I know we're in the stretch drive here, so a theoretical diary probably isn't what folks are aiming to read. But I wanted my first diary entry to be an introduction to the thought process that led me here, so if someone reads something I write and asks "Who does this guy think he is?", there's an easy place to find the answer. I promise my next entry will be full of election day goodness. (My house will be a polling place.)
I'm a grad student in philosophy at Philadelphia's Temple University, writing my dissertation on John Dewey's democratic theory. The words "pragmatism" and "progressive" are near and dear to my heart - they're at the core of how I think about myself and the kind of world I'd like to help create. It wasn't until my second year at Temple that I really delved into Dewey's works, after reading Robert Westbrook's excellent intellectual biography, John Dewey and American Democracy. As I explored Dewey's writings, I found a remarkably robust way of thinking that was intellectually satisfying and still engaged in the world. To have any shot at explaining that, though, I'm gonna need the extended entry box.
To start, Dewey didn't see the world in the absolute terms that have been handed down through Western philosophy since Plato and Descartes. He wasn't looking for an absolute objective truth that existed outside of human beings - he thought that search was a fool's errand. Every human is engaged in a constant give-and-take with the people, things and events around them; Dewey refers to these surroundings as "nature." The agent responds to the information he receives from nature - at the same time that the agent acts to alter those surroundings. The result of this give and take is
experience; in its purest form (i.e., before it is analyzed and broken down into categories), experience is both the source from which human intelligence flows and the destination toward which it returns. There is no dualism because there is no clear dividing point at which to make a separation.
Nature is, in a sense, outside human experience, since human beings do not connect with nature directly. Even in its most basic form, experience is the result of the "processing" of nature through sensory organs. Our experience would be different if we routinely saw in the ultraviolet spectrum, for example. However, the existence of beings who process and interpret nature is itself a part of nature; the results of that processing thus become a part of nature which can subsequently experienced by others. When this occurs, we do not access another's experience directly, but through mediated interactions such as language. Experience does not remain in its unanalyzed form, however. We may focus on one part of our current experience over another; one moment we may be looking intently at a painting, while the next we strain to hear some distant sound. In both instances, some part of experience has been called to the foreground. We may compare our current experience with what we have experienced in the past, or even attempt to predict what experience we will have in the future. In so doing, we will often make use of concepts that we have abstracted from prior experience in order to better grasp the possibilities offered by the current situation. The purpose of human thinking, then, is as a guide to human activity; it is only in activity that meaning can be found.
But what is the purpose of human activity? Dewey says that like all forms of life, our purpose is to grow. Dewey describes growth as the restructuring of experience and the use of available resources in a process of self-perpetuation and self-renewal. Life strives to grow; it changes itself to overcome obstacles and take advantage of available opportunities. When growth stops completely, life ends. A living plant alters its growth in search of light and water; an unliving rock does nothing to stop or redirect the force that crushes it. For human beings, growth is not merely a question of physical survival, but of intellectual and emotional flourishing - we grow in our ability to understand our surroundings, in our capability to act on and alter our environment; in doing so we develop and fulfill new potential not just for ourselves, but for the community to which we belong.
Dewey was a firm believer in science; it inspired his notion of the process of inquiry. (He shared that inspiration with other classical pragmatists like Charles Peirce and William James.) To Dewey, scientific inquiry is ideally marked by 1) a rigorous empirical investigation of the structures of the universe and 2) the sharing of results for discussion, critique, and further research. When the system works, the creativity and insight of each member of the community is harnessed and amplified by the efforts of others. One scientist may have a brilliant insight or a radical new experiment. Until that insight is tested by others, subjected to a withering yet respectful critique, and duplicated (and perhaps refined) by others, the scientist is not successful. Once the new idea passes through the crucible, it becomes a public resource, which can be used as a basis for future research and as a new tool in shaping our experience.
An ideal democratic community would function in much the same way. Matters of public policy would be decided by an active and engaged populace. Everyone would bring their own insights and talents to bear on the situation, brainstorming and collaborating with their neighbors. Rather than sit idly by and wait for leaders to solve their problems for them, members of such a community would chart their own destiny together. They would strive to create the kind of political and social environment that would maximize their chances for meaningful growth as individuals and as a society.
Why don't we have such an ideal community today? Dewey offered one huge reason that still has not been overcome: in a nutshell, we don't think things through. We do not spend enough time thinking about the vast number of people who will be affected by our actions; as such, we do not have a solid vision of the future our actions will bring about, and our choices are a blind stabbing in the dark rather than well-informed and rational. A prime reason for this is that technology has increased the power of our actions to affect others - the ripple effect from our choices spreads wider and wider. But technology has not found a way to duplicate the person-to-person interaction that is so vital in helping us visualize the influence our actions have on others. Once, I had only to be concerned about my tribe, my village, my town. Now my choice of clothes might have a direct bearing (however small) on a child laborer that I have never met in a Third World country that I have never seen. (I let out a whoop during Barack Obama's keynote address when he boiled this point down to its essence far more eloquently than Dewey or I could ever hope to.) In Dewey's words, we have built a Great Society that has yet to become a Great Community.
Right before the last presidential election, my wife and a few friends and I launched This Is Not News, a webzine/message board that tried to capture some of that Deweyan spirit of progressive social change. The site still exists, but it's in a little bit of a dormant stage right now as my research and family have consumed more and more of my energy. In the last year, as I've discovered the political blog community, I've seen a similar spirit at work, and in a lot of ways the success and frustrations of the blog community have highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of Dewey's vision. So this is a very exciting place to be and a very exciting moment to be a part of. I'm looking forward to seeing where we go from here.