The ReUpswing

Photo from Flickr

 

In The Upswing, Robert Putnam notes a pattern. In the late 19th century we were an individualistic country. As we moved into the 20th century, we became less individualist and shared more of the same values, something he calls "communitarian." After the 1960s, we reverted to becoming more individualistic. 

Putnam believes that if we shifted away from individualism before, we can do it again. My hypothesis is that this shift has already started, but it looks nothing like the previous move to communitarianism, instead it’s more of the conformity side of those communitarian/shared values. 

The culture war that is happening right now is about two dominant groups trying to enforce conformity. Both the cancel culture left and the natcon right want Americans to conform to their values. 

Take pronouns. They started off as a way for people to be open and accepting to all gender identities, very individualistic. Now you have employers forcing their employees to put their pronouns in their email signatures and Zoom names. Conform or be fired.

Take education. You had conservatives saying school choice (ie charter schools) is good; parents need more options. Now you have anti CRT laws censuring curriculum, leading to fewer options for learning. These laws don't happen at the local level; they apply to the all public schools in the whole state. You must conform. 

So I do think we are becoming less individualistic. But it’s not a reversion to the Putnam’s good communitarian values, but the darker conformist side. And two cultures are fighting it out while liberalism is standing on the sideline like, "Can't we go back to 'live and let live'?"

I don't know where this is going to go, but it doesn't seem like either side wants to make concessions. And classical liberalism, which has been the past solution to this problem, doesn't seem to have much sway. 

It's almost like community and conformity have decoupled. If I had to guess, I would say the cancel culture left will win out because it has youth on its side. As Tanner Greer wrote, Culture Wars are Long Wars. In a few generations, the nationalist conservatives will die out and the leftist will be dominant. 

However, illiberalism has historically been unpopular and I think cancel culture will make too many enemies for it to have too much cultural power. Something novel will replace both ideologies and maybe it will look something more like communitarianism. 

In Defense of Objectivity

I've seen too many people attack objectivity as stupid and wrong; abandoning all notions of neutrality to buttress their naked partisanship. I think this belief is not only wrong, but dangerous. 

I hate to go Reducto ad Hitlerium, but ya know who doesn't believe in journalistic objectivity? Putin. He doesn't allow journalists to report "just the facts," if those facts make him look bad.

The reason I find the absence of any pretense of objectivity to be dangerous is that it becomes a slippery slope to propaganda.

In describing what he dubbed "Social Justice U", Jonathan Haidt invoked this quote from Marx: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

The important role of journalism is to report the news and keep an informed citizenry. As soon as you abandon that mission, and adopt something like "moral clarity", you've then stepped into activism. You've changed your mission to something closer to Marx's vision of trying to change society. Then you're just a small step from propaganda. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with activism; it's just that it is decidedly not journalism. And journalism is too important to do away with.

Objective Communities

As I've quoted before, Scott Siskind states that objectivity isn't a binary, but a spectrum. But in The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch described a Karl Popper quote that I like even better.

“Truth, as Karol Popper said, is a regulative principle. Like north, it is a direction, an orientation, not a destination."

Rauch then goes on to describe how truth and objectivity are something that comes about from a community, not an individual.

"When we join the reality-based community … we resolve to conduct ourselves as if reality were out there and objectivity were possible, even while acknowledging that reality is elusive and perfect objectivity is impossible.”

For most of the 20th century, we had trust in the media because it was composed of a community that strove for objectivity. Rauch writes that when the American Society of Newspaper Editors was founded in 1922, its first order of business was to promulgate an ethics code, including things like distinguishing between news and opinion, soliciting a response from anyone whose reputation or moral character might be impugned in print. "To news professionals, correcting error should be a point of pride, a distinguishing and defining feature of the culture.”

These journalistic norms induce writers to paint a more complete, fair, and accurate picture of their reporting. Abandoning these norms because they reek of "performative neutrality" and you abandon truth.

In as much as biases exist, that makes the strongest case for viewpoint diversity. A single opinion writer might not present an objective view, but an editorial board with panoply of perspectives will do a pretty good job.

Knowledge of Self

When Rauch writes about conducting ourselves as if objectivity were possible, even while acknowledging that perfect objectivity is impossible, he's talking about something very real that I think many different groups of people can understand.

• Christians know that we are not free from sin. That knowledge doesn't lead them to rob, rape and pillage but to try seek redemption for when they do sin and strive to do better.
• White readers of Robin DiAngelo don't read White Fragility, learn about implicit biases and microagressions, and then conclude they can never not be racist so they might as well join the Klan. They try to be more mindful and look for ways to minimize harm against the black community.
• The rationalist community doesn't read about cognitive biases and conclude that people are hopelessly irrational. They develop systems and norms for overcoming biases and being less wrong.

This is even measurable. Phillip Tetlock's research into Superforcasters detailed observations about which personality traits led to people being right more than everyone else: they developed base rates to anchor beliefs and avoid recency bias, they thinked in probabilities rather than absolutes, they updated their positions as new information arrived. 

They kept a broad curiosity about the world, using multiple lenses rather than getting bogged down in one. They were more objective and this led to them being more right and less wrong. (To circle back to Rauch's point, Tetlock also found that a superforecaster's performance improved when grouped together with other superforecasters, thus proving the point about communities' ability to point toward a more truthy reality.)

If partisans, activists, or hedgehogs had the correct world view, then they would be ones making the most accurate forecasts. 

Words Matter

A professor started a twitter thread about "performative neutrality" that started off looking like a knock on objectivity but ended up actually defending it. Better yet, it was more like "saying you are objective isn't enough, you have to do these things to be something closer to objective."

He gives a good example.

What word did you choose? That word matters! It frames how someone new to the is going to perceive and frame the conflict.

While there will be lots of answers in class Monday, I expect most will say something like:

• War
• Invasion
• Conflict

— Jeremy Littau (@JeremyLittau) February 25, 2022

He pointed out how careful one has to be in choosing words. Yes, ten different writers might choose ten different words to describe what is happening in Ukraine. But a reasonable group of editors can agree on a ranking of those words from most to least objective and choose accordingly.

This takes work, but it is far from impossible. And while I still think there is a place for activist writing, it should never replace actual objective-seeking journalism.

Evolve

Now, all of this isn't to say the what our society needs is a reversion to "the way things were." For instance, I hate fact-checking journalism. It does nothing, really. And it often suffers from a bias that journalism is supposed to solve.

But if there is a direction for journalism to evolve, I think it's closer to the work of Amanda Ripley and Solutions Journalism Network. In her groundbreaking essay, Complicating the Narratives, Ripley notes that traditional journalism no longer has the same impact. 

"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. We continue to collect facts and capture quotes as if we are operating in a linear world. But it’s becoming clear that we cannot FOIA our way out of this problem. If we want to learn the truth, we have to find new ways to listen."

If people like Wesley Lowery want journalism to evolve to something like activism or moral guidance, Ripley thinks it should evolve to be more like conflict mediation. 

"If any of us want to understand what’s underneath someone’s political rage, we need to follow stories to these moral roots — just like mediators. “People tend to keep describing their stories in the same way,” McCulloch says. “In mediation, you try to flip that over and say, ‘How did you come to that? Why is this story important to you? How do you feel when you tell it to me?’”

In a way, this is activism as it has the potential to change society. But it's antitribalist as opposed to the bias-confirming moral clarity that increases tribalism. 

I do worry that the move from community journalism (eg New York Times) to individualistic journalism (eg Substack) will lead to more biases and less objectivity. But if there is a path for journalism to get us out of conflict and serve a great societal need, this is it.

Hygiene Theateria and AntiVaxtopia

About ten years ago I was listening to David Brooks on some news talk show. He had a take about America's declining trust in government that went something like this:

"Social Security would never pass today. You couldn't tell people: 'We're going to take some money out of your paycheck each month, spend it on other things, but don't worry, it will be there for you when you retire.'"

It's an interesting hypothesis, and one I'm inclined to believe, but it's not testable. But we might have something close that is testable.

I have a prediction for how I see Covid-19 changing our society. I think people are going to sort into two types of communities: Hygiene Theateria and Antivaxtopia. Both will feature very different people but movitaved by the same phenomenon: we're never going back to normal.

What is Normal?

It's a freezing cold take to say that antivaxxers are refusing the jab because they don't trust institutions: whether it's public health officials, Big Pharma, or mainstream media. It's beyond political; they even boo Trump when he touts the vax. 

No, my take is that antivaxxers are going to go beyond resisting the covid-19 vaccination. They are going to start resisting all vaccines and all institutions that require any of them. This is Brooks' hypothesis in play; something that we used to go along with (vaccination) is being reintroduced and many of the public are resisting. Whereas "normal" was getting all your shots, the new Covid normal is refusing all shots and rejecting places that require them.

So I think antivaxxers will start sorting into communities, employers, and other institutions that shun ALL mandates. They will create their own Antivaxtopia (and natural selection will have its way with them in a few generations).

New Risk Normal

My other prediction has to do with Covid's endemic stage. We are (hopefully) approaching a place where the lethality of Covid is falling under normal levels of risk, like the flu or car accidents. But for a certain portion of society, that concept of "normal risk" has been recalibrated and they will never feel safe again. 

They will never trust being in crowded places without a mask. They will seek out communities and institutions that have strict mandates where entrants must show a passport that proves you've been boosted in the last six months. 

They will always carry hand sanitizer and extra N95 masks. They will continue to hang plexiglass in front of their businesses registers. They will only work at jobs that allow full remote work. They will create their own Hygiene Theateria. 

Of course, there will still be a plurality of normies who continue to get vaccinated and wear masks in places that require them but otherwise continue living their life as normally as they can. But for these two groups, I think there is no going back to normal.

The Job Market as Your Therapist

I have a friend who once told me that everyone, everyone, should have a therapist. If nothing else, he said, it's someone to unload all of your shit on so you don't unload it on your family.

I've written ad nauseam about the death of the community and what this means for how people interact with the market. But the problem keeps staring me in the face. 

Case in point, I'm in a webinar about Gen Z and I'm told that they want a job that is meaningful. For my generation and older, this sounds like "I want a job where it feels like I'm having some positive impact on the world." But for Gen Z, it means they want the values of the employer to reflect their values.

This is new. 

People used to belong to churches or civic organizations or other moral communities that reflected their values, but Gen Z does not. As such, they unload all their shit on their employer.

This will massively change how our country looks. It will result in ideological sorting in the market. In the state, it will either swing back and forth with each election or lead to divorce.

Vampire Perks

I wish I believed there was a path for the community to arise as a place for people to unload their need for meaning. The common thing for people in my situation is to bemoan the morally bankrupt values of this younger generation and fight against it. But I am reminded of the Vampire Problem.

Most people--given the option to have an undead creature bite their neck, suck their blood, and transform them into a creature of the night that can only subsist on hunting and killing the living--would say "No, thanks." Even though every single vampire, who used to be human, loves being a vampire. They prefer it to their old life as a mortal human. So who's to say I wouldn't like being a vampire even if it's not my choice?

This is the Vampire Problem. Just because I don't like living in a world in which moral communities shift from the community to the employer, doesn't mean my children's generation won't prefer it that way. If this shift happens in my lifetime, I might even find myself liking it better.

Full Circle

I'm also encouraged by The Third Pillar. Reading it made me realize the long, surviving legacy of the community. As a bayesian who is partial to base rates, I have to ask myself, what is more likely: a change in society completely destroys the community as we know it, never to return? Or it finds a way to survive and push back against the state and the market, just as it always has.

What if this trend of transparently-politicized businesses continues and every employer explicitly states their political and moral values and employees self select into jobs that match their values? Reducing your pool of potential employees in half is going to make you weaker, just like any employer that only hired blonde-haired candidates would be weaker.

The first employer to defect (ie be open to job candidates of all ideologies) is going to outcompete all the other businesses that only hire social justice advocates or nationalists or whatever. The defections to becoming apolitical and to prioritizing the best employees over those who match your values will increase and the ideologically-minded companies will start to go out of business.

But the ideological businesses won't go away completely! People will have become so attached to having that tight moral community that they will continue to meet regularly. The old ideological businesses will just become the new churches and the community will return back where it belongs.

There, I galaxy-brained myself into it. I feel better now. I guess I don't need a therapist after all.

Why the rent is too damn high but the TVs are not

You should be able to raise a family on one single income. But @shoe0nhead is right to ask — how do we get there? First, let’s talk about making more money. And later this week we’ll answer the next question: how do we get costs down so that your money has value? https://t.co/YT4deiJfYy pic.twitter.com/04MTDkrt1O

— Blake Masters (@bgmasters) January 31, 2022

I can’t believe this moron is running for office and will probably win. But is he wrong? Isn’t it true that many Americans could survive on one income and that’s no longer the case? The neoliberals insist everything keeps getting better but it doesn’t feel that way.

So I guess I need to do some research to find what is true. And it starts with the graphic:

This blog post explains how author Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny, but not a car. Today, for most people, the opposite is true; they can afford a car but not a maid. Some things have gotten cheaper and some have gotten more expensive.

Life seems better in the 1950s for most middle-class families, but they had fewer and crappier clothes, electronics, toys, and cars. What was actually better was the cost of education, mortgages, and healthcare. Something “bring back American jobs” will have no impact on.

Housing is tricky. The chart shows almost no change but that’s because it looks at all US homes and gives an average. Wages are better, but they require degrees. And to find the jobs that pay those wages you need to move to parts of the country where housing is scarce, making it more expensive and often requiring two-income households. (I'd also guess the decrease in married households makes the cost of living look much worse compared to the good old days.)

Read this report from the Brookings Institute and you'll see that St. Louis has more houses that households, making housing cheap. San Francisco is the opposite, more households than housing, making housing expensive. And you can’t just pick up vacant homes and move them to where people live.

The rate of housing has not kept up with population growth, which is why you need two incomes to raise a family. I don’t see how an America First strategy is going to result in more housing to drive down prices so families will only need one income.

So if your plan to fix America's problem is to look back at how good we had it, you are going to trade off a lot of things that many Americans currently like (cheap electronics, cars, toys, and clothes). Unless you can clearly articulate a way to drive down the cost of education, healthcare, and housing, you're just another charlatan.

The Well-Intentioned Abuse of "Equity"

 From an Inside Higher Ed story:

“And in 2020, an important report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce supplied contemporary and comparative evidence that general education helps “tame” authoritarian inclinations and thus protects democracy….

Policy and higher education leaders must become bold in making the case that democracy is the foundation of everything else we hold dear….”

Cool. I love democracy, and loathe authoritarianism. Tell me more.

"At most institutions, participation in civic and democracy learning remains optional rather than part of the degree-requirement fabric."

Sigh. So we're going to promote democracy and erode authoritarianism in students by taking away their freedom to choose what classes to take and requiring them to enroll in what we want. Great.

My hope is that the case for democracy teaches students how to lose with grace. How to, as Sebastian Junger put it, prefer a fair system in which you have no power to an unfair system in which you have all the power.

I think this also means separating how we fight against things we don’t like; choosing between legislation and social pressure/persuasion. I don’t like the CRT bans that remove from school libraries harmless and important books about Ruby Bridges. But those bans, although illiberal, were achieved through a democratic process that I have to agree to respect. 

Will examples like these be taught to students? Or is it just going to be about voter ID laws and all the bad things Republicans do.

But that’s not even my biggest gripe with the article. It's this:

“And we need to set equity goals and markers so that the civic learning movement becomes inclusive rather than, as it is today, often marked by deep disparities between who participates and who does not…

“the students least likely to “do optional” are America’s low-income, first-generation students and students from historically underserved communities.

"The result is deeply inequitable participation in college-level civic learning.”

My gripe is aimed at this obsession with equity, a term that is often a noble goal that is too often shoehorned into strategies without a thought of its usefulness.

Managing Risk

According to The Big Short, the mortgage backed securities that led to the Great Recession were once a popular investment tool. Once you pooled a bunch of mortgages together, you got a really safe investment with pretty good returns. The problem is that, as demand for them surged, investors began to run out of mortgages to fill them with. This led to taking on riskier and riskier mortgages.

I think something similar is happening in higher education. About 80 years ago the number of US colleges took off in response to increasing demand, fueled by the GI bill, draft dodgers, and the rise of most people’s standard of living, making affording college a possibility. The latter part is what I am interested in and will return to. 

Since we haven’t done much to expand immigration (numbers improved, but not as a share of the population) and coupled with infertility and rising tuition, there is a shortage of demand and colleges are starting to look like 2007-era mortgage backed securities, with more students enrolling who are likely to drop out.

Does that mean low-income students should be discouraged from pursuing higher education? No, but I think both students and colleges need to be more transparent about what they are looking for.

Life Examined

Baby Boomers went to college to get a better job AND become a better citizen. The latter part is what comes from a life of relative privilege. You care about citizenship once your basic needs are met. For Boomers of that era who did not pursue college, it wasn’t always because of costs. A lot of times there was enough good-paying, low-skilled manufacturing jobs that didn’t require a degree.

Let’s be honest, this push to teach citizenship and the value of democracy is something you only care about when your hierarchy of basic needs have been met. You have to be privileged to even be thinking about it.

So close to getting it

The sad thing is that the Inside Higher Ed's author is so close to getting it.

“Faced with such disparities, educators point out that community college students (and many four-year college students) often live very complex lives, balancing college study with work and family and frequently facing searing societal disparities as well.”

The first generation, low income community college student who we’re trying to force, in the name of equity, to pass a course about citizenship and the value of democracy, isn’t in college because he wants to have a broad-based liberal arts education. He wants to get a job so he doesn’t have to worry about his heat being shut off, how to afford his son’s baby formula, or how to take care of his ailing mother. And there isn’t a manufacturing job that pays enough so this is his only chance.

He is in school so he can make more money! That is it! And now you’re going to force him to take some class that isn’t going to make him more valuable in the workplace? 

You want equity? Let’s start with making it easier for low income people to find good paying jobs. Anything that isn’t doing that is just making their lives harder.

The End of (Believing in) Hate

 I no longer believe in hate as some type of motivational principle. Slogans like "End hate" always sounded so silly to me and I think the reason is: I never believed in hate. Such slogans are attempts to treat the symptom rather than the cause.

I believe that hate is the manifestation of the former of the "fight or flight" reflex. And I believe that reflex is ignited by fear. So you could say that I just believe that hate is a response to fear.

One of my idealist beliefs is that we all share certain human emotions. And when someone acts in a way that seems stupid or evil, you should look for the common human emotion that causes it rather than lazily relying on something banal like hate, racism, or power--things that only bad guys do. If the motives you attribute to someone's behavior are not motives that play out in your life, then they probably aren't their motives either.

I believe that the alt-right's nationalistic, anti immigrant sentiment isn't about hatred and racism. I think it's about fear. I think that what they call "patriotism" is the feeling that America is a sense of their identity and they fear that they are losing that sense of identity. It's probably a good place to explain to them how black people feel about cultural appropriation. 

When black progressives talk about “code switching” and “white spaces”, I think they are talking about the fear of losing their identity. I think it is the same fear nationalists have toward immigrants; they worry outside cultures are entering their spaces and threatening to erode their identity. Either people's behavior is rooted in the same human emotions, or we start to believe something that sounds like race science.

I don't think AOC's "Tax the Rich" sentiment is born our of a hatred of billionaires or jealousy of their success. I think she fears that people won't be able to escape poverty without help and that the 1 percent are sitting on piles of help that could change the lives of those living in poverty.

If you diagnose hate, you treat it with censorship. Which never works. If you diagnose fear, you treat it with understanding. Which is harder work than censorship, but it's win-win in the end.