Freedom from civilization

The concept of freedom is deeply embedded in the American story and psychology. We are the ones that fled the oppression of theocracy and monarchy to shape a new existence. Indeed, this sense of autonomy and independence colors much that we do and celebrate.

Lately, though, many Americans have expressed a particularly troubling interpretation of freedom, a binary, absolutist interpretation. The choices are 1) externally mandated, dictated structure on one hand (as is the case with monarchy or other non-participatory society), or 2) absolute freedom from structure (as with the popular understanding of anarchy).

This idea of freedom is used to justify uncompromising opposition to any and all restrictive legislation. For example, many who oppose firearm regulation stand on a platform defined by a resistance to any imposed structure, and thus neglect to engage in a meaningful discussion about the particular issue.

A polarized, binary view of freedom doubly misses the mark, by skirting around either side of a third, typically superior option: to participate in designing the structures that govern our interactions. Our country was founded by people dedicated to such an enterprise, and the constitution is revered not only for its elements of liberty, but those that encourage participation. Instead of following that lead, we citizens often behave as if at war with one another, entrenched in some or another extreme position, divorced from the processes of reasonable scrutiny and collaboration.

But this is a manufactured war. The battle lines are created to marginalize meaningful change, which is always rather moderate. It is a play on the psychology of fear to maintain the dominant paradigm.

Here's to hoping that we can step off the battleground and move productively together.

Take Back the Story

A while back I read a very interesting book: "Program or Be Programmed" by Douglas Rushkoff. It coincided with my first foray into computational programming (for engineering tasks), and it was therefore both relevant and eye-opening. In it, Rushkoff argues that we are influenced heavily by programming, and that by learning about the concepts and methods employed in creating such codes, we gain both empowerment and awareness.

The rise of literal programming (i.e. computational or computer-based programming) has coincided with advancements in another kind of programming: media programming. TV shows are literally called "programming" within the industry, and every other kind of information medium-- radio, billboards, internet, magazines, etc.-- is analogous. They are all engineered to deliver "messages" to us, and this engineering is informed by the sciences of sociology, psychology, and biology to maximize their efficacy.

A quick tour of advertisements from the 50's run in parallel with those of today reveals very clearly the advancement of programming sophistication. This, of course, is a dynamic system which plays off of the evolving cultural sensibilities which are both drivers of- and driven by- the messages that permeate our lives.

This kind of messaging is a quite natural element of a market-driven society. Our social structure, based on the notion that pursuit of individual, short term gains collectively drives an emergent prosperity in society as a whole, carries an implicit imperative to utilize any and all tools at our disposal to pursue our individual interests.

There is a cost, however. It's actually visible on every level of this structure, but it's most famously identified at the large-scale corporate level: the externality. This is the idea that if it is possible to outsource the cost of your action, you will increase the net gain from that action. Highly visible on those larger scales (e.g. pollution, sweat shops, climate change), the externality plays out on a small scale as well - with similar costs.

This concept was popularized in 1968 by Garrett Hardin in his "Tragedy of the Commons," and previously, in 1833, by William Lloyd in a pamphlet discussing shared grazing rights. Both interesting reads.

The severity of the consequences outlined by Hardin and Lloyd has reached a peak in today's society. We are in the midst of the most dramatic, ever-increasing sickening of... everything: our personal health, our social health (sense of connection between one another), and our ecological health.

On all of these levels, the trend is pointed toward an inevitable tipping point. The foundations of our civilization are actually in peril. Few will debate this point reasonably.

My proposal (probably not original) is this: let's take control of the messaging; take control of the story. We need to recognize that the media messaging is designed to reinforce the status quo. Our messages should be re-designed from the roots - replacing the mass-produced messages with those that make sense at an individual level, and with a longer timeline in mind.

The number of absurdities that we have come to regard as normal and acceptable is incredible. I hope that we might start to "see" the programming and take control of the message. Our story needs to be more about the space between us -- connections -- and less about the discrete entities (people and things).

It is "the big reveal."
The unfolding of truth. The depths and heights, gradually, unveiling their magnificence. And only through the vivid clouded window of the inner light.
All gratitude for the opportunity. The experience. The only thing of value.

With love,

Me. And all of it.

Economics of Health Care

Have you ever walked into a pharmacy and noticed that you have to pass through isles of candy on the way to the medicine? Often, on the way back to the register, you'll pass more isles full of alcoholic beverages (depending on the state), before you face directly, as you're paying, a wall of cigarettes. The medicinal services now occupy a small corner of most chain pharmacies now.

Seems odd that a pharmacy, whose original purpose was to distribute agents of good health, is principally engaged in distributing illness. How can I trust the pharmacist who chooses to work in such a place with my health?

This, to me, feels like one of the most stark examples of how our economic system is failing to serve the public good. These sorts of counter-examples pop up anywhere that basic human needs are regulated (in any part) by monetary economies with any amount of "free market" forces allowed to play out.

Perhaps health should be managed by the people, all of us, rather than by industry.

Distinction

Evidence 1: I heard this great story on radiolab the other day. It was about how it is entirely possible that members of ancient cultures, despite the same physical capacity as modern people, could not identify the color blue. Apparently such a distinction had no inherent value for them (no blue food, enemies, art, etc.).

Evidence 2: There was a decade in there when I got really into drawing copies of nature photos (originally my ADD coping strategy for college lectures). One if the discoveries I made, which drastically improved the quality of the drawings was that there are no real lines in nature; that separations are all gradations with various degrees of severity. If you draw harsh lines on the edges of anything, it ceases to look realistic.

Evidence 3: They say babies are born unable to distinguish anything from themselves. The separations that define ”this” and ”that” are not immediately apparent. Gradually, as necessities and interests develop, one thing or another becomes important, and children learn to identify the particular thing. Some learning occurs when a distinction dawns on a person, and previously fluid concepts become discrete, at which point new conceptual manipulations become possible.

Conclusion/hypothesis: Separations are artificial constructs of the human mind. We (everything) are all one, maybe.

If this is true, then what of those elegant manipulations? Are they commonly accepted because they reflect some objective reality, or merely because we develop in a shared society, with reference frames overlapping?

Contributing member of society

I had begun to lose faith in humanity.   

Having spent some weeks frequenting an urban hospital that serves a diverse population, I had encountered a shocking number of people who function on an astoundingly low level. I've always argued that very few people are utterly hopeless. I've had numerous debates with conservative friends and family wherein I take the side of those whose livelihood depends on social safety nets (don't we all rely on the security inherent to our social contract to some degree?). But over the past month it started to dawn on me that there is a pretty substantial population of legitimately dependent, utterly un-self-aware people in this country, simply going through the motions, however distasteful, however physically uncomfortable.

I wondered:
Is this a local phenomenon?
Is this a recent thing?
Have there always been large chucks of society that are essentially on autopilot?

A few thoughts emerged from some discussion and pondering. Initially, it didn't seem possible that this has always been the case, as we have been through some tough times as a species, and I'm sure we didn't, and couldn't, lug around such dead weight through that. So did this just crop up, or is it instead a new manifestation of something that has been around but maybe not an issue in the past, when environmental/social circumstances would have provided a productive outlet for these tendencies?

Maybe, I wondered, freeing most people from the burden of decision-making is adaptive in the long run? Maybe that human ballast functions as a keel at times, rather than our modern result: dragging anchor-like.

I like that explanation. So I'll run with it for a bit...

The problem, then, is that the default actions of the choiceless many are only recently dysfunctional. The unstated barking orders of our modern times are destructive; the culture/paradigm of the impoverished among us is polluted with toxic expectations and norms.

I have seen the other end of the spectrum, where folks are brought into a high functioning culture. It would be easy to attribute their functionality to good breeding, but the same proportion of adherents exist there, only they adhere to policies and practices that work better, and their families work hard to ensure that this is so. They live in "bubbles" of high-functioning humanity, buffeted against the din of the dominant American paradigm.

And here I'm unfairly casting, as nearly all people (myself included) exhibit the behavior patterns I'm referring to as ”adherence,” as opposed to independent decision-making. Truth is, the analysis required to thoughtfully make choices is taxing. Perpetually questioning the paradigm is exhausting. So it is that we all benefit from immersion into a functioning culture that sets default settings which keep us healthy and well.


Let the goal be to immerse our people in cultural habits that promote health, opportunity, and happiness. Let us enrich our world and provide fall-back protocols that carry us through trying times. May we fold more of the masses into the security and empowerment of well-being.

Grass-roots can only grow in reasonably rich soil. Let's rid ourselves of the toxic...

The Invisible Hand

Something that keeps coming up with colleagues is a conversation about motivations.  At my school, there is a general movement away from the contrived motivations of grading scales, toward an emphasis on the process of learning and the intrinsic human tendency to explore and investigate.  We are learning machines, and so it is argued that we should be set loose to learn, not constrained to do so for some manufactured or abstracted reason(s).  "Unbridle the learner within," seems to be a sort of mantra among us.

Diligent skeptics in the field argue that there are necessarily structures that keep focus, maintain order, and teach discipline (none of which occurs naturally to most young students).  This is true, of course, but I argue that the ultimate rationale for those structures should be to better permit effective and natural learning to take place, rather than structure and discipline for its own sake.

Generating enthusiasm, building motivation, and then channeling that motivation toward the less exciting, but necessary, aspects of exploration--the aspects of science that separates it from relatively chaotic and inefficient "stabs in the dark" that constituted the proto-scientific curiosity of past millennia--can be as effective as fear- or penalty-based schemes.

What I'm talking about is tapping into motivations that are intrinsic, rather than creating new and "artificial" ones. We are driven to discover, to master, and to be a part of something greater than ourselves. We are driven to be both individuals and part of a collective. Our species has this duality to thank for much of our success.  We have transcended biological evolution by employing a diversity of continually evolving ideas and a need to exchange those ideas.

So in continually discussing all of this with colleagues and researchers, I can't help but see that there is a contradiction between what we are trying to do in the classroom--what the research tells us works best--and what we see in our larger society. If successful, we are creating collaborative, exploratory, inventive, enthusiastic citizens who are adept at tapping into their own passions, and applying intense effort for the collective good of their community. These concerned and connected citizens then step out into a world where competition abounds and decisions are routinely made which lead to excesses for some and deprivation, even death, for others.

We, the "givers-back" who have dedicated ourselves to the future of our society by choosing this field are modeling those same empathetic, connection-based motivations for our students. And, when successful, we see the best of humanity come out of them. But the world we live in does not necessarily reflect this value system.

I was asked in grad school whether schools should be charged with creating a new social order; whether it is our place as teachers to envision and move toward what might be the next best steps in our cultural evolution, or if such a charge revealed a touch of arrogance and self-importance.  I feel that our job description includes an element of vision, but that even though we are the adults in our environment(s), among "mere" children, our students are as much a part of the vision as we are. We are increasingly teaching a "student-centered" paradigm, and as such, our classroom values reflect, more and more, much of what is in their nature, in our nature.

And research shows this to be true. Clearly, we are hard/soft-wired for empathy and collaboration, for creativity and exploration.

Much of the dysfunction in our world seems rooted in values that don't appear to be intrinsic in our nature; values that are taught and scared into us. To me, the solution seems to necessitate some sort of revolution in social consciousness, and we, with our exponentially increasing ability to share and create ideas, are poised to launch such a revolution.  It has already started.

I imagine a future where the invisible hand of the market has little or no connection to material wealth, but is all about the things that motivate us intrinsically: mastery, creativity, participation, and purpose. The sense of being "really useful" is powerful and important, and can replace the sense of being materially powerful (wealthy) as the prime motivator. I get excited thinking about the sort of competitions that would emerge from this connective and collective will.

And, I believe, the only thing holding us back from this shift is a concerted effort by a majority. Many are in a struggle for survival, and making choices that simply allow the next day to come, but this doesn't have to be. We are thousands of times more productive than our isolated ancestors, with 10,000 years of technology behind us. If we were to band together, focus our attention on meeting the basic needs of everyone, we could end that sense of struggle. We could free humanity to do what we do best. We could set the stage for the new motivational schemes that I'm describing.

Skeptics tell me that without a struggle for survival, "human laziness" will turn our society into an "idiocracy."  "How else do you explain multigenerational welfare families?" they ask. But I have seen that this is not the case. Just look at the children. Children are transparent, less complicated examples of our human nature.  And I have seen them respond when given the opportunity to be a part of something, instead of the mandate to do so. When people see a group of others celebrating a collaborative effort, we can't help but long to join in.  Freed from the self-centered and individualistic biases trained into us, I am confident we would be continually participating in this sort of collective enterprise.