Many Small Pleasures Make us Happier Than a Few Big Ones

This is one of several bits of wisdom compiled by Sonja Lyubomirsky in Myths of Happiness. 

She applies it to many areas of life, especially to the savoring of experiences and objects.

I think this idea is also helpful in thinking about the relationship between children and happiness.  Raising children can make us unhappy at any given moment. Raising children often deals a major blow to our marital happiness for years.

And yet, and yet.  Raising children is counted by most parents as the most meaningful thing they do in their lives. On reflection, most parents can come up with many precious moments of delight about their children to savor.

The lesson I take from Lyubomirsky's summation of happiness research on this subject: savor the many small pleasures of children while they are happening.  These many small pleasures are they very stuff of a happy life.

I Am Married Tomorrow

M. Keith Chen at Yale offers a fascinating study about the different effects of languages that do distinguish between present and future, such as English, and those that do not, such as German:

Speakers of languages that do not distinguish between the present and the future save more money, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese, according to Chen’s findings.

I often try to get students to think about their future marriages now, to plan as strategically for their family life as they do for their careers.

The example Chen uses is Morgen regnet es - "morning raining is" - as the German equivalent of "It will rain tomorrow."

I may get students to try saying "I am married tomorrow" to see if that gives them a more future-oriented view of family life.

The Symmetry of Sexual Fantasies

I put this out tentatively, and would welcome correction as well as comment.

One of the most common sexual fantasies of men is of the nymphomaniac, a woman with an endless desire for sex.

One of the most common sexual fantasies for women is of being ravished, particularly by a bad boy.

It is very puzzling why women, who hate rape so much, and want decent men to marry, would have a fantasy like this.

It is also puzzling, though not puzzled over as much as it should be, why men, who fear sexual comparison and want loyal women to marry, would have a fantasy like this.

I think I have been looking at these fantasies the wrong way.  If I ask "what's in it for the fantasizer," the potential appeal is a little clearer.

Women want to feel irresistible, and wish their sexual attraction to be enough to not only draw a strong man, but to tame him, to overcome his resistance to commitment.

Men want to feel free to have sex with a woman without judgment, commitment, or, importantly, injustice.  They do not need to deceive a nymphomaniac that they are more committed to her than they really are.

And here is where the symmetry breaks down.  Women might fantasize about taming the ravisher and marrying him.  Men are not likely to fantasize about marrying the nymphomaniac. She goes on a different list than the potential wife.

[And no, I do not think these differences are the result of socialization, nor can they be simply abolished by social engineering.  Civilization teaches us to self-control our actions much better than it can change our fantasies.]

"Schep Naches" is a Wonderful Gruntled Idea

The Yiddish expression schep naches is commonly used to describe the pride parents and grandparents feel at the achievements of their offspring.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, in Myths of Happiness, says it can also be used to mean a general sense of "deriving pleasure from the experience of others."

In this sense, she writes, we can use it as the opposite of Schadenfreude.

Deriving pleasure, or calm contentment, from the experience of others seems to me a fine way to make my life, and my community, a happier place.

Japanese Valentine's Day

I was discussing comparative holidays with a Japanese student in my "Family Life" class.  She said Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan - but women give men chocolate.

This struck me as odd, since the norm of courtship is for men to show their capacity for resource provision to women.

She then told me that there is also a counterpart holiday, White Day, one month later, in which men give chocolate to women.  Originally they gave white chocolate (hence the name), but now the browner kinds are also common.

And Wikipedia tells me that on White Day, if a man merely gives as much as he was given, that signals that he wants to end the relationship.  To continue the romance, he gives twice or thrice as much chocolate as he received on Valentine's Day.

The imbalance in the sociobiological universe is made right.

Your Older Self Can Help You Save for the Future

A nifty experiment from Jeremy Bailenson's virtual reality lab:

Ask 20-somethings how much they want to start setting aside for their retirement.

Then show them a picture of their own face, morphed to show what they will look like at 70.

Now they want to set aside twice as much.

This is a great nudge.

If the World Is Getting Better, Isn't It Simpler to Think That God is Helping?

I believe the world is getting better.  The material evidence is all around us, as I have written before.

I believe that God guides the general direction of the world with a providential hand.

Most of the writers who share my belief that the world is getting better seem to atheists who believe in naturalistic evolution. 

If you are a naturalistic evolutionist who does not believe the world is getting better, then you have no problem - species simply adapt to whatever the environment happens to be at the moment, without direction or meaning.  The world is neither getting better nor getting worse, because there is no naturalistic meaning to those terms when applied to all existence. Evolution is simply change over time.

But naturalistic evolutionists who do believe in progress have to go through some elaborate twists to explain both why our evolutionary practice seems to show a positive design without a designer, and how we keep progressing even though our evolved psychology is pessimistic.

It seems to me that theistic evolution is a simpler account of how a species designed for both hope and fear, designed for pessimistic assumptions but optimistic actions, can in fact achieve such progress.

I don't have an elaborate philosophical argument here.  I just think that people who see that the world is improving through the amazing collective action of creative humans are halfway to seeing that we are meant for this by a Creator.

Today's Good News: Westboro Baptist Church Leaders Leave the Church Without Repudiating Christianity

Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister Grace have left their family's Westboro Baptist Church and apologized for the hurt the church has caused in the name of Jesus. They report that their family and their congregation - which overlap considerably - have disowned them, but they return that rejection with love.

Repentance without further hate is one of the most hopeful changes we ever see in the world.

What Intransigence Costs Senator McConnell

Mitch McConnell, the senate majority leader and senior senator from my state, is a regular Republican, as establishment as they come.  I don't usually agree with him on policy, but I do respect him as an effective politician, capable of making a deal and moving the government forward.  When he wants to.

At the beginning of President Obama's first term, Sen. McConnell made a fateful decision to oppose the president on everything, no matter what cost to the country.  He said that the highest priority of the Republican Party was to make Obama a one-term president.  That decision did not work out very well for the country, or for Sen. McConnell.

A new poll shows that only 17% of Kentucky voters plan to vote for Senator McConnell, even though he is the highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate and the head of the Republican Party in the commonwealth.  Even among Republicans, only 34% are sure they will vote for him.  By contrast, 34% of Kentuckians are already sure they will vote against him.  The rest will wait and see who his opponents are.  Indeed, he is likely to get a primary challenge from the Tea Party.

I think Sen. McConnell can improve his chances of re-election by dropping his policy of obstruction and going back to ordinary politics.  He has already made a promising beginning in the compromise to raise taxes on the rich and to raise the debt ceiling.  More of that will be better for him, and for the country.

Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in Six Generations (What Surname Changes Show About Social Mobility)

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California - Davis, has a nifty paper on the persistence of surnames in England from the 1200s to now.  He was looking for how much specific family names stayed in the same class. 

Clark's conclusion is that family names seem to cycle in and out of the top and middle classes (at least) over about six generations. He concludes from this that there are not really permanent classes in Britain, a famously class-ridden society.

Clark offers some important caveats, and the interesting suggestion that it is only now, in the more meritocratic society that was supposed to end family privilege, that there is actually greater persistence of the same families in the same classes.  He cannot demonstrate that point in this paper, but I hope he follows up.

On the one hand, it is good news for the happy society that the "regression toward the mean" pushes social mobility.  Privilege does not last forever, or even very long.  Nor does subordination.

On the other hand, showing that families move in and out of classes is not at all the same as proving that there are no classes.  On the contrary, he has to use some persistent features of the class structure, such as the amount of estate tax paid, as his measure of which class a family name is in.

Lineages are mobile, up and down, which is good news.  But the class structure endures, which is a basic fact of modern societies.

Is an Arsenal of Guns Like a Closet Full of Shoes?

A new survey of Kentuckians asked whether they had a gun in the household, and if so, whether they had more than one. The results were interesting:

No gun: 35%

One gun: 27%

More than one gun: 38%

That is, about 58% of households with a gun have more than one.

National surveys show that about 3/4ths of households with a gun have more than one.

Indeed, more than half of all the guns in America are owned by only about 1/7th of all households.

For the minority who don't want guns at all outside of a well-regulated militia, the puzzle is why other people want to have any guns. For them, any gun in the house is a far greater source of danger than of protection.

However, these figures make me think that an even more interesting question is why a few people want to have many guns in their house.  For most gun owners, the weapon seems to be a tool, as one might have a dishwasher.

For a few people, though, guns seem to be something else - a status good, a comfort item, perhaps even a fetish.

Some people buy many guns, I think, for the same reason that some women buy many shoes.

Join the "New Conversation on Marriage"

The Institute for American Values has launched a "New Conversation on Marriage."  I strongly endorse this conversation, and was honored to be asked to be among the original signatories.

The conversation has several parts.  The one I am particularly moved by is this: "marriage is rapidly dividing along class lines, splitting the country that it used to unite."

I will share the further fruits of this conversation with you as they develop.

In the meantime, I urge you to check out the call.

Today's Good News for Centrists: A Bipartisan Proposal for Immigration Reform

Eight senators - four Democrats and four Republicans - have announced a framework for a immigration reform.

After four years of a failed alliance with the Tea Party and their policy of "no government," I am delighted to see the Republicans rejoin the government.

Marriage: An Advantage You Can Make for Yourself (and Your Children)

The estimable Isabel Sawhill, in The Brookings Review, argues that class is displacing race as a determiner of life chances in America, and that family structure is a major factor in class.  These are themes I have often argued in this blog.  She writes

I am also struck by the lessons that emerge from looking at how trends in family formation have differed by class as well as by race. If we were once two countries, one black and one white, we are now increasingly becoming two countries, one advantaged and one disadvantaged.

I see here a crucial difference between the two kinds of division.  You can't change your race, and you can't change the family you are from.  But you can mostly determine the family that you make, the family your children will have. 

Marriage is an advantage that you can choose.

Meaning is a Component of Happiness

The Atlantic has an article by Emily Esfahani Smith, "There's More to Life Than Happiness," which raises a perpetual issue in the happiness discussion.

On the one side is the Aristotelian view that happiness is the end of life, the one end which is not a means to another end.

On the other side is the view that happiness is a feeling that may accompany the highest end(s) of life, but is not that end.

This dispute is mostly semantic.  But there is a substantive question here.

The best alternative contender for the chief end of life is "meaning."  This is the alternative that Smith's article, and many others like it in this long-running dispute, raises.

The modern empirical study of happiness keeps coming back to this question: "On the whole, would you say that your life is very happy, somewhat [or pretty] happy, or not too happy?"  The overwhelming majority of people pick the first or second option.

What is important to me here is that people can answer this question about the lives on the whole. I think this means they are understanding happiness as a state of being, not a temporary feeling.

So how do we square the circle? I think meaning is a vital component of happiness.  When people say that, on the whole, they are happy, this includes some judgment that their lives are meaningful enough.

There is much more to be said on this subject.

Today's Good News: The Center Rises in Israel

In Israeli elections yesterday the governing right-wing party did win the most seats, as expected. 

But widespread gloomy predictions that the next biggest bloc would be an even more right-wing party, bent on driving all Palestinians out of Israel, proved false. 

The second largest party in the Knesset will be a new centrist party.

Hopes for a peaceful and semi-just settlement in Israel and Palestine stay alive.

Stealth Bomber Parents

I learned a new distinction and a new ideal type this morning. 

A college staff member who deals with parents said that Baby Boomers are the generation of helicopter parents, hovering over their children.

Gen Xers, on the other hand, don't hover, but instead are fierce advocates for their children.  She called them "stealth bomber parents."

Needed: A "No Sex Till Marriage" Dating Site

Dan Slater Atlantic has a good article about a sad phenomenon: online dating makes some relationships less stable and less likely to lead to marriage.

One of the reasons for this instability is that online relationships tend to quickly lead to sex.  As Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker found in Premarital Sex in America, the earlier sex is introduced into a relationship, the shorter the relationship is likely to be.

This leads me to think there is a market for a new kind of dating site: one of the ground rules would be "no sex till marriage."  Or at least until she has a ring and a date. 

Such a site would separate the let's-have-sex-and-see-what-happens online daters from the I-am-here-for-lifelong-marriage online daters - to the mutual benefit of both groups.

Family Scholars Online Discussion of "Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith?"

I invite you all to participate in an online discussion, today and tomorrow, at the Family Scholars blog on their new report, "Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith?" 

Yours truly has contributed one of the response essays, and I will be following the discussion and commenting where appropriate.

The link is here.

"The End of Courtship?" is Really About The Subculture of Courtship Incompetents

The New York Times has a story that those of us in the pro-marriage business are obliged to read.  It is a popular theme in upper-middle class publications that hope to attract young adult readers: courtship is impossible now because men are incompetent and/or women are incomprehensible. She wants a traditional date, but he only wants to hang out in a group.  He tries to be traditional and romantic, but she attacks his macho presumption.  And they don't have enough money for courtship.  And Facebook Ruins Everything.

I think the good news is that the extreme incompetence that such stories highlight is not universal, but is the kind of anecdote that makes a good hook - the sort of stuff that forms the core of most stand-up comedy.

I think the core of the problem is that there are two groups here, working at cross-purposes.  One group wants a game with sex; the other wants a clear path to marriage.  Most of the players in the first group are men, and most of the players in the second group are women.  Clearly, though, there are overlaps - which adds to the confusion.

One of the core features of dysfunctional relationships is unclear communication.  Therefore,  I think our best hope in ending the "end of courtship" story is to say clearly which game - that is, which kind of social relationship - you are seeking.  To that end, by the authority vested in me by having a blog, I offer three pieces of advice:

1) Figure out what you want, say so, and stick to it.  Ambivalence kills.

2) The earlier sex comes into a relationship, the less likely it is to last.  Women control sex - this is just a basic, asymmetrical fact - so if you want marriage, don't allow sex early.

3) Use social media to your advantage.  If you want a traditional courtship leading to marriage, spell it out.  If you just want to hang out and not get serious, say that, too.  And whichever side of that divide you are on, Don't Go Out With the Other Kind.  Period.

Following these simple rules are more likely to keep the two games separated, and to get you want you want.

I commend "Café" as a morally and theologically interesting film

I lucked into a theologically interesting film. "Café" is a small independent movie, though the recognizable Jennifer Love Hewitt is one of the leads.  It is set in a small independent coffee house in West Philadelphia.  I found it when I was looking for films to use in my "Cafés and Public Life" class.

What "Café" is really about, though, is the idea that this reality might just be virtual, a simulated reality set up by a programmer.  I am not very interested in that idea.  But the film uses it to run a parallel conversation about how our free will is consonant with God's foreknowledge.  I thought they handled this tricky idea well.

Moreover, the several running stories of the regulars in the coffee house all lead them toward potential evil choices.  Most of the characters use their free will well.  I will not spoil it by saying more.

The ending will not be satisfying to all. I thought it was too pat, though intelligible.

Divorce Undermines Children's Trust in Other Institutions, Too

Yesterday I wrote about the new report "Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith?"

Today I want to connect that report with other recent research on young people and institutions.

Divorced kids are less likely to become churched adults.  Yet these unchurched adults are not usually atheists.  They are just disappointed with and suspicious of the institution of religion.

Divorced kids are also less likely to get married. Yet they are not against romance, parenthood, or even the idea of permanent pair bonding.  They are just disappointed with and suspicious of the institution of marriage.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center, led by Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone fame, found that a fifth of Americans say they have no religious affiliation. Yet most of them believe in God and think of themselves as in some way spiritual. They are religious, but decline to register with a religious institution, in the same way that they are political, but decline to register with a political party. This is especially true of young people.

My best guess is that the young people are reluctant to trust institutions because they were divorced upon in their childhood, or never saw their parents even attempt marriage in the first place.  The experience of family is more basic than the experience of other institutions, and the decline in marriage precedes the decline in religious and political affiliation.

The shape of families not only shapes faith, it shapes children's trust of all institutions.

Kids Often Lose Their Church Network in the Divorce

The Institute for American Values will soon release an excellent report, "Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith?" by Elizabeth Marquardt, Amy Zeitlow, and Charles E. Stokes.

This study of the religious effects of divorce on kids suggested to me a connection to another effect of divorce on kids.

Researchers have long noted that many divorced kids not only lose all connection with their fathers, but also with their father’s whole side of the family.  The keenest loss is of their paternal grandparents, who are usually a huge part of a child’s support network.   

In the same way, if children lose their religious community in the divorce, they lose one of the richest sources of general support that our society offers.  They not only lose the small number of people in the church they might have had close personal ties to; divorced kids often lose the much larger network of weak ties that a congregation gives them, the adults who take some interest in their lives and connect them to many other networks of information and support.

Puffing Up Rural Districts With Prisoners

Felons are from cities, but are mostly imprisoned in the countryside. 

The Census does not count them in their home cities, but it does count them in their prison counties.   

Thus, the rural districts inflate their population figures with prisoners, even though the prisoners cannot vote for the district's representatives. 

The felons are subtracted from the population of mostly Democratic districts and used to inflate the populations of mostly Republican districts.

(A second useful point: I learned this interesting fact from a bad book, Hattery and Smith's African American Families Today. We can learn from all sorts of sources, even bad ones.)

The House Votes for Normal Politics, Too.

The House of Representatives passed the Senate "fiscal cliff" bill.  They did so with a strong bipartisan vote. 

Speaker Boehner himself voted for it, though the Speaker does not usually vote. In fact, Speaker Boehner engaged in a great act of statesmanship: he abandoned the gridlock-inducing "Hastert Rule" of only bringing to a vote bills that a majority of the majority would support.  The Republican Speaker brought the bill to a vote and voted for it himself, even though most Republicans voted against it. 

The Republican leadership, especially Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader McConnell, are also to be commended for abandoning another foolish rule, the "Norquist Pledge" to never, ever, ever raise taxes.

I hope this important example of bipartisan cooperation - including compromise and horse-trading - is a portent of things to come. A competent legislature is the heart of a good government.

A Good Start to the New Year: Normal Politics Resumes

The United States Senate kept working, making compromises, doing the ordinary business of governing, and passed a bill.  At 2 in the morning, New Year's Day.  And an 89 - 8 vote means that it was a bipartisan effort.

This is the best present the Congress could give the country.

If we can get the House of Representatives to follow suit, we will have taken our government back from the intransigents.

2013 could be an excellent year for improving public order in the United States.

Most Republicans Own Guns

Most Republicans own guns.  Most Democrats do not.  Most independents do not.

This is a real difference - gun ownership is one of the strongest predictors of Republican affiliation.

There are Republican majorities in all age groups and both sexes.

The more education Americans have, the less likely they are to own a gun.

The biggest gap:

High-school educated Republicans: 59%
Post-graduate educated Democrats: 22%

Hurrah! Normal Politics Resumes

The decline of the Tea Party, as I have been arguing, allows Republicans to resume the normal politics of compromise.

I am very hopeful that the Republican and Democratic leadership will reach a deal to raise taxes on the rich and cut government spending, especially on defense contractor entitlements.

I am also hopeful that the Republican and Democratic leadership will reach a deal on controlling assault weapons and other mass-murder tools.

I am hopeful that Grover Norquist will fade into the sunset, now that Republicans are ready to break their foolish pledge never to raise taxes, no matter how much it hurt the country.

I am less hopeful that the gun lobby will fade away, but at least some conservatives are willing to break with them when little white children get massacred.

Is the Casual Sex of Today Like the Smoking of Yesterday?

Today we look back on the indifference to the effects of smoking in the '60s with amazement. Now we know better, mostly due to science.

I think future ages will look at us the same way when they think about the emotional effects of casual sex. And this change will also mostly be due to science.

Why I Don't Like to Travel, Dressed Up in Sociologese.

I don't really like to travel, though I do a fair amount.

I have been thinking about why, exactly, I do not. 

I do like to learn about other people and places; that is one of the reasons I am a sociologist. 

I do not much need to feel the aura of special places, to have an authentic experience of "being there."  On the other hand, I always notice things about the juxtaposition of places and cultures that I would not have seen from just reading about other places. 

Still, I would rather be in my house or campus or coffee house, talking to people and working.

I think this is the main reason I do not like to travel:

When I am home, I feel that I am building social capital.
When I travel, I am spending it.
Each trip, therefore, had better be worth the social expense.

A Hopeful Sign: Egyptian President Gives Up Dictatorial Powers.

The Arab Spring is one of the most hopeful movements for a peaceful world.

The Islamic world has been so resistant to democracy that some have seen democratic government as un-Islamic.  This charge has not only come from opponents of Islamic nations, but from some Islamist theorists.  Many regimes, from merely authoritarian to brutally fascist, have been protected by the anti-democratic united front of Islamic states.

The Arab Spring looks like it will break that anti-democratic tradition.  If a group of stable democracies were established in the heart of the Islamic world, then the pressure for better government would ripple out all the way to Morocco and to Indonesia.  The "bloody borders" of the Islamic world that Samuel Huntington famously noted would turn to normal, peaceful, compromising, nation-upbuilding politics.

The most important nation trying to establish Islamic democracy is Egypt.  When an Islamist, Mohammed Morsi, was elected president after the overthrow of the dictator, many were worried. That he represents the Muslim Brotherhood, which had assassinated the previous president for making peace with Israel, was even scarier. However, I remain hopeful that having political responsibility will make the Muslim Brotherhood a more responsible and normal political party.

I was very distressed, therefore, when President Morsi proclaimed dictatorial powers.  The oppressed imitate their oppressors.

However, there was broad and sustained resistance in Egypt to Morsi's dictatorship.

Today, responding to the protests, Morsi annulled the decree giving him dictatorial power.

The conflict is far from over in Egypt, but this is a hopeful sign for a happier world.

Another Improvement in Congress

I have been arguing for some time that the Tea Party has been the major obstacle to competent politics, and that this election cycle was their last hurrah.

Yesterday came a further sign that the prospects are improving for compromise and progress in Congress.  Senator Jim DeMint, the Tea Party leader, resigned his Senate seat to become head of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

DeMint's resignation in the middle of his term of actual power is reminiscent of Governor Sarah Palin's resignation in the middle of her term of actual power.

These resignations make sense: it is hard for people with an anti-government ideology to serve in government.  It is hard for people with an anti-compromise ideology to serve in a legislature.

I look forward to better normal government in the coming year.

Gratitude: The Most Powerful Happiness Tool

This week we finished the first iteration of my "Happy Society" course.

As I reflect on what we have learned this term about what works to make people feel happier, I think reminding ourselves of how much we have to be grateful for is among the most powerful.   

With privileged people, I believe gratitude is the single most powerful tool we have.

A Nation That Runs on Immigrants Can't Afford to Run Short

American fertility has been at or a little below the replacement rate for a generation.  Our rate is the highest in the developed world, and our demographic future is generally bright.

Immigrants are the main reason that our fertility rate is near replacement.  Immigrants have a somewhat higher fertility rate than the native born.  This bump seems to last only one generation, though, so we benefit from continued immigration.

In the recent recession, immigrant fertility fell, and fell even more than native-born fertility. Fertility normally falls during a recession, and bounces back as people become more optimistic about the future. Immigration also fell during the recession, and indeed there seems to have been more return migration to Mexico (at least) than in-migration during that period.

All of which argues to me that the U.S. has a strong interest now in making immigration easy.  Likewise, we have a strong interest in making it easier to normalize the condition of migrants already in the country illegally.  Moreover, we have an even stronger interest in encouraging the permanent immigration of families, with their higher fertility rates, to insure that we have a sufficient nation - of citizens, as well as merely of workers - in the future.

Our Happy Prospects of Legislative Compromise

A happy society benefits from a competent government, most especially from a competent legislature.  The legislature, by its nature, will have representatives of conflicting interests.  It will naturally be full of conflicts much more often than it starts with broad agreement on major issues.  Thus, a competent government requires a willingness to compromise and work together for the good of the country.

Lately, our government, especially our legislature, has been polarized by a faction, the Tea Party, that rejects compromise on principle.  Moreover, the federal legislature has been hamstrung by a pledge that many members of one party, the Republican Party, made to never raise taxes, no matter what effect that has on the country.

There are happy signs that the logjam in the legislature is breaking up.  The uncompromising faction lost more than it gained in the recent election.  This frees the establishment of their host party, the Republicans, to make deals in the usual way, to move the government forward.

Recently, there has been another happy trend: many Republican leaders who signed the "never raise taxes" pledge are expressing a willingness to shrug off that straightjacket.

I am very hopeful that the lame duck session, and the new Congress to follow, will be very productive in solving a number of problems facing the federal government.

Do Some Feel That Organ Donation is Polluting?

My "Happy Society" class has conducted a project to sign up the entire Centre College community as organ donors.  We have had excellent success with the faculty, pretty good success with students, but only so-so with the blue-collar staff.

A couple of the latter said they would not sign up as organ donors because they "came in with all their organs, and they plan to go out with them."

I have a hypothesis about why this is so, which I don't have enough data to test.  Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, argues that all kinds of people tend to have immediate emotional reactions to moral questions.  Educated people, though, have trained themselves to only accept judgments that serve to prevent harm and advance care, or prevent inequality and advance fairness.  But most people also have an emotional commitment to liberty, sanctity, loyalty, and purity.  If they are not trained in Enlightenment theories, most people will go with their first emotional reactions.

My hypothesis is that when some people imagine their organs going in to other people react with disgust at the impurity of it, the pollution of their identity that would result.

The Tea Party Has Shot Its Bolt

This was the last Tea Party election. Like most uncompromising "know-nothing" movements, they fade away after about three elections because they don't get everything they want, and don't understand that all of politics requires compromise. 

To be sure, some politicians elected by the Tea Party will remain in office, such as my own junior senator Rand Paul.  But now the Republican establishment will be able to free itself from this threat from the right, and begin to make deals in the normal way.  And I hope we can also dispense with Grover Norquist and his foolish "don't raise taxes" straightjacket, too. My own senior senator, Mitch McConnell, is already talking about raising taxes.

One part of the Tea Party is burning itself out in petitions to secede from the United States.  This is open treason, and might be cause for serious criticism by regular, patriotic Republicans if the movement weren't so laughable.

Another part of the Tea Party will go back to grumbling political inactivity, along with the would-be socialists and anarchists.

A third part will become regular members of the Republican Party, arguing for their positions, but working to make deals that move the country forward.  I hope that my junior senator evolves in that direction. Likewise, I hope that my senior senator helps him by working with the Democratic Party to actually govern.

An Unexpected Benefit of the Election: Mormons are Normalized for Evangelicals

Evangelical Protestants have been suspicious of the Latter-Day Saints since the church began.  Until recently, even well-known ministries described Mormonism as a cult.

However, evangelical Protestants are also the core constituency of the Republican Party today.  So, when the G.O.P. nominated a Mormon for president, some thought evangelicals would be cool to Mitt Romney, a Mormon bishop and very active church leader.

Instead, evangelical Protestants dropped their opposition to Mormonism.

Though Mitt Romney did not win, I think his candidacy normalized Mormonism in American politics as much as John F. Kennedy's candidacy normalized Roman Catholicism in American politics.

What I Like About Obama: The Personal Reason

I believe that Barack Obama is the person most like me who will ever be president of the United States.  And the Obama family is the most like my family that will ever occupy the White House.

Barack Obama is a year younger than me.  I am conscious of being right on the cusp between the Baby Boomer generation and Generation X.  As I get older, I side more and more with the younger generation, the Xers.  Barack Obama is clearly a Gen Xer - a pragmatist who rebuilds basic institutions, willing to compromise to get practical reforms moving.  That is my attitude toward politics, large and small, as well.

Barack and Michelle Obama are meritocrats from financially modest backgrounds who made their way by academic success.  They finished their schooling at Harvard, which my wife and I, who did our graduate work at Yale, do not hold against them.

The Obamas are long and solidly married, and devoted parents. The Gruntleds married younger, so our kids are older, but I predict that Malia and Sasha Obama will likewise be successful students.  When Malia is ready for college in a couple of years, I imagine there will be stiff competition, especially between Columbia and Princeton, her parents' alma maters.

The Obamas are mainline Christians from a Reformed tradition of stewardship for society. Their faith informs their politics - including a firm sense that church and state should be separated for the good of each.

The Obamas were raised with the Civil Rights movement as the living chapter of the long sacred history of America, a heroic fulfillment of the long-denied promise of our nation's birth.  The Gruntleds see American history the same way. We have a triptych over our fireplace, surrounding the many family pictures: Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and above all, Jesus, in Rembrandt's rendition.

I feel a personal connection to Barack Obama that I am not likely to feel for any other president. I happily voted for him before, and again today.

What I Like About Obama: The Joshua Generation

One of the greatest achievements of President Barack Obama is how little we talk about him now as the first black president.

Four years ago, candidate Obama was very much seen as the great hope of the Joshua generation of black leaders to complete the civil rights revolution wrought by the Moses generation of Martin Luther King and his contemporaries.  Obama himself honored his elders, and sought to carry forward the mantle honorably.

It is a huge measure of his success that now his supporters, like me, point to his solid record of practical achievements in righting the ship of state from the disaster of the previous administration, and making dozens of improvements in how government functions.  Likewise, Obama's opponents attack him for many things, but only rarely for his blackness.

To be sure, Barack Obama's election to the presidency brought the racists out of the woodwork of American politics.  And some of his most vociferous and poisonous opponents are motivated by racism, which they sometimes foreground in their attacks.
NOTE: I am not saying that all opponents of Pres. Obama are racists.  Most of just Republicans, opposing the Democrat, in the most ordinary of ways.

I think that anti-black racism is the original sin of America.  I therefore believed four years ago that in electing a black president, American had taken a giant step forward.  And in electing a hugely accomplished meritocrat, married to another hugely accomplished meritocrat, who were devoted parents, committed church members, patriotic citizens - in short, just what we usually want our First Family to be - the Obamas made it clear that there were plenty of African-Americans ready and able to take their place in the leading classes of ordinary, bourgeois America.

Barack Obama was elected as, among other things, the first black president, and that mattered a great deal.  But he will be re-elected (I believe) as just the president, and that matters more.

What I Like About Obama: His Long List of Practical Improvements

I have been wrestling with this post for some days because the list of Pres. Obama's practical achievements is so long, I have not known just which ones to lift up in a short post.  Here is one fairly current list, of many.

And the list itself is only half the story. Obama has succeeded as a practical reformer.  He is not the radical that either extreme paints him to be - and never was. 

He campaigned and government as a practical reformer. And in his first term, especially in his first two-year Congress, he had a list of achievements that only Roosevelt and Johnson can compare to in the past century. In his second two-year Congress he has continued to achieve practical good, especially in foreign affairs, despite an opposition party that is publicly committed to opposing him no matter what effect that has on the country.

Jonathan Chait makes the practical, moderate case for Obama very well.  I particularly like this summary:

"Obama can boast a record of accomplishment that bests any president since Roosevelt, and has fewer demerits on his record than any of them, including Roosevelt."

What I Like About Obama: Everyone is Better Off Than They Were Four Years Ago - Except bin Laden

The world economic system was collapsing in 2008, as the Bush administration waited to expire. They bailed out the mortgage banks, but not the mortgage holders.  They were ready to let the auto industry die, as Gov. Romney explicitly argued at the time.

The Obama administration acted quickly to save the banking system. They saved the auto industry. They stimulated the economy, as much as the intransigent Republican leaders would allow. They could have created jobs, which would have done the most to stimulate the economy, but the Republicans chose to cut jobs instead.

Four years later, the economy is steadily recovering. The auto industry is thriving. The banking industry is thriving.  Even housing is starting to come back.

Everyone benefits from this recovery.

Thanks to President Obama, GM is alive, and bin Laden is dead.

What I Like About Obama: The Long Game

There are many particular achievements of Pres. Obama that I applaud.  I will get to some of them in the next few posts.  But I want to note, first, that I believe the president has had a clear, politically realistic vision from the outset, which he has been amazingly successful at achieving.

I believe the big goal that Barack Obama set for himself from the beginning of his campaign for president was to finally, finally, achieve universal health insurance.  This has been the dream of the whole middle and left of the political spectrum since the New Deal.  Many presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have failed in this great attempt, sunk by insurance and drug companies.  The Clinton administration, under what should have been ideal conditions, failed spectacularly.

When Obama set out on this great quest for universal health insurance, he knew it would take all of his political capital. He knew he would have to make big compromises, in his own party as much as with the opposition. And on top of the huge task passing universal health insurance, he had to save the entire economy.

The biggest constraint the Pres. Obama administration faced was that they only had two years to do nearly every important thing on their agenda.  When Democrats won big in the 2008 election it was clear to me that they would lose the lose big in the 2010 midterms.  This usually happens to the incumbent party, even in the best of times.  Add a massive recession and the most intransigent opposition since the Wilson administration, and the midterms would probably stop nearly all progress.

In fact, the Obama administration, working with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, managed the most successful Hundred Days since FDR. And that made possible the great push for the health care bill. Obamacare - a term that began as an insult, but will, I think, become one of the greatest terms of praise of the president - is a huge step forward.  I don't like all the compromises that had to be made to pass it, but I appreciate that it was necessary for the president to make compromises.  Barack Obama is a masterful politician - I trust his judgment about which rat parts needed to go into the sausage.

Pres. Obama knew that he had until the end of the 111th Congress to pass most of what he would be able to pass in his first term. And he did, right up to the budget compromise at the end.

Barack Obama is a great player of the long chess game of governance.

Obama: What I Don't Like

The rest of my posts from now to the election will be what I do like about Pres. Obama.

Today I want to start with what I don't like.

He didn't close Guantanamo Bay prison.

He assassinates American citizens with a thin veneer of due process.

He spies on American citizens with a slightly thicker veneer of due process.

He has not prosecuted the Wall Street barons who created the financial crises quickly enough.

He has too many Wall Street veterans in charge of economic policy.

There are also some compromises he made that I am uneasy with, though they may have been necessary to get the deal done.  This is especially true for the health care bill and the budget compromise.

Re-Elect President Obama

I think Barack Obama has been a very good president.  I enthusiastically support his re-election.

Each day until the election I will give a reason why I support President Obama. 

I welcome your comments.

An Appreciation of George McGovern

The first election I paid attention to was the 1972 Nixon-McGovern debacle.  I don't think Sen. McGovern could have beaten Pres. Nixon even if he had run an excellent campaign.  Turns out, though, that Nixon would eventually do it for him.

I give Sen. McGovern full credit, though, for opposing the Vietnam War. That war was wrong in so many ways, and as it headed toward its third decade, it needed killing.  Having the standard bearer a major party - the historic war party - oppose that war help speed its end.

McGovern stood for good causes all of his public life, in office and out. He did not cash in in retirement; in fact, he didn't really even retire.

By opposing the Vietnam War, though, the Democratic Party did acquire a reputation for softness.  This was mostly undeserved, but not wholly.

It is fitting, therefore, that the end of George McGovern's honorable life should come during the term of a Democratic president who is clearly not soft.  An era has ended; another has begun.

The Interests of Romney and Obama Followers

A fascinating graphic from iProspect about the election compares the Facebook followers of Gov. Romney and Pres. Obama.  This suggests, in tantalizing outline, a social portrait of the two groups.

Gov. Romney has 1.5 million followers on Facebook.  Pres. Obama has 20.9 million.

The top activities listed by Gov. Romney's followers:

• Basketball
• Guns
• Gardening
• Football
• Church
• Quilting

The top activities listed by Pres. Obama's followers:

• Camping
• Meditation
• Stand-up Comedy
• Power Walking 
• Playing Computer Games
• Jigsaw Puzzles

I wish they broke this down by the standard sociological categories of race, class, and gender, as well as age, but it does create a picture in the mind of the different "ideal type" voters for each candidate.

The European Union's Well-Deserved Nobel Peace Prize

The European Union was the surprise winner of the Nobel Peace Prize this week.  Yet, as I pondered this choice, I chided myself for not having thought of it before.  The Long Peace of Europe since the Second World War is so much a part of our taken-for-granted world that we have already forgotten what an achievement that peace is. 

The massive decline in violence in the world in the past two generations is due primarily to the strong system of inter-connected and law-abiding states. And the core of the system of peaceful states is a stable Europe and a stable North America.

Good job, Nobel committee.  The prize is long overdue.  I hope it helps the EU overcome its current financial difficulties.

Creating, Versus Consuming, Love on the Internet Dating Market

I am working through the new book of that fine sociologist, Arlie Hochschild. In The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times she looks at the many ways we have turned to the market for aspects of personal life that we used to rely on "the village" for.

In the chapter on internet dating that opens the book, she makes this helpful observation: internet dating clients had such trouble finding a mate because "they were preparing to be consumers, not creators, of love."

One fruitful insight of our "Happy Society" class is that the simple act of performing acts of kindness for others makes one feel happier.  And we notice that our friends, seeing our example, are more likely to do the same.

I find that students have another, even more unexpected insight.  They have clear feelings about whether society is happy and kind, or unhappy and cold.  But until doing this class exercise, they had just never thought about themselves as the creators of the moral tone of society.

Creating love, like creating kindness, is hard and risky.  But it is also empowering.  And, of course, good.

Protestants Fall to Less Than Half: Nones Rise to a Fifth

The Pew Research Center has released a new report, The Rise of the Nones, on the changing shape of American religion.

Protestants are down by 5% to 48% total.

Religiously unaffiliated (nones) are up 5% to 20%.

Catholics are down 1% to 22%

Other religions are up 2% to 6%.

The main thing that seems to have happened is that lightly affiliated Protestants of five years ago now no longer call themselves religious at all.

Marriage is the "Group Selection" on a Molecular Scale

Evolutionary thought usually focuses on individuals being selected for, and thus passing on individually valuable traits.  The idea that groups can be selected for, thus passing on a trait of "groupishness," is usually dismissed.  Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, makes a case for group selection. It is precisely groupishness that gives humans an advantage as a species, and more social groups of humans their advantage, in the long run, over anti-social aggregations of people.

We see the same group advantage at the molecular level of society: families.  Couples who successfully marry and raise children together have well-documented advantages in their own lives.  Their children, likewise, benefit in many ways.  The gap between the social class that marries and the class that does not is growing.

What this says to me is that successful marriage is an instance of group selection in an evolutionary sense. Lineages that produce more successful marriages get selected for, generation after generation.  These benefits accrue quickly, too.  It does not take the tens of thousands of years that random physical mutations do to become part of the dominant fraction of the species.  People choose who they marry, and who they have children with, much more than other species do.  Thus, those selecting for long marriages can do so deliberately and with pretty good information.  And pass their advantage on in human-scaled time to their descendents.

If We Really Want to Reduce the Abortion Rate, We Should Provide Reliable Contraception for Free

An exciting study from Washington University School of Medicine provided reliable birth control - intrauterine devices and hormone implants - for free to 9000 women, aged 14 - 45 for three years. The researchers tracked the effects on their abortion rate, and also on their teen pregnancy rate.

Nationally, women in this age range have about 19.6 abortions per 1000 - a huge number.

The women in this study: 4.4 to 7.5 abortions per 1000.  That is a huge improvement.

Moreover, teen girls (15 - 19) have a staggering 34.4 births per 1000 every year.

The girls in this study: 6.3 per 1000 annually.

Moreover, IUDs and hormone implants such as Norplant are cheaper than birth control pills.  They are also more reliable, since many women, especially the poorer and younger ones, don't usually take the pill every day - a problem that is solved by implanted methods. 

The implants, though, have a higher up-front cost, which tends to put off those same younger and poorer women from using them.  This is why providing them free was a crucial element of this study.

As someone who would like to dramatically reduce the abortion and teen pregnancy rates, I find this study to be very good news.

Thrift Was a Greater Virtue When We Were a More Modest People

David Brooks gave an excellent lecture at Centre College last night on how our politics today reflects a change in our culture.

During World War II, he argued, we placed more value on modesty, self-control, and limiting our self-assertion.  The cultural revolution since then produced many good things, especially in overcoming the oppression and self-suppression of African-Americans and women.

But some things have been lost, which has contributed to the polarization and mistrust of the current moment.

This talk led me to make a connection that I had not seen before.  People who are personally modest are more likely to be thrifty.  If it seems wrong to spend lavishly on yourself, you are less likely to go into debt for things.  If you think that your present comfort and status are not more worthy than your children's and their children's, you are more likely to save.

Thrift is not only a good personal virtue and family virtue. Thrift is a humble virtue.

The Privileged Have a Greater Duty to Initiate Positive Reciprocity

Jonathan Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis, says that reciprocity is the currency of society. Giving and getting help bind our group together. Some of this reciprocity comes in direct tit-for-tat,  contract-like exchanges.  More comes from longer term gift exchanges - I give a gift to you or the group now, you give a gift to me or the group later. 

Economists and others who emphasize self-interested choices as the measure of rational action note that it is hard to explain why anyone would initiate a cycle of reciprocal trust and gift giving - even though all can see the benefits of being in such a social group.

As part of our "Happy Society" class, I assigned students to perform random acts of kindness for other people each day for a time, recording and reflecting on the results.  All students found the assignment interesting and nearly all reported that it increased their happiness (as happiness research predicts).

I have been thinking about a hidden element of this assignment: it was easy for my students, and me, to initiate a beneficial cycle of gift giving because we are privileged relative to nearly everyone else we interact with. 

This leads me to a general insight: the privileged risk less by giving the gift of trust and service.  Therefore, it is more incumbent on the privileged to take that risk and start the virtuous cycle of reciprocity.

Which Candidate Do Small Business Owners Think Would Be Better?

What do actual job creators (not just rich people) think about the presidential candidates?

George Washington University and Thumbtack.com survey small business owners and entrepreneurs, who create 2/3rds of new jobs in the average year.  They were asked which candidate is most supportive of small business.  The results:


39% President Obama
31% Governor Romney
28% Not sure

This result is particularly interesting, since small business owners have traditionally been one of the most conservative and Republican constituencies.

Moving Out of a Poor Neighborhood Makes You Happier Like a $13,000 Raise

In the 1990s a major experiment was done to improve the lives of some of the poorest city people.  They were given subsidies to move out of the slums of concentrated poverty into neighborhoods that were a little better off and better mixed economically.  The policy makers hoped that the people who moved would get more education and better jobs.

They didn't.

What they did get, though, was much happier.  Moving their families to safer, less stressful neighborhoods increased their happiness the equivalent of a $13,000 raise.

A parallel experiment that moved poor non-white people into equally poor white neighborhoods had no such positive effect.

This report does not tell what happened to the children of these relocated families.  My guess is that they grew up safer, with better chances, and happier.

Baby Boom Among Women Ph.D.s

A decade ago, one third of women Ph.D.s past 40 were childless.

Today that fraction has dropped to a quarter.

(Thank you Pew Center for another nifty study.)

In my own little faculty at Centre College, six female colleagues have had babies in the past three years.  One was born yesterday.  Her birth announcement was the first I had seen with a full account of the classical derivation of her name, with footnotes and web links.

Why Religious Belongers Are Happier

I am teaching a Sunday School class on "Happiness and Faith."  Reviewing the research on this subject, I have come to this partial insight.

Happiness comes more from the process of doing something worthwhile with other people we care about than it does from any specific outcome of that process.  This is a common finding of happiness research.

Religious people are, on the whole, happier, than non-religious people.  This is also a standard finding of happiness research.

Happiness correlates more with religious belonging than with believing - that is, people who are active in religious communities report higher happiness, whereas people with strong religious beliefs who are not part of religious communities do not report higher levels of happiness.

I believe what religious institutions do that adds to happiness is to give structure and permanence to the process of doing good things together with other people.  One-off group projects are good, and an interest in civic betterment can produce such projects.  But for sheer persistence and long-term effect, nothing can compete with religious institutions for getting a group of people to work together for the common good week after week, year after year, decade after decade.

New alumni-driven college ranking rates Centre graduates “Happiest in the Nation”

Sometimes, the world writes my blog for me.

I am a Centre College professor, teaching and writing about happiness.

This story is the lead on the Centre College website. 

The story is a based on a new form of ranking from The Alumni Factor, which uses, as the name suggests, on surveys of alumni.

Rubin's Happiness Project Enacts Aristotle's Conclusion

In my "Happy Society" class we started with Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, as most studies of happiness do.  Aristotle says happiness is the highest end of life, the only end that is not a means to some other end.  And happiness is a thing we do more than a condition we have. Happiness is an action of the soul, in accordance with virtue.

In other words, happiness is a project.

Which is why the second book we studied is Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. Rubin read the wisdom and empirical literature of happiness and tried to put it into practice over the course of a year.  She, too, started with Aristotle.  She was not overtly implementing Aristotle, but the similarity in conclusions is striking.

The puzzling thing for many about Aristotle's argument is that he spend 9/10ths of the book talking about happiness coming from practical virtues, and then in the final chapter says that true happiness comes from contemplation.

Rubin, too, spends nearly all of her project on things that she did to increase her happiness - but the final chapters are about mindfulness, attitude, and reflection.  And what she concludes is that what most increased her happiness was not what she did, but what she stopped doing - namely, thinking and saying criticisms of herself and others. A cheerful and contented attitude did more to make her happy than any particular thing she did, even things she did with her children and husband, the loves of her life.

That is, the greatest fruit of Rubin's happiness project came from contemplation of the attempt to act virtuously, more than from the virtuous acts themselves.  The virtuous acts were still virtuous, and worth turning into habits, and also happy-making. And I believe that Rubin could not have fruitfully contemplated the attempt to become happy by acting in accordance with virtue if she had not, in fact, wholeheartedly done all that virtuous acting.

But the greatest happiness comes from the contemplation of the action of the soul in accordance with virtue.

Do Old Fathers and Defeated Fathers Produce Biological Problems in Their Offspring?

Judith Shulevitz has a fascinating roundup of several bad biological effects in kids that are correlated with traumas or sheer age in their fathers.

Children of traumatized fathers (shown more clearly in mice than humans) are more likely to be timid.  Stranger still, so are their grandchildren.

Children of older fathers are more likely to be autistic or schizophrenic. The increasing number of older fathers may explain the otherwise puzzling rise in autistic children.

This research is just beginning, especially on the human side.  But it is fascinating, and promises to provide some balance to the large body of evidence that older mothers risk biologically damaged children.

The Last Tea Party Election

David Brooks laments that

The country that exists is not on the right track. It has a completely dysfunctional political system. What was there in this speech [of Obama's at the Democratic Convention] that will make us think the next few years will be any different? America will only be governable again if there is a leader who breaks the mold and reframes the debate. Romney is unlikely to do that, and Obama’s speech didn’t offer much either.

I am more optimistic than David Brooks that our political system will soon recover some balance.

There are many legitimate interests in a complex society, some of which are in conflict. Working out these conflicts requires compromise.  These compromises will, of necessity, not please most people in every detail.  But most people can see that compromise is necessary. Politics requires the ability to compromise. If you are not willing to compromise, if you see compromise as weakness or treason, then you should not get involved in politics.

The main reason our political system is so dysfunctional right now is the Tea Party movement. They reject compromise on principal.  They want contradictory things - smaller government for people they disapprove of, without any reduction of government for themselves. They attack their political enemies, and they attack their political allies - that is, normal Republican politicians - even harder if they don't toe the line.

The Tea Party is a Know-Nothing movement, of a kind that periodically appears in American politics. And the history of Know-Nothing movements convinces me that they are self-limiting.  They typically last about three electoral cycles.  2012 is the third Tea Party cycle. If the Democrats win, the Tea Party will start to get disheartened with politics - their normal attitude - and return to their previous grudging support of the establishment Republicans or political quietude. If the Republicans win, the Tea Party will turn on them even greater disillusionment for not being able to deliver big government for good people, no government for bad people, and all at no cost.

And when the Tea Party is gone, the regular politicians of both parties will be able to work with one another.  They will not completely end partisan politics and some mutual obstruction.  But the Party of NO will be able to become, once again, the party of Let's Make a Deal.  And the normal, fairly functional politics of American government can resume.

Republicans and Democrats on the Immigrant Story

Both the Republican and Democratic conventions have been full of immigrant stories, or "up-from-nothing" stories.

I have noticed, though, an important difference in what they emphasize.

The Republican versions emphasize how hard the immigrant (family, usually) worked to build up their business on their own. This is in keeping with the convention's theme, "We Built It."

The Democratic versions emphasize how hard the immigrant (family, usually) worked to succeed in this country, with the help of the public schools, college loans, GI Bill, small business loans, and now health insurance - not to mention the larger structure of honest government that did not take arbitrarily in the first place.  The "land of opportunity" has that opportunity because it is guaranteed by the people's institutions, and the entire infrastructure of opportunity to which we all contribute. This version is in keeping the less formal convention theme of equal opportunity "for all."

"You Didn't Build That" - On Your Own

The theme of the Republican National Convention is "We Built This."  This is a critique of an off-the-cuff remark the President Obama made:  "If you've got a business, you didn't build that." They have repeated the audio clip several times during the convention.

President Obama's phrasing is unfortunate.  If he had completed the thought - "If you've got a business, you didn't build that on your own" - this whole kerfuffle would never have arisen.  The rest of the president's statement makes clear his intent.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

 I believe this is obviously true.

In watching the convention, it is clear that both sides perceive the world differently.  One side sees the achievements of your life as almost entirely your own work.  The other side sees the mountain of work done by other people - including other people working through the government, but also much, much more - that makes my achievement possible.  The president gave a few examples, which could be multiplied almost infinitely.  And if you believe, as I and most Americans do, that God created the entire universe and still actively superintends it, then the realm of "I built this on my own" shrinks to a tiny fraction of my achievements, indeed.

The major insight that sociology brings to this problem is that privilege creates a whole ladder of unearned benefits that help us "build it."  And the greatest privilege is not realizing that you are privileged.  If you are, for example, a white man in America, from a rich, powerful family, who went to a leading prep school and the fanciest graduate school, you have a huge leg up - even if you then use that privilege to build up a successful business.

Hard work and responsibility are good things which we should honor and assist. But few indeed build anything, no matter how smart and hardworking they are, by themselves.

Merit and Privilege Among our Presidents and Candidates

George W. Bush, Andover '64, was a prep school slacker.
He is the heir to every privilege this country has to offer.
As a result, he does not admit when he is wrong.
He stuck with his decisions, even when they led to growing disaster.

Mitt Romney, Cranbrook '65, was a prep school bully.
He is the heir to just about every privilege this country has to offer, save his religion.
As a result, he does not admit when he is wrong.
He sticks with his decisions, even when they lead to growing pain for others.

Bill Clinton was the child of poverty and family disaster.
He made his way by intellectual merit and hard work through the best meritocratic institutions this country has to offer.
As a result, he readily admits when he is wrong, sometimes very embarrassingly.
He tried to reach out to those who differ from him and to compromise with them for the larger good.

Barack Obama, Punahou '79, was the child of family disorder and ethnic-identity confusion, but also of a supportive extended family.
He made his way by intellectual merit and, eventually, hard work, through the best meritocratic institutions this country has to offer.
As a result, he does not readily admit he is wrong.
He does try to reach out to those who differ from him and compromise with them for the larger good.

Capon Springs - the Pivot of My Year

My family has reunited at Capon Springs and Farms in the West Virginia mountains since the 1960s. We do this the same week in late August.  Many other families have come for years during that same week. The kids I grew up with now bring their kids.

For an academic, the end of August is the end of the year; September is when the year really begins.

Thus, for me, this week of vacation in the mountains, and in the cold, spring-fed pool, is the pivot of my whole annual cycle.

See you in the new year.

Happiness in the High-Trust Society

(Today we conclude our annual Theory Camp.  I apologize for a long entry, but I wanted to pull together my thoughts on both books, and on how they can help us think about the happy society.)

Francis Fukuyama argues in Trust that high-trust societies are generally richer than low-trust societies. This is because trust reduces transaction costs.  I think this is true.  Moreover, I think that high-trust societies are happier societies.  This is not only because they are richer, but because trust itself is a happy-making public good.

Adam Seligman, in The Problem of Trust, argues that Fukuyama does not really mean “trust,” but rather “confidence.”  Trust, he contends, is what an individual can extend to another individual on insufficient evidence.  By contrast, in a well-functioning social system we can have sufficient evidence to be confident that it will function well in our case, too.

I can accept revising Fukuyama to say that high-confidence societies are richer and happier.  At least, I can accept saying that this is a viable alternative expression. As a practical matter, I think Fukuyama is right that we should still refer to “high-trust” societies.  But Seligman’s main point – social trust rests on confidence in social systems – is correct and powerful.

There remains, though, the question of whether Fukuyama’s society needs trust in the sense that Seligman means.  Seligman believes that there is a realm beyond the limits of social structures, beyond where we can have confidence or even where we can make educated guesses about people based on familiarity. Here agentic individuals, in the full measure of their freedom, may meet other agentic individuals.  Neither have enough structures or cultural clues to be confident.  Here, the individual must make a leap of faith to trust, or a protective calculation to mistrust.

Is Seligman right?  My gut reaction is “no.”  I think human beings are so deeply cultured that we will read any presentation of self as providing some familiar clues about how the other will act. We could be wrong, of course, in reading those supposed clues. But we could be just as wrong in more familiar situations (such as Seligman’s man on the subway who looks like he played stickball). But I think it takes an ideological commitment to the complete otherness of the other to read another person as being completely unfamiliar.  The main ideological commitment to the complete otherness of the other that I can think of is racism, but there could be more.

Seligman defines trust as a rare event occurring at the limits of social structure.  And he argues that the differentiation of the self has gone so far today that our remaining “selves” are too removed from social roles to be true selves in any socially meaningful way.  Therefore, civilization will collapse and we all die.  Or something like that.  He is a little vague about actual consequences.

If, however, there are not really many cases of people beyond institutional confidence and social familiarity, then Seligman’s project may not apply to reality.  And if there are not really many cases of people so removed from their abundance of social roles that they have no true selves, then Seligman’s worry may not apply to reality, either.

Fukuyama, on the other hand, is clearly on to something real when he says that high-trust societies yield a valuable economic benefit from their institutions of trust, compared to low-trust societies.

In thinking about what all this has to do with the happy society, therefore, I think Fukuyama has the more fruitful empirical approach.  However, I do find one part of Seligman’s argument to be helpful for the happy society.  If what Fukuyama calls trust is best thought of as confidence in the social system, then I see a line of action we can take to make society happier: promote confidence in the social system.  Or more exactly, show the ways in which many social systems (the sub-systems of society as a whole) are working well and getting better. Show that confidence in social systems is well-placed.  Show, further, that developing the habit of confiding in social systems promotes the better functioning of those systems, and encourages others to be more confident, as well. 

One finding of happiness research is that happy people tend to see bad events as temporary and unusual, and good events as permanent and common.  Unhappy people tend to see the same events in the opposite way.  Everyone has some bad experiences with social systems.  However, happy people are likely to remain confident in the basic good order of the system, and attribute that particular bad experience to temporary, non-systemic qualities. Unhappy people, by contrast, are likely to blame the whole system any time they have a bad experience.

If most people are confident in their social systems, the society will be happier; if the society is happier, most people will be confident in their social systems. 

This suggests two lines of action to make society happier.  First, fix any actual problems in social systems.  Second, persuade the persuadable to re-interpret their bad experiences, or (more likely) what they have heard about other people’s bad experiences. Some people are, of course, determined to be unhappy. This will be true in the happiest society.  But there is a middle group who can be moved, by example, emotion, and reason, to read the social systems in a positive, confidence-building way.

To persuade people that the bad experiences they have had, or, more likely, just heard about, are unusual, it may be helpful to show that “the news is a freak show.”  That is, the news is designed to present the unusual, and has a bias toward the unusually bad rather than the unusually good.  This is not a flaw in the news.  The unusually bad can be fixed.  We know this is true, in the main, because the bad thing is unusual. The usual practice is better.  So if we can fix or prevent this deviant case, the usual working of the system is good. In any case, even if the bad case can’t be fixed, it is helpful to remember that the case is presented on the news because it is unusual.

Yet many people – most people, I expect – treat the news as a picture of what is normal and usual, because that is all they normally hear and see about that kind of social system. This is not a flaw in the news.  This is a flaw in the audience for news. The main audience for news falls victim to bad stereotyping.  The cure is not to do away with stereotyping – in this case, doing away with the news.  The cure is to teach the audience the difference between the rule, which is not reported, and the exception, which is.  This is why sophisticated people usually have a deeper grasp of what is going on. Not only do they know the latest news, they also know the larger context of the normal that does not make the news.

So, we can promote the happy society by teaching people that they have good reason to be confident in the social system.

Seligman's "Trust" is Only in the Social Gaps

(Continuing the discussion of Adam Seligman's The Problem of Trust from our annual Theory Camp.)

Seligman's most distinctive idea is that trust is rarely needed.  Most of the theorists he is arguing with, especially Francis Fukuyama and Anthony Giddens, treat trust as a common and necessary feature of modern societies.  They think that modern people have to trust that millions of faceless strangers have done their jobs correctly in making our food, building our buildings, driving cars in the opposite lane, and so forth.  But Seligman says that that should not be called trust in other people, but confidence in the social system.

Trust, Seligman thinks, is needed when we confront other people beyond any reliable role in the social system, and beyond any signs of familiarity that they give off that they are people we can predict. Trust in other people is like the faith that people had in God in premodern times before, as he claims, we all became atheists.

Having defined trust as beyond social roles and beyond experienced familiarity, he then draws his grim conclusions.  Our roles are becoming so differentiated that we can't connect any of them to a real self - neither in ourselves nor in others. The globalized world brings us into contact with so many people with different experiences than our own that we cannot assume familiarity. We are forced to trust, or led to mistrust, in more and more encounters.  We are in danger, he thinks, of "re-enchanting" the world.  But the new world would not be enchanted by God, but something "more brutal and more Hobbesian."

[I disagree with Seligman's conclusion, a matter I will take up in the next post.]

Trust in Civil Society vs. Civic Virtue

In Theory Camp this year we are working through books on trust.  This week we are considering Adam Seligman's The Problem of Trust.

Seligman contrasts the "civil society" version of how citizenship works with the "civic virtue" approach. The former is more congenial to Americans and other English-speaking theorists, while the latter is found more among continental European thinkers.

The civil society approach, since Adam Smith, has seen society as an association of individuals pursuing different ends, within a social order that has enough even-handed institutions to help them live together fairly and pursue their ends without stepping on each other too much.  Tocqueville's great insight was that these free individuals realize that their self interest can be best served if they create civic associations to address many problems of social order.  These associations work for the common good.  Seligman sees that these associations working for the common good engender trust.  I see that, beyond trust, they contribute to the happy society.

The civic virtue approach sees the whole society as having an end toward which it is working, not just the ends of the many different individuals in it.  This is an appealing, Durkheimian vision of a society unified in one collective conscience and one collective consciousness. In the tiny hunting and gathering bands that Durkheim used as his examples of the elementary forms of social life, this degree of unity seems possible.

In modern societies, though, which are huge and highly differentiated, the idea that there is one collective conscience and consciousness is harder to see.  Durkheim offered an ingenious solution, through the collective cult of the sacred individual.  Seligman, though, doesn't think it can really happen. He argues that we cannot know that we share a social conscience with others, nor even, have confidence that our shared social institutions make others predictable.  There, and there only, in the place beyond the limits of the collective sacred or the social institution, is the realm where trust is needed.