Let's Reason

This piece is for all those reluctant men of Christian homes that are summoned every year to do what they might have never guessed they had signed on when they tied the knot.  What I ‘m talking about is the annual ritual of putting up the outdoor Christmas lights.

The nagging usually starts around Thanksgiving.  “Honey, you better start early this year.  Not like last year when all neighbors had their lights up and we were a lousy spot of darkness.”  My wife doesn’t nag me like this, nor does she call me “honey,” thank goodness.  Instead she couches her wish as a matter of caring for my health.  “You better do it now before it gets freezing out there and you catch a cold.”  When I was still teaching, I had lots of excuses.  “I have exams to prepare.”  A few days later: “I have exams and papers to grade.”  Well, it almost always turned out as she had predicted.  When I finally found the time and, even more importantly, mustered the state of mind to put up the lights it was really freezing cold.

Putting up Christmas lights is like a little enterprise.  Unless you have planned every step, you find yourself going up and down the ladder several times.  It took me a good number of years but I finally gave up relying on my memory to identify which string of lights goes around the door and which down each side of the stoop railings and over the bushes.  So, I started to store the strings in different bags with a piece of paper telling me where each string had to go next year.  Of course, the cardinal rule is you don’t spread the lights before you have made sure they work.  You miss this step and you have major problems.  “This string doesn’t light.  I have a good one but the they are white.”  To which you hear.  “Don’t dare mix green and white lights.  What will people say?  We are cheap? Besides, I hate white.”  Again, let me clarify my wife doesn’t talk like that.  The dialogue applies to some impossible wife that some poor soul out there had the privilege to marry.  Now, if you are really cheap, you start looking for the culprit.  That stupid light that went kaput and threw the rest into darkness.  And when you find it, you look for a replacement you never bothered to check whether you had.

I am a minimalist when it comes to Christmas lights.  Which is another way to say I am lazy.  I spread the strings down each railing and then I throw them on the bushes pretending I follow some secret pattern.  Regardless, I always deliver satisfaction and earn my wife’s praise.  “They look so nice!”  I stretch my head up and take in her approval with great pride as well as with relief that I ‘m done for the year.  The fact, however, is that no matter how you spread the lights around, come darkness, they look like they were arranged by a designer.  It’s all about brightness against darkness.  Any pattern wins.  All you have to do to believe this is to gaze at the sky in a moonless night.  Do the stars follow any grand cosmic pattern? No.  And yet the sight mesmerizes us.

When you finish and you think you are in the clear for another whole year, then comes the competition that can scramble everything up.  You are returning from a nice night out and as you turn into your street, there it is.  The house with a million lights all the way to the roof and around the door and windows and up and down the trees, hugging the bushes and, “Oh my God, they blink in different colors.”  That’s when you (the man) say inside your head “Oh, crap.   The show offs had to do this!”  And then the damage control starts.  “Huh, they look gaudy.  And who knows how much they spent to have someone put them up.  What real man outsources Christmas lights to someone else?” And then the clincher: “Besides, baby Jesus was born in a humble stable.  This is so much out of the Christmas spirit.”  If you escape with some approving nod from your wife you know you are a lucky SOB; if not, good luck next year.

I live in a neighborhood with many Jewish homes.  You can tell your Jewish neighbors from the Hanukkah Menorah that rests in the inside window ledge.  But you don’t see outdoor lights.  So, I asked a Jewish friend, “how come?”  I got the very informative answer: “We just didn’t catch up with the custom.”  Seriously?  The Maccabees spilled their blood to fight those badass Hellenistic Syrians to keep the Jewish faith and all they deserve is an eight-candle Menorah?

And what about the Hindus?  Every fall they celebrate the Diwali – the festival of lights.  So, where are their Diwali outdoor lights?  The bottom line is we Christians of all stripes, from atheist Christians to devout Christians are suckers.  Just because some Lutheran Germans started decorating their Christmas trees and homes with lights we had to follow.

But if you feel like blaming somebody, reserve your opprobrium for that invention-crazy guy Thomas Edison who was not happy to invent electricity, but he went on to put up the first electric outdoor Christmas lights in 1880.  And, of course, soon after, good, money-hungry capitalism took over and another invention pal, Edward Johnson, had the idea of making money by introducing string lights.  Thank you, guys!  From then on, like a meme, Christmas lights and decorations took a life of their own and proliferated in all different forms and directions.  Even that keeper of faith and tradition, Pope John Paul II, finally succumbed and put a Christmas tree inside the Vatican in 1982.

So, let’s conclude by wishing

To the politically correct:  Happy Holidays

To the sensitive Christians: Merry Christmas

To African-American Christians:  Happy Kwanzaa

To the pagans:  Happy Winter Solstice

To the secularists: Thanks for being a sport and helping with the lights.

And with some lateness:

To the Jews:  Happy Hanukkah

To the Hindus:  Happy Diwali

And to all a Happy and Healthy 2019

It’s holiday time again and we are reminded in myriad ways to be charitable and generous to all sorts of causes.  Americans are generous in their giving and they do give in various ways.  Some prefer to send their money and be content with the anonymity of their small donations.  Others prefer to volunteer their work and enjoy interacting with others.  The very rich, often vaingloriously, part with millions in order to see their names splashed on the marquees of buildings or featured in the names of institutions, universities, or hospitals.

And then there are the truly transformative givers.  Those who with stubborn resilience and vision start something that meets the needs of people that few would find important or worthy enough to part their money for.  In this season of giving, I want to present to you such an exceptional person.

Earl Shorris was a writer and social critic who dedicated the later part of his life fighting poverty through education.  In 1995 he started the Clemente* Course in the Humanities with the purpose of teaching poor and disadvantaged individuals the art of how to think critically and independently and how to appreciate literature and the arts just like those who had the advantage of going to good schools and colleges.

Finding himself with a group of inmates in 1995, he struck a conversation with a female prisoner, Viniece Walker, who told him that “people are poor because they don’t have the moral life of the downtown.”  Prompted by Shorris, she continued to explain that “by taking children to downtown, to plays, museums, concerts, lectures, they can learn the moral life of the downtown” as opposed “to the moral life of the street.”  Earl Shorris replied: “You mean the humanities.” “Yes, Earl, the humanities” Viniece replied.  Shorris was surprised that Viniece had not mentioned money or jobs.  Instead her solution was: teach children the art of thinking and expose them to the good life (good life as the philosophers defined it) and children would grow up to desire and, hence, strive for the good life, not the life of the street.

Thus, out of this improbable conversation, the Clemente Course in the Humanities was born, first administered in a class of inmates in upstate New York.  With the support of a few generous donors and the pro bono teaching of college faculty the Clemente Course was taught to 10,000 individuals all around the world over the next 15-plus years.  It was taught to drug addicts, prisoners and downtrodden people in NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Charleston, SC, and Madison Wisconsin; to native Americans in Oklahoma and Alaska; to underprivileged persons in Vancouver and Halifax, Canada; to natives in Mexico City and Buenos Aires: to Aborigines in Australia; and to poor people in So. Korea.

The one-year course was an exploration of philosophical reasoning and ethics from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hume and Mills; of literature from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to Shakespeare, Maya poetry and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and of history and arts.  The standard teaching technique was the Socratic method of questions and answers.  Students came to appreciate it to the point some of them would ask “what would Socrates do in my situation?”  Students learned that there was more to life than money; that a contemplative life was a rewarding life. Shorris came to discover the democracy of the humanities, meaning humanities could be taught and be appreciated by different people in different countries.  And above all, the Clemente Course changed the lives of the students.  Of those who were inmates very few returned to prison; many of the students went on to enroll in colleges, even earn doctoral degrees; the majority got and kept jobs.  The average cost per student was about $2,000, a fraction compared to the cost of keeping people incarcerated or supporting them through welfare payments or keeping them unproductive.

A year after his death in 2012, Shorris’s book The Art of Freedom was published.  The title was emblematic of what the Clemente Course in Humanities had accomplished.  It took people with no or very little possibility of having a decent education and gave them the skills to understand the worlds of thought, art, and human condition so that they would become free.  Free and able to realize their potential that was no less than that of others who had found themselves in luckier and brighter paths of life.  As I was reading the book, I recalled the scene in the 1980s movie “Educating Rita” when her college tutor (Michael Cain) asks Rita (a thirty-something working class woman) “why do you want to get an education?” and Rita answers back “In order to become independent.”

There are a few lessons that come out through the book.  The first lesson is epitomized in the words of that female inmate Vincie Walker.  When children grow up in poor environments, deprived of good education or the opportunity to witness culture and civic life they are more likely to learn the moral life of the street than the moral life of the downtown.  They will grow never exposed to the manners, habits and customs of the privileged classes.  That is, they will never be exposed to the good life.  Yes, their teachers and their schools will try to offer them glimpses of the good life with field trips and classroom talks; but it’s not the same as when you witness firsthand the lives of the those who have the means to live the good life.  Societies that do not promote educational or community integration are bound to produce morals of the street as opposed to morals of the downtown.

The second lesson is that it’s wrong to write off people that have fallen on the wrong side of society, whether this is the side of poverty, crime, of personal depravation.  Many of these people can be taught to lift themselves up and have productive and useful lives.

In recognition of his transformative work, Earl Shorris was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton.

*The course was named after the legendary baseball player of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Roberto Clemente.

In late November 2018, the news media reported that, according to the CDC, life expectancy (at birth) in the US had decline to 78.6 years.  This was the second time in three years that life expectancy had declined from the previous year.  The fact that it has happened in the midst of a long period of economic growth it is indeed stunning.  For perspective, consider that this places the US 29^th out of 34 OECD countries, and almost 3 years behind crisis-stricken Greece where life expectancy is 81.5 years.   Moreover, 65-year olds in 23 other OECD countries are expected to live longer than their age peers in the US.  Despite spending more on health care in general and in serving those over 65 in particular, the US is still achieving mediocre results.  For a country that invented many of the modern tools of public and private sector management this is a striking evidence of poor performance to put it charitably

The interesting question then to ask is: Whom do we fail to protect from premature death and why?  Let’s first take a look at who is at risk?  (That’s why the title of this essay.)  The data point to several directions.

First, infant mortality.  In a 2014 survey, the US had the highest infant mortality rate (5.8 per 1000 birth) in a group of 12 countries of comparable economic standards.  In a 2016 survey, the US ranked 33^rd (higher ranking means more) in infant mortality compared to 44 industrialized countries.  Further, in the US and for not well-known yet reasons, black newborns and their mothers seem to be more at risk at birth than other demographic groups.

Second, death by suicide.  The US ranked 35^th (higher ranking means more) in suicide rates out of the same 44 countries in 2016.  US suicide rates are higher in rural than in urban areas according to 2011-2015 data.

Third, gun victims.  In 2015, 64% of all homicides were gun-related, double the percentage in Canada (30.5%) and, of course, way much higher than in other countries.  Most of these deaths by gun are suicides.  The higher gun ownership in rural areas than urban areas (51% vs. 25%), means that living in the countryside and owning a gun is hazardous to your health.  Being a black American is also deadly, as the chance to be killed by gun is 21.6% vs. 11.9% for whites.

Fourth, drug overdose and opioids.  A record 72,000 Americans died of drug overdose and opioids in 2017.  The fastest growth is occurring in rural areas and in Midwestern states in particular.

Fifth, mid-life and less educated whites.  Princeton University professors Deaton and Case recently reported an accelerating rate of mortality among mid-life, less-educated whites since 1999 relative to the mortality rates of other US demographic groups.  Leading causes were family dysfunction, social isolation, addiction, and obesity.   In contrast, peer groups in other developed countries are found to have extended their life expectancy.

What has attracted a lot of interest is the plight of rural Americans.  In the past, interest focused mostly on black young men in inner cities who faced grim prospects for a normal life span because of crime and gun violence.  This problem has not entirely gone away, but the fact that Americans living in the quiet of rural settings are now an endangered species is surprisingly new.  To my surprise I found that the median household income is higher in rural than urban areas ($54,296 vs $52,386 as of 2016).  Poverty is also lower in rural than in urban areas (13.3% vs. 16%).  Although aggregate statistics can obscure differences in income and poverty within populations of rural and urban areas, income does not appear to explain differences in these dire statistics between rural and urban areas.

Instead, what surveys and the experts point to is a cluster of factors that make life very difficult for rural Americans.  Such factors include social isolation due to low population density, job losses and shrinking career opportunities, broken marriages, and poorer health care.  Health care providers and facilities are scarcer in rural areas.  Studies point out the insufficient numbers of medical specialists, especially in the treatment of mental and psychological ailments.  This leads many rural people to persistent depression and dependence on drugs, mostly opioids.  Even participation in the digital social community is limited for rural people.  Whereas only 3% of urban people had no access to broadband in 2017, that percentage stood at 35% for rural Americans.  This also means that rural people have much less opportunity to participate in the knowledge or new digital economy of our time.

All the above statistics point to our inability or unwillingness as a society to either allocate our tax dollars appropriately or to curb whatever is killing us.  I am talking about policies concerning availability of health care, treatment of mental ailments and drug (including opioids) abuse, and guns.  A country that mustered the will, determination, and resources to send a man to the moon seems less capable of summoning the political will and enough sense of social solidarity to protect its citizens from conditions that lead to substandard living and death.

I understand that keeping ourselves healthy and alive starts with our own sense of personal responsibility.  Conservatives and libertarians, in particular, are fond of reminding us this and up to a point they are right.  But the social and economic environment where people live also impacts the opportunities they have and the choices they make.  And if because of limited opportunities and support or bad personal choices they fall in trouble, shouldn’t our society have an obligation to remedy the situation?

Americans like to point out that our system of free markets and capitalism proved to be superior compared to the command system of communist countries.  The new reality though is that we now compete with countries that apply various versions of free markets, even if sometimes mixed with state intervention.  The question I see then is this: How will we make our case for the superiority of our socio-economic version of capitalism if in the most critical gauge of national health, i.e., life expectancy, we fail, and especially when we consider the causes of this failure?

The sources for the above statistics were: US Census, OECD, CDC, and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In my last blog I wrote about the American paradox of a thriving country populated by people many of whom hold fantastical beliefs.  The fact that significant portions of the population hold supernatural beliefs or choose to ignore scientific findings has stirred a lot of apprehension and concern regarding the course of the country.  My personal view is “beware of generalizations.”

First, let’s look at some survey-based statistics.  According to a 2018 survey of the Pew Research Center, 29% of Americans believe in astrology, 33% believe in reincarnation, and 42% in the spiritual powers of inanimate things like mountains, trees and crystals.  Twenty eight percent believe they talked to God and God talked back to them.  Only 41% believe in physics, i.e., in the laws of nature as explained by science.  A 2013 Harris poll found that 42% believe in ghosts.  Other surveys show a majority of Americans to believe in angels and demons and one fourth in witches.  Most of these beliefs in the supernatural have nothing or very little to do with devotion to this or that religion.

Religious beliefs do seem though to affect people’s understanding of how nature works, and particularly in relation to the creation of cosmos and the evolution of species.  For example, 25% of Americans take the creation of cosmos and species as told in Genesis to be factually correct and a 2017 Gallup poll found that 38% of Americans believe in creationism as the explanation of human origins.  Surveys by Yale University and Gallup poll taken this year (2018) found that 29% to 40% of Americans are unconvinced that climate change is happening.

Given these statistics, are we right to ask: “so what?”  That is, does it matter on an individual or societal level whether people hold such views?  I think It depends on how these beliefs play out socially, politically, and intellectually.  Many evolution theorists and psychologists argue that beliefs in supernatural powers and causes gave early humans a way to explain the mysteries of nature and to cope with adversities, disease, and calamities.  Attributing powers to invisible and visible agents (spirits, demons, thunder, and such) provided an explanation as well as a comforting response of the type “if I worship and show respect, they may leave me alone.”  The evolutionary view is, therefore, that humans are wired for supernatural beliefs.  Despite our immense progress in expanding our knowledge and understanding of nature, this early human tendency is still in us like the redundant appendix in our body.

This school of thought then implies that humans can hold supernatural beliefs and yet go on with their lives without serious compromise of day-to-day decision making.  That is, humans compartmentalize between the need for comfort and comprehension and the need for a practical living.  Indeed, a recent study published in the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology found that in a sample of Finnish people there was no significant difference in making informed decisions in their daily lives between those who hold religious and paranormal phenomena beliefs and those who don’t.  However, the same study did find that religious people and those believing in paranormal phenomena demonstrated a lower understanding of how the physical world works.

This latter finding is important, especially when we consider it in the context of current American popular attitudes toward science and evidence-based reasoning.  Surveys and casual observation show that significant segments of Americans do not believe in scientific evidence and conclusions.  Part of that distrust stems from fundamental religious beliefs, as the case is with the creation of the cosmos and the evolution of life.  Another part is due to economic and financial motives.  This is the case with respect to climate change and environmental sustainability.

Whereas one’s individual religious beliefs or superstitions may not necessarily affect the ability to make sound decisions in mundane daily situations, an organized group’s beliefs may affect the freedom to independent thought.  For example, the fact that the pagan Greeks were religious and very superstitious – they never embarked on an important venture without a Delphic Oracle – did not impede them from freely engaging in natural and ethical philosophy and the arts.  On the other hand, Christianity and Islam, both enjoying organizational structure and authority, set limits to how far philosophical thought and scientific inquiry could go.*

In contemporary America, religious fundamentalism and economic interests can also hinder our freedom and the resources needed to impart knowledge and pursue scientific endeavors.  For example, religious conservatives in Texas and other states have tried to limit students’ knowledge of evolution theory and instead advance creationism.  More distrust toward science and disregard of scientific findings can also alter the voters’ attitudes toward supporting government aid to scientific organizations, like the National Science Foundation, the National Health Institute, or the Center for Disease Control to mention a few.  More importantly, widespread low esteem for scholarly and scientific engagement can demotivate young people from pursuing professional fields that require scientific training.  The US already has a significant deficit in professionals needed in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.

Returning to the original question, I think we need not overly worry about the potential effect on individuals and societies because people in this and other countries entertain beliefs in supernatural and paranormal phenomena.  We all know people with strong or superficial beliefs like these.  And yet, I have not noticed that they are not practical or they don’t work hard and smart or they don’t take advantage of modern knowledge and technology in their lives.  Besides, many of them are not against science.  They may believe in the power of crystals but they click the remote control to turn on their TV and take their meds.  But I do worry about the influence of individuals and organized groups which for religious, economic, or what-have-you reasons, are aligned around beliefs and attitudes that purport to create the equivalent of a thought police, or a morality police, or a scientific research police.  That can harm us all.

So, the deal is this: You get to keep your crystals and I get to keep my telescope.

*A good source on this topic is: The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. To A.D. 1450 by David C. Lindberg, 1992.

It’s that time of the year Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day in memory of the feast the Puritans (also known as Pilgrims) held with the local Indians in order to rejoice after their first harvest in the New World that fall of 1621.

But who were those Puritans who, along with the colonists of Jamestown in Virginia some ten years earlier, are considered the first permanent European residents of America?  The American Puritans have been looked at with approval and disparagement depending on who is telling their story.  As I searched to learn more about them, I found their story emblematic of America’s historical experience in several respects.

Years before the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, they had become a fringe group of the Protestant Church of England.  The most radical of them, the Separatists, dissatisfied with the insufficient break of official English Protestantism from the Papacy, sailed to Leiden in Holland.  Not finding the variety of Protestantism practiced there to their taste, they boarded the Mayflower and on they sailed across the ocean to the New World.  In the ensuing years they were joined by more Separatist and a wave of Non-Separatist Puritans (more loyal to the Church of England) who chose to colonize the area that later became Boston.

Because of their more radical break from Roman Catholicism and their life style, engrossed by religion, some choose to consider American Puritans as extreme religionists.  In Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen writes that “America was founded by a nutty religious cult.”  I think this view is only partly true.  Puritans did away with most of the ecclesiastical order of the mainline Christian Churches.  They believed they could reach salvation and earn God’s grace through faith, reading and religious instruction and less through ritualistic ceremonies and deeds.  They also believed that at the Eucharist, Jesus became present to them only spiritually.  There was no transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.  In comparison to other Christians, these beliefs hardly qualify the Puritans as a nutty religious sect.

But, at a time Christian Europe was leaving behind centuries of Church and religious dominance over the lives and minds of the people and was moving into a more secular and reasoned worldview, the Puritans were an anachronism.  In the words of a historian “Puritans were Englishmen who had accepted Reformation without the Renaissance.”  Everyday life was circumscribed by religious edicts; millennialism (the imminence of Paradise) was a perpetual expectation; and the specter of Satan led to witch hunts, usually against poor women as well as natives, Africans and Asians.  That was the nutty and out-of-the-times side of Puritans.   On top of that, they were intolerant to other religions.  They persecuted the Quakers, they banned Anglican priest, and Catholic priests risked their lives if they showed up in Puritan territories.

However, contrary to common wisdom that such behavior could only be the result of illiteracy and unschooled thought, Puritans were great readers and friends of education.  It is reported that the literacy rate was 60% among American Puritans but only 30% among the population of England.  Alas, their devotion to reading and education was driven by the need to be able to read the Bible and conduct administrative affairs, and not to explore new ideas.  Even so, thanks to high literacy, Puritans became successful managers and makers of things.

Looked at through the lens of American history, the Puritans seem to be an early prototype of the American paradoxical combination of religious zealotry, fantastical ideas, and conspiracy theory tendencies on one side and strong work ethic, entrepreneurial acumen, and pragmatism on the other.  This paradox has survived – even thrived – to this day.  This is one observation to ponder about.

The second observation is that those first Americans were Christians but intolerant to others, even fellow Christians.  So, as zealous Christians argue today, America was indeed founded by Christians; but not by Christians that would have allowed other faiths to survive.  That freedom was given to Americans later.

And this brings me to a third observation:  That a little more than 150 years after the coming of the theocratic Puritans, thirteen states ratified a constitution that was anything but theocratic or religious.  By the time of the Revolution, secularism and reason had won over religious zealotry and intolerance in organizing the political life and protecting the freedoms of the people.

My Thanksgiving Day Memory 

Three hundred fifty years after the Puritans celebrated their first thanksgiving, I celebrated mine.  It was, however, my second Thanksgiving Day in 1972, I still remember more fondly.  I was studying at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and the university had arranged with local families to invite international students, like me, to spend Thanksgiving in their homes.  Our host was not some wealthy cosmopolitan family.  It was a working-class family living across the downtown on the other side of the Allegheny river.  Their home was a two-story frame house, very common in the working-class neighborhoods of Pittsburgh at a time the city was still the steel capital of the US.  The host was a construction worker or a brick layer as he described his job to the curious Taiwanese student.    Sitting among members of the family and relatives, there we were, four or five of us – a Greek, two or three Chinese from Taiwan and possibly a Mexican.  We felt like we were part of that family.  They took pride and enjoyment explaining to us what Thanksgiving was all about and what we were eating if some food, like cranberry sauce, looked new to us.  It was a Thanksgiving celebration in the right spirit.  The new American natives offering hospitality and breaking bread with a bunch of foreigners.

I used to tell this story to the Chinese students of the Zarb Business School at the Thanksgiving Dinner we organized for them. I hoped that my story and the dinner would be the warmest memory they would take back home.  The generous hospitality of that brick layer still coming alive some forty years later.

Judged from a national security and economic performance standpoint, the US is doing quite well.  And yet its people are divided and unsure of their future, gripped by a sense of loss or risk of losing of what they hold dear.  More distressingly, though, the object of anxiety is not something all Americans regard as a common good or a central embodiment of their common destiny.  Instead, the object of anxiety is what different groups of Americans consider to be the common good of their respective group, of their tribe.  That’s why we read and hear so much in books, articles and the media that we are in the era of tribalism.

America is a complex country.  It is a non-ethnic country made up of people of different ethnicities, religions and cultures.  The American revolutionaries claimed independence not in the name of an ethnic group or a certain religion.  They claimed it in the name of people that were willing to bond together under a constitution and a justice system in order to live in liberty and pursue happiness.  This must not, however, mask the reality that the dominant early Americans were white western Europeans and protestants.  Nor should we ignore that independence and freedom did not extend to the slaves.

Given human nature, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the public sentiment at the time was that America would remain what it was at its birth: a sovereign country for protestant white western Europeans.  That was the implicit surrogate of a national identity.  It is easy, therefore, to understand the suspicions and pushback against new- comers who did not fit this demographic profile: the Catholics, the Jews, the Eastern European Orthodox immigrants, the Asians, the Latin Americans.  Eventually, the Anglo-Protestant identity was expanded and refashioned as a Judeo-Christian identity, notwithstanding the many Americans this religion-based identity excludes.

For most of its history, the sense that America is a nation of immigrants bonded by laws and a Protestant ethic toward work and enterprising held sway while the country was on an upward trajectory that eventually made it a global economic and military leader.  That was enough to help the system gloss over its internal frictions and discontents.  However, things, both domestically and internationally, have changed and are bound to change even more in the future; hence, the insecurity or more accurately the insecurities.  One or more for each different constituent.

Domestically, less educated as well as rural Americans feel they are looked down by urban elites.  An intersection of white and rural Americans, especially those they call Old or Middle America, feel their culture threatened by the rising population of Latino and Asian Americans and the prospect of more immigrants entering the country from Latin America and Muslim countries.  A similar combination of Americans feel their voting power and control over government institutions are being eroded by the same suspects plus a vague assortment of nefarious internationalists or globalists.  The common grievance of these groups is that “other” Americans or future Americans-to-be are tipping the scales of control and influence in shaping culture and politics at the expense of whites.

Then we have the religion vs secularism division, as Christian religionists (not only Evangelicals) aim at expanding their rights and moral code beyond what secular Americans find acceptable.

Economic insecurities also fuel strong divisions and resentment.  Working class Americans feel left behind as technology and outsourcing takes their jobs away.  Those in the lowest rugs of the economic ladder resent losing jobs or better wages due to the influx of low-skill immigrants.  A cross-section of Americans resent the fact that international trade arrangements and the rise of other economies, most particularly China’s, threaten the economic hegemony of the US.  A similar sense of reduced relative influence in the sphere of global affairs help to arouse sentiments of nationalism.

In summary, different groups of Americans are vying for a national identity that will define them domestically as well as internationally.  The struggle is for “Who are we?” and “What kind of country is America?”

These questions were destined to come to the fore sooner or later whether a politician like Trump had appeared in the scene three years ago or at a later time.  Indeed, Pat Buchanan had campaigned on a basically white western European kind of nationalism in the 1990s but the time was not yet right.  By capturing the mantle of white nationalism and America First, Donald Trump became the catalyst for raising issues of national identity and purpose to the level of public discourse.  Regrettably, though, Trump chose sloganeering over a reasoned debate.

It does not help that the two major parties, as well as Trump himself, have embraced identity politics that make it difficult for either of them to throw a conciliatory bridge to the other groups.  To do so, they fear, will erode their base.  It’s like playing a chicken game, with each party afraid to make the first move.

If the politicians are afraid to take the initiative, is it likely that civic groups and thought leaders will do so?  What if each one of us engages in this endeavor by trying to understand the grievances of the other side?  Unfortunately, the education system has not equipped many Americans with the ability to engage in critical thinking.  Even well-educated Americans are unable or unwilling to get out of their respective echo chambers and listen to the opposing arguments.  John Adams had said that the purpose of education is to prepare people to be citizens of a democratic state.  If by education we also mean life-long learning, we should heed his advice without delay or reservation.

The midterm elections will bring an unprecedented number of women to the US Congress.  This piece is related to the emergence of female empowerment.  I hope mixing humor with information will help us get over our election-induced hangover and give us some food for thought. 

From XY to XX

This post is about men and women, though mostly about women.  Now that I have your attention, let me say there is good news and bad news for men.  The good news is that we are still around.  The bad news is this may not last for long.

Researchers in Australia have found that termite colonies in Japan can thrive and reproduce without any males around.  We have known for long time that asexual reproduction is possible in plants and animals.  Some species (reptiles, bees, birds) can even alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction.  Asexual reproduction, also called parthenogenesis, occurs when the egg alone produces new off-springs.  In an interesting case of parthenogenesis, female hammerhead sharks and black-tip sharks reproduced without sex after they were kept in captivity without males.  Equally impressive is the case of a female boa constrictor which was able to asexually reproduce 22 female off-springs.

So, how long do you men out there think women will tolerate us before they turn on the parthenogenesis machine and do away with us?  (I would not trust them alone in the lab.)  Think of the benefits they will reap.  No more excuses they have a headache.  No more explaining about how many pairs of shoes they have collecting dust in the closet.  No more defending their credit card balances.  No more putting up with our sour mood because our bunch of men scored fewer points than another guy’s bunch of men when all of them make more money than we need to know.  No more coming back from a trip and finding dirty dishes in the kitchen sink instead of in the dish washer that happens to be one foot away.  Of course, they will lose too.  Who will take the garbage out?  Who will throw the ball to little Jonny?  Who will find out that the lump doesn’t work because it is unplugued?  Still, I bet our absence is going to be a net gain for women.

Under our nose, women have been preparing for this over a long time.  Look around the house.  All electrical appliances invented by men are in order to do chores women used to do with a lot more work: electric irons, dish and cloth washers, dryers, cooking stoves.  Throw in some artificial intelligence and women will have nothing to do but sit back and sip their martinis.

But lest you think they are slackers, here is what else they are doing.  They are getting educated.  More than men are.  In recent years, a greater percentage of US high school female students have been enrolling to college than boys.  As of 2015, a higher percentage of 25 to 29- year olds with a college degree were women than men.  And, pay attention to this: twice as many bachelor degrees were earned by women (57.3%) than men (25.6%) in 2016!  (The source didn’t say who got the rest!)

The results of this rapid educational advancement by women are already manifesting themselves and will have even more far-reaching consequences in the future.  Despite persisting bias in entering and advancing in certain professions, more young women are becoming better qualified than men to enter well-paying fields.  Less educated American young men do not lose good jobs only to outsourcing.  They also lose them to their fellow American women!  Young women have greater difficulty to find men with appropriate professional qualifications and education.  For this, and other career-related reasons, young women postpone marriage and child bearing to a later stage of their life than in past times.  This has already produced very low birth rates in industrialized countries.

These trends are noticed globally.  In my old place of work, the Zarb Business School, there is practically a gender parity among the many Chinese students that arrive each year.  Chinese parents are heavily investing in their daughters’ education in order to give them financial security and overall independence.  As I noted in an earlier post, years in school are almost equal for boys and girls around the world.

More and better educated women will be able to utilize knowledge and information to more successfully navigate the fast-changing world we are living in, including global competition for jobs.  They will also be more open and receptive to foreign cultures than their more parochial male peers.  This could create tensions that we are already witnessing in this country when it comes to the political choices women, especially educated ones, make compared to men.

Eventually, greater education and professional advancement will be translated into political power.  Today, as I write this piece, we know that an unprecedented number of women will enter the halls of Congress as a result of the midterm elections.  More women will most likely do so in the future.  Women have seen the challenge to their status and self-actualization and have rightly channeled their indignation to political action with confidence and purpose.  We should expect a different kind of political style and practice in all levels of government when female presence increases to a critical mass.  Men should start getting used to the idea that the long period of patriarchy* that began with the introduction of agriculture and property may finally come to an end.

Despite the fact women are half of the human population, in most places they have been denied their fair share of participation in all human activities.  Their emergence as co-equal will lead to a new social, cultural, economic and political order.

* Biological explanations are part of the theories that try to explain patriarchy and might, therefore, stymie female advancement outside traditional roles. Nonetheless, we should not ignore that, notwithstanding the power of nature, humans have been able to “hack” nature and divert it to their goals.  For example, contraceptives regulate reproduction; medications moderate mental illnesses and mood disorders, and so it goes with other human intervention with nature.  Therefore, it is unlikely that biological forces alone will stop women from gaining the status they wish for themselves.

On November 6, Americans will cast their votes in the midterm elections.  Many have called these elections the most important in our lifetime.  The question is “important in regards to what?”  Is it in order to declare our approval or disapproval of the president’s policies and executive style and the Republican’s legislative actions, including their Supreme Court appointments?  Is it in order to restore checks and balances with respect to how the US government is conducted?  Or is it to reaffirm certain fundamental American values?

To different people all or only one of these reasons may matter.  I will argue the third is the most important.   First, and with regards to checks and balances, let’s clarify that party dominance in designing and enacting policies is not what was foremost in the minds of the framers of the American Constitution.  After all, most parliamentary democracies bestow this privilege to the governing party, which usually controls the executive as well as the legislative branch.  The reason checks and balances were written into the American constitution – by recognizing all three branches as co-equal – was to prevent the president from becoming an autocrat and tyrant in the mold of the much hated, at the time, British king.

It seems that fortuitously or for some underlying reason, Americans have heeded the framers’ concern and, with few exceptions, have produced bi-partisan governments. I have found that over the past one hundred years one-party dominance (by that I mean all three branches are controlled by the same party) has happened five times.  The Democrats have held full control sometime in the years 1937-45 (during the FDR era) and in 1961-69 (under JFK and Johnson); whereas the GOP has had control sometime in the years 1927-33 (under Hoover) and in 2001-07 (under G. W. Bush), and again since 2016 under Donald Trump.

In reviewing President Trump’s first nine months in office, an article in the October 2017 issue of the otherwise liberal Atlantic concluded that despite Trump’s breaking established norms, threats, and mean-spirited style, institutions had held pretty well, and, hence, one-party dominance had not done a serious damage to the constitutional order.  A year later, another article in the October 2018 issue of The Atlantic again arrived at the same conclusion.  Despite the realignment of Congressional Republicans under the Trump banner, the judicial branch has held up, though bruised by the relentless attacks from the president.   Attorney General Sessions is still in the Department of Justice and special counselor Mueller continues to do his investigation.  So, if your standard for judging the endurance and strength of checks and balances is one out of three branches doing its job, then we are not yet in crisis territory.  But the current state in this particular area is not reassuring for the future.  Should Republicans hold on to the House and the Senate, their loyalty to President Trump, who has assiduously campaigned on their behalf, will compel them even more to shield him from any check.  Given his inclination and habit to run all things as his personal interests dictate as well as his fondness to cultivate a personality cult (the antithesis of what a democratic leader ought to do), there is no guaranty what the quality of American democracy will be at the end of his tenure.

If still these concerns do not rise to the point that a bi-partisan government is needed, what about the possible erosion of fundamental American values?  Abraham Lincoln once said that the Constitution and Law were supposed to be America’s political religion.  As president, Trump might have not damaged the Constitution and the justice system by action but he has certainly attacked the ideas on which the Constitution and Law were founded.  He has questioned the objectivity of a federal judge because of his ethnic background, has called upon the DOJ to prosecute his political opponents, and has threatened to take executive action against the birthright of citizenship granted by the 14^th Amendment.  He has attacked the freedom of speech by declaring the press to be the enemy of the people; and he has done pretty much the same in regards to his political opponents.  He has been divisive from the start of his presidency by catering only to the political spirits and politics of his base and has called those who demonstrate against him to be a mob.  Thus, he has failed to act as the president of all Americans.

The Constitution does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, race, color, or religious background as to who is or can be an American.  Moreover, the confidence of this Republic in its capacity to take in people from foreign lands and turn them into loyal citizens is such that we can demonstrate our Jewish, Greek, Irish, Italian and any other ethnic affiliation and still be considered American patriots.  And yet, Donald Trump has demonized and dehumanized Latin American and Muslim people and has offended them as unfit to join this country.  Furthermore, his rhetoric, willingly or not, has given voice to white nationalism and has emboldened fringe groups that stand for hate and an illiberal order.

Under any other administration, a caravan of hungry, destitute and desperate migrants would have been handled by the appropriate authorities as a matter of law and order with very little said by the president.  Instead, the leader of a country of immigrants chooses to name these people invaders and a danger to the country.  And for no other purpose but to manipulate public sentiment through fear mongering he has ordered the military to intervene in a clearly civilian matter of law enforcement.  If that’s how he understands the purpose of the military, what other uses is he likely to have in mind? I don’t need to remind anyone that once the military is called out of the barracks to intervene in domestic affairs, we have entered a slippery slope toward suppression.

Despite all its flaws, America is a unique experiment in making a nation out of people of all kinds of different backgrounds.  The national motto is still E Pluribus Unum, “out of many one.”

One party’s economic policies can make us prosperous or may give us judges that rule in favor of our partisan values.  If we lose, however, the foundational values that have inspired and guided this country, none of these gains will matter.

So, to my initial question as to what these elections are all about, my answer is: In order to re-affirm the fundamental values this republic has set in its best moments.

 

From the moment Donald Trump entered the race for the 2016 presidential election, the press and TV media have been flummoxed by the type of personal character and tactics he has introduced to American politics.  The fascination has mostly centered around the question of what explains the man’s behavior.  What kind of an American politician could display personal traits, communication language and political tactics that would have eliminated any other candidate, past or present, and expect to win?  Only belatedly some commentators have also started to deal with the really important question of why despite all that Trump succeeded in attracting enough votes to win and has since maintained a solid loyal base of around 30 to 35 percent.  As unique (and I don’t mean this in a positive light) as Trump appears to be, trying to explain his appeal to voters is a lot more important for our political system than his psychological profile and motivations

Prior to the 2016 election, I thought the aggressive and bullying style was Trump’s way to shake republican voters away from established politicians.  While researching for a finance project, I had come across a reference to two ways professionals and businesses use to build reputation.  One is called type reputation and is used by newcomers to a field, who need to signal how well and aggressively they will meet the clients’ needs.  Trump’s abrasive tactics had the purpose to convince conservatives he would be their warrior.  The other type of reputation is behavioral reputation and comes into play once one has established the type reputation.  Behavioral reputation is built on actions that satisfy mainstream standards.  Without using this terminology, some commentators had estimated that, once in the White House, Trump would change his approach to garnering reputation and esteem by reverting to the standard mainstream behavior of previous presidents.  We now know we were all clearly wrong.  So, the question remains what explains the appeal.

Most of the analysis regarding Trump’s appeal is based on survey results that show rising white nationalism, economic insecurity of working-class people and anti-immigrant feelings among conservatives.  If it were the policies only, though, that mattered for people’s choices, was it rational for such voters to prefer Trump – given his offensive, hurtful and inflammatory tactics – over other very conservative and more seasoned candidates, like, say, Ted Cruz?  Trump’s appeal was missed because of our misguided adherence to the belief that rationality drives, or should drive, human decisions, including political choices.

Genes and brains, however, are not made to serve rational behavior.  Instead they are made to serve survival by replication and through adaptability to changing environments.  Morality as well is formed to help humans successfully navigate complex social environments in order to survive.  Similar to cognition, morality is intuitive and innate to our nature.   For cognitive functions, scientists use the terms fast and slow thinking.  Or more generally, system 1 and system 2, respectively.  For morality, Jonathan Haidt* uses the terms Elephant for innate morality (passed on by genes and influenced by the cultural environment) and Rider for reasoned morality.  Faced by various moral choices, we first respond automatically according to our innate morality.  This is the elephant that moves us through moral choices.  Our rider tries to steer our elephant toward more nuanced and reasoned moral choices but not always successfully.  It often works to validate our innate moral choices.  That’s why we talk of confirmation bias.  Therefore, if you wish to change another person’s morality try to talk to the elephant, not to the rider.  It is interesting that these recent advances in our understanding of human behavior had been foretold by the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume who proposed that humans are motivated more by sentiment than reason and rationality.

I think we have a better chance to understand the Trump phenomenon in light of the above arguments.  Trump consistently speaks to the sentiments of conservatives; that is, he addresses their elephant.  Surveys and casual observation show that conservatives hold very strong beliefs about loyalty (to family, social institutions, country), authority and order, and sanctity.  According to Haidt, loyalty, authority, and sanctity are three of the five pillars of Moral Foundations, the other two being care and fairness.  Conservativism coincides with moral innateness (or intuition) that primarily favors loyalty, authority and sanctity; whereas liberalism coincides with moral innateness that primarily favors care and fairness.

Trump never addresses his supporters by appealing to reasoned arguments.  Should he do that, their views about matters of national interest, immigration policy, religious versus secular rights and other issues would cause them to temper their views and be more inclined to consider policies advocated by the less conservative or liberal opponents of Trump.  Instead, by speaking to their elephant, Trump keeps his voters firmly away from the influence of any reasoned rider they may have.

And by speaking exclusively to like-minded people, Trump avoids accountability.  The psychologist Phil Tetlock suggests that accountability comes into play when (a) one knows he/she will be held accountable, (b) the audience’s views are unknown and (c) one believes the audience is well-informed.  These are exactly the conditions – especially the first two – that do not hold in Trump’s rallies.  Hence, Trump has no interest to use reason and arguments as opposed to what we call “raw meat.”

Now, in case those of us who abhor Trump’s methods start to feel too righteous, let’s be reminded that we are as susceptible to our liberal elephant as Trump’s supporters are to their conservative elephant.  Should our own Trump-like warrior emerge to appeal to our innate liberal morality, we could very well descend to the frenzy and hurtful level of Trump’s rally crowds.

Let’s hope this will not happen so that we can continue to fight the politics of divisiveness and misplaced patriotism with reason and humanity.

*Jonathan Haidt, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion”