In yesterday's Morning Feature I suggested we need to reframe the American dream of home ownership, moving away from nuclear, single families of the parent(s) and minor children as the "standard" household economic unit, and toward extended families with multiple working adults and minor children. I was surprised by the comments, as I expected to hear a strong defense of the nuclear, single family as an economic unit, or as Americans' rightful expectation.
There was some of that, but surprisingly little. Maybe those who disagreed felt intimidated, or skipped the diary. If it was the former, I'm sorry because I welcome civil disagreement. I write to explore, not to expound, and I learn most from those who disagree.
So today I'll explore expectations and their ontological weight. Call it "the business of is-ness."
More below the fold....
The Business of Is-ness.
Ontology is the study of whether there exists objective reality apart from our experience, and what it means to say something "is." The DKos FAQ posits that we are a "reality-based community," and most of us generally assume that objective reality exists, even if we may not have direct or complete knowledge of it. Ontology both questions that assumption and asks how we classify concepts as "real." It is, I like to say, "the business of is-ness."
To the extent that we can say anything is "real," expectations "really do" exist. We all experience them, and they are not wholly subjective. Many are shaped and shared by society, so they are at least inter-subjective. For many Americans, there "really is" an expectation that each generation will have more opportunity and a better standard of living than those that came before. And part of that expectation "really is" a home owned and occupied by a nuclear, single family.
That expectation is surprisingly recent, as it was made possible only by the exceptional economic conditions that followed World War II. The U.S. held 90% of the world's gold reserves, received in payment for arms and provisions sold to our allies. The U.S. economy accounted for roughly half of the entire world's GDP in 1946, and held near there for nearly two decades, because every other major industrial economy lay in ruins. And the U.S. was still the world's largest oil exporter.
All of those conditions have changed, but many Americans still hold to the expectations that emerged from the post-war economy. Yesterday, I argued that clinging to those expectations despite the changed conditions was grasping at straws; it ignores "reality." Some countered that I was ignoring the "reality" of those expectations. It raises an interesting conundrum:
Are expectations "reality?"
The glib answer is to say "Of course not. People have expected the Rapture countless times in history, but it hasn't happened." In a sense that's true. Merely expecting something doesn't make it "real."
On the other hand, acting on our expectations - or our hopes - sometimes can make the seemingly "impossible" into reality. Consider our current president as a case in point. Back in late 2006, the bookmakers' odds on America electing a black man named Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 were slim indeed. Hillary Clinton was the presumptive Democratic nominee, to the point that her campaign took too much for granted. Her early campaign theme was that of a restoration. She was perceived as the incumbent, at least within the Democratic Party, and a nearly unbeatable one at that.
Yet a black man named Barack Hussein Obama is now our president. Had he and his supporters lacked the courage to reach for the "impossible," that could not have happened.
So the glib answer is exactly that: glib. Our "reality" can't improve if we expect no improvement. If we accept the status quo as all that can be, that's all we can get. Setting our expectations - or at least our hopes - higher than "reality" seems to permit is a big part of how our species has managed to progress over the millenia. We imagined a world we wished to exist, then worked to forge the dream into "reality."
"Reality" can be bent ... but only so far.
Human history proves that our expectations can be forged into "reality." But how far can that go? Can we, in the common phrase, "do anything we set our minds to?" George Bush certainly thought so, and many of his supporters said and continue to say exactly that. If America does not achieve some (ill-defined) complete "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said and still say, that will be a "failure of will." Logistical, strategic, economic, and Iraqi political considerations are trivial; if Americans are resolute, "reality" must yield to our expectations.
Phil Gramm said much the same thing about the economic crisis. The economy was fine, but we were "a nation of whiners." Others have echoed that sentiment recently. Obama and a pessimistic media are "talking us into a depression." If we're resolute and go on borrowing and spending, we'll borrow and spend our way out of debt and back into prosperity. The glory days if the 1950s will return, and underlying economic conditions are as trivial as the logistical, strategic, and political conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we are resolute, "reality" must yield to our expectations.
But human history also proves the folly of that reasoning. "Reality" can be bent, but only so far. To quote one of my law school professors in his explanation of why one party lost a case, "Both the facts and the law were against him. You can't make chicken soup from chicken shit."
"Doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results."
That quote is often attributed as Albert Einstein's definition of insanity. Others attribute it to Ben Franklin or the proverbial "Old Chinese Proverb." It's more likely a paraphrase of Einstein's critiques of quantum mechanics, which are said to include another phrase Einstein may never have uttered: "God does not play dice with the universe."
Einstein believed in a deterministic universe. Given exact knowledge of the present state of the system, the forces acting in the system, and the laws governing the system, Einstein believed you should be able to give exact predictions of the state changes in that system. That belief was the philosophical basis of classical science, and quantum mechanics does not fit into that schema. Quantum mechanics instead posits a stochastic universe, where at the subatomic level you can "do the same thing again and again and expect different results." Einstein described that as "crazy" and said if true, it would be "the end of science."
And of course many philosophers seized on quantum mechanics as providing a scientific basis for the primacy of will. If the results are not fixed by the prior state of the system, forces acting in that system, and laws governing that system, then how does the universe choose which result to give each time? It must be "conscious," and if so, then we can change the results by willful intention.
But while there are some experiments that seem to show minute quantum deviations under conditions of willful intention, those results remain in dispute. Quantum mechanics does not say the universe is "conscious" or that it "chooses" different results. Quantum mechanics says there are a range of possible results in quantum state changes, that there are exact probabilities for each possible state change, and that state changes are random within those probabilities. Experiments have validated those probabilities to astonishing precision.
In a stochastic universe, you can "do the same thing again and again and expect different results." We all experience that in everyday life. We date and meet failure, yet date again and meet success. We have sex and don't conceive a child, then have sex again and do. We send out dozens of resumes, but get only a handful of interviews, and from the interviews hope to get one job. But the conditions have to be favorable enough to permit the desired outcome and we have to get lucky ... or at least not get unlucky.
Clinging to post-World War II expectations is relying on luck.
Yes, it's possible that we can realize those expectations of a nuclear, single family household as a successful economic unit. Some people still do realize that. But it's not likely, or at least not nearly as likely as it was in the very favorable post-World War II U.S. economy. Those underlying conditions have changed, and they've moved the probabilities of success. Living as if those conditions remain unchanged and anyone willing to work hard can have a nuclear, single family household is not "resolute." It's betting against long odds and hoping to get lucky.
Yes, our present conditions might change in ways that once again make that dream realizable, and even perhaps even sustainable, without relying on luck. But the mathematics of world population, resource distribution, growing industrialization in previously under-developed economies, and other trends don't seem to point that way. Barring some deck-reshuffling events, Americans need to reset our expectations to be more in line with the probabilities.
That doesn't mean "giving up on" our dreams. It means harmonizing our dreams with our changed conditions. It means dealing with:
The Business of Is-ness.
Happy Saturday!