Is the Jewish God a Cosmic Life Force?

The General Social Survey, the workhorse survey of American sociology, in 2010 asked a representative sample of American adults how they envisioned God.

The two most popular options were "God is a personal being involved in the lives of people today" and "God is not personal, but something like a cosmic life force."

For Christians, the more strongly religious they reported themselves to be, the more they chose the first option.  Thus, 93% of "strong Protestants" and 86% of "strong Catholics" think God is a personal being, compared to 70% of "not very strong" Protestants and 62% of "not very strong" Catholics. 

By contrast, only 3 and 5%, respectively, of strong Protestants and Catholics see God as a cosmic force. For not very strong Protestants and Catholics, the proportion embracing the cosmic force view rises to 17%.

For Jews, though, the trend goes in the opposite direction. Among strong Jews, only 33% see God as personal, whereas 40% see God as a cosmic force.  Interestingly, it is the not very strong Jews who show a more gentile distribution: 53% say "personal being," vs. 12% who say "cosmic force."

My best guess of what this means:  Jews who are not very involved in the Jewish community do not really know the distinctive features of Jewish theology, and therefore assimilate to the Christian view that pervades American culture.

Improved U.S. - India Ties are Good for Democracy

President Obama and Indian President Modi unblocked a stalled agreement to improve joint trade and development relations on nuclear power and drones.

President Obama turned toward India at the beginning of his administration, with Modi's predecessor.  Now he has made a second visit to India, to deal with the new administration, and move forward.

It has always made sense to me that the U.S. and India, giant English-tradition democracies, should be allies.  The Cold War made us enemies.  The silver lining of that era was our relatively close ties with Pakistan.  Still, India is a more natural ally.  With the end of the Cold War, and the rise of the mutual competitor, China, it is very hopeful that US/India relations are improving.

This is an achievement of the Obama administration that will pay dividends not only for the U.S., but for the advancement of democracy.

Recovering the Republican Center: Moderates Force Compromise on Abortion Bill

Today's hopeful sign:  moderates within the Republican coalition in the House of Representative pushed back against the far right on their standard abortion bill.  As a result, the Republican leadership was forced - or, as I hope, allowed - to drop one of the most controversial and punishing requirements.

The bill would forbid abortions after 20 weeks, which is now the Republican unifying position.  It would have allowed an exception in cases of rape, which is a standard American position.  The contentious point was whether women would have to report the rape to police to qualify.  The far right said yes.  The moderates, especially more moderate women, said no.  The moderates won.

Presbyterians Are Optimistic Trusters

I am analyzing new data from the Presbyterian Panel, a survey of Presbyterian Church (USA) members and leaders.

One comparison I am interested in is with an important baseline table from the 1972 American National Election Survey.  That survey's table crossed the "are you an optimist or a pessimist?" question with the "do you think most people can be trusted?" question.

I am interested in this issue, because I think trusters, especially optimistic trusters, are the people most likely to undertake Tocquevillian projects of community improvement.

The result:

Proportions of Americans (from the American National Election Survey 1972):

Optimistic Trusters: 35%

Pessimistic Trusters: 13

Optimistic Mistrusters: 30

Pessimistic Mistrusters: 23

Proportion of Presbyterian members (from the Presbyterian Panel 2014):

Optimistic Trusters: 65%

Pessimistic Trusters: <1

Optimistic Mistrusters: 26

Pessimistic Mistrusters: 9

Today's Good News: The Attorney General Curbs Local Police From Taking Civil Assets

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the widespread practice of police seizing money and assets, such as vehicles, from people they stop without a warrant and without proving a crime will no longer be shielded by federal law.  His move drew bipartisan support from Congress.

Until now, police could seize assets they thought were suspicious and keep them, if they shared a portion with the federal government, and be protected by federal law.  By greatly restricting the circumstances of such seizures, Holder eliminates the incentive that some departments had succumbed to to get a significant part of their annual budget from asset seizures.

The Washington Post reported that "the Institute for Justice and other libertarian-leaning groups teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union and left-leaning groups to press for changes in the wake of the Post's investigation."

Two Kinds of Universal Identity

How do you think about the largest human identity group?

Christians say we are all children of God.

The biggest secular option is to be a cosmopolitan citizen of the world.

The latter has the advantage of seeming like an adult and modern identity.  But it has the disadvantage of depending on a universal state that one could be a citizen of, which clearly does not exist.

The best modern Christian universal identity I can think of is something like co-worker with God.  This works for Jews and Muslims, too.

(This is a half-formed idea).

State-Backed Modernization of Islam in Egypt Will Help

The president of Egypt has come out forcefully for modernizing Islam on religious, rather than nationalist, grounds.

He has already enlisted al-Azhar University, the great seat of Sunni learning and, in effect, an arm of the Egyptian state to make small steps.  For example, "texts on slavery and on refusing to greet Christians and Jews, for example, have been removed" from Egyptian textbooks. 

I don't think a religious reform initiated by the state can work by itself.  I don't think President el-Sissi can be the Muslim Martin Luther.  But he could be the Muslim Frederick the Wise, who sheltered the reformer from political attack.  

Feeling Mainline Leads to a Sense of Entitlement

I am working on a paper that I have tentatively titled "Feeling Mainline."  This comes from a dataset that grouped people into big categories based on their denomination, including dividing Protestant denominations into Evangelical, Black, and Mainline.  This is a fairly standard move in sociological studies.

Later in the survey, though, they also asked each respondent how well different words described their religious identity, such as "religious liberal" or "fundamentalist."  Among the words they asked about were "evangelical" and "mainline."

The most interesting finding:  about a quarter of members of mainline denominations think of themselves as "evangelical", and about a quarter of members of evangelical denominations think of themselves as "mainline." In fact, about a third of black Protestants see themselves as mainline, and even 15% of Catholics say "mainline" describes them very well.

Clearly, people are not using the term the same way sociologists do.

I think embracing the identity "mainline" means that you feel entitled to participate in decisions affecting your community.  This is more than just "mainstream" (as opposed to weird, deviant, extreme, eccentric, etc.)  I think "mainline" carries a sense of responsibility for the world.

I use this odd phrase - entitled to participate in decisions affecting - because this is how Annette Lareau describes the sense of entitlement that middle and upper-middle-class children learn from being raised according to what she calls "concerted cultivation."  Where poor and working-class kids are taught to be obedient and do their work - what Lareau calls the "natural growth" method of childrearing - middle class parents work to develop all of the talents of each of their children through all the methods of pushing, coaching, and enrichment they can muster.  And one aim of concerted cultivation is to teach children to be independent and curious, to actively promote their own growth.

Middle class kids, thus, grow up with a sense of entitlement. But this entitlement is not to get whatever they want, but to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

Which, I believe, is how people who feel mainline in their religion have a sense of entitlement to participate in decisions that affect their communities.

Re-Republicanization in Arizona: McCain Fights Back Against the Tea Party

Senator John McCain is making a concerted effort to oust Tea Party operatives from the local precinct apparatus of the Arizona Republican Party, and replace them with Republicans.  This is good news for those who wish to see the two parties return to working together in order to govern.

McCain was censured by his own party by the anti-government activists who had taken over Republican precinct offices, and he faced a serious challenge in the Republican primary when he ran for re-election.  The senator was determined not to have that happen if (when) he seeks re-election in two years.

One particularly promising aspect of the re-Republicanization campaign: McCain has mobilized the Vietnamese-American community in Arizona, who are threatened by the anti-immigrant Tea Party.

Good News: Charles Koch and George Soros Working Together For Criminal Justice Reform

Koch and Soros working together on anything is likely to be good news.  Working together on such an important issue is particularly heart-warming.

The [Wichita] Eagle reports that Koch has unofficially teamed up with progressive mega-donor George Soros and the American Civil Liberties Union to address prison reform. Koch has also earned praise from outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who told The Marshall Project that Koch's donation to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which funds training for attorneys who represent those in need, was a positive force. 

Normalizing Relations With Cuba is a Great Step Forward

The news that at long last the United States will normalize relations with Cuba is one I have hoped for all my life.  I believe that if we had engaged Cuba from the outset, pushed for the same kind of trade relations that we had with many other dictatorships, and kept fussing at them about human rights that we also do, we could have created an opening for more freedom, and maybe even democracy, decades ago.

I hope the Congress follows suit and drops the foolish embargo.

I think the combination of Cuban-Americans, Coca-Cola, and the internet will do more for Cuban freedom that all the Cold War freeze-out could ever have accomplished.

Thank you, President Obama. And a hat tip to the Pope and the Canadians for helping.

No State Tax Incentives for the Ark Park - A Sensible Middle Position

The Answers in Genesis ministry, parent of the Creation Museum, had proposed a few years ago to create an Ark Park theme park, based on Noah's Ark, in central Kentucky.

Gov. Beshear supported the proposal as a good tourism draw for the state.  He caught some flack from the left for that position.  I think he was entirely in the right.

Now, though, the state Tourism Commission has withdrawn the offer of $18 million in tax incentives from the Ark Park.  They say that the sponsors have changed their position.  Originally, Answers in Genesis said they would not have a religious test for hiring at the park.  Recently, though, they have made clear that they would have a religion test for hiring.

The state's position is clear: tax incentives can't be used to advance a particular religion, nor discriminate on the basis of religion.

Answers in Genesis claims that their religious freedom will be violated if they can't both have a religious test in hiring and get state tax incentives.

I believe the state is, once again, correct in its judgment.

I also had my doubts that the Ark Park could ever succeed, but that is beside the principled point here.

Happiness is a Warm Congregation

The new Relationships in America study has a nifty table on the relation of happiness to regular involvement in a religious community.

The core finding:  "frequency of attendance at religious services has a stronger effect on overall happiness than either belonging to an organized religion or self-reported personal religiosity."

The magnitude of the effect is also pretty impressive:  nearly half of those who regularly attend religious services say they are very happy.

Softball vs Golf - A Metaphor for Liberal Happiness vs. Conservative Happiness

A thoughtful student in my "Introduction to Sociology" class was wrestling with Arthur Brooks' report, in Gross National Happiness, that conservatives are generally happier than liberals as individuals, in light of our class' question of what makes for a happy society. 

This student, herself inclined to be an apolitical conservative, drew from several aspects of what we had been studying to consider, and reconsider, her own experience.

Conservatives look at society and see a collection of individuals, so they believe that personal action is the right focus of attention.  Liberals look at society as more of a collective, so the community requires change in order for real progress to happen.  ... Conservatives could feel happier than liberals in this sense because success is based on an individual's own actions instead of basing it on the actions of everyone else.  It is easier to feel then that you have successfully made changes that are important to you.  An example I thought of when I was reading this was about golf.  I used to play softball, a team sport, then I started playing golf in high school.  I found a greater sense of satisfaction when playing golf because all of my success was based on how hard I was willing to work to achieve my goals.  In softball, I often felt let down and less happy because my team did not practice as much as I did, so we would often lose.  These losses left me feeling down because I was working hard, but by being on the team, I was relying on them for our success.  It was nice with golf because I was reliant on myself.

However, she notes, there are costs to a society that builds no more than individual successes.

I find problems with this as well because it is necessary to work together to achieve goals, and it brings up the Myth of the Individual from the middle of the term.  It showed that we needed a network of people to help support us, or we could face becoming isolated and radicalized in our ideas.  From personal experiences, successes with a group are much more profound ... as compared to personal victories because of the shared emotional experience.  It will be interesting to see how this plays into overall happiness.  I would think shared experiences like collective effervescences would help increase happiness overall because it helps to form bonds with others.  

Her last point, that happier societies come not just from happy individuals, but have bonds across larger groups from shared emotional experiences, is well borne out by sociology.

Happiness Grows With Wisdom

Jonathan Rauch has a fine article in the Atlantic on the U-shaped curve of happiness.

Not for everyone, and not in every society, but strong enough to be a helpful pattern, we see life satisfaction bottoming out in the late 40s for many people.  And then it gets better.

There is much in here, including a whole section on brain development.

I found this to be the most helpful idea:

“This finding,” [Princeton researcher Hannes] Schwandt writes, “supports the hypothesis that the age U-shape in life satisfaction is driven by unmet aspirations that are painfully felt during midlife but beneficially abandoned and felt with less regret during old age.”

The curve below was compiled by economist Carol Graham and colleagues, looking at averages in many different countries.  The X-axis measures life satisfaction on a ten-point scale; the Y measures age.

The Politics of Male First Names

Verdant Labs has a fascinating blog post on political trends in first names.

One big finding: "Of male names that are at least fairly common, the most Democratic are Jonah and Malik, and the most Republican are Delbert and Duane."

I think I know what is going on here.

The Democratic end is tipped by distinctively black or Jewish names. In addition to Jonah and Malik, we find Ethan, Willie, Saul, Emmanuel, Isaiah, Tyrone, Omar, Irving, and Israel.

On the Republican side, we find country white names. In addition to Delbert and Duane, there are Rex, Dallas, Brent, Troy, Lyle, Darrell, Billy, Ricky, and Randy.

The Distribution of Generosity

Christian Smith, a sociologist at Notre Dame, has been reporting the results of a large Science of Generosity project.  Sociology is particularly useful for giving us a sense of proportion of how phenomena are distributed in a large population.

Americans as a whole are generous people.  We give away huge amounts of money for good causes.

However, nearly half of Americans - 45% - give nothing.

The high standard of tithing (giving at least 10%) is met by only 3%.

Poorer people give away a higher proportion of their income than richer people do.

Looked at another way, 57% of all the charitable dollars in America are contributed by the 5% of Americans who are most generous.

And I should note that the main point of The Paradox of Generosity, by Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson, is that people who give more away lead happier and healthier lives.

The Tea Party Congress is the Least Productive, Ever.

The Tea Party Congress, the one now ending, is officially the least productive Congress ever.

That is what they said they would do if elected - prevent government.

I take them at their word that that is what they will keep doing.

The Republicans are at a crossroads.  They control the legislative branch of government. They will have to decide whether to stick with the Tea Party and prevent government, or cut the Tea Party loose and govern.

This will be a very tough choice.  So far the Republican leadership has talked tough about governing, but they haven't actually taken any concrete steps to break with their dangerous coalition partner.

World War One Was the Worst War Ever

All wars are bad.  Some are worse than others.  I am imagining a scale based on the foolishness of the causes of a war multiplied by the number of casualties.

On that scale, I believe World War One was the worst war ever.

And that is before we factor in the way the victors made a peace so bad that it produced another, even larger war.

Today's Great Thing: The Silver Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

And an East German is the head of state of the united Germany.

We may hope for such a happy reunion in Korea soon.

Christian Social Science - How Do I Get at What Students Really Want to Know?

I am giving a talk next week at Hendrix College on "Being a Christian and a Social Scientist".  At the moment it ends this way:

Christianity also makes for a better social science than materialism can, precisely because people do act for reasons.  People act for reasons, they believe they act for reasons, and they believe their existence is meaningful because their reasoned action leads to meaningful ends. I can’t prove that people are right in these beliefs.  But I can prove that most people do have these beliefs (even people who profess materialism).  And I assert that the universal fact that people act as if they act for a meaningful reason is evidence that they are right.  Not proof, but strong evidence.

I think this is true, but doesn't really get to the core of what undergraduates are likely to be concerned about.

I would welcome suggestions for how to bridge this gap.

Fear of Anything as a Vote-Shaping Strategy

Of all the enemies of the happy society, fear is the greatest.  Fear is the acid of trust.

The strategy of Karl Rove and his disciples had been to make their party base fearful, and forget about trying to win over the center.

In recent years they have added strategies to make it harder for everyone to vote, which hurt their opponents more than it did their supporters.

In this last cycle, I believe they gave up on trying to instill fear of things that corporate interests usually oppose, namely taxes and regulations, or that social conservatives oppose, such as abortion and gay marriage.  This cycle they seemed to promote any fear at all as a way of ginning up the base. This worked against compromise and normal politics, and toward a black-and-white view of the world which their candidates would address with force.

This explains, I think, why there has been such political interest in Ebola and ISIS as things to be afraid of in this country.  Notice that the promoters of these fears are not focused on the dangers of Ebola to West Africans, or of ISIS to decent people in the Middle East - where those fears are well grounded.  Instead, they have promoted fear, even hysteria, about the minuscule dangers that either threat poses to Americans at home.  The aim is simply fear, and anything scary will do.

The Obama Administration is Very Good.

President Obama is a very good president, with a commendable record of achievement. The Affordable Care Act is a huge step forward for our nation, both in justice for all and in reducing the costs of medical care. The "war on coal" is being waged by the natural gas companies, not the federal government. The financial firms that wrecked the economy before he took office are under better regulation. The wars launched by his predecessors have been ended or reduced. The auto industry was saved. And, as you can see below, the economy is vastly improved. If he had a Congress that was not committed to obstructing all government, he could do even more good.

Resist the Fear Machine. It Only Serves Our Enemies.

This was the story that Brent Bozell ran:

"A Florida hardware store was ordered to remove American flags honoring the owners family serving in the military. In response, residents displayed more than 500 American flags throughout the town. God Bless America!"

That's it - the whole story, with no links to where you could find out what happened.

In fact, the store was NOT ordered to remove the flags. They were asked to move them from the public right of way, where no flags are permitted, on to the store's property, where they were free to fly any flag they wanted. http://www.news-press.com/.../hundreds-flags.../17231703/

People like Brent Bozell, who made up the scary headline, make a living from tricking Americans into fearing other Americans. Isn't that exactly what America's enemies want? Resist the Fear Machine.

Passive-Aggressive Atheism.

Claiming to raise your children with no religion "so they can make up their own minds" is just a passive-aggressive way to teach atheism.

New Position Paper on Presbyterian Same-Sex Policy Takes a Centrist Line

Barry Ensign-George and Charles Wiley, officials of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), have issued a new paper, "Our Challenging Way: Faithfulness, Sex, Ordination, and Marriage."

They defend the middle line that the denomination has taken on both gay ordination and same-sex marriage.  The church recognizes both pro and con positions, and leaves it up to the conscience of local authorities to determine whether they - ministers, elders, sessions, presbyteries - will participate in authorizing same-sex actions by the church.

I have written often that this middle way is in keeping with the Presbyterian middle polity.  Indeed, I have discussed this with the authors in the past.

I would only add to their paper that our polity allows presbyteries to differ from one another without threatening the unity of the denomination, not just a conscience clause allowing individual officers of the church to differ.

In particular, I commend their gentle criticism of the my-way-or-the-highway ruling on women's ordination in the 1970s 'Kenyon case'.

(I still do think that the Authoritative Interpretation of the church constitution that the General Assembly adopted this summer, in which the words "between a man and a woman" were interpreted to mean "not only between a man and a woman" is incoherent and foolish, but that is water over the dam.)

A Centrist Position on the Gender Binary

What the left needs to accept is that, for most people, there is a close connection between sex and gender.  For them, the gender binary of masculine and feminine works well.

What the right needs to accept is that the gender binary does not work well for some people. In those cases, we all should be understanding and, where possible, accommodating.

The Ethics of an Industry is Driven by the Most Ruthless Competitor

This insight is the fruit of a visit to the Eastern Kentucky coal fields, but could come from many other industries.

I am drawn to this idea because students tend to see ethics as simply the morals of individuals, multiplied by the number of individuals.  It is very hard for them to see social structures at first.  Thus, when we study how some particular firm is exploitative, they attribute this to the bad morals of the owners of that firm.  Students imagine that if they were in charge, they would never act so badly because they are good people.

Yet in any competitive industry - which is to say, any industry in capitalism - if exploitation will increase profits, then some firm will become more exploitative.  And if that gives them a competitive advantage over other firms, the other firms will incline to become that exploitative, too, or lose business.  Normally, I think, it is not the biggest or highest status firms that begin a round of exploitation, and the managers in that firm think themselves more honorable than their more ruthless competitors.  Until, that is, the higher-status firm starts losing profits.  Then, no matter how high-minded they started out, they are likely to follow the more ruthless firms downward.  And thus, the ethics of the industry as a whole are driven by the most ruthless competitor.

Which is why regulation is good for industries, and is most beneficial to those owners and managers who do want to be moral, who do not want to exploit their workers.

We were told a chilling story by a retired coal miner, who had worked in both unionized (that is, more regulated) and non-unionized mines.  He said that when women won the right to work in the mines in the 1970s, the owners were required to put portable toilets in the mines.  In the unionized mines, these were a practical improvement for all workers.  In the non-unionized mines, our guide told us, the workers were told that the toilets were there for the inspectors to see - any miner who actually used one would get fired.  To eke out the tiniest bit of extra profit by not letting miners take a toilet break, and not paying the cost of cleaning portable toilets, the more ruthless firms would add that much exploitation - until and unless the inspectors caught on. 

Ethics comes from the structure of social relations as much as it does from the morals of individuals.

'Who Benefits?' Now is the Result of 'Who Governs?' and 'Who Wins?' Before

Teachers know that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

I have come to see that I need to spend the first month of my "Introduction to Sociology" course on how power works and why the political economy of any society is fundamental to understanding everything else.  This is a hard lesson for students to learn - their tendency to see everything from their perspective as individuals and consumers means it takes work to envision that the structures of power that shape everyone's reality are not simply given, but are the result of the conflict of social forces.

This morning we started on William Domhoff's Who Rules America? I like using Domhoff because his fundamental questions are very practical, very graspable by students. He says that what we really want to know is 'who has the power?' but we can't measure that directly.  So we ask of any social situation 'Who benefits?', 'Who Governs?', and 'Who Wins?'.  These questions each get closer to power, but also get harder to measure.

This was the thing I learned as I was teaching Domhoff's questions this time: the answer to 'Who benefits?' now is the result of 'Who governs?' and 'Who wins?' before.  The distribution of wealth now is the direct result of who won the previous conflict of power in an earlier struggle.  There is no neutral starting point, which got distorted by power.  And there is no 'free market' solution that does not reflect ongoing struggles of 'who governs'.

This was helpful to me. I will see if it was as helpful to students.

Is There an Essential Affinity Between A Typological Reading of the Biblical Story and a Providential View of History?

I am reading a nifty manuscript on civil religion.  The author emphasizes that one of the great traditions of American civil religion - Martin Luther King's, for example - reads the Bible narrative as provides types of the themes that we also see in our national narrative.  This is not the same as seeing the Bible as providing literal prophetic markers of current events, as 'End Times' readings do.  Rather, the belief that history has an arc, which we see signs of in the biblical story and in our own, connected-but-different story, is a deep and fruitful way of seeing history as meaningful.

I have also long believed that life has a providential form, which is a way of seeing historical events as a meaningful narrative.

It has only struck me now, though, that these two kinds of readings - a typological reading of the Bible and a providential reading of history - are intimately connected. My intuition is that they are really just different ways of doing the same thing.

But I can 't quite flesh out the argument to prove that intuition.  Any help from you smart readers to make the argument or set me straight?

It Is Always True That 'Reality Is More Complex Than Your Social Theory'. And That Argument Is Never Helpful.

I have loved social theory since I started reading it in high school because it reveals something of the underlying structure of reality - the reasons behind the human world that we see on the surface.

And when talking about social theory, I often run across someone who dismisses the whole project because "reality is more complex than that."

Yes.

But the same is true of a map.  A map simplifies, but shows the relations of the main elements.  A map that showed everything in its true proportions, in a 1"=1" scale, would be more accurate than any simpler map.

But it would be useless.

The alternative to social theory is not a completely complex picture of society.  The alternative to the simplifications of social theory is to argue that reality has no underlying structure at all.

Does Every Discipline Have a Worldview-Changing Idea?

The college is up for re-accreditation.  In addition to showing that we are doing the usual things well, we are also supposed to come up with a big idea of something new to try - a Quality Enhancement Plan. We have decided that this big idea should be to improve critical thinking, and/or creative thinking - somehow.  I am on the committee charged with coming up with a good idea of how, exactly, to do this, so I have been pondering the problem.

One of the hardest things to teach in sociology is to get students to move from thinking about society in terms of individuals, to thinking about society in terms of groups.  I start many classes with Marx in part to plant this seed. The actors in Marx' account of society are not individual workers and individual owners, but whole classes of workers and owners.  Similarly, when we talk about the patterns of gender relations, it is hard to keep students from immediately translating that into how a man and a woman interact - usually meaning the student him- or herself. Likewise, seeing social structures is a qualitatively different idea than seeing how one person habitually acts in relation to another.  We expend a great deal of creativity in trying to get students to think critically about social structures and social groups.

In other words, it is a persistent problem in teaching sociology to transform a student's perspective from the individual imagination to the sociological imagination.  Once you get it, you see the world differently.  The sociological imagination is a vital tool in critical thinking about society.

So here is the beginning of an idea: suppose every discipline has a fundamental shift in thinking that it is trying to teach - a new lens for seeing the world that it is trying to fit students with.  If so, then the college as a whole might fruitfully work together on the shared or meta-issues in teaching these disparate worldview-changing ideas.  We would be working creatively and critically as a faculty, and helping students to see the world creatively and critically with these new lenses of several kinds.  That would be a Quality Enhancement Plan worthy of a liberal arts college.

So the question is, does every discipline have a core idea that is hard to get students to see, but once achieved, fundamentally changes the way they think?

A Gallup Poll of Unattractive Women

In reading Gallup Poll data on happiness I came across this eyebrow-raiser from 1943:

So far as you personally are concerned, do you think the chances are that the next ten years of your life will be exciting ones, just average, or rather dull?  (Asked of a national cross-section of women from twenty to thirty-five years old.)

National total:

Exciting 43.3%
Average 43.6%
Dull 9.3%

Single women (20 - 24 years):

Exciting 53.8%
Average 35.0%
Dull 6.5%

Unattractive women:

Exciting 26.1%
Average 44.9%
Dull 21.7%


No, I do not know how they determined the sample for that last question.  My guess is that this was the interviewer's judgment.

I take this as further evidence for the 'feminine mystique,' which Betty Friedan would locate specifically in this time period.

I also think that the 1940s were a cultural revolution ago.

A Quick Thought on Calvinist Energy

Many at the time of the Reformation thought the doctrine of predestination would lead to quietism.  It was surprising that it led to the opposite.  Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, shows why.

Calvinist activity in the world was not aimed at happiness.  But it produced happiness, because meaningful work is essential to happiness.

Is There a Theological Doctrine Against Exaggerating Dangers?

I am reading William Bouwsma's excellent portrait of John Calvin.  Bouwsma emphasizes that Calvin was a rhetorician, not a cool scholar.  He was a pastor, trying to persuade his listeners to change their lives.  Calvin also read the Bible as rhetoric of the same kind.

One of the main tools of persuasive rhetoric is to exaggerate the dangers that the audience faces if they continue their present lives.

In my work on happiness, I have concluded that the main solvent of the happy society is fear.  Fear mongers are a great danger to a happy society, because they undermine trust, and obscure how much the good actions of most people make the world better.

Which leads me to look for a religious limit to fear-mongering.  There is, of course, the general commandment against lying.  But I can't think of a specific religious doctrine or practice the guards against overstating the dangers of this world.

Overstating dangers is bad for the credibility and legitimacy of religious organizations, as we can see from the short life-span of doomsday cults. As a practical matter, most religious institutions that last more than a couple of generations do learn to tone down the end-times rhetoric, and start to build for the indefinite future.

Still, I can't think of a religious justification that I have run across for telling the strict truth about dangers and fears. 

What Does the Contrast of Baking and Fermenting Mean? (A Half-Thought on Reading Michael Pollan's Cooked)

For our annual Centre sociology alumni study group we are reading Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.

In this very interesting study of the basic elements of food and culture, Pollan treats four elemental ways of transforming natural goods into human food under the heading of the four classical elements.  Under 'fire' he discusses roasting over a fire, under 'water', braising in a pot, under 'air', baking bread, and under 'earth', fermenting in many forms.

Pollan's account brings out the ways in which roasting is very masculine and braising very feminine.  This spectrum is not central to Pollan's analysis, but he notes this contrast as many others before have, notably the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

This has made me wonder if baking and fermenting form another pair of contrasts, perhaps cross-cutting the first.  Pollan does not directly contrast the two.  He does, though, note the association of fermentation with death - that we pause putrefaction long enough to eat the tangy middle phase.  Which suggests, then, that perhaps baking is the staff and symbol of life.  This certainly works in Christian mythology. 

Still, I have a nagging sense that there is a more down-to-earth pair that the making of 'air' and 'earth' foods is like.

Suggestions welcome.

Americans are Moving Less - This is More Good Than Bad

Moving to a new home is down among Americans over the past generation.

Business Insider, from which this chart is taken, thinks this is a bad thing.  High mobility is good for the housing industry, which is a big component of our gross domestic product.

My first thought on seeing this chart, though, is that stability is good for community.  People who stay are more likely to get to know their neighbors, have commitments to their community, and to benefit themselves from reducing the inevitable stress of moving.

Moreover, people who know they are staying are free to make big investments in their community, knowing that they themselves will reap some of the benefits. 

When Mrs. G and I decided that we were never moving again, we were free to (expensively) renovate our house for the long term.  This is good for the local housing industry.  And this investment is not just in our own home.  It made sense for us to invest in trees, and to help organize the neighbors for a mass tree planting in our neighborhood.

Both stability and mobility have economic benefits, for different sectors of the economy.  But stability has clear benefits for communities, and transience has large costs.