Identities
I wonder if Amartya Sen is atheist? I think he is. Rationality and Freedom (2002) implicitly attacks the idea of God as moral arbiter while looking nostalgically back to a time (roughly speaking, the four decades subsequent to 1917) when nations were created on a frankly secular basis.
Nor does he have much use for George Bush’s strategy of fighting “terrorism” by damning Islam with faint praise: “The respect shown by praising religion rather than praising divese aspects of other loyalties has had the effect of magnifying religious voices–when religiosity in its political use is itself problematic.”
I heard Mr Sen utter these words in April at a symposium at Harvard (where he teaches economics). It was a friendly audience. Most seemed genuinely sympathetic. If there were dissidents within earshot, they kept shut about it. Even when Mr Sen went on to dismiss the idea of “singular systems of classification” when it came to defining “identities”. “The illusion that one exists makes the world much more divisive,” he declared, while concluding that “Global harmony lies in recognizing the plurality of our identities“.
Really? Just what are “identities”? How many do most of us have? And to what extent do they affect our values? Or, our politics? Professor Sen tells us of his (imagined?) neighbor; “an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a historian, a long-distance runner, a tennis fan, a heterosexual, and a supporter of gay and lesbian rights.” In other words, people are not defined ordinarily by any one “identity”; rather, they cherry-pick from a multitude of “allegiances”.
The question is not really as silly as it sounds. In Iraq, the lackey regime is sinking into the quicksand of “identity” as it struggles to produce for its American master a modern Islamic capitalist state. More and more, however, “multiple allegiances” and a “plurality of identities” are being subsumed within one central goal; kicking the Americans out.
I thought of Mr Sen just the other day. Someone I like very much and who blogs on things that matter is taking a bit of a hiatus. Rather than a verbose “see you later” she simply posted a photo of a distressed child, little fist clenched to a sobbing face, looking pensively toward nothing in particular. One gets the idea she is not long for this world, perhaps.
The picture itself is genuine and affecting. Though not too terribly different from thousands I have seen over the years. Like them, it makes a “singular” assumption concerning the values of those whose gaze is likely to linger over it. What is one supposed to feel? Empathy, surely, though perhaps also a certain frustration or, rather, recognition that there is so much misery in the world — and especially in the developing world, which this child is almost certainly obliged to call home — that solutions seem nearly impossible.
But, several of the people to whom I happened to show this pathetic little creature had, frankly, different, and far more troubling, things to say. Much of what they said is quite unedifying in its detail but basically it comes down to this: there are too many people in the world, all of them hungry, all of them determined to love. If this child survives and reaches majority, it will compete in this gloabalized world with me and my children. And perhaps their children. For jobs, for housing, for all the resources that make life worthwhile or even bearable but which each day are dwindling in number and accessibility. It is perhaps better that she does not survive. Will she? And millions like her? I don’t know. And I am all the better for it.
So, yes, Mr Sen, we may identify with many things, just like your imagined Cambridge neighbor; But, what do we say when asked about that child in the picture? Are not such superficial externalities dwarfed by the salient features of capitalist life? Regardless of one’s “identity”, or “multiple allegiances”, the unifying epigram has become:
“I wish to be secure in my treasure”
Enough said.
Raina
August 15, 2005 @ 8:30 pm
I heard Amartya Sen in New Haven last year. He said something rather striking about the 1960s. It became almost a cultural pre-requisite for one to be “concerned” about war or the environment or about a host of other issues that had captured the imagination of mass media and its audience. Sen wonderred about the depth of that committment. You wrote somewhere that “dispensations” gave rise to values, and not vice versa. If as you say, values are changing, or that the basis on which those values gained supremacy is changing, perhaps in a generation we shall no longer be concerned with that child in the picture or people like her or people in distress generally. I find such prospects unsettling. I know there can be no values existing above or independently of class or the struggle for “goods and services” (as you I think put it), but is there not room for values independent of those of the capitalist system?
Seth
August 15, 2005 @ 8:36 pm
Lou, I think you or your friends should really think about things like purpose. I think humans have to be concerned with something larger than themselves to be happy or to feel connected with what is happening around them. Our “identities” are less important than the knowledge that we are part of something that can for good or ill make a difference in the world. Yes, people from developing countries will “compete” with Americans for essentials, but at a far less frantic pace and perhaps with a greater eye for the common good than those represented by your friends.
Roxanne
August 15, 2005 @ 8:41 pm
There is a good piece by Adorno on values in Cohen, *et al* Human Social Organization (Harvard, 1996) that addresses the issues of personal accumulation vs the general good.
Louis Godena
August 16, 2005 @ 12:17 pm
Hi Raina, Seth, and Roxanne; I wrote this piece after watching the ‘evacuations’ by the Israeli army of the settlers in Gaza. It has long been a source of wonderment how a ‘civilized’ people like Israeli Jews could assume such an abjectly indifferent pose when it came to the sufferings daily and routinely inflicted upon the occupied Palestinian population. But, is the callousness that now forms an endemic part of Israeli life really all that different than that displayed by Professor Sen or his neighbors when they live and enjoy life in cities that are virtual hellholes for working people and the poor? Privilege is a doctrinal given to people who teach at Harvard and who relish rubbing shoulders with the rich and well-placed. This is as true of Amartya Sen (whose in-laws were Italian Communists and one of whom played a role in early attempts to forge a European Common Market)as it is of those who actually collaborate with rapacious capitalist governments. I fear we are not far from the day when the values represented by my friends become in fact the norm, if in fact they are not already. But, values reflect nothing more than the aspirations and insecurities of those who hold them, I suppose. Rox, I’ll look for the Cohen book; I’ve always thought of Adorno and the Frankfurt School in terms of exchange values, rather than human ones. This should be interesting.
Orion
August 19, 2005 @ 12:55 pm
Ellen and I recently saw the documentary “Darwin’s Nightmare” — it is about the destruction of Lake Victoria by Nile Perch, and the growth of the Tanzanian fishing industry. It shows in unflinching detail the horror of abject poverty–street children fighting over a pot of rice, prostitutes murdered by foreign clients, HIV-AIDS, maggot filled carcas being prepared for food, this is the news of what is happening in the world today. Everyday cargo planes from Europe flown by cheap Russian pilots land in Tanzania. They bring only illicit arms. They leave filled to bursting with fish filletes. While the filming was underway, a famine broke out in central Tanzania. The filmmaker kept asking people, “what do the planes from Europe bring?” Everyone responded with the same nonchalant, “Oh, they come empty.” If
only they did–that would be better than the weapons they supply to the child soldiers in the ongoing wars of Africa.
In my experience in war-torn parts of this global society, it is racism and religious identity that make peace so ellusive. We are willing to exploit each other, but we are even more willing to exploit the other. Human consistently define in-groups and out-groups, are constantly drawing boundaries using ideological and cultural markers, and phony pseudo-kinship terms like “brother” or “comrade” to reinforce a sense of “family” or “solidarity.” Factions and fragmentation weaken our group, allow us to be divided and conquered.
At this stage in history the “in-group morality, out-group brutality” algorithm that shapes human nature must be transcended if we are to survive as a species on this planet. The stakes are high.
In case you are wondering why the movie was called Darwin’s Nightmare, here is a quote from the director:
In DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish and the ephemeral boom around this “fittest” animal into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order. I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds, in Honduras, bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil. Most of us I guess, know about the destructive mechanisms of our time, but we cannot fully picture them. We are unable to “get it”, unable to actually believe what we know.
It is, for example, incredible that wherever prime raw material is discovered, the locals die in misery, their sons become soldiers, and their daughters are turned into servants and whores. Hearing and seeing the same stories over and over makes me feel sick. After hundreds of years of slavery and colonisation of Africa, globalisation of african markets is the third and deadliest humiliation for the people of this continent. The arrogance of rich countries towards the third world (that’s three quarters of humanity) is creating immeasurable future dangers for all peoples. (taken from http://www.coop99.at/darwins-nightmare/darwin/html/startset.htm)
Louis Godena
August 19, 2005 @ 9:54 pm
Orion; for some reason this beast is only saving certain messages (perhaps it does not like certain ideologies! Two posters have written to say that their remarks were “forbidden, code 403” when they pressed “submit”. The same thing happened to me earlier. I will try to get in touch with Harvard Berkman (Friday in August, right? Forget it) at some point, but in the meantime I have responded privately to your email.
Jim F.
August 20, 2005 @ 10:30 pm
I have gotten “forbidden, code 403” error messages as well. I think it could be, at least partially, an issue of how many bytes one is attempting to post. When I posted in response to “Stirrin’ it up,” I found that I had to break up my post into multiple parts and post them separately.
There are, of course, probably some other issues involved too.