The History of the World, Vol. 4

The invention of the USA: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  

Or...

The natural state of man, excuse me, the natural state of male and female H. sapiens, is that though we’re all unique in how we look, how smart we are, and what innate talents we have, nobody is born automatically better than anyone else. We are entitled to live as long as biology and fate permit, we’re free to pursue our own path and discover what it is that will keep getting us out of bed in the morning until we can’t (or won’t) get out of bed in the morning. I maintain that this is obvious (self-evident) to any more or less well-adjusted kid on the playground. I also maintain that this is obvious to any emotionally healthy, clear thinking grownup. I maintain that any well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) king, cleric, or bully (even politically correct bullies) that maintains otherwise is delusional and needs to be dealt with appropriately.

Obvious?

Yup. Well, sorta/kinda. It’s obvious to those of us that have grown up fortunate enough to take the concept for granted. The, um, traditional way was the way of the alpha male. A method of social organization still in vogue in more than a few places. We’re hard-wired to function that way and when the excrement hits the air conditioning we’re often rudely reminded of that fact.    

We have two choices. The traditional way -- the way of the alpha male, the way of the bully, the way of the king, the way of the high priest -- or the way of the (at least superficially) rational person. Rational people employ reason. Wikipedia: “Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions and beliefs based on new or existing information.”  

And yes, I used the word superficially. Rationality is a buggy, crash-prone app still in beta testing. For the dead white males that invented the USA, fortunately for us, reason was a thing, a very big thing. We got lucky. They were the 1% of their day, but back in their particular day, something that came to be called the Age of Enlightenment was rockin’ the world. A new meme was going around.

If you decided that the traditional way of doing things only worked well for a very small group of people and you could rewrite the rules, using reason, to set up a new system that benefited everyone equally (at least in theory), what would you do?

What they did, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, was set up the USA. The wailing and gnashing continued, and continues, as it should in a democracy. Fortunately, the new system includes built-in mechanisms to fix and/or change what the people decide needs fixed and/or changed. It ain’t easy to change, and it shouldn’t be, considering how thin the veneer of rationality is.            

Emotionally healthy, clear thinking grownups realize they’re not the only kid on the playground and that just enough rules are necessary to ensure everyone has fun but has to share the equipment and that bullies are not allowed. This is called government and it requires that a few conditions be met in order that the people remain as free as realistically possible. First, we the governed, get to decide what the rules are. Second, the rules should be as few in number as possible so that individuals remain as free as possible.Third, great care must be taken to avoid the potentially huge, honking, downside of democracy, the tyranny of the majority.

If a majority of the kids on the playground get together to ban little Timmy from the premises just because of his unfortunate tendency to pick his nose, even  though he’s not breaking any rules, a grownup (the rule of law) must step in to protect not only Timmy’s right to be there but also make sure he isn’t bullied. This is the why and what of the U.S. constitution. It’s called the American experiment because no one else in history had managed to pull off anything quite like it and many thought we wouldn’t either. Some still don’t, and there’s no guarantee that it will ultimately end well.

Now, just because we’re lucky enough to have been born into the species that sits at the top of the food chain, in the most prosperous nation the world has seen (so far at least) we still live in a dangerous, hostile world that guarantees nothing but our eventual death. It’s up to us to come up with food, clothing, and shelter and defend ourselves from those that want to kill us for fun and/or profit.

I once heard a nurse that was the head of some organization or another declaring with passion and conviction that, “Healthcare is a right!” in a radio interview.

No, it’s not.

Life, freedom, and the pursuit of whatever it is that keeps us getting out of bed are the fundamental rights everyone obviously should get. But even these natural, fundamental rights are a reality, not just a potential reality, only for those fortunate enough to be born into a culture that acknowledges and defends them. You may have noticed there’s no shortage of thugs that look at things a bit differently. Everything else that you think you’re entitled to depends on what you and/or your fellow citizens are prepared to work your bums off for. If you don’t believe this, try performing the following experiment.

Have yourself stranded on a desert island without a crew from a reality television show. Raise your fist to the sky and DEMAND! food, clothing, shelter (and healthcare), then wait and see what happens. Oh, and make sure you don’t let your situational awareness chops get rusty while you’re waiting because mother nature is notoriously oblivious to our rights. Like any good mom, if she has a favorite, she’s keeping it to herself, and, she doesn’t seem to lose any sleep when her kids eat each other to stay alive.

Oh, and please note that you don’t even have to ask nicely for life (however temporary), liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Self-evidently, unless Gilligan and company show up and turn out to be evil, drug-addled crazies (which would explain a lot), you’re about as free as you can be within the physical limitations of life on Earth. And unless one or more  of the zany castaways has brought a trunk full of meth, you could stay as free as possible (all things considered) simply by agreeing respect each others unalienable rights. Next, on to the original Mr. Smith.

Have an OK day.

©2016 Mark Mehlmauer


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Cognitive Bias

Not long ago I wrote a column about the work of Dr. Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist, that included a link to a video interview (1). The subject of the column, and the interview, was Mr. Haidt's take on why Depublicans and Republicrats, conservatives and liberals, sheesh, everyone, have become so polarized.

It's occurred to me that I didn't make mention of one of Mr. Haidt's observations that I find to be not only true but also particularly important. It conveniently confirms my position that the Information Age has a huge, honking downside, its alter ego so to speak, the Dizzinformation Age, that was the subject of another fairly recent column. So, that must mean I was right, right?

(GRIN)

Cognitive bias is a widely documented and accepted phenomenon by psychologists that simply refers to the fact that when we take in information we're more likely to process it subjectively than objectively. This is what I've dubbed gut first, brain later (GFBL). Most of the time we're not the highly rational creatures we imagine ourselves to be and that we tend to react to information, at least at first, in a biased way. We may or may not change our minds when/if we step back and at least try to decide what's what, objectively speaking.

Scholarly studies aside, this seems like common sense to me. For example, I don't know about you but I know that I have a strong tendency to form opinions about others within moments of meeting them that I can't justify rationally. I quickly label and classify them in spite of the fact that I resent it when I'm aware of someone else doing the same thing to me. And, of course, in spite of the fact that I'm um, occasionally wrong when I do it. It would seem that first impressions are indeed as important as often claimed.

I take solace from the fact that this sort of thing makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. I, your dilettante about town, know that science explains our innate biases as a survival mechanism. When wandering around the jungle, hunting and gathering lunch, you and the gang have a better chance of not being hunted and gathered by someone or something else if you're wired to react quickly to the snap of a twig rather than to stop and call a committee meeting to discuss its ramifications.

Mr. Haidt points out that the internet is the most effective tool for the promotion of cognitive bias ever invented.

For example, if I google the question, "Do bigfeet exist?' I will be supplied (after being asked if I meant to say bigfoot, so many things to fix once I'm king...) in short order with the answer. Yes, definitely, and no, definitely not. Take your pick.


Now -- keep in mind the power of cognitive bias due to its long history as a successful survival strategery.

Also --  keep in mind that it's been scientifically demonstrated why it's so difficult to change someone's mind, which requires an entire column or for you to go a-googling. (I refuse to go into it any further just now as I hold this is self-evident to anyone that interacts with anyone, that is, everyone.)

Also -- you've no doubt noticed there's no point in arguing with a conspiratorially-minded person (except for fun) because they will shrug off your alleged facts as being just the bonkercockie THEY want you to believe.

Which is why --  I maintain most people will click on the links that look like they will supply the answer that they wanted in the first place.

Furthermore -- if they don't find what they were hoping to find in the first place, they will keep clicking till they do, or, give up in disgust and try to forget about it. Not you and me of course, but most people.


Haidt points out that the internet, our Information Machine (can I get a shout out for Mr. Peabody and the WABAC machine?), makes it possible to "prove" anything. In spite of the fact we have access to vastly more information (and here's more, and here's some more...) than at any time in human history, more info can, but doesn't necessarily, solve a given problem/question/argument. In fact, it can make things worse via bias confirmation. We can easily find what we want to find (and here's some more.)

Walk with me, talk with me. Let's take a brief detour down Digression Ave., we'll be back in just a sec'.


The phrase, "90% of world's data generated over last two years", or something like it, can be found all over the internet. Consistent with my stated mission, to provide enlightened infotainment, I went a-googling to try and discover the source of this information about information. According to sciencedaily.com ("Your source for the latest research news") this factoid can be attributed to a research/development entity called SINTEF (.no) -- "Applied Research, Technology and Innovation" -- as of 5.22.13.

At this point, I could've kept going and tried to discover yet more information about how fast information is accumulating but -- I have a life, I'm a dilettante, and I'm certain (as I'm sure you are) that I would find no shortage of contradictory information about information.

However, ya' gotta love the irony. I went looking for information about a commonly used alleged factoid about information and discovered that the two-year window schtick that I keep running into was posited three years ago. So for all we know, two years may now be two months, or two days. If I went  looking for more up to date statistics they would probably be out of date, and disputed, before I finished writing this column.


And we're back! What have we learned, Dorothies?

Relatively easy access to the Information Machine has and will continue to change the world at light speed in wonderful/awful ways. But, some things will never change. We need to cultivate an open mind, we need to commit to at least trying to find out what the truth actually is, not just what we would like it to be. We need to find the fine line between compromise and selling out/walking out. This is an attitude which would also give us more families with both a mom and a dad on site but that's not what this column is about so I won't bring it up.

Have an OK day.

© 2016 Mark Mehlmauer

(1) Jonathan Haidt Explains Our Contentious Culture

The History of the World (Part Three)

In our last episode, we covered the history of the world from the invention of agriculture to the year 1776. In 1776 the world caught a major break.

In Great Britain's North American colonies a bunch of folks got together and invented the United States of America. In Scotland, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, invented modern economics, and taught the world how free markets would eventually lead to the need for a weight loss industry. These two events occurred while the industrial revolution was picking up steam.  A trifecta!  

Sound of screeching tires in a panic stop. I must here throw in a few paragraphs from the Reality Checks, Caveats & Premises department before proceeding. First, the three events mentioned in the previous paragraph didn’t happen by magic. The Greeks dabbled in democracy, the Romans ran a republic (sorta/kinda), the English managed to make a Magna Carta, etc. Mr. Smith wasn’t the first person to consider how economies worked and we had obviously been producing and selling stuff to each other for thousands of years before the industrial revolution came along and we got really, really good at it. But the trifecta served to usher in the modern world and made it possible for so many of us to become the spoiled, whiny, overfed ingrates of the first world and inspire the lean and downtrodden third world to aspire to someday have their own obesity epidemics.   

Second, in my semi-humble opinion, the American experiment can be defined by quoting the most important passage of the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” If you accept that statement as a fundamental given (whether or not you believe in a creator), perhaps the most fundamental of givens… Well, If you don’t accept that statement, I fear it’s time for us to go our separate ways, you can have the dog but I’m keeping most of the DVDs.

And third, (still here?) I freely acknowledge that the next sentence in the declaration could have been, “Assuming, of course, that you are caucasian and male.” That was undeniably the way America worked at the time and it was undeniably flawed. However, it was the local version of how much of the world worked at the time, a version of reality that lives on in not a few places. Sexism and racism are unfortunately not rare phenomena. However, I maintain that some dramatic progress has been made in the last 250 years or so, particularly when compared to however many gazillions of years it was considered normal for a given caveman to club a cutie down at the waterhole to keep his cave clean while he and the boys raided other tribes for booty and slaves.

When my mom and dad got together, roughly 75 years ago (chronologically speaking a drop in the bucket), they believed that a man’s job was to bring home the bacon and a woman’s job was to be a domestic engineer. Period. In light of the way many folks look at things today, including me, they were wrong. I’m inclined to not only forgive them, but to also say thanks. They weren’t evil, and incidentally, they were part of the generation that survived the Great Depression and won World War Two. While they were busy saving the world they didn’t know that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow would be an era of unprecedented prosperity for the USA, the one that lasted from just after WW2 to the late 1970s. Things started getting weird after that, which I’ll get into later.

Finally, let us acknowledge the elephant skulking in the corner of the room. Homo sapiens will be Homo sapiens. While I’m profoundly grateful for the dumb luck of being a product of, and living in, a country that’s a product of Western civilization, I’m slightly smarter than I look. My gratitude is based on two things. Although I think Western civilization in general, and the USA in particular, is the best we’ve done so far, both are as flawed and imperfect as the H. sapiens that somehow came up with them. Therefore a -- We’re number one! We’re number one! -- overheated sports fan attitude can be as tacky as wearing socks with sandals. Let us be quietly smug. The coolest kid doesn’t have to tell people he’s cool, that’s part of his, um, coolness.  Also, an economic implosion here, an epidemic there, a bus-sized meteorite over there and the Dark Ages Digest will experience a sudden, dramatic increase in circulation.

Have an OK day.

[Dana, perpetually grumpy imaginary gentlereader, speaks. Wait just a minute, Sparky! yer gonna stop there? Posit that 1776 marked some sort of global game changer, then insert a "caveat" (whatever the hell that is) and then leave off? Marie-Louise (my drop dead gorgeous muse, who has finally returned from Quebec) is looking at me dubiously.]

Well, I'm running low on words. Think of it as a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers are cool, right?

[No, they're not, they're annoying. Who do you think you are, James (short, breathless chapters ending often as not with a cliffhanger) Patterson?]

Well, he is a best-selling author, and a gazillionaire.

[This ain't no suspense novel! It's a weekly column...

... With mini-posts on Tuesday and Thursday now, don't forget!

[Bonkercockie! exclaims Marie-Louise with a French accent (Bon-care-cok-E!). I'm going back to Quebec! She storms out of the room. Dana and I stare at each other in stunned silence -- for half a second.

Now look what you've done! Now look what you've done! Yikes! simultaneous exclamations. We're degenerating into a second-rate sitcom. I gotta go. Marie! I'm sorry! Come back, baby!]

© 2016 Mark Mehlmauer 

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