Questing For Foresight and Futuristics

 Madame:

Your words on discernment remind us that people crave simplicity in an overly complex world.  Black and white is a lot easier than trying to discern nuance in the truth of the tangled gray.

I am interested in your opinions this evening far more than I am in expressing my own.  What I am most interested in at the moment is what, of the noisesome things this culture dwells on, will still be issues 50 years from now?  Why will they be or not be issues?  What does that indicate?

Here’s a short list.  Feel free, as always, to add your own!

Marriage equality (homosexual rights)

Abortion

Immigration

Weapon Regulation

Environmental Impact (Climate Change, Pollution, etc.)

Obesity

Health Care

Education

Plight of the Middle Class

Infrastructure

Poverty

Energy Independence

Deficit and Debt

Terrorism

Social Security

Partisanship

War(s)

Jobs

Drugs (including legalization)

Corporations

Overpopulation

Misinformation/Disinformation

Consumerism

Spirituality

Religion

Species Extinction

Water and Food Supply and Quality

I’ve often thought that if we made decisions based on “how is the world going to look 200 years from now, and how will it look with this decision?”, we'd be better off, but 50 years is maybe more imaginable for people.  For those readers out there who are vexed by the American non-disposition toward math, that would be how you or your predecessors would have tried to look forward in 1963.

What fun!  And it’s also fun to read about how they thought we’d be by now.  In many ways we’ve gone in unimagined directions, and in others, we haven’t lived up to their expectations!

Misplaced Priorities

Professor J,

As I noted on our Facebook page, at first glance, I thought the title to your last post was "Idiot Day." I asked readers to supply their own jokes. 

Usually we want to throw all the other bums out but, I was referencing what happens every few election cycles now when the vast majority of voters are beyond disgusted with their own bums as well as the bums from the other side. People have so little confidence that anyone is going to go about getting the people's business done that they often throw up their hands in disgust. (But maybe that's just me.)

The article you referenced made many excellent points. "The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats." That's a problem unless the belief that "music has charms to soothe a savage breast" is actually the basis of our foreign policy.

Somehow along the way talking has become a sign of weakness. "We don't negotiate with terrorists" has somehow come to mean we don't negotiate with anybody. Ever. Ron Paul's alluding to the fact that it isn't our democracy or freedoms that people around the world hate, but instead our, often abysmal foreign policy, was met with a visceral reaction from other candidates during the last presidential campaign. Rick Santorum's response reminded me of someone singing God Bless America at the top of his lungs with his fingers in his ears.

One of George Carlin's more famous rants comes to mind.

Our inability to see nuance, coupled with out mistrust and hatred of "the other" is strangling us. People, parties, organizations are divided up politically into "hawks" and "doves." The former never met a war they didn't like and the latter often think nothing is worth fighting for. What we need are peace loving hawks and doves who know that there are, sometimes in history lines that must be drawn in the sand, things that must not be allowed to stand. (That accidentally rhymed and sounds like a bad protest sign.)

The observation that we would rather spend on weapons and military power, that the article points out are not "sufficient to win" is telling. Because it isn't just true abroad. It's true at home too. The same group of people who think it's reprehensible that college students would want their astronomical student debt forgiven think nothing of spending billions on war toys.

Our misplaced priorities are a sad recurring theme... 

Idiom Day

Madame:

Except that we usually only want to throw all the OTHER bums out, but our particular congressman or senator is the reasonable exception we want to keep (because somehow he or she’s “one of us” near election time and he or she nearly always successfully runs “against” the very Congress that he/she’s a part of).  And regular rotation, while it intuitively sounds like the correct prescription, is not borne out by the data (Michigan study, for example) we have so far.

But don’t give up.  Maybe we just need to adjust for more precise variables. :)

I turn today to how we are penny-unwise AND pound-foolish.  One of the briefest but best explanations was given 4 and a half years ago by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.  Some excerpts:

“The United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems. After all, you can’t bomb global warming.”

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates realized this and did his best to fight to right it (he flew in the face of parochial expectation that he would be pro-Defense spending, not pro-State Dept spending).  But he ran up against parochial interest from congressmen and senators: “As an example, the F-22 aircraft is produced by companies in 44 states; that’s 88 senators…(and) the Navy and the Air Force are seizing upon China s rise as an excuse to grab tens of billions of dollars for the F-22, for an advanced destroyer, for new attack submarines. But we’re failing to invest minuscule sums to build good will among Chinese. For the price of one F-22, we could for 25 years operate American libraries in each Chinese province, pay for more Chinese-American exchanges, and hire more diplomats prepared to appear on Chinese television and explain in fluent Chinese what American policy is. And for the price of one M.R.E. lunch for one soldier, the State Department could make a few phone calls to push the Chinese leadership to respond to the Dalai Lama’s olive branch…helping to eliminate a long-term irritant in U.S.-China relations.”

“Then there’s the Middle East. Dennis Ross, the longtime Middle East peace negotiator, says he has been frustrated beyond belief to see resources showered on the military while diplomacy has to fight for scraps. Mr. Ross argues that an investment of just $1 billion financing job creation and other grass-roots programs in the West Bank could significantly increase the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But that money isn’t forthcoming. Our intuitive approach to fighting terrorists and insurgents is to blow things up. But one of the most cost-effective counterterrorism methods in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan may be to build things up, like schooling and microfinance. Girls education sometimes gets more bang for the buck than a missile.”

“A new study from the RAND Corporation examined how 648 terror groups around the world ended between 1968 and 2006. It found that by far the most common way for them to disappear was to be absorbed by the political process. The second most common way was to be defeated by police work. In contrast, in only 7 percent of cases did military force destroy the terrorist group.”

For the complete article, readers can go here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10kristof.html?_r=0

Lordy, lordy, we HAVE to get smarter.  While the Obama administration has done a better job in some respects than the conditions existing during the previous one when this article was written, that’s a pretty low bar.  But more to the point is that it’s a mindset that’s the real problem.  And that mindset exists in the congressmen, senators, and we the people.  Because we’re the ones ultimately who get short-sighted about what we spend on. 

Something to think about the next time someone utters the classic phrase: “We need to spend all that money we’re wasting on foreign aid and all right here instead.”  Even counting a lot of largely barely related stuff, if we cut it all out, we’re talking at most some tens of billions of dollars.  Versus many hundreds of billions of dollars.  

Straining at gnats and swallowing elephants.

And the idioms keep coming! :)

Second Grade Logic and Whiskey Wisdom

Professor J,

Combining your idea with a coffee house (can we add a bookstore?) is a great idea. Meeting and talking with people NOT like them, as you point out would go a long way towards a society of real tolerance and understanding, not just the surface political correct nonsense we are often confronted with now.

I was giving a tour recently at the art museum where I'm a docent and had a class of second graders, all African American. While discussing a work of art one pointed out something of interest to him and the other docent asked which person he was referring to. "The white one." he said. His friend elbowed him and said "Caucasian!" I later pulled their teacher aside to ask if that was what they were being taught to say. She said that the teacher of the class they belonged to was especially sensitive and she didn't allow them to say "black" or "white." I found that interesting since the exhibit they were touring was, Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, featuring works of art created by the artist, an African American, in which the classic story of The Odyssey is retold through collage. Bearden's version of the epic tale is reset in the Caribbean and the characters are all cut out of black construction paper. The paper can't be African American can it? There's a fine line between being sensitive enough about things to be able to discuss them, yet not so sensitive that we can't.

Does changing the terminology impact behavior in any meaningful way or just make us all more uncomfortable and/or easily offended? Of course all language used to dehumanize or deliberately insult is never acceptable , but innocent descriptions from second graders, that really aren't offensive at all...maybe we should let those slide.

Your entire quote by Phil Williams sums up our issues and why it isn't likely this culture (cue John Wayne movie soundtrack) is going to get as far as solving them as some other countries.

Took a little weekend trip to the Jack Daniel's Distillery and on the tour the guide explained that the government use to send down 5 "revenuers" (this was the term used for tax men everywhere we went in east Tennessee) and they lived together in one house to oversee the production and make sure all the taxes were being collected. It was a rotation set up. Every few months whoever had been there the longest would be sent home and replaced by a new person. The idea was to keep enough people on site long enough to understand how things operated but not long enough to make too many friends, be open to taking bribes, or become alcoholics. That actually might not be a bad compromise to what we have now in Washington. Stay long enough to be effective but not long enough to get too comfortable inside the beltway or make too many corporate friends you are going to want to employ you later on.  It might keep us from this "throw the bums out" mentality we experience every few election cycles.

Seriously, if the whiskey makers don't know how to run things then I give up. :)

The Common Boat

Madame M:

Counseling and support groups?  I suppose, but as you said, this would be a different avenue.  One with no narrow focus, or any associated—deserved or undeserved—stigma.  One where the thoughts of citizens could not only be expressed and collected, but where people feel free to modify those thoughts.  Where people feel valued in society that is too often anti-valuing or uncaring.  A place where they can want to learn and understand how they fit—and possibly to learn and understand from others.  Where people talk or see in person what others have expressed—without condemnation.  Where they get to know not the ideological views primarily, but the STORIES of people—where they come from, what their background is, what drives them and why. Where, in this insular society, they can meet and talk with people NOT like them, and maybe find out how rich, varied, and complicated many of us are. 

Probably need to combine this idea with a good coffeehouse idea. :)

Would be nice to attain what a thriving democracy should look like rather than a dysfunctional one: “Procedural and substantive norms are widely accepted; although there is opportunity for the expression of individual and group interests within well-defined limits. There is general acceptance of the political process and widespread agreement on what is or is not permissible behavior. Pluralistic democracies are typically based on this notion of collective interest and constrained (if vigorous) competition. Moreover, there is a common expectation that those in office will use their position for the public good rather than for private gain. In cases where individual interests take priority over the collective interest, then corruption runs rife or the state becomes fragmented. When control of the state becomes the prize of politics, then obligations to the collective interest are subordinated to the pursuit of individual or factional interests.” (from a 2008 Swiss published article entitled “Violent Non-State Actors and National and International Security,” by Phil Williams, pages 5-6)

Of course, the above is all the more accentuated by the displays of hyper-partisanship in Washington—including now the arcane procedural debates in the Senate to score momentary political advantages.  More posturing (and casualties to the “general welfare”—the common good) in this post-truth, post-facts era.

Sometimes it seems like America is adrift in a boat with the wheel lashed down by opposing factions.  While the passengers mostly lounge below decks and don’t come up very often to see how far things have drifted dangerously off course—and when they do, usually retreat quickly back down below to settle back into denial, despair, apathy, or escapism.

Still working on what to do about that. :)

Adventure of the (not so) Final Problem

Professor J,

I get to be Sherlock, don't I, Professor? LOL

Yes. Yes. I know. Very brief post last time. Good lesson for me there about putting my posting off to the last minute and realizing that I'm too exhausted to remember all the brilliant things I'd planned to say. Since I can't recall them let's just assume they were deep and profound. Probably the solutions to many of the world's problems.--Oh well. ;)

This inability to compromise, to listen, to find time to think deeply, to question one's own beliefs and opinions, to discuss without debating, to speak passionately without screaming, is one of our biggest problems, isn't it? It also keeps us from discovery. As Brian McLaren points out in his book, A New Kind of Christianity:  "...revelation occurs not in the words and statements of individuals, but in conversation among individuals and God..."

Which brings me to another point of yours...

I think you are on to something important with your idea, The Center for Listening and Connecting. I'd say that not feeling that we've  has been heard or understood is one of the bedrock problems we are facing. I suspect that it is the root of many things that morph into all kinds of behaviors and attitudes that plague society.

Above all else I would say that human beings want to be known (and loved for who we are once we are known). We desperately want someone to hear our story. We want our experiences and our emotions validated. That is a problem, though isn't it? As we've pointed out numerous times on this blog the lack of connection that people feel to one another is profound. For all our cool technology,  lots of people are awash in a sea of loneliness and disconnection.

Basically what you described with your idea sounds a lot like counseling and support groups. People generally don't reach out for that kind of help until their problems have spun out of control and they are on the verge of some great loss, if they haven't lost it all already. The benefits of being able to connect and feel heard might be great indeed if such a thing were available with no stigma attached. People with close friendships may not feel the need of it, but even then it might be very helpful when moving to a new city alone, or having something you were uncomfortable revealing. The lack of close friendships and the emotional safety that comes with them is weakening us as individuals and as a society. As we drift away from institutions, clubs, and organizations (outlined in Bowling Alone), the problem deepens.

Well, of course you know I don't have data on the hypothetical violent meditators. As I said, I'm sure it would go a long way in reducing the problem--but a universal solution? --for the human condition? Sadly I doubt it's possible.

Listening Up

Madame M:

Two Can Play?  You’re making me feel like Holmes and Moriarty, lol.  And your post was so brief, readers might be thinking that either 1) you are subtly hinting to me to embrace brevity, or 2) you are being “short” with me for some reason. :)

Ah, so I surmise from your explanation that in those people there is mis-associative allegiance then, where the people end up voting or otherwise supporting something against their own interests, a la What’s The Matter With Kansas?

I’VE disturbed your focus?  My powers aren’t as feeble as I thought! :)

As for why we can’t be offended AND listen, I can surmise many reasons (a sampling listed shortly), but first I want to note that because we are disconnected, because we feel semi-isolated and vulnerable in a world that seems off-kilter and beyond our control, our sensitivity is heightened to extremes. 

So many of us, it seems, feel we are defending what we feel to be the essence of ourselves against a world that is uncaring (and sometimes cruelly uncaring) or even so fast changing that we feel stability and familiarity is besieged or destroyed, and equilibrium but a dream.  No one ever really tries to understand us first (and forget about deeply) before we are categorized and dismissed (and sometimes condemned) in some ridiculous oversimplification, or worse, a caricature based on false information or misperception. And infuriatingly, the dismissers then retreat into their electronics or other diversions, never valuing us enough to listen to clarifications.

When some (real, imagined, or twisted) moral precept—often arrogantly displayed from some position of supposed “superiority"—is inserted into the mix, we get the situation so well described by famous political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau: “Compromise, the virtue of the old diplomacy, becomes the treason of the new; for the mutual accommodation of conflicting claims, possible or legitimate with a common framework of moral standards, amounts to surrender when the moral standards themselves are the stakes of the conflict.”

In a call-in radio or tv program, or a town hall, people try to talk non-stop, because they’re afraid if they pause, someone might demonstrate the faulty foundations of their thinking.  Others keep talking because it’s one of the few times in their lives that others pretend to hear and care.

All not exactly conducive to connecting with our fellow citizens.

Sometimes I’ve thought that you and I should found The Center For Listening and Connecting, where people could go (maybe pay a nominal fee or maybe just a donation; haven’t thought through that part) and someone would give them 15 minutes of their undivided and silent attention, taking notes, and attempt to summarize what they said afterwards.  Where people could go to get things off their chests to a real person, in person (not via social media), where they can have their thoughts recorded on paper (well, electrons) and feel like they were understood.  Where people could rent a soapbox (not even used anymore!) and speak to a crowd of 5 or 10 people. 

Maybe after people felt their ids/egos/superegos were no longer under constant attack, where some other, REAL (not virtual) people tried to understand them, then they’d be more receptive to hearing what others had to say.  And maybe, just MAYBE, utter the words civil discourse longs to hear: “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I see that there’s more to some things than I thought.  I may change my mind about what I said before.”

Present me data, Madame, on how many regular practitioners of meditation initiate violence, and perhaps I can be persuaded to adopt your view!  I understand, however, your skepticism about any potential universalities in the human condition!

Two Can Play

Professor J,

Yes, you summarized my points perfectly. 

When I said that if you question people you often find that they don't believe what they think they do, I simply mean that often people think that lines or blocks of thinking go together. If they are for or against (I don't know...let's use a hot topic like abortion) they may believe they'll line up politically with those who agree with them on that one issue in other areas, or veins within larger arguments.

You've disturbed my focus and I have a few questions (okay, and comments) about your random thoughts and quotes.

Ben Carson: Sadly he is correct. Our offense reflex is constantly on edge and we don't seem to have the ability to be offended AND listen. Why is that?

Somehow I doubt that teaching meditation would eliminate violence. Reduce it greatly perhaps, but total elimination by any means seems overly hopeful even for this optimist.

The drone over California comparison brings home the fact that we often condone and support actions we take in other countries that we cannot imagine happening here. I thought that was a brilliant point. 

Care to elaborate on the anthrax specifics you mentioned? 

Random Channels Week

Madame M:

You will have to quit speaking such eminent sense if you want me to avoid the inclination to emphatically say “Yes!” after reading your points. :)  Suffice to say that the reader will once again do well to review Madame’s points carefully, including (if I have surmised correctly) 1) investment in international travel should be part of our educational system, for every student, 2) nuance is needed to help us bring our thoughts out of the shallows and into full reality (where we may find we need to alter them), and 3) collective/communal IQ—and wisdom!—can be extremely beneficial, and we don’t have to sacrifice our independence to do it, just our radical independence (which is killing us, as you said).

One of Madame’s statements was, “I find that when you really question people, they don't believe the things they think they believe.” Can you expound more on that?

While Madame’s thoughts are focused, my thoughts are scattered this week.  A random sample of the channels playing in the Professor’s head at the moment, without further comment:

“People run around with their feelings on their shoulders, waiting to be offended, and then they can’t hear anything else.” Dr. Ben Carson

We have been acknowledging climate change in official government documents since at least 2008 (National Defense Strategy).

2/3rds of Americans now play video games.

“We are an overworked, overstressed, polluted people.” Bill Maher

There were 23 healthy people to 1 disabled in 2000.  Today, it’s 13:1.

“If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” Dalai Lama

Much of my own writing and thinking is raw—at best, intellectual protoplasm. 

If Mexico started using armed drones over California to target Mexican drug dealers hiding in America, and even if they targeted ONLY drug dealers’ houses, would we be okay with that? 

Brad Manning is in prison and no senior Wall Street executive is—or even up on charges.

There are largely no sick days for employees of non-unionized restaurants and hospitals.  Sickness runs through employees, customers, and patients because sick people come to work.

The more specifics that come out on the anthrax mailings of over a decade ago, the more disturbing it looks.

The amount of quirks and odd behavior in the general population seem so large, is the norm now the exception?

Both the “conservative” and “liberal” stations on satellite radio have the same advertisements to own gold, sell accounts receivable, buy foreclosed homes and property, save big money on taxes, earn big in the stock market, etc.

‎"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”  Anais Nin