Ethics

Note, November 14, 2019: This page has been extensively developed from one that is now offline, and unfortunately includes citations to pages, especially research journal entries, on parts-unknown.org, a site that is no longer online and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Development of this page will continue here (so it should continue to be considered undated for citation purposes) and I will strive to update those links as I can.

If I am an ethical person, I shouldn’t have to say it. Or so I tend to think. And so, it’s with some reluctance that I have produced this page. But one thing Jonathan Haidt emphasizes is the difference between appearing moral and actually being moral.[1]

Please note that this page will remain under development; I do not imagine it to be complete or even particularly comprehensive and I doubt that completion is possible.[2]

In the beginning. . . .


Fig. 1. Engraving of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer, 1504, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

I am not a believer in divine beings, am not much impressed with patriarchal monotheism,[3] and am certainly not much impressed with the notion that such beings have some grand plan that somehow justifies the extreme suffering of so many. Rather I see any desert religion[4] notion of such a grand plan as entirely refuted by the Old Testament.

The question of theodicy, the question of why such a being permits evil or why such beings permit evil,[5] cannot be answered, as so many attempt, by blaming humans. Of course, humans are responsible for evil. This is not the question. The question is why an allegedly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing god permits it or why such gods permit it. The only answer I can conceive is that if any such beings exist, they are certainly not the ultimate arbiters we are so often told they are, and unlikely to be anything like what we imagine them to be.

That said, one of the very curious points about the creation myth in Genesis is that it surrounds “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”[6] The problem in this story wasn’t Adam and Eve’s nakedness, but rather that their curiosity—eating of the fruit—led to moral knowledge and, therefore, shame. But relevant to Haidt’s argument,[7] in their attempt to cover themselves, they sought to appear moral even as they had violated a commandment of their god.[8]

There are a couple ways to go with this: First, we can understand that this god sought to protect Adam and Eve from that knowledge, to permit them to live in a state of innocence, in contrast to the notion of “original sin” that we allegedly now inherit. It’s the tantalizing idea that we needn’t have been troubled by questions of right and wrong, good and evil at all. (If so, then why plant the tree in the garden in the first place?[9])

But second is an understanding that even here, moral knowledge is social knowledge, just as Haidt suggests, and even as we may only speculate as to whom else that god may have been referring as s/he refers to him or herself and, apparently others,[10] in the first person plural,[11] saying “Behold, the man has become like one of Us,” with that knowledge.[12]

Simultaneously, in contrast to an absolute prohibition as we might attribute to such a god, Haidt’s claim that we strive to appear ethical even more than we do to be ethical strikes me as somewhat circular. Our notions of right and wrong, which Haidt has explored at length over his career, are indeed, in themselves, social.[13] What we construct as ‘right’ is socially constructed and indeed the history of “natural law” and “natural right” confirm that there are few truly universal notions of right and wrong.[14] The approval of our peers and the arguments we make function as feedbacks that adjust our collective and individual sense of morality. The boundary between appearance and being here is not so clear cut: The experience of each adjusts the other.[15]


Fig. 2. Original by user McGeddon, converted to SVG by Zapyon, March 6, 2018, via Wikipedia, converted to JPEG by author, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Bearing that in mind, consider the trolley problem, as described in Wikipedia (figure 2):

You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:

  1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
  2. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.

Which is the more ethical option?[16]

We might think and be grateful this is not a highly plausible scenario. But first, philosophy is rarely about plausibility. It is rather about thinking through a question. Good philosophy (which this page probably is not) exhausts possibilities as it reaches for a conclusion to questions that, as my Introduction to Philosophy teacher way back when explained, can never be definitively answered.


Fig. 3. “South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phùc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. The terrified girl had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The children from left to right are: Phan Thanh Tam (the younger brother of Kim Phùc), Phan Thanh Phouc, (the youngest brother of Kim Phùc), Kim Phùc, and Kim Phùc’s cousins Ho Van Bon and Ho Thi Ting. Behind them are soldiers of the Vietnam Army 25th Division.” Photograph by Nick Ut for the Associated Press, June 8, 1972.[17] Fair use.

Second, the trolley problem finds reality on a massive scale in examples such as the firebombings of Dresden, Tokyo, and other Japanese cities; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the napalm attacks in Vietnam (figure 1); and the economic sanctions that led to an increase in child mortality in Iraq.[18] We fight wars, allegedly for the greater good, and choose horrific strategies, often claiming, that alternatives will cost more lives, or that, as did Madeleine Albright of those sanctions, that “we think the price,” that is, the killing of a half million children, “is worth it.”[19]

The question in the Wikipedia entry pits utilitarian concern, that is, for the most happiness of the most people, against deontological concern, that is, for doing the right thing. The utilitarian thinks, obviously, that s/he should save the greater number of lives. The deontologist replies that the affirmative action of killing the one person is, in itself, wrong. Neither the utilitarian nor the deontological answer is satisfactory; each entails some degree of culpability, either for acting or for failing to act.


Fig. 4. Cartoon by Matt Pritchett, November 20, 2022, via the Telegraph, fair use.

If it were me standing by that switch, I think I would probably pull it because, we live in a society with a strong bias in favor of quantitative assessments.[20] Pulling the switch to save five lives, even at the expense of the one life, accords with that bias. It might get the charge against me reduced to manslaughter or even dismissed entirely. If I’m really lucky, I might be lauded as the hero “who made the tough decision.” As Haidt might predict, I would be appearing to do the right thing. But I am not merely weighing the action to save five lives against its cost of one life. I am weighing an additional factor in an otherwise dubious decision: the potential harm to myself. This is not just about appearance, but about prison time.

But when I consider those bombings and those sanctions, I think no, these actions cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds. I cannot excuse a deontological horror. And however one rationalizes atrocities, they risk begetting more atrocities, undermining the utilitarian argument.

The question of culpability is a question of blame: It is a condition that follows from our actions, failures to act, and the sufficiency of each.[21] Haidt argues persuasively that, as individuals within groups, we are not so much concerned with right actions in themselves as we are with appearing to our peers to take right actions, and that we have evolved enormous skill at rationalizing our actions to our peers. He verges on a universal claim,[22] which I think is a step too far. And while I am hardly infallible—I might indeed pull the switch—in my moral judgments or the execution of those judgments, Haidt’s claim might be a step too far for me, even if the very act of saying so would convince him that it in fact does apply to me.

I see ethics largely as an affirmation of personal autonomy, a right I apply to nonhuman as well as human animals. This is a product of my upbringing and continued immersion in an individualistic society. If saving the five lives is correct, it is because the rights of the five people—a group—exceed the rights of the one. My understanding of ethics as they apply to groups is, as yet, undeveloped, but I would note here that human rights would not be needed except to protect minorities, including individuals, from groups, including countries and their powerful elites: The one matters as much as the five, at least in part because the rights of the five are inextricably linked to the rights of the one. That doesn’t make the utilitarian answer wrong, but we need to consider the deontological answer more carefully than it might initially appear. (But think fast: Part of the trolley dilemma is that the trolley is coming—one simply does not have time or opportunity to free the captives tied to the tracks.)

Anarchism

It is a bit difficult for me to know what to write about anarchism, an approach that seeks to eliminate unnecessary authoritarianism among humans. I see that our authoritarian system of social organization fails to address even existential threats to human survival.[23] I see that its very existence is, to the say the very least, problematic, that the existence of elites promotes nepotism rather than merit; that in allowing elites to decide who has merit, we limit challenges to the status quo,[24] and are thus governed by a certain ‘groupthink’ that inhibits solutions. I see further that these elites, whom I often refer to as functionalist conservatives, are principally interested in preserving their own power and privileges over the rest of us.[25] And so, of course, I see our present system of social organization as unethical.

As Joel Federman, my first advisor at Saybrook University, explained it to me, humans have a wide range of potential to be good, evil, or something in between. When I was an anarchist, I relied on the goodness of humanity, and diminished the evil.[26] I pointed out that that we draw most of what we “know” about human nature from the reproduced cruelty of an insanely ridiculous society,[27] and I fear that the system of social organization we adopted in the Neolithic, that is, somewhere in the range of five to fifteen thousand years ago, distorts Federman’s range of possibilities.[28]

I also understand all too well that it will be difficult to displace the elites without violence, which is itself a form of authority, creating the same sort of conundrum[29] that Michael Bakunin saw as Karl Marx’s failing: Marx thought that the authoritarian system could be used to dismantle itself. Bakunin thought that that couldn’t work[30] and the experience of the Soviet Union[31] and other authoritarian socialist countries confirms that Bakunin was correct. When we use violence to overthrow authority, who is it who will replace that authority? It will, I very much fear, be those to whom we gave the guns, when the point was in fact to displace and remove that authority. We will have replaced one set of ‘thugs,’ by which I mean the overwhelmingly wealthy white male elite, with another.

But even if we were to succeed, would such a victory be pyrrhic? Haidt suggests that humans are naturally hierarchical, that when in prehistory they were much more egalitarian, it was because they all had spears with which they could simply dispense with any leader who abused his (or, I will presume, her) position.[32] This recreates the very dilemma I state above as a simile to Bakunin’s critique of Marx. I do not know if any egalitarian system can work at scale—this is a premise of anarcho-syndicalism—or across a broad spectrum of topics that comprise the totality of human life—the available successful examples of large “cooperatives” are economic, not political or even so much social endeavors, operating on a large scale but nonetheless far smaller than that of even our larger cities. I do not know if we would not, simply out of habits accumulated since the Neolithic, recreate the authoritarian structure we sought to depose.

Economic systems

A point that’s too easily overlooked is that no other rights are possible when people lack even the basics of life or when the acquisition of such basics becomes a “total situation,” that is, a situation that demands all of their time, perhaps even at the expense of sleep. When people work multiple jobs, especially when they do so to make ends meet,[33] they are likely in total or near-total situations. To have a workforce so occupied serves elite interests by denying workers the time and energy to seek improvements in their condition, whether through job changes, social change, or political change.[34] The present economic order thus constitutes an abuse of power. As it happens, this abuse is structural. Which is to say that no, a “pure” capitalism would not solve the problem, and no, the market does not and cannot solve social problems but in fact exacerbates them.

Capitalism

I should not be so happy about being a “hero who made the tough decision” in pulling that lever. Such plaudits are heard too often of wealthy executives making “tough decisions” to close factories and lay workers off. Such decisions are, in fact, much too easy in our quantitative society, where money (a quantity) too often counts for more than humanity,[35] an exchange system inherently privileges the wealthy and handicaps the poor in a feedback cycle that widens social inequality,[36] we then imagine that people get “what they deserve” according to their “merit,”[37] and we behave toward people—human beings—accordingly.[38] It is clear that capitalism celebrates greed, glorifies competition with little or no regard for ‘losers,’ and views workers, whether as slaves, serfs, sharecroppers, employees, or so-called “independent contractors,” as existing for exploitation. Numbers do not equate to righteousness, but our biases often make us think as if they do.

Exchange

Money is near-central to the problems of capitalism, let alone neoliberalism. Its very existence enables a reduction of all value to itself, a single, linear, quantity. Thus creating a “medium of exchange,” it facilitates exchange,[39] which as Max Weber observed of capitalism, privileges whomever has the greater power to say no, that is, the rich, enabling them to amass ever more of it, to the unceasing detriment of the poor who, by virtue of their weaker negotiating position, lose with every transaction.[40]

In systems theory, we recognize these as self-reinforcing feedbacks.[41] As they accumulate ever more money, the rich are ever more powerful, simply by virtue of their means to decline deals with ever more people, holding out for ever better deals. Such deals cost everyone else, ever weakening their positions. Hence widening social inequality. There are no natural, countering feedbacks, hence a need for a political system, which is itself easily corruptible.

We might note here that capitalism’s loudest advocates, whom I categorize as capitalist libertarians and neoliberals, are also those most opposed to political operations to mitigate inequality. They oppose social safety nets. They oppose regulation. Many would like to abolish government altogether while leaving economic power intact. In short, they favor ever increasing economic inequality.[42]

Weber made that claim of capitalism;[43] but his argument applies to any exchange system: Barter merely complicates the machination, slowing it down. The problem is fundamental to the idea that in order to do anything for anybody, they must do something for us, that we allow our fear of being taken advantage of (the “free rider” problem) to outweigh an essential generosity.[44]

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism, as a development of capitalism, particularizes and essentializes human beings as economic units of production, compelling them to compete globally on terms over which they have little or no control, such as their costs of living, environmental regulations, labor regulations, and taxes. Workers do not control the political or economic systems in any country but they absorb the costs of a “race to the bottom” in wages, benefits, and working conditions while capitalists grow ever richer and seek even to replace poorly-paid labor with automation. No concession is offered to human beings who still need to live with these developments: It is “efficiency” alone, defined in terms of profits for the rich, that matters.[45]

When we measure global poverty using evidence-based poverty lines, the story [of neoliberalism’s contribution to the alleged reduction of poverty] changes completely. At the $7.40 [per day] threshold – which is still at the low end of the metrics scholars have proposed – we find that the number of people in poverty hasn’t declined at all. Rather, it has grown dramatically since 1981, going from 3.2 billion to 4.2 billion, according to World Bank data. Six times higher than the 730 million [Bill] Gates and [Steven] Pinker would have us believe.[46]

Though their ideology has been intellectually discredited utterly,[47] neoliberals seek to justify the catastrophe they have wrought[48] by pointing to those who have been lifted from more extreme forms of absolute poverty.[49] Events such as a garment factory fire in Bangladesh,[50] however, echo historic tragedies while over half the world’s population remains mired in absolute poverty; while even those reductions in absolute poverty that have occurred cannot be attributed to neoliberalism, “but rather to state-led industrial policy, protectionism and regulation” in Southeast Asian countries and China, and while “improvements [in Latin America] have coincided with the Pink Tide, the leftwing governments that have swept to power across much of the continent since the turn of the [20th to 21st] century, in many cases challenging the US’s economic power over the region,” and whose “gains against poverty have been driven by social-welfare, not ‘free market’, policies;”[51] while ever more people in developed countries sink into relative poverty; and while the neoliberal rationalization valorizes money even over human life.

Justice and so-called “justice”

In general, I do not accept the reduction of justice to law, especially when laws are produced by a class consisting overwhelmingly of wealthy, white males, and enforcement is overwhelmingly directed at the poor and people of color.[52] This system functions to further stigmatize, scapegoat, imprison, and sometimes even put to death those it targets, rationalizing further cruelty and structural violence,[53] and thus functions socially to mitigate the perception of even more egregious crimes committed by the rich.[54] This profoundly flawed system[55] does all this on a pretense to objectivity which cannot survive critical examination.[56] It thus feeds a hierarchically invidious monism[57] that valorizes the very same wealthy white males who passed the laws while burdening a widening number of individuals, families and communities[58] and contributing even further to social inequality. Social inequality is a significant factor in much crime,[59] creating a feedback that produces even more crime,[60] rationalizing more stigmatization, more scapegoating, and more cruelty toward the poor while further valorizing the rich. As such, and in combination with neoliberalism, our system of so-called “justice” falls within the scope of my definition of fascism.[61] Instead I endorse a system of restorative justice that thoroughly examines the context in which what sociologists call “deviant” actions occur, up to and including the social system itself, and to remedy the problems in that context that led to those crimes.[62]

Veganism, vegetarian ecofeminism

On May 5, 2008, I went vegan. This means I abstain, as much as possible, from the exploitation of nonhuman animals. It is an extension of my anarchism, which opposes the illegitimate domination of people by other people, in that I oppose human domination of nonhuman animals. As a vegetarian ecofeminist, I understand that how we treat each other as humans is inseparable from how we treat nonhuman animals and inseparable from how we treat the environment.[63] And I see the environmental calamity that we now face as a product of unethical human behavior.[64]

I do this, because it is right and because it is necessary[65], even in a society that often derides veganism as extreme and exhibits prejudice against vegans on par with that against racial and ethnic minorities;[66] even when it means I cannot, for example, share Thanksgiving feasts with friends and family who remain omnivores; and even as I remain largely socially isolated even from other vegans. Haidt’s claim that we act to appear righteous rather than to actually be righteous fails to adequately explain this.

Inquiry (research)

My anarchism flows effortlessly into my view of research ethics. Respecting the personal autonomy of participants and co-researchers is paramount for me. I have found myself unable to be involved with any form of bullying to obtain participation or to inflict poor or unethical methodology on participants and I believe that unethical inquiry damages the information obtained.[67] This last part is especially problematic for me as I take pride in my scholarship, in which I am accredited (a Ph.D.) by academia as a producer of knowledge: I want my contributions to knowledge to be contributions rather than detriments. I embrace an approach to ethics not only as so often repeated in academia but that embraces the values of critical and indigenous scholarship.[68]

Pedagogy

In critical theory, the line between pedagogy and inquiry is, to the say the least, blurred, and quite possibly nonexistent.[69] Indeed, Paolo Freire, charged with educating indigenous villagers, instead of having them enroll in and come to a central institution, went to the villages; instead of bringing a predetermined curriculum, asked them what they wanted to learn; and instead of adopting the role of teacher in teacher-student relationships, pooled his knowledge and experience with theirs as a co-learner.[70] This approach lives on today as participatory action research[71] and as an unaffiliated scholar, I remain available for such work, as well as to advise and mentor students in conventional academic settings.[72] In this, I hope to honor the many professors whose intellectual generosity made it possible for me to attain what I have.

Deception

I am sometimes even brutally honest. Sissela Bok explores the problem of lying at length as an impairment of the deceived’s personal autonomy. Her conclusion avoids a blanket condemnation of lying—we seem unable to avoid some “white” lies—but her argument is that lying denies people the information they need to make informed decisions and thus to fully exercise their personal autonomy.[73] I disagree with her distinction between deception as the withholding of truth and lying as the telling of falsehood; it seems to me that by her reasoning, deception is every bit as problematic as lying.

Accordingly, I see myself as a straight forward person. It is important to me that I am what I claim to be, that people can trust my word and the information—the appearance—I produce, especially because my conclusions often run counter to our social ideologies. And when I find myself in a situation that calls for deception, it is clear to me that I need to exit that situation.

I understand all too well that this is not always possible for all too many people. As a child, I had an abusive father and did my share of sneaking around, seeking to avoid his wrath. But this is the point: I needed to exit that situation even when I had no opportunity to do so.

Selling and marketing

As an anarchist, as a vegan, and as a vegetarian ecofeminist, I do not place my self-interest above the personal autonomy of other human and non-human animals. Which means I will not be involved in persuading people to do things that are not in their own best interest: Even at horribly low points in my life, I have found myself unable to “sell,” that is, as I was informed while flunking an interview for an auto dealership job, to “recognize” (and exploit) other people’s “need” to buy products or services I offer. We may come to an arrangement, but I cannot impose myself on others.

Job hunting

Unfortunately, I have discovered that a presumption in neoliberal society conflates merit with an ability to promote that merit (and entrepreneurship with “merit”). I believe I have merit. But I cannot sell even myself; I might even be deficient in the skill to rationalize my actions, failures to act, and the sufficiency of each, to my peers—hence this page—and it is in part due to these failures that I have suffered the lack of a “real” job since the dot-com crash.[74]

  1. [1]Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012).
  2. [2]David Benfell, “Dilemmas are Good,” October 6, 2012, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2012/10/06/dilemmas-are-good
  3. [3]I find systems theory an ample explanation for how we come to be: Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (New York: Anchor, 1996); Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (Delhi, India: Sri Satguru, 1991).
  4. [4]I believe I first saw the term ‘desert religion,’ referring to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, in writing by Riane Eisler, but have not located the reference.
  5. [5]Cornel West, Brother West (Carlsbad, CA: Smiley, 2009).
  6. [6]Gen. 2:17, 3:22 (New International Version).
  7. [7]Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012).
  8. [8]Gen. 3:10-11 (New International Version).
  9. [9]Hence, theodicy, the question of why an allegedly good, omniscient, and omnipotent god would permit evil, which I first took up in David Benfell, “Embracing Evil,” Not Housebroken, December 2, 2010, https://disunitedstates.org/2010/12/02/embracing-evil/; and David Benfell, “Blasphemy,” Not Housebroken, May 9, 2011, https://disunitedstates.org/2011/05/09/blasphemy/.
  10. [10]I have not delved into the Wikipedia entry that addresses this issue: Wikipedia, s.v., “Elohim,” last modified November 17, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elohim As always, my advice with Wikipedia is to rely not on the entry itself but rather to explore the sources it cites. However, I am likely at my limits as I have studied neither Hebrew nor theology.
  11. [11]The royal ‘we’ seems not to apply: Grammarist, “Royal ‘we,’” n.d., https://grammarist.com/usage/royal-we/
  12. [12]Gen. 3:22 (New International Version).
  13. [13]Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012).
  14. [14]R. H. Helmholz, Natural Law in Court: A History of Legal Theory in Practice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2015).
  15. [15]This is mutual causality: Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (Delhi, India: Sri Satguru, 1991).
  16. [16]Wikipedia, s.v. “Trolley problem,” last modified November 14, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
  17. [17]Public Radio International, How the Vietnam War’s Napalm Girl found hope after tragedy,” February 21, 2018, https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-02-21/how-vietnam-wars-napalm-girl-found-hope-after-tragedy
  18. [18]Mohamed M. Ali and Iqbal H. Shah, “Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq,” Lancet 355, no. 9218 (May 27, 2000), doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)02289-3
  19. [19]Madeleine Albright, quoted in Wikiquote, s.v. “Madeleine Albright,” last modified May 14, 2019, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright
  20. [20]Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, John Wilkinson, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1964).; Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993).
  21. [21]Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).
  22. [22]Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012).
  23. [23]Lindsey Bever, Sarah Kaplan, and Abby Ohlheiser, “The Doomsday Clock is now just 2 minutes to ‘midnight,’ the symbolic hour of the apocalypse,” Washington Post, January 25, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/01/25/after-a-missile-scare-and-insult-war-withth-korea-its-time-to-check-the-doomsday-clock/
  24. [24]David Benfell, “‘We have found the enemy, and he is us’ — and our system of social organization,”
    March 6, 2013, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2013/03/06/we-have-found-enemy-and-he-us-and-our-system-social-organization; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “‘Race’ as the Trope of the World,” in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2010), 521-526; Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (New York: Crown, 2012); C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956; repr., New York: Oxford University, 2000).
  25. [25]David Benfell, “Functionalist conservatism,” n.d., https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/content/functionalist-conservatism
  26. [26]The COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing widespread denial of the climate crisis have persuaded me that I had, as a practical matter grossly overrated such ‘goodness,’ and as grossly underrated the ‘evil.’ Accordingly, I now regard myself as libertarian socialist, challenging both political and economic power relationships, but lacking a practical alternative. David Benfell, “I am no longer an anarchist,” Not Housebroken, June 8, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/01/29/i-am-no-longer-an-anarchist/
  27. [27]Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1956; repr., Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2010).
  28. [28]David Benfell, “Why we won’t respond to climate change,” Not Housebroken, October 16, 2018, https://disunitedstates.org/2018/10/16/why-we-wont-respond-to-climate-change/
  29. [29]David Benfell, “Violence is the illegitimate authority that begets all other illegitimate authority,” Not Housebroken, July 1, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/07/01/violence-is-the-illegitimate-authority-that-begets-all-other-illegitimate-authority/
  30. [30]Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom (Montréal: Black Rose, 1993).
  31. [31]Emma Goldman, “There Is No Communism in Russia,” in Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader, ed. Alix Kates Shulman, 3rd ed. (Amherst, NY: Humanity, 1998), 405-420.
  32. [32]Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012). The claim that humans were often somewhat more egalitarian prior to the Neolithic usually relies on an extrapolation from present day indigenous societies to the prehistoric. See, for examples, John H. Bodley, Victims of Progress, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2008); William James Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2005); Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995); Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1991). On such basis, Peter Gray asserts that they were even actively egalitarian in “How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways,” Psychology Today, May 16, 2011, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways?page=1. Unfortunately, that extrapolation from modern day indigenous societies to prehistoric societies seems dubious; at the very least, it would appear to rely on selective evidence: Even among historic (not prehistoric) societies, some conquered others—an unmistakably hierarchical move. Finally, one thing also to notice is that societies grew larger, they also seem to have become more hierarchical: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). This is a case where I am forced to conclude that the evidence simply does not support my preferred conclusion.
  33. [33]Note that many of the jobs Julia Beckhusen mentions in “Women More Likely to Have Multiple Jobs,” Census Bureau, June 18, 2019, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/about-thirteen-million-united-states-workers-have-more-than-one-job.html are what Riane Eisler refers to as “caring jobs,” jobs which are undervalued in the present economic order and often gendered female: Riane Eisler, the Real Wealth of Nations (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007).
  34. [34]John Asimakopoulos, The Political Economy of the Spectacle and Postmodern Caste (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2020); Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America, 25th anniversary ed. (New York: Crown, 1995).
  35. [35]Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Achord Rountree, The Hidden Structure of Violence (New York: Monthly Review, 2015); Matthew Yglesias, “Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism,” Vox, August 15, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17683022/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations
  36. [36]Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” in Social Theory, ed. Charles Lemert, 6th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2017), 94-101.
  37. [37]Thomas M. Shapiro, “Introduction,” in Great Divides: Readings in Social Inequality in the United States, ed. Thomas M. Shapiro, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2005), 1-7.
  38. [38]Herbert J. Gans, The War Against The Poor: The Underclass And Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic, 1995).
  39. [39]N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics, 6th ed. (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2012).
  40. [40]Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” in Social Theory, ed. Charles Lemert, 6th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2017), 94-101.
  41. [41]Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems (New York: Anchor, 1996); Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (Delhi, India: Sri Satguru, 1995); Edgar Morin, On Complexity (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 2008).
  42. [42]David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).
  43. [43]Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party,” in Social Theory, ed. Charles Lemert, 6th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2017), 94-101.
  44. [44]David Benfell, “These disunited states,” Not Housebroken, January 9, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/01/09/these-disunited-states/
  45. [45]My understanding of neoliberalism continues to evolve from that in my dissertation: David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126); David Benfell, “The larger question of California’s AB 5,” Not Housebroken, September 14, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/09/14/the-larger-question-of-californias-ab-5/
  46. [46]Jason Hickel, “Progress and its discontents,” New Internationalist, August 7, 2019, https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents
  47. [47]Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford, UK: Oxford University, 2013); Amir Fleischmann, “The Myth of the Fiscal Conservative,” Jacobin, March 5, 2017, https://jacobinmag.com/2017/03/fiscal-conservative-social-services-austerity-save-money; Jason Hickel, “Progress and its discontents,” New Internationalist, August 7, 2019, https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents; Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2012); Robert Kuttner, “Austerity never works: Deficit hawks are amoral — and wrong,” Salon, May 5, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/05/05/austerity_never_works_deficit_hawks_are_amoral_and_wrong/; Dennis Loo, Globalization and the Demolition of Society (Glendale, CA: Larkmead, 2011); Thomas Piketty, Jeffrey Sachs, Heiner Flassbeck, Dani Rodrik and Simon Wren-Lewis, “Austerity Has Failed: An Open Letter From Thomas Piketty to Angela Merkel,” Nation, July 6, 2015, http://www.thenation.com/article/austerity-has-failed-an-open-letter-from-thomas-piketty-to-angela-merkel/; John Quiggin, “Austerity Has Been Tested, and It Failed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2013, http://chronicle.com/article/Austerity-Has-Been-Tested-and/139255/; David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, “How Austerity Kills,” New York Times, May 12, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/opinion/how-austerity-kills.html; David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, “Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills,” Salon, May 19, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/paul_krugmans_right_austerity_kills/
  48. [48]Julia Belluz, “Why the white middle class is dying faster, explained in 6 charts,” Vox, March 23, 2017, http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/23/14988084/white-middle-class-dying-faster-explained-case-deaton; Laura Bliss, “The Pessimism of White, Working-Class America,” CityLab, November 17, 2015, http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/11/the-pessimism-of-white-working-class-america/416379/; Andrew J. Cherlin, “Why Are White Death Rates Rising?” New York Times, February 22, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/opinion/why-are-white-death-rates-rising.html; John Feffer, “Did the Fall of the Berlin Wall Produce the Trump Presidency?” Foreign Policy in Focus, November 13, 2019, https://fpif.org/did-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-produce-the-trump-presidency/; Gina Kolata, “Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds,” New York Times, November 2, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html; Gina Kolata and Sarah Cohen, “Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites,” New York Times, January 16, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-overdoses-propel-rise-in-mortality-rates-of-young-whites.html; Paul Krugman, “Heartland of Darkness,” New York Times, November 4, 2015, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/heartland-of-darkness/; Paul Krugman, “Despair, American Style,” New York Times, November 9, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/despair-american-style.html; Alana Semuels, “Is Economic Despair What’s Killing Middle-Aged White Americans?” CityLab, March 23, 2017, https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/03/economic-despair-killing-middle-aged-white-americans/520554/; Josh Zumbrun, “The Economic Roots of the Climbing Death Rate for Middle-Aged Whites,” Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2015, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/11/03/the-economic-roots-of-the-climbing-death-rate-for-middle-aged-whites/
  49. [49]Jason Hickel, “Progress and its discontents,” New Internationalist, August 7, 2019, https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents For an example other than those Hickel cites, see Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time (New York: Penguin, 2006).
  50. [50]Jim Yardley, “Last Hope in Ruins: Bangladesh’s Race to Save Shaheena,” New York Times, May 5, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/world/asia/struggle-in-bangladesh-to-save-collapse-survivor.html
  51. [51]Jason Hickel, “Progress and its discontents,” New Internationalist, August 7, 2019, https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents
  52. [52]Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).
  53. [53]Herbert J. Gans, The War Against The Poor: The Underclass And Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic, 1995).
  54. [54]Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).
  55. [55]Dan Simon, In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2012).
  56. [56]David Benfell, “Juries and injustice: The fools call me in again,” Not Housebroken, April 28, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/2015/04/27/juries-and-injustice-the-fools-call-me-in-again/
  57. [57]See David Benfell, “Hierarchically Invidious Monism,” July 28, 2017, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/content/hierarchically-invidious-monism
  58. [58]Ernest Drucker, A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: New, 2011); Dan Simon, In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2012).
  59. [59]Steven E. Barkan, Criminology: A Sociological Understanding, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006).
  60. [60]Ernest Drucker notes all the conditions of a self-reinforcing (positive) feedback loop but does not identify or consider it as such and therefore probably fails to adequately account for feedback effects in suggesting that the system reduces crime by, at most, fifteen percent in A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: New, 2011).
  61. [61]David Benfell, “A simple definition of fascism,” July 6, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/07/06/a-simple-definition-of-fascism/
  62. [62]Wanda D. McCaslin and Denise C. Breton, “Justice as Healing: Going Outside the Colonizers’ Cage,” in Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, eds. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 511-529.
  63. [63]David Benfell, “The Inevitability of Speciesism,” December 7, 2012, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2012/12/07/inevitability-speciesism
  64. [64]David Benfell, “‘We have found the enemy, and he is us’ — and our system of social organization,” March 6, 2013, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2013/03/06/we-have-found-enemy-and-he-us-and-our-system-social-organization
  65. [65]David Benfell, “A hurricane, a burning rainforest, and economic survival: Why we cannot view these problems separately,” Not Housebroken, August 31, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/31/a-hurricane-a-burning-rainforest-and-economic-survival-why-we-cannot-view-these-problems-separately/
  66. [66]George Reynolds, “Why do people hate vegans?” Guardian, October 25, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/25/why-do-people-hate-vegans
  67. [67]David Benfell, “Dilemmas are Good,” October 6, 2012, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2012/10/06/dilemmas-are-good; David Benfell, “Unethical research,” November 13, 2018, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2018/11/10/unethical-research; David Benfell, “Methodological Problems of the American Community Survey,” November 17, 2018, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2018/11/17/methodological-problems-american-community-survey; David Benfell, “Socially constructed ethics,” November 24, 2018, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2018/11/24/socially-constructed-ethics
  68. [68]David Benfell, “From Authoritarian Boast to Awe and Wonder: A Transformation of the Understanding of Knowledge,” November 21, 2011, https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/journal/2011/11/21/authoritarian-boast-awe-and-wonder-transformation-understanding-knowledge; Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, eds., Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008).
  69. [69]Raymond A. Morrow with David D. Brown, Critical Theory and Methodology (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994); Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, eds., Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008).
  70. [70]Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition (New York: Continuum, 2006).
  71. [71]Mary Brydon-Miller et al., “Jazz and the Banyan Tree: Roots and Riffs on Participatory Action Research,” in The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th ed., eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011), 387-400.
  72. [72]See David Benfell, “Teaching Philosophy,” n.d., https://parts-unknown.org/drupal7/content/teaching-philosophy
  73. [73]Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1999).
  74. [74]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/