Friendship and Facebook
I’ve read a bit about the philosophy of friendship over the years, but none of it is much use when encountering Facebook for the first time. Thinking myself too middle-aged for what I thought to be a youth site I hadn’t even looked at it until last week, when Jacques Chester asked me to link to a Liberty and Society group and I decided (in my middle-aged caution) to check before I linked. But I had to join first, and every day since I have received emails from Facebook telling me that person X, Y or Z has added me as a ‘friend’ and wanting to confirm that we are in fact ‘friends’.
In most cases, it’s been pretty easy to ‘confirm’ these people as friends. But can I be a ‘friend’ of someone whose name and face I don’t recognise? (from the friends we have in common I presume we must have met, but I don’t remember it). Or someone whose name and face I do recognise but I haven’t seen them, been in touch with them, or even thought of them for years? On the other hand, not confirming someone as a ‘friend’ could be seen as rude. Just because I am not a friend doesn’t mean I want to make an enemy.
I am a little sorry that Facebook is stretching the concept of ‘friendship’. Though of course friendship long predates liberalism, it seems to embody the liberal voluntary ideal more than other forms of social relationship. Pre-Facebook at least, it was a relationship of mutual agreement, in which the parties chose each other. You can’t choose your family or your neighbours or even your colleagues most of the time, but you can choose your friends.
But Facebook won’t affect other liberal aspects of friendship. Unlike other forms of voluntary relationships such as marriage or employment based on legal frameworks, in friendship the parties (usually implicitly) set all their own relationship rules. These rules often evolve over time, adapting to signals from each other and circumstances, like a market. Friendship is one of the very few areas of society in which there is virtually no state interference from Western liberal democracies. It is one of the last realms of near-complete freedom.
July 31st, 2007 22:46
I received a “Friend request” from an acquaintance I know through political networks. It occurred to me then that different categories of relationship better encompass human relationships rather than the single category “friend”.
July 31st, 2007 22:49
I wouldn’t be surprised if people’s use of Facebook has a half-life, at which time some other internet phenomenon will take its place as the activity of the moment (and depresser of productivity at work).
There’s something wrong about “depresser” but in my tired state I can’t see what it is.
August 1st, 2007 00:29
I’m glad you posted this as I also thought it was a little odd how anyone you had even the most tenuous connexion to was labelled a ‘friend’. That’s probably not how Facebook (and other social networking sites) was first envisioned, but it is what it has become.
August 1st, 2007 01:21
I think this is just semantics. For the purposes of Facebook, “friend” really just mean someone you have granted access to certain private functions in relation to your online profile. Instead of an “Add as a friend” button, they could have had a “Create link on database” button, or some such - but that wouldn’t have been as marketable. I have plenty of “friends” on Facebook who, I’m sure, I share a mutual acknowledgment that we’re not really “friends” in the real world. For example, one of my “how do you know this person” descriptions is “we were on student council together and we hated each other”, which is more accurate than it is ironic.
That said, I appreciate your dilemma of people adding you who either you don’t recognise or who you don’t want to grant access to the private aspects of your profile. If I don’t know who the person is or I have a strong objection to their gaining access to my profile, I just ignore their request - despite the possibility it may cause offense. If it is a real imposition, you could always delete your Facebook profile altogether and rely on more traditional socialising instruments.
August 1st, 2007 09:46
Andrew, I’m clearly much more middle-aged than you (despite my more recent date of birth), because I CANNOT SEE THE POINT of Facebook. If you have a friend and you want to share something with them, why not just pick up the phone or perhaps even send an email? Linking to a website is so much less personal, but then I guess older people would think that even phone or email are impersonal…
Perhaps I being a bit hypocritical: A cousin of mine got me onto Geni, which is a family tree site. At the start it seemed like a good idea - I put my wedding photos up to avoid mailing them to 10s of people. But now I have 1092 relatives on my tree and get regular emails telling me about people like my “great uncle’s daughter-in-law’s uncle’s first cousin once removed’s daughter-in-law’s uncle’s son-in-law’s grandmother ” (no kidding). God help me if one of them is a terrorist.
August 1st, 2007 10:02
Rajat - I’m yet to entirely see the point, and indeed probably wouldn’t have looked it again except for these emails I have been receiving. But it has only been a week. The main potential use I can see is perhaps keeping track of people I know but do not see regularly. But most of them are cases of ‘friendly with’ rather than ‘friends with’.
August 1st, 2007 10:32
Sorry this is off topic, Andrew - I couldn’t see a contact email to give you a tip off.
Theres an interesting article on the connection between rising GDP (ie wealth) and happiness in todays Australian I thought you’d be interested in; I know youve written on this a few times.
A snippet:
August 1st, 2007 12:03
“It is one of the last realms of near-complete freedom.” Buck up Andrew, things aren’t that bad! We have more access to anything we want to read than any other people, anytime. More opportunities for expression - you have a blog, a magazine, Facebook … Presumably you can get on a plane and go anywhere you like. Your parents haven’t arranged a marriage for you? You weren’t conscripted into the army. You vote and vote in local, state and federal elections. Surely any more freedom would just be exhausting.
August 1st, 2007 19:31
You vote and vote in local, state and federal elections
Voting isn’t a freedom in Australia, it is a compulsion.
Surely any more freedom would just be exhausting.
You’d think that wouldn’t you? But your imagination of what freedom entails is very limited.
August 1st, 2007 21:12
Yes. The tax code is more extensive than it has ever been. You are now free to waste an entire lifetime reading it.
August 1st, 2007 21:13
Brendan, compulsory voting is designed to protect your right to vote, not take away your freedom.
It is aimed at stopping people intimidating you into not voting.
In some other countries voting outcomes are affected by intimidating certain sections of society (particularly women in Islamic countries) into not voting.
August 1st, 2007 22:05
Stephen, that really makes no sense. If that was the case, then why are non-voters fined and threatened with gaol if they refuse to pay?
And since when does Australia have a problem with religious fundamentalists denying women the vote?
That is the craziest reason for compulsory voting I have ever heard.
Protecting my rights by forcing me to do something? You’re kidding me, right? What rights do I enjoy when it is complusory? Shouldn’t it be my choice to exercise a right? Even a stupid positive right like voting?
August 1st, 2007 22:10
OK, I’m curious. Brendan and Terje, what important freedoms are you missing out on? How would your lives be significantly improved by exploiting these new spheres of freedom?
August 1st, 2007 22:42
Russell,
You are looking at it the wrong way. If the state is going to compel me to do something, the onus of proof of net benefit lays on the party proposing the compulsion, not the party subject to it.
August 1st, 2007 23:16
Brendan - it’s not often that Andrew let’s fly with a bit of hyperbole like “friendship … is one of the last realms of near-complete freedom”, so I couldn’t resist asking what foregone realms of freedom would he, you and Terje like restored.
When you say “the proof of net benefit” do you mean benefit to the community?
August 1st, 2007 23:34
Look you can twist it whatever way you want. If you honestly believe they’ll send you to gaol for not paying a fine for not voting then you have serious problems, but I suspect you don’t beleive that and just wanted to solidify your point.
The fact is Australia has historically been a world leader in democratic freedoms - the secret ballot is an Australian invention, and also used to go by its old name, the Australian Ballot. The second area we have pioneered is through compulsory voting, to prevent people intimidating others into not voting.
Your reply is a logical fallacy. Enforcing the law (the fine) doesn’t in anyway present evidence to the contrary regarding the purpose of the law. What is a law if it is not enforced? Passing a law for cumpolsory voting isn’t worth the paper its written on without a penalty for a breach.
Voter Supression is a regular campaign tactic even today in the United States, with both major parties devoting massive time and energy to finding ways to reduce voters from voting rolls and prevent opposition party activists from encouraging voters to turn out to vote. In 2002 Republican officials tried to reduce Democratic voters by paying professional telemarketers in Idaho to make repeated hang-up calls to block Democrats’ ride-to-the-polls phone lines on election day.
With compulsory voting such tactics are moot because we have 96+% voter turnout so encouraging people to get of their arse and vote is unnecessary.
In the USA before 1965 some southern states used government taxes, called Poll Taxes and literacy tests designed to prevent African Americans and working-class whites from voting.
August 2nd, 2007 00:03
Russel, you are avoiding the issue and persisting with the idea that it is up the the free individual to justify their freedom.
Costs and benefits are to individuals, not communities. Communities can’t lose freedoms because they don’t have any. Define how a community can experience a benefit?
August 2nd, 2007 00:04
…and do it without referring to individuals, while you’re at it…
August 2nd, 2007 00:29
Stephen, you’ve clearly failed to understand what a right is and is not. The right to vote is not the same as a legal obligation to vote. One is a right, the other is a infringement of my right to NOT vote. Non-payment of fines typically leads to gaol, that is the whole point. What is the point of issuing fines, if you’re not going to enforce payment. And if I can avoid payment and punishment for non-payment, what is the point of issuing the fine in the first place.
I have been fined for not voting and I did avoid it by a slight extension of the truth, claiming that I’d moved inter-state (I had) before the election (I hadn’t). It was a pure oversight on my behalf, I didn’t realise that voting in council elections was compulsory in Victoria as I am from WA where it isn’t. There was no malice, no victim, so why should I have been fined in the first place and felt a need to perjure myself to avoid a stupid fine for not voting? It is ridiculous. Anyone who pays a not voting fine is not imaginative enough to avoid it, but the point is, making people jump through hoops to avoid stupid laws is more stupid.
Compulsory voting is stupid and its most significant unintended consequence is to turn participation in the democratic process from a proud duty and a positive experience to a drudgery and an inconvenience, with the resultant decrease in the quality of political discourse.
I really don’t see how compulsory voting would stop underhanded tactics during elections. If voting were compulsory in the US, can you imagine an African American in Lousianna in 1960 fighting their way through a bunch of angry white supremicists to get to the polling booth because of fear of a fine? Crack down on illegal intimidation of voters, don’t crack down on voters for being fearful.
August 2nd, 2007 02:11
Chaplain under fire for pedophile friendship
I thought this was relevent - an example of interference in the freedom of friendship?
August 2nd, 2007 08:19
Stephen,
If people wanted to intimidate others into not voting, I doubt whether a $20 fine is going to make much difference. If you are worried about intimidation in the way it occurs in most places of the world, I’m sure it isn’t too hard to think of laws to stop it.
More importantly, if politicians wern’t the hopeless lying populist trash that they have become in many Anglo-countries, and they actually had real policies and the parties offered real alternatives, people might actually turn out to vote voluntarily — The last election in France got 85% of registered voters, so it is possible.
August 2nd, 2007 11:14
“Define how a community can experience a benefit? and do it without referring to individuals, while you’re at it…”
A community can benefit by protecting itself from a disease if a certain proportion of the community is vaccinated.
August 2nd, 2007 16:20
Russell,
Really? And who would this proportion be, then? Immunisation programmes provide individual benefits, Russell. Just because an individual benefits from the actions of others, when he himself takes no action, is an unintended consequence of the selfish behaviour of the people who get immunised. When you subject your kids to immunisation and the minor risk associated with it, you are doing so to protect them, not your lazy arse neighbour’s kids.
Try again.
August 2nd, 2007 17:37
Brendan - isn’t this just semantics? You can always say, as a community is made up of individuals, that only individuals act and only individuals benefit - but we don’t live as hermits in caves. The whole community has benefitted from not having polio or tuberclosis epidemics - just imagine how much more you would be taxed if the hospitals were filled with your fellow citizens struck down with those diseases.
“Just because an individual benefits from the actions of others, when he himself takes no action, is an unintended consequence of the selfish behaviour of the people who get immunised. When you subject your kids to immunisation and the minor risk associated with it, you are doing so to protect them, not your lazy arse neighbour’s kids”
This is a fairly miserable view of the effort a lot of volunteers put in, which benefits a lot of other people ( the community). My next door neighbour helps a migrant family learn English, my sister (via a network run by the local council) takes an elderly women shopping and to doctor’s appointments etc. All these things benefit individuals, save having to have government programs to do stuff, multiply “social capital” and “trust” - - they benefit the community!
I think there is an unbridgeable difference of perception between us - which is also how I felt when Andrew wrote of friendship, above “These rules often evolve over time, adapting to signals from each other and circumstances, like a market.” Sorry, but human relationships of any depth are not like a market.
August 2nd, 2007 18:10
Wow! Talk about following the argument whereever it leads - from Facebook to immunisations for children (although I suppose that a tangential link might relate if you think about real viruses and computer viruses).
But I digress. I think that the main thing about new IT trends like facebook are that we live in the electronic age, and that we don’t really go out and spend much time interacting with each other as people or as a community anymore. It used to be that we just sat in front of the TV instead of meeting, and now instead, we spend all our time doing things on the internet.
What I wonder is whether or not things like facebook are an electronic attempt for people to reclaim, in the new age, some degree of the social interaction which used to exist before we all went electronic, and if so, how successful is this instead of actually meeting or speaking to people?
August 2nd, 2007 18:16
Russell,
Don’t accuse me of a miserly outlook on life, I applaud volunteer behaviour and believe that our ability to act charitably is much under-rated by people who would replace voluntary activities with state services.
It is not miserly to consider that a volunteer benefits from their volunteering action, but your example wasn’t about charity, it was an inherently selfish act of immunisation. Any benefits others gain from my immunisation are positive side effects, but the primary purpose is to keep myself or my children healthy. Positive side effects are a bonus, and I get additional benefit from feeling good about doing both the smart thing and a good thing. But if it was only the good thing and the cost to me was excessive, then I would have less motivation to do it. Say if immunisation resulted in a 1 in 10 chance of bad side effects, then I may not immunise myself. This is what parents who don’t understand the risk are doing when they refuse to give their children the super-immunisation, they are mis-weighting the adverse outcome against the probability. They don’t care about the positive benefits to others, they are worried about the negative impacts on their children. Their irrationality doesn’t cost them most of the time though, because they get benefits of others immunisation reducing the chance of the disease being present. Their irrational selfishness is being rewarded by other’s rational selfishness.
As for voluntary work, to claim that volunteers don’t get rewarded for their work through the good feelings that they have, the sense of pupose they gain, the socil network they develop, the social status they gain, the experience they gain, is to ignore the reason people do volunteer. People choose their own rewards, for some it is enough to see the smile on a child’s face, and that in itself is reward enough to them.
It is quite difficult to imagine a truly selfless act, one that provides you with absolutely no benefit whatsoever, much less commit one without some external clear and present danger, such as people risking their lives during emergencies.
August 2nd, 2007 18:29
On the facebook topic, I’ve received a bunch of invites from friends, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered. I’d rather them simply email me the photos, or send me a personal email. Typing my email address into a social network site does not a friendship make.
I don’t think Andrew is right though, there are lots of areas the state doesn’t interfere. Most of my life is free of state interference, but I am an educated, employed, middle class male. The problem is, is that if you have to be middle class and male to avoid the state, that leaves a whole lot of people who aren’t free of almost daily interactions with the state.
August 2nd, 2007 19:11
“It is quite difficult to imagine a truly selfless act”
Brendan are you asking us to believe that you’ve never been loved?
August 2nd, 2007 19:34
Russel, what are you talking about? The person who loves someone else feels good about it, and hopefully gets to trade those feelings for equal feelings in return. How is that selfless? Emotions aren’t an action anyway.
This is getting a bit personal for a blog, don’t you think?
August 2nd, 2007 19:50
“This is getting a bit personal for a blog, don’t you think?”
Sort of. I thought your statement: “It is quite difficult to imagine a truly selfless act” was kind of shocking, but maybe that’s just my experience … I didn’t have to imagine truly selfless acts, just remember witnessing them, thousands of them. I’ve been lucky then.
I often think, when I see commenters here wielding the razor of reason, of that phrase: “The heart has reasons that reason cannot know”
August 2nd, 2007 21:39
Russell,
Not to put to fine a point out of it, if you derive anything positive from an act of charity of kindness, even a glimmer of joy or wellbeing, then it isn’t selfless. If people didn’t receive these positive reinforcements through their body chemistry, they wouldn’t do them. I’m just trying to be honest about what motivates humans, not denigrate the acts of charity and kindness that surround us.
It doesn’t cheapen the act to know that fire-fighters get a visceral thrill and adrenalin rush from entering burning buildings and rescuing people. To a certain extent, knowledge that fire-fighters enjoy their work so much is a reason their pay is so low, they are getting non-monetary rewards, and is why Australia successfully relies on volunteer country fire-fighters. The non-monetary rewards must be pretty high to risk your life for a living for either little money or no money. Similar reasons could be attributed to teachers’ and nurses’ low rates of pay (not to mention socialised education and healthcare).
Why do you think the government spends time and money propagandising charity work, is it to boost the recognition of voluntary work? If charitable work was selfless, people wouldn’t mention it on their cvs, for instance.
August 2nd, 2007 23:41
Brendan - this is a very purist approach to life you have: even a ‘glimmer’ of self-satisfaction and the act isn’t selfless. Hmmn. I guess I’m just prepared to accept all the little, mostly selfless, acts I see as, well, selfless. Sometimes people just respond to other people’s needs, even though they don’t want to, it’s just how they are. I don’t really think you can prove that all acts do have even the tiniest degree of self-satisfaction, but as I said, I don’t think it matters.
I wouldn’t have cited fire-fighters, or even Simpson and his bloody donkey, (no breach of comments policy - the donkey was surely bloody, carrying wounded soldiers) but what about bystanders at the scene of an accident or disaster who don’t even think, but fling themselves into danger to help rescue someone? A fairly selfless act I would say.
August 3rd, 2007 00:04
If people’s reaction’s during emergencies are the best you can up with as “selfless acts”, then in the scheme of human activity, most people are never in a position nor likely to encounter a selfless act.
Charitable acts don’t need to be heroic in the dramtic sense of the word, the vast majority of volunteer work is drudgery. Ask someone who mans homeless shelters as a volunteer whether they get satisfaction out of their work.
Whether you think an act is selfless matters little though. I think we both agree that charitable work is good, even if we come from different ideas about the nature of the human condition. From a political point of view, I’d prefer that the state stopped crowding out charitable works through the provision of services and the regulation of service provision.
August 3rd, 2007 08:12
Brendan,
you need to distinguish between whether people would perform altruistic acts even if they were not rewarded — i.e., just because there is a reward does not imply people act because of it. These things are easy to test, and people certainly have for many years, with groups as young as 18 months old (Tomasello and K? have a famous peg study from a few years back), and chimpanzees in captivity even act altruisically towards humans also. You can also do things like vary the reward — under the assumption people act altruistically based on rewards, it should be the case that the bigger the reward you give, the more altruistic behavior you should find — but this relationship is generally weak with huge individual differences.
It is also worthwhile pointing out that in terms of a reward scenario, there should be negative correlations with age (young people have more to gain over time) — but you’ll find great amounts of altruism between old people in places like old people’s homes, when these guys have almost nothing to gain.
It seems to me thatgiven most of the evidence points to the fact that altruistic behavior is not strongly related to rewards, then the onus is really on those that say it is to provide the studies and evidence, and preferably evidence as to why the other studies don’t find such a relationship.
August 3rd, 2007 08:43
Brendan,
a good article to read about this is “The nature of Human Altruism” which is a review article in Nature in 2003 by Fehr and Fischbacher. You can find it on google scholar using the terms altruism and rewards and then clicking on the html version.
August 3rd, 2007 10:55
Nobody wants me to be their friend.
Was it something I said?
August 3rd, 2007 12:39
Apparently everything has its price Rafe - perhaps you need to raise your bids.
(BTW I don’t suppose you have a copy of “Lives of the Saints” you could lend Brendan, do you? - I had to memorise it at school so didn’t need to keep a copy)
August 3rd, 2007 14:46
back to the topic I think fuddy duddies like Rajat and Andrew are missing out on the *real* reason behind Facebook i.e. networking with ‘celebrities’. You sign on to facebook, make friends with people you know, then trawl through their friends to see if they have any celebrities among them, then make some excuse to communicate with them and/or subsequently request friendship with them. six degrees of separation:-)
August 3rd, 2007 14:47
PS in andrew’s case he may be missing the point because he is one of these ‘celebrities’ which is why he gets all these unsolicited friendship requests.
August 3rd, 2007 15:54
So… in that case, all that blogging and Rafe is no more of a celebrity than I am.
August 3rd, 2007 16:45
Pursuing your self-interest can mean different things to different people. It does not necessarily mean greed.
Many businesspeople get satisfaction from making lots of money, but Mother Teresa pursued her self-interest by helping the poor. People have different personalities, but everyone pursues their self-interest if given the chance.
A truly self-less act might be giving up your life to save another.
August 3rd, 2007 17:11
I never claimed that the size of the reward mattered, I merely claimed that the acts were not selfless. How do you measure the size of feeling good about yourself?
People may learn that they feel good about helping others, parents teach children to share etc. Why do you think this means I don’t value charitable works or am small hearted ub some way? Not a charitable attitude to have.
August 3rd, 2007 17:56
Brendon: I’ll claim (and I believe the evidence supports me), that altruistic acts and feeling good (or for that matter, any type of reward) are only weakly correlated — and hence many (not all) altruistic acts are essentially selfless.
The claim is therefore that people do altruistic acts because they are essentially programmed to do so (i.e., its a genetic predisposition on behavior), do so for other reasons (like being forced to thanks to social pressure), and a whole gamut of other reasons not to do with feeling good.
Read the article — its really interesting, and shows just how complicated making attributions about why people do these sorts of things is.
August 3rd, 2007 18:15
Conrod, you’re missing my point. If you get anything in return for altruism, then it is not selfless, irrelevent to the correlation of strength of reward. I normally don’t go hunting for other people’s references, but in your case I’ll read the article and get back to you. First impression, though, they could have formatted the article with a bigger font. It is truly an act of charity to read such eye straining material.
August 3rd, 2007 19:07
From reading the article, all I gather is that if reputation is at stake, most people will behave fairly, if it is not, there are some that will continue to act fairly, and some that will not. It really didn’t tell me anything about whether charitable works are selfless or not. There was a lot of talk about future rewards, which indicates a non-selfless act, but not much explanation of why strong reciprocators act the way they do because the results cannot explain n-person cooperative behaviour.
August 3rd, 2007 20:29
Brendan — sorry if the article is hard to understand (I read this sort of stuff all the time as part of my job). I suggested the article because it shows that:
(a) altruism is very complex (it can be examined at different levels and in different forms);
(b) You can however succesfully investigate altruism and aspects of it in constrained situations (and hence investigate things like reward conditions);
and most importantly
(c) you can construct theories of altruism that do not rely on selfish behavior (your “feeling good”) that have predictive power in some circumstances. This suggests that altruistic behavior is not neccesarily done just so the individual feels good.
I find it intersesting because if we don’t just rely on maximizing our gains then a good question is why we do it (like, why do we all co-operate in a way that other animals don’t?). This is where we degenerate into more speculative reasons, and people wonder about the genetic basis of it.
Its worthwhile noting that some of this has strong relevance to the types of things that you often argue about, (which is why I suggested it) because it shows that group co-operation (or lack of it) can rely on small numbers of individuals.
August 3rd, 2007 21:15
Conrad, this article supports my argument more than it disproves it. It shows a strong correlation between people acting fairly when they have something at stake. For instance, when reputation was a factor, individuals would not accept an off less than 4 MUs out of 10, but when it wasn’t, they’d accept 3 MUs in the ultimatum game.
The fact that they didn’t simple act selfishly all the time and accept any offer, independent of guaranteed future interactions or not, isn’t difficult to imagine. Punishing someone (and yourself) for unfair behaviour today provides future benefit irrelevent to whether you deal with that person or not, because of the expectation that they may have to deal with others in the future. If they are reasonably sure that others will behave as they do in punishing unfair behaviour, then they do benefit in the future by having to deal with less defectors overall. They must trust that others do the same to get a future benefit, but experience tells them whether this is true or not.
Just because I am a libertarian doesn’t mean I don’t have faith in other humans, in fact to a certain extent, it means I have to have more faith in the moral actions of others, because I would choose not to be protected by the state in order to enjoy greater personal freedom.
August 4th, 2007 08:22
Justin — I wasn’t saying you don’t have faith in other humans at all — and I agree that being a libertarian requires more faith in others than other political persuasions (probably a lot more).
August 4th, 2007 21:46
Conrad,
I assume that your last post is addressed to me? I guess it simply boils down to the idea that if you have a fair idea of what type of situations promote the best in human behaviour, you can look for these properties and endorse them. Saying that charity is some sort of unexplainable selfless act, gives you no clue on the human condition and seems to me an act of pure faith, a pseudo-religious experience, a concept I don’t believe. Faith is where reason ends and superstition begins.
August 4th, 2007 21:49
“being a libertarian requires more faith in others than other political persuasions (probably a lot more”
or being a libertarian suggests a lot of confidence in your ability to be able to exploit the opportunities in any situation and come out a winner. Maybe people on the left have faith in most people (even if the community needs protection from those rogue exploiting libertarians) but think that building up social institutions helps develop the more civilised aspects of our nature.
August 4th, 2007 22:11
Russell, exploit is a good word isn’t it? Just by mentioning it you can slate someone’s reputation and come up as morally superior. Sometimes I wonder whether the left is more about making its proponents feel better about themselves than having any real understanding about what people want and what motivates them.
People need protecting against the state and individuals who haven’t learnt that cooperative voluntary behaviour is the best way to get ahead.
If someone starts from a poor background, works hard, takes advantage of all their opportunities and natural skills and comes out the other side as an upwardly mobile middle class person, they go from deserving protection from the exploitative classes to being the exploiters themselves in the eyes of many on the left. How can a person fundamentally change in such a way? They are just a person with their own dreams and ambitions, and yet if they achieve them, they become a class traitor and enemy. That might be a bit of old school socialism talk, but when guys like Clive Hamilton and David Williamson bemoan the chattering classes for their materialism, it is hard not to think that they really do hate successful people.
August 4th, 2007 22:17
Clive and David seem fairly successful to me - it’s the materialism they’re criticising, not success.
August 6th, 2007 06:57
[...] Norton’s recent post about Facebook* reminded me of something I noticed in the US: the complete acceptance of internet dating. Last [...]
August 9th, 2007 07:51
In one sense no act is selfless because people always act in such a way that they create an outcome they prefer to the alternative. Otherwise they wouldn’t have acted that way. If I give food to a poor person it’s a fairly likely that I prefer a world where that poor person has some food.
But this gets a bit to semantics. It would be equally legitimate to split voluntary behaviour into “love-based” and “profit-based” and while both may be “selfish” in the unusual sense that Brendan and I (and some economic philosophers) sometimes use… there is obviously a difference in motivation between (1) aiming primarily to help others; and (2) aiming primarily to help yourself.
Whatever you call it — everybody agrees that “love-based voluntary interaction” is good. Libertarians complain (with good reason) that government crowds out “love”. It’s a shame. Most people agree that, in David Friedman’s words “love is not enough”. We then need to supliment that approach either with “profit-based voluntary interactions” (ie the market) or “violence/coercion”. Obviously, libertarains prefer the former.
As for facebook… I think it offers a useful service for quick’n'nasty keeping in contact with semi-friends and catching up with people on your own time & in 2 minutes.
Prediction: At the moment facebook seems pointless the same way that mobile phones, e-mail and SMSs seemed pointless to the middle aged… just before they became obvious.
August 9th, 2007 09:31
John, on your prediction, you’re probably right. But all the technologies you mention refer to one-on-one communication. My middle-agedness lies in that I can’t understand group/collective communication tools like facebook, YouTube and MySpace. Of course I watch videos of wacky Japanese game shows and people being gored in the butt on YouTube, but I can’t say they enhance my life beyond being a momentary diversion.
August 9th, 2007 10:43
“Clive and David seem fairly successful to me - it’s the materialism they’re criticising, not success.”
My problem with David (and probably Clive as well) is that by anyone’s material standards they are very well off (I believe that David has a harbourside home in Sydney as well as properties in other desirable locations). So when they preach about the evils of materialism they are mainly preaching to and about people who are worse off than they are.
August 9th, 2007 11:15
BG - you’re looking at it the wrong way around. Materialism isn’t the things around you (this is from my Buddhist phase) but your desire for or attachment to them - your valuing of them. Clive and David are criticising that desire and attachment.
Rajat - I have a couple of friends who have glamorous lives and instead of emailing all their friends they keep website diaries plus photos of their travels. That means people can keep up with their lives and respond to them individually when and if they want to. A good idea. I’ve never owned a mobile ‘phone and with a bit of luck will get to my grave without ever having received an SMS.
JH - I think that a lot of the time people just act out of habit and impulse without any weighing up of benefits or consequences, and that’s one reason why there are countless, everyday selfless acts.
August 9th, 2007 12:38
Russell - are you seriously suggesting that David Williamson did not desire and is not attached to his harbourside property and the other trappings of success that he enjoys?
When He and Clive sell up all their worldly goods and move to the western suburbs or equivalent, I might take them seriously, but from where I sit it looks to me as if they are morally outraged by working class people aspiring to the kind of lifestyle that can only be properly appreciated by middle class people.
August 9th, 2007 13:19
Off with those tall poppies’ heads ?
I know practically nothing about either of them, so I can’t say how important material possessions are to them. I’d like to think they value, highly, ‘the life of the mind’, and that that pushes owning flashy houses down their list of priorities a bit.
I suppose that what irritates them is that they see the aspirationals, having the opportunity to have so much, seemingly only wanting material things.
August 9th, 2007 13:34
Revealed preference, Russell - that’s what I’m talking about. If David williamson owns a house on Sydney Harbour rather than one in Campbelltown, I’m willing to bet that it’s because he values living on Sydney Harbour fairly highly.
I don’t have any problem with people like Clive and David owning whatever they want and living however they want, it’s their propensity to sneer at other people’s aspirations (and their revealed preferences, come to that) that I have a problem with. I was brought up to judge people by what they do, not what they say.
August 9th, 2007 14:24
Whereas I of course was brought up not to judge people at all …..
As usual, revealed preference means nothing without context. Take the example of my mother - she still lives in the family home in City Beach, but we moved there in 1955, when it was a cheapish, way-out sort of place. Now it’s only for millionaires - should that stop her from commenting on the materialism of her (now) neighbours with their new garish mansions and 6 car garages ?
I will allow you the point about sneering though - a low pleasure we probably all indulge in from time to time.
August 9th, 2007 15:53
“Whereas I of course was brought up not to judge people at all
Well, good for you Russell. Pity Clive and David weren’t brought up that way - fair bit of judging coming from them I think.
August 9th, 2007 17:43
You don’t judge other people but you’re defending the right of David and Clive commenting (and looking down) on people who consume beyond what they consider is necessary? Kettle, black, pot?
Clive Hamilton had a whinge earlier this year about buying a winter coat, it was too bourgeois for his liking. I mean, a winter coat is excessive? The guy is on another planet.
David Williamson has produced some interesting drama for both the stage and the screen (however, never, ever, watch Emerald City, it is one big ego stroke), but that piece on his apoplexy at the behaviour and conversation topics of Australians on cruise ships was pure tripe.
This New Left hatred of working class people making good and wanting a bit of la dolce vita is reminiscent of the old class system that the old union movement did so much to tear down. This time though it is diguised behind environmentalism and anti-capitalism rather than simple snobbery and a hierarchical view of society. But it all ammounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? These new snobs think new wealth is bad because new wealth is created by people who have bad taste and don’t understand or appreciate the finer things in life and think quantity beats quality. It burns me up this snobbish attitude I see coming out of cretins like Clive and David.
August 9th, 2007 18:43
BG, if I am not wrong, I think what you are getting at with David and Clive is their hypocrisy, not their tendency to judge others per se. After all, Clive’s world view - to which he is perfectly entitled - is entirely based on (his) judgment about what is a good life. But hypocrisy is a tricky one because, as we have discussed previously on this blog, there is arguably little wrong with wishing the world were a certain way but acting self-interestedly within the world that is.
August 9th, 2007 19:47
“You don’t judge other people but you’re defending the right of David and Clive commenting (and looking down) on people who consume beyond what they consider is necessary? Kettle, black, pot?”
That’s called the right to free speech, Brendan, and worth defending.
Can’t remember if I read about Clive’s coat, but there’s no harm in reminding ourselves of the difference between necessity and luxury.
I thought David Williamson’s article was amusing, but as I commented at the time a writer like Helen Garner would also have found interest and humanity in her subjects.
I myself enjoy simple snobbery (the U and non-U game) and don’t need to disguise it behind anything. I have unshakeable confidence in the superiority of my own tastes. I’m not rising to Andrew’s bait to defend the 1950s, but it seems to me that sometime during the 70s nouveau riche vulgarity teamed up with aggressive ocker-ism to become our new national style.
I don’t have a hatred for working class people making good, but I do disdain this trivial, ugly, squandering, stupid culture we’ve developed.
August 9th, 2007 20:49
It didn’t seem to me that you were defending their right to say it, but that you were defending what they stand for.
You dislike the choices of others in choosing nationalistic materialism, and it is fair enough that you haven’t chosen that life, but why can’t you just ignore (it’s called toleration) other’s choices and celebrate your own. Why the snobbery?
If you don’t participate in popular culture, and aren’t forced to by anyone, what exactly are you complaining about?
Whinging that more people haven’t made the same choice as you is shallow, and it is such whinging that calls on state funding for the arts, the opera and the ABC because you’re not able to voluntarily convince enough people to like what you like and be willing to pay for it.
Complain as much as you like, but please don’t also expect the hard working slob’s taxes to pay for choices you approve of and then get all snooty when the great unwashed want the state to pay for drag strips and speedways. Both groups should be paying for their own choices.
August 9th, 2007 21:48
“Why the snobbery?” Because, as I wrote, I see people living more trivial, ugly, squandering, and stupid lives. And I want that trend reversed. I want to live amongst people who are informed, discriminating, modest; and striving for more knowledge, more understanding, more creativity … rather than more horsepower, more bling, more excitement.
Could be I’m just getting old, because I did enjoy the popular culture of earlier times. I think we’re in a destructive cycle and that there’s nothing wrong in pointing it out. Unlike you Brendan, I feel, as part of this community, that we’re all in it together - I don’t need to actually participate in taking drugs and binge drinking to be affected by it or have a right to criticise it.
August 9th, 2007 23:16
Go join a circus (I can’t say what I feel without getting pulled by Mr Norton). I feel as much a part of the community as anyone, moreso perhaps than your good self because I don’t look down on my fellow man just because I disagree with his choices. I don’t enjoy most rap or r’n'b or boy bands or big brother or survivor or many elements of popular culture, but I can see the market for it and respect the choices of those who consume it. I don’t get into any existential crisis about civilisation going to the dogs just because Mozart or Miles Davis isn’t played on TripleMMM (or TripleJJJ for that matter), even though I like that music. I stump up the coin and pay for it myself.
How exactly are you affected by binge drinking or drug taking unless you’ve been involved in a traffic accident with a drunk or ha your stereo stolen by a heroin addict. Is it the alcohol that caused those events, or the individual making the decision behind them? Do you have to make illicit drugs illegal to make the property and assault crimes of the addicted illegal? Or is that sort of behaviour already illegal?
Maybe you get enjoyment about feeling superior and depressed about the future of human civilisation. That’s your pessimistic perogative I suppose.
August 10th, 2007 09:28
“there is arguably little wrong with wishing the world were a certain way but acting self-interestedly within the world that is.”
I would agree with you there Rajat and plead guilty myself. That’s why, for example, I am one of the horrible tax-avoiding people who has taken out minimal private health insurance in order to avoid the Medicare levy surcharge, something the AI most definitely disapproves of.
But I still think there is a problem with preachers who exhort people to “do as I say, not as I do”. I’ve never found overt moral superiority a very attractive human quality and I listened to enough sermons when I was growing up to last me a lifetime.
But I will admit I don’t know enough about Clive Hamilton’s personal lifestyle to know whether he is a total hypocrite - perhaps he really is into the ascetic lifestyle. I’m fairly comfortable with assuming that he lives in a pretty nice (presumably tasteful) house in a pretty good suburb, though.
August 10th, 2007 09:31
And Russell, in the end I don’t buy the argument that spending a lot of money on yourself is OK as long as you spend it on tasteful things and high culture but not OK if you are one of those people with more money than taste.
August 10th, 2007 11:46
Brendan, glad to know that you “feel as much a part of the community as anyone”, I had the impression you were a fairly reluctant member of it.
What others do affects me both in the simple sense that I pay taxes to fix up the mess they make (look at hospital emergency wards on any weekend), but also in the ’social capital’ and ‘trust’ way: for example I wouldn’t feel safe in most parts of this city if I were out after dark, alone. Too many drunks.
Another way I’m affected is just the way I feel when I’m out and about: I find the ugliness of most public spaces, and architecture, depressing. I made a rare foray into the city yesterday - in the retail epicentre of Perth, the Hay Street Mall, I found that the mall has been paved with depressingly dark grey pavers, there are dozens of metal planter boxes throughout the Mall, all empty, the big clock at London Court is broken … and there were plenty of people hanging about that looked disturbed, dirty. It doesn’t add up to a pleasant feeling (going ‘into town’ gave one much more of a pick-me-up in the 50s and 60s!).
I don’t regard my own impeccable taste (anything of dubious taste in my house is to be taken as an ironic statement) as a reason to feel superior. A good teacher doesn’t feel superior to his students, but he does want to introduce them to experiences which will change them. Having wider experience will allow them to make more positive choices. I think Williamson is probably decrying the fact that the cashed-up bogans just go on making childish choices because their experiences have been so limited.
BG - I don’t totally agree - I would rather be surrounded by other people’s tasteful stuff, than other people’s tasteless stuff. Wouldn’t you prefer that there was a larger market for good design, craftsmanship and creativity, than for kitsch rubbish?
August 10th, 2007 13:58
Russell - I might prefer people (including myself) to be better than they are in all sorts of ways, but generally this will only happen if they come to the same conclusion themselves. I doubt the capacity of governments to do much to change people, particularly in areas such as cultural tastes and consumption preferences.
Yes, all children should have access to a decent education and maybe governments should do a bit more to improve the quality of education on offer, particularly for kids whose home environment is deprived, but I’m a lot more uncomfortable about government actions that purport to improve affordability and accessibility of ‘culture’ for lower income people by providing subsidies that end up benefiting primarily well-off people.
And, you know, I don’t think that prefering opera to Australian Idol actually makes you a better person. Or that wanting to live in a tasteful Victorian terrace in Fitzroy makes you a better person than wanting to live in a McMansion in Caroline Springs (even though I would much prefer the former to the latter). Can’t you see that a statement such as “cashed-up bogans just go on making childish choices” just reeks with self-righteous snobbery?
August 10th, 2007 14:35
“the devil made me do it” as Flip Wilson used to say. (It IS Friday afteroon)
So how do we get governments to lift their game re their uglification projects? Why do we have philistines running Perth City Council - anyone would look at the Hay Street Mall and think “This looks dreadful”. You should see our infamous convention centre! I think environments have an effect on people, and I expect more of the people who create them. BHP has just announced it will build a tower block in the city - from the illustration in the paper I can tell you, Foster’s gherkin it ain’t.
There’s nothing wrong with people watching anything on TV for entertainment. It’s the amount, and balance with other stuff that matters. We differ in that I do think experiencing the best in our culture is a life-affirming, positive, improving thing to do. I’m not a post-modernist - I don’t rank all cultural experience as equal.
August 10th, 2007 15:44
I don’t think I’m a post-modernist either - but while I know what I like and I’m sure that some entertainment/culture/art is ‘worth’ more than others, I’m not so sure of the superiority of my own tastes that I would be confident to foist them on others. While it may be possible to separate good from bad at some absolute level, I still think that an awful lot of taste is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
As to Perth architecture, I have no experience of that (living in tasteful Melbourne as I do) - but perhaps people get the City Council they vote for? Unfortunately, democracy being what it is, unless the people with your taste are in the majority, you are probably destined to having to put up with the civic tastes of the less refined. Maybe it’s time for you to move to more civilised environs
August 10th, 2007 15:53
or civilised times …. the 1960s!
The Perth City Council area is a tiny CBD area, so we don’t have a vote, other than with our feet.
Never mind about your lack of confidence in your own taste - you’ll become more certain with age.
August 10th, 2007 18:52
Russell, Perth may be no architectural gem, but what are you going to do about it? Force the shareholders of BHP to subsidise your favourite architect? That is what you are talking about, really. You may think of BHP as a massive conglomerate with bucketloads of money to spend on your choices, but it is owned directly or indirectly by individual shareholders who have but up their hard earned to finance the company. If you want to influence the decision making of BHP, buy some shares and convince enough other shareholders to turn Perth into some sort of Antipodean Madrid or London. Or, for the coward, you could whinge and moan to the city council to prevent BHP building anything you don’t approve of, which will probably mean BHP don’t build anything at all. No cash, no conviction.
London may have some fine architecture, but it also has its fair share of monstrosities. The Barbican is one of the ugliest examples of concrete brutalism on the planet, and that was built by the state, inspired by the totalitarian architecture of the Soviet Union. Man, that building is ugly, and it sits right down the road from your Gherkin and St Pauls.
If you are so concerned about the cultural tastes of your fellow man, then you should donate to organisations that are doing something to bring ‘high’ culture to the masses. And I don’t mean lobby your MP to spend some of other people’s taxes on your behalf.
August 10th, 2007 19:07
“Russell, Perth may be no architectural gem, but what are you going to do about it?” I’m going to criticise it Brendan - I say it’s tasteless and soul destroying. I’m going to point to examples of better architecture, and be called an elitist snob for doing so.
I don’t have money to buy BHP shares, so I’ll try to shame the management instead. When they build a dominating building in a city they have a responsibility to the community to make it a good one. That building will contribute to people’s experience - both as a workplace and as a feature of the environment - and it can be a good contribution or a bad one. Which would you prefer?
I’m encouraged that you criticise the Barbican - that’s one way progress is made: distinguishing rubbish from quality.
I’ll stop before I start channeling Prince Charles.
August 10th, 2007 19:24
Wrong, Russell. BHP’s only responsibility is to its shareholders and other companies, people it has made legal obligations to. Only in serving their owner’s best interests does BHP have any legitimacy. If that responsibility coincides with benefits for others, then so be it. The law of unintended consequences works both ways.
City planning is a crock. Best let people build what ever they want, wherever they want and let revealed preference show what is good architecture and which is bad by the process of constant destruction and renewal. No one tells artists what they can and can’t paint, nor where they can paint it. However, the market in art gives clear indication which art is more aesthetically pleasing, and bad art remains unsold and undisplayed. If we applied your ideas to art, an artist would have to first apply for a license to paint and then have what he is painting approved before his given access to a canvas and paint, then have it checked while they are painting that the artist is following the plan he submitted. Would this produce great art?
August 10th, 2007 19:47
Brendan, have you heard the phrases “corporate social responsibility” or “triple bottom line reporting” - I think you’ll even find them in the annual reports of many companies. BHP says that they are successful when “communities in which we operate value our citizenship”. BHP does have obligations other than its legal ones. So do you.
“No one tells artists what they can and can’t paint, nor where they can paint it.” Yes they do. They can’t paint just anywhere or it will be called graffiti, and be an offence. I think your approach to city planning (none) would likely result in an ugly environment.
August 10th, 2007 20:11
Russell, you couldn’t be more wrong on BHP’s responsibilities if you tried. You are confusing marketing with intent. BHP exists solely to pursue the charter of it’s incorporation, which is to pursue the exploration, extraction and processing of minerals for sale. Any activity they engage in has this as its motivation, the company does not exist to build attractive buildings in the CBD, nor to build communities. It coordinates activities of individuals to pursue mining. In doing this, it may happen to do other things which people value, like providing employment, like providing facilities for workers and their families in order to attract and keep good workers, like building attractive office towers to improve prestige and reputation (and increase share value), all done in order to pursue MINING FOR PROFIT.
Don’t be obtuse about confusing graffiti, a violation of property rights issue, with my point about centrally planned art. Do you, or do you not think that regulating art would produce good or bad results for art? It has been tried in authoritarian nations in Europe and Asia, and to a lesser extent in Perth with all those ugly bronze kangaroos all over the place. Art for the people, perhaps?
Sure, unregulated development would see some disasters get built, but, over time, revealed preferences would eliminate mistakes and value successes. Look at the attempts at building a planned city, you get places like Canberra, a giant series of roundabouts with empty National Buldings in the middle of them. But I suppose if it were only you who planned Canberra, it would have been better, hey?
August 10th, 2007 22:28
“over time, revealed preferences would eliminate mistakes and value successes” or produce jerry-built strip developments featuring porn shops and tattoo parlours.
I don’t know anyone in Canberra, but my impression is that most people who live there appreciate it’s advantages. (Can anyone explain the point in living in Australia, if you can’t have a swim in the sea every day?)
“BHP exists solely to pursue the charter of it’s incorporation” - Brendan, you’re very keen on considering everyone as a unique responsible human being. Will you explain how being part of BHP exempts any individual from their moral responsibilities? It doesn’t. And neither does it exempt them from other responsibilities.
Brendan I think you’re even more cynical about people than I am. When I hear that BHP is really trying and trying and trying to accomodate aboriginals into its workforce, even though I know that there would be a public relations advantage in that, I’m inclined to believe that there are people, senior and otherwise in that company, that are doing it out of a genuine concern to do something for those people - whether it adds up to a ‘profit’ for BHP or not. Perhaps they think, as I do, that it’s absolutely legitimate to use BHPs resources to do some good for people. That in fact they had a kind of duty to do it.
It would be nice if friends of BHP’s chairman or CEO would say to them, “Saw a picture of your new building planned for Perth - it’s rubbish” and that that would spur said Chairman to think “yes, it’s true - we can do better than that”.
August 10th, 2007 23:04
Russell, if BHP’s executives where misappropriating shareholders money to pursue their own agenda, charitable or otherwise, it would be considered fraud. If BHP has a programme to train workers of any ethnic background, then BHP are getting their labour in exchange for pay, and if they are making a song and dance about employing aboriginals, then they are getting some good PR, which raise the profile of their company and hopefully increases the value of their shares to the benefit of their stockholders. They would not train anyone unless they expected to get their labour. Everyone benefits.
I don’t really understand what you mean by moral responsibilities. My only moral responsibility is to not do something that would harm other people. I am not responsible for anyone else’s welfare except my own and my family’s. I may well make decisions that benefit others, but that is because I would prefer to see a better outcome. This in no way makes it my responsibility. It also doesn’t make me cynical. A cynic is someone who mistrusts the motives of others. I don’t mistrust the motives of others, in fact I try trust them implicitly unless I have a real reason and evidence to think otherwise. I think good of my neighbour, I believe their actions are driven by mostly rational self-interest and honesty. Any other belief would mean that I would unable to pursue my own ends efficiently in a society that demands trust between complete strangers to cooperatively assist each other. The beauty of it all, is that most people aren’t even aware that they are helping others achieve their own ends, ends that they might even disagree with, but are valued by others, it is done because they at the same time are pursuing their own ends. That is what society is.
I really don’t know what you think of me, Russell, but you seem determined to paint libertarians as being selfish, cold hearted cynics, whereas in reality, all we want is to create an environment in which people can pursue their own goals and objectives without interference, respecting other’s own right to do the same, where all cooperative activities are voluntarily entered into. The net result will be positive for everyone.
August 10th, 2007 23:08
that’s selfish, cold hearted, immoral cynics …… though some may have good taste.
August 11th, 2007 10:24
Brendan, you are a selfish, cold hearted cynic (from troppo:)
August 12th, 2007 01:45
Dave, how is defending hard working poor people either selfish, cynical or cold hearted?
August 12th, 2007 11:02
Maybe not cold hearted, but definitely cynical - not toward working people, but toward “middle class socialists”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think being a cynic is any bad thing (i.e. it’s not a criticism). I do think you have some cynical attitudes to bits of the community though, judging by that quote.