Best of 2018

In no particular order, these are the best essays/blog posts I read in 2018.

Conflict Theory vs. Mistake Theory, by Scott Alexander.
The entire Slate Star Codex post is long but worthwhile. However, I'll use David Brooks to sum it up:

"Mistake theorists believe that the world is complicated and most of our troubles are caused by error and incompetence, not by malice or evil intent...Basically, we’re all physicians standing over a patient with a very complex condition and we’re trying to collectively figure out what to do. 

In the conflict theorist worldview, most public problems are caused not by errors or complexity, but by malice and oppression. The powerful few keep everyone else down. The solutions to injustice and suffering are simple and obvious: Defeat the powerful."

Complicating the Narrative by Amanda Ripley
A fantastic, long read that builds a roadmap for the future of journalism.

"Journalism has yet to undergo this awakening. We like to think of ourselves as objective seekers of truth. Which is why most of us have simply doubled down in recent years, continuing to do more of the same kind of journalism, despite mounting evidence that we are not having the impact we once had.... If we want to learn the truth, we have to find new ways to listen.

The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words."

The Anthropology of Manhood by Sebastian Junger, National Review. I've written about this before and it still holds up well.

The Bulverizing of the American Mind, by Aaron Sibarium, The American Interest. I've mentioned this before as well and come back to it for two reasons. This quote: "Give people too much freedom, and soon they’ll come crawling back to their chains," which reminds me of the paradox of choice in moral terms. And that it introduced me to the term bulverizing, which exposes ad hominem, identity politics arguments for the logical fallacy they are (or am I only saying that because I'm a straight, white, cisgendered man?).

Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth, by Russ Roberts.
Speaking of complicating the narrative, this Medium post by Russ Roberts made me think that maybe income inequality isn't as bad as we think. Make sure you watch the videos too.

A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue by Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic. Talk about nuance. His focus on "limits and equilibrium" reminds me of my post about viewing topics as trying to minimize false positives or false negatives.

"Most political stances can be understood in terms of an equilibrium. For instance, some people might believe that access to abortion in a conservative state is too restricted under the status quo, and favor relaxing the rules regulating abortion clinics. That is, they might favor shifting the equilibrium in a “pro-choice” direction.

But ask those same voters, "Should there be any limits on legal abortion?" and they might declare that the procedure should be banned in the last trimester of pregnancy unless the mother's health is threatened. Insofar as the abortion debate is framed around the equilibrium, they will align with the pro-choice movement; but insofar as it is framed around limits, they will align with the pro-life movement."

Libertarian Paternalism

I often read thought-provoking books that get deep into the "what is wrong with modern society" discussion. I enjoy them, but their next-step conclusions often leave me underwhelmed.

They amount to things like "people just need to understand that..." or "we need a public discussion about..." and other pie-in-the-sky proclamations that will never fucking happen. There just aren't enough people who are going to make serious enough changes in their lives to have an impact.

For example, I truly believe if everyone read The Righteous Mind, the world would be a better place. At the very least, we would fight less, understand more, and tone down our self-righteousness. But I'm grounded enough to know that most people are not going to read that book.

I keep coming back to one of Jonathan Haidt's essays, which he opens by talking about how the cosmic settings of the universe are tweaked just so, allowing for the possibility of life. He then relates how our founders searched for the same fine tuning to establish a Republic that would work.

Maybe Richard Thaler and Cass Sustein's concept of libertarian paternalism would do a better job of fine tuning the settings to improve society.

We all know that social media is bad for us, but we lack the self-restraint to do anything about it. What if a community decided to shut off internet access every Sunday, but allowed people to fill out an opt-out form if they didn't want to be included.

Or each Sunday, designate several streets closed to traffic. Pedestrian only. Let kids play in the street without fear and encourage them to get outside, play, interact, and develop their social skills--something our schools no longer allow them to do.

For problems like rampage shootings, defraying social trust, addiction, depression, and suicide, maybe tackling them head on is the wrong approach. It might be better to attack the conditions that cause them: isolation, technology/social media, and hyper individualism. These causal problems are better addressed by looking at changes to their environment than trying to educate individuals and expecting them to change themselves.

I've lost some interest in Better Angels because I don't think it's sustainable. You get a few reds and blues in a room, they talk it out, and and feel more comfortable around those they met in the workshop. I don't see that reverberating throughout the community.

But if you invest in social infrastructure that gets parents talking to each other in social spaces, gets kids making friends in unstructured, unsupervised play, rally everyone together around a virual bowling league at the library or a Friday night football game, you might not need to worry about convincing people that reds and blues are actually normal people just like you. You'll already be identifying them first as friends and neighbors than by political ideology.

And the more reason you give people to leave their home, the less lonely and at-risk for depression, suicide, and anti-social behavior they will become.

American mythology

I'm reading Sapiens and learned something fascinating. Several similar species lived alongside homo sapiens at the same time. One of our distinguishing characteristics was the ability to tell fiction.

Most tribes, of all sapiens, couldn't grow by much more than 150 people without destabilizing. At that point it took a belief in the same story to get a large group of people to work together. That is how we got spirit animals, Greek Gods, contemporary religion, and patriotism.

One of the problems with America is that there are two competing fictions about our identity.

One says that we created a system based on freedom, pluralism, checks and balances, and a refuge to people seeking a better life and economic opportunity. This produced the longest lasting government in world history and the most powerful country ever.

The other fiction says that colonizers came here and wiped out native americans while stealing their land. They imported African slaves and made mint off their backs. All progress is from from slavery and thievery. We are the products of mass murderers who used their power to oppress women and minorities and continue to do so today.

The problem is that, hyperbole aside, both stories are true. But if we don't find a fiction we agree on, this isn't going to last.

We're always at war

I've been troubled by the recent rampage shootings. I've also been re-reading Sebastian Junger's Tribe. It reminded me of an unusual fact. Look at U.S. rampage shootings in the last three decades:

Notice anything unusual? Is it odd that, since 1986, the only year with no shootings was 2002, the year after our country was attacked? And there was only 1 per year in the years that followed, before it spiked again as the war became unpopular.

Here is another unusual fact: Israel has only had one mass shooting in recent years. The country is constantly at war. Does that give their lives more purpose?

For hundreds of thousands of years, tribes had to be prepared for war at any moment. But as Stephen Pinker illustrates in Enlightenment, we are living in, quite possibly, the safest time in human history. And yet, we cannot escape our longing for war.

As Scott Alexander notes, our levels of violence are about more than easy access to guns.

"The United States’ homicide rate of 3.8 is clearly higher than that of eg France (1.0), Germany (0.8), Australia (1.1), or Canada (1.4). However, as per the FBI, only 11,208 of our 16,121 murders were committed with firearms, eg 69%. By my calculations, that means our nonfirearm murder rate is 1.2. In other words, our non-firearm homicide rate alone is higher than France, Germany, and Australia’s total homicide rate."

I'm coming to the sobering conclusion that war is a part of the human DNA. And my fear is that, if we are not at war with an outside enemy, we will turn on ourselves.

And it isn't just the mentally disturbed, Islamic terrorists, or neo nazis. The most successful political campaigns are the ones that convince people that the other party is trying to destroy American democracy. So we create an enemy where none exists.

We are convinced that immigrants are coming here to take our jobs, rape our women, and sell drugs to our children. Or that republicans are going to increase inequality, establish a police state, only look out for the rich, and take away our healthcare, our unions, our rights. That democrats are going to turn us into a classless Marxist society where all hardworking Americans will be taxed to feed the lazy.

And we need your vote so we can fight them because we cannot let them win. 

The War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Things We Don't Like.

We need to create a system that satisfies our need for war. Repression until the point of rampages doesn't appear to be working.

Maybe it's like Nassim Taleb's idea of antifragility. Maybe men seek volatility in order to strengthen our evolutionary role as protectors. Too much peace weakens us, so something in our DNA convinces us that there is an enemy afoot.

The New(est) American Religion

In a wonderful critique of The Coddling of the American Mind (which, by the way, I loved), writer Aaron Sibarium writes:

"Give people too much freedom, and soon they’ll come crawling back to their chains."

The more I think about it; the more I think he's right.

John McWhorter writes a wonderful column about our new American religion, Antiracism. Some call it wokeness. But I believe the most inclusive term would be Social Justice. Either way, it shares some commonality with traditional religion.

McWhorter notes:

"It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are not to be asked ... The Antiracism religion, then, has clergy, creed, and also even a conception of Original Sin. Note the current idea that the enlightened white person is to, I assume regularly (ritually?), 'acknowledge' that they possess White Privilege." 

It seems that in an effort to free ourselves from the restrictions of religion, liberalism has only gone on to redefine a new religion. My concern is that it's hostility to heretics is approaching (or surpassing) hostility to other races and genders in contemporary times.

In one of his most popular blog posts, Scott Alexander comments on this ideological hostility.

"Someone finally had the bright idea of doing an Implicit Association Test with political parties, and they found that people’s unconscious partisan biases were half again as strong as their unconscious racial biases. For example, if you are a white Democrat, your unconscious bias against blacks (as measured by something called a d-score) is 0.16, but your unconscious bias against Republicans will be 0.23." 

He continues:

"Iyengar and Westwood ... asked subjects to decide which of several candidates should get a scholarship (subjects were told this was a genuine decision for the university the researchers were affiliated with). Some resumes had photos of black people, others of white people. And some students listed their experience in Young Democrats of America, others in Young Republicans of America.

Once again, discrimination on the basis of party was much stronger than discrimination on the basis of race. The size of the race effect for white people was only 56-44 (and in the reverse of the expected direction); the size of the party effect was about 80-20 for Democrats and 69-31 for Republicans."

How do liberals and conservatives feel about their children marrying a different race? I'm glad you asked.

 How about marrying outside one's political party?

To recap, 1% of consistent liberals would be unhappy if their child married a different race but 23% would be unhappy if they married a Republican and 31% would be upset if they married a gun owner.

23% of consistent conservatives would be unhappy if their child married a different race but 30% would be unhappy if they marred a Democrat.

I admire my college's goal of increasing racial diversity: It better prepares students for interacting with people of different cultures. But if political ideology is a more emotionally-charged topic, it might make more sense to increase diversity of thought to better prepare students for the real world.

What's going on?

Beyond Social Justice being the raison d'etre of liberals, I think there is another reason race gets more attention than politics. We have a long, documented history of racial injustice in this country. Although things have improved dramatically, SJWs are so sensitive to any perceived racial slight—with the image of Emmet Till's face burned into our minds.

What we don't have is a long history of political discrimination on which to draw. The reason blacks were treated so poorly was because it was, for the most part, acceptable. Currently it is, for the most part, unacceptable. We'd like it to stay that way, hence the racial sensitivity.

But political discrimination is different. It is acceptable. We are not yet sensitive to it.

The next recession will be like the last one. I don't mean a housing bubble; I mean it will be something no one sees coming. I think the current political climate is like that. It won't be until decades from now that we realize how poorly we treat our ideological opponents.

Toxic Society

A professor recently gave a talk about toxic masculinity. He described it has not showing emotion, engaging in risky behavior, and a desire for physical strength, suggesting this leads to substance abuse, aggression, abusing women, depression, and other health problems.

My question is: is this type masculinity toxic, or is our society toxic to this type of masculinity?

While I often agree with the phrase "prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child," there is one area I dissent. Our school system has moved into a structure that is more conducive to girls than boys. As a result, this hinders social and physical development at best and at worst leads to males being overrepresented in the school dropout, homelessness, and prison populations.

Maybe if these men liked school, they wouldn't end up homeless, in jail, or out of work. Maybe they wouldn't use drugs and assault women. Maybe they would feel like valued members of society and wouldn't give in to these toxic behaviors.

A Little Risk Goes a Long Way

We are hardwired for risk taking. Risky, rough-and-tumble play is actually a good an necessary thing for development. But we have eliminated it from our children's lives, which negatively impacts boys more than girls. Maybe that is why risky behavior turns more hardcore later in life; young boys weren't given the opportunity to navigate it.

Maybe instead of telling young men to stop being who they are, we should give them more freedom to develop social skills as youth so they don't feel alienated by society and turn toward toxic behavior.

Toxic just means Testosterone

The professor who gave the talk seemed to believe that young men choose these toxic behaviors because they think it is what society expects of them. I disagree. Research shows a correlation between high levels of testosterone and risk taking.

Sebastian Junger writes:

"Male violence is a problem across all societies, communities, and races, and the primary driver is testosterone, which declines steadily throughout a man’s adult lifetime. As testosterone levels go down, so do rates of violence and accidental death — which would not be the case if socialization alone were to blame."

I think we are wired that way and the "toxic" aggression and violence are a result of not having appropriate outlets for them.

I also disagree that stoicism and physical strength are, prima facie, toxic behaviors. In a great article about different cultures' rites of passage to manhood, the author asks the question of why young men go through these difficult tasks.

The disquieting answer, of course, is to prepare for war...Boys are “tempered” and “toughened” so they may fulfill the classic duties to procreate, provide, and protect that men have performed for millennia. Whether it’s marshaled to ward off the aggression of other males or to capitalize on weakness, violence is the leitmotif of manhood in countless cultures. 

We've moved past a society that needs all young men to be prepared for war, but we haven't solved the biological hardwiring that remains. My belief is that is will be easier, but not easy, to adapt our society to this need with some type of rite of passage for young men then it will be to convince young men to socially neuter themselves.

"In the fall of 1999, the journalist Susan Faludi published Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, in which she interviewed everyone from gang members to shipyard employees to even Sylvester Stallone to suss out the root causes of America’s “crisis of masculinity.” One possible cause: a postwar emphasis on consumerism and vanity. The modern man, Faludi wrote, has been sold the idea that masculinity is “something to drape over the body, not draw from inner resources; that it is personal, not societal; that manhood is displayed, not demonstrated.”

Victim Blaming

Wait a minute, are you saying rapists should be absolved because it's society's fault for turning them into monsters? 

Well, no. I still believe in personal agency and accountability. Put those monsters behind bars. But I think that if we make tweaks to our institutions and social norms we can, in the aggregate, have a positive impact on these toxic behaviors. Society might be more, dare I say, equitable?

A Return to Walter Cronkite news?

In an essay about our growing partisan divide, Jon Haidt and Sam Abrams note:

American newspapers were quite partisan for most of history. But with the emergence of television in the post-war years, and with the popularity of newscasters such as Walter Cronkite, the nation had a few decades in which most Americans got the same news from the same few sources, particularly the three national television networks.

All that changed with the advent of cable television in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s. Now Americans can choose from hundreds of partisan news sources, many of which care more about arousing emotions than hewing to journalistic standards.

Is it possible this course reverses direction and media becomes consolidated again? Seems impossible, information is way too bottom up and widely accessible now.

But is it?

The big 4 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple) keep growing and swallowing up their competition. Jeff Bezos even owns the Washington Post. People regularly get their news from Facebook and Twitter, accessing it through Google Chrome on their iPhone.

I know, these are content aggregators and not content producers like NBC, ABC, and CBS. But what's to stop them from filtering content or eventually producing their own content?

We've already seen Alex Jones' Infowars get banned from pretty much every online platform. If the big 4 decide to ban unpopular messages, they can control the content to more palpable tastes. They might tone done dangerous rhetoric at the risk of drowning out important dissent.

I'm still not sure if this would be a good thing or not.

Who is brilliant?

In recent months, I've heard friends describe Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson as "brilliant."

That sounds bold. I am really reserved when using that term. But it got me to thinking: who would I think of as "brilliant" among living intellectuals.

I really enjoy and respect the thoughtfulness of writers like David Brooks and Conor Friedersdorf, but I don't think of them as brilliant.

David Foster Wallace comes to mind (okay, no longer living but still a contemporary intellectual) Same goes for Robert Pirsig, Jonathan Haidt, Daniel Kahneman, Nassim Taleb, Scott Alexander; I still feel I have more to learn about the Weinstein brothers, but probably them.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking are probably brilliant but maybe they just know a lot about a subject I know nothing of.

What about business and technology? Is Elon Musk brilliant? Jeff Bezos? Bill Gates? Or did they have one really great idea/invention?

I feel most comfortable assigning the word to writers. Probably because we have documented access to their thoughts and can confirm their brilliance.

My father-in-law is great at solving riddles and playing chess and would probably score high on tests that measure cognition. But he also gets his news from chain e-mails and thinks Obama is a closet Muslim. So even though he might be "smart," I don't really respect his opinion on most subjects.

In fact, I can think of many people with doctoral degrees or ivy league educations, and I don't respect their opinion either.

So what am I really talking about? I think I'm trying to describe people who are in my [extreme Robert DeNiro voice] Circle of Trust. It's my coterie of people whom I find thoughtful and careful in their analysis of a subject before weighing in on it. As Philip Tetlock would say, more "fox" than "hedgehog." 

Socialism's Ascendency

With the rise in popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, socialism in America is having a moment. This always shocks me. We live in the wealthiest country in the world, maybe ever, and it was built on the backs of capitalism. Why would we turn on what made us who we are?

As it turns out, measuring what is best for everyone is really difficult.  Here is what I understand: the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism has done more to bring people out of poverty than any social assistance program.

Unfettered capitalism creates wealth and it isn't zero sum. Jeff Bezos didn't become rich by taking money from poor people; he created wealth (Of course there are people who acquire money through rent seeking, which does not create wealth and basically is taking money from the lower classes). Poor people today are much better off than poor people were 100 years ago.

So what's the problem? If there is so much more wealth year after year, why are people occupying Wall Street and cheering on socialism? I can think of two reasons.

Cost Disease

I admire the Democrats' goal of wanting to improve the lives of struggling Americans. If one is having difficulty making ends meet, there are really only two choices: make more or spend less.

What's odd is that Democrats only focus on one of those choices. You see it in their calls for a $15 minimum wage or a Universal Basic Income.

I get that median wages are stagnating*, but it doesn't help that the cost of living keeps rising (most notably in rent, health care, and tuition). Maybe that is the bigger issue.

From Slate Star Codex:

Even if you’re making twice as much money, if your health care and education and so on cost ten times as much, you’re going to start falling behind.

Regarding rising tuition:

Would you rather graduate from a modern college, or graduate from a college more like the one your parents went to, plus get a check for $72,000? (or, more realistically, have $72,000 less in student loans to pay off).

Control Rent

Cost disease is about more than just college. It affects housing as well, probably the largest expense in most Americans' budget. 

I wonder what a Democratic platform that focuses on reducing costs would look like. For starters, it would wind back urban zoning regulations that crowd out lower income housing in upper class neighborhoods. (I'm looking at you Seattle and San Francisco. You wouldn't need a $15 minimum wage if people could afford rent.)

Control Healthcare

It would also look at healthcare. It's great that Obamacare gave people access to healthcare that didn't have it before, but costs have skyrocketed.

How about implementing the Thaler/Sustein proposal of allowing people to waive their right to sue for malpractice to lower the cost?  Scott Alexander gives a good example of this.

I see this all the time in medicine. A patient goes to the hospital with a heart attack. While he’s recovering, he tells his doctor that he’s really upset about all of this. Any normal person would say “You had a heart attack, of course you’re upset, get over it.” But if his doctor says this, and then a year later he commits suicide for some unrelated reason, his family can sue the doctor for “not picking up the warning signs” and win several million dollars. So now the doctor consults a psychiatrist, who does an hour-long evaluation, charges the insurance company $500, and determines using her immense clinical expertise that the patient is upset because he just had a heart attack.

How about any of these ideas that cost no money and don't require big sweeping legislation? Can we give people more options to pay for the level of care they can afford?  What about Elizabeth Warren's effort to allow students to refinance their student loan debt?

If $15/hour is what it takes to meet the cost of living, why aren't Democrats looking at what is causing this high cost of living?

It appears that markets aren't operating as efficiently as they should be.

The Joneses

There might be another reason for all the socialism fervor. Here, psychology can help us. Throw out your employment rates, your GDP growth, your consumer price index, and all other measures of economic health.

Only one measure matters and it's the only one that has ever mattered: happiness.

As explained in The Happiness Curve, people don't notice changes in their day-to-day lives. They notice changes in relation to the people around them. So if your wealth increases but so does everyone around you, you don't notice. But when Mark Zuckerburg becomes a multi billionaire, you feel it and you are not happy about it.

It doesn't help that, post recession, wages for middle- and lower- class Americans have stagnated*. Add to that rising rents, ballooning college tuition, and exploding health care costs, and many people really are worse off than they were 50 years ago.

But even if we fix these things, people will still focus on the haves and feel the system is unfair. Comparing ourselves to the Joneses is natural and it's unrealistic to expect people to stop.

*After viewing this video by Russ Roberts, I'm no longer convinced that middle class wages are actually stagnating. However, that doesn't change the fact that the cost of living is rising.

The Next Generation of Donors

The Seven Faces of Philanthropy is an interesting book. The authors talk to major donors about their movitations for giving, pore over the responses, and identify seven personalities.

As a higher education professional, the one personality that seems to fit most of our donors (many of whom are alumni) is the Repayer. Repayers tend to have been constituents first and partners second. A typical Repayer has benefited from some institution and now supports that institution from a feeling of loyalty or obligation.

Most of our donors are also 55 and older. Most colleges struggle to get millenials to give; but just because they are paying off student debt doesn't mean they can't give something. It's more likely that they don't see themselves as Repayers.

Millenials don't trust institutions. Ergo, they won't support them. So asking them to support the annual fund so a college can go on college-ing is a lost cause.

However, they will support causes. They won't support the Red Cross because they believe in their mission but they will support the Red Cross' efforts to help Hurricane Harvey victims. Then they move on to the next cause, regardless of the charity doing the work.

This is where The Seven Faces of Philanthropy can help. When millenials give, they see themselves as (mostly) Altruists. Altruists give out of generosity and empathy to urgent causes and who modestly wish to remain anonymous.

The challenge for higher education is to market giving opportunities as causes. Talk to millenials as Altruists, people who's gift can directly improve someone's life.

My journey with Better Angels

When I first read about Better Angels—a non profit group whose goal is to depolarize America by, among other things, hosting workshops with 7 liberals and 7 conservatives to get people talking again and forming community-based alliances—my reaction was that this was similar to an idea I had percolating in the back of my mind.

The other similar group was Living Room Conversations. Although they had similar missions, their approach couldn't be more different. Living Room Conversations was very libertarian. Their message is: "Talk to a friend in your house. Here are some discussion points. Let us know how it goes."

BA's message is "Here is what you need to do and how you need to do it. Follow this blueprint."

I ultimately chose BA because I wanted to work off of a blueprint. I know I wanted to get people from my community together with opposing views so we could find common ground. But I wanted some sort of direction.

I became a dues-paying member, reached out to some people from my town about starting a workshop (with little success), and haven't done much since. While I love BA and their mission, I have a few concerns.

First, to sign up they make you chose a side: red or blue. I don't identify either way and don't like being put into a camp. Plus, this crowds out libertarians, greens, and other independents, who should have a voice as well.

Second, the few people I have talked to who have shown interest have the same problems that I do. We're all in our thirties, have young children, and are consumed by our expanding responsibilities. The workshop is a full seven-hour day. I have trouble finding a sitter for a two-hour stretch.

I attended a group meeting with local BA members and was struck by how relatively-young I was compared to everyone else; mostly empty-nesters and retirees. In other words, people who have time for a day-long workshop and recruiting local members. I'll return to this in a moment.

Thirdly, BA seems to have a goal of creating BA red-blue alliances all across the country. I think that is a shallow goal. They mention "depolarizing" and "getting people talking again" but I think it should be more ambitious.

My goal is to solve problems. Immigration, healthcare, guns, terrorism; these are all issues we want to solve but cannot without coming to a mutual understanding with our political opponents. In that respect, I view BA is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

For millenials, such as myself and the other young fathers I spoke to about BA, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. That is why the book New Power shows how young people are drawn to movements that allow for their own customization, like the Ice Bucket Challenge or AirBNB.

BA does not allow such customization; it's structure is top-down. As such, I worry that it's very nature will crowd-out millenials. Based on my own observations; it already has.

Why I read

Justin Theroux, not reading. Trust me, it will make sense.

At the beginning of Season 2 of The Leftovers, you see the protagonist Kevin Garvey constantly wearing earbuds and playing loud music.

The narration keeps you in the dark before the big reveal: Kevin is experiencing hallucinations of a women for whose death he feels responsible. The music is his solution for drowning out the hallucinations.

I mention this because it is the best metaphor for explaining why I am always reading a book, particularly nonfiction.

My mind's natural state is untethered, and will invariably drift toward depression. A good book— particularly a complicated one in which I am learning something new, something that, for a moment, makes the world a little more sensible—drowns out the noise of my depression.

Unlike medication, there are no side effects. Unlike therapy, there is no cost (as long as I can find the book in a library). My only vulnerability would be running out of books to read.

The Tragedy of Tribalism

In his book Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene talks about the Tragedy of the Commons and what he calls the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality. The former puts "we" above "I" to solve societal problems. The latter pits "we" against "them," creating societal problems. This is both the blessing and curse of tribalism.

I've argued before that we are good at naturally sorting ourselves into communities of like-minded thinkers (although the "community" aspect has been dying in the absence of religion and civic engagement). However, we are terrible at dealing with other tribes.

I believe that we might have a government system able to solve this problem. Our sovereign states and localities should be able to operate as different like-minded moral communities, with little overreach from the federal government. Government's role should be to address what we are not naturally good at: communicating between moral communities.

Let's take the multicultural metaphor of a salad. Instead of a melting pot, people are expected to stay a tomato, onion, or whatever belief or race they represent. But this only works if they are tossed in the same dressing. But what is this dressing that binds all these different beliefs, cultures, and tribes to America? This is the problem we can't solve on our own. It might take intervention from the federal government.

The best essays of the past 3 years

Each year there always seems to be one essay I read that sticks out from all the rest.

In 2016, it was a blog post about the effects of globalization by economist Russ Roberts. Even as a libertarian, Roberts is great at considering all sides of an issue. Libertarians have a habit of being overly rational, but he is great at understanding the emotional impact of people's lives.

Last year it was this essay by Jonathan Haidt, which is actually a transcription of a speech he gave. It's a great look at the current state of our polarized country, how we got here, and how we can find our way out of the mess we're in.

He lists things that tend to pull people together and things that tend to separate us. I should note that he references a study suggesting that immigration divides people. Since that time, I have read about several additional studies that either show no impact of immigration on what he calls "social capital" and even some studies that show immigration bringing communities closer together.

I think the best part is where he talks about Martin Luther King's concept of an American Civil Religion. Currently, there is a lot of focus from both sides of the political spectrum on what divides us. King cared about what united us.

"The civil rights struggle was indeed identity politics, but it was an effort to fix a mistake, to make us better and stronger as a nation. Martin Luther King’s rhetoric made it clear that this was a campaign to create conditions that would allow national reconciliation. He drew on the moral resources of the American civil religion to activate our shared identity and values."

For 2018, I think I already have a winner: Sebastion Junger's essay "The Anthropology of Manhood." For the first time in our country's history, men seem really lost. Junger does a great job of openly talking about why men are the way they are, and the pros and cons they bring to society.

"men are eminently disposable; kill most of the men in a society and it quickly recovers, but kill most of the women and it dies out within generations. Because of all these factors, a common definition of manhood throughout history has been a willingness to put the safety of others above one’s own."

He makes some points that seem especially prescient in the aftermath of the incel massacre:

"As these gender-specific jobs disappear, it becomes harder for men to know whether they have anything essential to offer society... But the only way to guarantee membership in a group is to be needed by it, so being unneeded can feel catastrophic... The national suicide rate is known to closely track unemployment, for example, and after the economic collapse of 2008, around 5,000 additional people in 54 countries committed suicide because they had lost their jobs. These were people who no longer felt needed." 

Like Roberts, Junger doesn't call to return to the way things were. Rather, he looks for new and healthy ways to adapt society to our natural traits.

My (Regretful) Unwillingness to Believe

I was rewatching Moon on Netflix last night. Spoiler: the protagonist is supposed to be alone in a space station on the moon and one day comes face to face with another person who talks and acts like himself, and claims to have the same identity as the protagonist.

The first time I watched Moon I believed the protagonist was delusional until the twist ending reveals they are just two of many clones awakened and then killed every three years, spending their short lives working at the station as free labor.

I am bad at predicting twists (I guess I prefer to get swept up in the moment rather than trying to guess where everything is going) but I think my rational brain just felt that delusion was more probable than cloning.

When someone makes an assertion I believe is misguided, I ask two questions that I am stealing from Neil Degrasse Tyson:

• What is your best evidence for this belief?
• What would it take for you to believe otherwise?

The latter question subtly asks the person to consider that they may be wrong; something the human mind is loathe to do on its own.

I was thinking about God the other day and what it would take for me to believe in him. At first, I thought that he would have to reveal himself to me and communicate with me for me to believe. However, I think I would make the same rationalization I made the first time I watched Moon. I would believe that there is a higher probability that I am delusional than having a conversation with God.

What about something experienced by many people at once that cannot be explained by science, like the Miracle of the Sun? Even then, it seems more probable that it would be a Black Swan-like event, something we have just never seen before and will understand eventually.

This disappoints me because I don't want to close myself off from changing my mind on a position.

The Two Axioms of American Democracy

America was created to be a pluralistic society. Everyone is welcome, you are not required to look a certain way or believe a certain faith.

By it's very nature, pluralism leads to what the founders called "factionalism" and I call "tribalism." If we don't require a particular belief, people will sort themselves into communal belief systems that compete for power.

This leads to the first axiom of American democracy: One tribe, or faction, will never dominate. (In this context, a tribe can be a religion, political party, or any belief system.) It may hold a majority for a brief time, but there will always be another tribe pushing back against it.

Due to self-preservation or some evolutionary trait we picked up along the way, humans are really bad at admitting when they are wrong. This leads to the second axiom of American democracy: One tribe will never convince another tribe that they are wrong. A few may switch sides from time to time, but one tribe will never give up everything they believe in and willfully adopt the ethos of another tribe. 

These two axioms lead to my conclusion: Our system of government was not designed to solve problems by growing one's tribe. Our system was designed to solve problems by building coalitions. 

We start where we have common ground and make trade offs until everyone agrees that the best deal is on the table.

10 Rules for Life

1. Seek common ground instead of conflict. Coalitions, not warring against other tribes, solve problems.
2. Stay open to the idea that you may be wrong and someone, even a person whom you think is dumb, may be able to change your mind.
3. Seek to change your mind on one issue a year. Find intelligent counter points. Changing your mind is a signal that you value evidence over intuition.
4. Never post something on social media that blatantly attacks a different tribe. Virtue signaling is divisive.
5. If a child wants you to read them a book, stop what you're doing and read them the damn book.
6. Unless you're over 70, or one or more of your legs doesn't work, put your shopping cart away.
7. Spend at least 5 minutes a day outdoors, not doing much more than thinking and looking at trees.
8. Get some type of exercise at least 3 times a week.
9. Understand that everyone is a hypocrite at some point, including yourself. There is no perfect belief system, otherwise we would have discovered it by now. However, we should never stop trying to make the world better.
10. Once a year, admit when you are wrong. Aloud, and to the person who was right. You are wrong more often than you think and humility actually brings people closer.

The Telos of Higher Ed

I've been thinking about Plato and Jonathan Haidt lately. Specifically the latter's writings on the telos of higher education. 

Haidt believes that social justice is an important component of an education, but the ultimate purpose, or telos, of a college should be the pursuit of truth. He goes on to write that, in many colleges, the telos has become social justice and that a college can only have one telos and they should be clear about which one they espouse: truth or social justice.

I agreed with him until recently. I wonder if social justice is just a poor characterization of what these colleges are doing. Would it be better to say their telos is ethics?* When you pit ethics against truth (which is basically science), it becomes harder to make a choice. In fact, it seems that colleges try to pursue both.

I think of Plato's concepts of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. We tend to get into trouble when one concept overwhelms another. Ken Wilber said that the Good, or ethics, is something we decide as a community. The True requires something independent from the human experience (the scientific method).

Haidt's binary choice forces people to choose one over the other when they are probably both necessary. The True shouldn't usurp the Good, they should coexist. Isn't that what a liberal arts education is supposed to be about?

Where I think he's right is that ethics isn't taught as much as one branch of ethics, social justice, which places care for the oppressed as the ultimate goal toward leading a moral life.

Haidt has talked about how a college should give students many lenses to view the world and social justice only gives one, the lens of power**. The problem with the multi lens path is that it's essentially moral relativism and competing ethical systems is what is tearing our country apart right now.

It would be great if colleges taught multiple ethical systems, how they have been deployed in our culture, and attempted to find a way synthesize them in a society so students can learn to live alongside different tribes.

Colleges can then tell students: "Here are the lenses. Now go out and find a community that holds these ethical values but also be sure to interact with other tribes since you have to share the same physical and political landscape as them."

In a post-Christian world, we need to fill the void of ethics and community. This means people need to sort themselves into clearly defined tribes who share an ethical code. This involves routine face-to-face interaction, ritual, and reflection. Facebook Groups and Sub Reddit threads ARE NOT an effective replacement. People need more options and this will help with social isolation.

It also means we need routine interaction with other tribal communities, so we see them as Americans too. We don't solve problems by growing and mobilizing our tribe, but by building coalitions.

*After listening to Haidt's lecture again, it appears he was criticizing social justice's attempts to achieve equal outcomes in all instances and inferring all forms of racial and gender disparity are due to prejudice. Any attempts at using truth to suggest prejudice might not explain the disparity but something else gets shouted down without reason.

**Haidt actually said this about intersectionality, not social justice. Although you could argue that social justice is about the lens of power as well.

Meaning and Ethics in 21st Century America

"Listen to the silence behind the engine's noise...It's a love song."
"For whom?"
"You are loved."
Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way by David Foster Wallace

Religion serves two basic purposes: meaning and ethics. It gives meaning to our lives (which we are naturally inclined to look for) and a moral code for a community to live by. So it serves needs on both an individual and group level.

Ethics needs to take place on a community level. Individualism leads to people pursuing their own form of ethics, which sounds good in the name of freedom, but I think has been sort of a disaster on the national level. Meaning, on the other hand, can be pursued on the individual level.

With religion's decline, as measured by both belief and church attendance, a vacuum has been created. I don't know if the problem has been with the shallow options that have filled the void or the fact that they are incompatible, tribal groups fighting for the same space.

The largest branch of neo ethics to fill the void has been social justice. A lot of this derives from the 7 themes Catholic social teaching, notably the "preferential option for the poor." The other major ideology to emerge has been the alt-right, although I'm unsure if they have a clear ethical system other than "immigrants=bad" and a desire for "law and order."

The Meaning of Meaning
Meaning is the answer to the question: What makes suffering worth it? This void has been filled with nationalism, tribalism, and the crusade against "the other"? Ernest Becker believed that once humans become aware of their own mortality, they seek immortality. Religion, and it's promise of an afterlife, accomplishes this. In its absence, people attach themselves to a cause, one that will live on after they die.

Although Christianity has been used to justify violence, oppression, and other terrible acts, a lot of early American Christianity was based on simply loving God and loving your neighbor. In neo meaning and the crusade against "the other", the basic tenet is to slay the evil dragon. It's motivated by war rather than love, fighting the devil rather than worshiping God.

The evil dragon can be the patriarchy, oppressors, immigrants, barbarism, government, or tyranny.  For example, social justice is less about feeding, clothing, and caring for the poor (love) than it is about smashing the oppressors (war) such as capitalism, white men, and the patriarchy in general.  Trump, torch bearer for the alt-right, has paid lip service to helping native-born Americans with tariffs on imports and deregulation on coal mining in an effort to help struggling Americans (love), but spends more time demonizing and deporting immigrants (war).

Habitat for Immigrants and Orphans
Instead of protesting outside Planned Parenthood (war) abortion opponents should promote abortion alternatives (love). The problem is that there are two alternatives; and neither are great. One, abstinence until marriage, is simply ineffective, especially to a secular crowd. The other, birth control, is anathema to conservative orthodoxy.

Maybe a third way is to support adoption. Create funds (publicly or privately) that provide care for unwanted pregnancies (health care and lost income support) and reduce the barriers, financial and otherwise, to attract more adoption parents. Imagine conservative Christians dialing back the "abortion is evil" rhetoric and taking the mantel of "adoption is your duty!" This would emphasize love over war. Either that or ease their stance on birth control.

The pro immigration crowd, instead of fighting government restriction, should be opening their house to immigrants. Give them food, shelter, and support until they get on their feet. The anti immigration group can't complain because this way the immigrants won't be using up public services. What better way to love thy neighbor while having some skin in the game?

This opens up a philanthropic opportunity for Habitat for Humanity. Instead of building homes for the poor, they could build additions to middle class homes for people who are housing immigrants/refugees or an adopted child who would have otherwise been terminated via abortion?

Empathetic Lives Matter
In communities with tension between cops and black citizens, adopt a system of voluntary service. Citizens who opt in will serve one day a year on the police force in lieu of jury duty. Each day, the police will be represented by members of the community who will be able to influence the cops' approach to community policing while also understanding the difficulty in the job. Those who opt out will not be able to have access to police services.

How do we address income inequality with love? What if, instead of forcing employers to pay a $15/hour minimum wage, employers gave customers the option to pay a voluntary surcharge during each transaction? This surcharge would have a suggested amount based on sales per month and how much each customer would have to pay to close the wage gap between what the employees make and a living wage. This surcharge would go into a fund that is equally distributed among the businesses employees at the end of each month.

Expand your "family"
What if your health insurance provider allowed you to add another member to your plan? Only, instead of a spouse or child, you "adopted" someone without access to health insurance. Think of the impact you can have on this one person's life! You can even bring them to their appointments and actually see their health improve from your actions. Or better yet, you can sponsor their health program. Maybe you and another family split the cost.

I get that war is simply a more motivating ethos than love. But using war to address a problem will only be met by war. With love, there is at least a chance of being met with love.

Love has been what is lost by this vacuum. It's right there in the neo ethics of social justice but no where to be found in the neo meaning of any of the post Christian ideologies. David Foster Wallace warned that this was the failure of postmodernism and called for a new type of fiction in which the "silence behind the engine's noise" is love.

Update
I'm not trying to say ethics derived from Christianity are better than those derived from social justice. I'm saying that we now have multiple competing ethical systems in our country and they are causing problems. I believe a solution is:

1. to derive your actions from the Greatest Commandment: love thy neighbor. Making your actions focused on love and not war will reduce conflict.
2. address your concerns on the individual level, rather than as a part of a group. Instead of "what can we do to fix this?" say "what can I do?" 

Mobilizing your tribe to fix something will inevitably lead to some form of coercion and more conflict. I also believe it's a hollow pursuit of meaning; once you slay one dragon, you'll always be looking for the next dragon and will inevitably make more enemies along the way.

Working through love on the individual level will produce less conflict and give more meaning to one's life.

Saving America: Part II

I've been reading American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present by Philip Gorski. He articulates two ideals, radical secularism and religious nationalism, both of which he believes are misguided.

In his conclusion, Gorski gives a vision for drawing our polarizing country together:

1. Banish big money from the political process. The marketplace of ideas cannot work properly if some people are allowed to buy giant bullhorns to shout down everyone else. The Preamble describes the virtues of freedom and equality, which I now view as competing ideas. Too much of one drowns the other. Likewise, allowing for the freedom of businesses to donate unlimited amounts to campaigns makes political influence unequal.
2. Make civic holidays into holidays again. This space for civic reflection and celebration has been gradually eroded for the sake of commerce...removed in the name of freedom itself. In other words, all non-essential businesses will be closed. Remembering our fallen, celebrating the Declaration, and giving thanks for our blessings would be good for civic spirit.
3. Make character education a part of civic education. The U.K. has introduced a program of character education in its public schools, based on research done by the Jubilee Center at the University of Birmhingham. It's purpose is to instill basic civic virtues such as honesty, courage, and generosity. This would help greatly with public discourse.
4. Establish a universal system of national service. Many countries require citizens to perform a national service. Ours should include men and women, military and civil service. If more families had children in the military, it would temper our trigger-happy instinct toward war. One of Nassim Taleb's examples of "skin in the game" included politicians not being able to vote on war efforts unless they had a direct family member in active duty. This would be a good start. It would give young Americans first-hand experience with our nation's diversity and instill an ethic of service in our youth.

Venn Diagram

What ideas here do liberals and conservatives agree on? I think 2 will work. Conservatives value tradition, sacredness, and respect. Liberals would get behind the anti-consumerism. Plus, those who are forced to work on holidays tend to be the working poor. This would be a good opportunity to stand on their side and against "oppressive" capitalism.

I think 4 would work too, as long as people can choose between military or civic service. Conservatives love the military and liberals love community service/social justice. Only libertarians would disagree with forcing individuals into this, but they're used to being the minority. 

I really like 3, but it's already super hard to get any changes done to the public school system. What would be displaced by this new program? It would be hard to get both sides to agree on what constitutes "character." Is it social justice? Self-reliance? Personal restraint?

1 just raises more questions. Do we make super PACs illegal? That would be a good start but I don't know how many non-rich conservatives would support it. Do we publicly fund campaigns? I can't see conservatives getting behind more taxes and government.

Gorski says John McCormick has a third option: wealthy citizens would be relieved of all tax burdens but in exchange would give up their rights to vote, to stand for office, or to contribute funds to political campaigns. I like the idea and how it fits in with "no taxation without representation" but I worry about the huge impact it will have on tax revenues.

How to Save America: Individualism or Centripetal Forces

I don't make a lot of bold claims, but there is one #hottake that I think about more and more. I believe that, within my lifetime, American democracy as we know it will come to an end.

I don't think our government will dissolve and I don't see civil war in our future either. I'm thinking of something closer to secession. Or, as David French wrote, a divorce.

There are too many forces pulling us apart and too few binding us to one another. I can only think of two solutions for keeping this country together.

I. Massive decentralization of our national government and returning of more power to the states (i.e. federalism). If you believe in a public option for healthcare, your state can tax its citizens and start one up. But you're not going to force people in other states to have their own if they vote against it.

If you think bakers shouldn't have to make cakes for gay weddings, you pass legislation protecting that right. If you want all employers to cover their employees birth control, go for it. Just keep it at the state level.

or

II. A return to a nation-wide belief in an American civil religion.

The problem with multiculturalism is that, while it keeps individual groups together, it does nothing to bind these cultures into the larger tapestry of American life. An American civil religion means we would all have to buy into certain values that our country represents, even as we retain our unique and specific cultural identities.

This option would be less likely to happen than the first option, a libertarian's dream, but here are some additional thoughts on it anyway:

• I used the word "return" but it would only work if we took what we had and modernized it, rather than expecting people to revert back to something from the past. Nostalgia feels nice but culture always moves forward. 
• This new American civil religion would have to incorporate ideas from the right and the left. We would have to decide on what we agree upon and what we agree to disagree upon. Right now, our Venn Diagram does not overlap at all. 
• We would derive this new civil religion from Enlightenment values as well as our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. It would have to somehow acknowledge our stained history w/r/t slavery and Native American genocide, rather than brushing these things under the carpet. More importantly, it would have to incorporate modern concepts like multiculturalism, privilege, and intersectionality.
• Once agreed upon, this civic religion would be taught in all schools, public and private. It would be required for all immigrants to agree to before becoming U.S. citizens.
• If necessary, it could spawn a new national anthem. Football players kneeling during the national anthem would have had far less support 50 years ago because the song meant so much to so many. That is no longer the case, which means we need a new set of values to get behind, something we all believe in. Something we would collectively get upset about if one of our citizens disrespected. We should celebrate and honor the ideals that make the country great while acknowledging our sins and pledging not to repeat them. Imagine social justice warriors and MAGA supporters being fervently enraged over someone disrespecting the same American ideal. What would that even look like?

Aberration or Precursor?

In 20 years, will we look back on the Trump presidency as an aberration or a precursor?

I want the answer to be "aberration" but I worry that I'm wrong.

"Precursor" is very vague, which makes it more likely. It doesn't necessarily mean Trumpism will win. It might mean the country swings harder in the opposite direction.

"Aberration" means we go back to electing candidates from the political establishment and never again consider unqualified demagogues. I wish I believed this.

I think the 2020 Democratic candidate is more likely to be a Kamala Harris/Elizabeth Warren type (not demagogues; but not the most experienced either), or even Oprah, than a Tim Kaine. And I think the reason is the Internet.

It used to be that cabinet-level experience was a ticket to the white house. That is the only reason Hillary Clinton took the Secretary of State position. If she believed staying a senator offered better presidential prospects she never would have taken the job.

However, in the Information Age, I believe that type of experience is a detriment. It probably makes you more qualified, but less electable. It makes your record public and allows your choices to be picked apart by the opposition.

Obama was a relative outsider and Trump had no experience. Rather than a flaw, this acted as a shield. It meant there were more opportunities for their opponents to get picked apart.

Clinton's time as Secretary of State and the scandal/not scandal involving her email server and Benghazi did nothing but hurt her. She probably would have been better off staying in the Senate.

That is why I think the trend of Washington outsiders will continue. I think Trump is a precursor that will lead to more candidates with less experience who pick apart the hypocrisy of established candidates and take advantage of voters.