Some Hypotheses on Crime and Poverty

This is just a brief conceptual piece and not fundamentally concerned with empirical claims. It addresses crime and incarceration.

One basic empirical starting point: in the US prisoners are disproportionately low-income and low education. So what are some possible reasons for why our prisons are mostly full of the worst off? There are at least three reasons why those with lower socio-economic status (SES) might be more likely to end up in jail. We can think of them as working hypotheses.

1. Lower SES Americans do commit some types of crime at higher rates. For instance, many crimes in America are property crimes. It would not be surprising if the poor commit more property crimes due to entrenched poverty and a lack of alternative options. This is also a plausible hypothesis for homicide. Homicide rates tend to be highest in urban areas with entrenched poverty, collapsed social institutions, and a lack of job prospects. In so far as this is the case, the poor are disproportionately present in jail because they commit some crimes at a higher rate. But this hardly suggests that they do so out of some free “choice” to be criminal—they do so in the face of narrowly circumscribed life opportunities, none of which promise a secure and comfortable middle-class life.
2. Enforcement is primarily targeted at the poor. Breaking and entering as well as other forms of material theft are enforced with vigor, whereas white collar property crimes are not. For instance, as a recent piece noted (still trying to place it), if a home or business is broken into, the owner calls the police. If a worker experiences wage theft, who do they call? You can’t call the police and have them arrest the manager of the McDonald’s franchise where you work, let alone the McDonald’s CEO or its Board of Directors who together might be said to incentivize such behavior. But why not? There is no inherent rule that says enforcement has to be this way.  Similarly, drug laws appear to be enforced largely in poor areas, particularly in the inner city. On the other hand, in wealthy areas, from the Los Angeles suburbs to the offices and condos of Manhattan, drug laws are virtually non-existent. Again, this is not preordained by nature. It is a consequence of a country that is run by the wealthy. This leads to the third reason.
3. In some cases, at least, the laws criminalize the behavior of the poor. It is not only the case that the enforcement of white collar crimes is lax, though this is true. The penalties for such crimes are themselves small or non-existent. The forms of tax evasion that wealthy individuals and corporations engage in are often legal, not by nature but by design. The tax laws are written by and in response to such constituencies. And when their behavior is criminalized the penalties are minor, often ranging from fines to months-long prison sentences. Compare this to the often decades spent in prison for those who rob a bank or convenience store. The in-person theft of the poor is criminalized far more harshly than the out-of-sight, largely online theft of the rich. On another note, in many American cities it is effectively illegal to be homeless. If one cannot secure a shelter bed for the night, they risk being chased out of parks, parking lots, alleys, tent camps, and anywhere else a person seeking shelter might settle down for the night. Satirizing this injustice, Anatole France famously said that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

None of this is necessary. A key goal for a more democratic and egalitarian polity would be precisely to eliminate these disparities.

Star Wars: Originals, Prequels, and Sequels

In a time of growing authoritarianism we need a reappraisal of the Star Wars prequels. And on a lighter note, it is always fun to talk about Star Wars.

The original Star Wars trilogy tells a coherent story. The prequel trilogy, in terms of plot and themes, adds to this story, something for which it does not receive enough credit, particularly in the context of contemporary politics, since it concerns the transformation of a democratic republic into an authoritarian empire. The sequel trilogy, I will argue, fails to contribute to the original story or tell its own story.

Star Wars, in terms of the original trilogy, the sequels, the prequels, and the general universe, is an epic space fantasy. But its basic story can arguably be boiled down to two simple components, one personal and one political: the father-son relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, on the one hand, and, on the other, the rebellion against the Galactic Empire.

In other words, the two most fundamental components of Star Wars are the political battle against tyranny, as the rebels attempt to overturn the Galactic Empire and restore the Republic, and the personal Skywalker drama, specifically the father-son dynamic as Luke attempts to convert his father back to the light side of the force.

By the end of Return of the Jedi, the two fundamental components of the story are resolved. The political and the personal dramas have both come to an end. The Empire is defeated and the Republic restored. Just as importantly for the story, Darth Vader returned to the light side of the force and killed the Emperor, saving his son Luke in the process. Furthermore, when Vader kills the Emperor and abandons the dark side of the force, the Sith are effectively destroyed.

The new movies, episodes 7-9 (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker), add nothing to this. They are fundamentally apolitical, though internet right-wingers deride their “agenda” because they include many women and people of color in the cast.

Episodes 7-9 do not explain or contribute to the political story that develops and is resolved in episodes 1-6. They don’t explain how the Galactic Empire effectively returned, now rebranded as the New Order, or what happened to the Republic. Wasn’t the Empire destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi? Wasn’t the Republic restored? Why are those fighting for the Republic called “the resistance”? Aren’t they the government? How did a massive fascist state, the New Order, arise and come to take power with only token resistance from the previously victorious opponents of fascism? What were Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie, Lando, and all our other beloved heroes doing in between episodes 6 and 7? For any adult these are pretty glaring omissions, all the more so because of the explicitly political component of both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy.

Alas, the new films also fail to add anything of value to the personal drama of the first six films.  Darth Vader is dead while Luke is virtually non-existent in two of the three films, and his depiction is mediocre in the other. Meanwhile the films resurrect an Emperor-like figure in Supreme Leader Snoke and then in one of the lamest examples of Hollywood writing in decades, literally resurrect the Emperor himself in episode 9.

Even episode 8, The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson and celebrated by critics, is derivative and uninteresting. The final battle is a ripoff of the Hoth battle from The Empire Strikes Back but without the tactile, in-the-cockpit feel of Irvin Kershner’s masterpiece. Luke’s training of Rey is a sad, borderline parodic ripoff of Yoda’s training of Luke on Dagobah, complete with a Luke in the cave ripoff but with far less power or insight. The widely discussed confrontation with Snoke is visually cool but completely derivative of the Luke-Vader-Emperor confrontation in Return of the Jedi. A Luke figure (Rey) is brought by a Vader figure (Kylo Ren) to an Emperor figure (Snoke). The Emperor figure (Snoke) then taunts and tortures the Luke figure (Rey) before being surprised and killed by the Vader figure (Kylo Ren). So original! It is, however, superior to the embarrassing episode 9, which the less said about the better.

On the other hand, the prequel films, for all their flaws (and there are many), actually tell a story worth telling. They tell the story of how the Republic weakened and was finally taken over and transformed by Palpatine into the brutal Galactic Empire. They tell the story of the defeat of the Jedi and the exile of the two surviving Jedi (Obi wan and Yoda). They also give us more insight into the Skywalker family drama as we witness Anakin Skywalker grow up, from a slave boy into a Jedi, and then turn to the dark side, becoming Darth Vader. We also see him marry Padmé, gain insight into the nature of their relationship, and witness the birth of Luke and Leia, accompanied by Padmé’s death.

The political dimension in the prequels is also fascinating—watch Palpatine’s moves as he goes from Senator to Supreme Chancellor to Emperor. Does he try to overthrow the Republic from outside? Of course not. The Republic, for all its flaws, is too powerful. Rather, he foments a civil war and consolidates his power as Chancellor of the Republic, concentrating it more and more, while also generating a base of support in the Senate, such that in time he can simply proclaim himself Emperor and turn the Republic into the Empire. We watch the Republic weaken, crumble, and ultimately get taken over from within. It is sad, powerful, and for a space fantasy, surprisingly real.

And yet the prequel films have faced considerable criticism, from professionals and fans, in the roughly two decades since their release. It should come as no surprise, then, that the only lesson Disney learned from the prequels was that original stories, especially concerning politics, are boring. So, their rules for the new films, episodes 7-9, appeared to be as follows: Explain nothing. Don’t try anything new or risky. Have no politics (other than a diverse cast, which offended racist fanboys online). Use the old characters for nostalgia and make all the new characters archetypes of the old—Rey (Luke), Poe (Han), Kylo (Vader), Snoke (Emperor Palpatine). Don’t have a death star, have a death planet! Don’t mess with the tried and true formula of rebels fighting the empire, only now they are the “resistance” fighting the “new order.”

The prequels have problems. The writing is often mediocre, the acting often is as well (though some of the actors are great), the prequel films all rely too heavily on cgi, Jar Jar was a mistake, the Trade Federation leaders have strong and offensive east-asian style accents. One could go on. But the prequel films also serve a purpose. To add to and enrich the story of the original trilogy. They are actually brave, in that George Lucas did not just feed people the same old crap. Unlike the new films, which just give us three more rebels-versus-empire films (the Resistance versus the New Order), the prequels told a different story. How the Jedi were defeated by the Sith, how the Republic was turned into the authoritarian and murderous Galactic Empire, and how Anakin skywaker became Darth Vader. That was a story worth telling, even imperfectly. And it matters today.

The new films, on the other hand, have no story to tell and thus it matters little how effectively executed it is (A Force Awakens) or isn’t (The Rise of Skywalker). Disney’s hunger for market share and profits, combined with fans’ hunger for infinite content, virtually ensures that there will be new Star Wars films and television shows in perpetuity. But let’s not pretend that these are all of a piece. Something very special happened between 1977 and 1983, when the original trilogy was released. And something flawed but brave and worthwhile happened when the (surprisingly original) prequel trilogy was released between 1999 and 2005. Nothing similar has happened since. Perhaps this is because George Lucas, who created the story, characters, and themes, was last directly involved in 2005’s The Revenge of the Sith, the final prequel film. To be a little melodramatic, that was the last time Star Wars was a genuine story and not simply corporate intellectual property.

Follow Up Notes on Mass Incarceration and Crime

Here are a few more thoughts on mass incarceration, policing, and crime, in both the American and global context. 

I haven’t heard the following argument but conservatives might make it in defense of mass incarceration: America has more prisoners because America has more crime. This argument would say, in effect, that we aren’t more punitive than a country like Canada—rather, we just have more criminals and thus more people in jail.

And the argument isn’t totally crazy. America does have much higher rates of one type of crime—homicide. Our national homicide rate is anywhere from two to eight times that of other, similar wealthy democracies. So, all things equal, we should be expected to have more people in prison for murder than these other countries. And we do.

The problem is that this hardly explains the disparities in prison rates. The incarceration rate in America, as of 2020 according to World Prison Brief, was more than six times as much as Canada, though our homicide rate is about twice as high. Do we have more violent crime, specifically homicide, than similar countries? Yes. Does this explain the disparity between America and other similar countries? No. Because we also have a far more punitive criminal justice system, with much harsher initial punishments, mandatory sentencing, three strikes provisions, and extreme drug laws that are enforced with severity in poor and especially urban areas. 

If Canada were to unfortunately experience the American homicide rate it would have more prisoners than it currently does but it would not remotely approach the American incarceration rate. This is in part because as political scientist Marie Gottschalk documents, long prison sentences compound on one another. Unlike almost every other country on earth, America has many prisoners serving life sentences and many others serving multi-decade ones. These people remain in the prison population for extended periods of time, whereas criminals in other countries, even serious ones, rarely serve sentences of more than ten or fifteen years. This makes it difficult for the prison population to shrink since so many prisoners are in there for life. Even the recent (possibly temporary) covid-related drop only took a 14% bite out of our prison population.

The American system of punishment used to resemble that of other wealthy democracies. In the old American prison system, before the massive expansion brought on by the war on crime and the war on drugs, we were more like Europe. An example of this was the so-called Dime and a Half sentence, in which those sentenced to “life in prison” usually only served 10 and a half years before being released. Not anymore. Life without the possibility of parole, as well as other multi-decade sentences, are common here.

On another note, why do the poor, in some cases, commit more crimes? As Geo Maher notes in his new work, inner cities, which have high rates of property and violent crime, are characterized by “systematic neglect and active looting, a lack of social welfare programs, and unequal access to education and opportunities.” They have also experienced substantial deindustrialization in recent decades, with good manufacturing work replaced by minimum wage service work. We can connect this to the more recent deindustrialization of rust belt and small town white America which has seen its own growing problem—deaths of despair due to drugs, alcohol, and suicide. So part of the explanation, for both inner city crime and rural deaths of despair, is that people in both groups experience such hopelessness and desperation that they cannot access or imagine accessing the aspirational middle class life that defines the mainstream American Dream. They are thus more likely to spurn it through the turn to crime or abandon it through the turn to drugs and suicide. (There is much to say here— this paragraph really merits its own blog post).

The question remains—How do we get to the virtuous feedback loop of so many other countries, with both low violent crime rates and low incarceration rates? In the most general sense, our system of policing and incarceration does not work. It has failed to create a society that is safe by the standards of the wealthy democracies of the world while at the same time creating the authoritarian stain of mass incarceration. The answer to this question will look very different than the practices that have defined America for the past half century.

Mass Incarceration in America: Defenders and Critics

The latest edition of National Review (October 4, 2021) contains a piece by Andrew McCarthy entitled “Fictions of the carceral state.” In this essay McCarthy takes to task leftist critics of mass incarceration in America. At no point in the essay does McCarthy identify any leftist writer or organization by name. Let’s not make this same mistake. Here I will engage with and critique this specific article by conservative writer, lawyer, and former assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Andrew McCarthy, writing for the prominent conservative magazine National Review.

Okay, let’s get started. In 2019 there were some 2.1-2.3 million Americans behind bars, depending on how and who ones counts. (Technically, prisons hold those sentenced to long terms while jails hold those serving one year or less. I will use the term “prison population” more loosely to refer to all Americans behind bars). That number dropped by a few hundred thousand over the course of 2020, due to covid and the impact of some mild pre-covid criminal justice reforms in California and other states. According to data compiled by the Vera Institute of Justice there were approximately 1.8 million Americans behind bars in late 2020, a notable drop.

McCarthy spends much of his essay harping on these numbers. Of course it is important that we get the numbers right. Though, as I discuss below, it is not yet clear whether this drop represents a temporary or more long-term decline. But what is the broader point here? Why spend so much energy and time stressing the exact numbers? Does this disprove the arguments of the left? Does this small decline disprove the basic thesis that America has a system of mass incarceration and what can be called a “carceral state”? Does mass incarceration cease to exist when the number of incarcerated Americans falls under 2 million?

The fact remains that the USA still has the highest, or one of the highest, prison populations in the world, in both absolute and per-capita terms, even accounting for this small covid-related drop. As the detailed study by the Vera Institute of Justice notes, “the decrease was neither substantial nor sustained enough to be considered an adequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and incarceration in the United States remains a global aberration.”

And this is indeed a key part of the case against mass incarceration in the United States. The system of imprisonment developed in the US from the 1970s to the early 2000s (at which point prison numbers began to level off) was historically unprecedented both within America and around the world. Not only do the other wealthy democracies of the world have much lower prison rates—Canada, for instance, imprisons around 104 people per 100,000, compared to the US rate of 639 per 100,000—but even authoritarian states like China have lower rates. Indeed, according to the World Prison Brief, China incarcerated around 1.7 million people in 2020, a far lower rate than the US. Only a few countries, such as Cuba and Turkmenistan, even come close to the absurdly high rates of American incarceration. This should stand as a damning indictment of the American prison system. We do indeed have a carceral state, if any country on earth can be said to possess one.

McCarthy claims that “in point of fact our prisons are not teeming at all,” a response to supposed leftist arguments that our prisons are “teeming” with non-violent offenders. But McCarthy’s claim is absurd on its face. According to his numbers, the American incarceration rate peaked between 2006 and 2008 at 1,000 prisoners per 100,000 people, which is likely the highest incarceration rate in recorded human history. Even with the post-2008 slow decline and the more recent covid-related drop, America’s imprisonment rate remains the highest in the world. (The Vera Institute estimates that the American prison rate dropped to a low of around 550 per 100,000 in mid-late 2020, roughly tying Turkmenistan for the highest rate on earth).

It is also important to note that much of the recent drop in the American prison population occurred in the early stages of covid, i.e. the first half of 2020. The overall incarcerated population in the US started to increase again by late 2020, particularly in local jails. So we don’t know how many people are incarcerated in America in September 2021, partly because it takes time and careful scholarship to pinpoint the exact number. The point is, the decline in 2020 may have already partially reversed itself by now, data for which we won’t have until 2022. The broader point? While this drop in prison population is welcome to those opposed to mass incarceration, it should not be overstated, nor presumed to be permanent.

Back to McCarthy, who in his essay never mentions any other countries. But all other wealthy democracies manage to have low incarceration rates and lower rates of violent crime, particularly homicide. Why is this? The answer is complicated, and related to easy access to firearms, entrenched poverty, social and economic inequality, race relations, and many other factors. What we can say with confidence is that a world that has low levels of violence and low levels of incarceration is possible. So why not here?

At a more basic level, these absences in McCarthy’s essay point to the sheer inadequacy of his evidence and arguments. At no point does he seriously engage with any of the arguments on the left regarding mass incarceration nor does he engage with the criminal justice systems of any other country on earth. This myopia is common in conservative circles. For instance, it was only possible to fear-monger the prospect of universal healthcare, as Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and McCarthy himself have done, if one ignores the experiences of every other wealthy democracy on earth. Not a very promising line of argument.

Turning back to the development of the modern American prison system, McCarthy claims the prison boom from the 1970s to the 2000s contributed to the dramatic drop in violent crime that began in the early 1990s and lasted for roughly twenty years. It may have contributed, though the evidence is mixed. Sociologist Bruce Western’s detailed study, Punishment and Inequality in America, finds that the massive increase in imprisonment rates had only a limited impact on crime reduction. Many other factors contributed as well, which social scientists are still sorting through. The point is that it is not at all clear how much mass incarceration contributed to the twenty year drop in violent crime rates in America.

McCarthy also implies, and at times explicitly says, that the recent reductions in America’s prison population have caused the recent increases in violent crime. But he offers no evidence for this claim. Isn’t it likely that a series of more complex factors led to the 2020 and 2021 increase in violent crime? Do we, for instance, have any evidence that those released in 2020 in response to the pandemic went on to commit violent crimes? Again, we should recognize that these are complicated questions. They will require better data and careful analysis. However, it is presumptuous, and presented without evidence, for McCarthy to make the claim that those released in 2020 to reduce crowding and the dangers of covid infection went on to commit a wave of violent crimes. Some states, like New Jersey, were explicitly not releasing those convicted of murder or sex offenses. And more basically, there is zero evidence that those recently released contributed to a wave of violent crime.

Two final points to make in my critique of McCarthy, regarding recidivism and racism. First, recidivism. McCarthy writes as if all prisoners are hardened, repeat offenders. In his words, “the jails are filled with recidivist criminals, most of them violent.” He points to the high rates of recidivism. This is not a good argument. 

Imprisonment erodes the life chances of the incarcerated, who are already among the least well-off. In a careful summary of his research, Bruce Western notes that “ex-prisoners can find jobs after incarceration but these jobs usually offer no earnings growth and little employment security.” In addition, “few relationships survive incarceration…the life course [i.e. marriage, career employment, parenthood, homeownership] builds a web of social ties and obligations that prevents young men from straying into crime and other antisocial behavior, but incarceration prevents the life course from unfolding.” These rich ties are the glue that prevents a life from coming unstuck and devolving into crime. The formerly incarcerated do not have access to this glue.

Furthermore, recidivism rates indicate that prisons do not rehabilitate. Ex-convicts re-enter a society without training, resources, connections, or opportunities, and navigate a legal web in which they are always in danger of violating parole and frequently unable to procure gainful employment. They are, understandably, much more likely to be homeless than the general population. It is no surprise that they often return to a life of crime. Many also return to prison as “repeat” offenders because they violate parole. This of course raises the question as to why similar countries don’t suffer as much from these problems.

Second, racism. Even if the carceral state were not racist it would still be a monstrosity, a massive network of totalitarian institutions corroding our (imperfectly) democratic society. However, this is not the case. America’s prison population is disproportionately black and latino, in addition to poor and uneducated. Why? McCarthy insists it cannot be due to institutional racism. As he says, “the legal profession, including most prominently judges and leading criminal-justice practitioners, predominantly educated in elite law schools, is among the most self-avowedly progressive in the world. The notion that it would preside over a “systematically racist” process of prosecution, sentencing, and incarceration is ludicrous.”

This comment demonstrates a failure to understand how institutional racism operates. It is not premised on the participants possessing and acting on openly racist attitudes, although undoubtedly some police, lawyers, and judges are indeed racist. Institutional racism persists through subtler means (although not that much subtler). The infamous crack-cocaine disparity in sentencing punished possession of crack (a poor, black drug) 100 times more severely than possession of cocaine (a wealthy, white drug) even though the drugs are very similar. Similarly, prisons are not racist because the guards hate black people--they are racist because they disproportionately swallow up and destroy the lives of black and latino men.

McCarthy does note that black Americans commit homicide at a higher rate than white Americans, which partly explains the higher rate of black incarceration. But only partly. When it comes to the use and sale of illegal drugs, white Americans violate the law at higher rates. And yet drug violations are policed more heavily (one could almost say primarily) against inner-city blacks and hispanics. Criminologist Michael Tonry has demonstrated that it is primarily with regard to the war on drugs that the racism of the criminal justice system is most manifest.

More generally, those of us on the left ask: Why are the prisons so full of the least well off? The prisons are literally warehouses and cages filled to the brim with society’s cast aways—the poorest, least educated, most mentally ill, and most desperate Americans. If this is how we treat the least well off, by locking them in cages for extended periods of time, what does that say about us as a society? What would Jesus (“whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me”) say about our carceral choices?

What we see with McCarthy is the embodiment of two standard conservative claims regarding significant cases of injustice: it’s not a big deal and nothing can be done about it anyway. (We have seen this for the past year and a half with the covid crisis). Thus, first the claim that American mass incarceration is not real, or not a serious problem, and second, the claim that it cannot be remedied without destroying American communities by releasing thousands of hardened criminals into the streets. Unfortunately for America, mass incarceration is in fact a big deal, indeed a profound injustice. Fortunately for America, something can be done about it. We are not stuck with a system of mass incarceration, as virtually every other country on earth demonstrates. And in the best cases, across Europe and much of East Asia, we have examples of countries that have both low rates of incarceration and very low rates of violent crime. Two related goals that we must achieve.

We do indeed have a carceral state. What we don’t have, and won’t have until we dismantle it and replace it with something far more humane, is a fully free, just, and democratic society.

In Defense of Anthropomorphizing Animals

Anthropomorphizing. It’s an ugly, ungainly word. Here’s the basic idea: the dictionary definition is to “attribute human characteristics to” something that is non-human. If you google the word you get the following example—“people’s tendency to anthropomorphize their dogs.”

Indeed, this is the most common example. Sentimental animal lovers are sometimes criticized for anthropomorphizing our pets. We treat them like family and project human traits and experiences onto them. Is this a flaw? I want to suggest that it would be far better if we tended towards more anthropomorphizing (ugh, this word!) of those in the animal kingdom.

If there are two extremes in terms of how humans can relate to animals, one is to treat animals as unthinking, moving objects (like walking rocks), the other is to treat them as furry but odd looking people. Both are simplifications but only one is harmful.

The first, to treat animals merely as objects for human use, is the most common, at least in modernity. Descartes famously saw animals as akin to machines, guided by automatic, unthinking internal clockwork. For him they really were moving rocks.

But we know so much more today. The view expressed by Descartes, which has dominated so much of the modern world, is neither acceptable nor accurate. We should also recognize that for many centuries there were indigenous communities, in the Americas and elsewhere, that developed entirely different philosophies which recognized the sentience and human-independent value of animals.

It may be too simple to suggest that we either treat animals as pure objects with no value other than what they can do for us (food, labor, eyes for the blind, so on) or as furry little humans. Of course reality presents a more complex spectrum for how we can relate to and treat non-human animals. But basically, I will argue, it would be much better if we treated them like humans.

This of course raises a question: do humans really treat fellow humans so well? Would treating animals like humans mean that they would be treated decently? After all, throughout our history humans have fought wars, committed genocide, torture, and other monstrosities, in addition to enslaving each other in large numbers. The Atlantic slave trade involved the movement of literally millions of Africans who were captured in Africa and sold in the Americas.

Humans don’t treat one another perfectly. But since the enlightenment, and especially in the past century or so, slavery has been formally rejected around the world. In addition, virtually all existing governments have signed onto a range of human rights, embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that seek to guarantee a certain quality of life for all people. Treating people purely as chattel, i.e. as tools to be used by other people, is widely considered illegitimate, even if we fail to honor these standards with some frequency.

Now consider the treatment of animals. The ones that we anthropomorphize, primarily our pets, are treated like family members and more or less as furry little people. And this is good—we give them food, shelter, medical care, attention, and companionship, some gruesome cases of animal abuse notwithstanding.

The ones we treat as unthinking objects, the millions caught up in factory farming, as well as those subject to animal testing, are given more or less the opposite treatment. On a much smaller scale, the Netflix show Tiger King depicted the similarly awful treatment big cats frequently experience at the hands of roadside zoos and breeders.

Peter Singer, an influential utilitarian philosopher, made this point decades ago—surely the sheer quantity of suffering among all those chickens, cows, and pigs caged in factory farms has to weigh heavily on the global scale of pain and injustice. One can prioritize the value of human life and still recognize that sentient creatures are suffering terribly because we see them merely as walking, unprocessed food.

Sentience and intelligence, which we might characterize as the ability to analyze and solve a range of complex problems, as well as to experience, understand, and share a rich array of emotions, are not limited to human persons. At its most complex forms intelligence includes the ability to develop relationships, attachments, memories, desires, life plans, and so on. (Philosophers and those in positions of power have historically been much too focused on the abstract mathematical component of intelligence). One does not need to be capable of every one of these experiences to feel pain, fear, sadness, and anxiety.

The evidence zoologists have uncovered in recent years, as well as anecdotal evidence from every attentive dog and cat owner in the world, suggests that all mammals and birds experience some degree of these features of sentience and intelligence, including emotions. Mammals and birds also dream, which suggests a level of consciousness that persists even in sleep. Stressed out dogs and cats in animal shelters are even given anti-anxiety medication.

The evidence may be more mixed for reptiles and fish, let alone insects, but there are some studies that indicate that at least fish and reptiles are somewhat sentient as well. Granted, these are very complex questions, involving empirical research, ethics, and theories of intelligence. But it seems that the only decent moral standard would be for us to ask whether we would let our pets be subject to the treatment in question. If the answer is no, that should at least give us pause.

The upshot is that if we treated all animals, or at the very least mammals and birds, as akin to humans (or akin to our pets) this would immediately invalidate almost all current factory farming methods. 

Does this mean that we should stop eating meat? Maybe, maybe not. One thing is clear from this perspective—it is difficult to see justifications of factory farming as anything other than efforts to treat sentient creatures as mere objects and subject them to tremendous and unnecessary suffering.

Of course how to accomplish the goal of treating animals as sentient creatures capable of pain and suffering is a demanding, longterm task. Local, state, and federal law, combined with changing norms, can have a positive impact. Thanks to such efforts nearly a third of factory chickens are now housed in large warehouses where they can move about and stretch their wings, rather than crowded together into tiny cages where they can barely move.

Future positive changes will rely not only on changes in law but also changing values and attitudes. There is a rich legacy of arguments in favor of animal rights but my suggestion here has more to do with empathy and emotion. We anthropomorphize our pets because we spend time with them and see their positive traits, their intelligence and emotions, and we then impute further, more complex human experiences to them. But just because we overstate their emotional and analytic complexity does not mean that they possess none. 

The philosopher Richard Rorty argued that emotional attachments can be more powerful than, or at least supplemental to, our more logical forms of argumentation. Anthropomorphizing animals is in this vein. If we saw animals more like little people, and less like moving rocks, we would treat them much better. This requires humans to tap into our emotional intelligence and imagination so that we can engage in a genuine attempt to understand these beings that are different from us but still complex enough to experience and enjoy life in a rich manner. Maybe animals should get to do just that.

Rewatching Hook

Starting this blog I intended it to mostly concern politics but also figured it might cover culture or sports from time to time. So this piece on the film Hook has no overt political dimension. It is simply concerned with the joys of watching Hook as an adult.

In doing so I hope to lend some insight into why Hook is so beloved by my generation. Pretty much everyone I know who grew up in the 90s loves rewatching the movie (most of my friends own the dvd). Why is this? Partly, it is because the Peter Pan story itself is magical. The story continues to be retold, in films, plays, and through movies like Finding Neverland that focus on the author J.M. Barrie. For a story that focuses on childhood and an imaginary land where children never grow up it is hard to imagine a better fit for director than Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg has always had a sense for how children experience the world and the wonders of storytelling. We see this in movies like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or Jurassic Park (which could have been a much more cynical and R-rated film working from the same source material). And yet Spielberg himself has criticized Hook as did many critics. Not only does the film have a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes but Spielberg said in 2013 "I wanna see Hook again because I so don't like that movie, and I'm hoping someday I'll see it again and perhaps like some of it."

Given these caveats, why is the film so beloved by those who grew up in the 90s? Why does its wikipedia page claim that the film “has gained a strong cult following since its release”? One answer is nostalgia. The second is Robin Williams’ playful, childlike charm as Peter Pan. But also, as an adult, the movie has a double impact, which I think gets to the heart of why its appeal is so enduring. 

The double impact is as follows: Peter is first reminded of his lost youth when he, his wife, and their kids visit Grandma Wendy’s house in London. When Peter first approaches the childhood bedroom of Wendy we feel through the haunting music, lighting, wind through the open windows, and wallpaper that being in this room unsettles Peter, reminding him of a long-forgotten, seemingly lost childhood.  Second, Peter actually returns to his physical past to rediscover the wonder and magic of childhood in Neverland. 

Okay, why is this so powerful? Because for those of us who grew up watching (and loving) Hook, by rewatching it as adults we ourselves travel the same path that Peter does, first being reminded of our childhood through the nostalgia we experience when watching the movie and then second, in a more direct sense re-experiencing the magic of our childhood with Peter as he travels to Neverland. We of course don’t actually go to Neverland, as Peter does, but to watch Peter travel there is to travel back with him to the play and joy of youth, the magic of imagination, and the fear of growing up (all the pirates are adults).

I am suggesting that to rewatch this magical story about childhood is not merely to be reminded of one’s youth but to metaphorically travel back to the child one was when they first watched Hook. This is why I call it a double impact. In so far as this is true for people my age it may explain some of the enduring appeal of the movie. Put simply, in rewatching Hook as adults, people of my generation are doing exactly what adult Peter does in the film—revisiting the magic of our lost youth. When watching Hook we don’t just remember our youth, we feel it and experience it again, just like Peter does.

Or maybe I’m just being sentimental. If so, it is a widespread sentimentality. For when my friends and I get together we don’t watch The Land Before Time or other movies we loved as little kids in the 90s. We specifically and frequently gravitate towards a movie that is about an adult returning to youth. This probably explains some of the potency of Hook and the general staying power of the Peter Pan story.

Just a couple reflections to conclude: The scene where Peter first returns to Neverland and tries to save his kids is quite moving. He climbs the mast on Captain Hook’s ship and vainly reaches out to his children who are hanging in a net, unable to rescue them. Peter has genuinely forgotten everything—his past, his identity as Peter Pan, his ability to fly, the magic of Neverland. In other words, he has forgotten, and thus lost, his childhood. This of course is reflected in how he lives his life in the regular world, obsessed with work to the detriment of his family, especially the fleeting childhood of his children. As Wendy memorably says when Peter’s son Jack describes the nature of his work, “Peter, you’ve become a pirate.”  (Just one of many great lines).

Similarly, when Peter has his first meal with the lost boys after a grueling day of training, he can’t remember how to play. Enjoying the lost boys’ meal requires one to imagine the feast. Peter is reminded once again, in stark terms as he sits there hungry, that he has forgotten how to be a child. It is only through truly and unselfconsciously embracing his youth, by trading insults with Rufio and then initiating a food fight, that he is able to recapture that magic. By acting like a child he effectively becomes one again, rediscovering the lost, forever young Peter Pan within him, and thus the amazing but invisible food before him.

Watching the film, for us, is a lower stakes version of Peter’s journey. Neverland is a stand-in for the place or way of being that is childhood. While we can’t go there, for those of us lucky enough to grow up with Hook we can return to childhood in other ways, such as watching this delightful film.

Pluralism and Protests

Politics is not a philosophy seminar. My recent discussion of respectful pluralist engagement with disagreement can make it seem as if all politics takes place between a few relatively equal, well-off people sitting in a room and chatting about an issue before coming to an agreement or at least respectfully agreeing to disagree.

In many ways this is the ideal of political dialogue sketched by proponents of deliberative democracy. It is a powerful ideal and there are many, many settings when we should strive for this. In addition, respect for fellow humans is always important. But politics will not always resemble a calm discussion between equals. And sometimes disagreements are irresolvable. As Madison recognized in the Federalist Papers, disagreement and freedom of speech go together. Furthermore, the desire for total agreement and the elimination of dissent is a totalitarian drive that has no place in a democratic polity. This is why it is necessary to briefly consider the power and value of protest.

In the face of persistent injustice protest is justified, even necessary. Peaceful protests serve many different purposes and accomplish a diverse range of goals. Protests can motivate citizens to get involved and stay involved in politics. They can put pressure on elected officials and on those considering a run in the future, as well as targeting the behavior of corporations and other powerful private actors. They are a demonstration of popular strength and power. They can also change the discourse surrounding an issue—see the potential impacts the Tea Party movement (in 2010-2011) and then the Occupy Wall Street Movement (in 2011-2012) had on the discourse surrounding jobs, debt, and inequality. We have seen similar impacts with the more recent movement against police brutality.

Peaceful, democratic protests also have an intrinsic value. Protests empower the citizens who participate, increasing their sense of efficacy, as social scientists say. At their best they are an act of direct democracy that is deeply rewarding in its own right—ordinary citizens coming together collectively with one another to state their positions and make demands. Anyone who has been at a protest feels the collective democratic power of the people. Protesters are also frequently innovative, often engaging in symbolic forms of protest (like die-ins to protest a war). Protests at their most powerful, such as during the civil rights movement, dramatize an issue, making it more poignant and salient, which gets back to the first part, protests at their best help to mobilize and persuade people to think and act differently. 

Of course there are questions of both principle and strategy to consider when protesting. At their worst protests could make a cause less popular. And however intrinsically fulfilling they may be, we generally don’t protest with the goal of making our cause less likely to win. So protesters, particularly those organizing and leading them, must take these considerations into account. There are many different goals to balance when organizing.

But, as the Berrigan brothers discussed in the context of Vietnam War protests, we can neither fully predict nor control the future. So there is a case to be made that in the face of an unjust cause (say, the invasion of Iraq) citizens have an obligation to protest without any certainty that their protest will make a difference. 

Protests and other forms of direct action are also necessary because much of the world is defined by closed doors and unequal power relations. Many economic and political institutions don’t provide citizens with direct access to decision-making procedures. When decision-making is not democratic, like at a corporate board meeting, the only options we have are various outsider actions. When we don’t have a seat at the deliberative table, so to speak, we can turn to protests to draw attention to an issue and pressure decision-makers from the outside. As I discuss in Democratic Knowledge: Why There Are No Political Experts, protests have a legitimate and significant role to play in all polities, including deeply democratic ones.