The Color of Corporations

When you think of corporations, what color are they? Are they black or white?  The Supreme Court decision to see them as deserving the right to free speech makes the answer trickier than one might imagine. 

Civic Reasons for Gun Safety

Most people do what they think is right, considering the world they think they live in.  This seems true in many cases, and the defeat of the expansion of gun registration in the US Senate seems to be one of them. So if we want to understand these senators, we need to understand the world they think they live in, and if we think they make a mistake, then we need to understand what’s wrong with their world-view. 

Whether one resists or promotes change, one usually uses one of three strategies: persuasion, incentives, or regulation.  In this case, the proposed change was regulation.  Good laws, however, seldom gain adherence by themselves.  People need to believe they will help or perhaps that they are simply the right thing to do.  With 90 percent of those polled supporting such regulation, it would appear that casting a yes vote would have been fairly simple.  After all, why would one shoot down gun safety?

It turns out persuasion was not strong enough to outweigh the third strategy for maintaining or changing systems: incentives.  In the world of many senators, they had nothing to gain by voting for gun safety and a lot to loose.  It seems reasonable for senators not to support the legislation if the negative rating by the National Rifle Association would have a more negative impact on their political future than the positive feeling of those who support gun safety.  If that was the case, then we can conclude that they operated in a political world of bargains and exchanges—a kind of commercial politics—rather than in a world of disagreement and deliberation—a civic politics.

In commercial politics, elected officials follow the preferences and interests of their constituency, and use them for determining the right position on different issues.  Sounds like democracy, if one sees democracy as bargaining.  What if democracy is not about the exchange of ideas, but about the generation of ideas; not about consumer preferences, but about citizen’s beliefs, not about agreeing, but rather about disagreeing, with the strongest?   

When politics is based on the civic, persuasion will have more force than incentives.  At the same time, as long as we stay in the world of what we have—property relations—instead of who we are—civic relations—it is doubtful if we will generate the kind of empathy and solidarity that makes persuasion persuasive in politics.

Civic and Commercial Arguments

In a commercial argument, we haggle over the value of something, and try to convince the other that our product or idea is the best one.  This involves engaging in what is commonly called “the marketplace of ideas.”  Such arguments appeal to our interests, and we seek to find a coincidence of interests—a win/win situation—where we can agree.  In commercial arguments, we treat our ideas as properties or commodities that we try to sell to others.  So how does this differ from a civic model of communication?

In a commercial argument, we see people exchanging their ideas with each other.  Each person exists isolated from the other and they market their ideas to each other.  In civic dialogues, we see people working through their disagreements in a shared civic context.  Much like we are engaged in the English language now, as I write and you read this text, citizens become engaged in a civic conversation through participation in it.  In these conversations, instead of trying to sell their ideas as though they were commodities, participants spend time developing new ideas that will move the conversation forward.

This difference between a commercial exchange and civic engagement is really central to understanding civic arguments.  It is like the distinction between ownership and membership.  If we think we own our ideas, then we protect them as we protect property, or we sell them for the right price (a promotion or at least some recognition).  If we see our ideas as belonging to a language and a culture, then we can enjoy their development as we become more familiar with the vocabulary and attitudes that constitute civic arguments.

As members of the civic, we can acknowledge each other as global citizens. This membership does not replace city or national citizenship, but rather expands it to include those with whom we share the planet, share this time, and share a similar planetary future.  To be a member is to acknowledge that we are all in this together, and that as members, we all have equal moral status.  This moral equality of all members carries with it a second implicit civic norm: the norm of justice or reciprocity.  The claim here is quite simple:  All members should receive good for doing good.  The relationships among the members should be reciprocal.  Actually, reciprocity also plays a role in justifying differences.  As Ernst Baker has pointed out, reciprocity fosters “balanced social relations” (Becker, 1986).  A balanced social relation does not mean that everyone has the same, but it does mean that the differences are among members, instead of among members and non-members.

When we think about our future, it is truer than ever before that we are all in the same boat.  Even though we today live within the conflicts generated by class, race, gender, and nationality, all our grandchildren will inherit the same earth.  Their inheritance depends on our willingness to work together to create a more just and sustainable world.  Civic membership does not resolve the disagreements about how to do this, but it does give us a platform upon which we can work together toward viable solutions.

Remember that one cannot be a citizen alone.  It is a relational and collective concept.  It is about belonging—belonging to the civic. Because equal membership is granted to all who participate, all have equal rights to be involved, or at least represented, in arguments that affect them.  These civic arguments can occur in many different places from local to international assemblies, in workplaces, voluntary associations, neighborhoods, and government agencies.  A civic argument is not defined by place, but rather by human relationships—relationships of moral equality, reciprocity, and participation.   If we apply these moral claims to arguments among citizens, civic arguments would exhibit the following characteristics.

1. Each person’s participation is equally valued
2. Participants feel safe enough to risk sharing their point of view
3. They ask questions in an effort to understand each other,
4. They develop reasons for their views that others can grasp.
5. They value their differences,
6. They work together for the best solution possible.

You can use the exercise below to assess your experiences of and knowledge about good civic arguments.  List 7 people with whom you have conversations and then rank them in terms of how often (1 meaning seldom and 5 meaning often) the conversations include the six features of civic arguments.

After you finish the exercise, you can reflect on why some individuals received different numbers than others.  Also, you can imagine how they would have assessed their capacity for good conversations.  If you think they also would have had some high numbers with some people, then all of you have the individual capacity for good conversations.  The question is how to change our conditions so that all of us can participate at our highest potential.  I am not alone on working on this, but there is a lot still to be done.

The Ethical Principles of Citizenship

I have agreed to develop a course for Saybrook University in San Francisco on the ethics of social transformation from a global citizen perspective.  So I have been exploring the ethical principles of citizenship, which is more complex than one might think.  In any case, the following chart reflects my current thinking.

Voice Composition

I attended a meeting this evening.  There were six or seven of us, and we began by sharing why we were present.  I said that I was invited, but that was not an adequate answer.  I was expected to say something—to compose a statement about myself—to compose my voice.