Important versus interesting

When I first came to SCOTUSblog, I quickly faced the brutal cut between ideas and writing that were blog-worthy or not. After suggesting that we report on the reenactment of a historical case, ex parte Milligan, with Justice Scalia, I got a sharply worded email from Tom. The blog's Twitter feed was reserved for snippets that weren't worth a post. We were repeatedly told that there are 1000s of "interesting" things out there, most of which don't appear on the blog. I thought that I might, with such a sharp distinction between the types of content, stop appreciating random observations that make interesting -- if not "important" -- connections.

However, I appreciate those interesting observations just as much now. I simply have come to carefully place each new bit of interesting information into its place. That is to say, I've figured out which medium is best for communicating different types of insights--whether on the blog, in a paper, in a journal, in a conversation, over Twitter, over Google Reader, etc. As a result, I've become better at, or learned the lessons necessary to become better at, hanging onto ideas as I stumble upon them. That, I think is important, for any thoughts we have that others in our position might share -- that are freed from our own personal experience, or merely informed rather than dictated by our personal experience, may be worth sharing.

I think this is especially important because the quality of importance is often conveyed by the current time and situation--and your social circle. It may not be important now to understand what Merrick Garland would rule on certain cases, because we don't estimate he will be nominated. But at the point that he is nominated, it will be crucial. And because of this transience of importance, a quality that often alights on a piece of information briefly, rather than describing its everlasting core. So I think it can be important to pursue these "interesting" thoughts even if they are not important.

At the same time, working for the blog has given me a much more heightened sense of what type of comment is "acceptable" in different social settings. The search for "important" information or "relevant" information is largely a search of the social setting. And thus, in the process, you can often pick up on information that is at least appropriate to mention in a given circle.

Women dominating a man's world

It's a truism that this is a man's world. But who cares? At least in many cases, the characteristics about it that make it "male" don't necessarily make it much easier for men to dominate. For example, I recently realized that women seem far more concerned about "tone" than are men. They tend to contemplate layers of meaning and intention behind a statement when there may not be any. Yet it is relatively simple for women to stop caring so much about tone. Just don't take it to heart that a tone sounds degrading, so long as it isn't actually. The mere fact that the baseline is male doesn't have to be offensive.

There are two exceptions. The first is when the male-biased baseline actually makes it easier for them to function and succeed in a culture. For example, when the baseline for effective communication is volume, the louder voices of men makes them succeed more easily in communicating. This becomes an issue of fairness when the advantage is not natural (we actually hear better when we have higher volume) but was historically established by men in dominant positions by influencing our values. For example, the (rough) tendency of American culture to value masculine strength and sports over music and art might be thought problematic for women, who cannot compete physically.

The second exception is when there is active bias against women wholesale, not about any particular quality of them. This is obviously not something women can escape easily. This is, for example, the trouble Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced in law school when her ideas would be ignored but then congratulated in the mouth of a male.

Yaron's Willy Lowman Argument

Yaron just pointed out to me a beautiful, though for many crushing, argument about the life of achievement.  I call it the Willy Lowman Argument, and the conclusion is that we should never base our entire life's fulfillment on reaching some "achievement."  For, even if we are to trace the life trajectories of all the men in history of great achievements, and discover some pattern in those trajectories, and then model our lives exactly on that pattern, the likelihood of our achieving something similarly great is very slim.  For this looks at only a biased sample of men and women: those who achieved.  The appropriate sample is those men and women who followed a similar life trajectory.  Those who actually achieved are in all likelihood a tiny minority.  This is because the outcomes of our any particular action are determined by many circumstances beyond our control: the financial market collapses, the greatest discovery of the century happens at the same time as yours and the Nobel Prize goes to it that year, the nomination for the Supreme Court doesn't come up or doesn't come up during the right presidency, etc.  Thus, we act irrationally if we hedge our life fulfillment on the achievement of a goal, because we are highly unlikely to achieve it--and all the motivation, determination, and hard work that we can muster to make it happen is drastically causally insufficient.

Of course, there is a caveat.  Many would say that the very pursuit of a goal is a fulfilling lifestyle, like Woolf's To the Lighthouse.  We are likely to at least get somewhere toward our goal: even if we do not win the Nobel Prize, we make some great discovery and are respected by our scientific colleagues, even if we are never appointed to the Supreme Court, we become a great federal district judge.  But we are still bound to end in disappointment, insofar as we fail to achieve the goal.  Perhaps we can make an argument in favor of this lifestyle nonetheless, because it is necessary for human progress for there to be individuals who are driven to attain the highest social achievements.  Yet, I wonder how many people actually need such a narrow drive, how many people who became great were driven by such a narrow goal--I suppose this is an empirical matter.

Perhaps what we can instead do to define self-fulfillment was suggested by Yaron: the pursuit of valuable activity.  If we enjoy every moment of our lives, and can find contentment in our day-to-day activities, perhaps we can n this way be fulfilled.  That does not mean stoically lowering our expectations.  And it does not mean that we do not need to have some achievements in order to find a position where we can begin to engage in meaningful activity (we do live in society, after all!). But it does mean finding meaning in the activity, without reference to any goal that is very specific or very long-term.  For me, those things include teaching, litigating, making big decisions on an everyday basis, etc.

But Yaron is right, I think, that this observation is, for many, crushing.

"You can spend your whole life working for one thing..."

"...just to have it taken away." -Brett Dennen, "There Ain't No Reason"

The truth of this line struck me while I was jogging yesterday.  We sacrifice the results of our efforts all the time for the sake of living in a society, and for the prosperity of that society.  We do not achieve our dreams despite our utmost efforts -- either because of poor luck, or because we did not do well enough relative to others, who may or may not have been advantaged from the start.  

We can literally spend an entire lifetime focused on one goal, and still fail.  The chances are pretty slim, but not impossible.  And the chances of failing when you spend a LOT of time--but not a lifetime--working for one thing are not inconsequential.  

But it is more than that.  We also lose compassion in evaluating the claims of others to their dreams.  For we must sacrifice them, too, in our criticism, for the sake of living in a society, and for that society to prosper.  From the moment that we are born, we are indoctrinated with the notion of virtues.  We are told that people who have these virtues are better than others, and are more likely to succeed--which is true.  But we are also taught to value these virtues in and of themselves.  We all come to believe, in a deeply engrained way, that we are better people if we have these cvirtues.  We ought to aspire to achieve these virtues even if we do not achieve our goals.  

Furthermore, the odds are much higher for people in our society who start off advantaged.  They are much more able to succeed in the values system we've established for ourselves.  But, for lack of a system that produces better results, we must simply accept their dominance--in part because it does not entirely preclude the rise of others.  (There is never any moment at which certain goals will be entirely closed off to you, so long as you haven't yet hit old age or incapacitation.  Almost all long-term goals can be achieved through alternate, non-socially-sanctioned ones.)  But nonetheless, we must constantly turn a blind eye to this fact in order to motivate everyone, including ourselves.  For we would become too weepy if we failed to value individual achievement and dwelled too much on getting everyone to start in the same spot.  The people I know who have the best motivation are also those who do not dwell on their starting place, or on the distance they must travel.  They simply do not care how far they must travel relative to others--simply that they care about the goals and can feasibly travel the distance.

There is one potential way out of this difficulty: we all gain happiness from living vicariously through others, or from living in such an accomplished society.  This argument seems plausible.  For I certainly get a lot of utility from watching videos of spacewalks on the international space station, or from watching people run in the Olympics.   Perhaps we simply value living in a society with such an achievements-studded history that we are willing to sacrifice the risk of personal failure, or of shallow compassion and mercy.

I think this is the same general phenomenon that happens in criminal law, when we refuse to give second chances to criminals because our society is trying to motivate the conduct of others, even when some individuals may feel compassion toward criminals who seem to have made a single mistake that will ruin their entire life.  Can we really believe that someone "deserves" a lifetime of pain for killing one?  Of course, the conduct we are trying to motivate here is pretty basic, just refraining from harming others.

So when Brett Dennen says There Ain't No Reason, I reply that there is a reason.  But it requries a sacrifice on the part of the losers.  So, depending on your position of what constitutes morality, there ain't no reason for those of us who fail to abide by social rules that praise individual responsibility.

Liberal v. conservative: real or illusion?

We talk about this division all the time as though it represents a fundamental difference between people.  As it turns out, it's not so easy to figure this one out.  The only real personal difference in outlook between liberals and conservatives is the liberals' (1) heightened empathy and pessimistic feeling that individual responsibility (and a free market) just can't solve anything, (2) distrust of authority figures and organizations and therefore societally dictated morality, and (3) willingness to change institutions without much sentimentality.  In other words, conservatives are more likely to like social structures just the way they are and to believe that "internal" ingenuity and personal relationships are enough to invigorate the society and keep life worth living.  Liberals are much more likely to try to revolutionize the structures in order to solve injustices to individuals, because they believe these structures dictate a lot.

But when I'm talking to my conservative friend, do I ever feel uncomfortable?  Only when I think I might offend some structural value that she has -- such as religion or patriotism.  But other than that, we can hash out a lot of these fundamental differences quite rationally.

 

Motivation is all about obligations

Allow me to preach for a moment: The only way to aspire in life is to constantly be under the net of obligations and commitments -- ideally, ones you have formed for yourself. Yet almost equally valuable are other commitments that society has imposed upon you and you have endorsed, however actively or passively. To walk down the street without any obligations at all is to live an inactive, hence inhuman life. This could sound like a terribly burdensome view of life. Yet the secret to mastering it is not unburdening yourself, but finding the strength to bear the burdens as though they are light.

See Kundera.

Fundamentals of small-talk

I finally realized today, in the hair stylist's chair, that politics - and, more importantly, apolitical common topics - are the foundation of small-talk. I had always thought that these topics of conversation magically spring from the uniquely creative minds of conversationalists, but that just isn't true. I found an instant common ground with the woman cutting my hair in discussing the inauguration. I realized in the moment that I couldn't simply ask her for her political opinions - but I could ask her about an event in politics that anyone could have apolitical views on. The fact that 1.8 million people came was a great starting place.

One might ask what caused such naivety in me. I think the answer is that I'd always reflected on this outside the moment. There's something about being in the moment, in front of people, that forces you to be cognizant of what you 'can' and 'can't' do or say to them. I almost wonder if the claims people express against us are not uniquely individual, and conveyed to us through their body language and demeanor. (Of course everyone would convey the right to be treated as a human being -- but that one doesn't take being in the moment to recognize.)