A Boating Betabilitarian

-- By NonaFarahnik - 18 Feb 2010

“The actual habits and attitudes which operate under the banner of the creed to make the institution effective have a slightly obscene appearance. Nice people do not want to discuss them, except for the purpose of getting rid of them.”

For Arnold, institutions are a necessary corollary to our human sociality. Every organization--from a little league baseball team, to the US Coast Guard, to the now defunct Lehman-- appeals to that sociality through a unique institutional culture furthered by self-fulfilling propaganda. An easy way to see the functioning of these orders is when Potential New Members are being recruited by competing institutions: fraternity rush, admitted student days, law firm happy hours, etc. Once a member has been initiated, the institution can heighten its control by using its ordering principles to motivate its adherents and to sharply demarcate us from them.

Coupled with our sociality (and perhaps developed alongside it), is our desire for a world narrative with inherent meaning and order. That need for outwardly-existing (often divine) order stifles our ability to question reality and to recognize how more pervasive and ordering institutions can manipulate public attitude and thought. Thus, we recognize these forces only when the context of the institution's functioning is benign (Santa), or so blatant as to make us uncomfortable about its effectiveness (Nazi Germany). Otherwise, we operate as if these forces do not exist. This is reflected through the purposive content, but underlying ignorance of the New York Times’ Where Fear Turns Graphic.

We have a hard time recognizing the less identifiable and more difficult ways by which powerful institutions bombard us with particular attitudes and creeds. This ignorance perpetuates the separation borne of institutional identification, and leads to moral rationalization grounded in institutional folklore, not in reality. A simple experiment to witness this phenomenon can be performed by watching the Fox News Channel during prime time. Journalism today mostly serves to help obfuscate what is actually happening in the world around us (particularly from 2:45). We are often left unable to see how an institution functions and its direct relationship to how we think and function.

If institutions unconsciously move us by creating some notion of a general will whose furtherance demands the suppression of the particular, we should be focused on improving the frameworks of society's most basic structures so they are more just. My license will also be a membership to one of the world's most powerful institutions-- the American legal system. How can I use my membership to increase the share of justice in a world devoid of ascertainable moral standards? I will seek to be Holmes’ betabilitarian: I cannot measure my choices against a normative standard, but against my predictions on how people behave. The only choice I have is to measure risk and place my bets.

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Tzedek Tzedek, Tirdof

On one hand, Law in Contemporary Society is a class like any other— it has a slot on our schedules, we get credit, and there will be a grade on our transcripts. On the other hand, this class is a holistic thinking exercise that fosters our personal goals and our relationships with one other. Eben achieves this is by designing this class to appeal to our human sociality and by harnessing the forces that led us to choose to attend law school. Eben is a master institutional architect.

The rituals of the classroom--the music, the lively debate, Eben’s knowledge and war stories, the crowded office hours where students spill out into the hallway-- reinforce Eben's mythology. The wiki adds additional dimensions to the institution's reach and gives us time to play with how we might organize our own institutional efforts. Someone can reroute the wiki's pipelines with a new folder scheme tomorrow, or with little effort as to the how, someone can just participate in this collaborative community.

Eben uses the larger mythology of Columbia Law School to give us a logical structure as to why we must seek more and the ways we might do so. Eben and his class inspire me to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

My Feet on the Street (or Marble). Where Do I Start?

Professor Wu used this metaphor to illustrate something he experienced in his work as a Supreme Court clerk: we put our best and brightest into surgery when we need people in preventative care. We have court-appointed defense lawyers who sleep during a capital murder trial, and a pro-bono firm partner taking the case at the appellate level when the client is already on death row. I want to go into preventative care.

* My Legal Education. I go to faculty and industry lectures, interact in student groups, participate in student government, and make use of office hours. I won't bemoan the cost of my tuition until I take full advantage of its possibilities. I plan to wring out the educational value of every dollar I put into this place, and then some.

* My Legal Institution. I want to contribute to shaping Columbia while I am here so that it brings out the best in us as students, as colleagues, and as future advocates.

* My License. I want to continue use the time before I have my license to learn how to be a most effective advocate and representative for others.

Building My Boat(s)

This class cultivates my desire to build my own fleet so that in the future I can tack in every direction. Right now, I am building a simple Sunfish that can sail--even if there is little room aboard and it cannot go very fast or far. I want to build a racing trimaran that can cut through the water at ridiculous speeds. I will build a motorboat for when the wind dies down but I still have somewhere to go. I want to build a yacht where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor. And I want to be so good at building boats that I engender trust from my clients, and can inspire others to build on their own.

# * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, NonaFarahnik

Can you sum up the point / thesis of this essay in one or two sentences? Honestly, I think the suffocating recantation of Arnold, the use of multiple (dubiously helpful) metaphors, and the multiple quotations obscures and detracts from the point of your essay. (Note: I am often guilty of this myself).

I also think your description of Holmes' betabilitarian is off the mark by a considerable margin.

-- MatthewZorn - 28 Mar 2010

I appreciate the criticism, though it is a little late in the game. I think my point was that the institutions we belong to define how we think about ourselves and the world, and that changes in institutional culture can thus yield substantive change for the better/towards justice. Law is the ultimate institution. I want to use my time in law school to learn as much as I possibly can and to learn how to use my license to effectively operate within and against institutions. I want to use that license in a way so that I might be given the responsibility of managing institutions as well. I want to make things more efficient and more just and I kind of wanted this paper to be a little pledge to myself.

I am not sure how to explain what that "just" is and so I guess I misused Eben's reference to betabilitarian without proper research. I only used two quotations and I kind of like them so sorry that you didn't. Since this paper gives us the ability to hyperlink without adding clutter, I had fun with my multiple metaphors. Everyone should be as pissed as Mr. Kennedy. The boats are a little much, but I do think they are accurate. I want to have a box filled with 1000 different tools for solving a problem and reaching my goal. There I go again... I will work on that metaphor thing next time.

Anyhow, I know that this thing is all over the place, and I eagerly await Eben's feedback so that next time I can write a paper that means something to you Matt. (Note: I do not mean this sarcastically, I want to write something that anyone can read without feeling suffocated, and perhaps even enjoy).