1. Common motives and goals;
2. An accepted division of labor, i.e. roles;
3. Established status (social rank, dominance) relationships;
4. Accepted norms and values with reference to matters relevant to the group;
5. Development of accepted sanctions (praise and punishment) if and when norms were respected or violated.
(For implications regarding leadership, see this.)
Although the definition may appear quite formal, it actually
describes a great deal of human interaction over a vast range of
situations. For example, all these criteria
can be identified in a “bottle gang,” a group that pools the money they have to
buy a bottle of alcohol that will be then shared amongst them. (1) These same
criteria also characterize massive, formal groups such as religions,
militaries, and nations.
Upon reflections, most of us would recognize that we are
members of many groups such as families, PTAs, churches, neighborhood
associations, political parties, nations, etc.
We also recognize that there may be conflicts between the motives and
goals of various groups and, sometimes, between our personal goals and those of
a group we’re in. It’s no exaggeration
to say that much of the conflict and distress of our lives comes from trying to
reconcile these conflicting motives and goals.
An obvious example is conflicts between a person’s religious beliefs
about proper actions and particular laws of a nation.
As citizens of the United States we generally share, and
expect others to share, a goal of supporting the US government and it’s
obligation to protect and preserve our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. This is so even though we
recognize vast differences in opinion about what that means and how to attain
it. In spite of these vastly differing
opinions on every one of Sherif’s elements, we are still a social unit, a
group, a nation.
But unlike a bottle gang and many other groups, in our
nation thousand of brand new members enter into our group every day: our
children. They come into being as
citizens, with some, but not all, of “the rights and privileges there unto
pertaining.” These new citizens, though
equal before the law, come into being in vastly different circumstances;
circumstances which will inevitably affect them from birth onward. These circumstances, though not of their
making, will powerfully influence the trajectory of their development over the
course of their lives.
While every child faces a unique constellation of
circumstances, our present knowledge about many particular issues allows us to
make statistically valid generalizations about their effects on growth and
development. As just one important
example, we can quite accurately predict the percentage of children who, born
to parents whose income is in the poorest quintile, will make it to the
richest. There are dozens of similar
issues that we know, as a result of careful longitudinal study, strongly
influence a child’s chances of success in life.
In the unique set of circumstances each child faces, some
are advantageous while others can be beyond daunting. Income, parenting style, school quality,
multiple characteristics of the local neighborhood, mentors, lead in the water
supply or not, even sound levels and many more variables have been shown to affect
child development and, hence, the adult who will join our society: this new
citizen of our nation. It is also true
that each and every adult in our society burdens and/or benefits the rest of us
to some degree. They pay taxes or they
don’t, they require public services or not, they do or don’t serve in the
military, and so on and so forth. As a
result of all this, we each have a stake, however small, in who each child
becomes.
When we look closely at the various circumstances the child
faces it becomes apparent that not all of them are effects of happenstance or
mere luck. Not all are due to random
variations in genres or fixed realities such as geography; some are “manmade,” the effects of actions and
inactions of the Nation through time. We obviously
need laws, policies, procedures, agencies, and officials to specify the norms
and values of our nation as well as the “accepted sanctions (praise and punishment)
if and when norms are respected or violated.”
Yet, just as obviously, all such laws, polices, etc. are imperfect as is
everything made by humans. The most well-intentioned law can’t cover every
circumstance and there are always some rare, specific circumstances where most
of us would say the law should not apply.
“In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep
under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” Sometimes the law will criminalize an unlucky
traveller who missed a connection and has nowhere else to escape the rain.
But is it not also true that all human institutions create
systematic differences in benefits, advantaging
some and disadvantaging others? This
point is critical. Every line in the tax
code creates a benefit or liability that will apply to some and not to others. Every Government program will provide
benefits to some that are denied others, even those of apparently deserving
status. Geography, income, social class,
race, age, and more differentially affect who does and does not receive some
benefits or who is or is not subject to some penalty. The inevitable implication of this is that
among the circumstances that a child faces at birth, some are the result of the
collective actions and inactions of us as citizens. The inevitable corollary of this is that
circumstances of birth result in wide variations in opportunity and adversity
faced by each child.
If this is so, then it suggests a vital
question: Should a
child be expected to overcome the circumstances of his/her birth solely through
the results of his/her own efforts (and those of his/her family)? Do we expect, therefore, differentially
burdened and/or privileged children to deal with circumstances of our making solely through their efforts?
We could. Indeed for virtually
the entirety of human existence we have believed that the family is largely or
solely responsible for meeting the child’s needs and assisting them through
their childhood. For most of our
existence this made sense because the circumstances everyone faced were
primarily “natural,” that is, those imposed by the physical environment, and
largely the same for everyone. But in
modern industrialized countries that is no longer true. Now the vast majority of US citizens are born
into a primarily human made environment: cities, towns, and rural areas where
wilderness is something occasionally visited.
Now the circumstances a child faces at birth are largely those created
by the workings of our economic, political, and social systems.
We could, but should we?
Some who consider this question come to a different conclusion. Some believe that since our policies, our
collective actions, increase the adversity some children face that fairness
demands we act to try to eliminate, minimize, or ameliorate the differential
opportunities that result. Indeed, I
believe this is, or should be, the animating concern of the liberal
worldview. The politics of liberals
are/should be based on examining how existing and proposed polices/laws affect
the opportunities and adversities faced by children and attempting to rectify
any identified systemic differences.
Indeed, much of liberal politics can easily be understood
through that lens. Liberal programs
regarding childcare, nutrition, education, and social welfare are easily
understood examples. Sometimes liberals
may loose their way. Ezra Pound once
wrote “Music
begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to
atrophy when it gets too far from music.”
If liberal polices stray too far from equality of opportunity for all
citizens, they, too, may go astray. On
the other hand, the vital importance of liberal concerns to the future of
liberal democracy should not be underestimated.
Every human society must develop working solutions to two
fundamental tasks: 1. How to protect the
individual (or identified sub groups) from the power of the majority. 2. How
to dispense the benefits (and the costs) of shared efforts.
Both are extremely challenging. Success at the second will make the first
much more tractable. Success at both is
required for long term survival.
Notes
(1) The goal is to buy the bottle; one person may keep tabs
on the money, another actually purchase it; the purchaser is usually the one
seen as most trustworthy; people are expected to drink in portion to the amount
the contributed; if you drink more than your share, you won’t be allowed in
subsequent buys.
