Abandon Text! - Psychology

Effort, Free Will, and Destiny

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Sat, 23 May 2009 07:37:30 -0700

In response to Kenny's comments on the primacy of effort:

If social scientists can accurately predict whether someone will drop out of high school on the day they are born, does that necessarily mean that effort is not the primary factor in their success or failure? Maybe the social scientists have merely learned how to predict who will make the effort (e.g. people in a cultural context that values education and economic advancement) and those who will not (e.g. those who lack those forms of support). And, even if their predictions are 80% right, we could still look at the 20% who defy those predictions, and I'm fairly certain we would find greater effort as a common characteristic of those who beat the odds.
Along those same lines, consider the results of the KIPP schools (mentioned both in the New Yorker article and in Gladwell's book Outliers). 80% of the eighth graders in the KIPP program in the South Bronx scored at or above grade level in reading or math – nearly twice the New York City average. The core difference of KIPP schools: effort. Between extended school calendars and piles of homework, they make students spend 100% of their time working on academic success. The differences are dramatic. Again, nothing is a guarantee (there are still the other 20% who are not performing at grade level) but that still a huge difference.
Kenny is correct that an individual's success is vastly dependent on the context in which they are born, and that effort is insufficient without opportunity. If you pull back and consider a family's success over several generations, you will see the correlation between effort and success become much stronger. If one or more generations are willing to make the effort and sacrifices necessary to create the environment of opportunity (e.g. coming to America, working two jobs to save for kids' college, etc.) then families can readily advance from poverty to the middle class, or from the middle class to the outright wealthy. One can argue whether it is morally just that the virtues or the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children . . . but most humans would agree that it is just (to the extent anything is just in this world), and that we have a right and a responsibility to work for the advancement of our children.
All of this is tying back to our earlier (and ongoing) discussion about our moral obligations to the poor. Yes, we have vastly more than most other people in the world . . . but that's not an accident. Our wealth is the result of a particular context of opportunity, which was primarily created out of the effort, sacrifice, and risk-taking of our forebears. I think we need to pay as much attention to the virtues that created this wealth in the first place, as well as the impulse to share it with others. (More on this later.)
I agree that intelligence and willpower are strongly correlated. Notice the kind of intelligence, though. The article explicitly points out that willpower is a feat of imagination – the ability to create a mental vision of the future rewards, or to mentally erase the prospect of immediate gratification. And yet most of our schools (at least, the schools I grew up in) do very little to stimulate our capacity to imagine. Imagination and creativity were usually regarded as something extra-curricular, something beyond the pale of standard education. If you look at the report cards from the Chapel Hill/Carrboro City Schools, you will see that for grades one through five, "imagination" and "creativity" are never mentioned.

Earnestness is everything

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:27:18 -0700

The writers at the New Yorker keep coming up with new angles on a recurring theme: talent is Out, effort is In.

I had already written previously about Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, in which he details how effort and opportunity are more important than talent in creating super-successful people. Now, in another article, "How David Beats Goliath," (The New Yorker, May 11, 2009) he asks a seemingly simple question for a dedicated basketball fan such as himself: "Why don't more teams play the full-court press?" It doesn't take a genius to realize that a weaker team can dramatically slow down a superior team by playing the full-court press: guarding their opponents they moment they get the ball, and doing everything in their power to stop them from advancing to mid-court in the required 10 seconds. And yet, you rarely see that strategy pursued, at any level of play.

Gladwell followed up on those who did use the full-court press -- a team of 12-year-old girls in the National Junior Basketball league, and the teams of college coach Rick Pitino -- and found that they triumphed . . . at a price. The full-court press is an exhausting strategy, one that requires players to run and run and run. Few teams, it turns out, are willing to work that hard. It also makes for rather ugly basketball, a rushing and flailing of arms and legs instead of the graceful passes and shots players like to make and fans like to watch. The full-court press is stigmatized -- those who use it are met with both anger and contempt, and some officials make biased calls to discourage its use.

All this would be interesting enough on its own. But Gladwell loves isomorphisms -- he wants to see if this same phenomena maps to other sorts of struggles. And before you know it, he draws parallels with the military history, and academic studies of how underdogs prevail in battle. Lawrence of Arabia played the military equivalent of the full-court press, using the everywhere-at-once attacks of his Bedouin troops in the places his foes were weakest. They prevailed because the hustled, and refused to play by the rules that favored their opponents. Those same tactics -- small, fast, non-traditional, and out-of-bounds -- have now redefined modern warfare in an age of terrorism and insurgency. David can win against Goliath, but only by using methods Goliath finds repellant.

The triumph of effort found another voice this week in another New Yorker article ("Don't! The secret of self-control," May 18, 2009) that looked at the unexpected results of psychological research in the sixties. Some researches had created "the marshmallow test," a simple exercise to see how long four-year-olds could resist eating a treat in order to earn a greater reward later. Kids' abilities to defer gratification varied significantly, but they could also be taught cognitive tricks to make it easier. The researchers didn't realize the significance of their findings until they followed up on their subjects decades later . . . and found that the marshmallow test was profoundly predictive of success in later life. Those who passed the marshmallow test scored higher on the SAT. Those who couldn't resist the marshmallow were more likely to have behavioral problems, had trouble paying attention and maintaining friendships.

For years educators and parents have been focusing on IQ as the most important cognitive measure, when it turns out willpower was more significant. And willpower, they've found, is not some mysterious quality of character, but rather a specific skill for controlling one's attention, focusing on certain thoughts and tuning out others. Persistence of attention and effort are what ensure lifelong success.

What does this mean for our culture? I hope it signals a rejuvenation of the American meritocracy, restoring our faith that people can control their destinies, if they are willing to pay the price. The "land of opportunity" is really "the land of the opportunity to work." Effort is not omnipotent, but it's the closest thing to it.

Reason, Handmaid of Emotion

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:25:21 -0700

For most of my life, and most of my career as a spiritual seeker, I had a classically Romantic notion of reason and emotion:

Reason was the primary driver and rightful ruler of behavior.
Emotions were messy, unpredictable side-effects of living in a body, the "primitive" leftovers of our mentality, which continually interfered with the smooth functioning of Reason.
Mental life was primarily the ongoing struggle between these two forces – Reason trying to direct and control, Emotions ready to run off the rails at any moment.

In How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker inverts this model. Pinker asserts that the mind is an evolved mechanism, and as such any complex mechanism in the mind must have served a survival function. And that function is not the lowest of functions, but rather the highest.

Pinker posits that if you had a perfectly rational, sophisticated cognition machine without emotions (say, a robot, or Dr. Spock) and you set it lose in the world with no instructions, it would do . . . absolutely nothing. Intelligence has no use at all unless it has goals – it has to want something. It has to have a motive. And intelligence itself cannot generate the motive; it can figure out how to achieve a goal, but it can't figure out what goals to achieve. The highest-level goal has to come from somewhere else. And that's where the emotions come in. Pinker: "The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain's highest-level goals. Once triggered by a propitious moment, an emotion triggers the cascade of subgoals and sub-subgoals that we call thinking and acting."

So, rather than reason controlling emotion, it's exactly the other way around – emotions mobilize reason to fulfill goals. Every emotion we have is evolutionarily designed to meet some challenge in the world. Pinker spends most of the second half of the book deconstructing the design and survival value of every human emotion: fear, disgust, happiness, friendship, gratitude, sympathy, romantic love, guilt, grief, etc.

For now, though, just consider the ramifications of that simple formulation: emotions trigger responses that lead to action. It becomes a sort of mindfulness meditation: what emotion is motivating my thoughts and actions right now? If you want to change your behavior in some way (after, of course, considering the emotions that make you want to change your behavior) you will probably have to consciously manage your emotions – figure out what environmental cues trigger the emotions that generate the thoughts and behaviors that are manifesting in your life.

These ideas were not entirely new to me – I was always partial to Hume's formulation: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." But this was the first time that I heard a strong scientific case for that position. And rather than seeing the emotions as "primitive" or somehow undesirable, Pinker gives the emotions their due as sophisticated, engineered, essential aspects of cognition. It makes it that much easier for me to accept them and understand them for what they are.

Be Not Afraid

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:40:22 -0700

Steven Pinker is an atheist; in How the Mind Works he is not shy about stating, without fanfare or argument, that the explanations of religion are "palpably not true." Why, then would this book be high on my list of recommended reading for the spiritual seeker? Am I trying to argue people out of their faith, with Pinker as my secret weapon?

Steven Pinker demonstrates the best attitude towards finding the truth. He's not afraid to ask the hard questions, and not afraid to accept the hard answers, and (most astounding of all) not afraid to admit what he doesn't know. He's not afraid of giving opposing views a hearing, nor is he afraid to ruthlessly critiquing them, while still avoiding being outright snarky. He is, simply, not afraid. He has a marvelous equipoise that makes you remember that science is a noble manifestation of Reason, with a capital R, and not just an excuse for the geek-and-wonk crowd to bully you with their assertions. And his inquiries have gotten him in trouble -- in fact he wrote an entire book, The Blank Slate, to explain why so many people -- both the religious conservatives and the liberal intelligentsia -- will fight tooth and nail against the notion of human nature.

Maybe it's just a result of his extremely clear, friendly, and witty style, that he seems so fearless. But frankly, I could have used a little more of that in youth. In my teens, everyone who talked about spirituality used the language of fear. Back then it seemed my only possible choice was to exchange the fear of eternal damnation (courtesy of traditional Christianity) for the fear of existential nothingness (thanks a lot, rational intellect). I latched onto mysticism because it seemed like the only way out of perpetual anxiety. Why guess, when you could know? Sometimes I think my philosophy might have gone down a different path, had I just known a few more people who had the guts to face the Unknown without ducking for cover or shitting their pants. Rather than working out my salvation with fear and trembling, I might have spent a lot more time just really paying attention.

That fearlessness only counts, though, if someone is fearlessly asking the right questions. I don't have much use for people who are fearless because they don't have a thought in their head, or who choose to stay in their philosophic bunkers and not go outside into the Doubt. And that's the biggest reason Pinker should appeal to spiritual seekers -- he doesn't shy away from the question of Consciousness. Most other cognitive scientists, after happily explaining why you're just one big ball of algorithms, will just wave their hands indignantly at consciousness. They pretend it doesn't exist, that it's an illusion, or that it doesn't matter, or that it's a question to ask another day, maybe in another hundred years or so. But Pinker, bless him, recognizes that consciousness is THE question, the one we most care about. If there is one thing we know with more certainty than anything else, it's that we are Aware . . . and what the hell is that about?

And, even more interestingly, Pinker is willing for now to let consciousness defy the computational theory of mind. No algorithm or neural network can satisfactorily explain how you come to have the experience of red, with all its redness. Pinker even suggests that it might be truly unfathomable for the human mind, because the human mind never needed to evolve the capacity to understand such things. Our ability to solve problems and predict the future was mighty handy for our ancestors on the African savannah -- but the nature of consciousness might be outside of our ability to comprehend it, because our ancestors never needed to in order to survive. This also feels intuitively true -- if there is any possible way to understand consciousness, it's going to be an entirely different sort of understanding than we're used to.

Pinker has lots of useful insights to share about every other kind of thought and feeling that occupies your philosophic contemplation. But the biggie, the best, the pearl of great price, is this: keep your eye on consciousness, because THAT'S what science can't touch, and that's where all the action is. If God is ever to be found to be "palpably" real, it's going to be there.

Equal pay for equal . . . what?

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:04:00 -0700

Gender pay equity has been back in the news lately, as the Senate passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which starts the clock on the statute of limitations on inequitable treatment at the time of the last paycheck. I include the link to original text, because it does turn out that the Wall Street Journal's warnings of a trial-lawyer bonanza are somewhat exaggerated – under the law, someone could recover for back pay for up to two years, instead of twenty or more. But the Paycheck Fairness Act, which supposedly seeks to revive the notion of "comparable worth" and set wage guidelines on abstract notions instead of market demand, does seem to me to be a little more disturbing.

Pay equity is one of the most vexing social issues ever to plague a policy wonk. It's thornier than even healthcare. Everyone agrees they want a level playing field and equal opportunity for all. But knowing whether particular outcomes are fair challenges every other principle that supports a free economy. In the real world, wages are not set by bureaucrats but by a labor market – that is, negotiations between buyer and seller. Research suggests that the wage gap may not be due to sinister employers trying to keep women down, but rather the fact that men are more aggressive than women when it comes to negotiating pay. The U.S. General Accounting Office research demonstrates that the majority of pay discrepancies between men and women are due to what they cautiously refer to as "work patterns" – namely, women are more likely than men to place their family obligations ahead of their career ambitions, which inevitably leads them to make decisions that diminish their earnings. As a general rule, the people who care more about money get more of it . . . and those who care about other things, get less. That might be frustrating, but is it unfair?

Ok, time out for mandatory PC disclaimers. Yes, bona fide cases of unfair gender discrimination in pay exist. Yes, women should have legal protections against such abuses. I do think, however, it is flat-out wrong to assume that differences in pay are automatically a moral offense. A difference in outcome does not necessarily mean a difference in opportunity.

Fairness and Human Nature

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:39:00 -0700

Most theories of human nature (especially those that inform people's politics) boil down to two simplistic notions:

Human beings are basically bad. People are intrinsically selfish, violent, impulsive, and destructive. Their natural state is evil. Only by virtue of some external constraint (by the social system, by the law, by God) can people be pulled out of their natural evil into a state of good.
Human beings are basically good. People are naturally cooperative, loving, empathetic and altruistic. Left to their own devices, people are "noble savages." Only the corrupting forces of bad parents, bad societies, and bad states can thwart people's inherent goodness.

Generally speaking, conservatives believe people are naturally bad, and liberals think people are naturally good. Conservatives focus their attention on controlling and directing the individual with rules in order to preserve the common good (e.g. "law and order" campaigns, big defense budgets, etc.). Liberals focus their attention on controlling collective organizations (governments, businesses, families) in order to preserve the individual good (e.g. government mandates for worker safety, "safety nets," etc.)

I think most people are moderates, since they find the first position too cynical and the second too naïve. The truth is that human beings are naturally selfish and naturally cooperative. Things would be a whole lot easier if it was one way or the other; then we wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to figure out which response was the right one.

This poses some problems for anyone trying to construct a consistent model of fairness . . . since fairness is only consistent with about half of human nature.

Social Inclusion

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:40:35 -0700

I had written earlier about my concerns about teasing and bullying in my own children, as a prelude to discussing a lecture I heard by Kim John Payne, a prominent authority on handling bullying in schools.

Payne turned out to be, above all else, and excellent story-teller. He had made a concerted study of coming-of-age rituals in various indigenous societies, and had come out of the experience inspired to bring a more enlightened understanding of childhood development, and especially managing conflict, to modern Western culture. He told several stories about those experiences, most of which were both funny and interesting. I don't think I'll do him just repeating them, though you could probably hear many of the stories in the books and CDs on his website. But I can at least give the high points of his talk, and the take-home message:

Payne found that all coming-of-age rituals throughout the world shared the same fundamental structure:

Seclusion. The child is isolated in some way from his family and his peers.
Endurance. The child has to endure through physical, mental, and emotional trials.
Liminality. The child arrives at a state of maximum tension, marked by intense confusion and the inversion of the normal order of things.
Change. The child undergoes a transformation, leaving behind childhood and moving into their identity as an adult.
Belonging. The new adult, no longer a child, is accepted into the community, with new adult responsibilities and privileges.

The process is shaped like an hour-glass, with the person "squeezed" through an intense experience in the middle (the "liminal" stage) and ultimately released again into greater freedom and autonomy. [My first thought, in seeing this map of coming-of-age rituals, was: "That's exactly the structure of all spiritual experience."]

Payne correlated this structure of coming-of-age rituals with what happens with bullying in the schools. The bullied student goes through a process of isolation and endurance, resulting in extreme disorientation, but ultimately (if things go well) changes and emerges into a new form of belonging to the community. It's not a perfect fit, as analogies go, and Payne didn't push it too far, though he did seem to have some conclusions about what it means for bullying:

The process of social growth inevitably involves struggle and conflict. He accused Western culture of having a "harmony addiction" – we feel a strong need for everyone to "get along" and for no one to have conflicts . . . which ultimately sabotages real growth. The goal of a society is not to eliminate conflict, but to properly manage conflict. As Payne says: "peace is not the absence of conflict but the beginning of it."
Because the process will involve struggle and conflict, our role as parents and community members is not necessarily to intervene, and especially not to blame, but mostly to be aware and present and manage the process. Or, as Payne put it, it's "an accompanied journey." He thinks any reaction to bullying should be moderate and common-sensical: "We're gonna talk about this, but we're not going to get weird about it." He put a lot of emphasis on seeing bullying as a process that involves both the bully and the bullied, and that it is not useful to make it a question of blame or victimhood. If parents avoid trying to assign blame, they are able to constructively communicate about issues and collectively arrive at good solutions, with everyone's input and collaboration: "It's nobody's fault, but everyone's responsibility."

The other big take-home message (and I'm not sure if this directly ties into the whole coming-of-age theme or not) was that bullying always starts small, primarily with verbal put-downs. Put-downs have become a staple form of entertainment in our society; for instance, every 18-minute episode of Friends was found to contain over 50 put-downs. Kids follow the example that parents and popular culture set; we are essentially teaching them that verbally abusing others is fun and acceptable. Eventually, put-downs become a compulsive, addictive behavior: criticism creates a temporary feeling of camaraderie, superiority, and power, but later leads to a sense of isolation, shame, guilt, and emptiness. Payne's first recommendation for schools is to teach students, teachers, and parents to become aware of gratuitous criticism in their own communication, and to challenge every occurrence of it. There is nothing profoundly new about such advice: Buddhism includes "right speech" in its prescriptions for moral behavior, and nearly everyone's mother said (if not practiced) "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." And yet, I know most people (adults and children alike) would find Payne's "blame, shame, and put-down diet" to be extremely challenging. If we're not complaining or criticizing someone or something, then what do we have to talk about?

Red Sex, Blue Sex

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:40:16 -0700

A recent New Yorker article ("Red Sex, Blue Sex," by Margaret Talbot, November 3, 2008) challenges some assumptions about whether conservative attitudes towards sexuality are really "pro-family". Some new sociological studies find that evangelicals who most strongly push for abstinence before marriage are also the groups that have the most sexually active teenagers, the highest teen pregnancy, the lowest age of marriage and (as a direct consequence) the highest rate of divorce. Meanwhile, the liberals who are generally accepting of both teenage sex and abortion are the ones having the lowest teenage pregnancy rate, delaying marriage and childbearing, and therefore having kids when they are more emotionally and financially mature.

I have mixed feelings about the results they report . . . Primarily because I have lived on both sides of their conservative/liberal divide, at least as far as sexuality was concerned. I grew up with a belief that one should postpone sexual activity until marriage, instilled by my family as a part of my religious beliefs. And I did, in fact, remain a virgin until I married.

However, I had a lot of the "blue" factors at work as well. My parents were explicit about practical perils of sex as well as the moral ones -- "if you father a child, you are the one who will be raising it, not me," my mother told me on more than one occasion. And though my mother was vehement about postponing sex until marriage, she was far from being against sex per se. Sex was not banned because it was evil, but precisely because it was good -- a sacred bond, something to be cherished and not debased. And, like many teenagers, I engaged in certain, erm, practices that only barely qualified me as a "technical virgin," as is typical of the liberal-minded prescription.

The New Yorker article didn't mention some of the downsides that I see to the "liberal-minded" approach to sexuality. It completely ignores the emotionally charged nature of sexuality. All the condoms in the world cannot protect the psyche from the ramifications of such intimacy. Today's youth might be more informed about sexuality, more careful in a practical sense, and yet they also seem numb. It seems as if the only way they could deal with the emotional consequences of sex was to shut down. I can't speak to this with any authority, since, as I said, I took a different path and have no direct experience with promiscuity. But, as one young woman told me, "With my generation, it's like, sleeping with someone is no big deal." And while some liberals might cheer at such an attitude, I find it unnerving, in the same way I found mandatory promiscuity to be unnerving in Brave New World. If we conquer sexuality by sucking absolutely all meaning and significance out of it, then I'm not entirely sure we're better off.

Interestingly, the study found that the abstinence-only works fine for those who score high on measures of religiosity -- those who go to church often and pray at home. People who get plenty of support and attention, and who are embedded in a cultural alternative to the sexed-up popular culture, can succeed in delaying sex. But, as with lots of religious groups, most who identify themselves as evangelicals are not deeply observant. So it's not enough to have the conservative beliefs about sexuality -- you have to have a lifestyle that supports those beliefs in order for them to have any significance.

All this reinforces some basic SKS messages regarding one's philosophy:

It's not enough to hold a particular belief: you have to actually act on it
It's not enough to act on a particular conviction: you have to observe the outcomes and see if they really provide the results for which you were hoping
Community and family support are vital to living a counter-cultural position

The Burden (and the Gift) of Necessity

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:51:00 -0700

I have a new theory of human meaning, and human happiness.

It sprung from contemplating my "need to be needed." (See my previous post, "The Geek Shall Inherit…") I think at some level everyone feels a need to be needed. "Being needed" is almost synonymous with "being significant"; if you aren't needed, then you are superfluous, unnecessary, insignificant, and therefore meaningless. If you are needed, that means you are fulfilling a necessary role in the world. People care who you are and what you do. They are counting on you. They rejoice in your victories and bemoan your losses. When you listen to people who are obviously galvanized by a compelling purpose, you hear the language of need: "They really need me here." "They can't make it without me." Even if it's not directly stated, the necessity of your activity is implied. When one says, "I'm making a difference here," it implies the necessity of your action-- because, if you're action was unnecessary, could you say you're making a difference?

"Nonsense!" declares the hard-charging businessman with his copy of Atlas Shrugged in his briefcase. "I don't do this stuff to be needed! I just want to be the best! I'm doing this for myself!" Hmmm . . . Well, the businessman might think he's in it just for himself, but empirically it doesn't seem to hold up. If you dig into his definition of what "being the best" means, you will ultimately find that it involves filling someone's need. The railroad he builds, or the media empire, or the work of art, is ultimately judged as "good" or even "great" to the extent that it fulfills some human need.

So . . . We need to be needed. And with that need comes the burden of necessity. When your action is required, it becomes a duty, something you have to do. (Never mind, for the moment, that you might also want to do it; it still remains a necessity, a have-to-do.) Now, the burden of necessity can be a blessing; lots of people talk about "having a reason to get out of bed in the morning." They want to have some necessity to compel them to action. Some people even find a certain intensity and bliss in all their actions coming from sheer necessity. Soldiers and others in life-and-death struggles often report a lightness in their being, a clarity unclouded by doubt. They know what they need to do, and they do it . . . which is more than many of us can claim for our day-to-day lives.

Over time, though, the burden of necessity can ultimately lead to being enslaved by necessity. Unless the necessity we serve is completely in accord with our true desires, we find ourselves feeling trapped by our duties and obligations. Think of Steve Martin's character in Parenthood, snarling to his wife: "My whole life is 'have to' !" We feel deprived of freedom, deprived of choice, a mere cog in the works of society.

So . . . we can look to the other side of meaning, which is freedom. I'll take that up tomorrow.

The geek shall inherit . . .

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:44:47 -0700

"What happened to the blog?" I'll tell you: I was overcome by my inner geek.

The stereotype is that geeks are social outcasts -- awkward, repulsive people who cultivate relationships with machines because they can't relate to other people. And yet, as technology becomes a bigger and bigger part of the popular culture and everyday life, people with technological skill are generally well-loved and respected. I have no lack of fans, at least among those who need my help.

And . . . There is always a need for technological help. Confessing to be a techno-geek at a party is almost as bad as being a doctor; people immediately start telling you about their computer problems and asking you to help them.

And the geeks do help. I've rarely found a geek who wasn't willing, nay, dying to share his expertise with others. That is, after all, how they constitute their self image. In our own minds, we are super-heroes. I am not exaggerating; we really do see ourselves as the specially-endowed saviors of humanity.

Consider the following scene:

Someone cries for help. Something awful has happened. Their world has turned upside down. Something very dear to them is terribly imperiled by a threat they do not understand, some kind of monster, and nobody around them can help. Others have been powerless to help. The victim is on the verge of despair. Suddenly, someone new arrives . . . Someone who is not afraid. "I've seen this sort of thing before, ma'am." Using powers that seem mystical and strange, the stranger banishes the evil, restores balance and peace to the world. The rescued victims are so thankful. "However can I repay you . . . ?"

This is a stock scene from Superman, yes? It is also what happens when you recover someone's email files from a corrupted hard disk. The thrill of power and purpose is probably about the same.

I used to think that the pull of being a superhero was only a small part of my motivation. Surely I have other motives -- personal profit, intellectual interest. But the drive to be the super-hero consistently trumps all other desires. I will give up billable hours, even my own free time, even food and sleep, all for the sake of hearing someone say, "You saved me. You're awesome."

No doubt lots of good comes from it. And yet, it is an unmanageable addiction, one that leads to over-commitment, poorly planned projects, and misplaced priorities. My boss once told a customer: "Don't ask Georg to do anything that's not on this list . . . Because saying 'please' to him is, like, kryptonite. He loses all willpower, he does whatever anyone says."

So . . . As I started making free time to pursue my writing, I was filling it instead with more technical heroics . . . This time unpaid technical heroics for my kids school. It all needed doing, and I'm glad I did it, but it's not what I set out to do. It's time to change that.

My thanks, as always, to the friends and colleagues who kept asking me, "Where's the blog?" Sadly, I need that. I need that a lot.

Warmer, colder

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:04:14 -0700

Yesterday I went to my mother-in-law's house in Winston-Salem to take pictures for selling the house. It was overcast for most of the day, and I busied myself pulling weeds and clipping hedges while praying for the sun to come out and give me the light I needed to make the house look good. I guess hunters must feel like this â€“ preparing and planning and waiting, but still mostly dependent on blind chance and forces of nature outside their control to bring them success.

I have no particular skill as a photographer, and certainly no training, other than a few bits of common advice on composition I picked up from old desktop publishing magazines. I spent enough time creating posters and marketing pieces to acquire some vocabulary and concepts for evaluating images: what was too busy, or too boring, too dense or too sparse. What struck me then, as now, is how much the process is one of just looking at something and judging how it makes you feel. Evaluating images is an introspective process; you look at the image, and at the same time you watch yourself watching the image, and seeing how you react to it. Out of nowhere, thoughts occur: "That corner is dark, I can't tell what's back there, and that makes me feel uneasy." "I keep looking at this tree in the foreground instead of the house." "I like that flower, I wish there were more of them." From these random thoughts you devise experiments: change the light, change the angle, pull that damn frog statue out of the frame. And then you compare and conclude: "Yup, that's definitely better." "Nope, didn't make much difference." Eventually you start to recognize patterns and devise simple rules: "Don't include the light source in the frame." "Get as much light as possible into the room." "Windows are interesting. Walls are boring."

I know I'm only rediscovering what people probably learn in the first twenty minutes of an introductory photography class. But what's more interesting is what it says about how we think:

As Dan Ariely pointed out in Predictably Irrational, we think largely in terms of comparisons. Judging whether a picture is "good" or "bad" is complicated, but judging whether this photo is better than that photo can be instantly recognized by most anyone. In fact, the only way we devise broad principles at all is through lots and lots of comparisons.
There is a discrete difference between knowing how we react to something and knowing why we react that way. As Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly demonstrated in Blink, we formulate impressions and opinions long before we are consciously aware of them. And sometimes we never figure out why we react the way we react: "I dunno, for some reason I like this one more than that one."
We like to believe that our decisions are following rational, logical, consistent principles . . . but the logic and the rationale come later, after the fact. Most of the time, we are responding in the moment to gut reactions â€“ warmer, colder, warmer, red hot â€“ which only later we understand.

Disagreements over sex

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:06:56 -0700

I've had some extensive sidebar discussions over my last post on sexual conduct. Read the comments, and then my responses, here.

Let me start by saying: I love these kinds of discussions. I've written and re-written numerous responses, only to discard them after thinking more, or doing more research.

Well, actually, I do think that the problems of inner city poverty and violence are directly correlated to the breakdown of family structures. That's certainly not the only problem there, but I think it's the one that's most important and the one we can directly influence.Â I only used the inner city to illustrate the point, since itâ€™s the most dramatic illustration of the problem. But itâ€™s not just a problem in inner-city black communities.Â Most of the increase in single motherhood in the last few years has been among whites, and Â following the same pattern that has played out in the inner city: generational cycles of poverty, ignorance, neglect, and abuse.
Yes, women unfortunately bear most of the risk associated with sex. Morally responsible men will recognize that, and respect it. In my own upbringing, my mother was pretty explicit about putting the moral burden of "saying when" on the GUY, because without that moral restraint the guy is more likely to take advantage of his less-risky position to push for sex. Of course, in days of yore there was a consequence for men who knocked up women: the woman's father and brothers usually came and beat the crap out of him. Not exactly â€œdue process,â€ but cultures generally do evolve some mechanism to protect women from (literally) being taken advantage of.
Unfortunately, codes of sexuality are often used as means of subjegating women. Women are kept from education and involvement in the community on the pretext of "protecting their purity." Yes, that's bad. But that doesn't mean ALL restraints on sexual conduct are efforts to unreasonably restrict the freedom of women. As far as I can see, sexual â€œliberationâ€ is highly overrated; the freedom to screw around is hardly the most enobling aspiration, for women or for men. And is either of them really better off for it?
Ummm . . . actually, overpopulation stopped being a serious public policy issue about ten years ago. Much of the world is facing the opposite problem â€“ their birth rates are so low that their demographics are wildly imbalanced, with not enough young people to take care of the old. (See the Wikipedia'sÂ discussion of "The Greying of Europe.")Â I donâ€™t think birth rates are tied to liberalization of sexuality, so much as they are tied to economics. In agrarian societies, having lots of kids provided the economic advantage of free labor. In a post-industrial society, the incentives are reversed, since kids are expensive and provide no immediate economic advantage.
Lots of people are inclined to blame religion for sexual repression. I actually credit religion with sexual repression. Given the current cultural climate, I think we could stand to be a little more repressed.
When I traced out the evolutionary rationale for marriage, I wanted to make it clear that these traditional rules were not arbitrary: they served specific purposes to deal with very real biological and psychological consequences of sex. Marriage is not a patriarchal conspiracy to subjegate women; it is a mutually advantageous contract that gets both men and women what they want. The worldâ€™s religious traditions were merely the vehicles for transmitting and enforcing those values.
Besides, shame and humiliation, in association with sex, is not the invention of culture. Psychologically, there are always taints of shame in sexuality simply because sex is one of the most obvious reminders that we are merely animals. All human cultures have evolved extensive traditions and taboos around eating, elimination, and sex, in an attempt to minimize our â€œanimalnessâ€ and emphasize our identity as rational beings. People eager to take the shame out of sex will argue that itâ€™s â€œonly natural,â€ but thatâ€™s exactly the problem. Human beings donâ€™t want to be natural. We want to be super-natural, better than beasts. (The best discussion of this overall sweep of human history is the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker.) The extent to which people are slaves to their bodily appetites is exactly the extent to which they feel shame, which is why I think chastity and temperance in general is necessary for psychological health.
I suppose some people see an increase of infidelity as a sign of women getting more power. In an attempt to appear â€œempowered,â€ many feminists have celebrated their ability to behave as badly as the worst men. Casual sexuality, smoking, drinking, cursing, slovenly dress â€“ all these habits have been employed by some feministsÂ to demonstrate how liberated they are. I much prefer to see women embrace their freedom to be better than men â€“ to get educations, to thrive in professions and commerce and the arts, to take care of their families and communities. I do believe that double standards in sexuality is unfair, but a race to the bottom proves nothing. Better to hold men to higher standards than to lower the standards for women.

What caucuses tell us about human nature

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:51:52 -0700

I am not a political junkie. My understanding of the candidates is shaped by an astonishingly small amount of data: a few interviews I hear on NPR, a few commentaries in the Wall Street Journal (especially Peggy Noonan's sly digs at just about everyone) and one or two things written by the candidates themselves and their legions of advisors. Which is to say, I'm pretty typical of the American electorate.

What should last night's caucuses in Iowa tell us about human nature?

Humans are exceedingly difficult to predict. People mourn the loss of spontaneity in politics and politicians, what with all the exhaustive polling and focus-groups and what-not. You would think the election had already been decided, listening to the press and the commentators. Everyone was saying Iowa was an exceedingly close race, so I expected to see photo-finish between Clinton and Obama. And then . . . Barack walks away with 25% more votes than Hillary (38% to 30%). And the last person the Clinton machine expected trouble from was John Edwards, who nonetheless stole second from them. You might think Hillary had the most humiliating defeat last night, but actually I think that title belongs to the pollsters and commentators. We would all do well to remember: no matter how authoritative they sound, predictions are routinely wrong. Let's all say it again, because we're gonna forget it inside of two days: nobody can predict the future.
Because of uncertainty, hope springs eternal. I always looked at crowded presidential fields and marvelled at the triumph of hope. I probably couldn't list half of the candidates from memory, on either side of the aisle. What in the world makes someone like John Kucinick believe he has a snowball's chance in Washington of becoming president? Well, see my first point, above. Stranger things have happened. And political egos need only the slightest of encouragement to believe they could become the most important leader in the free world.
Humans are duplicitous, or don't understand themselves, or both. How could the polls be so far wrong? For the simple fact that people routinely say one thing and then do another. Perhaps they lied: many of speculated that both Clinton and Obama's popularity was inflated by polls, because many more people wanted to be seen as supporting a woman or a black than actually personally supported them. Or perhaps they just misunderstood their own opinions, for better or for worse. Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink pays special tribute to the cognitive powers of the unconscious; we are often the last ones to know what we really think.
In human matters, appearance is everything. (Or is it?) The Clinton campaign had tried to project an air of inevitability, figuring if Hillary looks like the presumptive nominee, she will be the nominee. Hmmm . . . guess it didn't work out that way. Doped up on schadenfreude, I went to her website to see what kind of spin they could put on the Iowa results. Of course, I should have known that the only spin possible was no spin at all: the website completely ignores the results. Just a big "Thank You, Iowa" on the front, and then back to sunshine pump. Let's modify the assertion: appearances are important, but not entirely sufficient. Anyone who lives entirely on appearances, but ignores questions of personal integrity, is likely to take a fall. Anyone who is full of substance but ignores their appearances is either lazy or stupid or both.

The Happiness Myth

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:13:01 -0700

The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed last week that jousted at another favorite topic of season, our notions of happiness ["The Happiness Myth," by Steve Salerno]. A part of the Journal's practical, curmudeony character is that it has little use for the younger generation's endless mantras of self-affirmation and self-actualization. The editors do believe fervantly in the empowerment of the individual and energetic optimism -- this is, after all, the flagship publication of the capitalist free market -- but those attitudes are also perpetually grounded in a sense of obligation to the whole. To work merely for one's own fulfillment is, to them, self-evidently shallow. The only proper reasons for getting rich are to serve one's family, one's community, one's country, or for the sheer love of work itself.

This was one my mind because I had finished up my lecture series on ancient Greek philosophers, and I was mulling over Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, especially his take on happiness. The Greek word Aristotle uses is eudaimonia (literally, "to have a good guardian spirit") and is described as "not a mood or temporary state, but a state achieved through a lifetime of virtuous action, accompanied by some measure of good fortune." I like the fact that Aristotle recognizes that virtue is a necessary but not sufficient condition for happiness -- even the best of people are not guaranteed happiness, which I think is part of the current generation's malaise. Modern Americans feel guilty and insufficient for not feeling perpetually sun-shiny, which leads them to ultimately self-destructive quests for the next thrill, not to mention undermining the basis of all deferral of gratification and self-control. I also like the connect to virtue, which elevates happiness to more than mere circumstance or pleasure. And for Aristotle, virtue is (like everything) a matter of teleology -- everything has a purpose and an end, even people, and happiness is to found by best fulfilling one's purpose.

"Fulfilling one's purpose" sound suspiciously like Work. This also, I think, is the downfall of the current generation, which often equates leisure with happiness. I'm not the first one to notice the connection between work and happiness, either. M. Scott Peck went so far as to define love as fundamentally a matter of Work. Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiÂ noticed that the activities that make people feel most fulfilled (music, gardening, writing, and intellectual debate, to name a few) combined aspects of work and leisure. There needs to be purpose, direction, and active engagement with experience in order to be anything close to happy.

All of which makes me feel better when I'm itching to do some work on December 26. Happiness is the freedom to work on whatever you want.

Dollar Grease

nospam@example.com (Georg Buehler) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:31:44 -0700

Working with the Emerson Waldorf School's annual fund has led me to meditate long and hard about the virtues of charitable giving. I remember Augie Turak often said that everyone should being a salesman at some point in their life, because it would give them newfound appreciation for human nature and the process of persuasion. In the same vein, I think everyone should at some point try to raise money for a cause they believe in. It forces you to think about money, and your relationship to money, and how that relationship to money influences everything else in your life.

I was surprised to learn that philanthropy is a predominantly American phenomena. While most other developed nations have more extensive government involvement in taking care of their own people, America is unique in having a culture that gives away a lot of money. That makes sense -- in the same way that we like having a free market of goods and services, we like having a free market of social causes. Rather than have the government decide what's best for everyone, we vote with our dollars, supporting the causes we believe in, and persuading others to do the same.

And yet, giving money is not something that comes naturally. I would like to think of myself as a generous person, and yet looking back I realize that it took me a long time to learn to give. I have vague memories of my mother giving me money to put in the church offering plate, but I don't think I ever seriously considered putting my own money in the plate when I was young. Money was for saving, or money was for spending, but giving it away was completely foreign, something other people did. Even after I left home and was independent, that frame of mind continued for a long time; if someone hit me up for a donation, the same mental barriers that protect me from retail salesmen and Amway pitches would come slamming down: no thank you! Not interested! Go away!

Eventually, though, I was exposed to charity through necessity. Working with the Self Knowledge Symposium in college, I needed to pay for posters, and the only way to do it was to pass the hat. Well, no, actually I would rather have washed cars or sold donuts or do any other kind of fund-raiser, rather than walk around the room and ask my friends for money. But Augie insisted on having a collection from within the group, and for good reason. Giving money, even a dollar or two, has a tangible psychological effect. You might have thought that you really cared about it, before, but once your money is involved, suddenly you care about it more. We got money lots of other ways, of course, and lots more of it, too . . . but I understand now that people's hearts follow their wallets. They value what they pay for, and they value even moreÂ what they give to.

Once that donation-barrier had been broken -- once I had given money to a cause I believed in, and asked others to do the same -- now suddenly the whole world of charitable giving opened up to me. Something had flipped inside of me; instead of grudgingly surrending my cash, I wanted to be a person who gave. The similar parallel attitude emerged in me with volunteerism; the SKS immutably turned me into a lifetime volunteer. I think people who freely give their time to benefit the collective are superior human beings. I think people who don't are, like the Grinch, living with hearts two sizes too small.

I started giving to other causes. I think I started with WUNC, my local public radio station. Then came my schools, and Mepkin Abbey, and some small magazines. They were small gifts, but regular, and eventually, routine. I was in the habit now. It took a few more years until I became a tither -- charity was now a part of my budget. I really wish I could say that my expanding giving was the result of my expanding generosity, but really it was the other way around. The act of giving turned me into a generous person.