Blog Archives

Feelings

11/25/2022

No, this is not a riff on the maudlin, lounge-lizard standard from “Cats” in the 1980s. It is about a phenomenon that we all encounter every day and which is embedded in our public discourse; i.e., the conflation of feelings and solutions.

More or less contemporaneously with the Andrew Llyod Webber hit, John Gray wrote a book called “Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.” The core concept (which Gray unfortunately pitched in a gendered frame), is the vast gap between the way people express themselves and what is understood by their listeners.

All of us process the world from both emotive and analytic perspectives. But most of us have a default mode (I’m definitely more towards the “analytic” end of the spectrum; and rate much more towards the “thinker” end of the Myers/Briggs spectrum than the “feeler” end). We may also express ourselves more from one stance and hear others from another. These differences are a recipe for a vast range of “failures to communicate.” Regardless of your own preferences and tendencies, it takes some real attention to parse what people really mean underneath what they are saying. Expressions of unhappiness may appear as the rejection of plans which are not (apparently) connected to the source of the discontent. Ideas are advanced that are more a manifestation of angst or delight than any assessment of the need for or cost/benefits of the nominal proposal.

If I were a professional psychologist, I would vector off into a discussion of how this shows up in personal or business relationships or friendships (familiar to anyone who has a spouse, child, or business associate). But as an observer of the political culture, I can’t help but notice that much of our current cultural confusion is tied to this problem. I was particularly struck by the attention to poll numbers earlier this year which showed an uptick in Biden’s “approval” rating. The commentariat was quick to draw potential implications for the mid-term elections, but it seemed to me that these results were a great example of my point.

The nominal polling question was: “Are you satisfied with the President’s performance of his job?” But most folks don’t know what the President does or even what he has the power to do. The global economic upsets caused by the war in Ukraine and the pandemic are but the most recent examples of events which profoundly affect people’s lives over which the President has little control. Hell, as Trump discovered to his frustration, the President is barely in charge of the Executive Branch, much less the whole US Government—much, much less the economy and the vectors of global infection.

Most people were actually answering a different question: “Are you happy about your current life and prospects?” (i.e. based on health, family, jobs, views on abortion or who won the 2020 election). In other words, they were giving a “feelings” answer to a “solutions” question. This obviously doesn’t tell us much about whether Biden is actually doing a good job or even what people’s opinions of his work and policies.

Much the same can be said of the reaction to Trump both during his Presidency and since, both by supporters and detractors. Indeed, he has made a political career out of not really caring about the merits and policies but giving voice to the anxieties of a fair number of Americans. (Much the same can be said of a host of other world leaders who tap into the same visceral fear in many of their citizens.) At the time of his first campaign, there were those who said that the Dems erred by taking him literally, but not seriously; while his supporters took him seriously, but not literally. I think there is a lot to this framing, but rather than using a Red/Blue (or even, per my recent post, a Left/Right) dichotomy, I suspect the real demarcation is between those that are analytical and those who resonate more with their feelings (at least when it comes to politics). How that split maps into the political spectrum is an interesting question (for another day).

Trump is hardly unique in this regard, even among US political leaders. You may call it “political license” or disingenuity, but leading with comfort and reassurance rather than policy specifics seems to be a prerequisite to electability rather than a disqualification. Neither Wilson nor FDR expressed a desire to go to war, based on their assessment of the public mood, even as they recognized the realities of global affairs. People vote for psychological security, confidence and comfort rather than briefing papers.

You may consider that this is but one more example of me “tilting at the windmills” of our 21C human world; but I regularly find it useful to think in these terms when listening to others talk, whether politicians, spouses, friends, or others. I’m not sure that I understand their feelings, but if I can at least pause rather than responding to their literal/nominal statement; I find that I’m better off.

2 Comments

Passions and Interests

11/18/2022

0 Comments

      Albert Hirschman, a scholar of unusual insight, wrote The Passions and the Interests to explore why capitalism was considered a profound opportunity for social change (not just economic) in the 18C. it’s kind of an obscure topic and a considerable amount of context is helpful to make sense of it, but it recurs in my thinking from time to time, so I thought I would say why.

      In my recent piece Das Kapital, I talked about how it is useful to see capitalism as an epistemology rather than merely a socio-economic system. In this light, capitalism can be seen as a structure of values centered on markets and money, which leaves altruistic, long-term, and (non-quantifiable) sentimental values to the side. In terms of (at least European) history, the emergence of capitalism from an economic perspective is reasonably easy to trace. On the other hand, what’s not so clear is articulating why it is different from what came before. After all, greed isn’t exactly a recent development as a human motivation, nor is commercial activity a new practice.

      What was new is the attitude about such things and the way in which those who practice trade/commerce/entrepreneurship/finance have been regarded by their fellows.

      The gist of Hirschman’s argument is that in the aftermath of the religious wars which raged across Europe in the 16-18C, shifting human mentality away from the profound and disruptive religious passions towards the (seemingly) ordered, measurable “interests” in a prosperous life here in earth. Thus, (what we have come to call) capitalism was seen as an improvement, as a path forward out of the thicket of contending religious beliefs. It was cleaner, more rational, and much less deadly.

      This is an “intellectual history” sort of framing. A more “cultural history” perspective would emphasize the declining authority of Christianity, riven by the Reformation, in which a host of Protestant sects challenged the incumbent Catholic church and whose ongoing debates (and wars) sapped the attention and energy of most of Europe’s principal political, religious, and intellectual elites into a closed competitive environment. Those seeking a way out, inspired by the “scientific revolution,” had to craft a way of looking at the world without the lens of religion. Turning people’s attention towards money seemed like a good way to go; even if that meant pushing aside traditional Christian disparagement of wealth (“It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”) and condemnation of usury.

      All this, as a matter of historical analysis is, of course, without moral judgment. We historians try to describe what happened at a particular time and place without importing the values of the present day or the awareness of what happened after.

      The 18C writers that Hirschman talked about didn’t spend much time addressing the risks/downsides of their suggestion. It’s not likely that they foresaw the extent of their triumph: the relegation of religion to a contained sideline in human affairs, the globalization of their impact, and the all-consuming “passions” that the pursuit of their “interests” ultimately engendered. Regardless of what they foresaw, it’s certainly not fair to blame them for what we have done with their suggestion that people think a bit differently (no more than it’s fair to blame Marx for Lenin or Stalin or Jesus for the Crusades). Indeed, it’s a rare idea or philosophy that, valid and useful in its own right, can’t easily be taken to excess.

      Now that “capitalism” has had a good run of two or three centuries, it would be surprising if it hasn’t gone a bit “off the rails.” We’ve learned a great deal about its limits and abuses. The world has changed (partially as a result of the dominant capitalistic outlook). And, to a considerable extent, the elevation of (average) human living conditions is so far beyond what anyone in the 18C likely imagined, that we should consider values and perspectives that have been left on the wayside in the meantime. I have spent no little time taking about the real costs of treating the planet as a “free” resource from which we can take valuable stuff “off-book.” Similarly, this past summer, I talked about the dramatic disparities in wealth both within countries and globally. There are legions of thinkers who have decried modern capitalism for its damage to “human” values, whether in terms of aesthetics, religion/morality, or social cohesion/personal psychology.

      In our current febrile environment, it’s hard to imagine a serious, intentional, and meaningful discussion along these lines, but I can’t think of a better time to try. As we try to conceive of what’s next, we need to remember how deeply immersed we are in this outlook; so much so that we are, likely as not, going to create a new epistemology that eventually will have its own problems. Let’s not pretend to too much wisdom or make simplistic claims of panaceas; but merely try to do it better next time.

0 Comments

8 Billion

11/11/2022

0 Comments

Next week, according to UN predictions, the world population will hit 8,000,000,000 people. That’s about three times what it was when I was born, with a projected peak of over 10B by the end of this century.

I’ve talked about population demographics before since I see this as a key factor in so many issues facing the world: food, water, wages/jobs, climate impacts, international migration, inequality, and general standards of living.

What would the world be like if there were 2.7B people (as when I was born) instead of 8 or 10B? Is there really any doubt that they would, on average, be a lot better off? Is there any doubt that the planet would be better off? We wouldn’t be in so dire a climate crisis, for starters. Average living standards would be higher, reducing the principal pressure on political unrest. To be sure, such a different socio-economic configuration of humanity would present other problems, but it’s hard to see them as dire and deep as our current situation.

This is perhaps the ultimate example of the “tragedy of the commons,” a phenomenon articulated in the 19C (although probably known de facto by ordinary folks for much longer) which gained currency in the mid 20C as the expression of the economic practice of the overuse of a free shared resource. It turns out, that use of fresh air and water are part of the “commons” and most modern societies at least aspire to include access to energy and a “good” standard of living in the list, as well. For each parent/family, there are, of course real costs to raising a child. But the expectation that each new person has a “human right” to air/water/power/subsistence effectively places a tax on the society’s supply of those resources over which the society has no direct control. Thus, we now understand that the scope and complexity of the “commons” is much greater than we accounted for so far. This tension is then expanded on a global basis.

The combination of a sense of global “equal rights” with the realization that there are limits to what the planet can support, means that we each share a responsibility for achieving a sustainable level of human population. Another way of looking at this is to recognize that the benefits of children are presumed to be predominantly private (i.e., they accrue to the individual child/person and its family), but there are significant public/shared costs (i.e. economic externalities).

On the other hand, attempts by governments to manage their populations date to the 19C, as well. French anxiety over being overtaken by Germany in the late 19C is perhaps the best-known example, leading to wide-spread debate and a range of government pro-growth policies. In the 20C, many countries provide tax or other benefits to subsidize children. More recently, China imposed a 1-child limit for decades beginning in the late 20C (now reversed). There is no sense that these governmental policies considered the global resource implications. Indeed, in an increasingly democratic age, procreation is usually seen as an essential component of personal freedom (certain portions of the US notwithstanding). I suspect there is also an unspoken assumption that countries with the most people will have a bigger voice in global affairs; an incentive for growth to be sure.

So, this presents a real and significant quandary. How to balance overarching issues of global inequality/justice, national economic growth/opportunity, and the impact of additional people on the planet? Western countries (which have already generally stopped growing) are in no moral position to demand less developed countries to reduce their population. Indeed, those less developed countries generally don’t have strong enough states to implement such a policy in any event. Overall, we face the conundrum that everyone would be better off with fewer people but there are no means to get there.

In saying this, I am rejecting the approach of some who think we are better off with more people. William Macaskill, noted Oxford philosophy don, takes this stance in his recent book “What We Owe the Future.” He makes a pretty good case for explicitly expanding the scope of our moral responsibility to include the many billions of people yet to come. He is well-attuned to the climate problem, but argues that more people means more brains means better solutions to our problems. I guess that this is true in the abstract, but not in the middle of a long-term resource crisis. Nor am I enamored with the faith in techno-solutions this seems to imply. Most broad human problems arise not because of lack of ideas, but due to a lack of will to implement the perfectly sensible solutions already on offer.

Of course, in the real world, the issue is not merely comparing where we are now with some lower level of population, but how we are going to get from A to B. In the Book of Exodus, God smites down the first-born of each Egyptian family. That’s one approach. The Bible also refers to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as heralding the “End Times.” That’s another. I think some version of this—war, plague, or famine caused by direct human action or climatic effects—is actually the most likely. Finally, unforced attrition is certainly possible. Even the lowest UN projection of population by 2100 sees the planetary total peaking at 8+B by 2060 and then dropping to 6+B by the end of the century. One way or another, the next 100 years is likely to see dramatic changes in population levels with profound implications for economics/capitalism/climate/geopolitics. Sitting here early in the 21C, we can only guess at how that future world will approach the tensions described here. All sorts of SciFi scenarios come to mind; ranging from the “Hunger Games” to “Logan’s Run” to various birth licensing schemes.

Humans have freely reproduced for millennia without consideration of the planet or their fellows. This is likely to change—one way or another—in the future; but social inertia will likely push that future out to a point that we can’t quite see yet.

0 Comments

November 04th, 2022

11/4/2022

0 Comments

Inertia

Peter Burke, an important British historian, once suggested (a bit tongue-in-cheek) that much of the Enlightenment was really just the formalization of commonly held knowledge.1 I suspect he really thought it was true, but had better things to do than deal with the brouhaha of staking such a claim in the academic debates. I tend to agree with him. History, as we know, is written by the winners; but it’s also written by the intellectuals, who inherently tend to overvalue “formal” knowledge and downplay the practical learning of farmers, mechanics, midwives, etc.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was reading a piece on “path dependence.” This is a term, developed by a pair of economists in the 1980s which has gained broader currency. To me, the concept is just the formalization, in modern social science jargon, of the well-known if less impressive sounding concept of “inertia,” itself a term appropriated from physics and applied to an innumerable list of social/historical phenomenon; both merely being the formalization of common-sense observations that are deeply embedded in all cultures..

To put it in straightforward terms: things change slowly because people think and act habitually. Economists may be disappointed that most folks don’t run cost-benefit analyses on everything they do. They do what they do and think what they think because that’s what they (we) learned from our parents or a older sibling or girlfriend, etc. This may show up in how I perform my daily ablutions, or how I load the dishwasher, or cover cooking pots. And, once I start to shave from left-to-right, I continue to do so, even if I might learn some years later that it would be more efficient to shave top-to-bottom.

The classic example cited by the promoters of “path dependency” is the very keyboard I am using to type up this posting. It’s a standard “QWERTY” keyboard, developed in the 19C to be sufficiently inefficient as to minimize the jamming of manual typewriters. Even after that technology improved, long before many of us learned (kinda) how to text with two thumbs on a small virtual keyboard, it was shown to be inefficient as a means of communications; but, that’s what we all learned, so that’s what we all do (still). The costs of change are too high. The same was said of the US decision not to switch to the metric system in the 1960s. As a result, we spend a lot, directly and invisibly, in dealing with the rest of the world who made the switch. But we DO have Myanmar and Liberia on our side, and we ARE the US of A, so that should be enough justification. “Path dependency” or inertia?

There are two things that I take from this situation. The first is that social science mentality often gets in the way of good history and people’s understanding. The second is a reminder that most of the time, social change, particularly attitudes, change very slowly.

One of my first professors when I started down my current history path, Tony D’Agostino, explained to me that social scientists and historians were two separate breeds. The former start with an elegant mathematical model of human behavior (in economics, psychology, or political science), they then neatly package the available data, plug them into the model and come out with descriptions and predictions. The latter insist that there are few (if any) useful models of human behavior, so all we can do is try to get each story out for consideration without expecting things to line up coherently. Historians agree that it would be great to be able to model human behavior, but that it’s a fool’s errand. Social scientists think historians muck about in the dust way too much and come up with interesting but meaningless stories.

While my own inclinations are closer to social sciences than most historians, I still recoil from the idea of modelling, for example, the ways wars start. I’ve read way too many discussions of flukes and weird personal proclivities to have much confidence that we can come to some profound comprehensive conclusion. Still, as a Historian, I tend to steer away from “path dependency,” and stick with focusing on human habits.

And, as a Historian, I can tell you that there is not much evidence to support the idea of rapid social change. I’m not speaking here of fashion (e.g. hemline location), but, rather, the way people think and the way societies operate. We refer to the French Revolution as one of the great turning points of modern history. However, if you look at the vagaries of French history in the 19C, you can see it actually took until the 1880s (i.e. almost 100 years) to establish a stable republican form of government. Women began agitating for political rights in the US in 1848, but it took 70 years for them to break through the accumulated inertia of male-dominated power structures and attitudes to finally achieve the vote after WWI. That was over a hundred years ago and many women would say that a lot of attitudinal adjustment still lies ahead.

The central struggle of modernity—between rationality and faith—has been going on for hundreds of years and billions of people continue to find the literal word of God (Jesus/J*hweh/Allah) a better guide to understanding the world than the combination of evidence and reason which (if you’ll pardon the expression) God gave ‘em. And, stay tuned, Marx and Lenin might yet still be right about the broad course of human history, even if they missed many specifics and muffed the implementation so far.

Revolutions (whether political or epistemological) are oft proclaimed. Political revolutions are (often) morally imperative. They are also, historically-speaking, usually futile. Things just take a while to absorb. There is change in the world, but when you look at from a little distance and allow the turmoil du jour to settle down, there’s no escaping the power of inertia. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that there is no escape from inertia (even when you call it path dependency).

1 Burke, Social History of Knowledge, p. 14.

0 Comments

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Feelings

Passions and Interests

8 Billion

November 04th, 2022

Inertia

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

Archives

Sign up for alerts when there's a new post

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.