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< | WORK IN PROGRESS
This endless revision process feels like psychoanalysis -- there's something I want to write about and the last two versions of this paper have been more about barriers to writing about that subject than about the subject itself. I'm in the process of revising this paper a third time following my conversation with Anja at the bottom of the page. I'm trying to narrow my subject significantly. Once again, it'll look a little ragged for a while. I'm not sure what the schedule is for comments anymore (if there is such a schedule). | >
> | The Importance of Contradiction in the Constitution of Political Bodies | | | The Mob | |
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< | This summer I witnessed the running of the bulls in New Orleans. A man dressed as a bishop with a bullhorn yelled from the balcony: "For he that drinks Sangria with me today shall be my brother!", and then hundreds of people dressed in white and red ran screaming down the streets of the French Quarter chased by roller-derby girls with curved horns and baseball bats. Men wore shirts that said "NOLA bulls 2009. Por Qué no?". | >
> | This summer I witnessed the running of the bulls in New Orleans. A man dressed as a bishop with a bullhorn yelled from the balcony: "For he that drinks Sangria with me today shall be my brother!". Hundreds of people dressed in white and red ran screaming down the streets of the French Quarter chased by roller-derby girls with curved horns and baseball bats. Men wore shirts that said "NOLA bulls 2009. Por Qué no?".
An essential feature of individuals is that they have an infinite capacity to contradict themselves. This capacity is only amplified when lots of them get together. The bulls are actually women on roller skates. New Orleans is not Pamplona. There is no danger of goring. And yet everyone becomes what they are not for a day and runs screaming down the street. The NOLA running of the bulls is a cathartic experience for its participants because it eliminates the practical needs of the group and opens up a space where its OK for the group to contradict itself. Pure ceremony -- Por qué no?
Thurman Arnold explains that we need our leaders and the organizations to which we belong to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successful politician because, not in spite, of his foibles. Organizations need to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." If nothing else, we need our organizations to reflect the full spectrum of our drives at all times. | | | | |
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< | I've been fascinated by mobs, especially groups of people that get together seemingly for no other reason than just to be around other people. Pure groups. When large masses of people form, its not surprising that bizarre things happen. It's surprising when nothing abnormal happens. | >
> | Organization and Constitutional Crisis | | | | |
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< | The base of a political theory has to, at base, join up with the way masses of people function. Thurman Arnold begins The Folklore of Capitalism with this premise: "Today, when sophisticated men speak of democracy as the only workable method of government, they mean that government which does not carry its people along with it emotionally, which depends on force, is insecure." The need to connect with the enthusiams of the body politic is a cold fact recognized by leaders across the political spectrum. | >
> | Things become more convoluted if you want an organization to work towards a practical goal. Your ceremony needs to strike a balance between holding a group together and directing their activity towards that goal. You need a creed or a constitution. Arnold argues that as the practical needs of a group and their ceremonial image of themselves diverge, bodies of metaphysical learning and split organizations develop. But different actual needs will always diverge. So what Arnold is describing is a pathological state where a society's ideal image of itself isn't succeeding in reconciling the contradictory needs that animate it. This pathological state leads to a constitutional crisis. | | | | |
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< | Since our institutions are built to respond to the enthusiasms of masses of people, it would help to understand a little about the dynamics of groups of people. Arnold argues that since individuals are full of contradictory drives and goals, then the groups they form are full of contradiction. Thus, at heart, we want our leaders to reflect the contradictions we all feel. Bill Clinton was such a successfull politician because of, not in spite of, his foibles. Organizations need to reflect the full spectrum of forces acting between and through individuals: "Thus the American industrial organization is a hard-boiled trader, a scholar, a patron of modern architecture, a thrifty housewife, a philanthropist, a statesman preaching sound principles of government, a patriot, and a sentimental protector of widows and orphans at the same time." | >
> | The end of Robert Altman's movie Nashville dramatizes the resolution of a immanent constitutional crisis. The movie is set in 1976, the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. During a concert sponsored by a political candidate the diva of Nashville's country music industry (who has been slowly disintegrating mentally) is shot. It looks like a riot is about to break out. The fallen diva's male counterpart, who has political ambitions, grabs the microphone and yells: "This is Nashville, you show 'em what we're made of. They can't do this to us here in Nashville. Okay, everybody, sing!" A young woman picks up the microphone and leads the crowd in singing: "You may say I ain't free. It don't worry me." | | | | |
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< | Individuals have an infinite capacity to contradict themselves. This capacity is only amplified when lots of them get together. The bulls are actually women on roller skates. New Orleans is not Pamplona. There is no danger of goring. And yet everyone becomes what they are not and runs screaming down the street. Nothing is produced except enthusiasm. There is no ulterior motive. Por qué no? | >
> | Music is an excellent tool for forming an organized group out of a mob. Music works because it doesn't obey the law of non-contradiction. Thus music can (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group -- unifying them. In fact, music can be understood as an art of pure organization. Composers create anxiety and satisfaction by approaching and receding from the edge of the tonal worlds they create. The tension produced in the middle of a classical sonata is the fear that the composer wont be able to successfully "bring it back" to the tonic, and that it will all "fall apart". The satisfaction is created by the composer pulling it off. But music is never played in a vacuum. The tension felt in the middle of a piece is also the anxiety and excitement created by the possibility that the audience will turn back into a mob -- a group of pure contradiction. The first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is an instance of this reverse transformation of group into a mob. | | | | |
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< | Organization | >
> | What a Lawyer Can Do | | | | |
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< | A creed or a constitution. | >
> | Thought cannot directly create or even change groups of people -- since much of what we need is not logical: "Men--even learned men-- cannot 'think up forms of social organization". "The Politician does not attempt to change the mythology. He works with it unscrupulously to get results." Creeds and constitutions -- the glue that holds groups of people together cannot be created by any one person. This theory poses a problem for people who went to law school with the hopes of learning how to change the world. The world changes itself, and the most that lawyers can do is help facilitate that change. The law is supposed to hold groups of people together by mediating conflicts, but not one person can decide what those conflicts are going to be because they are the result of the natural contradictions that run through the social body. A budding lawyer cannot make up his practice out of whole cloth. | | | | |
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< | The New Orleans running of the bulls as about as close as you can get to the abstract limit of pure-getting-together-without-an-ulterior-motive. In general the enthusiasm of groups is organized towards some end: "political realism about democracy was brought home to us by the success of the dictatorships in Russia and Germany. In these countries the revolutionary governments undertook deliberately to arouse the intense enthusiasm of their poples and to keep it at a high pitch. The method used was not rational; it was the rhythm of uniforms, salutes, marching feet, and national games..." As Arnold recognizes, an organized body can be formed out of a mob by using rhythm, music, and ceremony in general. The undetermined enthusiasm created by what William McNeil? calls "Moving together in time" -- marching, saluting, moving rhythmically with others -- is given content. Music, to take only one tool that can form a unified body out of a mob, works because, like drives that respond to rhythm, it does not know the law of non-contradiction. Whoever, or whatever, attaches himself to music can take on the ability to (temporarily) resolve the contradictions that run through a group. | >
> | What we can do is keep an eye out for which conflicts are going to arise, and work to adequately reconcile the conflicting drives that animate them so that we avoid the pathological state that Arnold describes. There will always be contradiction and conflict. The goal is to skillfully work through the conflict as a musician keeps a crowd satisfied. Groups need tension. Lawyers can help to make sure all the contradictory voices in the social body are heard and more or less resolved. If the desires of a segment of the population are not being heard and ceremonially reconciled then the surface of the political body can become too lax and the social body will sicken. | | | | |
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< | The organization of a body of people by music is most clearly seen at a concert of purely instrumental music. There is no content to a Mozart symphony. The musicians are playing with pure organization. The anxiety and tension created by a piece of music is produced by the danger of it all "falling apart". A (classical at least) composer approaches the edge of what a listener can keep organized in their head, only to bring it back from the abyss. This pure organization creates a body politic without a goal, without a content. It can do this because it suspends the law of non-contradiction for a period of time. Sometimes, though, it can all "fall apart". Take the response to the first performance of Stravinski's The Rite of Spring as an instance of the composer leading a group of people to an organization that was just too foreign. Or for the reverse processs, take the end of Robert Altman's movie Nashville. During a concert sponsored by a political canidate the diva is killed. It looks like a riot is about to break out. The other star singer, who has political ambitions, grabs the microphone and yells: "This is Nashville, you show 'em what we're made of. They can't do this to us here in Nashville. Okay, everybody, sing!" And as a young woman steps into the fallen diva's shoes, everyone sings: "You may say I ain't free. It don't worry me." | | | | |
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