Customers as Members and Guests: Retail Fakeness Infecting Society

“Are you a member of the store?”  A salesperson at a Barnes & Nobles’ café department once asked me the question as I was preparing to pay for the coffee drink I had just ordered. Apparently, customers who had registered for a discount card were considered  “members of the store.” The same thing happened to me at a Borders store before that chain went bankrupt. There, the salesperson refused to take my “No, I am not a member” for an answer—as per company policy.

Let's be clear here: retail stores have customers, not members.  Shopping in a Walmart store especially is not at all like belonging to a country club. To put it bluntly, arrogance is the unavoidable bad odor that fills the air when a bottom-feeder retail presumes to have "guests" and "membors." Once an assistant manager of a Target store insisted that customers are guests even after I had pointed out that people do not have guests over to buy something. Ignoring or refuting a customer's reply adds not only further insult, but belies the original claim, for it is an oxymoron for a host or hostess to be rude to guests. 

Moreover, it is presumptuous for a retail company’s employees (including managers) to act (i.e. lie) as if they really believe that stores naturally have members or guests.  Clubs have members, and people who have guests over do not typically treat them to a sale, as in, "Come on over for dinner, but you have to buy something from me first." The retail employee does not think providing dinner is necessary, but is nevertheless orienting to the selling. If a business is open to the public, it does not make sense to refer to the general public as members or invited guests. The self-serving nature of the pretense or outright lie is too saccurine for my taste. In the domain of religion, such managerial employees would doubtless want a convenient religion that boils down to me, me, me. Only a people-pleaser could serve for long as the cleric in such congregations. 
Lastly, a rather slick elitism is implicit in explicitly distinguishing members from non-members, as in “are you a member?” Even in calling some customers "guests" and others "members" projects an "outsider/insider" dichotomy that is overdrawn (and may even involve passive aggression as well as power-aggrandizement). Is it really in a store's financial interest to make some of its customers feel second class? Imagine a Walmart cashier asking you, "Are you a member?" as if anyone would want to be one! You might break out in uncontrollable laughter. "How utterly arrogant for a bottom-feeder retailer even to assume that membership rightly applies there. 

Moreover, any culture highlighted by “members,” "guests," and “upgrades” being somehow pertaining to retail business may suffer from a more general societal trend that is not transparent. Too often, moderns pretend that vacuous retail phrases have substance--treating emptiness as though it were substance. Just because someone, even a manager, asserts that something is real does not make it so. Ultimately, if customers do not object to the arrogant and erroneous use of the words, member and guest, then the insufferable retail mentality that is fine with such vacuous misnomers is enabled. Pretty soon, the sordid practice could become ubiquitous not only in the business sector, but across society if it is highly commercialized as is the case in the United States relative to the European Union. 

When an employee in a store or at it's customer service call-bank says, “I’m sorry for your inconvenience,” or even uses the word "unfortunately" in such an emotionless tone that the speaker could not possibly feel bad about the customer's bad experience, absolutely no credence is to go with that stock (marketing) reply. It is really to say, "Even though you had a bad experience or have a complaint, we at the store want you to think that we acknowledge some responsibility or obligation due to the store's part." In fact, "we want you to go on buying things here as if the problem were so minor it could not warrant an apology with recompensense." In actuality, an apology without any compensation, monetarily or in terms of merchandise, is not only empty, but also quite insulting, for it is a subtle means of cheating the customer, or "guest." Do retailers really think their customers are so stupid as to think that everything is made right again by an easy apology? Even the authors of customer-service books admit that such apologies are so ubiquitous in business that they count for next to nothing. Who could possibly take such unemotional, easy "apology sans renumeration as a real apology, rather than as a pre-arranged talking point that can even feel as a slap. Authentic apologies would be backed up by some economic sacrifice, rather than a coupon-enticement to buy again as if the matter had been resolved to the customer's real satisfaction). Rarely does a customer demand compensation as a prerequisite for accepting the apology, and also for any coming back to the store. A business is an economic entity; one must treat it as such and transact in economic terms. By a business's own reckoning, "Sorry for any inconvenience" without any economic cost to the business can only be of a distant, hypothetical value unless most of the customers are suckers.

More on this topic is in On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, which is available at Amazon.

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Modern Renaissance Man

Perhaps no greater Renaissance man has been cited in American history than Thomas Jefferson. He wrote on the native plants of his country, Virginia, ran a plantation, designed buildings, founded a university, surveyed land,  was the head of state in Virginia, wrote a declaration of independence, and was the third president of the new American Union. More than two centuries after Mr. Jefferson, however, a cleft had become well-ensconced in American society between being an intellectual and a practitioner. The typical lawyer or physician, who holds two undergraduate degrees due in part to the political sense that a well-rounded citizenry makes a good electorate, has scant interest in intellectual endeavor. Indeed, one might even say that the “professions” place scant value on such activity; it is not “real work” or of the “real world.” The disdain is palpable, particularly in among the self-righteous in America. Yet Mr. Jefferson was able to bridge this gulf; so too can we. More contemporary examples can be cited to illustrate the mere possibility. The requisite delimiting "pruning" self-discipline might come as a surprise to people who presume that Renaissance breadth is borne of a wayward inability to "stay put."

When it was announced in 2012 that Frank Lloyd Wright’s archive was to be moved from his foundation to Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, it was reported that the architect had some six hundred manuscripts, as well as more than 23,000 drawings and forty large-scale architectural models and more than 300,000 pieces of correspondence. He also had a formidable art collection, though it would stay with the foundation. The number of manuscripts is what caught my eye. How many manuscripts is a leading lawyer or physician likely to written, even in his or her own field of work? What was behind Wright's foray into writing?

It can be said that Wright was a genius. In a world populated by victorian houses, he saw something very different. Seeing something different (having that genius) might have been enough to stir the jealousy of the city bosses in his native Madison in Wisconsin—they twice ignored the results of the referendums (which they wrote!) to ok the construction of a city building designed by the famous architect. Genius, however, does not account for Wright's foray into writing; rather, he must have valued the endeavor and sensed that he could do it very well. Even though he could have rested on his architectural laurels, he wanted to excel beyond his native fauna, and he was willing to put forth the effort.

Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" house.           FLW Fdn Archives/NYT

Similarly, the famous  clothing designer in the E.U., Karl Lagerfeld, came to excell at more than one field. Specifically, from having taking pictures of the models wearing his designs, he branched off into photography in its own right late in his career (instead of taking retirement), even though he could have rested on the reputation of his clothing line. He gained a reputation as a photographer from publishing a book of his photos taken at the French palace.

It is not that a genius in a field feels entitled to venture onto other fields as if doing so is of value in itself. Rather, there must be a sense of being able to extend one’s excellence without sliding onto mediocrity. This does not necessarily mean that the two fields are related. Excellence can be found in a disparate discipline. Yet this does not mean trying anything. Even within one's native field, one must limit oneself to what one can do well.

Being willing to let go of what is beyond oneself is part of being able to extend one’s excellence. The director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, for example, was willing to give up most of the valuable archive because he recognized that Columbia and the museum were better-fitted to house it. “It’s what guarantees the deepest impact, the highest level of conservation and access in perpetuity, said Sean Malone. “The potential for new audiences far outweighs the personal desire to have it close by.”  All too often, people feel a clinginess to what they have, or want to have something both ways. We want to retain our cake and eat it too. In being willing to give up something valuable out of a recognition that another institution would be better suited to house it, Malone evinces the sort of mature mentality that modernity could use. Moreover, delimiting what his foundation can do well enabled Malone to ask: “what else can I do excellently?” It is ironic that pruning lays the groundwork for a Renaissance person being able to extend his or her excellence (a virtue) on to other, even disparate, fields. In Malone’s case, in being freed up from the care of an archive for which is organization was ill-suited for anyway, he freed himself up to apply his strengths to other vintures, such as writing on virtue ethics, for example.

Beyond intelligence, a certain mentality that includes character or a virtue ethic involving self-discipline undergirds the bringing together of intellectual endeavor and praxis in the “real world” in a way that exudes excellence. A willingness to strive while others snooze and a value on excellence can catapult a person from the confines of a profession. A deeper, or more enriched sense of what it means to be human can result as one experiences the best in more than one domain of human experience. Just as a Buddhist would say that the “other shore” does not really exist (at least as another shore), one could say that the gulf between academia and the excellent practitioner exists only in the mind. It is a societal illusion perpetuated by a certain culture that values some things and not others. Fortunately, examples that transgress this illusion exist even in modernity. It is up to the rest of us to notice, and then decide whether we have it in ourselves to go the extra mile on a second or third course.

In the end, it is the human spirit that flourishes in the context of excellence achieved in more than one way. No one is inherently trapped in the routine of a lifeless job whose boredom reduces the task to money. Nevertheless, I suspect that sometimes it takes the words of a friend or two to enlighten a person so trapped as to where his or her passion lies. Then it is up to the person to seize the excellence within (carpe diem) and put forth the effort, to be active rather than static before it is too late.

Source:
Robin Pogrebin, “A Vast Frank Lloyd WrightArchive Is Moving to New York,” The New York Times, September 4, 2012.

Wealth as a Societal Value in the E.U. and U.S.: The Case of Financial Reform

The E.U. and U.S differ markedly in the degree to which the interests of big business are etched in the respective societies and polities. That is to say, the difference goes beyond the question of the relative influences of the lobbyists. I contend that the relative proclivity societally in favor of business in the U.S. tilts the political playing-field excessively in the direction of the financial interests at the expense of the public good, which I take to be well represented generally by a full, equally-weighted spectrum of views. I further contend that influence is easier for financial-sector lobbyists in the United States than in the European  Union because the societal values in the former lean more in their favor. By analogy,  it is easier to run downhill than even on a flat surface.
These points can be discerned from the respective financial reforms in the E.U. and U.S. in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Because the financial sector was viewed as culpable in both societies, the ensuing respective financial reforms would be expected to be at the expense of the banks rather than conducive to their interests.

On March 10, 2010, the E.U. Parliament adopted a Resolution (536 votes in favour to 80 against) calling for the financial sector to contribute fairly towards economic recovery since the costs of the crisis are being borne by taxpayers. On 25 March, Members of Parliament’s special “Financial, Economic and Social Crisis Committee” debated the rationale behind a possible financial transaction tax. Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research in Vienna said short-term financial transactions can make short-term prices of currencies and other financial products such as derivatives and shares vary wildly. Schulmeister claimed that a tax on financial transactions of just 0.05% would eliminate these short-term transactions, bring greater stability and bring €300 billion of additional revenues to the E.U. While the tax would undoubtedly bring in revenue, it is not clear to me that short-term transactions would be eliminated, as they can be worthwhile even with such a tax. Moreover, the financial crisis of 2008 shows us that the volitility can come from the market mechanism itself (in so far as it magnifies irrational exuberance). At any rate, even as there was division on the matter of such a tax in the parliament, that the proposal had been made distiguishes the legislative body of the E.U. from the Congress in the U.S., where such a proposal would undoubted have been blocked. Indeed, the E.U. Parliament went ever further.

On July 7, 2010, the EU Parliament approved some of the strictest rules in the world on bankers’ bonuses. In the legislation, caps were imposed on upfront cash bonuses and at least half of any bonus had  to be paid in contingent capital and shares. The legislative chamber also toughened rules on the capital reserves that banks had to hold to guard against any risks from their trading activities and from their exposure to highly complex securities. “Two years on from the global financial crisis, these tough new rules on bonuses will transform the bonus culture and end incentives for excessive risk-taking. A high-risk and short-term bonus culture wrought havoc with the global economy and taxpayers paid the price. Since banks have failed to reform we are now doing the job for them,” said MEP Arlene McCarthy. Upfront cash bonuses were capped at 30% of the total bonus and to 20% for particularly large bonuses. Between 40% and 60% of any bonus had to be deferred for at least three years and could be recovered if investments did not perform as expected. Moreover at least 50% of the total bonus had to be paid as “contingent capital” (funds to be called upon first in case of bank difficulties) and shares. Bonuses also had to be capped as a proportion of salary. Each bank had to establish limits on bonuses related to salaries, on the basis of E.U.-wide guidelines, to help bring down the overall, disproportionate, role played by bonuses in the financial sector. Finally, bonus-like pensions were also covered. Exceptional pension payments had to be held back in instruments such as contingent capital that link their final value to the overall strength of the bank. This was to avoid situations similar to those experienced in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 in which some bankers retired with substantial pensions unaffected by the crisis their bank was facing. The rules applied to foreign banks operating in the E.U.and to subsidiaries of E.U. banks operating abroad. The law gave state regulators binding powers to take action against banks that failed to comply with the new rules. In contrast, the U.S. went after Arizona for trying to enforce US immigration law.

Clearly, the U.S. financial reform did not go nearly as far; it did not put nearly as much crimp in the American banks. This is no accident. The feeling among big bankers in the US was that they dodged a bullet concerning what could have been in the American bill. No “too big to fail” limit was put on a bank’s capital or size , or on the bankers’ compensation. The American media and President Obama were strangely silent on why. In the case of the health reform, the President silently removed his objection to an insurance mandate and dropped his desire for a public option after the lobbyist for the American health insurance companies told him that her support was contingent on these changes. 
My point is simply this: Were not American society leaning in a pro-business direction (e.g., economic liberty being salient in how liberty itself is viewed), the President might not have felt the need, or pressure without a sufficient countervailing wind, to bend in the banking lobbyists' direction. That is to say, the lobbyist would not have had so much leverage. Wall Street no doubt had massive influence in the crafting of the financial reform as it was making its way through Congress (even though the banks were culpable in the financial crisis—which is itself telling). I submit that the reasons go beyond the sheer power of money to unquestioned societal values.

Sources:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/044-71441-088-03-14-907-20100329STO71433-2010-29-03-2010/default_en.htm

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/focus_page/008-76988-176-06-26-901-20100625FCS76850-25-06-2010-2010/default_p001c011_en.

The Increasing Decadence in American Business (and Society): The Case of On-Screen Distractions during Television Programs

While watching Lord of the Rings on TBS in 2010, I noticed that the network was posting not only its logo on the bottom right of the screen, but also advertising for its programming on the bottom left. Also, “more movie, less commercials” was written to accompany the logo. What really got to me during the movie was when pictures advertising a television show were shown. They took up almost an eighth of the screen and thus could not but distract the viewer from watching the movie. I decided I would not watch movies on networks that compromise or prostitute their own programing in order to sell themselves while "in progress." It is like sitting down at a restaurant and having the waitor sell me on other dishes while I am trying to enjoy the one that I'm eating. “I just want to enjoy this fine meal, thank you,” any discerning customer would be wont to say. Once at Starbucks, the customer in front of me at the register was paying $25 for a variety of products.  As I was thinking that the store had made a good sale, the clerk tried to sell the customer on a certain food item for the next visit--as if the present sale was not enough.  The same propensity wherein nothing is ever enough is evinced by the television networks that can't seem to restrain themselves from adding more and more self-promotions onto the screen during their own programming.  These networks are playing off the mitigated nature of the additions being incremental, and thus not objectionable to the average viewer. 

It is simply bad business to interfere with a customer’s enjoyment of a product by trying to promote the business or another product. The over-reaching has the bad smell of self-indulgence knowingly at others’ expense. It is impossible to enjoy a movie while animated characters run around the bottom of the screen to get the viewers' attention. The perpetrators ought to be regarded as children wherein if we give them an inch, they will indeed take a mile. Sadly, too many of us allow ourselves to be strung along the slippery slope--perhaps some viewers don't even notice the incremental intrusions. The smell of the network managers' over-reaching ought to be emetic, but perhaps the stench is so ubiquitous that we as a soceity are innoculated against even smelling it.  One can hope that one day, we shall wake up to the decadence and "smell the coffee." Perhaps only the loss of a significant viewership would mean that the sordid managers will be out of their jobs–unable to earn their high salaries for trying to manipulate us in new subterfuges. That, ladies and gentlemen, would be justice and a more salubrious society.  In the meantime, American television will increasingly come to reflect the lowest common denominator in the viewership because that is where the numbers are. In fact, perhaps it could be said that this nature of television reflects the values that are taking hold in American society.

Do we as a society value mutual respect and self-restraint, or are we too tolerant of selfishness and manipulatory behavior? Do we not value strength, but instead enable weakness? Are the stars of reality shows famous for fifteen minutes because they evince our society's actual values?  In other words, have we become a self-absorbed, petty people without realizing it?  If so, the television networks may simply be us taking advantage because it is condoned.

The Fiat 500: The American Taste for Convenience Revealed

One means of doing cross-cultural comparison is by contrasting consumer tastes; such proclivities tend to evince societal mores by which societies can be perceived to be distinctive. In the case of the E.U. and U.S., Fiat, a European auto company that controls Chrysler, an American company, is discovering some societal differences as it refashions the Fiat 500 for American customers.

For example, the pod of drink holders had to be enlarged to hold American-size “supersize” drinks. According to Fabio DiMuro, chief engineer of the 500, the in-car beverage concept is so foreign to Europeans that the workers didn’t understand his exhortations for more and bigger holders. The American taste for larger portions is known to restaurant owners and managers in the United States, but what does the preference say about the society and its people? Is it as simple as greed—a desire for more and to excess? Or is it simply a preference for convenience—filling up more so the next meal can be pushed back to make room for other activities? 

In terms of convenience, “Americans consider all-season tires a must,” whereas Europeans keep two sets (which must be changed with the advent of the snow season). Of course, this comparison over-generalizes, for we are talking about the Northern states in the E.U. and U.S. Even so, the northerners in America tend to be willing to sacrifice some traction in the snow for the convenience of not having to take the car to the garage to have the tires changed.

Furthermore, the fuel tank of the 500 was enlarged from 10.6 to 14.5 gallons “for longer distances typical in the U.S.”  The larger tank also enables American in-town drivers to drive more before having to fill up. The interstate highway system sports enough gas stations that the longer-distances rationale is perhaps specious; it probably comes from the European misconception of the U.S. being like one of the E.U.’s countries but with a larger territory. The U.S., an empire-level union of republics, is qualitatively as well as quantitatively distinct from a large state like Texas or France.

Returning to the matter of convenience, the comfort-factor may be a relevant difference. The U.S., having excelled in terms of material goods in the decades after World War II, may in the twenty-first century be more accustomed to comfort. Hence, the American 500 is to have an armrest added to the driver’s seat.

A stress on comfort may also explain why “lots more” insulation is needed in the American 500, “to keep it quiet enough for Americans.” This is a rather odd phrase, considering the growth of the car stereo industry in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the notion of one’s car as a personal cocoon of sorts resonates. Might this be a manifestation of the individualism for which Americans are so well known? 

If one’s home is one’s castle, one’s car might be one’s bubble through which one passes through public space. Considering the “road rage” phenomenon and general impoliteness, the greater insulation might suggest that Americans are in general rather unfriendly when we are out and about. Hence there are “screening” devices such as fraternities and sororities, as well as country clubs and other private associations. The general American public may contain too many loud, pushing or boorish people to be palatable to the elite.

In general, James Healey’s article on the American Fiat 500 is not flattering to Americans, but perhaps Healey is pointing to indications of undesirable traits that we (for I am an American) should face about ourselves and our society. I for one have noticed that where strangers communicate without any purpose, such as in a store, politeness is the norm. However, as soon as a purpose is added, such as buying and selling a car, renting an apartment or room, or resolving a bill at a restaurant, presumptuous tends to raise its ugly head.

I don’t know if it is arrogance or a presumption that the worst is apt to be in others, but I would not disagree with a European assessment of American society in general as anti-social or antagonistic. It is perhaps no wonder that houses are castles and cars are insulated bubbles. Of course, I am over-generalizing, as the U.S. is composed of various cultures. Once flying from New York to Seattle, I was struck by the difference in how strangers treated each other; then I realized (aided by a few anti-New Yorker comments from Seattle airport employees) I had just flown over a continent! To render a continent as akin to a European state writ large is to miss the vital distinction between an empire and a kingdom politically and geographically.

Another possible source of my over-generalizing may be that modern society itself could be too much inclined to the road of most convenience.  Europeans may have their rankles as well, even as they differ from those of Americans. For example, the whole “peers/commoners” thing can be read as a matter of convenience by some at the expense of others. Such a matter of convenience is not apt to show up in an analysis of the Fiat 500. In general, we moderns may be too spoiled and too presumptuous when it comes to dealing with strangers. Humility, it seems, is out of fashion in modernity, at least in the public square. If so, my cultural critique goes well beyond the American shores. Although war and poverty are not to be wished for, it would be nice if greater human solidarity could be realized amid our lattes and 500s.

Source:

James Healey, “Fiat 500: Little Car Shoulders Huge Responsibility in U.S.,” USA Today, June 1, 2011, p. 5B.

Capitalism and Caste: Artificial vs. Natural

Part I

Capitalism & Caste: Melting Untouchability in India

In what has become known as India, the caste system of Hinduism has for millennia served as the template for the socio-economic ordering of people into family-based groups. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the economic liberalization policy put in place in 1991 to replace the stagnant “import-substitution” domestic-favoring model of economic development had enabled some people in the lower castes to vault into social acceptability by virtue of what The New York Times calls “the newest god in the Indian pantheon: money.” Given the advent of the prosperity gospel in Christianity and the associated eclipse of the “camel getting through the eye of a needle” much-earlier-hegemonic association of wealth with greed, a similar statement could be made with regard to the Trinity (see “Godliness and Greed” and "God's Gold," both available at Amazon).
Gandhi is said to have remarked, “I used to think that truth was God. I have realized that God is truth.” This is a very profound statement, which must be unpacked to be understood and appreciated. “God” refers here to what in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is called revelation (God revealing itself through scripture). In Hinduism, the basic scriptures are known as the Vedas—the commentary thereof is known as the Upanisads (which are quite rich in terms of religious philosophy). The Vedas contain directions for social practices, such as concern widows (e.g., Sati (throwing oneself on the burning funeral pire of one’s husband) or going into a widows home, which often involved prostitution) and Dalits, or “untouchables” (e.g., not permitted to worship in the temple, or use public drinking fountains—sound familiar?).
Gandhi was saying that he used to accept all that was in revelation—including social practices concerning widows and untouchables—as truth (i.e., as unquestionably valid, or sacred). Observing the suffering of widows and untouchables, he came to realize that to be valid, revelation must itself “pass the truth test.” Suffering of the innocent (Christians may recall the suffering servant motif) as a direct and sole result of a directive in scripture could not be of truth, Gandhi concluded. Truth, in other words, has a higher calling than does revelation. In other words, what humans record as their revelations of the divine should be subject to truth itself, rather than defining (i.e., limiting) it. Even if what the religions record as revelation is informed by a divine source or field, the “informing” must pass through the imperfect (i.e., distortive) atmosphere of the human instruments that do the writing and copying. Therefore, “God is truth” means that truth is rightfully a criterion to be applied to revelation.  That which doesn’t pass the “smell test” can rightfully be ignored (I would include a conflict-of-interest criterion to the “smell test”).
The constitution of modern India forbids the old, rather sordid institutional prejudice against widows and the Dalit (which as of this writing number about 200 million). For example, the practice of physical untouchability, which confined Dalits to low-status jobs and social exclusion, is outlawed. Except in some remote areas, Dalits can walk on the same streets as upper-caste Indians, look them in the eye, and drink from the same wells and water fountains.
Even so, as anyone who has stayed in a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn Express owned or operated by a Patel knows, vocational groupings continue to reflect family groupings, or castes. According to the New York Times, “(s)ocial and economic mobility are limited, a product of India’s layers of cultural legacies: the Hindu caste system, the feudal and sometimes racial hierarchies . . ., and the imperial bureaucracy imposed by Britain.” For many Indians still, you do what your father did. The Times reports that “(k)nowledge-based businesses like information technology have attracted large numbers of Brahmins, the traditional learned caste. The business castes tended to focus more on retail and wholesale trade than manufacturing. Messy industries like construction are closer to the traditional occupations of the lowest castes.” That the historical caste of scholars and priests (i.e., the Brahmins) has turned to information technology reflects the new “high priests” in terms of modern Indian values, yet I doubt that contemporary Brahmin scholars and priests view a computer programmer as being at all equivalent. The caste system itself has been truncated by a certain reductionism to business (i.e., oriented to business), given the societal hegemony of business in modern India.
As a brief digression, I want to translate the Hindu caste system into Western society. A learned caste exists in the West, even if that caste has been eclipsed in popular culture by the “professional” sub-caste in the business caste. Even so, scholars and priests in the West correspond to the Indian Brahmin caste. The political caste contains (in decreasing order) imperial, kingdom/state, province/region/county, and local offices. This is so in both India and the West. The business caste in the West contains its own hierarchy, from professionals (physicians, CPA’s and lawyers) to the people who work in the financial services and information technology, and on down to retail managers and finally manufacturers. The worker caste (foreign farm workers being at its bottom) is below the “managerial” sub-caste of the business caste, and the “welfare” or “homeless” caste is perhaps the Western equivalent of the untouchables in India. As in India, the business caste—in particular the professional and managerial sub-castes—has in practice vaulted to being the de facto highest caste in terms of contemporary values. That the Brahmin caste, in having scriptures or treatises as referents that contradict or relativize whatever happens to be the flavor of the month (e.g., “being a professional”), self-consciously transcends or repudiates “professional” values suggests that a basic learned—politics—business order of status (and even class) exists in spite of the apparent societal hegemony of the professionals (in which, not coincidentally, the next-lower business sub-caste, that of the business executive/manager, has claimed membership). Indeed, practically every working adult American who is not a student claims to be a professional (just look at the housing postings on Craigslist). In the U.S., everyone gets to classify oneself as being in the highest sub-caste of business, which in turn is presumed to be the highest caste in the entire system. It is not simply because physicians, public accountants and lawyers can be wealthy; “professional” now conveys a high-class sort of status. So, it would appear there are two new gods in the American pantheon.
In modern India, the “Dalit problem” may reduce in a practical sense to the task of reducing a rather extreme economic inequality, which in itself is dangerous to a representative democracy. Thanks in part to an affirmative action program by the government, Dalits and tribal people have gained in getting an education and procuring government jobs. This is only part of the story, however. Although widening “the gulf between rich and poor,” the economic expansion brought about by the post-1991 liberalization policy allowing foreign direct investment and expanding trade has enabled some Dalits to become wealthy as business practitioners. As a result of both the affirmative action and liberalization policies, the wage gap between other castes and Dalits decreased from 36 percent in 1983 to 21 percent in 2011 (and the education gap has been halved). Twenty-one percent is less than the gap between Caucasian and Black men in the United States in 2011. The social status of Dalits has risen as well. “With their new wealth they have also won a measure of social acceptance,” according to the Times.
According to Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit activist and proponent of capitalism for untouchables, “(b)ecause of the new market economy, material markers are replacing social markers.” This can be generalized to include the self-vaunting of the business caste to the head of the line from third in terms of popular understanding both in India and the West. Prasad implicitly likens India to the West, in fact, by making the following observation: “India is moving from a caste-based to a class-based society, where if you have all the goodies in life and your bank account is booming, you are acceptable.” What of the Brahmin priest or scholar of philosophy who sees through all the vanities in life and appreciates timeless gems that don’t necessary pay a monetary dividend? Is the modern professional society in actuality without class, yet still very hierarchical and unequal? It is indeed part of the role of the scholar and priest to hold this mirror up to the “professionals,” whose niggardly caste does not permit donations to such “lost” causes as that of truth. Am I understood?
As Nietzsche theorizes, the strong can be hoodwinked by the weak who seek to dominate beyond their native pith and ken (e.g., those with an undergraduate degree in Law or Medicine claiming nonetheless a false entitlement to the doctorate—the J.S.D. or D.Sci.M. rather than the LLB/JD or MD prerequisite degrees). Pith, or strength, and ken, or knowledge, may come down in the end to character, out of which real castes naturally form in human relations. What physician is going to party with a scholar who reminds him that his MD is actually an undergraduate degree in a Medical school?—the doctorate being a terminal (highest possible, so not a prerequisite for another degree in the same school/discipline) degree that includes comprehensive (not board) exams and a dissertation-length defended body of original research. What scholar is going to respect a lawyer who cannot be wrong about the LLB (the JD is just another name for that degree) being a doctorate because he or she also has a BA in English? It was student dissatisfaction at around 1900 with the “two B’s” (LLB and BA) that prompted the three lawyers who started new University of Chicago Law School to re-label the LLB program as “JD” (this “D” does not stand for doctorate). In typically American fashion, the marketing gimmick was inexorably taken for substance (because of the convenience) and the misnomer quite understandably became the default rather than recognized as a stubborn category mistake. Substantively, a year or two of basic survey courses and the same time in senior seminars (without even a major!) in the discipline of law does not a doctorate make. Yet this misnomer, and the related one in American medical schools, helped fuel the ascendancy of the “professional” sub-caste of business to the top of the heap, aided by the perennial non-virgin goddess of money.
I contend that the self-vaunting of the “professional” sub-caste in the West is just as squalid (and without foundation) as the historical discrimination against the Dalit in what is now India. Both trajectories violate the ethical principle of desert (i.e., what is deserved) which is related to the principle of fairness. Both “mis-casteings” involve the presumption of knowing more than is actually known in the assigning (and enforcement) of roles. In other words, both are dogmatic, or arbitrary, relative to nature. Rather than looking to capitalism or democracy here, the real lesson is in terms of nature relative to human contrivance. The ancient Greek marble pillars might have been majestic in service to Athena or Poseidon, but green vines would have the last say, as per the painting of the Romantics in the nineteenth century.
Whereas governmental preference and capitalism have enabled an increasing number of Dalits to “join the club” of social acceptance, business and government in the West reinforce the hegemony of the “doctored” professionals who in actuality typically have one (Europe) or two (America) undergraduate degrees. Indeed, kings (raj) and businessmen (as well as Brahmin priests!) in historical India played salient roles in keeping the Dalit in their place as (literally) outcastes. So the value of capitalism and a preferential policy of government should not be over-esteemed in themselves simply because they contributed the upward mobility of some (or many) in the Dalit caste. In the end, above particular economic and political systems as well as historical and even modern societal caste or class systems in which some benefit unduly at the expense of others, lies human character, out of which a rather different, distinctly invisible order of castes naturally unfolds without relying on human intention.

Part II

Nature’s Caste System: Character-Based Clusters

Pushing good characters down for no good reason in a sort of “collective judgment” that applies to an entire group of people—as in the case of the untouchables in the caste system in India—and accepting the false entitlement of “professionals” to membership in the highest caste simply because they tend to be wealthy—as in the case of lawyers and physicians in America—violates the clusters that naturally cohere—like gases that form distinct planets having their own separated orbits—on the basis of character. Being “on one planet,” it is immediately obvious that someone else is on another. In this essay, I attempt to sketch some of the basic mechanisms by which nature’s caste system is sustained and articulate the nature of the differences that occasion there being appreciable distance between the clusters.
When a stranger is so rude or presumptuous that all you can do is turn and walk away in utter disbelief, for example, you have run into an alien from one of the outer planets. There are many such creatures communicating with us through Craigslist.
A quick read through the housing section (e.g., room shares, apartments for rent) and many “drama-free” private individuals—self-described “professionals”—can be found making demands right off the bat as they seek to attract (?) a future tenant. In actuality, such people are neither “drama-free” nor “professionals.” Both claims are immediately belied by the manner and content of the writing itself. Such people inhabit a sort of low-class society in which they presume themselves as the elite, or rulers. Astonishingly, the presumption is quite without any hint of second-guessing or shame. “YOU MUST . . . ” written in just this way as an advertisement points to the lack of control they have over their urge to dominate from weakness. Furthermore, they are convinced that they cannot be wrong. Some ask for age and others even bring up religion even though doing so is illegal. “No it’s not!” they would undoubtedly reply. They cannot be wrong. As if by sheer reflex, they must surely take any resistance to their presumption as an insult, even an attack, while they continue to hold themselves as blameless. How could they be otherwise? This rock-hard mentality naturally exists in its own “low class” caste in part because it is immune from being corrected or healed. The only thing a healthy person can do is keep reading—avoiding contact at any cost. This reaction is natural; it is thus one of the principal means by which nature enforces the clusters based on character.
Although I have met some really very nice people on twitter, that “universe” sometimes resembles a low-caste society of sorts that is populated, unfortunately, by creatures who seem dominated by an innate urge or proclivity to grant themselves the entitlement of being a self-certified expert. This seems particularly the case in religious or political topics. Opinions are routinely declared as if facts. “X is Y.” Seldom is it asked, “Perhaps X can be Y?” Although certainly not everyone who tweets on leadership does so, some of the so-called leadership “coaches” like to declare their opinions as if knowledge. It is like watching a little populist democracy of self-invented theory that presumes itself to be fully valid upon being tweeted!
I have in mind the “coaches” who declare as experts  that “Leadership is X” without even having bothered to read the academic (i.e. not “how to”) literature on the topic. In fact, these “coaches,” or cockroaches as they are otherwise known, even dismiss that literature, confusing their own self-informed (grade-wise?) declaration, “Leadership can’t be taught in a classroom!” (whereas leadership can be taught in a daylong “seminar” or “workshop” held in a hotel ballroom for a nice fee) with the fact that leadership can be understood. That was an actual tweet, by the way—by an “expert.” It does not matter that such “experts” are not scholars; they presume they know better what is possible in a classroom. Their presumption is thus of an encroaching nature, without any limit of restraint. Such creatures tend to presume on a regular basis that they 1) know what they actually do not know, and 2) cannot be wrong about it. They must be from a small, very rocky planet somewhere out past Neptune (a similar species populates my “small” hometown, including its little “professional” elite—an elite that is viewed as such only because a mere 21% of the adult population holds a college degree). Low caste, or class, it turns out, is not necessarily of a low socio-economic (or racial) demographic. This is where the historical Hindu caste system really got it wrong.
Worlds away from “low class” know-it-all attitude—which instantly (and naturally!) relegates a person to a low caste much more than does even the ignorance itself—are the more humble and genuine, flying at a much higher altitude. Such people are open to what they might not know and perhaps they are kind to strangers as a kind of natural default of politeness. If you have been fortunate to have been touched by such a person, you have been touched by a being from a planet closer to the sun. The rest of us do not deserve to be so touched, and we know this. Accordingly, as Nietzsche posits, there is a natural distance that arises between people who differ in terms of character-strength—what he calls noble strength. This is the power of a will that willingly takes on resistance, even and especially within—in self-overcoming.
In Nietzsche’s terms, having the will (and will-power!) to self-overcome one’s own most intransigent internal obstacle—a powerful instinct—proffers the most intense (or powerful) pleasure of power. Having the will and strength to perform such a task on a regular basis (i.e., self-overcoming) naturally builds character (noble strength). In so doing, it naturally separates one from people who take an easier path through life, whether through lack of will, or weakness. In other words, strength of character, an innate quality that I believe a person can strengthen or choose to compromise by will, differs among human beings (no doubt at least in part from upbringing). Such differences constitute the vacuums that inevitably exist between the natural castes that naturally form in the human condition. All other castes, or classes, are dogmatic in the sense that they are arbitrary to that condition.
In expunging the artificial sort such as the Hindu caste system, we should not ignore or dismiss the natural array of castes that we know on a daily basis by means of our natural sentiments of approbation and disapprobation. In fact, David Hume held that such sentiments constitute our recognition of “moral” and “immoral.” Perhaps these terms are but part of a more general sense we naturally have of the subjective distance that exists between natural, character-driven, castes or levels of being human, all too human. We moderns hate to think of humanity in such terms, yet I wager we know it on an all-too-daily basis, as we inexorably interact with others—realizing that some people are naturally closer while insisting that others acknowledge the distance that is—and must be—there.
Even a mere essay reflects and reinforces the natural affinities and distances that account for there being distinct clusters, or castes, in any given human social context. Nietzsche wrote in his Genealogy of Morals that it is not meant to be understood by everyone. Breaching the natural distance as if it were somehow “immoral” could sicken, or infect, the innately stronger. Many of the self-certified “coaches” (i.e., “experts” on leadership), for example, have already dismissed this essay in its entirety, mistaking disdain for disagreement (and ultimately weakness for strength). Sustaining that distance is not only the odious smell of arrogant ignorance; the cockroaches themselves fear being “outed” as phonies by a pest-control guy whom they sense can spray them with the disinfectant of (other-certified) knowledge. The arrogance of cockroaches does not permit them to scatter in the transparency of knowledge, so they tend to naturally keep their distance in the first place.
Far more interesting than the presumption of false entitlement by supercilious “professionals” and the ignorant opinion certifying itself as knowledge by the “coaches” is the notion that differences in the duration and timing of genes that trigger other genes can (along with environmental factors) eventuate in human interaction manifesting as distinct clusters based on something as intangible as character—and much of it without intention! We naturally cohere with some people as though in invisible stickiness were involved, and we just as naturally keep our distance from others as if doing so were simply by instinct. I must admit I have tended not to pay sufficient attention to natural distance and have wound up having to enforce what should have been natural. As imperfect as nature’s caste system is, the historical Hindu attempt to systematize it by group and presumably for all ages to come shows just how far ahead nature is to human intention. Try as we might, we cannot bottle it! For unlike the Hindu variety, natural law does not depend on religious, political and economic institutions for enforcement.

Sources:

Lydia Polgreen, “Scaling Caste Walls With Capitalism’s Ladders,” The New York Times, December 22, 2011. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, trans. and ed. (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

Mass Shootings in the U.S.: Why Are Americans So Angry?

Even though the United States account for less than 5% of the world’s population, 31% of the total number of mass killings worldwide between 1966 and 2012 occurred there.[1] I contend that a rise in passive aggression and the related intolerance accounts for much of the difference. In other words, it could be that Americans generally are getting nastier and more angry at each other.

Although not a mass-shooting, Vester Flanagan shot two former co-workers in August 2015. While it is easy to relegate the story by simply concluding that the guy was nuts, a closer examination reveals the situation to be more complicated. The nuances may help us understand what lies behind the mass-killing violence that goes beyond the killers themselves and is disproportionately an American phenomenon. In analyzing the Flanagan case, I want to stress that even if his coworkers had been at fault, the double-murder was completely unjustified. My analysis is oriented to uncovering a hidden trend in American society rather than answering whether the shooting is justified.

In a lawsuit against another network in 2000, Flanagan had claimed that a producer had called him a "monkey" and that he had been "made aware that other black employees ... had been called monkeys by officials affiliated with defendant." He also claimed that a Caucasian "official" had told him that "it busted her butt that blacks did not take advantage of the free money," referring to scholarship funds. Additionally, he insisted that a supervisor at the station had said that "blacks are lazy,” and that that another employee had told a black tape-operator to "stop talking ebonics." WTWC-TV acknowledged that an employee "may have made similar comments to another employee," but denied that such comments are "indicative of unlawful employment practices." The case ended in a non-disclosed settlement.[2] The admission of race-oriented comments to another employee lends some credibility to Flanagan’s assertions.

Even so, Flanagan may have made his own contribution to the workplace tension. The news station denied that his termination was the result of discrimination. It instead cited "poor performance," budgetary reasons and "misbehavior with regards to co-workers."[3] The latter in particular resonates with what he wrote regarding the cameraman (Adam) and reporter (Alison) from his next station. After announcing that he filmed the shooting, he wrote, “Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!”[4] Either Adam had overreacted or Flanagan’s treatment of co-workers was incredibly bad. Flanagan also wrote, “Alison made racist comments” to him, and that he had filed an EEOC report.[5] It could be a case of “white privilege,” or simply that Alison was racist (or that she took sides with Adam).

In any case, the shooting stemmed from anger in the workplace—people not getting along and not having the social skills to work things out rather than make things worse. Adam’s quick trip to the station’s human resources department may indicate a lack of tolerance, as well as a tendency to escalate matters rather than patiently work them out. If Alison made demeaning racial statements to Flanagan, then perhaps her attitude may have been condescending and thus inherently conflictual. Of course, both Adam and Alison may have simply been reacting to extraordinarily bad treatment from Flanagan—his report to the EEOC being an effort to go on the offensive rather than admit that he had treated his coworkers very badly.

I suspect that at least part of the problem is societal—Americans may be been becoming more passive aggressive, and this anger in turn might be kicking the outright aggression up a notch in some people. The lack of tolerance for disagreements shows up in the ideological fragmentation of the American news networks, for example, with Fox News and MSNBC employees on the air brazenly displaying utter disdain for progressives and conservatives, respectively. Dismissiveness toward others, or in other words being “too cool to talk,” stemming from an abject lack of respect for others, may have been increasing at least in the Millennial Generation. As the sordid attitude becomes more socially acceptable as a social more in America, then increasing anger and ensuing aggression can be expected. “Road rage” is a case in point: an extreme hostility toward other people ruffling feathers. Why are so many Americans angry? This may be part of the reason why the U.S. has a disproportionate number of mass killings, and I suspect that the same holds for workplace (and former workplace) violence.

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[1] Stan Ziv, “Study: Mass Shootings ‘Exceptionally American Problem’,” Newsweek, August 23, 2015.

[2] Dana Liebelson and Jessica Schulberg, “Shooting Suspect Sued Another Newsroom for Racism, Claimed He Was Called a Monkey,” The Huffington Post, August 26, 2015.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

Living the Urban Life: Increasing Economic Inequalities?

Richard Rinaldi, an innovative photographer in New York City, devised an interesting photo series, titled "Touching Strangers." It provides an answer to the following question: If brought together literally through touch, will two people who have never met begin, after some initial discomfort, to feel comfort, even a feeling of caring for the other person? Richard traversed the streets of Manhattan looking for pairs to put together. Seeing one person, and then another, who together would make an interesting picture, he would ask them simply to stand together. The  resulting picture would depict any initial reluctance. Then, he would arrange the two so they are touching each other in a friendly way.

A curious thing came out in the resulting pictures: a feeling of caring. Astonished, the subjects invariably reported that merely from the touching they actually had actually begun to care about a stranger! Reflecting on this feedback, Richard said in an interview that his “experiment” reveals humanity that lies within us, that we wish there were more of in the world, and that existed in the past. By “the past,” the photographer was referring to the photo shoots.

If we are willing to go a bit farther back in our reflection, say to the state of nature, whether mythic or historical, we can profit from the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which can explain why we do not feel more caring and compassion as we inhabit great edifices of modern business, government, and society. Indeed, it may be that those tremendous artifacts within which we work, argue, and live may have gradually changed human nature itself—and not for the better.

In his Discourse on Inequality,[1] Rousseau argues that humanity was in a much better condition in the state of nature, before all the artificialities of society changed us. Indeed, the question we might ask the eighteenth-century philosopher is whether forming commercial enterprises, governments and societies has modified human nature itself, or merely our proclivities. Rousseau’s view of “primitive” humanity is best grasped in a bundle.

With “savage man, wandering about in the forests, without industry, without speech, without any fixed residence, an equal stranger to war and every social connection, without standing in any shape in need of his fellows, as well as without any desire of hurting them, and perhaps even without ever distinguishing them individually one from the other, subject to few passions, and finding in himself all he wants, let us, I say, conclude that savage man thus circumstanced had no knowledge or sentiment but such as are proper to that condition, that he was alone sensible of his real necessities, took notice of nothing but what it was his interest to see, and that his understanding made as little progress as his vanity.”

We are naturally inclined to far less social interaction than is foisted on us by living in towns and cities. Less social intercourse meant less conflict and even fewer desires—hence my question of whether human nature was different. All that the savage man desired was limited to whatever nature could provide of its own making, rather than by means of man’s cultivation of forest and field. “The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it. The productions of the earth yielded him all the assistance he required; instinct prompted him to make use of them.”

Like Hesiod’s and Ovid’s idyllic descriptions of a Golden Age, whose natural wealth literally grows on trees for the easy taking, Rousseau (unlike Aristotle, whose notion of natural wealth involves the labor of cultivating land) views labor for the savage’s subsistence as nugatory; real labor kicks in when people start to desire wealth. In the simple life enjoyed by primitive man, free time gave rise to more and more “conveniences.”  Through regular use (given declining marginal utility), they “lost almost all their aptness to please, and even degenerated into real wants, the privation of them became far more intolerable than the possession of them had been agreeable; to lose them was a misfortune, to possess them no happiness.

"There being no wealth or property and only limited contact with other humans at first, pride and jealousy from comparisons with others were either not yet in human nature or latent in its bowels. Hence, Rousseau rejects Hobbes’ theory that constant warfare exists in the state of nature and thus justifies the institution of government—even a tyrant. In fact, Rousseau refers directly to Hobbes’ theory in remarking, “so many authors have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle than he in his primitive state.” To Hobbes life in the state of nature is short, cruel, and brutish. Rousseau totally rejects this view.

Rousseau argues that pity, or empathy for others who are suffering, is  a sentiment natural in human beings:

"(P)ity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes to the mutual preservation of the whole species. It is this pity which hurries us without reflection to the assistance of those we see in distress; it is this pity which, in a state of nature, stands for laws, for manners, for virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to disobey her sweet and gentle voice: it is this pity which will always hinder a robust savage from plundering a feeble child, or infirm old man, of the subsistence they have acquired with pain and difficulty, if he has but the least prospect of providing for himself by any other means.”

In the state of nature, the compassion is not yet overwhelmed by the vices borne of the close proximity of other people in society. Empathy can check anger and fighting in the state of nature. Before the institution of property and law to protect it, “goodness of heart” was “suitable to the pure state of nature.” Furthermore, “nothing can be more gentle than he in his primitive state, when . . .  he is withheld by natural compassion from doing any injury to others. . . . For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, Where there is no property, there can be no injury.”

Rousseau embraces Locke’s theory that property arises from one’s labor. “(I)t is impossible to conceive how property can flow from any other source but industry; for what can a man add but his labour to things which he has not made, in order to acquire a property in them? . . . enjoyment forming a continued possession is easily transformed into a property.” To Rousseau, mine and yours came about in the process of societalization. “The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.”

Furthermore, because man in the state of nature was oriented to “his real necessities,” no impetus kicked in to trigger industry. Hence, there was no economic inequality beyond that which nature grants. Referring to human beings in the state of nature, Rousseau maintains,

"(A)s long as they undertook such works only as a single person could finish, and stuck to such arts as did not require the joint endeavours of several hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy, as much as their nature would admit, and continued to enjoy with each other all the pleasures of an independent intercourse; but from the moment one man began to stand in need of another's assistance; from the moment it appeared an advantage for one man to possess the quantity of provisions requisite for two, all equality vanished; property started up; labour became necessary; and boundless forests became smiling fields, which it was found necessary to water with human sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to sprout out and grow with the fruits of the earth.”

The increased industry involved the development of reason and understanding, which have also led to problems. The savage man needed only to learn “to surmount the obstacles of nature, to contend in case of necessity with other animals, to dispute his subsistence even with other men, or indemnify himself for the loss of whatever he found himself obliged to part with to the strongest.” As the mind grew more enlightened, “property, and along with it perhaps a thousand quarrels and battles” more than countered the epistemological benefits. Whereas Hegel hails the progression of reason through human history, Rousseau sees a link between the expanding use of reason, increased wealth, and more wants and thus comparisons and conquest. In other words, modern man uses reason much more than is natural, and this had led to problems confined to society rather than based in the savage man.

In political terms, “Those who heretofore wandered through the woods, by taking to a more settled way of life, gradually flock together, coalesce into several separate bodies, and at length form in every country distinct nations.” From the increased interaction between people, jealousy and warfare take off. “Every one [sic] begins to survey the rest, and wishes to be surveyed himself; and public esteem acquires a value. . . . From these first preferences there proceeded on one side vanity and contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness and innocence. . . It was thus that every man, punishing the contempt expressed for him by others in proportion to the value he set upon himself, the effects of revenge became terrible, and men learned to be sanguinary and cruel.” Increased contact with others from that of our natural state leads to tremendous problems. Interestingly, the increased cruelty suggests that the human race has become weaker, as it is the weak person who seeks to dominate who is intentionally cruel.

According to Rousseau, our bad qualities have surged ahead of our pre-existing good ones. Society and the ensuing established relations among people draw on “qualities different from those . . . derived from their primitive constitution.” The question is perhaps whether the bad qualities had been merely latent, or altogether absent from human nature. Put another way, have the artificial aspects of society changed human nature or merely altered the balance between a number of instincts that we have come to see as good and bad?

In referring to different characteristics of man coming to dominate others, Rousseau implies that human nature has not changed. On the other hand, he also writes that “natural compassion” has “suffered some alteration” as human interaction has increased. Moreover, "the spirit of society" and "the inequality [that] society engenders" have changed and transformed "all our natural inclinations." This would seem to go beyond merely increasing some and decreasing others, suggesting instead that human nature itself has been altered, even transformed.

The implications from the change in context being able to transform human nature could only be highly significant. It would seem that societal artifacts, including systems of business and government, can render humans less humane in our very nature, which is perhaps to say human, all too human.

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1. All quotes are from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1910).