National Exceptionalism is True of Every Nation, and Dangerous

This is taken from CNN's account of today's minor dustup over national exceptionalism:

It was a reference to President Vladimir Putin's address Tuesday night, in which he said that while Russia can't be a global cop, it ought to act when in certain situations.

"That's what makes us exceptional," Putin said. "With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth."

Obama's answer to that?

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation," he wrote.

He concluded with the line, "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."

This seems to me to be true and not really that controversial. As a sociologist I have to object to equating God creating all individuals equal with all nations being equal. Likewise, I object to conflating nations with the governments of those nations.

The main point, though, holds.  All nations are exceptional in some way.  But when a government thinks that its policies are justified because our nation is better than other nations, that is dangerous.  It is dangerous for everyone, most especially for the nation imagining that it is above the laws that affect other nations. 

The United States as a state, and the American people as a nation, have some distinctive virtues.  I celebrate and promote them often. But we also have the same kind of self-serving temptations that all states do to see our interests as justifying acting unilaterally, and claiming it is for the common good.

Now, as you have probably realized, I did amend CNN's account of the kerfuffle slightly: I swapped "Putin" and "Obama," and substituted "Russia" for "America."  But the same principle holds.  And it would hold if any other leader were swapped for "Putin" and any other country swapped for "Russia."

Better-off People Seem to Be Having More Children

This is the conclusion of a private report from BCA Research, described in The Economist.

The birth dearth that was threatening to crash the populations of developed nations in a generation or two seems to be reversing. And it is reversing in exactly the cohorts one would most hope it would: educated, married couples who have the structure and resources most conducive to raising children.

A generation ago, the more educated a woman was, the fewer children she was likely to have.  Now, it appears, the opposite is true for younger cohorts.

This is good news, indeed.

The Russians Get the Syrians to Destroy Chemical Weapons? Win, Win, Win

The great news coming out the Syrian crisis would be a win for everyone. 

A win for the Syrian people, first and foremost, who would no longer be gassed by their government.

A win for the United States and its allies in not having to bomb the Syrian weapon capacity.

A win for the Russians in showing that they have the power to help, and actually helping.

It is probably also a win, if only temporary, for the Syrian the dictatorship, in showing that they are slightly less awful than they could possibly be.

This is not a done deal, of course, but it certainly would be happy news if it can be brought home.

Good News From the New Iranian Leadership

My friend Ron Stockton posted these useful facts:

President Rohani, the new President of Iran, sent Rosh Hashana greetings to all Jews "but especially to Iranian Jews." The Foreign Minister of Iran sent his own greetings. The daughter of Nancy Pelosi, a filmmaker who knows the foreign minister, sent a message asking what this message meant given that Iran had denied the Holocaust. The Foreign Minister, who studied and lived in the US, responded that "Iran never denied the Holocaust. One man denied the Holocaust and he is gone. Happy Holidays."

Obama Takes a Centrist Approach to Syria

I think the president is following the right, careful path in Syria.

He is right that the whole international community can't let chemical weapons be used with impunity. Since the U.S. is the leading power in the international community, it falls to us to lead - and, if necessary, carry out - the response.

At the same time, he is right that the whole international system is endangered if countries respond to bad regimes, like Syria, by simply overthrowing them.  That is a cure worse than the disease.

Therefore, a measured response, targeted as far as possible at destroying the specific Syrian military units that carried out the poison gas attacks, is a good centrist path.

Moreover, the U.S. government works better when the president and Congress agree on military action. It has become easier and easier for presidents to make war and bypass Congress.  This is a dangerous practice.  Congressional leaders constantly push to be consulted and to debate and vote on military action.  Sometimes there is no time.  Syria is not one of those cases.

President Obama is right to propose a clear, limited military action that will not (in itself) overthrow the Syrian dictator, and he is right to ask Congress to vote to support this plan or explain why not.

One good outcome of this debate is that so many Republican leaders in Congress have insisted that the president must consult with them before making war.  I hope they will remember this the next time a Republican president wants to make war.

The bigger issue, though, is that I think there are always middle positions and calibrated steps that we can take in policy.  Granted, once an all-out war begins and fear takes over, it is hard to stick to limits.  But we have not had an all-out war in decades, and are not likely to soon.  The Syrian case is the right place for a measured, transparent, policy-driven response.

How to End Voter Suppression: Base Congressional Representation on the Number of Registered Voters

I am disheartened by the repeated efforts to make it harder to vote, mostly for poor people.

I have an idea to create an incentive the other way - to get the parties to be interested in expanding the number of voters:

Base congressional representation on the number of registered voters, not on the sheer number of people, in a district.

Chinese-Slavic Match-Making?

When high-achieving women have a hard time finding suitable husbands in Western societies, where there are roughly equal sex ratios, that is bad.  But when high-achieving women have a hard time finding husbands in China, which has way more men than women, that is terrible. 

Maybe China should import Eastern European men, who also greatly outnumber women in several countries.  The men might be glad to find high-achieving wives and to move to a more vibrant economy, and the Chinese women might be glad to have husbands who don't come with the baggage of oppressive mothers-in-law.

'Stay-at-Home Moms' Who Work Full Time

An interesting tidbit from an American Sociological Association meeting session:

In a study of women's work/family arrangements, a number of women described themselves as 'stay-at-home moms' even though they worked 30 or 40 hours per week.  When pressed, they said that they thought of themselves as stay-at-home moms if they were there when their children were awake.

Naturally, these women did not get much sleep themselves.

The Headline 'Smarter Women Have Fewer Children' is an Excellent Illustration of Why Correlation is Not Causation

A Japanese researcher who likes to provoke controversy, Satoshi Kanazawa, has proclaimed that women with high IQs have few or no children.  This leads him to proclaim in his book The Intelligence Paradox that "the urge to have kids among women drops by 25 percent with every extra 15 IQ points above a certain rate."

The correlation is likely true.  The causation, though, is not likely to be that high IQ leads women to want fewer children, and certainly not that the highest IQ women want no children.

Rather, high IQ women have many choices in life, and are much more likely to have long years of education and highly demanding jobs than lower IQ women do.  Therefore, the whole population of high IQ women is likely to have fewer children than women with average or low IQs.  The correlation, though, is not the cause.

Conservative 'Righteous Minds' Conserve Sanctity the Most

Jonathan Haidt gives three pictures of the moral matrices of liberals, libertarians, and social conservatives at the end of Righteous Minds. Each matrix is attached by lines of varying thickness to six moral spectra – care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.

In the liberal picture, care/harm is twice as thick as liberty/oppression, which is twice as thick as fairness/cheating. The other three are minimal.

In the libertarian picture, liberty/oppression if four times as thick as fairness/cheating; the other four are minimal.

In the social conservative picture, all six lines are of equal thickness.

I think he is wrong that social conservatives place equal value on all six moral foundations.   

Conservatives get the greatest emotional reward from conserving. The things most worth conserving, most worth defending from degradation, are sacred things. Authority is authoritative because it defends – and defines – what is sacred. Institutionalized authority that defends the sacred creates institutions worth being loyal to.

Haidt's larger picture would be more symmetrical if liberals emphasized Care/Harm the most, and conservatives emphasized Sanctity/Degradation the most.  Symmetry is not a necessary feature of his theory, of course.  Indeed, one of his main points is that conservatives understand liberals more than the reverse because conservatives draw from all six moral foundations, whereas liberals only draw from three.

Nonetheless, I think envisioning the social conservative position as heavier on conserving sanctity, just as the liberal position is heavier on preventing harm, is closer to the truth than the picture Haidt draws in the book.

Robert E. Lee Had Good Morals But Bad Ethics

I subscribe to the view that "morals" applies to individuals and "ethics" applies to social structures.  I learned this distinction in graduate school from Louis Dupré, who described it as the Hegelian view.  I know other people distinguish morals and ethics differently, but this distinction makes the most sense to me.

It is often hard in teaching sociology to individualistic Americans to give a clear example of the distinction between a whole bunch of individuals and a social structure.  A good society, they figure, is just the sum of the actions of a bunch of good individuals.  But social structures, I try to show, have values embedded in them that serve the institution's ends, regardless of the morals of the individuals acting within them.

Most Americans who study Robert E. Lee find him to be an admirably honorable man.  I do, too.  And nearly all Americans now see slavery as a great evil.

Yet Lee fought for slavery. 

Without a distinction between individual morals and structural ethics, most Americans are left morally dumbfounded, caught between their two opposing judgments.

"Robert E. Lee had good individual morals but served a bad ethical structure" is a teachable case that I believe most of my students will find helpful.

Bureaucracies Are the Heaviest Superorganisms of the Social World

 
Jonathan Haidt argues in The Righteous Mind that creatures that can create 'superorganisms' come to dominate their field.  

There are billions of insects, and thousands of species of insects, but the social insects comprise the majority of all insects by weight.

There are billions of mammals, and hundreds of species of mammals, but human beings, plus the animals they cultivate, comprise the majority of all mammals by weight.

I think we can make a parallel statement about bureaucracies.  There are, at least, hundreds of millions of organizations, but I think it safe to say that bureaucracies - corporate and government, especially - comprise a majority of all organizations by weight. And wealth.  And power. 

I draw another conclusion from this comparison - the superorganisms may be the dominant form in their field, but they are far from the only one.  Superorganisms are also brittle, vulnerable to attack and infection precisely because they are so integrated and coordinated. 

The foundational organizational form of human life is the family.  Any given family is vulnerable to all sorts of threats, and all families (if not lineages) succumb eventually to time.  But the family form is so adaptable that it has held its own in every social environment that humans have created.  Including our current environment that is dominated by bureaucracies. 

We Only See the World as Black-and-White When We Are Afraid.

When people are afraid, they tend to see their problems in black-and-white terms.  They tend to block out contrasting information, and want a muscular solution.  These are the characteristics that lead to authoritarianism, which we are all prone to sometimes.

I often hear laments about the polarization and partisanship that comes from people - other people - being closed-minded, narrow-minded, or, again, seeing things only in black and white. 

As I review the psychological studies I know and the anecdotes I can think of, I have a hunch:  we only see the world in black-and-white terms when we are fearful.  When we are reasoning calmly, everyone is able to see positions in the middle.

The Rational Rider Can't Control the Emotional Elephant If They Have No Internal Conversation

Our emotions are like an elephant, and our reason is like an elephant rider.  Thus does Jonathan Haidt give a sense of the proportions between our emotional judgments and our reason's ability to sway them.  Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, says that our emotional systems are very old and refined, whereas our reason is a relatively new addition.  Reason has to bring something that the emotional elephant can use.

What reason gives us is the ability to imagine alternative futures.  Our emotional cognitions lead us to want to feel a certain way, but there might be several paths to that feeling.  On a good day, the rational rider can sway the elephant to choose one path over another by bringing out the advantages of one imagined future over another.

We are reading Haidt in Theory Camp now.  I have also been reading critical realist social theory this summer, especially the work of Margaret Archer.  Archer makes the case that our internal conversation works in a similar way.  The 'I' that I am now is in conversation with the 'You' that I want to be in the future.  Archer understands our emotions to be part of the future self that we wish to have.

Archer, like most intellectuals, imagines this conversation as a rational discourse.  She is unusual among rationalist intellectuals in giving even this much weight to emotions.

Haidt, unlike most intellectuals, has worked his way to the scientific conclusion that our internal conversation is primarily an emotional intuition rather than a rational discourse. He thinks intellectuals are prone to a rationalist delusion that all people are primarily rational.

Archer, in her recent works, has attempted to conduct a small empirical study of how different people conduct their inner conversations.  The results seem to me to show that the educated and privileged classes have more elaborate internal conversations.  Indeed, the people with the most disrupted lives sometimes had no inner life at all.

So what do we get when we put Haidt and Archer together?

We all make instantaneous moral judgments all the time, which our 'elephants' are inclined to follow. The people who have cultivated reason the most have the greatest chance of swaying the elephant toward one imagined future over another.   And the people who have cultivated reason the least will be guided by their first emotional reactions. They may not have much internal conversation at all.

Intellectuals imagine that everyone has internal conversations that rationally weigh alternative futures.  But really, only intellectuals do that, and even they (we) are not nearly as rational as we like to think.

Fathers of Daughters Are More Generous

Men become more generous to serve women.  This is one of the best things about the ingenious complementarity of our species.

This new finding that fathers of daughters are more generous - including paying their employees more and giving more money away - is a wonderful elaboration of that theme.

I know that my daughters have helped me to expect more giving of myself.

We Need Egyptian Democracy, Warts and All.

The Egyptian military overthrew the government, as they are prone to do. The difference this time is that they overthrew the first and only elected government that Egypt has ever had.  And that makes all the difference.

U.S. law requires us to stop giving aid to countries if the government is overthrown by a military coup.  The Obama administration has been dancing around describing what the Egyptian military did as a 'coup' to avoid having to face this consequence.  The president is afraid that we will lose crucial leverage with the government there is we stop sending them a billion dollars a year.  And the president is right to worry - keeping Egypt as a peaceful neighbor to Israel is critical to our interests and the larger interests of peace.

I also believe the sketchy reports that the Saudi government colluded with the Egyptian military. The Saudi monarchy has benefited, in a perverse way, from the seeming antipathy between Islamist government and democracy.  If the Arab Spring succeeds in creating an elected Islamist government, then the Saudi absolute rulers would reasonably fear that the Arabs in Arabia would demand the chance to do the same.

Nonetheless, democracy serves peace and order better than even useful dictatorships do.  That means America's real interests are in promoting elected governments, even if the parties elected are not as compliant as the dictators they replaced.

The United States should oppose the coup and support the restoration of democracy in Egypt, warts and all.

Addressing the Bad

I have been holding back from blogging for the last few weeks.  I realize that I was trying to say only positive things, and some of the world's news has been disheartening.

I think, though, that I have been thinking about this the wrong way.  Addressing the bad things is just as much part of building up the world as promoting the good.

Besides, It's My Blog. So I should say what I am thinking.

Happy Society Teaching at Centre

The Centre College website has a nice story about the teaching and studying we have been doing about the happy society.

The Coup Against Egyptian Democracy is Bad for the World, No Matter How Unpopular President Moursi Was

The military 'suspension' of Egypt's one and only elected government is a bad thing.  Even if the elected president is unpopular and doing some things that are scary for religious minorities, he should not be ousted by mobs or generals. 

The Arab Spring is still one of the most promising developments in the world.  The Arab Muslim countries were the last holdouts against even attempting to create democratic societies. If there are ever to be stable, peaceful relations in the Middle East, the Arab nations have to establish real democracies.  And nowhere is this more important than in Egypt.

Good News on the Fertility Front: Fertility Drops Gradually Through Your 30s, Not Sharply After Your 20s

Jean Twenge has a very helpful article in The Atlantic.  She counteracts the widespread view, made popular by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, that women's fertility drops significantly in their early 30s.  The good news is that better studies based on more modern populations find that most women trying to have children through their 30s will be able to conceive without assistance.

I know that Hewlett's view is widespread because I have been one of those spreading it.  Since her Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children came out in 2002 I have been teaching her report that women's fertility begins to decline significantly in their late 20s.  This tends to produce consternation among young women, as it did Twenge who read Hewlett's report when Twenge was herself 30 and newly divorced.

The new research is not a complete about-face.  It is true that women's fertility declines after their 20s.  The difference is that the decline is more gradual than the data Hewlett - an economist who relied on other people's studies for this part of the book - had reported.

I think there is another part of this story to consider, though.  Hewlett's book was not about all women.  She set out to study how the highest achieving women broke the glass ceiling.  To her surprise, what many of those women wanted to talk about, instead, was how they missed having as many children as they had wished to, and how a sizable fraction had had no children at all.  These high-achieving women did not decide not to have children, but rather found themselves in their 40s and beyond having made a "creeping non-choice" for no kids.

Twenge found that most women in their 30s, and many in their early 40s, can conceive normally. So why were Hewlett's women different?

No one has the data to answer that question right now.  Other research, though, suggests a possibility to me:  the population of women who make it to the top of competitive professions are more likely to include higher-than-average levels of testosterone.  And high-testosterone women may have more trouble conceiving at every stage of life.

It may be, therefore, that Hewlett was not so far off for the population she studied. The error may have been in assuming that all other populations of women would have the same fertility chances.

The Decline of Marriage Means We Should Build Up, Not Give Up

Philip Cohen notes the continuing marriage decline, and concludes that we should give up. Marriage, he thinks, will become irrelevant, even if it doesn't disappear.

I think this is exactly the wrong conclusion.

Marriage is coming back among the most educated, thoughtful, plan-ahead people.  There is every reason to believe that they will continue to reap the benefits that marriage has always bestowed.  In fact, as the non-marrying fraction of parents grows, the relative benefits of marriage will get even bigger.  And these benefits are not just to married families, but to society as a whole.  Especially to society as a whole.

I believe that more people will see the growing benefits of marriage, and head back to the institution.  The average person, I think, can see when one path benefits them more than another.  The most educated couples are leading the way.  But good social trends trickle down, just as bad ones sometimes do.

Emotions Are Judgments That We Make in Our Inner Conversation

Jonathan Haidt, in Righteous Minds, says that emotions are not just feelings but moral judgments. They move us to act.  Reason tries to guide our emotionally inspired actions.  Haidt thinks the right proportion between emotion and reason is like the proportion between an elephant and its rider.

Margaret Archer, in Being Human, says that emotions are part of an inner conversation between the self we are now (the 'I' in microsociological terms) and the self we want to be in the future (the 'You'). These emotions are also judgments. 

Archer's emotions include moral judgments drawn from social discourse, but also practical judgments drawn from our works, and natural judgments drawn from our biology.

I think both Haidt and Archer are on to something powerful.  The two theories can be reconciled.  I will try to pursue this fruitful idea.

Progressives are Not Contradictory in Supporting Big Government, Abortion Choice, and Same-Sex Marriage

Today's post is prompted by a comment made by David Williamson and George Yancey in There is No God, their study of American atheists.  It could, however, have come from many other standard accounts of what divides political progressives and conservatives.

In general, Williamson and Yancey note, progressives are for more government, and conservatives are for less.  Atheists, who are strongly committed to progressive politics, follow that pattern.  However, Williamson and Yancey note, the roles are reversed when it comes to abortion and same-sex marriage.  On those issues, they argue, the progressives are the ones who want government to stay out of these "personal" decisions, whereas the conservatives are the ones who want big, intrusive government.

I do not think there is a role reversal here.  The issue for progressives in abortion and same-sex marriage is not that the government has no business prohibiting either practice.  Rather, what progressives want is for the government to give ethical legitimacy to abortion and same-sex marriage by protecting the legal status of both actions.  Progressives do not argue that there should be no regulation of abortion and marriage, leaving these matters up to individual decision.  Rather, they argue for a right to abortion and to same-sex marriage, rights which the government must defend against the (very real) attacks by conservatives.

Pro-choice and marriage-equality positions do not contradict the usual pro-government position of progressives.  Progressives rely on the law to validate these actions.

The World's Ten Happiest Countries Are Notably Protestant

These are ten happiest countries, according to the OECD's Better Life Index:

• Australia
• Sweden
• Canada
• Norway
• Switzerland
• United States
• Denmark
• The Netherlands
• Iceland
• United Kingdom

My best guess at this remarkable correlation: doing meaningful work makes us happy.  The Protestant Work Ethic, even in its attenuated form in the "iron cage" of the modern world economy, still keeps us working and seeking the vocation in our work.

Liberal Fairness, Conservative Fairness, and What They Have to Do With Justice

Justice means getting what you deserve.

This is a traditional definition, which I believe is true.

Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, notes that "fairness" is a basic moral value, to which we have a strong emotional attachment.  However, Haidt found an interesting ideological difference in what fairness means.

To liberals, fairness means that you get an equal share.
To conservatives, fairness means that you get a share proportionate to what you put in.

However, neither view of fairness is based on getting the share you deserve. 

Knowing what you truly deserve is a very deep and hard question.  Ultimately, I think, only God can know that.  The best human approximation is how parents try to give their children what they should have, what would be most beneficial to their lives and development.  But, as all parents know, this approximation is uncertain, and we are prone to mess it up in practice.

So we use fairness as a rough proxy for justice.  But our different ideological views of what fairness entails has very difference consequences for the kinds of society we are trying to make.

Men Listen With Their Ears, Women Listen With Their Eyes

This was an aphorism that came to me after reading student papers on gender differences in communication. 

Women look at one another when they speak, men turn an ear toward the speaker. 

Men concentrate on the message; women, on the metamessage.

Discriminating Against Smart Cops - or Smart People in Any Job - is a Bad Idea for Society

Society benefits if we have smart people in all jobs.

The main point of The Bell Curve was not really about race.  Rather, Murray and Herrnstein were lamenting that the great IQ sorting machine was pouring our smartest people into a smaller and smaller number of occupations.  This is a loss to the rest of society.

Which is why I think it is such a bad idea for the New London, CT police department to reject a potential officer because he scored too high on an IQ test.  They argued that smart cops will get bored and leave, so it is not worth hiring and training them.

Police work, of all work, requires constant judgment calls about how to best use the great power of the state.  It requires more smarts than the average job.

Moreover, the leadership of the police department will eventually come from the new officers working their way up the chain of command.  No smart patrol officers now means no smart captains later.

Hate-Filled Religious Terrorists Think They Are the Good Guys

This is what a hate-filled religious terrorist looks like:

Barry West is a County Commissioner in Tennessee.  He posted this image on Facebook, which then went viral.  He was embarrassed enough to take it down, but not to take it back. He says he is “prejudiced against anyone who’s trying to tear down this country, Muslims, Mexicans, anybody.”

Objectively, he is threatening violence against people he defines as enemies of his way of life because they are of a different religion.  That is what "hate-filled religious terrorist" means.

What he thinks he is doing is defending the good against people who are objectively evil.  Which is exactly what the terrorists who attack our country think they are doing, too.

Worse, Mr. West is a government official threatening fellow Americans because of their religion. But he doesn't see that that is what he is doing, because he doesn't see Muslims as fellow Americans. Worse, he doesn't see armed threats by government officials as the worst kind of terrorism.

We will not understand what the terrorists who attack us are until we see that they think they are the good guys defending their way of life, just as we do.

I am not arguing that the 9/11 attackers or the Boston Marathon bombers were actually good guys.  They were actually hate-filled religious terrorists who did very evil things.  I am arguing, though, that when Americans make the same kinds of threats, they are becoming the thing they hate, while imagining they are doing the opposite.

Free Speech Protects NRA Shirts in School

I am as opposed to the National Rifle Association as anyone.  Nonetheless, I think it very wrong that an eighth grader in the Logan County, WV, middle school was suspended and taken away in handcuffs for wearing an NRA tee-shirt to school.

The First Amendment protects the others, including the Second.

Some Christian Homeschoolers Want Alternatives to Young Earth Creationism

Developers of Christian homeschooling material report that there is a growing market for material that either teaches a range of views about creation, or goes all the way to teach theistic evolution. 

I think this is an encouraging development in the culture war between homeschooling evangelical Christians and regular-schooling mainline Christians.

Most American Christians accept the "young earth" view that the universe was created by God pretty much as it is now within the last 10,000 years.  A sizable minority, though, believe the "theistic evolution" view that God created the universe a long time ago and has guided evolution since.  This is roughly the division between evangelical or traditionalist Christians, on the one hand, and mainliners, on the other. The number of Christians who believe in purely naturalistic evolution is vanishingly small (and hard to explain without contradiction).

I think the real issue for most young earth creationists is not how old the universe is, but that God made it.  For most educated biblical believers of all stripes, the shackles of the dogma that the universe is only 10,000 years old is an embarrassment, the kind that leads young people away from the faith altogether. The fact that there is a growing market for more open-minded creationist accounts shows that there is common ground to be developed across one of great divides among American Christians (which is to say, among most Americans).

And that common ground is a triumph for centrism.

There Are "Mommy Wars" But Not "Daddy Wars" Because Women Expect All Women to Be the Same More Than Men Expect All Men to Be the Same

This insight is informed by Deborah Tannen's work on how women talk to establish equality, whereas men talk to establish hierarchy.

I am also thinking of Catherine Hakim's contention that the distribution of women's preference across the spectrum from career-oriented to family-oriented is a bell curve, whereas men are bunched much more at the career end. 

Satisficing is to ADD as Maximizing is to Eating Disorders

I had this thought while talking to a student in my "Social Structure" class about men's and women's approach to problem solving.

Men are much more given to Attention Deficit Disorder.  I think that men are more likely to satisfice - to pick the first option that works, rather than trying to get perfect information about all options.

Women are much more given to eating disorders.  I think that women are more likely to maximize - to try for perfect information and perfect control.

So far, all I have is a good lumper's hunch.  But I think there is something deep here.

Wait To Marry - But Not Too Long

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has a very sensible main point in their new report, "Knot Yet."  Delaying marriage past the teens is a good thing.  When educated couples marry in their mid or late twenties, and then have children, they are pursuing the most successful family strategy.  The less educated, though, are now having kids before marriage, in a pattern that is sure to bring them grief as a class (even if it does not harm each couple.)

I did want to raise an issue with one point in their report, though. They write:

Women enjoy an annual income premium if they wait until 30 or later
to marry. For college-educated women in their midthirties, this premium
amounts to $18,152.

I do not dispute this economic fact.  But women who wait to marry until after 30, and then to have children after that, risk waiting too long to have children at all.

Waiting the marry and have children is excellent advice for teenagers. It become risky advice for tweny-somethings.

Two Contrasting Social Lubricants

A thought for your consideration:

In low-functioning family systems, alcohol is the social lubricant.

In high-functioning family systems, humor is the social lubricant.

Nativism and Multiculturalism Are Twin, and Unsuccessful, Attempts to Resist the Melting Pot

Nativism is a rear-guard reaction by declining sectors of the old elite.  It does not work.

Multiculturalism is a rear-guard action by declining sectors of assimilating minorities. It does not work, either.

The great American melting pot works relentlessly to turn the middle of American society into Americans.  Our culture is changed somewhat by each group it assimilates, but is more continuous than changed.

And this is a good thing.

A Rough Analogy Between Peacocks and Pickups

A pickup truck is a very impractical vehicle for a family.  And if you aren't hauling bales of hay or the like regularly, it is kind of impractical for any other purpose.  Yet pickup trucks are hugely popular, especially with young men. 

I think the main appeal of pickup trucks to most of their owners is as a symbolic display of masculinity.

Displays of masculinity should, I would think, need to appeal to women to be useful in mate selection.  So why would women find a man with a pickup truck attractive?

The sociobiological study of mate selection has wrestled with a signature puzzle: the peacock's tail.  The giant, bright tail on the peacock would seem a huge hazard to peacocks - attracting predators and slowing down the peacock's escape from predators. The ingenious answer to this puzzle that sociobiologists have come up with is the "handicap theory." The peahen, who tends to select the peacock with the biggest and brightest tail, may be thinking that if this peacock can survive despite the gigantic handicap on its butt, it must have tremendous genes.

I think the pickup truck bed is something like the peacock's tail.  The pickup driver's mate may reason (subconsciously) that if this guy can succeed in having enough resources to afford a vehicle, despite the huge handicap it imposes on having friends or family, then he must really have something on the ball.

Why Is the Tea Party So Mad About Their Taxes Helping Others?

What really incenses the Tea Party is the idea that their taxes help cheaters who do not really need the help.   

That anger is what leads to the (unjust) leap from knowing that there are some cheaters to believing that all of the 47% (or whatever the number might be) are cheaters.   

When I help cheaters, I do not reap a status benefit for kindness, but lose one as a sucker.

Happy AIDS News from Africa

That headline may be unexpected. 

New AIDS cases are down 25% in a decade in sub-Saharan Africa.

The better news:  the main actors seem to be local leaders, not outsiders, especially religious leaders of many different communions.

I Partially Agree With Rand Paul: Reduce Marijuana Sentences

I do not often agree with my Senator, Rand Paul, but I do commend his efforts to reduce the federal minimum penalties for marijuana use. 

He says using marijuana is a bad idea.  As we know, he speaks from experience.  I agree with him.

But he also thinks that marijuana use is not the sort of thing that should lead to a life-ruining arrest, either.  I also agree with him about that.

Sen. Paul does not want to legalize marijuana.  Here I do not agree with him. I believe marijuana, though foolish, is not worse than bourbon.  I think it should be fully legal, fully regulated, and fully taxed.

But I am very glad to see Sen. Paul helping to create common ground with Democrats for some progress in Congress.

Are the Rising Number of "No Religion" a Sign of the World Getting Better?

Those who answer "none" to survey questions asking "what religion do you consider yourself to be?" have been rising.  They are about 15% of all U.S. adults, and in the 20-something percentages for young adults.  In Europe and other developed countries, the percentages are higher.

The proportion of religious "nones" roughly correlates with how well-ordered a society is.  In that way, the growth of religious nones might be taken as a proxy of increasing social order.

I am not arguing that irreligion makes society better, or that religious nones are happier. They aren't.

On the contrary, I am a Presbyterian elder and a pretty traditional Calvinist.

Rather, people who say they have no religion often do not mean that they are atheists.  They haven't rejected God or a spirit-infused way of thinking about the world.  They just don't take part in an institution that requires them to think about God or a divine order.  And because none of their institutions require it, most of them just don't think about religion in their daily lives - until some survey comes along and asks.

I do think that a well-ordered society makes it easier to believe that we can make a decent society ourselves, without thinking much about God. 

Yet it is also the case the the people who live within religious institutions and find their work in the world to be meaningful because it accords with a divine order are more likely to do the very things that make a well-ordered society well ordered. They are more likely to be helpful, and to be happy because they are helpful.  They are more likely to think their lives are meaningful because they help make good order for everyone. 

Especially for young people who still believe that their well-ordered world just is, rather than being something that good people make.

Are Indian Gang Rapes the Fruit of Sex-Selection Abortion?

India has been killing off girls at high rates for a generation.  Sex-selection abortions have produced ratios of 120 boys to 100 girls born in some rural provinces. There are already millions of young men in India with no reasonable hope of marriage.

The world heard the horrible story of the gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi in 2012.  This month a Swiss woman was gang-raped in central India.  In each case the woman was with a man, who the gang beat and subdued before raping the woman in front of him.

Two cases does not make a social trend.  Still, these cases, in the larger context of masses of poor, unmarriageable men, suggests to me a story that makes sense.  Gang rape is extremely rare - almost all rapes, even stranger rapes, are by lone men who hide their deeds from everyone.  To get a whole gang of men in a condition to rape a woman together, and in front of one another, takes unusual circumstances.  And the circumstances of seeing a young woman having fun with a man seems to me the very circumstance that would madden a gang of permanent bachelors the most.

The killing off of girls, mostly by sex-selection abortion, is a great evil in the world.  China, India, Eastern Europe, and the Arab countries are the worst offenders.  I think they will reap the whirlwind.  A rising rate of gang rapes is one the forms of that whirlwind that I think likely.

What If: A Nigerian Pope?

When Karol Wojtila was chosen as Pope John Paul II, the political value was immediately apparent.  The Polish pope was an old hand at resisting communists, and was a strong voice in the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

With that in mind, I have been thinking about what might have been: a pope from sub-Saharan Africa, the front lines of the world-wide struggle between militant Islam and Christianity.  (NOTE: I am not saying there is a struggle between all of Islam and Christianity.) 

I have no objection to the newly chosen Argentine pope, and no brief for any particular African bishop.

I am glad that the cardinals did not go with a Curia insider, or indeed with any European.  And it certainly makes sense to finally pick someone from the most Catholic continent.  But, in a sense, a South American is a safe choice.  A Nigerian would have shifted the world power balance in one of the great cultural struggles of our time. At least a little.

Differential Life Expectancy of the Rich and Poor is Half Chosen, Half Structural

The Washington Post has an interesting article by Michael Fletcher on how raising the Social Security benefit age would affect poor people much more than rich people.  The catchiest fact:

the life expectancy of male workers retiring at 65 had risen six years in the top half of the income distribution but only 1.3 years in the bottom half over the previous three decades.

However, deep in the article they also note that the behavior of the poor and the rich among the old are quite different.  Comparing a poor Florida county with an adjacent rich one (Putnam vs. St. Johns), Fletcher notes:

Adults also smoke at nearly double the rate they do in St. Johns, and they are far more likely to be obese and far less likely to be physically active.

He quotes doctors who say that the difference in life expectancy shows differences in health insurance and health care availability. Yet it is clear that a big part of the difference is due to self-chosen behavior, by both the rich and poor populations.

The centrist position here is that both factors are relevant. 

But I think at this point we can say that the many bad effects of smoking, at least, are the smokers' own dumb fault, and not primarily to be addressed by health insurance and having more doctors.  And in coming years I think we will reach the same conclusion about most causes of obesity and lack of exercise.

The Routinization of Charisma of the Pope

Max Weber described the "routinization of charisma," the process by which the personal authority of a leader is transformed into the institutional authority of the leader's office.  This is a predictable part of the rationalization of any social institution.

Pope Benedict XVI, by resigning rather than dying in office, has taken a crucial step in routinizing the charisma of the Pope into the Papacy.

I expect his successors will follow suit more often than not.

The Good, the Bad, and the Tolerated in Family Forms

I am reading a pretty good new book, What is Parenthood?, edited by Linda McClain and Daniel Cere.  It consists of paired essays arguing what they call an "integrative" versus a "diversity" model of family life.  The editors are law professors, so the central concern is with family law, but a broad range of disciplines are engaged.

This argument is a version of conservative vs. liberal, with some useful nuance in defining the terms.  Indeed, while Cere is more conservative than McClain, both claim to be moderate versions in the diversity spectrum.

The core of the integrative model is that a married couple raising their own children is the best model of family life for society as a whole.  The diversity model argues that other family arrangements can also be good for society.  The debate over same-sex marriage is a central case in this debate, but not the only one.

In her introductory essay, McClain summarizes the result of a Pew survey on what most Americans feel about the current diversity of family forms.  She says about a third oppose accepting all family forms, a third support accepting all family forms, and a third are tolerant but skeptical.

I am in that last group.  I do think that a married couple raising their own children is the best model for society.  But I also think that many children do not have that option, so in those cases the closest approximation we can manage is a good thing for society to accept and promote. Likewise, I think marriage is better for people who don't want to be alone - which is nearly everyone - so society does well to accept several kinds of marriage.

However, in the Gruntled Center Manifesto that sits on the upper left column of every post on this blog, I argue that a fundamental principle of centrism is the three-part distinction between the Good, the Bad, and the Tolerated. I think the Pew survey, noted above, show exactly the distinction I am talking about.  Extremists try to force us to believe that there are only two choices - theirs, or their enemy's.  But centrists see that most of life offers us some choices that are good, and a separate category of "good enough."

The hard part of maintaining a principled centrism is holding on to the difference between good and good enough, in the face of extremist pressures.

The Hard Passage of the Islamic Reformation

The Reformation was a necessary reform in Christianity.  One of its fruits, ultimately, was democracy in the state.  Along the way the English-speaking church and state suffered through the excesses of a Puritan regime.  But the improvement in church and in the state ultimately vindicated even that hard passage.

Islam is going through its Reformation now.  I think ultimately - within a generation or two - this will mean a revitalized Islam, as at peace with democracy, science, and social pluralism as Christianity is now.

To get there, though, they may have to go through a hard passage of some Salafist regimes.

The Arab Spring is a huge advance over the corrupt tyrannies, derived from socialism, which preceded them. 

I am confident that the ultimate result will be a democratic Arabic Islam.

But in the short run - in Egypt, in Syria, in Yemen - the world may see some less corrupt but equally hard regimes of Islamic Puritans.

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.