Like Richard Rorty, I’m not convinced that logic and argument are finally persuasive. Rationality is like the foundation and framing of a house. There are as many different rationalities as there are ideological houses–even if personal ideologies in some neighborhoods all look the same. The measure of a good rationality is whether or not it works at holding the house together. As long as it does, you can move on to other considerations: aesthetics, utility, location, price, etc.
And for most folks, those are the criteria that count, for better or worse. Most folks expect to do some maintenance and repairs along the way, as the house settles and the north wind blows. Anyone expecting a perfect or self-maintatining house is in for a disappointment, and even the best laid foundations can crack.
Persuasion, then, is about getting people to move from one ideological house to another, or at least getting them to incorporate features of your ideological house into their own. What will seal the deal is better location, better affordability, better heating and cooling, easier maintenance, and better aesthetics. The logical coherence of an argument may be the best ever built, but if the ideology built on top of it is ugly and next to a crack house, no one will buy it. Some people will buy a new ideology for the bells and whistles even if it has structural problems (assuming they even care to ask). Others buy older, weather-worn ideologies with structural problems because of affordability and the challenge of a fixer-upper. Still others demand only the newest and best.
Choosing an ideology is an individual decision, but it always also a social decision. You will have neighbors, and odds are that you’ll be sharing your home with others, your co-residents and guests. Innovations in your ideology will spread to your friends and neighbors if they judge them worthwhile, and vice versa. The value of your ideology depends in part on how well your neighbors keep up their own ideologies, and good relations are a more likely road to success than small claims court. Going to war with your neighbor puts your own house at risk and may render it unlivable. No one wants a house where someone was murdered; they don’t even care to visit. The neighbor who is quiet and keeps to himself is not always a blessing.
Personally, I’m a renter. The lease runs to November anyhow, and living in my ideological apartment allows me to entertain the fantasy that I’m more mobile than those tied down with a mortgage. I have to watch how many holes I put in the wall, but I also don’t have to spill any sweat when the garbage disposal breaks down. I’m more likely to see my neighbors on a day to day basis but less likely to develop long term relations with them. Where I live, people my age are more likely to rent. Where my parents live, people my age are more likely to buy.
Those who imagine their choice of ideological home to be completely under their control are fooling themselves, as a job loss, death of a loved one, or natural disaster will prove. Those growing up in ideological homes with a toilet will not easily switch to a bidet, but they will switch if forced by circumstances. A person who had to replace a flat roof will think twice before buying a flat roof house again. Your neighbor living in the ideology in the flood plain may have good reason to move but be unable to sell. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a responsibility to help them move. Or at least lend them the spare bedroom until the flood waters subside.
There are no autonomous individuals, only neighbors more or less far away.
(Thanks to Mark Anderson at American Sentimentalist for seeding this article.)
My apologies to subscribers who got a double email (with a weird message at the bottom of the second). I guess that’s what happens when you try to update two blogs at the same time.
chutney:
Excellent piece, well written and structured after my own heart – with analogy galore.
A quick idea, though – I would be a little less willing to ascribe situational flexibility to ideological foundations than you suggest. The means in which to analyze and understand the notions of “ideology” are many, and line the entire arc of how ideologies are in fact created. For example, the notions of class and race often and regularly transcend external shocks, both good and bad, as do the insertion of religious tenents into the equation. But while the creation of a “political ideology” can be viewed as situational, particularly in a culture in which the ideas of diversity and mobility are celebrated if not necessarily institutionally supported, I would argue that the core aspects of a personally-chosen ideology can – and should – not be flexible, but, in fact, should be considered somewhat inflexible. If my ideology is that handgun distribution is innapropriate for a free society, for example (or the reverse), aging, moving up (or down) a class, or experiencing personal tragedy should not change that notion if it was ever truly held – otherwise, it was never an ideology in the first pace, but simply a temporary, situational value I might have ascribed to in an effort to justify a place in my own personal history (which, I would argue, in an unrelated moment, is the core problem with political discourse in America today).
So, in short, I think “ideology” is, once embraced, more personally universal and less transitory than your piece might suggest, (because a number of other examples could be identified), even though you make an extremely important and valid point over the social development aspect of the phenomenon.
Good work.
Mark
Because of my work with developmental theory, I can’t agree that personal ideology is mostly stable. I would agree, though, that personal ideology within any particular developmental stage can be quite stable, no matter how many crises are experienced. But more often than not, a transition into a more developed stage is triggered by just such a crisis (or a handful of them), even though many crises don’t have this effect.
The stabilty you describe is particularly characteristic of the individuative-reflective stage, which can appear as early as late adolescence. The individuative-reflective stage revolves around the individual sorting out their own personal ideology for their own purposes. The synthetic-conventional stage–which appears first in early adolescence and revolves around choosing and conforming to a peer group–can also be very stable, so long as the peer group is stable.
I agree with your points about the extra-individual stability of contructs like race and class. To keep with my analogy, perhaps these are the public infrastructure around which any ideology is built and upon which it depends. You can still build off the grid, but who’d want to, even if the trash pick-up is unreliable?
(An important assessment instrument for assessing your own developmental stage will be going public in a couple weeks or so. I took the beta last week and found it quite revealing.)
need ta put da body in dere somewheres
iddy iddy iddy
wheres the lumber now?
Hmmm… Perhaps the body is the faculty of choice? Or perhaps the body is that part of us seeking refuge in ideology?
Lumber, eh? Now we’re getting into who owns the means of production–of ideology. Don’t know what to think about that one…
faculty?
i like the word faculty
but i am a bit originary, i afraid, and a bit choosey–>
body is the metaphor of choice,
(and to think that friends say i live in my head!!)
who owns the body owns the style of production,
and that means you bubba!
Chutney
I am sympathetic to your embrace of Rorty’s argument—-it is a classical claim of the rhetorical tradition that Rorty has shifted from and practices. To be persuasive an argument must appeal to the emotions , hence we need ornament. to shift our emotions. Rhetoric is the very stuff of politics.
However I am not sure that irhetoric in political life is concerned to shift me from one ideological house to anaother. It is to persuade me to adopt one course of action as opposed to another—-to take the path of public funding of health as distinct from private health insurance.
As for your ideological house its more an historical overlay of different styleseg. the neocons are both conservatives and liberals. It is quite common to be a hard-edged market liberal and a moral/culturall/political conservative.
To me that is deeply contradictory since the market keeps on undermining tradition but those who live in this house (eg. The Howard Government & the Bush Administration) are quite comfortable.
However I am not sure that irhetoric in political life is concerned to shift me from one ideological house to anaother.
Perhaps I didn’t lay enough emphasis on “the vision thing.” For something to be truly persuasive, it needs to carry itself within a broader vision that is more “filling” than the alternative. Absent that, I completely agree with you.
Niccceee pagee