Concrete v. Abstract Thinking

By Dennis Loo (5/10/12)

Editor’s Note: Below is a message that Dennis Loo shares with his students in his Classical Social Theory class. In it he discusses the distinction between concrete knowledge and abstract knowledge. We post it here because understanding what’s going on necessarily involves using abstractions, but the role of abstractions is not widely well understood. In the U.S., theory (the systematic development of abstractions) is widely considered irrelevant and “practical men” are the rule: what matters is whether something works, not why it does.

Yet, in contrast to this widespread belief, everyone uses theory, all of the time. We cannot avoid using theory since theory is the basis for our being able to make sense of our world. Without it we could not operate in the world and we could not survive. Theory provides a structure for meaning: if offers an explanation for what something is, what it is "for," and why it is that way. The so-called practical men of our time actually use theory. The dominant (theoretical) doctrine of our time is neoliberalism, a doctrine that originates from the work of Frederick Hayek. Neoliberalism bases itself, in turn, upon a particular interpretation of functionalist theory.

Different theories offer radically different perspectives on reality and truth. This is as true in the realm of science as it is in the social sciences and humanities and in people's everyday lives. To illustrate this, as Loo states in Globalization and the Demolition of Society:

In sociology there are two major paradigmatic perspectives. The first is called functionalism, sometimes referred to as the “consensus perspective.” It holds that societies are best understood as held together by universal agreement about values among the people and by a division of labor that produces interdependence and therefore social solidarity; inequality is natural, inevitable, functional, and everlasting because people are not equally endowed and because the division of labor requires different levels and kinds of skill; those whose jobs are the most important to the society are more highly rewarded; the public gets the leaders and media that it deserves and wants because the leaders and media function at the pleasure of the public and reflect public sentiment; society’s main and default condition is one of harmony, with the greatest harmony existing when people do their respective parts in the overall division of labor; the preservation of the whole of society is paramount and the whole functions best when everyone knows where they belong.

Sociology’s other major theoretical perspective is known as the “conflict perspective.” Instead of viewing societies as bound by shared values, the conflict perspective holds that society is shaped by groups with different and conflicting interests battling over resources, both material and non-material. This perspective is based on materialism (in the philosophical sense): ideas do not exist separate and apart from material interests and materiality; ideas grow out of and represent material interests and materiality; because values are based on interests, and the interests of groups are themselves in conflict, different groups possess different values; public officials and media mainly reflect the society’s dominant groups rather than the society as a whole; the ideas that serve the dominant groups’ interests are the most widely propagated and promoted ones in the society, but are not the ideas that reflect a society-wide consensus of shared values; the dispossessed and subordinated and those who advance the ideas of the subordinated are generally downplayed, ignored, derided, and/or dismissed; the course of history is shaped by the struggle between different interests and their corresponding ideas; revolutionary changes happen when the subordinated groups and their subordinated ideas overturn those who have been dominant, establishing a new economic and political system based on a different organization of society, especially the economy, and correspondingly different values, ideas, norms, and social relations.

Everyone adopts one of these two perspectives (including variants upon them), whether they know it or not. A consensus person sees the world differently from a conflict person. Both types of people could be watching the famous Rodney King video, for example, and one would see a black man being mercilessly and unnecessarily beaten and another would see the “thin blue line” of the police protecting the citizenry against a large black man, high on PCP, refusing to cooperate with authority.

Functionalism, because it advocates, naturalizes, and therefore justifies inequality, represents the dominant perspective in the US. For the American Dream of great wealth to work as a strong incentive for people to strive and work hard, there must be a wide gap between the rich and the poor. If the gap is not wide then the incentive for striving for wealth would not be strong since a standard of living that was not that much different from others could be enjoyed without having to strive for riches. Thus, those who say that the American Dream allows everyone to be prosperous are misleading people. In fact, poverty is part and parcel of capitalism and of the American Dream in particular. If no poor people existed, they would have to be created as an incentive for those at the lower rungs of society, so that those people would be afraid for their jobs and keep their noses to the grindstone lest they end up like the poor below them. The American Dream, in other words, is rather like a game of musical chairs where some must of necessity and by structural logic be left out in the cold, no matter how hard they might work or how talented they might be.

All societies need to ensure that all or at least most of their population are working and working hard. How they ensure this varies. Hunting and gathering societies demand hard work from their members (for at least part of the day, since hunting and gathering societies actually enjoy a lot of leisure time) as a precondition for being a member of the tribe/group; if you do not work hard then you will be ostracized and ejected. Slavery compelled hard work on pain of whippings and death. Capitalism offers the Hobson’s choice: work or starve. Capitalism differs from feudalism in that in capitalism the vast majority of the population are systematically deprived of the means to survive independently, compelling them to work for those who own and control the means of production, that is, the means to life.

The conflict perspective regards social and economic inequality by classes and other groupings (e.g., race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation) as both very real and not desirable. Those who rule the society consequently do not generally adopt the conflict perspective because the conflict perspective challenges their own position of power and privilege.

Most people in the US have strains of both the functionalist and conflict perspectives intermingled in their views of the world. Only a minority of people are either fully consistent functionalist or conflict people. In response to the Rodney King beating, most Americans were shocked at the police brutality. They were stunned because their native worldview was/is functionalist and the video challenged that view, depicting an event that a functionalist would find hard to believe: police were not acting according to shared values; they were illegally beating a defenseless man. (Pp. 21-23)

***

If you find that you are still struggling in this class or if you are doing significantly worse than you are used to doing, or even if you aren’t struggling in this class, these reflections should help you.

Because theory is abstract, it is more difficult for most people. Why?

Abstractions are harder to grasp than concrete, particular cases. Abstractions are a higher order of thinking than concrete thinking.

Another way of getting at this is to speak of the general and the particular, with the general = abstractions and the particular = the concrete.

The general/abstract is built on the basis of summing up many, many particular instances over the course of history. You get to the general by determining what multiple instances of specific instances all have in common. That is the first stage above concrete thinking.

You know the expression, “The exception proves the rule”? This dictum shows that a rule exists because the exceptions are just that, exceptions from the general cases and few in number compared to the rule in which the vast majority are similar to each other. That is why we can call it a rule: a rule is a term to refer to situations where we see a certain outcome and pattern the vast majority of the time.

The next step above summation of many particular instances is that a correct and useful abstraction represents the essence of what all of those particular instances have in common. An abstraction is thus not only a statement about the general trend, but also a statement about what is going on in the process that causes this general result to occur.

If a child sticks his hands on a hot stove and burns himself from the heat, he learns that a hot stove is not a good thing to touch. Does he yet know why? No. But his parent says: “Hot” and the child learns that “hot” means that it hurts and feels a certain way. He learns to associate “hot” with the stove when it’s red. But does he understand the nature of heat as a form of energy? No. To learn that he has to become more developed cognitively and he will eventually learn that heat is a form of activated molecules, caused by putting more energy into the activity of the molecules. He learns that if you pull energy out of the molecules’ activity then it cools down. Etc.

Energy is a concept, an abstraction. Hot is a concrete experience. Energy can only be understood as an abstraction and the Laws of Thermodynamics are based upon this abstraction. Science had to develop to a certain point before it could identify and develop the abstraction known as energy. What you’re learning in this class about theory is abstractions and different and competing theories that offer different explanations for why things are the way they are.

Theory is designed to not only predict but to explain why this outcome will occur. Those are two other reasons why abstract thinking reflects a higher order of thinking than concrete thinking.

For instance, functionalist theory says that the reason why all human cultures prohibit murder and treat it as a great offense is because the people of all of these cultures share the same view that murder is a profoundly anti-social act. This is based upon the view that social solidarity is key to any social grouping.

The concept here of “social solidarity” is an abstraction. You can’t go out into the world and find it but what you will find are all kinds of examples of social solidarity in action. When someone pats you on the back or shakes your hand, they don’t also then literally speak the words, “I’m showing you that I feel social solidarity with you.” But the actions and words that they do use (such as “Hello! How are you?”) are examples of what social scientists call social solidarity.

Understanding the underlying dynamics of what is going on is important because if you don’t understand things on this level, then you will not know how to respond appropriately when the concrete conditions that you are familiar with change, either by a little or by a lot. If you don’t understand the underlying principles that are at work in a process, then you won’t be able to predict what’s going to happen next and you won’t know how to deal with the new situation.

As a really strange but revealing example of this I once had two students tell me that they got the wrong answer to a test question, the correct answer to which was 20%. I said, “Didn’t I say in lecture that 1 out of 5 people were so and so?” “Yes,” they said. I then said, “What’s 1 out of 5 as a percentage?” “20%,” they said. “Then why didn’t you choose the answer 20%?” “Because you didn’t say it on the test the way you said it in lecture, as 1 out of 5.”

To give you another example, if someone explains to you how to cook a dish and tells you to do this, this, this and this in a particular order, but they don’t teach you the basic principles of how to cook, then if something happens and you’re missing a particular ingredient, you’re going to be stymied because you don’t know what to do. If you’ve been told to add sugar and you find that you’re out of sugar, you’ll not know that honey could perhaps be used instead. If you don’t know what each ingredient does and how it tastes, you’ll not know how to modify the process and/or ingredients to still successfully finish making the dish.

To learn theory, you cannot leave it at the level of understanding a concrete instance of it. When I give you concrete examples to illustrate a theory, the examples I use are meant to help you see the underlying principles but are not the same thing as the principles. If you could understand the entirety of a principle through a specific concrete example alone, then that would mean that the principle wouldn’t be necessary and that all there is to know would be exhausted by that one particular concrete example alone. The principle of some process is a distillation of the essence of what all similar processes have in common and what is the essence of what’s going on under the surface.

The reason that many of you are having some trouble with theory is because not only is theory hard to grasp, but because you have been trained in school by teaching practices that have become unfortunately all too common: teaching people by memorization, fragmenting the material into parts without integrating them into a whole, neglecting to train students in thinking holistically, inferentially, and giving people direct answers to simple direct questions and thus undermining students’ ability to learn how to think through problems and develop critical thinking skills. If you’re used to getting simple direct questions and answer choices, then you’ve not been trained in learning the different dimensions of any process and any thing. Reality isn’t one-dimensional; it is multi-dimensional. Reality isn’t static; it is dynamic.

When you study (this material or any other), ask yourself “what are the different aspects that I have learned/read/heard about a particular person or concept or theory?” There are multiple dimensions or facets to everything and every process. If you cannot answer this question by reciting more than one thing, or if you find yourself answering the question by resorting exclusively to a concrete example of it, then you need to study the matter more. Ask yourself, “What difference does it make to think about it through the lens of this particular theory?” “How does that differ from the perspective of another theory?” “What premises are this theory and that theory based upon?”

As I lay out in the last sheet of the syllabus, there are different levels of cognition. It begins at the level of recognition and recall. This is where all too much of even higher education has devolved to. If all you’re being tested on is if you can remember hearing or reading some word or phrase or some definition that you then recite back without really understanding, then you aren’t learning how to think and you’re not being trained at a college level (or even at the high school level). What you need to get to in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels is to the level of analysis, synthesis and evaluation – the highest stages. If you’re not studying this material at that level, then you’re going to do poorly on the tests and in the papers. This is what this class is about and what a college level education is supposed to be about. Part of this challenge to get a college level education also requires expanding your vocabulary. If you find that you are seeing or hearing words that you don’t understand, this means that you need to build a bigger vocabulary.

Different words exist for the same reason why different colors exist in a multiple array of intensities, shades, and tones. If you tried to paint an accurate picture of something but only had access to the primary colors of Red, Yellow and Blue, then you could not carry out this task in the way that someone who has access to 50 different colors and shades and tones and intensities could. This is likewise true of words. No two words mean exactly the same thing. That is why we have so many words in the dictionary. You want to learn a lot more words and as you do so, your ability to understand what you’re reading will be greatly enhanced and your ability to be more sophisticated and nuanced in your writing and speaking will also be greatly enhanced. Otherwise it would be like trying to fix a car but only having a hammer, screwdriver, and non-adjustable wrench. Auto mechanics have a large array of tools to do what they do. Anyone seeking to understand society and act effectively in society also needs access to and command over a wide array of intellectual tools, including a large vocabulary.

War Criminals to Meet in Chicago, But Somehow Protest Will be the Danger?

By Debra Sweet, posted at her blog at World Can't Wait.

Editor's Note: Debra Sweet is the 2012 recipient of the American Humanist Association's Humanist Heroine Award. See press release below. 

For immediate release
May 7, 2012
Contact: Lina Thorne 718 825 9119
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. " data-mce-href="mailto: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. "> This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Debra Sweet, World Can’t Wait Director, will receive the 2012 American Humanist Association’s (AHA) Humanist Heroine Award. The award will be presented at the AHA national conference on June 9 in New Orleans and is a joint presentation of the AHA and its Feminist Caucus. Since 1982, this award is given annually to women who promote and advance the ideals of human rights and gender justice using a non-theological approach. Past awardees have included Judy Norsigian, Robin Morgan, Julia Sweeney and Amy Goodman.

Debra Sweet helped establish and continues to lead World Can’t Wait in its mission to “stop the crimes of our government,” including unjust military occupations, covert drone wars, torture and indefinite detention as well as reversing the fascist direction of U.S. society.  She has worked with abortion providers for thirty years, organizing community support and helping them withstand anti-abortion violence.  Since the age of 19, when she confronted Richard Nixon during a face-to-face meeting and told him to stop the war in Vietnam, Debra has been a leader in the opposition to U.S. wars and military occupations.

Sweet will be leading World Can’t Wait’s efforts in protesting  NATO’s meeting in Chicago, May 20-21, where  the U.S. and its military allies will discuss the continuation of US/NATO presence in Afghanistan until 2024.

Annie Laurie Geller, Co-President, Freedom from Religion Foundation, nominated Debra for this award. “Debra Sweet, more than any person I know, embodies heroism: for women, for peace, for the progression of humanity,” she says. “She inspired me, her classmates, the city of Madison, Wisconsin and the entire nation when, as a student, she met President Richard Nixon. Her courage to openly express the views of most Americans toward Nixon and the war was an electrifying moment that touched many and opened our eyes to personal activism. She has gone on to dedicate her life to peace and progressive causes, including feminist issues.”  

On Friday, May 4, Sweet was convicted with 19 others of disorderly conduct for a 2011 protest against the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy.  “700,000 people were stopped, questioned and frisked by the NYPD last year, the great majority of them Black and Latino, in violation of their constitutional rights and their humanity,” said Sweet. Fellow defendants in the non-violent civil resistance were Dr. Cornel West of Princeton University; Vietnam war resister and revolutionary leader Carl Dix; clergy, students and residents of the Harlem community who had been victimized by the policy.  Dr. West called Sweet “a long-distance freedom fighter whom I deeply respect and love.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION about The American Humanist Association <http://www.americanhumanist.org/> , contact: Brian Magee, (202) 238-9088 extension 105, Mobile: (202) 681-2425.   FOR MORE INFORMATION about Freedom from Religion Foundation <http://ffrf.org/about/> , contact: Annie Laurie Gaylor (608) 256-8900.

***

Update May 8: “On Tuesday, city officials notified National Nurses United that they were ordering nurses to accept new, less visible, locations for the protest, under threat of cancelling a long approved permit for the public event – even though the G-8 leaders will now be 700 miles away from Chicago on that date in the backwoods of Camp David, Md.”  At a press conference Wednesday, “NNU will outline a legal challenge to the city’s demand and discuss other plans responding to the city’s move” (from a press release from National Nurses United regarding the suppression of their planned May 18 protest in Chicago against the NATO Summit).

The NATO International Security Force, which we all know is actually led by the U.S. military, killed a woman and her 5 children in an airstrike in southwestern Afghanistan Sunday, and then yesterday expressed “regret” for what they call their “mistake.”

Military tribunals, the crowning achievement of a US system of indefinite detention and torture aided by and including NATO member countries, and which defense attorneys assert are rigged by the U.S. to assure the execution of 5 men in Guantánamo, have begun, in the process of continuing the unending U.S. war on terror.

U.S. drone strikes, halted briefly because of protest from the government of Pakistan (presumably a sovereign country) began again last week, killing 4 people in a school.  Of course these victims were called insurgents; everyone killed by U.S. drones is a militant, by definition.  NATO is now a major purchaser of U.S. drones, and has a vast role in aiding the covert U.S. strikes.

The most heavily armed empire in world history occupies and has destroyed whole countries, has a system of indefinite detention and torture in place, and is expanding secret military operations across the region.

But according to this empire, the biggest danger to peace is some hundreds or thousands of people protesting the Chicago meeting of the NATO military alliance next week?  According to the purveyors of war crimes, the people decrying the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan are the ones to fear and lock up, while the war-makers and torturers are given even more power to war critics into criminals?

Public opinion is being prepared for this criminalization. The Chicago press has featured reports on plans to evacuate Chicago because of “unrest;” on the deployment of National Guard troops to quell protests; on plans to reopen a closed prison in Joliet to house arrested protesters; on heavily armed federal teams sweeping through the central city; on closing down the public transport system in the city; and more.

Despite the measures which Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s former White House enforcer, wanted in place against protest, a well-publicized battle was successful in getting a permit for the march on Sunday May 20 at Grant Park.  With the removal of a long-held permit to march on Friday May 18 by National Nurses United, the City is trying to force protest further away from city center, supposedly because rocker Tom Morello will be performing at their rally.

No matter how they parse the words of the First Amendment, what the federal authorities (who are the ones running the show in Chicago) are doing is criminalizing protest in advance.  As they did at the Republican Convention in St. Paul in 2008; at the G-20 in Pittsburgh in 2009; in response to the Occupy movement, they are putting measures in place that will sweep up people who are assembling and speaking based on the content of our protest message.  The message to the general public is that protest should be feared, not a system that perpetrates war crimes and mass denial of civil liberties.

We state clearly and publicly, in advance: It’s right to protest the crimes being carried out in our name, in public space, near the NATO meeting.  We protesters are not the endangering the people; the danger to humanity is a system which uses police-state measures to back up war crimes. The following measures are in place, or have been proposed:

Last fall, hundreds of Occupy protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge

* Sending arrested protesters to an old prison in Joliet. 

The idea was then ditched, as the place is falling apart (To Joliet jail for NATO offenders?  Sun-Times, Apr 28, 2012).

* The National Guard is deployed to Chicago for NATO Summit:

“Another contingent of guard troops will conduct a large-scale domestic response drill outside Cook County during the summit weekend, ready to provide support in the event of any problems in Chicago, said Maj. Troy Scott, deputy director of domestic operations for the Illinois National Guard.”

Video of military helicopters flying over the Loop.

* Milwaukee Red Cross to Prep for Chicago Evacuation During NATO Summit:

“CBS News has obtained a copy of a Red Cross e-mail sent to volunteers in the Milwaukee area. It said the NATO summit “may create unrest or another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.”

According to a chapter spokesperson, the evacuation plan is not theirs alone. “Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service,” she said (accompanied by picture of demonstrators amidst flames, who knows where…).

* Vague Speculation about “Unrest” Concerns about NATO Summit Violence Leave Chicago Guessing CBS News reported on April 29:

“There also are reports that a heavily armed security team will start making a very public appearance around federal buildings in the Loop this week. Officials with the Chicago NATO host committee were completely in the dark. They had no reports of any such plans. A source told CBS 2 that security forces in full battle gear would not be seen this week.”

* Chicago airspace to be closed down:

“The FAA says private planes may be shot down if they fly within ten nautical miles of downtown Chicago during the summit. The only planes allowed will be commercial passenger and cargo carriers, and police and military aircraft.”

* Surgical strikes against anyone in protests who “crosses the line” beyond First Amendment activity… as defined by the Secret Service?

“Police will embrace “First Amendment activity,” she told the building managers, and will surgically deal with those who cross the line into vandalism. She was asked how many demonstrators could arrive in Chicago who aren’t now part of a permitted group.

“If I had that crystal ball, I’d be solid,” she said.

Many building managers said that overall they were relatively satisfied with the level of information they are getting and are willing to trust the police and federal authorities to keep things under control.

“I understand they haven’t got everything figured out yet,” said Wes Stoginski, assistant engineer at a building on 13th Street near the Illinois Central rail line. But Stoginski also said he knows where the variables are.

“You can’t legislate against lunatics,” he said.”

(This is the only somewhat oblique reference I could find to the CPD extraction technique of arresting the people they see as leaders, which they did at the mass March 20, 2003 arrests. The civil suit by NLG based on those arrests was just settled for $6.2 million to demonstrators. In the pre-trial discovery, that technique was documented.)

* Federal Patrols Set for Loop:

“In a memo titled Operation Red Zone, the protective service said the increased security will be extended throughout the South Loop area often referred to as the federal complex. It includes the Kluczynski Federal Building, the U.S. Dirksen Courthouse and the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Several buildings just east on State Street are also in the so-called red zone.

“The memo notes there have been no specific or credible threats at federal facilities ‘related to terrorism by international terrorist organizations’ but that the area around the complex will be ‘directly and indirectly’ affected by protests in the days before and after the summit.”

http://debra.worldcantwait.net/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png)

Rupert Murdoch and the Phone-Hacking Scandal: Unfit to Lead? Willful Blindness?

By Dennis Loo (5/2/12)

On Tuesday, April 30, 2012, the House of Commons’ Culture, Sports and Media Committee issued its report “News International and Phone-hacking”: “We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”

They describe Murdoch as having “exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications.”

Willful blindness means that someone in charge has failed to investigate, when they should have, what their subordinates have been doing, and they are still therefore legally responsible for what has been done, despite not knowing what was being done in their name. While these findings appear to be – and in some respects are – a damning indictment of someone who has been, and is, one of the most powerful people in the world, and until now nearly untouchable, “willful blindness” serves as a poor excuse for holding Murdoch responsible for lying to Parliament about what he knew and when he knew it. Murdoch knew. His son knew. All of his lieutenants knew. And they knew it from the start. Rupert and his son James, when they testified before Parliament, were obviously lying.

What NewsCorp was caught doing is analogous to what Nixon was caught doing in the Watergate Scandal that ended up forcing Nixon from office. Nixon and his henchmen were spying upon the Democratic Party (and the anti-war movement, most especially Daniel Ellsberg). But it wasn’t Nixon’s spying on the anti-war movement that brought his presidency down. It was Nixon’s spying on the “legitimate opposition” of the Democratic Party that sealed his doom. Similarly, this scandal in Britain has been fueled not as much by NewsCorp’s horrid spying on common people (although that has been a factor), it’s been his company’s daring to tap the phones of the rich and famous, including the Royal Family.

What Murdoch, his son, and his various other lieutenants have been doing, and are now in deep trouble for, is merely the logical extension of what tabloid journalism is all about, which Murdoch has turned into one of the most powerful and most influential corporate empires in the world and in history: scandal and unprincipled, unethical, gutter “journalism.”

As one of the commenters at The New York Times on their May 1^st article about this states, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. The collusion, corruption, influence peddling and cozy relationship between Murdoch and his companies with the PM and others in power in Britain and elsewhere, including most notably of course, the U.S. and Australia, their ability to make or break political careers, parties and election results, their ideological role as right-wing extremists posturing as “populists,” are all in play here.

The monstrous way that power is exercised by those in authority, whether they’re in public office or part of the media world, are tantalizingly present if this scandal is allowed to continue. The hemorrhaging is only in its early stages. Removing the Murdoch’s from power in their companies would only substitute two fiends but not alter the culture of the companies that they founded and lead or the larger landscape of neoliberal policies.

For the full story to come out will require that the populace insist that the unraveling of the various threads be completed to their end and that they participate along with other journalistic sleuths in making that happen. The House of Commons’ report references several sealed documents that have yet to be revealed.

As I have more time to read the report I will likely post more about this.