Random Blogging – Page 69

Asking A Favor

I have previously noted that I learn a lot from the people who comment on this blog. (Even those with whom I strongly disagree provide me with valuable insights about the world-views of people I have trouble understanding.)

Because I continue to be impressed with the breadth of knowledge of so many who comment here, I’m asking for your help with a project I am currently pursuing in collaboration with a (much better informed) colleague.

The project grew out of our joint concern over what I’ll call “the woke wars–” the efforts to label accurate history instruction as the vilified “CRT,” the accusations of “cancelling” and commissions of “micro-aggressions”–the use and misuse of a whole vocabulary of culture war. We wanted to write a small book (or long article) aimed at the substantial number of Americans who are unfamiliar with that vocabulary–people who aren’t bigots, who believe in racial reconciliation–but who are unaware of the ways in which some behaviors, words and phrases are experienced as stereotypical and/or hurtful. We wanted to communicate with the numerous Americans who fall somewhere between the nationalists and nativists clinging to their hatreds and the”woke” purists who decry the racism that they detect virtually everywhere.

We define purists as those who elevate the perfect (as they define it) over the good, who tend to view the world as binary– us vs. them, good versus evil—and to view any recognition of nuance, shades of gray and/or context as evidence of insufficient “wokeness.”

Our working title is: How To Be Anti-Racist Without Being a Jerk.

Below is the current draft of our introduction, explaining why we are writing this and for whom. We follow it in the book with a “glossary” explaining terminology. A third section has examples and accompanying tips on how to distinguish between ignorance (lack of awareness) and negative intent, while a fourth section offers what we think are appropriate responses to various common situations. The fifth and final section is a summary re-emphasizing that we consider the proper goal of anti-racist behavior to be a world in which individuals are treated as individuals, not as representatives of any particular “tribe” –a world where each person is treated with dignity and respect until and unless they demonstrate behaviors that divest them of the right to demand such respect.

We have talked mainly to each other, and shared the whole draft with a very limited number of diverse friends; accordingly, we would really appreciate other suggestions as we go forward. What points are important to include? What messages are likely to resonate with our target market (which is neither White Supremicists nor the armies of the rabidly “woke.”)

In case you feel you need to read the entire draft in order to comment, I’ll post it in the comments section.
____________________________

We decided to offer this small book because we think we have a somewhat different approach to the subject-matter, one that we hope will allow people of good will to navigate the increasingly choppy waters of tribal discord.

We live in a time of social change, much of it positive. We especially recognize and celebrate the practical and symbolic progress toward equality. Many people point to the 2008 election of President Obama, the 2015 Obergfell v. Hodges Supreme Court recognition of gay marriage, and the very public rejection of racist behaviors and institutions that animate protest movements and viral messaging on social media as signs of progress.

That said, America is finally coming to terms with the reality that a far-too-substantial portion of our population is composed of White Christian Nationalists—a belief system that goes well beyond prejudice against people of color. It includes anti-Semitism and bigotries against Islam and various other religions, as well as a healthy dose of misogyny. When this book talks about being “anti-racist,” it’s shorthand for combatting that expansive distaste for the “other” to which we’re referring.

What, exactly, is racism, as we are using that term? It is the belief that identity trumps individuality and behavior—the belief that people who share a skin color or religion share essential characteristics that distinguish “them” from “us.” (We use the term identity in its political sense: the tendency of people of a particular gender, religion, race, social background, social class or other identifying factors to develop political agendas that are based upon these identities.) It is a worldview that fails to see people as people—individuals who deserve to be approached and evaluated as individuals. There are certainly cultural and regional differences among Americans, but humans of every color and faith and gender can and do vary from delightful to annoying to truly damaged and/or deplorable. Racism is denial of that reality, accompanied by a belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own “tribe.” Such a worldview is racist whether people harboring such beliefs are members of the majority or part of a marginalized group, whether they act on those beliefs or not, and whether or not they are fully conscious of the fact that they harbor such beliefs.

Recognition of the persistence and outsized influence of White Supremacist ideology, and the emergence of efforts to combat it, are welcome. It’s a truism that you cannot solve a problem of which you are unaware, and many, if not most Americans were unaware of the extent and persistence of these attitudes until the election of an African-American President brought them to the surface. The rise of anti-racism efforts is very welcome. We also recognize, however, that all culture clashes prompt excesses and oversimplifications. Well-meaning—and not so well-meaning—people too often engage in “virtue signaling”—performances meant to signal moral superiority– in situations in which thoughtful, civil discussions would be more productive.

Speaking of productivity–this is intended to be a book about getting the job done, moving the needle, being effective. If you are an activist who is determined to make the perfect the enemy of the good, if your goal is to garner attention, to feel morally superior, to curry favor with this or that constituency—if you believe that your particular experiences or insights entitle you to set the agenda irrespective of the setbacks your behavior might trigger or the harm that could be caused by hasty or unfair accusations– this isn’t a book for you.

It isn’t only physicians who must abide by the admonition: do no harm. Our goal in this little book is to help Americans move toward a fair and equitable society while doing no harm—or at least as little harm as possible. We are firmly convinced that progress toward a more fair and equitable society will be retarded, rather than advanced, by shaming, “cancelling” or self-righteous denunciations, and that social justice is more likely to result from educational interventions communicated with kindness and civility.

Rather obviously, this isn’t a book for those who have bought into the myths of White Christian Supremacy. We are aware that we aren’t going to change the minds or hearts of those who are convinced of their own innate superiority. This is also not a book for people who see racism and bigotry in every offhand remark. It is meant to be a helpful guide for people who recognize the pervasiveness and immorality of both personal prejudice and structural racism, people who don’t see themselves as culture warriors, but who do want to be effective allies in the effort to right systemic wrongs—and who are uncertain of the (often-shifting) terms upon which today’s battles are being fought. This book is for the majority of people who find themselves in the broad, uncharted territory between the more extreme anti-racist activists and America’s increasingly vocal White Supremacists.

Americans are currently awash in advice about how to be an ally—how to combat racism, how to see stereotypical assumptions that underlie seemingly neutral acts and comments, how to investigate one’s own biases and beliefs. Much of that advice is important and useful. There are fewer admonitions—okay, we haven’t seen any—about summoning the courage required to support people who are the target of overblown, unfair and/or unsupported accusations of bigotry. (Those situations aren’t as rare as we’d all like to believe.) Paradoxically, the orgies of condemnation that all too often become part of efforts to combat racism and “cancel” the racists can end up actually impeding progress– creating circular firing squads that silence or antagonize would-be allies. Insisting on fair play helps avoid the angry reactions to unjustified accusations that can end up disrupting organizations and movements and retarding efforts to move us toward a fairer, more equitable society. We need to understand and remember that there are meaningful differences between ignorance, “micro”-aggressions, and bad behaviors—and that even bad behavior does not automatically equal “bad person.”

In short, in this little book, we hope to provide readers with tools to: (1) understand the sometimes-bewildering vocabulary of the anti-racist movement; (2) identify and avoid pernicious stereotypes; (3) distinguish between inadvertent offenses and more harmful and deeply-rooted attitudes; and (4) recognize the most effective ways to deal with both the inadvertent offenses and more intentional displays of prejudice.

In other words, how to be anti-racist without being a jerk.

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Reward And Punish

I recently stumbled upon a report issued (and constantly updated) byJeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management identifying the U.S. companies that have–and have not– withdrawn from Russia in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The report separates the companies into four categories:

1) WITHDRAWAL – Clean Break: companies completely halting Russian engagements;

2) SUSPENSION – Keeping Options Open for Return: companies temporarily curtailing operations while keeping return options open;

3) SCALING BACK – Reducing Activities: companies scaling back some but not all operations, or delaying investments;

4) DIGGING IN – Defying Demands for Exit: companies defying demands for exit/reduction of activities .

The date I logged on, there were 34 companies “digging in.”Unsurprisingly, Koch Industries was–and remains– among them, and there are calls to boycott goods like Bounty paper towels, that are produced by Koch subsidiaries.

American pundits sometimes seem divided between the tiresome ideologues who believe the market can solve every problem known to humankind, and the equally tiresome scolds who want to replace capitalism entirely. Actually, both the unwillingness of some companies to forego profits in order to help pressure Russia to withdraw, and the calls to boycott those companies, display what we might think of as the yin and yang of capitalism.

Ignore, for the purposes of the ensuing discussion, the fact that the American economy has devolved into crony capitalism and corporatism, a situation that deserves its own analysis.

America’s most pervasive and longstanding economic error has been one of categorization–determining what goods and services should be left to free (appropriately regulated) markets, and which by their very nature must be collectively supplied by government. Other western nations have long understood that the provision of effective and accessible health care, for example, is incompatible with a market approach. (Market transactions require a willing buyer and willing seller, both of whom are in possession of all information relevant to the transaction–an impossibility with respect to health care.)

On the other hand, there is no reason for government to be involved in the manufacture or sale of most consumer goods. The genius of a properly operating capitalism is its ability to provide us with a multiplicity of products and sources of entertainment. Government agencies would be highly unlikely to invent the iPhone…or Netflix.

If we are to have a properly operating economy–not to mention a properly operating government–we need to distinguish between the consumer goods that are most efficiently provided by the market, and the social and physical infrastructure that must be provided by government.

A good example is education. Efforts to “privatize” public education rest on the mistaken assumption that education is just another consumer good–that schools exist only to provide children with the skills to compete–or at least operate–successfully in the economy. That assumption entirely ignores what has been called the “civic mission” of public education–the role of our public schools in the transmission of democratic norms, and the forging of a common American identity among children from diverse backgrounds.

So what does all this have to do with Ukraine?

When we look at Sonnenfeld’s list of companies that have placed profit above morality, we see the dark side of capitalism–its tendency to incentivize greed over concern for the human consequences of economic (mis)behavior. (It is encouraging, and worth noting , that the list of companies that have elected to remain is far, far shorter than the list of those that have pulled out–often at considerable cost.)

When we look at the calls to boycott the products of the companies that have elected to “dig in,” we see the power consumers can wield in market economies. Consumers “vote” with our dollars, and if enough of us choose to do so, we can punish companies engaging in behaviors of which we disapprove. A number of such boycotts have succeeded in the past and there are several websites enumerating those successes.

When it comes to mega-businesses like Koch Industries, it’s admittedly difficult: their products are pretty much everywhere. (Here’s a list.) Others–like Subway– are much easier to spot.

Bottom line: market economies provide consumers with the ability to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior–but just like democracy, delivering those rewards and punishments requires an informed and engaged populace.

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Wisdom From Harvey Fierstein

Sometimes, you stumble across wisdom in the least predictable places.

Time Magazine recently had an interview with gay icon Harvey Fierstein,. The interview was triggered by the publication of Fierstein’s memoir, titled “I Was Better Last Night.” As you might expect from a writer known for his wit, the interview elicited some funny responses; for example, asked what had prompted him to write the memoir–what circumstances had led him to consider doing so–Fierstein replied,

First, you arrange for a global pandemic. You clean your desk of all other garbage; then you look around the house for other things to do. I made five quilts. I walked the dog. And then the next thing—the only thing—I could possibly come up with, besides cleaning the refrigerator, which is nothing anybody ever wants to do, was to write my memoir.

The interview covered a number of more serious topics, several focused on Fierstein’s long history of activism on behalf of gay rights. But it was the following exchange that made me stop and reread both the question (in bold) and the answer.

You wrote about rehearsals for the Torch Song Trilogy, and a scene specifically where Estelle Getty took issue with a line from her character, when she tells her son, “It gets better.” She’s talking specifically about grief, but that phrase has become such a rallying cry for the LGBTQ community more broadly—and maybe too generally—in recent years. Do you think that’s been the case?

Whatever you survive becomes a triumph, right? And I think time, you know, does make things better. Does it bring somebody back to life? No. But makes it easier to take that breath without that incredible pain underneath. Do things get better politically just because time passes? No. You actually have to do the work. One thing that people don’t understand, and I don’t understand why they don’t understand, is that you can’t go backwards. Nothing goes backwards! If you want to go backwards in time, you’re just kidding yourself. Especially these days when you see this ‘Make America Great Again’ idiocy; I look at those people and what I see are these walking skeletons. Dead people. They’re not looking to the future, and if you’re not looking to the future you’re not alive. You are saying, I am no longer a force in the world. I am just a memory. And that’s no way to live.

This exchange highlighted the under-appreciated connection between the pain of loss and the utter uselessness of trying to reverse that loss. Reading it made me (marginally) more understanding of the people trying so desperately to return the country and the world to an earlier time that existed in their (very selective) memories.

Most of us who have reached a “certain age” have experienced the grief that comes when loved ones or friends of longstanding die, and we have no choice but to come to terms with the hole in our lives that results. Three years ago, I lost my best friend of 50 years, and Fierstein is exactly right when he says that “it gets better” is limited to the dulling of the pain, not its absence.

He is definitely right when he points out what should be obvious: you can’t go back.

No matter how much you grieve–about a personal loss, about the disappearance of a social environment in which you felt comfortable–your grief, nostalgia and yearning won’t reverse what has happened. If you aren’t working on accepting changes you cannot undo, Fierstein is exactly right: you aren’t really living.

Reading the interview reminded me of my grandfather’s favorite saying: denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

When people are unwilling to accept reality–when they are in denial–they are surrendering an important, even essential part of what makes us human. Acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t feel the pain of loss; that pain also makes us human. It does mean that–as Fierstein eloquently framed it–if you’re not looking to the future, if you’re not engaging with your environment as it actually exists and making decisions about how you will continue that engagement, you aren’t truly alive.

Fierstein’s observation made me think of that famous line from the movie “The Sixth Sense,” where the young boy says “I see dead people.”

So does Fierstein. So do I. A lot of them.

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Can Human Ingenuity Save Us?

There used to be a television soap opera called–if I remember accurately–“As the World Turns.” Today, an all-too-real soap opera might be called “As the World Burns,” and those of us who believe in science and evidence have no choice but to watch–and worry about what will happen.

It seems increasingly clear that the outcome will depend upon whether we can avert calamity long enough to allow new technologies to moderate climate change and avoid the worst of the predicted outcomes. And promising technologies are being developed.

Just a couple of recent reports give a sense of the various efforts to provide food and energy while reducing global warming. From Fast Company, we learn that

Inside bioreactors in a Vienna-based lab, the startup Arkeon Biotechnologies is reimagining farming: Using a single-step process of fermentation, it’s turning captured CO2 into ingredients for food. Unlike other fermentation processes—such as brewing beer—it doesn’t start with sugars from plants. Instead, the company uses a microorganism with the unique ability to directly transform CO2 into the building blocks for carbon-negative protein.

“The unique feature of the microorganism we’re using is that it’s producing all of the amino acids that we need in human nutrition,” says Gregor Tegl, the CEO of Arkeon, which just raised a seed round of $7 million from investors, including Synthesis Capital and ReGen Ventures….

Because the fermentation process also works without any inputs like sugar, it can avoid the environmental impact of growing and harvesting crops. “Basically, it has the potential to bypass agriculture,” says Michael Mitsakos, principal at Evig Group. That efficiency will make the amino acids cheaper than what’s on the market now, he says. Arkeon has also calculated that using its bioreactors to produce protein takes 99% less land than traditional agriculture—potentially creating the opportunity for farmland to turn into forests to help fight climate change—and uses 0.01% of the water in traditional farming. Since the production process uses captured CO2 and few other resources, the ingredients are carbon negative.

When it comes to the world’s vast appetite for energy, we are seeing in real time how important it is to divest ourselves of reliance on fossil fuels-and not just to address climate change. If the West no longer needed oil and gas from Russia, one of Putin’s most potent weapons would vanish. A Ukrainian climate scientist was recently quoted on the connection between climate change and war:

Burning oil, gas and coal is causing warming and impacts we need to adapt to. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries are dependent upon these fossil fuels, they don’t make themselves free of them. This is a fossil fuel war. It’s clear we cannot continue to live this way, it will destroy our civilization.”

We are closer to weaning ourselves from fossil fuels– by accessing geothermal energy.

Geothermal energy resources are virtually immeasurable . One estimate is that the heat located just within the first 6.25 miles of the Earth’s surface would yield 50,000 times more energy than the world’s oil and natural gas supplies. If we can tap into it, it’s renewable and nearly free of emissions. The problem has been in reaching it, due to the immense heat encountered in the deep subsurface. (That heat has melted conventional drilling bits, among other things.) New, highly advanced drilling technologies are “pushing the envelope of what can be achieved in conventional drilling operations.”

The linked article describes one such advanced drilling process; an article from Treehugger describes another.

But Quaise Energy, a startup spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is applying new drilling technology to make it possible to get geothermal energy anywhere. They don’t want to lily dip at 6.5 miles, either, but they want to go down 12 miles to where it is even hotter (930 degrees Fahrenheit) and anywhere in the world—perhaps right next to existing generating plants already attached to the grid.

Rather than using drill bits that will wear out or melt, they drill with microwaves. It vaporizes boreholes through rock and provides access to deep geothermal heat without complex downhole equipment. It’s described as a “radical new approach to ultra-deep drilling.”

Quaise’s long-term plan is to approach power plants running on fossil fuels and offer to drill geothermal fields customized to match their existing equipment. The fields sit on a footprint 100 to 1,000 times less than what’s needed for solar or wind. Once hooked up, it’s basically business as usual: turbines create electricity and feed it to the grid—and our homes, cars, and businesses—via existing infrastructure.

These and multiple other new technologies are enormously promising, but even if most of them come to fruition, their ability to halt planetary warming will take time.

I sure hope we have that time.

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Messaging

A longtime friend–a moderate Democrat–recently sent me the following email (I am pasting it in verbatim.)

A recent headline, “The brand is so toxic Dems fear extinction in rural US” jumped off the page. The article by AP writer Steve Peoples repeated and articulated well what so many of us have thought for several years. Ds do a terrible job of creating a desirable brand. Here, in southern Indiana, where less than 10% of the population has a college degree, Ds use terms like metric tons of CO2, while Rs talk about outrageous price per gallon at the pump. Ds read and quote the NYT and US News and condemn the idea of book police. Rs text why Coach Woodson’s player rotation is wrong. Ds promote the statistical benefits of vaccinations. Rs simply demand that the school kids not have to wear a damn mask.

I am proud to be among the 10% who read the NYT, see benefit in exposure to ideas, think the liberal arts professors are underpaid and still wear my mask into ACE Hardware. But Mr. Peoples is correct. One need only look at Indiana’s 9th congressional district to see clear and irrefutable evidence. We Ds are terrible at branding. We seem doomed to take a licking, and maybe soon stop ticking, to paraphrase John Cameron Swayze.

It’s hard to disagree with the essential point, which is that Democratic “talking points” aren’t connecting to those we think of as “average Americans.” I would also agree with the rather obvious implication of that observation, to wit: Democrats need to fashion messages that would be likely to resonate with the inhabitants of southern Indiana and the country’s rural precincts.

However.

It’s easy enough to cringe at slogans like “Defund the Police” –which not only repelled large numbers of voters, but utterly failed to describe the policy change that was being proposed. The persistent complaints about messaging, however, aren’t limited to such examples.

It may be worth taking a step back and examining the roots of that perceived messaging problem–and the extent to which it is and is not about messaging.

As I have previously noted, today’s Democratic Party is not only a far bigger “tent” than the GOP, it is a far bigger tent than it has previously been, thanks to a massive exodus of sane people from what the Republican Party has become. Devising messages that will appeal to all parts of the Democrats’ ideological spectrum–a spectum that spans from relatively conservative GOP refugees all the way to the Democrats who think AOC and Bernie Sanders are insufficiently liberal–isn’t a simple exercise in clever PR.

There is another challenge to the strategists trying to devise messaging that will appeal to “ordinary Americans” who don’t read the New York Times or accept the scientific consensus on climate change or COVID. As those of us who count ourselves among those refugees (in my case, a long-time defector) can attest, there is no messaging that will penetrate the faith-based cult that is today’s GOP. Today’s Republican Party is owned by White Christian Nationalists who cheered for Trump and Putin because they were champions for their version of Christianity–pro-patriarchy, anti-LGBTQ, anti-“woke,” etc. They aren’t going to respond to messages from a point of view that is entirely inconsistent with their hysterical effort to reinstate cultural dominance.

That leaves “messaging” directed to the dwindling numbers of “persuadable.” I agree that it would be worthwhile to find an approach that would appeal to those individuals–but I will also point out that any effort to craft such messages should be preceded by research into the reason(s) for their current status. Are they disconnected and disinterested? Disgusted by today’s political reality and loss of civility? Uninformed? All of the above?

I am by no means intending to diminish the importance of messaging. Words matter, and they matter a lot. But given where we are right now–given the substitution of a semi-religious cult for one of our only two major parties–I’d suggest putting all of our resources into messages and volunteer efforts focused on turning out the substantial majority of voters who already are in broad agreement with Democratic priorities. Polling consistently shows that the elements of Biden’s Build Back Better, for example, are widely popular.

We just have to remember that–given the multiple political and psychological barriers to casting a ballot–messages alone will not get voters to the polls.

And as Paul Ogden periodically reminds us, we also need to make sure that the people counting the votes of those we do turn out are counting them accurately.

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