New Models

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I have no doubt that as we go forward trying to understand our country and make it better we are going to have to find new language, new maps, new models to understand. I have come across one that isn't perfect, but worth considering. 

First, why do we need new models? No model explains everything, they are shorthand to allow collaboration and passing torches for giant projects like cultures and nations. The reason to change out your model is if another one comes along that explains more of the problems with the model ... the ways in which the model doesn't apply or work. 

Ok, so our current model/large-scale narrative is that our society is not perfect, but it is built on equality and freedom. People come to America for this opportunity. Immanuel Wallerstein calls this universalism:
  • jobs assigned/granted by merit
  • school acceptance by merit
  • marriage for love (not wealth or ethic group)
  • equal vote
  • equal before the law
This is the "official gospel of modernity." 

The opposite of that is anti-universalism and includes racism, sexism, bigotry, its-who-you-know, police harassment and brutality, unequal before the law based on wealth/status, etc. 
So Wallerstein says both universalism and anti-universalism are "operative day to day, but they operate in different arenas." He uses a term - cadres. Cadres for him represents the manager class that is "neither in the top command positions of the social system nor among the vast majority who fulfill the bottom tasks." He argues that universalism happens primarily among the cadres group, but that anti-universalism happens everywhere else. 

I am not sure know enough to decide whether his model works and it is set inside a much larger model called World-Systems Analysis Theory. 

Here is why I share it and what does seem useful. We have to find some way to talk about the US ideals/hopes/goals and how those are offered very unevenly to society. I think conservatives always argue that while this is true, it is only a small portion of society being harmed and all other systems will create larger harms or larger groups being harmed. We need to find a way to examine this claim. 

*World-Systems Analysis: And Introduction. Immanuel Wallerstein. 2007.
**Drawing pictured above from The New Way Things Work. David Macaulay. 1998.

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