Years ago, when I commented on "Ship of Fools," I or another Yank had asked if there were a British equivalent to Nine Nations of North America, Joel Garreau's marvelous 1985 work that still
Someone at SOF wrote a beauty, which I kept and published here without attribution, while acknowledging it wasn't original to me. Probably via search engine, someone Named Ken Brown has stepped forward and claimed it is his. I have no reason to doubt it, though I don't have any ability to confirm it either. He has his own site, The View From Nunhead Station, which has as its current tope entry "Toward a New Railway History of Middle-Earth.
It is a thing little remembered – even by the Wise – that Dwarven miners had been laying or carving tracks along the floor of their tunnels to ease the movement of ore trucks and other gear since at least the end of the Second Age. Moria, in its time of glory, was completely spanned by such, and a cable-hauled gravity-assisted rack-and-pinion railway was laid in the to take mithril and gems down to Lorien, and return with such provisions as even Dwarves need.
I did the reader’s theater production in Concord. My son hinted pretty strongly that I
over-acted – “hamming it up” was the tweet, I believe. That’s hardly surprising, as I played
Tevye. The character’s actual name was
Frank MacPherson, a retired English professor in early stages of dementia, but
he kept shading into Tevye.
This is because I always play Tevye. The Importance of Being Yiddish; Death of a
Milkman; and the risque Oy! Anatevka! I
don’t mean to, but I just seem to believe that all of life needs more
Tevye. I can vary it at need: depressed
in A Day In The Life of Tevye Denisovitch, reflective in The Tragical History
of Tevye, Prince of Denmark. I play
Tevye in real life a lot, too.
It is even odder because I have never been cast as
Tevye. I was in Fiddler as a young man
and played Mendel, the rabbi’s son. Now that I look like Tevye and could play
him blindfolded (one of those avant-garde Toronto Shakespeare Festival things,
I imagine) my singing voice is shot and I’m too irritable to go to rehearsals
every night.
My second son almost succumbed. The one time I subbed in for
his director in high school, he started to make Frank Gilbreth rather Tevyish
in “Cheaper by the Tuzen;” but in college he fought free, and settled down to
shameless fly-catching in Chekov instead.
I actually do have a few other characters I can play, unlike
Walter Matthau, who always plays the same guy.*
There’s an irritable, sarcastic Scot (can go Irish, Yorkshire, or
Cockney at need), Inspector Clouseau, and Eeyore. Scratch that.
My Inspector Clouseau is just Tevye with a French accent.
*And a good thing, too.
We need more of that guy in the world.
Think of how few wars there would be if 10% of the male populace in
every country did that Walter Matthau schtik.
Elizabeth Scalia wrote a piece at First Things almost two weeks ago about the dissatisfaction of many older Catholics with mass as it is often celebrated these days.
My son is on the leadership team at church reading over the comments people have about what we should be looking for in a worship pastor - unable to contain themselves to that question and leaking out into what they want in worship itself (More projections screens! No projection screens! Newer music! Older music!)
Our Bible study friends, who came up in a particular era of evangelicalism, used the term worship to mean "an extended time of praise songs interspersed with extemporaneous prayer," which was always jarring to me, who uses it to mean the entirety of the Sunday service, and even something outside that.
Hearkening back to last night's conversation with our young friends (previous posts), they described preferences and we rolled over other possibilities - eastern orthodox rites, full-volume contemporary, emerging church.
I have recently come to the opinion that our desired worship style is more a heart language, a mother tonge, which we cannot easily change. We might intellectually assent that other forms are just as valid, but they just don't do it for us in practice. They don't work for us as well. This may be our childhood experience, our post-conversion form of worship, or one we have been in longest, but it is what our heart desires, and we think, our surest way to experience God. It is not absolutely immutable, but it resists modification.
Whether any of us thinks that is a healthy thing or not, I believe it is a reality of worship, and we might all do better if we recognised that our preference is deep-seated and works for us but not necessarily superior thereby. Also, that those others are not just being obstinate and unwilling to see that we would find our way much better if they would only give it an honest try, but on exactly the same footing.
I have noted from time-to-time that I seldom find worship all that emotionally moving anyway. I think it is because I don't have a mother tongue of worship, a favorite heart language that reaches to my depths. I have a collection of different worship experiences which are just fine but not exciting. Looking over my mixed worship history, it is hardly surprising. What would be surprising, in fact, is if I did have some form that really tripped my trigger.
On the other hand, there's some significant advantage in that. There aren't any forms of Christian worship that don't work at least somewhat for me. I don't get much of Quaker silence, and I desire it; I don't get much regular liturgy and I miss it; I like things quite raucous and contemporary at times - much more contemporary than our 1990 version at BCC, in fact; I like black churches, eastern churches. Pound-it-out late 19th C camp meeting I've had about enough of, but I don't need to avoid it, especially.
For me it's like a filling station. Some of them have conveniences stores, some don't; some have a Dunkin's, some will pump for you, they bear different brands, they are easier or harder to get to, less expensive or more, with carwash or air or not. It doesn't much matter to me. The car needs gas - this will do.
I can get taken out of worship by people doing some part of it very badly. I don't mean music poorly performed, but arrogantly, force-feeding a congregation what the worship team knows is good for it; or congregations clearly congratulating themselves on how right their worship is - not like those other ignorant people who aren't spirit-filled or whatever. It takes me a while to get past that. But if congregations just innocently do what they do because that's who they are, I find I can enter in to that pretty easily.
The young friends (previous post) and I chuckled over Christian cliches a bit last night, as we both encounter a fair number of believers whose understanding seems to go no deeper. Their faith might, but not their understanding.
It's offputting, certainly.
Yet this morning I was rereading The Professor and the Madman - an excellent story told in a ludicrous style - and ran across secular cliches strung together. Bull Durham* for writers, perhaps. The symptoms described for Captain Minor are quite clearly a late-onset paranoid psychosis, probably schizophrenia. Simon Winchester doesn't give us much detail, and the misinterpretation of tastes as well as sounds might send us toward another category of illness in understanding the American Captain, but the organic, or biological quality is unmistakeable.
But Winchester, even as recently as the 1990's, doesn't bother to ask any actual professionals what was actually wrong with the man, apparently. He reads the biographical information and notes that he comes from a pious family, lusted after naked girls in Ceylon when he was thirteen, felt guilty about it afterward but still felt lust, and attributes his later psychosis to this constellation of circumstances. He as much as sighs that if the boy had only gotten laid a few times as a youth and not troubled himself over it, he might not have turned into a murderer.
I have not noted that any reviewers have objected to this idiocy. It's the cliche, the preferred narrative that missionary piety leads to pathological guilt, especially over sex (and more especially of the nice natural sex of exploiting native girls?), and the personality is forever warped. That many boys (or girls) of pious family experience lust as teenagers and feel guilty about it, yet don't go on to murder others and be locked up for life in institutions for the criminally insane, seems not to occur to Winchester. Or his reviewers.
*Crash Davis: You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them. They're your friends. Write this down: "We gotta play it one day at a time."
Young friends who are believers but have no church home were over last night. I understand why they are distant and unltracautious about church - and they do lots of things to compensated for it in keeping contact with other young believers.
Most people would have some disquiet about that because they feel that all young people should have a network of strong and mature believers around them for their upbuilding and edification. For me it's the opposite, or rather, the reverse. You have to be yoked to a certain percentage of knuckleheads or you don't grow in the faith.
Yeah, that sounds cute and ironic, but I mean just that. If you have nothing but great Christian fellowship (We were really blessed!) then I'm not sure you've got the full package.
In case you were wondering why there was no "Australian Invasion" in 60's pop music. I always liked the 12-string guitar that the lead played, though I'm not seeing it here. A little research shows that it was Harry Vanda, and a Maton guitar (a very good brand).
Thus the Wyman Family Culture was slated to drift into its next phase, dispersion, in 2000. Jonathan was a Junior at Asbury and was still dating his highschool sweetheart who had followed him there, part of one-quarter of the Concord Christian class of '98 who went from NH to Asbury. Ben was plodding along happily in his own self-contained way, doing well at school, playing JV basketball, surfacing into conversation with others often enough to be interesting. As one of the older boys put it, we were that reading, eccentric, high-volunteering family that won all the puzzles and contests. Tracy and I looked forward to some variation of "Mama in her kerchief, and I In my cap, were looking forward to a long winter's nap that involved lots of reading, and perhaps travel." The end of an era approached, and it was a satisfying and comforting feeling to watch our two about to be well-launched.
My mother was dying, which took a great deal of travel up to Wolfeboro, twice a month, then once a week, then twice a week and three. Terribly sad, but that also fit with the ending of the era. My father would live on for a few more years, and I am like him in many ways, but my part of the family culture derives strongly from my mother and her side of the family, specifically her mother's side, where everyone played word games and knew poetry and talked with animation. When my mother died in October, I knew I would see little of my stepfather after (though I never expected he would forbid contact entirely).
I had visiting Romania in 1998, and after hearing Dale Kuehne mention that he had encouraged Rachel to go because he didn't want Romania to be the Other Woman in his life, I convinced Tracy to go in 1999. Perhaps this would be our new direction, one or both of us going to Romania every year. It seemed a place where we could carve out some ministry niche. But the cards fell differently and we adopted two teenagers from the orphanage instead, bringing Romania to America instead of the other way around.
The cultural divide was sharp. Jonathan graduated the week before they arrived, and Ben was finishing his junior year and looking on to college himself. Yet it never became two families. That was part of our energy and intent, to make sure that Chris and JA integrated into a family they would still have after we died, but I think Jonathan and Ben would have naturally done that anyway, or so it seems in retrospect. We were now the raucous House of Boys, with people noisily slamming in and out all the time, with more argument and less deep reflective conversation and clever irony. Irony is a weak teacher across foreign language and culture. Now we were all part Romanian. A new student at Concord Christian couldn't figure out why towheaded Ben had no accent and didn't speak Romanian like his brothers. (I think he never did get it. A full sandwich short of a picnic, that boy.) We had soccer players who knew what they were doing, but had no interest in baseball, basketball, or football. One of them does now.
Yet the continuity was also enormous - likely because that too was a specific, intentional part of our raising them. We have all become each other to some extent, which is how it should be. That makes no sense on the surface, but I think it is the grand expansion of goodness. We are each, all seven, very distinct from each other, yet there is similarity. Goodness can grow and expand, it does not have to harbor strength.
Next up, I will comment on acquiring sons at junior high age and how one raises them, which in turn sheds light on how one raises them from birth.
In these foreign-language robot spam comments I get on my back posts, I got my first one in Romanian: deratizare bucuresti. I think it means professional cleaners, or perhaps exterminators, in Bucharest.
I am reading tomorrow for a coworker's original script at the Concord Auditorium. The few rehearsals have reminded me why I loved acting and hated it, and why it is a good thing I left it. Simplest form: It is bad for my character.
Ironically, I may be better at it now than I was then. No matter. Still not good enough to make a living, and the danger of descent into more obnoxiousness remains high.
Part of my ongoing correspondence. My uncle mentioned the great hypocritical irony of blue states supporting red ones, of red states that received much per dollar sent and blue ones that received little. My original replay was that the numbers looked very different when you broke it out by county, and the state breakdown was misleading. He accused me of being evasive, and not attending to the real data, aending along the following list:
States Receiving Most in Federal Spending Per Dollar of Federal Taxes Paid:
1. D.C. ($6.17)
2. North Dakota ($2.03)
3. New Mexico ($1.89)
4. Mississippi ($1.84)
5. Alaska ($1.82)
6. West Virginia ($1.74)
7. Montana ($1.64)
8. Alabama ($1.61)
9. South Dakota ($1.59)
10. Arkansas ($1.53)
States Receiving Least in Federal Spending Per Dollar of Federal Taxes Paid:
1. New Jersey ($0.62)
2. Connecticut ($0.64)
3. New Hampshire ($0.68)
4. Nevada ($0.73)
5. Illinois ($0.77)
6. Minnesota ($0.77)
7. Colorado ($0.79)
8. Massachusetts ($0.79)
9. California ($0.81)
10. New York ($0.81)
My reply:
There are two separate subjects here. First, the specific data about who sends money to Washington and who gets it back. Second, why it is important to liberals to divide things into Red States and Blue States.
I have seen other lists with less dramatic numbers but similar results, so I’m guessing that different things are being counted, but the trend is real. I am not contesting that for what it measures, the list of which states are net givers and which are net receivers is accurate. The problem with the data, as I suggested when I noted you get a different reading when breaking down by counties, is that suburbs, towns, and small cities pay for everything and are purple. Look at the lists again and you will see that it is highly related to population density.
Big cities and rural areas are a drain, though in different ways. But cities have one big advantage for the government, and it is why many environmentalists are advocating that people be encouraged to move to cities (quite a reverse from where they started, eh?). You can deliver services much more efficiently there. Rail passenger service is only cost-effective at high population density, for example. Delivery costs of food and goods is less. You can build one big Something rather than a lot of little ones. Highway construction is much more expensive per mile in Trenton, but you have way fewer miles to build than in North Dakota. The Big Dig in Boston was insanely over cost and probably a long time before it pays for itself. But it serves a lot of people, and I’ll bet without even checking that there are highways in West Virginia far more useless. Yet because the final number isn’t as big, it doesn’t get the press.
It is still ironic that ranchers getting fewer, but longer and emptier highways, don’t mentally count this cost when they think about “government,” but it’s part of the entitlement mentality we all have. Highways are part of the furniture. Also, the government owns a lot of the land out west – Yellowstone doesn’t cost a fortune to administer, but it doesn’t pay anything in taxes either. Rural areas are receivers of agricultural subsidies and related crap. A lot of those growing areas aren’t especially red – Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado. Most of those central states are pretty well divided – agricultural welfare remains a bipartisan problem, which is why we can’t even get rid of the sugar subsidy.
The money comes in from the purple suburbs, towns, and small cities, as I noted. They don’t get so much back. Think where the money goes back out to. One big ticket item is military bases. But those are only partly tied to a local economy, and hardly to a state’s economy at all. Twenty miles out, the effect is pretty weak. So when the feds shovel money into Camp Pendleton, San Luis Obispo doesn’t see a lot of that bread. Yet by the calculations of the list you sent, it would look like some big windfall for “California.” Look at the list again and you won’t see a lot of places known for their military bases. Population density. That land is put to the use of underlying homes and businesses.
So the list is an interesting data point that tells us something, and it does have its ironies. But drawing a red-blue conclusion from it is pretty sketchy. The purple areas pay the bills.
Second, the need for liberals to keep dividing things this way. Other groups have followed their lead, and to a smaller extent, some have even embraced that thinking. But generally, before you have looked at a single number or label, when you see a map or list that is drawing a Red State Blue State comparison, that map has been drawn by a liberal to show how good the people in the blue states are, and how bad those awful reddies are. Try it at home. The large exception is electoral maps, which necessarily have to be conceptualized by states. Yet even here, the automatic thinking of all political events in terms of electoral power is much heavier on the left. It’s rather chilling whenever some current legislator dies how quickly you can find writers in the Huffington Post speculating on who can be run for that office, and what the chances are of Democrats winning it. Before the body is even cold. (And yes, now that the phenomenon has been noticed, there are conservative sites who track it.) Republicans aren’t innocents on that and do some of the same. Right now they are doing altogether too much of it with the Texas-California thing. But it’s damn revealing.
Back to the map-drawing and list-making by states. I don’t think the liberal focus on this is a good thing. It obscures a lot of important information, as above. States are not that homogeneous, even the small ones like New Hampshire. But there is a deeper need, quite unattractive. It is the need to demonise, to put people into convenient categories and just regard them as stupid or evil. I have always thought that liberals are quick to accuse others of racism or sexism because they are projecting. They think that is how the world works, that people just naturally divide others into competitive categories. They focus on one set of divisions where they think they are more innocent, ignoring the ones where they are worse.
This relates to the other reason it is liberals driving the red state-blue state conceptualization of the country. They are actually only about 15-19% of the voting population. They are the leaders (dare I say rulers) of a coalition which includes blacks and unions plus some smaller groups. But being able to paint a whole state blue, and discussing everything in terms of the near-balance between Us and Them allows them to inflate their impression of who agrees with them. Which is why they are always amazed when stuff like Sandra Fluke polls against them.* The left-right political division is a leftist conceptualization from the early 20th C that they have used to great effect. But countries aren’t really divided that way, none of them, never have been. There have always been a variety of groups with shifting interests – just like countries, which sometimes switch sides in a war.
*How can that be? I thought more than half the country supported women’s rights? Why does more than half the country hate the poor and women? Uh, check your premises, that’s how. And whenever feeling righteous is on the line, liberals stop thinking. Okay, that’s true of everyone. But for some reason it is just a million miles from liberal understanding. It’s a mob psychology that scares the pants off me.
I first heard this at scout camp, which would have been 1965. It had the Kingston Trio sound I grew up with, and I thought it must be old - at least a generation. It had great emotional power for me for an odd reason.
I had been at YMCA camp since age 6, but this was my first (and only) year at Camp Carpenter. I didn't have especial nervousness, and rather liked being able to pick up a couple of merit badges on the cheap, as my scoutmaster, old Wally Webb, he of the 42-year pin and Silver Beaver award, was very strict and didn't want any hotshots moving through the ranks too quickly. The whole village, named after some group of Indians, of course, went on an overnight hike and campout at the end of the lake. I was one of the youngest and a little odd, and my two friends were in other villages.
There was a thunderstorm, which woke me in the middle of the night, at which point I noticed that I was the only one around. They had gone somewhere and left me behind. It later turned out they were only "about a hundred yards" away at a makeshift shelter. But as far as I knew they had gone back to camp, so I headed back in that direction. There was a path that ran along the edge of the lake, and I later calculated on the map it was less than a mile, but I was a rather forlorn 12-year-old trudging back, with an unraveled sleeping bag and soaked clothes. I don't think I cried, but I was feeling rather abandoned and cast aside, a child with no father and no one who seemed to care.
When I got to the regular village, it was empty. You'd think I would be relieved to be back in dry, familiar territory, but I was worried I was in big trouble. When reveille was played in the morning, I wondered if I should hide or go to morning assembly and face the music. I elected to go, standing all alone in my troop's spot as the flag was raised before breakfast, trying to stand at very good attention and be precise in my scout oath and movement. (At that moment, I actually was grateful to Mr. Webb for teaching me properly. I hoped it would keep me out of trouble.) I marched into the mess hall at the proper time and sat at our village's tables. There was nothing set out for me, of course, so I went over to the window and grabbed plates and bowls - they looked like this, remember?
- and got in the line for getting seconds, figuring I would have to wait a bit, but at least would get something. I didn't dare ask anyone for anything.
You may wonder how a boy of twelve could be so foolish as to think he would be the one in trouble over such an event, rather than the adults and older scouts charged with keeping track of me. You forget what a different world it was, and how it was automatically assumed that children were at fault if anything went wrong. I was in trouble, at least at first. Irritated men came over to ask me where my troop was, and why I had left it. Not until I was safely home, and my mother had heard the whole story and angrily followed up on this was there any acknowledgement that I was the victim. Even then, they apologised to her and she relayed that to me as if I should feel vindicated. No one ever said a word to me.
At camp, I finished out the week amidst whispers about the boy who had run away from his village. Children are easily distractable, plus I was back in contact with my two buddies - they believed me and commiserated, anyway - so it wasn't too bad, actually. The walk in the dark and sitting alone at breakfast were the worst of it. There were awards on the last night and only a few of us had completed the Mile Swim, so I felt I had proved myself in some way. Then it was final campfire, with songs we had learned and a few new ones cooked up for the occasion. "I'm Henry VIII I Am" was #1, and the counselors did a takeoff called "I'm Docked For The Summer I Am," which of course I still remember all the words to.
The second to last song was "The Blizzard," which I had never heard. It's maudlin, and I had considerable susceptibility to such then, but there was also an immediate identification with the man traveling alone at night, looking forward to home and someone who love him. Then the "hundred yards" part really had me tearing up. It was just like what I had been through. Except that he was in bitter cold, and died, of course, but other than that it was about me.
I picked the Jim Croce version mostly for novelty, and because it's not quite so overdone.
Not until years later did the ridiculousness of this song come to me. It's friggin' horse, Mack, not a human being. What kind of twisted loyalty to a non-sentient creature causes you to refuse to walk into the house so that you can pretend his last moments were less tortuous because his pal had stayed behind with him?
I keep wondering if it is only my liberal friends, or if it applies to all liberals, but I get a lot of emails and work comments that focus on the (supposed) humor of how ridiculous conservatives are. Often there is even an explicit comment of "I can't believe Santorum/Gingrich/random evangelical pastor from Podunk/ is saying this! What are they thinking?" Or more revealing still, a comment about how easy this is going to be to make fun of - that Leno or Colbert are going to have easy pickings. Knowing smirks are common.
And then nothing. No follow-through. No further reasoning is necessary, apparently.
How easy something is to make fun of as a measure of its rightness or wisdom. Only in high school. I don't see how it is making the top ten reasons for believing something otherwise. Lord knows I've got plenty of reasons to leave the Republicans behind, but every time I try I meet one of these brain-dead Democratic arguments at the first corner and have to just sit down and sigh.
It is a specific variety of the general set of arguments of "research showing how stupid conservatives are," and "mind-reading how Republicans have reasons other than what they say," and "evidence that the Right is selfish and evil." But this might the most important, the crown jewel. If only we can show that there is something ridiculous about these people then everyone will come over to our side. It must really strike a chord - how else would Trudeau have stayed in business all these years? (Slight credit. Trudeau can sometimes make fun of his own, a healthy sign. But it has strange limitations. Mostly, it's humorous only to his tribe, because it's not much more than sneering.)
Some general rules:
1. Everything is easy to make fun of.* Even middle-school kids accomplish it. Professionals have an ability to do it with that extra flair, twist, and delivery - that last 1% takes talent - but it's still easy.
2. If someone is trying to be serious, it is extra-easy to make fun of them.
3. If sex, food, or money is within fifty meters of the topic, it is easier still.
4. If your audience already agrees with you, you don't even have to be funny.
5. I can take the things you hold dear and make fun of them with no effort - funny enough that a group of knuckleheads I select will forward it to each other. (Which isn't funny enough for me to bother, BTW.)
6. It's not an actual, er, y'know, intellectual argument.
It is not accidental that the conservative NPR-humor is most comfortable is PJ O'Rourke, an ex-liberal whose strength is making fun of people. I love PJ - I think he brings real observational skill and wisdom to the American scene. But it's not lost on me that snark is his oeuvre.
*If you read outside your culture or time period this becomes embarrassingly obvious. Liberals seem to be prisoners of current events and intellectual fashions.
I picked the right day to wonder what was up with Nicholas Nassim Taleb, it seems. He's all over the news.
I have said all year that I am unexcited by the field, but the Republicans have only to notify me who they have nominated in November and I will cast my vote - but that Ron Paul might make me rethink that. As of Taleb's announcement, at a minimum that qualifier is gone. The Author of The Black Swan, who is not a libertarian, neither Republican nor Democrat, not especially political and deeply involved in other projects - has "come out of his library" to campaign for Ron Paul.
He notes four major issues, and Paul is the only one addressing them with the severity needed. Taleb uses words like metastacised, chemotherapy, and hyperinflation in his little speech. The deficit, he states, is 90% of the problem. Then the fed, then militarism rather than defense, then resilience and energy. He is notably less excited on the Ron Paul difference in those categories, yet he still gives him the edge. And once you've put out that 90% number, the rest doesn't matter so much, does it?
A new Pew Report, high points here, notes that 18% of social networking site users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone because of their political comments. Liberals are more likely to do this than conservatives, 28-16. Moderates less. Fascinating report.
I think that would be me, were I a user, having much opportunity to feel hurt because some friend tossed me over. But it wouldn't be because of anything I brought to the conversation - it would be my response to what someone else brought. I'm not good at staying away from that stuff. I seem to believe strongly that wrongness needs reply.
“Any social science which does not teach the impossibility of rational
social construction is entirely blind to the most important facts of
social life.”
Yuval Levin has commentary on Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart and the general topics behind it. His view is that the formation of the New Lower Class and the New Upper Class are not that strongly related. In his view, the former is simply falling apart, and the latter has little effect on that.
Many of the other critics of Murray's book make the claim that wage stagnation and loss of good jobs for lower-middle and middle-class workers has driven the collapse of family formation in Fishtown, not some moral deterioration that we should tsk-tsk at. Sometimes this job loss is presented as the result of bad economic policies left or right, sometimes as fairly inevitable given the world economy. Steve Sailer would note that everyone is ignoring the effect of immigration, especially illegal immigration, in creating this.
I do think it is likely that the technical advances since 1960, plus the addition of women to the paid workforce, should have made Americans fabulously more wealthy, but we have squandered it and learned bad habits. Now that we can afford to divorce, we've done lots of it, and "family" income now supports two dwellings. We have been able to afford college majors - perhaps even the education itself - that does not produce anything of job value, so we've done that too; a lot of talent has gone into areas of refinement, or knowledge for its own sake, or enjoyment - all of which used to be available mostly to the sons of the independently wealthy. In a constantly growing economy, there was always a way to use that knowledge. We can now afford to entertain ourselves lavishly, and boy have we ever. The new normal for how much choice and fun we think we should have has taken over enormous chunks of our economy.
I have opinions on all that, which I leave off for the moment in order
to talk about family formation, as that is nearer to the parenting topic
I have been pondering more lately.
The simplest fact is that the world has changed and is changing. Some have the skills and attitudes the era calls for, others have to scramble. The rules have changed. It is now more imperative that couples remain married - which makes this data from The Witherspoon Institute troubling. I am not encouraged that young people still endorse the idea of getting married if they don't know what that means. It is more important to live modestly and delay gratification, because volatile economies, even if they generally reward you, are going to have scary times.
The Virginia Postrels of the world believe that new jobs will keep being added, because they always have. It's not a bad argument, but I am reminded of the opening of Taleb's The Black Swan, in which some Lebanese were certain that their battles and upheavals are temporary and everything will go back to normal - because it had for a thousand years.
Dubbahdee sends along an article by a design company showing how graphic presentation can make different impressions - all of them true - arise from the data. They disguise their own slant - if they have one - admirably well, though if I had to guess I would think they lean left.
The examples given by Darrell Huff in How To Lie With Statistics are more linear. This example is a little subtler, not only relying on our immediate visual impression, but on our quiet assumptions as well. I will repeat, BTW, that the Huff 1954 book, though all the dollar values should likely be increased by a factor of ten now, should be required reading in highschool. When folks take it into their head to design a canon to suggest for secondary education, that title is nearly never on the list, but immediately assented to once someone suggests it in the comments. List-makers tend to favor books which teach Great Ideas. Seeing through Bad Ideas may be more to the point.
