{"id":52458,"date":"2012-11-03T14:04:52","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T19:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=52458"},"modified":"2017-09-17T15:58:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T20:58:39","slug":"climate-denial-and-american-voluntarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/11\/03\/climate-denial-and-american-voluntarism\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Denial and American Voluntarism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2012\/11\/climate-denial-and-american-voluntarism.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At the GOP convention in August, Mitt Romney\u2019s cavalier dismissal of global warming got the intended laughs.\u00a0 Today, it seems less funny and the Democrats are capitalizing on the turn of events:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XCcCq_SrXsI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the transcript:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the<br \/>\noceans and to heal the planet.\u00a0 My promise is to help you and your family.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In two short sentences, Romney gives us the broader context for the denial of global warming:\u00a0 the denial of society itself.\u00a0 He echoes Margaret Thatcher\u2019s famous dictum<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This doesn\u2019t mean that there are no groups beyond the family.\u00a0 But those larger groups are valid only because individuals, consciously and voluntarily, chose to create them.\u00a0 This way of thinking about the relation between individuals and groups has long been an underlying principle of American thought.\u00a0 Claude Fischer, in\u00a0<em>Made in America<\/em>\u00a0calls it \u201cvoluntarism\u201d \u2013 the idea that the only legitimate groups are the ones that people voluntarily form or join.*\u00a0 The individual has a strong obligation to those groups and their members, but he has little or no obligation towards groups and people he did not choose.<\/p>\n<p>That is a moral position.\u00a0 It tells us what is morally O.K., and what is not.\u00a0 If I did not choose to join a group, I make no claims on others, and it is wrong for others \u2013 whether as individuals or as an organized group, even a government \u2013 to make any claim upon me.<\/p>\n<p>That moral position also shapes the conservative view of reality, particularly about our connectedness to other people and to the environment.\u00a0 Ideas about what is right determine ideas about what is true.\u00a0 The conservative rejects non-voluntary connections as illegitimate, but he also denies that they exist.\u00a0 If what I do affects someone else, that person has some claim upon me; but unless I voluntarily enter into that relationship,\u00a0 that claim is morally wrong.\u00a0 So in order to remain free of that claim, I must believe that what I do does not affect others, at least not in any harmful way.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to maintain that belief when the thing being affected is not an individual or family but a large and vague entity like \u201csociety\u201d or \u201cthe environment.\u201d\u00a0 If I willingly join with many other people, then I will see how our small individual acts &#8211; one vote, one small donation, one act of charity, etc. \u2013 add up to a large effect. That effect is what we intended.\u00a0 But if we separately, individually, drive a lot in our SUVs, use mega-amounts of electricity, and so on, we deny that these acts can add up to any unintended effect on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>As Fischer says, voluntarism is characteristically American.\u00a0 So is the denial of global warming. \u00a0At a recent Romney rally (video\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=w8tcf6exeDw\" data-rel=\"lightbox-video-0\">here<\/a>), when a protester yelled out the question, \u201cWhat about climate?\u201d Romney stands there, grinning but silent, and the crowd starts chanting, \u201cUSA, USA.\u201d\u00a0 The message is clear: we don\u2019t talk about climate change; we\u2019re Americans.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jay Livingston is\u00a0the\u00a0chair of the Sociology Department at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Montclair State University<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow him at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>\u00a0or on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>. \u00a0Two more\u00a0posts on voluntarism are\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2011\/02\/those-people.html\">here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2010\/04\/its-your-decision.html\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. At the GOP convention in August, Mitt Romney\u2019s cavalier dismissal of global warming got the intended laughs.\u00a0 Today, it seems less funny and the Democrats are capitalizing on the turn of events: Here\u2019s the transcript: President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,702,2123,3920,85,8121,37],"class_list":["post-52458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-energy","tag-environmentnature","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics","tag-election-2012","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52458"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71608,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52458\/revisions\/71608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}