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MaoShan comments on Firewalling the Optimal from the Rational - Less Wrong
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The Pledge being creepy, sure, I can see that. (I wasn't entirely comfortable with reciting it either, after a certain age.) Culty? Not without throwing out any conventional definition of "cult".
I may have been a little hasty in implying that there's no epistemic danger in public avowal of shared values; I'd expect it to be a reinforcer of those values and to contribute to unanimity effects, although probably not very strongly. But I don't think it's anywhere near as much of a red flag as V_V seemed to be suggesting.
Expecting small children to give a solemn vow filled with patriotic propaganda every weekday morning that they can't even begin to know the ramifications of, OR ELSE, sounds like something you'd find in a totalitarian state.
It also sounds like something you would find in all sorts of other states that aren't totalitarian.
Maybe, but as one small data point, I was really surprised (and creeped out) to just now infer from MaoShen's comment and check on Wikipedia that the Pledge of Allegiance is recited at the beginning of every school day. In my country, the closest cultural equivalent is done once per year, in "Flag Day", and I had previously assumed the American Pledge was like that, being said on July 4th or similar specially significant moments.
[Googles for it and reads it] Whaaaaaat??? O.o
Yep. I'm American. My school did it.
Mine, too, though I'd say it worked backwards in my case-- I'm very cynical about formal group-bonding.
For what it's worth, I only remember doing so until fourth grade, or about nine years of age. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.
I now regret using it as an example, though. Evidently I grossly underestimated its potential sensitivity, and I really should have known better.
Likewise (except now I'm only creeped out, the surprise came a long time ago).
I don't recall whether we have one at all. I remember we have a national anthem that we sung occasionally. Something about "wealth for toil" is involved.
For what it's worth, I've never seen it said in any of the US schools I've attended. It's not universal.
Are there countries generally regarded as non-totalitarian, other than the US, where people do anything like that?
If "anything like that" includes reciting prayers, practically all catholic private schools in Europe will count.
Yes, FWIW catholic schools in the US do that too.
Well, that's what I thought too, but in those schools everyone is (supposed to be) a Catholic, and if not you (well, your parents) can choose a different school, whereas if I understand correctly children are asked to say the Pledge in all American schools, so (short of emigrating) you (and your parents) have no choice.
(Then again, some otherwise non-confessional schools in Italy keep a crucifix in each classroom -- I think it used to be mandated by law, but it no longer is and a few years ago a Muslim sued his son's school for that and managed to have it removed. But keeping around a sculpture that pupils might not even notice --I honestly can't even remember which of certain classrooms in my high school had one and which hadn't-- is a lot less scary than have everyone pledge allegiance every morning, IMO.)
I actually never was asked to say the Pledge in any US school I went to, and I've never even seen it said. I'm pretty sure this is limited to some parts of the country and is no longer as universal as it may have been once. If someone did go to one such school, they and their parents would have the option of simply not saying the Pledge, transferring to a different school (I doubt private or religious schools say it), or homeschooling/unschooling.
As another datapoint, the pledge was announced over the loudspeaker but students weren't required to recite it at the first high school I went to (though we were required to stand respectfully and most everybody still did the salute even if they didn't recite), and theoretically required for any student that didn't have a religious exemption note at the second high school I went to.
I have a funny story about the second situation, too. I'd been one of the ones who didn't say the pledge, before I moved, and decided that I wasn't going to change that unless they made me. The result of this was that the other students in my homeroom class stopped saying it, too - first the ones nearest me, then the ones next to them, and so on across the room. I happened to have a desk in one corner of the room, and by the end of the year a handful of the students in the other corner of the room were the only ones still saying the pledge, and they generally shouted it, raucously or sarcastically depending on their mood. (Makes a pretty interesting complement to the Asch conformity test, come to think of it.)
It is highly likely (that there is at least one). It is a kind of insane practice but it isn't quite that out of character for human social groups that I'd expect it to be a quirk unique to the USA.
Do all totalitarian states bother making all the children go to school and recite pledges?
Oh wait... Now that I think about it, Ireland's Irish language policy is probably the biggest thing-like-that in the world. (Yeah, it's saddening that people don't know their great-grandparents' language, but if the Irish government actually cared about preserving Irish, and not just about seeming to care about preserving Irish to an inattentive observer, they could achieve that in waaaaaaay more cost-effective ways.)
What would be better methods of preserving Irish?
AFAIK things are slowly changing for the better, but this is my impression of how they were until recently. (People who have spent more time in Ireland than I have (EDIT: eight months) are welcome to correct me.)
1. Forcing every single school child in Ireland to study it four hours a week fourteen years (even in areas where Irish hasn't been spoken for centuries, and in a way reminiscent of the study of dead languages and that it is nearly useless for actually having conversations with native speakers, or for remembering anything after a few years out of school) is just a huge waste of time and money, IMO. Making it optional would make much more sense, and make sure that only people actually interested will learn it.
1b. They also spend lots of money for translations of official acts hardly anyone will read. Changing the rule from “the public administration must write all documents in both languages” to (say) “the public administration can write all documents in either language, but must prepare a translation in the other language if requested with a thirty days' notice” would save lots of money that could be spent otherwise.
2. They don't even seriously try to assess what the situation in the Gaeltacht is actually like, which IMO is a fundamental prerequisite to fixing it. For example, the 2011 census asked the question “Can you speak Irish?” with possible answers “Yes” and “No” -- cf “How well can you speak English?” with answers “Very well”, “Well”, “Not well” and “Not at all” (I'm told that this one was only added in the last census, but why didn't they do the same with Irish?); and the question “How often do you speak Irish?” has answers “Daily, within the educational system”, “Daily, outside the educational system”, “Weekly”, “More rarely” (IIRC) and “Never” -- and the first two were only split in the last census, after people realized that having an answer “Daily” would inflate the numbers because all school children would pick that. (Why didn't they just ask “How often do you speak Irish, not counting language classes and the like?”?) And I'm not aware of any large-scale survey asking people in the Gaeltacht which language they prefer to use in which circumstances, as there have been for Welsh. (Are they scared of the answers?)
2b. They hardly do anything to make sure that children of living native speakers are comfortable with continuing speaking Irish, i.e. that they are able to cope with Irish in everyday life whenever possible and are forced to recur to English only when actually necessary. For example, they don't even require Irish on food labels and the like. Living as a monolingual Irish speaker in present-day Ireland would be pretty much impossible, even in the Gaeltacht.
One interesting thing to note is that if you're accustomed to pledging your allegiance to something every day as a child, while you're still unable to enter into legal agreements and aren't thinking about them, it may not occur to you that when you go to school on your 18th birthday, you've just pledged your allegiance in a way that... might be legally binding?
Regardless of what sort of government expects it's children to pledge allegiance every day, do you agree with the practice of making people pledge allegiance?
Allegiance is kind of vague. It could be interpreted to mean doing normal responsibilities (not being a criminal, paying your taxes) or it might be interpreted to mean total obedience. I'm not sure whether to agree or disagree with the pledge. Maybe I should disagree with it on the grounds that it is too vague and therefore doesn't protect reciters from feeling obligated to obey a tyrant, were one to end up in power.
This is actually has been a problem with real-life examples. I've read that the oaths in NAZI Germany were specifically to Hitler himself, and that many members of the military felt bound by their oaths to obey orders, even when it was clear the orders shouldn't be obeyed. I think the critical danger is in giving oaths to an individual (any of which have a very real chance of being corrupted by power, unless they take action to prevent it).
I see the difference that the U.S. pledge of alliegence is to the republic and it's symbol, the flag. The saving factors to prevent abuses of power are:
The focus on alliegence to the nation as a whole, including all it's members, it's leaders, and it's ideals.
The "with liberty and justice for all" line, which is the guarantee of what the State offers in return. The U.S. has to be worthy of the alliegence.
The extreme other war example is the U.S Civil War, where many military officers left the army to join the Confederacy. They formed ranks and marched right out of West Point because they opposed the U.S. leadership. And the soldiers who stayed let them go, knowing they were going to help the seceding states fight. Even if they disagreed, it was felt the honorable thing to do was to let them go.
This idea shows up specifically in our military training and culture in the definition of lawful orders. The military culture and legal rules define your duty to obey all lawful orders from your chain of command, up to the President. So that if you feel that an order is unlawful it's actually your duty to disobey. Now, of course, that carries with it all the weight of being the first one to be the opposition, so it's no guarantee to prevent abuses of power, but it does exist.
I gues my point is that the danger is in making oaths to a person.
I agree that it's a form of indoctrination for children. But as long as the trade of alliegence and freedom it describes is a true and real one, I think it's a good thing to keep those principles in their minds.
Ooh, I like these points, Troshen. You might be right that there's enough "security" built into the pledge. Now you've got me questioning whether it might actually protect us.
If nothing else, it would make tyrannical pledges look bad by comparison, perhaps blocking them.
I suppose it could, yet countries don't require you to do anything to place you in such legal binds. They have laws about "treason" that they can apply when people from their population don't act out allegiance, whether they have pledged it or not.
Sure but the people have to enforce those laws (the government is something like 3% of the population from what I understand, which means that the people could overwhelm them easily), so if the concept of allegiance is foreign to them, as opposed to being very familiar and feeling like an obligation, or if they haven't witnessed all the OTHER citizens pledging allegiance, it might feel like an empty word they can safely ignore.
If the concept of allegiance becomes completely foreign to the citizens of a country, than the country effectively ceases to exist.
Of course not. I was stabbing one of our soldiers in the back. Because, frankly, that metaphorical soldier had it coming.
Fair enough. A more accurate statement would be: "Expecting small children...of, OR ELSE, is a mind-control tactic that I feel is wrong to use on children without the capacity to counter it, which I would expect to find in blatantly controlling nations, and not in a supposedly free nation."
I just thought the first version flowed better.
It does flow well, in as much as the first thing (ridiculous pledge obligation) is already opposed by most of the audience and so they can be expected to applaud when the enemy is associated with the hated thing. Unfortunately it is a crude harnessing of a fallacy.
And I would have got away with it, too, if it weren't for your meddling rationality!
I have seen footage of a documentary about Cuba, that used kids reciting their allegiance to the State, Party etc as a way of showing what an evil place it was. To this Londoner, yes, the whole thing of kids reciting the Pledge is very creepy.
Yeah. I can pledge allegiance, now, and when I do, I mean it - but coming out of the mouth of a child, it's as meaningless as they all know it is. When I was a kid, I knew it was all kinds of messed up. I suspected that I would agree with it when I was older, and I was right. That doesn't make it valid.
As a child I had to pledge that I will become a law-abiding citizen of my country, and a member of the Communist party.
I have failed to adhere to both parts. The first part, because "my beloved homeland" does not exist anymore. The second part, knowingly and willingly. (Although, as a 6-years old child, I would probably also guess that I will agree with both parts when I grow up. Mostly because of: "if that wouldn't be a good thing, they would not ask me to promise it".)
Or maybe it's just because I had to recite the pledge only once. ;-)
(OK, technically I had to practice it a few times first.)
Also because observations contradicted the belief that your country was good.
Brainwashing success!
I don't agree with everything the country does, that's for sure. But on the broad strokes, I'm willing to stand for it.
Why? In other words, which parts of the pledge would you keep, and which would you change/remove and why?
What? I'd drop the 'under god' part, but that isn't really what I was talking about. My not agreeing with everything the country does, does not have the pledge as its subject matter.
That is, say, the unjustified wars, etc.. The whole laundry list. The particular method of choosing representation in our government - 'plurality of first preference' voting, with closed primary elections, and districts chosen in a partisan way. There's a reason congress is as messed up as it is.
But it's my messed-up country.
Why is it your messed-up country?
I wonder if "rationality of patriotism" has been discussed on LW? Probably in the context of the Prisoner's Dilemma.
Something like that was discussed here.
Because states are still a powerful force for (or against) change in this world, you are limited in the number of them you can directly affect (determined largely by where you and relatives were born), and for political and psychological reasons that ability is diminished when you fail to display loyalty (of the appropriate sort, which varies by group) to those states.
Also, apple pie is delicious.
Then the obvious strategy is to start feeling lots of loyalty toward Easily Affected Country, and donate lots to organizations in Powerful Country that effect change in Easily Affected Country. This diminishes your political bonus but the extra leverage compensates. Bot-swa-na! Bot-swa-na!
I actually think the apple pie reason is an unusually good one. There's nothing wrong with cheering for things.
Yeah, but a lot of stuff is meaningless coming out of the mouth of a child. But you have to start teaching them about things like duty and loyalty at some point. The pledge is a reasonable way to get kids to understand that they're part of a country, and that there's a common moral and political activity that they'll one day be involved in.
Data point: My home country, Australia, does not have a pledge of allegiance. Overt demonstrations of patriotism were limited to being expected to sing the national anthem in school assembly once a week. I personally feel that there is still plenty of patriotism to go around. However, a common perception of the US is that you guys are over-patriotic.
Thinking a bit more on this, I can't help wondering how much of this can be traced to free voting versus mandatory voting. How much of encouraging patriotism is an attempt to make people care enough to vote?
Something that a lot of people, both inside and outside the US, don't realize is that what patriotism means in the US is not quite the same as what patriotism means in other countries.
Requiring someone to make a mndatory pledge to a flag instills the Love of Freedom how...?
By making it Capitalized. Actually having the people loving freedom sounds all sorts of dangerous---people may expect you to let them do stuff. If you make them Love Freedom instead you should be able to keep them in line.
I would expect nearly all patriotic people to consider patriotism to their own country to be different in some fundamentally important way to patriotism to another. The other patriots don't care about Better Seating after all.
I wonder whether the reason why a lot of people don't realise it might be because it's not actually true.
I mean, ESR's argument seems to me incoherent and mostly aimed at finding a way to identify Barack Obama as not only an America-hater but also a freedom-hater. (Step 1: True US patriotism is more about loving the ideal of liberty and less about tribal attachment to the US as such. Step 2: Because for a while Barack Obama chose not to wear a flag pin, he doesn't love his country. Step 3, unstated but I think clearly there: Since true US patriotism means loving liberty and Barack Obama is not a true US patriot, he is opposed not only to the US but to liberty.) It's hard to avoid the suspicion that his characterization of US patriotism may be as much a matter of political convenience as the (absurd) inference he draws from Obama's not wearing a flag pin. Certainly at least one of them must be wrong; it cannot be true both that patriotism for Americans means loving their country "not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas" and that not wearing a US flag pin indicates "a lack of love for America as it actually is" and therefore a lack of patriotism.
And it's certainly not only in the US that patriotism tends to involve not only tribal loyalty to one's country but also love of what are taken to be its virtues. (Sometimes grand things like liberty and enterprise in the US, courage and fair play in the UK; sometimes little quirks like apple pie and baseball in the US, pubs and cricket in the UK.)
I'd be very interested in others' opinions: Is US patriotism really as much more "abstracted" than other nations' as ESR suggests? Is it true that "most Americans love their country ... not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas about liberty"?
That sounds wrong. Certainly people who consider themselves French patriots are likely to say "Speak French, dammit!", "Yeah, maybe it's like that in your country but you're in France now", or "Go Napoleon!", but no more than American patriots are likely to say the analogues.
Also, French patriotism is huge on political ideas. Motherland of human rights, French revolution, Resistance, and all that.
I missed the part where he was identifying Obama as an "America-hater" or a "freedom-hater" - I don't see those words, or any analogues, in the post.
That's OK; I, likewise, missed the part in what I wrote where I said that those words appear in ESR's post.
I think he's suggesting it, not saying it. And he comes pretty damn close to saying in so many words that Barack Obama "doesn't love" America, which of course is far from the same thing as hating it but still a pretty serious accusation to level at a candidate for the presidency.
As for the stronger claim about hating, though, consider the following bits from what ESR wrote. (Please feel free to verify that the ellipses don't misrepresent his meaning or tone.)
It seems to me that (1) ESR is defining "chomskyism" to mean actual destructive hatred of America, and (2) his comments about the significance of Obama's not wearing a flag pin make no sense unless he's taken to be saying that Obama was exemplifying "chomskyism", and hence actual destructive hatred of America.
But no, indeed, he didn't actually say it explicitly using the words "America-hater" or "freedom-hater" or any close analogue.
(I shall not comment further on the political questions at issue here. The actual point I was making was just that I don't feel any obligation to believe what ESR says about American patriotism as compared with other sorts.)
Yeah, it seems like you're going a bit far to connect the dots. ESR is saying that the "destructive hatred" is produced by "patriotism by dissent" "at its extreme". He didn't actually say that Obama has this extreme sort.
It seemed to me that he was just using the flag pin case as an accessible example of this "patriotism by dissent". It didn't seem to me that he was even saying anything was wrong with "patriotism by dissent", other than noting that a lot of Americans seemed to disagree with it. Though he does suggest it's a "pathology", which would normally be a negative term.
In the comments, he even clarifies that he was not trying to call any particular person unpatriotic, and repeatedly says that he is trying to do an analysis of American patriotism. Given the sorts of stuff ESR has written on the philosophical side before, I'm inclined to believe him.
According to the article, patriotism-as-dissent is identified as un-American and as Obama's theory. American patriotism is also conceptualized as loyalty-to-freedom, for example in the Franklin quote.
I would say that many Americans don't properly keep the two concepts separate.
That doesn't seem true to me. Do you have anything more solid to back this up? Also, see Esar's comment below that the US is a mess but it's his mess. How is that not regular old tribal patriotism?
Both forms of patriotism exist and are frequently confused, even by said patriots.
First things first: do people have to be part of a country? If the division of humanity into mutually distrustful camps is ultimately a problem, not a solution. (I think it is. My evidence is history. Nothing specific...just open a page at random..) you might be causally defending something that is as bad, or worse, than religious tribalism.
You mean metaphysically? No. Practically? Yes. Having no citizenship is pretty serious problem. And these mutually distrustful camps aren't very mutually distrustful at the moment. Most countries are actually very stable, peaceful, and trusting. More so now then at any other time in history. Other kinds of political organization may be feasible, and that's fine, but this one is working pretty well and changing things would probably result in trouble.
From a simple consequentialist perspective, I think it's hard to argue against the present system. Do you have an alternative suggestion?
At one time it was a practical necessity to belong to some religion or other.
Just because everyone believes you need one. But does that pass the PKD test?
Does that prove that nationalism is good...or that its one the way out? Europe went through a period of religious bloodshed...followed by an era of religious tolerance...followed by a period of irreligion. SWIM?
Nations solve the problems created by nations. Up to a point. Does religion "work" when there is a respite in the slaughter?
Maybe things are chainging anyway. I'm a citizen of England, and the Uk, and the EU. If you are a Usian, you are also in a federated superstate.
In any case you don't have to believe in (qua approve of) something just because you believe in (qua note the existence of) it.
If the status quo didn't already include the daily recitation of such a pledge, do you think you would suggest it as a way to get kids to understand that?
I think that's a practical question too complicated for me to answer. I would want some kind of voluntary activity like that in place. The pledge isn't great, but it's likely that something better would require more resources. And while I don't think (and would doubt) that the pledge has any kind of 'brainwashing' effect, it would be worth looking into whatever data we can gather about that.
As a teaching tool it seems almost useless; the language is antiquated, way past age-appropriate for elementary school, and while the meaning of the Pledge might be the subject of a third-grade civics lesson I don't recall any substantial effort to break down its text in such a way as to integrate it into working knowledge.
Which now strikes me as a fairly clever bit of social engineering. At first I don't think you'd need meaningful content; if you and your classmates are facing the flag, right hand over heart, and quoting from the text in unison, you'd still get group cohesion effects if the text itself was a list of Vedic demons or multilingual translations of the word "pickle". But later, as children learn about concepts like duty by other means, they're supplied with associations left over from their childhood practice. At least in theory; in practice this might be ruined by other associations, as elementary school's usually not a terribly pleasant place for its inmates.
The "under God" bit can lead to some unpleasant cognitive dissonance as a secular child, too.
My thoughts exactly.
And I agree, 'under God' should be removed. But it's not really a big deal. A substantial part of the value of secularism is in the fact that you have to go against the grain a bit.
The whole thing, though, is a giant "under God" of patriotism. A small nod to religion isn't a big deal compared to that.
Well, not just patriotism (which is good if your country is good) but also the whole 'liberty and justice for all' thing. I think it's kind of nice. I want liberty and justice for all.
Patriotism can also sometimes be good independent of whether my country is good, insofar as it can facilitate cooperation among patriots, who even in a bad country might have good goals which are more readily achieved cooperatively.
That's a good point, but I think there are stricter conditions on the goodness of patriotism than merely consequential ones. I'm not sure how to articulate this, but as a disposition, patriotism is enough like a belief that it ought to be true, and not just beneficial.
It's not actually required that children say it; it would, in fact, violate the Constitution to mandate political speech, even from students. But it's expected that students recite the Pledge, and most do.
Because if they don't, they are looked at with suspicion and ostracized.
For what it's worth, another student noticed I wasn't actually saying the pledge and hassled me mildly about it. I gave in immediately and started saying the pledge-- it didn't seem worth the effort of opposition.
This didn't increase my (very minimal) sense of patriotism. Oddly enough, I don't think it lowered my sense of patriotism, either.