Gruntled Center

A Possible American Trollope: Louisa May Alcott

2012-01-29T14:40:00.001-05:00

Some months ago I asked for suggestions of which novelist, if any, was the American equivalent of Anthony Trollope. Most respondents thought there wasn't one.

I am now reading Little Women for the first time. I see a strong moral similarity between Alcott's project and Trollope's. He draws on a broader social world. On the whole I think he is the better writer. Still, Alcott seems to be engage in a similar project at the same time, and with comparable popularity.

I offer this idea for the consideration of my literary readers.

Monogamy Succeeds Polygamy as Part of the Civilizing Process

2012-01-27T08:46:00.002-05:00

Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, about which I blogged recently, argues that the civilizing process of the modern era is one of the main reasons for the massive decrease in violence in the world.

Pinker does not treat the change in marriage norms specifically in his consideration of the civilizing process. I have long thought, though, that one of the great social benefits of monogamy is that it should reduce the violence by groups of unmarried men that is a predictable by-product of polygamy. This, I think, is why monogamy is nearly universal in developed nations, despite the wide variety of religious and cultural traditions that these different nations developed from.

A new study by Joseph Henrich and others at the University of British Columbia found "significantly higher levels of rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud in polygymous cultures found in Asia and Africa." By contrast, monogamy leads to more paternal investment, long-term planning, economic productivity, savings, and child investments.

These social advantages explain why even those who benefit the most from polygamy - rich, high-status men - are willing to switch to a monogamous social norm. The civilizing process leads to monogamy because of its greater peace and social investment for society as a whole.

Low IQ Correlates with Racism Through Social Conservatism

2012-01-26T18:23:00.003-05:00

A fascinating study by Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Canada, found that people with low intelligence in childhood were more likely to be racist adults. This was expected, given earlier research on education and racism.

The new finding tried to answer how, exactly, the two became connected. Hodson's conclusion:

The factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

The researchers speculate that conservative ideologies offer a more black-and-white worldview, which would be more appealing to people who finding it hard to take the position of the Other.

These findings correspond with Hetherington and Weiler's studies of authoritarianism and polarization which I blogged about before. Hodson's psychological study does not really look at the political mechanism by which low-IQ people find out about socially conservative ideologies. Political scientists Hetherington and Weiler, on the other hand, point to the fact that conservative organizations and parties have, over the past generation, actively sought out fearful people.

It seems a reasonable step to me to suppose that low-IQ people are more fearful than others. That would be an excellent subject for the next study.

Sovereignty vs. Majesty

2012-01-24T13:52:00.001-05:00

I am participating in the Christian Life and Witness conference at Georgetown College on the subject of "From the Academy to the Church." Nicholas Wolterstorff, a distinguished Reformed philosopher from Yale, was drawing a distinction between the Reformed approach to higher education and a conservative Baptist approach (Georgetown is a Baptist college). In the course of presenting an ideal type of the Reformed approach, he was asked about what is often considered the key Reformed doctrine, the sovereignty of God.

Wolterstorff surprised me by saying that Calvin does not seem to speak of the sovereignty of God. Instead, Calvin promotes the idea of the majesty of God.

Wolterstorff thought this difference presented Calvinism in a more hopeful light, because he reads the idea of God's sovereignty as the foundation of the most notorious Reformed doctrine, double predestination.

I, however, have always favored the idea of the sovereignty of God. I do not, though, connect it with predestination. Instead, I see it as a claim by the Reformed that all of Creation has one order, which we can investigate by reason.

We agreed that "sovereignty" and "majesty" are clearly similar ideas. It may be that they are simply different translations of the same word.

My question to you is this: Which term you find resonates better with your understanding? It seems to me that sovereignty is a concept better adapted to a democratic culture, whereas majesty is a more monarchical concept.

Still wrestling. Very fruitful conference, though.

Children as a Happy-Making Gift.

2012-01-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

I have been synthesizing two lines of happiness research.

People who give more are more likely to report that they are very happy.

People who have children are more likely to report that they are very happy, even though children typically diminish their marital happiness.

I think it is very fruitful to think of raising children as a gift, a gift to society.

Giving the gift of raising children should make it more likely that you will be very happy.

Facebook is Not an Echo Chamber

2012-01-22T19:54:00.002-05:00

Some people fear that social media creates an echo chamber in which we only hear opinions from like-minded friends which confirm our own.

Eytan Bakshy, a researcher at Facebook, conducted a fine, huge experiment. Facebook normally shows you links that your friends have posted. Using a modest sample of 253 million users, Bakshy suppressed some of that sharing, to create an experimental and a control group. He wanted to see how much people shared links, whether they shared links that were kept from them but that they found some other way, and whether they shared more from their strong-tie or weak-tie friends.

If Facebook were an echo chamber, we would mostly be sharing links from friends and from strong ties more than weak.

What Bakshy found is that we do share links from our close friends. And we do share links that we would have gotten from our close friends - Bakshy hid them, but we found them anyway. So far, so echo-y. But we also share links from our weak ties, ones we would not have seen otherwise. And the number of links we get and share from weak ties overwhelm the number we get from close ties. Weak ties bring us novel information.

My experience confirms this finding. I share opinions with close friends every day on Facebook. But I also get contrary information all the time. Some comes from a few close friends who do not agree with me. But most comes from weak ties - acquaintances who are "friends" but not really close friends. Even more often, people I do not know contribute comments to a friends' post disagreeing with that friend. Almost daily I find myself reading and checking a contrasting idea that someone I sort-of know put on Facebook.

This keeps me honest. Good for busting the echo chamber.

Big-Time Sports Did Not Eat Division III College Life

2012-01-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

"How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life," by Laura Pappano in the New York Times, is an excellent and sad story. Two interesting statistics that she reports:

Between 1985 and 2010, average salaries at public universities rose 32 percent for full professors, 90 percent for presidents and 650 percent for football coaches.

A study of University of Oregon students found that for every three games won by the football team, the grade-point average for men dropped 0.02, widening the G.P.A. gender gap by 9 percent.

The good news is that this is only a problem at Division I schools. Division III schools, like Centre College, do athletics right. And not all Division III schools are small, like Centre. The University of Chicago, for example, or Washington University, are full-scale research universities. But they keep sports in proportion.

Physical activity is a fine part of a well-rounded education. Athletics is a good addition to academic education. For those who don't want their academic priorities totally distorted by semi-professional sports teams operating near their academic institution, Division III does academic/athletic balance right.

World Population Pyramid Shows Some Big Declines Coming

2012-01-20T21:33:00.002-05:00

This world population pyramid is fantastic.

Want to see something scary? Look at the population of Japan, Russia, and Italy now, vs. 2030.

I think world population is likely to stabilize. But some countries are looking at a demographic shrinkage so large that their societies will be fundamentally changed.

Have the Republicans Run Out of Protestants?

2012-01-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

With Rick Perry's withdrawal from the presidential nomination race, the Republican Party is down to Romney the Mormon, Santorum the traditional Catholic, Gingrich the newcomer Catholic, and Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is a libertarian. Libertarians are mostly unreligious, and a strong segment, like Jesse Ventura, regard religion as a crutch for the weak.

But Ron Paul also attends a Baptist church, is pro-life, and has been on both sides of the gay marriage issue.

I think Paul has not fully worked out the relationship between his religious views and his political views. He is clearly against the federal government being involved in moral and religious matters, as a strict libertarian would be. But whether he would support or oppose the Christian Right position at the state level is not clear.

In any case, the Republican Party, which has made evangelical Protestants the foundation of its base for a generation, has now run out of any clear socially conservative evangelical candidates for president.

We Should Err on the Side of Internet Freedom

2012-01-18T09:21:00.002-05:00

Today many internet sites, my daily tools and haunts, are protesting proposed legislation. The intent of the legislation - to prevent stealing intellectual property - is noble. The proposed method of control, though, seems so burdensome on internet content transmitters that it could really cripple this wonderful tool.

I am not expert enough on the details of the legislation to say more than that about this law or that. And I am confident that our legislative process will work out to a compromise that is not as bad as the proposed law. The political forces are divided and the economic forces are divided. This is the circumstance that makes for compromise.

The internet needs regulation. Every human institution needs rules and regulation. The question is whether our presumption is to err on the side of freedom or on the side of tight control. To take two extreme examples: we need very little regulation of how the rules of children's games work; we need strict regulation of how nuclear power plants operate.

The flow of content on the internet is, I submit, more like the rules of kids' games than it is like nuclear power. Light regulation is appropriate.

School Your Passion Toward a Real Problem, and Thus Find Happiness

2012-01-17T12:00:00.004-05:00

Oliver Segovia has a fine piece on the Harvard Business Review blog with the unfortunate headline "To Find Happiness, Forget Passion."

His main point is that if you want a meaningful life, find a big problem to work on. Since it is a big problem, you will probably find a way to make a living at trying to solve it. And working on something worthwhile is likely to make you happy.

Segovia frames this point with a story of a woman who "followed her passion" into something liberal artsy (subject not specified), who ended up unemployed and depressed. This story, no doubt, is what led the headline writer to say "forget passion."

I think Segovia's point, though, is that working on a big problem that you have an initial interest in tends to engage your passion. Thus, his real message is not "forget passion," but try to school your passion toward something the world can use.

That way does lead to happiness, fulfillment, and probably enough income to live on.

The Best Measure of How Far We Have Come On King Day

2012-01-16T17:55:00.002-05:00

... is a black president in the White House.

The Vocation to Discern Vocations

2012-01-15T15:29:00.000-05:00

In Sunday School we have been talking about the Presbyterian calling to teach. Everyone in the class is or has been a teacher of some sort. I think this is pretty typical for a Presbyterian Sunday School. I think I would not find the same thing in a random sample of adult Sunday School classes in most denominations.

Being called to teach has also meant that Presbyterians are disproportionately involved in creating schools. The stewardship of society means that these schools are meant to serve everyone, not just Presbyterians.

One point that came out in the class that I had not fully appreciated before comes from putting the call to teach with the call to create schools. Having a vocation to teach in institutions that serve everyone means that we also have a vocation to help everyone find his or her vocation - whether that includes teaching or not.

The vocation to help discern vocations vastly multiplies the social effect of the Presbyterian call to teach.

Christian Right Leaders Give Obama a Gift

2012-01-14T17:56:00.004-05:00

Leaders of the Christian Right, a once-important bloc within the Republican Party, have endorsed Rick Santorum.

I believe this action will have two consequences.

First, evangelical Christians will not follow these once-powerful leaders, but will split their votes among many candidates, including Mitt Romney.

Second, the split within the Republican Party between the establishment wing, which backs Romney, and the evangelical wing, which does not, will widen.

The Republican Party has been effective in blocking a few of President Obama's policies, but seems to be unable to unite around any effective positive idea for governing, nor do they support an effective candidate to bear such an idea. By further splitting the party, the Christian Right leaders have handed President Obama another gift.

Twins Up Nearly 100% in a Generation Due to Old Mothers

2012-01-13T08:57:00.000-05:00

The birth rate for twins has nearly doubled in the past generation in the U.S.

One third of this growth in twinning is due to more older mothers, who tend to have twins at a higher rate naturally than younger mothers do.

Most of the increase in twins - and triplets, quadruplets, etc. on to Octomom - is due to more women waiting so long to have children that they need fertility drugs.

"The King of Bain" is a Very Bad Film

2012-01-12T12:46:00.001-05:00

"When Mitt Romney Came to Town," also known as "The King of Bain," the long-form attack ad that Newt Gingrich's supporters are running, is a very bad documentary. It is the kind of sensationalist fear mongering that the right wing hates when Michael Moore does it.

The film, which was originally made by Romney employees, was sold to a pro-Gingrich political action committee.

The film shows Romney and his firm, Bain Capital, buying up several companies, firing most of the workforce, making huge profits by getting other people to loan the companies money, and then shutting them down completely. In one case they started a technology firm, got favorable ratings from Lehman Brothers, made a huge pile from the initial public offering, then sold off all their stock just before the company went bankrupt.

In each case - and the film says there are many more - Bain acts like the vultures that Rick Perry says they are.

What the film does not do is investigate whether the companies could have been run profitably at all. The film-makers did not even ask whether anyone could have saved these firms.

I do not know the answer to that question. So far, no commentators on the film have tried to answer it. It may be that Bain Capital, and Mitt Romney, are indeed "vulture capitalists" or "mafia capitalists," buying profitable companies, suckering investors into giving Bain lots of money in exchange for worthless debt, then destroying the firms. It may also be that Bain Capital bought failing companies, performed necessary creative destruction, and saved the fragment that would otherwise have failed.

I would really like to know which kind of businessman Mitt Romney is. But "When Mitt Romney Came to Town" is a very bad way to try to answer the question.

What You Get If You Ask the Web If It's Cool to Be a Virgin

2012-01-11T19:46:00.000-05:00

The website "First World Problems" had this intriguing item:

My daughter wants to know if it's cool to be a virgin. I'm not sure, but I know that if I Google the answer, it'll result in firing or divorce.

I am in little danger of being fired or divorced for pursuing such a question, so I did.

The first answer that Google yields is, surprisingly, a Yahoo! Answers Q & A from 2006 (!). The lead answer given then was "it's up to you."

A query from last year is a little scarier: "Is it OK to be 16 and a virgin?" This, I am happy to report, brought several sensible and well-reasoned "yes" answers.

A similar query brought this response from TheSite.org, a British advice site for young adults:

I'm 78, still a virgin and so cool, I piss ice cubes.

You're doing the right thing.

The Pay It Forward Coffee House

2012-01-10T18:57:00.002-05:00

I like good news, coffee houses, and Good magazine. This story has all three.

At the Corner Perk, a coffee house in Bluffton, SC, one anonymous customer started leaving money to pay for other people's drinks and food. This custom caught on, and now many people do it.

As psychologist Jonathan Haidt has so interestingly demonstrated, seeing other people do good things fills most people with a desire to do good things, too.

Utopian "Third Party" Movements are the Bane of Centrism

2012-01-09T18:14:00.001-05:00

I am grateful to Solomon Kleinsmith to participate in his blog collective, The Rise of the Center.

Recently I got to voice a pet peeve about something that has bedeviled every centrist forum I have been part of: the desire to create a third party between the Democratic and Republican Parties.

I think that in this country third parties are always utopian, sectarian, and do more harm than good. In particular, they hurt the party that they are more in sympathy with by splitting the vote in an election. Not all third parties are centrist, by any means. But the effect is the same: third parties are a gift your enemies.

Moreover, like all utopian endeavors, they take up too many evenings with too little to show for it.

The Republicans and the Democrats have nearly all the governmental action. If you want to actually affect government policy, as I do, then you have to work within the big tent of one or the other major party.

There are many other ways to build up the world besides government policy, of course. Those other sectors allow for many fruitful centrist paths. But American politics does not.

Most of the other participants in the Rise of the Center discussion, including Kleinsmith, disagree with me on this.

I would be interested in the thoughts of Gruntled Center readers on this topic.

Why President Obama Will Be Re-Elected

2012-01-06T11:55:00.004-05:00

This first week of the year is devoted to posts on the big political picture.

The main reasons that I think President Obama will be re-elected is that:

a) he is the incumbent, so the sizable majority that voted for him last time will want to vote for him again;

b) the economy is improving; and

c) the Republicans will be unable to unite around an exciting and unifying candidate.

President Obama has been a very good president.

Conditions in the country and in the world are improving.

Obama is playing the long game of politics very well. When he was first elected, he knew he had about 18 months to pass the main pieces of his positive agenda. He did, most importantly by passing universal health care. He has also been relentlessly bi-partisan, working with any Republicans who were willing to help, compromising the way any competent politician must, and keeping his eye on the ball. He has had even greater successes in foreign policy. And he has waited until the turn into his re-election year to push back harder against the Republican leadership's intransigence.

The Republicans have played into Obama's hands. They have positioned themselves as against health care for millions, against saving the auto industry, against regulating the investment "banks" that nearly destroyed the world economy, against regulating the payday lenders that batten on the poor and working class, against supporting democratic movements in the Arab world, against reducing payroll taxes for people who live on their earnings, against raising taxes on the hugely rich. Most importantly, they have positioned themselves against compromising and working together in the way that government absolutely requires.

To take a signal example, I think universal health care will be a pillar of what most Americans appreciate about government, as they do Medicare and Social Security. Republicans also opposed Medicare and Social Security, but at least some of them voted for it. Not universal health care, though - the Republican leadership made sure their party was unanimously against it. And they call it "Obamacare." This short-sighted intransigence will come back to bite them for years to come.

The Republican Party is also suffering a three-way civil war among its establishment, social conservative, and libertarian wings. The Tea Party, in particular, is almost as much anti-Republican as it is anti-Democratic. I believe the Tea Party has shot its bolt and will be irrelevant after this election. But in the mean time, they will exacerbate the intransigence that is undermining the Republican Party as an actual instrument of government.

Obama Is Mostly Doing an Excellent Job

2012-01-05T23:41:00.002-05:00

This first week of the year is devoted to posts on the big political picture.

Yesterday I wrote about my main criticism of President Obama. Today I want to say that, on the whole, I think he has done a masterful job under very difficult circumstances.

President Obama first had to clean up the gigantic mess left by the previous administration. He prevented a major depression, ended a misbegotten war, is winding down a more justified war, killed bin Laden, ended torture, restored America's stature in the world, saved the auto industry, resumed regulating the finance industry, and started protecting the environment again.

Obama also came in to office with a positive agenda. His main achievement was to create universal health care, an objective of Democratic administrations since Truman. He started investing more in alternative energy, rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, working with our allies, and shifting our military focus toward Asia.

He also made the most of some unexpected opportunities, most importantly the Arab Spring. President Obama supported indigenous revolutions against Arab dictators, without sending American troops, spending a trillion dollars, alienating our allies, or creating loathing for America among the "liberated" people. The contrast with the Iraq war is striking in this regard. And the chances of successful democracy are greater than in Iraq, though still iffy in both cases.

One great achievement of the Obama administration is something it did not do: it did not make our enemies do worse things by threatening them. The President did not invent an "axis of evil," pushing them to invest in nuclear weapons against an American threat.

And President Obama achieved all of this in the face of a determined foe whose sole objective was to deny the president any achievements: the leadership of the Republican Party. As Senator McConnell said at the outset of the current administration, the main goal of Republicans is to deny President Obama a second term.

Obama has been a very good president. I hope in the coming year he will prove to be an excellent one.

Obama Is Doing Something Wrong in Fighting Terrorists

2012-01-04T17:54:00.002-05:00

This first week of the year is devoted to posts on the big political picture.

On his first day in office, President Obama promised to close the Guantanamo prison within a year. He did not.

Last year he ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen, Anwar Awlaki, by a drone attack in Yemen.

Last week he signed the defense bill which allows the indefinite detention without trial of suspected terrorists.

Each of these acts is wrong in itself and dangerous as a precedent.

I normally support President Obama, so I have tried hard to understand why he did these things, and what principle or theory might lie behind them. I have not come up with a good account. National security, especially when dealing with terrorists, necessarily includes facts that can't be revealed to the public. Perhaps there are good reasons for these acts that are now hidden.

Here are my best guesses.

Some of the Guantanamo prisoners were so badly tortured under the previous administration that they cannot effectively be put on trial or released. Since their testimony was acquired by torture, it is worthless. The Obama administration ended the torture, but cannot undue what was done before.

A very small number of American citizens, such as Awlaki, have indeed become enemy combatants. Awlaki himself openly proclaimed this. Since he was in hiding in enemy territory, it was not practical to capture and try him as a citizen has a right to receive. The drone attack was the only practical way to fight that enemy, as we have with many other non-citizen enemy individuals.

When signing the National Defense Authorization Act, the president issued a statement that he objected to the provisions of the act that allowed for indefinite military detention and would not allow them on his watch. His opponents put this poison pill in the law precisely to embarrass the president. Since he had to sign the law in order to pay the troops, he accepted this compromise, while still rejecting this provision of the law.

I think these guesses on my part are the best case for understanding how President Obama could be party to these bad acts. Still, they only mitigate the evil; they do not justify it, nor end it.

I understand that we are fighting terrorists - enemy individuals and loose organizations that really do threaten us. The normal tools that states can use in fighting the armies of other states are not available. We have had to develop new tools to fight these enemies effectively.

I believe the Obama administration has made some effort to make the war against terrorists more legal than it was, and to make it still more legal and ethical as we go forward.

But I believe that President Obama has not done enough to fight these enemy individuals and organizations in a way that is in accord with American constitutional principles. This is my biggest disappointment with the Obama administration.

The Three-Way Fight Among Republicans

2012-01-03T22:43:00.001-05:00

I am starting the year with a week of Big Picture posts.

Republicans normally nominate the person whose turn it is to run for president. They typically pick a candidate who did respectably in their previous primary. By that logic, it is Mitt Romney's turn.

Some newcomers also run in order to get in line for a future race, or at least to position themselves for a post in the next Republican administration. I believe Jon Huntsman, my favorite of the Republican candidates this year, ran for this reason.

When I look at the rest of this year's Republican field, I see two things.

First, I think all the other establishment politicians in the party believe that Barack Obama will be re-elected. Therefore, they decided to sit this one out.

Second, the Tea Party is a wild card. This movement is as much against the Republican establishment as it is against the Democrats. None of those who are running are exactly Tea Partiers. Tea Partiers are mostly very conservative white Christians, drawn heavily from the petite bourgeoisie, who are the bedrock of any Republican coalition. I think Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann come closest. They are drawn to libertarianism, so they think well of Ron Paul. But mostly they are not really against government, as true libertarians are. Rather, Tea Partiers are against government spending money on people they regard as undeserving. All the Not-Romney candidates have been trying to mobilize the Tea Party, but none have a lock.

Herman Cain got into the race, I believe, to raise his speaking fees. That is his main source of income. Ironically, if he had not become the front-runner, this strategy might have worked. Too much exposure, though, destroyed his credibility (if not his marriage).

Newt Gingrich, I think, never expected to be the nominee. He does, though, wish he still mattered politically, so he ran to raise his profile. He may even get his wish. I think, though, he has also raised his negatives, reminding a new generation of Republicans why the previous generation of Republican leaders pushed him out of leadership.

Rick Santorum is, I believe, actually the strongest social conservative in the race - which is saying quite a bit. He is a very traditional Catholic - not an evangelical Protestant. One consequence of this fact, not usually appreciated by secular political commentators, is that traditional Catholics are not beholden to free-market capitalism, large corporations, or big banks. This is also why Santorum is not the candidate of the Republican establishment.

As I write this, the Iowa caucuses are unfolding. Romney, Santorum, and Paul are leading. I think the Republican race will continue with these three, or people representing the three Republican camps.

The Tea Party and the social conservatives will try to fend off the gravitational pull of the establishment candidate.

I expect that Romney, the establishment candidate, the my-turn candidate, will be the eventual nominee.

The World Is Better Off Than It Was a Year Ago

2012-01-02T19:18:00.000-05:00

I like to start each year with a week of reflections on the big picture.

The worst dictator in the world died.

The worst terrorist in the world was killed.

Three Arab dictatorships were overthrown, which is good; by their own people; which is better; with Western help, but not Western domination, which is best of all.

Three other Arab dictatorships may be overthrown the same way. As well as the military dictatorship of Burma.

The world economy is slowly improving. Europe has been able to avert economic collapse, and is slowly dealing with their currency and debt crisis.

China is cooperating more with the West in trade and in stabilizing Western debt. China has also been helpful in containing North Korea.

Conditions are improving for women's education, careers, public lives, and general freedom throughout nearly all nations of the world.

Conditions are improving for sexual minorities in most nations of the world.

Religious freedom is improving in most nations of the world.

World population seems to be stabilizing.

Let us not take for granted stable democracies in almost every corner of the Western hemisphere, the Northern hemisphere, and most of the Pacific island nations.

The generation-long trend of declining violence continues in nearly all nations.

All the great powers are working together to reduce the threat of war, both among great powers, and among little states.

To be sure, there are a few very bad actors in the world, some of them controlling states. And there are always uncertainties to worry about. The world economy is recovering, but not recovered. The global warming trend may be getting worse. And bad things happen to individuals every day.

Still, the world as a whole is better off than it was a year ago.

There is a great deal to be thankful for, and hopeful about, in the world today.

Merry Christmas to One and All

2011-12-25T08:44:00.002-05:00

The Gruntled Center will take a vacation until the New Year.

I am looking forward to an excellent 2012, and I hope you have the same.

A Dylan Thomas Trip to Shakertown

2011-12-24T04:40:00.002-05:00

We had a delightful bit of providential timing last night.

Near Danville is Pleasant Hill, a restored Shaker community now known as Shakertown. It is, in my opinion, the most beautiful human-made place in Kentucky. I took the family there for Christmas Eve-eve dinner.

My mother-in-law brought a recording of Dylan Thomas reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales," a favorite family poem that I used to read to the kids when they were small. We started listening as we pulled out of the driveway. "I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six," and all that follows, carried us through the misty December twilight in the lovely Kentucky countryside.

As we came in sight of the entrance to Shakertown, Dylan Thomas was winding down Christmas day.

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

And he spoke the last word as we pulled up to the stop sign opposite the Pleasant Hill gate.

So now we know: the distance from Danville to Shakertown can be measured in the scientific unit of one Child's Christmas in Wales.

China's Surprising Christian Distribution

2011-12-23T14:07:00.001-05:00

The Pew Research Center has taken on the difficult task of estimating the numbers of Christians all over the world. Yesterday I reported that the country with the third largest number of Protestants is China - many in underground churches.

I was surprised, though, to see the ratio of Protestant to Catholic Christians in China.

Using the same methods to estimate both groups, Pew came up with these totals for Chinese Christians:

Protestants: 58 million

Catholics: 9 million

I hope that some day, when China is democratic, these churches will be able to operate openly. I expect that, when that day comes, there will be an evangelical boom in China - as is already happening covertly.

And, incidentally, sociologists will be able to get more definite numbers.

Which Countries Have the Most Protestants?

2011-12-22T22:02:00.000-05:00

Which country has the most Protestants? The United States - that one was not so hard.

But which countries have the second and third largest Protestant populations? Not the largest percentage, but the largest number - a question that obviously favors the countries with the largest populations?

The answer? China and Nigeria.

A new world Christianity is being built.

"Keeping Her Maiden Name" on the Decline

2011-12-21T14:05:00.000-05:00

A young friend, recently engaged, passed on this story of the decline in married women keeping their maiden names.

The interesting statistics on American brides keeping their maiden names:

1980s: 9%
1990s: 23%
2000s: 18%

They also report a large, but probably not scientific, survey by TheKnot.com, which found that only 8% did in 2010.

The article suggests, by anecdote, that more women are using their maiden names as middle names for professional purposes, as Mrs. G. does.

I do remember noticing that among people we know, the trend seemed to peak with the late Baby Boomers of the college class of '77, but had was less common in our early Gen X cohort marrying in the early 1980s, even at a very politically correct college.

Marry Before Kids: An Answer to Tracy McMillan

2011-12-20T10:40:00.001-05:00

Tracy McMillan has written very popular piece at The Huffington Post that is funny, insightful, and deliberately over the top, explaining to aging single women, like herself, "Why You Are Not Married." McMillan's politically incorrect advice has drawn some criticism, including Lisa Wade's piece at Sociological Images that I addressed yesterday.

I did want to take issue with one point that McMillan, a thrice-divorced single mother, makes:

if what you really want is a baby, go get you one. Your husband will be along shortly. Motherhood has a way of weeding out the lotharios.

McMillan's advice is not completely wrong, but it is very risky.

On the one hand, it is true many women who have children out of wedlock do eventually marry someone, including most teen welfare moms (see Edin and Kefalas' Promises I Can Keep).

On the other hand, it is much harder to court with children. It is less likely that step-fathers will be as good for kids as would natural fathers married to natural mothers. Most of all, McMillan's strategy discounts the bad effects on the children of their single-parent years. Things may work out OK eventually, but there are usually costs from the tough years. And if things do not work out eventually, all the years are likely to be tough.

I think Tracy McMillan does offer a helpful reality check to single women who do want to marry, though she offers it in an almost brutal way. But I think she errs in her advice about the relationship between marriage and children.

Marriage is so Normal: an Answer to Lisa Wade

2011-12-19T14:08:00.003-05:00

The other day I posted about the scary report that only a bare majority of American adults are married. I argued that the alarm over this report is overblown. Marriage is not becoming a minority taste.

Another sociologist has argued that marriage could become a minority taste, but so what? Lisa Wade, at the always-interesting Sociological Images, defended her own unmarried pairing with a general critique of marriage. She distinguishes, rightly, between the idea that marriage is normative - that is, thought to be good and desirable - and the factual question of whether or not marriage is normal - that is, what most people actually do.

Marriage is normative. Most Americans favor marriage, and do marry. They think it is good for society, even if they are not married themselves. They think marriage is good for children, even if they are not married or parents themselves. Wade dances around this fact, but she does not (and cannot) actually deny it.

She does, though, make this claim: "In actual reality, though, the state of being married is not any more normal than the state of being unmarried."

This is not true, for reasons I outlined in my earlier post. The proportion of people who marry for life is closer to two-thirds than to one-half. We are dealing with estimates of what people will do in the future, so it is hard to be more precise than that.

My more important critique of Wade's position, though, is that the conception of marriage she defends is entirely about her relationship.

The greatest value of marriage to society as a whole, and to the members of most families, is that marriage is the best environment for raising children. Once you have kids, your life is not all about you any more. Since the great majority of adults do have children, we all have an interest - first-hand or second-hand - in the social arrangements that are best for children.

Marriage is both normal and normative primarily because it is best for children, and secondarily because, on the whole, most people are happier married than as cohabitors or as single parents.

The World's Worst Tyrant Dies

2011-12-18T22:29:00.002-05:00

Kim Jong-Il, the brutal dictator of North Korea, has died. It would take someone at a higher paygrade than mine to explain why this is a bad thing.

I hope the North Koreans can escape the whole apparatus of their police state. In fact, I think it is realistic to think that if they can upgrade to even a merely bad government, the long hoped-for reunification of the Koreas might become real.

Honesty is Common. Kudos to Coke for Demonstrating and Rewarding This

2011-12-16T12:31:00.002-05:00

Coke planted a wallet with the equivalent of $200 and a much-coveted ticket to a big soccer match on the walkway in the middle of a mall in Portugal. They filmed what happened.

95% of the people who picked up the wallet turned it in to the nearby soccer store.

The crowd of shoppers cheered. The honest citizen was given a Coke (of course). And a ticket to the soccer match, where they were seated with the other wallet-returners. During the match, Coke ran the hidden-camera film of all the wallets being returned on the big screen, then panned to the section of the stadium where these honest citizens were seated. Huge cheers from the crowd.

Most people are honest. Most people like to help others. Most people do ordinary things to build up society.

Wanted: Domestic Men for High-Achieving Women

2011-12-15T10:29:00.003-05:00

High-achieving women have a hard time finding even higher-achieving men to marry. There are more high-achieving women than ever - my students and my daughters among them.

I think it is a deep and natural desire in most women to marry up if they can. This is prudent in class and status terms. More importantly, it makes sense as young women prepare, consciously or not, for the great risk of having children, to find the most securely attached and resource-laden spouse they can.

However, human beings are reasoning creatures, who can understand trade-offs, changed social conditions, and priorities. High-achieving women are probably the best people of all to understand and weigh such factors. And every woman and man is not looking to marry an entire sex or the average of an entire sex, but one particular person with a very specific set of qualities.

SO the good news for high-achieving women is that there are more men who want to be part of a family that shares the achievements, the status, and, of course, the work. Just as women have always done when the shoe is on other foot.

So one could lament the hard time high-achieving women have of making a traditional pairing. I prefer, though, this response:

A feminist leader, Siobhan (Sam) Bennett, president of the nonpartisan Women’s Campaign Fund, does not see conflicts for high-earning women in dating, marriage and domestic life. On the contrary, she told me, “I see great opportunity that these high-value women will ask and gain the flexibility they need to have marriages and families — their lives will probably look different than what we’ve seen — but they will work for them.”

Marriage is Not About the Become a Minority Lifestyle

2011-12-14T20:43:00.001-05:00

A scary Pew Research Center report, based on the latest census, calculates that only 51% of American adults are married. Some have leaped to the conclusion that marriage is declining, and about to tip into a minority taste.

This alarmist talk is overblown.

First, most adults are married, as they always have been in this country.

Second, a significant fraction were married until death did them part. As we live longer, the fraction of the population composed of widows and widowers is growing. They are not evidence that marriage is passé - quite the opposite. They made the ultimate commitment to marriage, and we should never forget it.

Third, as the Pew report notes, the average age of first marriage is the highest it has been in this country - 26 for women, 29 for men. We can be confident from past trends that the most of those unmarried twenty-somethings will marry. We know from current survey research that they want to marry.

The actually scary trend is that the poorest and least educated people - the families that could most benefit from the material side of marriage - are the least likely to marry.

The good news is that the marriage rate among educated and dual-career couples is rising, and constitutes the great majority of the top half of the class and status structure.

They Are Stopping My Gold Dollar

2011-12-13T15:01:00.004-05:00

I like the gold dollar coin. I get my coffee with them every day. I started doing that with the Sacagewea dollar, one of my favorite coins ever. Now the Mint is making dollar coins for each president, a new one per month. We are still in the Reign of Beards in the 19th century.

Alas, the Treasury has decided to cut back on making new dollar coins to just the minimum that the numismatists want. They claim that too few people actually spend them. As a result, they already have a ten-year backlog in storage.

So I will do my bit for the dollar coin. Fewer for America, but more for me.

Parenthood is Hard, But Married Parents Are the Least Likely to be Depressed

2011-12-12T21:21:00.000-05:00

This is the second post on Marquardt and Wilcox' State of Our Unions 2011.

In the 1970s, Jesse Bernard became famous among feminists for arguing that marriage was good for men, but bad for women. The main empirical foundation of her book was a study that purported to show that married women (but not men) were more prone to depression than single women were.

Bernard's study has long been discredited. What the study she cited actually showed was that women who had recently left careers for motherhood were somewhat more prone to depression than were childless working women.

Marquardt and Wilcox now offer current data, which goes further into parental life. They find that single parents are more prone to depression. Married parents, on the other hand, are not. In fact, married women, with or without children, were the least likely to be depressed. Cohabiting parents were also not likely to be depressed. Single women were more likely to be depressed, and most likely of all were single parents - 37% of single mothers, vs. only 22% of married women. This figure controls for age, education, income, and race/ethnicity.

Marquardt and Wilcox's overall conclusion about the affect of parenthood on depression, and on overall happiness, is

the sense of support, solidarity, and meaning afforded by a co-parenting relationship more than makes up for any challenges associated with parenthood when it comes to global happiness and depression.

New Reformed Body - Polity Statement

2011-12-11T20:35:00.001-05:00

Occasionally on a Sunday I write about a painfully specific Presbyterian Church (USA) topic. If this is not your cup of tea, xkcd is always good.

The Fellowship of Presbyterians is proposing a New Reformed Body. At this point they are navigating between the Charybdis of creating a counter-polity within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Scylla of outright schism. This week they released draft documents on polity and theology for comment, prior to next month's national meeting to Take the Next Step, whatever that might turn out to be. Today I will talk about the polity document.

The document looks to me like a very good constitutional framework for a Reformed denomination. They dissolve regional synods, a move that I favor. They strengthen the collegial accountability of the presbytery, which I think is an excellent professional and pastoral idea. They put congregations, rather than presbyteries, in charge of their property. This is a giant step toward congregationalism, but in practice would not be very different from what we are devolving into now.

The document is deliberately lean, leaving to each presbytery and congregation the responsibility for adopting the normal rules recommend in this polity document, and/or developing their own.

My favorite innovation is this:

The session shall evaluate the congregation’s ministry and mission annually and report to the presbytery for reasons of mutual accountability and the sharing of best practices.

This sounds like an excellent idea for any congregation. If congregations really did this seriously then the presbytery would, of necessity, develop knowledge and skill in sharing and assessing best practices. That would be a huge benefit to the whole denomination.

What really makes a denomination work are not the official rules, but trust among the members and constituent congregations, and respect for the authority of established leaders. If the New Reformed Body can achieve that kind of trust and respect, it will succeed no matter what its official relationship to the PC (USA).

Mockupy

2011-12-10T18:14:00.001-05:00

This is hilarious.

"Law and Order" recreated the Occupy Wall Street site to film a segment of the show.

The real Occupy Wall Street people heard about the fake.

The real Occupy Wall Street occupied the fake Occupy Wall Street on fake Wall Street.

At the behest of the fake cops, the real cops drove out the real OWS so the fake OWS could occupy the fake OWS.

Life is full of wonders.

Married Parents Are More Likely to Think That Their Lives Have an Important Purpose

2011-12-09T13:28:00.001-05:00

The 2011 edition of The State of Our Unions has just been released by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values. This year's report, by Brad Wilcox and Elizabeth Marquardt, has the wonderful subtitle "And Baby Makes Three: How Parenthood Makes Life Meaningful and How Marriage Makes Parenthood Bearable."

Among their findings, drawn from a new Survey of Marital Generosity, is that married people are more likely to think that their lives are meaningful than are unmarried people. Even more interesting, as this table shows, is that among married people, parents are more likely to think that their "life has an important purpose" than are childless husbands and wives. In fact, a majority of married mothers, and a near majority of married fathers strongly agree that their lives have an important purpose.

Believing that your life has an important purpose is one of the strongest components of a happy life.

The Civil War Was the Heroic Birth of Black America

2011-12-08T14:53:00.002-05:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates has an excellent essay in the Atlantic Monthly special issue on the Civil War. His main point is to call on African-Americans to know and own and cherish their role in the Civil War in winning their freedom and making democracy real in America.

More than that, Coates calls on all Americans to see the Civil War as a "good war," in the sense that we see the Second World War as a "good war" - a just struggle that defeated a manifest evil. He argues that to see the Civil War as a tragedy that divided brother against brother is to collude in the exclusion of the "darker brother" from existence in America.

I think Coates is quite right. The collusion of northern and southern whites in the myth of the Lost Cause after the war may have seemed worth it to foster national white reconciliation. But it came at the high cost of racial apartheid, terrorism, and oppression for another hundred years.

Only now, on the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, can we start to appreciate the Civil War as a heroic war for the American ideals of liberty and equality for all Americans. And no matter which side, if any, your ancestors were on (and I have ancestors on both sides), all Americans can come to see the Civil War as the heroic birth of the whole nation.

Daily Show vs. Swamp Loggers

2011-12-06T21:14:00.002-05:00

Entertainment Weekly commissioned a survey of the favorite television shows of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

At the top of the liberal Democratic list: "The Daily Show."

At the top of the conservative Republican list: "Swamp Loggers."

Democrats favor snark and literate humor. Republicans favor work and literal reality.

I don't see a deep lesson in this difference. But I do think it reinforces the notion that there is some cultural polarization in America. This is not just a matter of official partisan positions, either. Pop culture shows a party, if not partisan, divide.

So now I have to go find out what "Swamp Loggers" is about. :-)

Pinker's Main Point About Why Violence Has Declined

2011-12-04T21:11:00.001-05:00

Steven Pinker's main point in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is this:

The “Kantian triangle of democracy, openeconomies, and engagement in the international community” (310) is his maincausal theory of the decline of violence. Each of these institutions justifies itself by the reasonable gains that people get from them, and from the spread of Enlightenment culture as a whole.

The spread of competent states with somewhat open economies has reduced violence because

a) violence by citizens is bad for states;

b) violence by the state against citizens is bad for states, unless it is necessary for a);

c) violence is bad for commerce;

d) interstate institutions have been somewhat successful in preventing interstate violence (wars).

The places that we see violence in the world today are in failed states, weak states, and relatively lawless corners of otherwise competent states. And these places are shrinking as states and globalized commerce fill the remaining lawless corners of the world.

Facing Up to Bullies as a Class Exercise

2011-12-03T23:21:00.002-05:00

Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, emphasizes that there has been a massive reduction in violence in the world because, in part, we have developed skills and habits such as self-control and sympathetic compassion.

One of the sources of collective violent acts come when groups do bad things together even though the members of the group individually think it is wrong. This comes about from what positive psychologists call "pluralistic ignorance" - each thinks the others all agree. Moreover, the effect of pluralistic ignorance is multiplied if there are a few enforcers in the group, insisting that everyone follow the group line. And the irony of enforcers is that they themselves often don't really believe in the bad action the group is doing. Instead, they are trying to convince other people of their sincerity.

This circle of ignorance and evil can be pierced by a few people willing to stand against the group. Sometimes this means standing against individual bullies. It is probably harder to stand against the group when it does not have an obvious bully in it.

So this is my idea, and also my question to you. I want to develop a class exercise in my "Happy Society" class to help students practice speaking up for conscience, even in a group of friends. This kind of practice is especially important because most of their friends probably have the same pangs of conscience, but are held back by the pluralistic ignorance of what the others really feel.

One example Pinker cites is that most students actually do not think binge drinking is good or fun or what they really want to do. Some students in the class are likely to find themselves in a situation where they can speak up against an impending binge drinking game. And, no doubt, there are other, similar situations that arise in ordinary life.

I would welcome ideas on how, exactly, to help students develop the capacity to pierce pluralistic ignorance.

Our Less-Violent World Depends on Great Leaders

2011-12-02T14:30:00.001-05:00

The great genocides and wars of the early twentieth century were made much worse by the specific individual leaders Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The movements toward fascism and communism might have happened without them, but these movements would surely have been less bloody.

In reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, I was struck by a parallel thought: the great reduction in violence of the late twentieth century was made much better by the specific individual leaders Gandhi and King. The movements toward independence and civil rights might have happened without them, but these movements would surely have been more bloody.

The "New Peace" of the Past Generation is a New Blessing

2011-12-01T22:50:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about Steven Pinker's account of the long peace we have enjoyed for the two generations without a major great power war, in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined .

Pinker goes on to what he calls the "new peace" - the decline in the past one generation of civil wars, low-intensity conflicts (warlords, raiders, gangs), terrorism, and, most importantly, genocide.

What reduces all of these intrastate forms of violence are effective states. The effectiveness of states is increased by democracy, open markets, and involvement in international organizations, including peacekeeping.

Effective democratic states are the best at reducing all of these forms of violence. Effective autocratic states are somewhat effective in preventing these forms of violence - unless the state itself is the cause of the violence, as it usually is in genocide. The biggest danger arises from failed or ineffective states, which become power vacuums and safe harbors for civil war, warlords, and terrorists.

It may seem that terrorism has obviously risen in the last generation, which includes the 9/11 attack. That one attack was indeed the single biggest act of terrorism in generations. But the incidence of terrorist attacks has gone down since the '60s and '70s. Terrorism is very hard to do effectively, almost never achieves its objectives, and usually undermines whatever support it starts out with the more terrifying it is.

It is too soon to tell if the new peace will also be a long peace. But the new forms of conflict do not come close to producing the same quantity of violence that the great-power wars used to create.

Things are getting better. We may rejoice in that.

Today's "Long Peace" Is A Nearly Unprecedented Blessing

2011-11-30T19:01:00.001-05:00

As I study what makes for a happy society, I am struck again and again by two related points:

Many many conditions of life are much better now than they ever have been, and are getting better; and

Most people, and especially most intellectuals, are unwilling to believe that this is so.

The Long Peace that the world has enjoyed since the end of the Second World War is one of the greatest blessings in the world. Indeed, it is one of the greatest blessings in human history.

To be sure, there have been and are smaller wars, and even a few medium sized ones. But the Great Powers have not fought a war with one another since the Korean War, and arguably not since World War II.

Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, makes this remarkable point:

As of May 15, 1984, the major powers of theworld had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of timesince the Roman Empire. Not since the second century BCE, when Teutonic tribeschallenged the Romans, has a comparable interval passed without an armycrossing the Rhine.

Trying to Manipulate Women is Wrong. And Dumb.

2011-11-29T22:54:00.001-05:00

I don't usually fuss about things, but I think this is evil for what it means to say about women.

The Molson company should be ashamed of itself.

Most Young Japanese Adults Are Single

2011-11-28T22:32:00.001-05:00

Almost two thirds of Japanese men in the prime marriage years, 18 - 34, are single. Almost half of women in the same age are single, too. A quarter of them say they are not looking.

Japan is the oldest population in the world. If they don't have a significant increase in the birth rate, their population will start to shrink. They will run out of workers to pay for their old people. They will run out of workers to make people.

Things don't look great for Japan's future production of Japanese.

Thanksgiving is a Holiday of the Civil Religion

2011-11-27T21:21:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving is derived from the Christian religion, but is not a Christian holiday. Nor is it a Judeo-Christian, or Biblical, or Abrahamic, or holiday. It is a holiday of giving thanks to God, so it is, in the very broadest sense, theistic. Mostly, though, it is a National holiday, a holiday of the American civil religion.

I think it is normal for people to want all their religions to line up and support one another - our spiritual faith, our civil faith, our community faith, our family faith. But I think it is safe to say that for everyone, they do not line up with one another all the time. For Americans, living in an increasingly diverse society, the opportunities for conflict between our several religions - especially that devoted to God and that devoted to nation - become increasingly likely.

Thanksgiving is the closest point of connection between the theistic faith of nearly all Americans and the civil faith of nearly all Americans. But they remain different.

Believing in the "Grand Design" Can Sustain Hope in Marriage for the Unmarried

2011-11-26T21:06:00.001-05:00

Most women want to marry. More women find themselves at 40 not having married, for one reason and another. Kate Bolick wrote a heart-wrenching article about her own missed chances in The Atlantic, "All the Single Ladies." Jennifer Marshall, interviewed in the The National Review Online, sympathizes with Bolick, but rejects her conclusion - that the ideal of marriage is unrealistic and should be given up.

I agree with Marshall's conclusion about how to hold on to the ideal of marriage in general, and to our hopes for our own marriage, while nonetheless being happy if we are not now married (at any age):

If we want to find joy and satisfaction now even as we long for something more in the future, we need the confidence that there is a grand design to our lives, and that there is a purpose that transcends any particular circumstances.

Local Friday

2011-11-25T16:38:00.001-05:00

The Gruntleds are among those who avoid shopping on Black Friday. We went to the Hub, our local independent coffee house. The ladies got their hair cut from a local, non-chain beauty salon. We walked to the public library. And mostly we sat together, reading and writing

This year the Small Business Administration, fearing that it cannot fight the chain-store-driven Black Friday today, is promoting a Small Business Saturday tomorrow. I support their efforts.

But as for me and my house, Black Friday means Buy Local, and Stay Home.

Happy Thanksgiving to All

2011-11-24T08:47:00.001-05:00

I hope you enjoy the blessings of our wonderfully varied world.

For my part, I will read a Trollope novel by the fire, eat leftovers (we had the feast yesterday), and enjoy having family around.

Most Republican Evangelical Christians Think Mormonism in Not Christian.

2011-11-23T14:02:00.001-05:00

33% of all Republicans think that Mormonism is not Christian.

Only 1/5th of white Republicans who are Catholic or mainline Protestant think Mormonism is not Christian.

However, most white Republicans who are evangelical Christians - 53% - think Mormonism is not Christian.

Since Mormons are strongly Republican, including the leading Republican contender for president of the United States, this conflict within the Republican party could be a problem of religious amity.

The "Super Committee" Shows That the Government is Actually Working

2011-11-21T21:53:00.001-05:00

I think the Congressional Super Committee was always intended to fail. The rules that set it up already included massive cuts to social services and defense. The president has already said he will let the Bush tax cuts run out. Together, these cuts and new taxes will take a big hunk out of the deficit soon, and will gradually bring it under control.

This strategy was how the Clinton administration worked with the Congress (both parties) to get the Reagan/Bush deficit under control. This strategy is how the Obama administration will work with the Congress (both parties) to get the Bush II deficit under control.

I believe the Republican leadership wants to work with the Democratic leadership and the president to actually govern. The Republicans are hampered by a very foolish pledge most of them made to never raise taxes, even when we need to. Since that pledge is an impossible governing standard, and most of the Republican leadership actually does want to govern, they needed an end-run like this Super Committee drama to give them political cover for actually acting responsibly.

I find it encouraging that, despite the bluster, our government leaders are, in fact, finding ways to act responsibly.

The Gruntled Family Life Plan

2011-11-20T22:17:00.001-05:00

Happy Colonels

2011-11-19T08:17:00.001-05:00

I will take a break from the broad brush of the Happy Society to note a specific happy thing in our little world: the Centre College football team has been invited to play in the NCAA playoffs in Division III (the most sensible division, I think). This is the first time the team has ever been in the NCAA playoffs, since the last time we were invited to post-season play - the 1955 Tangerine Bowl - came before the NCAA division system was in place.

Kickoff is at noon in our own stadium against Hampden-Syndey. I will give an update after the game.

Go Colonels! Play with dignity!

Hopeful News from Burma

2011-11-18T07:35:00.002-05:00

Burma is ruled by the world's weirdest military dictatorship. They have been isolated, oppressive, and just odd for decades.

The democracy movement in Burma is led by one of the world's great moral leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi. She was given the Nobel Peace Prize to recognize her party's work for peaceful change, and to encourage the military junta to let democracy happen. Her party did win elections in 1990, but the junta ignored them.

ASEAN, the development partnership of several Southeast Asian countries, is one of the few outside ties that the Burmese government has cared about. Burma was to have taken over the rotating chairmanship in 2006, but protests by the other governments made them decline.

Lately, the government seems to want to join the world. They released some political prisoners last month. They lifted a ban on "convicts" - former political prisoners such as Aung San Suu Kyi and most of her party's leadership - from participating in elections.

The thaw is so hopeful that the opposition has said it will try again to register as a party and take part in local elections, which it is expected to win. ASEAN, for its part, voted to allow Burma to accept the chairmanship when its turn comes again.

President Obama, who is at the ASEAN summit, announced that he will send Secretary of State Clinton to Burma to help encourage democracy and normalization.

And if, at the end of this long process, President Aung San Suu Kyi says that the country really should be called Myanmar, as the military government named it, I, for one, will accept that Burma has really been freed.

The Republican Split in Boyle County

2011-11-16T21:19:00.003-05:00

I wish to call attention to an interesting exit poll conducted by my colleague Ben Knoll. During the recent election, his students stood outside every polling place in Boyle County, Kentucky, where Danville is located. Boyle County is a very centrist place - it has a Democratic registration edge, but often votes Republican in national elections.

So Boyle County is a good place to ask about support for an establishment Republican, a Tea Party Republican, or neither. Specifically, voters were asked "Considering Kentucky's senators, which best represents your views?"

Mitch McConnell 20.6%
Rand Paul, 24.8%
Both equally, 7.8%
Neither, 42.8%

So, in a centrist county in a conservative state, we find about 25% establishment Republicans, 30% Tea Partiers, and over 40%, neither.

As Rand Paul himself demonstrates regularly, the Tea Party is almost as unhappy with the Republican establishment as it is with the Democratic Party. If the Tea Partiers are not enthusiastic about the Republican presidential nominee, they may not show up next year. And that does not bode well for establishment Republicans in Boyle County.

Are Any Presidents Acceptable to the Political Extremes?

2011-11-14T09:18:00.001-05:00

My Tea Party friends object to President Obama as a socialist.

My left-wing friends object to president Obama for giving in to corporate interests.

My questions to each group are parallel.

They are genuine questions - I really want to know, and I do not know the answers.

Is there any president who you think was not a socialist?

Is there any president who you think did not give in to corporate interests?

Centre's Investment in Renewable Energy.

2011-11-12T21:26:00.003-05:00

This is the Mother Ann Lee hydroelectric plant near Shakertown (Ann Lee founded the Shakers).

This turbine is one of three that provides renewable power.

Centre students voted to tax themselves to help pay for this turbine. The plant produces the equivalent about about a quarter of Centre's power.

If you look closely, you can see the Centre stencil at the top of the turbine.

Social Inequality in Higher Ed vs. Lower Ed

2011-11-11T15:00:00.003-05:00

David Brooks has another fine piece of pop sociology on the kinds of inequality that it is socially acceptable and unacceptable to wave about in America today.

One pairing that is particularly interesting to me is this:

Status inequality is acceptable for college teachers. Universities exist within a finely gradated status structure, with certain schools like Brown clearly more elite than other schools. University departments are carefully ranked and compete for superiority.
Status inequality is unacceptable for high school teachers. Teachers at this level strongly resist being ranked. It would be loathsome to have one’s department competing with other departments in nearby schools.

Brooks is only overstating a bit. Higher education does have many public rankings of schools, and even of the same discipline in different schools. However, disciplines within the same school generally adopt the polite fiction that they are on same level as one another, sharing the school's overall status. This is much like what Brooks says about high schools.

Nonetheless, I have noticed, comparing my life in higher education with my wife's work with elementary and secondary education (she is an education policy wonk) that the lower the age of students being taught, the more important it is to teachers to maintain that they are all at the same status level.

It is also true that the lower the age of students being taught, the more likely it is that the teachers are women.

And women, in general, are more likely to wish to treat all of their social relations as if everyone were on the same level, whereas men are more comfortable with the idea of hierarchy.

The Penn State Story is About Pedophilia, Not Football

2011-11-10T10:44:00.001-05:00

The horrifying scandal emerging from Pennsylvania State University is first and foremost about the repeated sexual abuse of boys by a man. What makes it worse is that the man used his prominence as a coach to run a charity for boys, who he then took advantage of. And that scandal, horrible as it already was, was made worse by two of his bosses lying and covering up for the coach, which let him keep abusing more boys for more years.

The best element of the story thus far is that the criminal is in jail and the liars have been fired.

A relatively minor element of the story is that two of the criminal's bosses, though they did further the investigation of the crimes, did not do so with enough diligence. As a result, Penn State also fired these other two bosses. It matters a bit that the university trustees were willing to fire the university president because he was not zealous enough in prosecuting sexual abuse of children by a university employee. This is to the university's credit.

The least important part of this story is that the head football coach was also fired for not being zealous enough in furthering the prosecution of sexual abuse of children by one of his staff members.

So why was the lead element of the news story in many venues - including those that don't care about sports - that head coach football coach Joe Paterno was fired? Why did Penn State students riot in the street about the firing of the head football coach - and not about the sexual abuse by the assistant football coach?

Because big-time sports are the religions of the masses.

The Tide Has Turned on the Tea Party

2011-11-09T22:23:00.001-05:00

I have thought from the outset of the Tea Party movement that it would last three elections cycles.

That is the usual length of Know-Nothing movements. This is because when they succeed in electing some anti-politicians who vow to completely change the government, one of two things happen. Either the anti-politicians become normal politicians and compromise in order to accomplish a few things, or they become completely frustrated at their inability to change the entire government.

The main reason they can't change the entire government is that nearly everyone needs the government, including the Know-Nothings in their role as citizens of an actually functioning country.

And what happens after that is that the Know-Nothings become disgusted with their turncoats, or disheartened at their failures. Some of the movement diehards quit all politics in despair. Some of the single-issue activists give up on changing the whole system and focus on their single issue.

The third cycle of my three-cycle prediction will not be completed until next November. But yesterday's election was a portent of things to come. The Tea Party, as detailed surveys have shown, are not small-government libertarians. They are mostly traditional conservatives, fed up with the government subsidizing and encouraging people who they think undermine the nation. These include those with loose sexual morals; expensive, featherbedding government unions; and disorganized, poor voters. The Tea-Party-inflected state governments elected in the last cycle made laws or ballot measures suppressing all these kinds of bad citizens (from a Tea Party perspective).

But a majority of voters turned back all of these suppressive measures.

To me, that suggests that the tide has turned. The country has hit the rightward wall, and is beginning to turn back toward the center.

Great Night for Democrats in Kentucky

2011-11-08T20:30:00.000-05:00

Democrats look like they are going to make a clean sweep of the statewide races, except one.

Governor Beshear was reelected handily. Attorney General Conway was reelected handily. Rising stars Allison Grimes and Adam Edelen took Secretary of State and Auditor, respectively.

The one office Democrats lost was Agriculture Secretary. This was just - the Democrat, Farmer, really had no qualification for the office. The Republican, Rep. Comer, won fair and square.

That said, I think the post of Agriculture Secretary is an anachronism, like the Railroad Commissioner. Kentucky abolished the Railroad Commissioner's office in the past decade. I believe it is time to abolish the Agriculture Secretary's office.

The turnout was very low. I spoke to this yesterday. I thank all those who voted.

To those Kentuckians who did not vote today but could have: you have lost your right to complain about our statewide elected officials for the next four years.

Who Votes in a Low-Turnout Election?

2011-11-07T21:43:00.001-05:00

People who pick up litter.

People who let others merge onto the highway.

People who wear seatbelts, all the time.

Who votes in low-turnout elections, like the one Kentucky will have tomorrow?

People who feel that being a dutiful member of the community is part of who they are.

Voting is not really about what's in it for you.

Voting is not really about whether your vote will make a difference.

Voting is part of being a member of a democratic community.

I can't prove any of the above. This is my opinion. But it is my opinion that voting is more a matter of identity and loyalty and character than it is about any instrumental goal.

As for me and Mrs. G., we will be at the polls early. As usual. I hope you will be too.

Centre Fights Above Its Weight - for the Liberal Arts

2011-11-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

Dave Serchuk had a wonderful blog for Forbes on why liberal arts education is so necessary to national creativity. He took Steve Jobs' studies at Reed - taking classes in calligraphy even after he officially dropped out - as evidence of the unknowable future value of a broad arts education.

I totally agree.

Serchuk also electrified the Centre College world with this sentence:

There’s a reason schools like Reed, Evergreen, Wesleyan, Centre College, and Brown will continue to punch way above their weight when it comes to minting future generations of leaders and innovators.

Amen and amen.

How to Keep Welfare from Undermining Poor Marriages

2011-11-04T06:16:00.001-04:00

David Schramm, a University of Missouri researcher, compared two kinds of poor families (making less that $20,000 per year): those who took welfare, and those who did not.

Those who did not take welfare had happier marriages.

Schramm is not sure why. He thinks it is because work is valuable in itself, and unemployment is undermining, especially for men. He acknowledges, though, that the welfare recipients might be different - drug addicts or mentally ill, perhaps.

I can see how taking welfare would be undermining, especially for men. It may be necessary in emergencies to keep your family afloat, but that doesn't mean it is without cost.

There is a wonderful scene in the movie "Cinderella Man," in which a boxer during the Depression is obliged to take relief to feed his family. He is deeply ashamed of taking charity, but does what his family needs. Later, when he is successful and famous as a boxer, he turns up in the relief line again. The people in the line know who he is, and are surprised to see him there. Their faces show that they think he may be cheating the system, taking when he is not really in need. However, when he gets to the head of the line, he delights the crowd: he pays back all the welfare he took.

That might be a good model for how to keep your self respect on welfare: make a real plan to pay it back when you are on your feet again.

Fertility Drops With the Economic Recession

2011-11-03T20:29:00.003-04:00

Fertility peaked in the U.S. in 2007, just before the recession, at 69.7 babies per 1000 women. Last year it dropped to 64.7.

The CNN report I cite for these figures cheerfully opines that "we aren't going to run out of people soon." However, we could start to run out of people, especially young workers, in we do not have enough babies now. The U.S. is probably OK, but all other industrialized nations are showing similar fertility drops with the recession, and they were in a deep population-trend hole to begin with.

If we want 20 year olds twenty years from now, we have to have them now. By then it will be too late.

The Governor Serves All the People, Including Hindus

2011-11-02T18:23:00.002-04:00

Governor Steve Beshear took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a packaging film business that promised to bring 250 jobs and $180 million investment to a Kentucky town. This is what governors do.

Since the firm is run by Hindus, they had a Hindu blessing ceremony. The governor joined in, as governors usually do at all kinds of local ceremonies. The governor graciously said "While I can't say for sure that this is the first time that a boomy pooshim ceremony has been performed for a business on Kentucky soil, I can certainly say that I don't want it to be the last one."

David Williams, Senate President and Republican candidate for governor against Beshear, attacked Governor Beshear for "idolatry." "To get down and get involved and participate in prayers to these polytheistic situations, where you have these Hindu gods that they are praying to, doesn't appear to me to be in line with what a governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky ought to be doing."

Note that Senator Williams did not object to the governor participating in a religious ceremony or promoting a business run by religious people.

This may be why Senator Williams did not criticize Governor Beshear for promoting the Ark Park, a Christian theme park planned by the same ministry behind the Creation Museum. The governor promoted that project, too, for the jobs and investment it would bring. He was criticized from the left, but in that case they were objecting to the state promoting any religion.

The governor of Kentucky is governor of all the people of Kentucky, not just the Christians. His jobs requires him to promote just about any economic development of the commonwealth, especially now. And I applaud Governor Beshear for being cosmopolitan enough to embrace the rituals of Hindu citizens as he embraces the rituals of his own Christian practice.

India Will Pass China in the Next Generation

2011-11-01T17:29:00.000-04:00

These two demographic projections come from The Sustainable Demographic Dividend, by Brad Wilcox and Carlos Cavallé.

What they mean is that, in the next generation, China will not have the people to sustain its economic boom. India will.

Welcome the World's Seven Billionth Person

2011-10-31T11:21:00.001-04:00

Demographers estimate the seven billionth person was born yesterday. This is wonderful news. People are great. People are one of the very best parts of Creation.

CBS news estimates that the typical person - the one with the most common features on several measures - is a 28-year-old, Mandarin-speaking, Han Chinese, Christian man.

The UN estimates that the seven billionth person was probably born in India.

Some lament our growth to seven billion people. They think more people just means more problems. And of course there are problems in the world, which we should keep working to solve. But our economy, political system, culture, and even-the human-shaped environment all exist to serve people - not the other way around.

Some worry that we will run out of resources. I do not. This has never happened, and is never likely to. We are a problem-solving species. We respond to challenges with ingenuity.

Moreover, population growth in the world is slowing down. In the developed world we are already looking at population decline, and decline in world population is not far behind. I might live to see the peak world population.

Cherish the seven billionth person. Cherish the average person. Cherish your own people.

Wisdom is Best Taught in a Small Liberal Arts College

2011-10-30T09:11:00.002-04:00

The final fruit of the "Wisdom and the Liberal Arts Conference" at Baylor University for me is that wisdom is best taught when a small group of students work with a wiser guide through great texts and with great examples to develop in themselves habits of wise judgment.

The several plenary speakers from large research universities lamented the "crisis of the humanities" which prevented "the academy" from doing this anymore. Several were famous and got invited to speak because they had written books about this crisis. Others, less famous and from less august universities, lamented how professional and vocational training was driving out the inculcation of wisdom through the liberal arts.

Yet what they described as the ideal circumstance for teaching wisdom sounded to me like the ordinary condition of a small liberal arts college.

And the irony was that the speakers issuing these laments did not have time to teach that way themselves because they had to spend all their time writing books - including the ones lamenting the decline of teaching wisdom.

Once again, I go home to Centre College thinking that the grass in greener in Danville.

Images Fill Up Our Working Memory Faster Than Words Do

2011-10-29T16:07:00.002-04:00

This was an unexpected thing I learned at the "Wisdom and the Liberal Arts" conference today.

The session was about why it is hard for people (students especially) to concentrate on deep ideas when they spend much of their day looking at moving images on a screen. There were several elements to this argument, but this was the one that struck me the most.

I spend hours a day looking at a screen. However, when I spend those hours reading words, I can learn more and longer than when I spend those hours watching moving images.

I think I will build an exercise into my next class: go a day without watching any moving images, and see what it does to your concentration and the depth of your understanding of what you read.

Prophets Are Enemies of Happiness

2011-10-28T18:40:00.003-04:00

This is what I realized listening to Walter Brueggemann at the "Wisdom and the Liberal Arts" conference. Brueggemann is a brilliant scholar of the church, and he gave, as usual, a fine prophet's indictment. At this university conference on wisdom he indicted the university for unfaithfulness by pursuing worldly wisdom. Once again, though, I found that Brueggemann leaves me cold, though I appreciate the excellence of his work.

Today I realized why. Prophets are enemies of happiness. They cannot be satisfied. If you solve the problem they are on about today, they have plenty more.

The problems that real prophets name are real problems. We should try to solve them. Prophets are necessary in the ecology of the church. But they cannot be the whole of the church. In fact, they cannot be the leading element of the church or of any institution.

As we try to make happy lives and happy societies, we have to be able to admit that we are happy sometimes. Nay, we have to proclaim that we are happy sometimes, and that we are happy about some things all the time.

"Without a telos, there is no understanding."

2011-10-27T23:02:00.003-04:00

This was said by my friend Scott Moore, a Baylor philosopher, at the Baylor University conference on "Wisdom and the Liberal Arts."

I think this is exactly right. If we believe that existence has an end that draws it on, we can hope to understand what it all means. If there is no telos, though, I don't see how any science, scholarship, philosophy, any manner of knowing at all can understand why existence, exists.

A good down payment on wisdom on day one of the conference.

Honoring Diane Sollee

2011-10-26T09:01:00.003-04:00

I believe in honoring prophets in their own time, so let me add to the praise of Diane Sollee for creating Smartmarriages and promoting marriage education. This article by Susan Heitler is not driven by any particular event or anniversary in the marriage movement, just an appreciation for Diane's work.

Which is as it should be.

Moderate Islamic Party Leading in Tunisia Elections Will Keep Democracy, and Not Make an Islamic State

2011-10-25T16:56:00.000-04:00

For those who worry that any election victory by an Islamic party spells the end of democracy, there is good news from Tunisia. The first fruits of the Arab Spring - or what I think will turn out to be the North African Spring - show Ennahda, a moderate Islamic party, leading in early returns. The BBC reports this crucial fact:

The party's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, has pledged not to set up an Islamist state and to respect multi-party democracy.

Ennadha is in talks with secular parties as coalition partners.

Three Cheers for the Church that Gives Free Weddings to Cohabiting Parents

2011-10-24T20:10:00.003-04:00

I think couples with children who want to marry "someday" should just do it. I think "marry your baby daddy days" are a wonderful idea.

The Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach, CA offered to the several cohabiting parents in the congregation that the church would give them a free wedding. Four couples took them up on it in a joint ceremony.

The advantage that Parkcrest had in promoting these marriages is that the couples were already part of the church. If a couple are that far along - cohabiting, with children, attending church - all they need is a little nudge.

I believe that church and state could work together on promoting "marriage now" for cohabiting parents.

Most Abortions Are By Moms Who Think the Next Kid Will Costs Too Much

2011-10-23T06:59:00.000-04:00

More than 2/3rds of women who have abortions are already mothers. The main reason they give for their abortion is that they want to give more to the children they already have.

Bryan Caplan points out in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids that much of the huge effort and expense that middle-class parents think they have to put into each child is unnecessary.

This suggests to me that if middle-class parents could reduce their anxiety about what another child would cost them, we would significantly reduce the abortion rate.

Supporting Democracy is the Foreign Policy Aim That Does Not Come Back to Bite Us

2011-10-22T09:17:00.002-04:00

I think the one reliable pillar of a centrist foreign policy for the United States is to support democracy.

This means supporting democracy even when people we don't like get elected. Our long-term interests are best served by supporting democracy as a framework, which is the best help and hope we can give to the factions that will, when elected, support us.

This means we do not support dictators even if they are, temporarily, the enemies of our enemies.

This means we do not make war simply for our own economic interests. That is actually more craven than supporting dictators against other dictators. War for profit reaps us justified opposition all over the world.

This means we do not invade other countries on our own, ever. Sometimes armed intervention is necessary in an emergency to prevent genocide or repel aggression. That is what the UN or NATO or our other security alliances are for. When we invade on our own, colonialism follows almost every time.

And this means that sometimes we can't do enough to support democrats in other countries. There are limits to the power of even the world's greatest superpower. But we should keep pressing diplomatically for democracy in the most oppressive places.

Most of the world's people like the American people. They like our culture. If the doors were wide open, we would have 100 million immigrants, I expect, as fast as transport could be arranged.

When the United States supports democracy in their countries, we justify that good feeling and earn legitimate admiration. When we base our foreign policy on the realipolitik of the Great Game against this year's enemy, or, worse, on what is profitable to U.S.-based multinational corporations, we undermine that good feeling and destroy that admiration.

Finally, when we do support dictators, or do make war for profit, it comes back to bite us. Every time.

Oldest Siblings are the Most Persuasive Models

2011-10-21T13:34:00.003-04:00

Oldest siblings are the most persuasive models for or against delinquency for adolescents.

In a study of Latina teens, if a girl's mother had been a teen mother, she was only .2 times more likely to be a teen mother herself. However, if a girl's older sister had been a teen mother, she was 4.8 times as more likely to become a teen mother herself.

Drinking, smoking, drug use, and crime are almost as contagious from older to younger siblings. The effect is stronger among sisters than among brothers.

These findings are reported in Jeffrey Kluger's The Sibling Effect.

This suggests to me that interventions and ministries with at-risk youth should focus on the eldest children in a family most of all.

The Arab Spring Was a Revolt Against the Dictator's Sons

2011-10-20T12:29:00.002-04:00

With the death of Muammar Gaddafi and his sons, the long generation of North African dictators comes to an end.

I think what made the time ripe for a successful revolt in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya was that the nations that had put up with dictators since independence, were not willing to stomach the even more brutal and corrupt sons of the dictators as they threatened to come to power.

This is also, I think, why the time has not been as ripe in Yemen, Bahrain, or, saddest of all, Syria. The Syrians missed their moment when the current dictator succeeded his father. I wish all three nations well in replacing their tyrants. Yemen might pull it off still.

On the whole, though, I think the "Arab Spring" will turn out to be the "North African Spring" as the post-independence autocrats get replaced by a broader ruling group. This is still a great achievement. But democracy in the Arabian peninsula will probably have to wait another season.

Most Americans Want to Legalize Marijuana. Do It.

2011-10-19T09:45:00.002-04:00

Let me make clear that my position is not personal. I have no interest in using pot. I do think, though, that marijuana is no worse for society than bourbon. I think we should legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana production the same way we do alcohol. I have maintained this position for some years.

What is new now is that 50% of Americans agree. Moreover, only old people are strongly against it. Coming generations are clearly in favor, as this list of the percent supporting marijuana legalization by age group shows:

65+: 31%
50 - 64: 49% (this is my age group)
30 - 49: 56%
18 - 29: 62%

I saw we tax pot to fight crack.

Materialism Undermines Your Marriage

2011-10-18T11:05:00.003-04:00

A common finding of happiness research is that, once your basic needs are met, more money does not reliably bring more happiness.

Another finding is that good marriages do reliably bring more happiness.

So what happens when money-oriented people marry?

A new Brigham Young University study found that couples who put a high priority on getting and spending money have less satisfying and less stable marriages. Lead research Jason Carroll said:

Our study found that materialism was associated with spouses having lower levels of responsiveness and less emotional maturity. Materialism was also linked to less effective communication, higher levels of negative conflict, lower relationship satisfaction, and less marriage stability.

Mitt Romney's Mormonism is the Best Thing About Him

2011-10-16T13:15:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has a substantial article about Mitt Romney's days as head of the Latter Day Saints in Boston. He comes across as solid in his faith, walking the talk, helping those in need, and serving as a low-key liaison between the Mormon church and a sometimes suspicious surrounding community. He seems especially strong as a traditional Mormon husband and father - and the LDS is a church that makes something of a specialty of family life.

He also comes across as stiff and reserved, which matches his political persona. That seems to be the way he is, which is no real criticism.

This article has been helpful to me, because Romney has changed his political positions so often that I was wondering if he really believed in anything. I am glad to see that on the core issues of faith and family, he is consistent and reliable. His faith is not mine, but I honor his fidelity to it.

"Social Decline Panic" Creates Social Decline

2011-10-15T10:12:00.001-04:00

The other day I argued that "The only thing we have to fear are fearmongers themselves." Loyal reader Brendan sent me the appropriate xkcd strip (the favorite comic of the knowledge class). This hits the nail on the head:

The Tea Party is for a Less-Intrusive State

2011-10-12T11:54:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I wrote about the Occupy Wall Street movement. I was asked, reasonably, by an anonymous reader to offer an equally even-handed treatment of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party movement, like Occupy Wall Street, began as street theater. I don't care for political street theater, but I am glad that in a free country the people who like to do that sort of thing can do so.

The main thing the Tea Partiers are mad about is the government telling them what to do and taxing them to do things they did not approve of. I read the core of the tea party movement as libertarian, rather than social conservative, though there is clearly overlap. This is not a movement to limit abortion, for example. Nor is it a movement that is against large government expenditures or even deficits as such.

The "tea baggers," as they originally called themselves, did not mobilize when the federal government ran up giant deficits to pay for the wars of the 2000s. Instead, they mobilized against the expenditures to cover the costs of poor-risk mortgage holders and people with no health insurance - people the tea party regards as feckless, irresponsible, and not their problem.

Some of my liberal friends regard the tea partiers as simply selfish. I think this view is mistaken. Of course there are some people who are opposed to social responsibility as a whole, and naturally some of them will be drawn to an anti-government protest. I do not think, though, that social irresponsibility is the core of what the protest is about.

The Tea Party wants the government to take less and tell citizens what to do less on behalf of irresponsible people. I think this position is not sufficient to make a good social order. But the Tea Party position is a legitimate part of the argument about how to make a better society.

Occupy Wall Street is for Better Capitalism

2011-10-11T12:36:00.001-04:00

The Occupy Wall Street movement is mostly theater. I don't care for street theater myself, but in a free country I appreciate that the people who like that sort of thing should be able to engage in it.

The main thing they are mad about is that Wall Street traders were the main cause of the collapse of the world economy in 2008. They were able to do that because they had increasing pressure to make short-term profits, and because the agencies that were supposed to keep an eye on them to prevent exactly this type of collapse were feckless and timid. In the years following the actions of government regulators have improved somewhat, but the actions of the Wall Street traders show that they have learned little from their mistakes.

I believe these criticisms are true and just. I see the core of the Wall Street protests as against corporate greed and for greater regulation. I agree with that.

A friend thought it was hilarious that the Wall Street occupiers stopped for a moment of silence for Steve Jobs. In his mind, the Wall Street occupation is against capitalism, and therefore it was ironic for them to honor a capitalist. I think this view is mistaken. Of course there are some people who are opposed to capitalism as a whole, and naturally some of them will be drawn to an anti-Wall Street protest. I do not, though, think that anti-capitalism is the core of what the protest is about.

Occupy Wall Street wants more responsible and better-regulated capitalism. So do I.

The Long Arc of Mainline Protestantism and Print

2011-10-10T20:52:00.001-04:00

At my Yale Divinity School reunion today, Rev. Henry Brinton, pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church, drew an interesting parallel.

As is well known, printed books and Protestant religion were born together.

Now, Mainline Protestantism and print journalism seem to be declining together. Both are primarily the province of educated old people who like to get their information by reading.

This parallel was offered half seriously, but the group agreed there might be some meat in it.

Sociology needs a proportionate focus on improvement

2011-10-10T06:58:00.000-04:00

I made a trip to Storrs to visit with University of Connecticut sociologist Brad Wright. Brad wrote a gruntled book, Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of Our World.

We had a fruitful conversation about the state of the world and the presumptions of sociology - which seem to go in opposite directions. In many ways, as Brad demonstrates in his book, the state of the world is improving.

Yet there is no sociology of how things get better. Sociology is best at criticism. When some area of social life starts getting better, sociology either focuses on how that practice still falls short of utopia, or moves on to another problem.

Focusing on problems is a defensible strategy if your aim is solely to solve problems. But seeing only the problems gives you a distorted view of reality - and surely no science wants that.

Focusing on problems is not simply erroneous and one-sided. Thinking only of problems and fears undermines happiness. A happy society needs a science that appreciates improvements and our ability to solve problems, too.

Now, as you can see, I am offering a criticism of sociology's tendency to criticize. So that this observation is not simply fussing (and ironic), let me point out that sociology is, at its deepest level, committed to truth.

Sociology needs a proportionate focus on improvement, as well as on problems.

The Only Things We Have to Fear Are Fearmongers Themselves

2011-10-07T10:44:00.002-04:00

Of course there are real problems and real dangers. Nonetheless, most Americans are happy with their own lives. This reflects the fact that there are many, many things right with our society. Moreover, we solve problems all the time. We have a strong tradition of improving, which is as active at this moment as it ever has been.

It is a psychological quirk of human beings that we pay more attention to threats than to blessings. This makes us think that a large proportion of our life conditions are dangerous. Yet a calm inventory of each of the people and institutions that we rely on each day would clearly show that most of what we depend on is actually working.

In my judgment, the people who spread fear are a greater danger to the happiness of society than are the people and circumstances they are afraid of.

The Close Parallel in the Sociology of the Virtues and of Religion

2011-10-05T09:39:00.000-04:00

I was struck by a helpful analogy between two literatures that I have been reading.

Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, says that the main end of life is happiness. Happiness, he says, is an action of the soul in accordance with virtue. The whole middle of the book is a detailed consideration of the action involved in cultivating each of the main virtues.

And then in the last chapter he throws a curveball. He says that there is a virtue that is different from all these active virtues. It is higher, and ultimately makes those who can achieve it the happiest of all. This is the virtue of contemplation. Contemplation is what the gods do often, and in contemplating we come as close to being like the gods as human beings can.

The sociology of religion finds over and over again that the religion has many good effects for religious people. The main good effects come to those who participate in religious institutions, becoming part of a network who help one another and who spur each other to help others, as well. This leads some people to say that religious institutions are really just social clubs, and the same benefit could be had from all kinds of secular social clubs.

However, in the last chapter, as it were, the sociologists of religion find that there is a kind of religious experience that is different from all this social relationship practice. It is higher, and ultimately makes those who achieve it the most fulfilled of all. This is the practice of contemplating and experiencing God.

Nearly everyone contemplates sometimes. Nearly everyone contemplates God and experiences the transcendent sometimes. However, only what Max Weber calls the virtuosi make a habit of contemplation (like the gods) and make a habit of contemplating God.

Is Marriage for White People? Is a Pretty Good Analysis

2011-10-03T22:32:00.002-04:00

The black marriage rate has declined precipitously in the past half century. A gap has opened between black and white marriage rates which was not true two generations ago. Similarly, a gap has opened between the out-marriage rate (that is, marrying outside their race) of black women and black men, which was not true two generations ago.

Banks' main conclusion is that the imbalance in the relationship market is the main culprit. There are many more black women ready for marriage than there are black men. This lets black men, as a group, get the benefits of marriage, including children, without the obligations.

Banks concludes that if black women were more willing to marry out, the power balance would become more even. In the end, more black men and women would marry each other.

The Two Parties Agree: Democrats Care More About the Poor, Republicans Care More About the Rich

2011-10-02T19:27:00.001-04:00

A YouGov/Economist poll found that most Americans agree that the Democratic Party is more concerned about poor people, and the Republic Party is more concerned about rich people. Democrats and Republicans are about equally likely to see the two parties this way.

There is a kind of balance in this division of labor, with each party holding down their end of the seesaw.

People of both parties and no party agree that millionaires should be taxed more. Even about half of Republicans agree on this point.

Csikszentmihalyi's Disappointing "Flow"

2011-10-01T22:09:00.000-04:00

One of the most cited works in the positive psychology canon is Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. I think the main idea is sound and helpful. But the book itself is surprisingly and unnecessarily negative.

"Flow" is what we feel when we are having what he calls an optimal experience. He describes these as “when a person’sbody or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplishsomething difficult and worthwhile.”The flow channel is an optimal path between anxiety andboredom, where your skills and your challenges meet. The result of experiencing flow is that yourown consciousness becomes more complex.

Most of Csikszentmihalyi's examples come from avocations - music, art, athletics, crafts. He says that we can experience flow in our jobs as well, though most of his examples are drawn from the white collar professions. It was surprising to me that he did not treat marriage or childrearing as common settings for flow - the social relationships at the core of positive psychology. Instead, the social relationships chapter was mostly about friendship.

Most of positive psychology treats religion as the most reliable setting, outside of family life, for positive relations, for serving others and feeling that your life is a meaningful part of a larger whole.

Csikszentmihalyi, on the other hand, pronounces religion false, and worse. He simply declares at the outset that the universe has no meaning, that there is no God or any other kind of creating or superintending power. The meaning we find in our lives we put there ourselves. And this polemic against religion and any form of meaningful universe is not confined to the opening ideological chapters, but is shot through the book. Moreover, he takes it for granted that "people today" can't believe that old religion. He cites Muslims from the Gulf States as the kind of people he has met who come from cultures where traditional faith still seems plausible.

I had the feeling at the World Congress of Positive Psychology, where Csikszentmihalyi was honored along with the other Founding Fathers of the movement, that his position was somewhat outside or askew the main stream of positivity. I now have a better sense of why.

Twice as Many Morning People as Night Owls (so ha!)

2011-09-30T09:54:00.002-04:00

Cornell sociologists Scott Golder and Michael Macy studied the moods that people express in their Twitter messages. They found a pattern through the day - happy in the morning, trough in the later afternoon, picking up again last thing. Likewise, happy tweets were more likely on the weekend than Monday (or the equivalent in other cultures).

One side finding that I, a morning person, found particularly interesting was this one:

The pair found that about 7 percent of the users qualified as “night owls,” showing peaks in upbeat-sounding messages around midnight and beyond, and about 16 percent were morning people, who showed such peaks very early in the day.

Gratitude vs. Social Closure

2011-09-29T18:38:00.000-04:00

One of the best practical tools of positive psychology is the gratitude notebook. In it you write, say, three things a day that you are grateful for. This helps you feel grateful in general, as a daily attitude, and cuts down on complaining and self-pity.

Gretchen Rubin, in her Happiness Project, found that she was more grateful if she compared down than if she compared up. That is, if she started thinking "I'm grateful I'm not ..." rather than "I wish I were ...," she ended up more grateful.

Social closure works like that, too, but in a negative way. Social closure is an idea developed by Max Weber to explain how status differences get turned into hard divisions between groups. The higher status group picks some small and mostly arbitrary difference between itself and the group immediately below, and tries to close ranks on the basis of that distinction. Educational credentials are the most important tools for status difference today, but practically any difference can be pressed into this service. And the group below, facing exclusion, resists being excluded. But they, in turn, tend to close against the group below them, engendering the same kind of resistance, and so on to the bottom of the social structure.

We can feel grateful that we do not have the problems of those worse off than us, without thereby wishing to exclude them from our society.

The fruit of social closure is a status ladder. The fruit of gratitude is compassion.

NSF Helps Science Moms Have Their Grants and Babies, Too

2011-09-28T14:21:00.003-04:00

The National Science Foundation has announced new policies to accommodate women scientists get and keep big science grants while having and raising children.

These changes are in response to a sociological study by Elaine Eklund that women scientists are twice as likely as their male counterparts to regret not having more children. Moreover, the science policy makers are worried by evidence that young women are diverting themselves from science careers because of the difficulties they see in combining that work with a family.

This is excellent news. I have blogged before about how the family-unfriendliness of science was scaring women off. I see these new policies as evidence that the tide is turning.

Do What You Really Find Fun, Not What You Wish You Found Fun

2011-09-27T08:11:00.001-04:00

Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project revealed a truth to her that she found very helpful, but also sad: she often did things that she did not enjoy because she thought she should enjoy them. She concludes

Accepting my true likes and dislikes bring me akind of sadness. … First, it makes mesad to realize my limitations. The world offers so much! – so much beauty, somuch fun, and I am unable to appreciate most of it. But it also makes me sadbecause, in many ways, I wish I were different.

I think Gretchen Rubin is a more adventuresome person than I am. She is sad that she doesn't enjoy many things that other people do. Rubin's list of what she wishes she enjoyed seems to be higher status culture items - classical music, vs. pop - rather than higher cost items. I think her desire to appreciate beauty is honorable. And realizing that some kinds of beauty just do not give her pleasure is an important kind of honesty.

I, on the other hand, have a long "Thank you, Lord" list of things that other people enjoy, which I am grateful not to desire. The list began with "Thank you, Lord, I do not want a boat." New items get added all the time. Contentment with what you have, and counting what you do not desire, is the cheapest way to feel rich - and in that way, I am loaded.