neighborhood mailing list Archives - Patricia Roberts-Miller

Democratic deliberation and dog poop in my trash

Several smiling poop emojis

So, far I’ve argued that the neighborhood mailing list exemplifies two deeply problematic ways that Americans think about political deliberation:

1. For every policy question, there is one policy oriented toward the public good; all others are advocated by people representing special interests; [corollary: to the extent that we modify the policy that is in the public good in order to take into consideration the arguments and demands of other groups, we are compromising good on behalf of special interests (and their gullible stooges)]
2. That the public good is universally good means that any good policy is really in the best interests of everyone, and so interlocutors should universalize their claims (even if the policy is really in service of very particular needs) [corollary: people arguing from a place of fear, anger, and so on should not argue that they feel threatened, but that the Other is threatening.]

Both of these positions are strongly influenced by a kind of epistemological selfishness—my position is the only legitimate because it is mine. But they’re also influenced by the rational/irrational split. And, just to be clear: I object to the rational/irrational split, and how it’s taught and reinforced in argumentation courses, not because I think there is no useful distincti0ni to be made between rational or irrational argumentation, but because that distinction isn’t a zero-sum binary, and it isn’t the muddle 0f intention, emotionalism, data, tone, truth, identity, affect, and all sorts of other unrelated (or, at best, orthogonally related) criteria that attach to conventional notions about the rational/irrational split.

I’m arguing for what I think is a better, and much more limited, way to think and talk about what makes an argument or a claim rational, irrational, or something somewhere in the range between the two. (And I’m also saying that not all of our beliefs have to be, or even can be, rational, and I’m far from the only one making this argument.)

There is a third recurrent argument on my neighborhood mailing list (and nextdoor) that exemplifies another serious problem with how we imagine political deliberation: some dog walkers, on the day that the trash will be picked up, scoop up their dog’s poop in a plastic bag and put that plastic bag in the trash bin that is about to be picked up. And that enrages some people.

While the people arguing that putting plastic bags of poop into their trash is wrong make a lot of arguments, and they sincerely believe that they are making a rational argument, they aren’t. (And, just to be clear, my husband and I generally don’t put poop bags in anyone else’s trash, but, if we do, only in cans that belong to people we know walk their dogs.) Their arguments are hilariously irrational. But sincere.

The people who have someone else put poop in the bin they think of as theirs sincerely believe that their property has been violated. They have trouble making that argument rationally, though. Sometimes they try to argue that it’s robbery, since they pay for garbage pickup, and someone is putting something into their garbage. Since they aren’t charged for garbage by the ounce, they are not getting charged any more for someone putting a bag that contains dog poop, so this isn’t a rational argument. The bin is not actually theirs, but belongs to the city, so this is an even more troubled argument.

They argue that they are acting from a sense of public service (the public good) in that they’re worried about the additional work for garbage collectors (no kidding, that argument gets made). That’s irrational, in that they aren’t saying that people shouldn’t put plastic bags with poop into any trash can—only theirs. They don’t argue that people shouldn’t put used diapers in the trash. S0, their policy doesn’t really protect garbage collectors. At least one person argued that they tried to keep their trash bin clean, and plastic bags with dog poop … it got a little vague.

It does no harm to the public, or the trash collectors, or anyone, if a person puts a plastic bag with dog poop in a trash bin on the day that trash will be collected. The harm is to their sense of purity of the trash bin they think of as theirs.

This isn’t about a rational (falsifiable, with internally consistent premises, and standards across interlocutors) argument. But it’s sincere insofar as they sincerely believe that they are harmed by having plastic bags with dog poop in the trash bins they believe are their property.

It’s a purity argument. It’s an argument grounded in an irrational belief that some people have that they must keep their personal possessions pure of contamination. This is about poop. Putting poop, even in a plastic bag, into their bin means putting poop into a part of their realm they want to keep poop-free. Of course, poop is in their realm, and they probably have some pretty gross things in their trash, so this is a taboo.

I get that there are taboos. I don’t like the unopened box of (obviously, unused) poop bags to be on a kitchen counter or dinner table, but I don’t mind a box of plastic bags in the same places. That’s an irrational position; it’s a taboo.

I don’t think people are bad for having taboos, nor do I think people incapable of advocating their position through rational argumentation should be dismissed from our world of argument.

I think we should admit we are reasoning from an irrational position, and I think we have a world that is big enough to give fair consideration to taboos. But we shouldn’t try to pretend that taboos are universally valid premises—later I’ll mention how acknowledging the particularity and irrationality of the poop-bag-in-the-trash position can lead to better solutions than will ever be achieved by pretending it’s an issue of the violation of a universally accepted public good.

I think this problem, of a not very helpful frame, is at least related to the media’s tendency to frame harms a issues of someone being “offended.” The media (and too much public discourse) framed Trump bragging that he sexually assaults women as a problem because it “offended” some people; HRC claiming that many of Trump supporters were “deplorable” “offended” some people; someone using a racist slur “offends” someone.

Serious issues about institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry are reframed as issues of individual people being “offended.” In an informational culture in which a person hearing a racial slur is offended, as is a person who discovers someone has put a plastic bag with poop in it in their trash, the two actions seem to be the same importance. Framing actions as harmful because they “offended” someone inevitably leads to false equivalencies

Hearing a racial slur is offensive (to some people), but racism isn’t bad because it offends people. It’s bad because it harms people. It harms our world.

As long as we have a culture that irrationally makes policy issues about feelings, then people who think from a place of epistemological selfishness can sincerely believe that their being offended at someone putting poop in their trash bin is just as important as someone who has to listen to racial slurs.

So, the third thing that the neighborhood mailing exemplifies about toxic democratic deliberation is how our culture (and media) falsely frame policy arguments, not as arguments about policy, but about the feelings of the people involved. You might feel offended that someone might put poop in your bin; if I have to behave differently at work because the norms of appropriate behavior are different for men and women, I might feel anger about that. But that doesn’t mean those two feelings are equally valid, nor that the policy argument about either issue (poop v. gendered norms) is usefully reduced to who is or is not offended.

A reasonable world of public deliberation is not one in which those two feelings are treated as equally valid, nor one in which they’re both dismissed, but one in which we argue about their validity and relevance and the policies. I can make a rational argument that it matters that women are held to different standards than men at the place at which I work; a person arguing that no one should throw plastic bags with poop in them can make lots of arguments, but not a rational one. They’re just offended because it violates their sense of purity about their trash bin.

That you are offended does not mean the act is offensive.

Believing that you are harmed by someone putting plastic bag with poop in it in “your” trash bin on the day it’s going to be picked up is irrational, but that doesn’t mean your strong beliefs about poop and the trash bin you think of as yours should be dismissed or ignored.

They don’t want plastic bags that contain poop in their trash. Instead of trying to pretend that their position is universally valid, and everyone should agree, they could instead appeal to neighborliness. They could put a sign on the trash can saying, “Please don’t put dog poop bags into our trash can.” I think that would work pretty well.

Paradoxically, being willing to admit when our preferences can’t be rationally defended can enable us to have better policy arguments.

And it might also keep us from arguments grounded in false equivalency, in which issues of systemic discrimination are falsely framed as individuals (or a special interest) being offended.

Democratic deliberation, marathons, and that nice neighbor down the road

I continue to believe that democracy is the best form of government there is, and that healthy democratic deliberation is not just a pipe dream, despite having spent years reading the neighborhood mailing list.

Democratic deliberation isn’t perfect, as I know from studying times it goes very, very wrong, and, unhappily, the ways it goes wrong are perfectly represented in my neighborhood mailing list. Those ways aren’t the consequence of bad people on the list, or the moderators doing a bad job, or some people being stupid (or brainwashed). They’re the self-reinforcing ways we think about politics, political decision-making, and political deliberation.

First: marathons, values, and fairness

One of many reasons I wanted to move into this neighborhood is that marathons came through it. For the first two (or three?) years we lived here, the marathon ran right in front of our house, and I thought it was fun to cheer people on. While I’m not a runner, I think it’s great that the city promotes running. I could try to argue that by promoting a healthy activity it is promoting a public good, and that’s more or less true, but, really, I just like having a city that promotes marathons, and I liked having the marathon run down our street.

There were opponents, of course. One of the most vocal opponents of the marathons is a very nice neighbor who lives down the road. She’s the kind of neighbor who would show up with a casserole if she heard that something bad happened to us, who spend a lot of her time doing volunteer work, and who is active in her church. She said marathons on Sunday mornings made it hard for people like her to get to early service at church, and, therefore, they should be moved to a different day, different time, or different route.

She argued that going to church was a selfless and essentially good act, but running a marathon was selfish, and, therefore, public policy should favor her behavior over others. She was thereby making two really interesting assumptions: first, that there is one right policy to be determined as far as marathons in our neighborhood on Sundays and, second, that policy should be determined as to what was best for good people.

She didn’t want to ban marathons, and she was open to various other policy solutions, such as not having marathons on Sundays. But, when it was pointed out that having marathons on Saturday mornings created much worse traffic problems than Sunday mornings, she emphasized that what she was doing was a public good, whereas marathon-running was only a private one.

This is one way of thinking about public policies, and it’s an unhappily common position in democratic discourse—because I am motivated by ethical considerations, and what I am doing is good for the community, I am motivated by a sense of public good. People who disagree with me are arguing from their special interests. And, since the public good should also be privileged over special interests, my policy should be privileged.

From within this world, to say that my policy cannot be enacted in its purity is to say that the public good must be watered down by special interests.

This tendency to think in terms of the public good (my preferred policy) v. special interests (all other policies) isn’t restricted to any place on the political spectrum. Many marathon runners made exactly the same argument as to why their position should be privileged over people going to church: running is an ethical action, because it’s healthy, promoting a healthy community is a public good, so marathons represent the public good, whereas going to church only benefits those individuals–that’s a private good.

In other words, opposing positions invoked the binary of the public good v. a special interest, and I think they did so perfectly sincerely.

When distributing public lands, the government saved spaces for churches, schools, and libraries because so many people believed that those three kinds of spaces contribute to the public good. Some people believe that attending churches makes people more ethical, some believe that a godly community will not be punished by God, some people believe that church attendance correlates to healthier living. I’m practically positive that my very nice neighbor (and she is nice) sincerely believed that all those people running marathons would benefit the community more if they went to church instead.

I’m equally sure that the marathon runners thought she should be running a marathon instead of attending church. It is, after all, true that a healthy community is a public good.

If you can identify a public good that your policy furthers, then you nab the position of being the group arguing for the public good, and that means everyone else is arguing from a place of special interest.

I’ve seen this same presentation of public good v. special interest when there were arguments about what to do with the roads, with cyclists, runners, dog walkers, people with strollers all each claiming that their position was the one grounded in public good. When there was a proposal for increasing funding for public schools, there were people who argued that reducing taxes serves the public good, whereas the only people who wanted more funding for schools were teachers and administrators, and they were just looking to line their own pockets–they were a special interest.

It’s fine that we disagree; that’s what democratic deliberation requires. It’s actively good that we feel passionate about getting to church, having a marathon, ensuring emergency vehicles can get places, wanting low taxes, wanting good public schools, and various other legitimate perspectives that come from ethical concerns. The problem is not that people are passionate, nor that people argue and sincerely believe that the policy they prefer (that happens to benefit them) is a public good.

Democracy is based on the premise that people legitimately disagree, that there are multiple legitimate points of view (but not all points of view are equally legitimate—a different post), that we come to a better decision when we argue together. Such a view assumes that there is not the public good, but a lot of public goods, and they’re inherently in conflict.

Something can be a public good and yet not the public good.

When we choose to support or compromise with a position that is not ideal for us, it is not because we are watering down the obviously right course of action with some amount of the obviously wrong course of action–the public good with what special interests demand–, but because we recognize that our world benefits from diversity, and that means a diversity of points of views and needs and goods.

That doesn’t mean we have to be nice to people who disagree with us; that doesn’t mean we have to speak to or about them in a measured tone; that doesn’t mean that passion, outrage, and anger have no place in our deliberations. That doesn’t mean we have to say “both sides are just as bad” or say something bad about this side if we say something bad about that side. Nor does it mean that we have to say that all positions are equally valid. We can, and should, argue vehemently for why our position is right, and even why some positions aren’t. But it does mean that none of us is, in fact, imbued with universal vision, that there is not only one possible right solution to our problems, and only one set of concerns that is legitimate.

In a healthy community, good people really disagree.