Bjorn Lomborg debated Bill McKibben at Middlebury College recently, and a video of the event can be accessed online from the college library. I am surprised this hasn’t received more attention, as it shows the keys differences between the environmental advocacy argument and the mild skeptic argument in a straightforward way.
Lomborg is a PhD economist specialising in statistics. McKibben is an author of books on a variety of subjects, gravitating strongly to environmental themes.
As I don’t want to prejudice anyone’s opinion before viewing, I will withhold commentary for a polite amount of time to allow folks to watch the video. I estimate that something over half of my readers are mild-to-moderate enviroskeptics, yet there are also a few full-throated environmentalists here. To all viewers I would note that both speakers in the video make some solid points that are not entirely answered by the other. Keep your ears on.
After 10 minutes of introduction and setting the stage by a Middlebury professor from the environmental studies dept, Lomborg speaks for 45 minutes, then McKibben for 25. Both are engaging enough speakers to hold your attention. There is then time of rebuttal and submitted questions. The whole shebang takes about 2 hours. I know none of you has that kind of time to spare, but as this encapsulates issues that would take you many hours of reading to acquire a knowledge of, I think you will find it worth it.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Sailor Suit
Bethany over at Fair Trade Certified has a good chuckle of a story about Gay & Lesbian Pride weekend over at her site.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Family Backpacking Notes - This Time With Pictures
I made it all the way up and all the way back. That was goal number one. I'm old.
We did not find the Bette Davis plaque. It is supposedly a quarter-mile up the trail, by the brook's edge. Unfortunately, the trail does not get to the brook until the three-quarter mile mark. There is an old path and an old road, both with lots of treefall and overgrowth now. We tried the path, searching both upstream and down when we reached Coppermine Brook. No plaque. The road would be a better choice, then. Of course "the road that used to lead to the old bridge" doesn't narrow it down much in the White Mountain National Forest. The area you're in may look like ancient wilderness to you, but poke around any stream and you'll eventually be telling your companions "Huh. It looks like there used to be a bridge here."
My nephew Doug mentioned that there was supposedly an old copper mine, which hardly seems surprising on Coppermine brook. It took some searching of old maps to get a guess where it might be, but we found zoomable maps of the 1892 atlas of Grafton County in the David Rumsey Collection. Those maps mark the old copper mine near the trail and old lead mine above the falls. If it was old in 1892, after 100+ years of forest overgrowth we're not going to find it now without a lot of bushwhacking and frustration.
The plaque mentions Peckett's Hotel, and the mine was also called Peckett's Mine, which is of interest since an old friend of ours married into the Pecketts in Franconia.
The word "old" is showing up a lot in this post. Peachy. We had a wonderful time in the frigid water, tending the campfire, gorging on gorp and arguing about whose pack was heavier. I have the Fox News pack - fair and balanced. Mine leans to the left - must be a CNN pack. This led to my second son's discussion of the production values of the two networks, and he assures me that CNN's are much better. Fox still makes mistakes like running the wrong graphic, and to people who know camera and broadcasting work, it undermines their credibility.
I have to believe him. I've never seen Fox, and have seen CNN only in airports.
One of the Romanian brothers got to come for the first time, and so got to borrow some childhood memories. Fathers, be careful where you take your children camping when they're little, because when they wax nostalgiac twenty years later and want to "all hike to the place you used to take us," you'll want it to be something you can still manage. You could do worse than the 80-ft falls (two cascades) at Bridal Veil in Franconia. There's even a 3-sided shelter to get your old bones up off the ground.
They Are Just Nuts
There was an essay from Daily Kos, perhaps the major liberal website, a few days ago (No offense meant to Huffpo, MyDD, Democratic Underground, et alia). It notes an obscure bit of legislation that the author believes is being put into place so that George W. Bush can declare martial law and refuse to give up the presidency in 2009. It’s just nuts.
We have to start there. This is a supposedly serious thinker, writing on a supposedly serious political site, and it’s just nuts.
Sane people can have crazy ideas. In fact, it is likely that all of us have an odd belief or two tucked in an odd corner. I know relatively sane people who think that Henry Kissinger is the Antichrist, or that the pagan goddess on the seal of the EU is significant in apocalyptic prophecy. Tax protesters, New Agers, and diet addicts all have their favored beliefs. Lots of folks read or watched The DaVinci Code last year, and some folks still get outraged if one suggests that WWF is fixed. People fall for Ponzi schemes. There are amazingly improbable urban legends which remain widely believed even by educated people, and there are urban legends which are believed especially by educated people.
I touched on this a year ago in a similar context. Fashions in paranoia change slowly, I guess.
Conservatives see this as merely bizarre, that anyone could think that Chavez, the Saddam of yore, and Bush differ in national authority only in small degree. Liberals think conservatives blind for not seeing it. It is for this reason that protestations that the left is being paranoid and hyperbolic fall on deaf ears. They really believe that a president wields enormous power, and any move by the Bush administration to assert authority in an unclear area is an attempt to capture that last few percentage points of power and bring us close to autocracy.
I sent the story along to a few liberal friends, who wrote back that they hoped it wasn't true. One added the disclaimer that he was sure that there were some in this administration who would act like this if they could. Astounding. This is on the level of believing in the Illuminati - of the animals believing Napoleon when he blames Snowball in Animal Farm.
In a related story, I had someone again tell me at work the story of Dan Quayle wishing that he's brushed up on his Latin so he could speak to the people of Latin America. Snopes, as usual, comes to the rescue with the news that this is false, and just one more urban legend.
Why do they need so badly to see Republicans as evil and stupid? What does it say about you if you are willing to gullibly swallow anything about your opponents?
We have to start there. This is a supposedly serious thinker, writing on a supposedly serious political site, and it’s just nuts.
Sane people can have crazy ideas. In fact, it is likely that all of us have an odd belief or two tucked in an odd corner. I know relatively sane people who think that Henry Kissinger is the Antichrist, or that the pagan goddess on the seal of the EU is significant in apocalyptic prophecy. Tax protesters, New Agers, and diet addicts all have their favored beliefs. Lots of folks read or watched The DaVinci Code last year, and some folks still get outraged if one suggests that WWF is fixed. People fall for Ponzi schemes. There are amazingly improbable urban legends which remain widely believed even by educated people, and there are urban legends which are believed especially by educated people.
I touched on this a year ago in a similar context. Fashions in paranoia change slowly, I guess.
Conservatives see this as merely bizarre, that anyone could think that Chavez, the Saddam of yore, and Bush differ in national authority only in small degree. Liberals think conservatives blind for not seeing it. It is for this reason that protestations that the left is being paranoid and hyperbolic fall on deaf ears. They really believe that a president wields enormous power, and any move by the Bush administration to assert authority in an unclear area is an attempt to capture that last few percentage points of power and bring us close to autocracy.
I sent the story along to a few liberal friends, who wrote back that they hoped it wasn't true. One added the disclaimer that he was sure that there were some in this administration who would act like this if they could. Astounding. This is on the level of believing in the Illuminati - of the animals believing Napoleon when he blames Snowball in Animal Farm.
In a related story, I had someone again tell me at work the story of Dan Quayle wishing that he's brushed up on his Latin so he could speak to the people of Latin America. Snopes, as usual, comes to the rescue with the news that this is false, and just one more urban legend.
Why do they need so badly to see Republicans as evil and stupid? What does it say about you if you are willing to gullibly swallow anything about your opponents?
Jeri Thompson
Joe Scarborough at MSNBC asks whether Fred Thompson's wife Jeri "works the pole." This leads to the immediate question "Why does Joe Scarborough still have a job when Don Imus doesn't?"
Kicking Progressives: A Review
Last year at this time I was putting a lot of energy into refuting progressive arguments by using Logic. That’s a good thing, because it’s an important topic but I’m more interested in breaking new ground just now. Some of you like watching liberals get kicked, so I will repost the links. Some are religious in topic, others more political and social. Several of the posts have excellent comments, including some that challenged my statements.
Continue reading Rush Is Wrong, Sort Of
Short version: no one is running the world. The 60's fantasy of trying to figure out who is behind it all - and the idea that it was the phone company was pretty funny - of tracing the military-industrial complex, blaming Nixon, or otherwise speculating who had the power to move society, is completely off reality. Even the modified version, of multinational corporations, advertising, Big Oil, Microsoft, etc is wildly exagerrated. Because people feel powerless, they speculate that Someone Else must have the power to do things. There is no danger of American fascism, or theocracy, or empire. Even if there were a determined collection of the rich and powerful who somehow decided to act cooperatively for evil, it wouldn't change things much. The types of power are too varied, and overall power simply too diffuse, for them to have much effect. Worry about something else.Continue reading No One Is Minding The Store
One of the reasons why I care so little for preserving "the environment" according to some artificial standard that bobos have left over from their stays at summer camp, it's because I value the other legacy - the legacy of ideas - so much more.Continue reading The Survival of Western Culture
Wandering over to comment on some left-leaning blogs, I was puzzled yet again by the accusations of tyranny, of fascism, and of the new pet phrase Unitary Authority, referring to Bush, of course. This rhetoric is so common on the left, with frequent mentions of how the Republicans "control" all branches of government, worries of imposed theocracy, and fear of multinational corporations (or "corporate interests").Continue reading Diffuse Power
Randall Balmer has an essay in the most recent Chronicle of Higher Education entitled Jesus Is Not A Republican.Continue reading The Religious Left That Doesn’t Exist
Balmer is a professor of religious history at Barnard College. The Assistant Village Idiot puts his fingers to his temples and makes some guesses: (Full disclosure: I read the opening one-sentence blurb, so I did see the phrase “drunk on power.” Therefore I made no predictions about what would be written about that, figuring I had an unfair hint.)
A psychiatrist I have known for over twenty years sent me this email, his most recent Letter To The Editor. This is an extremely intelligent person, from whom I learned a great deal about psychiatry years ago. A man of wit and humor, he holds positions of responsibility and a respected reputation in forensic psychiatry. He has had a long-standing tendency to argue via sneer and condescension - which I imagine he would describe as being unwilling to suffer fools gladly - but he is not incapable of constructed arguemnt. And yet... And yet this is what he is currently reduced to under the influence of BDS (Krauthammer 2004).Continue reading Picking On An Old Friend
Why does this story distress us? It happened long ago, to a person we don’t know. A thirteen year old boy is found guilty of stealing a handkerchief and is sent to Virginia to provide servant labor. We know that worse things have happened before and since.Continue reading False Equivalence
We are angered because of the extreme lack of proportion. Yes, it is theft, and yes, he probably did do it, but good heavens, man. For a handkerchief? Sent at a tender age across an ocean, all alone? Yes, yes, I’m sure he was of an age where he should know better, but a single handkerchief?
We might even think the law was the greater criminal for imposing such a punishment.
True?
It is still an idea current on liberal blogs, and apparently in the NCC, Episcopal, and Methodist Church hierarchies, that evangelicals in general, and especially fundamentalists, arrive at their “peculiar” social ideas because they hate women and/or gays and/or sex and/or change – or that they fear same.Continue reading Ned Flanders and Evangelical Pathology
I wonder if a certain specie of leftist confuses the passion with importance. The fact that Erin Brokovich and Silkwood made it to the list of most inspiring movies would suggest that. Also, people are impressed with Al Gore’s “passion” in An Inconvenient Truth, and this seems to be used as a proxy for accuracy.Continue reading The Managing of Impressions II
This morning, over on NPR's Car Talk, Ray (I think) had a Great Idea how to solve the energy crisis, at least as it relates to cars.Continue reading Tom and Ray on Car Talk
I love these guys, but I'm also from New Hampshire, so if you asked me to predict "Dave, what kind of a solution do you think two really smart guys from Massachusetts - Cambridge, no less - will come up with?" I would have a ready answer. Raise taxes.
They are willing to entertain any number of extremely unlikely possibilities rather than consider that their world-view is what's awry.
Continue reading Rush Is Wrong, Sort Of
A Gitmo prisoner's attorney is among the best we could hope for to be our eyes and ears in holding the military accountable.Continue reading The Managing of Impressions I
But a prisoner’s attorney is also the worst of sources. It is his job to manage the impression created, to tell only one side of the story, and to put his client’s actions in the best possible light.
Continue reading The Influence of Doonesbury
Conservatives wonder how the liberal interpretation of history is maintained in the face of the facts. The massacres by the VC and the Khmer Rouge; the fall of communism and the translation of the Venona Cables; the growth in the economy in close parallel to conservative predicitions; the behavior of nations seeming closer to the older interpretations of men and evil than to the newer, more hopeful foreign policies.
The myths are sustained by condescending humor, and Ivy-League liberals do it best.
Maybe. I’m more concerned about a half-dozen other types of wellness: cultural wellness, spiritual wellness, familial wellness. Intellect, citizenship - I think the list might go on for quite awhile before I got to body wellness. Time spent working on one is time taken from the others.Continue reading Wellness Fair
Continue reading Balloonjuice Complains
But I find over time that if you press people, they reveal themselves. To claim “We are not against surveillance, we just want it to be done lawfully,” after the program has been explained, is more suspect. (Still possible, though.) But more often, the writer reveals that the heart of her opposition to the war or the surveillance is that she doesn’t trust George Bush. When that is the case, I research or probe to discover if the writer just plain always disbelieves George Bush; nine times out of ten, that’s the case. They believe Joe Wilson, they believe Dan Rather, they believe the Thanksgiving turkey was plastic, they believe it’s a war for oil, they believe any crazy thing that people claim, no matter how plausible the administration’s response. When I see that, I feel comfortable disregarding their objections.
The decision tree reveals a superdominance that you make a wager at least once.Continue reading Pascal’s Wager
Dope
Today's linguistics lesson is about how words change in meaning from the specific to the general, and back again.
The word "dope" has cognates in the other Germanic languages, and is probably related to the word "daub." In the early 1800's, it referred to the thick concentrated opium goo imported from Asia. It gradually acquired forms such as doped, doped up, dopey referring to the condition of being on opium and eventually, having the appearance of being on opium. This broadened further to include being under the influence of any drug. It still held this meaning until the 50's and even 60's. It is still used by people complaining about the psychiatric profession complaining that their friends or relatives who are slowed down look "doped up." But as marijuana became the most commonly used drug, the word dope began to gravitate primarily to that substance.
The slang has changed, and saying dope instead of pot or weed now has an archaic flavor. When the word is used at all, it is becoming general again.
The word "dope" has cognates in the other Germanic languages, and is probably related to the word "daub." In the early 1800's, it referred to the thick concentrated opium goo imported from Asia. It gradually acquired forms such as doped, doped up, dopey referring to the condition of being on opium and eventually, having the appearance of being on opium. This broadened further to include being under the influence of any drug. It still held this meaning until the 50's and even 60's. It is still used by people complaining about the psychiatric profession complaining that their friends or relatives who are slowed down look "doped up." But as marijuana became the most commonly used drug, the word dope began to gravitate primarily to that substance.
The slang has changed, and saying dope instead of pot or weed now has an archaic flavor. When the word is used at all, it is becoming general again.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Hunger and Oppression
Feeding hungry people seems to us so obviously a good thing that we do not even take much time to justify it. It's something we all know. If the hungry live in other countries or are otherwise perceived to not be "ours" we might regard it as of little concern to us, or not our problem, but we don't condemn others who want to go fix it. We regard them as kindly and noble. Unrealistically kindly and noble, perhaps, but not evil.
In the practical world this is not as clear and clean as we'd like - for example, if we put the other nation's farmers out of business by destroying their market we may have created a worse situation. But ignore that for the moment, and pretend that giving food is an unmitigated good, if only in theory.
Freeing politically oppressed people we regard as more ambiguous. We are far more likely to treat such situations as none of our business and not our problem. Further, we look at people who want to intervene in these situations as more suspect. The obvious reason is that to increase freedom for some group of people, we have to do something against some other group. We might have to tax them, shame them, arrest them, or kill them, but there are others in the equation now. To do something for one group necessitates doing something against another.
Is that really a large difference? Our emotions tell us it is. Feeding = good; killing = bad. Non-western cultures make this distinction far more weakly or not at all. Even in the west the distinction was not so strong even a century ago. This impression of a great moral superiority of the one type of rescue over the other is not new, but its commonness is new. When values change, it is interesting to ask why.
I think resistance to judging others enters into this change. To be nonjudgmental is currently one of the highest of virtues in western cultures. To intervene for one group against another implies a judgment. It is now fashionable to declare we have no right to judge.
How do you think this looks to a person who knows without doubt that they are being oppressed by evil and corrupt rulers? To a person who knows as clearly he is oppressed as he would know he was hungry if he had no food? How would our distinction about not judging look to that person?
I think he would regard us as merely cowardly or uncaring, not morally sophisticated.
In the practical world this is not as clear and clean as we'd like - for example, if we put the other nation's farmers out of business by destroying their market we may have created a worse situation. But ignore that for the moment, and pretend that giving food is an unmitigated good, if only in theory.
Freeing politically oppressed people we regard as more ambiguous. We are far more likely to treat such situations as none of our business and not our problem. Further, we look at people who want to intervene in these situations as more suspect. The obvious reason is that to increase freedom for some group of people, we have to do something against some other group. We might have to tax them, shame them, arrest them, or kill them, but there are others in the equation now. To do something for one group necessitates doing something against another.
Is that really a large difference? Our emotions tell us it is. Feeding = good; killing = bad. Non-western cultures make this distinction far more weakly or not at all. Even in the west the distinction was not so strong even a century ago. This impression of a great moral superiority of the one type of rescue over the other is not new, but its commonness is new. When values change, it is interesting to ask why.
I think resistance to judging others enters into this change. To be nonjudgmental is currently one of the highest of virtues in western cultures. To intervene for one group against another implies a judgment. It is now fashionable to declare we have no right to judge.
How do you think this looks to a person who knows without doubt that they are being oppressed by evil and corrupt rulers? To a person who knows as clearly he is oppressed as he would know he was hungry if he had no food? How would our distinction about not judging look to that person?
I think he would regard us as merely cowardly or uncaring, not morally sophisticated.
Intentions
The closer you are to an irritating situation, the more certain you will be that the other person is acting purposefully. It will seem that they must know at some level that they are annoying, or must be so uncaring of you as to be showing contempt.
If you have distance, you tend more to see the other person as responding to impersonal circumstances of upbringing, recent stressors, or disadvantages beyond their control. If you get too far away, you will attribute very little agency to them at all, and be annoyed in turn by the folks close to the situation who insist that the offender is acting "on purpose."
Neither is ever wholly true. Our freedom and motives are always mixed. It is only possible in the extremest circumstances for our actions to be entirely free or entirely determined, entirely base or entirely altruistic. Perhaps they are never purely possible at all.
This Public Service Announcement was brought to you to remind you: neither entirely blame or entirely excuse the actions of others, nor entirely blame or entirely excuse your own actions. Hey, come back! Don't just mildly agree with this and move on. This applies to someone in your life today.
If you have distance, you tend more to see the other person as responding to impersonal circumstances of upbringing, recent stressors, or disadvantages beyond their control. If you get too far away, you will attribute very little agency to them at all, and be annoyed in turn by the folks close to the situation who insist that the offender is acting "on purpose."
Neither is ever wholly true. Our freedom and motives are always mixed. It is only possible in the extremest circumstances for our actions to be entirely free or entirely determined, entirely base or entirely altruistic. Perhaps they are never purely possible at all.
This Public Service Announcement was brought to you to remind you: neither entirely blame or entirely excuse the actions of others, nor entirely blame or entirely excuse your own actions. Hey, come back! Don't just mildly agree with this and move on. This applies to someone in your life today.
Default Culture and Class Warfare
Scene Setter: Will Herberg wrote the fascinating Protestant, Catholic, Jew in 1955, a clear and elegant summary of religion in American life. Herberg was struck by the melting-pot nature of our civic and religious values, the developing similarities in worship and practice. He noted, for example, that synagogue worship in America resembled that of American churches more than European synagogues; moreover, the social views of American Jews mirrored this. The underlying religious doctrinal differences might be profound, but if you turned the sound off they seemed much the same.
Films or stories often start with the typical in order to contrast it with later events. Just a typical American family…the generic American town…a school just like yours. The creator might go to some lengths to show just how typical the person or office is. The artist wants to capture the essentials, so that the audience just thinks “generic Protestant wedding,” or “generic State U.” These images are self-reinforcing. We grow up with an impression of what is typical based on what others tell us is typical, and pass that expectation on to others in a thousand subtle ways.
This impression changes over time, but not in the same way for all of us. There is a good deal of wishful thinking on all fronts. If everyone in your circle makes certain assumptions, you will see them as more typical. Cultures argue within themselves about whose picture of typicality is the more accurate. National elections may be about this more than anything else: who are we right now, this minute?
This accounts for the fondness that folks have for quoting poll statistics as if they were proofs of something rather than illustrations. 67% of Americans believe…more people agree with A than not-A 42%-39%. By taking these oversimplifications and spinning them in certain ways, we attempt to create social pressure that others should adopt our ideas, or at least go along with them. This is not just a PR campaign for most of us – it is usually a sincerely held belief that our culture is “normative” and the other guy’s is out-of-step in some way.
We usually notice this most jarringly when we encounter someone who is not only different, but has a different idea of what is typical. People who know they are eccentric, or from another culture, do not challenge our assumptions so much, as we can write them off.
Because we are social creatures, we tend slightly to regard what we think is typical as right. While we all have numerous exceptions to this – areas where we think the great mass of humanity is just wrong about something – there is a slight favoring of the common as the correct. This isn’t a bad thing in itself; we all have to live together and this mutual influence is probably adaptive. Yet it is easy to see how this can be pretty dangerous, if everyone starts heading off in the same idiotic direction while patting each other on the back and reassuring the children that all is well. To be overly influenced by what everyone else thinks might be good for you socially, but too much of it is eventually bad for the group. Even more, it’s bad for all the other groups you come in contact with.
Television shows came under fire in the 70’s and 80’s for portraying a pretty high standard of living as typical. I don’t know if that’s still true, but I’m going to bet that unless the specific point of the show is to portray a poorer family, what is put forth as typical is actually well above typical in income, education, beauty, and a dozen other things. Upside: we like to think we are better than we are, so identifying with people who have more advantages makes us feel like our group must be pretty good. Highschool students are usually played by kids that are college age; 40-something single mothers are usually played by pretty glamorous 30-somethings, carefully made up to look as if they aren’t wearing makeup. Downside: a lot of people know that they don’t measure up to this standard, and if they accept the artist’s view of typicality, will feel they have been cheated in some way. If you are middle class it is merely irritating that an upper-middle-class lifestyle is what you “should” be experiencing. It might even be challenging and inspiring. But if you are poor, you are going to have the sense that you have been robbed. You could only get to that level of wealth with a lot of effort or an unfair advantage. Those people on the TV don’t seem to be putting in a lot of effort, so they must have some unfair advantage. At this point your own perceptions and prejudices of race, religion, personality, or occupation will come into play.
You will likely transfer that TV prejudice to the actual people in your society. You will perceive others as unfairly richer than you and resent them. Those people will have done nothing against you, but you will resent them. This is not healthy for the society as a whole. If you stretch out the possible futures for this in your imagination, you can see where it could lead to great instability.
It is for this reason that I resent the class-warfare rhetoric of political figures. Politicians who say they will fight for you, rather than work for you, are dangerous.
Films or stories often start with the typical in order to contrast it with later events. Just a typical American family…the generic American town…a school just like yours. The creator might go to some lengths to show just how typical the person or office is. The artist wants to capture the essentials, so that the audience just thinks “generic Protestant wedding,” or “generic State U.” These images are self-reinforcing. We grow up with an impression of what is typical based on what others tell us is typical, and pass that expectation on to others in a thousand subtle ways.
This impression changes over time, but not in the same way for all of us. There is a good deal of wishful thinking on all fronts. If everyone in your circle makes certain assumptions, you will see them as more typical. Cultures argue within themselves about whose picture of typicality is the more accurate. National elections may be about this more than anything else: who are we right now, this minute?
This accounts for the fondness that folks have for quoting poll statistics as if they were proofs of something rather than illustrations. 67% of Americans believe…more people agree with A than not-A 42%-39%. By taking these oversimplifications and spinning them in certain ways, we attempt to create social pressure that others should adopt our ideas, or at least go along with them. This is not just a PR campaign for most of us – it is usually a sincerely held belief that our culture is “normative” and the other guy’s is out-of-step in some way.
We usually notice this most jarringly when we encounter someone who is not only different, but has a different idea of what is typical. People who know they are eccentric, or from another culture, do not challenge our assumptions so much, as we can write them off.
Because we are social creatures, we tend slightly to regard what we think is typical as right. While we all have numerous exceptions to this – areas where we think the great mass of humanity is just wrong about something – there is a slight favoring of the common as the correct. This isn’t a bad thing in itself; we all have to live together and this mutual influence is probably adaptive. Yet it is easy to see how this can be pretty dangerous, if everyone starts heading off in the same idiotic direction while patting each other on the back and reassuring the children that all is well. To be overly influenced by what everyone else thinks might be good for you socially, but too much of it is eventually bad for the group. Even more, it’s bad for all the other groups you come in contact with.
Television shows came under fire in the 70’s and 80’s for portraying a pretty high standard of living as typical. I don’t know if that’s still true, but I’m going to bet that unless the specific point of the show is to portray a poorer family, what is put forth as typical is actually well above typical in income, education, beauty, and a dozen other things. Upside: we like to think we are better than we are, so identifying with people who have more advantages makes us feel like our group must be pretty good. Highschool students are usually played by kids that are college age; 40-something single mothers are usually played by pretty glamorous 30-somethings, carefully made up to look as if they aren’t wearing makeup. Downside: a lot of people know that they don’t measure up to this standard, and if they accept the artist’s view of typicality, will feel they have been cheated in some way. If you are middle class it is merely irritating that an upper-middle-class lifestyle is what you “should” be experiencing. It might even be challenging and inspiring. But if you are poor, you are going to have the sense that you have been robbed. You could only get to that level of wealth with a lot of effort or an unfair advantage. Those people on the TV don’t seem to be putting in a lot of effort, so they must have some unfair advantage. At this point your own perceptions and prejudices of race, religion, personality, or occupation will come into play.
You will likely transfer that TV prejudice to the actual people in your society. You will perceive others as unfairly richer than you and resent them. Those people will have done nothing against you, but you will resent them. This is not healthy for the society as a whole. If you stretch out the possible futures for this in your imagination, you can see where it could lead to great instability.
It is for this reason that I resent the class-warfare rhetoric of political figures. Politicians who say they will fight for you, rather than work for you, are dangerous.
Friday, June 08, 2007
The Skin Of Our Teeth
Christian Andrew, Son #4, just barely squeaked by (squoke by?) in Senior English - I think his average was 64.8 with 65% passing - and will graduate with his class. His entire highschool career has been marked by measuring exactly how much skin teeth do have.
This fourth child has taken more parenting than the other three put together.
This fourth child has taken more parenting than the other three put together.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
A New Pattern?
The Red Sox are unraveling in June. They must have done this before, but I can't recall when. Huh. They find a new way to kill us every year.
While I am on sports news, Chris Wallace from the front office of the Celtics looks like he's going to go to Memphis to be GM. Hasn't Memphis suffered enough? They already lost out on the top two picks in the draft, even though their record was worse than Boston's. Than anyone's. If there are any Memphis fans reading, look, I'm sorry. You poor bastards don't deserve this.
While I am on sports news, Chris Wallace from the front office of the Celtics looks like he's going to go to Memphis to be GM. Hasn't Memphis suffered enough? They already lost out on the top two picks in the draft, even though their record was worse than Boston's. Than anyone's. If there are any Memphis fans reading, look, I'm sorry. You poor bastards don't deserve this.
Scoring Low on the Aware-O-Meter
Someone at the PR department for Gay & Lesbian Pride did not do elementary research when setting up National Gay & Lesbian Pride Month for June. You just don't make that the same month as Fresh Fruits Month or Queen's Birthday. There are others even worse if you look around. I won't list them here.
I suppose whatever month you picked there would be some other holiday you could make a joke about, though.
I suppose whatever month you picked there would be some other holiday you could make a joke about, though.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
A Kingdom of Non-Immigrants
Over at Brussels Journal there is a short essay on whether Great Britain is indeed a nation of immigrants, using David Conway's new Civitas as a jumping-off point.
I would guess that the numbers would drop even further in the Danelaw, perhaps down to 60%. Still, that is much more than folks there would estimate, I'm sure. They see themselves as less Celtic.
It's not much of an issue in America, where we are so clearly ethnically mixed that it's hard to see what the fuss would be about. We have some curiosity about British development because our institutions have British origin. The history of the United
States is usually told from the perspective of British-style government landing on the eastern coast of America and moving west with settlement, being influenced by many other strains of people - indigenous, African, and other European, mostly - as it developed. Yet American ethnicity is only minority British.
How those British institutions developed before they got here is viewed quite differently by English traditionalist/conservatives and American Anglophiles. The blood-character is of greater importance in the Old World, where the English impression is that they are much more Norman, Danish, and Saxon, than all those wild Celts to the west and north.
To Americans it would seem less of an innate ethnic issue and more of an institutions issue. That there remained a considerable, even dominant Briton-Celt bloodline would matter less than the expansion of Norman-Saxon custom and language.
The evidence he cites for his thesis largely comes from the new science of 'genetic archaeology' which has discovered through paternal DNA that a significant majority of those who live in the UK today are descended directly from the Ice Age hunters who first came here it seems from the Iberian peninsula. The figures are 88% of the Irish, 81% of the Welsh, 79% of the Cornish, 70% of the Scots and 68% of the remainder of England ... So despite invasions of Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norse and whoever the ethnic makeup of the UK has hardly been altered.
One of the side effects of this research is to massively undermine ideas of Celtic difference. It suggests that there is precious little such thing, if anything any difference predates (the) Celtic retreat from Anglo Saxons by 5,000 years.
I would guess that the numbers would drop even further in the Danelaw, perhaps down to 60%. Still, that is much more than folks there would estimate, I'm sure. They see themselves as less Celtic.
It's not much of an issue in America, where we are so clearly ethnically mixed that it's hard to see what the fuss would be about. We have some curiosity about British development because our institutions have British origin. The history of the United
States is usually told from the perspective of British-style government landing on the eastern coast of America and moving west with settlement, being influenced by many other strains of people - indigenous, African, and other European, mostly - as it developed. Yet American ethnicity is only minority British.
How those British institutions developed before they got here is viewed quite differently by English traditionalist/conservatives and American Anglophiles. The blood-character is of greater importance in the Old World, where the English impression is that they are much more Norman, Danish, and Saxon, than all those wild Celts to the west and north.
To Americans it would seem less of an innate ethnic issue and more of an institutions issue. That there remained a considerable, even dominant Briton-Celt bloodline would matter less than the expansion of Norman-Saxon custom and language.
German Brain Drain
We again have news that the educated young people are leaving the western European countries. This time it's Germany (again), which had its largest emigration since just after WWII. The numbers aren't huge against a population of 80M, but when your fertility level is already low, and inching toward lowest low, from which no nation has (yet) recovered, these are the last folks you want to see moving out.
It's considered polite for Americans to look on this demographic suicide in Europe with sympathy and sadness, and I should. But I confess I take a secret glee in it, because of the arrogance which European media and elites display toward America. The population in general is much less antipathetic to Yanks, but we don't get to hear about that so much.
HT: Brussels Journal
It's considered polite for Americans to look on this demographic suicide in Europe with sympathy and sadness, and I should. But I confess I take a secret glee in it, because of the arrogance which European media and elites display toward America. The population in general is much less antipathetic to Yanks, but we don't get to hear about that so much.
HT: Brussels Journal
Friday, June 01, 2007
Backpacking for Bette
I will be backpacking this weekend with three of my four sons. I have even done a little training for the event, as a moderate hike is no longer moderate for me, but difficult. At least I no longer have to carry all their stuff as well as my own.
We will be tracking down a Bette Davis legend, and hope to have photos. It's not often that we have an actual connection to a bit of film legend trivia.
I will try and think deep thoughts to write about upon return.
I said "try."
We will be tracking down a Bette Davis legend, and hope to have photos. It's not often that we have an actual connection to a bit of film legend trivia.
I will try and think deep thoughts to write about upon return.
I said "try."
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
American Productivity - Reprise
Once again I defend American youth against the sneers of the world. Reprinted from last May.
I waited in line at 12:03 pm at the cafeteria at work. I hadn't thought that the order of a plain hamburger would be that confusing, but there was a lot of wasted motion behind the counter. "12 Noon seems to catch George by surprize every day" I murmured to the person in front of me in line. The person in front turned and told an amusing story about waiting an hour for a pizza. In Rome. When the pizza was pre-made.
It reminded me of long waits for service in Romania and Hungary, and even, come to think of it, in England, Ireland, and the airport in Frankfurt. Contrast this with the service that barely-supervised highschool kids give you at McDonald's. It was the efficient-under-pressure fast food service that I had automatically compared George to, not to George's advantage.
McDonald's is a cultural synomym for low-talent, bottom end job in America. "You want fries with that?" But notice when traveling abroad how few people can manage that level of efficiency. They seem to do just fine when they immigrate here, but it just isn't happening there. These are the countries whose students are supposedly walloping ours in every competition. If that's the case, why are they unable grill two different sandwiches simultaneously?
I have wondered on this site before how, if our education system is so bad, we keep so far ahead of the rest of the world? People in other places work much harder, but get less accomplished. Productivity is the term used in economics. Japanese productivity in technical and industrial areas approaches or exceeds ours. In service industries, they are far behind. There are islands of efficient information exchange outside of North America (sorry to have excluded the Canadians thus far. Them too), but no one has so many people moving helpful info into the hands of people who need it.
Americans have a gift for spontaneous organization. So what if our pumpkin-headed teenagers forget where Costa Rica is fifteen minutes after the quiz? They can figure out how to get two kids to work, one back from school, and everyone to Emily's house from 8-12 with two cars and little gas. They can figure out that someone needs to move from stocking to bagging for a few minutes. They take awhile to notice and respond, but they get there. Try that in Romania. You will time them with a calendar, not a wristwatch.
Favored stories: I first visited Romania in 1998 or a mission trip. We had
less than two hours to shop in Oradea at the end of the trip, and I had a mission to get to the museum before it closed. We arrived in the van at 2pm and got coffee at the McDonald's on the bottom floor of a shopping center (a shopping center with few things for sale, BTW. Better now). The Romanians began a discussion of where and when we should meet to return. In my head, this was already automatic reasoning: We all know where this place is. Meet back here. We have to be back by five, it's an hour's drive. Allow an extra half hour, everyone meet here at 3:30. Ten minutes later, the Romanians are still discussing the matter. "When Dani comes, maybe she will want to go shopping with the women." "Andrei's church doesn't meet until 7pm. We will already be gone by then." I thought The
average American fifth-grader is more organized than this. These were intelligent people, but wasted effort doesn't seem to bother them as it does Americans.
In 2001 I visited Chris and J-A just after our permission to adopt came through. John-Adrian's soccer team traveled to Oradea to represent Beius in a tournament on a Saturday morning. I followed the team in a rented car. We got to the field early, but no one was there. The teacher/coach talked to some people, and we drove to another field. No one there either. Finally he talked to someone on his cell and we searched for a third field. We got there late, but three other teams had still not arrived. The coach tried to register the team, but was not allowed - he was supposed to bring everyone's birth certificate. Much complaining and gesticulating followed. The team was allowed to play one exhibition game. Another team had forgotten their birth certs and played an exhibition as well. One team never showed up.
On the way back, the police stopped the coach, discovering that he had not registered his car for six months, nor renewed his license. He had also been letting the boys have drinks as a consolation, but no one worried about that. Eighth grade? No problem.
Five years in America, our boys organize things like Americans. It's not an intelligence issue. But while cursing your wait in line next time, remember that it would be worse anywhere else.
I waited in line at 12:03 pm at the cafeteria at work. I hadn't thought that the order of a plain hamburger would be that confusing, but there was a lot of wasted motion behind the counter. "12 Noon seems to catch George by surprize every day" I murmured to the person in front of me in line. The person in front turned and told an amusing story about waiting an hour for a pizza. In Rome. When the pizza was pre-made.
It reminded me of long waits for service in Romania and Hungary, and even, come to think of it, in England, Ireland, and the airport in Frankfurt. Contrast this with the service that barely-supervised highschool kids give you at McDonald's. It was the efficient-under-pressure fast food service that I had automatically compared George to, not to George's advantage.
McDonald's is a cultural synomym for low-talent, bottom end job in America. "You want fries with that?" But notice when traveling abroad how few people can manage that level of efficiency. They seem to do just fine when they immigrate here, but it just isn't happening there. These are the countries whose students are supposedly walloping ours in every competition. If that's the case, why are they unable grill two different sandwiches simultaneously?
I have wondered on this site before how, if our education system is so bad, we keep so far ahead of the rest of the world? People in other places work much harder, but get less accomplished. Productivity is the term used in economics. Japanese productivity in technical and industrial areas approaches or exceeds ours. In service industries, they are far behind. There are islands of efficient information exchange outside of North America (sorry to have excluded the Canadians thus far. Them too), but no one has so many people moving helpful info into the hands of people who need it.
Americans have a gift for spontaneous organization. So what if our pumpkin-headed teenagers forget where Costa Rica is fifteen minutes after the quiz? They can figure out how to get two kids to work, one back from school, and everyone to Emily's house from 8-12 with two cars and little gas. They can figure out that someone needs to move from stocking to bagging for a few minutes. They take awhile to notice and respond, but they get there. Try that in Romania. You will time them with a calendar, not a wristwatch.
Favored stories: I first visited Romania in 1998 or a mission trip. We had
less than two hours to shop in Oradea at the end of the trip, and I had a mission to get to the museum before it closed. We arrived in the van at 2pm and got coffee at the McDonald's on the bottom floor of a shopping center (a shopping center with few things for sale, BTW. Better now). The Romanians began a discussion of where and when we should meet to return. In my head, this was already automatic reasoning: We all know where this place is. Meet back here. We have to be back by five, it's an hour's drive. Allow an extra half hour, everyone meet here at 3:30. Ten minutes later, the Romanians are still discussing the matter. "When Dani comes, maybe she will want to go shopping with the women." "Andrei's church doesn't meet until 7pm. We will already be gone by then." I thought The
average American fifth-grader is more organized than this. These were intelligent people, but wasted effort doesn't seem to bother them as it does Americans.
In 2001 I visited Chris and J-A just after our permission to adopt came through. John-Adrian's soccer team traveled to Oradea to represent Beius in a tournament on a Saturday morning. I followed the team in a rented car. We got to the field early, but no one was there. The teacher/coach talked to some people, and we drove to another field. No one there either. Finally he talked to someone on his cell and we searched for a third field. We got there late, but three other teams had still not arrived. The coach tried to register the team, but was not allowed - he was supposed to bring everyone's birth certificate. Much complaining and gesticulating followed. The team was allowed to play one exhibition game. Another team had forgotten their birth certs and played an exhibition as well. One team never showed up.
On the way back, the police stopped the coach, discovering that he had not registered his car for six months, nor renewed his license. He had also been letting the boys have drinks as a consolation, but no one worried about that. Eighth grade? No problem.
Five years in America, our boys organize things like Americans. It's not an intelligence issue. But while cursing your wait in line next time, remember that it would be worse anywhere else.
Exit Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan’s announcement that she will no longer be an active public figure in the antiwar movement has provoked a revival of harsh criticism of her, not only from the right, as expected, but from the left as well. Tammy Bruce is particularly cutting, as was the Democratic Underground.
I never thought the common explanations for her behavior, pro and con, adequately explained her motivations. We like things to be simple in our public figures, enacting the myth that we have assigned to them so we can put them in a box. It’s intellectually and emotionally tidy that way.
It has been an interesting exercise for me to look at the explanatory power of the various simplifications of Cindy Sheehan and where they fall short, in order to find a combination which covers the waterfront. I would first like to clear out the debris of discussing personal attractiveness. This should be irrelevant, but both men and women, both right and left, are likely to disparage their opponents’ appearance. Conservative men have been brutally insulting regarding Ms. Sheehan’s looks. I don’t get it. Most of the unflattering caricature and snide remarks relate to traits related to age. I think we should expect mothers of servicemen to be older than Lindsey Lohan, shouldn’t we?
Tangent: men praise or criticise women’s basic attractiveness, women are more likely to evaluate style. I suspect that women are making an indirect comment about themselves when they pronounce judgement on other women – too overdressed, too cheap, too the-90’s-are-over-honey. These are equally irrelevant, just a different focus. I also don’t think that people care that much, even when they are the ones making the comment. Most people, when you press them, would agree that Hillary Clinton’s figure and Katherine Harris’s eyeliner aren’t important. I conclude from this that people say these things not because they are relevant but because they hurt. In an appearance-oriented society, where women are already self-conscious, you can make it sting. Our usual complaint is that people are being shallow with these evaluations. I think gratuitous cruelty is closer to the mark. Cindy Sheehan isn’t especially unattractive, and people just used that as one more way to kick her. You can get something of the same effect with male public figures, calling Bush a chimp or Kerry “Lurch,” but the intensity isn’t the same.
Back to Cindy are her motivations. She has been accused of being an attention whore. There’s likely something to that, but really good attention whores start earlier and are better at keeping it once they’ve got it. As applause addicts, sudden attention might go to their heads, causing them to miscalculate the long-term effect on your popularity of cozying up to Hugo Chavez, but they generally avoid those mistakes. Real attention whores are more calculating than that, protecting the supply of their drug for later. Ms. Sheehan clearly enjoyed all the attention. She played to it, she got energised by it, she came back for more. Yet in the end she acquiesced in dropping out of sight. There might be some attention-seeking in her method of exit, but she could do more to keep in the public eye. Rosie O’Donnell keeps ratcheting up the outrageousness to stay visible; Cindy Sheehan could have done the same. As nice as the attention was, in the end it wasn’t everything.
On the pro side are those folks who claim that she’s just a sincere grieving mother who opposes this war, a noble sacrificing type willing to endure all this criticism for the sake of her cause. Well, maybe. But people with a single cause tend not to water it down by throwing in every criticism that comes to hand. They try not to get into the whole “corporate fascists” routine or tying it into kicking Israel. Those extras are for people whose cause is broader, who want a whole basket of changes in the economy, social policy, and education. Could Cindy Sheehan be a clumsy one-issue person, who cares mostly about the war but has these few other things she gets carried away with? Perhaps. But where does Chavez come into that, or Cuban medical care? A True Believer can get distracted, or seek coalition partners, but usually don’t spread themselves that thin. The myth of the anti-war specialist also doesn’t explain enough. From the start, she has wanted to change more about America than just being in Iraq.
Blog comments often call her stupid or brainless. That can’t be. It takes some wit even to take vapid cliches and put them in your own words, and Ms. Sheehan went well beyond that. I don’t think she’s going to go on and study neuroscience with her free time, but she’s not stupid. Naïve may be closer to the mark, or unwitting. Moonbat? One of those who believe that because it would be a better world if certain things were true, we should pretend they are true to help them along? Folks who believe only herbs are necessary for healing, or that you can reason with tyrants are certainly spread out across the IQ spectrum, so it’s not an intelligence issue per se (All together now: Imagine there’s no countries…). That could be what’s up with Cindy, believing that if we could just get rid of George Bush and a few neocons, sanity would be restored to the world and the Belgians would help us out in putting pressure on Iran.
But that also leaves unexplained a moderate parcel of facts. She’s disillusioned with the Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and is walking off the stage. Moonbats just switch to another venue and promise to keep up the struggle. Also, Cindy didn’t start with a lot of these views, but picked them up from her supporters and handlers along the way.
Supporters and handlers. This intrigues me. She has clearly been used by people who could not care less about her or Casey, but have causes and power grabs of their own in play. Spokespeople can get caught up in being Vox Populi, and submerge their own personalities under the group identity. If you are the “face” of the antiwar movement, or the “voice” of it, then that’s sort of an enormous personality in itself. There are people who are so weak in their own core that being a figurehead is the closest thing they have to having a personality. Teddy Kennedy seems to fit this, being the outspoken representative of whatever is most important to Massachusetts Democrats, however that changes over the years.
This would line up well with the theory that this is the grief reaction of a mother whose purpose in life seems to have gone away. That he died for values in opposition to hers would be a further erosion of her own sense of worth. I can relate to that. If my children died, I would wonder what the whole point of my life had been. If they died in some way that was a negation of my values, it would go down even harder. Additionally, when one can identify some evil as having caused the death – drunk driving, neocon agenda, spina bifida – then parents often find purpose in removing that evil so that others do not share the same grief. At its best, this is the healthy defense mechanism of sublimation. Our own reality cannot be changed, but perhaps we can change things for others. It is an important distinction to keep in mind that even a foolish cause intellectually can be a healthy response psychologically. We turn our grief into self-sacrifice, though it is no guarantee that we give ourselves wisely.
People who have endured great grief can go on to smile, and laugh, and resume normal life, and this casts no shadow on their sincerity. That Cindy Sheehan is able to enjoy herself with friends, or being fussed over and listened to does not in itself invalidate her grief. But to take such enjoyment in the particular acts she did verges on celebrating her grief rather than his life. That undermines the sublimation explanation.
No single explanation satisfies me
I never thought the common explanations for her behavior, pro and con, adequately explained her motivations. We like things to be simple in our public figures, enacting the myth that we have assigned to them so we can put them in a box. It’s intellectually and emotionally tidy that way.
It has been an interesting exercise for me to look at the explanatory power of the various simplifications of Cindy Sheehan and where they fall short, in order to find a combination which covers the waterfront. I would first like to clear out the debris of discussing personal attractiveness. This should be irrelevant, but both men and women, both right and left, are likely to disparage their opponents’ appearance. Conservative men have been brutally insulting regarding Ms. Sheehan’s looks. I don’t get it. Most of the unflattering caricature and snide remarks relate to traits related to age. I think we should expect mothers of servicemen to be older than Lindsey Lohan, shouldn’t we?
Tangent: men praise or criticise women’s basic attractiveness, women are more likely to evaluate style. I suspect that women are making an indirect comment about themselves when they pronounce judgement on other women – too overdressed, too cheap, too the-90’s-are-over-honey. These are equally irrelevant, just a different focus. I also don’t think that people care that much, even when they are the ones making the comment. Most people, when you press them, would agree that Hillary Clinton’s figure and Katherine Harris’s eyeliner aren’t important. I conclude from this that people say these things not because they are relevant but because they hurt. In an appearance-oriented society, where women are already self-conscious, you can make it sting. Our usual complaint is that people are being shallow with these evaluations. I think gratuitous cruelty is closer to the mark. Cindy Sheehan isn’t especially unattractive, and people just used that as one more way to kick her. You can get something of the same effect with male public figures, calling Bush a chimp or Kerry “Lurch,” but the intensity isn’t the same.
Back to Cindy are her motivations. She has been accused of being an attention whore. There’s likely something to that, but really good attention whores start earlier and are better at keeping it once they’ve got it. As applause addicts, sudden attention might go to their heads, causing them to miscalculate the long-term effect on your popularity of cozying up to Hugo Chavez, but they generally avoid those mistakes. Real attention whores are more calculating than that, protecting the supply of their drug for later. Ms. Sheehan clearly enjoyed all the attention. She played to it, she got energised by it, she came back for more. Yet in the end she acquiesced in dropping out of sight. There might be some attention-seeking in her method of exit, but she could do more to keep in the public eye. Rosie O’Donnell keeps ratcheting up the outrageousness to stay visible; Cindy Sheehan could have done the same. As nice as the attention was, in the end it wasn’t everything.
On the pro side are those folks who claim that she’s just a sincere grieving mother who opposes this war, a noble sacrificing type willing to endure all this criticism for the sake of her cause. Well, maybe. But people with a single cause tend not to water it down by throwing in every criticism that comes to hand. They try not to get into the whole “corporate fascists” routine or tying it into kicking Israel. Those extras are for people whose cause is broader, who want a whole basket of changes in the economy, social policy, and education. Could Cindy Sheehan be a clumsy one-issue person, who cares mostly about the war but has these few other things she gets carried away with? Perhaps. But where does Chavez come into that, or Cuban medical care? A True Believer can get distracted, or seek coalition partners, but usually don’t spread themselves that thin. The myth of the anti-war specialist also doesn’t explain enough. From the start, she has wanted to change more about America than just being in Iraq.
Blog comments often call her stupid or brainless. That can’t be. It takes some wit even to take vapid cliches and put them in your own words, and Ms. Sheehan went well beyond that. I don’t think she’s going to go on and study neuroscience with her free time, but she’s not stupid. Naïve may be closer to the mark, or unwitting. Moonbat? One of those who believe that because it would be a better world if certain things were true, we should pretend they are true to help them along? Folks who believe only herbs are necessary for healing, or that you can reason with tyrants are certainly spread out across the IQ spectrum, so it’s not an intelligence issue per se (All together now: Imagine there’s no countries…). That could be what’s up with Cindy, believing that if we could just get rid of George Bush and a few neocons, sanity would be restored to the world and the Belgians would help us out in putting pressure on Iran.
But that also leaves unexplained a moderate parcel of facts. She’s disillusioned with the Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and is walking off the stage. Moonbats just switch to another venue and promise to keep up the struggle. Also, Cindy didn’t start with a lot of these views, but picked them up from her supporters and handlers along the way.
Supporters and handlers. This intrigues me. She has clearly been used by people who could not care less about her or Casey, but have causes and power grabs of their own in play. Spokespeople can get caught up in being Vox Populi, and submerge their own personalities under the group identity. If you are the “face” of the antiwar movement, or the “voice” of it, then that’s sort of an enormous personality in itself. There are people who are so weak in their own core that being a figurehead is the closest thing they have to having a personality. Teddy Kennedy seems to fit this, being the outspoken representative of whatever is most important to Massachusetts Democrats, however that changes over the years.
This would line up well with the theory that this is the grief reaction of a mother whose purpose in life seems to have gone away. That he died for values in opposition to hers would be a further erosion of her own sense of worth. I can relate to that. If my children died, I would wonder what the whole point of my life had been. If they died in some way that was a negation of my values, it would go down even harder. Additionally, when one can identify some evil as having caused the death – drunk driving, neocon agenda, spina bifida – then parents often find purpose in removing that evil so that others do not share the same grief. At its best, this is the healthy defense mechanism of sublimation. Our own reality cannot be changed, but perhaps we can change things for others. It is an important distinction to keep in mind that even a foolish cause intellectually can be a healthy response psychologically. We turn our grief into self-sacrifice, though it is no guarantee that we give ourselves wisely.
People who have endured great grief can go on to smile, and laugh, and resume normal life, and this casts no shadow on their sincerity. That Cindy Sheehan is able to enjoy herself with friends, or being fussed over and listened to does not in itself invalidate her grief. But to take such enjoyment in the particular acts she did verges on celebrating her grief rather than his life. That undermines the sublimation explanation.
No single explanation satisfies me
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Fashion Accessories
If Birkenstocks are the shoe of choice for leftists, what should those of us on the right wear?
Perhaps The Manolo has advice.
Perhaps The Manolo has advice.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Musings on Large Issues
For those of you worried that these links might take you to places where you might have to think hard, not to worry. These are all structured so that you can take in the fun part now and think about it later.
Would it be a good thing to live on this earth an extra hundred years, or a thousand? My bias is against, as I wrote in Perpetual Life last year.
That question is tied into what we find important to accomplish in life, which is intimately tied up with whether we have children or not. I slogged through some birthrate tables for developed countries and found a correlation between those who had been oppressors and seemingly national decisions to have no more children. I have since come to wonder if it is national humiliation, which the WWII and communist oppressors have endured, which drives down the birthrate.
I also had fun discussing how no one lives in the real world (except the guys at Home Depot), and how spiritual seeking is really just goofing off.
Would it be a good thing to live on this earth an extra hundred years, or a thousand? My bias is against, as I wrote in Perpetual Life last year.
That question is tied into what we find important to accomplish in life, which is intimately tied up with whether we have children or not. I slogged through some birthrate tables for developed countries and found a correlation between those who had been oppressors and seemingly national decisions to have no more children. I have since come to wonder if it is national humiliation, which the WWII and communist oppressors have endured, which drives down the birthrate.
I also had fun discussing how no one lives in the real world (except the guys at Home Depot), and how spiritual seeking is really just goofing off.
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