Bee Wise

Professor J,

It's both amusing and sad that your post, Spank Daddy is such a hit with what I'm sure must be disappointed Googlers. I have the twin post/response on my blog. I wrote one (read it here) about Vogue sexualizing a young girl with clothing, make-up, and a smoldering look. I compared it to a 1970's photo of a young Brooke Shields, topless, which is quite innocent by comparison. The amount of visitors who find my blog because they have searched for "topless little girls" is disturbing. 

While we're on the subject of travel and how (and this is sad to say) it is sometimes embarrassing to be an American abroad, I want to mention a couple more things. One is that when I'm traveling I feel the need to be as polite, culturally sensitive, well spoken, and well dressed as possible feeling the weight of representing my country and fear that I am having to make up for damage others may have done. And another is that it may not be impossible for a really closed minded person, but it is terribly difficult to hold on to some narrow American ideas when travel brings to light the fact that you've been misinformed. A trip to Mexico or Central America and conversing with the locals will bring home just how much we need immigration reform. In Europe a feeling of arrogance about the American way of doing everything being the right way evaporates quickly. If you'll recall in my dream education system international travel would be a required investment in our youth.

I've had a couple of interesting discussions lately and I find that when you really question people, they don't believe the things they think they believe. And they can't embrace nuance. It's rare to find people who want to dissect phrases or follow trains of thought to the station and watch the baggage of ideas being unloaded. Which I'm quite sure is why we don't have more readers here, where we often unpack each bag down to the smallest detail. :)

I found an interesting article this week about making decisions and what we can learn from a colony of bees. As a beekeeper, every time I open the hive I learn something and the analogies that can be drawn to all kinds of things are numerous. Decision making though, was one I hadn't thought of. The article, Five Habits of Highly Effective Hives is focusing on building a collective IQ in an organization, in this case particularly a business. Naturally though, we desperately need this kind of thinking everywhere from families to Capital Hill.  Here are the 5 take away points from the article by Thomas Seeley, Professor of Biology in Cornell University's Department of Neurobiology and Behavior:

1. Remind the group’s members of their shared interests and foster mutual respect, so they work together productively.
2. Explore diverse solutions to the problem, to maximize the group’s likelihood of uncovering an excellent option.
3. Aggregate the group’s knowledge through a frank debate.
4. Minimize the leader’s influence on the group’s thinking.
5. Balance interdependence (information sharing) and independence (absence of peer pressure) among the group’s members.

 I'm adding his latest book, Honeybee Democracy to my reading list. This list is a glaring outline of what is missing in American politics and culture. I value individualism as much as anyone, but our every man for himself, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, John Wayne mentality is killing us along with good ideas and effective solutions. There's a lot to learn from the humble honeybee. If Monsanto doesn't kill them all...but that's another post.


*Click on the title of the article above to read the article in its entirety. 

"Times, Why You Punish Us?"

Madame:

Outlaw wisdom?  I’m thinking that if alien observers from space exist, it must certainly be their conclusion that it has already happened, and they are frantically searching the archives to see how they missed it!

As for Foolishness Zsar, we have so many stellar candidates (legion) it would be like declaring a King of Ice Cream Flavors—entertaining, but certain to make many say “no way, it should obviously be X.” 

Your comments on how we export our ignorance and exult in our shallowness are bitingly exact.  I too have cringed when traveling, for much of the same reason you list.  It’s a wonder that people abroad like Americans as well as they do, given that the perception is often that the everyday American not only has crude tastes, but must be a proudly ignorant pawn of the powerful and manipulative.  I guess many abroad are willing to give you a pass on the assumption that if you are traveling somewhere actually out of your insular country, you must be a cut above.  I’m going to go with that interpretation, self-delusional as it may be! :)

In addition to Madame's excellent post http://www.99percentbeauty.com/2013/02/the-power-of-intent.html on her own blog, let me reprise and expound here on the most popular post (http://passionateexamination.blogspot.com/2012/04/spank-daddy.html) on The Professor Blog.  Popular, alas, not due to its content, but because of its title, which has brought to the site many with a fetish.  One disappointed site traveler even left a single word comment of his displeasure. 

The post goes to the heart of the matter: Just as what you fill your eyes, ears, lungs, and stomach with—and conversely, what you miss out on—becomes you, so does what you fill your mind and your time with become you.  They also channel not just what where you get your “information,” what you think, but HOW (including, maybe, how deeply or not) you think.    

We need to quit proving Chris Hedges—and Pogo—right. When this culture begins emphasizing attention to its pressing issues—many of which are nearly-formed catastrophes—rather than entertainment and diversion, it will be the wrenching step needed.  When we actually shorten sport seasons and numbers of sports events, when the video game industry experiences only modest sales, when crass materialism and deification of wealth become passé, and instead book groups, magazine clubs, blog clubs, discussion groups, service groups, academic lectures, roundtables, citizen information circles, and other mostly in-person meetups are reenergized and experience dramatic growth, we will have stepped into the footprints of a path to right ourselves.

There’s a message to our fellow citizens.  “What are you valuing, what are you emphasizing? We can be widely informed, or we can be diverted and escapist (including escaping into work), but we can’t be both.”

Recreation and pastimes are welcome and needed things.  There is a time for diversion and escapism, but that’s our problem.  They’ve been getting far too much of it.

Wise Guys Needed

Professor, Professor,

The fact that you said we need to get smarter but that more than that we need to get wiser is...well, pretty wise. If there is one thing we lack in this country it is wisdom. We have plenty of smart people but those who can exercise good judgement, those who can think long term, those who can imagine solutions beyond what might just be politically expedient are much harder to come by.

So here's a question: How would a population go about acquiring wisdom? I actually had a funny mental picture concerning this. We could have one of those ever popular "wars" on senselessness. I'd like to hear some of your suggestions for the Foolishness Zsar. It would make a good SNL skit, at least.

Of course we cannot think on a national scale for such an effort. It is simply too daunting. So the only thing to do is to press on one mind at a time. Challenging thinking, having discussions, continuing to pry open our own minds and those of friends. (I did give it up at parties my daughter will be pleased to hear.) One heart and mind is really about all we can hope for. 

While we can't make stupidity illegal, we ought to at least honor sound judgement. But we don't do we? We give reality shows to people who ought to be (if we had any national self respect) be embarrassments. We export our ignorance and proudly display our shallowness. This is never quite as evident as when traveling in a foreign country and coming across American programming. The feeling is one of revulsion in a way that cannot be experienced at home. You become keenly aware that this is how those around the world may be interpreting us.

Yikes.

If we can't legislate morality we certainly can't legislate wisdom. Maybe we are going about it all wrong. Maybe we should try prohibition. After all it worked wonders for drugs and alcohol.

Think You Know?

Madame M:

Can we trust ourselves?  A question that not enough ask.  In fact, to be rock sure, unexaminingly sure, is instead the basis of much of the populace of this fractured and defensive society.  Add to that the problems global-wide with all this:

“Will humans the world over succumb to growing levels of ennui, anomie, and alienation (from each other and their governments)?  Will they become more atomized, distrustful, and uncivil? Will their expectations of government continue to rise dramatically, and will governments show themselves increasingly ill-equipped to fulfill these heightened expectations? Will there be growing levels of civic indifference, disengagement, and strategic illiteracy? And will humans and governments maintain their preternatural aversion to risk and resistance to change? The answer to all of these questions will assuredly be yes.”  From “Civil-Military Relations: The Postmodern Democratic Challenge,” Gregory D. Foster, World Affairs; Winter 2005; 167, 3; Research Library, pg. 92.

We need citizens and humans to think, think, think, and do that broadly, widely, and through to second and third order effects.  And we have been deficient in that and need to get dramatically better.  We keep choosing “leaders” who are our “representatives” who do not display these.  What does that say about us?  And if it is “the system” of choosing that is the problem, what does that say about us that we don’t move to change THAT?

We have seen a “grand evolution of war that has taken us from a prolonged historical period of ‘hot war,’ dating to antiquity, in which the actual use of force was the central element of statecraft.  From there, we moved to a highly compressed period of ‘cold war,’ in which two overmuscled behemoths, more alike than not, sought the nonuse of force through the untethered accretion of military might and tacit threatmaking. Currently, we find ourselves in a period of ‘new war,’ where nonmilitary instruments of power and nontraditional uses of the military promise the best results abroad, even if intellectually calcified decisionmakers remain largely ignorant of the efficacy of such measures.” Also from page 92 of Foster’s piece.

The above addresses “war,” but our “wars” on many “things” have been afflicted with the same lack of clear thinking.  We have muddled along, in selfishness, denial of reality, and evasion of responsibility, from addressing the central threatening issues and foreseeable catastrophes of our time.  Only to find those problems all the worse the next time we (briefly) look at them.  We cleave to unthinking ideologies, and the continued legacies of a past that no longer exists in the present, and then fight over ill thought out pseudo-solutions that either are doomed to fail, or are merely selfish deceptions and evasions designed to serve plutocratic masters or other parochial interests.

Many say we need to get smarter, and that’s true.  But we far more need to get wiser.  Or we perish.

My father once told me: “Do not fear the intelligent, the intellectuals.  At least they think.  Fear the near-intelligent—those who think they think.”

My father saw the seeds of decay—and the warning signs—in this society before most could even foresee the possibilities.  And yet he questioned his own thinking frequently, and rarely felt absolutely confident in it.  At the time, I thought it merely because he felt he didn’t have an advanced education.  Now I recognize it as the discerning wisdom of a man who knew better than to be unthinkingly sure of anything concerning the outcomes of his own thinking.

Born This Way?

Professor J,

Our readers have had so much me lately, and so little you, I hate to dislodge your current post. I'm sure our regular readers join me in sending along our deepest condolences on your recent loss of your mom. Your current post on your personal blog was a beautiful tribute to her.

Last night was the annual State of the Union Address. From what I can gather (having been unable to watch it live)  he pushed a far left agenda, single handedly killed small businesses by wanting to increase the minimum wage, and launched a left wing conspiracy to confiscate guns by personally going door to door. Oh wait...that's just according to the comments from Facebook friends who are conservatives. Guess I'll have to read the transcript myself when I get a pair of minutes.

I can't help but wonder why it is that it seems so hard for so many to listen to anyone with a differing opinion. What makes it so hard to listen and pick out at least a few things you might agree with? What makes it seem like treason to look for common ground? It is certainly getting worse due to the powerful forces at play, but is that all?  Every once in a while I come across something that gives an insight.

A couple of months ago I saw something I found so interesting, a 60 Minutes segment about research being done that seems to prove that a certain level of morality is hardwired into the human mind from the very beginning. The experiments seem to prove that while altruism is an innate quality that bigotry is also.

I've covered before the science behind fear, a larger amygdala, and the connection to a fear of change.  This recent testing seems to lend credence to the argument that before we can make real decisions based on any evidence and before we are capable of any critical thinking skill whatsoever, we are inclined to distrust, dismiss, and dislike the "other." The research seems to indicate that we not only like people who look like us or act like us, but those who simply like the same things we like.

We'd like to imagine that those around us are weighing information, listening to evidence on both sides of arguments, and using critical thinking to make decisions about what they believe. But it seems that much more than that is going on. In addition to cultural bias, intolerance picked up on in our environment, and a myriad of other issues that can cloud and affect our thinking, now, we can add biology.

Forget trusting anyone else. The new question seems to be--can we trust ourselves?

Wretches

Dearest Madame:

Your words on mistrust are digging deeper at the roots.  What is behind the mistrust one might ask?  It is not just the lack of a tangible mega-enemy (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia) that has fractured us and bitterly polarized us. It is our disconnection with each other and with our society.  We retreat into, and hide behind, our so called instruments of connection (television, internet, cellphones, social media).  We do not FEEL the human connection.  We are reaping the excessive focus on our “independent” American nature, our hyper-individuality.

It is a fine thing, a very fine thing, to have grit and determination and solitary work ethic.  It can work wonders in both personal and societal benefit, as well as self-pride.  But it can also mutate all too easily into a dismissive, judgmental—even condemning—anger and disgust with those who do not seem to perform the same.

Those doing the condemning leave aside the incredible importance that luck and fortunate background and circumstances play in one’s outcome, even when those factors are not readily apparent.  People are also spun up by the manipulators with their own malicious or selfish agendas.  Yes, there are some of the lower class who abuse the social safety net system and tax code, and it is infuriating when that happens.  But it isn’t the majority, and certainly not the majority of the poor.  What ails them (and with them, us) are systemic things.

Can the poor be blamed if their economic foundation is removed, and virtually all of their ready options, when they even exist, involve lower wages?  Can the poor be condemned for “stupidity” when the system not only discourages critical thinking, not only encourages despair and passive acceptance, but even more so encourages diversion into entertainment of all kinds?  Can the poor be blamed for, in what little time remains after working 2-3 far below livable wage jobs, having their thoughts and drive often drowned in a cloud of fatigue?  Can they be blamed for not bearing sufficiently all the crushing weight of all their burdens as the nuclear family or sole individual bears them all without the social support network—for nearly everyone in that network are all similarly burdened?  Can the poor be blamed for not having clarity of thought if they are forced to live with few healthful options, but only a poisoned environment and degraded and low-quality food that all leads to mental and physical and emotional disabilities, toxicity, and genetic damage?

Those who listen strictly to the manipulators want a quick and meaningless sound bite so they can congratulate themselves, like the biblical Pharisee, at how superior they are to the poor and sinful.  That false sense of superiority—instead of the calm, reflective, and nuanced truth—is just as sad and reprehensible as it was 2000 years ago.

More credence might be given to the complainers if they wanted to make their society better, if they wanted to get involved and do something positive.  But caustic negativity spewed into the ether—especially when it has at most only kernels of partial validity—breeds only division, hatred, and other forms of societal disintegration.  Our bucket is already brimming over with those.  We need to drain the bucket, not add to it.

Trust and (IN)Security

Professor J,

Okay, clearly I didn't have anything brilliant by yesterday. That may have been expecting too much, now that I think about it. ;)

Now. Let's get back to your economy/national security post from a couple of weeks ago. I agree to a point, but couldn't the current situation be put to rights if we had a group of people in charge who could listen, understand, find common ground, compromise, and take hard action? I'm thinking that beyond the economy, our inability to find solutions is an even worse problem. And our inability to both speak and hear the hard truth. Politicians posture for the folks back home. They stick to ridiculous lines of thought even when evidence to the contrary emerges and is presented.

That can seem frustrating at times but then a question arises:What is the elected official's moral obligation? Is it to keep promises made while on the campaign trail, or to listen and change his/her vote if they feel it's the right thing to do? I'm assuming here that "the right thing" is more than just the politically expedient thing. People voted for a representative to follow a particular line of thinking. They assume (often wrongly) he/she will keep those campaign promises and vote accordingly on issues.

Allowing your rep to vote their conscience, would mean putting great trust in the character of the person. Considering some of the things we've seen them do and the corrupting nature of power in general, it is hard to judge correctly the motives for their actions. I think if we thought we could trust them we would be willing to give them more flexibility in changing their minds on major issues.

And this is how we feel about the people from "our" party or "our" candidates. If we have little faith that the people we send to the Hill, as well as our state legislatures can reliably do the right thing, those feelings are usually nonexistent for those on the other side of the aisle. They've been demonized to such a point that we can only assume they are full of evil intent when they disagree with "our" side. 

I'd say that most voters have little confidence that their congressman or senator is beyond corruption, has a long term vision for the area in which their constituents live, or think about much more than how the next vote will be used by their opponent in the next election. The dismal approval ratings that we consistently see when people are polled, shows just how low the average person's opinion of elected officials is.

Maybe our trust deficit is the biggest security issue of all.

What We Have Here...

When the cat's away the mouse will...something or other. Okay, actually Dear Reader, our good professor is away for a couple of weeks and I was supposed to fill in. What's that line from Cool Hand Luke?

Since I am a day late, was up at 3:00 AM with my mother in the emergency room, and have just the teeniest Superbowl hangover I'm taking the easy way out.

Let's call it a meme fest. Or whatever clever name you can come up with (my head hurts). The Professor is still mostly getting to have his say even in his absence.

I'm sure I'll have something just brilliant by Wednesday...