Health: That's What Friends Are For

Professor J,

I have no doubt that you and your MD friend are more than perfectly capable of changing the world if you team up. A billion people is a pretty good start!

I like your idea of National Social week. I nominate you to be in charge of that. But don't you just know there would be that one person in every office who would still show up so he could say "Well, I'm just so busy." I think our culture has created a lot of people who don't know how to relax, spend time alone, observe nature, listen, or think deeply.

One great thing about your idea would be that the socializing would be the point. December has become a time some of us dread because you don't get out of doing much and other things like shopping, socializing, decorating, travel, and entertaining are added. Everyone is still expected to show up at work and school even though as you point out little gets done because there are so many distractions. I get tired just thinking about the holidays. That's really sad. I don't know about men but more and more women I know dread the holiday season. It's exhausting.

Is this NSW you have in mind going to mean more cooking, cleaning, and planning? Can we make it in summer so it's low maintenance? If you can get this rolling then you can start working on implementing a siesta! :)

Good luck trying to get companies who resent having to give new parents time off to get to know their newborns, time off to hang out with friends. Our culture seems incapable of doing some of the things we most desperately need.

But you are definitely onto just how important those social connections are. I recently read that a new study shows that people who are isolated are less physically healthy and researchers were surprised to learn that it was true no matter the age of the participant in the study. They were also surprised to learn that people who don't have feelings of loneliness and enjoy being by themselves were just as susceptible to the negative effects of isolation as extroverts who crave lots of associations.

Read an article about the benefit of social networks here.

I have a friend who is a pharmacist who is peeved that her doctor never asks about her stress level or her diet. We can add inquiring about friendships and membership in organizations to the list of things the medical community needs to be addressing if they want to treat the whole person and not just address symptoms and write prescriptions.

I can't help thinking that someone who's opposed to your idea is going to say that you are promoting National Socialist Week or something. :) I wonder if people would get behind National Goof Off With Your Friends Week? Maybe take a lesson from the Italians and have a Joy of Doing Nothing Week.

I think you may be on to something!

National Social Week

Madame:

Yes, could be great shift—or inductive skewing! LOL  In any case, it will be very interesting to observe, especially if it is a shift. 

Adding fuel to your postulation, a successful MD friend of mine is anxious to leave his medical field and “make a difference.”  He’s linked up, however just initially, with an organization that focuses on and invests in ideas that can “improve the lives of a billion or more people.”  That’s thinking about making a difference!  He and I discussed extensively just recently of doing something in a few short years.  He’s not only very intelligent, but determined, and we both agree that when we have put our present careers on semi-dormant backburners, we’ll be ready to do things that energize us greatly!  Readers will have to stay tuned for a few more years for developments! :)

And yes, I agree.  Because the nature of our capitalism has not changed all that much—indeed, in a few respects, has even regressed—Waldo and David would perhaps be taken aback that the social and communal was not doing nearly so well (even with social media) as advances of capital.

So… I said I would be up to changing subjects.  I am wondering about the cultural and social aspects of our working schedules.  Right now, although we SORT OF have a “slow week” in the Christmas/New Year time frame, we don’t have a National Holiday WEEK, and especially not one in the high energy spring/summer/autumn cycles.

Would we be better off as a society, as workers, as citizens, and even productively, if we did?  One where we were engaged in celebrations, family reunions, energizing and investing in our relationships, community, state, and national consciousness?  I’m thinking of other cultures—many just as hard working—who  do more of this sort of thing than we do (Chinese New Year, for example).

Or do we already get all that, just in different (imperfect) forms?  It seems to me that we don’t, that we just stay AT work, but aren’t productive, because it’s Superbowl Week, or March Madness Week, or Christmas/New Year’s Week, etc.   Which means we don’t really get all the benefits, and especially the regenerative properties, from being away.  Wouldn’t we be better off if we actually took, as a nation, a week off?  Because if everybody (or nearly everybody) were really off, no one would be “missing” anything, or “falling behind,” or getting anxious and fretting.  Yes, with globalization, it might be more complicated to pull off, but we also might find that the jacked-up hyper-working model was being pushed most strongly by us (U.S.), and that the rest of the world might welcome a break.

Assuming, of course, we don’t spend it all just frantically trying to have a crazy, souped up “free” vacation.  :)

What does the good Madame think?

The Good Life

Professor J,

In talking about famines, I'm reminded of a professor of Jewish studies I heard speak recently. Her talk was on the Prodigal Son and she noted the different reactions she received when speaking on this story in different parts of the world. In America and Europe listeners noted bad parenting skills and awkward family dynamics. In Latin and Asian countries they noted the ungratefulness of the son. In Russia? Their first reaction was to the famine. They saw the famine as the cause of the son's troubles and identified with him. I thought of how casually I'd glossed over that phrase in my own reading.

I took a Chinese cooking class once and the chef, whose family had been cooks for the emperors, described some dishes that were less than appetizing to our American tastes. As we made faces revealing our disgust he said, "How lucky you are that this country has never known famine." I've never forgotten that and often mention it in situations where people are being critical of another culture's culinary choices.

Thinking about the younger millionaires and billionaires not being quite so enamored by their wealth as previous generations goes along with the shift I think we're seeing in society.  I mentioned young people and more and more retirees it looks like opting out of conventional materialistic lifestyles. I'd like to think it's proof of one kind of paradigm shift at least. People are looking not so much to amass wealth as they are to build a life. Celebrities often fall into this category as well. Reaching the pinnacle of success for many means looking around to find out it isn't as fulfilling as they imagined it to be. We then see them get busy in politics or throw themselves into humanitarian efforts.

Just as we saw women want something more than just their traditional roles and head out of the house in search of something more fulfilling, we see men not just wanting to bring home the bacon like their fathers, who were happy often just to have work, but modern men want it to be something they are passionate about. Everyone seems to want more out of life than their parents and grandparents.

I wonder if we are seeing a paradigm shift in the culture about what's really important. It seems like everything I read and everyone I talk to is embracing the idea of a bigger inner life with less to show for it on the outside. But of course that could be greatly skewed by what I read and who I talk to! :)

Still, Emerson and Thoreau might be surprised at just how alive and well their ideas are today.

Characteristics of Change

Madame:

Famines are a mixed bag.  Often, societies RECOVER from famines but are not much changed by them.  Revolutions, for their part, are in one sense both caused by gradual or immediate changes (or even just the deepening of inequity and injustice), and in another sense, the cause of further immediate change.

Yes, I mean, for example: depressions, large total wars, deep oppressions, etc.  Great change, due to the manner of human personal and social psychology, usually require them, and such “remakings” are made possible and often necessary by those great disruptions.  For example, the Great Depression brought many politically engineered changes in a country set up to be obstructive to much politically engineered change.  And WW2 both accelerated and broadened those changes.

However, catastrophic propellants are not required for ALL change.  Movements can arise in gradual response to inequities and injustice.  Populism in response to the Gilded Age’s inequality and corruption, the Civil Rights Movement’s response to segregation and oppression, etc. are examples.  The changes they bring are moderated in strength and usually stretched out over time, but they too can have an effect.  They are harder to predict because human psychology is more variable about them.

Your question about leaving the “store” untended and elite further grabbing is an interesting one and bears monitoring.  What is also interesting is that many of the younger plutocratic multimillionaires and billionaires are less enamored with their wealth than their older counterparts, and although they carry many of the same traits of defensiveness about their wealth, they are full of ideas about how to use that wealth to further their visions of societal (often world societal) good.  Of course, many progressives and conservatives disagree with those visions, but that is another discussion.

Those sites you mentioned are also interesting.  If they merely allow the young to ADAPT to the changes instituted by the wealthy and the greedy, they will be less impactful.  However, if they become elements of true change, well!  So, it will be very important to monitor the answer to the question in the title of your post!

I see I have filled my five paragraph guideline.  Which means I won’t be inserting a new topic.  Yet! :)

Affluenza: Is the Tide Turning?

Professor J,

Thanks for manning the ship last week! The bathroom graffiti was disturbing and illustrates perfectly the need for all the documentation that was done upon liberation of the camps, interviews, books, photographs, etc. Well done, you, making sure something was done about it.

The articles you linked to were interesting. While I was catching up on your posts I had a couple of questions:

Can you give a couple of examples of past "immediate catastrophic propellants to great action and change" I'm assuming you mean wars, revolutions, famines and the like but I'd like to know exactly what you had in mind. 

While I'm excited about a cultural shift toward simplicity among young people, does that in some ways leave the "store" untended allowing the elites to grab more while we are all meditating and simplifying? 

Since I posted about this generation's willingness to share and live lives less centered around accumulating things I've seen even more examples of ways people are working around the old systems.

Yerdle.  A site that allows you to give things away and accumulate points for them. You then use the points to "purchase" something you need. 

Freecycle. A way to let your community know when you are giving something away allowing someone who needs it to come and pick it up. 

Zipcar. A car sharing service. 

Nextdoor. A way to share things like lawn equipment, tools, or even child care in a neighborhood.

Bike sharing systems that go by various names in different cities. 

Thrift stores are multiplying like crazy. 

Add to the list farmer's markets, community gardens, and a rise in bartering among friends and it makes me hopeful that new systems might be loosely in place soon enough to avert disaster for many people if the worst happens. Everything old is new again it seems. Ideas that worked in the past are becoming fashionable. Grandparents and great grandparents look wiser all the time. Lots of young couples are looking to live in walkable neighborhoods and my daughter and son in law are keen to become a "one car family." Keeping up with the Joneses is less about something shiny and new for this generation and more about what a sustainable lifestyle looks like. 

One lesson that appears to have taken hold in the aftermath of the Great Recession is that we not only didn't need all that debt, we don't really want the stuff that goes with it.

Vigilance Vs. The United States of Amnesia

Dear Madame:

It was written in permanent marker, in big black letters, on the wall of the Barnes & Noble bathroom:

“The Holocaust Is A Lie”

Lie was underlined three times for emphasis.

While it was somewhat surprising that such ridiculousness was scrawled in a place of books and knowledge accumulation, presumably among the well-read store goers, from me came an immediate counter-reaction.

Not just that the ignorant, manipulatively “informed” show their lack of learning and lack of discernment by such a statement, but that they have to do it in cowardly fashion because they cannot stand the light of open discussion and reasoning.  Or worse, that it’s the hate-branders purposely spreading falsehood for their own twisted and manipulative purposes.

No, my main reaction was as a historian.  Because it is completely illogical for someone to be expected to be shown the least credence or plausibility when attempting to dispute what may be the most well-documented long period event in history, one in which not only endless recorded interviews and footage exist, but survivors of still exist.

I only said it in these blog pages just last September, but it bears repeating:  To paraphrase the great civilizationist historian, Arnold Toynbee, “When the last person who remembers the last terrible war is gone, the next terrible war becomes inevitable.” 

Here’s your challenge, humanity: Break Toynbee’s cycle.  It can be done!

And to you Madame, and all mothers, well wishes to you on this Mother’s Day. 

By the way, I told the B&N staff, and they were going to paint over the false words.  Vigilance!

Here’s also hoping that America and the world gets and stays educated enough to never even consider to believe such falsehoods as what was written.

Potential Richness

Dear Readers:

Madame is unable to post this week, so I get to continue my response earlier than I thought!

I do not know if the next generation(s) WILL significantly positively impact the future.   But they have strong potential to do so, although perhaps not for the reasons many suppose.   The next generations do not (at least yet, thankfully) have the immediate catastrophic propellants to great action and change which have historically been the usual prerequisites, but perhaps they do not need them.  We will see!

Gradually, although perhaps not deeply yet, the established societies’ economic systems operated by everyday people appear to be becoming more distributive and more democratic.  Maybe this will even extend to renewable energy and other sustainable things.  Already there are growing signs among these next generations that they both do, and will, stress much more a sort of collaborative commons, and that perhaps cooperatives will become an everyday given. 

These generations have either seen or experienced the dramatic shortcomings and sufferings under the present plutocratic-oligarchic dominated form of capitalism.  Not only do they appear to not like it, but they are alienated from it.  Sure, they like its possibilities for tech advancement, but the list of what to like about it after that gets rather short.  They are far more into living satisfying lives not as connected to sheer creature comforts (outside of technology!) as before.  Much of what they do, as you showed previously in a post which I presently can’t locate (argh!), is done first not with trying to obtain remunerative gain, but because it works and they like to share it. 

The devotees of classic capitalism are searching for a way to successfully integrate that.  Allowing short-term monopolies are one idea, but really, it may come to pass that eventually classic capitalism will become only a niche player in a largely collaborative society that redefines even classic democratic-socialism.

Because, more and more, classic capitalism doesn’t fit the new sharing/cooperative environment of public-use applications, etc., or even the internet in general.  Nor does it very much serve the common good, especially the common good communicative/information infrastructure.

Jeremy Rifkin, in his book, The Zero-Marginal Cost Society, talks about the increasing number of societal things with zero or near zero margin cost.  The vast majority of people may soon (and some already are) acquire the ability to produce their own info, energy, goods, and services.

The transformation of classic capitalism may be the next great change in human evolutionary progress.  Time will tell.  There is much potential at the same time that there is much danger.  There is a lot on the next generations to sidestep, deal with, and/or transform.  They also have a lot of tools and dispositions to have the ability to do so.

Fascinating times of promise and peril! 

The Slow Fires of Consensus Build

Madame:

I know of no studies along the lines you describe.  However, the coverage has morphed out of the progressive outlets.  For instance, the OECD’s generally respected work; The University of Washington’s and USC’s recent studies; The Economist’s coverage; Robert Reich’s documentary, Inequality For All; and, particularly, French economist Thomas Piketty’s best selling (and for an economic!) book Capital in the 21^st Century. (More on this in a bit).

The winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Economics was recorded on October 19^th of last year saying that economic inequality in the world, and especially the US, is the most important economic concern, perhaps THE most important concern.

Perhaps most indicative of a shift could be the Wall Street Journal (note: the WSJ is not noted for pro-labor or economic equality sentiments) article entitled “A Bipartisan Consensus on Economic Inequality?”  From the article:

In a respected Pew poll, a majority of Americans are strongly concerned about economic inequality.  Of course Democrats heavily are, but so are Independents.  What’s even more telling?  “To be sure, the share of Democrats (90%) who think that government should do something to reduce the gap is twice that of Republicans (45%). Still, it is significant that nearly half of a party more hostile to the public sector than in previous generations believes that inequality calls for a response beyond family responsibility and private charity.”

“More frequently than in recent years, one hears Republicans repeating Jack Kemp's famous motto: People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Now GOP leaders and presidential aspirants are delivering speeches about poverty and opportunity.”

Readers are encouraged to read the whole (short) article: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304117904579499790499812228

Economist’s Piketty’s blockbuster book (even more spectacular given it is a 700 page goliath) sounds warnings that come from a field generally noted for its pro-business, pro-growth, capitalism-cheerleading sentiments.  Its message has attracted attention beyond those expected to incline to agree.  Possibly because Piketty’s writing is easy for the layman to understand, and easy for that layman to place that understanding in his or her consciousness: “The US economy has begun to decay into the aristocratic Europe of the 19^th century.  Hard  work will matter less [for the majority of people], inherited wealth more.  The fortunes of the few will unsettle the foundations of democracy.”

“Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck. Sometimes, meritocratic arguments are used by the winners of the game to justify the role of unlimited inequality. I don't think there is any serious evidence that we need to be paying people more than 100 times the average wage in order to get high-performing managers.”

Read the newspaper interview with the author here: http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_25620723/q-amp-french-economists-grim-view-wealth-gap

Of course, readers have had frequent reminding from me about how the disconnection between self-serving, self-focused, wealthy “elites,” and the mass of the rest of the citizenry, played an exceedingly strong role in the decline and fall of the Roman Republic and the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire.

I have not even begun to respond to the rest of your post, and I have much to say about it!  I will next week though!