Value Competition

One way to learn from the Gita

[riding on the bus to visit my parents...feel like a brief break from working on the Society for Business Ethics matrix project paper due 3/15 that the last post is about...feeling a certain enthusiastic spirit at the moment that doesn't work too well for that basically cool-spirited paper..so, here goes...]

I am a non-Hindu who is a loyal Unitarian-Universalist.  At the same time, I have something of a missionary's enthusiasm for the Bhagavad Gita.  It seems to me to be a full peer of the Garden of Eden story and the Crucifixion and Resurrection story in its power, and the vastly lesser knowledge of it by people in my country seems to me something that should change.

Perhaps the story is best appreciated by people like me if it is told not only in its original version but also in a way that suggests how it can be received by someone like me...the Gita's story of Arjuna's unwillingness to fight and Krishna's remonstrances to him, potent as it is, is embedded in a cultural pattern that is profoundly distant from that of the modern West...Arjuna's reluctance to fight is articulated not in terms of a universal objection to killing, or of an overarching "we are all equal" ethics, but rather of a specific objection to killing kin.  No matter how bad the foes are--and Arjuna has no doubt, at least none that he expresses, about the superiority of his Pandava side over the greedy opposing side commanded by Dhritirashtra--they are still kin, and killing them will disorder the laws of caste.   Similarly, Krishna's admonitions to Arjuna are couched not in the universalist lexicon of a moral duty that applies to all, but rather in terms of a particular duty that lies upon Arjuna as a member of the warrior caste, the commander of his army, and a warrior of singular power--"The Scorcher of Foes".

So how to cast Arjuna's deep self-doubt and Krishna's advice to him--Fight, for the Self, as opposed to the body that is born to die, is imperishable; Fight, for there is in truth neither a Slayer nor a Slain--in a contemporary cultural context?  

Here is one way that resonates for me...I believe that others can recast the Gita in their own way to make it live for them...

The reluctant warrior-politician-businessperson-spouse, etc: "I do not want to fight.  I do not trust myself, for I see inside myself hatred and anger that makes me judge myself and makes me doubt that I am any better than the side I fight.  I do not want to fight.  I am too afraid of what may happen if the other side prevails and the burden of failure lies upon me, for it would be a terrible thing if the other side were to win and I were to be the bringer of that catastrophe.  I do not want to fight.  It is wrong to fight.  I should walk in the ways of peace in all the days of my life."

The guide: "Fight. The causes you cherish and the causes the other cherishes are alike impermanent and corporeal, just as you and the other are.  They are the causes of a day or a millennium, born to die.  What lives forever is the idea of you and the other and the idea of your cause and the cause of the other locked together eternally in harmonious struggle.  Fight, for that idea is imperishable.  The husk of your body and your cause is only that.  Fight, for there is neither a slayer nor a slain."

Carrying Forward the Practical Utopianism of the Scottish Enlightenment

Let us assume that Smith and Hume basically got the path for social progress right in the late 18th century: The way forward is to blend practicality and aspiration in a way that is conducive to the expansion of opportunities and accomplishments for and by a widening circle of people.

What follows for us?  Three major things, it seems to me.  First, in the area of economic productivity, we need to figure out ways for many more people to enjoy the ongoing sense and reality of creativity and innovation that a relatively small proportion of people now do.  We don't want as large a majority of our population a hundred years from now to be, say, highly paid but perhaps disillusioned cogs in big corporations, government offices, or professional firms who do not themselves engage in entrepreneurial economic activity.  Not everyone could or should be an economic entrepreneur, and we should be deeply grateful for the rise of organizations that have freed people in wealthy nations from grinding micro-entrepreneurship--and yet, a better future will be one in which a much larger proportion of people than now are economic entrepreneurs in at least a part of their lives. 

Second, in the area of cultural productivity defined by often hard to monetize accomplishments in the arts and sciences, we similarly want to have a substantially larger proportion of people who are cultural entrepreneurs.  Not everyone could or should be a cultural entrepreneur painting pictures, writing songs, conducting scientific experiments, and so on--and yet, a better future will have such activities being a part of the lives of a much larger proportion of adults than is now the case. 

Third, in the area of social productivity defined by morally infused activity with other people and individually, we could similarly use a broadening of entrepreneurial spirit and a resultant expansion of social accomplishments.  Again, we will not all be social entrepreneurs--but it would be very nice indeed if a significantly higher proportion of us took on the role for part of our lives.

Let's assume (a big assumption, to be sure) that that 21st century reformulation of Smith and Hume in terms of expanded economic, cultural, and social entrepreneurship is a good form of practical utopianism.   That leads to two matched question: What are the obstacles to getting there?   And how can we overcome those obstacles?  

It seems to me there are two (no doubt more) plausible responses...I'll try to lay them out in the next two posts...

 

 

 

 

 

You are Elvis: Who Is Chuck Berry (and Who is Pat Boone)?

Rereading "Roll Over Beethoven," Duncan Kennedy and Peter Gabel's old article, for the AOM paper I'm rushing to meet the submission deadline on made me think about interdisciplinary work in which the author is translating one genre of scholarship into another in a creative, inspiring fashion, or at least so the author must believe--i.e., the author is Elvis as opposed to Pat Boone.  For the critical legal studies project of translating Continental philosophy into American legal scholarship in which Kennedy was the central figure and Gabel was a reasonably significant one, Kennedy was Elvis and Gabel a reasonably important white 1950s rocker--Jerry Lee Lewis, to be generous to Gabel.  Old Left American law professors who had tried with mediocre results to import Marx or another part of the world of Continental philosophy were Pat Boone, and figures like Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Sartre were Chuck Berry.

How about my own matrix project of translating game theory into something of interest for humanists? Though I can think of some other possibilities, my own 1990s work can serve as Pat Boone.  Chuck Berry is John Nash.

Art Critics as a Model for Business Columnists and Business Academics

Those of us who express opinions on business matters as journalists or as professors in business schools are subject to criticism from two sides.  From one side, there is concern that our work can support populist misunderstanding and dislike of business and markets.  From another side, there is concern that our work amounts to an apologetic for business and business interests, whether or not those interests harmonize with those of society.

As a professor at Rutgers Business School who teaches business ethics and business law in a department that deals with supply chain management--including outsourcing and off-shoring decisions--and marketing, I have grappled over the years with the criticism from both sides.  The best way to respond to it, I've come to believe, is to see what I do when I express opinions on business matters as similar to what critics do in reviewing painting, books, theater, dance, and other art forms.

An art critic needs a willingness to tell it like it is in identifying work that in the critic's judgment is not good.  If Times arts section readers knew that Michiko Kakutani were an uncritical cheerleader who praised every book she reviewed--instead of the occasionally acerbic reviewer that she actually is--she would be a poor critic indeed.

So, too, we in business schools and the business media need to be able to criticize given instances of business conduct that we regard as foolish, immoral, or otherwise inadvisable.  if we do not do that, and only express support for business across the board, we are doing our jobs poorly, and are subject to valid criticism as mere cheerleaders for business and its interests.

Now, the other side of the coin.  Along with a willingness to stand up for standards, an art critic needs to have a deep appreciation of the form he or she is reviewing.  A reviewer of contemporary painting who expressed the view that modern art from the time of Picasso and Cubism in the early twentieth century to the present day has been a disaster would not be an effective critic for the Times or any other paper.  To be useful to gallery-goers, art buyers, and others, the critic should not be estranged from the art form he or she is criticizing.

The same applies to those of us who express opinions on business as journalists and academics.  For our opinions to matter to businesspeople, we need to have a fundamental appreciation of business and markets, much as we may strongly oppose a given instance of business conduct or practice.  If that makes us apologists, so be it. 

I strongly believe that there is a role in society for criticism from the outside that does not register in the art world or in the business world.  The classicist art critic who contends that modern art has been an aesthetic debacle and the Thoreauvian social critic of business and markets are both figures who should be present in the broader culture.

At the same time, the role of the outsider critic is not mine as a business school professor, nor in my judgment should it be.  As a professor of business law and business ethics who discusses business scandals and failures as well as business successes in my classes and with journalists, I am equivalent to a reviewer for the daily arts section rather than to a sweeping social critic.  Whatever I may do on my own time, I do my job best by being like Michiko Kakutani, not by aspiring to the mantle of Henry David Thoreau. 

An alternative to left-right ideology in everyday life

Competing political ideologies that are antagonistic to one another can work well, or well enough, in settings in which there is no effective exit option.  Legislatures and courts epitomize such settings.  On the other hand, a competition between such antagonistic ideologies will not work well in firms, families, comunity groups, and other settings in which entry and exit tend to be flexible and close day-to-day cooperation between colleagues, family members, and group members is crucial. 

Is there a substitute for conventional political ideologies that would have some of the benefits that these ideologies bring--such as keeping people on their toes and motivating them to care about the preferences of "swing voters" or more generally uncommitted people--without the deep flaws that such ideologies have in non-government, non-compulsory settings?  One idea: Men and women, and a whole complex of traits, principles, and characteristics culturally associated with maleness and femaleness, are interdependent and simultaneously cooperative and competitive.  "Maleness" and "femaleness" in the form of constructed sides in everyday life settings that are not limited to people of any one gender or position present a possible way to benefit from the energizing effect of competing values that also cooperate better than, say, liberalism and conservatism.  Value competition is useful--but it's also necessary to avoid having people in intimate settings be torn apart from one another by the divisive features of conventional ideological competition.

An Historical Riddle

One might have expected party democracy to first arise and flourish in a culture whose basic worldview tolerates and even celebrates opposing positions, rather than in a culture whose basic worldview centers on an opposition between good and evil.  By that light, China with its Taoist, yin-yang, relatively nontheistic worldview should have been a more hospitable home for democracy than cultures with monotheistic, good versus evil worldviews.  An enlightened Chinese emperor could have contemplated a system with a Yin Party versus a Yang Party with more equanimity than an enlightened Jewish, Christian, or Muslim leader could have contemplated a system with a Good Party versus an Evil Party.   

As we know, history worked out differently.  One possible lesson: To get political value competition off the ground, what is needed is not abstract, dispassionate tolerance for both sides but fierce, morally-charged energy that motivates partisans to act in a way they would not otherwise.  The logic of successful democracy is Taoist--but the motor that sets partisans into action is anti-Taoist.