Trying to Figure Privilege and Hard Work

I teach about privilege in most of my classes.  In talking about privilege, students always want some credit for their own or their ancestors' hard work.  This is fair enough.

I am working on a table showing how to think about the relation of privilege and hard work.

This is my half-baked idea.  Comments welcome.

	Hard Work
Privilege		+	-
	+	Most Power	Low Status
	-	High Status	Pity

Young Adult Dystopian Fiction is How Millennials Are Preparing for War

The forces who want the next big war get louder each day.

Young adults are preparing themselves by absorbing story after story about kids being called on to fight a great evil and save the remnant of civilization.  Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent, The Fifth Wave, and many more show the huge market for this fantasy.

The good thing about these stories is that they prepare young people to fight heroically for the right.

The bad thing is that they build the presumption of a coming war for civilization into the taken-for-granted background of our lives.

Howe and Strauss' generation theory predicts a "Crisis of 2020" or thereabouts, when the generations align to produce a major crisis.  The initiative for the war would come from the aging Baby Boomers.  But the people who would do the brunt of the fighting would be Millennials.  And the Millennials seem to be mentally preparing themselves for war.

Hilary Clinton's Reticence About Discussing Her Faith is Common to Mainliners

Hilary Clinton was asked at a town hall meeting to talk about her Christian faith.  She gave a solid answer, typical of mainline Protestants (she is a Methodist).

My study of the Bible, my many conversations with people of faith, has led me to believe the most important commandment is to love the Lord with all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself, and that is what I think we are commanded by Christ to do, and there is so much more in the Bible about taking care of the poor, visiting the prisoners, taking in the stranger, creating opportunities for others to be lifted up, to find faith themselves that I think there are many different ways of exercising your faith.

There is the Methodist Social Creed (1908) in a nutshell.  

Her last point, though, also shows why mainliners are reluctant to wear our faith on our sleeves, for fear of unjustly imposing it on others.  "My study of the Bible ... has led me to believe ... [in helping others]  to find faith themselves [such] that I think there are many different ways of exercising your faith."  For those without ears to hear, this seems as if mainliners do not act on their faith.

Millennials Trust CNN the Most for News; Rush Limbaugh the Least

A nifty Pew survey about where Millennials get their news found that their most trusted sources for news were CNN (the only one trusted by more than half), followed by ABC, NBC, CBS, and the New York Times.

The bottom of the list?  Sean Hannity, Breitbart, Glenn Beck, and, at the very bottom, Rush Limbaugh.

The Ark Park Decision is Bad for Christian Honor

When Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry behind the Creation Museum, proposed a Noah's Ark theme park, they promised that there would be no religious test to work there.  On the strength of that pledge, Gov. Beshear promised tourism tax credits.

Both the ministry and the government acknowledged that if employees had to proclaim AiG's specific brand of Christianity, the deal would be off.

Then the ministry broke its word, and quietly required a religious test for employment.

Governor Beshear, therefore, cancelled the tax credits.

Inconsistent with the honor one might expect of a Christian ministry, Answers in Genesis sued for the tax credits.

Surprisingly, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Ark Park.  I think this is a bad decision in law.

But even worse, I believe, is the Ark Park bringing the suit, and accepting money from all the taxpayers while excluding some from employment.

Perhaps the GOP Coalition Will Break Up Like the Democratic Party Did in 1860

The war between the regular Republicans and the angry populists shows no signs of ending.  Donald Trump is still the leading candidate for the party's nomination.  Behind him comes Ted Cruz, who is loathed by his party's leaders.

Now Michael Bloomberg, the moderate Republican former mayor of New York, is mulling an independent run.

And Jim Webb, the Republican cabinet official turned Democratic senator, is also contemplating an independent candidacy.

In 1860 the Democratic Party split.  If they had not, Centre College's own John C. Breckinridge, the sitting vice-president, would surely have won the presidency.  Instead, Stephen Douglas refused to concede the nomination.  The Democrats field two competing candidates.  A third party candidate, John Bell, ran on a status-quo platform.  This allowed Abraham Lincoln, of the new Republican Party, to win an election he is not likely to have won otherwise.

If the Republicans splinter in 2016, I expect the would recover in a few years.  Still, there is no guarantee that the conservatives will rally behind one banner this year.

The Ideal Types of Human Flourishing vs. the Reality of Corporate Domination

I believe that burghers who build up the burgh, and love the polis, are the happiest and most developed humans.  

Jefferson believed that yeoman farmers developed an independence of character that was essential to a democratic nation. The burgher in the city and the yeoman on the farm are clearly different ideals of what the modal, and model, citizen is.

A modern nation consists mostly of urban people, but also draws from (and vitally depends on) the farm.

The small town, run by voluntary associations, has been the best compromise.  The new urbanists envision making the city livable through a conjunction of small town neighborhoods.

The real problem for all of these ideals, though, is that the economy is dominated by large corporations, which are not responsive to small town citizen associations, yeoman farmers, or even urban burghers.

Why Do We Need an Ark Park When We Have the Creation Museum?

Answers in Genesis, who gave us the Creation Museum, is building an Ark Park.  It was to have rides and food and other theme park stuff, centered on a 510 foot ark.  But they didn't raise enough money. In order to save the Ark Park, they have cut out nearly everything except the ark itself.

They project 2 million visitors a year. Almost no one outside the ministry and the mayor's office believe that the Ark Park will generate that amount of interest.

So why do we need an Ark Park when we already have the Creation Museum?  It would be sort of cool to see a 510 foot ark.  But not 2 million visitors cool.  The museum teaches the idea better, and it shows quite a bit of the Flood spectacle, too.  What more would a big ark add that would be so appealing?

Should Prisons Be Only for Psychopaths?

The debate about mass incarceration has led me to think about who should be imprisoned.

Of course people should be punished for their crimes.

However, I think prisons are an ineffective way to fight and treat drug use.  If we prevented drug use better, and treated drug use separately from prison, then rehabilitation for former drug users would be much more effective.

This would leave the prison system for the hard core of career criminals and conscienceless psychopaths.  We would still have prisons, but would no longer use mass incarceration as our main tool of social control of poor and lonely men.

Good News for the New Year

A Dutch journalist and data analyst have come up with a wonderful idea to open the new year:  cards made of good-news charts.

Below is an example, based on Dutch life expectancy.

This is an excellent idea.  I think next year I will make Christmas cards on this principle.

The Federal Government Shows Admirable Restraint Against Armed Anti-Government Renegades

An anti-government militia has seized federal property in Oregon.

The federal government has show admirable restraint in containing them thus far.

Ironically, these white guys, who have taken up arms against the United States, claim they are not traitors, but are defending the Constitution.

I have no doubt that if this group of armed rebels had been Arabs or black people claiming to defend their rights, Fox News would be calling for their heads.

Fear Produces False Negatives

Trusting people are prone to false positives, in thinking that some specific Other can be trusted.  

Fearful people are prone to false negatives, in thinking that some specific Other can not be trusted.  

The bias of our sociobiology is to be too fearful, just in case; it takes a high degree of civilization to nurture people who are too trusting.  

Nonetheless, civilization is a great thing, the highest achievement of human beings. A bias toward trust is a good thing.  And the best way to create trust in others is to be trustworthy, and to be trusting.

The Residence of Fear and of Trust

Where do people live when they are primarily driven by fear of other people?

Where do people live when they are primarily driven by trust in other people?

I am working on a new research project.  I have been wrestling with the core question.

Today, I think this is it.

The Japanese Apology to Their WWII Sex Slaves.

Today's good thing:  the Japanese government apologized for making thousands of Korean women sex slaves during World War II, and agreed to pay a billion yen as compensation to the victims.

A Great Thing in the World This Christmas: The Canadians Welcoming Syrian Refugees

The Canadian government has taken the lead in welcoming large numbers of Syrian refugees to the country.

Even better, though, thousands of Canadian citizens, often organizing through their churches, have gone above and beyond the government's legal permission to immigrate to help and support the tens of thousands of families fleeing a brutal war.

The West's best response to both brutal tyrannical states and brutal persecuting religious nationalists is this open-arms response to ordinary families.  This is a good work in itself, and our best "hearts and minds" strategy.

Mothers Are 10% More Likely to Work if Their Mother or Mother-in-Law Lives Nearby

The headline on the story is the half of American adults live within 18 miles of their parents.

In the college-educated class - roughly a quarter of the population - the distances typically get much greater, as the Gruntleds can attest.

Hidden in the report is this interesting additional fact:

labor force participation by married women with children increased by as much as 10 percentage points when they lived near their mothers or mothers-in-law

Professional men and women tend to go where the job is, regardless of family ties. However, professional women, if they have any choice in the matter, tend to try to live near their mothers. The help that grandparents give is especially important for emergencies, more than for daily care.

This is a good idea to bear in mind when professional and managerial couples are starting out: plan to live near backup care before you have kids, if at all possible.

Yay for Positive Criminology

Here is a happy new development on the way to a full-fledged positive sociology:  positive criminology.

This project comes from Bar Ilan University in Israel.  The epigraph of their webpage contains a fruitful theory of how all of positive sociology works:

Run to do even easy mitzvah and run away from any sins, for doing mitzvah leads to more mitzvah and sinning leads to further sinning.

The Liberalizing Effect of Actually Reading the Bible

Christianity Today has a nifty study of the effects of Bible reading on people's political views.  This finding gives a taste of a range of their fascinating findings:

“Ask an evangelical who is politically conservative, has some college education, has an average level of income, is a biblical literalist, and does not read the Bible, and you’ll have only a 22 percent chance he or she will say reducing consumption is part of ethical living.

Ask the same person, only now they read the Bible, and you’ll have a 44 percent chance they’ll say so.”

Republican Leadership Rejects Trump's Muslim Ban

Today's good news:  the entire Republican leadership has denounced Donald Trump's proposal to block Muslims from entering the country.

Even former Vice-President Dick Cheney called Trump's proposal un-American.

Perhaps, perhaps, the GOP has turned a corner back, slowly, in the direction of the center.

Calvinism and the Second Amendment

Calvinism sees the world ordered by the sovereign God, and disordered by human foolishness.

Yet Calvin was a protestant reformer - he protested against a disordered church, and enacted a wide-ranging reform in church and state.

For anyone who believes both in divine order and godly protest, there is a bit of a problem.  Calvinists can't be anarchists.  They cannot countenance resistance to duly constituted authority, in church or state, by mere personal judgment.

Calvin solved this by justifying reform, and even resistance, through the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate". Reform and resistance against the actions of the greater magistrate were only legitimate if conducted on behalf of the fundamental order of society and were supported by some lesser magistrate.

The American Founding Fathers were as influenced by Calvinism as they were by any secular Enlightenment theories.

Therefore I conclude that the Second Amendment could not have been intended to justify arming each citizen against the government.  The Founding Fathers were, indeed, revolutionaries against the duly constituted authority of the day.  But they were also lesser magistrates in their own right.  The well-regulated militia in which citizens have the right to bear arms is itself part of the government - not a justification for armed citizen anarchy.

Rising Death Rates Among Low-Status Whites is Due to Despair at Their Declining Privilege

Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, has a good take on the important Cole-Deaton study on why death rates among less educated white people have been going up - while every other group is living longer.

The causes of death are self-inflicted:  suicide, booze, drugs, and sheer reckless living.

Marshall's educated guess is that the relative value of white privilege is declining, which leads some white people to despair that they are losing their place in society.  The anti-government Tea Party politics was rooted in this demographic group.  Today's even more aggressive white nativist populism  is almost entirely a movement of angry, low-status white people.  Marshall cites a re-study of Cole-Deaton which finds that this increasing death rate is most pronounced in the South, which makes sense as the place where low-status whites have lost the most relative privilege.

... in a Well-Regulated Militia

That is the gun right protected in the Second Amendment.

Divorce Ideation is Common, But Most Couples Work it Out

Brad Wilcox' National Divorce Decision-Making Project found that most couples have thought about divorce in the early years, and a quarter have thought about it recently.

Nonetheless, most of them work it out because they want to work it out.  And they do it on their own, through patience, taking a broader perspective, and remembering their promises to one another and to their community.

"Divorce ideation" - a wonderful phrase, derived from "suicide ideation" - does not mean you are at high risk for divorce.  In fact, Wilcox and colleagues conclude, in our divorce-prone culture it would be hard not to think about divorce sometimes.

The good news is that most couples do work through these fleeting ideas.  And the great majority of them are happy they did.

In Praise of the Rat Squad

Professions must police themselves in order to remain ethical and effective.

Professions know best what bad actions to look for.

But it is very hard to police your friends and colleagues.  It is easy for us to understand our own kind, and thus make excuses. It is painful to punish the bad, and to lose the those who are sometimes good, or used to be good. And it is embarrassing to the profession to air dirty laundry.

Nonetheless, no one hates a bad cop more than a good cop.

Religious Nationalists, East and West, are Spoiling for a Fight

Nationalism is the modern version of tribalism.

Religion is our most powerful cultural tool to transcend tribalism.

But tribalism is powerful, and crafty.  It finds ways to co-opt every form of religion and cosmopolitan sentiment.

Thus, religious nationalism uses the terms and forms of universal religions to, ironically, support tribal conflicts.

Religious nationalists are usually kept in check by two unlikely allies: secular realists who oppose the utopian and apocalyptic excesses of nationalist religion; and truly religious people who oppose the parochial and violent excesses of nationalist cooptations of universal faiths.

But there is a cycle to human affairs.  New nationalist generations arise who "knew not Joseph," who forget why the last great war was so terrible.

I believe we are entering such a phase now.  Muslim religious nationalists, on one side, and Christian and Jewish religious nationalists, on the other, are spoiling for a fight.

Class Taste Reflects Our Conception of Happiness

We are now interviewing college graduates to see the connection between their tastes and their social class fraction. We started asking about why our subjects chose particular things or chose particular services. We soon realized though, that the more important question, the prior question, is to ask which choices seem like just utilitarian selection, and which choices involve a moral element.

I have over the past few years also been studying happiness, looking for what makes for a happy society.

I now see a point of convergence between these two lines of inquiry:  to ask people which of their choices seem to involve a moral element is to ask them their conception of the happy life.  In these questions, as we add them up, we are discovering (together with our subjects) their vision of eudaemonia - of a flourishing life.

Gov. Beshear Restores the Voting Rights of 180,000+ Nonviolent Felons in Kentucky

Kentucky is one of the few states that does not automatically restore voting rights to felons after they have completed their sentence.

Outgoing Governor Beshear, in a fine act of statesmanship, signed an executive order to restore voting rights to more than 180,000 nonviolent felons.

This is a good day for democracy.

Positive Civility Requires a Thick Skin

Here is a good centrist idea:

To take a positive step toward creating civility in society, be relentlessly reasonable.

Have a thick skin.

Don't get upset over potential problems.

Cut other people some slack when they are insensitive or thoughtless. (You undoubtedly need the same slack cut for you sometimes.)

Too often we think of civility as consisting of what we do not do - not being extreme, not getting worked up over minor issues, not calling names.

I offer this idea as something that centrists (or anyone interested in civility) can do to actively promote the happy society.

Millennials are the Most Willing to Use Government Censorship in a Good Cause. This is Still Wrong, But Teachable.

It is alarming that 40% of Millennials would be willing to have government prevent people from saying things that are offensive to minority groups.

Still, I see this as a vice of their virtues.  They are trying to overcome America's long history of racism.  The tool they have chosen - government censorship - is a cure worse than the disease, but they are trying to cure a disease.  Millennials are young, and famously less informed about history, including the historical use of government suppression of free speech to oppress minority groups.

I think most Millennials are not far from supporting other, less oppressive means of helping denigrated minorities. The traditional mechanism for opposing outright racists - public shaming - is effective and not as dangerous as government suppression.

For most people, though, the problem is not so much outright racism as it is insensitivity to unexamined denigration.  The cure for insensitivity is gentle consciousness raising.  And that applies to educating Millennials who are insensitive to the dangers of government censorship.