On Settling by Robert E. Goodin

On Settling by Robert E. Goodin (Princeton University Press, 2012)

The American Dream for most is achieved by working hard, persevering, overcoming obstacles: by striving.  You might expect that a book called "On Settling" would be down-right anti-American.  If striving isn't thought of precisely as a socialist trait, it's often thought of as a loser's trait, as "giving up."

Or is it?

Goodin argues in this book that "settling" is a necessary compliment to striving.  And is in itself good for such things as planning, creating trust, and strengthening the social fabric.

This book reminded me of "Staying Put," the great essay by Scott Russell Sanders on the importance of roots in our restless world.  And it reminded me of Wendell Berry's work.  But Goodin's work is more philosophical and more structured argument.  It's good fun to watch the argument take shape.  In one chapter he defines the term settling in how we commonly use it in positive senses, like "settling down," and "settling in," and "settling up."  Next he demonstrates why we value these settlings.  In another chapter he argues that settling is distinct from "compromising," "conservatism," and (most interestingly to me) "resignation."  In a short last chapter Goodin re-sees striving and settilng in a common context.  There he says, "We ought to settle some things, precisely in order better to strive for others."

Striving v. Settling

Beginning with Thomas Hobbes' famous line: "a general inclination of all mankind...., a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death," Goodin provides many examples of how humans have memorialized and celebrated "striving" in history, including French Revolutionary Danton's ralliyng crying "to dare, to dare again, ever to dare!" to Goethe to Tennyson (the last line of 'Ulysses' - "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'".  It's not hard to think of modern examples, from Nike's "Just Do It" to the Olympic's credo "Higher, Faster, Stronger."

To "rescue" the notion of "settling" in our current cultural context, Goodin examines a variety of modern usages of the word settling, including: Settling Down, Settling In, Settling Up, Settling For, Settling One's Affairs, Settling On.  None of these, he will argue later in the book, are like compromising or resigning.

What should we settle for?

People plan their lives on the assumption that the things they take to be settled in their own lives will remain fixed for some suitably protracted period.  In their dealings with others, they likewise plan on the assumption that crucial facts about those people, too, will remain fixed for some suitably protracted period.  In all of that, they furthermore plan on the assumption that crucial features of their larger social environment will remain fixed for some suitably protracted period.

That's the value underlying all settling -- it's an necessary aide to planning and agency, it's the settled trust we have in each other and in the law of the land.  And it's important in our own identities.  This is my favorite part of the book:

The point about commitment is just this.  People are not merely bundles of beliefs and desires.  They also have (and want to have, and are better off and better people for having) sympathies and commitments to people, principles, and projects.  Those commitments specify what a person cares about, and in so doing define who the person is.  Given who we see ourselves as being -- the desires with which we identify (as Harry Frankfurt would put it), the people, principles, and projects to which we are committed (as Bernard Williams would) -- there are some things that we just cannot do, or even seriously consider as live options.  They lie outside our "narrative identity" thus constructed. 

We need to settle to strive

Goodin claims in the last chapter that "If we do not settle on some things -- our goals -- then we will have nothing to strive for.  If we settle everything too firmly -- if we resign ourselves too completely to the world as we find it -- we have nothing to strive for, and nothing to live for.... We ought to settle some things, precisely in order better to strive for others."  We need to settle, he says, "to clear the decks and free up resources."  We need to settle on things we will not strive for.

You need to treat other things as given, fixed for a time; you need to put pursuit of those other things on hold; you need to treat those other things as true, for present purposes.  In that way, you free up time and attention and other resources with which you can pursue whatever it is you have settled on as the thing(s) that you next want to strive for.

This seems to me the philosophical explanation for Stephen Covey's work.  The mantra of "First things first" is another way of saying "imagine that everything but the first thing is settled for now."  It gives a philosophical weight to saying that you can't do x, y, or z, because your deck is full.  Otherwise, everything is "unsettled."

Also in the last chapter Goodin tries to address the questions of "when do you know to stop striving" and "when do you know when it's time to stop being settled."  Goodin's answers are weak and unsatisfactory: when something comes up, when reasons accumulate, when time runs out, when big events happen.  None of that seems to explain much.

So, it's OK to settle -- if you're settling down, up, on, or for.  Settling is a necessary precondition to most of life and our sense of self.  And settling even helps us become better in our strivings.