Fear of the New

There has been a huge amount of technological advancement in the past 20 years. The growth of the internet has made it drastically easier to transmit and receive information. Smart phones push this even further by giving people access in the palm of their hand anywhere, not just at a computer terminal.

Following this change, many business models have been upended. Advertising used to depend heavily on the reach of newspapers. It was hard to get the attention of a large number of people any other way. However, with the internet, it's much easier to target specific audiences. Data mining of searches can determine what kinds of ads a particular person will respond to. Combine that with the fact that it's much easier and cheaper to consume news over the internet than in a physical sheet of paper, and you get a floundering newspaper industry.

While this is a boon for consumers of news, it's a huge negative for people in the business. If you could get your news form the New York Times about world events, why would you bother bother reading the local Podunk Paper for worse content? If you could reach people everywhere with Google, why would you advertise in the New York Times?

The quickly changing face of business has many sectors of the economy struggling to keep up. People are afraid that their livelihoods are in danger. And rightly so. If change is unpredictable, who knows whose jobs are on the line? And when change happens quickly, there's not a lot of time to plan for sudden career changes.

All this shows that if we want to have an economy with new ideas as well as protect people from market forces outside of their control, we need to have a strong social safety net. That way changing conditions in the economy won't run the risk of throwing people into destitution due to bad luck.  Hopefully people will be able to evaluate different ways of doing things without worrying about a life of poverty.

The Failure of the Humanities

I'll admit, I used to have a pretty low opinion of those studying the humanities. For me, the biggest strike was the lack of accountability. If you made up a totally bs story, it would have to receive the same consideration as the most well thought out of treatises. Heck, in the AP English and History tests in school, you could write any number of crazy ideas in your paper, as long as you followed the format and used (or abused) the appropriate sources.

However, looking back, the true failure of the humanities was convincing me the humanities are important. After all, communication, persuasion, and art all fall under the humanities. Would it be too much to ask that the fields use their own powers to defend themselves?

I'm not sure why that's the case, but I have a few theories. Chief among them is the fact that those in those fields don't want other people to learn them. It's become a part of their identity, and having other people share in the study of their subjects violates their sense of self. It's a well known fact that mathematicians deny the applicability of their studies while physicists and others would beg to differ. I imagine the same can be said of those in the humanities.

It could also be that those who teach humanities can't relate to the type of person who could use some humanities studies but isn't as interested. Instead of showing how the humanities could be used to forge one's own identity or interpret history and modern events, classes are spent fetishizing obscure passages by long dead authors, with only passing context given. While I'm sure the instructor finds the subject interesting, it doesn't exactly give a strong lead in interest.

I did have a class in college which I thought gave a great introduction to philosophy, but the professors real favorite topic was the deep introspection of a medieval author, and suffice it to say I declined to even find out when it was scheduled.

Another theory is that bs is not challenged enough. Often writing assignments were one off papers, so even controversial topics were never really explored. Some comments might come back in the margins of the paper, but there was never any deep critical analysis that could have sparked true introspection.

It's a real shame, because looking back at my education, even though I only took two humanities courses, they were easily more thought provoking than many of my scientific ones. Perhaps if someone had shown me the true power of history or philosophy or english earlier on in my schooling I would have given them more of a chance in college. Now I can only stumble through such topics, like a child that never truly learned to walk.

Activism

I read some pretty political blogs so it's inevitable that I'll read a post by a frustrated activist. These posts are easy to remember because they always make you feel angry after reading them, and not in a sympathetic way. The post is dripping with self righteousness, self pity, and condescension. Anyone who disagrees with them is just one of the oppressors/corporatists/the establishment. They may feel better after this post, but the fact they wrote it makes me wonder if they have any idea what an activist really is.

The way I see it, the point of activism is to leverage the power of the people to affect change. In a democratic society, if enough people are willing to spend their time and money to get something, they will get it. Despite all the body blows that system has taken recently, I still believe it holds up. Therefore, an activist should try to get as many people to spend their time or money on a cause.

However, what I see instead is a digital totem measuring contest to see who is the most right. Believe it or not, yelling at people that they aren't pure enough doesn't convince anyone to join your cause. If a man tries to write something in support of feminism and is a little off base, cussing him out on the internet does not advance your cause. You convince very few people to join you, and many more to oppose you.

Of course, the activists them shout back (and it is always shouting) that they are sick of taking a positive tone, that they shouldn't have to submit to the humiliation of correcting other people's mistakes. After all, THOSE people are wrong, and they deserve every bolt of lightning the activists can muster from their quiver of indignation.

And it's true. If someone is doing something wrong that actively hurts someone, they probably do deserve some opprobrium. But it doesn't matter. If you don't convince people to join your side, you are not helping your side. All the righteous fury in the world is useless if your cause is still defeated. You are no closer to your goal than when you started, ind in all likelihood farther behind.

Activists also dangerously intermingle their own sense of self into their cause. This makes it hard to accept new people as members of the cause, which is the whole point of being an activist. I read an article about a black woman helping a white administrator educate some white teachers about defeating black stereotypes. "We showed them," the administrator said to the black teacher.

Did the black woman accept the white administrator as a member of the cause to eliminate racism? No. She instead thought to herself "No, you are not one of us. Fighting racism is my identity, not yours." This sort of rejection may preserve the self but in the end hurts the cause. For an activist cause to succeed you can't kick people out just because they don't meet your definition of what such a person should be. You must grow the cause even at the expense of your own comfort.

Most so called activists are not what I would call an activist. They are martyrs. Their identity is wrapped up inside of the cause they champion. So much so that they are unable to do what is necessary to advance the cause. Any attack on them becomes an attack on the cause. Anyone who is not them is an enemy to the cause. And thus the cause falters, and the so called activist thrives on the bitter leaves of self righteous indignation.

Malleable Identity

I like to think that I'm me, no matter what. If someone describes me as something I'm not, it's comforting to think that whatever it is they make me out to be, and no matter how many people say it, it won't affect me. However, the reality is a person's identity is never set in stone. The public perception of anyone can change in an instant. And, if one isn't careful, their very definition of their own self can be knocked astray.

This is especially true in children. All children have a certain disposition, but depending how outside stimulus, the end result can vary drastically. This doesn't mean that all you have to do to a child to force them in one direction is to just tell them that they are so. For example, telling a rebellious kid he is good doesn't make him behave any better. He will probably just become entitled and spoiled. Personalities are more complicated than to accept a direct contradiction

However, if you them they are a bad kid, that framing can have an impact on their long term conception of themselves. Whether or not they want it to, it becomes a part of their identity, and they will have a hard time shaking it, even if they'd rather be something else. Instead of being just a kid who threw a tantrum one day, they are that kid who always throws tantrums, who challenges authority, who has problems with parents and teachers. Of course nothing is a one to one cause and effect, but how someone perceives themselves determines who they are.

Although adults have a stronger self perception, that doesn't mean they can't be affected by outside interference. It takes a thick skin to suffer accusations or receive praises without impacting the ego. Adults are somewhat aware that they can't let other people dictate who they are, but the battle is still a tough one. If you undermine someone's identity, that is the surest way to receiving a scathing, defensive response. We have all spent our entire lives building our selves and trying to make sense of who we are. There is nothing more unsettling than a false attack on the self we believe to be. Nothing, except a true one.

Philosophy and Science

Occasionally I read an article talking about how philosophy gives us insight into science, or how science defeats the need for philosophy. This misunderstands what the point of both of these disciplines are. The two fields are orthogonal to each other and there is no reason to suspect one has priority over the other or obviates the other.

Philosophy is the assumption of axioms and applying logical rules to derive conclusions. What separates philosophy from math is subjectivity. In math, the logical steps are incontrovertible. In philosophy, given the same set of facts, no 2 people will come up with the exact same answer, and none of them have to be wrong. However, though an imperfect tool, it is the only one we have that can attempt to attribute concepts such as justice, good, or evil to the real events and objects people experience.

Science is the acquisition of universal knowledge through experimentation. It is a tool that explains the universe we live in and how it works. The results of good science are not logically contestable. There is no room for debate. The data shows what's true and what's false.

However, science cannot prove anything which is not testable. There is no objective test for the purpose of human existence. There is not definitive way to measure of justice. The subjectivity involved means that science is incapable of answering.

Science explains how the universe works. Philosophy tells us what it means.

Justice

Since I don't believe there is any such thing as a supernatural being, and there is no inherent purpose to the universe, it's hard to see how there could be such a thing as universal justice. That is, a justice where which is fair to all participants.

There are a few painful points of reality that make this sort of justice impossible. For example, nothing is perfectly reversible. If someone gets punched, there is nothing that can go back in time and save the person from that hurt at that moment. If someone is killed, they're dead. No amount of money or grief will bring them back.

Furthermore, justice is purely in the eye of the beholder. Living things seem to more or less care about fairness, but this is more of a tool to further the future survivability of the group, not a fundamental concept of the universe.

Thus we should not try to think of justice as a way of fixing past wrongs. That is impossible. Justice is a tool to encourage people to function in a way that advances the group, not just the individual.

The Obligation of Success

If it's true that all people should do what they want, does that mean we can dissolve the bonds of society and all just live disconnected lives? After all, there is no heavenly mandate or true moral code anyone can refer to, so if all people thought this way, there would be no reason to have bonds of community or family, right?

While anarchists might disagree, society is not something that was imposed from on high. People built societies for a reason. As I've mentioned before, people are social creatures. Most of us cannot live isolation. We are stronger in numbers. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Social organization is a tool for people to further their own goals.

In order to ensure people can chase their fulfillment, we need to make sure that they can take the risks necessary to do so. Without the bonds of family and society, there is no safety net. Spending a year of your life trying to create the next great work is just too risky if the cost of failure is destitution. Those who succeed in their ambitions must share the burden of those unable to do so, otherwise only the foolhardy would ever have a shot at self satisfaction.

After all, there are no guarantees in life. Those who enjoy success and those crushed by failure are, in the grand scheme of things, only separated by a roll of the dice. There will always be people who are unable to provide back as much as they take. But, as long as there is food and shelter to spare, it is heartless to deny anyone at least a base subsistence.