERT: Why would you concede that?
S&N’s attack on the do-gooder environmentalists rests completely, as it must, on two pillars: their polling and their philosophy. I am suspicious of the polling data, as one of the commenters also expressed, but that is above my pay grade. And even if it’s accurate, all that means is that thirty years of conservative framing and ideology have had an effect. S&N are right, that liberals in 2007 need to address the sea-change the right has accomplished in a willing public. But maybe surrender is not the only strategy for fighting the right wing mindset machine.
On my turf, however, I must say that S&N’s venture into political theory more resembles young Anthony Soprano’s sophomoric encounter with “Neetch” than anything resembling serious political philosophy. I am always skeptical when a writer starts a proposal for a revived liberal political theory by dissing the concern with abortion rights as special pleading. But even someone as distant from feminism as Larry Summers would have to look twice at a paragraph like the following:
“. . . in affluent postindustrial societies there is no reason why every citizen could not adopt the virtues of strength, pride, and excellence that Nietzsche valorized. Those values are entirely consistent with democratic, egalitarian politics. Indeed, these are increasingly the values of many Americans who hold autonomy, individuality, and self-creation above virtually all else.” (at 249).
The United States has had roughly three or four decades of a politics of “individuality, strength and self-creation,” depending on when you date the beginning of the conservative revival. As a result, as others in this discussion much more knowledgeable than I am have noted, regulatory agencies have been gutted (“individuality”), including the investment and regulatory apparatus of the environmental movement, particularly as the conservative revival moved into its jet-fueled stage with the nomination of the born again George W. Bush. The agencies of a communally responsible economic policy, like, dare I say it, labor unions (“strength,” “self-creation”), have all but vanished from the scene. The society is at a point of economic inequality (“pride,”) unrivalled since the last Gilded Age, 40 million Americans lack basic health insurance (“individuality, self-creation,”) in a technological age when medicine can actually make a difference, and that much derided touchstone of autonomy, reproductive control, is one conservative Justice away from the back alleys (Kansas “self-creation”). I’m having a real hard time seeing the “democratic, egalitarian politics” in the picture. Even those “egalitarian democrats” S&N are willing to go $300 billion further into debt rather than say the dread word: “taxes.”
Maybe Nietzsche’s values are just the slightest bit inconsistent with democratic, egalitarian politics? As I have suggested elsewhere, a political philosophy that recognizes human’s political nature, responsibility for the well-being of others in their community, and the social aspect of human creation might be a better value-foundation for an egalitarian democracy than Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s half-baked, chardonnay besotted, Berkeley, California version of self-actualization. The, er, methodologically challenged Fifties psychologist Abraham Maslow for God’s sake? What next, conversation pits?
In my other role here on TPM this week, I have elicited from the ether a bunch of sophiaphobes, who disagree that policies and politics ultimately have to rest on a set of core beliefs about what it means to be human and how humans should live together in societies. I thank S&N for trying to show how their policy results from their philosophy. The philosophy being incoherent, it cannot support the policy. Maybe their policy is absolutely correct, and cold fusion is a mere $300 billion away or, as they just said, Barack Obama’s energy plan is a terrific idea. But if it is correct, its rectitude is purely coincidental.
Comments (11)
"But maybe surrender is not the only strategy for fighting the right wing mindset machine." All very nicely put. And Nietzsche is a model for another value altogether as well, one that N&S could benefit from, irony. (Oh, we probably all do have and value core beliefs, just maybe disagree on what they are. Seems like the comments all had a slightly different history of philosophy.)
Any time I hear people start with polling data, I get worried. Whenever people tell you to vote for X because X will win, it's discouraging. If one is omniscient enough to know who will win, one is probably omnipotent enough to push for an outcome more consonant with one's beliefs. A little conviction might carry weight in influencing outcomes of its own accord anyhow.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
October 11, 2007 3:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
"policies and politics ultimately have to rest on a set of core beliefs about what it means to be human and how humans should live together in societies."
One person's "core belief" may be another's belly laugh, yet they can work together on policy issues that concern them both.
Example: I find several of Sam Brownback's religious beliefs incredulous , yet that doesn't stop me from agreeing with him in his opposition to the Darfur ethnic conflicts.
Another, that applies to this conversation.
Many left wing environmentalist oppose hunting but they will work with hunting groups to save and restore wetlands.
Wetlands btw are great carbon sinks far better than forests.
Jack
October 11, 2007 4:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
1. You're yanking S&N out of context. They obvious respect values in addition to srength, pride, etc.
2. What's with the name-calling? Is that how feminist philosophers at Brandeis do it? "Chardonnay-besotted"? Good grief, isn't that methodologically challenged? Did you study under Maslow?'
3. I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you, to find out that people can use good values to bad ends! You mean that individualism can be taken too far? That price can be taken too far? Thank God that can't happen with any of the values you cherish, Linda.
4.Only ignorance or a misreading can allow for your statement that "S&N’s attack on the do-gooder environmentalists rests completely, as it must, on two pillars: their polling and their philosophy." Their attack rests on their real-world experience. As someone who has consulted on environmental and energy issues to NGOs, governments, and businesess for over 20 years, their experience fits with mine.
S&N explicitly said:
"the two of us had spent all of our professional careers, about thirty years between us, working for the country's largest environmental organizations and foundations, as well as many smaller grassroots ones. Like most of our colleagues, we tended to see global warming as a problem of pollution, whose solution would be found in pollution limits."
***
"After we created the Apollo proposal, we did what new political coalitions on the left tend to do: round up endorsements from other groups. And while we succeeded in getting endorsements and letters of support for Apollo's principles from businesses, unions, and most of the large national environmental groups, we were baffled, and then angered, by what happened next.
Environmental lobbyists told us that while they supported Apollo's vision, they would do nothing to support it in concrete ways, either in Congress or during the 2004 elections. Those of us who had created Apollo had made the decision to focus on jobs and energy independence, because they were far higher priorities among voters than stopping global warming. In particular, we discovered that investment in clean-energy jobs, to get free of oil, was more popular with voters than talk of global warming, clean air, and regulation. But environmental leaders thought our nonenvironmental and nonregulatory focus was a vice, not a virtue.
Fearing that it would distract Democrats' attention away from stopping the George W. Bush administration's energy bill, which included billions in new subsidies for coal and oil, environmental leaders eventually asked us to keep Apollo legislation from being considered by Congress. Still the good soldiers, we did as we were asked, and Apollo was, briefly, withdrawn. But it hardly mattered: the Bush energy bill passed anyway."
5. Based on your earlier posts, I was very interested in what you had to say. This posting, for me, is bizarre. Selective quotation, falsely attributing positions to S&N that they do not take, and assuming your conclusions (in the face of contrary facts!) strike me as the signs of a second-rate argument. I know you don't have a second-rate mind, so I'm at a loss, here.
October 11, 2007 5:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
The paragraph from Break Through comes in the last chapter, called, in case you wonder if they think it's important, "Greatness;" the authors have been building up to it for 248 pages. In the leadup to the para in the chapter, Greatness, they have gone through all the competing theories and clearly signal that they are ready to state their own, "reject[ing]" the competing views. Anyone with any knowledge of forensics would recognize it as the key paragraph. In case you missed the message, the next paragraph repeats their commitments: unique individuals, autonomous and in control of their lives, "respected and recognized as such [sic] by those around them . . . today's common man eats like the aristocrats that Nietzsche exalted and lives in a castle . . . "
Shortly thereafter the book ends. But there's always a possibility that I misread their intent. So, if S and N want to disavow their Greatness, now's their chance.
I have no idea what vokrosgian's problem is. They presented themselves as philosophers, "grappling with the existential questions . . . what kind of country do we want? How can we achieve it?" (257) The combination of the authors' Berkeley educations, the offices outside San Francisco, and the revival of that pillar of Sixties pop psychology was absolutely irresistible, although when I think about us debating Abraham Maslow as the ice cap melts, it does lose some of its hilarity.
October 11, 2007 6:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's no need to rag on Nietzsche here. You're right, Linda -- Nietzsche didn't think much of democracy. He wasn't a fascist as some would claim but as a moralist he wanted people to be free to pursue their destructive and creative desires and I'm not sure that the EPA fits into that.
"Man is something that should be overcome," said Zarathustra, then moving on to argue that he shouldn't have to clean up whatever it was he just dumped into the Hudson River.
Thing is Nietzsche's being maligned here because he's got a lot going for him spiritually. Mental, emotional artistic and expressive self creaation needs tgo be protected at all costs. Linda, I think you do leave out the protection of those ideals when you talk about people in political terms first.
Anyway, my individuality wouldn't be well served by anarchy. People would constantly be hitting me on the head and taking my stuff. That, I think is a positive point that can be made -- the individual is the first principle, but individuality among people living together can only be protected and allowed to flourish under a fair, honest and capable government.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 11, 2007 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Linda-
Are you sure you're not an economist? You certainly have an economist's disregard for facts--or maybe just accuracy. It's vorkosigan, not vokrosigan--you know, "so long as they spell my name right." And only one of S&N has a Berkeley degree.
And my reading of S&N is that they're calling for a return to balance, rather than calling for strength, pride, etc. to the exclusion of other virtues.
Your words remind me of that old saw about about giving a dog a bad name, and then kicking it because you don't like its name. Careful with that hammer, Linda, you might break a few things that you think are nails.
October 11, 2007 7:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
omigod, Vorkosigan, it's one University of California at Berkeley and one the University of California degree. Could be Berkeley though, no? Maybe he's just modest.
But to all who were kind enough to weigh in, here's the point: they spend around half of the book on their enterprise of defining what America should mean. They invoke the work of others -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Abraham Maslow -- who are not immediately in the field of environmental policy. They are trying to do something grand, to fuel their policy position, and because, I'm guessing, they think the grand enterprise is worth doing, which it is. I'm just saying they don't do a good job at it, indeed, an embarrassingly bad job. As to their policy prescription, I have said from the beginning that I'm not an expert. The refusal to pay for it is a red flag, but I'll leave that debate to you experts.
October 11, 2007 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
The poster's name is vorkosigan the 1st, Linda! You're leaving off the number now!
Sincerely,
Destor the 23rd.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 11, 2007 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have no idea what vokrosgian's problem is.
The vigorous, breathless defense of all things S&N is curious.
Which do you think vorkosigan is?
S, or N?
heh heh.
October 11, 2007 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't feel too defensive here. You're a philosophy kind of person, responding to and commenting on the philosophical aspects of S&N's book.
vorkosigan seems to be only worried about the delicate sensibilities of someone getting upset over being called "chardonnay besotted."
Boo hoo.
I think you make a fine argument. Really, this is all much like health care -- capitalism, in all its glory, got us into these messes, and now we expect it to get us out?
And, while I don't have my own polling company to back this up, I think there is definitely an appetite for a message of community, and social consciousness. You see it in the reaction to Al Gore's movie, and Michael Moore's movie.
The shine on this whole "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" thing has gotten quite dull.
October 11, 2007 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, it case it's not clear, that was a joke.
October 11, 2007 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink