Southwest Philosophy Review 31, Issue 1, January 2016, 19-24. The Unavoidable, the Avoidable, and the Viciously Intentional Costs of Comfort: A Reply to Lachs Eric Thomas Weber The University of Mississippi It is an honor and a pleasure to comment on John Lachs’s (2016) article, on “The Cost of Comfort.” My reply to Lachs can be summarized with three key questions, each of which I will clarify in my remarks. They are: (1) Are we really so unhappy? (2) Why should we not call the avoidable costs of comfort unjust? (3) If there are avoidable or diminishable costs of comfort, don’t we need better leadership – reformers? In “The Cost of Comfort,” John Lachs returns to an important theme from his early work – mediation. His family moved to Canada when he was young, in part to pursue liberty in a period when Eastern Europe was limiting it more and more. Despite having cause for criticizing Marxism, Lachs studied the subject extensively. By some odd chance, the first of Lachs’s books that I came across as an undergraduate student was his work, Marxist Philosophy: A Bibliographic Guide. Anyone who knows Lachs’s work recognizes his spirited defense of liberty throughout his writings. At the same time, there is no doubt that Marx had a profound influence upon the world. Unlike ideologues who say they love liberty and dismiss anything Marx had to say, Lachs recognized some deeply important insights that Marx pointed out. In Intermediate Man, Lachs calls our attention to the fact that today human beings are alienated so often and to an incredible degree from the products of our efforts. All around us we have manufactured items that were created by people whom we can scarcely imagine. For the few of us in the academy who have been blessed with rewarding and comfortable careers in which we get to pursue our own inquiries and aims driven by passion, it is easy to forget how many countless people in the masses of human beings in the world have had little choice about how they spend their days. They take occupations that they can find, completing tasks for others without receiv- 19 Eric Thomas Weber ing even a modest show of respect for their efforts from employers beyond the market wage that they are paid. While so many people toil in work that is difficult to find meaningful, Lachs points out reasons why we could nevertheless count ourselves, the masses included, profoundly lucky today. As a citizen of the state of Mississippi, I cannot agree more with Lachs that air conditioning, that simple, everyday expectation and tool we now have, has made my life so much more tolerable than it would be without that advantage. Without the developments of modern medicine, furthermore, I would have one child today, rather than two. We live in an incredible age, as Lachs points out, yet, he says, “people in the modern world appear not to be happy” (2016, p. 2). This moment in Lachs’s project is pivotal. It is critical to what he tells us that people today are largely unhappy. Is this true? Authors of a 2010 Princeton study found that most Americans, 85%, regardless of annual income “felt happy each day” (Kahneman and Deaton, 2010). In 2011, Gallup explained that “Happiness is love – and $75,000” (Robinson, 2011). These findings suggest that, for the most part, Americans are happy. They also show that economic hardships are among the great threats to happiness, and at the same time, income beyond $75,000 per year does not substantially increase happiness, as far as day-to-day emotional well-being. Unhappiness comes from economic disadvantage, then, and from the mistake in thinking that happiness is to be found in the acquisition of more and more wealth. Given the Princeton study’s findings, that most people in the United States appear in fact feel largely happy about life, then it is vital for Lachs to tell us why we should think that people are unhappy. Of course people feel frustrated sometimes, but they may simply accept alienation that is out of their control, a proper stoic outlook. There surely are unhappy people, but the “us” and the “we” that Lachs refers to appears sometimes to involve people who are in a minority, if they are in fact largely unhappy much of the time. At other points, Lachs’s references appear to focus on the lucky many of us who are not affected by generations of white supremacy or other injustices. In other words, when answering the question of whether “we” are really unhappy, it is important to determine who the “we” is. The thing that rankles many people today or at any time is unnecessary suffering – particularly injustice. Lachs recognizes that “Arbitrary injustice has not been eliminated and lamentable inequities remain between the sexes, between races, between the rich and the poor and the young and the old” (2016, pp. 2-3). There certainly is cause for unhappiness in such problems, especially insofar as they are often wholly unnecessary. 20 The Unavoidable, the Avoidable, and the Viciously Intentional Costs of Comfort In Mississippi today, people in power are clinging to a symbol of white supremacy stitched into the state flag (Sanburn, 2015). It would cost Mississippians nothing to let go of such hate and to embrace the future and progress. What we need are reformers, a group whom Lachs appears at times to dismiss, people with the courage and leadership to let go of those things which harm us without compensating benefit. Holding on to such symbols yields incredible costs both in injustice and in loss of potential industry. Alabama announced the same day that it was removing its Confederate Battle Flags, saying that they were not stuck in 1963, then announced plans for a $600 million Google facility (Associated Press, 2015). Terrible, willfully ignorant leaders keep themselves intentionally mediated through their self-segregation, their kids in private white academies (Carr, 2012), and even their families on Sunday morning, still the most segregated hour in America (Blake, 2010). The missing piece I see in Lachs’s analysis has to do with terrible leadership among the advantaged classes. Economically advantaged Americans choose to allow continued failure in education for the less advantaged, such as by significant underfunding, a decision reaffirmed in Mississippi this November (Royals, 2015). Those disadvantaged groups who are in terrible schools have almost no prospects for earning $75,000 and its consequent potential for happiness. They more often end up in prison, where our leaders are perfectly comfortable to pay $40,000 per year or more to house them, yet spending as little as $9,000 per pupil per year to educate impoverished youths. The imbalance would be unbelievable were it not so pervasive. The separation and ignorance that come from mediation are barriers that some people preserve or even erect in order to maintain economic advantage. It is the powerful among us who tolerate such injustice, furthermore, and who perpetuate so much unhappiness. In short, mediation and its costs are sometimes intentional. Lachs is right that powerlessness is a problem. There are those who feel powerless and therefore give up on bringing about change. But, the fact of passivity among nonvoters, for example, might also sometimes be due to Americans’ overall happiness. In the time of Vietnam, American citizens were highly involved politically. The problems of the world were at their doorsteps. Their kids were being shipped overseas. Today, in our volunteer army, it is those who choose to go or those too poor to do anything else who are shipped overseas. Thus, the majority-“we” no longer experience the widespread political involvement that we once did. Another problem arises for Lachs’s analysis with respect to mediation. The feeling of powerlessness that so many experience may not be inevitable. The problem for many is that an individual may not in fact be 21 Eric Thomas Weber able to make much of a difference. When many individuals get together with solidarity, however, they can make a difference. This is why unions have been so important, such as the American Association of University Professors, of which John Dewey was a founding member (see American Association of University Professors, no date). But, the powerful in many places bust unions or make them illegal. Our economically advantaged citizens often undermine the potential for less powerful individuals who seek influence together. To be sure, unions can force individuals into certain options in life also, another cost of comfort. But, if those in power were to feel unity with those who are less empowered, we could diminish the feeling of powerlessness that arises in so many contexts. Consider an example. Mr. Papa John’s, John Schnatter, explained his opposition to the Affordable Care Act with reference to the increased costs it would cause for his pizzas. He deemed the law unacceptable, despite the large increase in the number of medically insured Americans that it would yield, because it would lead to an increase of 10-14 cents per pizza (Melby, 2012). In contrast, I have witnessed a corporation that fights alienation. I worked at Publix Grocery Stores, which are employee owned. When I stopped working there, I got a check for my (small) partial ownership of the company from working there. While I was there, people had me work in different parts of the store often, so that I would see the greater whole of where I was working, of how the organization operates. The experience taught me that employers who want to diminish alienation, to make employees feel more empowered and involved in the processes of leadership, can do it. In that sense, I believe that the key costs of comfort are especially due to poor leadership from the advantaged classes. There can be occasions to blame some disadvantaged people for inactivity, for failing to take some responsibilities, such as in voting, yet the powerlessness in politics that can arise from failure to act hardly registers in comparison with the Koch Brothers’ ability to contribute $889 million to the 2016 elections (Confessore, 2015). What I have said brings me to some final points that I raise for Lachs’s project. I have been highlighting the profound need for reformers, especially for educators and enablers of solidarity and better, democratic governance both in the public and the private sectors. Lachs recognizes the role of reformers, but he commits a straw man fallacy in criticizing them. There may be those who think that only one issue out there is all that matters, as Lachs suggests, but they are not the great advocates of reform. Anyone wise as a reformer recognizes that fixing one problem won’t solve 22 The Unavoidable, the Avoidable, and the Viciously Intentional Costs of Comfort them all. But, we can only make progress with some focus. Therefore, a wise reformer is one who focuses efforts to ameliorate what he or she can. In fact, even if Lachs does not identify as one, I believe that he is a reformer. Philosophers, especially empowering teachers, are precisely what we need more of to combat the worst problem of alienation, which is ignorance. That is why some of us focus as intently as we do on educational inequalities. At the same time, we call attention to injustices because they are so unnecessary. Those costs of comfort that are inevitable are ones which we must accept, to be sure, but so many are not. Thus, if we want our children and grandchildren to be even happier than we are, as we are so much happier than past generations, then we need reformers to continue to fight, to diminish those unnecessary costs that accompany our otherwise comfortable lives.1 Notes 1 I am grateful to Robyn Gaier of Viterbo University and to Sarah Woolwine of the University of Central Oklahoma for the encouragement to comment on John Lachs’s work in progress. I am also especially thankful to Lachs, whose research and teaching have been an inspiration for me since my first days studying philosophy. Finally, I appreciate Justin Bell of the University of Houston Victoria for his comments on Lachs’s work and Todd Stewart of Illinois State University for his leadership of the journal. Works Cited American Association of University Professors. (no date) History of the AAUP. Retrieved from http://www.aaup.org/about/history-aaup. Associated Press. (2015, July 4) Removing Confederate Flags Shows World Alabama Isn’t Stuck in 1963, Governor Says. AL.com, retrieved from http:// www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/07/removing_confederate_flags_sho. html. Blake, John. (2010, October 6) Why Sunday Morning Remains America’s Most Segregated Hour. CNN Religion Blog, retrieved from http://religion.blogs. cnn.com/2010/10/06/why-sunday-morningremains-americas-most-segregated-hour/. Carr, Sarah. (2012, December 13) In Southern Towns, ‘Segregation Academies’ Are Still Going Strong. The Atlantic, retrieved from http://www.theatlantic. com/national/archive/2012/12/in-southern-towns-segregation-academiesare-still-going-strong/266207/. Confessore, Nicholas. (2015, January 26) Koch Brothers’ Budget of $889 Million for 2016 Is on Par with Both Parties’ Spending. The New York Times, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-planto-spend-900-million-on-2016-campaign.html. 23 Eric Thomas Weber Kahneman, Daniel and Angus Deaton. (2010) High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-Being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(38): 16489-16493. Lachs, John. (2016) The Cost of Comfort. Southwest Philosophy Review 32(1): 1-12. Melby, Caleb. (2012, November 12) Breaking Down Centi-Millionaire ‘Papa’ John Schnatter’s Obamacare Math. Forbes, retrieved from http://www. forbes.com/sites/calebmelby/2012/11/12/breaking-down-centi-millionairepapa-john-schnatters-obamacare-math/. Robinson, Jennifer. (2011, November 17) Happiness is Love – and $75,000. Gallup Business Journal, retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/150671/happiness-is-love-and-75k.aspx. Royals, Kate. (2015, November 4) School Funding Ballot Issue Initiative 42 Fails. The Clarion Ledger, retrieved from http://www.clarionledger.com/ story/news/2015/11/03/initiative-42-election-results/75036674/. Sanburn, Josh. (2015, June 23) Why Mississippi Is Unlikely to Redesign Its State Flag. Time, retrieved from http://time.com/3932807/mississippi-state-flag/. 24