Returning To the Blog

Returning to the blog in September reminds me starting a new semester after a long summer break.  The most challenging part of the first class of each course was to introduce myself to a new crop of students by telling them my name and writing it on the blackboard.  George Papaioannou. I would slowly pronounce each syllable of my last name hoping it would sink in.  Then I would use some rhythmic pronunciation.  Break after Papai and continue with oannou.  Next, I would tell my students that my wife had all her second-graders call her Mrs. Papaioannou in perfect Greek accent by the second week, hopping that would be a better motivator.  Since I knew all that had failed in the past, I would then allow with resignation “O.K., call me Dr. P.”  (I remember a faculty meeting, when someone called on a foreign-born faculty sitting next to me.  He mispronounced the name so badly that prompted my colleague to whisper in my ear “how come they expect us to pronounce their ‘American’ names correctly but they butcher ours?”)

I never asked my students how they spent the summer.  I thought this to be too personal and private.  But I would ask them whether anything relevant to the subject matter of the course had happened.  So, let me ask (just a rhetorical question) what happened this past summer.  Well, lots of stuff happened, and not all was good.  No wonder then, the mood in opinion columns and essays these days is dark and ominous.  News obeys Gresham’s law.  Bad news drives out good news like bad money drives out good money.

So, what happened this summer?  Horrible floods and fires around the globe happened.  Can I interest you in climate change?  Covid infections surged again.  Can I interest you in vaccination?  Private citizens went up into space.  Can I interest you in child poverty?  American troops exited Afghanistan after 20 years and $2 trillion dollars.  Can I interest you in the futility of nation building?  Two bills aiming at rebuilding this country and restoring social fairness are languishing in Congress.  Can I interest you in the tax evasion of the super-wealthy? 

I look at this list and realize that it can serve as Exhibit A of many of the posts on this blog.  I understand that not everyone agrees with the side of the arguments I have chosen.  But the framework for a discussion on these and other issues is there in these posts.  Many of the topics I have covered the last three years were not premeditated or planned based on my prior ideas and knowledge.  The most significant came out of insights from books that offered new information and fresh perspectives that deviated from our traditional understanding and worldview.  Below are the most notable insights to me.

Humans are not a unique species.  With respect to emotions, cognition and even consciousness we just lie on a continuum that includes a surprisingly broad range of species.  Our human uniqueness is a purely anthropocentric conceptualization of the world that has made us in many respects dangerous to our planet.  How we handle the climate and the ecosystem depends a lot on how much we come to terms with our necessary symbiotic co-existence with our natural environment.  After several years of putting it off, finally, this summer, I read the wonderful story of an African Grey parrot as told by its owner, Irene Pepperberg in “Alex and Me.”  By the time Alex died, he had the intelligence of a little kid.  The night before he passed, Alex told Irene “You be good. I love you.” “I love you too,” she replied.  “You ‘ll be in tomorrow?” Alex asked.  “Yes” Irene said.

A lot of things we understand as progress do not necessarily make human life better.  Progress is not a free lunch.  Many advancements and innovations (political, social, economic, technological) make life more complicated and are both the result and the feeder of our never-ending wants.  Just like entropy increases the disorder of a physical system, progress introduces disruption and disorder in our lives.  That is, the entropy of our lives goes up.  It takes enormous energy to reverse entropy in a physical system.  Likewise, it takes enormous human effort to control the disruption caused by human progress.  For every digital innovation, we have to worry and spend enormous energy to control the malfeasance that follows.  Thus, we find ourselves spinning in a wheel in the quest for “progress.”  Even worse, we rarely ask “progress to what end?”

Becoming human and surviving as humans is the result of sociality: living together, learning together, entertaining and supporting each other.  In the past, this meant personal and communal bonds.  Economic and social stratification, however, has pulled us apart into segregated islands.  Thus, we fail to understand and appreciate each other’s lives.  This social clustering is big part of the modern crisis of capitalism.  Although technology (social media, in particular) expands our social universe, relationships and personal interactions are not experienced the same way.  The dependence of our species on sociality should make us more socially conscious and responsible.  The common good ought to weigh more on our choices.

Finally, reason does not necessarily win the day.  Emotions are stronger and often trounce reason.  Even more, knowledge and science as building blocks of reason are often, rightly or wrongly, perceived as abusive and breed resentment.  Instead, of enabling people to inform their emotions and make better judgments, they enable attitudes of cultural, social, and educational superiority.  The root of this goes back to the problem of the last paragraph, of living segregated lives.  David Brooks’ essay “Blame the Bobos” in The Atlantic is truly instructive in this connection.  (I had made similar arguments in my post on meritocracy.)   A present-day example of this divide of attitudes toward knowledge and science is our current split on how to confront the covid pandemic.

At the same time, we should be grateful to all those who care for refugees and migrants, the poor and sick, the hopeless, and the persecuted; in summary, all those who work hard to redress human hardship.  The fact that they are needed implies that our societies do not deliver in a fair and just way.  At least we can say that thanks to information connectivity we cannot remain unaware of what happens elsewhere.  Perhaps, we ‘ll slowly-slowly develop a more unified consciousness that will enable us to confront our destiny through common means.