Fascinating new research shows that holding and caring for children when they are little turns on genes that reduce the child's stress responses, and helps them grow up balanced and resilient.
We are wonderfully made that an activity that feels so good to grownups is also of such lasting benefit to children.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Erotic Capital is Right on the Main Point
Catherine Hakim's new book, Erotic Capital, makes an interesting case that beauty, charm, and sexiness are an important personal asset - right up there with money, education, and connections.
She further argues that erotic capital is the great asset that women have more of than men. She thinks this is so in part because women work more at developing their attractive assets. Mostly, though, women's advantage comes from the fact that, on the whole, men desire sex more than women do.
Hakim cites studies showing that beauty confers an advantage in pay of 10 - 20% across industries. This is comparable to the pay advantage that comes from being taller.
Hakim thinks that an unholy alliance of patriarchy and radical feminism has suppressed the idea that erotic capital is powerful and is just as honorable as any other kind of capital.
The book, as a whole, is disappointingly thin in its empirical support. Nonetheless, I think the basic idea is true and worth developing.
She further argues that erotic capital is the great asset that women have more of than men. She thinks this is so in part because women work more at developing their attractive assets. Mostly, though, women's advantage comes from the fact that, on the whole, men desire sex more than women do.
Hakim cites studies showing that beauty confers an advantage in pay of 10 - 20% across industries. This is comparable to the pay advantage that comes from being taller.
Hakim thinks that an unholy alliance of patriarchy and radical feminism has suppressed the idea that erotic capital is powerful and is just as honorable as any other kind of capital.
The book, as a whole, is disappointingly thin in its empirical support. Nonetheless, I think the basic idea is true and worth developing.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a Centrist Policy, Reaches Its Timely End
When Bill Clinton was first elected president, one of the first items he tried to spend his political capital on was repealing the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military. However, the opposition from conservatives was so strong that he had to compromise. The result was Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a centrist policy at the time. It ended the earlier policy of actively ferreting out homosexuals in the military as a security threat. This was a liberal gain. But it stopped short of fully accepting homosexuality. This was a conservative gain.
In the years that followed, the sentiments of the country changed. Young people, in particular, accept gays and lesbians as normal Americans. This is true even of young people who are otherwise quite conservative. Just as important, a generation of military leaders came to power who also accepted gays and lesbians as normal members of the military. Their testimony, it seems, was the crucial step in convincing some Congressional Republicans to vote with the Democrats to repeal the law underlying Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
This story is the right way to make a controversial social change: take centrist steps until the change is no longer controversial to most people. Some people think this change should have been made long ago, that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a sellout. Others think the change should not have been made at all, that homosexuality should not be normalized. But this day, when the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy officially ended in the U.S. military, policy caught up with majority sentiment. Which is a good day for centrist social change.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a centrist policy at the time. It ended the earlier policy of actively ferreting out homosexuals in the military as a security threat. This was a liberal gain. But it stopped short of fully accepting homosexuality. This was a conservative gain.
In the years that followed, the sentiments of the country changed. Young people, in particular, accept gays and lesbians as normal Americans. This is true even of young people who are otherwise quite conservative. Just as important, a generation of military leaders came to power who also accepted gays and lesbians as normal members of the military. Their testimony, it seems, was the crucial step in convincing some Congressional Republicans to vote with the Democrats to repeal the law underlying Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
This story is the right way to make a controversial social change: take centrist steps until the change is no longer controversial to most people. Some people think this change should have been made long ago, that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a sellout. Others think the change should not have been made at all, that homosexuality should not be normalized. But this day, when the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy officially ended in the U.S. military, policy caught up with majority sentiment. Which is a good day for centrist social change.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Gigi Grazer's Anti-Divorce Gem
NOTE: The following is anti-divorce. Proceed forewarned.
Gigi Levangie Grazer is an expert on divorce, the hard way. The twice-divorced author of The Starter Wife and the screenplay of Stepmom has a fine piece of hard-won wisdom in the Huffington Post. I can't write with this kind of authority.
My favorite nugget is this:
Gigi Levangie Grazer is an expert on divorce, the hard way. The twice-divorced author of The Starter Wife and the screenplay of Stepmom has a fine piece of hard-won wisdom in the Huffington Post. I can't write with this kind of authority.
My favorite nugget is this:
When you do go out with someone (after the kids go to bed), you size them up not only against your standards, but the standards of your children. You're not the only one going out on that date -- your seven-year-old is right there with you, with his toothy grin. Your fourteen-year-old is scowling in the background. Your stoic ten-year-old has tears welling up in his eyes.
Frankly, other than superficial dating far away from your kids' eyes and ears, E.S.P. might be the only thing that makes sense for the single parent.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Our Moderately Progressive Tax Rate
For my conservative friends who have been telling me that the poorer half of Americans pay no taxes:
According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the lowest 20 percent of income earners (those with an average cash income of 12,500 a year) are paying about 16.2 percent of their income in taxes. The next 20 percent (those with an average cash income of 25,300 a year) are paying 20.7 percent of their income in taxes. The top 1 percent (with an average cash income of 1,254,000) are paying more but still just 30 percent of their total income. But if you go a step above that and calculate the tax rate for the 400 richest Americans in 2008, you find that they only paid 18.1 percent of their income in taxes. That is less than those making an average of 25,300 a year.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Fog Happiness
Gretchen Rubin takes up an important finding in happiness research: when a couple has children, their marital happiness goes down. After pondering this finding compared to her own experience, and compared with the obvious fact that most parents are happy that they have children, she came to this conclusion:
She calls this “fog happiness.” Caring for children, especially small children, may be a trial at any given moment. Yet the experience of being a parent, having children, of family in the round, is deeply satisfying to most people.
I think that the kind of well-being that comes from having children is the single clearest path from "happiness" to "meaningfulness." And thinking about why raising children produces fog happiness is an instance of what Aristotle means when he says that contemplation is the highest happiness.
I have to reject the experts’ argument that children don’t bring happiness. Because they do. Not always in a moment-to-moment way, perhaps, but in a more profound way.
She calls this “fog happiness.” Caring for children, especially small children, may be a trial at any given moment. Yet the experience of being a parent, having children, of family in the round, is deeply satisfying to most people.
I think that the kind of well-being that comes from having children is the single clearest path from "happiness" to "meaningfulness." And thinking about why raising children produces fog happiness is an instance of what Aristotle means when he says that contemplation is the highest happiness.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Gretchen Rubin's First Splendid Truth about Happiness
Gretchen Rubin develops several Splendid Truths in the course of her Happiness Project. The
First Splendid Truth is
“To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”
This is a dense statement. We need to think about feeling good and think about feeling bad because one of the unexpected findings of happiness research is that feeling happy and feeling unhappy are separate feelings. She found over the course of her project that reducing the actions that made her feel unhappy gave the single biggest boost to her happiness; however, they did so more by removing an obstacle than by automatically creating happy feelings.
"Feeling right" is about living, giving, and working in a way that feels good and meaningful. I think living meaningfully is the hardest part of achieving deep and lasting happiness. I believe that the difference that Rubin found between feeling happy and feeling right is the same distinction that Aristotle was getting at when he said happiness is an action in accordance with virtue, but really the deepest happiness (which not all will achieve) comes from contemplation.
The idea that she had to think about these feelings in an atmosphere of growth adds a necessary dynamic element to living happily. It also raises what I think is an interesting gender difference in thinking about what makes us happy. Martin Seligman, the guru of positive psychology, recently revised his long-standing definition of what makes for a happy life to add an element of achievement. It strikes me that growth and achievement are characteristically feminine and masculine ways of thinking about the same dynamic process.
I think Gretchen Rubin's First Splendid Truth about happiness holds up, and makes sense within the larger philosophical and empirical study of happiness.
This is a dense statement. We need to think about feeling good and think about feeling bad because one of the unexpected findings of happiness research is that feeling happy and feeling unhappy are separate feelings. She found over the course of her project that reducing the actions that made her feel unhappy gave the single biggest boost to her happiness; however, they did so more by removing an obstacle than by automatically creating happy feelings.
"Feeling right" is about living, giving, and working in a way that feels good and meaningful. I think living meaningfully is the hardest part of achieving deep and lasting happiness. I believe that the difference that Rubin found between feeling happy and feeling right is the same distinction that Aristotle was getting at when he said happiness is an action in accordance with virtue, but really the deepest happiness (which not all will achieve) comes from contemplation.
The idea that she had to think about these feelings in an atmosphere of growth adds a necessary dynamic element to living happily. It also raises what I think is an interesting gender difference in thinking about what makes us happy. Martin Seligman, the guru of positive psychology, recently revised his long-standing definition of what makes for a happy life to add an element of achievement. It strikes me that growth and achievement are characteristically feminine and masculine ways of thinking about the same dynamic process.
I think Gretchen Rubin's First Splendid Truth about happiness holds up, and makes sense within the larger philosophical and empirical study of happiness.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
“Enthusiasm is a form of social courage”
I commend Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. It is very gruntled.
I was particularly taken with this sequence of observations at the end of the book:
“Being critical made me feel more sophisticated and intelligent.”
“Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.”
“A willingness to be pleased requires modesty and even innocence.”
I was particularly taken with this sequence of observations at the end of the book:
“Being critical made me feel more sophisticated and intelligent.”
“Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.”
“A willingness to be pleased requires modesty and even innocence.”
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Endpoint of Religious Evolution is Robert Bellah
Robert Bellah's last major work (as he says - he is in his eighties), Religion in Human Evolution, was designed to show that the world religions that emerged in the "axial age" around 500 BCE grew out of parallel social evolution. The new, very hierarchical and often brutal states of that era produced a reaction of "renouncers" - mostly traveling teachers who criticized the current state in the name of a perfect standard located in the past or in another plane beyond this one. This is an interesting story. The sociology seems very plausible to me. I was a little disappointed that there doesn't seem to be much religion left in his discussion of religion once he has extracted the philosophy he was looking for, but that might be a story for someone else to develop.
Bellah then tries to tie this moment of social and intellectual evolution to the larger framework of biological evolution. The link between them is that playing, which animals and early humans did, led to singing and dancing and rituals. The rituals, which still partly endure, became the basis of religion and of social solidarity - a very Durkheimian thought. The evolutionary connection between play and ritual is, he admits, a late addition to the book. In fact, he barely mentions play through the whole core, where he compares the various axial age proto-philosophers. Still, I can see how this might be true. Worth someone investigating.
Then Bellah starts going off the rails. He says that just because the world religions evolved from earlier tribal religions, and from animal play, doesn't mean they are better or true. He wants to avoid judging any religious metanarrative from the perspective of another religious metanarrative. So instead he judges them from the metanarrative of evolution, on the grounds that evolution is the only metanarrative believed by nearly all thinking people.
And then I think he gets himself into a real tangle. On the one hand, he says that there is no standard, not even evolution, from which to choose among the religions. On the other hand, he extracts from all of them an "axial ethic" of universal equality. Moreover, he says that that the axial thinkers were utopians, but it would be unreasonable to try to make more than modest social reforms based on their ideas. And while it would be improper for this book, which ends its story 2000 years ago, to comment on the subsequent evolution of religion, he does think “it is imperative that humans wake up to what is happening [to the environment] and take the necessary dramatic steps that are so clearly needed but also at present so clearly ignored by the powers of this earth.” He doesn't specify what those steps are, but the main culprit he names is the invention of agriculture.
Bellah's position, that the point of all the world's religions is universal equality in social ethics, and environmentalism is a quasi-religious imperative, sounds like just what you would expect a Berkeley sociology professor to believe. The outcome of religion in human evolution from the paleolithic to the axial age is mild reformist liberalism.
Bellah then tries to tie this moment of social and intellectual evolution to the larger framework of biological evolution. The link between them is that playing, which animals and early humans did, led to singing and dancing and rituals. The rituals, which still partly endure, became the basis of religion and of social solidarity - a very Durkheimian thought. The evolutionary connection between play and ritual is, he admits, a late addition to the book. In fact, he barely mentions play through the whole core, where he compares the various axial age proto-philosophers. Still, I can see how this might be true. Worth someone investigating.
Then Bellah starts going off the rails. He says that just because the world religions evolved from earlier tribal religions, and from animal play, doesn't mean they are better or true. He wants to avoid judging any religious metanarrative from the perspective of another religious metanarrative. So instead he judges them from the metanarrative of evolution, on the grounds that evolution is the only metanarrative believed by nearly all thinking people.
And then I think he gets himself into a real tangle. On the one hand, he says that there is no standard, not even evolution, from which to choose among the religions. On the other hand, he extracts from all of them an "axial ethic" of universal equality. Moreover, he says that that the axial thinkers were utopians, but it would be unreasonable to try to make more than modest social reforms based on their ideas. And while it would be improper for this book, which ends its story 2000 years ago, to comment on the subsequent evolution of religion, he does think “it is imperative that humans wake up to what is happening [to the environment] and take the necessary dramatic steps that are so clearly needed but also at present so clearly ignored by the powers of this earth.” He doesn't specify what those steps are, but the main culprit he names is the invention of agriculture.
Bellah's position, that the point of all the world's religions is universal equality in social ethics, and environmentalism is a quasi-religious imperative, sounds like just what you would expect a Berkeley sociology professor to believe. The outcome of religion in human evolution from the paleolithic to the axial age is mild reformist liberalism.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
The Moral Muddleheadedness of Most Americans
Two noted sociologists who study religion have each just released a distressing study about the moral muddleheadedness of most Americans, especially the young.
Christian Smith, in a study of youth, found that when faced with a moral dilemma, most had no standards, stories, or virtues they could articulate to guide their actions. Instead, they said “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.”
George Barna, in a study of American Christians (that is, most Americans), summarizes the view of most people thus: "People say, 'I believe in God. I believe the Bible is a good book. And then I believe whatever I want.'"
I do not think that people are actually so mush-headed in what they believe. I think they have learned the lesson of tolerance, relativism, and not-judging so well that they have no way of talking about how they actually make judgments for themselves. I think people are actually more consistent in their actions than they can explain. And that most people consistently act in accordance with traditional virtues.
Still, if the only theory that people have is that they should act on their current feelings, then the long-term commitments that structure our lives and our societies, like mortgages and marriages, are undermined.
I think every healthy society lives by a narrative of virtue. The narrative of learning not to make judgments is way too thin to live by.
Christian Smith, in a study of youth, found that when faced with a moral dilemma, most had no standards, stories, or virtues they could articulate to guide their actions. Instead, they said “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.”
George Barna, in a study of American Christians (that is, most Americans), summarizes the view of most people thus: "People say, 'I believe in God. I believe the Bible is a good book. And then I believe whatever I want.'"
I do not think that people are actually so mush-headed in what they believe. I think they have learned the lesson of tolerance, relativism, and not-judging so well that they have no way of talking about how they actually make judgments for themselves. I think people are actually more consistent in their actions than they can explain. And that most people consistently act in accordance with traditional virtues.
Still, if the only theory that people have is that they should act on their current feelings, then the long-term commitments that structure our lives and our societies, like mortgages and marriages, are undermined.
I think every healthy society lives by a narrative of virtue. The narrative of learning not to make judgments is way too thin to live by.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Robert Bellah's Final Attempt at Religious Evolution
I am working through Robert Bellah's magnum opus, the just-published Religion in Human Evolution. As the title suggests, he is placing the development of all religious institutions in the large framework of biological evolution. The core of this large book is a detailed treatment of the breakthrough to theoretical thought in the "axial age" (the centuries around 500 BCE) when the foundations for the world religions and great civilizations of history were laid in ancient Israel, Greece, China, and India.
His discussion of the development of ancient Israel's religion is the most personally interesting to me, and the most personally distressing. Bellah, one of the most eminent living sociologists of religion, has also been an active Episcopalian. I was grieved to see, therefore, that he follows what he calls "most scholars" - most secular scholars - in treating all the story of the Bible up to the prophets as mythic rather than historic. He thinks David and Solomon may have been historic figures, but not as grand as they are made out. All the story before that - certainly Genesis, but also Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Moses - were made up or embellished later to support a new, unified story of one God that the earlier "Israelites" probably did not believe - if they even existed.
Bellah makes repeated claims like this: The original god of the people who become Israel was El, with his consort Ashterah. Yahweh was another god of a different group. When El and Yahweh were merged in the later story, Ashterah came along as Yahweh's consort, too. Bellah concludes "the existence of Mrs. God, so unseemly to Jewish and Christian orthodoxy, has become widely, though not universally, accepted."
What saddens me in this statement is not so much the substance of it. Disbelieving the biblical story is what makes secular scholars secular. Rather, I wish that Bellah had not left the sentence unfinished - that he had not implied "accepted by all people whose opinions are worth listening to."
I will keep my own counsel, and my own authorities, on how to understand the Bible.
His discussion of the development of ancient Israel's religion is the most personally interesting to me, and the most personally distressing. Bellah, one of the most eminent living sociologists of religion, has also been an active Episcopalian. I was grieved to see, therefore, that he follows what he calls "most scholars" - most secular scholars - in treating all the story of the Bible up to the prophets as mythic rather than historic. He thinks David and Solomon may have been historic figures, but not as grand as they are made out. All the story before that - certainly Genesis, but also Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Moses - were made up or embellished later to support a new, unified story of one God that the earlier "Israelites" probably did not believe - if they even existed.
Bellah makes repeated claims like this: The original god of the people who become Israel was El, with his consort Ashterah. Yahweh was another god of a different group. When El and Yahweh were merged in the later story, Ashterah came along as Yahweh's consort, too. Bellah concludes "the existence of Mrs. God, so unseemly to Jewish and Christian orthodoxy, has become widely, though not universally, accepted."
What saddens me in this statement is not so much the substance of it. Disbelieving the biblical story is what makes secular scholars secular. Rather, I wish that Bellah had not left the sentence unfinished - that he had not implied "accepted by all people whose opinions are worth listening to."
I will keep my own counsel, and my own authorities, on how to understand the Bible.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Wind Down the 9/11 Cycle: Bring the Troops Home
The attack on September 11, 2001, was part of a longer war. We had been fighting that specific war at least since our invasion of Iraq. We are still fighting it today.
Each side has had its victories. Al Qaeda achieved its stated aim: to get the Western coalition to remove our troops from Saudia Arabia. And they achieved their secondary aim: to terrorize the West and take Islamist fighting abilities seriously. We also gave them an unexpected victory by invading Iraq again. This wiped out the sympathy that the world had for the U.S. and against Al Qaeda. We created a massive recruiting field for Islamist terrorists, both in the Muslim lands and within the West. And by imprisoning and torturing whoever fell into our net, without charges or trials or law, we gave away the moral high ground. We will pay for these unforced errors for a long time to come.
For our part, the U.S. finally killed Osama bin Laden, and has severely damaged Al Qaeda. We offered the Taliban regime the chance to turn over Al Qaeda, and they chose not to. As a result, we removed the Taliban from Afghanistan, which was at the time the worst regime in the world (except North Korea). The unrelated war in Iraq removed Saddam Hussein and his family from power, which is a good thing, but at a huge cost to Iraqi civilians and to our relations with the Muslim world. Though there were gains from the Iraq war, I would call the balance of costs and benefits at best a draw.
In the long struggle, neither side is likely to prevail fully.
In the tit-for-tat with Al Qaeda following 9/11, though, we mostly won.
I think on this tenth anniversary we should declare victory and bring the troops home.
Each side has had its victories. Al Qaeda achieved its stated aim: to get the Western coalition to remove our troops from Saudia Arabia. And they achieved their secondary aim: to terrorize the West and take Islamist fighting abilities seriously. We also gave them an unexpected victory by invading Iraq again. This wiped out the sympathy that the world had for the U.S. and against Al Qaeda. We created a massive recruiting field for Islamist terrorists, both in the Muslim lands and within the West. And by imprisoning and torturing whoever fell into our net, without charges or trials or law, we gave away the moral high ground. We will pay for these unforced errors for a long time to come.
For our part, the U.S. finally killed Osama bin Laden, and has severely damaged Al Qaeda. We offered the Taliban regime the chance to turn over Al Qaeda, and they chose not to. As a result, we removed the Taliban from Afghanistan, which was at the time the worst regime in the world (except North Korea). The unrelated war in Iraq removed Saddam Hussein and his family from power, which is a good thing, but at a huge cost to Iraqi civilians and to our relations with the Muslim world. Though there were gains from the Iraq war, I would call the balance of costs and benefits at best a draw.
In the long struggle, neither side is likely to prevail fully.
In the tit-for-tat with Al Qaeda following 9/11, though, we mostly won.
I think on this tenth anniversary we should declare victory and bring the troops home.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Why Dropouts Were Not a Problem a Century Ago
A century ago so few people graduated from high school, or even elementary school, that what was measured was how much schooling they had, not how much schooling they did not have.
Today we have the luxury of conceiving of "dropping out" as a problem because most people get so much more schooling - and better schooling - than they used to. This is a huge improvement that we take for granted.
The positive way to see the same facts is that we have a very high high school graduation rate today, compared to the past. And it is getting higher.
Today we have the luxury of conceiving of "dropping out" as a problem because most people get so much more schooling - and better schooling - than they used to. This is a huge improvement that we take for granted.
The positive way to see the same facts is that we have a very high high school graduation rate today, compared to the past. And it is getting higher.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Is There an American Trollope?
Anthony Trollope is my favorite novelist. I enjoy his Barsetshire novels very much. I am now working through his Parliamentary novels in sequence.
Which led to this question: Which novelist is the American Trollope?
I put this question to my colleagues in American literature, asking for their gut reaction. Their responses are helpful and fascinating, though not quite the answer I was hoping for. The first wrote:
Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for, though I did not know that until my friend put it that way.
A second colleague offered this theory of why there is no American Trollope:
I do appreciate Trollope for his optimistic comic sanity. As a sociologist I am especially drawn to his portrayal of social types as they interact, which he does with remarkable even-handedness. I think an American novelist could write in all of those ways. Optimism is a famous American trait. Comic and sane writing about family and community should be within any culture's reach.
I am halted, though, by the idea that American individualism really does make it hard to write about social types within the stable social institutions of Trollope's world.
What I am wrestling with now is whether American social structures have always been so fluid that a Trollope could not have set his eternal dramas of marriage and status in them, or if this fluidity is something that afflicts all late-modern or post-modern societies.
Which led to this question: Which novelist is the American Trollope?
I put this question to my colleagues in American literature, asking for their gut reaction. Their responses are helpful and fascinating, though not quite the answer I was hoping for. The first wrote:
Gut reaction: We don’t have a Trollope.
I assume you mean writes about family and community life from a generally optimistic perspective. The first name that comes to mind is Howells, but even in him there’s more darkness than there is in the Trollope I’ve read.
Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for, though I did not know that until my friend put it that way.
Well, I was going to give you Updike, but I’m sure you’ve read the Rabbit books. His life deteriorates—his family’s full of dysfunction. You could try Harold Fredericks’ The Damnation of Theron Ware (Updike rewrote it for his In the Beauty of the Lilies), but that’s (not surprisingly) about disintegration too. Do try Howells: if you haven’t read The Rise of Silas Lapham or A Hazard of New Fortunes, you should—you’d appreciate, if not necessarily like, them.I have tried William Dean Howells' The Hazard of New Fortunes, which I found rather stuffy (and I like Victorian novels) - I will give it another go.
There are more contemporary social realists who love their characters too much to let them come to any real harm.
A second colleague offered this theory of why there is no American Trollope:
Our rather different culture doesn’t have a Trollope—or an Austen, for that matter. Which is exactly why I usually listen to either of these (right now, I’m in the middle of Emma) whenever I’m in the car alone. Both are so wonderfully sane and intelligent and basically comic in outlook, comedy always having to do with community. We’re too goddamned individualistic. No Brit could ever have written “Self-Reliance” or “Huck Finn.”
Our best stuff is darker, more philosophical, and more profound than Trollope or Austen were capable of. America is a great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live here.
I do appreciate Trollope for his optimistic comic sanity. As a sociologist I am especially drawn to his portrayal of social types as they interact, which he does with remarkable even-handedness. I think an American novelist could write in all of those ways. Optimism is a famous American trait. Comic and sane writing about family and community should be within any culture's reach.
I am halted, though, by the idea that American individualism really does make it hard to write about social types within the stable social institutions of Trollope's world.
What I am wrestling with now is whether American social structures have always been so fluid that a Trollope could not have set his eternal dramas of marriage and status in them, or if this fluidity is something that afflicts all late-modern or post-modern societies.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
A Happy Convergence of William James and G.K. Chesterton
I am reading William James' Pragmatism. I am hoping that it will be a good philosophical text to teach in conjunction with the current empirical work that shows that the practical lives of most populations are, in fact, improving.
In this connection I also recently read G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World. Chesterton and James were contemporaries, but I had not previously thought of them as conversation partners with one another. Yet James quotes Chesterton approvingly at the opening of this book to the effect that the most important thing to know about someone is his philosophy.
The point of James' pragmatism is that all we can know of truth is what kind of practical action it leads to. He says that pragmatism is a method, and is not wedded to any particular conclusions about what will prove practical. In making this claim, he reviews the argument between materialism and idealism or spiritualism. What impressed me in this argument is how much William James sounds like G.K. Chesterton, both in his tone and in his conclusions, to wit:
In this connection I also recently read G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World. Chesterton and James were contemporaries, but I had not previously thought of them as conversation partners with one another. Yet James quotes Chesterton approvingly at the opening of this book to the effect that the most important thing to know about someone is his philosophy.
The point of James' pragmatism is that all we can know of truth is what kind of practical action it leads to. He says that pragmatism is a method, and is not wedded to any particular conclusions about what will prove practical. In making this claim, he reviews the argument between materialism and idealism or spiritualism. What impressed me in this argument is how much William James sounds like G.K. Chesterton, both in his tone and in his conclusions, to wit:
A world with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely final things.
Monday, September 05, 2011
The Most Trusting Kids Are From the Middle
David Sloan Wilson ran a "cooperation" game with public school students in Binghamton, NY, as reported in The Neighborhood Project. This game paired kids, and set up the rules such that they would each benefit the most if they cooperated - if the first kid trustingly gave more, and the second kid proved trustworthy and gave more back.
He found that the richest kids and the poorest kids were the least trusting. The most trusting kids were from middle income neighborhoods that gave their children high levels of social support.
He found that the richest kids and the poorest kids were the least trusting. The most trusting kids were from middle income neighborhoods that gave their children high levels of social support.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Friday, September 02, 2011
David Sloan Wilson's Curious Theological Claims
David Sloan Wilson is a successful popularizer of Darwinism in such books as Evolution for Everyone and Darwin's Cathedral. In his new book, The Neighborhood Project, he offers some surprisingly uncompromising theological claims for an avowed atheist. He writes:
The second part of this claim is entailed by the Darwinian position. They believe that evolution shows no progress, and is not developing toward any teleological end, but is simply a series of adaptations to local conditions.
The first claim, though, is the one that caught my eye. Wilson simply asserts that a creator would have created all the varieties of creatures at once. This lets him show that some variants (in this case, of insects) seem to have developed later than others, thus disproving creation and proving evolution.
Wilson's victory, though, is over a straw man. The vast majority of Americans believe that God created the universe. Yet very few would claim that all of the kinds of creatures were created at the same time. The Bible tells the story as successive days of creating one kind of thing after another, whether you read those days at ages or as twenty-four-hour periods. The most hard-core Young Earth creationists allow for all extensive micro-evolution within the various "kinds" that the Bible notes. Mainline Christians believe in a longer and more intertwined form of evolution, most accepting at least the main points of the Darwinian theory.
The creationist majority differs from the secular minority over whether evolution is guided by God, and whether it is going someplace.
That is the argument that Wilson needs to address.
An omniscient God would have created the different kinds of hymenopterans in a single stroke, but evolution exhibits a property that in technical jargon is called path dependence and in more familiar terms could be called you can’t always get there from here.
The second part of this claim is entailed by the Darwinian position. They believe that evolution shows no progress, and is not developing toward any teleological end, but is simply a series of adaptations to local conditions.
The first claim, though, is the one that caught my eye. Wilson simply asserts that a creator would have created all the varieties of creatures at once. This lets him show that some variants (in this case, of insects) seem to have developed later than others, thus disproving creation and proving evolution.
Wilson's victory, though, is over a straw man. The vast majority of Americans believe that God created the universe. Yet very few would claim that all of the kinds of creatures were created at the same time. The Bible tells the story as successive days of creating one kind of thing after another, whether you read those days at ages or as twenty-four-hour periods. The most hard-core Young Earth creationists allow for all extensive micro-evolution within the various "kinds" that the Bible notes. Mainline Christians believe in a longer and more intertwined form of evolution, most accepting at least the main points of the Darwinian theory.
The creationist majority differs from the secular minority over whether evolution is guided by God, and whether it is going someplace.
That is the argument that Wilson needs to address.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Happy Calvinism
Regular reader Ceemac posted this question:
I think one of the reasons the Calvinists tend to be so critical is that we find it exasperating that other worldviews do not see the good order God made in the world. Calvinists are stewards of the world in order to work with and bring out the good order that the sovereign God made.
I have toyed with the idea of writing The Happy Calvinist. That happiness is chastened by the knowledge of sin and the Fall, but nonetheless remains cheerful knowing that God triumphs, first and last.
Do you think it is in the DNA of Calvinists to be disgruntled? After all we have a commitment to always be working to reform church and culture. So we are inclined to look at a situation and focus on what needs to be fixed and not what is working.I do think that a worldview that began with protest and reform does tend to emphasize the negative. Nonetheless, the core of the scripture that Calvinists confess is that God created the world and called it good, and Christ ultimately triumphs over sin. The basic message of Christianity from beginning to end is pretty positive, and Calvinists embrace that message.
I think one of the reasons the Calvinists tend to be so critical is that we find it exasperating that other worldviews do not see the good order God made in the world. Calvinists are stewards of the world in order to work with and bring out the good order that the sovereign God made.
I have toyed with the idea of writing The Happy Calvinist. That happiness is chastened by the knowledge of sin and the Fall, but nonetheless remains cheerful knowing that God triumphs, first and last.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Rick Perry is Who George W. Bush Was Trying to Be
I thought from the moment that Rick Perry mused that Texas might secede from the Union (again) that he was going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. I still think so.
George W. Bush was a good-old-boy in the making from a small town in Texas. Then they sent him off, against his will, to the fancy prep school and university that his northeastern blue-blood family traditionally attended. He didn't like either one, spending his real energy on social life and cheerleading. He even got a further degree from another fancy northeastern school. He was a military pilot, but mostly to avoid the war. But as I read his history, George W. Bush never really came into his own until he got to be head cheerleader again for a sports team. That job used his best, Texas-honed sales skills. His Texas Methodist wife finally helped him straighten out, dry up, find Jesus, and become a stand-up guy. He was always a political amateur, but he caught the eye of a political professional, Karl Rove, who recruited the money and borrowed other professional politicians from Bush, Sr.'s shop.
Rick Perry was a good-old-boy in the making from a small town in Texas. Except his Texas roots went back generations, proletarian and petite bourgeois all the way. He went to the local high school, was an Eagle Scout, married a Texas Methodist who was his elementary school sweetheart. He then went to an iconic Texas school, where he majored in social life and cheerleading. He became a military pilot, but for real. His real education, as he tells it, came from his boss when Perry was a door-to-door salesman. Perry was a serious and competent Democratic politician, supporting Al Gore for president and backing Bill Clinton's health care plan. Perry switched parties when the opportunities were better, and drew the attention of Karl Rove. When Perry and Rove fell out, Rove picked up George W. Bush.
George W. Bush represented what the activated part of the Republican Party wanted, but in him it was an overlay that went against most of his training. Rick Perry, on the other hand, really is a white Christian businessman who supports government spending for people and interests like his, but is suspicious of government spending for others. And he is a competent politician who can learn enough about government to make just-in-time executive decisions.
I think Gov. Perry will give the Republican base a chance to try to replay the Bush administration, only this time make it come out better.
George W. Bush was a good-old-boy in the making from a small town in Texas. Then they sent him off, against his will, to the fancy prep school and university that his northeastern blue-blood family traditionally attended. He didn't like either one, spending his real energy on social life and cheerleading. He even got a further degree from another fancy northeastern school. He was a military pilot, but mostly to avoid the war. But as I read his history, George W. Bush never really came into his own until he got to be head cheerleader again for a sports team. That job used his best, Texas-honed sales skills. His Texas Methodist wife finally helped him straighten out, dry up, find Jesus, and become a stand-up guy. He was always a political amateur, but he caught the eye of a political professional, Karl Rove, who recruited the money and borrowed other professional politicians from Bush, Sr.'s shop.
Rick Perry was a good-old-boy in the making from a small town in Texas. Except his Texas roots went back generations, proletarian and petite bourgeois all the way. He went to the local high school, was an Eagle Scout, married a Texas Methodist who was his elementary school sweetheart. He then went to an iconic Texas school, where he majored in social life and cheerleading. He became a military pilot, but for real. His real education, as he tells it, came from his boss when Perry was a door-to-door salesman. Perry was a serious and competent Democratic politician, supporting Al Gore for president and backing Bill Clinton's health care plan. Perry switched parties when the opportunities were better, and drew the attention of Karl Rove. When Perry and Rove fell out, Rove picked up George W. Bush.
George W. Bush represented what the activated part of the Republican Party wanted, but in him it was an overlay that went against most of his training. Rick Perry, on the other hand, really is a white Christian businessman who supports government spending for people and interests like his, but is suspicious of government spending for others. And he is a competent politician who can learn enough about government to make just-in-time executive decisions.
I think Gov. Perry will give the Republican base a chance to try to replay the Bush administration, only this time make it come out better.
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