In chapter 13 of Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes drops this bomb on us:

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Political theorists might not be that sanguine about Hobbes, mainly because he’s such a bummer! But our society seems to buy this underlying premise. Hobbes’ main point is that, at our core, we are motivated by acquisition of wealth, power, status, etc. This pursuit drives politics and as such, we need a “strongman” to maintain order, or we will become mired in a war of “all against all.”

The extent to which we accept this premise as valid shapes how we approach policy problems. Is this a universal maxim? Are there times and places during which “awe” is not necessary to organize a society? Are there other incentives that maintain social order that are not based on fear?

About two years into my Ph.D. program I had an uber-typical, grad-student existential crisis and decided to drop out and pursue an MA in journalism instead. Since I was 14, I wanted to be a writer for Rolling Stone (more specifically I wanted to be P.J. O’ Rourke) and I had decided that, now in my early thirties, I would pursue my adolescent dream.

It took me two weeks into that program to realize I had made a grave mistake. I loved my classmates in J-school, but I truly missed a deep engagement with ideas. I missed the ability to plumb deeply into important issues. I felt as if I were being trained to quickly spit out a jumble of words that sounded like a coherent take on an issue, but was too immediate and empirical to say anything profound. No sooner did I leave my Ph.D. program that I bounded towards the chair’s door pleading to be readmitted.

Fast forward to 2009. I’m going up for tenure soon any many in my position wouldn’t ever say the word “blog.” But here I go, posting once a day….except Sundays. What motivates me to do this to myself? As Andrew Sullivan skillfully lays out in his own foray into this question:

a blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater

Why if blogging is exactly the kind of impulsive, unreflective, episodic writing that drove me from my journalism program, do I make myself blog? I spell out some of why I do it on an interview I did for Contexts But after thinking about it more, I think there’s something deeper.

I think part of my desire to blog has to do with a nagging desire to be relevant, to be part of the zeitgeist. Blogging brings with it the allure of unlimited possibility. With a WordPress or Blogger account anyone has the potential to be highly relevant. The best of academic work can also be relevant and in more profound ways than any blog post could, but the best academic work takes time, lots of it. And lots of good work never makes it out of its academic bubble.

But the blog allows a daily illusion, or promise, that my input can be of consequence by introducing them to a new idea or making them reflect more deeply about an issue. It also provides the chance to create good class discussions, so have at it.

Do you blog? Why? Can bloggers be relevant?

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The California State Supreme court has decided to take up a set of cases challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8. Among the issues that will be decided by the court is whether a ban on gay marriage constitutes a minor change (which can be done by public initiative) or a “revision” to the state constitution (which requires two-thirds vote by the state legislature or a constitutional convention to place on the ballot). This narrow questions begs a larger discussion of the rules for governing in California.

Many observers say that California makes it way too easy to amend the state constitution. In this Los Angeles Times op-ed by Ed Lascher and Tim Hodson, political scientists at Sacramento State University, and Floyd Feeny a law professor at UC-Davis, they make a compelling case for significantly revising the Constitutional amendment process in California:

the California Constitution is a bloated mishmash by comparison with the hard-to-amend federal document. Instead of a transparent constitution that citizens can understand and use, California has obfuscation, clutter and dysfunction. Eight times the length of the U.S. Constitution, it is more about legal technicalities than principles; an embarrassment for an otherwise cutting-edge state.

While I share my colleagues predilection for short, elegant constitutions, is a bloated governing document the cost of true citizen engagement? It’s not fashionable to defend California state government, but could it be that California easy initiative process is not the problem? The initiative process in California produces both horrible and inspired public policy, that is part of what makes California the wonderfully messy, incoherent, unpredictable place that it is.

But I’d suggest that the problem is the voter, not the system. Rather than focus on whether citizens should have so much ownership over the state’s governance, our time might be better spent thinking about how their decision-making about ballot initiatives could be improved. Comprehensive voter guides are not enough. If a state is going to be serious about providing its citizens with direct policy making power, then we need to think more reflectively about how we train citizens to use that power responsibly. How could we go about doing that?

Super Bowl Porn Hits U.S. Viewers (BBC). I’m dying to know if this was a clever act of cyber-political resistance or some Comcast employee who didn’t read the employee handbook 🙂

I’d like to build upon my brief post about Yochai Benkler and Helen Nisselbaum’s 2006 article in the Journal of Political Philosophy entitled Commons Based Peer Production and Virtue. where they lay out an argument for how commons based peer production leads to virtuous behavior. They lay out four ways in which individual virtue is enhanced by engaging in collaborative peer work online.

The first is increased self-autonomy and individuation. They cite Charles Taylor’s notion of liberation as virtue brought about by being part on an on-line collaborative community. Such people are:

directing their own lives, … deciding for themselves the conditions of their own existence, as against falling prey to the domination of others, and to impersonal, natural, or social mechanisms which they fail to understand, and therefore cannot control or transform.

Second, they claim peer production enhances the ability of people to engage in productive and creative work. They use Alasdair McIntyre’s notion of practice:

socially established human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially derivative of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

Third, they claim altruism as a virtue enhanced by peer-production:

In helping others, in small ways such as donating spare cycles, or larger ways such as creating carefully researched encyclopedia entries without receiving conventional, tangible payments or favors in return, peers exercise kindness, benevolence, charity and generosity.

Finally, they argue that peer production develops habits of civic participation. They liken on-line peer production to “barn raising”

In a similar way, participants in a commons-based peer effort cooperate, build upon the work of others, contribute time, effort and expertise to create and enhance a public good.

Are Benkler and Nisselbaum being too pollyanna about commons based peer production? (That’s the easy argument). Or are they on to something? Have at it!

Benker and Nissenbaum have a provocative argument for why peer production is virtuous. Here are their two principles:

(a) that a society that provides opportunities for virtuous behavior is one that is more conducive to virtuous individuals; and (b) that the practice of effective virtuous behavior may lead to more people adopting virtues as their own, or as attributes of what they see as their self-definition.

What do you think, does Wikipedia and YouTube contribute to a more virtuous society?

Planetizen links to a New Urban News article reporting on a study which finds that cities built in California before 1950 have safer raods than those built after 1950. The authors, Wes Marshall and Norman Garrick, find that post 1950 cities:

tend to have more “dendritic” networks — branching, tree-like organizations that include many cul-de-sacs, limiting the movement of traffic through residential areas. They also don’t have as many intersections.

They suggest these “dendric” networks actually lead to greater travel speeds which in turn cause more fatalities. “Connected” grid-like streets are less likely to lead to fatal accidents because the heavier traffic leads to lower travel speeds.

The PBS show E2 (E Squared) had a compelling look at the transformation of Bogota, Colombia during the tenure of Enrique Penalosa. It’s worth a look to see how the transformation of space can impact social behavior. Through the development of green space, libraries, public parks, and pedestrian friendly streets, Penalosa helped transform Bogota into a public city. One key thing Penalosa did was shut down major thoroughfares on Sundays for pedestrian foot traffic (see picture below)

Could you imagine this happening in an American city. What do we lose as Americans with our emphasis on automobile travel and car friendly streets? I recognize a hint of misplaced, misty nostalga in my view, but it strikes me that our spaces in the U.S. (particularly my space in Thousand Oaks, California) could stand to be rethought with an eye toward reclaiming space for the commons.

I had an interesting discussion in my California politics class today. We read Samuel Huntington’s article/screed in Foreign Policy on “The Hispanic Challenge” the United States faces as a result of what he thinks is unabated immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

In the article, Huntington cites Miami as a city where assimilation is not required because the ethnic enclave created by the city’s Cuban/Latin American population is self-sufficient. I noted, having been born and raised in Miami, that Huntington was correct on one count: in Miami proper, Spanish is the public language. I compared that to my experience in California where even in predominantly Latino areas of Los Angeles, English still pervades as the public language . What explains the difference? We talked about the historical patterns of migration between the two groups. Miami was largely a tourist destination in the late 1950’s, so Cuban Americans had a largely blank canvas from which to create an ethnic enclave. That, the assistance from the federal government as political refugees led there to be diminished pressure to make English the public language of Miami.

Mexican-Americans migration to Southern California, on the other hand, has accelerated in recent years (Los Angeles was the “Whitest” city in the U.S. in 1940). The pressures for this group to assimilate has historically been stronger than for Cubans. Mexican-Americans have been in a constant battle for resources with other racial/ethnic groups and have been subject to traditional racial hierarchies and the pressure to conform to a Whiteness and Americanness standard that Cubans have largely been able to elide.

I’ve found it an interesting experience to go to restaurants in Los Angeles and order in Spanish only to have the waitress/waiter answer me in English. That would never happen in Miami.

I came across this tidbit while doing a paper on how Latinos use social networking sites. This quote is from a press release announcing a new social networking site called BabySpotLatino.com:

A new report from Forrester Research shows U.S. Hispanics are active online social networkers. Three thousand online Hispanics were surveyed, and results showed 69% of Hispanic’s, compared to 42% of non-Hispanics, were characterized as spectators, meaning they peruse what others do, suggesting that this is a level where interactivity starts to increase. 40% of Hispanics, compared to 12% of non-Hispanics, were characterized as creators, meaning they actively pursued social networks by blogging, uploading photos and videos and creating personal web pages.

If this is true, this is a big difference in how Latinos and non-Latinos use the web. Assuming these numbers are valid, why do Latinos engage in more social activity online than non-Latinos? I’d guess that much of it has to do with differing notions of family, individualism and the role of friendship networks. Help me unpack this intellectual suitcase 🙂