Theory in Action: Constructivism by Caleb Gallemore Lyrics
So in the Matrix, you know, what you’ve got is the whole world is a computer program, right. And what makes Neo special is that he can break the rules of the program. And so that’s what gives him his phenomenal, sort of cosmic powers in the digital realm that, this ended in a really, really bad film by the third installment.
What Neo can do is change the rules that the world is based on. And for a constructivist, that’s what people are doing all the time. Some people are in a better place to do it than others. So it’s much easier for Barack Obama to change some of the rules that the world is based on than for me or you just because people will listen. And, that itself is a product of some of the rules that the world is based on. So, there’s this sort of endless cycle where we’re constantly changing these rules, we’re constantly changing the way social life works in little bitty ways that are themselves framed by the way social life already works.
Well constructivists want to see the world as something that we build out of the way we relate to each other. So think about this: if everybody woke up tomorrow morning and we decided that the United States just doesn’t exist, well it really, it doesn’t exist anymore. Because what makes up the United States isn’t the buildings and the bombs and the votes, it’s everybody thinking that those things make up the United States. And we agree and we act and we treat each other as if the United States was there. And it’s all of that agreement and all of those beliefs and ideas that give us the United States.
And so for a constructivist, the same thing applies to the whole rest of social life, and that includes international relations. You just can’t have international politics unless you have a set of ideas. You know, you have to have a set of ideas about there are states, states have foreign policies, when I want to go talk to a state, I go talk to the head of state, you know, I don’t just talk to a random person from that state. You know, you have an idea that there are authority structures, there are legitimate governments, and that’s how you carry out international relations.
And the interesting part for a lot constructivists, is sort of the question that how much of the belief structure you have to share before you can even have international relations at all. So you can imagine, some alien comes down from mars and doesn’t share any of our belief structures, has no idea what states are. You couldn’t establish diplomatic relations with mars if the alien doesn’t even know what a state is.
So a lot of questions that constructivists ask take place in much longer time scales than questions realists or liberals might ask. So, whereas a realist might ask, “Okay. What would’ve been the best way for a state to maximize its security in the 1600s?” a constructivist would ask, “What made people think there were states in the 1600s?”
You know, I used the example that if everybody woke up tomorrow and decide the United States didn’t exists anymore, right. The end of the Cold War, that was kind of what happened to the U.S.S.R., is people got up one day and they started thinking that, “Maybe this shouldn’t exist anymore.” Actually, what happens, is people get up one morning, and they decide, “Maybe it’s not so important that that wall’s there anymore.” And they start going through the wall. And then, the soldiers that are guarding the wall, think, “Well maybe it’s not so important that I shoot these people that are going through the wall.” And then, it goes from there, and the government starts deciding, “Well, maybe it’s not so important that we keep these people out of the wall.” And then it continues and people start to say, “Well maybe it’s not important that we’re part of the U.S.S.R. anymore.”
And, very, very rapidly, this whole house of cards disintegrates. And there’s all sorts of reasons why. There were economic problems, there were political issues, and this should not at all be taken to think that there weren’t. But the end of the day, the U.S.S.R. would have kept going until everybody decided it was time to stop. And, 1989-1991, they decided it was time to stop. And it stopped.
All of these things that you take as being natural and given just because they’re habitual, you have to be able to realize, could be some other way and, at some level, the choice is arbitrary. At some level, what we do - that red means stop is a random choice. Could’ve been green, could’ve been yellow, could’ve been purple, and there’s so much of the way we live everyday life is like that. Because if we had to stop and think about those things all the time, our brains would explode. You know, you have to kind of make your brain explode a little bit.
What Neo can do is change the rules that the world is based on. And for a constructivist, that’s what people are doing all the time. Some people are in a better place to do it than others. So it’s much easier for Barack Obama to change some of the rules that the world is based on than for me or you just because people will listen. And, that itself is a product of some of the rules that the world is based on. So, there’s this sort of endless cycle where we’re constantly changing these rules, we’re constantly changing the way social life works in little bitty ways that are themselves framed by the way social life already works.
Well constructivists want to see the world as something that we build out of the way we relate to each other. So think about this: if everybody woke up tomorrow morning and we decided that the United States just doesn’t exist, well it really, it doesn’t exist anymore. Because what makes up the United States isn’t the buildings and the bombs and the votes, it’s everybody thinking that those things make up the United States. And we agree and we act and we treat each other as if the United States was there. And it’s all of that agreement and all of those beliefs and ideas that give us the United States.
And so for a constructivist, the same thing applies to the whole rest of social life, and that includes international relations. You just can’t have international politics unless you have a set of ideas. You know, you have to have a set of ideas about there are states, states have foreign policies, when I want to go talk to a state, I go talk to the head of state, you know, I don’t just talk to a random person from that state. You know, you have an idea that there are authority structures, there are legitimate governments, and that’s how you carry out international relations.
And the interesting part for a lot constructivists, is sort of the question that how much of the belief structure you have to share before you can even have international relations at all. So you can imagine, some alien comes down from mars and doesn’t share any of our belief structures, has no idea what states are. You couldn’t establish diplomatic relations with mars if the alien doesn’t even know what a state is.
So a lot of questions that constructivists ask take place in much longer time scales than questions realists or liberals might ask. So, whereas a realist might ask, “Okay. What would’ve been the best way for a state to maximize its security in the 1600s?” a constructivist would ask, “What made people think there were states in the 1600s?”
You know, I used the example that if everybody woke up tomorrow and decide the United States didn’t exists anymore, right. The end of the Cold War, that was kind of what happened to the U.S.S.R., is people got up one day and they started thinking that, “Maybe this shouldn’t exist anymore.” Actually, what happens, is people get up one morning, and they decide, “Maybe it’s not so important that that wall’s there anymore.” And they start going through the wall. And then, the soldiers that are guarding the wall, think, “Well maybe it’s not so important that I shoot these people that are going through the wall.” And then, it goes from there, and the government starts deciding, “Well, maybe it’s not so important that we keep these people out of the wall.” And then it continues and people start to say, “Well maybe it’s not important that we’re part of the U.S.S.R. anymore.”
And, very, very rapidly, this whole house of cards disintegrates. And there’s all sorts of reasons why. There were economic problems, there were political issues, and this should not at all be taken to think that there weren’t. But the end of the day, the U.S.S.R. would have kept going until everybody decided it was time to stop. And, 1989-1991, they decided it was time to stop. And it stopped.
All of these things that you take as being natural and given just because they’re habitual, you have to be able to realize, could be some other way and, at some level, the choice is arbitrary. At some level, what we do - that red means stop is a random choice. Could’ve been green, could’ve been yellow, could’ve been purple, and there’s so much of the way we live everyday life is like that. Because if we had to stop and think about those things all the time, our brains would explode. You know, you have to kind of make your brain explode a little bit.