That would be more charitable, but less accurate. Most of the major social reform movements of the 20th century explicitly claimed that the human mind is a blank slate that can be arbitrarily re-written by social conditioning, and built elaborate reform programs on the idea that they could eradicate everything from discrimination to selfishness through aggressive re-education efforts. I’m not inclined to let them sweep that bit of hubris under the rug, especially since the same groups are in many cases continuing to advocate for the same reform programs despite the fact that one of their key assumptions has been disproved.
I’ll certainly concede that we don’t currently know exactly what the landscape of human behavioral tendencies and constraints looks like, but this should be a motivation for reform advocates to be cautious rather than dismissing the concern. Blithely assuming that you can suppress an infinite variety of undesired behaviors with sufficient social pressure is a recipe for disaster—the end result is likely to be a long buildup of resentment and covert resistance, followed by a sudden revolution that replaces the reformer’s desired social order with a new regime that feels more psychologically comfortable to whatever faction manages to seize power.
Most of the major social reform movements of the 20th century explicitly claimed that the human mind is a blank slate that can be arbitrarily re-written by social conditioning
That’s the special case of “every point in the state space”, isn’t it?
And I’m not even sure it’s true. Marxist ideology, for example, explicitly disclaims that sort of neuroplasticity: its big idea (oversimplifying like crazy here) is that people unconsciously act as agents of large-scale social groups, and that this sort of group agency is stable enough to be exploited when promoted to conscious awareness. Far from implying a tabula rasa, it actually requires certain stable psychology.
I don’t see how “people unconsciously act as agents of large-scale social groups” contradicts “the human mind can be arbitrarily re-written by social conditioning”. To me it seems that one implies the other.
Isn’t the whole Marxist project based on the idea that you can bring about radical changes in human behavior by reorganizing society? “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” can only work if humans are so malleable that basic greed, laziness, selfishness and ambition can be eradicated through social programs.
I don’t see how “people unconsciously act as agents of large-scale social groups” contradicts “the human mind can be arbitrarily re-written by social conditioning”. To me it seems that one implies the other.
It’s less about social conditioning and more about the extent to which people pursue group interests regardless of social conditioning. To people subscribing to Marxist ideas of class, behaviors which we might perceive as individualistic ambition in fact serve partly—even primarily—to further the interests of the social class in which an actor is embedded, unbeknownst to the actor; when a Marxist talks about capitalist greed, they’re not talking about the selfishness of individual capitalists, they’re accusing capitalists as a group of greed for the resources of other social groups. None of this requires any grand scheme of brainwashing (though social conditioning does come into play when we start talking about “false consciousness” and related ideas); it’s all seen as implicit in people’s native behavior.
It wouldn’t be too far wrong to describe Marxism as primarily a theory of group agency; originally it covered only coarse-grained economic classes, but modern descendants of Marxist ideology have extended it to cover other common interests as well. You’re probably more likely to encounter the latter these days.
I think we mean different things by ‘brainwashing’ and ‘social conditioning’, which is causing some terminology confusion. The above is perfectly consistent with my thesis, which is simply that a major theme of 20th-century social movements was the belief that you can change individual behavior pretty much however you want by changing the society that people live in.
I call this an incorrect belief because more recent research in cognitive science reveals that there are strong constraints on what kinds of mental adaptations will actually happen in practice, and thus on what kinds of social organizations will actually be stable enough to survive for any great length of time.
For example, humans have an innate tendency to form ingroup / outgroup distinctions and to look down on members of their outgroup, which is one of the factors responsible for a lot of bigotry and racism. Society can tell people who to include in these groups with a high degree of success, and can encourage or discourage the abuse of outgroup members. But you can’t eliminate the underlying desire for an outgroup, and if you try you’ll get odd phenomena like people who violently hate their political opponents while honestly believing themselves to be paragons of love and tolerance.
Again, this is not to say that reforms are impossible. Rather, the point is that you can’t fix everything simultaneously, because every social change has unpredictable side effects that currently no one knows how to eliminate. This is one reason why grand social engineering projects almost always fail—because they carelessly pile up lots of big changes in a short period of time, and the accumulated side effects create so much social chaos that they get deposed and replaced with someone more psychologically comfortable.
The above is perfectly consistent with my thesis, which is simply that a major theme of 20th-century social movements was the belief that you can change individual behavior pretty much however you want by changing the society that people live in.
I feel like I’m explaining this poorly. You can’t make arbitrary changes to behavior under the Marxist worldview by making social reforms. You can get people to further the interests of their social class more effectively by changing their perception of class, or get them to further the interests of other social classes by making them aware of common social goals, but to a Marxist this follows preexisting and fairly strict principles of how people relate to the class structure. To an orthodox Marxist, for example, improving social conditions by means of placing constraints on the behavior of socially dominant classes would be doomed to failure without a corresponding increase in the power of socially subordinate classes: other forms of exploitation would be found, and class relations would regress to the mean.
It’s not that you can do whatever you want by hacking society in a certain way; it’s that people’s psychology is organized in such a way as to lead to more equitable outcomes if you hack society in particular ways. And even describing this as “hacking” is a little misleading; Marx didn’t see any of it as a social project, more as the inevitable result of existing social forces. (Incidentally, this is a main point of divergence between orthodox Marxism and Leninism or Maoism, both of which aimed to produce Marxist revolutions “early”.)
That would be more charitable, but less accurate. Most of the major social reform movements of the 20th century explicitly claimed that the human mind is a blank slate that can be arbitrarily re-written by social conditioning, and built elaborate reform programs on the idea that they could eradicate everything from discrimination to selfishness through aggressive re-education efforts. I’m not inclined to let them sweep that bit of hubris under the rug, especially since the same groups are in many cases continuing to advocate for the same reform programs despite the fact that one of their key assumptions has been disproved.
I’ll certainly concede that we don’t currently know exactly what the landscape of human behavioral tendencies and constraints looks like, but this should be a motivation for reform advocates to be cautious rather than dismissing the concern. Blithely assuming that you can suppress an infinite variety of undesired behaviors with sufficient social pressure is a recipe for disaster—the end result is likely to be a long buildup of resentment and covert resistance, followed by a sudden revolution that replaces the reformer’s desired social order with a new regime that feels more psychologically comfortable to whatever faction manages to seize power.
That’s the special case of “every point in the state space”, isn’t it?
And I’m not even sure it’s true. Marxist ideology, for example, explicitly disclaims that sort of neuroplasticity: its big idea (oversimplifying like crazy here) is that people unconsciously act as agents of large-scale social groups, and that this sort of group agency is stable enough to be exploited when promoted to conscious awareness. Far from implying a tabula rasa, it actually requires certain stable psychology.
I don’t see how “people unconsciously act as agents of large-scale social groups” contradicts “the human mind can be arbitrarily re-written by social conditioning”. To me it seems that one implies the other.
Isn’t the whole Marxist project based on the idea that you can bring about radical changes in human behavior by reorganizing society? “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” can only work if humans are so malleable that basic greed, laziness, selfishness and ambition can be eradicated through social programs.
It’s less about social conditioning and more about the extent to which people pursue group interests regardless of social conditioning. To people subscribing to Marxist ideas of class, behaviors which we might perceive as individualistic ambition in fact serve partly—even primarily—to further the interests of the social class in which an actor is embedded, unbeknownst to the actor; when a Marxist talks about capitalist greed, they’re not talking about the selfishness of individual capitalists, they’re accusing capitalists as a group of greed for the resources of other social groups. None of this requires any grand scheme of brainwashing (though social conditioning does come into play when we start talking about “false consciousness” and related ideas); it’s all seen as implicit in people’s native behavior.
It wouldn’t be too far wrong to describe Marxism as primarily a theory of group agency; originally it covered only coarse-grained economic classes, but modern descendants of Marxist ideology have extended it to cover other common interests as well. You’re probably more likely to encounter the latter these days.
I think we mean different things by ‘brainwashing’ and ‘social conditioning’, which is causing some terminology confusion. The above is perfectly consistent with my thesis, which is simply that a major theme of 20th-century social movements was the belief that you can change individual behavior pretty much however you want by changing the society that people live in.
I call this an incorrect belief because more recent research in cognitive science reveals that there are strong constraints on what kinds of mental adaptations will actually happen in practice, and thus on what kinds of social organizations will actually be stable enough to survive for any great length of time.
For example, humans have an innate tendency to form ingroup / outgroup distinctions and to look down on members of their outgroup, which is one of the factors responsible for a lot of bigotry and racism. Society can tell people who to include in these groups with a high degree of success, and can encourage or discourage the abuse of outgroup members. But you can’t eliminate the underlying desire for an outgroup, and if you try you’ll get odd phenomena like people who violently hate their political opponents while honestly believing themselves to be paragons of love and tolerance.
Again, this is not to say that reforms are impossible. Rather, the point is that you can’t fix everything simultaneously, because every social change has unpredictable side effects that currently no one knows how to eliminate. This is one reason why grand social engineering projects almost always fail—because they carelessly pile up lots of big changes in a short period of time, and the accumulated side effects create so much social chaos that they get deposed and replaced with someone more psychologically comfortable.
I feel like I’m explaining this poorly. You can’t make arbitrary changes to behavior under the Marxist worldview by making social reforms. You can get people to further the interests of their social class more effectively by changing their perception of class, or get them to further the interests of other social classes by making them aware of common social goals, but to a Marxist this follows preexisting and fairly strict principles of how people relate to the class structure. To an orthodox Marxist, for example, improving social conditions by means of placing constraints on the behavior of socially dominant classes would be doomed to failure without a corresponding increase in the power of socially subordinate classes: other forms of exploitation would be found, and class relations would regress to the mean.
It’s not that you can do whatever you want by hacking society in a certain way; it’s that people’s psychology is organized in such a way as to lead to more equitable outcomes if you hack society in particular ways. And even describing this as “hacking” is a little misleading; Marx didn’t see any of it as a social project, more as the inevitable result of existing social forces. (Incidentally, this is a main point of divergence between orthodox Marxism and Leninism or Maoism, both of which aimed to produce Marxist revolutions “early”.)