Hope has been on my mind lately. It keeps coming up in unexpected places, drifting into my thoughts and conversations. I wrote a post about the economics of hope last week. Wednesday my courageous sister the artist wrote a beautiful post about how hope should not put us to shame. All these thoughts reminded me of one of my favorite stories about hope, from the king of Minnesotan nostalgia and host of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor.
I am a huge fan of A Prairie Home Companion, America's last surviving radio variety show. So much so that one summer I listened to two or three episodes a day while I fed architectural documents into a giant scanner during a lackluster internship. The show's signature mix of nostalgia, oddball humor, bluegrass, and storytelling got me through it. I'm a sucker for Guy Noir, the Powdermilk Biscuit break, the Ketchup Advisory Board, Be-Bop-A-Re-Bop Rhubarb Pie, Guy's All-Star Shoe Band (including one of my piano heroes, Rich Dwarsky)... well, you get the idea.
If you're unfamiliar, the central moment of every show is Keillor's monologue, "The News from Lake Wobegon," when Keillor tells a story about his fictional hometown. Of all the many, many Prairie Home episodes I've listened to, the following is my favorite monologue by far; I've probably listened to it thirty times. Partially because it makes light of high school plays, something that were a huge part of my life growing up, but mostly because its humorous messages about hope, life, and perseverance have so much truth hiding beneath the surface.
Last week the prince of pop psychology, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a New Yorker piece titled "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted." With characteristic adeptness (I am in love with this man's style) he argues that social networks like Twitter and Facebook create "weak-ties," casual relationships among acquaintances that do not lend themselves to the strong bonds of friendship which allow people to bind together to enact high-risk social change, such as the lunch counter sit-ins which sparked the American Civil Rights movement. Gladwell accurately points out that the roll played by Twitter and other social networks in recent movements such as the 2009 election protests in Iran has been vastly overstated.
But in arguing his case, Gladwell makes an error which I think reflects a common misunderstanding about social networking, one that perhaps even the creators of the most popular social networks in existence are just now beginning to sort out. It's succinctly expressed in the following quote from the piece:
The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.
This simply isn't true. My friend and go-to expert on social networking, web entrepreneur Rob Johnson, was the first to point this out to me almost a year ago. People do not primarily use Facebook and Twitter to amass acquaintances. They use these tools to dive deeper into the lives of people they already know. Think about it. If you're a Facebook user, do you spend most of your time on the site expanding your network of friends or scanning your news feed to keep up with the handful of people you know and love well? For me and I believe most people, it's the latter.
The folks behind Facebook have begun to figure this out, and slowly tweak their service in this direction. Not too long ago they added the ability to "hide" updates from people in your news feed, and recently removed the 200 friend limit on this feature. Even more recently they released their new Groups feature, which rather than encouraging users to share information more publicly, moves in the opposite direction, allowing them to share information among certain exclusive groups. I believe this is evidence that all the privacy backlash the Facebook folks have experienced has made them realize that people don't want to share more things with more people. They want to share more things with less people. (I can only hope Twitter will realize this soon, although the way the service is built lends itself more towards broadcasting to a group of followers than connecting with friends. Myspace is doomed.)
This is where Gladwell gets it wrong. If we view social networks not as weak-tie friend collectors but as tools or mediums to bridge gaps in geography and lifestyle to connect with our closest friends, it is easy to see how Facebook or Twitter might have greased the wheels of social change in the 1960's, had they been available. Social networking would have allowed tight groups of committed protesters to collectively communicate at the speed of light. It's hard for me to imagine how this would have had anything but a positive effect on achieving their goals. This is why so many governments (such as China and Iran) have moved quickly to limit or shutdown social networking during times of social unrest.
I do not consider myself a social networking evangelist. Most of the reaction to Gladwell's article from social network advocates has been to point out various high-risk social movements which have allegedly been fostered by social networking. I am hesitant to point to any social network as a primary breeding ground for social change. I still believe "all great change in America begins at the dinner table." But that doesn't mean these networks are irrelevant to high-risk social movements. We must see social networks as what they are: tools. Tools that are enabling people around the world to do great things by spreading infectious messages among their small circle of connected friends—their "tribes," to use a popular term. Missing this perspective is why this time, Gladwell doesn't get it.
For over a year now I've had this hunch about hope. I keep hearing these two ideas from two different schools of thought, and I wonder if we can draw a line between them.
The first idea is that despite the constant warnings of the doomsday prophets, the world is continually improving. This message is generally delivered by a small but optomistic group of classical economists, who point out that despite the war, famine, and slavery still present in our world, things are measurably better for almost every human being on earth than they were just a hundred years ago. I've shared articles and videos to this effect on this blog before, but here are a few new ones:
The world's poor are getting richer faster than its rich are getting richer. Per capita wealth in the richest countries is still 45 times that of the poorest countries, but a decade ago, wealthy countries had 135 times as much wealth. The population distribution of wealth in the world is changing so that most people live somewhere in the middle between the very rich and the very poor. This is further explained in this brilliant lecture, as well as this one, by everyone's favorite statistician, Hans Rosling (who fervently believes it is possible for us to conquer poverty).
Writer Matt Ridley notes that in the past 50 years, the average per capita income of every person on earth has tripled, lifespan is up by 30%, child mortality is down by 2/3, and per capita food production is up by 1/3—all while the population has doubled.
Each generation is better off than the one before it. In fact, an economics podcast I listen to recently conducted a poll and found that of the 3,500 people who participated, 2/3 would rather be middle-class in 2010 than rich in 1900.
The second idea comes from New Testament scholar N. T. Wright. I haven't yet read any of Wright's work (Surprised by Hope has been on my to-read list for some time), but I've been taught about his ideas a good bit, and one of them goes something like this: the resurrection was not merely the salvation of God's people from their sins, allowing them to one day fly away to glory once the troubles of this world have passed, but rather the earth-splitting beginning of God's redemption of the world. A new heaven and new earth are not far-off fantasies, they are a movement which God has begun, which we may (indeed, we must) take part in as his followers.
This theological position runs contrary to many of the protestant traditions I am familiar with, which see the world in a steady state of moral decay, evidenced by everything from war and famine to abortion and sex on T.V. But if we look at the grand, global, social and economic history of the world, we find ourselves in the middle of a long and steady improvement which has experienced a revolution of unbelievable acceleration in the last century or so. There is a great deal of evidence that there is much good at work in the world, and my faith compels me to acknowledge good work as the presence of God.
As protest season comes to a close and Erin and I gear up to attend our first rally as actual supporters, I keep coming back to this question: should the irrational, fearful ideas emanating from the far right be fought, or ignored?
The "ignore" side is tempting. I often argue here that the pundits don't matter, that most Americans are centrists, that fearing someone who is selling fear is self-defeating. I've explained my strong belief that the Tea Party will quietly go away once unemployment drops with little to no lasting, historical significance. Schoolchildren won't be reading about the Tea Party in twenty years.
The case for the "fight" side is disconcerting. Many of the signs and slogans I have seen at the rallies I've attended (some of them pictured in this post) have a violent, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim tone. There is a growing suspicion in my mind that the fury whipped up by Fox News and their ilk has contributed to such events as the arson at a Mosque construction site in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in August (where fear of Muslims was already running high), the pipe-bombing at a Florida Mosque in May (virtually unreported by the national media), and the incident in February when a man wrote an anti-government rant and then flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin.
When irrational fear-mongering turns from scaring a small portion of the population to inciting violence that threatens such essential American values as freedom of religion, it may be time to stop ignoring it and begin arguing the case for sanity. As Americans we cannot accept violence against those practicing their constitutional freedoms. As men and women of faith we cannot accept the claim that a religion's violent extremists are representative of its whole. Christians decry those who paint the Crusaders and the judges at the Salem witch trials and Eric Rudolph as model Christians; why do we hesitate to deny that Osama Bin Laden is a model Muslim?
It seems silly to need to proclaim that Obama's widely-available birth certificate exists. It seems pointless to have to argue that creating "small government" and limiting government spending will require real, honest, accomplish-able reform. It seems unnecessary to announce that Muslims, some of whom died in the World Trade Center and defend this country in our military, are by and large a peace-loving people. It seems ridiculous to have to explain that the recent health care legislation does not include "death panels." But if this is what is required to prevent a movement from turning to violence, can we afford not to?
I know I've spent most of this post arguing the "fight" side. I admit it has been gaining ground in my internal debate. But I also know that there are many members of the Tea Party and the far right who would never, never resort to violence. I must be careful not to be hypocritical by assigning the characteristics of a few Tea Partiers to the whole, just as I accuse them of doing with Muslims. The question is where is we're headed. Can we afford to wait until the central cause of fear in this country (unemployment) being capitalized on by Fox and friends dies out? How much more violence will occur and how much more sorely needed legislation will be squelched before we decide to fight fear with reason?
"But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein
It is unfortunately rare to find public figures who inspire you. Or at least this is true for me. As a Christian and a moderate Republican, I spend a lot of time trying to distance myself from public figures who claim to believe the same things I do, from Pat Robertson to Sarah Palin. But every once in a while, someone comes along whose views on life give me great hope.
I recently found such a person in Francis Collins. Collins is a physician-geneticist who made ground-breaking discoveries of disease genes, lead the famous and successful Human Genome Project, was described by the Endocrine Society as "one of the most accomplished scientists of our time," and was Obama's choice for director of the National Institute of Health.
He is also a Christian.
Not only is he a Christian, he is a vocal one. He has written a book and created an online forum which explore the intersection between science and faith. And not only is he a scientist, he is a good one. Even though some studies have shown as many as 40% of American scientists believe in a personal God, I admit that many of the Christian scientists I've come across are much more adept in their faith than their science. Not so for Collins. I've already mentioned his formidable achievements. An excellent New Yorker piece about him I read this week states, "Collins's detractors did not question his professional achievements, which long ago secured his place in the first rank of international scientists." Even New Atheist Sam Harris calls Collins' work on the Human Genomoe Project "one of the greatest scientific achievements in human history" and praises his "stellar career in science." (For those unfamiliar, New Atheism refers to a recent development in atheist thinking which holds that not only is religion wrong and should be completely replaced by scientific inquiry, it is a corrosive force responsible for nearly all of the conflict and tragedy in human history.)
Not only he is a professing Christian and an expert scientist, Collins is a genuinely amiable fellow. He is friends with another New Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, and is helping him explore experimental treatment options for his worsening throat cancer. I have no doubt that Collins' expert abilities, not only in science, but in bridging the gap between scientific and religious thought with honesty, calm, respect, and friendliness influenced Obama's decision to appoint him. These abilities were readily apparent in an interview I read last week with Collins for National Geographic.
The interview had a profound impact on me. It was conducted by John Horgman, the director of the Centor for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, who National Geographic notes "has described himself as 'an agnostic increasingly disturbed by religion's influence on human affairs.'" When I read the interview, and heard Collins give his answers to the truly difficult questions Christian intellectuals face (what about miracles? evil? suffering? free will?), I was filled with respect for the man—so much so that I want to post the interview here. If the intersection of science and faith interests you at all (it definitely affects you, regardless), I urge you to click "read more" and, well, read more.
"[Americans] are socialists when it comes to spending and libertarians when it comes to taxes." Brian Riedl
"Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." Bertrand Russell
"I am a wreck of a person.
But I have a hope beyond myself." Anna Grace Scott
"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside." Robert X. Cringely
"The worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the core of the system from being realized by those who suffered from it and understood by those who contemplated it." Slavoj Žižek
"Only politically toxic cuts or rationing of medical care, a marked rise in the eligible age for health and retirement benefits, or significant inflation, can close the deficit." Alan Greenspan
"Sometimes you hear whispers by the dark of the moon
That we promised too much and gave it too soon" Joe Pug
Here's the deal and I'm giving it you as straight as it comes. Any member of Congress who has not made any legislative move to reform Medicare or Social Security is not concerned about fiscal responsibility. They can try to appear sanctimonious by freezing discretionary spending or stalling legislation to benefit 9/11 rescue workers or cutting the Bush tax cuts or unemployment benefits or the space program or aid for Haiti or whatever they like in the name of fiscal reform, but it's all bunch of bull. Most of the money (62%, actually) the government spends is mandatory, meaning the government is required by law to spend it. This chunk includes the big three entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; as well as interest on the national debt. It is growing incredibly fast. If we do not do something about these programs soon, by 2019 mandatory spending will be 92% of all revenues the government receives. It will exceed government revenues by 2040. Social Security alone will be out of cash by 2017; Medicare already is. We're not talking about 2050 here, we're talking about events that are less than ten years away. These are not scare tactics or political rhetoric. This is the way it is.
Every last voter in this country needs to understand this NOW. Because November is coming, and the Republican Party is likely going to gain more control of Congress (despite the sabotage being perpetrated in the primaries right now by Tea Party endorsements of candidates who are so far right they may prove unelectable). Last week the GOP unveiled its "Pledge to America," a hodgepodge list of amorphous conservative talking points which don't hold a candle to the specific, accomplish-able, honest reforms of the 1994 party's Contract with America. Among the many ambiguous pledges ("we pledge to make American government more transparent, careful, and honest") are promises to "stop out of control spending and reduce the size of government." But the ideas listed (cancel unspent stimulus funds, cap discretionary spending, cut Congress' budget, end TARP, hold weekly votes on spending cuts, reform the budget process, root out waste, focus on long-term challenges...) don't amount to a hill of beans compared to the real source of our spending problem: the entitlements. Only one federal politician I know, Paul Ryan, has proposed a plan that could even come close to actually solving our government's financial problems—and it does this by privatizing Social Security and nearly eliminating Medicare. I respect Ryan's honesty, but it's no surprise that such a political non-starter got passed over by the Pledge writers, who would prefer to offer vague promises rather than specific reform measures. If you don't believe me, take a listen to one of them floundering around while Steve Inskeep grills him on how, specifically, the GOP plans to cut the budget. If you think the disingenuous "anti-spending" rhetoric going around right now is bad, just wait until we've got a Republican majority in Congress and Obama as president.
As voters, if we truly believe in financial responsibility in government, we cannot simply vote for whatever politician comes along and claims they hold this belief as well. We must demand reform. The Tea Party is here in DC every-other weekend it seems, screaming about government spending, but as far as I know not one politician who has aligned themselves with the Tea Party has presented any real, workable legislation for mandatory spending reform. Yes, this is the kind of dishonesty we have come to expect from Congress, but if we are going to make any progress in solving the financial problems we face, we cannot let it stand. We need solutions, not slogans.
If you're still unconvinced by what I've written here, check out the Wikipedia article on the U.S. public debt and the excellent, non-partisan documentary I.O.U.S.A., which I've mentioned here before. You can view the 30-minute version below, get the DVD on Netflix, and check out its website for more. The site was recently updated with a series of five videos titled "Solutions" which lay out an honest, specific, non-partisan, straightforward plan for a way out of this mess.
Note: I've written a lot here about mandatory entitlement spending, which I believe is our nation's biggest financial problem because of its growth rate and the impending retirement of the Baby Boomers. However, I do believe significant cuts in discretionary spending, such as national defense, would be helpful as well. That's coming in a later post.
At the recommendation of my old friend the athletic Michael Mayo, over the summer I viewed "Justice with Michael Sandel," a video lecture series from Harvard University which is provided by iTunes U. For those who are unacquainted, iTunes U is a program where universities (including Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Yale, and others) submit videos of course lectures which are free to download and watch on your computer or Apple mobile device. "Justice" is the number one lecture series in the iTunes U top ten.
In college I flirted with the idea of a philosophy minor, but gave up after two courses because my major required too many hours to allow room for a minor in four years. Those two introductory courses only served to whet my appetite, so when Michael recommended "Justice" to me I couldn't resist. The class covers the figures (Kant, Bentham, Locke, Aristotle, Rawls, Mill) and ideas (utilitarianism, libertarianism, meritocracy, individual and natural rights, communitarianism, patriotism) you might expect, but it also displays Michael Sandel's one-of-a-kind ability to conduct calm, respectful, open-minded discussions among the thousands of students who attend his class. I think it's Sandel's greatest gift as a teacher. More on that later.
If you have any interest at all in the philosophy of justice but don't have the resources to attend a class at Harvard, go for it. Download the videos using iTunes here and visit justiceharvard.org for resources including readings and all the lectures as YouTube videos, if iTunes isn't your thing. If you're still not convinced, here's a compelling NYT article about Sandel's class and an introductory video:
Viewing the lecture series was a powerful experience for me. It revealed how difficult it is to decide what is just in a pluralistic society, and how we should construct a fair and helpful government. I was confronted with the fact that no over-arching political or social philosophy truly governs justice in American society. There are contradictions inherent in our beliefs about the common good vs. individual liberty which affect how we govern every day.
Even so, I was convinced by Sandel's assertion (explicitly in the first and last lectures, and implicitly throughout) that though the questions pursued in his course are difficult, they are crucial. Sandel answers the ubiquitous claim of the skeptic—that grand philosophical questions have been debated for centuries without solution and therefore may as well be ignored—with a strong conviction that the very recurrence of these questions suggest that they have enormous import to the human condition.
I was also continually impressed, as I mentioned before, by Sandel's ability to conduct open, public, respectful debates and discussions amongst his students. This is a refreshing thing to watch given the toxic state of our current national political discourse. Watching the 24-hour news networks, it's hard to believe honest public debate even occurs anymore. Reading about Sandel online, I discovered that this type of discussion is his passion. He believes it is central to the formation of sound policy and law, and he wants to expand his course into a global classroom where such conversation can take place.
I saw some of this passion in the following video, in which Sandel is interviewed by Jim Wallis (a man who every day it seems I gain more respect for). Sandel explains his belief that rancor has grown in public debate because many liberals and progressives have tried to remove moral convictions from public policy, in an effort to become completely neutral about moral issues. Sandel explains that he believes this is impossible, and when it is attempted, it hurts those who hold strong moral convictions. It offends them because and they feel they are being rejected and denied a voice (which in many ways they are) because of their strong, personal, moral and spiritual beliefs. I think Sandel is onto something. He explains this idea much better than I just did in the first three minutes of the video. I encourage you to take a look.
