Human idols

The cult of the genius and the need for role models

I’m not the first to note that many idols aren’t the wonderful people the initial image suggests. Mohandas Gandhi is the most famous example: a pacifist famed for his principled stand against colonial rule who regarded Asians (British usage) as equals of white people… but didn’t stretch this belief in human equality as far as black people. We’ve just gone through another round of honouring the nation’s role models – a new list of knights and lords has been announced. They don’t seem the most inspirational people. They’re mostly politically-connected, or else rewarded for doing their job.

              Statues of great people litter the country. Benefactors, officials and generals loom over us. The recent ‘Rhodes must fall’ campaign has reminded us that none of these people was perfect, and many seem to have more to condemn than recommend them. I think much of the time we immortalise these men (yes, mostly men, another criticism of our national statuary) for a specific deed or act; it is the good thing that they want to be remembered for. In that sense, something like a Said Business School, named after Wafic Said, a billionaire arms dealer, is implicitly promoting values that we should support. Mr Said didn’t regard his legacy as an arms dealer as a worthy legacy, and would prefer that we respect and remember funding of education (even if it is a business school, a university department that raised and raises difficult questions about the nature of academia and the value of education).

              It’s true that many people who had statues erected to themselves, as well as those viewing them, thought of the honour as adding to their social status and erasing other misdeeds, but the only sensible justification a modern mind can accept is that we must respect the individual acts that the statues commemorate more than the individuals who did them.

              And that’s the crux of the matter. We are a social species. We see character in the ways of fate. We deduce intention where none exists. That’s how gods evolved. Most of us despise the abstraction of information away from people and human narrative. That’s why television is overflowing with the sewage of soap operas and un-‘reality television’, and drama is pumped into otherwise perfectly decent shows about natural history, cooking etc. It’s why Prime Minister’s Questions is so popular, even though it’s about as close to real debate as a candle is to the sun, and about as relatively enlightening.

                We care about people, despite all the evidence that they don’t deserve it. Of course, in modern times we don’t erect statues so easily. The people who matter don’t care about the physical medium of lasting architecture and old-fashioned monuments. Instead we have autobiographies and cult followings. The greatest of modern times is probably Steve Jobs, although in the UK the noted racist Winston Churchill has even made it to the £5 note.

              Steve Jobs was, it seems, a difficult and unpleasant man to work with. Hailed as a genius, he wasn’t genius enough when he went to India seeking enlightenment; a true genius would already have a budding philosophical approach. He was a computer hobbyist whose hobby brought him wealth, and hence licence to be nasty. Once in the position of CEO of a company you know perfectly, it’s perfectly possible to achieve what he did without being such a deeply unpleasant and difficult person. I haven’t pored over his biography, but I get the impression of someone who never really found that enlightenment. His main superpowers seem to have been luck, supreme confidence and a good amount of inside knowledge of his own company. We could spend many pages (and people have) analysing exactly what making an idol of him says about modern society; I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

              Alongside our obsession with entrepreneurs whose main achievement seems to have been to be lucky, we also talk of role models when we discuss athletes and performers. Despite not caring about footballers’ lives, I still can’t escape the occasional article reporting yet another instance of bad behaviour and noting that the footballer is a bad role model. Of course, without such reporting no-one would know of the bad behaviour or even think that footballers are role models. It’s strange that we care about the morality of athletes and musicians, but not so much the morality of our economic idols.

              We also sometimes talk of scientists the same way. Yet science is a collective effort, and making a massive leap in understanding is usually luck; after all, if the discovery was known, it wouldn’t be a discovery. So a researcher is necessarily leaping into the dark.

              Do we need role models? When I was young, I certainly dreamed of fame and riches (and yes, I still do, although it gets harder and harder as I realize how far I am from such things) but I didn’t dream of doing exactly what I read other people doing. The fun was in imagining myself in that position: how I would help friends and family. I’m fairly sure that wealth and power can corrupt and tempt people even without role models to show people how to drink heavily, take drugs and seduce each other’s partners. Humans have imagination, and what a wealthy individual lacks in imagination a multitude of salesmen and hangers-on will provide instead. The idea of having a role model is no longer to show people how to live a good life. It seems that it is another aspirational propaganda tool: see what it is possible to do in this marvellous society. It has become corrupted from its origins in sainthood.

              We’ve had role models for a long time. Saints are another example of humans who have become remembered for an act, or a death, or occasionally a reasonably good life. As the protestant branches of Christianity pointed out, the cults of sainthood, including the cult of the virgin Mary (i.e. Roman Catholicism) come very close to idolatry. In some places, they definitely merged into idolatry. For example, Santeria in Cuba is a fusion of the Christianity the Spaniards imposed on their slaves and the African gods the slaves brought with them; the identities of saints have merged with those of gods.

              This brings us back to our predilection for seeing character and intent where none exists. Footballers, entrepreneurs and CEOs are our modern saints; our version of the primitive animist spirits of the wind and the sea. We have simply updated our concerns from the natural world to the economic and sporting worlds. We ascribe to these god-like beings mastery of their element because we refuse to believe in chaos and chance.

              By ignoring these powerful forces in our society we aren’t indulging in harmless dreaming. Hero-worship isn’t only a sin for the Christians who believe that we should have only the one God. It’s a sin against truth. If we don’t understand how our world works we won’t act in the right ways to make it better, or do the best with our lives.

              We like to blame Trump for the awful state of modern America, or Dacre for the same in Britain. Both men are bilious parasites in the world, proof positive that there is no such thing as natural justice. But the truth is that individuals only push the vast impersonal structures of society little by little. It takes thousands of individuals working together, either consciously or subconsciously, to make a difference. In the world of PR and marketing, people look for influencers: the cadre of people who will spread the world from its central origin. Christianity needed Jesus’ disciples.

              The truth is that people are just people. There are bad people and good people, but good people make mistakes, at best, and bad people sometimes do nice things. We shouldn’t worship or demonize any of them; they are just little people. It is the systems and ideas they leave behind that matter. The idea of the role model is one idea we need to discard.

Inequality

Inequality regularly makes the news; when we see reports that inequality is rising, there’s no need to complain too much that it doesn’t reflect everything in an economy. Inequality as measured in a Gini coefficient is one important thing to consider, and if inequality increases, people should wonder if we can stop that.

               But the reverse isn’t true. When our inequality measure shows inequality decreasing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all is well with the economy, and that’s my subject for today.

               First of all, let’s take a look at income inequality as it was in the UK for income taxpayers, just to get an idea of what this sort of information looks like.

Graph 1

               This graph shows the total income subject to tax for someone at each percentage point for income in the population, for those with taxable income only (for more information about the data, see HMRC’s Survey of Personal Incomes 2013-14). So, for example, the person with the middle income, at 50% of the population, earned £20,020 after tax. The person at the top (the 99^th percentile) earned £103,427 in the year.

               The next bit is important, but a bit involved. The way to represent inequality calculations is by summing the incomes and plotting the cumulative income for everyone under that percentile. The graph looks like the lower plot on graph 2. That curve shows the accumulated income of a segment of a population. For example, the bottom 20% of taxpayers earned 9.8% of income. The bottom 90% earned about 78% of income.

               On the same scale I’ve overlaid a plot of complete equality, in which everyone earns the same amount. As everyone earns the same amount, the cumulative score increases linearly as we add extra people to our total, and we get a straight line. Inequality is calculated by comparing the area between the two lines to the size of the whole triangle underneath the straight line (i.e the area between the plot of perfect equality and the axes). That triangle represents what this measure calls perfect inequality: if one person had all the income, the cumulative total would remain 0 right until the very end, when it would suddenly leap to 100% of all income. So what we’re doing is seeing how far between complete equality and inequality we are; we measure the proportion of complete inequality we see in the country.

Graph 2

               I do think it’s important to point out that of us regard perfect inequality as a lot less troublesome than perfect equality. I, for one, wouldn’t like to earn exactly the same as everyone else; it would be a pay cut, I’d feel unrewarded for my expertise, and I’d have no incentive to work harder, learn or improve. But I would hugely prefer that to earning nothing at all while someone else got all the country’s income. So although inequality is measured on a scale of 0 (perfectly equal) to 1 (perfectly unequal), we should skew our expected range to be closer to 0 than to 1. But in the end, measures like this are about detecting change; we use them to compare different countries and change within a country.

That means that we’re looking for improvement that represents improving lives, and as soon as we start using specific measures to analyze general concepts such as wellbeing and inequality, we need to be aware that no individual measure will incorporate everything that we understand in the general term. We need a range of measures, and we need to understand how and why they change, rather than just believing that a change in the number is either good or bad. In other areas, such as targets within a company or the NHS, using a measure can change behavior so that the measure improves but overall circumstances don’t.

So why and how can inequality change? We’ve already considered two extremes: perfect equality and perfect inequality. But what about another scenario just to illustrate other odd possibilities? How about graph 3? Here I’ve given half the population no income and the remaining half share the income equally. This gives us an inequality coefficient of 0.5. If we were thinking simplistically, we’d assume that this was a tolerable situation. After all, we don’t like 0, and we don’t like 1; we want something that’s a pleasing balance between the two. And 0.5 is balanced between 0 and 1! Yet this distribution seems very unfair.

Graph 3

               Graph 3 therefore nicely demonstrates that inequality as a simple number doesn’t mean much. We have to assume that the rough shape of the Lorenz curve remains the same and that a change in inequality represents just a slight shift one way or another. Drastic leaps and jumps in which income varies hugely between percentiles of the population can distort the measure. And graph 3 is based on a very drastic leap in income at the 50^th percentile, as shown in graph 4, which plots the underlying incomes used for the cumulative totals of graph 3.

Graph 4

               I hope this establishes perhaps the most important point I want to make here: that fairness is not the same as inequality, or any other economic measure. Economists measure whole-population effects, and a whole-population measure typically can’t detect large leaps and dips: they’re ‘averaging’ across everyone. The UK had a Gini coefficient (the measure usually used, and which I’m describing here) of 0.356 in 2014. That’s not so far off the 0.5 of graphs 3 and 4. I could probably create a distribution very much like graph 4 which had a Gini coefficient of 0.36.

               But what I have instead are some slight variations on the real income distribution of graph 1.

Graph 5

               Graph 5 shows something very similar to graph 1. Total income is roughly equivalent, but the main difference is the top end (note the scale on the y axis). Graph 5 shows a similar gradual increase in income across the population, but without the very big increases amongst the richest. Graph 6 shows the cumulative distribution for the same data.

Graph 6

We can see that although graph 5 isn’t a flat line with everyone earning the same, the Lorenz curve (the name economists give to this cumulative income graph) is extremely close to ‘perfect equality’, and the Gini coefficient very close to 0. The same would apply with a doubled gradient on the slope of graph 5; graph 7 shows the Lorenz curve if I double the changes from the midpoint. The inequality coefficient for incomes that vary linearly from £4,000 to £44,000 (instead of £14,000 to £34000) is still very close to 1.

Graph 7

This shows us another feature of inequality measures: they’re insensitive to linear changes. As long as the relationship is linear we need a massive change to make much difference. For incomes to look even moderately unequal we need to leave the linear relationship behind and try exponential relationships.

It’s very important to point out here that I doubled the difference of a percentile’s income from the midpoint. If I had doubled everyone’s income then inequality wouldn’t have changed, because the measures have been deliberately designed to detect proportional differences, not absolute differences. In graph 5 the highest earners earn £20,000 p.a. more than the lowest, which is about 2.5 times their salary. If we double everything, the lowest earners would earn £28k, the highest earners £68k and the difference would be £40,000. Inequality would be exactly the same, even though the highest earners would now earn £40,000 more than the lowest earners, not £20,000.

If I were to keep the same slope, and keep the earnings difference between top and bottom at £20k, but still double total income (i.e. give everyone an extra £24k each) then inequality would drop.

This is important, because earnings aren’t the only measure of quality of life. We also need to understand what people can buy with their earnings. There’s a minimum level of expenditure that’s required in order to live in the UK (yes, I know that accommodation costs in particular vary a lot, but for the moment let’s simplify and assume that the minimum applies across the whole country evenly).

We know that the minimum wage doesn’t provide the minimum level of expenditure because there are long-running campaigns about the ‘living wage’, which is higher than the minimum wage. But just for this argument, I’ll set it at the lowest percentile of income in graph 5.

If we assume that the bare necessities cost this much, then the lowest earners have absolutely no spare spending money for luxuries, mishaps, presents and personal expenditure. The highest earners have £20k spare for such things; more than the low earners’ entire income. Our measure of inequality suggests that this distribution is close to perfect equality, but as soon as we introduce a minimum necessary level of expenditure, we change our understanding of people’s lives. Some people can afford no luxury or deviation from the absolute minimum, whilst others have a wide choice. The ability to choose interests or activities to pursue is an essential part of human flourishing (and, incidentally, an assumption of free market economics). People who are trapped in only one set of choices do not feel happy or wealthy, no matter what the Gini coefficient might say.

Finally, let’s look at something more realistic.

Graph 8

Graph 8 shows us something a lot closer to the real distribution we saw in graph 1, but accentuated a bit. As we have learned, the gradual increase across much of the population in graph 1 makes little difference to inequality measures, so I’ve left it flat. Now we’re looking at the tails of the population. Yet again, total income is roughly similar.

If we plot the Lorenz curve for this, we see that the tails do matter; that big leap at the end drives a narrow wedge between our line and ‘perfect equality’. But overall the equality coefficient is still very low. Most of the population (between the 4^th and 97^th percentiles, or 95% of the population) is absolutely equal, and that’s what the measure detects. Those other 5% drag the number away from perfect equality, up to about 0.3.Just by looking at the measure of equality, we might say that this society is slightly more equal than our own, and therefore a bit of an advance. Yet it’s a combination of perfect equality, which we don’t like, and perfect inequality, which we hate.

Graph 9

Inequality isn’t the same as fairness. For humans, those cases at the end matter. If I told you that we could all live happily if we just sacrificed 3 in 100 of the population, most people would say that human sacrifice isn’t an option. It’s not right, and it’s not fair. But economic measures don’t account for this. A few people here or there don’t change the bulk figures, but they matter enormously for our perceptions of society. I haven’t even touched on how enormous wealth differences distort power relations, or how greater ability to spend on luxuries ‘distorts’ the market for goods /luxuries away from what the population might want. Those are topics for you to ponder, bearing in mind that the difference between people’s self-directed expenditure is proportionally vastly greater than their plain incomes, due to our threshold effect.

Our society might be slightly more equal, according to the Gini coefficient, but we need to understand the distribution changes underlying this before we judge whether this is good or not. Our society can easily have become more equal and yet also become much less fair. If the 1% (or 0.01%) at the top earn millions of pounds and do not deserve it (and yes, judging what a person deserves could occupy many other essays) then we are right to complain about economic injustice even if ‘inequality’, as measured by this one economic measure, is lower. Justice and social equality is about whether a person’s situation is fair when compared to any other person in society, not most others, all others, or the average.

Hard Liberalism

Our polarized world is often categorized into hard-nosed conservatives and soft, caring lefties. This binary view makes people think of liberals as less competent than conservatives because liberals are more lefty. Right-wingers, in contrast, can be called uncaring or even cruel.

Conservatives hate being called heartless; many of them do have hearts and some actually care deeply about helping the poor. But as I’ve discussed elsewhere, people will always choose a reason to explain why you’re wrong and they are right, and if you’ve ruled out incompetence and ignorance, due to your reputation for competence, then malice is their only answer.

Lefties similarly object to being regarded as incompetent. Governments of all types have made fantastic blunders, and lefty policies are no more likely to fail than right-wing ones. In fact, of late they are less likely to fail. But if you’ve ruled out lack of interest in good as an explanation for doing bad, then incompetence has to be people’s explanation.

This dichotomy has expanded to govern people’s perception of politics in other ways, too. The Right is regarded as more ‘head’ whilst the Left is ‘heart’. The dominant Right is assumed to be dominant because of the economic stability and good stewardship it brings. This is why the remain side in the EU referendum campaigned so hard on economic prosperity versus economic doom. Common belief is that people care about economics and social issues are just a sideshow. This neatly fits economists’ old ideas of ‘homo economicus’, who is perfectly informed, perfectly rational and makes rational profit-maximizing decisions.

However, the referendum was lost, and with good reason. Commentators are now realizing that it was lost due to irrationality; the Leave campaign lied and appealed to biases. There were no facts in sight, let alone rational analysis. This was not ‘head’, yet it was right-wing. The cold, hard facts were all on the remain side, which is clearly the more ‘Left’ of the two.

For those of us who care about being right (not Right-wing), this is no surprise. It has long been recognized that reality has a liberal bias. But this truism is more than a running joke amongst liberals. It is an important insight that explains the political shifts we are seeing. Brexit was achieved by appealing to people’s emotions: their fear and distrust of strangers, their feelings of powerlessness, their resentment towards political elites and the status quo…

Facts would say that strangers are no worse than other people. This is why the areas with the most immigrants weren’t very scared of them. This is why most rapes are still committed by people known to the victim. These things answer the fear of strangers with hard logic. Instead Brexit answered the fear by offering to try to change the outside world. Lefty identity politics came full-circle, and the Right claimed that opinions based on lies and misunderstandings were as valid as any expert’s opinion.

Despite this, we see the Left still acting on its understanding of itself as the ‘heart’ of politics. When the Right wants to negotiate, it stamps its foot and refuses to move, and the consensus-seeking, wimpy lefties fall in line. Even when Obama had power in the USA, he ended up behaving like a Republican because they kicked up such a fuss: ‘our precious principles are under threat from economically damaging lefties! We mustn’t change anything’. We saw the same in the UK in the coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The Lib Dems got an awful coalition deal from the Tories, who then blamed all nastiness on them whilst taking the credit for good Lib Dem policies. The Left cannot negotiate because it seeks consensus with people for whom consensus is a dirty word; who believe that democracy matters less than their own opinions, and that the Left, even if in power, must be fought in any way. Their politics has become the die-hard equivalent of guerilla warfare or terrorism.

And that’s why the Left needs to realize that it is not the ‘heart’ of politics. The Right is the biased, irrational side of politics, and liberals have all the facts and evidence. You cannot seek consensus with the terrorist who just wants you to die. Our government has a policy of not giving in to terrorist demands, yet Obama caved in when Republicans held up the national budget, and our government is right now attempting to negotiate with the EU using the blackmail of economic doom for all. What is this negotiating position except a national equivalent of a suicide bomber? The Right imagines that its opponents will once again cave in to its demands, as they have done so many times before.

We need to realize that liberalism is the doctrine of facts, principles and competence. The Conservatives and UKIP are the ‘heart’ of the country, but they are the black, twisted emotions of fear, distrust and resentment. The Greens are mainly ‘heart’ too, hoping for utopia whilst advocating alternative (i.e. not) medicine. That’s the wacky, well-meaning ‘heart’ that we’re accustomed to considering.

Liberalism is different. It is a cold, hard doctrine of principles. Sometimes it will enrage the well-meaning who wish we could just do something really nice, even though it’s impractical and probably ineffective. Often it will enrage the new ‘heartlands’ who don’t want to engage with detail and prefer comforting lies.

But, as a liberal, I want to be clear that my rage at seeing my country ruled by lies and stupidity is bigger than any impotent fury others feel at being exposed to facts and principles. I’m not a wishy-washy, woolly Leftie with a well-meaning attitude who will roll over in submission when others start to kick up a storm. I am someone with a devotion to truth and justice, and if you are too, then you need to make it clear, because we need a new narrative and stereotype for this country. We need to stop caving in; to stop ‘acknowledging their opinion’; to stop hedging and seeking consensus and trying to be all things to all men.

I understand that being outspoken can create conflict. I understand that can feel nasty. I understand that disagreeing strongly with someone often won’t persuade that person as well as gently nudging them. However, others can refuse to be nudged, and can deliberately create conflict to silence us. We have abandoned our principles and accepted opinions that should never have been countenanced in the hope of meeting someone half-way who has no intention of ever moving.

There are no alternative facts. There can be no more compromise.

Meaning or happiness?

This follows up my post about self-control nicely. The following article expounds on the fact that meaning in life is complex, and a good life isn't just a happy one.

https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-better-a-happy-life-or-a-meaningful-one

If we divide our goals in life into two categories, of meaningfulness and happiness, it helps explain a number of oddities that frustrate a lot of us.

For example, it is quite common for people to say that not wanting children is selfish. If we think about it, though, having a child brings an extra burden into the world. It takes up valuable resources, and it’s usually to satisfy the parents’ desire to procreate. These same people might pursue the argument by asking who will support a childless person in old age, or keep them company. Those look like selfish reasons to me.

            Numerous studies show that parents become less happy after having children, but nonetheless wouldn’t change things if they were given the chance; a finding that seems very perverse. When we realize that happiness and meaning are different, we can understand that children bring meaning to otherwise empty lives. They provide a connection between past, present and future, and a coherent narrative arc about continuity and purpose. It is this that parents get from their children. Parents also, presumably, judge childless people as selfishly hedonistic in their desire to avoid the pain of dealing with squealing brats and the meaning of curating continuity. Parents find purpose in their lives from children, and judge others as selfish because they assume that childless people are avoiding having any purpose.

            And that’s the crux of the misunderstanding. Purpose doesn’t have to come from children. Everyone seeks meaningfulness in life, but some of us find it in thinking our own thoughts, self-expression, self-examination, campaigning about good things, voting for what is right or leaving any sort of non-child legacy for the future. In fact, I regard these attempts to have value in life as a necessary part of citizenship whether you have a child or not. And that’s what makes being called selfish for not having children so galling: the fact that these people cannot even conceive of getting meaning from doing social good, but are so blinkered that they think the only meaning achievable is from their own selfish version of it.

            Different characters get different amounts of meaning from social relationships. Meaning comes from working through difficult issues; happiness comes from sharing good times. Difficult issues don’t cause happiness, so many misunderstandings probably arise because people are looking for different things from a relationship. I am happy to help my friends, but I’m not looking for meaning from them, whereas others might think that the major purpose of friendship and relationships is mutual support; to build continuity with each other.

            Our culture certainly teaches people, especially women, that meaning comes mainly from marriage and children. Meaning is more culturally determined than happiness, and so I suspect that a lot of people are looking to marry and have children not only because of biological instinct, but cultural bias. And that upsets me, because I’m looking for neither. I reject the cultural imposition, and people who look to impose it annoy me.

I don’t want other people to soothe my insecurities because that’s not where I want meaning, yet people actively want to find out about them, because that builds mutual meaning in our lives. I can happily miss out on company if someone is feeling grumpy or tiresome, but for many people putting up with those moods is the essence of friendship. I don’t think of myself as a lesser friend; I just don’t have that masochistic need.

For many I probably am a lesser friend, or maybe just an acquaintance. They need something from friendships that I don’t give. But people who have that need should understand that this isn’t because I’m a lesser person. It’s a question of compatibility, not me being objectionable. They have a need that I don’t want to satisfy, and that makes each of us inappropriate for the other.

Self control

Imagine someone wants you to exert no control over your waste-related bodily functions. Imagine that your partner (or a prospective partner) expects you to wet yourself in joy or sadness and finds your control disappointing. Maybe the person even finds the smell a nice, natural sign of emotional engagement.

What would you say? What would you do? If we assume you don’t run away from the freak and never speak to the person again, you’d have to explain that’s simply not how you work any more (since you were potty-trained). You have control over this function, and it’s not control that you can reverse. You could, theoretically, deliberately wet yourself (only in private), but it wouldn’t show emotional engagement in the same way. It would be a deliberate act of communication to satisfy a demand that makes no sense to you, not an automatic signal of what you’re feeling. You’d be wetting yourself deliberately to show joy or sadness because that’s the message your partner wants, not because that’s how your body works.

Of course, you’d not wet yourself. That would be disgusting. You probably feel repulsed at the thought. And besides, would you remember to wet yourself every time you were happy in your partner’s presence? That would be exhausting! It’s not anywhere near your mind; you’re probably too busy being happy in a normal way.

Of course, your partner might be unhappy with you those times. It’d be clear that your partner wasn’t in your mind and your weren’t thinking of your partner, and didn’t care enough. And if your partner took that attitude, after you’d actually accepted this crazy demand and acted on it on occasion, you’d feed pretty fed up with constant pressure to do something that you don’t like and doesn’t come naturally. You’d definitely be upset for being judged for the odd omission when it’s a big effort to do it at all.

Now imagine that you’re a quiet person without much intrinsic desire to communicate with other people just for the fun of it. Imagine that, perhaps, you’ve been bullied throughout your childhood. You will have learned never to show interest or curiosity in other people. Your impulses to blurt out ‘tell me more’ about some interesting thing another person has done, or to display your sadness at others’ discomfort, in so far as those impulses existed in a quiet introvert at all, are now entirely controlled. This helped you avoid the bullying of people who would seize on any attempt at social interaction as weakness to be mocked. You no longer miss people or feel a need for them (if you ever did), or perhaps you do but you have learned never to act on it or think about it. You merely enjoy good company when it happens.

            You have full control over such impulses, just as almost everyone has full control over when they expel their bodily waste. These impulses simply no longer exist for you, and you have learned to think of them as somewhat distasteful. They are indeed a sign of weakness and dependence; they hand power over to others and are a hostage to fortune. They are for children who need their Mummies, not for grown adults. If you’re a man, there’ll be an element of macho culture there too. If you’re English, there’s a cultural pressure to be a mature, sensible adult rather than a childish Mediterranean-style emo-wreck.

            With this background, you might nonetheless encounter a partner who expects you to emote regularly, as a sign that you are emotionally engaged. Many people across the world regard simple things such as remembering to ask about life events, showing shock and sympathy at others’ bad news, blurting out sweet nothings and responding to them in kind as standard, expected signs of emotional engagement.

            But for some of us, these things no longer come naturally, if they ever did, and it feels odd to do them. When such a person remembers to do them, it’s a conscious effort akin to you remembering to wet yourself for a particularly weird partner. People can say that it’s just natural to say these things, and all I can say in reply is that it’s perfectly natural to wet yourself; that’s why babies do it. But humans can train themselves to be more controlled, and whether you call it mature or emotionally isolated is an opinion that’s arguable both ways.

            I understand that many people need these signs of engagement, and rely on them in a way that explicit verbal reassurances of friendship can never provide. I understand that most people think it’s the job of a partner to spot signs of insecurity and offer reassurance. I’m sorry that these people can’t have fulfilling relationships with quiet or bullied people, but they’re not being deliberately unpleasant. It’s reasonable to display some forbearance, and not attack them for being rude. I understand others; is it too much to ask them to try to understand me?

Discrimination and reparations

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/

This article rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons. In it, a commentator suggests that Bernie Sanders, the most left-wing presidential candidate, is making a terrible mistake in saying that America’s focus should be on inequality and poverty, not reparations for black communities. He says that pragmatic concerns of impossibility are hypocritical from someone who wants to fight inequality, and that fighting wealth/income inequality doesn’t address the wage gap between blacks and whites, and that Sanders is ignoring white supremacy.

            It reminds me of another article I saw recently, which discussed whether nerds/geeks have a legitimate claim to be oppressed. This comes from a long line of articles along the same lines, some of which are both hypocritical and offensive. Many, of course, are more balanced and reasonable.

            The world is a nasty place and lots of people suffer. Not all suffering can be blamed on other people, and there frequently is a different system in which any particular suffering might not have arisen, and which someone could therefore use as evidence of systemic suffering.

            The two articles above are on different subjects, but they’re clearly linked; they are arguments about the targets/sufferers of oppression and how to fix the problem. In one case an author is claiming that racism is a problem that goes far beyond poverty, and in the other case an author is claiming that bullying is negligible compared to sexism (or racism). As others have pointed out, ideally we would say something like ‘I understand your pain and sympathize. I will support you and hope you can do the same for me’. But government budgets are limited, political goodwill and time for changes is limited, and humans, even feminists, tend to see things as competitive hierarchies and tend to divide the world into tribal groups.

            It is therefore both a naturally human, and a legitimate political, question to ask whose suffering is worst, and if there are any overlaps. Let me start with a brief summary of the suffering of racial minorities (primarily black people), move on to women, take a stroll through poverty and, finally look at bullying, by which point you’ll already be anticipating my arguments. These aren’t comprehensive summaries, but give a taste of the points people make. If you have read much about this, skip this page.

Racial discrimination

            Racial minorities have undergone some extreme discrimination in the past. Africans were enslaved. They were regarded as stupid animals, and never educated, prolonging the myth. Non-European countries were conquered and ruled from abroad, with foreigners extracting wealth from the oppressed population. In the US, housing was segregated and controlled, blacks were denied opportunities for advancement and black areas (created by segregated housing as well as demographic differences between states) were underfunded. More recently, legal barriers to equality have been removed, but black people nowadays have to work past poor education, financial barriers (such as higher insurance costs), social barriers (such as needing to support more needy families and not knowing anyone who can offer support) and cultural barriers (such as deference being misinterpreted as being shifty). Children play in the streets because they have nowhere else, but police can harass youngsters on the streets, or else drug dealers can recruit them from off the streets. Both options can lead to them getting shot. Black people are still regarded as criminals or less accomplished, even when an individual clearly is not, and these recognizable stereotypes permeate a lot of their lives.

Sexist discrimination

            Women have been the lesser sex for as long as we have a historical record. They were property. Rape was a crime against a father for reducing his daughter’s value, and was often settled by forcing the rapist to pay the father an appropriate dowry and marry his victim. In other places rape was the initiation of married life. Women were regarded as stupid creatures and not educated, which perpetuated the myth. More recently, women have achieved equal legal status. However, they still need to work against systematic cultural biases. Women are treated differently from early life onwards, raised to be more conciliatory, less aggressive, passive and to subordinate their interests to others, be it a group or an individual. Women are still regarded as inferior by some, and their bias finds justification by criticising a woman whatever approach she takes; bossy if she acts like some men, or too passively feminine if she doesn’t. Others subscribe to these judgements because they are recognizable stereotypes and easier to consider than to make a careful judgement of a person.

            Women have higher requirements placed on them, being expected to be HR managers, dealing with emotional issues, even when their job is elsewhere, and judged on how attractive they are, with comments switching from ‘ugly troll’ to ‘slut who charmed her way to the job’, with some men and women unable to deal with women without letting these judgements cloud their minds.

‘Class’ discrimination

            Poor people have existed for as long as there have been people. Every society in the world (perhaps barring some small and effectively negligible ones) has had hierarchies and people who got less than others. Poor children have always had a worse education, worse support from their parents financially, educationally and in time. Their social networks preclude them from finding good jobs that would lift them from poverty, and their appearance and accent can get them stereotyped as criminal, untrustworthy or incapable. Legal barriers to equality have been lifted (everyone can vote, landowner or not) but all sorts of cultural and social barriers remain. For example, poor people aren’t socialized to deal with high society and instead they learn their place and not to be pushy. Poor people, without family support and expectations of achievement often lack confidence (just like women), and people judge this belief that one is worse as actually being worse. Even outside of these judgements, a lack of confidence and social ability can prevent poor people from taking or creating opportunities.

           

            That summarises ‘mainstream’ forms of oppression. I haven’t discussed other protected categories (age, religion, sexuality are protected in addition to race and sex), but I don’t need to. My summaries, or your own knowledge if you skipped them, should make it clear that our theories of how oppression manifests itself are converging. Poor educational opportunities, social exclusion and bias that judges people for ‘character’ traits that are either taught to them, not relevant, or a stereotype, all create barriers that in any situation are not extreme, but make much of life more difficult. Each of the groups discussed suffers from the same mechanisms of disadvantage. Discrimination has been far worse in the past, but legal equality now exists. That these groups, as groups, are so much worse off shows how powerful these mechanisms of disadvantage are.

            But that’s the whole point. Through careful thought and study sociologists have found out how disadvantage is perpetuated, and disadvantage causes further disadvantage in the same way. The cycle of poverty is hugely powerful. Bernie Sanders is quite right to focus on inequality and unequal opportunities. These are overriding concerns, because inequality affects everyone. Yes, racism affects black people, but so does poverty. Without poverty perpetuating itself, racism in the US probably still would exist, but a vast amount of the inequality would resolve itself because we know that blacks are suffering from the effects of poverty.

            Why should we have reparations for harms that weren’t committed against us? I happen not to have any black ancestors that I know of, but I have both poor and female ancestors. Should I be repaid because of that heritage? Am I no more than a member of an arbitrary group, rather than an individual, free to define myself? If we read the article I first mentioned, we’d be told that reparations are due to blacks because of past crimes. What aspect of slavery has a modern black man suffered? None. He has suffered from the cycle of poverty that was initiated by slavery. Anti-poverty campaigning will resolve that disadvantage.

           

            Of course, it does seem to be the case that these different oppressed groups suffer from some of these mechanisms of disadvantage more than others. Women, through the sharing of wealth in marriage, experience no perpetuation of their poverty as a group. They now share in the poverty (or not) of their parents, one male and one female. On the other hand, they probably do suffer from social judgements more than poor people.

            Any campaign to address these social disadvantages must necessarily help both women and the poor, just like any campaign that truly addresses the root cause of disadvantage. But it might be easier to ask for special privileges for a group, based on past suffering of people who belonged to the same group in the past. This avoids the difficulty of dealing with people as individuals, and the difficulty of addressing flaws in fundamental aspects of human nature and our economic system. However, it is based on the logical fallacy of collective responsibility, which is outlawed by the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. In this case, though, it’s collective suffering: ‘a black man suffered, I am black, therefore I share his suffering’. If that argument holds, I can as easily take out the ‘black’. Or one could replace ‘man’ with ‘human’. A human suffered, I am human, therefore I share that suffering.

            Similarly, white people conquered and ruled foreign countries. But so did non-white people, and people of all types conquered and ruled their own countries. It is undeniable that the British committed some monstrous acts in India. It is undeniable that Indians also did so, both before and during British rule. Not only this, but British people were nasty to British people, and Indians nasty to other Indians; the Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims had fought many times before the British, and the Indian kingdoms had fought amongst themselves. At the bottom of the heap were always the poor people. Poor people’s countries were conquered and ruled, with aristocrats extracting wealth from the oppressed population.

            Perhaps we do all deserve compensation for the sufferings of our ancestors. If they hadn’t been murdered, oppressed and maltreated then society might be far more advanced than it is now. The number of geniuses whose insights were lost to disease, war, famine or lack of education or opportunity must be enormous. Sadly we can’t recreate a perfect society by paying ourselves what we’ve lost. We can never regain the progress that might have been. There’s only so much wealth in the world, and its distribution is a problem of equality and poverty. I agree that there are aspects of racism that aren’t all about poverty, but the reason I was so riled by that article is because I do think that the original causes of disadvantage are subordinate to the perpetuation of it, and that solving all poverty would solve most of our race problems, but that somehow addressing all of our race problems without considering poverty is not possible and wouldn’t address all the other poverty out there.

            By any standard except the most selfish that must count as an inferior outcome. 

The next post will expand on this issue.

Jerks and empathy

As always, this was triggered by reading an article:

https://aeon.co/essays/so-you-re-surrounded-by-idiots-guess-who-the-real-jerk-is
 This article describes 'jerks' as people who 'culpably fail to appreciate the perspectives of others around them, treating them as tools to be manipulated or idiots to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic peers'. Jerks cannot appreciate how they might be wrong and others right, and others' wants don't register as of interest to a jerk. The author contrasts this with a 'sweetheart', who is giving, generous and merciful, before explaining that everyone is a bit of both with some examples of normal behaviour. He even provides a good explanation of why there are more jerks higher up any perceived social hierarchy. Much of what he says is an accurate characterization of a certain type of person.
 But the author goes wrong when he starts to split mercy and 'hard moralising principle' as opposites, with mercy and sympathy being essential to morality. And his derision for caring about moral or political principles, because this takes the place of genuine concern for people, is both ridiculous and offensive.
 Finally, there is a sharp distinction between hypocritical disrespect for other people (faceless fools are always shambling along, late for meetings, but I am late because I am too important and busy) and hard moralising principle (Being late is rude, I make lots of effort never to be late but no-one makes the same effort for me).
The author's constant references to 'self-rationalization' strike me as a sneaky way of imitating the old argument that 'if it doesn't agree with the Church, it must be unholy and deceitful, and the more persuasive it is the better evidence that is that it is the work of the devil'. You cannot beat such arguments; if you win, your persuasiveness proves you wrong, but if you lose, you've lost.
I understand his feelings on this. His 'sweethearts' can be pictured as nice, gentle people who do good as they see it, whereas jerks maintain their hard principles that are impossible because they flout them and are hypocritical.
But he assumes that it is impossible to live up to strong principles. If that is really the case, he is saying that original sin exists, since we can never be truly moral beings. I disagree. Many people have hard principles because they get very close to following them all the time and see that most people don't bother.
He suggests that it is a symptom of a jerk to think 'these people queuing in the post office are a mass of fools; why should I wait while they bumble with their requests'. And I know some examples I'd agree are jerks. But if someone holds up the queue when a counter is free, or, after waiting for 10 minutes only starts counting out small change when the clerk asks for payment, a harm has been committed. It is a symptom of a jerk not to consider others, by the author's own definition, and that includes the people behind you.  Those people are right to be annoyed by the jerks in front.
Similarly, when I get held up on the Tube, as I often am, I am frustrated by the way that people spread out to fill the corridors, at how people (even strangers) will walk at the same speed side by side, blocking the path for anyone who wants to get past, and at how people who walk extremely slowly nonetheless make a lot of effort to be first off the train... just to hold up the rest of us. Yes, even fast-moving people take up space and it takes time for fast-moving people to get through bottlenecks. But it's the thoughtlessness of others that makes me think of them as worthless idiots, and I'm very accepting of people who get in the way, but know what they've done and apologize. Everyone makes mistakes, or trips over etc. occasionally. I don't think that makes me either a hypocritical jerk or a merciful sweetheart. It just means he has misunderstood who the jerks really are. As the author puts it, 'entering a subway is an exercise in nudging past dumb schmoes'. But he thinks that the jerk has such a thought; I posit that the thought is about jerks.
 All around us people are thoughtless in myriad small ways. Pedestrians step in front of cyclists assuming that they'll go around but not thinking about who has right of way or about whether a cyclist would prefer to cycle on the smooth road rather than go over the rough patch left for him. Commuters idle along station corridors without thinking if someone behind might like to move faster into the gap ahead. Cars cut cyclists up in case the cyclist will slow them down. Cyclists jump lights, scaring pedestrians and risking accidents. Colleagues are late for meetings. Colleagues don't wash up in the kitchen. The list of small annoyances is endless.
 It isn't right and proper to be a merciful sweetheart and accept and forgive these transgressions. These are the actions of jerks, and we need to call them out, not be shamed into thinking we are jerks if we care about them. The author implies that we all do this, so we should accept others doing it. I disagree. I don't do these things, and when someone finds another example of rudeness that I do do, I will be ashamed and appalled... but you can be sure I will quietly work hard to change myself. If being a jerk is a bad thing, as he thinks, then we shouldn't accept it because we are all jerks. We should fight it, and be friends to each other by pointing it out.
 This brings me nicely back to 'hard moralising principle'. The author pictures a world where everyone is a bit jerkish and has given up on principles. Instead we're all a bit kind, generous and empathetic whilst also being thoughtless and rude, because kindness and empathy are targetted feelings. You aren't kind to someone you're not even thinking about.
 But the true heart of morality, in direct contrast to the author's assertion, and the belief of many philosophers, is not mercy and empathy. It is precisely in hard principle. Morality takes effort. You need to think about others and show concern for them. It is not enough to see me with my disabled mother and offer to help her reach goods in the shop. What matters is that you don't block the wheelchair's path when we're behind you, because a wheelchair can't squeeze past a thoughtless person.
Snape might have not been very empathetic when he abused Harry Potter for not doing well in his mind-protection tutorials, but his principles were absolutely right. Harry needed to do those lessons, and his apathy cost Sirius his life. Snape could have saved that life if Harry had been less of a jerk. 
 Jerks might be hypocritical, but they're half-way towards being moral because at least they think about principles. People who thoughtlessly rely on kindness and empathy are indeed foolish idiots. We have brains in order to think, but people prefer not to bother. Those people deserve to be called idiots.

I know that personal relationships appeal more to conservatives, and principles more to progressives. But even conservatives must agree that grand systems can build complex consequences from many small units or interactions. That's the basis of calculus and free markets, after all, neither of which are particularly left-wing. Principles are what save us from a chaotic mass of injustice and protect people from harm. It's not a morally culpable failing to care about them, nor morally laudable always to extend mercy for those who break them. Mercy, by definition, must accept that a penalty is expected, and that means that the penalty must usually be applied, or there is no mercy; just injustice. Mercy is for the powerful, who can get away with it. Enjoining individuals to be merciful is a manipulative way of asking them to accept injustices done to them... and believe it's right for them to do so. When that message starts to go to the poor and powerless, and is used to protect systematic suffering, it becomes not only an intellectual mistake, but an insidious way to make the world a nastier place.

We need less individual mercy and reliance on empathy, and a lot more hard moralising principle and the thought that goes behind it. And if that makes me a jerk, then so what? I'm a jerk. I don't look at things from the perspective of the person in my mind at the moment, or act on my immediate empathy... because I am thinking of everyone's perspective, and that requires wider principles. If seeing more perspectives is better, then principles are best of all.

c.f autism, politeness, courtesy,
https://aeon.co/opinions/what-every-dictator-knows-young-men-are-natural-fanatics?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits