one of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same
people lined up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may
have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military
spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar
faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political
fence again and again. That's how Thomas Sowell's book a Conflict of Visions starts. Sowell argues
the reason for this curious phenomenon is because both groups of people have
fundamentally different assumptions about human nature and human abilities.
These set of assumptions are rarely acknowledged or even recognized as
influencing people's opinions on such a wide variety of issues. But once you
understand the Conflict of Visions you'll understand this ideological battle
that's been raging for centuries.
So in order to understand this Conflict of Visions, we first need to understand
what a vision is. A vision is a pre-analytic cognitive act. Ummm, well no. Scratch that. A vision
is like, your gut feeling about the world works. Essentially it's a set of
assumptions about human nature and our capabilities. These set of assumptions give
simple formulas so that we can understand, or at least believe we understand, how the world
works and why people do what they do. For example let's say we have two people
arguing about why we go to war with each other.
You could get two completely different answers that stem from different visions.
For example, person A might say, "Well wars occur because people are people were
greedy lustful and generally a pretty terrible punch and that's not going to
change. Frankly it's amazing we never made it out of Savannah without
murdering each other trying to get to the other side of the continent first."
Person B might respond with, "No you're wrong people are inherently good
rational war only occurs because we have these large institutions like organized
religion and corporations and governments that end up creating
paranoia fear or misunderstandings that override a reason and lead us to go to
war. Both people are ideally trying to figure out how to prevent war, but you
can see how they're completely different visions or underlying assumptions of
"people are people" versus "people are good and rational" would cause them to reach
completely different conclusions about how to go about preventing war.
This is the Conflict of Visions, it's a set of assumptions you have often never
thought about that influence your thinking on how the world works and how
to fix it. Since visions are so rarely examined but have such a profound impact
Sowell states that the purpose of his book is to think about them. Sowell describes what
could be thought of as a spectrum for visions. On the one side of this vision
spectrum is constrained in on the other side is I'm unconstrained. I personally think
it's easier that look at the two sides as a limited and unlimited, but he
wouldn't call them that. In reality visions can be anywhere on this spectrum
for example Marxism is actually a hybrid of both versions. Whereas Fascism is in
multiple places at once it would seems. But for ease of understanding the spectrum of all
possible visions is split up into two distinct groups to illustrate the
differences.
The goal for Public Policy people of either vision is usually to create the
best outcome for society.
The problem is a core assumptions are so different from each other that they
never end up agreeing on the same way to get to the same destination.
At the core of each vision is some belief about human nature.
Essentially what are people's ultimate potential. Both versions see the base or
starting point of human nature as flawed and imperfect. That people are selfish
and just barely smart enough to get by. The constrained vision doesn't see
these factors is changing. It says are base nature will always be that of a
self-centered just smart enough person. The unconstrained vision sees the exact
opposite. Yes it says people start off by being just smart enough and self
centered, but we can change our human nature to be closer and closer to
perfection. This is a critical difference in assumptions between the two visions
everything else flows out like a logical report from here. Again both versions
believe human nature is flawed. The
constrained vision sees human nature as unchanging. That we can try all we want
to make people inherently unselfish or inherently smarter but thats doomed for
failure.
This is in stark contrast to the unconstrained vision that sees human
nature as capable of continuous improvement.
Yes we start out as being selfish and just smart enough but we can learn to
shed or selfishness and improve our intelligence.
All right let's let this intellectual rubber meets the road of reality. In
reality we all want stuff. Stuff is an actual stuff like food, clothes, cars, etc
But also stuff that's harder to define. Things like justice, security, love.
Furthermore these wants, Sowell calls them desires, are unlimited. Once we get some
shelter we want more and better shelters perhaps even a home. Maybe our own
private island one day. Once we get rid of the big injustices we get angry at the
smaller ones. We're selfish after. The constrained vision recognizes that we
have these unlimited desires but we run into a problem because our human nature
is so limited intellectually and morally that we can't get everything we want.
Crucially it also says that we won't tolerate these limitations on our
desires except when there are other powers that force us to. These other
powers are called social processes. Social processes serve two primary roles.
Firstly, they help to limit the amount of pain that we caused each other. For
example social processes are things like religion that say we shouldn't steal
things from each other or else. Or government that punishes us if we do
steal. But social processes not only serve this restricting role, limiting the
amount of pain that we caused each other, but also helped elevate us above our
base nature and help to advance the human race. For example prices in a free
market economy are a social process that helps coordinate what people want or
desire with what entrepreneurs will end up creating.
Common languages give us the means to communicate to find solutions to complex
problems. The cultural tradition of simple politeness helps everyday
interactions be just more pleasant and enjoyable. Even things like moral
traditions, cultural habits, aversions, attractions can all be social processes
that help elevate us above our base nature.
These social processes weren't designed by some philosopher king 2000
years ago. Rather they grew out of the experiences, wisdom, and hard lessons
learned of people over time. Each generation in a sense adds to this body
of knowledge by their experiences and ends up discarding subconsciously or
consciously what becomes outdated overtime. Sometimes knowledge is passed
down explicitly, like in the 10 Commandments. But even when this does
happens, says the constrained vision, it's usually just someone writing down what
everybody kind of already knows. They're in a sense just codifying what people already
practice. So the sum up the constrained vision has a pretty poor view human's
ability to change our base nature, essentially we can't really. And since we
have these unlimited desires social processes, in a sense, make up the
difference helping to advance society and keep us from hurting each other more.
Alright enough that, lets see what the unconstrained vision has to say. The
unconstrained vision sees things quite simply. Yes it says we have unlimited
desires, but our human potential is limitless. By shedding are selfish nature
and improving ourselves morally we can freely accept any suffering we ourselves
might feel if the outcome means a better society. And by increasing our
intellectual power we can figure out many solutions to our desires. All we
need to do is compile all the relevant knowledge together and user brainpower
figure it out.
Critically to the unconstrained vision knowledge is facts, figures, logical
arguments and anything that can be articulated rationally. Social processes,
or the wisdom of the ages, or whatever the constrained vision wants to call it
is not knowledge. The goal is to get everyone to this intellectual and
unselfish plane of existence eventually. But it's inevitable that some people are
going to arrive here first. And when they do they view as their responsibility to
use their intellectual abilities and unselfish moral nature to make the best
decisions for these other people the unwashed masses since they don't
understand what is best for them. And until such a time when they also can
make the best decisions for themselves they all use their morally superior and
intellectual superhuman ability to make decisions for them.
You can see about one difference earlier about the potential of man is already
causing a major split between the two visions. The constrained vision believes
it's human nature to have unlimited desires, but that our limited
intelligence and selfishness keep us from being able to satisfy them. So in
order to cope with this limited based nature, humans have learned lessons over
time from hard-won experience about what to do to best contain are dangerous and
selfish impulses. But also constructively channel human energies towards creating
ever higher levels of prosperity. These experiences become integrated into
social processes like traditions and morals and prices etc. The constrained
vision views this experience as a form of knowledge. Even though it's not facts
figures or logical arguments that can be just as useful and even more so
sometimes. It shouldn't be surprising of course that the unconstrained vision
reaches the complete opposite conclusion. Of course our desires are unlimited it says,
but people can improve their intelligence and shed their unselfish
nature. So what we need to do is find the best solutions for society by (1)
improving ourselves and (2) compiling all the relevant facts figures and
rationally finding a solution. Of course it's inevitable that some people will reach
this higher level of understanding before others and until everyone is smart
enough and morally committed enough to make the right decisions; these
intellectual and morally superior pioneers will have to make the best
decisions for everybody else.
Critically the unconstrained vision doesn't need social processes or the
wisdom of the ages. If things cannot be justified rationally using specifically
articulated reasons then it shouldn't exist. Now it's easy to see how these
different visions about men's ability can virtually predicting answer to any
number of huge questions. Let's take the most basic of questions who should
choose (what is best)? Well the constrained vision with this view that no one is really any
smarter than anybody else or that much more moral says everybody should be
allowed to choose for themselves what is best. They could make their decision
based off of their morality or spirituality, or they could just follow
the money, or they can just follow tradition. It doesn't really matter how
they end up deciding what is important is that they're all contributing to
these social processes which help advance society towards ever higher
levels.
The unconstrained vision with his view that human intelligence and moral
potential is huge says that anyone who strengthened their mind to be an
intellectual power house and possesses the requisite moral commitment can
effectively an unbiasedly reason out what is best. In reality not everyone
will reach the superior level of human all at once. So the intellectual and
moral eliet should make the best decisions for everybody else who is
either too dumb to understand or not morally committed enough. Amusingly you
can also see all these different visions even affect their insults at different
sides throw at each other. People with the constrained vision will often see the
other side is truly being sincere about their desire to change the world, but
they don't realize that they're being naive. That they're simply too
inexperienced to understand that you're going against human nature and that your
plan is simply never going to work.
People with the unconstrained vision will often counter with accusations
that those with the constrained vision are corrupt, or dumb, or clinging to outmoded
ideas. Because the only logical reasons for someone to disagree with them are
(1) they're being paid off by somebody or simply haven't morally committed
themselves to finding the best solution. (2) Aren't smart enough to see the truth.
or (3) don't really realize that social processes aren't wisdom but
simply traditions that have been carried on that have no basis in reason and
if they can't be justified with reason then they shouldn't exist.
Hopefully this brief summary piqued your interest in the book because this is
really just the tip of the vision iceberg. I've only skimmed the surface of
what Thomas Sowell goes over and this book. In addition he goes into much greater
detail on both visions and even explains how words that we typically
think only mean one thing, like freedom or justice, mean completely different
things to both of the visions. So if you like this summary please go purchase the
book from Amazon to use my Amazon affiliate link below I get a little
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