Right now, Im finishing up a course on Inner City Economic Development. As the quarter winds down, the assignments are becoming less intense as well. Last week, we only read a couple of newspaper articles from the The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The pieces address the problem of cash lending services. These are the kind of places that pop up in mostly poor neighborhoods (including mine), offering to cash checks for ridiculous fees and advance small payday loads at ridiculous interest rates.
However, these kind of venues do not just pop up in the inner city. The newest area they are targeting are military bases. In fact, there is a growing problem of military families getting sucked into spiraling debts because of these kinds of enterprises. Now, first, this obviously indicates some kind of problem with the wages that military men and women are being paid. They should definitely be paid more. I have no issue with that. But the bigger question that was gnawing at me as I read about this was the question of choice. To put it bluntly: do men and women who have trouble making financial decisions have the capacity to make the decision to join the military and put their life on the line?
Before someone reams me a new one, I am NOT trying to argue that people who join the military have some kind of innate diminished intellectual capacity. However, I would ask: can the average 18 year old really consent? I think the answer to this question obviously has bigger problems than just military issues (voting comes immediately to mind).
College students, who are presumably of the same cohort as most members of the military, seem to be an apt comparison. In a lot of ways, college life is just prolonged adolescence. Yeah, yeah sure: youre on your own. So long as by on your own you mean: living in a room paid for by your parents, being fed food prepared by the university and paid for by your parents, and living a life structured by university events and classes. (Note: Yes, many college students pay for their own school. No, not all of them are spoiled. But, I think it is fair to assume that parental assistance is the lynchpin of the lifestyle of most college students.) In terms of credit: college students are limited in terms of how much trouble they can get in. MBNA is not going to give your average 19 year old with no discernable income a $25,000 credit limit. (At least, I dont think so. I think my college age credit limit was like $3,000).) While there can be some financial growing pains associated with the BA phase of life they tend to be limited.
So, how does this all tie together? Well, we generally see undergraduates as not quite adults yet a bit nave, a bit idealistic, a bit lazy, and not really responsible to anyone or anything. Undergraduates do not seem quite capable of fully taking care of themselves. In that sense, college is a good experience one more social good, of many, that it provides is helping bridge that gap between childhood and adulthood. It aids in the life transition.
But, the military doesnt work in this same way. It puts people of comparable life experience and education in charge of their own destiny. (Note: In fact, people in the military may be LESS prepared for this. Military recruits tend to be from lower income families; structurally we might anticipate their education and experience with things like banks, credit, and so on are similarly reduced.) What we have is two groups of people that are ostensibly demographically quite similar (excepting the very important, looming income issue): college students and the military recruits. The former we dismiss as being near-children. The latter? We send them out to kill and die for us.
I do not want to suggest that the young men and women who sign up for the military are not noble, or driven by a genuine love of their country. Not at all. What I do want to ask is: is the trouble that some young military families have handling their finances a mark of something? Is it a mark of more than just not getting paid enough? Does an inability to manage your money (so important in capitalist, liberal society!) mean that maybe youre not quite ready to make life and death choices yet? It is somehow ironic that we lament when people in their late teens have children (babies having babies!), yet we applaud them when they sign up for military duty. (The feminist reading of this boggles the mind the notion of controlling womens bodies and the preference propagating a masculine, violent military-industrial complex over creating life just seem to scrap the tip of iceberg on that note.) Are the cognitive skills of military inclined members of this cohort really that much greater than those of similarly aged women who become pregnant?
In a lot of ways, this is an empirical question. We could measure this somehow. But, lets assume that it IS the case: lets assume that college kids, pregnant teens, and the new recruits are all generally the same in terms of intellectual capability (I would assume there are some differences but probably not that great. The differences would probably be statistically significant, but not crushingly substantive, due primarily to structural opportunity and nothing innate). And lets assume that this level of development is fairly low low enough that we rightfully question the ability to decide (after all, all those college kids change their majors and we certainly dont always like the idea of our kids running off and getting married at the impetuous age of 18 do we?). What does this mean about the military? Is the military exploiting the inexperience of youth? And for what end the good of the republic or for more insidious reasons? There is a serious ethical question about the ability to choose and how the government uses the lives of those who have given themselves over to it, placing their trust in our democratic institutions.
I dont know where this leaves me. The problem is determining when we have the power to choose. In many ways, this might be different for everyone. But taking individualized tests to pinpoint when you have reached cognitive maturity hardly seems like a tenable political solution. Further, at some point there even those who have limited capacity should not be denied voice. The danger is arguing for some type of philosopher-king; but a liberal belief in the inherent value and rationality of each individual makes this position untenable. The fear would be older, wise people controlling younger people who might have their own valuable contributions to make to the body politic (the 60s and the student movement come immediately to mind where college students probably rightly felt they had a unique perspective that needed to be introduced into the discourse). Consent and who has a legitimate say in government continues to plague democratic theory (the problem of borders, for instance, looms larger than ever). I dont really have an answer here. But I do think it is important to remember how much like children our soldiers are.
However, these kind of venues do not just pop up in the inner city. The newest area they are targeting are military bases. In fact, there is a growing problem of military families getting sucked into spiraling debts because of these kinds of enterprises. Now, first, this obviously indicates some kind of problem with the wages that military men and women are being paid. They should definitely be paid more. I have no issue with that. But the bigger question that was gnawing at me as I read about this was the question of choice. To put it bluntly: do men and women who have trouble making financial decisions have the capacity to make the decision to join the military and put their life on the line?
Before someone reams me a new one, I am NOT trying to argue that people who join the military have some kind of innate diminished intellectual capacity. However, I would ask: can the average 18 year old really consent? I think the answer to this question obviously has bigger problems than just military issues (voting comes immediately to mind).
College students, who are presumably of the same cohort as most members of the military, seem to be an apt comparison. In a lot of ways, college life is just prolonged adolescence. Yeah, yeah sure: youre on your own. So long as by on your own you mean: living in a room paid for by your parents, being fed food prepared by the university and paid for by your parents, and living a life structured by university events and classes. (Note: Yes, many college students pay for their own school. No, not all of them are spoiled. But, I think it is fair to assume that parental assistance is the lynchpin of the lifestyle of most college students.) In terms of credit: college students are limited in terms of how much trouble they can get in. MBNA is not going to give your average 19 year old with no discernable income a $25,000 credit limit. (At least, I dont think so. I think my college age credit limit was like $3,000).) While there can be some financial growing pains associated with the BA phase of life they tend to be limited.
So, how does this all tie together? Well, we generally see undergraduates as not quite adults yet a bit nave, a bit idealistic, a bit lazy, and not really responsible to anyone or anything. Undergraduates do not seem quite capable of fully taking care of themselves. In that sense, college is a good experience one more social good, of many, that it provides is helping bridge that gap between childhood and adulthood. It aids in the life transition.
But, the military doesnt work in this same way. It puts people of comparable life experience and education in charge of their own destiny. (Note: In fact, people in the military may be LESS prepared for this. Military recruits tend to be from lower income families; structurally we might anticipate their education and experience with things like banks, credit, and so on are similarly reduced.) What we have is two groups of people that are ostensibly demographically quite similar (excepting the very important, looming income issue): college students and the military recruits. The former we dismiss as being near-children. The latter? We send them out to kill and die for us.
I do not want to suggest that the young men and women who sign up for the military are not noble, or driven by a genuine love of their country. Not at all. What I do want to ask is: is the trouble that some young military families have handling their finances a mark of something? Is it a mark of more than just not getting paid enough? Does an inability to manage your money (so important in capitalist, liberal society!) mean that maybe youre not quite ready to make life and death choices yet? It is somehow ironic that we lament when people in their late teens have children (babies having babies!), yet we applaud them when they sign up for military duty. (The feminist reading of this boggles the mind the notion of controlling womens bodies and the preference propagating a masculine, violent military-industrial complex over creating life just seem to scrap the tip of iceberg on that note.) Are the cognitive skills of military inclined members of this cohort really that much greater than those of similarly aged women who become pregnant?
In a lot of ways, this is an empirical question. We could measure this somehow. But, lets assume that it IS the case: lets assume that college kids, pregnant teens, and the new recruits are all generally the same in terms of intellectual capability (I would assume there are some differences but probably not that great. The differences would probably be statistically significant, but not crushingly substantive, due primarily to structural opportunity and nothing innate). And lets assume that this level of development is fairly low low enough that we rightfully question the ability to decide (after all, all those college kids change their majors and we certainly dont always like the idea of our kids running off and getting married at the impetuous age of 18 do we?). What does this mean about the military? Is the military exploiting the inexperience of youth? And for what end the good of the republic or for more insidious reasons? There is a serious ethical question about the ability to choose and how the government uses the lives of those who have given themselves over to it, placing their trust in our democratic institutions.
I dont know where this leaves me. The problem is determining when we have the power to choose. In many ways, this might be different for everyone. But taking individualized tests to pinpoint when you have reached cognitive maturity hardly seems like a tenable political solution. Further, at some point there even those who have limited capacity should not be denied voice. The danger is arguing for some type of philosopher-king; but a liberal belief in the inherent value and rationality of each individual makes this position untenable. The fear would be older, wise people controlling younger people who might have their own valuable contributions to make to the body politic (the 60s and the student movement come immediately to mind where college students probably rightly felt they had a unique perspective that needed to be introduced into the discourse). Consent and who has a legitimate say in government continues to plague democratic theory (the problem of borders, for instance, looms larger than ever). I dont really have an answer here. But I do think it is important to remember how much like children our soldiers are.
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I'm not familiar with Friere at all (gosh, I haven't even heard of him), but that language--being more than "in the world"-- sounds distinctly Heideggerian--though he rejected existentialism la Sartre, i.e., in terms of subjectivity, freedom, the for-itself.
I think I tend to more or less toss out agency (I'm highly influenced by Foucault). I guess I've just never understood why a choice is assumed to be free. Do you know what I mean? So I chose X and not Y: where does freedom come in? So I had a desire and I didn't act: why is that necessarily free?