It’s tempting for Western philosophy to categorize democracy as originating in Greece and Rome in 5BCE. But it may have evolved to suit the city-states that made up the Mediterranean in that era. It is plausible to assume that democracy in one form or another arises naturally in any well-bounded group, such as a tribe, if the group is sufficiently independent of control by outsiders to permit members to run their own affairs and if a substantial number of members, such as tribal elders, consider themselves about equally qualified to participate in decisions about matters of concern to the group as a whole. This assumption has been supported by studies of nonliterate tribal societies, which suggest that democratic government existed among many tribal groups during the thousands of years when human beings survived by hunting and gathering. To these early humans, democracy, such as it was practiced, might well have seemed the most “natural” political system.

Representative democracy, that system the United States is still on a knife edge of losing, is at least partially based on the Iroquois Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace, thought by scholars to be adopted in 1142. In 1988, Congress passed a resolution, “The confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy,” it reads, “as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself.”

In the age of media silos, do we even discuss the philosophies and ideas that are the foundations of forms of modern governments? Communism, Marxism, Fascism? Democracy seems to be in decline. But worldwide, the results of good elections are being graciously accepted—Kenya, Senegal, Angola, Malaysia, Indonesia. “In the Philippines, the losing candidate, Leni Robredo, the former vice president, was gracious in defeat, telling her supporters, ‘We need to accept the majority’s decision.’ Her concession was a model that should be emulated elsewhere, including in the United States (Washington Post).”

As of November 21, 2022, 59.4% of registered voters say the United States is “off on the wrong track,” an ill-defined poll.  What track is that? Fiscal? Policy-wise? Philosophical ideology?

As Plato argues in the Republic, the best government would be led by a minority of the most highly qualified persons.

Thomas Hobbes argued that human nature, likewise, gravitates toward pleasure over pain and, when faced with hardship, the demos will favor an authoritarian leader. An example might be found in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, where the Ukrainians do not only blame Vladimir Putin for the war, but the Russian people for devolving back into authoritarianism after the fall of the USSR.

John Locke’s philosophy, of which so much is based on the concept of social contract and that states that human nature is based on reason and tolerance, truth and morality, even allowing that people can also be selfish. Most scholars attribute some phraseology in the Declaration of Independence to Locke’s ideology in “Two Treatises of Government.”

David Hume “understood feeling, rather than knowing, as that which governs ethical actions, stating that ‘moral decisions are grounded in moral sentiment.’ Arguing that reason cannot be behind morality, he wrote: ‘Morals excite passions and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.’”

Georg Hegel noted that when one idea has reached maturity, the natural inclination of the population swings back to the opposite ideal. “This lesson of the concept is necessarily also apparent from history, namely that it is only when actuality has reached maturity that the ideal appears opposite the real and reconstructs this real world, which it has grasped in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual realm.”

In this issue, we explore the theories in society that subjectify truth, the influence of social media, philosophical pragmatism, the generational representations of societal ideals, the environmental impact of governmental and private sector choices, the factions of progressive arguments, and the evolution of Sisyphus. 

As always, we invite you to create a profile to offer feedback and critique, to share these ideas to a wider audience, and to join us in contributing in future issues. Thanks, as always, to our readers for continuing the conversations.

today everyone is shouting
keep criminals off the streets!
keep homeless off the streets!
keep children off the streets!

none of these streets were
here when the colonists came,
bearing the seeds of a “nation
of laws” that would ultimately
assign property rights to all the
land from sea to shining sea

yielding profits to real estate
developers who pushed the ideal
of this being the highest and best
use of the land

now maybe if we just got rid of
all those nasty streets, we’d be
rid of those criminals, homeless,
and wayward children, just like
we clear buckets of sitting water
to be clear of mosquitoes

William Butler Yeats

 Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst 
    Are full of passionate intensity.   

Surely some revelation is at hand; 
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out 
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi 
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; 
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. 

The darkness drops again but now I know 
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep 
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

So we’ve done this before. Let’s not do it again. The last two times it led to World War I and World War II, near annihilation and destruction. 

Once again, democracy is on a razor’s edge. On one side of the razor lies the ideal of democratic governance, where every citizen has an equal say in how their society is run. On the other side lies the potential for chaos, corruption, and the erosion of democratic principles. 

On one side we see the pillars of democracy: free and fair elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law–the essential ingredients that ensure power is held accountable.  On the other side, the forces that threaten democracy: corruption, authoritarianism, demagoguery, apathy, and use of force to intimidate voters. These forces eat away at the foundations of democracy, slowly eroding its principles until they are no longer recognizable.  

We the people must remain vigilant and engaged in our defense of democratic values. For the means to accomplish this end, the requirements are critical thinking, educated discourse, and the ability to engage personal philosophy rooted in morality, as well as the ability to recognize the emotional make-up of our opponents, and to meet this with measured, righteous passion of our own. 

In modern society, it’s difficult to discern what’s real and what’s not in news media’s contemporary platforms and discussions.

Truth is difficult to define but having a correct theory or definition is not the problem. We all know many truths and untruths, without knowing what philosophers have said, and without knowing that many still disagree with each other. 

The important things that a person needs to know are:

• Truth is different from absolute certainty. 
• Absolute certainly is an impossible wish and goal. This is so even within mathematics. Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead (Principia Mathematica) tried to prove that pure mathematics could be reduced to deductive logic. However, mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated the impossibility of this. “Gödel’s two incompleteness theorems are among the most important results in modern logic, and have deep implications for various issues. They concern the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories. These results have had a great impact on the philosophy of mathematics and logic.”
• There have been many attempts by philosophers and religious leaders to establish absolute or infallible truth, ranging from Plato to Descartes to Kant to Husserl to authorities of Christianity, Islam, and innumerable cults. 
• Among the great achievements of human beings over the past 400 years has been a rational understanding that no claim is beyond question. Some important names in this effort are David Hume (1711-1776), John Dewey (1859-1952), and Karl Popper (1902-1994). 
• Roughly, at its core, truth refers to the state or quality of being in accordance with fact, reality, or actuality. It often signifies an agreement between a proposition or statement and the way things are in the world. Exact definitions and theories of truth are still disputed. Contrary to the convictions of most people throughout history, we don’t need absolute certainty to live good lives. A rough sense of the nature of truth is all we need. But we do need that. 
• While we don’t need theories of truth, we do need to know how to find it. Part of this is having common sense, coherent families and communities, and trusted friends and elders. 
• We also need science. We live in a time of expert technical knowledge. How many of us could make a cell phone? How about a pencil? That would require knowing how to get the metal and the graphite out of the ground, how to cut trees into pencil shapes, how to get the rubber for erasers, and put the things together. 
• We need not only science but scientists. We have to be able to trust them, but of course today most work for corporations and who can trust them? We swim in seas of information and of disinformation. There is truth from corporations and there are lies. The internet purveys it all.

Our democratic hope is that collectively, through a free press, a strong educational system, a fair legal system, and the beautiful scientific process itself, which relies on the constant creative interplay of hypotheses and experiments, truth can be discovered.

It will always be a messy process, with opportunities for grifters with evil ideals–mafia bosses, financial advisors who steal from clients, and all manner of racketeering. Such people will lie about anything. If they have enough money, they will use the media for disinformation campaigns. Or they will amplify and fund evil messages like QAnon. The goal of such people is often to claim that there is no objective truth. We now know there is no absolute or infallible truth. But of course there is objective truth.

The contemporary Republican party is locked into a platform that relies on a constructivist/consensus theory of historical truth, a socially constructed, “Age of Innocence.”  

The term “Age of Innocence” refers to a period in a society’s history when people are believed to have lived in a state of purity, simplicity, and moral virtue. It is often associated with nostalgia and idealization of the past, and the idea that there was once a time when life was better, more harmonious, and less complicated–a potent draw toward a belief system. The concept can be found in various forms throughout human history and across different cultures, often as part of mythological or religious narratives, such as the Garden of Eden in the Christian tradition or the Golden Age in Greek mythology. 

Several reasons can explain why the notion of an Age of Innocence recurs in societies: 

• Nostalgia encourages a tendency in people to idealize the past, recalling only the positive aspects and overlooking the difficulties and challenges. This selective memory can lead to a belief that there was once a time of innocence and simplicity. 
• The concept can be used as a tool for critiquing contemporary society. By invoking the idea of a lost age of virtue, people can express dissatisfaction with present-day conditions and advocate for a return to more traditional values and practices. 
• The idea can serve as a source of moral inspiration and guidance. By reflecting on the virtues and values of a bygone era, people can strive to emulate those qualities in their own lives and work towards creating a better society. 
• The concept can be important for preserving a sense of cultural identity and continuity. It connects people to their past and helps to maintain a shared narrative that unites a community. 
• Believing can provide psychological comfort, as it suggests that there was once a time when life was simpler, more harmonious, and free from the problems and anxieties of the present day. 

It is important to note that the idea of an Age of Innocence is often a romanticized and idealized vision of the past that may not accurately reflect historical realities. However, it remains a powerful and enduring concept that continues to shape the way people think about history, society, and human nature.  

If a country comes to support that vision, however, it is the end of democracy because there is no way to tell fact from fiction or know what’s real. The populace could then be easily manipulated by a potential demagogue. 

People can be led to surrender. 

“…for Trump Republicans,” Robert Reich says, “the ends justify whatever means they choose —including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election. 

“My friends,” he continues, “the Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy. It is rapidly becoming the American fascist party.” 

Last month, Ralph Yarl, 16, went to the wrong address to pick up his younger siblings — 1100 NE 115th Street instead of 1100 NE 115th Terrace. After ringing 84-year-old homeowner Andrew Lester’s doorbell, Ralph was shot in the head and arm. Lester has told police he did not exchange words with the teen before he fired at him through a locked glass door, according to a probable cause document obtained by CNN. The homeowner said he thought Ralph was trying to break into the home and he was “scared to death” due to the boy’s size, according to the document. Lester’s grandson Klint Ludwig said he was disturbed by racial comments made by his grandfather in the past, including about Black people. He said his grandfather believed in right-wing conspiracy theories and was influenced by the “fear and paranoia” stoked by some right-wing media, which was often “blaring in his living room.”

Part of the problem is the lack of critical thinking engendered by the reliance on provocative and social media.

Professor James Engell, a stalwart of Harvard University’s English department, threw down the glove in a Harvard Magazine essay, in which he wrote: “By minimizing the arts and humanities, higher education exacerbates the problems confronting society. No one can interpret difficult texts, write sound treaties, examine conflicting testimony, or cut a path through the divisive, frequently false claims on social media without language and judgment sharpened by the humanities.”

If a society can acknowledge the truth, we can begin again because we know where we went awry. This is the hopeful moment for democracy because we can see clearly what is wrong and how we got “false prophets.”

State Representative Keturah Herron, a Democrat who represents part of Louisville, said on Twitter that “as we hold our community tighter,” there must also be “outrage and anger.” 

These are my thoughts on what’s important today, why if we fail to agree on what’s right or what’s real or what’s true, we have a chance to lose our democracy. Democrats should get together and refuse to participate in a democracy gerrymandered beyond recognition.  

“We live in a war zone and we shouldn’t have to,” [Herron] said. 

As Yeats asked,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

If we have democratic ideals we can find our way. If we love the truth, and speaking the truth, we can work together against people of evil ideals.

What  can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. — Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

Editor’s Note: A word about the cover design–each Sisyphus cover is good, but I want to make a note about the growth of our designer, Tyler Varian. Our covers seem to get better and better. This particular cover image was created by Dall-E with the prompt: “Democracy on a razor’s edge in the style of Pablo Picasso.”

An Invocation

America. What a big continent—
and beyond. And what a history!

We come from every territory,
every nation, every race,
every gender, every blood
under our one sun.

We have endured slavery,
massacres of natives, untold
varieties of oppression—and yet

We have these promises.
And they are written in ink:

Equality before the law.

Innocent until proven guilty.

The fundamental right
to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.

True, we have not always
raised our beacon on the hill.
We have lied, we have pretended,
we have deluded ourselves—and yet

We always return.
We reclaim these words
and start again.

We are a starting over people.
We fail—often spectacularly—
and then get up on our two
exhausted legs and strive harder.

Over the centuries we have
established settlements,
steam-boated down rivers,
stage-coached across mountains,
rocketed to the moon and Mars.

We are pioneers
and we are pilgrims.

We protest and we serve.
We declare our independence
and we swear allegiance

On this day

Let us be a people
who keep our promises.

And let us be a nation
that continues to show promise

so that day by day,
year by year, we become

more fully the light,
the freedom, the justice
we are meant to be.

After successfully triumphing over the pandemic and the changes that it wrought, Managing Editor Charles Entrekin had to take some time to recover from some serious illnesses, as he has done in the past. He has tried to catch up on projects: completing a new manuscript, assisting in wife and poetry editor Gail Entrekin’s publication of her recent book Walking Each Other Home (Longship Press, 2023), and getting some publications at Hip Pocket Press into the front burner. All that time of both rest and work makes one consider the importance of what we do here at Sisyphus.

The most interesting thing is the conversations of the future of society are the same conversations that society has about the future of philosophy in general and literature specifically. We want to get the word out there through social media, yet continue those discussions, about critical thinking and it’s relevance in a civilized society. Sisyphus is a salon to discuss philosophy and ideas, a place where you can work out theories you’re considering.  We strive to be a platform that offers the discussion, like a dinner table conversation that happens organically and without penalty, that investigates, rationalizes, questions, debates in opposing camps, progresses and grows.

Sisyphus will never contain ads that sway editorial opinion to any entity, but we are a nonprofit corporation. What that means is we have an obligation to present an equal voice in society just like any other public organization. It means 1/3 of our funding is from the public at large, a voice we try hard to represent. It means we represent the broad section of society, from all walks of life.

When managing editor Charles Entrekin and editor emeritus Luke Wallin considered establishing Sisyphus, they also considered that the nature of a nonprofit organization means not only does the funding come from public at large, but also the dialog, the support, the art, and the creative voices. So Sisyphus isn’t a magazine that does the author a favor by publishing you. You are part and parcel of each finished work. As a reader, you may notice a regular contributor here and there. What you may not realize is that some contributors have chosen to be responsible for Sisyphus‘s thematic content on a regular basis, to work within parameters of the mission: Alicia Ostriker, Majorie Stelmach, Demian Entrekin, Jim Ross, Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan, just to name a few. We really appreciate that and rely on those resources to an even greater extent moving forward.

Sisyphus is restructuring again, evolving with the literary climate. Thanks for being patient while we grow. Thanks for resubmitting even if we took forever to get back to you. Thanks for supporting the guest editors we hope to invite, and the fresh ideas new voices will bring to the table. Thanks for writing to the editors with ideas you want to discuss. Thanks for volunteering to join us move that stone. After all, success as a team is defined as a win-win.

 
Once lost, the laws might be derived again 
When necessary, or so you’ve been told. 
You’re half asleep in January sun. 
Just out of sight, someone starts bugging you 
And Steller’s jays. Green hills, blue weather, — noon 
To bring out Panpipes, but it’s too damn cold.

Profligate sunlight’s more or less a waste, 
Though soil is warming, and ten thousand bulbs 
Set out last fall are stirring underground, 
Sleepers awakening, — as walnut trees, 
The English kind, lining a country lane, 
Portend, perhaps, a thousand years of peace.

During which age we might ascend the range 
Just east of here, where snow is often found 
Among the early petals, and the wind 
Is no stranger to loneliness. This time 
You talk about, where does one find the time 
To make good use of it? I’ve read the book

That guides you through the trails nearby, amazed 
At “accidental” birds, species of grace 
In that cathedral forest, where your “look” 
Is all the rage. Guides in the scattered hills 

Are quoting you, disparaging the tunes 
That brought us, after hardship, to this pass.

Just as today’s cloud cover is thrown off 
By Zeus, or whoever, the early smells 
Signal a fecund spring. — It’s not enough 
To quite undo a winter’s damage. — Still, 
You look up (after first chanting the runes 
You’ll leave last winter’s children), as the sun,

Puffed up with pride, all godlike, starts to sink 
Toward the west. Atop a Douglas fir, 
Two mountain bluebirds preen after a bath. 
One wants that image, to capture it, like 
A line of Horace. — A whole season’s worth 
Of drawing your despair back from the brink

Of heaven, tries, vainly, to bring you back 
With half-measures, half-truths. — The simple laws 
Are best, but aren’t available. Please take 
A number. Let the world be made of these. 
Let’s see what kind of world comes out in time. 
It’s like walking, the sun burning your nose,

When, utterly surprised, you find you’re home. 
 

For Charles Entrekin 

We face the primal situation that we need those closest to us to have an intense value and meaning that cannot be extended to others. As democratic citizens, or tribal members, or anyone else, we must live with the uneasy emotions of this. 

What if losing an election means losing power, money, and identity? As Heather Cox Richardson says about the founding of the United States, white male property owners knew that elevation of women or slaves or children could only come with a loss of their own power and privilege. They were right. This problem also manifests in environmental terms. If energy companies stopped burning fossil fuels they would have to leave $30 trillion in the ground. If people heard the screams of pigs in slaughterhouses, and decided to order something else on the menu, they would have to give up the taste of pig-beings’ flesh. 

When any powerful group is challenged to become more democratic, its members initially regard this as a demand for sacrifice on their part. If culture changes enough, people may begin to think about what they might be willing to “give up,” rather than “sacrifice.” Do citizens of France or Ireland resent their egalitarian health care systems? They do not. I’ve lived in those countries and only heard pride expressed.

As discussion of an issue becomes possible, partisans will thrash out solutions, and voters will decide some form of relative fairness. This may be an ideal process, but it can never be a calm and entirely reasonable one. Groups nurture emotional lines in the sand. 

If racism or misogyny run deep enough, even the discussion of real democracy is resisted. In this time of wealth inequality, domestic terrorism, and mass shootings in the USA, one hardly knows what to say. The people who act violently against rival groups have been “culturally created” by generations of hate: from 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century slaveholder’s tropes to Woodrow Wilson’s showing the racist film, “The Birth of a Nation” in the White House; to Father Coughlin’s 1930s radio broadcasts of anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views; to Fox News’ recent settlement of  $787.5 million for defaming Dominion Voting Systems.

Sometimes a more just culture can be achieved through a sudden, jarring, new law. For example, most people adjust pretty quickly to limits on the taking of animals and fish and come to feel that such laws are ethical, sustaining for their favored species, and important for one’s reputation. In other cases change to a culture must come slowly, sometimes by the older generation dying out, as in the bitterness over removing Confederate statues.

No matter what else we give up in the name of democracy and justice, we can’t give up love.  From within that core experience we must see strangers and even “others” relatively abstractly. Reflecting on this might give us insight into the emotions of the “non-negotiable” anti-democratic groups. It might startle us out of a comfortable sense that democracy should seem reasonable. It will seem reasonable in a democratic culture.

You, Under the Sun

An owl shaman saw it coming.
Math, language, art for wearing and walls.
Once you can measure a log for making a canoe,
memorialize battles and dinners, chant to suck in
animal mojo, you have acquired an abstract world.
It glows inside.

You are living with tribal artists and musicians,
and with warriors. The shaman tells you what to
fear, how to pray, what to pay. Now the world is rustling,
shhh, with creatures and their magics. It’s a heavy world inside
of you: burden of calculations, genealogy, unseen powers.
Obligations, expectations.

You are assigned something called your role. Perform or die.
All this happened one million years ago, possibly two million.
Not much has changed since then. Your head is heavy with
knowledge and questions. You are filmed and broadcast
everywhere. If you have the luck to please your gods and tribe,
when darkness falls you reach out for one person‘s hand.

Does that person love you for the animal you are?
Not just for your busy heart and machinations.
You need a connection with a person like yourself,
not your gang or nation. Those things and most people are
abstractions and deep strangers. Your only one can take you back
those million years and more.

With a smile or touch you are made whole.
You know that if your public game is hollow, and if your public cares
nothing for you, it doesn’t matter because your only-one animal
traveler knows you true. If you can’t return to the old prehuman,
to trust and love one person, you know you’re nothing but your
thoughts and weapons. You know that transcendence means the touch.

I’m an old man now
sitting like a movie extra
in a blocked-off street faire 
full of sunscreen tents and outdoor seating,
bales of hay imposing safe distance barriers against Covid,
reading, as it happens, Salmon Rushdie’s story,
“The Old Man in the Piazza.”  
 
I’m delighted by the phrase, 
“the vanity of certainty”
a vanity the old man in the story falls into, 
unexpectedly, because he has led 
a life disciplined by hermetical practice. 
 
I read for ecstatic flights
swept out of myself while sitting in a chair,
in a coy town surrounded by a culture 
of cutthroats and cannibals. 
 
The old man in the story, it turns out,
cannot escape his buried longing to belong.
Sensing this the villagers exalt him
make him a judge, so strong
is their desire to be told what to do.
They honor him so much 
he begins to believe he is truly wise and,
worse, useful. The recluse becomes another 
ordinary person, so compromised 
we turn away from him, 
recognizing ourselves.
 
I look up from the story and careless
laughing teenage girls
step to the curb from the puddled street
rippling a reflection of the old bank 
(now a pastry shop with faux Doric columns). 
The gorgeous insolence 
in their laughter makes the world
shimmer like the apparition it is.
Splash through the puddles, girls, shake 
the shimmering illusions of this world 
relish the thrill of walking down the street.

I. Nominal and Material Progressivism 

Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx believed in progress.

I’m concerned with action and results. If we don’t impact material change, what is the point? A results-oriented concern begins with clarifying what we mean by progress and progressivism. Consider this essay an open-ended exploration of progress rather than a definitive statement.

The question, therefore, is what do we mean by progress? How do we understand it? How does it operate? How does progress correspond with progressivism? These questions have become important because progressivism has encountered an internal impasse. It has become mired in internal conflict.

In a June, 2022 column in Politico entitled “The Left Goes to War with Itself,” John Harris summarizes the current state of internal dysfunction:

The fight is becoming bitter. On one side are people who believe in what can be thought of as a unified field theory of political and social change. Diverse issues, from climate change to abortion rights to racial equity, are seen as intimately interwoven, and progress on one priority will only be achieved with simultaneous progress on other fronts. On the other side are people who don’t much buy this theory — and roll their eyes impatiently at theoretical arguments of any sort if they stand in the way of practical results on the specific issues they care most urgently about.

Progressive communication has broken down. The ability to develop a shared understanding is distracted by unproductive and divisive language. Conversation and discussion can descend into unintentional language games. We burden ourselves with awkwardly loaded terms like “woke” and “identity politics” and “privilege.” Emotions run hot on nearly every progressive front, and many people have become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of progressivism. This essay will ask us to reconsider what we mean by progress and to reconsider how progressivism operates.

My argument is this: progressivism has bifurcated. It has split into two camps, and the split has handcuffed the impact of Progressivism. The nature of the split is fundamental, and it implicates the way progressives think, communicate and act. We might use the word schism, which implies the separation of one church into two. While progressives share many core beliefs, such as equal rights, economic mobility, access to healthcare, and the protection of natural resources, the ability to mobilize action has stalled. We could look at middle class wage stagnation, for example, as just one case of the ineffectiveness of progressive movement.

If we were to examine the effectiveness of public education or access to affordable healthcare in the United States, it wouldn’t be a pretty picture either.

II. A Schism

This schism is fundamental and cognitively structural. In one camp we see “nominal progressivism” and in the other camp we see “material progressivism.” Nominal progressivism is concerned with linguistic understanding and verbal criteria, while material progressivism is concerned with quantitative understanding and verifiable criteria. Nominal progressivism is concerned with naming, and material progressivism is concerned with measuring. This difference creates fundamental cognitive gaps in understanding, which then lead to an inability to take effective action. Why? Because the two camps cannot agree on what effective action means. In fact, they don’t seem to have the desire to communicate about it.

The opposition between nominal progressivism and material progressivism presents us with what appears to be a dichotomy: “it’s this or it’s that.” Many critical theorists will object to the use of a dichotomy as a way to understand a particular topic. They will say, “your dichotomy is a hierarchy in disguise that reveals a hidden bias.” But this is more complex than a simple dichotomy. I prefer to think of it as two categories of thought with distinct criteria, two different but connected sets of members. And this distinction changes what we are talking about.

We can identify the contents of the two categories (nominal progressive ideas and material progressive ideas) and compare them. There will be, for example, members who are in both categories. In other words, it’s more like set theory. If we call these two sets, set A and set B, we can look at A ⋃ B. (all members of both sets) and A ⋂ B (the members that are in both sets). We can also identify the members who are in set A and in set B but not in the intersection, also known as the disjunctive union or the symmetric difference.

This may seem like an abstract mathematical digression, but it’s central to the critical difference between the “nominal” and the “material.” Why does this matter? It matters because one important way to think about nominal categories is to attempt to quantify them, to take a material approach to defining what they mean. If we are to create and name categories like nominal and material progressives, we should also define them in material ways. How else are we to be clear about what we mean?

As Jung points out, “there is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites,” and “there is no position without its negation.” Or in other words, conceptual opposites spark our ability to think at a primordial level. We can also think of this not as a dualism, but what Dewey would call “two phases of a single action.” Either way, the categories of nominal and material progressivism provide us with a method to make sense of what’s happening around us. I would go further and say that while the “dualism” of nominal versus material is useful as a way to understand the schism in progressivism, ultimately we must transcend that dualism. We need to strike the right balance between the nominal and the material. We want to learn to operate in the dynamic intersection. We could borrow a term from music and think of it as a cyclic progression.

Finally, one could easily make the case that progressivism can be arranged into not two, but instead a wide variety of different segments and groups, each with its own unique vantage point. That case, however, is the case for someone else to make. My concern is that the split between nominal and material progressivism has created a divisive impasse within a group of people who are otherwise largely aligned about the direction of civil society.

III. Two Examples

Recently I was having a casual conversation with my sister-in-law who teaches in the public school system in Oakland, California. We were discussing terminology and the question before us seemed simple: is there a meaningful difference between “homeless” and “unhoused?” This categorical distinction had recently become a source of public discourse. We found ourselves discussing the potential for terminology distinctions between K-12 students who are categorized as “homeless,” and how that compares to the students who are categorized as “unhoused.”

Our questions hovered around the meaning of the two terms. Does using “unhoused” rather than “homeless” provide some useful specificity to how we classify these students in the school system? Does this terminology address some kind of harmful stigma? Does this terminology illuminate some underlying material differences and thus point us toward something we could do about it? After going around and around on this topic, we landed nowhere. 

In an essay by Architectural Digest, Nicholas Slayton writes that “a related term to homelessness, the homeless, has begun to be seen as othering. In May 2020 the Associated Press updated its stylebook to focus on “person-first” language; it said not to use the homeless, calling it a dehumanizing term, and instead use terms like homeless people or people without housing.” The article goes on to include the view, albeit briefly, that would appeal to an unapologetic material approach: “There is the argument that in some ways, the language does not matter; material solutions to homelessness do.” In the end, it’s unequivocally clear that both matter.

The conversation moved on, and we talked about the nominal difference between the terms ESL, or English as a second language, versus “English Learners.” We floated another term: English as a non-primary language. Was that more accurate? Which term is the better way to define English proficiency in the school system? Aren’t all K-12 students English learners? The question ultimately was, does using a different term actually make a difference? Again, there was no clear answer, and she is a bilingual teacher in heavily ESL/ELL communities.

This kind of terminology has significant material impacts, including program design and funding allocations. Whether a person is classified as ELL or ESL can correspond directly to programs that they can take advantage of to learn English. In an article by the National Council of Teachers of English, the authors state “the shift in terms has a great deal to do with both policy and issues of identity for students. For example, up until the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, most educational documents referred to these students as bilingual or ESL, both of which acknowledge that English is a second language and that a student has a first language as well.”

In many ways, this essay is a terminology discussion. There is a non-trivial relationship between terminology and material categories. Terminology discussions shape how we think about problems generally and social problems in particular. Furthermore, the terminology we use defines the characteristics of the category which then determine how we identify ideas as belonging to one group or another. In the case of “unhoused” versus “homeless,” terminology represents an attempt to understand the characteristics of a certain group. But when we focus on language and labeling, the discussion revolves around the words, and for nominal progressivism, the discussion tends to get trapped in language. We often find ourselves caught in an Orwellian dance around which term is acceptable and which term is objectionable.

Then, the conversation changed. I had seen some recent statistics on homeless/unhoused K-12 students, and the discussion moved to the numbers. The federal government’s department of education estimates that there are approximately 1.3 million homeless/unhoused students in the K-12 school system nationwide. California leads the nation in the shameful statistic with well over 300,000. It’s a shockingly large number. The hard data on homeless students changed our discussion to a “material” understanding about this social problem, a quantitative framing of the problem. And whether or not these students are classified as unhoused or homeless, the large number of homeless/unhoused children is an important social problem. The terminology may have a nuanced impact on the discussion of the problem, but it does not address the fact of the problem itself.

It was an informal conversation, but once we turned the topic to the hard numbers of homeless/unhoused students, we started talking about material ways to allocate funding and resources. We discussed the ratio of teachers to students and classrooms, the ratio of staff to teachers, and the salary of teachers. We discussed the lack of structural readiness of school systems to adequately support the challenges of these students, as well as the other students who are in classes with them. While we acknowledged that we weren’t experts in what works and what doesn’t, the conversation had changed. We had shifted from a nominal discussion to a material discussion. It became clear that without a material change to handling homeless/unhoused K-12 students, the terminology didn’t really matter.

In a formal setting, we could take the discussion about these definitions in a material direction. We could quantify the difference. We could use the definitions of “homeless” and “unhoused” to create two sets of students based on the different definitions, one set that contains all members from the “homeless” definition and one that contains all members from the “unhoused” set. We could then compare the two sets to see if there was a material difference. If the students in each set were essentially the same, we could say that the “nominal” difference made no “material” impact. If there were a difference, we could then consider the two sets more closely, compare them, and consider the union and the intersection of those two sets. Furthermore, we could start to consider ways to make an impact on the students in the group, an impact that we could measure and improve over time. 

IV. Progress

John Stuart Mill believed that people are inherently progressive, and that “the perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.” The past haunts us and refuses to let go. So what do we mean by progress? Simply stated, progress embodies the idea that “science, education, and political freedom will bring social progress” (Cahoone). Progressivism implies progress, but it is not the same thing. Progressivism is the politically and socially active behavior of the commitment to progress. Progressivism embodies a practical philosophy that applies to civil society. It is not a philosophy of ontology or teleology or epistemology. It is a philosophy of practical applicability and how we live in a civil society.

It must be said that not everyone believes in progress. There are countless traditionalists and fundamentalists who still believe that the past represents an ideal time, and that the future is a continuous degradation of that better past. But this paper does not concern itself with such traditional thinking. I am concerned with the split between nominal and material progressivism.

This concept of progress (and progressivism) is not necessarily ideological. In other words, it doesn’t have to be tied to a particular political philosophy.  It’s worth pausing to explore this idea – the idea of progress does not necessarily adhere to a particular economic or political ideology. At its most fundamental level, the belief in progress merely states that we can make the future better than the past through our actions. While the definitions of progress will surely differ depending on our ideology, we don’t have to be a libertarian or a socialist or a communist or capitalist in order to believe in progress. 

As I stated at the outset, both Adam Smith and Karl Marx believed in progress. There were, it’s safe to say, significant differences in their definitions of progress and how to get there. Much has been written on the similarities and differences of Smith and Marx, and I won’t rehash it here. But it might reflect the most important departure between nominal progressivism and material progressivism. Material progressivism does not necessarily concern itself with the particular ideology required to achieve progress. Material progressivism is concerned with material achievement. Nominal progressivism is concerned with language and terminology. Understanding the interplay between these two is the purpose of this essay.

How do we define progress? How do we quantify progress? These are easy questions to ask but not easy questions to answer. The very discussion with others about how we quantify progress will yield surprising results almost every time. For the sake of this discussion, we might consider using the human development index as one means to measure progress. It narrows the focus to three vectors for its measurement.

• a long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth;
• knowledge, as measured by mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling;
• a decent standard of living, as measured by GNI per capita in PPP terms in US$.

To these three metrics we might consider adding specific civic abilities, such as

• the ability to hire and fire your leaders through free and fair elections; 
• the ability to enjoy a free press;
• the ability to express yourself and your opinions openly. 

There are other measures that we could consider, but these six measures are practical, empirical, and easy to understand. They can be measured, and we can confidently presume that Progressivism aims to improve these material factors. But it is the exchange of ideas about how to materially quantify progress where we force a deeper understanding of what it means. To define quantifiable criteria forces us out of the trap of language games. For example, how would we quantify “the ability to enjoy a free press?” Engagement in that material discussion will doubtless yield many surprising directions. 

Furthermore, there is a vital entanglement between nominal and material definitions. This is the crux of the matter. The idea of nominal definitions, on one hand, indicates the practice of defining something, naming it, so that it can be verbally distinguished from other things or categories. This typically means using other words to describe the words you’re defining. A nominal definition tends to be qualitative, and it provides verbal characteristics. The nominal definition does not get at its underlying material structure or makeup. 

A nominal definition tends to be qualitative, and it provides verbal characteristics.

The material definition, on the other hand, is quantitative. It attempts to identify the measurable, empirical understanding. Can it be counted? Does it have weight? Does it have size? The material definition forces us to define the measurable contents of the nominal definition. The critical point here is this: the nominal definition guides us in defining the material definition, and the material definition brings us back to clarifying the nominal definition. The two are mutually entangled in a cognitive dance. This brings us back to the musical notion of a cyclical progression.

The material definition, on the other hand, is quantitative. It attempts to identify the measurable, empirical understanding. Can it be counted? Does it have weight? Does it have size?

Unlike the nominal definition, the material definition attempts to get at the structure and the measurable characteristics. As an example, if we say that “the glass is half-full of cold, clear liquid,” we’re using a nominal definition. If we say instead that “the glass contains 0.5 liter of .9% saline solution at 5 degrees Celsius,” we’re using a material definition. A material definition doesn’t necessarily need to be scientific. It could also refer to economics, mathematics or other material resources. A nominal definition of wealth might express that someone is rich, and the material definition might say that that person possesses $1 million in liquid assets. But someone else might disagree and say you’re not really rich until you’re worth more than a billion dollars. It is at this point that the definition of rich takes on material meaning.

In order to avoid confusion, I will add a brief clarification here on the difference between materialism and a material definition. While the philosophical idea of ‘materialism” and the idea of a “material definition” are related concepts, they are distinct in their scope and application. Materialism is a broad philosophical belief that holds that physical matter is the fundamental reality of the world, while a material definition is a tool used to define terms and concepts based on physical properties. The focus in this paper is on the application of a material definition.

V. Impasse

To be sure, the language we use shapes the way we think. This is a well established area of exploration for those who study linguistics and cognitive science. Some cultures have no words for left and right. Others have a very small number of words for color. “People who speak different languages will pay attention to different things depending on what their language usually requires them to do,” says Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist. Nominal progressivism tends to emphasize linguistic differences.

The same can be said of thinking quantitatively. When we attempt to understand something using quantitative tools and techniques, it changes the way we think. It forces us to engage techniques that we might call practical or pragmatic. It forces us to use numbers rather than words, calculations rather than sentences and paragraphs. As brain science matures, and we understand more about how the brain works, we can now examine, visualize and quantitatively measure the differences. Brain studies show that we use different parts of our brains when we think qualitatively versus quantitatively.

One of the biggest problems with this split between nominal and material progressivism is the inability to achieve a coherent understanding of actual progress. Nominal progressivism tends to be energized by terminology and language and that energy avoids the practical tools of material or quantitative analysis. Material progressivism is not necessarily concerned with ideology or terminology. It attempts to understand the inner workings of a problem in order to find the quantitative strategies that will change the situation. Furthermore, nominal progressives tend to be more ideological whereas material progressives are more practical. This important difference, which is largely unrecognized by most progressives, often pits them against each other causing friction and misunderstandings. They don’t have a common language and they don’t know how to define a unified direction. They will face off against each other in disagreement and not understand why they aren’t communicating. 

Language sets the ball in motion. Progressive efforts start with words, labels, and ideas rooted in language. Even if we are to make sense of any quantitative assessment, we use words. We do not start with numbers and measures.  We start with conversations, with sentences, utterances, words. If we are to agree to pursue any kind of material understanding we begin with a nominal understanding. Furthermore, any progressive pursuit ends with language. The entire effort is bookended by language. When we sit down to assess how we performed, to know if the policy or the investment or the experiment was useful, we engage in language. In the end, the nominal bookends the material on both ends, but the nominal without the material can be like bookends with no books between them.

VI. Language Games

In the 20th century, Western philosophy became increasingly obsessive with language. The practice of what I am calling nominal progressivism follows closely on the heels of this obsession. 20th century philosophy endlessly and furiously attempts to understand the relationship between language and thinking. Many of these thinkers attempt to reduce all thought down to language. From Wittgenstein to Heidegger to the Structuralists and the post-Structuralists and the Semioticians and Deconstructionists, 20th century philosophy became mired in the relationship between language and thinking. One of the representative figures of this obsession is Jacques Derrida, the father of what is known as Deconstruction. One of his central critiques is the idea of logocentrism, which claims that humans cannot help but obsess around words, signs, symbols and what they mean and what they don’t mean. Logocentrism means literally that everything is centered around “the word.”

Staying with Jacques Derrida for the moment, logocentrism presumes (among other things) the existence of stable and self-contained meanings in language, where words can accurately represent and convey essential concepts or truths. Derrida challenges this presumption by highlighting the inherent instability and ambiguity of language. He argues that language is a system of differences and signs that refer to other signs, lacking any fixed or absolute meanings. Therefore, the search for a single, fixed meaning is futile and leads to a false sense of certainty. In other words, we dissimulate incessantly about everything. Deconstruction also presents us with a set of tools to dissect and understand how the language that we have inherited can be taken apart to reveal underlying assumptions, presumptions and privileges. These are some of the linguistic hallmarks of what we call postmodernism, and what we also call “critical theory.”

This leaves the idea of nominal progressivism with some serious problems. In the words of Lawrence Cahoone, “Postmodernism may provide the means to critique the status quo, but can it provide the resources for a normative solution? If the postmodern critique attacks every statement that a policy maker or theorist might make, which they can, they could simply unhinge our ability to say or do anything. If we are to change society, this would require justifications of unity, identity and privileged conditions that postmodernism must undermine. Can the critical beast of post modernism be brought to heel?”

We have inherited this deconstructive obsession with language from the 20th century, and we don’t seem to know how to move past it. These linguistic tools provide us with a powerful way to apply critiques to texts, but they don’t provide us with means or mechanisms to move forward in any material way. If we go back to the example of the homeless / unhoused  students, we could debate endlessly about the language in and around these concepts and terms, the signs and symbols and transcendental signifiers, and show how the language reveals our logocentric obsessions, our preferences and privileges, but it doesn’t take us forward. In other words, we still have 1.3 million homeless / unhoused K-12 students in United States.

Using material methods does not guarantee success. It’s entirely possible that we could follow the method that I’m recommending and still fail. We might iteratively progress from the nominal to the material in a cyclic progression in order to arrive at some mode of progress, and in so doing devise poor, misleading or unconstructive material criteria and techniques. In other words, applying a material approach doesn’t guarantee that we will get it right. In fact, developing the acumen and the vernacular of using material methods requires practice and development and open-minded creativity.

One way we can lead ourselves astray, for example, is to consider both nominal and material techniques in a realm where we have no ability to make an impact. In other words, it’s important to understand the sphere of influence in which we operate. If we are truly interested in progress, we should consider framing our thinking within a space that we can impact. We might want to ask ourselves, “if we want to make progress in a particular area, do we have the authority and the imprimatur to make something happen?”

VII. Consciousness

In the New Organon, Francis Bacon dismantles the crippled mode of thinking of his time. As he saw it, the mode of thinking was stuck and irrelevant and mired in circular logic. Considered by many to be the father of the scientific revolution, Bacon changed the way we think about how the world works. And he did so with the express purpose of making the world a better place, to unleash the power of creative thinking to remedy the pain and suffering of people. “In order for the mind to remain free and unencumbered, it must abandon the old, accepted ways and embrace a new path of inquiry and investigation.” What I’m proposing ultimately is a method. The term I’ve used here is a “cyclic progression” and that seems adequate for now.

In a recent conversation with my father, we discussed whether or not consciousness could be understood from the standpoint of materiality. Could we take the lens of material progressivism and focus it on consciousness, a topic that is often esoteric and metaphysical? He thought about it for a few minutes and then suggested that we could consider the current mental health crisis that we’re experiencing. If, in other words, someone loses touch with reality, their consciousness is no longer able to adapt to the world around them in such a way that they can function as a member of society. Furthermore, if we were to use the lens of material progressivism towards consciousness, we might measure the rise and fall of significant mental health problems.

This was a completely unexpected direction for this conversation to go. I was surprised and curious. Generally speaking, our discussions about consciousness had centered around topics such as epistemology and faith and Buddhism. But when he applied this new material lens to the question, what surfaced was a a pressing, practical and quantifiable social problem. Of course there are many ways we can think about consciousness, but this redirection toward mental health struck me as materially germane and socially important. It forced us to both reconsider the nominal definition of consciousness as something to be thought about and studied and discussed. It was the beginning of a fine example of cyclic progression.

Being born between centuries
How primitive we will look
To the reflecting youths of the 2090s
To the historians and their compartments:

The Age of Terrorism, of Misdirection,
When people thought the End was Nigh,
Again, before we got our act together

In the 2020s, when that new scene arrived
And some cats were hip, again,
In some new way that everyone flashed onto.

In the university, the sophomores of the future will sit in
On a mandatory lecture on the late 20th Century
Poets, one of whom still resonates, one of whom
Really captured the black, subtle confusion

On the cusp of those years when the continent burned
Or so it seemed. The professor will ask
“What were they afraid of?” and the two hands
That always go up will go up.