'The unequal power sharing situation that a "Biblical Marriage" involves is basically a 24/7 re-ennactment of the Stanford Prison experiment. I'm not saying that every or even most unequal relationships are abusive, but the potential is very much there. Frankly, when one person has socially recognized power over another, the first person tends to turn into a jerk, and the second person quickly stops resisting. The latter is probably part of why abuse is chronically under-reported in the Christian community.
And of course, even in a healthy, non-abusive relationship, there's still the fact that women are pressured to "stay in the kitchen" while men are pressured to become the primary or sole breadwinner, with no real consideration for the fact that maybe either partner isn't suited for that job.' - Miles Teg
On the subject of abuse:
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
'Hedonism' (3)
It's not really about hedonism at all, but it follows from the last post I made. I mentioned one problem I have with specialization, and that's how it leads to instability in life because it is, in essence, a risk.
I think it's worth mentioning the link to the subject of 'The Spirit Level', which I never finished reviewing here. People take risks and many suffer the consequences of failure because of the urge to do well. If you need to acquire phenomenal amounts of wealth in order to stand on an equal footing with the wealthiest, then you need to take the sorts of risks that provide such massive benefits if they pay off. It is patently untrue (to me; proving it will have to be a subject of another post) that it is possible to work one's way up to being a millionnaire or billionnaire without any luck at all, but merely by hard work. Part of the proof will necessarily involve pointing out that listening to millionnaires explain how they did is a perfect example of selection bias; you need to count not only the people who are successful self-made millionnaires, but also the people who tried and failed.
The risk of success is not the same as the pressure. The pressure to succeed, whether it stems from personal goals, family needs or social environment, might well be stressful in itself, but that stress is in addition to the stress of taking on risk. A person might very well know that he is at risk: that the job is uncertain, or that the field is unstable, but need to specialize anyway. One of the effects of inequality is to set unreasonable standards for people to aspire to. If there are 'super-rich' people who own or earn (typically both, in one sense of the word 'earn') far more money than even the very well-off, people will aspire to that level of wealth, and will take risks to get there.
These risks can be working very hard in the hope that this will pay off later, when if it doesn't you've wasted your life, including your chance at a pleasurable social life, and quite possibly your health if you worked very hard.
Or the risk can be putting your money on a risky bet. Or getting a difficult loan. Or simply studying for, or taking, a job in a well-paid but small sector, in which numbers and market demand might make a big difference. In this context, risk covers a multitude of choices the outcome of which is not known by the chooser, but without which long-term success is not possible.
The greatest risks are too much even for most aspiring millionnaires, and in modern society, too much for the very poor, since they already have a nice enough life. Whenever someone says that a hopeful just doesn't want it enough, it annoys me. The hopeful isn't desperate enough to risk losing what he has. Taking risks is not manly; it's boyish. Risks are for those who have nothing to lose, except a lot of testosterone, and these people are typically young boys just making their way into society.
However, I see it as fundamentally unequal that risks are necessary and of different value to different people. A very wealthy child can take risks safely, knowing that his parents can support him. The risks are not risks to him, but merely opportunities. That is not equality, for which some people hope, nor equality of opportunity, for which I hope. As long as risk is necessary, the rich will have more opportunity.
I also regard it as wrong that one's outcome in life can depend on chance; that to do well one must risk some fairly consequential failure. The ideal would be that talent, ability and hard work, which are indistinguishable from each other, fully determine outcome, so that if there were millionnaires they were the most talented and dedicated individuals.
If it were truly possible for anyone to earn any of the range of incomes in society then wealth by birth would not be such a terrible thing; a person would merely be as well-off as anyone else who wished to be. The two problems of wealth are the unfairness of people receiving not only what they didn't earn, but what others cannot hope to earn, and that if a person starts from that point, they will be able to accumulate more: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or 'wealth accumulates'.
I wonder what the arguments are against a cap in income in a country. If we set it at 5 or 10 times the national median would we damage the economy greatly? If we did damage it greatly, would that actually matter in terms of human suffering, or would it simply reduce some otherwise worthless numbers?
If one could currently earn the national cap, the argument would go, then one would simply do less work until the national cap was the market rate for the amount of work. And presumably the argument would be that an inferior job was being done on the work cast off in this way, and hence the company and the economy and the efficient distribution of goods all suffers.
But I wonder if there really is such a detrimental effect. The person who doesn't work as much surely benefits; he gets time off, and relief from the pressure of chasing more. Because really, I wonder if people at that income level really feel the need for it, rather than simply getting caught up in a competition to earn; to beat one's own score and everyone else's, in which income is the score. Do they actually need that extra income, or is it merely exploring the limits of what is possible?
Secondly, I wonder whether the job will be done worse. There are plenty of sensible people out there who respond very poorly to the extreme financial incentives that are in place at the top of corporate hierarchies. Mismanagement and corruption are hardly rare nowadays, and are often the consequence of arrogance, risk-taking and bonus/incentive chasing. In a culture in which risk is better understood and avoided, and in which money can no longer be a target to chase, rather than earn, it is quite possible that people will behave more responsibly. The cult of the CEO has been interestingly examined in the book 'Bad Company' by Gideon Haigh. The psychology of incentives, and how incentives can fail, has been examined by many behavioural economists and psychologists.
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html
These two talks looked appropriate, but there are a number of examples: how motivating incentives encourage not creativity and inventiveness, but hidebound devotion to established systems, and only encourage better concentration at work that is mentally understood; how introducing monetary incentives over-rides or replaces moral or other concerns rather than adding to them, even when the two are aligned to create the same action; how culture and financial reward in these working environments leads to short-term goals and often not even good short-term strategies.
All these influences that cause problems would be lesser in a more equal society, in which CEOs earned a fraction of what they earn today. Is one man really worth 50 average people, or even 10 people in the top percentile of the population? Can any job reasonably require a better candidate than the job of running the whole country? If we made these CEOs work only 10-hour weeks and shared the work, would these large number of very intelligent replacements really ruin a company more than a CEO? I really doubt that a CEO is necessarily such a specialized and talented individual. The idea that people who are paid a lot must be very talented because they earn it, and therefore would be good at your company being paid a bit more has it the wrong way round: using the money as a way to judge talent is a mistake in trusting market decisions.
The more you abstract from the quantity you wish to judge, the more liable you are to bubbles. CEOs are just earnings bubbles; entirely over-rated, but paid because everyone believes everyone else. Once again, economics terms can be applied successfully to individuals within economies. A sane, rational world would judge the talent directly.
I've had a bit of a tangent here, but to return to the concept of ' The Spirit Level', it is the ultra-rich who cause the problems. The well-off accountants and financial officers who earn (at the moment) £40,000-100,000 are not the ones at the top end of the gross inequality spectrum, making everyone else anxious to keep up. It is the ultra-rich who are the problem.
I think it's worth mentioning the link to the subject of 'The Spirit Level', which I never finished reviewing here. People take risks and many suffer the consequences of failure because of the urge to do well. If you need to acquire phenomenal amounts of wealth in order to stand on an equal footing with the wealthiest, then you need to take the sorts of risks that provide such massive benefits if they pay off. It is patently untrue (to me; proving it will have to be a subject of another post) that it is possible to work one's way up to being a millionnaire or billionnaire without any luck at all, but merely by hard work. Part of the proof will necessarily involve pointing out that listening to millionnaires explain how they did is a perfect example of selection bias; you need to count not only the people who are successful self-made millionnaires, but also the people who tried and failed.
The risk of success is not the same as the pressure. The pressure to succeed, whether it stems from personal goals, family needs or social environment, might well be stressful in itself, but that stress is in addition to the stress of taking on risk. A person might very well know that he is at risk: that the job is uncertain, or that the field is unstable, but need to specialize anyway. One of the effects of inequality is to set unreasonable standards for people to aspire to. If there are 'super-rich' people who own or earn (typically both, in one sense of the word 'earn') far more money than even the very well-off, people will aspire to that level of wealth, and will take risks to get there.
These risks can be working very hard in the hope that this will pay off later, when if it doesn't you've wasted your life, including your chance at a pleasurable social life, and quite possibly your health if you worked very hard.
Or the risk can be putting your money on a risky bet. Or getting a difficult loan. Or simply studying for, or taking, a job in a well-paid but small sector, in which numbers and market demand might make a big difference. In this context, risk covers a multitude of choices the outcome of which is not known by the chooser, but without which long-term success is not possible.
The greatest risks are too much even for most aspiring millionnaires, and in modern society, too much for the very poor, since they already have a nice enough life. Whenever someone says that a hopeful just doesn't want it enough, it annoys me. The hopeful isn't desperate enough to risk losing what he has. Taking risks is not manly; it's boyish. Risks are for those who have nothing to lose, except a lot of testosterone, and these people are typically young boys just making their way into society.
However, I see it as fundamentally unequal that risks are necessary and of different value to different people. A very wealthy child can take risks safely, knowing that his parents can support him. The risks are not risks to him, but merely opportunities. That is not equality, for which some people hope, nor equality of opportunity, for which I hope. As long as risk is necessary, the rich will have more opportunity.
I also regard it as wrong that one's outcome in life can depend on chance; that to do well one must risk some fairly consequential failure. The ideal would be that talent, ability and hard work, which are indistinguishable from each other, fully determine outcome, so that if there were millionnaires they were the most talented and dedicated individuals.
If it were truly possible for anyone to earn any of the range of incomes in society then wealth by birth would not be such a terrible thing; a person would merely be as well-off as anyone else who wished to be. The two problems of wealth are the unfairness of people receiving not only what they didn't earn, but what others cannot hope to earn, and that if a person starts from that point, they will be able to accumulate more: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or 'wealth accumulates'.
I wonder what the arguments are against a cap in income in a country. If we set it at 5 or 10 times the national median would we damage the economy greatly? If we did damage it greatly, would that actually matter in terms of human suffering, or would it simply reduce some otherwise worthless numbers?
If one could currently earn the national cap, the argument would go, then one would simply do less work until the national cap was the market rate for the amount of work. And presumably the argument would be that an inferior job was being done on the work cast off in this way, and hence the company and the economy and the efficient distribution of goods all suffers.
But I wonder if there really is such a detrimental effect. The person who doesn't work as much surely benefits; he gets time off, and relief from the pressure of chasing more. Because really, I wonder if people at that income level really feel the need for it, rather than simply getting caught up in a competition to earn; to beat one's own score and everyone else's, in which income is the score. Do they actually need that extra income, or is it merely exploring the limits of what is possible?
Secondly, I wonder whether the job will be done worse. There are plenty of sensible people out there who respond very poorly to the extreme financial incentives that are in place at the top of corporate hierarchies. Mismanagement and corruption are hardly rare nowadays, and are often the consequence of arrogance, risk-taking and bonus/incentive chasing. In a culture in which risk is better understood and avoided, and in which money can no longer be a target to chase, rather than earn, it is quite possible that people will behave more responsibly. The cult of the CEO has been interestingly examined in the book 'Bad Company' by Gideon Haigh. The psychology of incentives, and how incentives can fail, has been examined by many behavioural economists and psychologists.
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html
These two talks looked appropriate, but there are a number of examples: how motivating incentives encourage not creativity and inventiveness, but hidebound devotion to established systems, and only encourage better concentration at work that is mentally understood; how introducing monetary incentives over-rides or replaces moral or other concerns rather than adding to them, even when the two are aligned to create the same action; how culture and financial reward in these working environments leads to short-term goals and often not even good short-term strategies.
All these influences that cause problems would be lesser in a more equal society, in which CEOs earned a fraction of what they earn today. Is one man really worth 50 average people, or even 10 people in the top percentile of the population? Can any job reasonably require a better candidate than the job of running the whole country? If we made these CEOs work only 10-hour weeks and shared the work, would these large number of very intelligent replacements really ruin a company more than a CEO? I really doubt that a CEO is necessarily such a specialized and talented individual. The idea that people who are paid a lot must be very talented because they earn it, and therefore would be good at your company being paid a bit more has it the wrong way round: using the money as a way to judge talent is a mistake in trusting market decisions.
The more you abstract from the quantity you wish to judge, the more liable you are to bubbles. CEOs are just earnings bubbles; entirely over-rated, but paid because everyone believes everyone else. Once again, economics terms can be applied successfully to individuals within economies. A sane, rational world would judge the talent directly.
I've had a bit of a tangent here, but to return to the concept of ' The Spirit Level', it is the ultra-rich who cause the problems. The well-off accountants and financial officers who earn (at the moment) £40,000-100,000 are not the ones at the top end of the gross inequality spectrum, making everyone else anxious to keep up. It is the ultra-rich who are the problem.
Monday, 22 November 2010
Hedonism (2)
I forgot to include in my post about hedonism my analogy with something that has formed quite a large part of my life (for better and for worse), which is game playing, on the computer particularly.
When one first plays a game, it's a voyage of discovery: the new rules, interactions and the consequent strategies are there to be discovered, and the first few games are interesting simply because of that. Perhaps, with board games, they're the most thrilling that the game ever is, because it's a challenge to find better strategies quickly, without anyone benefitting from experience or prior knowledge. I haven't played computer games against others, and certainly not on initial release, so I can't say the same for my computer game experiences.
Nonetheless, the challenges of learning the rules and developing 'broken' strategies are thrilling, and everyone will gradually settle down in a flatter part of the learning curve (not necessarily the same level of skill for everyone, but nonetheless flatter). New strategic discoveries are rare, and re-playing the game takes on a different meaning for people. The games that have replay value typically involve scoring systems of some sort. The game does not involve merely a win and a loss, but points. The essential feature is that a player can continue to beat himself, even when he is very likely to 'beat the game', such as by beating AI opponents.
The other major source of replayability is a certain randomness that throws up plenty of strategic decisions: randomness not in the outcomes of players' decisions, but in the set-up of the game that gives a huge range of different possible situations. Patience (by which I refer to any one of the range of solo card games) doesn't often involve scoring, but does give a random set-up that makes each game a different puzzle.
When people play a game that they can save, and have played many times before, the temptation increases greatly to save the game just before important decisions. People save regularly as well, in case things happen that the player didn't predict. Of course this makes sense; why lose a whole game because of one chance disaster, when all you'd do is start again and put a lot of work in to another game to get to the same point?
Or, alternatively, why accept that although you'll win, you'll win with a low score that won't be anywhere near your best?
The game (series) that I've played most is Civilization, which has long games of many hours. An event early on can heavily influence the rest of the game; it's quite possible to win from behind, but less likely that the win will be a big score. So I did get into the habit of saving games regularly, then frequently, and at one time, almost every battle (and there are plenty in a game).
The pursuit of the 'perfect game' distorted not just how much I saved, but also the whole strategy that goes with it. If I were running a real civilization amongst a number of hostile ones, I'd probably run a much larger standing army to avoid the risk of losing entirely. But when I can reload and the AI won't necessarily even make the same decision to make a 'surprise' attack, and I can certainly have a mobile defence force in place anyway, I can keep fewer units. Similarly, when a city can be taken by one unit (70% chance, let's say), and right at the beginning of the game I can choose to found my second city or build a third military unit, of course I'll found that city and take the chance that I lose: because I won't really lose!
When it comes to cheating at games like that, even so far as distorting strategy to account for the cheating, it's a personal decision about what's most fun (as long as they're one-person games). I can take big risks and reload when they don't pay off if I really want to push for the perfect game.
But in real life, as I hinted, I wouldn't take such risks; it's not sensible when you can't reload your life! And yet life is very similar, in that big risks have enormous rewards. And there are so many people out there that there's always someone desperate enough (or stupid enough, or testosterone-fuelled enough) to take a risk. The population is so large, in fact, that not only do people take risks, but that these risks pay off for a large number of people.
If I want success, how am I to achieve it? Am I to play safe, ensuring a decent, dull life, just as playing safe would lead to a moderate, decent game result? What is success?
Well, if success is merely surviving, then given my country I am almost guaranteed to succeed until about 80, and almost guaranteed to fail some time round about then.
But success is not about merely surviving, in my mind or in popular usage. Success is about being rich: it's about rising to the top and proving one's worth with objective achievements. How am I to rise to the top (assuming at least some ability)?
If I am to do as well, or better, than risk-takers, I must either be born with a vast amount of wealth, so that I don't need to take a risk, or I must take risks on as well. If we assume that I have some modicum of insight and ability, I can assure myself that I need only take risks that are slightly less risky than other people's risks, because my superior management will make my risks pay off at least as well.
Nonetheless, since risks give the most reward, I must take risks.
The problem is that I cannot reload my life. I have only the one life. When a risk goes wrong I can't try again in my pursuit of the perfect life. I can either acquiesce to a future of dullness and safety, or chase a dream of success which is highly unlikely to be realised simply because of the chances involved, even without considering human error. Neither option inspires me greatly.
I would describe risks in real life as anything from taking an uncertain position in a stock market to the course one chooses to study, or the field of work in which one specializes. Specialization itself is a risk, because you are ruling out a number of options in order to maximize the reward from a small subset of the options.
Obviously there are wide-ranging implications, other than the possibility of me being depressed.
Capitalism is half-predicated on the specialization of labour. Markets, for example, recognize that each person can't do everything for himself, and that it's better for a farrier to make horseshoes for everyone than for everyone to make horseshoes for himself. The problem is that as we chase more and more productivity, by which countries are measured, people must specialize more and more, because specialization does lead to greater efficiency. As nature shows us (and I've mentioned before the similarity between the theory of natural selection of species and market economics, which is basically natural selection of corporations), specialization leads to instability and collapse. A species well-adapted for a niche environment is poorly adapted for other environments and therefore sensitive to change.
When we consider an economy as a whole that's not a problem: a few people lose work here as demand shifts, and a few people get a lot of money elsewhere as they find themselves in demand, and things balance out as people train, or re-train, for the jobs that pay well. But have the people who lost work really been well-served by specialization? When one has put 10 years into learning a job, does one really want to spend 2-3 years re-training because of the unpredictable whims of the markets?
I'm not suggesting that we plan our economies instead. Planned economies would simply delay the inevitable, whilst wasting lots of money from other people on wasted labour. But I do wonder whether we should be chasing productivity, with the inevitable pressure for specialization. A Renaissance man, who can do many tasks, might not be as productive as a man who has learned a little bit more about one of them, but he is a happier, safer and less risk-exposed man.
At the moment the western world is talking about reducing banking risk exposure; about reducing leveraging, re-writing risk models and not underwriting risky corporate behaviour. But just as Hari Seldon, of the Foundation Series (by Isaac Asimov), invented psychohistory, which was eventually applied to individuals (with low certainty), having grown out of psychology, we should think about risk exposure on a personal as well as corporate level.
We have complex models for risk exposure for big banks, and yet none at all modelling risk exposure for humans, or considering the personal costs of that exposure that happen every day.
We have only one economy, and we get a crash every ten years or so. Just as we want to deleverage our banks to prevent a crash every ten (or thirty) years, we need to deleverage ourselves, to avoid the likelihood of a 'crash' for each person. We need personal liquidity: the ability to leave a risky position. And personal liquidity is not just accomplished by good labour rules about employment and maybe emigration, but also about specialization.
If we force a bank to specialize in a certain type of stock, of course it'll be susceptible to crashes in that stock. This is, as far as I know, the main justification of corporate takeovers of dissimilar businesses (barring, of course, the giant bonuses for the directors who initiate them). And yet no-one cares about individual susceptibility to market changes.
It takes time to re-train; time that a person doesn't have spare. The more specialized labour is, the more time he's wasted in his initial training, the more time he'll need for re-training, and the more sensitive his job is to market changes. Humans are successful because our minds make us adaptable in many ecosystems. Why are we so forcefully undoing this? Is there a point in a market when the human costs of specialization outweigh the productivity gains (and presumed human benefits)? Have we reached that point yet? Are the costs and benefits to the same people, and therefore is it right to weigh them against each other?
I don't know, but I wish someone would look into it.
When one first plays a game, it's a voyage of discovery: the new rules, interactions and the consequent strategies are there to be discovered, and the first few games are interesting simply because of that. Perhaps, with board games, they're the most thrilling that the game ever is, because it's a challenge to find better strategies quickly, without anyone benefitting from experience or prior knowledge. I haven't played computer games against others, and certainly not on initial release, so I can't say the same for my computer game experiences.
Nonetheless, the challenges of learning the rules and developing 'broken' strategies are thrilling, and everyone will gradually settle down in a flatter part of the learning curve (not necessarily the same level of skill for everyone, but nonetheless flatter). New strategic discoveries are rare, and re-playing the game takes on a different meaning for people. The games that have replay value typically involve scoring systems of some sort. The game does not involve merely a win and a loss, but points. The essential feature is that a player can continue to beat himself, even when he is very likely to 'beat the game', such as by beating AI opponents.
The other major source of replayability is a certain randomness that throws up plenty of strategic decisions: randomness not in the outcomes of players' decisions, but in the set-up of the game that gives a huge range of different possible situations. Patience (by which I refer to any one of the range of solo card games) doesn't often involve scoring, but does give a random set-up that makes each game a different puzzle.
When people play a game that they can save, and have played many times before, the temptation increases greatly to save the game just before important decisions. People save regularly as well, in case things happen that the player didn't predict. Of course this makes sense; why lose a whole game because of one chance disaster, when all you'd do is start again and put a lot of work in to another game to get to the same point?
Or, alternatively, why accept that although you'll win, you'll win with a low score that won't be anywhere near your best?
The game (series) that I've played most is Civilization, which has long games of many hours. An event early on can heavily influence the rest of the game; it's quite possible to win from behind, but less likely that the win will be a big score. So I did get into the habit of saving games regularly, then frequently, and at one time, almost every battle (and there are plenty in a game).
The pursuit of the 'perfect game' distorted not just how much I saved, but also the whole strategy that goes with it. If I were running a real civilization amongst a number of hostile ones, I'd probably run a much larger standing army to avoid the risk of losing entirely. But when I can reload and the AI won't necessarily even make the same decision to make a 'surprise' attack, and I can certainly have a mobile defence force in place anyway, I can keep fewer units. Similarly, when a city can be taken by one unit (70% chance, let's say), and right at the beginning of the game I can choose to found my second city or build a third military unit, of course I'll found that city and take the chance that I lose: because I won't really lose!
When it comes to cheating at games like that, even so far as distorting strategy to account for the cheating, it's a personal decision about what's most fun (as long as they're one-person games). I can take big risks and reload when they don't pay off if I really want to push for the perfect game.
But in real life, as I hinted, I wouldn't take such risks; it's not sensible when you can't reload your life! And yet life is very similar, in that big risks have enormous rewards. And there are so many people out there that there's always someone desperate enough (or stupid enough, or testosterone-fuelled enough) to take a risk. The population is so large, in fact, that not only do people take risks, but that these risks pay off for a large number of people.
If I want success, how am I to achieve it? Am I to play safe, ensuring a decent, dull life, just as playing safe would lead to a moderate, decent game result? What is success?
Well, if success is merely surviving, then given my country I am almost guaranteed to succeed until about 80, and almost guaranteed to fail some time round about then.
But success is not about merely surviving, in my mind or in popular usage. Success is about being rich: it's about rising to the top and proving one's worth with objective achievements. How am I to rise to the top (assuming at least some ability)?
If I am to do as well, or better, than risk-takers, I must either be born with a vast amount of wealth, so that I don't need to take a risk, or I must take risks on as well. If we assume that I have some modicum of insight and ability, I can assure myself that I need only take risks that are slightly less risky than other people's risks, because my superior management will make my risks pay off at least as well.
Nonetheless, since risks give the most reward, I must take risks.
The problem is that I cannot reload my life. I have only the one life. When a risk goes wrong I can't try again in my pursuit of the perfect life. I can either acquiesce to a future of dullness and safety, or chase a dream of success which is highly unlikely to be realised simply because of the chances involved, even without considering human error. Neither option inspires me greatly.
I would describe risks in real life as anything from taking an uncertain position in a stock market to the course one chooses to study, or the field of work in which one specializes. Specialization itself is a risk, because you are ruling out a number of options in order to maximize the reward from a small subset of the options.
Obviously there are wide-ranging implications, other than the possibility of me being depressed.
Capitalism is half-predicated on the specialization of labour. Markets, for example, recognize that each person can't do everything for himself, and that it's better for a farrier to make horseshoes for everyone than for everyone to make horseshoes for himself. The problem is that as we chase more and more productivity, by which countries are measured, people must specialize more and more, because specialization does lead to greater efficiency. As nature shows us (and I've mentioned before the similarity between the theory of natural selection of species and market economics, which is basically natural selection of corporations), specialization leads to instability and collapse. A species well-adapted for a niche environment is poorly adapted for other environments and therefore sensitive to change.
When we consider an economy as a whole that's not a problem: a few people lose work here as demand shifts, and a few people get a lot of money elsewhere as they find themselves in demand, and things balance out as people train, or re-train, for the jobs that pay well. But have the people who lost work really been well-served by specialization? When one has put 10 years into learning a job, does one really want to spend 2-3 years re-training because of the unpredictable whims of the markets?
I'm not suggesting that we plan our economies instead. Planned economies would simply delay the inevitable, whilst wasting lots of money from other people on wasted labour. But I do wonder whether we should be chasing productivity, with the inevitable pressure for specialization. A Renaissance man, who can do many tasks, might not be as productive as a man who has learned a little bit more about one of them, but he is a happier, safer and less risk-exposed man.
At the moment the western world is talking about reducing banking risk exposure; about reducing leveraging, re-writing risk models and not underwriting risky corporate behaviour. But just as Hari Seldon, of the Foundation Series (by Isaac Asimov), invented psychohistory, which was eventually applied to individuals (with low certainty), having grown out of psychology, we should think about risk exposure on a personal as well as corporate level.
We have complex models for risk exposure for big banks, and yet none at all modelling risk exposure for humans, or considering the personal costs of that exposure that happen every day.
We have only one economy, and we get a crash every ten years or so. Just as we want to deleverage our banks to prevent a crash every ten (or thirty) years, we need to deleverage ourselves, to avoid the likelihood of a 'crash' for each person. We need personal liquidity: the ability to leave a risky position. And personal liquidity is not just accomplished by good labour rules about employment and maybe emigration, but also about specialization.
If we force a bank to specialize in a certain type of stock, of course it'll be susceptible to crashes in that stock. This is, as far as I know, the main justification of corporate takeovers of dissimilar businesses (barring, of course, the giant bonuses for the directors who initiate them). And yet no-one cares about individual susceptibility to market changes.
It takes time to re-train; time that a person doesn't have spare. The more specialized labour is, the more time he's wasted in his initial training, the more time he'll need for re-training, and the more sensitive his job is to market changes. Humans are successful because our minds make us adaptable in many ecosystems. Why are we so forcefully undoing this? Is there a point in a market when the human costs of specialization outweigh the productivity gains (and presumed human benefits)? Have we reached that point yet? Are the costs and benefits to the same people, and therefore is it right to weigh them against each other?
I don't know, but I wish someone would look into it.
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Hedonism
I once thought of hedonism as a pointless, selfish and silly way of life. I was a serious person who planned ahead for sensible, fulfilling things, and got pleasure from achievement (probably because there wasn't much else in the way of fun as a child).
Hedonism seemed very short-sighted. If we refer to economics terminology, it seemed like extreme future discounting: you take your moment now, no matter what happens in the future. That's not a sensible way to live a whole life (if you're a perfect economical being for their models) and people who don't do it as very small children tend to grow up to be much more successful than those who do.
Hedonism can be variously defined, but here I'm sticking with 'pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially that of the senses.' I know that it's also a philosophical school of thought, and I know that hedonism also means to many people neglect of duties and responsibilities, but I'll leave those things as possible effects, rather than central to the definition.
Hedonism, both my definition and the philosophical school, has many critics, and there are plenty of books about it. Perhaps the most famous is 'A Portrait of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde, which certainly concerns hedonism.
Not only staid and resilient people like my younger self regard hedonism as bad. Most religious people, or even idealists, look down on simple pleasuring of the senses and the chase of experience. I know that many people who've been through tough experiences, or are going through them, look for something other than the present as motivation, and find people who enjoy the moment to be short-sighted and wasteful. Those same people, when they find themselves in nicer lives, often lose the drive they had; they got drive from the stress of the situation, and are not adept at manufacturing it themselves.
Stoicism comes from hard times. Stoics value virtues over achievements, the pessimistic view that one might consider to underlie Stoicism being that achievement is barely possible, and even then only transitory. Pain is all you can expect, and all you can control is your responses to the sorrows of life, rather than any aspect of that life.
And one of the best Stoics was Seneca, teacher of Nero (one of the ultimate hedonists!). Seneca wrote one particular book, called 'On the shortness of life' on which I want to dwell for a moment. In this book he says that life seems short, but the way to ensure contentment and happiness is to fill it up: to keep yourself busy. People who look back on their lives and see nothing are depressed and disappointed. This insight has been confirmed by modern neuroscience: you form more memories when you're doing new things than when doing things you know. Well, perceived time is different. Two weeks in a pleasurable holiday location forms as many memories as one week, in terms of looking back.
Seneca's ideas, apart from being two-thousand years ahead of his time, struck a chord with me, even with my younger self. I kept myself busy then (or rather, I was kept busy with lots of activites at school). And they lead to hedonism: if you want to lead a contented, fulfilling life, you must seek out new experiences and avoid boredom. You must chase new achievements at the very least, and experience new things along the way.
So now I'm older, and I look back on the things I've done, there's quite a list, and yet it's not extensive enough. Were I to go hiking with friends now I could encounter some fairly extreme conditions and not really remember it well, because I've been there a number of times before. My friends would find it spectacular. The conditions would have to be unmanageable for inexperienced hikers before I got too excited.
I enjoy hiking, but are 'boring' hikes worth it? What's in it for me (barring the obvious good time with friends in places we've not been together)? I want special memories. I want a fulfilled life: already I look back and regret the opportunities lost, and find that the last few years seem quiet. How can I reverse this gradual deterioration of the quality of life, when everything seems the same?
I need to find new experiences: I need to form special memories. And for that, I need more and more special challenges. And each time I rack up the 'specialness', that level becomes more normal. So inevitably special events occur less and less frequently, until life merges into one dull day after another. And then I'm old and grey, and ready to give up on life, and youngsters like me can't understand it. Only maybe I do now.
Can this be prevented? There are plenty of things to do and try in the world, but will they all merge into similar levels of 'thrill'? Is life really a question of living fast, taking greater and greater risks, and then dying young? Do we only have a limited number of special experiences before we either die of the risks associated with chasing them, or grow old and uninterested in the boredom that life offers?
At the moment I can only hope that I can continue to chase new things as much as I find I can. I'm sad that at the moment that's quite minimal, but I'm willing to continue throughout my life. More and more I hope I can live to see anti-ageing and rejuvenation therapies, so that I can go back and re-experience the worlds of the undergraduate again. But will it really be the same? I was shy, depressed and paranoid the first time. The second time I'll be old and world-weary. Perhaps I'll never have a good few years of fun and frolics with a few like-minded people who become good friends. If I learned less fast, would new experiences remain thrilling for longer? Is learning quickly a good way to guarantee depression?
One thing I can say, though, is that I don't want to settle down and 'nest'. The idea of forsaking even more possibilities and deliberately achieving boredom and sameness goes against everything that Seneca has to say about living fulfilled lives.
I can also now understand even more why people might react so deeply against foreign and unusual things. As soon as your horizons are broadened, they cannot be easily shrunk. I see the whole world of possibilities, cultures, sights and experiences and regret that I cn't try them all. Not seeing them, or being able to dismiss them in your ignorance as nasty people, sinners or otherwise suffering from it helps people feel fulfilled in their small worlds.
Hedonism seemed very short-sighted. If we refer to economics terminology, it seemed like extreme future discounting: you take your moment now, no matter what happens in the future. That's not a sensible way to live a whole life (if you're a perfect economical being for their models) and people who don't do it as very small children tend to grow up to be much more successful than those who do.
Hedonism can be variously defined, but here I'm sticking with 'pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially that of the senses.' I know that it's also a philosophical school of thought, and I know that hedonism also means to many people neglect of duties and responsibilities, but I'll leave those things as possible effects, rather than central to the definition.
Hedonism, both my definition and the philosophical school, has many critics, and there are plenty of books about it. Perhaps the most famous is 'A Portrait of Dorian Gray' by Oscar Wilde, which certainly concerns hedonism.
Not only staid and resilient people like my younger self regard hedonism as bad. Most religious people, or even idealists, look down on simple pleasuring of the senses and the chase of experience. I know that many people who've been through tough experiences, or are going through them, look for something other than the present as motivation, and find people who enjoy the moment to be short-sighted and wasteful. Those same people, when they find themselves in nicer lives, often lose the drive they had; they got drive from the stress of the situation, and are not adept at manufacturing it themselves.
Stoicism comes from hard times. Stoics value virtues over achievements, the pessimistic view that one might consider to underlie Stoicism being that achievement is barely possible, and even then only transitory. Pain is all you can expect, and all you can control is your responses to the sorrows of life, rather than any aspect of that life.
And one of the best Stoics was Seneca, teacher of Nero (one of the ultimate hedonists!). Seneca wrote one particular book, called 'On the shortness of life' on which I want to dwell for a moment. In this book he says that life seems short, but the way to ensure contentment and happiness is to fill it up: to keep yourself busy. People who look back on their lives and see nothing are depressed and disappointed. This insight has been confirmed by modern neuroscience: you form more memories when you're doing new things than when doing things you know. Well, perceived time is different. Two weeks in a pleasurable holiday location forms as many memories as one week, in terms of looking back.
Seneca's ideas, apart from being two-thousand years ahead of his time, struck a chord with me, even with my younger self. I kept myself busy then (or rather, I was kept busy with lots of activites at school). And they lead to hedonism: if you want to lead a contented, fulfilling life, you must seek out new experiences and avoid boredom. You must chase new achievements at the very least, and experience new things along the way.
So now I'm older, and I look back on the things I've done, there's quite a list, and yet it's not extensive enough. Were I to go hiking with friends now I could encounter some fairly extreme conditions and not really remember it well, because I've been there a number of times before. My friends would find it spectacular. The conditions would have to be unmanageable for inexperienced hikers before I got too excited.
I enjoy hiking, but are 'boring' hikes worth it? What's in it for me (barring the obvious good time with friends in places we've not been together)? I want special memories. I want a fulfilled life: already I look back and regret the opportunities lost, and find that the last few years seem quiet. How can I reverse this gradual deterioration of the quality of life, when everything seems the same?
I need to find new experiences: I need to form special memories. And for that, I need more and more special challenges. And each time I rack up the 'specialness', that level becomes more normal. So inevitably special events occur less and less frequently, until life merges into one dull day after another. And then I'm old and grey, and ready to give up on life, and youngsters like me can't understand it. Only maybe I do now.
Can this be prevented? There are plenty of things to do and try in the world, but will they all merge into similar levels of 'thrill'? Is life really a question of living fast, taking greater and greater risks, and then dying young? Do we only have a limited number of special experiences before we either die of the risks associated with chasing them, or grow old and uninterested in the boredom that life offers?
At the moment I can only hope that I can continue to chase new things as much as I find I can. I'm sad that at the moment that's quite minimal, but I'm willing to continue throughout my life. More and more I hope I can live to see anti-ageing and rejuvenation therapies, so that I can go back and re-experience the worlds of the undergraduate again. But will it really be the same? I was shy, depressed and paranoid the first time. The second time I'll be old and world-weary. Perhaps I'll never have a good few years of fun and frolics with a few like-minded people who become good friends. If I learned less fast, would new experiences remain thrilling for longer? Is learning quickly a good way to guarantee depression?
One thing I can say, though, is that I don't want to settle down and 'nest'. The idea of forsaking even more possibilities and deliberately achieving boredom and sameness goes against everything that Seneca has to say about living fulfilled lives.
I can also now understand even more why people might react so deeply against foreign and unusual things. As soon as your horizons are broadened, they cannot be easily shrunk. I see the whole world of possibilities, cultures, sights and experiences and regret that I cn't try them all. Not seeing them, or being able to dismiss them in your ignorance as nasty people, sinners or otherwise suffering from it helps people feel fulfilled in their small worlds.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Media storm
There were a lot of news articles today about a Conservative councillor in Birmingham who apparently wrote on Twitter
'Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really.'
This was a foolish thing for a professional politician to say to the public in general. However, the coverage that it has generated is ridiculous. It is not racist to express dislike for someone who is dark-skinned. It is not racist to express dislike for someone by referring to a culture-specific punishment. For a start, it conflates race with culture, so the person calling it racism is clearly ignorant of the distinction between discrimination and racism.
The Leader of the Commons managed to imply that this councillor had threatened stoning! Now it may be that his short post is very different from the one I have quoted, but the councillor has threatened nothing of the kind. He has asked someone to stone her, and offered the persuasive reward of not being reported by the councillor to Amnesty International.
Saying that you'd be happy that someone else is dead expressed extreme dislike, or else is hyperbole. Neither is an offence (either in law, or, as far as I am concerned, in feeling). I wouldn't want people to express hope about my death, but it's not offensive. Insults are offensive: dislike is not.
It's not a threat either. He has not said that he'll do anything nasty to her; just that he'd be happy if something were to happen. It is just about plausible that a man of some power over others, in the presence of like-minded people, could make something happen with this statement, when combined with other statements. It is also far more likely that this statement is simply bombast. It's certainly not a threat in any traditional sense of the word.
So it's not racist, sexist, offensive or threatening. Why the news stories? Oh, wait: a man said something not very nice! Yes, that makes for a great title and quotation. Just think of all the better news stories out there: what the council have done recently, what they've failed to do, how council tax is changing this year, how this councillor has contributed to the council's successes and failures...
but no, I forgot. Politics isn't about running the country. It's about temper tantrums and throwing mud.
So let's look at Yasmin Alibhai Brown, who says she found Mr Compton's attitude 'loathsome' and that a 'flippant apology' would not be enough.
'If I, as a Muslim woman, had said about him what he said about me then I would be arrested in these times of the war against terror. He does not have more of a right to say these things about me that I do about him and I think words matter when you are in public life.'
So she's a saint of propriety, who would never say something as close to being offensive, or expressing dislike, as this councillor has done? Let's look at an article of hers in The Independent:
'But even Jesus wouldn't go this meek in the face of the hard, well-planned demolition of the post-war British welfare state.'
Hey wait! Isn't this taking The Lord's name in vain? How can she be so flippant about something so sacred? If this were Mohammed being thrown into conversation there'd be a stream of letters complaining about it, and she'd be preaching respect for other people's values.
'...straight men feel they "disgust" women, who only have sex because that "is a price they are willing to pay for a relationship".
I suppose Fry is absolutely sure that rich and famous gays like him pull young, beautiful boyfriends because there is mutual attraction and no more.'
I suppose she can point out to me where he says anything about his own relationships? Oh sorry, I'm supposed to allow her to read whatever she wants into other people's statements.
'Immediate response: shut up Fry, why don't you, about stuff you can't know anything about? You clearly have odd and unhealthy feelings about the body and its needs. Sex to be good doesn't have to be really bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting and dislocated from the emotions. '
Two things here. Firstly, if considering things of which one has no experience is not allowed, I assume that all human imagination is pointless? The great works of fiction (as well as lesser ones), thought experiments, biochemistry and physics should all shut up?
Secondly, isn't calling Mr. Fry odd and unhealthy just a tad homophobic? GAY HATER! Am I not allowed to read implications I want to from her comments? Then why can she do it to others... sorry, I forgot. Double standards are a healthy form of commentary.
'You can't dismiss this controversial interview as just publicity whoring to shift the latest instalment of his autobiography.'
I'm sorry... did a supposed feminist just diminish the sacred (sorry, awful) meaning of 'whore' by using it in a metaphorical sense? Dear oh dear. What would the world be like if people were allowed to express dislike and disapproval with colourful language? It'd probably contain councillors expressing the possibility of pleasure at the death of newspaper columnists.
'Richard, for example, a colleague, ... said he felt sick when he thought about "the juices and soft flesh" of a woman. There has never been much open conversation about these ugly attitudes'
Sorry to reiterate a point, but a personal feeling is not an ugly attitude. Unless he treats women unfairly as a result of not wanting to know their juices, 'Richard' is expressing a perfectly acceptable sentiment.
'Most disturbing is how Fry's odious tirade now makes it acceptable, even cool to express sexist views.'
Sexist? Where? Oh, sorry. Aren't men allowed to talk about their desires, pleasures and observations about sex? Is it sexist to want pleasurable sex without emotional baggage? It's clearly not what Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wants ('really bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting') but I'd call it intolerant and offensive to dismiss my desires in such a way. Why can't we have an open conversation about her ugly attitude without odious tirades such as hers? Before I finish, I just love the phrase 'sex to be good doesn't have to be really bad...' Who swallows this trash?
Really, I have some sympathy for the man. This woman either doesn't think enough, or else thinks too much about selling articles to idiots and not enough about writing sense.
'Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really.'
This was a foolish thing for a professional politician to say to the public in general. However, the coverage that it has generated is ridiculous. It is not racist to express dislike for someone who is dark-skinned. It is not racist to express dislike for someone by referring to a culture-specific punishment. For a start, it conflates race with culture, so the person calling it racism is clearly ignorant of the distinction between discrimination and racism.
The Leader of the Commons managed to imply that this councillor had threatened stoning! Now it may be that his short post is very different from the one I have quoted, but the councillor has threatened nothing of the kind. He has asked someone to stone her, and offered the persuasive reward of not being reported by the councillor to Amnesty International.
Saying that you'd be happy that someone else is dead expressed extreme dislike, or else is hyperbole. Neither is an offence (either in law, or, as far as I am concerned, in feeling). I wouldn't want people to express hope about my death, but it's not offensive. Insults are offensive: dislike is not.
It's not a threat either. He has not said that he'll do anything nasty to her; just that he'd be happy if something were to happen. It is just about plausible that a man of some power over others, in the presence of like-minded people, could make something happen with this statement, when combined with other statements. It is also far more likely that this statement is simply bombast. It's certainly not a threat in any traditional sense of the word.
So it's not racist, sexist, offensive or threatening. Why the news stories? Oh, wait: a man said something not very nice! Yes, that makes for a great title and quotation. Just think of all the better news stories out there: what the council have done recently, what they've failed to do, how council tax is changing this year, how this councillor has contributed to the council's successes and failures...
but no, I forgot. Politics isn't about running the country. It's about temper tantrums and throwing mud.
So let's look at Yasmin Alibhai Brown, who says she found Mr Compton's attitude 'loathsome' and that a 'flippant apology' would not be enough.
'If I, as a Muslim woman, had said about him what he said about me then I would be arrested in these times of the war against terror. He does not have more of a right to say these things about me that I do about him and I think words matter when you are in public life.'
So she's a saint of propriety, who would never say something as close to being offensive, or expressing dislike, as this councillor has done? Let's look at an article of hers in The Independent:
'But even Jesus wouldn't go this meek in the face of the hard, well-planned demolition of the post-war British welfare state.'
Hey wait! Isn't this taking The Lord's name in vain? How can she be so flippant about something so sacred? If this were Mohammed being thrown into conversation there'd be a stream of letters complaining about it, and she'd be preaching respect for other people's values.
'...straight men feel they "disgust" women, who only have sex because that "is a price they are willing to pay for a relationship".
I suppose Fry is absolutely sure that rich and famous gays like him pull young, beautiful boyfriends because there is mutual attraction and no more.'
I suppose she can point out to me where he says anything about his own relationships? Oh sorry, I'm supposed to allow her to read whatever she wants into other people's statements.
'Immediate response: shut up Fry, why don't you, about stuff you can't know anything about? You clearly have odd and unhealthy feelings about the body and its needs. Sex to be good doesn't have to be really bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting and dislocated from the emotions. '
Two things here. Firstly, if considering things of which one has no experience is not allowed, I assume that all human imagination is pointless? The great works of fiction (as well as lesser ones), thought experiments, biochemistry and physics should all shut up?
Secondly, isn't calling Mr. Fry odd and unhealthy just a tad homophobic? GAY HATER! Am I not allowed to read implications I want to from her comments? Then why can she do it to others... sorry, I forgot. Double standards are a healthy form of commentary.
'You can't dismiss this controversial interview as just publicity whoring to shift the latest instalment of his autobiography.'
I'm sorry... did a supposed feminist just diminish the sacred (sorry, awful) meaning of 'whore' by using it in a metaphorical sense? Dear oh dear. What would the world be like if people were allowed to express dislike and disapproval with colourful language? It'd probably contain councillors expressing the possibility of pleasure at the death of newspaper columnists.
'Richard, for example, a colleague, ... said he felt sick when he thought about "the juices and soft flesh" of a woman. There has never been much open conversation about these ugly attitudes'
Sorry to reiterate a point, but a personal feeling is not an ugly attitude. Unless he treats women unfairly as a result of not wanting to know their juices, 'Richard' is expressing a perfectly acceptable sentiment.
'Most disturbing is how Fry's odious tirade now makes it acceptable, even cool to express sexist views.'
Sexist? Where? Oh, sorry. Aren't men allowed to talk about their desires, pleasures and observations about sex? Is it sexist to want pleasurable sex without emotional baggage? It's clearly not what Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wants ('really bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting') but I'd call it intolerant and offensive to dismiss my desires in such a way. Why can't we have an open conversation about her ugly attitude without odious tirades such as hers? Before I finish, I just love the phrase 'sex to be good doesn't have to be really bad...' Who swallows this trash?
Really, I have some sympathy for the man. This woman either doesn't think enough, or else thinks too much about selling articles to idiots and not enough about writing sense.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
I was thinking further about displacement behaviours and realised that the insecurity of inequality has been much greater in the past. I also thought about examples of behaviour that took advantage of those weaker than the person, or used power over another person to satisfy insecurities.
Amazingly enough, given my other beliefs, one thing sprang to mind as being more prevalent in the past and particularly prone to such behaviours, and that's religion. All the major (western) religions ensure that women are kept in their place, so that even impoverished men can feel some sort of superiority. This sex-difference takes me full circle back a few posts to the way I differ from most men in wanting a strong, independent woman rather than mere emotional support in all I do. There are other ways in which religions help people impose status hierarchies (the Indian caste system seems like an alternative to sexism).
The need to keep women in their place has always been greatest amongst the poor and disadvantaged, as far as my limited knowledge of history tells me, and I wonder if sexism can be yet another problem exacerbated by inequality. That seems an easy enough argument to make, but can we make a case for religion as well?
Obviously religions support sexism in their traditional forms, but that's not necessarily intrinsic to religion, but could be how they've developed because of the demands and needs of their adherents. But do people need to know about a God above who punishes the arrogant and honours the humble because of status issues? Is there something that necessarily links religion and poor women's rights because the appeal of eternal life for the humble is linked to the appeal of having someone over whom to exert power?
Is this link permanent, or can we break it in a modern, secular society with low inequality that therefore doesn't provoke status concerns in people who would be prone to them? Do we need to bother? Does less equality lead to more religion? The US is one of the most unequal rich countries, and has appallingly high rates of religion. Portugal is unequal, and is known for being a Catholic country; Wikipedia tells me that 84% of Portuguese call themselves Catholic, with an unstated number attending only important services, rather than regularly.
The Scandinavian countries are more equal, and are successful secular states too: 32% of Norwegian citizens believed that there is a god (in 2005), and between 31 and 72% of the population call themselves atheists, depending on the study. Perhaps this is why the right wing of politics hates the idea of promoting equality; it is intrinscially detrimental to religious belief. Certainly in the last 30 years, religious belief has become more and more correlated with right-wing politics. Before then, this was less the case, probably because religion was so dominant that it was rare for anyone not to profess some faith.
Amazingly enough, given my other beliefs, one thing sprang to mind as being more prevalent in the past and particularly prone to such behaviours, and that's religion. All the major (western) religions ensure that women are kept in their place, so that even impoverished men can feel some sort of superiority. This sex-difference takes me full circle back a few posts to the way I differ from most men in wanting a strong, independent woman rather than mere emotional support in all I do. There are other ways in which religions help people impose status hierarchies (the Indian caste system seems like an alternative to sexism).
The need to keep women in their place has always been greatest amongst the poor and disadvantaged, as far as my limited knowledge of history tells me, and I wonder if sexism can be yet another problem exacerbated by inequality. That seems an easy enough argument to make, but can we make a case for religion as well?
Obviously religions support sexism in their traditional forms, but that's not necessarily intrinsic to religion, but could be how they've developed because of the demands and needs of their adherents. But do people need to know about a God above who punishes the arrogant and honours the humble because of status issues? Is there something that necessarily links religion and poor women's rights because the appeal of eternal life for the humble is linked to the appeal of having someone over whom to exert power?
Is this link permanent, or can we break it in a modern, secular society with low inequality that therefore doesn't provoke status concerns in people who would be prone to them? Do we need to bother? Does less equality lead to more religion? The US is one of the most unequal rich countries, and has appallingly high rates of religion. Portugal is unequal, and is known for being a Catholic country; Wikipedia tells me that 84% of Portuguese call themselves Catholic, with an unstated number attending only important services, rather than regularly.
The Scandinavian countries are more equal, and are successful secular states too: 32% of Norwegian citizens believed that there is a god (in 2005), and between 31 and 72% of the population call themselves atheists, depending on the study. Perhaps this is why the right wing of politics hates the idea of promoting equality; it is intrinscially detrimental to religious belief. Certainly in the last 30 years, religious belief has become more and more correlated with right-wing politics. Before then, this was less the case, probably because religion was so dominant that it was rare for anyone not to profess some faith.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Displacement
I read a bit further in The Spirit Level, which I still haven't got round to finishing, even though it's interesting (perhaps because it seemed like the first chapter gave the whole book away), and came across an explanation of displacement: how people come to take out feelings engendered in one situation on another situation.
I've been discussing this in person recently, since I don't do this at all, and I find it hard to understand or recognise it. When someone acts a certain way towards me, I assume it's deliberate.
Apparently, displacement happens more when people feel helpless, or powerless to change their situation, when the system is very hierarchical and when the loss is particularly great. So, for example, people who feel deprived of social status by an encounter with someone might attempt to prove their status through exerting power over another person who is lower down the hierarchy, or over whom they have power.
I'm not sure if this happens especially when there's injustice, or whether the nasty encounter necessarily involves injustice in order to feel like a loss of status.
It is this strange phenomenon that causes sexually abused people to abuse others; both children who grow up to be abusers and prisoners who repeat the offence on other prisoners. Most people agree that this involves a messed-up attitude to the world and might be a reason, but is insufficient excuse for repeating the crime. Certainly I'd say that one ought to have learnt how nasty it is, and avoid it even more. However, it's exactly the same process as occurs when someone's feeling a bit moody and snaps at a family member. The only difference is that people accept the first as normal! In principle they're the same, and we should tolerate them to the same extent.
So this post is an introspective one. Do I not displace aggression because I feel superior? Do I not care about status and therefore not feel the need to prove it? Do I not see the hierarchy that others do? I think that the second and third questions are similar: I don't see hierarchies that others think exist, and therefore don't care about them. I'm secure: I don't have insecurities about myself; I have good self-knowledge and am not deluded. But I know that I do feel aggression (anger) about many injustices. It's just that it's the injustice that makes me angry; I hate injustice, and wouldn't perpetrate another one because that wouldn't satisfy me: I would want to give punishment to the criminal, not just get even with the world in general.
Now we're talking about treating people like individuals, and giving justice to individuals, or alternatively, treating the rest of the world as an entity with shared karma, we're touching on previously adumbrated philosophical positions (although with different language). Philosophers have considered the world a great karma-sharing place in which we're all tied through membership, bonds of empathy or other mystic union. I don't like that idea, and here I think I can demonstrate one way in which I find it unpleasant: because although the union is intended to be a justification for not hurting others, because we're bound together in some way, it also justifies injustice, because we're all linked, so karma will cycle round to the right person, or because it's all the same.
Breaking down the rigid barriers that in my mind separate individuals might justify empathy, but it also makes people treat other humans as less than individual; they treat the world as one entity, rather than truly recognising people as different. If they recognise their membership of this entity, that might be good (although I'd say wrong), but if they don't it leads to horror.
This scale, of individualism to collectivism, has been known and used before, but as far as I know only in terms of moral or political belief. The definition of the scale as a way of gauging how a person actually feels about (or views) the world and others had not occurred to me before. It certainly seems a good way to categorise a rather different mindset from the moral or political meanings of the words. I've met a lot of people who rely on moral intuition, feelings and empathy for moral insight. The extent to which a person relies on empathy should, I suppose, directly correlate with their place on the individualism scale. Obviously I'd equate individualism with rationality, and collectivism with emotion.
I'd even venture to suggest that the optimism of collectivists (about human nature) is so hard to argue with precisely because it isn't rational. They want to promote empathy, and believe that if only people would accept rational arguments for how empathy can justify morality, we would all be moral.
However, as we all know, you can't engender a feeling (empathy) with rational argument, so they're on a hiding to nothing. I would place myself on the other end of the scale, hoping to use rational arguments to engender rational acquiescence with the idea and consequences of treating others truly as individuals. Obviously I equally well can't remove empathy, if it's there, but I don't need to. The rational agreement with my arguments would be enough to cause moral actions. Of course making it subconscious by somehow making people 'feel' others' individuality, in the way that I 'feel' injustice, especially when the perpetrator feels righteous about it, would make moral action more reliable, but it's not necessary.
That would be the end of it, except that it's interesting to consider further the additional dichotomy between feeling others' pain, and feeling injustice. Many people equate the two: someone feeling pain is an injustice. The most popular argument underlying morality at the moment is to base it on avoiding pain. Obviously I disagree, and have made this clear many times in discussions. The question is always then "On what would you base morality?" as if that were sufficient support for pain as the basis of morality.
When I answer "Justice" I get laughed at. "But we define justice depending on morality, so you haven't really answered anything." I'm told. Yes, that's true in one way: if justice depends on what you say morality is, then I've created circular definitions. But in another way, I've merely repeated their own logic: if we are to base morality on something, why not giving each individual what he deserves, rather than avoiding pain to all?
Of course my definition needs further clarification, in that I haven't defined what each person deserves, but I don't regard complexity as a reason to discard a solution. The normal (Gaussian) distribution seems like a complex formula to most people, but that doesn't stop it being a good description of population spreads.
So perhaps I query the whole basis of much moral philosophy because of a simple character trait: the compartmentalisation of my life so that I treat people as they've treated me, rather than as I have recently been treated overall. Or perhaps it's the other way around: I've strengthened the trait because of my philosophy. Whichever it is, it's a shame that philosophers don't consider my point of view, but merely dismiss it because of current fashion. That doesn't seem like rational thought and enquiry to me... but then philosophy isn't, currently, rational enquiry, being based on empathy, feelings and intuition, so why should I expect philosophers to act according to my philosophical ideal?
Well, since philosophy touts itself as the thought underlying everything, it seems reasonable to expect it to rely on thought, not feeling. That's my short answer. And that's why individualism trumps collectivism, and doing justice is more important than avoiding hurt.
I've been discussing this in person recently, since I don't do this at all, and I find it hard to understand or recognise it. When someone acts a certain way towards me, I assume it's deliberate.
Apparently, displacement happens more when people feel helpless, or powerless to change their situation, when the system is very hierarchical and when the loss is particularly great. So, for example, people who feel deprived of social status by an encounter with someone might attempt to prove their status through exerting power over another person who is lower down the hierarchy, or over whom they have power.
I'm not sure if this happens especially when there's injustice, or whether the nasty encounter necessarily involves injustice in order to feel like a loss of status.
It is this strange phenomenon that causes sexually abused people to abuse others; both children who grow up to be abusers and prisoners who repeat the offence on other prisoners. Most people agree that this involves a messed-up attitude to the world and might be a reason, but is insufficient excuse for repeating the crime. Certainly I'd say that one ought to have learnt how nasty it is, and avoid it even more. However, it's exactly the same process as occurs when someone's feeling a bit moody and snaps at a family member. The only difference is that people accept the first as normal! In principle they're the same, and we should tolerate them to the same extent.
So this post is an introspective one. Do I not displace aggression because I feel superior? Do I not care about status and therefore not feel the need to prove it? Do I not see the hierarchy that others do? I think that the second and third questions are similar: I don't see hierarchies that others think exist, and therefore don't care about them. I'm secure: I don't have insecurities about myself; I have good self-knowledge and am not deluded. But I know that I do feel aggression (anger) about many injustices. It's just that it's the injustice that makes me angry; I hate injustice, and wouldn't perpetrate another one because that wouldn't satisfy me: I would want to give punishment to the criminal, not just get even with the world in general.
Now we're talking about treating people like individuals, and giving justice to individuals, or alternatively, treating the rest of the world as an entity with shared karma, we're touching on previously adumbrated philosophical positions (although with different language). Philosophers have considered the world a great karma-sharing place in which we're all tied through membership, bonds of empathy or other mystic union. I don't like that idea, and here I think I can demonstrate one way in which I find it unpleasant: because although the union is intended to be a justification for not hurting others, because we're bound together in some way, it also justifies injustice, because we're all linked, so karma will cycle round to the right person, or because it's all the same.
Breaking down the rigid barriers that in my mind separate individuals might justify empathy, but it also makes people treat other humans as less than individual; they treat the world as one entity, rather than truly recognising people as different. If they recognise their membership of this entity, that might be good (although I'd say wrong), but if they don't it leads to horror.
This scale, of individualism to collectivism, has been known and used before, but as far as I know only in terms of moral or political belief. The definition of the scale as a way of gauging how a person actually feels about (or views) the world and others had not occurred to me before. It certainly seems a good way to categorise a rather different mindset from the moral or political meanings of the words. I've met a lot of people who rely on moral intuition, feelings and empathy for moral insight. The extent to which a person relies on empathy should, I suppose, directly correlate with their place on the individualism scale. Obviously I'd equate individualism with rationality, and collectivism with emotion.
I'd even venture to suggest that the optimism of collectivists (about human nature) is so hard to argue with precisely because it isn't rational. They want to promote empathy, and believe that if only people would accept rational arguments for how empathy can justify morality, we would all be moral.
However, as we all know, you can't engender a feeling (empathy) with rational argument, so they're on a hiding to nothing. I would place myself on the other end of the scale, hoping to use rational arguments to engender rational acquiescence with the idea and consequences of treating others truly as individuals. Obviously I equally well can't remove empathy, if it's there, but I don't need to. The rational agreement with my arguments would be enough to cause moral actions. Of course making it subconscious by somehow making people 'feel' others' individuality, in the way that I 'feel' injustice, especially when the perpetrator feels righteous about it, would make moral action more reliable, but it's not necessary.
That would be the end of it, except that it's interesting to consider further the additional dichotomy between feeling others' pain, and feeling injustice. Many people equate the two: someone feeling pain is an injustice. The most popular argument underlying morality at the moment is to base it on avoiding pain. Obviously I disagree, and have made this clear many times in discussions. The question is always then "On what would you base morality?" as if that were sufficient support for pain as the basis of morality.
When I answer "Justice" I get laughed at. "But we define justice depending on morality, so you haven't really answered anything." I'm told. Yes, that's true in one way: if justice depends on what you say morality is, then I've created circular definitions. But in another way, I've merely repeated their own logic: if we are to base morality on something, why not giving each individual what he deserves, rather than avoiding pain to all?
Of course my definition needs further clarification, in that I haven't defined what each person deserves, but I don't regard complexity as a reason to discard a solution. The normal (Gaussian) distribution seems like a complex formula to most people, but that doesn't stop it being a good description of population spreads.
So perhaps I query the whole basis of much moral philosophy because of a simple character trait: the compartmentalisation of my life so that I treat people as they've treated me, rather than as I have recently been treated overall. Or perhaps it's the other way around: I've strengthened the trait because of my philosophy. Whichever it is, it's a shame that philosophers don't consider my point of view, but merely dismiss it because of current fashion. That doesn't seem like rational thought and enquiry to me... but then philosophy isn't, currently, rational enquiry, being based on empathy, feelings and intuition, so why should I expect philosophers to act according to my philosophical ideal?
Well, since philosophy touts itself as the thought underlying everything, it seems reasonable to expect it to rely on thought, not feeling. That's my short answer. And that's why individualism trumps collectivism, and doing justice is more important than avoiding hurt.
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