It is probably true that cultures which put a premium on
individual freedom make us chafe more at restrictions of such an
imaginary freedom than we would if socialized into a culture
where harmony with the group was a far more dominant value. But
we are not _coerced_ by our own beliefs, even if they serve
others' interests more than our own. We are coerced by the
application of force, of pain. This is an important distinction
that I think there is great moral, political, and intellectual
value in maintaining.
I do not deny that there are intersections of these principles.
There are forms of internally generated pain (guilt, anxiety,
shame, fear, etc.) by which we punish ourselves for
transgressions of values we have appropriated (and transformed, I
don't doubt) from others in our community. We can control
ourselves with such pain, and we can find such pains to be beyond
our control (either unconsciously generated, or in extreme cases
aspects of emotional dysfunction). But however painful a person's
moral struggles, they are of quite a different nature in terms of
the consequences for power and privilege relations in a community
than are the pains directly inflicted on us by others to enforce
a conformity with _their_ norms and values.
I do not believe all human cultures are equal in their degree of
control over individual behavior, nor that this is what culture
is all about. All cultures provide frameworks and resources for
making meaning, including making value-judgments and guiding
action. But some far more than others produce networks of social
practices within which the actions (including the professed
beliefs and values) of individuals are closely monitored and
regularly coerced into conformity with very narrow and intolerant
norms. Many cultures ignore or tolerate wide ranges of
idiosyncrasy and confine their coercions to a few very specific
domains of human activity ("taboos"). I think that it is possible
to construct 'objective' (i.e. cross-culturally applicable)
indices of the extent and intolerance of coercive control (the
inevitable cultural biases of such a project come in the interest
in doing so and in the forms of the indices); the coarsest
measure might well be the incidence of pain inflicted
deliberately by members of more powerful social caste categories
on members of less powerful ones.
I advocate less such coercion. Not because I want to maximize
individual freedom (much of which is admittedly illusory), but
because I want to maximize social equity (as between caste-
categories and their interests), intra-social cultural diversity,
and the options for social change. JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
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