Politics is a complex and important aspect of humanity. Even after decades of study through various branches of science, however, our understanding of the human elements of politics is still incomplete. Over time, however, a picture is slowly coming into a degree of focus. Research from Research from a variety of fields including history, evolutionary biology, cognitive biology, neuroscience, economics, political science, psychology and philosophy are all being brought to bear and, increasingly, all inform one another to some extent.
Another discipline that affords a different and important viewpoint through which one can analyze politics is sociology. That discipline attempts to understand the nature and origins of social institutions such as marriage, religion, law, and politics – or more broadly, society. In his 1963 book, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Anchor Books, 176 pages), sociologist Peter Berger describes some basic sociological concepts and their social importance to literally invite students to consider sociology as a career. His book is thus not intended to be a textbook or to advocate new theory. As Berger puts it, “this book is to be read, not studied.” For people not familiar with sociology, this book can convey nothing short of a major epiphany about human society and the individual’s place in it.
The influence of Berger's work should not be overlooked. Writing in 1990 on the impact of Berger's book, sociologist Kevin Christiano writing in 1990 commented that “as a publishing feat, Invitation has proved monumental; as an intellectual statement, its impact has been felt around the world.” It may be the case that another introductory sociology book has come along, but after reading it from this non-sociologist’s point of view, it is hard to see how much more powerful and influential it could be. Invitation can fairly be called an outstanding work of nonfiction. It is still used as an introductory textbook in at least some universities.
Despite being published 61 years ago, Invitation presents a view of a discipline that was, from this reviewer’s point of view, surprisingly advanced and sophisticated. The fundamental concepts that Berger discusses remain valid, although they are probably more refined and may be viewed differently by modern professionals.
Berger offers one vision of society as a prison that imposes more constraints on perceived choice and even consciousness than most people realize. Berger describes mechanisms of social control and the role of social institutions in exerting control. For example, he cites a situation where an unmarried couple conceive a baby. In Western society, the marriage social structure dictates marriage as the accepted social norm with all the trappings including florist, church wedding, engagement and wedding rings and so forth. Berger points out that none of those are mandatory, but many people cannot see that or are trapped by social norms they do not want to violate. Society, as a general rule, discourages socially unacceptable options such as running from the ceremony, arranging to have the child brought up by friends, or entering into a common law marriage. Of course, these days non-traditional marriages have become more acceptable than was the case in 1963.
Here, Berger asserts that “society not only controls our movements, but shapes our identity, our thought, and our emotions.” Social institutions are therefore, to a significant extent, “structures of our own consciousness.” From a personal freedom point of view, that seems a rather harsh vision of society and social institutions. In this scenario, humans are puppets being moved by invisible social strings, and we have little control.
In another, more accurate vision of society, Berger describes society as a stage on which individuals play their roles and have choices within the constraints of social norms. People can game the system or can play as society intends the rule to work. There is more personal freedom. One can attempt to escape society's tyranny using tactics such as “manipulation”, which is the deliberate use of social institutions in unforeseen ways. Using work equipment and time for personal purposes is one such example. Another path to freedom is a “detachment” from society, which is a mental withdrawal from the social stage, wherein an individual retreats into a religious, intellectual, or another fulfilling, self-interested pursuit. By doing this, “it is possible, though frequently at considerable psychological cost, to build for oneself a castle of the mind in which the day-to-day expectations of society can be almost completely ignored.”
Although the limits that society and social norms impose are daunting, maybe even depressing, Berger asserts that achieving sociological self-awareness offers at least a partial way out. “Unlike puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step toward freedom.”
Sociology and politics: Looking at politics from a sociological point of view affords a useful way to understand politics. Sociology can shed light on the role of society including various groups or tribes, who invariably construct their own social norms, perceptions and ways of thinking.
The power of roles that people play to are shaped by social institutions. For example, military draftees have to assume a new role, which Berger describes as an identity change process: “The same process occurs whenever a whole group of individuals is to be ‘broken’ and made to accept a new definition of themselves. . . . . This view tells us that man plays dramatic parts in the grand play of society, and that, speaking sociologically, he is the masks he must wear to do so.” Berger asserts that identity-breaking is prevalent in totalitarian groups or organizations. That affords a glimpse of the power that manipulating or “breaking” society can have in service to the tyrant-kleptocrat.
Establishing a political and religious ideology can also shape politics to a significant extent. Berger comments: “Sociologists speak of ‘ideology’ in discussing views that serve to rationalize the vested interests of some group. Very frequently, such views systematically distort social reality in much the same way that an individual may neurotically deny, deform or reinterpret aspects of his life that are inconvenient to him. . . . . the ideas by which men explain their actions are unmasked as self-deception, sales talk, the kind of ‘sincerity’ that David Riesman has aptly described as the state of mind of a man who habitually believes his own propaganda.”
Social science research since Berger wrote in 1963 has continued to document and reinforce knowledge that adhering to political and religious ideologies is a powerful distorter of both reality and facts, influencing the logic we apply to what we think we see. The situation of people dealing with politics was recently described as “infantile”, not because people are stupid. Instead, politics is generally too complex and opaque for our minds to process reality as it is even if we were not so biased and socially constrained. Seeing politics through a lens of one or more ideologies frames reality and reason. In turn, that is a basis that allows simplifying matters to make them coherent and consonant with ideological belief. The process of simplifying and generating coherence and ideological consonance happens unconsciously for the most part. That is an aspect of innate human cognitive biology, not a criticism of the human condition.
When sociological effects and pressures are brought to bear by political leaders, that biology can be powerfully manipulated by social pressures to shape and reinforce false realities often based on flawed conscious reason. Berger argues that politicians know how to manipulate social conditions to achieve their ends. He argues that “sociological understanding is inimical to revolutionary ideologies, not because it has some sort of conservative bias, but because it not only sees through the illusions of the present status quo but also through the illusionary expectations concerning possible futures, such expectations being the customary spiritual nourishment of the revolutionary.”
The anti-revolutionary aspect of sociology is not lost on tyrants: “Total respectability of thought, however, will invariably mean the death of sociology. This is one of the reasons why genuine sociology disappears promptly from the scene in totalitarian countries, as well illustrated in the instance of Nazi Germany. By implication, sociological understanding is always potentially dangerous in the hands of policemen and other guardians of public order, since it will always tend to relativize the claim to absolute rightness upon which such minds like to rest.”
The power of ideology to distort and bias reality and reason, and to help pave a path to power for the tyrant-kleptocrat is not in dispute among cognitive and social scientists. Perfect anti-biasing is not possible, because the human mind cannot operate that way. Nonetheless, partial debiasing has been associated with what has been interpreted to be more rational and pragmatic, less ideological mindsets.
Berger speaks to the possibility of a ‘non-ideological’ mindset for politics: “One cannot fully grasp the political world unless one understands it as a confidence game, or the stratification system unless one sees it as a costume party. . . . . Finally, there is a peculiar human value in the sociologist’s responsibility for evaluating his findings, as far as he is psychologically able, without regard to his own prejudices likes or dislikes, hopes or fears. . . . . To be motivated by human needs rather than by grandiose political programs, to commit oneself selectively and economically rather than to consecrate oneself to a totalitarian faith, to be skeptical and compassionate at the same time, to seek to understand without bias, all these are existential possibilities of the sociological enterprise that can hardly be overrated in many situations in the contemporary world. In this way, sociology can attain to the dignity of political relevance, not because it has a particular political ideology to offer, but just because it has not.”[1] (emphasis added)
In other words, Berger could see in 1963 through the lens of sociology, what a psychologist like Philip Tetlock described in 2015 about the mindset among people best able to deal with reality. Apparently, others can envision that an anti-bias mindset could be helpful for politics.
Culture Shock is Hard: If the aforementioned makes it sound like sociology is an unsettling and maybe dangerous point of view, it is. Berger was concerned about the ethics of even teaching it to college undergraduates: “What right does any man have to shake the taken-for-granted beliefs of others? Why educate young people to see the precariousness of things they had assumed to be absolutely solid? Why introduce them to the subtle erosion of critical thought?”
He answers his own questions in part by arguing that “the taken-for-granted are far too solidly entrenched in consciousness to be that easily shaken by, say, a couple of sophomore courses. ‘Culture shock’ is not induced that readily.” In other words, mindsets do not easily change. Teaching a couple of sociology courses to undergraduates will not faze them in their rock solid beliefs.
And therein lies a potential problem for the evidence-driven, anti-bias mindset advocated here. In essence, asking that people adopt an anti-bias mindset in an effort to partially rationalize politics could constitute a culture shock, at least for many or most political and/or religious ideologues. Maybe it is the case that few minds could ever accede to that mindset because it is so hard to override biology and social milieu. That leaves non-ideologues, moderates and pragmatists as minds most possibly open to at least hearing about a different way of seeing and thinking about politics.
Footnote:
1. Berger's observation of there being value in not having an ideology to bias or distort reality and reason and to defend helped me to arrive at my conception of pragmatic rationalism as an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology.
B&B orig: 10/24/18; DP 8/7/19, 3/29/20; 8/21/24
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