--AndrewCase, 8 July 2009

Patrick - I just read this paper for the first time. I really think you're onto something, and I look forward to reading and discussing your final version. Like you, I have been thinking a lot about "mob thinking" or group mentality over the last few years, and I agree that understanding this better is the key to a lot of societal problems. In my third paper, I tried (but so far failed, will rewrite this weekend) to explore this issue as it relates to crime. What fascinates me about this is that a seemingly minor change in social norms has the power to trigger a surge in mob thinking. Our personal code of ethics is flexible and changes depending on our environment. I recently read the book "Machete Season," which is a fascinating exploration of the Rwandan genocide from the eyes of the killers - mostly farmers who were somehow "mobbed" into hacking their neighbors to pieces with machetes. How is it that most people tend to lose their capacity for independent decision making when swept up in a collective movement? How can we, as individual members of a collective society, maintain our ability to act intelligently?

--AnjaHavedal, 8 July 2009

The Dream

Black Holes and Other People

I've been drawn to authors that attempt to create what George Eliot would call "The Key to all Mythologies" -- grand-unified theories of everything. I've tried to read Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the result of a collaboration between Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that promises to answer the question "why do people most desire their own repression?" through a materialist philosophy of just about everything. I've studied Spinoza's Ethics, which promises that there is a rational explanation for everything. I realize that I can't blame my failure on these authors. The fault lies in the way I've been reading them -- looking for that lever that will allow me to move the world. In any case, now I feel like someone who's tried to lift way too much without training. My new thesis is that grand-unified theories that attempt to grasp one fundamental aspect of the world – be it the movement of an elementary particle, or the relationship between a group and the individuals that make it up – are actually black holes that suck up intellectual energy that could be used for more modest projects.

Linked to the idea that there is a grand-unified theory of any discipline is the notion that if you just knew it, you could change the world. As if there were one switch that you could push that would subvert the entire world order. The idea that I have to “change the world” is a intellectual and spiritual heat-sink as well. As a practical matter, the weight of the way-things-are is just too great for me to lift by myself, no matter how much history or philosophy or law I absorb.

What Remains of Thought

So I need to relax and learn to play well with others.

Of course, I don’t need to give up on thought either. Simply belonging to a group that claims to like justice doesn’t necessarily make justice happen. Labeling what I do or what I want to do “public interest” doesn’t make it good either.

The Key to All Mythologies

1

Orienting My Professional Life

As I finish my 1L year, I can’t make my response to the “in order to change the world you have to know what you want and how to get it” mantra much more precise than "in general I want to do satisfying work that helps others and at some point I’d like to be in a position to help musicians". So in this paper I’d like to assess what I need to do in order to have a more precise answer to that question, so that I can plan the rest of my time at Columbia. I feel that what I’m missing is sense of where I will stand as a lawyer in relation to large-scale social problems. I need some way to orient myself and my work. In my first paper I tried to get a grasp of the type of thinking lawyers do from an ethically neutral position. My second brought back an ethical perspective – concluding that I need to have actual clients and to be able to see the effects of my work on actual people. Now I’d like to explore what I need to do in order to make my work fit into an overarching strategy that is adequate to large-scale social problems.

A Strategic Perspective

In the past I oriented myself either religiously or politically. If thought that if I did unto others as I would have them do unto me, then the big picture stuff would all work itself out. Politically, if I was voted democrat then I was a good liberal, and eventually the world would realize its mistakes and “progress”. But I’ve gradually lost faith that if I do the right things on a micro-level the larger things will fall into place naturally.

My first paper explored an alternative to these smooth and teleological ideologies by embracing the irreducible complexity of the real world. There’s a certain nihilistic joy in bathing in chaos – “complexity so intricate, none can fathom it” as Wylie puts it – but while necessary for creativity, such aesthetic disorganization can become impotent and aimless when taken to the extreme.

Rather than burying my head in facts or steering by faith alone, I need to learn how to see things strategically from a global perspective. I need some way to structure the flood of information from the outside in order to orient my work in the world. How can I do this in a livable way, so that I’m not a martyr to the real? How can I avoid just sticking my head in the sand and plowing ahead with whatever practice I end up having – hoping in the end that it will serve a good purpose?

I need to develop my ability to read large-scale events. Let me try to use the methodology of this class by applying different disciplinary approaches in a conciliant manner.

A Collective Event – Cannibalism and the Common Law

The trial of Dudley and Stephens, reconstructed in Cannibalism and the Common Law provides ample material for such an analysis.

The trial of Dudley and Stevens was an inflection of the application of the public force. It was an orchestrated clash between what a subgroup of the English people thought the English people should be, and what they actually were. On the level of social psychology, we can understand the trial as an effort of a collective super-ego to reconcile the harsh reality of what happened in the dingy with the English imperial self-image. The historical reality of the situation is that this event takes place in the middle of European colonial exploitation of Africa. In the end, the government succeeded in reinforcing the notion that the English are different from the cannibals that they were killing elsewhere.

What if Dudley & Stevens v. Regina came out the other way? On an individual level, two individuals would have been spared the collective opprobrium of the English People. Some pompous opinion writing would have been avoided. More importantly though, the acquittal of two English cannibals would have poked a hole in England’s conception of itself as a superior race. It wouldn’t reveal a pretty part of reality (cannibalism), but it would work in a small way towards a people having a more just understanding of who they are. There would be no drastic or immediate change, just a small release of the grip of a damaging ideology on the collective mind.

A defense lawyer could have knowingly brought about this outcome. He would have had to orient himself in the political context – making the connection between the killing of “mere cannibals” and this trial. He would have needed to have correctly read the forces he was up against and what they wanted. He would have needed to have understood the real “legal problem”, in Robinson’s sense of the term, that was driving the actual trial. If he would orient himself in this way, and if he was as skillful a defense counsel as Robinson, then he would stand a chance of opening up a crack in the English self-image – a significant accomplishment.

Going Forward

So it is possible for lawyers to consciously and strategically affect collective thought, so long as they can correctly read social events. What do I need to learn, in addition to simply more law, in order to understand my world? Looking at the layers we saw the first day of class, I’m weakest on history. While I’m at Columbia, I need to learn how to place legal events in a historical context, so that I can do it on my own later. I should take some history courses both in the law school and at Columbia. I should talk with professors about the how their practices (if they have them) fit into a larger strategies of social change. If I can do that, I think that I’ll be in a much better position to know what I need to do with my license when I get it.