Violence Tradeoff of Europeans

Bird Dog has a link to a Gateway Pundit article about the enormously higher homicide rate of African-Americans. This connects in turn to Scott Adams’s analysis that Democrats use guns to kill innocent people, while Republicans use them for defense and sport. (A reader here had sent that to me and I forwarded it on.) That may not be an accurate statement emotionally, because the vast majority of gun-owners, Republican or Democrat, do not use them to commit violence. Yet it is an accurate statement statistically. Please note that Adams is a Democrat who is making a starker statement than most Republicans would dare.

I could take this in many directions, but there is one I believe is particularly neglected. It is true – and Steven Pinker’s The BetterAngels of Our Nature*   acknowledges it even as he squirms around it – that this gradual reduction in killing of those in one’s own society started in Northern Europe (see, of course Hajnal Line). It is that group that has become unusual for its low violence, not other groups for their remarkable increase. If we can wrench our heads out Eurocentric/Anglospheric places and look at the rest of the world, we see that the violence level is quite high just about everywhere: Indonesia, Africa, Latin America, and Asia rather notoriously so. Even the exceptions, such as Japan, are instructive about this trend as a whole. Violence is generally low within the tribe and high outside it. A very few places in the world learned to expand their idea of who their tribe is, learning greater degrees of cooperation. This has rather obvious benefits for trade and specialization.

The downside in terms of violence is that greater cooperation leads to a much better military, which can kill large numbers of people very quickly.  Europeans have shown themselves to be remarkably good at that the last few centuries. Colonialism did not succeed because of superior technology (though that did help), but because the places the Europeans landed to trade were deeply divided tribally already, and could not get unified to fend off relatively small numbers (backed by enormous resources) of ships and soldiers from individual European countries. European nations have been dramatically effective at killing each other as well, and for similar reasons.  They figured out how to work together and make effective armies and navies. If you were part of their nation – which usually meant a collection of closely related tribes now united – life at home could be peaceful for long periods of time. A lot of that energy got diverted into religious persecutions internally (some about actual religious issues, some only nominally so), with repeated redefinition of who Our People are. But even that subsided. Europe divided into large nation-tribes that corresponded partially to international boundaries, and they tended to mistrust the other nation-tribes and persecute them or go to war with them.  But individual towns , counties, regions saw a continuing decline in internal violence.

So, read about ancient European tribes, with illustrations. Here's an example of France in the good old days.

An objection might be raised that the modern European ”superiority” in mass killing is an exaggeration. The deadliest wars have been largely Asian, especially Chinese, over the centuries after all, and even in WWII most death occurred in Asia. The deaths of the European Colonisation of the Americas, in second place, were largely from disease. I suppose one could say that the greater national cooperative efforts allowed Europe to cross the ocean and maintain enough presence to be the disease vectors, but it is otherwise a stretch to call that a killing efficiency. So with those corrections to the top two, the Europeans largely disappear from the upper list.  However, I think this understanding of internal versus external violence holds up for two reasons: first, the list covers many more centuries than the modern era; second, the example of China bears some resemblance to the European example.  It was a bureaucratic, organized empire with what we currently think were comparatively modest rates of internal violence, whose constituent parts occasionally exploded into highly organized warfare.

*Five years old already.  Wow.

Wisdom

If I were an actual wise, thoughtful person who takes the long view, I wouldn't be much concerned with all the gun-control rhetoric at present, recognising it for the ephemera that it is.  But I am as swpt about by fashions as the next person at times, and I notice what is going on around me.  For the time being, there will be firearms discussions.  Which are at least more interesting than Trump discussions.

Gun Violence

Granite Dad’s reminder that 3-D printing is going to completely change firearm availability does render much of the rest of the discussion more symbolic than safety-related. There is a second issue that is also usually unaddressed. A great deal of gun ownership is by minority groups, and this goes double for firearms that are already held illegally. (Let me repeat, however, most gun owners of all groups are responsible, nonviolent people who have firearms for sport and defense.) We tend to miss that because gun-rights groups and advocates are largely white, and prominent black politicians are among the strongest gun-control advocates, hoping that mere gun-reduction can reduce violence. It won’t, but I can see why they hold that hope.  Sitting in morning circle for Montessori School to make the world safer isn't likely to be a force-multiplier for righteousness either. Even if you are Senators.

Declaring further categories of weapon illegal is therefore going to have an increasingly disparate impact on those communities. Pause to imagine the increased confrontations, arrests, and incarcerations of minorities because of these well-meaning efforts.

Lelia

Now that she has friended me on Facebook, it is revealed that commenter Lelia is a genre fiction author - looks like sci-fi, Christian, historical, romance in varying mixtures, which I find to be very cool.  Lelia Rose Foreman.  Do the work yourself, as that is good for you and more likely to result in an occasional sale for her. I should have guessed that at least one of you out there filled that bill.

Father's Day

Neoneocon  posted a poem by Robert Hayden that might be of interest.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

 As my feelings every Father's Day are always contradictory and disjointed, this didn't help. Or perhaps, helped greatly.  I don't think about any of my fathers, I think about my children. Then I forget that two of them have children of their own, and their proper focus is on those girls, not on me.

Whatever criticisms they might deserve, all three of them - my biological father, the boyfriend my mother almost married, and my stepfather, did indeed do things for me that I never noticed,  unthanked.

Popehat On Gun Control

The title is intentionally misleading : In Support of a Total Ban on Civilians Owning Firearms.

I support the argument that the United States should enact a total ban on civilians owning firearms.

Oh, I don't support the ban. I support the argument.

I support the argument because it's honest and specific. It doesn't hide the ball, it doesn't refuse to define terms, it doesn't tell rely on telling people they are paranoid or stupid in their concerns about the scope of the ban. The argument proposes a particular solution and will require the advocate to defend it openly.

That elevates it above most gun control dialogue.

One of the sports stations I listen to on my commutes (93.7) has a morning show that discusses movies, politics, and popular culture more than sports. One of the hosts, who typically rants about a lot of things, complained that he doesn't want to hear firearms details from gun nuts who call in whenever shootings make the national news and a public gun control discussion is occurring.  He finds it tedious, he finds it irrelevant, he finds it annoying.

Once one is alert to the idea that for at least some percentage of gun-regulators, this is not about safety, but about culture war, comments like this jump out at you. When you take the time to read at least a few of the firearms-details arguments, you see pretty quickly that the details are not irrelevant.  People use terms like "assault weapon," or "weapons of war," or "reasonable for self-defense" with absolutely no clue what they are talking about.  President Obama, for example, that Omar Mateen had a Glock with a lot of clips, and an assault rifle. Then, after illustrating that he doesn't know much about guns, he wants to more deeply regulate them, sure that he knows enough - the details don't matter.

My brother, and two dear Christian women who are my friends posted similar things this week. They are all sure that they know enough to have a decent opinion.  If pressed, they believe that other anti-gun people who are wonks on the subject and pay attention to these things know enough to craft decent legislation about it - and their job is to rally support whatever that legislation is. Intelligent people often fall into the trap that they can pick up 90% of what they need with minimal effort, so they can move on to other subjects.

Actually, everyone believes that, but intelligent people at least have some empirical experience that this method works. They got through school this way, and navigate conversations this way now. They know a little bit about Egyptian loan-words in Biblical Hebrew, or Hungarian elections in the 2000's, or the Treaty of Westphalia, and instantly know more than 95% of everyone about those subjects. I get this.

Believe me, I get this.  I am that guy, having kited my way through conversations for decades by knowing more than the 95%, enough that I can usually at least hang out with people who actually know a lot more. I also believe in most situations that drawing in a few bits of information from a source or three I consider reliable, plus a little oppositional contemplation, puts me way ahead of just about everyone else. It works. The number of people doing this is pretty much the list of "smart people" that you know.

Here's the huge problem: This doesn't actually work with some subjects. It works in limited areas of mental health, but in other places you have to actually know something.  You can't fake it.  There are discussions of law that historians or political scientists can enter and be usefully knowledgeable in. But in others, you just need to know something about law in general, and particular rulings in specific, or you are just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. In those instances, a realtor discussing real-estate law with an attorney might be more accurate than a brilliant Ivy-League professor of history.  The hard data sometimes matters, and matters a lot. Psychologists, and parents, and grant-writers may know a lot about educational interventions; they may know more about the topic in general and have ideas about changing the system that are better than special-ed coordinators.  But if you want to write an IEP, you should talk with a person who is a specialist in IEP's.  Theory is gone.  Rubber meets road.

Slight tangent:  Is the Christian left actually worse on this than the secular left, or is that just an impression from my particular circle of friends?

So. I have generally chalked all this up to the mild arrogance of those who get by by overgeneralisng, combined with the quick sympathy of soft-hearted people for those who suffer (with a bit of "I've thought about ethical and moral issues and most haven't"), topped off with the infographics of those socially skilled enough to imagine what should be persuasive. Those people aren't your go-to source for solutions to political problems, but neither are they evil incarnate. They're just wrong, speaking beyond their knowledge but meaning well.

Or are they? This week I wondered if there actually is some evil involved for these nice people. I have wondered if culture war actually is more than half their motive, and if this is particularly true (though disguised even to themselves) of Christians who lean left, in defensive counter-reaction to the stereotype that they are suspected of rightist sympathies by secular progressives, and they want to get out from under. As with the sports-ranter above, it is their own words and their types of arguments which raise red flags for me. I don't think they are usually the hard-edged SJW's who want their opponents to be not merely defeated but humiliated. They have absorbed a Christian lesson of not-hating quite well, and hope that even those who disagree and lose out in the halls of power feel okay about it and don't feel disrespected or unheard. They want everyone to go home with a little gift.

And yet.  And yet. This time around my suspicions are darker, on the basis of their own words. Their first goal actually is to win, and to make sure everyone knows how much they care about humanity and their opponents apparently care about something else. Not very nice, though often mentioned indirectly or disguisedly. They don't know the important facts, and they know that they do not know, but cannot be troubled to reconsider.  Perversely, not knowing about the details seems to be a badge of honor - they aren't one of those icky dangerous people who know about guns and have some sort of obsessive, Aspergery interest in the details. (Watch out for that guy.  He could be the real danger.) They are good people who care about the arts. They are on to showing how gun manufacturers, and the NRA, and congressional Republicans are morally dangerous.  They won't say "evil" but it's pretty clear they think that there are some evil pro-gun people out there. (The rest of you nice hunters and home-defenders are just misled, and perhaps a bit primitive in your morality - but they have hopes that you will come around, because you are Christians - maybe kinda sorta, even though haven't you read what Jesus said... and oh dear, not as well read as we are, but not bad people really. Except actually, you are. Just a little bit, by which we mean "a whole lot," but we don't talk like that because it isn't nice. But we would never say it, because that would hurt your feelings, and we aren't the sort of people who hurt others' feelings).


Here is my challenge:  Most of those are anti-Trump because they fear there is far too much fascist, or at least authoritarian in him.  I see that.  But the actual fascists last time were not drawn from his type of crowd, but from yours. I should never have brought up Trump.  Lost my head there.  This isn't about Trump, it's about you.  Who goes Nazi? I am no longer sure about you.

Is Trauma The Driver?

Yesterday’s speaker at Grand Rounds very much sees mental health interventions through the focus of trauma. Which is fine in its own way. Trauma isn’t good for you and more is worse. We have neglected to ask about possible traumatic experiences which might be important in treating mental health clients. Neglected to do it perfectly, that is. It has been on my hospital’s protocol for all patients for thirty years.

The primary focus was that more symptoms are caused by childhood experiences than we realise, and sometimes they are not verbalized, but encoded in behavior. Well and good, very old-school psychology in some ways, actually. It’s just not the whole picture.

I raised my hand at one point to express the opinion that genetic influences weren’t being referenced, and everything was being put into the trauma basket. I was going to throw in pre-natal as well, but decided it was best to keep it simple. She agreed to some general statement about different temperaments and vulnerabilities, then went straight to epigenetics. She admitted she didn’t understand it that well, gave a passable definition of it, didn’t otherwise answer my objection, and moved on. There was a time when I would have pushed the issue. I was tempted to bring it up again fifteen minutes later when the question of genetics was even more obvious. But I didn’t.

I was interested in her reference to the Kaiser Permanante Adverse Childhood Experiences study. I had heard of it and meant to look it up but never had. The idea is that specific childhood traumas can lead to bad health outcomes for adults, which they as insurers would certainly be interested in. They have data on over 100,000 people who responded to the brief (60+ questions) questionnaire at this point. Big numbers are usually better. Good stuff, as far as it goes. Trauma isn’t good for you, as I said. It makes intuitive sense that bad things in childhood could lead to bad health outcomes as an adult. One newer bit is that if you lived in poverty as a child you were more likely to have a diet dominated by inexpensive starches – potatoes, rice, bread – and thus more likely to be obese as an adult.*Obesity is a health problem.  So poverty can be seen as an indirect cause.

Note that even though the right-hand arrow says conception, that area is gray and fuzzy, and it's not really part of the questionnaire.

There’s just this problem that when you pick up the story of a person’s life at birth, you haven’t actually begun at the beginning.  There are those nine months in utero – that should be a deeper level on the pyramid, a foundation on which the other things are built.  And there is the genetic union at conception, which is itself the product of years of influence, centuries and more.  That is an even deeper foundation of the pyramid. It is invisible not only in the infographic, but in the data.

Thus we know that whatever true things the Kaiser Permanente ACE study shows, we must apply some discount for the prenatal effects, and some discount for the genetic effects. And we have no idea how much – though I’ve been thinking icebergs rather than pyramids for my analogies lately.

The following is perhaps unnecessary, as we have discussed genetics confounding supposedly environmental studies before (and some of you know this better than I do). But two examples: You had a parent who was impulsive and pleasure-seeking.  If you looked at a hundred such parents, you would find a higher-than average number of smokers, of drinkers, of people who marry inappropriate others or cheat on their spouses, of folks who lose their tempers, lose their jobs, overeat, overspend, etc. Their children will thus experience more trauma.  More divorce, more poverty, more abandonment, more beatings.  This is just an average, of course.  Many of those parents may have had strong compensating or coping strategies.  They may have joined a religious group that provided rigor and structure. They may have chosen a profession which allows them to indulge this safely.  They may have slowly learned disciplining strategies because they loved a sport, or ballet, or the military, or being first in their class. Yet the average for the children of that group is going to be more traumatic. The ACE study will pick up all those traumas and explain your adult health risks in those terms.

But you also have half you genetic material from that person, and it may not be his/her impulsivity that drives your behavior, but your own.  Furthermore, who mates with these impulsive, risky people?  You got the other half of your genetic material from them. The parents' temperaments may be controlling or they may be irrelevant.  The Kaiser Permanente study won't tell us.

Similarly, you may be making very bad safety and sexual choices now, and you may attribute that to being sexually assaulted as a child.  There may be something to that. But if your abuser was a blood relative some of your behavior may be hard-wired. Sometimes the sexual predators have long since moved on or gone to jail before they even got to you.  And if not a blood relative, then did the blood relative choose to put you in their company?  Stepparents are much more likely to be abusers, but who invited them over the thresshold?  I don't mean to be accusing of innocent people here.  Some predators are so well disguised that decent people wouldn't pick up on the signals. Some predators only reveal under the influence of alcohol or drugs, not present in the courtship. I'm not trying to kick any of you, here.  My mother married a predator, and I'm not seeing how she would have seen that coming.

My point isn't to deny that trauma is bad, but to highlight that earlier factors, prenatal and genetic, are increasingly shown to be huge.

*In comparing Charles Murray’s Belmont and Fishtown there is reference to the rich eating differently than the poor, and valuing thinness and reserved eating more. It could be a signifier of upper-middle-class or above upbringing when you look at it that way. Fat people are more likely to have grown up poor, and thus not be “quite our kind.” (There are poor cultures that are lower starch users, certainly. I am being very general.)  And of course, there may be some inherited tendency toward obesity as well. We just can’t tell what’s what at present. And some of us, such as trauma-based intervention researchers, don’t seem very curious about knowing the full answer.

Retirement of School Librarian

Elementary school retirement party for Tracy Wyman. I've never been to one, but I figured I knew what to expect. I was disappointed at first. There were thanking speeches of varying quality but consistent goodwill. There were skits/performances for each, and the one for Tracy was especially skillful, but they didn't have the markers I expected from all-female elementary school educators. They are a type, you know. Finally, it did deteriorate to nine women in frog glasses and tutus, and I felt vindicated in my expectations.

They noted that Tracy had sent over 8,000 cards to students on the internal mail (delivered by second graders) over the years. That's who she is.  The real version of no child left behind.

Ichiro-Rose

Pete Rose still hasn't gotten the message that even the best leadoff hitters are not worth what #3 and #4 hitters are.  If they were they would have hit there at some point in their career. Henderson and Raines may be exceptions because their base-stealing was actually valuable. But if you aren't even the best hitter on your own team, why are you grousing about not getting recognition?

Is Ichiro better?  Doesn't matter. Both are second-tier, but lasted a long time.

Plus he's still just a jerk.

Egyptian Loan-Words in Hebrew as Evidence for the Exodus.

I am not qualified to judge whether this is responsible analysis or just kiting their favorite ideas.  But this article from Mosaic is certainly fun.

Okay, fun for me, that is.  I didn't ask the rest of you your opinions.

Anatomy of a Non-Epidemic

E Fuller Torrey, legendary these last 30 years in schizophrenia research and advocacy for the biological understanding of that illness (and others), reviewed Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, which had come out a few years before.  I had heard of Whitaker's book, touted quietly to me by a psychologist, and had run across reference to it a few other times. I was a bit surprised that it hadn't simply vanished like so many other books trying to scramble up evidence that schizophrenia was all some huge misunderstanding on the part of psychiatry and the medical profession.  Surprised because the evidence for that POV had largely not changed in the last twenty years - unless I had missed something that hadn't come to Dartmouth Medical School or the psychiatrists I work with. Somehow it persisted, but as it wasn't taking the world by storm around here I saw no need to follow up.  I just wondered.

Torrey makes a persuasive case, which I find he usually does.

In its 396 pages Whitaker got many things right, including criticism of the broad DSM diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses; the reckless prescribing of psychiatric drugs for children; and the prostitution of many psychiatric leaders for the pharmaceutical industry. Indeed, regarding the last, Whitaker may have understated the problem, based on recently released court documents detailing how the pharmaceutical industry secretly controlled the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.

When it came to schizophrenia and antipsychotic drugs, however, Whitaker got it mostly wrong. He made so many errors it is difficult to know where to begin, so I will begin where he did. In his Preface Whitaker says that his research on the book began when he encountered “two research findings that just didn’t make sense”: a 1994 schizophrenia outcome study (Hegarty et al. 1994) and the World Health Organization (WHO) studies “which had twice found that schizophrenia outcomes were much better in poor countries.”

I looked up that Texas Medication Algorithm Project reference, and it does seem to be seedy in parts, though "controlled" turns out to be a bit overstated. Janssen did end up paying $158M to settle, so that's not chopped liver. These are the sorts of reasonable complaints that can be leveled against Big Pharma, though usually not all of them at once, just one at a time: kickbacks, ignoring some studies and highlighting others, outcomes that seem to favor the expensive drugs under patent rather than the older medicines which are now generics.  But note.  This isn't Big Pharma making up illnesses that don't exist, or suppressing evidence of natural cures that are just as good, or making people believe they are sick. It's thumb-on-the-scale stuff, not denial-of-reality.  That's my default view of conspiracy theories and corporate corruption accusations, based on getting tired of investigating fevered claims.

Which is bad enough, and deserves big punishment.

Favoring newer drugs isn't all just money-chasing either (though some of it is).  There are usually specifics that pharmaceutical companies are trying to improve, because of problems with the old medications.  Side effects, because of the impact on long-term health (kidneys, livers) and the subsequent effect on compliance, just for openers. There was a reason why haloperidol replaced throrazine, and olanzepine replaced haloperidol.

Ferguson Effect

It is important to note, even if it is happening, it's not happening everywhere.  But it's intersting that a researcher trying to disprove it has come around to the idea that a version of it might be true, and is in fact his current leading explanation. Caution:  This is the Guardian.  Even when they go against liberal pieties they should be viewed suspiciously. Caution #2. This is still a fairly small sample size.

“The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis”.

I don't know myself.  The Ferguson effect has always sounded plausible to me, but I thought it might have confounding factors.  I will note, however, that it is irresponsible for people like Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, and Eric Holder to go around saying it's not true. 

Saving Secretary Hillary

I'm sure this article by Jill Abramson in the Huffington Post, caught the Clinton Campaign completely by surprise. It explains how Hillary isn't actually dishonest, but just seems that way because of some personality something-or-other. And she gets more scrutiny than others, not because of anything she has said or done, but because she's a woman.  In case you had missed that point. Certainly, I can't think of any other reason she would come to the attention of critics. It must be her sex, because all the other possibilities have been clearly eliminated.  Ms Abramson worked briefly on a Bill Clinton campaign decades ago - which is presented something of a coincidence - before going on to become executive editor of the NYTimes.  What are the odds, eh?

Expect to see more of this, as Hillary's supporters keep trying to find the magic explanation which convinces some significant portion of waverers that they are really not bad people and supporting corruption by voting for here.  We saw similar attempts to show us that Barack Obama is not really a narcissist who doesn't care what other people's opinions are, but just sorta private and aloof. And who can forget the resurgence of the 1992 articles about Bill Clinton being a Southern Baptist along about 1998 or so, with a little twist to make it fresh and new.

I'm sure Huff Po ran articles explaining how we were misunderstanding Mitt Romney, and John McCain, and Sarah Palin, but I can't bring them to mind at the moment. There must be someone in their slate of writers who is currently assigned to digging into the data, thinking hard, and explaining to us why Donald Trump isn't actually an irresponsible blowhard, he just looks that way.  For some Reason. If not HuffPo, then surely somebody else.

Yet I want to draw your attention to something else in the form of these explanations. They follow a pattern of social rather than logical argument, which I have noted is common among a certain type* of liberal.  They do not spend much time counterarguing anything, they promise to take you behind the curtain.  Those yahoos out there think she's a liar, but you look like a bright young woman.  I'm going to bring you back where the important people go - love your shoes, dear - because I believe you can understand what those others can't.

*Not so much the poor, or union, or black, or corporate Democrats, if you get my drift. 

Every Time I Look At It...

...I hate my era more. Yet I can't turn away, after seeing that Green Acres theme, below.

I knew all the lyrics to "My Mother The Car,"  by the way.  Of course I did.

Chronicles of Wasted Time

This seems like peak efficiency for me, so I pass it on to you.  Scott Alexander reviews Malcolm Muggeridge's Chronicles of Wasted Time so well that I don't feel much need to read it.  Looks great, too.  Glad I got it installed.

It's an excellent reminder of how deeply sympathetic much of the western intelligentsia was to communism, and their resistance to seeing the truth of it willful. If there is a rewriting of the history of the 20th C in favor of America:All Things Great, there has been an even more inaccurate account that can find nothing to praise in its mainstream culture, discovering heroes and heroines only in those who correct its errors (or think so).  But the rise and fall of communism, with the slaughter of at least 100,000,000 of its own people - never mind those it found to war with - is the dominant piece of history  in the 20th C.

Here's a nice quote Alexander extracts from Muggeridge, after he has not only seen through all of Stalinis, but found that he cannot convince anyone of what he has seen.

All this likewise indubitably belonged to history, and would have to be historically assessed; like the Murder of the Innocents, or the Black Death, or the Battle of Paschendaele. But there was something else; a monumental death-wish, an immense destructive force loosed in the world which was going to sweep over everything and everyone, laying them flat, burning, killing, obliterating, until nothing was left. Those German agronomes in their green uniform suits with feathers in their hats – they had their part to play. So had the paunchy Brown-Shirts, and the matronly blonde maidens painting swastikas on the windows of Jewish shops. So had the credulous armies of the just, listening open-mouthed to Intourist patter, or seeking reassurance from a boozy sandalled Wicksteed. Wise old Shaw, high-minded old Barbusse, the venerable Webbs, Gide the pure in heart and Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, drivelling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what might, to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook anything, however villainous, to approve anything, however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless, and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on Earth could be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives. All resolved, in other words, to abolish themselves and their world, the rest of us with it. Nor have I from that time ever had the faintest expectation that, in earthly terms, anything could be salvaged; that any earthly battle could be won or earthly solution found. It has all just been sleep-walking to the end of the night.

New York

My college roommate was from Wayne Township, and spoke glowingly of going into The City. There were all manner of people, and of restaurants, and entertainment venues.  He was fond of folk music coffee houses and other small concert settings, where you might go to hear Peter, Paul, and Mary yet be sitting just down the row from Tom Paxton. He liked the street vendors, or the little places you could get a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at midnight before heading out. The variety of people was endlessly fascinating, he told me, describing some of the characters he had seen on the street.  This I found a bit uncomfortable, as some of them were clearly ill and unhappy.  Providing entertainment for kids from Jersey wasn't a suitable counter for that.

My other close friend was from Long Island. He had little use for the city. Once he transferred from Adelphi to William and Mary, he only went back for family events. Greg would nod and laugh about the wonderful things Paul enthused over, but would frequently demur as well.  My favorite: "I'm not sure it's a good idea to put that many people in one place."

My continued contact with people who love New York has come two streams: in a minor way, the denominational camps we have camped at in NH, both of which draw from a considerable southern CT presence. Lots of people as oriented to NYC as to New England, who would talk often about working in the city, or going into the city with the family to see this or that. Restaurants!  Museums! People!  Noise!  Bustle!  They just couldn't get over how things were always happening there.  So much to see. In that group there is an interesting subtext. Among seminarians and writers for the denominational magazines there was this recurring theme of God loving the city; of the Church needing to maintain a presence in the city; of churches abandoning the city for new suburban structures; of struggling urban congregations that we should take an interest in. The subtext of that was Lutherans and Covenanters of Northern European extraction being uncomfortable with changing neighborhoods (wink, wink, changing color). They are more often talking about Chicago, however.

Even more common were the coworkers from New York and environs. Plenty of Jewish psychologists and psychiatrists to go around, either directly, or coming down as students out of Dartmouth. Tri-State emigres of many hues. The ones on internships fell into the usual pattern of making sure we knew that the restaurants up here aren't very good, and the museums aren't really museums. No theater worth speaking of. Architecture. And always, strongest of all, the fact that places outside of New York quiet down at some hour (sometimes early, the rubes), so that if you wanted to go and Do Something, you just couldn't.

The ones who came to stay are more like my friend Greg. Or even more like my friend Frank Schwartz who shrugs "they mean restaurants. Most of them don't go to shows or museums more than every few years.  Which you could do from Chichester just as well." Even that's not quite true, I don't think.  I think the bustle, and the idea that there is always bustle, is an enormous piece. When I went on Maggie's Urban Hike there was a lot of shining eye pointing out where some famous thing or another had happened.  Some movie scene.  Some historical event. Neighborhoods which had their own names. There was a certainty they were approaching the center of the universe.  I had the same feeling from Londoners. But there actually are famous or historical sites just about everywhere.
This fits here about as anywhere else, I guess.
Stuart Schneiderman laughed about it when we were walking together. One of his patients is a woman in her late fifties, widowed, who is going to pick up stakes and leave New York.  She'd be happy enough to stay, but her daughter decided a few years ago that there were not the job prospects she wanted in NY, so she sent out resumes and got a good job in Oregon.  She now has a husband and a small child. A powerful magnet for a Jewish grandmother, he chuckles. (And I approve of that.) But it's her son she is worried about. He has a terrible job and makes little money, with not many prospects for improvement. But he can't leave New York. He explains to his mother "Every morning I get up and I can go down to (cafe I didn't recognise) and have a coffee and a bagel.  Right there. I can actually go there every morning just by walking. I can't get that anywhere else." She worries about leaving him behind.

From some lips this is irritating to me, but that doesn't happen much anymore.  Mostly it's just puzzling. The fact that the events of 3pm also occur at 3am does not stir my imagination. Architecture is nice. I can see making an effort to go see that. I never did get back into the habit of theater, but I know enough that an adequate production has the same effect upon the soul as an exceptional one. I look at this year's Broadway lineup and see that there is  much I would likely find enjoyable. That some of it is irritating is no matter - that's true of everything everywhere. But I can't see why one would bother.  My other college roommate still directs and choreographs for a living.  He is up at Cape Cod Playhouse every few years - there are circuits of theaters, much as in baseball, and I think his is about AA. That would be fine.

Las Vegas

I suspect that John-Adrian and Jocelyn's wedding will be my only visit to Las Vegas.  We were there 48 hours, with about 9 hours of travel on each end. The wedding was at one of the little chapels, very simple and not at all irritating, as I had feared it would be.  They do know how to keep you moving along, and remind you what your time constraints are, but it is very cheery and polite. The woman performing the ceremony did not seem artificial - she seems to be genuinely excited by people getting married and being part of it all. They are her garden, maybe. She seems easily sentimental and this is her dream job.

I have been crying at weddings for a decade now, and I started in quite early on this one.  We joked and teased beforehand, but the moment we did actually have to be silent, it took about 45 seconds before things got misty.  Tracy held out with just moisture, but we both ramped up when JA repeated his vowed, and when Jocie's voice started to break as she said hers I had no defenses left and the tears simply came down.  I didn't bother to dab them. When the officiant mentioned when they were born as part of her little homily, my nerd-mapping went into play and calculated that Jocelyn was about 7,000 miles west and Ionut about 7,000 miles east in 1985 and I thought "What are the odds?" and teared up more. I'm tearing up again.  Some things are impossibly beautiful, but they happen anyway. He is now a husband, as I hoped he might be.  Their daughter Quinn Elena Wyman will be born in November.

The wedding and reception were our reason for going, but seem only a small island in the trip.  That is due to the bride's and groom's personalities, I think. The don't get out of Nome much, and wanted to continue on with serious shopping in Vegas, both the trinkets and the expensive. Eating at nice places is also a draw, and they stuffed it down hard at the Filipino market/restaurant. We also ate out, and walked around in those expensive malls which connect each of the casinos to each other in a long line.  Yes, there is a half-size Eiffel Tower and indoor canals with gondola rides and all that.  The Bellagio Fountains are remarkable.  There's not much distance  between these displays, so they look a bit cramped, but for what they are, they're nice enough.

I could dwell on how much it celebrates itself as sin city. Gambling, sex, and booze the big three, but you knew that. John-Adrian likes to go because in addition to the shopping and the eating, tends to win at poker. He also trundles down to Foxwoods when he visits here and succeeds in paying for his flights two times out of three. The noise is tough to handle for one such as I. As with all bright places, much is made of excitement qua excitement.

Jumping To Conclusions

I have railed in the past about political partisans leaping, sometimes in successive ridiculous springs, to conclusions whenever the new outrage-du-jour comes on the scene. I have attributed this largely to a tactical attempt to capture narrative battle space in the national discussion, coupled with a reflexive belief of four-legs-good, two-legs-bad.

I have noted that this leads to everyone ending up with poster children that they really shouldn't want, or in another metaphor, hills they really don't want to die on.  George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin are my current best illustration of that. Yet I have also learned over the last few years that perhaps this is what people want.  They want to demonstrate that they are foxhole companions, that they are down with the struggle. 

One of the things that psychologists are good for is noting that if a person keeps repeating an action that seems to be working against them, they are getting something out of it that you don't see.  Perhaps they don't see it either.  The Motivational Interviewing  and LEAP" styles do not go straight to "let's find strategies to get you to stop smoking weed," but ask "what does marijuana do for you?"  The answer is not the same for everyone.  Some seek to relax, some to get high, some to be social, some to stick it to their parents or society, etc.  Once that is learned it is easier to find an alternative strategy.

But I digress.  At some level, people don't want better poster children.  They don't want better hills to die on.  They don't really want to arrive at a just, balanced conclusion based on the real data. Jumping to conclusions is just one more way of showing that you really do Stand With Jesus, or believe black lives matter, or support our troops, or really really care about lesbians and gays trans people (I'm so 2015). I think there is a greater tendency when one is not an obvious group member - men who want to show they support feminism likely have to jump more quickly, as do white people trying to show they care about African-Americans.  That goes in reverse as well, though more subtly, I think, of females feeling pressured to display early on they're "not that sort of feminist," or blacks that they aren't that difficult sort you've reading about on the internet.

When you look at the news and the absolutely insane things people are saying this may be part of the explanation. Some of these college deans, I imagine, once had the reasoning skills to look at what is being demanded and think "this is nuts." But being down with the struggle is a positional good, and if you do not clap loudly enough, comrade, it is just as bad as not clapping at all.

Sometimes I remember to be that guy who says "wait and see what develops" about Ferguson, or Kim Davis, or Paris bombings, or whatever. It's not entirely natural to me, as I leap to conclusions as well. It can be a particular failing of intelligent, especially socially intelligent people, to size up what the popular answer is going to be and get their first.  I keep kidding myself that if I can get good at caution it will be a useful public service to remind others to do so as well. And they'll relax, and be grateful, and we'll all get along better and come to better decisions.  It's not fun to realise that this is never going to happen.  People don't really want the right answer.

*Xavier Amador

We Have a Country

An interesting First Things article  by Peter Spiliakos We Have A Country. I was struck early on by the idea that "small government" is not only a loser as an electoral popularity issue, but has weaknesses as a governing concept anyway.

Small-government conservatives and libertarians remain focused on the bad things that bumbling, large agencies screw up because they are large, and because they like to order people around.  This is, in fact, a major danger.  They are not merely large and inefficient, but inefficient (and worse) because they are large.  But most people don't care so much about that.  They see in theory that this largeness part may be the root cause, but they are more concerned about the right-now screwups.  Focusing on reducing government sounds good to only a percentage of the citizenry.  The others want to know "But what will that mean, really?"  It's a fair question.

Those who actually follow government get nervous because such evasions such as "effective government" are often merely code for increased government.  But that's because the wolves are hiding in what is, in fact, sheep's clothing.  Effective government is indeed what we're after, and if it were delivered even libertarians would sigh and pay dearly for it.

He rightly identifies welfare reform as a real victory both politically and in practice.  It captured enough of what positive things we do want a government to do, while removing real excesses.  We actually do want good roads and bridges, we want a functioning military, we want some regulation of poisons going into the air and water, we want trade to proceed in some orderly and mostly fair fashion.

Judicial Bias

NH wouldn't seem to have enough racial diversity to provide enough sample size for even a guesstimate measure of bias.  But note: we have lots of refugee-receiving agencies/charities and African immigrants as well. Though Sudanese, Congolese, Rwandan, and CAR non-refugee immigrants are fewer than the Caribbean and African-American blacks, they are likely a much higher percentage than in other states. As all African groups have a much higher schizophrenia rate, and trauma, adjustment disorder, and later depression are all significantly higher as well, we actually do see a fair percentage of blacks in mental-health related legal proceedings. I suppose the higher crime rate among blacks in general and the higher incarcerated-because-system-ignorant rate among Africans in specific also move the dial some. It is not "a good idea" to keep those numbers in your mind when contemplating bias, you will absolutely have no clue what is happening if you don't.  You will see a prejudice which is not there.  We have 2000 admission hearings a year a few hundred involuntary commitment and a few dozen guardianships every year.  County mental-health courts (a very worthy innovation) likely handle slightly more.

Let me tell you, in order, what will affect what happens to you in the mental health system.

1. What you did in terms of physical dangerousness.
2. How ill you are.
3. How well the sending agency did its paperwork.
4. Who the judge is.
5. What your creepiness factor is, which overlaps 1 and 2 but includes a bizarreness component.
6. Whether you have a developmental disability.
7. Whether drugs can plausibly be blamed.
8. How competent the primary witness against you is, and who it is: your mother, a police officer, an ER worker
9. Whether the judge has seen you in a mental-health or criminal context before.
10. What your sex is.  If you are helpless, females will be rescued/controlled more than males, who will be restrained/punished more if violent. For most other things, it's a wash.
Interruption: we are getting to really low percentages here.
11. Who your attorney is.
12. How well you present yourself in court.
13. Whether you are actually holding a job at the moment.
14. What race you are.

Small state, long experience.  When people speak in anecdotes at  Grand Rounds or as speakers at trainings I, and a few other superannuated clinicians, know the backstory, so they can't shade it.  Though many are stupid enough to try because their narrative would be so cool if true. They can say, when describing a supposed race or ethnicity victim that "he had an argument with a family member over a TV program" - implying that the poor boy is getting railroaded - we can bring up in the Q & A.  "I had this case.  It's Michael, in one of his 2013 admissions before he went Strafford County House of Correction for four months.  He didn't have an argument over a television program.  He beat the crap out of his mother when he tried to take the TV to sell it for drugs and she tried to stop him.  She's a wonderful sweet lady (note: rather obviously of similar ethnic group as her son) who is the only one who would take him in, even though he leaves cigarettes lying around which twice have started fires.

Race is a real factor in mental health.  Other things are bigger factors.

Bubble Economy

Terminology discussion:  The phrase bubble economy accurately describes the inflated, vulnerable aspect of corporation valuation, stock prices, housing values, etc.  But it sounds too cute and gentle. Yes, lots of people lost their homes, businesses, and jobs, but it was all just one of those things that hippies and yoga teachers sigh and can regard with "radical detachment."  There's a Hindi word for this, I've heard it but can't recall it. Yet you see my image, I'm sure.  Yes, a bubble burst, but bubbles do, sometimes.  Though bubbles are pretty things and who would discourage them?

We need something uglier.  What we call "bubbles" are pimple economies, boil economies, cyst economies.  They need to be lanced, then supervised to makes sure nothing unsafe lands on the innocent.  It takes time and attention. Libertarians talk a good game about limited government, but they need to jump on opportunities for government to supervise the lancing of boils as well as can be managed, recognising that everyone in those scenarios is likely a crook who needs the lash, not "market freedom." Once you've crossed a certain line, market freedom is for Other People, not you anymore. I'm sorta big on David Stockman at this point, who I wish could be put in charge of something important in the economy.

I think terminology matters in the PR  battles of culture.

ABBA Reunion

ABBA together for the first time in 30 years.

They look like Lutheran ministers from the Midwest now.  With above-average looks for the genre, but that style.

Some Truth In This

Gandhi

The Gandhi Nobody Knows came in over the transom.  The sender laughingly asked if "Richard Grenier" was my nom de plume, because he thought that it sounded a bit like me.  I took that as a compliment, but even if were possible for me to write this well in 2016, I certainly couldn't in 1983 when it was written.  I did recognise it, and was sure I had posted it before but it doesn't show up under search.  Perhaps it was in a larger discussion and it was in a post with many links.

It is slightly more interesting now, because of the Rob Bell's video where he is outraged that any Christian would claim that "Gandhi is in hell." (You will see this portrayed as Bell merely questioning that anyone could be so certain, but watch the video.  He is outraged that one of his heroes is thought unworthy, however carefully he chooses his words.) Bell is more than a little over-certain himself, but I think most Christians would regard Gandhi as some sort of good guy, practically a Christian, and certainly more Christlike than many believers.

The larger question of the Righteous Pagan - of Plato, Akenhaten, Chaucer's Troilus, all those philosophical souls in Dante's Limbo, of Emmet in Narnia - is not as interesting to me as it perhaps should be.  I am much with Lewis on this, that we don't know and it is best not to inquire foolishly into the actions of God. Those charged with setting out doctrines may not have much choice and must consider the import of entire books of the Bible, sometimes down to the level of examining individual verses in comparison with each other.  My blessing on them, as I don't want to do it.

But. Ahem. Gandhi is in no way on that list.  He has been elevated to some Cartoon Gandhi.  Cartoon Gandhi might be in Cartoon Heaven, I suppose. The real one had some real evil in him.

Fantasy and Religion

James sends along this piece, especially about Ursula LeGuin and JRR Tolkien, Draining the Gods from the World.  I am seeing a few places I might enter and disagree, but I may just give it a pass and keep it as part of the furniture.  Those who have inhabited the Lewis/Tolkien/Chesterton world have been over this ground a bit already.

Looks Like Fun

CS Lewis Onstage:  The Most Reluctant Convert.

I might even travel to see this. Keep your eyes peeled for me, please.

General Stereotypes

After posting the rather clever Massachusetts Stereotypes in the post-before-last, I browsed around the many other stereotype maps and images: New Hampshire stereotypes, New England stereotypes, England stereotypes...American, European, regional. The beauty of the one I displayed, and many that I like, is that it is essentially affectionate, and a community's expression. It is balanced, not trying to pick on any group in particular. Labeling Cambridge "Commies" and the islands "White Caribbean" would be offensive in many contexts. Describing SW NH as anarchists, and the Lowell/Lawrence/Methuen/Haverhill section as mill towns an methadone would also rankle if some Los Angeles comedian put that forward. But taking them all together, it becomes family banter, teasing. It might sting a bit but we bear up under it for our own good. And because it preserves our ability to take soft shots at others in the family. But most of the stereotype maps were just mean and bigoted. You would only think they were funny if you agreed with the bigotry and had a mean streak of your own. There was no affection for many of the groups on your map, just contempt.



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Garrison Keillor was charming and successful because even as he made fun of Central Minnesota and later, American arts and music culture, it was clear that he had a real affection for them both. Inasmuch as any of us shared in the cultures he lampooned - I was a Lutheran when he first came out, and my previous group identification had been the musicians, actors, storytellers, and poets on the fringes of success - we also winced and considered ourselves warned. There was irony in his Hopeful Gospel Quartet but more of his continuing desire to live among them. He brought in chorales from flyover country that were darn good. But when Keillor didn't actually love the culture he was talking about, it turned vicious quickly.

Over at Maggie's, Barrister links to an article about Lee Jussim's* research on stereotypes, which shows they are often accurate. We apparently think this way because it's efficient - a shorthand for navigating the world.  Theodore Dalrymple has written on the necessity of stereotypes as well - that without this 80% accurate instant evaluation, we would be unable to raise children or move about safely. So which is it? The easy answer is that the American ideal has always been that we start everyone at zero, every time, on anything of importance. We have never even approached this ideal, but we can at least say we have done better than others, and have held the ideal as desirable across many political persuasions, in good weather and bad.

  *Dr. Jussim is showing up a lot in articles I have been reading this year.

Ortiz

Just so my friends who are sports fans outside of New England know that I know, yeah, he's juiced. He's got to be juiced. I still root for my team, I hope they win, I kinda half look away. It takes some of the fun out of it for me. Sports fans focus on the positve, the talented young kids coming up. We put on a happy face when stuff like this happens. I'll try not to be quite so angry when it's your team, and Ray Lewis or whoever.

Massachusetts Stereotypes

Update: Fun expansion in the comments.

The 107th New Theory On Trump

Popular media, including straight news, slanted news, and social media, are very good at humiliating people.  In fact, if you look at the last forty years or so, that may be its primary skill.  When Rush Limbaugh came in in 1989 the difference was that he was able to gain a floor and humiliate liberals, which they didn't expect and infuriated them.  He was Doonesbury on the radio.

I don't see that as different now, and was reminded of that by the First Things article that the humiliation, not the refutation of Kim Davis was the point.  It's a only a bit over-the-top.  I think it is basically accurate.

For those who choose Trump because of all that stands-up-to-PC, doesn't-back-down, says-what-he-thinks appeal it's basically that.  The media loves to humiliate, primarily conservatives but ultimately whoever they can bring to earth, and Trump is impervious to this.  There are times that I think he should be humiliated when he is caught out, but he isn't.  I call that a negative, but can see why those who feel they have been quietly and slowly humiliated themselves are inspired by someone who simply pays no attention.