This morning I received 17 wonderful gifts. Maria Popova’s website has been one of my places of respite for many years. In her most recent article, she celebrates her 17 years of online writing at “The Marginalian” by crystallizing 17 lessons she has learned along the way. Here is Maria’s introduction to her 17 lessons:
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals, and beliefs, we ossify and perish.)
What follows are merely the titles to Popova's 17 lessons. She discusses each of these more fully at her website. Everything she writes is, somehow, both analytically precise and poetic. I've printed this list and it has gone up on my wall so that I have daily reminders:
1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.
2. Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone
3. Be generous.
4. Build pockets of stillness into your life.
5. You are the only custodian of your own integrity.
6. Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.
7. “Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.”
8. Seek out what magnifies your spirit.
9. Don’t be afraid to be an idealist.
10. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively.
11. Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.
Many years ago, I read Moral Politics (1996), in which George Lakoff tried to make sense to the two baskets of positions taken by the two political parties. He was intrigued by the idea that Republicans strongly cling to positions that didn't seem to have any coherent underlying value. What does a strong Second Amendment position have to do with being anti-abortion? What does willingness to through one's weight around in the world using the military have to do with Prayer in Schools, cutting welfare assistance or attempting to limit jury awards on tort cases? Then Lakoff realized that he, a self-proclaimed liberal, took the opposite position on all of those issues. In short, he had his own basket of seemingly unconnected issues. But, he thought, there must be an underlying basis for these two opposing collections of issue-positions. When I read his book, I wondered the same thing.
Lakoff concluded that there, indeed, were separate foundations for the Liberal and Conservative mindsets. He called these the "Strict Father Model" and the "Nurturant Parent Model." See pp 33-35. Lakoff claims that at the center of the conservative worldview is the Strict Father Model.
This model posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules. The mother has the day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father’s authority. Children must respect and obey their parents; by doing so they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance. Love and nurturance are, of course, a vital part of family life but can never outweigh parental authority, which is itself an expression of love and nurturance—tough love. Self-discipline, self-reliance, and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn.
Once children are mature, they are on their own and must depend on their acquired self-discipline to survive. Their self-reliance gives them authority over their own destinies, and parents are not to meddle in their lives.
According to Lakoff, the liberal worldview centers on a very different ideal of family life, what he calls the Nurturant Parent model:
Love, empathy, and nurturance are primary, and children become responsible, self-disciplined and self-reliant through being cared for, respected, and caring for others, both in their family and in their community. Support and protection are part of nurturance, and they require strength and courage on the part of parents. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents and their community, not out of the fear of punishment. Good communication is crucial. If their authority is to be legitimate, parents must explain why their decisions serve the cause of protection and nurturance. Questioning by children is seen as positive, since children need to learn why their parents do what they do and since children often have good ideas that should be taken seriously. Ultimately, of course, responsible parents have to make the decisions, and that must be clear.
The principal goal of nurturance is for children to be fulfilled and happy in their lives. A fulfilling life is assumed to be, in significant part, a nurturant life; one committed to family and community responsibility. What children need to learn most is empathy for others, the capacity for nurturance, and the maintenance of social ties, which cannot be done without the strength, respect, self-discipline, and self-reliance that comes through being cared for. Raising a child to be fulfilled also requires helping that child develop his or her potential for achievement and enjoyment. Th it requires respecting the child’s own values and allowing the child to explore the range of ideas and options that the world offers.
Lakoff contrasted these two models in a way that would intuitively sound correct to many people who traditionally vote for Democrats:
Strict Father morality assigns highest priorities to such things as moral strength (the self-control and self-discipline to stand up to external and internal evils), respect for and obedience to authority, the setting and following of strict guidelines and behavioral norms, and so on. Moral self-interest says that if everyone is free to pursue their self-interest, the overall self-interests of all will be maximized. In conservatism, the pursuit of self-interest is seen as a way of using self-discipline to achieve self-reliance.
Nurturant Parent morality has a different set of priorities. Moral nurturance requires empathy for others and the helping of those who need help. To help others, one must take care of oneself and nurture social ties. And one must be happy and fulfilled in oneself, or one will have little empathy for others. The moral pursuit of self-interest only makes sense within these priorities.
There's a big problem with Lakoff's analysis. From 1996 to the present, those who identify as "liberals" have dramatically flipped their positions on censorship, warmongering, race consciousness, trust in the U.S. security state. Did these issues become more "nurturing?" It's impossible to account for these 180 degree turns using a Strict Parent/Nurturant Parent analysis. Over time, conservatives have also turned themselves into pretzels, as discussed in a new book, The Myth of Left and Right, by brothers Hyrum and Verlan Lewis (2023). When they voted for Trump in large numbers, Republicans decided that the type of morality they had strongly touted for decades was no longer important.
Self-identified conservatives and liberals have also recently switched places on the importance of personal morality in public officials. During the Clinton years, conservatives were nearly unanimous in believing that the personal char acter of a politician was crucial to his or her performance in office - it was one of their central justifications for impeaching President Clinton- but as soon as Trump assumed leadership of the right, conservatives reversed course. Before Trump, only 36% of Republicans believed that "public officials can behave ethically in their professional roles even if they acted immorally in their personal life," but after Trump's nomination, that number shot up to 70%.54 More recently, Gallup found that:
[More . . . ]
I just returned from the 3-day FIRE Faculty Network Conference in DC.
I was surrounded by brave educators, many of whom have repeatedly faced adversity from their schools for the crime of being excellent teachers. I had the opportunity visit with three women professors who teach in the area of biological sciences (at three different universities). Each one of them was present because biology is so often seen as a threat to ignorant students, professors and administrators.
I also had the opportunity to meet Erika Lopez Prater, who was fired by Hamline University for doing an excellent job of teaching Islamic Religious History--her specific sin was displaying for the class the image of a much-revered historic 14th Century painting of Muhammed, painted by a Muslim for a Muslim audience. She did this after giving her class warning, so that anyone who might be offended could be excused from class. The administrator who fired her called her actions: "undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic”
I also had the opportunity to meet Professor of Religion, Mark Bergson, who argued, at considerable risk to his job, that Hamlin was making a horrific mistake by firing Lopez Prater.
Speakers at the conference included Greg Lukianoff and Steven Pinker. We all know that this problem--that many people who formerly opposed censorship and cancel culture are now in favor of these things--is not going away any time soon.
FIRE weighs in on the horrific struggle involving Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the same excellent suggestion that it offers regarding ever other conflict: The more feee speech, the better.
Let every participant in the debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict show their cards, even those with the most extreme views. And let others marshal arguments and evidence to refute or discredit those views. Let it all happen out in the open.
At the end of the day, we’re not better off knowing less about what our fellow Americans actually think. As FIRE co-founder Harvey Silverglate has said, “I want to know who the Nazi in the room is so I know not to turn my back to them.”
In Snyder v. Phelps, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to picket soldiers’ funerals with signs bearing messages like “Fags Doom Nations” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” It’s hard to find a case involving speech that draws less public sympathy. But as the Court said in an 8-1 decision uniting justices across the ideological spectrum:
Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.
Free speech comes at a price. But it’s nothing compared to the price we will pay if we abandon it.
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