Let's Reason

From politics to social and health conditions, it seems, in the words of Princeton economists Case and Deaton, that there are “not one but two Americas.”  One is the America of those with a college degree and the other is the America of those without.  But if we look at how the college education system works, we also see a divide in the opportunities, the quality, and the burden shared by students who attend elite colleges versus those who don’t.

The co-existence of these two divides drives populist politics, differences in health and life expectancy, social decay, and uneven opportunities for advancement and social mobility.  The fact that they persist with little ameliorative action signifies that we are willing to countenance a system in which segmenting people by degrees of education is acceptable.

In an interesting and perhaps unexpected way, the Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action may become a catalyst for change.  Both public opinion and experts prefer that college admissions move from the race-based model of affirmative action to a class-based model that opens-up opportunities for all young people of underprivileged socioeconomic status.  Richard Kahlenberg who writes about educational and social issues has long exposed the preference of elite institutions for applicants from more affluent families.  Preferential admissions for legacy students and high-school players in boutique sports, like hockey, clearly favor the better off.  But beyond that, 71% of Black and Hispanic students admitted to elite colleges come from the top 20% of the income distribution.  Therefore, Kahlenberg writes, what elite institutions practice is an affirmative action for the rich. 

Another divide in the American higher education system is the huge chasm in resources between elite and non-elite colleges.  Sociology professors Arum and Stevens remind us that the Supreme Court decision affected the opportunity for an elite college education of only a tiny fraction of minority students.  The overwhelming majority of such students, however, go to colleges inadequately funded and, hence, less likely to provide the same quality education.  Arum and Stevens point to California for an example of uneven educational resources.  Whereas elite colleges in that state spend $40 to $60 thousand per student, non-elite colleges spend only $6 to $8 thousand.  So, if we care to even the quality of college education, we ought to provide sufficient funding to public colleges.  

The less financially privileged students who mostly attend the poorly-funded and poorly-resourced colleges also lose in another more devastating way.  They are the ones who hold a disproportional fraction of the $1.7 trillion student debt.  The explosion of student debt is primarily due to the shift of most public colleges, including the very top among them, to a tuition-based financial model with states allocating fewer and fewer budget dollars to higher ed. 

This shift was inspired by the market-based idea that a college degree could pay off its cost through the higher life-time earnings of college graduates.  Unfortunately, things have not worked that way.  Except for well-paying degrees, as those in business, computers and technology, career earnings in many other jobs have not matched the inflation of educational costs.  Thus, students who follow lower-salary careers fall behind in their student debt payments with serious adverse consequences for their lives.  Not surprisingly, degrees in the humanities that lack the earnings power of degrees in professional fields have fallen out of favor with students.  As a result, we are witnessing a worrisome trend of colleges closing humanities departments and eliminating humanities courses.  Markets are supposed to rationalize allocation of resources.  But in education, the debt-financed tuition model leaves a broad range of lower-wage occupations below the affordability threshold and risks depriving students of a well-rounded education, a critical part of which comes from a strong humanities curriculum.

This state of affairs in higher education has led even moderate commentators like David Brooks to decry the college admissions process as “one of the truly destructive institutions in American society.”  Brooks argues that the admissions hierarchy is replicated in society as elite colleges prepare young people to live within an ecosystem of privileged citizens with a sense of meritocratic attainment that alienates them from those who lack elite college diplomas or a college degree at all. 

But what makes America unique among affluent countries is the divide between Americans with and without college education as a predictor of basic living conditions.  Case and Deaton were the first to call attention to the plight of non-college educated middle-aged Americans in their book Deaths of Despair in 2020.  Case and Deaton continue to remind us that non-college adults are plagued by more sickness, more drug abuse, more suicides, and significantly shorter life expectancy.  It is shocking, they write, that Americans without a college degree are now destined to live 8 and half years less than college educated Americans.

The consequences of lacking a college education also extend to poor family outcomes, such as the proliferation of single-parent homes.  Melissa Kearney, an economics professor, points out that children raised in single-parent homes are less likely to succeed in school and more likely to run afoul of the law.  Even worse, children of single-parent families are more likely to replicate the pattern of poor family outcomes in their own adult lives.

So, our current policies are inconsistent with our avowed goals.  First, our goal to maintain our global competitiveness requires that American colleges produce more and better educated students.  Second, our goal to have a society with the capacity to reproduce socially healthy outcomes requires that we have more stable and financially sustainable families.  To achieve these goals, though, we need to make education (college and vocational) more affordable and equitable across classes.  Neither seems promising under current policies.

Finally, there is another dimension in the college versus no college rift.  Educated elites like to glamorized college education as the ticket to social success and better living.  The representatives of these elites inhabit the two coastal strips of the country and live off the digital and information economy.  But a country needs food, energy, and other tangible goods to prosper.  And as of 2018, according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics most of the Americans who provided these necessities lived in the middle of the country.  These people for good reason dispute the idea that a college education (at a high cost nonetheless) is indispensable for their jobs.  And, of course, they resent the fact that they have lost significant share of the production of these goods to foreign countries.  Hence, they feel abandoned.

Which leads to the question: “Should lacking a college degree mean a life in misery in America?”  How wise and politically sustainable is it to ignore the interests and social standing of the majority of the population that happens to forego or not afford a college degree? 

I never knew who Charles F. Feeney was until I read his obituary in the New York Times.  What piqued my interest to read beyond the headline was what followed his name “. . . Who Made a Fortune and Gave it Away. . . “ 

As I kept reading, I learned that Mr. Feeney (who died at the advanced age of 92) did something else more remarkable than having given his fortune away.  In his fifties, he abandoned a life of comfort and luxury, including palatial residences around the world, and spent the rest of his life with his wife in a modest rented apartment in San Fransisco.  By that time Feeney was a multibillionaire having co-founded a large chain of duty-free shops in airports and then reinvesting his money in venture capital projects.  After keeping $2 million for himself, he embarked on giving his $8 billion fortune away, not once disclosing his identity.  This dramatic change came after he started “to have doubts about his right to have so much money” and “that money buying boats and all the trimmings didn’t appeal to me.”

Charles Feeney is not the only super rich person that eschewed a luxurious life.  Warren Buffet is reportedly known to follow a relatively modest life without the extravagance of so many of his peers.  Such individuals are the exceptions that stand opposite to our current model of outlandish spending and supercharged consumerism.  We are now at the point where we have lost sight of the line that separates what is enough from what is too much. 

In the closing year of the 19^th century and at the zenith of the Gilded Age, Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class in which he wrote about the public display of personal wealth in an attempt to emulate others and signal economic status.  The two world wars and the Great Depression destroyed fortunes and tamed spending habits, but eventually the building of immense fortunes and extravagant spending came back roaring in the latter part of the 20^th century and continue unabated to our day.

Then along the way, an interesting thing happened.  The excessive consumption habits of the rich metastasized to the upper-middle and middle classes.  Although many orders smaller on an individual level, consumption by the average person has many of the attributes of “conspicuous” consumption Veblen wrote about.  Living in McMansions, purchasing luxury goods, vacationing in plush hotels and resorts, cruising the seas, dining in fine restaurants, all these opportunities of high-end consumption are now within the reach of more and more people who do not belong in the class of the wealthy and superrich.  As a result, the very rich had to raise the ante. 

By that I mean that in a world where rising prosperity democratizes the consumption of perks previously enjoyed by the wealthy, conspicuous spending requires going deeper into lavish lifestyles.  This can take many forms: buying property in taller and taller buildings or very exclusive venues, building bigger and bigger yachts, flying larger private jets and much more.

Here are some examples of gratuitous consumption.  Last year 13,000 weddings cost more than $1,000,000 in the US.  But the rest of us didn’t do that badly by spending an average of $30,000.  The top-floor penthouse at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan was listed for $169 million in 2021 making it the most expensive property in Manhattan.  As the author of this article (in The Atlantic) writes, while the rich reside in ever taller skyscrapers the rest of us have to crane our necks more and more to get a glimpse of the sky.  In London and Manhattan many super-expensive properties remain uninhabited for months or years because they are bought to signal wealth not to serve as homes.  And who has missed that half billion-dollar yacht that Jeff Bezos built in the Netherlands and then demanding the dismantling of a bridge to make its way to the Atlantic?

Should all that extravagant spending matter at all?  While we can debate this question from a moral and cultural standpoint, it matters more for pragmatic reasons.  Extravagant spending by the wealthy and excessive consumerism by the rest of us have costly externalities that affect us and the planet.  From an environmental point of view, excessive consumerism means the extraction of more natural resources and the use of more climate-damaging fossil fuels.  As our footprint increases that of other species recedes and biodiversity declines.  A recent study found that the acceptable rise in global temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius is coming faster than the target year of 2050.  We seem to have pinned our hopes of fighting climate change on technology and alternative energy sources.  Is that, however, enough without any moderation of lifestyles?

From the viewpoint of how we allocate economic resources, we seem to tolerate a dualism in our society (I am speaking of the US) in which extravagant spending lives side by side with homelessness, polluted neighborhoods, inadequate health care, high rates of comorbidity in our population, and uneven and often inadequate investment in education.  In the ongoing discussions in Congress about the debt ceiling and our deteriorating fiscal situation, the least discussed topic is that of taxes.  Instead, one side of the aisle eagerly targets expenditures on those items that can make us a fairer and more livable society.

For the sake of preserving the health of the climate and that of our society, public policy needs to address the twin problem of excessive wealth and excessive spending.  We know how the enormous fortunes are being amassed.  Through the collapse of competitive markets in crucial sectors of the economy and through the preferential tax treatment of high incomes.  The United States practically invented progressive taxation.  In 1981, the top marginal income tax rate was still 70%.  And then the dramatic flattening of tax rates along with easily exploitable tax loopholes allowed the few to contribute so little to meeting our society’s needs.*

To address the negative externalities of excessive spending on the environment, we need to rationalize spending through taxation.  It is already done in the European Union.  Value Added Tax rates vary across goods and services.  In general, gas (bad for the climate) carries a higher VAT than food items.  Luxury items carry even higher rates.  Failure to reflect the cost of negative externalities is one of the major weaknesses of markets.  Taxing harmful spending is one way to correct this.

I have no way to know whether Charles Feeney abandoned his luxurious life to save the planet or because he was overtaken by the moral weight of modesty and moderation.  Regardless of why he chose a modest life, what he did was good and sets an example first and foremost for his wealthy peers and for the rest of us as well.

* In the summer of 2021, ProPublica published the taxes paid by wealthy people like Bezos, Buffett, and others.  They were shockingly low relative to the incomes and capital gains earned.  The data showed that the very richest Americans paid just 13.3 percent of their taxable income in 2018.

Matthew Bogdanos is not a household name by any means.  But it is to gallery owners, private art collectors and museum officials.  Bogdanos, who serves as the Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, has made it his mission to identify stolen or otherwise ill-gotten artifacts and return them to their lawful owners. 

An ex-marine, Bogdanos developed a personal disdain for the scourge of stolen art when he witnessed the looting of the Iraq Museum in the aftermath of the US invasion.  Thanks to his efforts, his team managed to recover approximately 10,000 pieces.  In his current job as a DA, Bogdanos has seized more than 4,000 artifacts and has repatriated hundreds of them to almost two dozen countries.  His legal successes have contributed to changing the attitudes and policies of art owners and museum officials.  As Bogdanos puts it, someone has “to guard the guardians (of art).”

Art that has fallen in the hands of private collectors or museums by illegal means in the black markets for artifacts is one part of the problem.  The other and more enduring and, I would say, more reprehensible part of the problem is art looted by national armies or removed by private citizens with the approval of state authorities and then brought and kept in the countries of the looters.

So, the object of this writing is not per se the commendable work of people like Matthew Bogdanos, but rather the arguments made by the apologists of the great museums of the West in holding on to looted art and their resistance against repatriating it to the countries of origin. 

Given my Greek roots, this topic is close to my heart, since, as all Greeks, I resent the refusal of the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles, removed from the Parthenon during the Ottoman times, to where they belong.  It was though an essay written by David Frum that appeared in The Atlantic last year that I found objectionable enough to put looted art in my list of candidate posts.  And yet, month after month I demurred about writing about it.  Until this past month, when I saw an article by Jason Felch in the NYT with the suggestive title “Museums Should Have Never Hoarded Looted Artifacts.”

What I learned in this article was that art deemed to be of universal value (universal by the aesthetic criteria of Western elites) ought to be housed in the great museums of the West as the heritage of the whole humankind regardless of where it was produced and by what people.  That was how the concept of the “universal” museum was supposed to gain legitimacy.  This concept was an intellectual product of the Enlightenment which espoused universal values.  Of course, the emergence of “universal” museums would not be possible without the imperial outreach of European powers, the subjugation of their colonies, and the massive relocation of artifacts to their own museums. 

David Frum, who centers his essay around the repatriation of the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria,* makes similar arguments as to who is a better custodian of great art; inadequately funded and poorly-managed museums in poor countries or well-funded and well-managed museums in the West.  And by the same logic, great art deserves the greatest possible accessibility that only museums in well-travelled Western countries can offer.  However, Jason Felch points out that of the more than 8 million artifacts owned by the British Museum only one percent is displayed.  So much for accessibility.  And this year it was disclosed that 2,000 objects had disappeared from the British Museum without any clue how this happened.  So much for custodianship.

Frum does admit that artifacts kept and exhibited in Western museums perpetuate memories of a painful history of subjugation.  And having to travel to Western museums to see samples of their cultural heritage is one more reminder to the people of former colonies that their bondage to their colonial masters is not been entirely over.    

But then Frum is willing to defend the notion of the “universal” museum through a series of spurious and even, what looted nations would consider, offensive arguments.  These arguments run something like this: it is only a minority of local elites in countries of origin that care about repatriation; the binding and inspirational power of art works better in Western societies; the Western museum is a great accomplishment of human civilization; the artistic work of any country is part of a common heritage of all humanity.

So, what we have here is in fact a defense of neo-colonialism carefully camouflaged as a thesis that supposedly serves a higher purpose.  By that I mean that although the political and military subjugation of former colonies is gone, forms of subordination and dependency by other means still persist, and one of them is holding on to looted art.  Shamelessly, the hoarding of such art is framed in arguments that allow Western countries to be both the judge and the jury.  In other words, they are the ones who decide what criteria museums and even government systems in former colonies ought to fulfill to have a legitimate claim for repatriation.  Former colonial powers, which were often rapacious in expropriating the resources of colonized and occupied countries, now they declare the cultural heritage of their colonial subjects the common heritage of humanity which moreover should be enjoyed only in their own (Western) museums.

If former colonial countries had any intention to undo some of the damage of their colonial rule, they should first return the fruits of their looting to their rightful owners.  And if the great Western museums cared about the conditions of maintenance and display of these artifacts, they should provide financial and managerial assistance to establish well-run museums in the countries where the looted artifacts first came out of the hands of the artists in those countries.

For years, officials of the British Museum argued that Greece had no world-class museum to house the Elgin Marbles.  Then in 2009, Greece opened the Acropolis Museum which quickly garnered multiple awards and global recognition.  Of course, by that time the arguments of the British Museum had again shifted.

It is high time Western countries stopped hiding behind the self-serving construct of the “universal” museum and do the honorable thing and return looted art where it belongs. 

*Benin was an ancient kingdom in southern Nigeria.  The Benin Bronzes (though not made of bronze) are artifacts of exquisite artistry that belonged to the kings of Benin.

In a recent column in the New York Times, David Brooks asked whether human beings are fundamentally good or fundamentally bad.  Based on my understanding of evolution I would be inclined to answer: neither.   Robert Sapolsky, author of the book Behave: The Biology of Humans At Our Best and Worst offers a more nuanced scientific answer:

Genes have different effects in different environments; a hormone can make you nicer or crummier, depending on your values; we haven’t evolved to be “selfish” or “altruistic” or anything else-we’ve evolved to be particular ways in particular settings.  Context, context, context.

Of course, this is a scientist’s answer detached from any moral purpose one’s faith may attach to human life.  The fact is that for hundreds of millennia and long before we reached the point to conceptualize the divine as a moralizing force that cares for the morality of its human creatures, we survived and evolved as a species.  We did this thanks to genes that found a way to pass their copies to the next generation.  This gave rise to the concept of “the selfish gene” that became the title of a blockbuster book by Richard Dawkins.

In the almost fifty years since this book was published the field of evolution has advanced by leaps and bounds and now not every evolutionary biologist or evolutionary behaviorist accepts that evolution works solely in the interest of selfish genes. *  Still though the basic principle remains, that evolution is about reproduction, and about new mutations of genes, some of which prove to strengthen the fitness for reproduction and by being inherited keep evolution going. 

But here is the greatest thing in the evolutionary process.  For genes to succeed in passing their copies on to future generations, many species, and above all human beings engage in patterns of pro-social behavior.  This means that, yes, the genes are selfish in their quest to replicate themselves, but we, their carriers, are not necessarily so.

Recognizing others as our kin and acting in their interest is one way to reproduce part of our own genes.  A sibling may sacrifice her chances to reproduce or otherwise improve her fitness to survive and reproduce because she knows that the common portion of genes shared with siblings (or another relative for that matter) will be passed on to the offspring of the sibling.  Altruism, and its variant reciprocal altruism, has also been selected as another efficient way to increase our fitness for reproduction.  I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine so that we both have a better chance to survive and reproduce.  Thus, evolution works both in selfish and cooperative ways.

And then there are the universal emotions we all share, most importantly empathy, sympathy, and envy.  Our predisposition to feel empathy and sympathy brings us together and make us pro-social.  But what about envy?  The ethologist Frans De Waal makes the argument that paradoxically envy might have very likely birthed the moral sentiment of fairness.  An uneven distribution first triggers envy and rejection.  Eventually we realize that fairer arrangements are more likely to be met with less friction and more acceptance by others.  Two-year toddlers, long before they have been inculcated by moral and religious values, refuse to accept unfair deals even though that leaves them with nothing.

Although genes can be responsible for our tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities they are not the only thing that matters for human behavior, as Sapolsky argues with plenty of convincing evidence though out his book.  Environment and culture do matter.  They matter to the point that it is more correct to say that genes and culture coevolve.

Here are some examples of how the cultural environment can twist any original genetic predisposition and affect one’s life.  Childhood poverty affects the brain and its development.  That can affect the child’s adult life.  Children raised by loving mothers have a better chance to be inclined toward good as opposed to bad behavior later in their lives.  Living under persistent stress makes people’s behavior more susceptible to emotional reaction (coming from the limbic system of the brain) rather than to reasoned reaction (coming from the frontal cortex).   Irrespective of any genetic advantage in analytical thinking, math scores of female and male students can suffer due to gender inequality.  (In Iceland, a country of gender equality, girls best boys in math scores!)

The extent of child poverty a society is willing to tolerate, the family and social context that enables mothers to care for their kids, the stress and insecurity people live under through their lives, and degrees of gender equality are all dependent on the kind of environment our political, social, and religious institutions built around people.  In other words, they constitute the cultural context within which our genetic tendencies, potentials and vulnerabilities are set to manifest themselves. 

Another important interplay of genes and culture has to do with how we treat those we know and those we don’t.  As part of our survival and reproduction game our behavior has been biased to favor in group comradery and out group hostility.  These biases become the springboard for racism, xenophobia, and ultimately war against others.  Even here though, we can avert our genetic predisposition by developing the kind of culture that bridges the precarious gap between Us and Them and leads toward acceptance and tolerance.

The interaction of genes and culture should convince us that it is a mistake to isolate individual behavior from one’s environment and social setting.  Our individual nature is not moral destiny.  Instead, we have plenty of room to develop the contextual conditions that can lead individuals in our societies to live better lives.   Thus, whatever role genes have in one’s behavior gives no pass to a society to remain indifferent or unscathed of any responsibility.

*The alternative to gene selection at the individual level is selection at the group level.  In this case traits of behavior are selected for the benefit of the group not of the individual necessarily. 

Several times in the past, I have come back to the blog by writing about books I had read during the summer vacation.  I hope I will have something to say about the books of this past summer, but right now I find myself staring at the books I keep on my desk and I have the feeling they are staring back at me pleading to be heard.

They are books that speak of human progress, of renewal, of fear of what we may be losing or of what we should pursue.  Factfulness is a book from 2018 that made a convincing case that in spite of all the world problems, humanity is making progress in the social, economic, educational and health fronts.  Given what followed: a menacing pandemic and the war in Ukraine, we would be excused to feel otherwise.  Then there is Upswing that described the remarkable period of progressive policy victories that still define many aspects of life in the US.  Here too, though, things have been turned around toward inequality and social anomie with a new upswing struggling to gain traction.  Then I hear the voices of worry and dismay from Liberalism and Its Discontents and Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.  Contrary to what, at least, the historians expected thirty years ago at the end of the Cold War, the two great offspring of Enlightenment, liberalism, and democratic government, show signs of serious weakness in inspiring people around the world.

And then there are the books that keep me focused on the two facts that matter the most.  First, that we are all members of one species.  We the sapiens that have come to rule planet earth but also in full ownership (no matter how much we wish to avoid it) of all its problems.  You must have guessed I am talking about Sapiens by Yuval Harari.  If Sapiens reminds us of our common history as the last surviving hominin species, it is in the books of Frans De Waal we are reminded that far from being entirely unique, we are also part of the animal kingdom that lies with us on the wide spectrum of intelligence, emotions, and even feelings.  If commonness with other fellow sapiens and other animals makes us uncomfortable is because of the obligations and challenges such realizations raise for each one of us.  Namely, how to coexist with one another and the rest of nature in a sustainable world.

The significance of looking at the world with full awareness that we humans are all part of the same species and that we cohabitate this planet with other forms of life within a fragile ecosystem should, I believe, be enough to stir us into a serious reconsideration of ideas we inherited from the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution.

When historians lament the decline and corruption of liberalism and then propose remedies for its reinvigoration, we would also like to know how this restored and rehabilitated liberalism can address the current challenges from climate change and ecological deterioration, extreme economic and social inequality with its consequent migration waves, and, of course, the prospect of superintelligent AI machines.  I am afraid that in the presence of these grave challenges, talking within the original framework of liberalism and conservativism or of any variant of each, falls short of helping us tackle the new challenges recent realities have imposed upon us.  These challenges do not appear, at least thus far, to be adequately served by the institutions trusted by both liberalism and conservativism, that is, individual sovereignty, free markets, and nationalism.

The liberating ideas that emerged three centuries ago with either a liberal or conservative flavor sought to unshackle the individual from political, ecclesiastical, and economic subjugation.  The new social order was supposed to be based on the consent of the governed, individual rights, and free markets.  At the same time, the thinkers that raised those ideas expected that people would use their new liberties responsibly and with moral restraints.  Similarly, nationalism aimed to give people with common cultural, religious, and historical bonds the right of self-rule.  

These ideals of individual sovereignty, economic freedom, and national self-rule were supposed to be the instrumental goals for an ultimate objective, that is, enable people to gain control over their lives and fate through personal choices.  Three centuries later we have, or should have, come to realize that upholding these ideals has led us down to a path that threatens our future as a species. 

For example, the prerogative of property rights weaponized, so to speak, by free markets has been used to elevate wealth maximization and unfettered consumption to a level of unquestioned legitimacy devoid of any restraint.  The result is inordinate wealth concentration and overconsumption.  Neither of these, however, serves the interests of ecological and climatic sustainability.  Nor do these pursuits serve the interests of social cohesion and equitable political and economic rights for all.

Nationalism also often morphs into chauvinism, and ethnic and religious fundamentalism that spawn xenophobia, ethnic cleansing, and countless inter-state frictions and wars.  Although founding the United Nations had the noble and ambitious objective to bring nations into cooperation and peaceful coexistence, the UN assembly – as this year’s meetings also demonstrate – is mostly used to air grievances and threats, often very vehement in their content and delivery.

Meanwhile the dangers of climate change (potentially life threatening) and AI going rogue know no national borders and as such they should concern us all.  To address these threats, we need to harness the presumed freedom to pursue profits and consumption without limits and we need to be willing to cede some national sovereignty so that we have a unified front in the fight for a life-sustainable climate and averting machines from transforming our human nature or eventually overtaking us.

In recent centuries, philosophical and political thought as well as open rebellion and warfare have been used to secure or expand freedoms for individuals and nations.  Now, however, is the time to strive for the fate of our whole species and its freedom from the fear of catastrophe.

In a previous post I wrote how early on biologists tried to check developments in genetic engineering and how the recent calls for restraint in AI research and application echoes those attempts.  Those early warnings, however, did not succeed in putting a halt to bio-engineering research into areas that would have much graver consequences for humankind.  And this provides a lesson as we enter the early phases of AI research and development. 

In its early stages genetic engineering had achieved only the modification of genetic characteristics in plants and animals by introducing qualities from the DNA of other species.  Despite the voices of caution and apprehension, scientists continued their inroads into genetic research and in 2012 a new powerful technique of gene editing, called CRISPR, was laid out.   This technique could edit human embryos for the purpose of either conferring specific traits exclusive to the newborn or, more dramatically and consequentially, passing inheritable genes down the line of its offspring.   In his book AS GODS Matthew Cobb describes the upheaval and flurry of activism that followed as biologists tried to check and control the proliferation of both new research on human editing as well as its publication in scientific journals. 

But neither the admonition or opposition of individual scientists (including the pioneers of gene editing) nor guidelines by scientific organizations stemmed the flow of new research discoveries.  In November 2018, the news came from China that the discoveries were turned into application.  A scientist, He Jiankui, had used CRISPR to edit the genes of two female embryos.  The reaction was swift and severe.  He was denounced by the international scientific community, his Chinese university fired him, and the Chinese authorities prosecuted him and sentenced him to a jail term.  However, the dam had burst.

Cobb writes that reliance on self-regulation and pronouncements by individual scientists and scientific organizations were not enough to stop an ambitious scientist from applying gene editing on human embryos.  Expectations and assumptions about self-restraint and the efficacy of rather abstract guidelines proved to be wrong.  This is exactly what could happen with AI.  Bio-engineering and AI are not lacking in potential for beneficial applications.  The problem is that research that empowers beneficial applications can also empower questionable, unethical, and devastating applications.  The conundrum we face is how we deal with the dictum “Just because we can do something does not mean that we should.”

So, who should have a say on what we are allowed to do?  To their credit, many biotech scientists recognized that their research and its applications had implications for all humanity.  Therefore, the public should have a seat at the table of such momentous decisions. 

The calls for the public to set boundaries whether in bio-engineering or AI, requires however that we have a public that is capable to appreciate the consequences of applications on human life.  This does not mean knowledge of the technical aspects only.  More importantly, it means an understanding of the of human experience and condition that only an education in the humanities (literature, philosophy, sociology) can offer.  To channel students into technical fields we call STEM (for science, technology, engineering, mathematics) without a decent exposure in the humanities deprives them of the ability to appreciate what their work means for the future of humankind.

In her inimitable style, Maureen Dowd (NYT, 5/27/2023) wrote “We can’t deal with artificial intelligence unless we cultivate and educate the non-artificial intelligence that we already have.”  And “Without humanities, humanity and humaneness, we won’t be imbuing society with wisdom, just creating owner’s manuals.”  Technology can dazzle us so much that we often blindly follow it with very little reflection as to what we have to lose.  Therefore, we need to ask what is the education we need in order to protect us from ourselves?” 

Pierre Hadot, a French academic, goes further and express skepticism as to whether the modern educational system prepares men and women for, as he puts it, “careers as human beings.” Instead, in his opinion, the system controlled by the state or corporations and often with the blessing of religious institutions prefers to trains us for occupational careers and, I would add, for unexamined lives.  As such we are destined for a life that marches to the drumbeat of daily chores in the interest of performative tasks dictated from outside without the time or capacity to reflect on our humanness.

A core lesson of an education in the humanities is to impart a modicum of wisdom so that we learn how to act so as not to harm ourselves or others.  This is not, however, what we see in the contemporary world.  Instead, lack of moderation and desire for self-gratification is what sets the tone in this era of the “sovereign self” as the historian Francis Fukuyama calls it.  The sovereign self is the extreme manifestation of the liberal world order, divorced from personal  responsibility. Without wisdom and temperance, the individual is practically unarmed in fighting the excesses of individual choice.  That applies to the average citizen as well as to the ambitious scientist or technologist.

So how do we edit the cell of the sovereign self with the traits of wisdom and temperance?  David Brooks, the well-known columnist of The New York Times has something to say in this regard in a piece for The Atlantic.   He argues that the autonomy-based liberalism should be replaced by the gifts-based liberalism.  These gifts include the gift of life and the gift of knowledge we have received from those that preceded us.  Therefore, “our individual choices take place within the framework of the gifts we have received, and the responsibilities to others that those gifts entail.”

It seems therefore, that in order to contemplate our human future and steer it down a path that preserves our fundamental humanness we need to train individual citizens in the art of wise living and reset our liberal world order so that it balances the freedom of individual choice with the responsibility toward preserving our human nature.  This is how we can instill agency in all of us so that we can take control of our human future.

On the other end, stand the voices of those who want to make us believe that whatever future we happen upon is the inevitable outcome of how the world works.  But these voices are either misguided or wish to escape responsibility.  Which innovations prevail, which technologies are adopted, which ways of life are stamped on us are not necessarily the result of nature-based inevitability.  They are rather the results of choices we make with less or more or even no consent under the influence of competing interests, political dynamics, and cultural diversions that keep us away from any liberating introspection.  No wonder then that the liberating power of the humanities must be suppressed.

It seems to me that any future human dystopias, if they come, will come only if we cease to have agency as responsible citizens.

I am not a movie or TV critic but I can’t resist throwing my hat in the ring of commentaries about these two series.  Much of what has been written has been from the perspective of the personalities of the protagonists and their human flaws.  But more than that can be glimpsed from the two series. 

Despite some commonalities, I found both series to project some salient reflections of the ways of the old and modern worlds, which surprisingly still coexist even in advanced societies and seem to appeal in varying degrees to different segments of people.  I have looked, though not thoroughly, for this kind of analysis, and the closest I came was an essay in the December 2022 issue of The Atlantic which I found to be an interesting point of departure.      

So, before I go into my own takeaway points, let me give some highlights of that Atlantic essay.  First, a glaring discrepancy.  Although “Yellowstone” has been more popular than “Succession,” it has received no formal artistic recognition.  “Succession” on the other hand, as of its third season, had garnered 48 Emmy nominations and 13 awards.  “The elites won.” That’s how the author put it.  To buttress this claim, the author wrote that “Yellowstone” appealed to audiences in the American heartland whereas “Succession” appealed to the coastal elites.  “Yellowstone” was all about masculinity, honest toil of the land, and resistance to change.  “Succession” was about corporate power and control, and about super-wealthy people served by swarms of domestic servants, lawyers and assistants, fleets of SUVs, and private jets. 

“Succession,” for sure, is firmly grounded into the world of modern capitalism and life, though the better part of this life is for the privileged few.  The plot in “Yellowstone” is about a struggle to keep it in its pre-modern state-dominated world.  In each of these series we see the reflections of raw versus sophisticated living.

What is striking in “Yellowstone” is how justice is meted out and order is kept.  Whether we have altercations in the cowboy compound or disputes with outside interests, justice and order are dealt with little resort to authorities.  The ethos of the residents of the ranch is based on personal loyalty and trust and immediate retribution.  When thuggish types threaten the Dutton’s interests the family prefers to settle scores outside the purview of the law in their own swift ways. That’s what we would see in clans and tribal societies.  Dispensing with formalities and authorities is not because the state is weak but because the direct application of justice (and for that matter revenge) entails greater and more immediate satisfaction.  The Dutton family runs the ranch under its own set of rules and discharges justice accordingly.  We have the distinct feeling that the state apparatus, from the governor’s office to the police, enter the Dutton’s affairs only as an imposition or as a last resort.  Authorities are trusted as long as they are under the control of the Dutton patriarch.

If these are valid observations, it is not difficult to see why the Dutton’s world can be appealing primarily to those who are distrustful of state authorities and prefer a personal or communal law and order.  In today’s America this yearning for direct justice finds its political expression in the “Stand your ground” laws.  Let’s face it.  Humanity has lived a lot longer under law and order systems that precede the founding of the state as the only authority to mete out justice.

Next, family assets have different meanings to the Dutton and Roy families.  John Dutton does not see his ranch just as a type of capital that can be transformed into cold cash.  He resists all takeover attempts because to him the ranch is family tradition and pride, hence, it has no transactional price.  “Succession,” standing on the other side of economic paradigms, is the embodiment of modern cut throat capitalism.  Everything can be sold and bought for the right price.  Royco run by the Roys or by the Swedish tech mogul Lukas Matsson makes no difference to the Roy siblings as long as it has the same value to them.  The sudden change of hearts toward keeping the company in the family has little to do with the desire to preserve a beloved family asset and a lot more to treating it as an object of power play and a trophy for whoever secures its leadership.   Capital in capitalism, as a factor of production, is devoid of any sentimental attachment and value.  After all, an asset can not be called capital unless it is available for trade and utilization for maximum monetary benefit.

The two series also tell us something about the complexity and contingency of our modern world.  Life and doing business in “Yellowstone” exude a much stronger flavor of a pre-industrialized world.  They are much more grounded and closer to the land.  Running the ranch has few of the trappings and layers upon layers of intermediaries that intervene to turn decisions into outcomes.  Both, “Yellowstone” and Royco are family businesses, but with distinctly different organizational forms.  John Dutton runs Yellowstone as he pleases, with only minimal input from his children.  Logan Roy has, in theory, the same power, but he needs to follow corporate bureaucracy and procedures that engage board directors, lawyers, PR executives, finance guys, securities authorities and on and on.  This is not just a difference in business organization; it is also a difference in complexity and division of labor. 

But there is more to increased complexity and division of labor.  The wider the gap becomes between wanting something and getting something because we need to rely on “experts” or technology, the less capable we become in basic survival skills.  Think of the decline in numeracy because of the reliance on calculators.  The Roy family members look like they have a privileged life served by servants and assistants catering to their every need.  The price of that life is dependency on others that can disappear once the privileges are gone.  For the Roys and their peers, and less so for the rest of us in the periphery of the elite world, each level of service depends on the function of a service under it, and so on.  This is what I like to call contingent living.  Greater complexity brings more contingency.  But the higher the degree of contingency the higher the risk a little disturbance in the system will bring a devastating end.  No wonder our modern lives, the result of advances, progress, and system complexity, are also lives full of anxiety.

We can draw all these differences between these series and then again come to the same enduring conclusion that has govern human life.  No matter under what system we live, human love, compassion, jealousy, ambition, greed, vengeance, are all there.  The only thing that varies is the social context within which our human nature finds its expression.   

If you have followed the news the messages are not particularly good for either the climate or the biodiversity of our planet.  A critical factor contributing to the diminishing quality of both is the rapid population growth of humans.  We actually have become the invasive species par excellence that threatens life, or at least its quality, for all earth’s creatures.

The negative effects of population growth are compounded by hyper-consumption and ever- increasing use of carbon-producing fuels.  And yet the demographic signals that population growth will peak and even reverse itself by the end of the century are treated as bad news. 

So, in a change of my usual approach of how I compose my posts, I will post parts of an interesting piece titled Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better published in Scientific America, on May 4, 2023, written by Stephanie Feldstein, the population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Before I present parts of this article, I want to list the reasons why, in my opinion, population growth is becoming a serious and difficult problem to handle.

• Population growth is favored by biological factors and cultural indoctrination; both make resistance to propagation very difficult.  That requires deliberate effort and policies to make population control possible.  Especially because . . .
• Population growth management most often requires the use of reproductive controls which are often opposed on religious grounds.  And . . .
• Population growth is linked to economic growth and national strength.  Although income per capita may decline if the economy fails to grow commensurately with the population, our strong focus on aggregate size than individual prosperity makes us ignore diminishing living standards at the individual level.

To overcome the forces of nature and those of culture we need to adopt a different set of principles that focus on: prosperity and human development at the level of the individual, respect for the biodiversity and survival of all species, and the protection of the climate which if destroyed can end human civilization.

Now below, I reproduce some of the interesting parts of Stephanie Feldstein’s opinion piece.

First on biodiversity and the climate:

“ . . . Declining populations will ease the pressure eight billion people put on the planet. As the population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity, I’ve seen the devastating effects of our ever-expanding footprint on global ecosystems. But if you listen to economists (and Elon Musk), you might believe falling birthrates mean the sky is falling as fewer babies means fewer workers and consumers driving economic growth.

. . . We’re at a crossroads—and we decide what happens next. We can maintain the economic status quo and continue to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet. Or we can heed the warning signs of a planet pushed to its limits, put the brakes on environmental catastrophe, and choose a different way to define prosperity that’s grounded in equity and a thriving natural world.”

More on the survival of other species:

“… As the human population has doubled over the past 50 years, wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of 69 percent. We’ve already altered at least 70 percent of Earth’s land, with some reports putting that number at 97 percent. Our activities have driven wildlife from their homes and destroyed irreplaceable ecosystems.

. . . The loss of biodiversity is tragic in itself. A world without elephants, hellbender salamanders and the million other species at risk of extinction in the coming decades would be deeply impoverished. Wild plants and animals enrich our lives and hold vital ecosystems together. The fresh water we need to survive, the plants we rely on for food and medicine, and the forests we depend on for clean air and carbon sequestration are all the product of complex interactions between life-forms ranging from microbes and pollinators to carnivores and scavengers. When even a single thread is pulled from that tapestry, the entire system can unravel.”

On the social impact:

“. . . Lower fertility rates also typically signal an increase in gender equality. Better-educated women tend to have fewer children, later in life. This slows population growth and helps reduce carbon emissions. And when women are in leadership roles, they’re more likely than men to advance initiatives to fight climate change and protect nature. These outcomes are side effects of policies that are necessary regardless of their impact on population.

On our options:

. . . With the first scenario [that of growth] we’ll find that an economy fueled by limitless population growth makes it increasingly difficult to address environmental crises. Communities are already struggling in the face of worsening droughts, extreme weather and other consequences of climate disruption—and population pressure makes adaptation even harder. A growing population will further stress damaged ecosystems, reducing their resilience and increasing the risk of threats like pandemics, soil desertification and biodiversity loss in a downward spiral.

. . . With the second—slow decline and all that comes with it—we can ultimately scale back our pressure on the environment, adapt to climate change, and protect enough places for imperiled wildlife to find refuge and potentially recover.”

On the duty of governments:

“. . . Governments must invest in health care, support caregivers, help people who want to work longer do so, and redesign communities to meet the housing, transportation and service needs of older people. We need to move our economy toward one where people and nature can thrive. That means managing consumption, prioritizing social and environmental welfare over profits, valuing cooperation and recognizing the need for a range of community-driven solutions. These practices already exist—in mutual-aid programs and worker-owned cooperatives—but they must become the foundation of our economy rather than the exception.”

I will close by adding that our challenge is to become less of an invasive species and more of a collaborative one that learns again how to live in harmony with our natural environment not at its expense. 

As a general rule, democracies are in danger when part of a country’s populace grows uncompromisingly intolerant to certain ideas and the behavior that such ideas inspire among their believers.  Judged by that rule, America is currently at risk of going down this slippery road.  Closing in on free thought and speech, illiberal elements on the right and left are trying to shield their respective constituents from critiques of their ideas and actions.  They do this by retreating to their respective silos. 

This arrangement is hardly stable and durable.  As the common space for the exchange of ideas shrinks, intolerance grows, and one side will eventually attempt to silence the other by undemocratic means.  For some time now, the common space in this country has been retreating and the competing silos of ideas have hardened. 

For a country born with a constitution that placed the course of the country in the hands of its people and gave people the protection to influence this course through the free expression of thought, it is ironic and tragic we are at this point.  But it is also a mistake to believe that this fight for free thought is new.  To recall the battles for free thought in America, I returned to the book FREETHINKERS by Susan Jacoby. 

Since the days of the revolution, the ground for free thought has not been necessarily welcoming.  And yet courageous freethinkers rose to take on the banner of unpopular but worthy causes.  These were men and women like Thomas Paine (the defender of reason), Robert Green Ingersoll (the Great Agnostic), the suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, the liberal poet Walt Whitman, the Black abolitionist Frederick Douglas, and Clarence Darrow (the lawyer for the defense in the Scopes (monkey) trial.  These freethinkers defended the separation of church and state, spoke against slavery and for voting rights for women, and argued the case of science in society.  The intellectual battles of today still echo those causes though in their modern versions. 

We still try to reach the right balance of power between religious and secular rights, as the changing numbers of conservative and liberal justices on the Supreme Court keep making the wall of separation lower or higher; unquestionably lower these days.  Amendments to the constitution may have abolished slavery and given equal rights to Black Americans but the legacy of slaveholding still casts a shadow and taints the relationship between Americans of different skin color.  Women have earned the right to vote but they are still behind men in wages and career opportunities and are still exposed to intrusions to personal matters, especially those concerning reproductive decisions. 

Jacoby reminds us that the illiberal streak in America culture and society has waxed and waned as the country moved from the euphoria of independence to its confrontation with the scourge of slavery, the influx of immigrants, the rise of science, the civil emancipation of women, and the spread of socialism and communism.  During those periods of warring ideas, fear and intolerance emanated from religious quarters, nationalist circles, and moral puritans.  The results were bans of books and movies, laws against obscenity and blasphemy, and equating  atheists, agnostics, socialists and communists with lack of morals or patriotism.  If the period around the turn of 20^th century was (as Jacoby calls it) the Golden Age of free thought, the McCarthy period of the 1950s was the nadir of free thought in America.

Today’s battles are about reproductive rights, racial justice, sexual and gender orientation, the separation of church and state, immigrants, and social fairness in general.  One would think that all these issues ought to invite reasoned and informed conversations.  On the contrary, they have led to polarized positions, often defended by illiberal means.   

On the left, a visceral disdain of white supremacy, antisemitism, anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ views has served as the “justification” for the rejection and expulsion of speech, sympathetic to these views, from university campuses.  Beyond that, student bodies have demanded the establishment of “safe” spaces (call them echo chambers) for the socialization of like-minded students, and for “trigger” warnings concerning any coursework material that may be deemed harmful to one’s worldview or self-identification.

Fortunately, after a period of ambivalence and inaction, university officials have started to stand up and put an end to these illiberal methods of quashing free speech and the unencumbered exchange of ideas on the natural venues of pluralism and truth seeking.  It is more common than not that the birth and death of free thought and open societies start and end in the hallow grounds of institutions of learning.  From the closing of Plato’s Academy to the closing of the Central European University in Orban’s Hungary, authoritarians have known this all too well.

On the right, the attack on free thought has taken, however, a turn towards methods that are even more illiberal and pernicious.  With Florida being the epicenter, Republican-controlled states have legislated (or are in the process of doing so) a slew of laws that aim at silencing voices and forms of expression that disagree with conservative notions of a righteous society or an acceptable national narrative.  Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibits schools to discuss sexual and gender orientation topics all the way to the 12^th grade.  Under the guise of shielding students from divisive ideas and giving parents control over the education of their children, the law, in essence, allows minorities of parents (even a single parent) to impose on the rest of the community their standards on the content of education. 

The same state’s WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act outlaws the teaching of theories arguing for the presence of racism, sexism, and oppression in societies – in reality, a strawman since hardly such theories are taught in public schools.  In an egregious encroachment of academic freedom this same law also places restrictions on what can be taught in social sciences in Florida’s state universities.  Thankfully, this section is currently blocked by the courts.

The dissonance between ideology and practice is particularly acute in the case of conservative states.  How can one profess the efficiency of markets in sorting out preferences for material goods but deny the same efficiency to the marketplace of ideas?  And how can one oppose the encroachment of individual liberties by the state but engineer the intrusion of the state in the free exchange of ideas.

There is a big difference between private citizens (like students) fighting for space in the agora of ideas or parents competing for different educational materials in their schools and the state using its authority to impose its ideological partiality to what ideas can be debated and disseminated.  This is how free thought dies in theocratic or authoritarian states.

In his 2017, book Life 3.0 Max Tegmark wrote of the almost infinite achievements we could realize through AI but also of the great perils we faced, if and when AI-based machines reached a state of autonomy from human control.  Hardly six years later, we are starting to freak out from the latest advances of AI in one single area, that of producing human-like written language.

As you may have read, more than 1000 tech leaders and researchers sent out an open letter warning us of the profound risks unchecked development of AI poses to humanity and called for a moratorium so that we have time to contemplate about the potential consequences. *  In a very insightful OP-ED piece in the NYT, Yuval Harari and his co-authors laid out the risks of supplanting humans by AI technologies in the creation of language, culture, and civilization.  In another on line piece in the Times, the linguist Noam Chomsky and his co-authors ridiculed the idea that AI programs, like ChatGPT and Bard, are true substitutes of human language and expressed apprehension at the thought that a mechanical synthesis of already produced information devoid, though, of emotion and moral judgment could be confused with human language.  On the other side of the debate, there is no shortage of people who, full of excitement and anticipation, can’t wait to see what the future of AI will bring to humankind.

 As I have written in other posts, innovation and technology have been both a boon and a bane for humanity.  One thing we can say with certainty is that our innovative prowess has not lived up to its most hyped promises.  Leisure from work is still a luxury, the pace of life has become more maddening, poverty and sickness are pervasive, and the geometrically increasing complexity of human life consumes ever greater amounts of energy and natural resources that threaten the climate and the survival of other species.  So how do we then approach the promise and threat of AI? 

First, I think that we are past the point of losing autonomy to machines.  Our lives are already so embedded in the world of machines, that I am not sure we can call ourselves masters.  Let’s try to imagine a life without the tech world with which we have surrounded our lives and I bet shivers will come down everybody’s spine.  We already live in a symbiotic world of humans and machines.  They may be our creations but we can’t do without them.  That means we have long ago surrendered our autonomy to our many Frankensteins. 

Second, questions as to how AI will affect the economy, jobs, politics, and education, though important, are in my opinion second order questions.  The questions we ought to be asking as we evaluate the promises and risks of AI are these:  Will AI be safe for the climate?  Will AI be safe for the biodiversity of species?  And most importantly, will AI be safe for the essence of human nature?  Though a livable climate and an ecosystem with biodiversity are extremely important, the most consequential question we need to contemplate about and ultimately answer is “what do we want our future as humans to be like?” 

My first concern here is the impact of the AI world on our evolution as a species.  Living within an environment of humanoid physical robots and brains will be unlike the environment we have encountered thus far.  How will our cognitive and emotional make up respond and adapt to this new environment?  Reason and emotions have evolved to foster cooperation between humans as a means of improving our chances for survival.  Will this cooperation and sociality in general erode when human beings start to rely on cooperation with AI creatures?  Think, for example, of  children raised by AI nannies.  Do we have any scientific or otherwise reliable method to make predictions about such and other questions of similar relevance to our future as authentic humans rather than hybrids of humans and machines?

The expressed voices of skepticism and alarm about the effects of AI suggest that we need to develop the tools to check and control advancements in AI that have the potential to put us at an existential risk.  To come up with some plan of response we can look at how we coped with two other life-transformative developments.  Namely, the development of nuclear physics and genetic engineering. 

Nuclear physics gave us the promise of plentiful and clean atomic energy but also the potential to destroy human life.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s the activism of the still young baby boomers of the world along with the logic of safe containment resulted in treaties among the nuclear powers that established limits to the development and quantity of nuclear weapons.  And proliferation of atomic energy plants has been checked in many countries through local public resistance. 

Genetic engineering has also presented us with deep moral questions regarding the possibility of molding human life in ways we have deemed to belong to the exclusive realm of nature and God.  Since 1971 researchers and academics working in genetics have initiated several self-imposed moratoria that have halted further applications of genetic engineering.  They have also drafted rules of safe conduct in research to minimize unintended consequences. *

Regulating and checking the development of AI though is not going to be as easily achieved.  Unlike nuclear power which was mostly developed in state-funded national labs or genetics that was developed in academic labs, AI development is backed by for-profit mega-firms (Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others) that have strong incentives to monetize their inventions.  Another difficulty is that the immediate effect of AI advances is increased convenience in carrying out a variety of tasks and this numbs our urgency to think about the ultimate consequences down the road.  Nor do I sense a widespread interest within the public at large that would mobilize activists to demand a governance model of checks and balances on AI.  And yet, the risks and dangers are real and call for action.  So, we do need to mobilize governments, AI innovators as well as the public on an international scale to find the right path forward.

In the end, it comes down to drawing a line between the freedom to develop new knowledge driven by our human curiosity and the necessity to apply it wisely for the good of humanity.

*The recent letter on AI echoes the pronouncement on standards and limits in genetics research of the 1975 Asilomar Conference in California.  An informative account of how research and applications in genetic engineering have been contained within some bounds can be found in Matthew Cobb’s book AS GODS – A Moral History of the Genetic Age