"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.)

Why we're entitled to more

In today's increasingly efficient world, where everything is faster-paced and we tend to be less altruistic on average to others because there are just more of us and - more importantly - we interact with others more often, I think the driving force of our change in attitudes is not just that we have more opportunities. I think it is also that we think we are entitled to more.

We are entitled to more, perhaps, because we have more activities that we are engaged in - which means more opportunities for rewards. It furthermore may take more work to do all of these things and, with the invention of things like red eye lattes and blackberrys, we can do more work than ever before.

Perhaps this is also because we see others around us taking advantage of these opportunities and actually getting more during life - and we all feel like we should be entitled to the same. It doesn't matter whether we realize that these people have devoted their lives entirely to the achievement of this one goal. We tend to think that everyone is entitled to whatever the greatest-achieving person in a society is entitled. That may be the secret of how inequality can be sustainable: if there is the opportunity for any of us to achieve the highest position in society.

This is also why the unrealistic optimism of American beliefs in self-ownership and initiative have also served as excuses for providing the appropriate support for people born into disadvantaged positions in society. If we cannot acknowledge that some simply cannot achieve higher positions, then we can scarcely be motivated to change this condition.

Obama

That was all the NYT headline read today. And the name now says so much.

Suddenly I feel proud to be an American, for the first time in my life - no exaggeration. What is most noteworthy is the fact that so many are treating this as a success not for Obama but for all of us. We don't even hear Obama's name mentioned all that much - just the victory itself. No one is mentioning much in partcular, just the pure potential that tis represents. Although we're all starstruck over Obama himself, he's so clearly symbolic. He's the first black, second-generation immigrant, professorial president in history. I tend to doubt the ability of symbolism to produce good, but Obama is symbolic in the best way possible: as an indicator of real demographic and attitudinal change. And to top off all his symbolism, he's smart, supported by a savvy staff, and beloved by the world. I'm going to throw caution to the winds and say he's perfect.

Cross-campus was awash with loud voices last night. Even my dining hall card-swiper greeted me with a wide smile today. We're all feeling the possibility of an Arendtian human power.

As the Guardian, of all newspapers, says, Obama is our hope.

Right, or just persuasive?

If you aren't persuasive, you lose in a debate. That is a sad fact of life. We recognize that reasoning must be transparent and public, and therefore our public policies should be determined by the winner of a dialogue, who demonstrates that he understands what types of reasons are compelling to others' interests. Compromise is essentially for clear speakers and thinkers.

But I think this is a problem on the individual persuasive/advisory level, where the articulate also have an advantage. A person necessarily understands her own interests better than others can. But if she cannot articulate her own position to herself, she can often be persuaded by others to follow a different course of action that is not, in fact, best for her. It is difficult to resist the persuasive power of a well-articulated intuition, unless we can defend our own intuitions in a similarly articulate manner.

I agree that the most articulate communicators are also the clearest thinkers, and often their expressed reasons simply are better than those from muddier thoughts. It is simply easier to think more deeply and complexly if one is working with clear parts. However, their reasons are often based on intuitions as well - they have just learned to understand those intuitions more clearly. The skill of explaining often doesn't change the intuition itself; the intuition may be flat wrong, whereas someone with weaker powers of communication has the correct intuition. This is especially dangerous when the articulate give advice, because their intuitions are especially ill-attuned to understand what is best for others.