Do We Need Loyalty?

Jim Comey has castigated Donald Trump for demanding loyalty.  He initially reported that when the president asked for this, he replied that he would give honesty.  We now know from Comey’s memoranda that he agreed to provide “honest loyalty.”

My question is why was it ever impermissible for Trump to ask a subordinate for loyalty.  Shouldn’t underlings be trustworthy?  Shouldn’t they carry out their assigned roles?  In most cases, shouldn’t they do what their bosses ask, without seeking to sabotage them?

No doubt, blind loyalty is a problem.  We don’t want people to be good Nazis who follow every order they are given. If some mandates are illegal—or immoral—the proper course may be to disobey.  In some instances, it may even be to resign.

But was this the case with Trump and Comey?  Did the president ask the Director of the FBI to violate his oath of office?  Did he, for instance, direct him to obstruct justice.  Such evidence as we have suggests that he did not.

So why did Comey bridle at the request?  We have learned that he was loyal to Attorney General Lynch.  At her request, he refrained from saying that Hillary Clinton was being investigated.  He instead referred to this as “a matter.”  Although he later claimed this made him queasy, he loyally complied.

The same can be said about Comey’s conduct with regard to president Obama. Plainly Obama did not want to see Hillary indicted.  His FBI chief got this message and faithfully oversaw a bogus investigation.  The normal procedures were not observed to ensure that the next president would not be embarrassed.

In view of this conduct, the only thing that makes sense is that Comey did not want to be loyal to Trump per se.  Indeed, he may well have participated in a cabal to oppose his election.  In other words, Comey distrusted Trump’s politics and temperament.  He believed him unworthy of loyalty—irrespective of any presidential action.

From Trump’s perspective, it made sense to worry about whether holdovers from the previous administration would carry out his policies.  No government can operate if too many subordinates disobey instructions.  He needed people who would be on his team.

As it happened, Trump was right to be concerned.  Folks like Comey had loyalties that collided with their new boss’s policies.  They were prepared to resist a change in administrative directions.

Loyalty may not be absolute.  For example, it seldom makes sense for an underling to be loyal to a superior who is not loyal to him.  But this was not the case with Comey and Trump.  The rupture in trust was initiated by Comey.  It was his negative attitude that started the downward spiral.

One of the most unfortunate aspects of this fiasco has been to disparage loyalty—and even imply that asking for it is an impeachable offence.  No large organization can operate without loyalty; no society can remain intact in its absence.

I think in terms of the family.  How can a marriage remain stable if husbands and wives are not loyal to one another?  How can parents and children be mutually supportive if there is no loyalty between them? Could they trust each other well enough to work in harmony?

In many ways, this has become a society wide problem.  It may be one of the reasons for the upsurge in divorce. It may also account for the epidemic in unwed parenthood.  If people cannot commit to one another, that is, to be loyal to one another, how that they be confident of mutual assistance?

Disloyal husbands cheat on their wives.  Disloyal parents belittle their children for non-existent infractions. So why wouldn’t disloyal FBI Directors tell lies or leak secrets?  Without a predisposition to loyalty, people don’t have the internal controls to avoid betraying those who deserve cooperation.

At the moment, Democrats are in a full-on obstructionist mode.  They even question whether they should approve a Secretary of State who might do a hated president’s bidding.  Not the interests of the nation, not loyalty to its traditions, but self-interested partisanship guides their decisions.

This is a potential disaster in the making.  If this trend continues, our national fragmentation will be irreversible.  We will become a nation of selfish monads who are loyal only to ourselves.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Perils of Manichean Thinking

Manichean thinking is very seductive.  Imagining that the world is made up of only good and bad guys simplifies the process of choosing sides.  No doubt, we will join the good guys and drive the bad ones into the ground. They are evil and therefore deserve whatever fate they meet.

Part of this scenario is that every smidgeon of wickedness in the world is attributable to the bad guys.  They are in league with the devil.  Ergo, once we get rid of them, all will be well.  With no one left to perpetrate vice, only goodness will remain.

Some religious people think this way.  They divide the universe into heaven and hell.  The trouble is that they often regard heaven as an absence of hell. It is a place where there is no disease, no starvation, no conflict.  How it will be laid out, however, is hazy.  It cannot consist solely of singing God’s praises.  (Too boring)

The Marxists are even more Manichean.  They divide the world into evil businesspersons and blameless proletarians.  Given that capitalist selfishness is responsible for mean-spirited exploitation, once they are shoved aside everyone will live in comfort.

In the Marxist playbook, after the revolution, first socialism, but later communism, will take over.  Property will be held in common and everyone will be nice to everyone else. Exactly how this will work, they do not say; mostly because they do not know.

The Marxist’s attention is directed almost exclusively toward the bad guys.  Their concern is with defeating these rich fiends.  Obviously, after they are consigned to the ash heap of history, altruistic workers will automatically do what is right.  It is thus unnecessary to foresee how they will accomplish this.

Historically, revolutionaries have sought to eliminate evil elites.  Whether they were French aristocrats, Russian boyars, or American robber barons, these villains were to be killed or impoverished.  So would any counter-revolutionaries foolish enough to enlist in their ranks.

As the kissing cousins of Marxists, contemporary liberals adhere to a similar narrative.  The one-percenters and their Republican allies are currently in their cross hairs. They are certain that once these political troglodytes are reduced to impotence, we will have heaven on earth.

As a result, liberals seldom think things through.  Because they assume their niceness will automatically beget niceness, they do not scrutinize impediments to their plans.  If the sole obstacle to a loving universe is the bad guys, with them gone there will be nothing to worry about.

The upshot is that we get shovel ready projects that are not shovel ready, ObamaCare that was predestined for a death spiral, and educational reforms that reduce what children learn.  Is it a surprise that ideologues who do not look ahead routinely encounter unforeseen complications?

A sterling example of this mentality was the Obama administration attempt to reduce racism by eliminating discipline in public schools.  On the assumption that racists were responsible for more disciplinary action being taken against black students than whites, they forbade punitive controls.

It never occurred to these liberals that some students might be more obstreperous than others.  It certainly did not occur to them that some differences might be correlated with social class—as opposed to racism.  From their Manichean perspective, punishments arose from evil educators who had to be restrained.

This lack of ability to decipher complicated problems or devise appropriate responses is one of the reasons education is in trouble.  Simplistic answers based on either/or reasoning have a way of imploding.  This also applies to the economy, criminal justice, the family, foreign relations, and gender relations.

At the moment, the biggest villain on the liberal horizon is Donald Trump. In many quarters, he is demonized as Beelzebub himself.  Whatever goes wrong—and I mean whatever—he is the evil genius operating behind the scenes. As a consequence, if we impeach him, peace and love will break out everywhere.

Although backward-looking conservatives can also be Manichean, nowadays liberals have made this their specialty.  They may brag about their sophisticated intellectual theories, but this is a false front.  They likewise boast of their unparalleled compassion, yet their relentlessly crude moralizing refutes this.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Environmentalism as Religion

Years ago, when programs about ecology invaded public television, I knew something was wrong.  No matter which species was highlighted, the moral was always the same.  We were told that if we modified any element in the environment, a cascade effect would destroy the delicate balance upon which we depended.

Thus, were we to upset the forests in which the Lynx thrived, we would shortly discover that we humans were also endangered.  Our only hope was to make sure we did nothing to modify the natural order.  As part of this biological tapestry, we were equally vulnerable.

What bothered me was the drumbeat of advice, which suggested that once an ecological equilibrium was lost, the path to doom was inevitable. It seemed to me that if an equilibrium were disrupted, a new one would emerge.  Without wolves to cull the deer, soon a lack of appropriate vegetation would thin the deer numbers.

Nonetheless, I was told that science was against me.  The ecology was fragile.  Plants and animals that had evolved in tandem were interdependent.  Pull one piece from the wall in which they were embedded and the whole edifice would come tumbling down.

To me, this had the whiff a religious doctrine.  While it was true that evolution was complex, it also moved. Freezing it at a point in time struck me as a secular commandment.  This was not about understanding nature, but prescribing how to deal with it.

A recent book confirmed my suspicions.  Charles Mann’s the Wizard and the Prophet (2018) traces the environmental movement back to its roots. It also compares it with the simultaneous growth of bioengineering.  As a reporter, Mann is meticulous about the details and provides a sweeping overview.

The wizard of his title is Norman Borluag.  He was the Nobel Prize winning originator of the Green Revolution. His work in developing more productive forms of wheat and rice probably saved billions—that’s right billions—from starvation.

Meanwhile the Prophet was William Vogt.  His book The Road to Survivalwas an early ecological manifesto.  Enormously influential, it predicted that we were on the road to ruin if we did not adapt to environmental verities.  Since we did not shape nature, it would have its revenge if we were arrogant.

While it must be said that we must be careful about how we pollute our planet, a return of pre-industrial poverty is not necessary.  Vogt, for instance, hated Borlaug’s innovations. He feared that more food would increase population pressures and therefore many people should be allowed to starve.

Vogt, of course, did not put it this way.  His emphasis was on the glories of unsullied nature.  According to him, we must not destroy the birds and the forests. We ought never assume God-like attributes.  Rather, we needed to fit in, rather than dominate.

To my ears this sounded romantic—and it was.  Vogt was not a scientist.  He was an activist.  Although toward the end of his career he used the title Dr., this was from an honorary degree.  His scientific training was almost non-existent.  Like so many leaders of the environmental movement, he was an enthusiastic dilettante.

My point is that environmentalism is not science.  It may dress itself up as science.  It may recruit scientists, as it does with the climate change movement.  It may even scorn its opponents by accusing them of not being scientific. Nonetheless, it is more about poetry than hard facts.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Scientists also go overboard.  They too can be arrogant.  For the moment, however, agrarian experts like Borlaug have thankfully kept famine at bay.  Even so, there may come a time when food production cannot keep up with population growth.

But do we really want to stop improving our agricultural technology? Do the environmental romantics who hope to limit our numbers to a billion intend to choose which of us are expendable? I am confident they will not select themselves.

Hence, if I have to choose between birds and people, I choose people. Likewise, if I must decide between more automobiles and forcing poor people into riding buses, I come down on the side of automobiles.  Yes, we must work to limit environmental contamination.  But this must not be at the expense of technological innovations or economic prosperity.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Looking for a Way to Speak Out

I began writing columns for the Cherokee Tribune about two years. For almost a decade before this I produced weekly pieces for the Marietta Daily Journal.  These ventures started almost by accident, but have been a wonderful outlet for an opinionated person such as myself.

My Tribune pieces ought actually be attributed to my wife Linda. She was the one who suggested that I do them.  Since people in Cobb County (where we work) had begun noticing me on the street, she wondered why our neighbors in Cherokee county should not do the same.

As for me, I questioned whether I could compose two columns per week.  I remembered Charles Krauthammer writing that when he began his column he insisted it be once a week lest he run out of things to say.  I also recalled a KSU colleague who marveled that I had enough material for as many essays as I already did.

Well, by now the count is well over five hundred—and I keep chugging along.  Every week I begin by speculating about the source of my next columns and every week I sit down in front of my computer and the words flow.  Here’s hoping they continue to do so.

This last week I told my MDJ readers about my adventures publishing a paperback on Amazon.com.  Today, I am doing the same for Tribune readers.  Perhaps this is narcissistic, but that goes with the territory of being a writer.

In any event, my new book (my seventeenth) Forward-Looking Conservatism: A Renegade Sociologist Speaks Outwas published a month ago as an e-book.  Converting this into a paperback was time consuming and entailed exasperating formatting problems.

The work is a compendium of my columns from both the MDJ and the Tribune. It attempts to forge a coherent whole out of what had been independent pieces.  The goal is to demonstrate that there is a viable conservative alternative to Neo-Marxist liberalism.

My subtitle reflects the fact that I use my sociological background in an unorthodox way.  Almost all of my colleagues are liberal; hence they regard me as an apostate. They disapprove of using our disciple to support opinions they consider vile.

And so I am a renegade in quest of a platform.  Today, as during every period in history, only a few ideologies command our attention.  These embody the conventional wisdom.  They are the viewpoints with which we grew up.  As such, they appear to be the only ways to understand our universe.

So what happens when a person has a different way of looking at things?  What if it is unlike liberalism or traditional conservatism?  Is it possible to be heard?  Will people listen to an unfamiliar perspective?

As a student of social change, I am acutely aware that new ideas take time to take root.  I think of Oliver Cromwell beseeching parliamentarians to be tolerant of one another. His appeals were in vain.  Only after another hundred years of bloodshed were people willing to listen.

I know this must sound arrogant.  After all, who am I to imply that I am in the same league as Cromwell? But then again, doesn’t everyone with novel ideas assume they are correct?  Don’t we all have big dreams about influencing the world?

The trouble is that it is hard to tell the difference between idiosyncratic musings and beneficial novelties.  Our limited outlooks always distort our personal perspectives.  Nonetheless, if people don’t promote their contributions, the good would get just as lost as the bad.

In the end, we winnow the truth from falsehood by testing it in the court of public opinion.  This cannot happen, however, if ideas never make it into the social arena.  If they are not heard, they cannot stoke anyone’s imagination or stimulate counter ideas.

So this is where I am.  Whether or not I am right, I believe I have insights that are worthy of examination. Over two centuries ago, the philosopher David Hume wrote that publishing a book was like dropping it down a well. He initially bemoaned the fact that his major tome fell stillborn from the press.  Eventually, however, it became a classic.

What will happen to my books?  This is in the lap of the Gods.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Confronting the Dominoes of Denial

For some time now, I have been struggling to understand why so many good people tolerate rank dishonesty.  Why do liberals, in particular, spout obvious mendacities?  Worse still, why do they applaud fabrications from others? Shouldn’t they reject politicians who make a habit of propagating falsehoods?

Although I am sure that liberals make the identical complaint about conservatives, for the moment let us assume that there were lies about ObamaCare, the IRS, and the Trump dossier.  Why have these not elicited the same sort of clamor, as occurred with Watergate?

When I was a clinician helping clients deal with their personal demons, a routine obstacle we faced was their denials.  Despite themselves, these troubled souls refused to see what was there to be seen.  The traumatic events they had experienced were so painful; they could not bear to relive them.

As I watch liberals refuse to acknowledge the failures of their political agenda, it is obvious that they too are in denial.  They genuinely do not see what they could if they were able to tolerate the agony of recognizing that their dreams have turned to ashes.

In fact, we are witnessing the dominoes of denial.  The repudiation of one painful truth requires the repudiation of another painful truth that were it admitted would tear away the façade of the first.  And so denial begets denial, which begets denial, and so forth.  Eventually a tissue of lies produces a Potemkin village of untruths.

This habit of progressive deceit goes way back.  It has its roots centuries ago.  But let us start with Barack Obama.  (I am tempted to begin with Bill Clinton, but let this pass.) Obama was a master of misdirection. He boasted about being transparent, but was the least transparent chief executive in living memory.

Donald Trump is currently lambasted for his alleged duplicity. Nothing he does is exempt from liberal criticism.  Whether it is his tax cut, or dealings with North Korea, or immigration policy, he is depicted as a felon and a fraud.  In short, he is regarded as a monster.

Obama, in contrast, could do nothing wrong.  Did he lie about Benghazi?  Well, not really.  Did race relations go sour on his watch?  Well, that was because of white privilege.  Did ObamaCare fail to live up to its advance billing?  This was clearly the fault of the Republicans.   Did the economy stagnate?  Obviously, no one could have done better.

In other words, the amount of denial regarding Obama’s shortcomings is massive.  Because he was perceived as our first black president, liberals could not allow him to fail.  This might cast aspersions on an entire race—which was completely unacceptable.

Yet this cover-up begat additional cover-ups.  Were Trump to be appreciated as undoing much of Obama’s mischief, it would be necessary to admit that Barack was not perfect.  It might be necessary, for instance, to acknowledge that the economy could have done better with fewer regulations.

Obama is still bragging about how corruption free his administration was, whereas we are learning about how he, and is cronies, weaponized the FBI, the Justice Department, and the CIA.  In order to obscure these embarrassing facts, Trump and his allies must be depicted as more corrupt.

This practice of disguising failures by inventing rival failures does not end.  Were Russian collusion confessed to be a fabrication, Obama’s complicity in creating it might come to light.  That cannot be allowed to happen.  It might unravel decades of liberal exaggerations.

The scales will not fall from liberal eyes because they would have to accept their limitations.  They could not continue to fool themselves into believing that they are more intelligent and compassionate than their foes.  How then would they congratulate themselves for being special?

Denial is a commonplace defense mechanism.  We all use it.  It has become standard operating procedure for liberals because they have so many failings to conceal.  Not the least of these is the dishonesty that their deteriorating fairytales forced them to employ.

With my clinical clients, the objective was to help them become sturdy enough to confront excruciating realities.  What sort of therapy must we now perform with liberals?  My guess is that this will have to be strong medicine.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Putting Pieces of the PuzzleTogether

For years I was perplexed over how to teach social change.   My students at Kennesaw State University—like young people almost everywhere—were hopelessly idealistic.  They held simplistic ideas about what is wrong with our country and even more simplistic ideas about how to remedy it.

Then, almost by accident, I blurted out that we were dealing with complicated questions.  Ever since then, I have been using this as a mantra.  Time and again, I remind a class that things are complicated.  Societies have so many interacting parts that it is difficult to keep track of changes—never mind control them.

I encountered a similar problem when I assembling my book Forward-Looking Conservatism: A Renegade Sociologist Speaks Out.  This compilation of MDJ and Cherokee Tribune columns (which is now out on Amazon) required me to select from over five hundred columns to create a unified whole. This was not easy.

The task was like putting the pieces of an intricate puzzle together. Somehow essays that were independently composed needed to fit into a coherent picture.  They had to tell a consistent story or there was little point of combining them under a single cover.

Whether I succeeded will be up to others to judge, but my strategy was to start by documenting our current political crisis.  After this I recommended principled realism as an alternative to the mess we inherited in the wake of Liberal failures.

A Neo-Marxist perspective is, in fact, a student favorite.  Its utopian projections and Manichean interpretation of social events suits their desire for stark villains and happy endings. They want to know whom to blame so that eternal happiness will burst forth like cherry blossoms in spring.

The young do not realize that they are assaulting our social integrity. They do not understand that in bashing traditional values they are endorsing anarchy.  While progress is a good thing, today’s youth have been so mis-educated that they do not recognize our need for core principles.

This is where forward-looking conservatism comes in. It provides an alternative that builds on a foundation of time-honored standards.  These tenets must be updated to address contemporary challenges, but they provide the adhesive to keep our diverse and techno-commercial society from fragmenting.

Regular readers will know that I have been recommending honesty, personal responsibility, fairness (defined as the same rules for all), liberty and family stability.  These may be difficult to implement, but they enable us to cooperate on ventures that are widely beneficial.

This (I hope) coherent story emerged from decades of focusing on independent aspects of a kaleidoscopic social universe.  Part of what is driving contemporary Americans to distraction is our inability to clarify what feels wrong.  Folks on a left and the right are distressed by unforeseen developments; unsure of what these mean.

If I am correct, forward-looking conservatism brings intelligibility out of darkness.  While it does not eliminate the complications, it puts them into perspective. At least it enabled me to do this while I was struggling to coordinate disparate essays.

Another aspect of this project, which is less relevant to readers than me, was puzzling out how to convert a manuscript into a published book. Times have changed and Amazon.com is on the leading edge of a revolution in social communications.  It not only sells books, it prints them on order.

Donald Trump may have issues with this commercial giant, but I appreciate its innovations.  First these helped me buy books conveniently and now they are helping me publish them conveniently—well, perhaps not all that easily.

I am no computer maven.  Although I am habitually at my keyboard typing out books and columns, the intricacies of programming leave me cold.  This is a complication I would rather skip.

Unfortunately I could not avoid it in preparing my manuscript for publication. I am sure that if I had much hair left, I would have pulled out every strand.  Each time I turned around there seemed to be an obstacle I could not master.

In the end, enough came together so that I now have an actual paperback in my hands.  The margins are not what I wanted and my original cover had to be scrapped, but the tome is now tangible.  Next time I will do better.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

A Million Little Obamas

Now that he has been out of office for over a year, Barack Obama is thinking about his future.  As per usual, his ruminations are on a large scale.  This former community organizer is contemplating organizing the entire planet.  “Hope and change” is intended to go global.

As Barack explained to a television audience, his goal is to inspire young people to pick up the mantle he was forced to drop when his second term as president ended.  He wants them to help implement reforms he was unable to complete.

The way Obama put it is that he hopes to cultivate “a million little Obamas.”  He expects these young people to emulate him—to the betterment of humankind.  In fact, when he said this, he chuckled.  He knew this plan was grandiose.

Actually, it was extraordinarily vain.  As such, it revealed one of the character flaws that made him a failed president.  Barack thinks so highly of himself that he can imagine of no better future than a world populated with Obama clones.

Consider that these are to be “little” Obamas.  They are to reflect his glory, rather than obscure it.  He is to be the shining sun, whereas they are to be asteroids that revolve around his greatness.

But what has Obama done to warrant this extraordinary glory.  When in office, he supposedly obsessed on his legacy.  Still, has this bequest developed in a way that we look back hungrily to a second coming of our erstwhile savior?  Did he produce such wonders that we crave many more?

Well, actually No.  Thus, ObamaCare was a dismal failure.  Its death spiral has finally arrived.  The costs were always going to be exorbitant, while the benefits were slim.  As a result, his government takeover of the health industry could barely survive the passing of its sponsor.

The Iran policy was also a failure.  If this gambit was intended to curb the ambitions of the mullahs, it has already demonstrated its futility.  The Shia hegemony is on the march.  It has reached the Mediterranean and penetrated deep into Yemen.  Can atomic weapons be far behind?

Nor did the rest of Obama’s foreign policy fare well.  Strategic patience established its ineffectiveness on the Korean peninsula.  Kim Jung Un did not decide to forego the bomb because the Americans looked the other way.  To the contrary, he interpreted this neglect as an all-clear sign.

Neither did the Russian Bear go into hibernation.  When Barack sent Putin the message that he would have more flexibility after he was re-elected, this was a signal that nothing would be done to stop Russia’s advance into the Ukraine or the Middle East.  There might be a few harsh words, but no action.

The same applied to ISIS.  In this case, some bombs were dropped, but a fear of injuring civilians meant these had limited effect.  What could have been done to stop the Islamists—but wasn’t—was laid bare by how easily Trump was able to dismember the Caliphate.

Nor was Obama’s legacy more glowing on the home front.  The economy stagnated for eight years.  Only a dose of deregulation and tax reform got it going again.  Race relations also soured, with Black Lives Matter casting aspersions on whites and inner city mobs running riot.

Then there was the rise in the crime rate, the continued decline in educational achievement, the fragmentation of the American family, and the opioid epidemic.  There are even intimations of corruption in the FBI, the IRS, and the White House.  Where, in this litany, was there something of which to be proud?

And yet the media continue to lionize Obama.  He is the standard of dignity with which Trump’s vulgarity is contrasted.  Oh, for the days when we heard literate speeches from our chief executive.  Spare us today’s egotism so that we can again bask in the polished egotism of yore.

Isn’t this, however, just another form of vanity?  The mainstream media seldom criticized Obama.  As our nation’s first black president, they were determined that he not fail.  They would protect him from himself for the good of the nation and humanity.

But isn’t this hubris?  Don’t those who practice it consider it proof of their moral superiority?  Haven’t they converted white guilt into a blindfold that enables them to pretend narcissism is a virtue?

Melvyn L. Fin, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Hazards of Too Much Wealth

I guess it was about half a year ago that I saw a television program on the Victorian era.  It concentrated on the lifestyles of the newly rich.  They were portrayed as parvenus who did not know how to handle such good fortune.  Their big hats and even bigger egos were anything but attractive.

Let me explain.  Mark Twain called the end of the nineteenth century the Gilded Age.  It was a period of unprecedented wealth.  Industrialization made the United States extremely affluent.  Indeed, it had become the richest nation in all of history.

As a corollary, the titans of industry became richer than any previous cohort.  Moreover, many of them came from humble roots and so did not know what to do with their bounty.  They therefore looked to the British aristocracy for role models.

American millionaires thus built palaces in which to reside.  They too threw lavish balls for which they could dress to the nines.  They likewise turned dinner into a stage setting choreographed in every detail.  Nothing was to be out of place.  No extravagance was too extreme.

And yet, these encumbrances were uncomfortable.  Wearing white tie finery to dinner required hours of preparation and resulted in stilted personal interactions.  People were so busy brandishing the symbols of success that they had little time to enjoy them.

Are our current middle classes—and to some extent our lower classes—experiencing a similar affluence shock?  Have we too become so wealthy that we do not know how to employ our assets?  Are we too wasting these advantages on frills that do not convert into personal happiness?

To me, the computer and its various accouterments are exhibit number one.  Many of us are so eager to possess the latest technological wizardry that we do not ask how it will improve our lives.  What, for instance, is the point of having an electronic servant order theater tickets for us?

And what is this business about social media.  If we spend so many hours on Facebook that we accumulate thousands of “friends,” do we have any real friends?  Can an electronic “like” replace the warm smile of a flesh and blood companion?

So badly have our social skills atrophied that people have a harder time establishing love relationships.  The upshot is that family stability is in jeopardy.  Marriages do not last, while children are at the mercy of parents who are more concerned with their own happiness.

As for our automobiles and houses, the larger and more luxurious they are evidently the better.  This cultural gigantism might not translate into additional comfort, but if my toy is bigger and fancier than your toy, I have won the competition to be best.

Next, come our outrageous fashions.  Somehow green hair is supposed to be attractive.  Well, maybe not attractive.  The objective is apparently to be noticed, not admired.  People want to stand out as opposed to achieving anything worthwhile.

Contemporary musical tastes, however, are probably the most revealing.  Sentimental melodies and insightful lyrics have been replaced by raucous rhythms and mean-spirited screams.  Not talent, but attention getting audacity is the goal of many performers.

What is the point of all this?  Is it to distract us from the fact that we have more opportunities than previous generations, but less of an idea what to do with them?  It is as if we had a banquet laid out before us, but got into a food fight because we did not know what to eat first.

So let me make a few suggestions.  Relationships matter.  Loving and being loved never go out of fashion.  Nonetheless, good relations begin with understanding ourselves.  We cannot make solid commitments to others if we are ignorant of who we are and what we want.  This, however, takes courage.

Achievements also matter.  Doing things that are worth doing provides self-respect and social dignity.  Making the world a better place deserves recognition and frequently commands it.  Yet here too courage is of inestimable value.  We could, after all, fail.

My last word.  Wealth is a tool—not an end in itself.  If we do not use it wisely, it can backfire.  Furthermore, this is a skill we are able to acquire, but only if we recognize its worth.

Melvyn L. Fin, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Figuring Out the Modern World

For the most part, we do not recognize what is happening around us until it is over.  When we are in the midst of changes, we are so confused by the unexpected that we cannot make out novel patterns.  It is only after the dust settles that we realize how the pieces fit together.

That, however, doesn’t keep us from tying to figure things out.  We do so because the more accurate our comprehension, the better choices we make.  Once we recognize the obstacles we face, we can improve our chances of circumventing them.

To this end, a recent book has helped put our current situation in better perspective.  Niall Ferguson’s “The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power from the Freemasons to FaceBook” offers a historian’s eye view.  He draws the parallels between what happened in the wake of the printing press with the current computer revolution.

According to Ferguson, relatively cheap books were extremely disruptive.  They brought about scientific, political, and religious upheavals.  Once ordinary people could communicate without the intervention of the authorities, new ways of thinking proliferated.

With inexpensive tracts available, scientists could cross-pollinate and spread innovative ideas.  With low-priced pamphlets at his disposal, Martin Luther could broadcast his challenge to the Roman Catholic Church, which, in turn, disrupted the political order.  The outcome was to midwife modern society.

Today, says Ferguson, we are experiencing similar turmoil.  The Internet and social media have scrambled the ways people communicate.  The news, for instance, is no longer always filtered through media authorities.  People can express their opinions to each other directly without worrying about official censorship.

The question is: Where will this end?  Will there be greater democratization or an administrative counter-attack.  Four hundred years ago, a counter-reformation reasserted the power of Rome.  At about the same time, Louis XIV of France was able to consolidate his more centralized government.  Will we suffer a comparable fate?

Ferguson is primarily interested in the effects of changing patterns of communication.  He contrasts hierarchies, where those at the top dominate information flows, with networks, where data flows laterally.  This, nonetheless, is a partial analysis.

What Ferguson leaves out are factors such as power and social roles.  Power is not just a matter of communication, but of coercion.  Bosses don’t control others solely by monopolizing information.  They also intimidate them into submission.

Likewise, lower level folks don’t only assert their desires by communicating with their peers.  They also do so through a division of labor.  If they are able to coordinate complicated specialties, they can make others dependent upon them.

Even so, Ferguson rightly talks about the emergence of the “administrative” state.  Another way to describe this is “bureaucratic” government.  It is hierarchical, and non-democratic, in the sense that those at the top can effectively control those at the bottom.

Meanwhile, the connections of those at the bottom can be mapped in terms of network connections.  Who communicates with whom frequently determines who is most influential.  Yet people also interact in terms of their roles.  Their various activities intersect so that they achieve more together than separately.  In this case, “professionalism” is correlated with power.

I would, therefore, describe the big fight today as between the bureaucrats and professionals.  Hence, we have the bureaucratic party, namely the Democrats, squared off against the decentralizing party, that is, the Republicans.  The former, in the name of protecting the people, are hierarchically oriented, whereas the latter, in the name of greater freedom, foster voluntary networks.

Ferguson is smart enough to know that the complete victory of one or the other of these parties might be disastrous.  If the centralizers won, we would probably be saddled with tyranny.  They would be inclined to stamp out originality so as to impose their version of social order.

On the other hand, if the decentralizers were completely victorious, chaos would likely ensue.  Not liberty, but license could prevail.  We are consequently on the horns of a dilemma.  With neither side monopolizing the truth, the best way to proceed is via a balance of power.

The trouble is that this is usually achieved by way of endless conflict.  Because no one can know the fluctuating sweet spot, we are doomed to eternal strife.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw, State University