Communities construct a sense of purpose

Hi everyone,

This is the weekly free issue of “Overthinking Everything” which goes out every Wednesday. There is also a paid issue every Sunday. This Sunday I wrote Parts of you haven’t grown up yet, which is about... well it’s about a lot of things, but among other things it’s about how many of our life skills and emotional responses stall at various points of development, and how this often leaves us “stuck”, and some thoughts about how we can help each other out of this mess.

As a result of the discussions in the comments, I was reminded of a section from a book I like (which I was originally introduced to by Lisa McNulty), Voices: The Educational Formation of Conscience¹, and as part of my new book focus (mentioned last week in How to teach the local style, where I also mention this book in particular).

What’s this book about?

Voice is a book about “moral education” - he studies questions of how we learn our sense of ethics. A significant amount of my thoughts about ethics and its relationship to the emotions are rooted in this book.

Green argues that we learn a sense of conscience - a “reflexive judgement on things that matter” through a process of normation, in which we learn to internalise the norms of a community of people. He argues that:

Depending upon the location of the norm in that expansive continuum from ‘incorrect’ to ‘social gaffe and thence to ‘moral breach’, we know that a norm has been acquired if, and only if, confronting violations of it or even anticipating one’s own violations of it provokes ome degree of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and the like in one’s self and provokes disapproval, anger, censure, moral rejection, or even abhorrence on the part of others. The central point is not that there is an emotional or affective side to normation. The point is rather that normation just is this structuring of the emotions of self-assessment-shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, and the like-both in our self-assessment and in our judgements of others. It follows, of course, that it structures also the positive emotions companion to these that I have called the emotions of self-assessment. That is to say, normation structures also the appearance of elation, pride, self-assurance, and the joy and hope that accompany these.

Voices is thus a book about how we collectively structure many of the emotions that we experience in our day to day life.

He also highlights an idea of weak normation, which consists of norms that lack this kind of moral force and are more by way of conventions - the way things are done around here, which you conform to to fit in but don’t treat as in any way universal.

The next section describes the sorts of communities that create strong and weak normation, and is the main thing I was reminded of.

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

[This section is lifted in full from Voices: The Educational Formation of Conscience, pages 50-53 in the paperback edition, except for bits between square brackets which are my additions]

In the history of sociological thought is found an extensive exposition of a distinction parallel to the contrast I seek to mark between strong and weak norms. The distinction, in one of its forms, appears as a difference between societies in which essential norms are extensively governed by the boundaries of the sacred, in contrast to other systems of social order in which norms are essentially guides to conduct of a purely functional, technical, and prudential sort. Ferdinand Tönnies introduced into sociology a useful distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft [These are usually translated as “community” and “society” respectively, but for some reason people really like using the German words for this]. Relations of Gemeinschaft, as he developed the distinction, tend to be rooted in kinship, blood, a shared memory or tradition, and often a common religion. Those of Gesellschaft, however, tend to be rooted more in contractual agreements of utility, in transient interests, or even in something as simple as a mere coincidence of compatible functions, but not in kinship, memory, or any shared religion. Tönnies’ deployment of the distinction was typological. That is to say, the distinction was meant to establish two ends of a continuum, two ideal types. Since actual human associations, at different times and in different respects, vary considerably, bearing sometimes a closer resemblance to Gesellschaft [society] and sometimes to Gemeinschaft [community], the distinction provides a means of discering order in the midst of that variation. Given the conceptual distinction, empirical instances can be appropriately placed in relation to one another on a scale, depending in each instance on whether it more nearly resembles the conditions of Gemeinschaft [community] of those of Gesellschaft [society].

In Gesellschaft [society], persons are separated except when related by agreement or shared interest, whereas in Gemeinschaft [community] persons remain united, or at least strongly related, despite deep discord or even enimity. According to the justly famous formulation of Tönnies,

The theory of the Gesellschaft [society] deals with the artificial construction of an aggregate of human beings which superficially resembles the Gemeinschaft[community] insofar as the individuals live and dwell together peacefully. However, in Gemeinschaft [community] they remain essentially united in spite of all separating factors, whereas in Gesellschaft [society] they are essentially separated in spite of all uniting factors.

We find exemplars of Gemeinschaft [community] in relations of friendship and families. Friendship is not a relation of utility, contract, or agreement. It is useful to have friends, but use them and they will vanish. Nor can one forge friendships by seeking to secure whatever utility such ties provide. Cronyism differs from friendship precisely because it tends to be based in a kind of quid pro quo, a utilitarian reciprocity of a sort alien to the relation of friendship. In this respect, cronyism typifies Gesellschaft [society] and friendship typifies Gemeinschaft [community]. Tönnies tended to assign these types to particular historical epochs, attempting thus to describe the transformation involved in the emergence of modern European societies from their earlier origins. I seek no such application of the distinction. I seek only to exploit its heuristic value. Gemeinschaft-like [community-like], require strong normation, whereas Gesellschaft-like [society-like] relations of contractual and purely economic ties do not., These latter are relations of weak normation.

A familiar description of the modern world is that strong social norms have become fewer and weak ones more numerous. This description, in which strong normation is seen to be a limited possibility, can be seen as one side of secularization, [Thomas Green was an elder of the Presbyterian church, so probably is more inclined to attribute things to secularization than is strictly warranted, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong] the expression of the idea that in modern societies relations among persons are more akin to the model of Gesellschaft [society] than to Gemeinschaft [community]. Nevertheless, even in such a world, there remain certain relations-most clearly those of friendship and some forms of religious, political, and familial association-to which strong normation seems not merely propitious but essential. The norms of friendship, for example, cannot be construed as mere technical guides to conduct. That one causes pain to one’s friends must be viewed within the institution of friendship itself as a major normative violation. If such conduct does not evoke strong feelings of shame, guilt, or the like, feelings of pain, then we can doubt that in the instance friendship itself is present.

“All of the cherished elemental states of mind of society-love, honor, friendship, and so on-are emanations of Gemeinschaft [community]”, thought Tönnies. Yet common experience in the modern world suggests that most relations are emanations of Gesellschaft [society], relations of craft, convenience, and utility to which we are weakly normed. If it be asked, “Why should we teach history?” for example, the question, in the instrumental modern world, will be readily understood to require an account of the utility of historical studies-”so that we do not repeat the past",” “so that we may be freed from unthinking submission to the past.” But if you ask that question of a Jew and specifically about Jewish education, the question will be greeted with incredulity- “That is just what education is; how could you not teach history?” The question itself will be disallowed. The difference is the difference in the way that education is conceived within the context of Gesellschaft [society] in contrast to the way it is conceived in the context if Gemeinschaft [community].

No doubt the increasing domain of weak normation is central to the expansion of human liberty in contemporary societies. If you are a Jew, then strict adherence to orthodox dietary rules may be difficult to fit into the protocols of lunch within the chambers of commerce, and if you are Japanese, then rituals of greeting are difficult to combine with telephone communication. How does one bow over the phone? Persons become lightly normed to such conventions because their observation, in any strong sense, imposes serious inconvenience. Fresh rules for dining and greeting will be introduced, and in the process the norms will become situationally excepted. People are likely to insist that such rules of conduct have not been abandoned. They still apply except not so strictly any longer in these circumstances, under those conditions. Cooperation is still viewed as a good thing, except not at school or under certain circumstances. Such a transition can be described, in an extended sense, as secularization, a decline in the domain of the sacred.

Why do I care about this?

I have to say, when I think about “the expansion of human liberty in contemporary societies”, the first examples that come to mind are not dietary laws and customs around bowing. The kind of tightly knit community that Green describes is pretty bad if you’re at all weird. “in Gemeinschaft [community] they remain essentially united in spite of all separating factors” is only comforting if those “separating factors” don’t make you desperately want to get away from them. Imagine being the only gay kid in a very Christian small village for example. I’m certainly in no hurry to treat that as our model of how a community should be.

And yet, I do find myself thinking that Green is onto something.

The two big things that I hear people complaining about about modern life are a lack of any sense of meaning/purpose and a lack of community, but what if these are actually just the same problem?

My current operating theory is that the thing that makes an activity feel meaningful is something along the lines of it involving a voluntary attempt to overcome an obstacle that is felt to be worth the effort of overcoming (I don’t think this is perfect, but it feels like a pretty good fit).

This seems to intrinsically involve these moral emotions, in that it requires that part of deeming to be worthwhile as an intrinsic step, and that feels like a clear example of Green’s notion of conscience as a judgement of things that matter (if this is worth doing, it must matter).

Perhaps part of the problem is the communities we are constructing our norms in are not ones that really lead themselves to treating things as if they mattered?

It certainly seems to me that the way we construct moral judgement in society heavily prioritises the negative moral emotions over the positive ones, in ways that feel related to the community/society distinction - it’s much easier to punish someone you have a weak connection to than it is to reward them - and as a result we seem to see a lot of people walking around full of negative moral judgements about themselves but rarely getting to feel the positive side of it.

This suggests that a lot of our emotional health and sources of purpose are disordered simply by the lack of any sort of shared moral community, and that figuring out community is probably more on the critical path to reclaiming a sense of purpose than one would naturally assume. The question we should be asking is not “What should I be doing with my life?” but “What should we be doing with our lives?”, and building structures to support that.

I don’t know if this is the case, but I rather hope it is, because honestly it seems a much easier problem to solve. Community isn’t easy, but it’s a practical problem more than it is a metaphysical one, and as such seems more solvable.

1. This book is unfortunately out of print and there aren’t that many extent copies, so you probably won’t want to buy it, but some kind soul has scanned it and made it available on the book piracy sites, so you may be able to find an electronic copy.