Response from TheLiberalCollector and CarpeOmnia to Thought 2: On Community and Grinding
Great response from Max and Graham to my previous post on Community and Grinding.
To summarize what I take from Max’ points:
- Regulating dancing because some are unhappy with its results veres towards a “depressing utilitarianism.” Total happiness is important, but other things are important, too (for example: free expression, justice, etc.)
- If its bad that dancing “illuminates difference,” what’s the alternative? Suppressing difference? We can’t suppress our differences. Even if most of our differences are uncontrollable, the truth of the matter is: we’re all different, and that’s what makes our world exciting.
- The answer is not suppressing an illuminated difference (through regulating grinding and the such). Rather, we should offer a variety of community events to illuminate a variety of skills. Grinding skills should be embraced, but so should math skills and baseball skills. And none of those skills should overly dominate society or spill over into other spheres. i.e. Grinding skills shouldn’t affect your status in math class and math skills shouldn’t affect your status on the dance floor. As Max points out, we face a problem with this in “the real world” because economic success injustly spills over into good health/education/democratic success. (See Michael Walzer and his Spheres of Justice for more).
- Citing this, maybe grinding is simply the sexual prowessed’s chance to illuminate their differences in an educational world that mostly illuminates the educationally and intellectually prowessed. However, perhaps the supremacy of dance in a high schooler’s social arc (i.e. Prom) should be supplemented with newfound social milestones that advantage those with a variety of other skills.
- I believe that the point still stands that dances with a sexual culture raise certain barriers and limit the amount of potential social connections. However, I agree wtih Max’ points that we shouldn’t suppress differences, disrespect grinding skills or allow utilitarian analysis to reign supreme. Thus, regulation might not be the appropriate avenue- just because something is not the perfect, universal, social bridger does not mean it should be suppressed. Perhaps, instead, our outlook should be to allow such community events to proceed while striving to offer additional—and more universal—opportunities for social bonding.
As Graham wrote:
- Limiting popular dance styles will reduce participation, turning inclusive (or social constructive) events into limited events.
- Limiting popular dance styles will not get rid of the problems of partner-choice or teenage sex.
- Our generation should freely choose to find more expressive, creative, and inclusive ways of dancing.
I really dig Graham’s point on the fact that community events that exclude at the event are better than exclusion outside of the event. I.e. People dancing only with their cliques at one party is better than everyone throwing private parties…for practical (safety) and community-building reasons. Any single event, no matter how exclusive the activity, at least has the potential for interaction across boundaries—if people are in different places, there’s no chance at interaction. This also speaks to the point that community events need to be popular— there’s a balance that needs to be struck between popularity and inclusion-based activity (though they are not mutually exclusive); i.e. people won’t connect if no one’s there and people won’t connect if the activity there is preventing people from connecting.
carpeomnia wrote:
As a student who was closely involved in setting some high school policy on dancing I might have some insight. In part I think that you have created a problem for yourself by turning two issues into one. The first being high-school students choosing how to dance and, the second: who they choose to dance with.
In dealing with HOW, one has to address the schools worries:
Teachers and administrators have made dancing a problem by lumping it in with teenage sex. The two are not necessarily related. Dancing is a great way to flirt and in some cases might lead to sex. Additionally dancers may inappropriately, depending on the setting, mix dancing and sex-acts. I think sex-acts during high school dances (even at prom) are not appropriate. I think schools are justified in preventing and punishing this. However, it seems more logical to allow students to dance as they please while targeting the real problem: teenage sex.
What are the real functions of dances?
- Create a supervised, alcohol & drug free environment for teenagers.
- Create an inclusive & social environment for the whole school. Or this could be phrased: build social capital between high school students.
Both are good reasons to maximize attendance. If teachers ban the type of dancing students want to engage in I think that significant numbers of students, led by the ‘trend setters’ (aka social leaders), will fall away from the school sponsored dance. They will continue to dance how they want where they can. This means that instead of a large and inclusive event some students will go to private parties and some (probably the already less popular) will still go to the dance. Students will only be interacting with pre-existing friends. This will build no new social capital and will actually move the school in a negative direction by reinforcing cliques.
The note asking if grinding actually building social capital is a central point. Should we, teenagers and 20-somethings, decide to dance differently independent of any parental or communal demands? I think so. Grinding is boring especially at high school dances. It really isn’t a very expressive or creative dance; repetitive back and forth or side to side hip-movements get old after about 2 songs. It also builds very little capital. Couples grinding tend to already be dates or friends; additionally, couples don’t talk or even make eye contact while grinding.
In dealing with the WHO:
It is almost impossible for high schools to regulate who dances with who. They might limit ticket sales to only approved students or enforce a strict guest policy but these don’t control what happens once students are in the door. Limiting the type of dancing students can engage in does not solve this problem. Yes, grinding absolutely highlights physical inequalities but so does any dance that involves physical contact. I personally don’t find dancing that much fun if there is no physical contact. However, those who do should be free to choose to dance in such a way. The issue here is really the issue of bullying. Dancing can be used by attractive or popular students to exclude the less extroverted and/or less attractive students. The question here is less if we want to allow sexual dancing, but rather if we want to have high school dances at all. I think that dances do have a social benefit but I would be open to less excluding alternatives.
I’ve tried to follow the framework of social capital but I do really think this is a rights issue. Do schools have a right to regulate student expression? Yes, but only when they can show a legitimate interest and that the regulation is closely related to furthering that interest. On the first point preventing public teenage sex and bullying is very clearly a legitimate interest. But, as I have attempted to argue above, the school has not shown that banning grinding is closely related to or at all effective in furthering that interest.
Summary/Concluding points:
- Limiting popular dance styles will reduce participation, turning inclusive (or social constructive) events into limited events.
- Limiting popular dance styles will not get rid of the problems of partner-choice or teenage sex.
- Our generation should freely choose to find more expressive, creative, and inclusive ways of dancing (possibly grinding near rather than on one another would allow for more expression and less explicit sexuality).
Also, I didn’t read the first response before posting this. It is safe to say that we took very unique approaches.
Good work, Pete. As you know, I’m a big fan of arguing for change within a community on behalf of that community, rather than on behalf of individual rights. MLK did it to mobilize the Civil Rights Movement. You, surely, should do it to overthrow the anti-grinding regime!
There are a couple thing, though. Your argument, in my opinion, veres way too close to a sort of depressing utilitarianism. Should we really be measuring whether a dance move is good based on the aggregate quantity of happiness it produces in a room?
Happiness is definitely something a community needs to consider. We should have a happy citizenry. But this isn’t really a community-based argument, because it is, after all, grounded in the pychology of individual exclusion. This brings up a good point: I don’t think you can call Putnam a communitarian, because he is, at the end of the day, attending to individual satisfaction.
A true communal argument would, unfortunately, need to make claims about the community’s sense of “good taste” and that begins to get sketchy very quickly.
My sense of this is that there is a communal argument here, but it’s not quite the one you made, and not nearly as complicated. I would just say that: dances are dances, and in America cerca 2009 they look a certain way. There’s nothing any more to stand athward yelling stop! at; the community has already spoken.
My second point is that I would be very careful arguing that sexualized dancing is bad because it “illuminates difference.” The alternative to “illuminating difference” is not to bring people up, but drag people down. Like the Harrison Bergeron of grinding, the foreign kid with the oily hair must make his hips less lucious so as to make everyone more equal.
I’m not a meritocrat - far from it. But everything, we should admit, in some ways illuminates difference. That’s because people are different. We engage in a host of differentiated activities every day - from putting on clothes (some are better at that) to driving, to making small talk, to going to school and so on and so forth. All of this illuminates difference.
The key, I think, is not to prevent that difference (not have sexualized dances) but to prevent it from dominating (also sponsor other communal events). Good grinding skills should be embraced. But so should good math skills. And good baseball skills.
This argument, obviously, is a broader one, one about the structure of a well-ordered society. We currently live in a society where dominance in the economic sphere translates into dominance of all other spheres.
And at least we can all agree - let’s thank God - that’s not the case with grinding!
