Loafers of the World, Unite!

Is this “working for a living” thing really necessary?  I’m prompted to ask this because now, at semester's end, I have to face a huge stack of papers-to-be-graded.  Bummer. 

Actually, it turns out that we are putting in too much time on the job.  As any expert on immediate-return hunting-gathering communities will tell you, people in these communities did not generally feel the pressure of time, as though everything they did was not enough to keep up with the economic demands of life. They did not, in other words, feel the way many of us in the work force routinely feel.

More of our time should, in true Stone Age fashion, be dedicated to socializing, singing, dancing, exchanging stories, and doing whatever the hell we want.  Which, no doubt, is why we generally feel both overworked, and unable to spend as much time as we would like hanging with our buddies.

Pertinent to all this, my friend Jonathan recently sent me an article on “bullshit jobs” written by anthropologist David Graeber.  Graeber’s piece begins thus:

“In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen.”

                                   Professor Graeber

From here, Graeber goes on to say that we (that is, all of us) don’t really have to work forty hours a week to maintain a comfortable standard of living, but, since our economy is controlled by a super-rich elite, most of us are harnessed into pointless bullshit jobs designed to facilitate the further enrichment of that elite.  Our energies are consumed in this “work” while our spirits are intimidated by the prospect of unemployment.  Thus are we neutralized by and for the sake of the one percent.

Neither Graeber nor I feel that teaching is a bullshit job (not even the teaching of anthropology).  Nor is bus driving, nor welding, etc.  These jobs involve making things that people need or providing them with worthwhile services.

      But corporate law?  Now there’s some bullshit.  It seems to me that the job of corporate lawyers is to facilitate the exploitation of 

     1.  the very customers whose dollars ultimately pay the lawyers’ salaries and

2.  the workers who make the products that justify the corporation’s existence.  

In Graeber’s words, “[W]hat does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law?”

I’d venture to guess that the only way out of the bullshit-bloated economy that engulfs us is to educate people about the power structure that sustains it.  This belief makes educators like me troublemakers, or it would make us such if we had any influence to speak of.  The real troublemakers are those, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who not only see through the bullshit, but have a significant power base. 

And how can we get more people like Elizabeth Warren into positions of power?  The first step would be to get private money out of Congressional and Presidential elections.  Let these elections be paid for with public money, and let ExxonMobil, WalMart, the Koch brothers, etc., spend their excess wealth on charity instead of the purchase of political influence.

The root of the problem is that, as of now, finance capital both controls the bullshit economy and virtually owns the government.  Right-wing “populists” claim that government IS the problem, but the real problem is that government can’t properly serve us until it gains some independence from private capital.  Misguided populists want to “shrink” the government, but shrinking the government just makes it that much easier for the moneyed interests to dupe and drain us without restraint.  What we really need is for a powerful government - genuinely responsive to the voters - to kick some corporate butt.  And I'm afraid that won’t happen as long as Conglomocorp owns Congress and Joe Sixpack imagines that Elizabeth Warren is his enemy.

Now, get back to work.

On Not Taking Humor Lightly

In view of my longstanding interest in humor, I was intrigued to see that today’s NY Times referenced “the first-ever United States symposium on the artificial intelligence of humor” organized by computer scientist Julia M. Taylor et al.  Well, I say it’s about damn time.  Humor, after all, is no mere laughing matter.

I want to acknowledge up front that not everyone shares the same sense of humor.  For example, at a conference last fall, I managed to crack up the group at my table with this bit of hilarity: A colleague named Murray was complaining at some length about spending time at a hotel where a Chinese family, the Wongs, were having a major event.  “Well,” said the exasperated Murray, “wherever we went, we were told, ‘The Wongs have reserved this room -- these hors d’oeuvres are for the Wongs -- the Wongs will be using this area, etc.’”  To which I responded, “Jeez, Murray, you were at the Wong place at the Wong time.” At this, the entire table burst into laughter.

But, when I related this hilarious incident to a spouse and daughter (who shall remain nameless), the former responded with a combination head-shake and eye-roll, and the latter by saying flatly, “Were these Dads at your table?  That sounds like a Dad joke.” 

Rodney Dangerfield, now I understand you.

Anyway, my research into the functions and bases of humor recently included the reading of a fascinating book by Hurley, Dennett and Adams called Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind.  But this book, interesting and thought-provoking though it is, does not quite hit the nail on the head in my opinion.  One point I did get from it is that the actors involved in humor always include humans or anthropomorphized entities.  I had never thought of this before, but I am convinced that it is not only true, but very significant.  It emphasizes that humor is above all a social construct with a social kick.

These authors review some of the major theories of humor including the release of tension theory, the incongruity theory, and the superiority theory.  Of the factors these theories highlight, the most crucial, I believe, are incongruity and superiority.  Other points, like the release of tension, may sometimes be relevant, but, it seems to me, that virtually every humorous situation includes either something incongruous or an occasion to feel in some way superior to a victimized individual.

My favorite joke from the entire book can illustrate this.  Here’s a version of it:

Eight-year-old Johnny and six-year-old Jimmy were about to go downstairs for breakfast when Johnny says to his little brother, “Say Jimmy, I think it’s about time we started cussing.  So at the table this morning, I’ll say hell and you say ass, OK?”

Jimmy happily assented to his brother’s plan.

So, when they sat down at the table, their mother asked, “What will you guys have for breakfast?”

“Sure as hell, Mom, I’ll have some Cheerios!” says Johnny.

At this, his mother grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, threw him over her knee and walloped him five or six times.  Then, dragging him upstairs, she threw him into his bedroom and slammed the door.  Finally, she stomped downstairs, sat back down at the table and said, “So, what will you have, Jimmy?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” said Jimmy, “but you can bet your ass it won’t be Cheerios.”

OK, so here we have it.  There are incongruities between Jimmy’s innocence and his rough language, between his focus on the issue of Cheerios rather than cussing as the source of Mom's anger, and, finally, between the expectation of self-preserving compliance vs. blatant defiance in his response.  We also have the victimization of poor little Johnny and, perhaps, of Jimmy as well.

The authors of Inside Jokes emphasize the incongruity feature of humor at the expense of the victimization or “superiority theory.”  And, though I agree that incongruity may be the single most important factor in humor, I’m not willing to discount the superiority aspect as these authors do.  I can’t imagine how people find America’s Funniest Home Videos amusing without acknowledging the importance of superiority/victimization.  I mean, we all see the idiot attempting to jump his bicycle over the muddy ditch, we know what’s coming, yet all too often we laugh at his disastrous splat when it comes anyway.  And how do groin shots manage to evoke laughter year after year?  I’m expecting that an archaeologist will someday find a cave painting depicting a Megaloceros butting a Neanderthal in the groin while a gang of Cro-Magnons stand around laughing.

My main problem with the theory of Hurley et al. is that it gives too much weight to the cognitive payoff of having an incongruity resolved as the main driving force behind humor -- and even as the main explanation for the very existence of humor.  With apologies for oversimplifying their position, I suggest that they make a mistake by not recognizing the importance of humor’s social function.

If we are going to explain the universal existence of humor in human societies, it seems to me the best way to do so is by noticing the way in which humor functions to define social relationships, either by cementing them, as when individuals share a laugh, or by specifying or denigrating outsiders as in the case of satire and mocking humor.  A theory encompassing these functions has room to accommodate both the importance of incongruity (as when two people share a perspective on an issue, sometimes by resolving an incongruity that reveals a heretofore unspoken truth) and superiority, when the butt of a joke takes it on the chin or some other anatomical area.

Related to humor is another human phenomenon, slang, which not only often incorporates humor, but which, like humor, is very often employed either to strengthen a social bond or to distinguish in-group members from outsiders. 

I have to stop here, given time's winged chariot, etc., but allow me to offer a couple of pictures for your consideration as I go:

  

This tree is not at all funny, but I took a picture of it during my morning walk because I  thought it looked very cool. 

This tree, however, is hilarious - it has a palm frond stuck in its branches.  Ha, ha, ha!  What a stupid tree!

The Righteous Mind - Part Deux

As I suggested in my last post, I like Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, but I also feel an urge to pick some of it apart.  One of Haidt’s main arguments is that there are six basic features underlying our moral codes and that liberals generally favor three of them (Care, Fairness, Liberty) while conservatives favor all six (the three just named plus Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity).  He illustrates this contrast with a metaphor of taste buds whereby a person who is capable of “tasting” a wider array of ethical principles is advantaged over those more limited in this regard.  Haidt goes on to back his position up by offering data showing that conservatives understand liberals better than liberals (especially extreme liberals) understand conservatives.  After all, conservatives are familiar with all six moral systems, liberals only honor three of them.

This is all interesting and worth knowing, but - I think the “range of tastes” image is misleading.  A better one would distinguish vital moral attributes from less essential ones.  How about a metaphorical sailboat, for instance?  A sailboat MUST have sails, rudder and hull in order to function but MIGHT also have flags, decorative painting on the hull and multicolored patterns on the sails as well. Care, Fairness and Liberty in morality are like hull, rudder and sails in a boat: absolutely essential. No moral system that doesn’t incorporate them makes sense.  It would be bizarre for anyone to argue that, “I believe we must obey our leaders and be loyal to our country, but I have nothing against torturing and killing innocent people.”

I’m not saying nobody has ever held such a moral code (I’m looking at you, Mr. Cheney), I’m just saying such a moral system makes no sense to ordinary people or to philosophical ethicists.

The liberal focus on Care, Fairness and Liberty stems directly from the fact that it is self-evidently wrong to inflict acts of cruelty on the innocent.  This is the essence of the Care principle.  The best way to prevent such cruelty is to ensure that Fairness guides our policies and that individuals have the Liberty to look after their own well-being.  Presto, there it is: the three-legged moral code of American liberals.

Cruelty, as I understand it, is the inflicting of pain, suffering or humiliation on people and similarly sentient beings.  I’m going to exclude the killing of animals for food here, on behalf of those who are not vegetarians (including me - and with apologies to the pigs and chickens of the world). 

The liberal values of Care, Fairness and Liberty spring necessarily and obviously from the moral value that says inflicting cruelty is wrong.  The secondary values of Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity do not.

Haidt shows how these “conservative” values function to bind societies together, and his argument here is interesting and partly convincing.  It hinges on the idea that natural selection has favored groups as well as individuals, and this “group selection” has endowed us with DNA that underlies the three conservative morals.  Authority’s role here is obvious.  Societies in which powerful authority figures can coordinate the efforts of all to attain a general goal otherwise unattainable are able to do things that more egalitarian and less obedient mobs cannot.  Loyalty and Sanctity work similarly to promote group efforts.

There is a catch here, however.  Haidt honors those (mainly conservatives) who consider respect for authority a moral ideal in and of itself.  But the 50,000-year-long human story is largely one of people who acted with Liberty, that is, according to their own interests as they understood them.  The great majority of our evolving ancestors lived in egalitarian societies in which there were no powerful leaders.  Haidt believes that despite this ancient, authority-less, egalitarian history underlying our evolution, humans are actually inclined, by virtue of our genetic natures, to defer to authority figures.  He dismisses the thousands of years of human prehistory when people lived without chiefs, kings, generals or dictators as an aberration.  But I don’t.

I believe that Haidt is wrong to claim that we, as adults, are programmed to defer to others who wield authority.  That we sometimes do, reflects those accidents of history that eventually gave us the likes of Genghis Khan, Mussolini, Stalin and Wall Street.  

I grant that sometimes deferring to authority is necessary, particularly when one’s society faces a threat from an enemy contemptuous of Care and other liberal values, and led by a ruthless yet sanctified ruler like Genghis Khan.  A trained and authoritarian army can fight much more effectively against such an enemy than could a mass of armed but independent warriors.  In the face of a Genghis-Khan-type threat, an obedient and armed citizenry is vital.  But this does not make deference to authority in itself a virtue – comparable to the need to refrain from inflicting pain on the innocent.  Authority, in other words, is in no way the equal of Care.  Rather, it is an ad hoc solution to the problem of coordinating the actions of large social groups.  Liberal democracies confirm this by making it the temporary attribute of democratically chosen representatives of the group.

Loyalty and Sanctity are similar to Authority in that they can be said to have their place, but their roles cannot be compared to those of the fundamentally and inherently moral propositions of Care, Fairness and Liberty.  Loyalty and Sanctity (like Authority) are as often abused as ethically applied.  It is well to remember that the essence of Nazism was a general demand for Loyalty and deference to Authority in the name of the Sacred “Aryan” race.  And the terrorists who attacked us on 9-ll were all about Sanctity.  In fact, had they been less devoted to the moral ideal of Sanctity, they would never have inflicted the killing and destruction on us that they did.  Care in itself does not inspire blitzkriegs or terrorist attacks; only Authority, Loyalty and Sanctity do.

In a brief comment like this, I can’t do justice to Haidt’s thought-provoking argument with all its complexity.  I do believe he makes some very interesting and valid points.  I think he is right when he says the three virtues of Authority, Loyalty and Sanctity comprise much of the glue that holds a society together.  We are, however, living in an era when the entire human species is evolving, economically and culturally, into a single, indivisible super-family.  It may well be that our genetic code includes a disposition to dehumanize those who seem different and to conceptualize them as impure “others” worthy only of exile (“Take your anchor baby and get out of my Pure and Sacred country.”) or destruction (“Bomb, bomb, bomb – bomb, bomb Iran”).  But we will be much better off if our policies go against the actions that these narrow impulses would engender and recognize that our real sanctity lies in the realization that we are one worldwide tribe and all of our children deserve to be born into a moral embrace whose sustaining  heart is Care.

Munchkins of the World, Unite!

They're Here, and Just in Time

Lots of news this week: Steve Jobs, American iCon, has died, the Occupy Wall Street movement is finally getting lots of media attention, and the amazingly talented Cyndi Lauper, now appearing at the local House of Blues, continues to misspell her own first name.

Occupy Wall Street is the real story, and I say this even though I consider their claim to be “the other 99%” of Americans an exaggeration. This is because they don’t represent that roughly 28% who insist on voting against their own interests even when a stone blind bat could see the unhelpfulness of such a tendency.

The 28% I'm talking about includes those people who still approved of George W. Bush in 2008, after he had dragged us into two wars, (one of which was unnecessarily long and the other absolutely unnecessary), had shifted the tax burden away from his super-rich friends and onto the backs of the rest of us, and, finally, led the economy into the worst disaster we've seen since the 1930s. So, who are those 28% that still approved of Bush even after he brought about Mondo Catastrofico? I don’t know, but I don't think they sympathize with the Occupy Wall Streeters. In other words, these good Wall Street demonstrators might want to change their slogan to “We are the other 72 percent!” Admittedly not too catchy, but more accurate.

The 28 percent who tend to vote for and support the interests of the super-rich (i.e., the one percent) would benefit from a more enlightened understanding of human nature. Such an understanding might convince many of them to see the errors of their ways and, who knows, maybe even get them to admit that G. W. Bush did not deserve their unwavering devotion.






Ganz bestimmt, Herr Goethe!


From Wikipedia






The key feature of human nature that needs to be more widely understood is that which binds us, against our own will sometimes, to our fellow humans. This feature is rooted in our brain chemistry, which in turn is a function of evolutionary processes that have made Homo sapiens the all-time mammalian champions of mutual help and support. When we are behaving naturally, we tend to feel for each other, share the sufferings of each other, and strive to help each other.

Such a statement is likely to provoke denunciations of “Kumbaya singer!” from the ranks of the 28-percenters, but, let me assure you, I like Kumbaya no more than I like pickled pigs’ feet, which is to say, not very much.

What I do like are the neural and behavioral studies, now arriving in an endless stream, that have identified mirror neurons and other brain components that underlie our inability to separate ourselves from each other. Call me a socialist if you must, but current research proves beyond a doubt that we are, above all, social creatures.

Admittedly, we can be trained to disqualify certain fellow humans from any right to our sympathy (i.e., dehumanize them), whether they be racially, religiously, ethnically or politically different. But this takes training. Our natural impulse, particularly when we are face to face with each other, is to look out for each other.

But, you say, what about murder? War? Enslavement? Rape? Theft? Going through the express check-out line with more than 10 items? Yes, these things do happen, and they are anti-social, but they are, except in the most dysfunctional of societies, newsworthy aberrations. What is not news is the constant, neuron-based, tide-like pull of the social impulses, the ones that mark us as inescapably linked to each other.

Here’s another possible objection to the “We are social” model: What about the benefits of capitalism, the encouragement it gives to individualistic, competitive striving?

I grant that a measure of competitive striving is also natural to us, and can be constructive, but only when channeled along socially responsible paths. Our problems today stem from the all-too-numerous examples of destructive, anti-social striving, the kind of striving that has characterized, for example, Enron, Halliburton, BP, the tobacco companies, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and other outfits whose natural habitat is Wall Street. Their striving has been aimed at personal enrichment even at the expense of social devastation.

Which brings us back to the OWSers. The “99 percent” they promote is more an aspiration than a reality, but it still speaks to the fact that the American economy, since about 1980 has been steadily drawn into the clutches of the super-rich - that one percent who use their money to buy Congress and the White House and then engender laws designed for their own benefit and at our expense. Theirs is a destructively selfish competitive striving.

Eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, the influence of their money on our elections would go a long way toward compelling our elected leaders to pay more attention to us than to those who fund their campaigns. The most obvious device for accomplishing this would be publicly funded federal elections.

Of course these same moneyed interests would claim that publicly funded elections amount to a “government take-over,” but the truth is that government is where our democratic rights make their home. The main problem with our democratic house today is not that it is governmental, but that it has been steadily taken over by non-governmental, moneyed interests. Wall Street represents these interests, so the OWS movement is a big, fat, bold step in the right direction. Even though some of these protestors seem unfocused, and, this being New York, they bring with them a healthy dose of the theatrically bizarre, they still, in my opinion, deserve our praise and support. If they manage to effectively focus our sustained anger they will indeed be the people we have been waiting for.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Peace Be upon Us

Steven Pinker is not only a terrific writer, he’s also brilliant. His views are in agreement with mine on almost every issue, and, though I won't go so far as to say this is the ultimate criterion of brilliance, I'll admit to the temptation to think this way.

Pinker has a new book coming out in October, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, and I’ve been given an advanced copy of it to review. I’m not sure I’m going to get to properly review it though, because it’s about 700 pages long and it will take me a while to get through it quickly given my professorial duties. And now that the semester has begun in earnest, these duties can be quite time-consuming. When your spouse begins referring to your job as “that cheap whore that keeps you away from home,” you kind of sense that taking on more work would not be a wise move.

Anyway, in Better Angels Pinker argues convincingly that we live in relatively peaceful times. Yes, you read that line right: We now live in relatively peaceful times. Furthermore, there are powerful trends that have steadily driven down levels of violence on virtually every front for centuries, and these trends should reduce levels of violence even more in the future.

“But,” you may well say, “what about Al Qaeda? 9-11? Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya?” And that’s not to even mention Somalia, Chechnya, Yemen and the Philadelphia Eagles fans.

Yes, there is violence in the world today, but less than there was in the recent past, and much less than there was in the distant past. Pinker identifies six trends, some having lasted for millennia, others for just a few decades, but all of which have helped reduce levels of violence both between nations and within them.

Pinker cites a number of ancient sources, including the Homeric epics and various biblical chapters to support his contention that we are much more peaceful and humane today than our ancestors were. Passages he refers to in the book of Deuteronomy are so intriguing that I found myself going to the original source to see just what God had in mind for the ancient Israelites where warfare was concerned.

Deuteronomy 20. Check it out:

“When the Lord your God delivers [a resisting city] into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.”

Hard cheese on the Hittites, I’d have to say.

From the next chapter we get Divine instructions on what to do with female hotties that fall into the victors’ hands:

“10 When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11 if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. 12 Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails 13 and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. 14 If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.”

Question: Do Christian fundamentalists, who insist on accepting every word of the bible as God’s truth, believe that our guys in Afghanistan should be putting local women under house arrest as potential future wives? If not, why not? Was God just kidding when he wrote Deuteronomy? And what would GOP front runner and Christian prayermeister, Rick Perry, say about this?





Sabine Women by David









So far, I’m only about 25% through with The Better Angels of Our Nature, but I’m happy to report that, like all of Pinker’s previous books, this one is interesting and beautifully written. It has Pinker’s characteristically engaging style and its argument is supported by reams of data, much of it in the form of charts and graphs. One of the minor points he makes is that in the U.S., the violence-prone frontier took root before proper policing by state authorities could bring it under control. Canada, on the other hand, policed its frontier courtesy of the Mounties, and consequently Canadian society is not racked with the gun-loving nuttiness (my word, not Pinker’s) that makes America so unique in the Western world. Hard cheese on us.

But ultimately, the varied array of data Pinker brings to bear, and the logical coherence with which he presses his points home are not only thoroughly convincing but even hope-engendering. This is an important story, and we are fortunate that Steven Pinker has taken the time to tell it and to tell it so well.