Read Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea Online
Authors: George Lakoff
It is surely not the case that conservatives are simpleminded and cannot think in terms of complex systems: Indeed, conservative strategists consistently outdo progressive strategists when it comes to long-term, overall strategic initiatives. But when it comes to forming arguments based on moral or political reasoning, this difference seems to keep coming up.
Direct causation is the simplest kind: There is a single agent who purposely exerts force on something and as a result that thing moves or changes. You throw a ball and the ball goes through the air. You flip a light switch and the light turns on. The properties of direct causation are simple: One agent. One entity affected. One action, performed freely (using free will). No intermediate cause. No multiple agents.
What is at issue here is how the event is conceptualized, not the way it occurs in the world. Overthrowing a dictator may take millions of actions by hundreds of thousands of troops, but it can be conceptualized as a single action, carried out at the level of the army or the nation. “Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein” is an example of a complex phenomenon in the world being conceptualized as direct causation.
Systemic causation is rather different. Complex systems are commonplace. Examples are the stock market, weather systems, the power grid, the economy, a culture, the electorate, an ecosystem, an epidemic, the health care system, a social phenomenon (e.g., crime).
Systemic causation is a causal relation involving at least one complex system. Examples are very common: Global warming is causing the melting of the polar ice cap. The use of fossil fuels is causing global warming. The health care system is breaking down. The rise in health care costs is putting stress on the economy.
Notice the use of the present participle, “is causing,” “is putting stress,” “is breaking down.” A complex system functions over a significant amount of time, during which human preventive or corrective action can occur.
Moreover, complex systems are not easy to pin down to single events or event types. To get a hold on them, one has to use metaphoric or metonymic indicators—which do not exist as
things in the world but give one a way of conceptualizing and measuring the state of some aspect of the world. Examples are stock market averages, average global temperature, health care cost indicators, the gross domestic product, and the number of diabetes patients treated in hospitals each year. To make causal statements with any rigor, one has to use statistical correlations among indicators and then impute causation to correlations. Since the indicators are, for the most part, not real things, and since correlation isn’t causation, indicators and the correlations among them must be supplemented with a theory linking cause and the effect, for example a theory of how the use of fossil fuels leads to global warming or a theory of how health-care costs affect the economy.
Social, economic, and political policies are based on assumptions about causation. Consider the following progressive argument:
The food industry has caused an increase in obesity, and, with it, the current diabetes epidemic, which threatens health-care costs, and food industry lobbying is stopping government regulation that could change the American diet and prevent future obesity and diabetes.
It contains the following complex systems: the food industry, obesity, the diabetes epidemic, health-care costs, and the (degree of healthiness of the) American diet. Since complex systems are widespread, they are not easily subject to control by individuals and so government action is seen as necessary. Consider a response in a conservative vein:
People get fat because they are undisciplined and eat too much, exercise too little, and eat the wrong foods. This is a matter of individual choice and individual responsibility. Everyone should be individually responsible for the
state of his health and his own health-care costs. That’s why consumer-driven health insurance is both the fairest and most effective option. If you take care of yourself, your health-care costs will be less, and they should be. If your health care costs more, that is an incentive to eat better and lose weight.
This argument has no complex systems and no systemic causation. It is all a matter of individual discipline, individual action, and an individual weighting of costs and benefits. It ignores genetic factors both in obesity and in diabetes; specific genes have now been isolated that tend to make diabetes more likely (genetic effects are also systemic). It ignores the marketing of unhealthy foods as being causal. The fact that the food industry makes its money on that marketing—especially on marketing to children—indicates that marketing does have a causal effect. But since marketing is a complex system and its causal effect is not a matter of individual responsibility, it will tend not to be used in conservative arguments.
Now let us consider what these forms of causation have to do with freedom.
Case 1
. Simple freedom has the condition that you are free to act only if you do not impose on the freedom of others. Causing harm to others imposes on their freedom. Therefore you are free to act only if you do not cause harm to others. That is one of the logical connections between causation and freedom.
What is contested is what counts as causing harm. Does only direct causation count? Or does systemic causation count?
Suppose you own the mineral rights to a mountain in West
Virginia and you want to blow the top off it and start mining coal. Suppose you don’t have the money for equipment and can get the money only by stealing it. Stealing money causes financial harm and is thus an imposition on the victim’s freedom. According to simple freedom, you are not free to cause harm by stealing the money and then mining the coal. Stealing money is directly causing harm, and conservatives as well as progressives would recognize this as a prohibition.
Now suppose you have the mineral rights and the money for the equipment. You intend to blow off the top of the mountain and start mining coal, sending large amounts of pollution into nearby streams. That pollution would contain mercury, which poisons the water, poisons fish, builds up in the environment, and ultimately winds up in people’s bodies, including the bodies of pregnant women. Right now, one woman out of six in America of childbearing age has so much mercury in her body that it threatens the viability of the fetus and can contribute to serious birth defects. Your coal mine would be contributing systemically to causing mercury poisoning, infant death, and lifelong illness. Should you be free to contribute systemically to causing such harm?
Progressives tend to say no, that such mining practices should be banned. They would argue on the basis of a significant contribution to the systemic causation of harm. And because the cause is systemic and widespread, only government action can be effective.
Conservatives tend to argue that your coal mine would not directly cause any known particular deaths or illness, and so you—and others—should be free to mine your coal. Government regulation would only get in the way of your legitimate right to do business and make a profit.
Case 2
. Suppose you are brought up in a culture of poverty and ignorance. Are you free to take advantage of the educational and economic opportunities that America offers? Or might the
culture you were brought up in be standing in your way, blocking such freedom?
Conservatives tend to argue that this is simply a matter of discipline and individual initiative. Here is Sean Hannity’s version of the argument in
Let Freedom Ring:
That’s the thing about freedom. It doesn’t guarantee success … But let’s say you show a little self-discipline—even if you haven’t before … Let’s say you go to bed at a reasonable hour at night and get up early in the morning to tackle the day. Let’s say you really work hard. You develop marketable skills. You help invent or produce or distribute some product or service that people want or need. You get out and hustle. Rather than waste your money, you pay off your college loans and your credit cards and your car loans … You get serious about your life … and your sense of personal responsibility. What’s going to happen? I guarantee you. You’ll be on the road to success.
If you have the freedom to enter the free market, then educational and economic success are just a matter of discipline and individual initiative (direct causation).
Progressives tend to argue rather differently.
If you are brought up in a culture of poverty and ignorance, you may not be raised to value learning and discursive arguments, to enjoy reading and other things done in school, and to function in a professional culture. Early cultural experience (a complex system) shapes your brain and thereby may place limits on your freedom to function well in school and in the business world.
It is not just a matter of discipline. Early cultural experience (a complex system) may systemically cause your brain to be shaped
so that you cannot function in an educational or a professional environment. You may need early childhood education and other appropriate experiences.
Case 3
. Suppose that we consider the group of, say, forty-five million working Americans (a complex system) who cannot afford health care (a complex system) because they are “unskilled” and cannot be paid much for their labor in this economy. Are all forty-five million jointly free to pull themselves up by their bootstraps in an economy structured to lower the cost of labor? Or is the structure of the economy a systemic cause limiting their freedom?
The progressive argument is that the economy does not have nearly enough well-paying jobs for those forty-five million people, and moreover, some forty-five million people would have to do the work these people now do for that low pay. Although some small number may be free to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the structure of the economy (a complex system) is
a
systemic cause limiting the freedom of the whole group (a complex system).
The most likely conservative response is that in a group that large there will always be winners and losers, but those who are the most disciplined will be the winners who do pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the losers will be those who are less disciplined and who therefore do not deserve to be winners. Individual initiative (direct causation) is the key.
Case 4
. We know from our study of simple freedom that causing harm is imposing on one’s freedom. We know also that freedom requires order and the rule of law. The question is this: Has George W. Bush brought freedom to the Iraqi people by waging the Iraq War?
The progressive answer is no. The war (a complex system) has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and the maiming of hundreds of thousands of others. It has brought devastation to much of the infrastructure of the country, it has resulted in an unemployment rate of about 50 percent, it has led to
women being far less free than before, and it has brought civil chaos to much of the country. In each case, the causation of lessened freedom is systemic.
The conservative response would be something like this: Bush toppled Saddam Hussein (direct causation in the war frame), freeing Iraqis by direct action from his tyranny. Those killed and maimed don’t count, since they are outside the war frame. Moreover, Bush has done nothing via direct causation to harm any Iraqis and so has not imposed on their freedom.
Let us now ask why progressives tend to focus on systemic causation and why conservatives focus on direct causation in their moral and political arguments.
Moral and political reasoning by conservatives and progressives uses the strict father and nurturant parent models. What is interesting about this is that the strict father model tends to use direct causation, while the nurturant parent model tends to use systemic causation. This difference can explain why progressives and conservatives think differently about causation and hence about freedom.
Think back to that part of the strict father model in which there is an absolute right and wrong, children are born bad in the sense that they just do what they want to do, and they have to be taught right from wrong. The father knows right from wrong and has the strength and authority to mete out rewards and punishments. That makes him a legitimate moral authority. In the model, the only way to teach a child morality is punishment for doing wrong, reward for doing right, and the assumption is that, to avoid punishment, the child will develop an
internal discipline to do right and avoid wrong, which is the only way to teach morality. The child is told that the right thing is to obey, that he or she has the free will to obey or not, that he or she must develop the internal discipline to obey (“Just say no!”), and that direct punishment is the only way to provide the incentive for obedience.
The model requires a complex and deep set of assumptions about what a person is like and what morality is:
A directive is a commandment, an order, a rule, or a clearly defined moral obligation with a clearly defined condition that would satisfy the directive.
A person can understand a directive—and can understand what would count as obeying or disobeying that directive, and the necessary rewards and punishments.
Moral behavior is obedience to the directives of a legitimate moral authority—a parent, God, a law, and ultimately oneself.
A person has free will and can choose to obey or disobey a directive.
In the typical case, obedience or disobedience is a single event with a single well-defined outcome by a single person caused directly via applying free will. If you are told to take out the garbage, you take it out or you don’t.
These are cases of direct causation.
In the typical case, only such acts merit reward or punishment.
There are certain major reasons for disobedience to the directive of a moral authority:
Desire: the pull of the passions is stronger than the will to obey.
Inability: the will to obey is there but cannot be carried out for reasons beyond one’s control.
Laziness: there is no desire to put the necessary energy into acting the right way.
A challenge to authority: there is a will to disobey.
Internal discipline is the proper response to all four cases.
Discipline involves strengthening the will to overrule the passions.
Discipline requires gaining control over external factors. There are no excuses.
Discipline involves gathering the necessary energy and using it.
Discipline involves bending one’s own will to the will of another.
Character is defined by using discipline and free will to follow the directives of one’s internalized legitimate moral authority.
The purpose of reward and punishment by the strict father is to develop character in a child by the time the child reaches adulthood.