Peer-driven culture

Frederica Mathewes-Green hits the nail on the head in "School and Career: Making It Work," the eleventh chapter in Real Choices. I was particularly interested in what she had to say about college students and pregnancy.

"On secular campuses, sexual activity has become less of a scandal than virginity, so pregnancy is not seen as shameful. It is, however, seen as stupid. A student at an Ivy League college told me that the campus health center refers about fifty women every year for abortions; yet in the previous five years the number of students who continued their pregnancies totaled zero."

Peer-driven culture has its own way of shaming. Instead of making you feel guilty, it just makes you feel stupid and/or left out. (I wonder which is worse? Guilt or stupidity?) While it's crucial to recognize the practical hardships that having a baby causes for a college student, it's equally if not more important to recognize the social pressure that causes women to abort. As Mathewes-Green puts it,

"The problems that pregnancy causes in school and job situations appear to be somewhat vague and occasional, and chiefly social in nature. The power of social pressure should not be underestimated, but it is a general human constant, not elicited by the specific obligations of school or job."

This applies especially to college students. One has to understand how the college experience is woven into our social fabric. A college student doesn't just expect to get an education. She expects to have four years that she will never forget, marked by experiences shared with other people her own age, and characterized also by a general lack of genuine responsibility. To at least some degree this expectation is encouraged (and to some extent maybe ought to be encouraged) by our parents; but the largest part of this expectation is given to us by our own peers.

The result of this expectation is that anything preventing that expectation from being fulfilled is to be shunned. That makes pregnancy just about the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, abstaining from sex, if it isn't the second worst thing, is pretty close behind. In such circumstances, abortion seems like an inevitable fallback.

It's difficult to blame college women for this, though in the end we must all take responsibility for our choices. Yet I would argue that society's commitment to the college experience is almost religious in nature. It is treated as both necessary and deserved: necessary in the sense of being a cocoon out of which adults emerge, deserved as in some sort of birthright for middle- to upper-class children (often the elitism of this expectation fails to be recognized). A woman in college who suddenly finds herself pregnant can't possibly think of it as any less than an utter violation of the natural order of things. And yet the reality is nothing could be more natural: at an age when human beings are most fertile, it should not be surprising when sex leads to pregnancy. Yet the values of her culture have been so instilled in her that she will quite probably feel the most horrifying shock imaginable at the prospect of having a baby.

I know that there are many factors leading to abortion, but I suspect that one of the most crucial cultural factors leading to abortion is the fact that culture for people in their late teens and early 20's is almost entirely created by their peers. Our system of education makes it so. As children we're put together starting from the time we're four or five years old; we grow up together in school, possibly spending more of our waking hours with each other than with family, and certainly learning more about social life from each other than from our parents; and finally we go off to college to pursue the college experience, just as I've described above.

And this only continues after college, because it's totally ingrained in us. As 20-somethings, we continue to surround ourselves with other 20-somethings. It's not at all surprising that people my age would be so hesitant to get married, and even less surprising that they would be hesitant to have children. We just haven't been trained for that. The habits we've set for ourselves have been based on social norms set by our peers. We're not used to inter-generational relationships. We only know how to please our friends. How in the world would we raise kids?

To me it's not surprising that church-going Christians tend to marry younger than other people. I know it has something to do with values, but I suspect there's also something much more practical involved, as well. People who go to church see other people in different stages of life on a regular basis. They see families with little children; they see teenagers; they see grandparents. You never see these people at work (especially not in grad school). Churches can have a profound impact on people my age. Where else would we even get the idea that having children can be a good thing?

If we really want to work toward a culture of life, we may have to start being intentional about building inter-generational relationships. The more kids are allowed to define their own values, for themselves and for each other, the longer they'll stay kids, and the less they'll tend to value being connected to the whole of human society. Without that sense of connectedness, the value of human life is also diminished. More concretely, kids just tend to want sex without consequences. Without any sense of obligation to anything beyond the kid culture they have constructed, abortion becomes an all too attractive choice.

Calvin on leaving the church

Not a long post today on the Institutes, just a couple of quotes that I read today that I found essential. From Book IV, Chapter I, Section 12:

What is more, some fault may creep into the administration of either doctrine or sacraments, but this ought not to estrange us from communion with the church. For not all the articles of true doctrine are of the same sort. Some are so necessary to know that they should be certain and unquestioned by all men as the proper principles of religion. Such are: God is one; Christ is God and the Son of God; our salvation rests in God's mercy; and the like. Among the churches there are other articles of doctrine disputed which still do not break the unity of faith. ... Here are the apostle's words: "Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be of the same mind; and if you be differently minded in anything, God shall reveal this also to you" [Phil. 3:15]. Does this not sufficiently indicate that a difference of opinion over these nonessential matters should in no wise by the basis of schism among Christians? First and foremost, we should agree on all points. But since all men are somewhat beclouded with ignorance, either we must leave no church remaining, or we must condone delusion in those matters which can go unknown without harm to the sum of religion and without loss of salvation.

And from Section 13:

There are others who sin more out of ill-advised zeal for righteousness than out of that insane pride. When they do not see a quality of life corresponding to the doctrine of the gospel among those to whom it is announced, they immediately judge that no church exists in that place. This is a very legitimate complaint, and we give all too much occasion for it in this most miserable age. And our cursed sloth is not to be excused, for the Lord will not allow it to go unpunished, seeing that he has already begun to chastise it with heavy stripes. Woe to us, then, who act with such dissolute and criminal license that weak consciences are wounded because of us! But on their part those of whom we have spoken sin in that they do not know how to restrain their disfavor. For where the Lord requires kindness, they neglect it and give themselves over completely to immoderate severity. Indeed, because they think no church exists where there are not perfect purity and integrity of life, they depart out of hatred of wickedness from the lawful church while they fancy themselves turning aside from the faction of the wicked.

How might Protestantism look differently if this had been the dominant opinion for the past 500 years?

What is "free will," anyway?

Inspired by a comment I got today, I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to post my thoughts on free will. It seems that this debate continues to go on, especially in Christian circles, where Calvinism seems to be everyone's favorite enemy--except, of course, for Calvinists, who pride themselves on believing the true biblical doctrine in spite of all common objections. Personally, I am continually shocked by the confidence with which either side can make their case. How both sides be so confident when it is logically certain that at least one of them is wrong?

Yesterday I thought a lot about how the way we use words confuses a lot of arguments. This is certainly true of free will. We use the words "free will" largely as a gap-filler. There's something about our actions we don't quite understand, and we attribute the part that remains mysterious to something innate in ourselves that can't be broken down any further. "Free will" becomes the same kind of answer as "God did it." It almost becomes a non-answer.

Here's what I mean. We've all had the sensation of wanting to do something, and then doing it. And probably all of us have had the sensation of wanting to do something and not being able to do it. Likewise, we've had the experience of not wanting to do something but being forced to do it anyway. So in common experience, it's easy for me to differentiate between things I do according to my own free will and things I do, or don't do, against my will.

But this only gets at sensation. What's behind that sensation? I have the experience of wanting to do something. Where did that desire come from in the first place? Did I create it, ex nihilo? I suppose there are some who might maintain such a position (I tried to argue this position in a philosophy class once), but after a little consideration, it seems kind of absurd. Our desires are very much based on things we have very little control over--primarily our own bodies, but also the culture we've grown up in. It's hard to underestimate just how much our culture helps create desires for us. Why do I have such a desire to pass my oral proficiency exams this week? Probably because I've been taught to think of this kind of success as a good thing. Do you think that if the academy didn't exist I would have any desire to take a test in mathematics?

So it's not so simple as just saying we have free will. From a scientific perspective, we have to deal with the fact that we are made of matter, just like everything else. Hence the stuff we're made of follows the same basic laws that all the other stuff in the universe does. Whatever free will is, then, it can't be so dramatic that it fundamentally violates this fact.

But before you accuse me of scientific determinism, consider the matter from a theological perspective. It's not really much different. Is God omnipotent or not? Are we capable of changing his plans? Does he somehow depend on us for input? Whatever free will is, it can hardly be so dramatic as to make God depend on humans. Ultimately, we're creatures, just like everything else. As Genesis puts it, we are dust. That doesn't mean we're not noble creatures. It just means that when you get right down to it, even the noblest of creatures can hardly violate God's control over his creation.

At this point it's natural to bring up the key objection to all of this. If everything is predetermined, why am I responsible for anything I do? That's the real heart of this whole "free will" debate: responsibility. And underneath responsibility, of course, has to be our basic understanding of justice. How do we deal with evil? How do we honor what is good?

The words "free will" really short-circuit any real discussion about justice. It is far from obvious how to deal with various real-world encounters with evil. Our culture is profoundly confused on this topic. Some are so convinced that every evil person is just a product of outside factors, that they will attempt to fix crime in every way except punishing criminals. Some take the opposite approach, insisting that every criminal is a product solely of his own choices. Both have profoundly detrimental effects on society. The reality is, evil is not so simple. It is hiding around every corner. It affects both our individual choices and our cultural influences. There is no more certain lesson from history than that one can never really draw a line between good guys and bad guys; evil cuts through everything.

Justice comes up a lot when talking about God and predestination. How can God be justified in punishing sin, when he predetermines every sin ever committed? But an equally potent question would be, how can God be justified in leaving mere creatures left to their free will? To make the force of this question clear, just consider the question in the context of saving faith. Good Protestants believe that if you believe in Jesus Christ, you will be saved--and if you don't, most would say, you will face God's judgment. How, then, would God be so cruel to leave that decision up to each individual human, knowing full well what the consequence of a wrong decision will be, as if by allowing humans decide for themselves he's washed his hands of guilt?

And in my mind, we're back to the same question we started with. Some say that we choose to believe in Christ or not based on free will. Okay, but what does that mean? Isn't that just an empty phrase to fill in the gap between what we know and what we don't? We know that some believe, and that others don't. What we don't really know is why. Why are some people convinced that the gospel is true, and others not? "Free will" answers nothing; it only allows people to quickly place the blame where they feel it belongs.

The more I reflect on these matters, both theological and philosophical, the more I am inclined to try to escape the question of free will altogether. That's because I believe more and more that what's really important, and what we can actually accomplish in life, is to try to oppose evil in a creative, redemptive way. Assigning blame doesn't accomplish that, whether you're assigning blame to individuals who do evil or to the influences that drive those individuals. The only thing way to really oppose evil is to become more aware of it, understanding how all-pervasive it is, and fighting it at every turn. It's both inside and outside, in every culture and every individual. Because of this, we may never really know why we do what we do. I'm often shocked by the evil I'm capable of doing. I'm surprised how often I hurt people, especially people I love. Romans 7 hits close to home for most of us, I think. Free will just doesn't seem to explain the real world, after all.

But even if we never understand why we do what we do, we can understand the difference between good and evil. It seems far more useful and important to focus on our actions, rather than on the "ultimate cause" of those actions (i.e. free will or predestination). Identifying good and evil may be difficult, but I do think we are capable of improvement. I don't have such hope for understanding free will.

What is "religion," anyway?

Karl Giberson, Vice-President of the BioLogos Foundation, frequently writes at the Huffington Post about science and religion. His latest post brings up a helpful point:

The most trivial part of the relationship between science and religion, and yet one that generates lots of debate, is the simple question of compatibility: Can they co-exist? I have written a bit about this, but I have to confess that this question is boring. Establishing that two things can exist at the same time is not an engaging enterprise, because it leaves unanswered the question of whether either of those things should exist at all. Pornography, as we know, is compatible with unbridled free enterprise (yawn). But should either, or both, of those things exist? Now that is a real question.

The article goes on to give a defense of religion's existence. I don't find his conclusion very helpful. I admit that it's interesting in terms of connecting the beauty of mathematics with religion, but ultimately I find his argument to be another version of the "God-of-the-gaps" argument. We've all heard one form of this argument or another: Science can tell us lots of things, but there's always something that it can't tell us, and that's where religion comes in.

I think a more fundamental question that our culture needs to be asking itself, especially with regard to science and faith, is, "What is religion?" Our society wrestles with questions about the compatibility of science and religion because we have a hard time critically analyzing our use of the words "science" and "religion."

Just for fun, I thought I'd go to biblegateway.com and search the word "religion," to see what the Bible says about it. I checked a few different translations, but the largest number of results I ever got was five. Five times in the entire Bible is the word "religion" mentioned--and not one time in the entire Old Testament. Kind of interesting, isn't it?

And what does the word appear to mean when it is used? I think the perfect verse to examine would be James 1:27--

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

In this and other contexts, the word "religion" appears to mean the way we serve God. It might in some other passages include things like belies and doctrines, but on the whole it seems to have more to do with tradition and practice than anything else.

Evidently, the word "religion," once upon a time, did not mean anything like "how we learn more about the world" or "how we learn what is true." Of course, religion might be based on certain truth claims, but the word "religion" itself was not used to mean the pursuit of those truth claims. It wouldn't make sense, then, to say that we need religion to answer questions that science can't answer. It's only in modern times that we think of religion this way. This probably has to do with the influence of Christianity, which has always stressed belief in certain propositions. But to use the word "religion" in the ancient sense, there is only one logical answer to the question, "Why should religion exist?" The answer is, "Because God ought to be served."

Questions about the compatibility of science and religion come up in many different contexts, and the modern tendency to lump all of these questions together is silly. A Christian has vastly different questions about science and religion than does a Hindu. For the Christian, the questions mostly boil down to how we ought to read the Bible. This is not a new question. The early Church Fathers almost 2000 years ago were asking questions like whether or not Genesis should be taken literally. The assumption that modern science presents new challenges to Christianity is pretty naive. Christians have been arguing for centuries, both with non-Christians and with other Christians, about the historicity of the Bible and the compatibility of scientific discoveries with Christian beliefs.

The point I'm trying to make is this. Every time someone asks the question, "Are science and religion compatible?" they are, knowingly or unknowingly, using a definition of "religion" that automatically diminishes all particular religions. We have come to use the word "religion" according to the assumption that science is what's actually helpful, while religion is just some impulse in humanity that we have to tolerate because it just doesn't seem to go away. There are indeed many people who believe this to be the case, but there are many other people who use the word "religion" to unwittingly support that assumption.

My own opinion is that science can and should inform and/or correct some of our religious beliefs. For instance, the modern view that the earth is billions of years old is not consistent with some of the traditional claims of Christianity. This doesn't bother me so much. I don't think the Christian religion is an all-or-nothing deal. If it is, God only knows which of us are actually Christians. On the other hand, neither do I subordinate all religious belief to science. Science is the study of the repeatable. Not everything worth understanding is repeatable, in my opinion.

When you get right down to it, you just have to start asking more specific questions than, "Are science and religion compatible?" or "Is religion useful?" These vague questions only perpetuate the assumption that science is good and religion is tolerable at best, without providing a serious critique of that assumption.

Calvin on Assurance, Resurrection

I have finished three out of the four books in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, a satisfying accomplishment, which I was able to do only by reading a few pages every day since January 1 of this year. By the end of the year, I should be finished with Book IV.

Having dealt with the doctrine of election, Calvin moves on in Chapter XXIV (of Book III) to talk about how we confirm our own election. This is an interesting chapter. As it builds on the previous chapters on election, it is in some ways just as frustrating. On the other hand, here as always we see some of Calvin's classic statements of humility and total dependence on God. The thing that always sticks out in Calvin is how humility is always coupled with confidence--both are rooted in a belief in God's absolute supremacy.

According to Calvin, God has elected from all eternity those destined for adoption as his children, but there is still a process of actually making them his own. The preaching and hearing of the gospel is essential to bringing the elect to faith (Sec. 1). But that isn't sufficient without the work of grace by the Holy Spirit (Sec. 2). Faith can only be stirred up in the elect, but election doesn't depend on faith (Sec. 3). This is basically a reiteration of earlier arguments, which make it clear that God doesn't simply predict the future--he actually determines it. In Calvin's mind, there really isn't any difference between God allowing and God causing; one way or the other, God is in total control of whatever happens.

There is a right and a wrong way to attain certainty about one's own election (Sec. 4). Calvin's own words are best to describe the difference:

I call it "seeking outside the way" when mere man attempts to break into the inner recesses of divine wisdom, and tries to penetrate even to highest eternity, in order to find out what decision has been made concerning himself at God's judgment seat. For then he casts himself into the depths of a bottomless whirlpool to be swallowed up; then he tangles himself in innumerable and inextricable snares; then he buries himself in an abyss of sightless darkness. For it is right for the stupidity of human understanding to be thus punished with dreadful ruin when man tries by his own strength to rise to the height of divine wisdom.

...

Let this, therefore, be the way of our inquiry: to begin with God's call, and to end with it.

In other words, certainty about one's own election can never come from some special knowledge. It can never come from yourself, no matter how spiritual you are. It always comes simply from believing God's promises.

In some sense, Calvin would have to agree that the doctrine of election need not be understood before assurance of calling is attained. For he insists it is wrong to seek certainty of election by directly inquiring about God's foreknowledge. Instead, he asks believers simply to believe the promise of the gospel, which is freely offered to all. It is as if the door leading to eternal life were marked on the front with the words "Come, all who will, and inherit eternal life," and then on the back with the words, "Welcome, you who have been chosen from all eternity." Those who enter the door might never even see the words on the back, but they would no less be those chosen from all eternity. They would inherit eternal life simply by believing the words on the front and obeying them.

And Calvin seems to be confirming this in Section 5 when he says, "First, if we seek God's fatherly mercy and kindly heart, we should turn our eyes to Christ, on whom alone God's Spirit rests [cf. Matt. 3:17]. If we seek salvation, life, and the immortality of the Heavenly Kingdom, then there is no other to whom we may flee, seeing that he alone is the fountain of life, the anchor of salvation, and the heir of the Kingdom of Heaven." If we enter into life through this door (that is, Christ) then we may be assured that we have eternal life, without penetrating the eternal decrees of God. It would seem to me, then, that contemplating our eternal election ought to serve only to produce humility, i.e. to prevent us from thinking that our decision to follow Christ was from ourselves, rather than from grace.

In Section 6-11, Calvin does a bit of scriptural exegesis to try to defend the view that those who truly believe cannot fall away. In my opinion, it all depends on what you mean by "truly believe." If you define true belief retroactively, so that only in the end can you know who truly believed, then you've won the argument by default. This to me is not very helpful. But I think the point Calvin is getting at is this: believers don't need to be troubled by their own sin, or by the nagging idea that God might let them go in the end, even after a life of struggling to believe. For Calvin, all believers ought to be reassured that God is good; he is not mean or arbitrary, and his promises are sure. As for those who fall away and stop believing and trusting in God, the promises no longer apply, and according to Calvin, they never did apply.

Personally, I don't think Calvin's view of perseverance matches real-life experience, and I also don't think it fits all that well with scripture. It seems to me that if you're going to talk about eternal things, you need to stop talking about temporal things, and vice versa. The choices people make here and now are real, but they are not eternal. People can and do choose to believe at one time, and then years later decide to stop believing--and vice versa. I think these choices are real, and meaningful. And I think it makes sense to say, so long as a person believes, he is a true Christian, and so long as he does not, he is no longer a Christian. Perseverance, then, is useful only in talking about eternal outcomes, rather than all these temporal decisions that people do, in fact, make. So far as I am concerned, the doctrine of perseverance, like the doctrine of election, is useful only in reminding believers that their salvation, both in the future as well as in the present, is only by grace, and not by something gained from themselves; and as it is by grace, we can trust that God will ensure the best outcome, because he is good.

Sections 12-17 explain what God does with the reprobate (those not elect to salvation). This is an intense section, but Calvin's motivation is, as always, quite clear. He insists that it is God who determines the fate of the reprobate--which sounds awful, because it is as if God throws them into hell against their will. But there is an awful lot of tension here. Calvin doesn't want to say anyone is thrown into hell against their will. The question he is answering, though, is why some people don't will to believe. In the end, he says, the answer to that question has to come down to God's decision; otherwise, it would come down to man's decision, and grace would no longer be grace.

If the same sermon is preached, say, to a hundred people, twenty receive it with the ready obedience of faith, while the rest hold it valueless, or laugh, or hiss, or loathe it. If anyone should reply that this diversity arises out of their malice and perverseness, I still will not be satisfied, because the nature of the former would be occupied with the same malice if God did not correct it by his goodness. Therefore, we shall always be confused unless Paul's question comes to mind: Who distinguishes you? [I Cor. 4:7] By this he means that some excel others not by their own virtue but by God's grace alone.

And if that doesn't satisfy you, well, here's what Calvin has to say:

When the impious hear these things, they complain that God with unbridled power abuses his miserable creatures for his cruel amusement. But we, who know all men to be on so many counts liable before God's judgment seat that challenged on a thousand points they cannot give satisfaction even on one, confess that the wicked suffer nothing out of accord with God's most righteous judgment. Despite the fact that we do not clearly grasp the reason for this, let us not be unwilling to admit some ignorance where God's wisdom rises to its height.

There is a great deal of humility in these words, yet also a sad lack of struggle in them. As I have mentioned time after time, the great saints of the Bible, from Abraham to Moses to David and even Jesus himself, all struggled with God over his sovereign purposes. Calvin doesn't give his readers much in the way of resources for truly "wrestling with God" (a feature of Jacob's character which earned him the very name Israel).

I'll just deal briefly with Chapter XXV, on the final resurrection of the dead. Mostly this is stuff commonly accepted by all Christians, but there are a couple of interesting ideas that Calvin takes the trouble to refute, which makes me curious which people have actually promoted these ideas.

The first idea is that there will be no resurrection. What's interesting about Calvin's refutation of this is that he uses burial rites to defend the idea that all cultures have been led to value the body and hope for resurrection.

Why the sacred and inviolable custom of burial but as an earnest of new life? And no one can claim that this arose out of error, for burial rites were always kept up among the holy patriarchs; and God willed that the same custom remain among the Gentiles so that an image of the resurrection set before them might shake off their drowsiness. Now, although that ceremony was unprofitable, it is useful to us if we wisely look to its purpose. For it is a weighty refutation of unbelief that all together professed what no one believed!

This is an interesting defense of Christian belief. In general the strategy is fairly common: take something that all people implicitly believe based on their actions, and show that it is logical only in a Christian worldview. But here the application of this strategy is quite unique, at least in my experience. Maybe that's because in our modern world burial customs aren't considered as important.

The second idea that Calvin refutes is the idea that when we are raised from the dead, we will have a new body, not the body we have now. Calvin affirms that the body we have now will be glorified, so that it will not be the same as it is now; but nevertheless it will be the same body. The reason he gives for this is quite wonderful, actually:

For it would be utterly absurd that the bodies which God has dedicated to himself as temples [I Cor. 3:16] should fall away into filth without hope of resurrection! What of the fact that they are also members of Christ? [I Cor. 6:15]. Or that God commands all their parts to be sanctified by him? Or that it is his will that his name be praised with men's tongues, that pure hands be lifted to himself [I Tim. 2:8], that sacrifices be offered [Rom. 12:1]? What madness is it for that part of man, deemed by the Heavenly Judge worthy of such shining honor, to be by mortal man reduced to dust beyond hope of restoration?

Thus Calvin refutes the dualism of the Manichaeans, who said that flesh was evil, and therefore could not share in the resurrection life. It's good to see a strong, classical Reformed affirmation of the physical body.

I think that's it for today. Next time I start in on Book IV, which has the pithy titled, "The External Means or Aids by Which God Invites Us Into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein."

Capitalism vs. Corporatism

Sheldon Richman over at the Freeman online wrote a great essay asking the simple question, is American "capitalism" really so much better than European "socialism"? He summarizes his view of American economics in this way:

What counts is what the system really is. And it’s nothing like an open, competitive market void of government privilege. It’s a corporatist system in which the liberty and property of regular people are subordinated in myriad ways to the interests of a mainly business-oriented ruling elite. (Do we need further evidence than the “socialist” Barack Obama’s coziness with Wall Street — rhetoric notwithstanding — and his generous gift to the health insurance industry?) Yes, we have some degree of freedom, but it is freedom circumscribed by a system of rules and regulations aimed at producing certain broad economic outcomes for the well-connected. At the federal, state, and local level, money has always talked. Intervention is of course defended on moral grounds (say, protection of consumers and workers), but behind the scenes lurks an economic interest. “Baptists and bootleggers” are ubiquitous.

This is what I appreciate about the libertarian, or classical liberal, perspective. The fundamental difference between "conservative" and "liberal" in this country seems to have to do with where the power structure should be located. The libertarian has the courage to ask, why should the power structure have a central location at all?

This is also why Republicans always sound so hypocritical. They talk about economic liberty, but what it really comes down to is more power for corporations, which is not better than more power for the government (in fact, sometimes it is equivalent). What we need is a true capitalist party, rather than a corporatist party.

Plagiarism and Incentive

Read this in an interesting New York Times article on growing amounts of plagiarism in American universities:

A University of Notre Dame anthropologist, Susan D. Blum, disturbed by the high rates of reported plagiarism, set out to understand how students view authorship and the written word, or “texts” in Ms. Blum’s academic language.

She conducted her ethnographic research among 234 Notre Dame undergraduates. “Today’s students stand at the crossroads of a new way of conceiving texts and the people who create them and who quote them,” she wrote last year in the book “My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture,” published by Cornell University Press.

Ms. Blum argued that student writing exhibits some of the same qualities of pastiche that drive other creative endeavors today — TV shows that constantly reference other shows or rap music that samples from earlier songs.

In an interview, she said the idea of an author whose singular effort creates an original work is rooted in Enlightenment ideas of the individual. It is buttressed by the Western concept of intellectual property rights as secured by copyright law. But both traditions are being challenged.

“Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning,” Ms. Blum said.

She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.

I find these remarks rather fascinating in that they trace a pattern through all areas of modern culture. Could we really be losing our desire for originality in general?

Perhaps, but I think Blum misses the essential structural problems that have led to this trend in American schools.

I tend to see the issues with American education in practical, economic terms. What Americans need to understand is what kind of system we have created, and how the pressures of that system will inevitably lead to more plagiarism, less originality, and less desire to achieve the Enlightenment of ideal of individual creative thought. The Internet may be a huge catalyst for this change, but the basic structures have been in place for years.

What we have is a system in which the following ideas are taken for granted:

1. Everyone deserves the same chance at a good education.
2. All good jobs require four years of college education.
3. The sooner you can finish college and start working, the better.
4. Being a "well-rounded" and super-involved student is much better for finding jobs than being a bookworm or nerd.

Now let's talk about the natural, and inevitable, effects of these ideas, when they are taken for granted by the whole society:

1. Price inflation: The price of education must go up. This is in fact what we have seen for years now, and it's amazing that people still marvel at it. Yet this is a very predictable result of the incontrovertible law of supply and demand.
2. Utilitarianism: The vast majority of students will not see the pursuit of truth as the primary reason to go to college and participate in academics. They will see it, rather, as a means to a good job in the future. That this is the case seems self-evident, but I'd be happy to find some source to back me up on this.
3. Trade-offs: When education is really about reaching economic goals, students do whatever will help them reach those goals. If teachers hold the line on things like plagiarism, that will make some difference, but it won't be the final word. Students will inevitably have to compromise between many different priorities.
4. Grade inflation: It's not just the idea that everyone deserves a chance. It's also simple economics. If grades matter to their economic well-being, then students will do whatever it takes to get higher grades. If they find that certain strategies other than actually learning more are working to get them grades, these strategies will flourish. It is infinitely more difficult for teachers to universally maintain rigorous standards than it is for students to come up with new ways of getting good grades. Grade inflation, under this system, is as inevitable as price inflation.

What does any of this have to do with plagiarism? Far too many people are under the impression that plagiarism is a sign of moral degradation and/or laziness among students. It is neither. I find it extremely hard to believe that entire generations are actually very different from one another in moral character. A friend once told me that some of the oldest writings we have from human civilizations include words lamenting the moral decline of younger generations. The belief that one generation is worse than the previous is as old as time; yet it is probably never true.

No, plagiarism is not a sign of moral degradation or laziness. It is actually the inevitable result of students trying their best to do what they've been told they must. They must go to college, they must do more than they can possibly do well in order to get the most out of college, they must get good grades, they must develop good relationships and networking skills, and they must find some way to balance all of these imperatives. Desire for free, original thought may be what drives the professor at the chalk board, but the students in their classroom are driven by much more practical concerns.

This, by the way, is a source for a lot of confusion in education over the issue of how to actually teach subjects to modern students. We see that students are motivated by practical concerns, so we think that the solution is to try to make learning more "hands on." We insist on finding ways to make everything from mathematics to philosophy more "practical." But this is to fundamentally mistake students' motivations for learning style. Of course different methods of teaching are always important for different students. But it is not as if an entire generation of students has become more "hands-on" than ever before (unless you just mean they know how to use a computer). It just means that an entire generation has become more interested in education as a tool for success and not as a path for intellectual growth.

Another point worth mentioning is that original thought may be genuinely more difficult than ever to produce. Think about it. If there are more kids in college and more information available than ever before, isn't it possible that there is less room for meaningful originality? It's not at all surprising to me that someone would say, as was quoted in the article, “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” Young people must surely feel this way after realizing that any good thing they ever thought has already been said before, and any original thing they ever thought is crap. (This blog post, for instance, probably falls into one of those two categories.) It's easy to become cynical.

As long as our system remains in place just the way it is, I suspect that plagiarism will become more and more common, and students will come to accept it more and more from their peers. It will not help to simply be appalled at it. I find it staggering the way professors in the academy can look at the situation we have with an air of self-righteousness. Do professional educators seriously not understand how the business of education works?