When I was around six years old, my grandfather died. His is the first funeral I can remember attending. He was a veteran of World War II, a man who was old enough not to go but enlisted anyway because doing so was right. I understand that he fought bravely and was awarded medals for doing just that. What I remember from his funeral, though, is the American flag draped over his casket. Even then I intuited the power of this symbol.
Today that image and the feelings of pride and wonder that it engendered remain seared in my mind and in my gut, for the feeling was visceral. I recall soldiers removing the flag and folding it carefully, ceremoniously, and presenting it to, I presume, my grandmother. And I recall thinking even as a six-year-old that serving one's country is supremely honorable and courageous. I thought then that I too ought to serve the United States of America as my grandfather had.
Of course time and experience have a way of changing even the best laid plans. I toyed with the idea of enlisting when I was in high school but a girlfriend and college got in the way. I couldn't abide the sacrifice or the commitment. I toyed with enlisting after I graduated college (minus the girlfriend), perhaps attempting to get into Officer Candidate School. Again, I declined to commit, beset with a sort of shiftless existential lassitude. Eventually I entered law school and again contemplated serving my country, this time as a potential member of the JAG Corps. Yet again I lacked the courage of my convictions and failed to live up to the example my grandfather set.
Despite my own failings, I remain to this day awed by those who have and had the courage to serve. Nearly every day I pass by Wood National Cemetery. Familiarity has not dulled the respect and appreciation I feel when I spy row upon row of white headstones marking the graves of those who have served. When I take my son to hockey practice at the Pettit Center I often see men and women from the different ROTC programs in Milwaukee testing their fitness and training. Each time I see them I am grateful they have the strength to follow the courage of their convictions and am proud of their commitment to one day serve this country; this despite the fact that they are strangers to me. And when I see an American flag up close, near enough see the texture of the fabric, I am transported to my grandfather's casket and the symbol draped over it which reminds me that the choice to serve is not made for status or heroism, but instead is made for duty and sacrifice. A choice made, like my grandfather's, because it is right. So I say to everyone who made or will make the choice to serve: thank you.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
A Boy Grows Up
My son is almost eleven; at one of those precarious ages where he straddles two phases in life. In his case, he sits astride childhood and adolescence. I witness the balance almost daily as he does things that are still firmly rooted in the experience of childhood - having an imaginary battle against some villain or foe with a squirt gun in the shower or casting spells gleaned from the Harry Potter books on our morning walks to school with a stick he picked up along the way. Simultaneously he moves toward independence, spurning my every attempt to help him with anything or vehemently insisting the clothes he picked, which perhaps match imperfectly "are fine, Dad."
These periods of transition, however slowly they proceed, are filled with poignance for me. They seem both fraught and filled with possibility, but represent, when completed, irrevocable change that will influence the path he ultimately takes in the world. Knowing they will end fills me with anticipatory nostalgia.
I am, for those who know me, deeply enamored of poetry. Perhaps this is unusual. I can trace it to a similar period of transition in my own life, when I was a freshman in college fully convinced my life would consist of a future in politics, starting with a political science major and being realized on completion of a law degree. However, my freshman year I took a seminar that exposed me to great works in the Western literary canon followed by a survey course in English literature. I fell in love with poetry in those two courses and switched majors to English, taking many courses focusing on or rife with poetry. I found poetic expression to be a powerful means of examining the world and the way we experience it.
But what does poetry have to do with my son's transition from childhood to adolescence? Quite a lot, I think. Many of the best poems and poets capture such periods of transition in ways that other forms of written expression do not. The best poetry penetrates the external realities of such periods and gets to the felt quality of them. In particular, I am thinking of an Emily Dickinson poem:
Being in the middle of my adult years, I appreciate the brief and fleeting nature of the transitions we experience as we mature. Do not get me wrong - I look forward to the maturation of my son. I can think of nothing finer than sitting down for a cup of coffee with him when he is a man or talking excitedly with him about college choices. These too will be wonderful. But still, there is nothing finer than hearing the silly shrill cries of the boy and his classmates as they play "lava monster" on the playground after school.
I think of the fleeting nature of these moments and am drawn to Dickinson's poem. In the past, I have thought "the banquet of abstemiousness" had something of a negative, parsimonious quality. Now I think I may have read it wrong. Instead, the poem refers to the necessary parsimony of life - these moments of transition are loaded with beauty and delight, but are precious few and always fleeting; hence, representing the moments requires exquisite precision, just the way seeing a squirt gun in the shower captures this fleeting moment in my son's life perfectly. To return to Dickinson, "hope is the the thing with feathers," joy is a ten-year-old boy with a squirt gun in the shower, and sorrow is not paying attention to either.
These periods of transition, however slowly they proceed, are filled with poignance for me. They seem both fraught and filled with possibility, but represent, when completed, irrevocable change that will influence the path he ultimately takes in the world. Knowing they will end fills me with anticipatory nostalgia.
I am, for those who know me, deeply enamored of poetry. Perhaps this is unusual. I can trace it to a similar period of transition in my own life, when I was a freshman in college fully convinced my life would consist of a future in politics, starting with a political science major and being realized on completion of a law degree. However, my freshman year I took a seminar that exposed me to great works in the Western literary canon followed by a survey course in English literature. I fell in love with poetry in those two courses and switched majors to English, taking many courses focusing on or rife with poetry. I found poetic expression to be a powerful means of examining the world and the way we experience it.
But what does poetry have to do with my son's transition from childhood to adolescence? Quite a lot, I think. Many of the best poems and poets capture such periods of transition in ways that other forms of written expression do not. The best poetry penetrates the external realities of such periods and gets to the felt quality of them. In particular, I am thinking of an Emily Dickinson poem:
Who never wanted,-- maddest joy
Remains to him unknown;
The banquet of abstemiousness
Surpasses that of wine
Within its hope, though yet ungraspedThe idea expressed in this poem seems to grasp perfectly the exquisite states of such periods of transition. When my son passes firmly into adolescence he will not wholly abandon the wondrous and magical qualities of childhood, but they will be irrevocably changed. This is normal and necessary for healthy human development. Something will, however, be lost. Reality will, to a large extent, disenthrall the boy's soul. A razor and shaving cream will replace the squirt gun in the shower. As a parent this prospect is poignant and a bit sad.
Desire's perfect goal,
No nearer, but reality
Should disenthrall thy soul.
Being in the middle of my adult years, I appreciate the brief and fleeting nature of the transitions we experience as we mature. Do not get me wrong - I look forward to the maturation of my son. I can think of nothing finer than sitting down for a cup of coffee with him when he is a man or talking excitedly with him about college choices. These too will be wonderful. But still, there is nothing finer than hearing the silly shrill cries of the boy and his classmates as they play "lava monster" on the playground after school.
I think of the fleeting nature of these moments and am drawn to Dickinson's poem. In the past, I have thought "the banquet of abstemiousness" had something of a negative, parsimonious quality. Now I think I may have read it wrong. Instead, the poem refers to the necessary parsimony of life - these moments of transition are loaded with beauty and delight, but are precious few and always fleeting; hence, representing the moments requires exquisite precision, just the way seeing a squirt gun in the shower captures this fleeting moment in my son's life perfectly. To return to Dickinson, "hope is the the thing with feathers," joy is a ten-year-old boy with a squirt gun in the shower, and sorrow is not paying attention to either.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
The Chimera of Libertarian "Freedom"
“I should be able to do whatever I want.”
Aside from being a point-of-view most
four-year-old children hold, the statement in part forms the basis of populist conservative and
corporatist conservative ideology.
The statement has a libertarian feel to it without the constraint every
serious libertarian thinker would concede must be placed on it, which can be
reduced to the dependent clause “so long as it doesn’t harm others.” The dependent clause is typically the problem
with libertarian perspectives because it is an equivocation subject to
interpretation regarding both its meaning and enforcement.
Even the staunchest libertarian accepts that some behavior
is criminal and that the state has a right to impose punishment for criminal
behavior. The easiest category of
behavior for which the state has the right to punish transgression is injury to
another’s person. Hence, nobody
seriously doubts the legitimacy of laws proscribing murder, battery, and
assault. The problem with the
libertarian perspective is that its proponents do not give serious
consideration of the consequences of the actions that they propose to decouple
from government regulation and whether the consequences harm others.
We know that corporatist conservatives especially decry
government regulation. It is a constant
refrain that government should let markets be free. The apparent subtext is that businesses should be able to harm people without government
intervention. This is the logic of the
position that government should let markets be free from any constraints or regulation. This perspective contravenes any coherent and serious form of libertarianism. The question from a libertarian perspective
should be: but what do we do when a
business harms a person or a group of persons?
Libertarianism does not allow unfettered behaviors or actions that harm others.
A classic example is pollution. If a business emits a carcinogen into the
environment, the business will harm persons that come into contact with the
carcinogen. The libertarian rule is that
the business is free to emit whatever it wants into the environment so long as
it doesn’t harm others. A carcinogen
harms others; hence, a business is not free to emit a carcinogen into the
environment.
In truth, libertarian principles do not support the idea of a market in which actors are free to produce and sell any product regardless of the cost to human health. According to libertarian principles, producing something that injures another is no less subject to government intervention and oversight than would be physical behavior that injures another. A company that emits a carcinogen into the environment commits an industrial battery. The state is amply justified in regulating such behavior in the same way the state is justified in regulating injurious physical behavior.
The problem with any point-of-view that does not accept the "as the behavior does not harm others" part of the libertarian position is that it abrogates personal responsibility. Of course we should be free to act consistent with our desires, so long as we do not harm others. If we harm others, we bear responsibility for the harm. This should be true of pollution, segregation, and any other behavior, economic or otherwise, that harms others. I am in favor of a market economy. I am also in favor of economic actors being held responsible for harm they cause to others. The two positions are compatible.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Malignant Marketing
When our body's cells proliferate uncontrollably, cancer results, a diseased state in which growth perversely causes death. I recently read an article about how the claims that marketers, businesses, and medical researchers are making about the benefits of mindfulness are, according to actual research, seriously overblown. The problem with mindfulness struck me as marketing gone malignant. There appears to be consensus that mindfulness, as it is understood in its purest form, is a good thing. When marketers and businesses try to capitalize it, mindfulness becomes practically unintelligible and, in the best case, of no benefit. In the worst case, this marketed or capitalized mindfulness can be both passively and actively harmful by creating an expectation that difficult existential problems have a simple, commercial fix.
Although the thing that prompted me to look at how marketing works in the contemporary world was mindfulness, the lesson seems to be applicable to practically all commercial space. Hence, the challenge is to remain attentive or alert to what is significant or substantive when one is overwhelmed with capitalized dross in what I call the malignant marketing living space. Marketers will tend to capitalize anything that draws interest from a measurable population. Given our interaction with "smart" technologies and digital interfaces, the measurable population can be as small as one. It is critical to note that the connectivity we experience is no bad per se. We can benefit from connections made or suggested through algorithms or other methods. What is bad about the connectivity is that every connection made carries with it information that can be and usually is capitalized. There are few if any connections that have no commercial aspect to them. It is a constant, though not impossible, challenge to parse substantive or intrinsic value from capitalized components, features, or accouterments.
Why the ubiquitous capitalization of information and connectivity is problematic can be exemplified by comparing a search engine and a librarian. A search engine cannot exist without exist without commercial support, usually in the form of advertisers. Hence, the search engine will capitalize on information analysis and delivery by producing results that have been either determined or heavily influenced by the commercial concerns of advertisers or other financial contributors. On the other hand, a librarian is human and as such will have biases, but if you ask him for help finding books about the Battle of Midway, he is not going to direct you to titles from Amazon or Barnes & Noble that may or may not be decent resources but are practically certain to appear in digital searches because of their commercial popularity. The librarian, though less efficient than a search engine in terms of brute strength of basic information processing, should do a better job of directing the library patron to the books most closely suited to her purpose (academic, hobby, general curiosity, etc.). The library patron will lose the size and speed of the search engine's results, but she will gain the reliability of a non-capitalized suggestion. This type of connection or suggestion has value because it is not driven by commercial considerations and it in turn has substantive merit based on what the content is (as a response to user need) as opposed to who produces the content and how well the content is selling.
The digital space, absent a massive ecological or planet-wide disaster, will continue to occupy a huge portion of human interaction and attention for the foreseeable future. Suggesting otherwise or advocating that we avoid the digital space is unrealistic at best and quixotic at worst. Nevertheless, malignant marketing can be identified and shunted our of one's intellectual space if she knows what to look for. Additionally, citizens can demand that public officials maintain existing and create new neutral information and connectivity options in the digital space. A library is a good example of a service that can operate in the digital space non-commercially, so long as its digital presence remains commercially neutral, i.e. public funds are used exclusively to build and maintain the digital space rather than corporate donations.
Regardless of whether the people demand and policymakers deliver commercially neutral digital spaces, individuals can learn to recognize marketing and capitalization of digital spaces and information delivery. As such, individuals can learn to separate wheat from chaff, metal from dross. News is a good example of where this skill is both necessary and easy to learn. First, one can easily learn to distinguish the subject of a news story from the bias, opinion, and point of view of the author or organization. Second, using multiple news sources with differing organizational points of view is a useful way to discern editorial bias by comparing both differing treatments of the same story and comparing the stories that actually get covered. It functions as a sort of saccades for building a representation of what actually happened. Although digital media conflate reporting and opinion more readily than pre-digital media which can make separating point of view from story harder, the ability to compare multiple sources is immeasurably easier in the digital milieu.
Simply knowing when one's digital interface or interaction is capitalized or commercial helps assess the quality and bias of the information presented. Most even mildly sophisticated digital spaces that have a search function will use your past and current viewing history along with an algorithm to predict what sorts of things you are likely to be interested in. This capitalizes our digital behavior and is not wholly bad. If you are looking for a specific type of product, an algorithm that gives you options to choose from is useful so long as the choice is real and not the offerings of a disguised monopoly. This maintains, presumably, competitive offerings and pricing which should be good for consumers.
The problem with algorithmic recommendations is that they are by necessity narrowed to results that are commercially relevant or viable for the organization that owns the algorithm. Again, if one is searching for a commercial product, commercial relevance and viability are expected. Algorithms become especially problematic when the searcher seeks more general information or non-commercial information. In these cases, the algorithms have a blunting or stultifying effect. General searches often are most successful when they turn up serendipitous information. I am not sure how serendipity can be programmed into search/recommendation algorithms. I certainly have not encountered it.
What do I mean by 'serendipity'? I will start with an example of dinner choice. Some of the most enjoyable meals I have had in (especially) cities that are new to me often involve little planning. I find an interesting neighborhood and wander around until I discover a place that looks interesting, has an interesting menu, and is crowded. This has led to some of the best dining experiences I have had. It is has also led to experiences I probably wouldn't have otherwise had if I relied on commercial search engines or social media sites. Recently, I discovered an excellent bibimbop place and doughnut shop in Chicago simply driving around an interesting neighborhood until something struck my fancy.
Physical libraries are another place where serendipitous searching happens. As all know, libraries organize stacks of books by subjects. In the past I have gone to subjects areas in which I was interested in but without specific titles in mind. I let my eyes wander over the stacks until something strikes me as interesting. Doing so has led to the discovery of J.R.R. Tolkien and many other tremendously interesting and useful books in many different subject areas. The discoveries were due to chance. That is the essence of serendipity: finding something useful or interesting that you weren't necessarily looking for. I think this is harder to do in the digital space because everything is targeted based on your digital footprint.
Distant searches or connections are stultified when search algorithms and other digital interactions are constantly capitalized. This eliminates the authenticity of experience that is available. To return to mindfulness, a search today will generate information that is less practical and more commercial. Hence you will find articles in business publications and pop psychology, but rarely will you encounter publications that offer hard treatments of what mindfulness is and how it can be achieved authentically. Authentic mindfulness is difficult to achieve and requires a sustained commitment. You will not discover this from a Google-mediated search.
Marketing in the digital space is strangely ubiquitous, prolific, and self-propagating. It is important to identify when it is occurring so that we can assess information for the legitimacy of its content. Otherwise, all information will be mere capitalization. In addition, we as a people should demand that our policymakers maintain existing digital spaces that are commercially neutral and, if possible, develop new commercially neutral digital spaces. Marketing is a distortion. We need to learn to see clearly. It is something we should be mindful of.
Although the thing that prompted me to look at how marketing works in the contemporary world was mindfulness, the lesson seems to be applicable to practically all commercial space. Hence, the challenge is to remain attentive or alert to what is significant or substantive when one is overwhelmed with capitalized dross in what I call the malignant marketing living space. Marketers will tend to capitalize anything that draws interest from a measurable population. Given our interaction with "smart" technologies and digital interfaces, the measurable population can be as small as one. It is critical to note that the connectivity we experience is no bad per se. We can benefit from connections made or suggested through algorithms or other methods. What is bad about the connectivity is that every connection made carries with it information that can be and usually is capitalized. There are few if any connections that have no commercial aspect to them. It is a constant, though not impossible, challenge to parse substantive or intrinsic value from capitalized components, features, or accouterments.
Why the ubiquitous capitalization of information and connectivity is problematic can be exemplified by comparing a search engine and a librarian. A search engine cannot exist without exist without commercial support, usually in the form of advertisers. Hence, the search engine will capitalize on information analysis and delivery by producing results that have been either determined or heavily influenced by the commercial concerns of advertisers or other financial contributors. On the other hand, a librarian is human and as such will have biases, but if you ask him for help finding books about the Battle of Midway, he is not going to direct you to titles from Amazon or Barnes & Noble that may or may not be decent resources but are practically certain to appear in digital searches because of their commercial popularity. The librarian, though less efficient than a search engine in terms of brute strength of basic information processing, should do a better job of directing the library patron to the books most closely suited to her purpose (academic, hobby, general curiosity, etc.). The library patron will lose the size and speed of the search engine's results, but she will gain the reliability of a non-capitalized suggestion. This type of connection or suggestion has value because it is not driven by commercial considerations and it in turn has substantive merit based on what the content is (as a response to user need) as opposed to who produces the content and how well the content is selling.
The digital space, absent a massive ecological or planet-wide disaster, will continue to occupy a huge portion of human interaction and attention for the foreseeable future. Suggesting otherwise or advocating that we avoid the digital space is unrealistic at best and quixotic at worst. Nevertheless, malignant marketing can be identified and shunted our of one's intellectual space if she knows what to look for. Additionally, citizens can demand that public officials maintain existing and create new neutral information and connectivity options in the digital space. A library is a good example of a service that can operate in the digital space non-commercially, so long as its digital presence remains commercially neutral, i.e. public funds are used exclusively to build and maintain the digital space rather than corporate donations.
Regardless of whether the people demand and policymakers deliver commercially neutral digital spaces, individuals can learn to recognize marketing and capitalization of digital spaces and information delivery. As such, individuals can learn to separate wheat from chaff, metal from dross. News is a good example of where this skill is both necessary and easy to learn. First, one can easily learn to distinguish the subject of a news story from the bias, opinion, and point of view of the author or organization. Second, using multiple news sources with differing organizational points of view is a useful way to discern editorial bias by comparing both differing treatments of the same story and comparing the stories that actually get covered. It functions as a sort of saccades for building a representation of what actually happened. Although digital media conflate reporting and opinion more readily than pre-digital media which can make separating point of view from story harder, the ability to compare multiple sources is immeasurably easier in the digital milieu.
Simply knowing when one's digital interface or interaction is capitalized or commercial helps assess the quality and bias of the information presented. Most even mildly sophisticated digital spaces that have a search function will use your past and current viewing history along with an algorithm to predict what sorts of things you are likely to be interested in. This capitalizes our digital behavior and is not wholly bad. If you are looking for a specific type of product, an algorithm that gives you options to choose from is useful so long as the choice is real and not the offerings of a disguised monopoly. This maintains, presumably, competitive offerings and pricing which should be good for consumers.
The problem with algorithmic recommendations is that they are by necessity narrowed to results that are commercially relevant or viable for the organization that owns the algorithm. Again, if one is searching for a commercial product, commercial relevance and viability are expected. Algorithms become especially problematic when the searcher seeks more general information or non-commercial information. In these cases, the algorithms have a blunting or stultifying effect. General searches often are most successful when they turn up serendipitous information. I am not sure how serendipity can be programmed into search/recommendation algorithms. I certainly have not encountered it.
What do I mean by 'serendipity'? I will start with an example of dinner choice. Some of the most enjoyable meals I have had in (especially) cities that are new to me often involve little planning. I find an interesting neighborhood and wander around until I discover a place that looks interesting, has an interesting menu, and is crowded. This has led to some of the best dining experiences I have had. It is has also led to experiences I probably wouldn't have otherwise had if I relied on commercial search engines or social media sites. Recently, I discovered an excellent bibimbop place and doughnut shop in Chicago simply driving around an interesting neighborhood until something struck my fancy.
Physical libraries are another place where serendipitous searching happens. As all know, libraries organize stacks of books by subjects. In the past I have gone to subjects areas in which I was interested in but without specific titles in mind. I let my eyes wander over the stacks until something strikes me as interesting. Doing so has led to the discovery of J.R.R. Tolkien and many other tremendously interesting and useful books in many different subject areas. The discoveries were due to chance. That is the essence of serendipity: finding something useful or interesting that you weren't necessarily looking for. I think this is harder to do in the digital space because everything is targeted based on your digital footprint.
Distant searches or connections are stultified when search algorithms and other digital interactions are constantly capitalized. This eliminates the authenticity of experience that is available. To return to mindfulness, a search today will generate information that is less practical and more commercial. Hence you will find articles in business publications and pop psychology, but rarely will you encounter publications that offer hard treatments of what mindfulness is and how it can be achieved authentically. Authentic mindfulness is difficult to achieve and requires a sustained commitment. You will not discover this from a Google-mediated search.
Marketing in the digital space is strangely ubiquitous, prolific, and self-propagating. It is important to identify when it is occurring so that we can assess information for the legitimacy of its content. Otherwise, all information will be mere capitalization. In addition, we as a people should demand that our policymakers maintain existing digital spaces that are commercially neutral and, if possible, develop new commercially neutral digital spaces. Marketing is a distortion. We need to learn to see clearly. It is something we should be mindful of.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
"#InstagrammingAfrica: The Narcissism of Global Voluntourism," the Collapse of Borders, and the New Authoritarianism
This is an email I recently sent. Thought it was worth reproducing:
Check this out when you have some time. It is a fairly short and interesting read. Although it is a couple of years old, it touches on something I have been thinking about lately, especially as it relates to the current political climate in the US and across the Middle East and Europe. The article is about the narcissism and ugly paternalism inherent in "voluntourism," especially of the medical sort. It is worth thinking about because one of the things we are experiencing is the collapsing of the neat borders we have created for ourselves in what has been called the global north. I hesitate to call it the developed world because it really is a Euro-American phenomenon more than it is "developed" in the sense that it does not seem to apply to the "developed" nations of Asia. In this country, the rise of Trump and the popularity of Sanders share at least one common factor and that is a dissatisfaction with the psychosocial boundaries that we either see as collapsing (in the case of Trump) or being unnecessarily and dangerously imposed on us (in the case of Sanders). The evidence of their collapse is most acutely demonstrated in the Syrian refugee crisis and the demonization of an entire people, in many circles pejoratively referred to as "Muslims" who are being displaced by the boundaries that we imposed on them from the global north. I continue to believe that the dominant and subverted metaphor for this collapse of boundaries between global north and global south is the current popularity of "zombies." They are impossibly numerous, already dead (read "not human") and threaten to subsume us into their mass of unintelligible chaos and inhumanity. Read Trump's rhetoric and those of his ilk and it is not hard to see the parallel: "Mexicans" and "Muslims" are not merely immigrants, but monsters with only one desire - to devour "us."
Check this out when you have some time. It is a fairly short and interesting read. Although it is a couple of years old, it touches on something I have been thinking about lately, especially as it relates to the current political climate in the US and across the Middle East and Europe. The article is about the narcissism and ugly paternalism inherent in "voluntourism," especially of the medical sort. It is worth thinking about because one of the things we are experiencing is the collapsing of the neat borders we have created for ourselves in what has been called the global north. I hesitate to call it the developed world because it really is a Euro-American phenomenon more than it is "developed" in the sense that it does not seem to apply to the "developed" nations of Asia. In this country, the rise of Trump and the popularity of Sanders share at least one common factor and that is a dissatisfaction with the psychosocial boundaries that we either see as collapsing (in the case of Trump) or being unnecessarily and dangerously imposed on us (in the case of Sanders). The evidence of their collapse is most acutely demonstrated in the Syrian refugee crisis and the demonization of an entire people, in many circles pejoratively referred to as "Muslims" who are being displaced by the boundaries that we imposed on them from the global north. I continue to believe that the dominant and subverted metaphor for this collapse of boundaries between global north and global south is the current popularity of "zombies." They are impossibly numerous, already dead (read "not human") and threaten to subsume us into their mass of unintelligible chaos and inhumanity. Read Trump's rhetoric and those of his ilk and it is not hard to see the parallel: "Mexicans" and "Muslims" are not merely immigrants, but monsters with only one desire - to devour "us."
The problem is that have to come to terms with the fact that we must share the globe with everyone on it. Paradoxically, we have created the conditions that by necessity are pushing people to demand that we start sharing what we have with them. I worry that the impulses of bigots and authoritarians will control our response to the very conditions of necessity that they and we have created. I fear these impulses because they will be bigoted and authoritarian and most probably violent in a martial sense. I don't think this response is guaranteed because there are a good many people and political actors that are striving to respond in decent and humane ways. I have never been much of a fan of Angela Merkel, but I have to say the decency and practicality she has shown in her response to the Syrian refugee crisis has caused me to reevaluate my opinion of her. She is truly a beacon of hope and example to be followed. I am particularly impressed with her insistence and commitment to the idea that a democratic and developed society not only can absorb those in need but that it must and in so doing will not collapse but will succeed and demonstrate a path for the rest of the global north to follow. I am also more deeply impressed with Pope Francis than I was even a year ago. His confidence and humility in the face of the global dislocations we are seeing serves as another model that we can become a better and stronger global population when we act justly and generously. It always hurts when you have had everything to yourself and suddenly are forced to share that which you have thought of as being wholly your own. What Pope Francis and Angela Merkel demonstrate to the global north is that we have never really had everything to ourselves, merely that we have taken everything for ourselves and this isn't right. If we want to change the world, it won't be through short trips to economically disadvantaged places where we take proud selfies to show how selfless we think we are being. Instead, if we want to change the world we should ask ourselves how we can divest ourselves of the privilege we have taken and accept the fact that this means we will have to acknowledge the claims of others as being equal to our own. It is true that boundaries are crumbling, but the answer isn't to build a wall. The answer is to build bridges.
I am worried and I am scared. I worry about the world my son is inheriting, but I am not without hope. Angela Merkel shows that we can be generous and tough. Pope Francis shows that we can be brave and humble. For all of its faults, the Milwaukee French Immersion School that my son attends shows that we can embrace each other, even when so many of us are so radically different. Trump notwithstanding, walls are crumbling. This shouldn't be scary. Zombies aren't coming in, people are. I say let's get to know them.
Friday, February 19, 2016
It's Not the End of the World, So Why Don't We Feel Fine?
Americans engaged with the political process seem particularly prone to cataclysmic thinking. I am not a political scientist or a historian, so I do not know if this is something that has been characteristic of Americans generally or whether this is a new phenomenon. Some aspects of contemporary culture are considered to be detrimental to civility in politics and society generally. These aspects included the 24 hour news cycle and social media (for its combined ubiquity, immediacy, and unfiltered nature). These same aspects are blamed for a cultural short attention span, which certainly could lead to or increase the sense that every piece of information is somehow crucial or influential. This, in turn, would seem to predispose persons to cataclysmic thinking, or the notion that every decision, every change, every political fight is of the utmost importance to both present and future. The problem is that this type of thinking is neither accurate nor healthy.
One current issue about which Americans engaged with the political process are currently thinking and debating is the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Scalia died unexpectedly and it is an election year. This has the right, in particular, in hysterics over the possibility that President Obama will appoint a 'liberal' justice who will influence the Court's decisions in a wholly untoward and dangerous manner, potentially for decades. The vacancy and the nomination are cast in stark terms, as if the country would somehow fail or cease to function if the makeup of the court were to become more liberal.
It is undoubtedly true that the decisions of the court would skew more liberal if President Obama appointed and the Senate confirmed an appointee before the election. This of course fails even to consider the possibility that a Republican wins the presidency and is able to appoint a justice when a member of the liberal voting block leaves the court. While predicting the future can be difficult, one would think that the actuarial tables are suggest we should not be optimistic that she will live through another presidential term, and certainly not two terms. The point being that the hyperbolic worry about a President Obama appointee being confirmed to the court is not the guarantee of a long-lived liberal majority on the court that it is made out to be.
Still, what if President Obama appoints a justice and the Senate confirms the appointment and it creates a liberal majority on the court that lasts for a couple of decades? Would this really doom us? It seems silly to think it would. The current makeup of the Supreme Court has been reliably conservative for at least 30 years now and it has not plunged us into the abyss. The Supreme Court was reliably liberal during the 1950s and 1960s and did not plunge us into the abyss. Certainly segments of the population have not been happy with decisions that either type of court issued, but the Republic did not dissolve into chaos and life has gone on. For example, conservatives bemoaned the expansion of rights afforded to criminal defendants under the Warren Court. Noteworthy among the decisions was the finding in Gideon v. Wainwright that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to legal representation in state criminal proceedings. Despite expanding criminal defendants' rights, the criminal justice system did not grind to a halt and violent criminals did not go unpunished. As any moderately aware resident of the United States knows, the reverse occurred in the last two decades during which huge numbers of criminal defendants were charged and convicted of crimes, which caused an explosion in the United States' prison population. It must be noted, that these criminal defendants were guaranteed legal representation and were still convicted.
The same holds true for the left. Justice Scalia authored the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Court explicitly found that the Second Amendment extends an individual right to bear arms unconnected with military service. Many on the left concluded that the sky would indeed fall, or at least would be filled with an unremitting hail of bullets. I personally do not find the need to bear arms of any sort and think the idea that one needs a weapon for personal safety in a civil society suggests at the very least that the society is not civil; nevertheless, the worried panegyrics from the left struck me as hopelessly overblown. The United States already had a huge number of persons who owned guns. The United States already had a huge number of persons who died from gunshots. It struck me as inconceivable that a technical change in the law would change either fact substantially, and it did not. The most reliable predictor of an increase in firearm ownership is not a loosening of the Second Amendment but rather threats to tighten the rules applying to firearm purchase and ownership. The bottom line is that most of what the Court decides will not have an impact on the daily life of citizens and that the decisions that do impact daily life are often not as profound as we think they will be.
People need to relax a bit about the political issues and choices with which we are faced. They are not insignificant, but they are often not as earth-shattering or radical as we make them out to be. Of course there are exceptions. In keeping with the U.S. Supreme Court, there are decisions that have a profound impact on American life. Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Lochner v. New York, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, Bush v. Gore. Each of these cases had profound and discernible effects on the lives of Americans. The problem is that we cannot know when these profoundly significant cases will arise and be ripe for decision one way or the other. Neither can we always know how courts will decide them. King v. Burwell is such an example. Perhaps the Affordable Healthcare Act is not as significant as the aforementioned cases. Still it was a seminal issue of this political generation and the fact that the decision was 6-3 and that Chief Justice Roberts not joined the liberal block (with Justice Kennedy) but also authored the opinion upholding the availability of tax credits to individuals purchasing health insurance on federal exchanges was not a predictable result. Whether and when the sky is falling is unfortunately not something that is often knowable in advance. As such, we should stop acting as if it is constant danger of coming down.
Cataclysmic thinking also perplexes me because many of the persons who think in cataclysmic terms about politics do not have it all that bad and are not likely to be significantly impacted by either political party gaining ascendancy. This is not true of persons at the margins of society, of those who are vulnerable and rely on the state to protect and provide for them when they are unable to do so for themselves. The strange thing is that the most vociferous voices on most things political, the ones who worry excessively and loudly, who engage in perpetual hyperbole and panegyric, are not the marginalized. If a person has a college, professional, or advanced degree and is in any number of white collar fields where upper middle class and upper class salaries are the norm, it really doesn't matter much which party is in charge of the government from a class-wide perspective. Members of this class will enjoy home ownership, safe neighborhoods, comfortable retirements, health care, reliable transportation, good-to-excellent schools, reliable public services, and myriad other benefits, both public and private, regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican are president. For this cohort, it is not the end of the world as they know it and they really ought to feel fine.
I worry about cataclysmic thinking because it creates a socio-political environment that is filled with unnecessary stress and strife. This cannot be good for us as a nation because it causes our thinking to be clouded with fear and other emotions when what would be best is for us to take a longer view. Cataclysmic thinking is the ultimate short-term perspective because it focuses everything on the battle at hand without giving any thought to our future as a socio-political collective. Politics in this country has an internal corrective to bad decisions: regular and free elections. Ultimately, if any one party gains ascendancy and behaves so irresponsibly as to damage significant and discernible portions of the population, that party will not be able to hold on to power. And if they somehow manage to maintain power, they will be forced to modify their positions, at least in part. The current support for criminal justice reform among elements of the political right is a good example of this.
Civic and political engagement is a good thing. It is an even better thing if it is well-reasoned and fully informed. And it is best when we realize that politics is a process, not an endgame. For Americans not at the margins, things are not that bad. Stop acting like the sky is falling. It almost certainly isn't, and it if is neither political party will be able to stop it.
One current issue about which Americans engaged with the political process are currently thinking and debating is the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Scalia died unexpectedly and it is an election year. This has the right, in particular, in hysterics over the possibility that President Obama will appoint a 'liberal' justice who will influence the Court's decisions in a wholly untoward and dangerous manner, potentially for decades. The vacancy and the nomination are cast in stark terms, as if the country would somehow fail or cease to function if the makeup of the court were to become more liberal.
It is undoubtedly true that the decisions of the court would skew more liberal if President Obama appointed and the Senate confirmed an appointee before the election. This of course fails even to consider the possibility that a Republican wins the presidency and is able to appoint a justice when a member of the liberal voting block leaves the court. While predicting the future can be difficult, one would think that the actuarial tables are suggest we should not be optimistic that she will live through another presidential term, and certainly not two terms. The point being that the hyperbolic worry about a President Obama appointee being confirmed to the court is not the guarantee of a long-lived liberal majority on the court that it is made out to be.
Still, what if President Obama appoints a justice and the Senate confirms the appointment and it creates a liberal majority on the court that lasts for a couple of decades? Would this really doom us? It seems silly to think it would. The current makeup of the Supreme Court has been reliably conservative for at least 30 years now and it has not plunged us into the abyss. The Supreme Court was reliably liberal during the 1950s and 1960s and did not plunge us into the abyss. Certainly segments of the population have not been happy with decisions that either type of court issued, but the Republic did not dissolve into chaos and life has gone on. For example, conservatives bemoaned the expansion of rights afforded to criminal defendants under the Warren Court. Noteworthy among the decisions was the finding in Gideon v. Wainwright that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to legal representation in state criminal proceedings. Despite expanding criminal defendants' rights, the criminal justice system did not grind to a halt and violent criminals did not go unpunished. As any moderately aware resident of the United States knows, the reverse occurred in the last two decades during which huge numbers of criminal defendants were charged and convicted of crimes, which caused an explosion in the United States' prison population. It must be noted, that these criminal defendants were guaranteed legal representation and were still convicted.
The same holds true for the left. Justice Scalia authored the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Court explicitly found that the Second Amendment extends an individual right to bear arms unconnected with military service. Many on the left concluded that the sky would indeed fall, or at least would be filled with an unremitting hail of bullets. I personally do not find the need to bear arms of any sort and think the idea that one needs a weapon for personal safety in a civil society suggests at the very least that the society is not civil; nevertheless, the worried panegyrics from the left struck me as hopelessly overblown. The United States already had a huge number of persons who owned guns. The United States already had a huge number of persons who died from gunshots. It struck me as inconceivable that a technical change in the law would change either fact substantially, and it did not. The most reliable predictor of an increase in firearm ownership is not a loosening of the Second Amendment but rather threats to tighten the rules applying to firearm purchase and ownership. The bottom line is that most of what the Court decides will not have an impact on the daily life of citizens and that the decisions that do impact daily life are often not as profound as we think they will be.
People need to relax a bit about the political issues and choices with which we are faced. They are not insignificant, but they are often not as earth-shattering or radical as we make them out to be. Of course there are exceptions. In keeping with the U.S. Supreme Court, there are decisions that have a profound impact on American life. Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Lochner v. New York, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, Bush v. Gore. Each of these cases had profound and discernible effects on the lives of Americans. The problem is that we cannot know when these profoundly significant cases will arise and be ripe for decision one way or the other. Neither can we always know how courts will decide them. King v. Burwell is such an example. Perhaps the Affordable Healthcare Act is not as significant as the aforementioned cases. Still it was a seminal issue of this political generation and the fact that the decision was 6-3 and that Chief Justice Roberts not joined the liberal block (with Justice Kennedy) but also authored the opinion upholding the availability of tax credits to individuals purchasing health insurance on federal exchanges was not a predictable result. Whether and when the sky is falling is unfortunately not something that is often knowable in advance. As such, we should stop acting as if it is constant danger of coming down.
Cataclysmic thinking also perplexes me because many of the persons who think in cataclysmic terms about politics do not have it all that bad and are not likely to be significantly impacted by either political party gaining ascendancy. This is not true of persons at the margins of society, of those who are vulnerable and rely on the state to protect and provide for them when they are unable to do so for themselves. The strange thing is that the most vociferous voices on most things political, the ones who worry excessively and loudly, who engage in perpetual hyperbole and panegyric, are not the marginalized. If a person has a college, professional, or advanced degree and is in any number of white collar fields where upper middle class and upper class salaries are the norm, it really doesn't matter much which party is in charge of the government from a class-wide perspective. Members of this class will enjoy home ownership, safe neighborhoods, comfortable retirements, health care, reliable transportation, good-to-excellent schools, reliable public services, and myriad other benefits, both public and private, regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican are president. For this cohort, it is not the end of the world as they know it and they really ought to feel fine.
I worry about cataclysmic thinking because it creates a socio-political environment that is filled with unnecessary stress and strife. This cannot be good for us as a nation because it causes our thinking to be clouded with fear and other emotions when what would be best is for us to take a longer view. Cataclysmic thinking is the ultimate short-term perspective because it focuses everything on the battle at hand without giving any thought to our future as a socio-political collective. Politics in this country has an internal corrective to bad decisions: regular and free elections. Ultimately, if any one party gains ascendancy and behaves so irresponsibly as to damage significant and discernible portions of the population, that party will not be able to hold on to power. And if they somehow manage to maintain power, they will be forced to modify their positions, at least in part. The current support for criminal justice reform among elements of the political right is a good example of this.
Civic and political engagement is a good thing. It is an even better thing if it is well-reasoned and fully informed. And it is best when we realize that politics is a process, not an endgame. For Americans not at the margins, things are not that bad. Stop acting like the sky is falling. It almost certainly isn't, and it if is neither political party will be able to stop it.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Looking for Salvation in Medicine
Several months ago, Atul Gawande wrote an interesting article in the New Yorker on why people seek unnecessary treatment. He questions why patients will willingly undergo unnecessary treatments that are objectively more dangerous than undergoing no treatment at all. He discusses why this is the case and posits, among other ideas, that part of the problem is that people generally don't know what statistics in medicine mean. Having thought about the piece myself, I question whether it is so much that we don’t know as it is
that we want to know about certain things in certain ways. Alan Levinovitz, author of The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What You Eat,
remarked about a similar issue involving diets:
In his piece, Gawande notes that a patient from whom he surgically removed
a benign thyroid cancer that was only discovered due to an unnecessary test “thanked
me profusely for relieving her anxiety.”
She was not concerned about her actual physical health condition. If she were, she would have recognized that
the procedure to remove the benign tumor carried with it higher risks of death
and physical harm than leaving the microcarcinoma alone and monitoring it. The need for treatment was not medical. Her understanding of the condition was
conditioned on a belief system about cancer (and medicine) that is mythic. Dr. Gawande was fulfilling a function perhaps
closer to shaman than surgeon. The
problem, if it is a problem, is with modes of understanding and typologies of
knowledge.
It is too easy to blame greed. Certainly greed in medicine exists. So does false hope and unrealistic
expectations. Charlatans take advantage
in medicine as they do in the revival tent (or on the revival screen, as the
case may be).
The idea of medicine in America is, or has become,
salvic. Christ on the Cross is no longer
intercessor or savior or redeemer. Now
it is the busy doctor dispensing antibiotics for viral upper respiratory
infections or the cardiothoracic surgeon putting in a stent or the plastic
surgeon cheating time with a Botox injection who intercedes, saves, or
redeems. The Rosary replaced by the Rx
b.i.d. The actual state of health is
unimportant compared to the reassurance of an explanation, the ritual that
allows us to feel as though everything is okay, that everything is in order,
that we are being taken care of. The
soul has become the body. Our quest for health is, as Levine notes with diet, quasi-religious.
And pain. Pain is
more than nociception. Pain is a modality
for expressing discomfort, physical or otherwise. Complaints of pain alone seems not to
establish physical pathology. However,
we have learned that when something hurts we go to the doctor. Unhappy marriages hurt. Financial distress hurts. Is it any wonder that we somaticize? Seeking understanding and counsel in medicine
is normal behavior for persons acculturated as we are; that is acculturated to
believe every problem is medical and every medical problem has a solution.
One of Foucault’s profound insights in The Clinic is that the patient went from being a person in the pre-clinical era of medicine to a specimen
when medicine became “scientific” or clinical. As a
specimen, the patient became an object of inquiry rather than a person in the
world. The goal of treatment became a
disease-free state rather than well-being.
Thus, questions about the patient’s overall well-being that were not
directly related to the disease state were subverted and minimized. “Treatment” would only be proffered in the
presence of objectively verifiable disease, regardless of the patient’s degree
of actual suffering. Consciously or not,
patients came to understand that if they wanted relief from pain they would
have to characterize it as a disease-state.
Members of all societies suffer, some more than others, but
suffering is a constant. No society is
Edenic. Nevertheless, contemporary
American society seems to predispose its members, at least those members not
living in abject poverty, to a certain anomie.
For whatever reason, traditional American cultural institutions seem unable to
ameliorate this state. Instead, this
cultural disaffection seems often to be medicalized in forms such as low back
pain, arthritis pain, or depression.
Unfortunately, medicine treats the manifestations of anomie as disease
states, with predictably poor results.
Despite the predictably poor results, medicine treats manifestations of anomie with the same
confidence and professional brio with which it treats broken bones. Hence, a perversity of expected outcomes is
created for both doctors and patients. Doctors offer something approximating science while patients seek salvation for existential discomfort out of the firmament of superstition and myth. Unfortunately, never the twain shall meet.
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