Month: July 2018

Habit and The Individual Will (A Dialogue)

Philosophy

(The banks of the Moskva river, late on a summer afternoon.  PAVEL sits on a park bench, gazing out over the water.  ANTON approaches.)

Anton:  Hello, professor, you look perplexed!

Pavel:  Ah, hi there Pasha.  Yes, I’ve been reading Alexander Livingston’s new book about the politics of William James, and I’m trying to figure out how his discussion of habit and will relates to my milieu: writing, the writing classroom, you know.

A: James, the American?  What does he say?

P: Well, habit is a key idea for James.  He calls it “the great flywheel of society,” the ultimate “conservative agent.”  These formulations suggest that habit is both omnipresent and restrictive.  Our habits are also not completely our own.  They have been formed over time by communal action.  In a very real sense, something as simple as riding a bicycle contains the combined wisdom of the ages.

A: Fascinating.

P:  I think so too.  For individuals, staying within the bounds of habit is easy.  It doesn’t require conscious thought, and when engaged in habitual behavior our affective state is one of calm, peacefulness.  Habit, it could be said, is a kind of anesthetic.

A:  I know this feeling.  Commuting to work, or moving around the house on a lazy Sunday morning, at these times it’s almost like I feel nothing.

P: Yes.  As Livingston has it, James draws a distinction between the warm embrace of habit and those moments when we are forced to transcend habit.  When we are forced to create our own interpretations of the world and act on those interpretations.  In these moments, we think and act for ourselves.  Our affective state is one of tension.  We feel “keyed up.”  This tension only subsides as our original, thought-intensive action becomes habituated.  As we start, once again, to operate automatically.  Now though our patterns of action are altered.  We’ve added our little contribution to the great mass of communal wisdom which is habit.  James sees great import in these little moments of transcendence.

A:  I think I’m following you.  Let’s see if I can play out an example.  You know I was recently in Australia.  They drive on the opposite side of the road there.  Learning to drive a car with a manual transmission—so shifting with my left hand—was a real challenge.  It took a lot of effort to do everything backwards.  I had to consciously think through what for years I’d been doing unconsciously.

P:  A perfect example.  James would say that in those moments of struggling with the gear shift you were transcending habit.  You were interpreting the world and adjusting your actions accordingly.  No one was thinking or acting for you.  In this sense, you were asserting your will as a sovereign individual.

A:  Hmm…

P: We should note, though, that the assertion of the will for James is not about conquest or mastery.  It’s essential element is not control over people or objects.  Instead, it’s about engaging the singularity of the world and formulating an equally singular response.

A: Interesting idea.  But how does any of this relate to writing?

P: That’s what I’m trying to figure out.  It seems that no act of writing can be completely habitual.  Even the writing of a simple narrative can’t be thoughtless in the way that driving a car is thoughtless.  We have to fit communal forms (words, sentences, etc.) to our singular experience.  This requires mentally searching for and selecting those forms—that is by definition thought.

A:  So all writing requires an act of will?

P:  To any extent.  Perhaps it’s more useful, though, to think of it as a continuum.  No act of writing is completely habitual, but some are less habitual than others.  Only some acts of writing, I think its fair to say, allow for transcendence of the type James is envisioning.  Transcendence occurs when we really have to struggle, when the words won’t do what we demand of them.

A: Those knots in a piece of writing, those moments of aporia when the ideas that you are working with just won’t cohere…

P:  Yes.  There’s a sort of dialectic in those moments, isn’t there?  The writer must take opposites and combine them to reach a higher synthesis.  In doing so he moves from a state of tension—of anxiety and uncertainty—to a state of calm.  I think this dynamic is analogous to James’s discussion of habit and will.  In this case, the will manifests in the struggle to overcome the aporia, in the moments of conscious effort that lead up to the resolution of the conflict.  James puts great value on moments such as these.  These are the times we are most attuned to and engaged with the world.

A:  Effort as an end in itself, eh?

P:  Yes, it seems so.  It also seems that the application or creation of new forms is another way we overcome the habitual in writing.  I mean, we typical do things one way.  We use certain genres in certain situations, etc.  To do things another way, to bend certain genres to fit new situations, that’s another way the will can manifest in the act of writing.

A:  Ah, I see!  That’s why you’re writing this blog post in narrative format.

P: Indeed.  I’m not the first to write a philosophical dialogue, of course, but remember, effort is an end in itself.  So James would say that in the struggle to do something new (something I’ve never done before), I am positioning my will against the force of my habits, and against the force of tradition as embodied in my habits.  I’m thus asserting myself as a sovereign agent.

A:  You are acting in response to the situation’s singular demands.  I could see how this process of reading and responding requires a certain “presentness” which could be of intrinsic value.

P:  Indeed…. Well, it’s almost dinner time.  Enough talking.  How about I buy you a kebab?

A:  Only if I can buy us a round of Putinka.

P:  You drive a hard bargain, my friend.  Let us go.

[PAVEL and ANTON exit.]

A New Critical Pedagogy

The Fragments

By most objectives measures, democratic governance is in retreat all around the world.  In the US, extreme political polarization has resulted in legislative paralysis, as well as the rise of politicians whose ideas, attitudes and tactics are unacceptable to many people.  Many writing teachers, myself included, are upset by this dynamic.  What is to be done?  I think the answer is clear: a recommitment to pedagogy that helps prepare young people for democratic participation.  In short, we need new politically progressive teaching methods, specifically tailored to the world our students now face.  This involves, inevitably, rethinking what makes a pedagogy progressive.

The maintenance of a healthy public sphere has often been listed among rhetoric and composition’s many goals.  In the 1980s, the field saw the rise of so-called “critical pedagogy.”  Largely influenced by the work of Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy is overtly political.  Through a variety of methods, critical pedagogues seek to help students achieve “emancipation” and “empowerment,” hoping to ultimately spur positive social change.  Of late, some scholars have argued that critical pedagogy, as such, has run its course.  This is not to say that overtly political pedagogies are out of fashion: one of the most lauded rhet-comp books of recent years (by the chair of Cs, no less) presents an overtly political writing pedagogy.  I do think, though, that ideas about what makes a pedagogy “political” or “politically progressive” have grown somewhat sedimented.

What’s the current progressive consensus?  Approaches vary, of course, but I think we can safely imagine a generic progressive classroom.  First, efforts are made to decentralize authority, to give students (relatively more) control over what and how they learn.  Second, students are taught to recognize and interrogate power structures.  It is assumed that we know what we know, and do what we do, not sui generis, but because of larger forces within society.  These forces create hierarchies that advantage / disadvantage certain groups.  With proper instruction (which often involves an introduction to critical theory), students can be taught to recognize and challenge these hierarchies.

The justification for the consensus approach is two-fold.  First, by gaining knowledge of power structures, students will be a better able to operate within them.  They will become more self-conscious and contextually aware writers.  Second, they will see that these structures are often unfair.  In turn, they’ll seek to challenge them.  Advantaged groups will realize that they need to “renounce their privilege” and embrace “allyship,” while disadvantaged groups will realize it’s “not their fault” and “by working together, we can change things.”  A combination of these factors (increased writerly agency + increased political awareness) are what makes these pedagogies “progressive.”

Now, I don’t want to completely dismiss the consensus approach; many teachers likely feel it works well.  Identifying and challenging power structures makes their teaching meaningful.  This is fine.  I highly suspect, though, that given the fact that regressive political elements now control all three branches of the US government, many teachers feel that current progressive approaches are not working.  For whatever reason, our efforts are not having optimal impact.  If this is the case (which I think it is) we need new forms of critical pedagogy.

Where should a progressive rethink start?  Well, for one, we can start by examining texts outside the conventional canon of Marxist-inspired social analysis.  I find that much progressive pedagogy (and honestly, much of rhet-comp in general) is painfully blind to how individuals actually think, feel and act.  In short, for too long we’ve focused too heavily on systems (networks, discourses, etc.) and not enough on human behavior within systems.  How can we correct this?  Well, one approach is to learn from those who study human behavior.  It seems to me that behavioral psychology can be particularly useful.

As noted, I believe that a progressive pedagogy should help prepare students for democratic participation.  This includes providing “knowledge of” (power structures, etc) and “knowledge how” (to formulate and evaluate arguments, etc).  Behavioral psychology, however, reminds us to take a more holistic view.  It suggests that a functioning democratic system requires not just that individuals have knowledge and skills, but certain dispositions.  Citizens, or a large portion of them anyway, must be inclined to act in certain ways.  In other words, if we want to promote liberal democratic values, we have to promote liberal democratic ways of being.

Now, to an extent, critical pedagogy recognizes the importance of cultivating certain ways of being.  Teachers relinquish power, for example, in order to demonstrate (and hence promote) egalitarian behaviors.  So how can behavioral psychology further such efforts?  Well, psychologists generally hold that behavioral tendencies occur together, thus allowing for the categorization of dispositions.  They also hold that certain dispositions are correlated to certain political attitudes.  For our purposes, the most relevant dispositional factor is one’s “openness to experience.”  Simply put, people who rate highly in openness are willing to accept that which is new or different.  As such, they tend towards creativity, intelligence and empathy.  In the political sphere, they resist authoritarianism, ethnocentrism, and systems of dominance.  Tellingly, research also indicates that democracy is more likely to work in relatively open societies.

From the above, we can conclude that to promote openness to experience is to promote liberal democracy.  We want our students to embrace, rather than run from that which is new or different.  To promote this dispositional tendency—which will manifest in patterns of behavior over a multitude of contexts and over a student’s entire life—is as important, I believe, as teaching context-specific knowledges or skills.

So how can we teach openness to experience?  This is a hard question.  It seems, though, that our first step should involve critiquing our current practices in light on this new goal.  Is it possible that anything we are doing is working to make students less generous towards others, less creative, less sensitive to beauty, or their own or others’ subjective states (all traits associated with high openness)?

Each teacher needs to perform her own analysis, but I do wonder if the current progressive emphasis on power structures might be working to make students more “closed.”  Perhaps well-meaning members of advantaged groups, eager not to oppress by “asserting their privilege,” are being incentivized to engage in less personal or meaningful contact with members of disadvantaged groups.  Likewise, members of disadvantaged groups, schooled in the ways of “microaggressions,” might be quicker to derive negative affect from otherwise benign encounters.  Indeed, reports indicate that cultural segregation—the clustering of same with same—is becoming more common on college campuses.  Overall, this line of analysis indicates that supposedly progressive ideas might be shutting down, rather than opening up, students’ willingness to engage with (and hence learn to accept) difference.  If so, behavioral psychology tells us that such pedagogies might be working against democratic ideals.

To close, I will say that the above is not an argument against the progressive consensus.  Instead, it is a call to take into account the whole person when theorizing how progressive political ends might be achieved.  Focusing more on dispositions, or patterns of behavior, can help us achieve a broader perspective.  What we will then see is uncertain.