Good luck,

Dan Malotky

The first one of those philosophers is Socrates, who always seems to end up surfacing in my writing.  In Minnich’s article, she actually references Socrates by name, which I laughed at because I had already made a note that I wanted to write about him for my blog response before I read that part.  She argues that the activity of thinking should be “exploratory” and “suggestive,” rather than the goal-oriented fact-seeking brand of intellectual thought that is preached in schools today (Minnich 20).  I completely and totally agree with her argument.  The reason Socrates has always been so fascinating to me is because of his idea that one can only be wise if he knows he is not.  He lived a live driven by continually questioning himself and everything around him.  Although he almost always reached a conclusion of “I don’t know,” he was wiser than all those around him because he was so open-minded towards learning.  Socrates would fail out of school today with the way our education system is set up.  Everything about education in our society is finite, from memorizing facts out of textbooks to calculating GPA.  In my opinion—which I share with Minnich—we’ve lost sight of what education means.  Instead of memorizing facts, we should be learning to think and reason with an open mind, so as to better ourselves individually and as a society.  As Minnich puts it, “Independent, open minds that regard knowledge and skills as resources to be used for responsible purposes, rather than possessions to be exploited for personal gain and power, remain all too rare” (Minnich 21).  So, the question is how did this happen? How did we move from Socratic dialogue to textbooks and scantrons?

The answer, which is addressed by Barber in “The Lost Art of Cooperation,” as well as Marx (the second philosopher that I was referring to earlier), is the rise of individualism.  I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a communist, but I strongly agree with the Marxist idea that we’ve let capitalism and its intrinsic individualistic nature take control of our society.  Barber’s article brought back to my mind all of the realizations that I had after reading the Communist Manifesto.  All of the major aspects of life today are dictated by competition, not just the education system.  Barber also managed to make me realize just how relevant this is to our core questions: “Even the American understanding of democracy, which emphasizes representation and the collision of interests, puts the focus on division and partisanship.”  So, maybe it’s not capitalism.  Maybe it’s the way we define democracy today.  Maybe if we just remembered that the purpose of democracy is people working together to better themselves as a whole, then we would be able to get back to thinking like Socrates.  Unfortunately, that brings it all back to our favorite question: “How do we reclaim our democracy?”

-Will Armour

The example that stuck out to me in his letter was on the third page (Printing made his 1-page letter into an 11-page letter) when he discussed consumerism: “Since our economy is driven by consumer spending, a key part of popular culture promotes consumerism—at the expense of citizenship.  Popular culture tells us that we need to buy more and more things to demonstrate our human value, we don’t need to think critically and build genuine relationships across the community and act collectively” (Johnston 3).  What he’s saying is that powerful institutions don’t benefit from open-minded conversation and relationships, they benefit from people spending money; therefore, our culture is controlled by consumerism.  And therein lies the systemic, institutional power.

So, even if I accept this idea that there is a secret network of institutions that make decisions for me even when I don’t realize it, and I accept the assertion that the institutions that control Greensboro have created this false notion that the city is progressive, the devil’s advocate in me wonders, “What’s so bad about that?”  To me, the idea of this ‘Progressive Establishment’ consistently pumping out hope by making people believe that Greensboro is moving in the right direction is pretty clever.  Positivity can be contagious, even if it has false origins.  One would think that something like that could quickly turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  So what’s the problem?

Luckily, Johnston had an answer.  As he explains, taking off of Chafe’s thorough investigation, Nelson Johnson is a prime example of how the Progressive Establishment has become a hindrance to the very progress it claims to seek: “There was a period in the mid to late 90’s when the Progressive Establishment began building a working relationship with some of the people who had previously been defined by the Progressive Myth as unforgivable villain-extremists because of their involvement in November 3^rd…But then the Truth and Reconciliation project surfaced, bringing November 3^rd back into play.  The Power Structure restarted the operating system in villain-extremist alert mode…During this period, Nelson Johnson has once again been portrayed by the Progressive Establishment as villainous and extremist” (Johnston 5).  So, as long as the ‘Establishment’ is happy, things are peaceful in ‘Shangri-la,’ but the second that it loses control this ‘Progressive Establishment’ throws everything to wind: progress, the people, and democracy altogether.

The way that Greensboro’s controlling forces dealt with Nelson Johnson and the TRC is explicit evidence of systemic institutional power being exercised—at the expense of individuals—in order to maintain status quo and avoid conflict.  However, contrary to its intent, it actually reinforced the racial conflict that continually stems from the issues that the ‘Establishment’ won’t allow the community to talk about.  Where is the progress in that?

So, in answer to my devil’s advocate self, the problem is that civic progress can only truly be civic progress if the civilians are the ones who want it, enact it, and embody it themselves.  The institutions can’t be the ones in control of deciding what progress means.  Giving a voice to the people through open-minded democratic discussion is the only way to start making progress toward solving the issues that plague Greensboro.  However, bringing that to fruition will require civic action.  It will require people like Randy Johnston to make responsible, concerted efforts in order to pull away the progressive façade.  Only then can the progressive movement in Greensboro begin in earnest.

-Will Armour

In relating this article back to our class, I think, this semester we have practiced often the activitiy of thinking as Minnich describes it in her article. The question now (the same question we have had all semester) is what does this require of us? How is this thinking practically realized and practiced in terms of reclaiming our democracy? How do we take all this thinking we have done, practiced, written out, kept to ourselves, manifest itself within our community and our democracy? Isn’t this the kind of preparation meant to come from college education? Isn’t this what separates us from our friends who may not have attended college? The ability to think in this way and then go out and use it? Share it? Teach the same kind of thinking that we have invested in for ourselves? I think so, and I intend on continuing to learn how to practically adapt my thinking into action.

Devon Currie

Minnich differentiates “thinking” from other types of learning by calling thinking “exploratory” and “suggestive” (20), and stating that thinking is a constant, questioning process. Thinking is good for democracy because “The activity of thinking prefigures, prepares for, and lets us practice the freedom of mind we require to exercise discerning judgment while living among people who differ from us” (20). In other words, thinking in Minnich’s sense of the term forces us to explore alternate worldviews from our own, making us more amenable to such viewpoints in others. Indeed, she says that “thinking cannot be considered a luxury for the few if we would be a democracy” (24). Thinking is necessary for a democracy to function properly. She still acknowledges the importance of learning factual knowledge, but sees it as a medium for teaching thinking itself, or a useful tool when implementing one’s own opinions or conclusions. The facts themselves, she states, are meaningless if they are not shared and discussed.

It’s hard to argue with what Minnich puts forth: of course it would be good if we taught our society’s children how to think critically about the world they lived in and the things they learned. Then maybe we would make fewer mistakes, have better communication with each other, and have a more politically-engaged society. But I think I’ll play devil’s advocate here. What if our society runs better without people examining the facts too closely? If everyone learned critical thinking skills and applied them to everyday life, might we and our government become so inundated with such a variety of ideas that it would become impossible to take them all into consideration? Might we become a nation of “thinkers” instead of “doers” (to the extent that we can be called “doers” now)? Might “thinking” in the long term just slow us down?

On another note, Benjamin Barber discusses the role of competition in America (it’s big). Because our society is so individualistic, we focus more on the divisions between us than on what unites us. For example, Barber states that entertainment, sports, and politics – America’s “favorite activities” (56) center around competition and the identification of winners and losers. In this all-encompassing, deeply-ingrained system, “winners lose perspective and put themselves above sexual norms, above ordinary standards, above the law” (59). This leads to celebrity excesses we see in the tabloids, athletes on steroids, and dirty politics. Besides creating a cutthroat and very weird society, this competition “threatens real democracy” by “distort[ing] and unhinge[ing] our common lives and slights the necessary role of cooperation and community in securing liberty” (59). We end up thinking that winning is the pinnacle of our existence, instead of working to the benefit of the community as a whole- which, ironically, might benefit us more than an individual win. In the corporate world, we see this played out as an excess of competition. When one corporation is such a winner that it buys out other corporations and works toward creating a monopoly for itself and its product, the consumer in effect has less choice- there is less competition. As a solution, Barber proposes the creation of a truly representative legislative body, but he fails to explain it in any detail.

Again, it is hard to disagree with Barber’s viewpoint. I would really like to know more about the system of proportional representation that he has in mind which will eliminate the specter of competition from our society. Without more details, what comes to my mind is Young’s “city” model. I could see Barber being very amenable to that idea, and I think that if it worked, it would accomplish his goals of greater cooperation without resorting to communism (which I don’t think he advocates and in any case will almost surely never be implemented in the US).

Elizabeth Leman

Allie M.