stimulant

Definitions

So, I recently hinted at the ways in which blame, power, responsibility, and guilt inform our ideas about social reform when it comes to a minority¹ .

Exploring this requires we constrain our definitions of action and reaction. To do that, let’s [re-]introduce the idea of locus of control.

“Locus of control” simply refers to the degree to which a person feels as though they control themselves and their life. Typically, “internal” and “external” loci are discussed. For the purposes of this discussion, we will soften this definition to yield a spectrum of loci. For our purposes, the locus of control will depend on a mixture of internal and external factors whose ratio changes depending on the context and situation. For instance, someone may feel powerless in the context of their job, but completely confident in romantic relationships.

Our definitions of action and reaction now follow similarly. An act is committed as an “action” to the extent that the locus of control is internal. Conversely, an act is a “reaction” to the extent that the locus of control is external. These definitions are subjective. Whether an act is committed as an “action” is independent of its reception by others. Regardless of this post’s title, I won’t be drawing a line between action and reaction. It is necessary to note, however, that most people think we draw such a line.

We already support such a spectrum in our language. When people say that someone is accountable, at fault, to blame, responsible, behind [an event], or guilty of [something], they choose their language by the moral tincture of their vocabulary (which is in turn parametrized by the perceived locus of control). We can choose very carefully how to couch culpability. And for most people, how we do so is a function of how easily averted we see the circumstances in question. If we feel that we would have acted similarly — if there simply wasn’t enough information, or if it was the lesser of two evils, or there is some other mitigating factor — we see the choice as a product of circumstances, not bad judgment. If we feel that the person’s acts were poorly informed and justified, if we feel that we would have acted differently (i.e. better), we will see the choice and its consequences in personal terms of responsibility (e.g. “They should have known better”). Unfortunately, hindsight and foresight are very different. It is simple (and self-satisfying) to be judgmental in hindsight: we often hear about the need to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” precisely because hindsights distorts the projected locus of control It is when this intuition fails us that we approach our personal threshold between internal and external loci. And it is there that you can easily concoct moral gray areas.

The reasons these definitions matter

The idea of responsibility is frequently behind-the-scenes in our thinking: from the judicial system to our personal sense of guilt, the concept is the social manifestation of how we think about causality² .

I’m not going to cover all that ground today. In future posts, I will discuss how this definition controls our approach to social reform generally and education specifically.

For instance, I think that giving people an artificial sense of control is one of the primary strategies employed to motivate work under arbitrary constraints. In social reform, the seed from which all assumptions and tactical decisions grow is precisely the question of to what degree and in what contexts those you’re aiming to help are empowered (or disempowered). As a special case of working on someone else’s behalf, school is shielded by its good intentions, creating the illusion of partial, intellectual autonomy, despite the fact that the learning program instituted by most schools determines to what extent students are intellectually autonomous.

Physical restraint constrains a freedom that is fully developed and knowable (i.e. the freedom to move around, unhindered). Intellectual freedom is significantly muddied by the fact that its full, unhindered exercise requires careful care and practice. Traditional pedagogies actively train against this capacity. As such, even straightforward opportunities for autonomy are routinely perverted.

I’m eager to understand the nature of the hooks school (and more broadly, well-intentioned but incompetent social reform) has in students (and more broadly, those whom the reform aims to help, as well as those who support reform).

Many such duplicities are built into the foundation of the system we’re trying to reform. Figuring out how to discuss and think about responsibility is as important to social reform as a careful conception of causality is to scientific investigation: it is a component fundamental to the phenomena we seek to control and understand.

1. By this I mean a minority of power, not of number. [↩]
2. Which is itself a pretty sticky situation [↩]