... The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old
freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to
Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said.
Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.
Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and GoogleGOOG +2.28%
Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free
app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent
company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.
Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate
family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for
instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a
subsidiary of Johnson & JohnsonJNJ +0.56%.
Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to
boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than
single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling,
will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the
36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory
labeling of genetically modified food. ...
“How can we create a congregation where work and discipleship are
truly integrated?” This is a question I am hearing more often, even
though much has been written about a theology of work in recent years.
Pastors and church leaders are looking for a programmatic strategy. I don’t think there is one. ...
This is a piece I wrote for the High Calling. They posted it yesterday. What do you think? What ideas do you have?
I recently received a copy of new book by Frank Viola titled God’s Favorite Place on Earth. The book uses a creative approach to reflecting on Jesus' visits to Bethany. Each of the six chapters begins with Viola role-playing Lazarus, narrating the various episodes from his viewpoint. Each chapter then presents the biblical text of the story, followed by Viola's reflections. There are discussion questions at the back for group study.
I confess that I am not typically fond of this genre where an author tries to offer a narrative through the mouth of a biblical character but this worked. I had never really thought about the place of Bethany in the larger scheme of things, at least not in the way Viola has done here. I found this to be an enjoyable read, prompting many moments of reflection. I encourage you to check it out if you are looking for a devotional or for a small group study.
To promote the book, Viola and the publisher will give you twenty-five bonus gifts if you buy by May 7. So jump on over to www.godsfavoriteplace.com and check it out.
There are few better places in the world where Tim Keller could write a
book about career and calling. "New York City is a place where people
live in order to work," says the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church
in Manhattan and author most recently of Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work
(Dutton). "They basically live more in their work than in their
neighborhoods. That . . . means that if you start talking about work,
you get right at their hearts."
In a recent sit-down conversation with This Is Our City executive
producer Andy Crouch, Keller explained why he wanted to write a more
comprehensive book about faith and work, how he learned to answer
congregants' questions about their work, and what Redeemer has done to
equip laypeople to live into their vocations outside the church.
Andy: What's been missing from faith-and-work books that Every Good Endeavor was designed to address?
Tim: When I read faith-and-work books, they tended to pass by each
other. I had the sense that they were drawing on different streams of
thought, maybe different biblical or historical themes. I tend to be a
complexifier. I like to hold the different biblical themes in tension. I
got the sense that most books on faith and work tended to isolate a
certain idea. This book is trying to bring the different streams
together.
What streams of thoughts have been most missing when we talk about faith and work?
It depends on who you're talking about. It seems to me the evangelical
tradition tends to talk a lot about how faith essentially spiritually
helps you deal with the troubles and the stresses of work. You need help
to face challenges.
Mainline churches tend to put more emphasis on social justice and
basically did a critique of capitalism early on, so whenever the
mainline churches or ecumenical movement did faith-and-work stuff, it
was usually critiquing the market, not "how's your heart?"
The Lutheran stream emphasizes that all work is God's work. Worldview
doesn't matter. You make a good pair of shoes, then you're doing God's
work, because work is God's way of caring for creation.
The Calvinist stream was more like yes, it's not just you are caring
for creation through work, but you are shaping it. and therefore your
beliefs have an impact.
When you put those four streams together, I think they're very
comprehensive. If you isolate them from each other, they can create
idiosyncrasies at best and imbalances at worst. ...
... These are all struggles about your vocation. That word has become a synonym for “job,” so that colleges debate the extent to which higher education should be primarily vocational training or whether it should have higher goals, such as cultivating the intellect. But vocation is simply the Latinate word for “calling.” It is one of those theological words—like inspiration, revelation, mission, and vision—that
has been taken over by the corporate world and drained of its meaning.
The idea is that what you do for a living can be a calling. From God.
That He has made you in a certain way and given you certain talents,
opportunities, and inclinations. He then calls you to certain tasks,
relationships, and experiences.
Your job is only a part of that, and
sometimes not the most important part. We have vocations in the family
(being a child, getting married, becoming a parent) and in the society
(being a citizen, being a friend). There are also vocations in the
church (pastor, layperson), but even if you don’t believe in religion,
the vocations are operative. Not only that, according to Martin Luther,
the great theologian of vocation, God works through vocation, including
the work of people who do not believe in Him. God gives us our daily
bread by means of farmers, millers, bakers, and the person who served
you your last meal. God creates new life by means of mothers and
fathers. He heals by means of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. He
protects us by means of police officers, judges, and the military
callings. He creates works of beauty and meaning by the talents He has
given to artists.
The purpose of every vocation—in the
workplace, the family, the church, the society—is to love and serve our
neighbors. These are the “good works” that we are given to do. That may
sound idealistic. Surely in our participation in the economy we are
motivated by our enlightened self-interest. And yet it is surely true
that if we are not helping someone by the goods or services we provide,
we will not stay in business very long. Even our self-interests are
taken up into God’s providential workings. In serving ourselves we also
find ourselves serving others, whether or not that is our intention.
Thus our work, our families, and our citizenship can be charged with
moral and even spiritual significance. ...
... College students are often so fixated on what their future vocations may be that they forget that they have vocations right now.
Slinging burgers may be a dull and boring
occupation with the sole purpose of earning tuition money. While it
won’t be your vocation forever, it is still a calling, a sphere of
service to one’s neighbors–customers, the boss, fellow workers—and a
meaningful human enterprise.
College students also have a vocation as
members of their family, with obligations to their parents, brothers,
and sisters. They also have a vocation as citizens of the various
communities they inhabit (their hometown, their college community, their
state, their country). They also have vocations in their religious
communities, if they have one.
Most notably, they have the vocation of
being college students. This calling, like all the others, has its
proper work—namely, to study, read, go to class, discuss ideas, and
write papers. ...
Good stuff! In the popular vernacular we typically think of "vocation" as an "occupation." "Vocation," or "calling," is mission given to us by God. R. Paul Stevens talks about three vocations.
Human vocation - Doing all of those things we do that make our world run and contribute to human flourishing that God called us to do at creation.
Christian vocation - Caring on the work of Christ in the world.
Personal vocation - Our particular response to the first two vocations in our particular time and context.
Our occupation is an important application of our vocation but our occupation can change. It is only one among many possible applications. And vocation includes much more than our occupation.
A question someone posed to me a few weeks ago (I’m sorry, I forgot to write down who asked this…):
“I am a fellow photographer desiring to make a business and have
been thinking through things such as: What is work according to God?
What does it look like? What does rest look like? How have these two
been redeemed by Christ? What are they going to look like for my life? …
I would love to hear your mission statement: the reason you work and
the way you should work. I would also love to hear any edifying words
you have for someone starting a photography business.
This is such a great question, and a necessary thing for any person
to think through, whether Christian or not— regardless of whether you
are an artist, a businessman, a homemaker, or a student. I’m going to
answer this in points, that could, perhaps, be an entire blog series, but I have so many other questions to answer that I’m just going to do this all in one shot. ...
1. Defining Work
What is work according to God? What does it look like? What does rest look like? How have these two been redeemed by Christ?
Answer: work is an expression of God’s character. It’s original
purpose is the “advancement of human flourishing to the glory of God.”
We were made to work, because we were made in th image of God, who is a
Worker.
I attended The Gospel at WorkConference
back in January. The opening session was entitled, “The Theology of
Work,” and is to date, one of the best sermon’s I’ve ever heard. You can
download the message here (and I highly recommend that you do so… like, NOW). A few basic points from that message: ...
Read the whole thing. You may not agree with her at every point but I love how she is wrestling with a practical theology of work in her in own context and being intentional about integrating her life.
Someday I'm actually going to finish reading Haidt's book but in the meantime I found this article fascinating. I think it fits well as I try to listen to the narratives and values underlying confrontation over controversial issues.
... I conducted interviews to find out how people feel about harmless taboo violations—for example, a family that eats its pet dog after the dog was killed by a car, or a woman who cuts up her nation’s flag to make rags to clean her toilet. In all cases the actions are performed in private and nobody is harmed; yet the actions feel wrong to many people—they found them disgusting or disrespectful. In my interviews, only one group of research subjects—college students in the United States—fully embraced the principle of harmlessness and said that people have a right to do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. People in Brazil and India, in contrast, had a broader moral domain—they were willing to condemn even actions that they admitted were harmless. Disgust and disrespect were sufficient grounds for moral condemnation.
I had predicted those cross-national differences. What I hadn’t predicted was that differences across social classes within each nation would be larger than differences across nations. In other words, college students at the University of Pennsylvania were more similar to college students in Recife, Brazil, than they were to the working-class adults I interviewed in West Philadelphia, a few blocks from campus. There’s something about the process of becoming comparatively well-off and educated that seems to shrink the moral domain down to its bare minimum—I won’t hurt you, you don’t hurt me, and beyond that, to each her own. ...
... Drawing on the work of many anthropologists (particularly Richard Shweder at the University of Chicago) and many evolutionary biologists and psychologists, my colleagues and I came to the conclusion that there are six best candidates for being the taste buds of the moral mind: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Liberty/Oppression, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation.
Moral foundations theory helped to explain the differing responses to those harmless taboo violations (the dog-eating and flag-shredding). Those stories always violated the Loyalty, Authority, or Sanctity foundations in ways that were harmless. My educated American subjects (who, in retrospect, I realize were mostly liberal) generally rejected those three foundations and had a moral “cuisine” built entirely on the first three foundations; so if an action doesn’t harm anyone (Care/Harm), cheat anyone (Fairness/Cheating), or violate anyone’s freedom (Liberty/Oppression), then you can’t condemn someone for doing it. But in more traditional societies, the moral domain is broader. Moral “cuisines” are typically based on all six foundations (though often with much less reliance on Liberty), and it is perfectly sensible to condemn people for homosexual behavior among consenting adults, or other behaviors that challenge traditions or question authority.
Everyone values the first three foundations, although liberals value the Care foundation more strongly. For example, they show the strongest agreement with assertions such as “Compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue.” But this difference on Care is small compared to the enormous difference on items such as these: “People should be loyal to their family members, even when they have done something wrong.” “Respect for authority is something all children need to learn.” “People should not do things that are disgusting, even if no one is harmed.” Those three items come from the scales we use to measure the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, respectively. You can see how social conservatives, whose morality rests in large part on those foundations, don’t see eye to eye with liberals. Basically, liberals want to loosen things up, especially in ways that they believe will make more room for women, African Americans, gay people, and other oppressed groups to escape from traditional strictures, express themselves, and succeed. Conservatives want to tighten things up, especially in ways that they perceive will help parents to raise more respectful and self-controlled kids, and will assist the police and other authorities in maintaining order. You can see how those disagreements led to battle after battle on issues related to sexuality, drug use, religion, family life, and patriotism. You can see why liberals sometimes say that conservatives are racist, sexist, and otherwise intolerant. You can see why social conservatives sometimes say that liberals are libertine anarchists. ...
... One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity
in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones
who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the
wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top
20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to
charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income
pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their
income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated
by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them
cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do
not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.
But why? Lower-income Americans are presumably no more intrinsically
generous (or “prosocial,” as the sociologists say) than anyone else.
However, some experts have speculated that the wealthy may
be less generous—that the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be
inconsistent with the idea of communal support. Last year, Paul Piff, a
psychologist at UC Berkeley, published research that correlated wealth
with an increase in unethical behavior: “While having money doesn’t
necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff later told New York magazine,
“the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests
above the interests of other people.” They are, he continued, “more
likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically
associate with, say, assholes.” Colorful statements aside, Piff’s
research on the giving habits of different social classes—while not
directly refuting the asshole theory—suggests that other, more complex
factors are at work. In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income
people and people who identified themselves as being on a relatively
low social rung were consistently more generous with limited goods than
upper-class participants were. Notably, though, when both groups were
exposed to a sympathy-eliciting video on child poverty, the compassion
of the wealthier group began to rise, and the groups’ willingness to
help others became almost identical.
If Piff’s research suggests that exposure to need drives generous
behavior, could it be that the isolation of wealthy Americans from those
in need is a cause of their relative stinginess? ...
... Wealth affects not only how much money is given but to whom it is given.
The poor tend to give to religious organizations and social-service
charities, while the wealthy prefer to support colleges and
universities, arts organizations, and museums....
1. The Economisthas an interesting graph showing the captialism has led to greater happiness in member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union countries excluding the three baltic countries.)
There are two ways to define economic mobility: 1) absolute mobility, whether each generation is financially better off than the one before; and 2) relative mobility,
whether you can change your income rank vs. your parents. Most
Americans probably think both measures important. We want to be more
prosperous than mom and dad, but also be able to change our
circumstances and make our dreams come true. ...
... A San Francisco Fed study –
using data tracking families since 1968 — looks at both versions of the
American Dream, finding one healthier than the other. Looking
at absolute mobility, researchers Leila Bengali and Mary Daly find the
United States “highly mobile.” Over the sample period, 67% of US adults
had higher family incomes than their parents, including 83% of those in
the lowest birth quintile, or bottom 20% (versus 54% for children born
into the top quintile, or top 20%.) ...
... It’s true that conservatives’
standard proposals for privatizing Social Security and
voucherizing Medicare would shift risk onto beneficiaries -- but
this plainly isn’t a necessary consequence of the basic
principle. I agree with Konczal that adequate insurance against
economic risk, underwritten by the government, is essential. I
also agree that most conservatives aren’t interested in
providing that guarantee. That’s exactly why liberals ought to
take up the ownership society themselves.
Ownership entails risk, it’s true, but insurance can
minimize it. Ownership also provides control, independence and
self-respect -- things it wouldn’t hurt liberals to be more
interested in. And when it comes to inequality and stagnating
middle incomes, ownership can give wage slaves a stake in the
nation’s economic capital.
Done right, an equity component in government-backed saving
for retirement could be the best idea liberals have had since
the earned-income tax credit (oh, sorry, that started out as a
conservative idea as well). ...
FMRI scans of volunteers' media prefrontal cortexes revealed unique brain activity patterns associated with individual characters or personalities as subjects thought about them.
Researchers already knew humans, animals and plants have evolved in
response to Earth's gravity and they are able to sense it. What we are
still discovering is how the processes occurring within the cells of the
human and plant bodies are affected by the more intense gravity, or
hypergravity, that would be found on a large planet, or the microgravity
that resembles the conditions on a space craft.
According to estimations, engineers expect the the store to generate
around 265,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Store operation will only
require 200,000 kWh, so perhaps that extra wattage could be pumped back
into the grid or used to power nearby utilities.
When people can browse potential dates online like items in a catalog, geo-locate hook-ups on an exercise bike just seven feet away, arrange a spontaneous group date with the app Grouper or arrange a bevy of blind dates in succession with Crazy Blind Date, it makes me wonder if all this newfound technological convenience has, in fact, made romance that much more elusive. Now, we may be more concerned with what someone isn't rather than what they are. And as that twenty-something entrepreneur reminded me over coffee, services like OkCupid, and even Facebook, sap a lot of the mystique out of those first few dates. So, sure, it may be easier than ever to score a date, but what kind of date will it really be?
Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little
bits – theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon
bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented
way, we ignore it’s divine author’s intention to shape our lives through
its story. All humanity communities live out some story that provides a
context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and
direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it
is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is
shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it
should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular
Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the
Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our
lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an
idolatrous culture. Hence the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a
fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally
upright, warmly pious idol worshippers! (p. 12).
I wish someone had taught me basic leadership skills.
“I was well grounded in theology and Bible exegesis, but seminary did
not prepare me for the real world of real people. It would have been
great to have someone walk alongside me before my first church.”
I needed to know a lot more about personal financial issues.
“No one ever told me about minister’s housing, social security,
automobile reimbursement, and the difference between a package and a
salary. I got burned in my first church.”
I wish I had been given advice on how to deal with power groups and power people in the church.
“I got it all wrong in my first two churches. I was fired outright from
the first one and pressured out in the second one. Someone finally and
courageously pointed out how I was messing things up almost from the
moment I began in a new church. I am so thankful that I am in the ninth
year of a happy pastorate in my third church.” ...
A thought provoking peace about how we think about charity. His characterization of Puritanism is way off but most of his substantive points are important to consider.
... The math of wealth is actually pretty simple: It all boils down to
four things: 1. How much you start with, 2. How much income you make, 3.
How much of your income you save, and 4. How good of a rate of return
you get on your savings.
So one obvious thing we could do to make wealth more equal is - surprise! - redistribution. It turns out that income redistribution and wealth
redistribution have much the same effect on the wealth of the poor and
middle-class. Income redistribution is probably a bit better, for two
reasons. First, people with higher incomes tend to save more, meaning
they build wealth more rapidly. Second, people with higher incomes tend
to have less risk aversion, meaning they are more willing to invest in
assets like stocks (which get high average rates of return, although
they are risky) rather than safe assets like savings accounts and CDs
that get low rates of return.
In other words, giving the poor and middle-class more income will boost the amount they are able to save, the percentage they are willing to save, and the return
they get on those savings. Part of the reason America's wealth
distribution is so unequal in the first place is that our income
distribution is very unequal.
But there are reasons to believe that redistribution can't fix all of
the problem, or even most of it. If you do the math, you discover that
in the long run, income levels and initial wealth (factors 1 and 2 from
above) are not the main determinants of wealth. They are dwarfed by
factors 3 and 4 -- savings rates and rates of return. The most potent
way to get more wealth to the poor and middle-class is to get these
people to save more of their income, and to invest in assets with higher
average rates of return.
As I mentioned, income redistribution helps these things a bit, but
it doesn't account for the whole difference. The rich probably save more
than the poor for many more reasons besides the simple fact that
they're rich. In fact, being willing to save more is probably a big part
of how the rich got rich in the first place. "Cheap" is an insult, but
being cheap is how you get rich. If you consume everything you earn,
your consumption will be higher today, but lower twenty years down the
road; in our consumption-focused society, a lot of people are caught in
this trap. And government can and should help them get out. ...
I heard a lecture by economist Peter Rodriquez of the University of Virginia sometime back. He believes our saving problems of the past generation are partly tied to globalization. As emerging markets grew they had more money to invest than their local economies could profitably absorb. American markets were more stable and reliable so the trend was to invest in the American economy. That meant a flood of capital, keeping borrowing cost low, and rising real estate values as foreigners bought up land for investment, making borrowing to buy real estate seem inordinately attractive. Combine this with weak consumer protection against nefarious lending practices and a poorly overseen financial sector, and the circumstances were ripe for disaster.
The great majority of people who become wealthy without having been born into wealth do so through frugal living and dogged investing. Yes, some get hit with challenges that wipe them out and others get lucky breaks, but the bulk of wealth creation happens through discipline practiced over a lifetime. Somehow we have to recover these values.
A lot has been written recently about the rise of the "Nones," people expressing no religious affiliation. Sociologist Brad Wright offers a fascinating insight by looking at the percentage of people at various stages of life report affliation. Young adults are not suprisingly the group with the highest percentage but Wright offers this chart.
Wright makes this observation:
Once again, the percentage of being unaffiliated increased in each
group, but relatively speaking, it’s increased most among the
middle-aged and the elderly. In both the percentage of the unaffiliated
more than tripled, compared to the 2.5x increase in the young. There is
some lagged effect, as the elderly are catching up the middle-aged in
the past decade, but overall, the rise of the religious nones is
something that spans all age groups. Thus it’s a societal-wide change
more than just an age or generational change.
This data doesn't tell us why there is the rise but I have a theory: Church offers little for discerning significance in life.
A few random thoughts (mostly intuitive perceptions.) For
many older adults who grew up in the church, there is disillusionment with
church life. Young adults have who are interested in the church are out
starting up independent congregations that are narrowly targeted to their
particular age demographic. Older Christians feel rejected. As a traditional
congregation tries to become more appealing to the younger demographic,
long-time congregants experience a loss of rhythms and routines that were
meaningful for them. With those gone, worship no longer seems meaningful. Some
look for other congregations but I sense many see the work of integrating into
a new community faith community as too much work. As the number of
congregations with familiar patterns dwindle and close, they slip out the door
into the ether.
Dr. Eileen Lindner, Deputy General Secretary for Research
and Planning of the National Council of Churches USA, gave a presentation a saw
a couple of years ago. She points out the fifty years ago congregations and
denominations were engaged in a whole range of work that ministered to the
world. Beginning the 1960s and 1970s, para-church organizations began to emerge
to do the things congregations once did ... like Young Life and Habitat for
Humanity. Many of the things churches once did have been replaced by nonprofit organizations
that may not have an explicit faith connection. In one sense, the church is
victim of its own success, having encultured values of service into the broader
culture. But the downside is that it frequently feels like all we are left with
is squabbles about internal politics. Congregations and denominations are
struggling for an identity and purpose in relating to the world.
As I’ve written several times, conservative congregations
typically respond by offering programming directed toward therapeutic healing,
personal piety, or political action to stop the “barbarians at the gates.”
Liberal congregations also offer therapeutic healing and personal piety, but
also frequently include political action they discern is directed toward “social
justice.” To me, much of it appears to a be a “me too” response to broader
movements in the culture, hoping to leach off of the meaning people find in
these movements rather than the church itself generating the meaning for
congregants. Religion (right and left) becomes so captive to the categories and
contours of cultural politics that theological understanding is lost. And if
you want to do political action, there are far more dynamic venues than the
church.
And that brings me back to my overarching theory: Church
offers little for discerning significance in life. Too much of church is about
a narrow personal piety (a niche market) while trying to make ourselves relevant
to the culture with “me too” strategies from the periphery of culture. Until people
see how daily life connects with God’s unending mission, I think the Nones
tribe will continue to grow and prosper.
... The subject-area expert, the substantive specialist, will lose some
of his or her luster compared with the statistician and data analyst,
who are unfettered by the old ways of doing things and let the data
speak. This new cadre will rely on correlations without prejudgments and
prejudice. To be sure, subject-area experts won’t die out, but their
supremacy will ebb. From now on, they must share the podium with the
big-data geeks, just as princely causation must share the limelight with
humble correlation.
This transforms the way we value knowledge, because we tend to think
that people with deep specialization are worth more than generalists —
that fortune favors depth.
Yet expertise is like exactitude: appropriate for a small-data world
where one never has enough information, or the right information, and
thus has to rely on intuition and experience to guide one’s way. In such
a world, experience plays a critical role, since it is the long
accumulation of latent knowledge — knowledge that one can’t transmit
easily or learn from a book, or perhaps even be consciously aware of —
that enables one to make smarter decisions.
But when you are stuffed silly with data, you can tap that instead,
and to greater effect. Thus those who can analyze big data may see past
the superstitions and conventional thinking not because they’re smarter,
but because they have the data. (And being outsiders, they are
impartial about squabbles within the field that may narrow an expert’s
vision to whichever side of a squabble she’s on.) This suggests that
what it takes for an employee to be valuable to a company changes. What
you need to know changes, whom you need to know changes, and so does
what you need to study to prepare for professional life.
Harnessing data is no guarantee of business success but shows what is possible.
The shift to data-driven decisions is profound. Most people base
their decisions on a combination of facts and reflection, plus a heavy
dose of guesswork. “A riot of subjective visions — feelings in the solar
plexus,” in the poet W. H. Auden’s memorable words. Thomas Davenport, a
business professor at Babson College in Massachusetts and the author of
numerous books on analytics, calls it “the golden gut.” Executives are
just sure of themselves from gut instinct, so they go with that. But
this is starting to change as managerial decisions are made or at least
confirmed by predictive modeling and big-data analysis.
As big data transforms our lives — optimizing, improving, making more
efficient, and capturing benefits — what role is left for intuition,
faith, uncertainty, and originality? ...
... Big data is not an ice-cold world of algorithms and automatons. What is
greatest about human beings is precisely what the algorithms and silicon
chips don’t reveal, what they can’t reveal because it can’t be captured
in data. It is not the “what is,” but the “what is not”: the empty
space, the cracks in the sidewalk, the unspoken and the
not-yet-thought. There is an essential role for people, with all our
foibles, misperceptions and mistakes, since these traits walk hand in
hand with human creativity, instinct, and genius. ...
I was recently invited to teach a session of a seminary class called “Pastoral Functions” at an extension of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
In this class, the pastors-in-training had been discussing such topics
as Worship, Disciplemaking, Evangelism, Visitation, Funerals, Weddings,
Pastoral Counseling, Children’s Ministry, etc.—topics we’d expect in a
class like this.
But I was invited to talk about something significantly different and
paradigm-shifting. Pastors need to recalibrate their ministry
philosophy so that the members of their congregations are affirmed,
encouraged, and equipped to serve God through their various vocations. I
challenged the students to help the people of God participate in God’s
mission on earth through their vocations. Thankfully, seminaries are
beginning to understand that they will need to transition their
curriculum beyond the traditional topics if they want to train pastors
to lead missional churches. ...
An excellent piece by Bob Robinson. Spot on! Read the whole thing.
1. Conventional wisdom says wearing the red shirt in Star Trek will get you killed. Not so fast. Statistical analysis in Significance Magazine disagrees. (Keep your redshirt on: a Bayesian exploration)
"... In spite of wearing a redshirt, there is
only an 8.6% chance of a member of the operations or engineering
departments becoming a casualty. These personnel should ensure that
their life insurance plans are based on their departments and not their
uniform color.
Although Enterprise crew members in
redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other
uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold
uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the
entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek.
This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of
blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being
a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of
security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance
that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this
red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining
redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single
population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.
Red uniform shirts are safe, as long as the wearer is not in the security department."
2. Interesting piece on automation in the Economist: Robocolleague
Robots are getting more powerful. That need not be bad news for workers. ...
... Historically, technological advances have been relatively benign for
workers. Labour-market trends through the 19th and 20th centuries show
surprising continuity, according to Lawrence Katz of Harvard University
and Robert Margo of Boston University. In recent decades, for example,
computerisation and automation have displaced “middle-skilled” workers
at the same time as employment among high- and low-skilled workers has
increased. This “hollowing out” is not new, Messrs Katz and Margo note.
Early industrialisation had similar effects. Middle-skilled artisans,
like trained weavers, were put out of work by industrial textile
production, but the fortunes of less-skilled factory workers and
white-collar factory managers steadily improved. Mechanisation’s
insatiable appetite for routine work of all types has yet to create mass
unemployment. Quite the opposite.
The worry is that technology now has its sights set on non-routine
tasks as well as mundane ones. Yet Mr Autor notes that just because a
skilled job can be automated does not mean it will be. The number of
workers used to build Nissan vehicles varies a lot between Japan, where
labour is expensive, and India, where it is abundant and cheap. The
relative cost of different types of workers matters for firms as they
choose how to deploy new technologies. ...
Indie Capitalism has three foundational principles:
• Creativity generates economic value.
Creativity is the source of profit. Yes, efficiency can squeeze more
out of what exists, but creativity gives us originality, which
translates into a market advantage and big margins.
• Creativity drives capitalism.
These past few years we have been victimized by the disastrous results
of “creativity” applied to the financial sector (mortgage-backed
securities, for starters). What we lost sight of is that the scaling of
creativity to actually make things of value sold in the marketplace is
the true heart of our economic system. It is the true generator of net
new jobs, wealth, and tax revenue.
• Creative destruction is crucial to economic growth.
Crony capitalism, which relies on monopoly and political power, is
antithetical to entrepreneurial capitalism. A faster cycle of birth,
growth, and death of companies boosts creativity, economic value, and
growth.
The bottom line: For the first time in decades, several key economic drivers have created a competitive advantage for the U.S. that will encourage corporate strategic decisions on capital allocation and acquisitions for generations to come.
Here's why:
1. Cheap and abundant natural gas. ...
2. Innovation. Despite talk of a brain drain, the U.S. remains the global innovation leader, maintaining a position enjoyed for 50 years. ...
3. Rule of law. Without the means to protect intellectual property, it cannot be exploited for competitive advantage. ...
4. Human capital. The wage gap between the U.S. and China has been shrinking. ...
5. De-complexity. Western multinationals continue to struggle with management of operations in developing countries. ...
6. Public policy and abundance. The federal government appears to be seizing the opportunity to promote job growth at home.
7. Credit, currency and the coming wave of mergers and acquisitions.
"Picture an assembly line not that isn’t made up of robotic arms spewing sparks to weld heavy steel, but a warehouse of plastic-spraying printers producing light, cheap and highly efficient automobiles.
If Jim Kor’s dream is realized, that’s exactly how the next generation of urban runabouts will be produced. His creation is called the Urbee 2 and it could revolutionize parts manufacturing while creating a cottage industry of small-batch automakers intent on challenging the status quo. ..."
Throughout history, war and innovation have gone hand in hand,
whether it’s breakthroughs out of heavily funded R&D programs
or makeshift contraptions thrown together with spare parts. Soldiers are
trained to use the technology on hand to get the job done, one way or
the other.
But how would military operations change if soldiers on the
battlefield could have the best of both worlds: access to expert
engineers able to fabricate custom-designed fixes right on-the-spot and
in very little time? ...
"It may sound strange and far out, but it’s actually quite simple. 4D
printing is being billed as a process where synthetic objects can change
and adapt themselves to the environment. In a recent TED interview, Tibbits compared the process of 4D printing to the process of natural adaptation:
Natural systems obviously have this built in — the
ability to have a desire. Plants, for example, generally have the desire
to grow towards light and they generate energy from the translation of
photosynthesis, carbon dioxide to oxygen, and so on. This is extremely
difficult to build into synthetic systems — the ability to “want” or
need something and know how to change itself in order to acquire it, or
the ability to generate its own energy source. If we combine the
processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic
instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial
or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure,
mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale
quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms."
The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the
digital revolution, said on Tuesday that its global sales rose last year
for the first time since 1999, raising hopes that a long-sought
recovery might have begun.
The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5
billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at
its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the
record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday
by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide
significant encouragement.
8. Teleworking: The myth of working from home from the BBC. "Yahoo has banned its staff from "remote" working. After years of many predicting working from home as the future for everybody, why is it not the norm?"
"Reasons for high unemployment among the young include ineffective education systems (the share of early school dropouts is 20% in Italy and 30% in Spain) and dual labour markets with highly protected jobs for older employees. The good performance of Germany is not least a result of the German apprenticeship system, which facilitates labour market access for school leavers by lowering the company’s costs for employing them. The OECD’s latest “Going for Growth” report recommends reforms to strengthen the vocational training systems as one of the most effective ways to fight structural youth unemployment. This would also be a reasonable starting point for the EU’s youth employment programme."
"What’s most revealing about this study is that, like earlier research,
it suggests that students’ preference for printed textbooks is reflects
the real pedagogical advantages they experience in using the format:
fewer distractions, deeper engagement, better comprehension and
retention, and greater flexibility to accommodating idiosyncratic study
habits. Electronic textbooks will certainly get better, and will
certainly have advantages of their own, but they won’t replicate the
particular advantages inherent to the tangible form of the printed book."
The Catholic Church has struggled to bring in young members in the
United States. Less than half of U.S. Hispanics between 18 and 29
identify as Catholic, compared with the 60+ percent of Hispanics older
than 50.
The narrative of decline in the mainline church underestimates the continuing influence of its members, says a religion researcher.
16.Some interesting observations by NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He says we tend to process our social world through three lenses: Social distance, hierarchy, and disgust. Conservatives tend to have a lower threshold of revulsion while liberals, and praticularly libertarians, have a higher threshold.
A fat salary isn’t the only way someone can strike it rich. Regardless
of one’s income level, people who live below their means, invest wisely,
and live modestly are on the path to real wealth.
Here are five frugal habits that many of the upper class have adopted to build long-lasting wealth and financial independence:
Drive a modest car. Your car should only serve the purpose of getting you safely and comfortably from point A to point B—nothing more. ...
Buy a modest house.Warren Buffett
famously still lives in the Omaha, Neb., home he bought back in 1958
for $31,500. Take Buffett’s cue and don’t overwhelm yourself with a
large monthly mortgage payment. Buy a modest and comfortable home and use the money you save to build your savings and retirement fund.
Don’t pay full price. A great way to keep more of your money is by not paying full price on anything. ...
Have an action mentality. Almost all self-made millionaires have
one thing in common: They are people of action. They don’t sit around
feeling sorry for themselves waiting for something good to happen to
them, as opposed to the people who I would say have the “lottery
mentality.” People of action take appropriate risks, are constantly
looking to improve themselves, and are addicted to knowledge, as it is
the best way to gain a competitive advantage in life’s financial
endeavors.
This article reminded my of a book written several years ago called The Millionare Next Door. We tend to confuse high income with high wealth. A great many people with the expensive houses and cars are spending more than earn. Their net worth is zero or less. Most people with a net wealth of one million or more live in modest homes, never buy new cars (or at least not expensive ones), watch expenses like a hawk, and are proactive with their investing. I think the never ending challenge for a follower of Jesus is a three part balancing exercise between personal consumption, giving, and investing wisely to care for one's own needs as well as to have more to give to others. I think the balance can very considerably between individuals, as well as vary over our lifetimes, based on any number of issues ranging from vocation to stage of life. I don't think the church does a very good job of helping us think this through.
... Data struggles with the social. Your brain is pretty bad at
math (quick, what’s the square root of 437), but it’s excellent at
social cognition. People are really good at mirroring each other’s
emotional states, at detecting uncooperative behavior and at assigning
value to things through emotion. ...
... Data struggles with context. Human decisions are not discrete
events. They are embedded in sequences and contexts. The human brain has
evolved to account for this reality. People are really good at telling
stories that weave together multiple causes and multiple contexts. Data
analysis is pretty bad at narrative and emergent thinking, and it cannot
match the explanatory suppleness of even a mediocre novel.
Data creates bigger haystacks. This is a point Nassim Taleb,
the author of “Antifragile,” has made. As we acquire more data, we have
the ability to find many, many more statistically significant
correlations. Most of these correlations are spurious and deceive us
when we’re trying to understand a situation. Falsity grows exponentially
the more data we collect. The haystack gets bigger, but the needle we
are looking for is still buried deep inside. ...
... Big data has trouble with big problems. If you are trying to
figure out which e-mail produces the most campaign contributions, you
can do a randomized control experiment. But let’s say you are trying to
stimulate an economy in a recession. You don’t have an alternate society
to use as a control group. For example, we’ve had huge debates over the
best economic stimulus, with mountains of data, and as far as I know
not a single major player in this debate has been persuaded by data to
switch sides.
Data favors memes over masterpieces. Data analysis can detect
when large numbers of people take an instant liking to some cultural
product. But many important (and profitable) products are hated
initially because they are unfamiliar.
Data obscures values. I recently saw an academic book with the
excellent title, “ ‘Raw Data’ Is an Oxymoron.” One of the points was
that data is never raw; it’s always structured according to somebody’s
predispositions and values. The end result looks disinterested, but, in
reality, there are value choices all the way through, from construction
to interpretation.
This is not to argue that big data isn’t a great tool. It’s just that,
like any tool, it’s good at some things and not at others. As the Yale
professor Edward Tufte has said, “The world is much more interesting
than any one discipline.”
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
You might hate your job, but there’s nothing like a good song to make
you feel like you’re not alone. (I mean, except when you think about
it, and realize that the musicians who performed the song probably no
longer have to work in an office, and are most likely drinking Champagne
with supermodels in a brand-new Learjet 85, while you’re eating
off-brand corn chips you bought from a convenience store that the health
department should have closed down a long time ago.)
The point is, labor has been the single
most popular subject of pop songs for decades (besides girls, cars,
alcohol, parties, religion, and about 10,000 other things). So below,
we’ve collected 20 of the best songs about the working life. Think of it
as an extremely depressing playlist, like if your local radio station
hired a German film director as its morning drive-time DJ. If we missed
anything, let us know in the comments! (But be nice, or we’ll tell your
boss you’re goldbricking again.) ...
Not so long ago, most ecclesiastical officials and Catholic academicians emphasized solidarity as a political
ideal. Owing to a common misunderstanding of both government and
solidarity, that emphasis was almost always at the expense of
subsidiarity. In recent years, however, the tide in favor of
subsidiarity has begun to turn.
It remains true that concern for the poor and marginalized must be a
significant political priority, reflected in how we conceive and use
government. But what too many Catholics missed for much of the twentieth
century was that solidarity is not really a political virtue
at all, whereas subsidiarity is. Solidarity is the concern of all for
all. It is the sense of responsibility we are all supposed to have for
each other. It leads to that true care and reciprocity which are the
marks of a healthy society, and it is prior to politics and government.
But insofar as solidarity has been incorrectly viewed as a political
virtue, too many Catholics have insisted on the need to mimic solidarity
by using government to enforce what they think the results of
solidarity should look like. ...
... In contrast, the principle of subsidiarity is distinctively a political
virtue, though not exclusively so. Based on the truth that human dignity
includes the right and the duty of persons to freely participate in the
solutions to their own problems, the principle of subsidiarity states
that everything should be done at the lowest possible level of
organization, and that whenever something more is needed, higher levels
of organization are obliged to assist lower levels rather than to
supplant them. This means that in the political order the virtue of
subsidiarity actually preserves and fosters the conditions within which
solidarity can flourish, even if solidarity does not necessarily
flourish as a direct result. ...
... However, despite this broad consensus, and its obvious health and
quality-of-life implications, there seems little empirical survey
evidence that daily life is truly speeding up. ...
... In that 1965 survey, we found 24 percent of respondents aged 18-64 said
they “always” felt rushed, and 48 percent said they had no excess time.
When we repeated the questions in the 1990s, these figures had risen to
35 percent “always” rushed and 55 percent with no excess time, where
they remained, more or less, until we last asked the questions in a 2004
survey.
This set the stage, then, for our repeating these questions in two
separate surveys in 2009-10. Quite contrary to our expectations, both of
these surveys now showdecreases
in Americans feeling “always” rushed particularly among the busiest
group of those aged 18 to 64 — a 7-point drop in feeling always rushed
to 28 percent — and a drop to 45 percent in those feeling no excess
time. ...
... Almost 50 percent of respondents who feel least rushed and who
also feel least excess time report being “very happy”, almost twice as
high as the rest of the US public. It is an elite group, making up less
than 10 percent of the population. They not only seem happier by
ignoring the “rat race” and subscribing to a philosophy of “Don’t hurry,
be happy,” but by organizing their lifestyles to minimize spells of
boredom and lack of focus as well. Thus, there seems dysfunction in
having either too much or too little free time. In a society that
otherwise seems obsessed with speed and the latest IT gadgets, this
would seem to offer a path to a more contented lifestyle.
Over the years I've had conversations with pastors who want to do more to integreate faith and work but struggle to know where to begin. Re-Integrate has a post with some very practical ideas.
Many conservative Christians have embrace government as a tool for achieving
their moral vision for society, a mindset that dates back to at least the 1970s.
Many people are now questioning the wisdom of this alliance. Stephen Prothero
recently wrote recently, "Americans have historically opted to
split the difference between living in a nation in which church and state are
married and one in which they are not allowed to date." The church has
role in the public discourse. But when church becomes too closely allied with a
political objective, a political party, or a politician, it becomes captive to a
mindset of power and domination. That is today’s context. It isn't the first
time we have been here and it won't be the last. As Prothero rightly notes, we
seem to go through cycles of balance and imbalance on how church and state
should relate.
The Christian Left (or progressives) hold themselves up as the antidote to this
unholy alliance between the church and state. They are prophetic. Unlike
conservatives who were in the tank for Bush and the Republican Party, they stand
unflinchingly for justice. Addressing the issue of torture is a good example.
The Bush administration used "enhanced interrogation techniques"
like waterboarding. This was torture and torture is never justified, we were
told. No amount of oversight, no amount of justification can EVER
justify torture. Not only is torture not Christian but it violates commonly
agreed upon ethics in the community of nations. There are no exceptions. Add to
this Guantanamo Bay and holding prisoners without due process. Bush is not a
Christian because no Christian would engage in torture. Bush and his
administration are war criminals. Bush should have been impeached but even
today he should be brought up on charges of war crimes. The church must take a
prophetic stand against injustice. Five and six years ago I can remember a
relentless stream of social media posts and conversations by my progressive
sisters and brothers in the faith along these lines.
Now fast forward a few years and see where we are now. President Obama's
team has not been using "enhanced interrogation techniques" (as far
as we know). They simply send in drones to, not torture, but kill
anyone they suspect might be a threat, apparently while occasionally killing
innocent bystanders. We are learning now that apparently these clandestine acts
could be targeting Americans abroad who are suspected of terrorist
activity. And, oh yes, last I checked, we are now in Obama’s second
administration and Guantanamo Bay is still open with no foreseeable end. Where
are the prophetic voices today? Cue the soundtrack with crickets chirping.
Oh sure, there are few voices here and there showing outrage, just as there
were conservative voices here and there expressing outrage during the Bush
Administration. There are expressions of disappointment at the Obama's
"failings" just as there were by conservatives about Bush. Obama has
strayed over the line a little and we need to bring him back. After all, it’s
complicated. But where is the relentless prophetic vitriol about a war criminal
president who is a faux Christian?
“Last
year Brown University’s Michael Tesler released a fascinating study showing
that Americans inclined to racially blinkered views wound up opposing policies
they would otherwise support, once they learned those policies were endorsed by
President Obama. Their prejudice extended to the breed of the president’s dog,
Bo: They were much more likely to say they liked Portuguese water dogs when
told Ted Kennedy owned one than when they learned Obama did.
But Tesler found that the Obama effect worked the opposite way, too:
African-Americans and white liberals who supported Obama became more likely to
support policies once they learned the president did.
More than once I’ve worried that might carry over to bad policies that Obama
has flirted with embracing, that liberals have traditionally opposed: raising
the age for Medicare and Social Security or cutting those programs’ benefits.
Or hawkish national security policies that liberals shrieked about when carried
out by President Bush, from rendition to warrantless spying. Or even worse,
policies that Bush stopped short of, like targeted assassination of U.S.
citizens loyal to al-Qaida (or “affiliates”) who were (broadly) deemed (likely)
to threaten the U.S. with (possible) violence (some day). ...”
I invite you to read the whole thing. She is looking at this from a political
perspective. But there are powerful lessons here for those of us who are
disciples of Jesus. Our affinity for the person or people in power clouds our
ability to be truly prophetic. And the more we cordon ourselves off into echo
chambers the more prone we are to compromise. But I think there is something
else at work here. Look at another controversial issue.
Illegal
immigration is ongoing hot-button issue. Many who advocate for the rights of
undocumented aliens say that opposition to incorporating undocumented aliens
into our society is grounded in racism. Now I can’t recall ever hearing a tight
border advocate say, “I hate Mexicans. Don’t let them in.” So why the
accusation of racism? Because they perceive symbolic hostility.
It is
often culturally inappropriate to express open dislike for a particular class
of people. Nevertheless, that dislike seeks an outlet. Symbolic hostility is
what happens when those with dislike for a community latch on to initiatives that
disadvantage that community but can be supported on a rationale that has
nothing to do with the underlying hostility. It is hostility with plausible deniability,
if you will. Symbolic hostility may be a calculated decision for some but I
suspect for most there is at least a measure of denial. Furthermore, for many,
support of a controversial measure may genuinely be uninfluenced by animus. It
is often difficult to objectively say exactly what it is that motivates us,
much less motivates others. This murkiness is precisely what gives cover to the
hostility.
The
immigration example highlights symbolic hostility that is usually linked with
conservative values. But liberals and progressives claim to be the community of
tolerance. Do they engage in symbolic hostility?
Sociologist
George Yancey had an interesting
post last December where he reviews his research into symbolic hostility.
Using data from the American National Election Study, he identified seven
religious groupings and measured the affection survey respondents had for each
group. Atheists were the most disliked group among respondents, more than twice
the degree of dislike over the second highest group. Christian conservatives
were in second, followed closely behind by Muslims. Yancey then looked at characteristics
of people who had the lowest affection for each group. Not surprisingly, the
least tolerance for atheists was found among political conservatives, the highly
religious, and the least educated. Political conservatives were the least
likely to have tolerance for Muslims. But when it came to tolerance for
Christian conservatives, political progressives, the highly educated, and the
irreligious had the least tolerance. This lack of tolerance was detected at a
statistically significant level. To the degree that there is “Islamophobia”
there is at least as that much animosity by progressives toward Christian
conservatives.
Yancey
goes on to make some distinctions about how animosity is expressed by the
different groups. He notes:
“While
clearly political conservatives are not all violent, they may have a political
philosophy that makes more allowances for violent reactions. [He is not
entirely persuaded of a violence differential.] But those with animosity
towards fundamentalists are well educated, irreligious and political
progressives. Those individuals are more likely to have educational status and
a political philosophy that would reject violence.”
He says
it is naïve to believe that groups experiencing the progressives’ level of
animosity do not act upon it. He offers this insight.
“Given
the propensity of the highly educated and political progressives to avoid being
labeled as intolerant, symbolic racism is a good way to understand how
animosity towards Christian conservatives may be expressed. Individuals with
this animosity are likely hesitant to openly express it but that animosity can
come out on issues where a different reason can hide a hostile expression.”
And, in
this case, being highly educated and in powerful positions, they have the
institutional wherewithal to act.
My
politics and economics is somewhere to the right of center. I have no doubt that
some advocates for some of the positions I embrace are practicing symbolic
hostility. Sometimes it is excruciating to have to listen to someone like this
make the case for a position I actually support. Furthermore, I am human. I can
frequently feel the animosity welling within me toward people who consistently
mock and disparage ideals I value. I don’t come to this discussion as innocent
objective observer. None of us do and progressive Christians are no different.
Many
people have deep moral concerns about violence and torture as practiced by the
previous presidential administration. I don’t doubt that. But I also don't doubt that a significant amount of the vitriol of “prophetic” denunciation toward
the previous administration was more rooted in the spirit of animus than in the
Spirit of God. The relative treatment of the issue with two different
presidents is telling. And this is a repeated pattern on the left with many
issues, mistaking symbolic hostility for prophetic witness.
Conservative
Christians aren’t the only ones who hate. And when being “prophetic” is
dependent upon which party has power or my affinity for a politician, it is not
prophetic. It is symbolic hostility. It is every bit as damaging to the witness
of Jesus Christ as is the alliance of the Christian Right with the state. Are
we not called to something higher?
While writing
this post, I came across the news that two of Fred Phelps’s daughters have left
the Westboro Baptist Church. (See Westboro
Baptist Heiress Pens Online Goodbye to Church) Now this is a group that sees no need for symbolic hostility. They wear their hostility proudly on their sleeves.
Surely if there was ever a group that most of would agree should be worthy of
our hostility, symbolic or otherwise, it is this community. What was the
catalyst for change in Megan Phelps-Roper’s life? An online encounter with an
Israeli web-designer who patiently and respectfully pushed her to reflect on
who God is and God’s mission. That reflection led to repentance. That Israeli
web-designer seemed to be employing a tactic used by an Israeli carpenter
living 2,000 years ago.
Three
lessons I take from these observations:
First,
what am I refraining from saying or doing because my team has the upper hand
right now? Humans tend to bend their moral standards to comply with positions
of people they find admirable. I am human. Do I really wrestle with this?
Second,
when the opportunity arises for me to support an action that is hurtful or
disadvantageous to people who annoy me, why am I really supporting that
measure? And after I’ve engaged in some self-examination and justified an answer
to that question, maybe I then need to reflect on why I am really supporting that measure.
Third,
we will never be fully free of the Christian Right or the Christian Left. Each
camp will continually invite us into their competing games of symbolic hostility.
And they may gain power for a fleeting moment in history. It is deeply seductive.
But I can’t shake the notion that lasting transformation of the world happens when
web-designers, welders, businesspeople, nurses, check-out clerks, scientists,
and the whole host of God’s servants in the world, enter into relationships
with those they dislike and do what that Israeli web-designer did: Imitate that
Israeli carpenter from 2,000 years ago.
Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!
"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've
identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall
flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those
elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic
plan."
"In this way a conception of subsidiarity “from below” is focused on the location of sovereignty from the “bottom up” rather than on the delegation of authority from the “top down.” We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity “from above” and “from below” that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of “sphere sovereignty” in the late nineteenth century and beyond."
"Pally’s essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have “left the right.” But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’ve left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."
"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.
But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."
10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)
From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.
Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.
12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before
"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."
15. Okay purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers will no longer be able to fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?
Sociologist Peter Berger concludes this article with this observation:
... But I do want to make a general observation: In all these cases the
authorities accused of violating the plaintiffs’ rights operate with a
definition of religion as a private matter to be kept out of public
space. There is here a general issue of government overreach, as clearly
illustrated by the (still unresolved) attempt by the Obama
administration to force Catholic institutions to provide contraception
coverage in their employees’ health plans. Beyond that, though, there is
a very ideological view of the place of religion in society. In other
words, religion is to be an activity engaged in by consenting adults in
private. The attorney for the Judeo-Christian side in the aforementioned
American case had it quite right when he compared the treatment of his
client’s religion with measures of disease control. This is not an
attitude one would expect to find in a Western democracy. It is
curiously reminiscent of policies toward religion in Communist countries
and toward non-Muslims under Islamic rule.
An aggressive secularism seems to be on the march in all these cases.
It seems more at home in Europe, which is far more secularized than
America. Even in the United Kingdom, it seems, the drums of the French
Revolution still reverberate. But how is one to explain this sort of
secularism in the United States? The “nones”—that is, those who say
“none” when asked for their religious affiliation by pollsters—are a
very mixed lot. One theme that comes through is disappointment with
organized religion. There is an anti-Christian edge to this, since
Christian churches continue to be the major religious institutions in
this country. Disappointment then, or disillusion—but why the aggressive
hostility? There is yet another theme that comes through in the survey
data: An identification of churches (and that means mainly Christian
ones) with intolerance and repression. I think that this is significant.
Let me venture a sociological hypothesis here: The new American
secularism is in defense of the sexual revolution. Since the 1960s there
has indeed been a sexual revolution in America. It has been very
successful in changing the mores and the law. It should not be
surprising that many people, especially younger ones, enjoy the new
libidinous benefits of this revolution. Whether one approves or deplores
the new sexual culture, it seems unlikely to be reversed. Yet Christian
churches (notably the Catholic and Evangelical ones) are in the
forefront of those who do want to reverse the libertine victory. Its
beneficiaries are haunted by the nightmare of being forced into chastity
belts by an all too holy alliance of clerics and conservative
politicians. No wonder they are hostile!
Despite a deep drop in the number of Americans who identify with a
particular faith, the country could be on the cusp of a religious
renaissance, says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll.
Grounded in more than a million Gallup interviews, Newport’s new book, God Is Alive and Well,
argues that the aging of the baby boomers, the influx of Hispanic
immigrants and the links between religion and health could portend a
bright future for faith in America. [The following interview was edited for length and clarity.]
Why did you write this book?
I
think religion is extremely important in America today. All of our
research shows that, and I wanted to get empirical data about religion
out there, rather than just speculation.
We here at Gallup have
had a tracking project since 2008. We do 350,000 interviews a year,
which is a huge and unique dataset that nobody else has. And personally,
I grew up in a religious background and always found it interesting. ...
Of course, this caught my eye ...
You write that mainline Protestants are pretty much doing everything wrong in terms of growing their churches. Why is that?
For
any group to grow, whether it’s a country or a church, you have to have
more people coming in than going out. For example, the Catholic Church
holds its own in terms of percentage of the American population because
of the in-migration of Hispanics. But there is no massive in-migration
of Protestants.
Second, there’s been no evidence that they’ve been
able to evangelize effectively. And third, one way you grow is to have
high fertility rates. Mormons are doing that well because their theology
encourages big families. But Presbyterians, for example, have fewer
children on average [than other Americans]. So, if you look at all the
ways churches could grow, the mainline Protestants haven’t been able to
hit the nail on the head with any of them. —RNS
"... University of Missouri MarketingProfessor Marsha Richins looks at this phenomenon in a new paper in the Journal of Consumer Research,
"When Wanting Is Better Than Having," where she compares high- and
low-materialist shoppers. "High-materialist" consumers have much higher
expectations of what a product will do for their overall happiness,
which is why positive emotions peak and then fall again after a
purchase.
According to research, materialists are "more likely to
believe that acquisition will change the kind of person they are,
improve their relationships with others, enable them to have more
pleasure in their lives, and enhance the effectiveness with which they
carry out daily tasks." They also experience "more negative emotions, such as anxiety, fear, and envy." ...
I spent New Year's Eve at the red-blooded, all-American epicenter of
college football: at the Chick-fil-A Bowl, next to Dan Cathy, as his
personal guest. It was among the most unexpected moments of my life.
Yes, after months of personal phone calls, text messages and
in-person meetings, I am coming out in a new way, as a friend of
Chick-fil-A's president and COO, Dan Cathy, and I am nervous about it. I
have come to know him and Chick-fil-A in ways that I would not have
thought possible when I first started hearing from LGBT students about
their concerns over the chicken chain's giving practices.
For many this news of friendship might be shocking. After all, I am an out, 40-year-old gay man and a lifelong activist for equality. I am also the founder and executive director of Campus Pride,
the leading national organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender (LGBT) and ally college students. Just seven months ago our
organization advanced a national campaign against Chick-fil-A for the millions of dollars it donated to anti-LGBT organizations
and divisive political groups that work each day to harm hardworking
LGBT young people, adults and our families. I have spent quite some time
being angry at and deeply distrustful of Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A. If
he had his way, my husband of 18 years and I would never be legally
married.
Why was I now standing next to him at one of the most popular football
showdowns? How could I dare think to have a relationship with a man and a
company that have advocated against who I am; who would take apart my
family in the name of "traditional marriage"; whose voice and views
represented exactly the opposite of those of the students for whom I
advocate every day? Dan is the problem, and Chick-fil-A is the enemy,
right? ...
I rarely post on anything dealing with same-sex issues at the Kruse Kronicle because my experience is that people simply cannot carry on a respectful cyber-conversation about the issue. I make an exception here because this story illustrates so well what needs to be happening more and more in our culture, especially in the church! Kudos to Windmeyer and Cathy for showing the way.
(Note: If you can't be respectful (from whatever postion you hold), don't comment!. I will delete the first disrespectful comment (name calling, characterizing people as evil or idiots, etc.). I will close comments with the second. I don't have time in my life to play referee to childish behavior.)
A new paper reviews how psychology, biology, and neurology are
ganging up on economics to prove that, when it comes to making
decisions, people are anything but rational.
Daniel McFadden is an economist. But his new paper, "The New Science of Pleasure,"
shows the many ways economics fails to explain how we make decisions --
and what it can learn from psychology, anthropology, biology, and
neurology.
The old economic theory of consumers says that "people should relish
choice." And we do. Shopping can be fun, democracy is better than its
alternatives, and a diverse and fully stocked grocery store ice cream
freezer is quite nearly the closest thing to heaven on earth. But other
fields of science tell a more complicated story. First, making a choice
is physically exhausting, literally, so that somebody forced to make a
number of decisions in a row is likely to get lazy and dumb. (That's one
reason why stores place candy near the check-out aisle: They suspect
your brain is too zonked to resist.) Second, having too many choices can
make us less likely to come to a conclusion. In a famous study of the
so-called "paradox of choice", psychologists Mark Lepper and Sheena
Iyengar found that customers presented with six jam varieties were more
likely to buy one than customers offered a choice of 24.
If you've read the work of Dan Ariely or Daniel Kahneman,
you know exactly how far from perfectly rational we are when faced with
a decision. Many of our mistakes stem from a central "availability
bias." Our brains are computers, and we like to access recently opened
files, even though many decisions require a deep body of information
that might require some searching. Cheap example: We remember the first,
last, and peak moments of certain experiences. So when we make a choice
about how to spend a certain amount of time -- say, by going to Six
Flags -- we forget that most of the time at an amusement park is spent
waiting around doing nothing. Instead, we remember the thrill of the
roller coaster. (This has been previously used to explain why people
sometimes go back to disappointing old romantic partners, but that might
be for another article.)
The third check against the theory of the rational consumer is the
fact that we're social animals. We let our friends and family and tribes
do our thinking for us. In a fascinating example, McFadden presents a
study that shows Korean peasant women within the same village tend to
use the same contraception -- even though there is "substantial,
persistent diversity across villages." This pattern could not be
explained by income, education, or price. Word-of-mouth explained
practically all the difference.
In another corner of the ivory tower (or, more likely, across campus
in a glassy lab), neurologists are finding that many of the biases
behavioral economists perceive in decision-making start in our brains.
"Brain studies indicate that organisms seem to be on a hedonic
treadmill, quickly habituating to homeostasis," McFadden writes. In
other words, perhaps our preference for the status quo isn't just
figuratively our heads, but also literally sculpted by the hand of
evolution inside of our brains.
A final example to show how
other fields of science are ganging up on classical economics: The
popular psychological theory of "hyperbolic discounting" says people
don't properly evaluate rewards over time. The theory seeks to explain
why many groups -- nappers, procrastinators, Congress -- take rewards
now and pain later, over and over again. But neurology suggests that it
hardly makes sense to speak of "the brain," in the singular, because
it's two very different parts of the brain that process choices for now
and later. The choice to delay gratification is mostly processed in the
frontal system. But studies show that the choice to do something
immediately gratifying is processed in a different system, the limbic
system, which is more viscerally connected to our behavior, our "reward
pathways," and our feelings of pain and pleasure.
And there's much more. To explain it, here's Daniel McFadden himself.
The following transcript of our email conversation has been very
lightly edited for clarity. ...
1. I don't know much about Common Good RVA but I like their vision. Christianity Today published a piece featuring them, Why the Rest of Your Week Matters to God
"In general, the church has done a fine job equipping Christians for the "private" areas of their lives: prayer, morality, family life, and so on. However, in general, the church has done a poor job equipping people for the "public" parts of their lives: namely, their work, their vocation. The reality is, most people spend the majority of their time in this latter, "public" area."
2. Can we Survive Technology? Written 57 years ago, Fortune resurrected this article by John von Neumann. The editor's note begins:
Editor's note: Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. This week, to mark our FutureIssue,
we turn to a feature from June 1955 by John von Neumann tackling the
profound questions wrought by radical technical advancement—in von
Neumann's day the atomic bomb and climate change. von Neumann was one of
the twentieth century's greatest and most influential geniuses. The
polymath and patron saint of Game Theory
was instrumental in developing America's nuclear superiority toward the
end of World War II as well as in framing the decades-long Cold War
with the Soviet Union. In his time, von Neumann was said to possess "the world's greatest mind." Here is his characteristically pessimistic look on what the future holds.
It is amazing how much of what he wrote remains true today!
"CONCLUSION: Although "materialists' perceptions that
acquisition brings them happiness appear to have some basis
in reality," that happiness is short-lived, Richins concluded. As such,
"The state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more
pleasurable than
product ownership itself.""
5. One of the most difficult topics to understand in economics is comparative advantage, especially why outsourcing jobs to other countries often is advantageous for both countries. Forbes has a creative piece this week, Is Outsourcing American Jobs Wrong?. However, as the BBC reports American manufacturers come back home, a trend that has been true for a few years now.
"In order to fight that perception and reclaim capitalism and business as
positive words, businesses have to find a purpose beyond just making money. Profit is necessary for business, Mackey said, but it's necessary in the same way that his body has to produce red blood cells. It's needed, but it's not the sole purpose."
"Most business leaders don't understand what makes innovation so different from everything else they do at work -- and they haven't adjusted their behavior to accommodate these differences."
"The science fiction vision of stars flashing by as streaks when spaceships travel faster than light isn't what the scene would actually look like, a team of physics students says.
Instead, the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, calculations show. ..."
That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle at Facebook.
As a financial planner, Ray Linder sometimes found that he would give what seemed like
solid, reasonable advice to a client that would be met with a
surprising level of resistance–one that had more to do with emotions
than anything else.
A little digging told him that people handle money differently,
according to their personality type, and these differences were often in
line with the Myers-Briggs test.
You’ve probably heard of it: The Myers-Briggs test is a psychological
profiling exam that was created during WWII. It divides people into
extroverts and introverts, and then segments them even more into types
that sense vs. intuit, think vs. feel and judge vs. perceive.
It’s kind of complicated, which is why categorizing people into the
16 personality types outlined by the Myers-Briggs test – which you can
officially take for a fee –
is big business. (The results are often used by recruiters, human
resources professionals, salespeople, matchmakers and lawyers in various
professional capacities.)
Linder was so interested in the parallels between the Myers-Briggs
test and his clients’ approach to finances that he literally wrote the
book on it: “What Will I Do With My Money?“
He also consolidated the 16 types into four broader categories: Protectors, Planners, Pleasers and Players.
But he’s careful to point out that there’s no right or wrong place to
be within the 16-category universe. Rather, the purpose of figuring all
this out is to capitalize on your type’s natural assets – as opposed to
shame yourself or beat yourself up.
We tracked down Linder to hear more about the four Ps – Protectors, Planners, Pleasers and Players. ...
I'm a planner. The description describes my investment challenges well.
The Atlantic: There's More to Life Than Being Happy This is a fascianting piece on happiness written by Emily Esfahani Smith as she reflects on the difference in between happiness and a meaningful life. I've got some thoughts below but here is one powerful excerpt:
... This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness. In a new study, which will be published this year in a forthcoming issue
of the Journal of Positive Psychology,
psychological scientists asked nearly 400
Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they thought their lives were
meaningful and/or happy. Examining their self-reported attitudes toward
meaning, happiness,
and many other variables -- like stress levels, spending patterns,
and having children -- over a month-long period, the researchers found
that a meaningful
life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very
different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated
with being a
"taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a
"giver."
"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow,
self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and
desire are easily
satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the
authors write.
How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness,
they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found
that people who are
happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical
health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want.
While not having
enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your
life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is
also defined by
a lack of stress or worry.
Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness
is associated with selfish behavior -- being, as mentioned, a "taker"
rather than a
"giver." The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for
this: happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire
-- like hunger --
you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in
other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are not the
only ones who can
feel happy. Animals have needs and drives, too, and when those
drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the researchers point
out.
"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others
while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to
others," explained
Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent
presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning
transcends the self
while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People
who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in
need. "If
anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need,"
the researchers write.
What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of
happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of
meaning, which is
unique to humans, according to Roy Baumeister, the lead researcher of
the study and author, with John Tierney, of the recent book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Baumeister, a social psychologists at
Florida State University, was named an ISI highly cited scientific researcher in 2003.
The study participants reported deriving meaning from giving a part
of themselves away to others and making a sacrifice on behalf of the
overall group. In
the words of Martin E. P. Seligman, one of the leading psychological
scientists alive today, in the meaningful life "you use your highest
strengths and
talents to belong to and serve something you believe is larger than
the self." For instance, having more meaning in one's life was
associated with doing
activities like buying presents for others, taking care of kids, and
arguing. People whose lives have high levels of meaning often actively
seek meaning
out even when they know it will come at the expense of happiness.
Because they have invested themselves in something bigger than
themselves, they also
worry more and have higher levels of stress and anxiety in their
lives than happy people. Having children, for example, is associated
with the meaningful
life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously
associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this
study. In fact,
according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, research shows
that
parents are less happy interacting with their children
than they are exercising, eating, and watching television.
"Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and
contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not
necessarily make us
happy," Baumeister told me in an interview.
Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about
transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important
finding of the
study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion
felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions
do; positive
affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time
people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at
all with meaning.
Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the
present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the
past or future,
was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the
researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating
the past or future."
That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but
people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past
struggles and
sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less
happy....
And this is where the church does a great disservice. We form
people into clients who look to the church as a route to personal happiness
rather than as people who can discern meaning. And this is especially true for a theology of work and daily life. I perceive
that the vast majority of Americans either see no meaning in their work as it
relates to God's mission in the world or they find great meaning it their work
precisely because it is such an important component to achieving the happiness that
comes from getting what we want.
For the most part, the church confirms that there is no meaning to daily
work. Meaningful work, as it relates to God, is the stuff that happens within
the four walls of the church or as an extension of some ecclesiastical initiative.
Christian service is framed as an alternative to work-a-day life, an
escape from meaningless work into meaningful work. Church leaders correctly perceive
that many people see no meaning to their daily existence but the ecclesiastical
impulse is to answer the question of meaning over and against daily life, not
to find meaning within it.
I see one of two strategies typically at work. One is to simply avoid saying
too much about daily work while offering therapeutic spirituality and
opportunities for service that (for some) supplement a daily meaningless
existence or (for others) enhances the meaning we find apart from God and God’s
mission in the world (essentially supporting idolatry.) The other is to offer
prophetic pronouncements against greed and selfishness … correctly challenging idolatries
that give false meaning to life … while steering people to participate in just
causes like eco-justice, gun-control, or poverty advocacy. False ideologies may
be challenged but, once again, the answer is to pursue the meaning question
over and against daily life, not to find meaning within it.
Until the church is willing to honestly wrestle with the meaning of work and
daily life, the church will never have be an effective expression of the
Kingdom of God.
"... Although the number of evangelical churches in the United States
declined for many years, the trend reversed in 2006, with more new
churches opening each year since, according to the Leadership Network’s
most recent surveys. This wave of “church planting” has been highest
among nondenominational pastors, free to experiment outside traditional
hierarchies.
“I hear a lot of pastors say, ‘I’m not just trying to be creative and
avant-garde, I think this is maybe the last chance for me,’ ” said Doug Pagitt, the founder of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.
Mr. Pagitt has written several books on church innovations, many of which were first developed in the “emergent” church movement of the last decade or among “missional” churches whose practices focus on life outside the church.
Many of their innovations are being adopted by an increasing number of pastors in the mainstream.
... But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.
Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.
The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.
Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk. ...
"...Launched in July, the Seattle-based Egraphs' business model is simple, but pretty clever. Fans can peruse the company website to see if their favorite athlete has partnered up with Egraphs. Each player's section has a number of professionally shot action photographs included, typically priced between $25 and $50. The fan pays and sends the athlete a message through the website, including some personal details or memories.
The athlete then receives that message on his custom iPad app, using the the information provided to write a personalized note and electronic autograph on the selected photo. The photo is then sent electronically to the fan, who can save it digitally, share it on social media or order a physical print. Revenue is split between company and athlete. ..."
8. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, legalizing abortion across the country. Time magazine has a feature article about the Pro-Choice movement this week that suggests 1973 may have been the high-water mark for the movement. Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall. Here is a short clip summarizing their take.
"...Academic Publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent Slate piece, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they'll never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to prop up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over flimsy copyright claims. ..."
12. Baseball Pitchers like Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and now, R. A. Dickey did their magic throwing a knuckleball. Pitchers who master usually do very well and it puts less stress on the arm. So why don't more pitchers throw it? Why the Knuckleball Isn’t Thrown by More Pitchers in Major League Baseball
...One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that some of the
most prominent Christian figures in politics radiate a sense that their
work is essential if the Lord is to accomplish His goals on earth.
Because they believe so much depends on them, they develop an
aggressive, anxious, even desperate spirit. They seem to believe that
only they and a few others are strong enough to resist compromising with
evil. And over the years they have demonstrated a barely contained
disdain toward those who do not share their zeal for their cause. This
can create its own set of problems.
I’m reminded here of the cautionary tale of Sheldon Vanauken, who in A Severe Mercy
wrote about his days in the anti-Vietnam war movement. “I was one of
those caught up in the mood and action oft the 1960s,” Vanauken wrote:
Christ,
I thought, would surely have me oppose what appeared an unjust war. But
the Movement, whatever its ideals, did a good deal of hating. And
Christ, gradually, was pushed to the rear: Movement goals, not God,
became first, in fact — not only for me but for other Christians
involved, including priests. I now think that making God secondary
(which in the end is to make Him nothing) is, quite simply, the mortal
danger in social action, especially in view of the marked intimations of
virtue — even arrogant virtue — that often perilously accompany it.
Some may avoid this danger, perhaps. But I was not obeying the first and
greatest commandment — to love God first — nor it is clear that I was
obeying the second — to love my neighbour. Hating the oppressors of my
neighbor isn’t perhaps quite what Christ had in mind.
Over
the years, some politically active Christian leaders seem to believe
that at stake in their work is nothing less than the influence of
Christianity in America, as if Christ depends on them instead of the
other way around. There are multiple effects to such a mindset,
including apocalyptic rhetoric and absolutism. At some point, though,
characterizing every election and every important piece of social
legislation as a moral tipping point for America begins to wear thin.
My
own sense of things is that an increasing number of evangelicals,
particularly younger evangelicals, want their brand of politics to be
less partisan and bitter than in the past, as well as more high-minded
and more firmly rooted in principles. They want their leaders to display
a lighter touch, a less distraught and angry spirit, a more gracious
tone. In short, they seem to be looking for a politics that is both
moral and civil. And they are thirsting for more serious Christian
reflection on human society and the human person — on first principles. ...
A dramatic shift in the global landscape has made religion a pressing issue on college campuses again. Douglas and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, authors of No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education, on how higher education found faith.
One in three Americans under the age of 30 reports being religiously unaffiliated, so it may be a surprise to learn that religion is making a comeback on American campuses. It’s not that campuses have become holy places, and religious zealots are not calling the shots. But religion is no longer marginalized from campus life as it was in the late 20th century. A generation ago, many Americans and most colleges and universities could live with the myth that religion was a purely private matter, but today no one questions that religion can have powerful effects on individuals and societies. ...
Liberal bishops dismissed Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict
XVI's apostolic constitution authorizing wider use of the traditional
Latin mass, as a bone thrown to over-the-hill conservatives. But Pope
Benedict XVI probably wrote it more for the young than the old. ...
... The secular press covers youth interest in the traditional Latin mass far more respectfully. TheEconomist
recently reported on the "traditionalist avant-garde." The old mass, it
found, isn't petering out but picking up some speed: "The Latin Mass
Society of England and Wales, started in 1965, now has over 5,000
members. The weekly number of Latin masses is up from 26 in 2007 to 157
now. In America it is up from 60 in 1991 to 420. At Brompton Oratory, a
hotspot of London traditionalism, 440 flock to the main Sunday Latin
mass. That is twice the figure for the main English one."
The influx of conservative Anglicans has bolstered these numbers a
bit: "Dozens of Anglican priests have 'crossed the Tiber' from the
heavily ritualistic 'smells and bells' high-church wing; they find a
ready welcome among traditionalist Roman Catholics."
But the principal source of growth comes from youth interest. "Like
evangelical Christianity, traditional Catholicism is attracting people
who were not even born when the Second Vatican Council tried to
rejuvenate the church," says The Economist. "Traditionalist groups have members in 34 countries, including Hong Kong, South Africa
and Belarus. Juventutem, a movement for young Catholics who like the
old ways, boasts scores of activists in a dozen countries."
Self-consciously "relevant" Catholicism is increasingly seen by the
young as irrelevant. Youth masses that try to imitate the trends of the
world, often lamely, generate only sporadic attendance. ...
Christmas Day I wrote about my appreciation for O Come, Emmanuel, because I think it captures the biblical story better than most Advent songs. Jeffrey Barbeau has some good thoughts in is humorously titled Don’t Let N. T. Wright Steal Christmas!
Peter Leithart, remarking on the trendsetting biblical criticism of N.
T. Wright, has questioned the way that many (presumably English)
Christmas hymns fail to capture the political and social context of the
birth of Jesus Christ. Leithart claims that Advent hymns (unlike
Christmas hymns) capture the here and now. Advent hymns declare, in this
way, a crisp, prophetic vision towards a world gone astray: “They are
deeply and thoroughly and thrillingly political. Advent hymns look
forward not to heaven but the redemption of Israel and of the nations, the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.”
For
Leithart, we would all be better off ridding ourselves of hymns that
fail to include the deeply political and social aspects of the original
Christmas story. “Wright is no Grinch,” he claims. “He didn’t steal
Christmas. What he stole was a false Christmas, a de-contextualized and
apolitical Christmas. But we shouldn’t have bought that Christmas in the
first place, and should have been embarrassed to display it so proudly
on the mantle. Good riddance, and Bah humbug.”
As one who studies
the literature of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Christianity (the
period that gave us so many of our great English hymns), I must admit
that some of Leithart’s critique rings true. Indeed, some of our most
beloved hymns contain precisely the kind of otherworldly message that
Leithart deplores.
Before we call for a moratorium on Christmas
hymns, however, let’s remember that these hymns often contain powerful
reminders of profound and, I daresay, eschatological change. We would be
wise to listen. ...
In PurItan New England, Protestant and Catholic churches are declining while evangelical and Pentecostal groups are rising. Why the nation's most secular region may hint at the future of religion.
This is a lengthy article that is hard to summarize. Here are a few interesting excerpts:
... The recent changes in New England have been significant:
•Between 2000 and 2010, the
Catholic church has lost 28 percent of its members in New Hampshire and
33 percent in Maine. It has closed at least 69 parishes (25 percent) in
greater Boston.
•Over the same period, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) established 118 new churches in northern New England, according to the 2010 Religion Census. About 50 of them inhabit buildings once owned by mainline churches.
•Other denominations are growing, too, including Pentecostals: Assemblies of God (11 new churches in Massachusetts) and International Church of the Foursquare
Gospel (13 new churches in Massachusetts and Maine). The Seventh-day
Adventists, an evangelical group, opened 55 new churches in
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine between 2000 and 2010, according
to the Religion Census. Muslims and Mormons are experiencing membership
gains as well.
More change looms on the horizon.
In 2013, northern New England will lose its only mainline Protestant
seminary and accredited graduate school of religion when the Bangor Theological Seminary closes in May. Three months later, Southern Baptists
will open Northeastern Baptist College – the first SBC-affiliated
pastor-training college in northern New England – in Bennington, Vt. ...
... Much of the church growth in secular New England
stems from immigrants and the cultures they create in pursuit of
spiritual grounding. Researchers at the Emmanuel Gospel Center (EGC), a
Boston-based Christian organization that studies urban ministries, call
it a "quiet revival." It is often overlooked because the Religion Census
tracks only denominations, yet nondenominational churches account for
some of the fastest-filling pews, or folding chairs, as the case may
more often be. ...
And ...
... In Westbrook, Maine, the
Seventh-day Adventists last year acquired a new regional headquarters – a
14,500-square-foot library. In Northfield, Mass., near the Vermont
border, a 217-acre campus will be handed to a Christian institution in
2013 as a gift from Oklahoma's Green family, billionaire owners of a craft store chain, who bought and renovated the property in order to give it away.
Some churches that offer an
alternative to prevailing regional values, in both New England and
around the country, are attracting new disciples. Liberal Unitarian
Universalists have seen some of their fastest growth in recent years in
Oklahoma, Tennessee, and other conservative Southern states.
In New England, the converse is
true. Churches that echo the prevailing culture's moral relativism and
liberal sensibilities sometimes struggle to differentiate themselves.
Yet when a doctrine-minded pastor like Joey Marshall unpacks the Bible,
verse by verse, many people yearn for his unflinching message. To
accommodate growing numbers, Mr. Marshall's Living Stone Community
Church in Standish, Maine, moved from a traditional 50-seat structure to
a former paintball facility. ...
And ...
... Churches that have equated faith
with political activism, in fact, are watching their ranks thin. Lewis,
the Bangor Seminary dean, sees emphasis on politics as one reason some
mainline denominations have seen their membership decline accelerate in
the past 10 years.
"In the mainline denominations,
liberalism is dead, but they just don't know it yet," says [Steve] Lewis, an
ordained Methodist elder. "Liberalism has moved so far toward the social
consciousness [agenda] that it's lost its spiritual roots. What they
need [in the mainlines] is a passionate spirituality." ...
I recently interviewed more than twenty pastors who had been in ministry for at least 25 years. All of these men were over 55 years old. A few of them were retired, but most of them were still active in full-time vocational ministry. ...
Lack of practical training for local church ministry. "I was not prepared for 80 percent of my day-to-day ministry after I graduated from seminary. ...
Overly concerned about critics. ...
Failure to exercise faith. ...
Not enough time with family. ...
Failure to understand basic business and finance issues. ...
Failure to share ministry. "Let me shoot straight. I had two complexes. The first was the Superman complex. ... My second complex was the conflict avoider complex. ...
Failure to make friends. ...
I'm certain that #8 was failing to spend enough time reading blog posts. ;-) What else should be on the list?
"... Though it's become a tradition for many households and congregations to
fulfill a child's wish list for families who can't do it on their own, a
growing number of ministries are replacing that charity model with what
they believe can be a more uplifting approach. From Rogers Park to
Garfield Park, ministries in Chicago have opened pop-up Christmas stores
where families can afford to check off their child's list thanks to
donated merchandise offered at drastically reduced prices, if not for
free.
Though many Christians bemoan the retail industry's hold on the
holidays, some ministries have found that enabling parents to put gifts
under their own trees, in many cases, restores a sense of dignity that's
often lost when families are in need.
"Everybody gets to work together to make something wonderful happen,"
Williams said as volunteers wrapped Christmas and birthday presents for
her youngest daughter last weekend. "It helps me feel good about
myself."
The shopping opportunity also pushes patrons to take steps toward
improving their lives. At Bethel, a Lutheran ministry in Garfield Park,
more than 700 families earned additional currency called Bethel Bucks by
attending seminars on parenting, financial management and renters'
rights. ..."
3. Four Harvard and MIT grads are experimenting with direct aid to the poor. "GiveDirectly, the brainchild of four Harvard and MIT graduate students, is so simple, it's genius. Give poor Kenyan families $1,000 -- and let them do whatever they want with it." Can 4 Economists Build the Most Economically Efficient Charity Ever?
"... Despite
its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for
rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and
conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has
sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of
the health service.
Their success is envied by the centre right
in Britain. Despite predictions of doom, Sweden's economy continues to
grow and its pro-business coalition has remained in power since 2006.
The last election was the first time since the war that a centre-right
government had been re-elected after serving a full term.
As the
state has been shrunk, the private sector has moved in. Göran Dahlgren, a
former head civil servant at the Swedish department of health and a
visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, says that "almost all
welfare services are now owned by private equity firms". ..."
"... We
have reached a point in our economy where it is becoming increasingly
clear that businesses are being measured not just for their profit, but
also for their impact. And I’m not just talking about writing a check or
funding a charity; I’m referring to business models for which community
involvement and inspirational brand building are the profit centers.
(Think Warby Parker, TOMS, and startups such as SOMA.) I recently went
to a conference where the founders of a startup posited a powerful idea:
the future of marketing is philanthropy. But I think the even bigger
idea is the future of business is morality. My grandfather saw this
early on.
At a time when the moral framework of America appears
to be fractured – or at the very least confused – businesses are in the
propitious position to espouse cultural standards that can help restore
values that our youth can use to build the next generation of positive
enterprise. In fact, whether businesses succeed in creating and
promoting positive cultures might determine whether they stay in
business at all. The future of business is morality, and the future is
now.
Whether it’s the job of the corporation or not to set the
moral tone for society, the expectation is trending towards companies
setting the right example for others to follow. With the sharp rise in
entrepreneurship, young companies have the opportunity to establish
strong cultures early on and share them with their communities. Money
must have a moral center, and from greater consciousness in business,
greater profit will follow. ..."
"New data show an increasing contribution of mental and behavioral disorders to deterioration in the health-related quality of life among teens in the U.S. and Canada over the past two decades, and increases elsewhere around the globe."
More people moved out of California in 2011 than moved in, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling that the Democrat-run state’s economic woes continue to drive residents away.
Most statisticians attribute California’s net loss of 100,000 people last year to its high cost of living, increased population density and troubling unemployment rate.
The widening middle class in Mexico is also encouraging some immigrants to remain in that country instead of moving to California.
Texas — home to lower taxes, less regulation and what the Manhattan Institute calls a “labor pool with the right skills at the right price” — is one of the most attractive destinations for companies departing from California, according to the Census Bureau. ...
"The country reported 85 executions in 2000 but only 43 in 2012, according to a new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Plus, far fewer people are being sentenced to death row in the first place. The year 2000 saw 224 new inmates sentenced to death, while 2012 saw only 78, according to the report."
15. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic had a great piece Why 'If We Can Just Save One Child ...' Is a Bad Argument, referring to a statement President Obama made at Newtown, CT. When we deal with complex topics like gun control, we are always
talking about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more
than 30,000 lives. The were 32,367 traffic fatalities last
year. Let's set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. Nearly all those lives would be saved. Should we do this "if we can save just
one more life"? I, like Friedersforf, am not advocating any particular
policy. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of making statements like this, as politicians often do.
"I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a
result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that
served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive.
The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they
splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old
evangelicalism whimper and wane."
He speaks of an Evangelical "collapse" having happened. That may be a bit premature but I think his articulation of trends is right.
Many denominations wonder if they are reflecting subtle devaluation of males in secular culture.
... Many applaud the advance of women within certain wings of
Christianity, such as the United, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and
Lutheran denominations.
U.S. studies have found 37 per cent of
liberal congregations, representing more than 17 million Christians, are
now led by women. And a recent survey by Faith Matters found wide
approval; with more than three in four of all Americans convinced
females should be permitted to be clergy.
At the same time, however, many worry about the so-called "feminization" of the Christian church.
Both
genders are concerned that somehow, for reasons no one seems able to
clearly explain, the rise of women in the church is not working for a
huge number of men. ...
The article then looks as some specific denominations before offering this summary:
Here is a rundown of some of the overlapping theories:
The relative dearth of men in church is an age-old issue that's just grown worse. The traditional image of the church and its adherents as the "bride of Christ," for instance, is a turn off to men.
Religion is typically less important to men than women, and nowhere more so than in Canada. Polls show Canadian women are 70 per cent more likely than men to say religion is "very important."
Churches tend to focus on "soft" feminine qualities, such as sharing, family and feelings. Bibby found 83 per cent of women believe "concern for others" is highly important, compared to only 67 per cent of men.
Many men are avoiding the diminished status associated with an increasingly countercultural and aging institution such as the church, particularly one in which women predominate.
Men, many say, tend to value rationality more than women. In Canada, men are 2.5 times more likely to follow atheism, which often pits reason against faith. In addition, critics say churches, since the 1970s, have become less "intellectual" as they have increasingly emphasized spiritual "experience."
While liberal Christians are careful to avoid stereotyping women, homosexuals or ethnic minorities, John Giuliano, a former moderator of the United Church, said churches too-often reflect the secular culture in which the mass media and advertising often portray men, especially fathers, as Homer Simpson-style buffoons.
Main line churches that allow females to be clergy are generally not attractive to immigrants, most of whom have grown up in patriarchal cultures. Asian immigrants to Canada are much more drawn to male-led evangelical or Catholic congregations.
Then these observations:
... A fledgling men's Christian spirituality movement is underway across
North America, says Grayston - with the Franciscan monk Richard Rohr,
author of From Wild Men to Wise Men, being one of its most mature
figures.
However, in addition to the church developing
men-friendly programs, Grayston says men, as individuals, also have to
find the courage to step up to the spiritual plate.
"The women's movement has left many men not knowing how to engage women, so they've backed off.
Whether in secular careers or the church, many men's confidence has been undermined," Grayston says.
At
Mount Seymour United, Talbot wants to find additional ways to draw
males into her congregation's life. As she puts it, the health of the
church is at stake. ...
My recollection is that more Evangelical churches, at least the large ones, there something less than a 60-40 split in favor of women. In small congregations, especially Mainline small congreations, the imballance is much greater. But the question is whether or not this that much different than historical balances. Some research data suggests that women are more "religious" or "spiritual" than men in religions all around the world.
... In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in "radiative forcing" (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.
The conclusion—taking the best observational estimates of the change in decadal-average global temperature between 1871-80 and 2002-11, and of the corresponding changes in forcing and ocean heat uptake—is this: A doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F).
This is much lower than the IPCC's current best estimate, 3°C (5.4°F).
Mr. Lewis is an expert reviewer of the recently leaked draft of the IPCC's WG1 Scientific Report. The IPCC forbids him to quote from it, but he is privy to all the observational best estimates and uncertainty ranges the draft report gives. What he has told me is dynamite.
... That is an extraordinary claim and clearly requires extraordinary
evidence to support it. Much as I like Ridley (we swap stories and
information regularly) I’m not going to accept it on the basis of one
newspaper column. And Ridley wouldn’t expect me or you to either.
But if it is true then climate change stops being a looming diaster
threatening all we hold dear and becomes instead just a minor background
effect. One that we really don’t have to do anything particularly
active about at all: the advancing technologies of low or non-carbon
energy generation will take care of it all for us. ...
I share Worstall's caution but I also think that to
acknowledge that the earth is warming and humans play a contributing role,
something for which there seems to be strong agreement, doesn't tell you the
magnitude of the impact or what policy options are optimal. As I've pointed out
in early posts, the global average temperature has plateaued for more than a
decade. Violent hurricane activity has not increased. Arctic ice is melting,
although, as I understand it, it is summer ice not winter ice where the change
is being observed. Dueling scientists publish studies with partisans
cherry-picking the elements that are most supportive of their narrative. I do
not doubt that human behavior is having impact on the climate. But I am uncertain
of how robust climate models are and how serious the challenges are likely to
be.
... But Kloor isn’t really talking about politics. Rather, I think, it’s how
we conceive of the environment and environmentalism. The message of the
modernist greens is: in a world of 7 billion plus people, all of
whom want (and deserve) to live modern, consuming lives, we need to be
pragmatic about how we use—and how much we protect—nature. We don’t have any other choice, so we’d better start dealing with the realities on the ground.
The realist in me thinks the modernist greens are right. There are simply too many of us,
and we want too much, for our footprint on the Earth to get anything
but bigger. And I’m cheered by the scientists and thinkers who suggest
that we might be able to have it all—a huge, thriving human population,
and an environment that can support it—as long as we plan right. What’s
more, I’m very conscious that industrialization and globalization have
largely been forces for good, expanding human access to wealth, health
and longevity. There’s no better time in history to be human being.
Industrialization is not going to be rolled back—and it shouldn’t be.
There’s also a larger social shift at work that’s altering our concept of nature. Today more human beings live in cities
than live in the countryside, and that proportion will only grow in the
future: by 2050, as many as three-quarters of the estimated 10 billion
people on Earth will live in urban areas. This is a historic change—as
recently as 1800 just 2% of the world’s population lived in cities—and
it’s a sign that humanity, inevitably, is decoupling from nature. I
suspect that’s true even of environmentalists, who are just as likely as
anyone else to come into contact with what passes for wilderness these
days more in a managed park than untrammeled rainforest or woodland.
For a lot of us, “environmental issues” increasingly have to do with
improving urban life—think cleaner mass transit or access to organic
food in farmer’s markets. As the writer Emma Marris argued in her book Rambunctious Garden,
environmentalism needs to stop drawing simplistic lines between what’s
natural and what’s manmade—with the former always good and the latter
always bad—and learn to celebrate the biodiversity that’s in our
backyards. ...
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1. Pray for Egypt Today!
More than 50 million Egyptians are voting today on a constitution that would be a giant step backward for Egypt and much of the Middle East, marginalizing women and religious minorities. A nation that has historically been a voice of moderation, the largest Muslim nation in the region, will likely move toward becoming an Islamist state. Remember to pray for Egypt. (See the Economist'sThe Founding Brothers)
2. Our prayers are with families of the victims at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.
Traffic deaths in the USA continued their historic decline last year,
falling to the lowest level since 1949, the government announced
Monday.
A total of 32,367 motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians died in 2011,
a 1.9% decrease from 2010. Last year’s toll represents a 26% decline
from 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
said. ...
... The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as
well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The
state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white
students.
“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have
any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health
commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in
the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011....
....The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. ...
... The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain.
The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it
sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only
twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the
researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response
whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who
had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her
leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells. ...
....In 2011, 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported to the CDC.
The rate of cases per 100,000 people increased 8%, to 457.6 in 2011 from
423.6 in 2010.
The CDC reported 321,849 gonorrhea infections. The
rate increased 4% to 104.2 cases per 100,000 in 2011 from 100.2 in
2010. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease,
a major cause of infertility in women.
Last year, 13,970 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported. The rate of 4.5 cases per 100,000 was unchanged from 2010. ...
7. You may be bilingual but can you write in two languages, one with each hand, at the same time?!
10. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones speculates on why liberals have more exaggerated perceptions of political differences. We Are More Alike Than We Think
11. A surprising "right to work" bill was signed into law in Michigan, of all places. That has spurred a lot of debate about unions and the right to work. Michael Kinsley wrote a thoughtful piece opposing RTW, The Liberal Case Against Right-to-Work Laws. David Henderson has piece in support of RTW, The Economics of "Right to Work".
12. Slate has a piece about The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement.
Keith Kloor opines on the division between mondernist environmentalists
(or eco-pragmatists) and conservation traditionalists.
...
Modernist greens don't dispute the ecological tumult associated with the
Anthropocene. But this is the world as it is, they say, so we might as
well reconcile the needs of people with the needs of nature. To this
end, Kareiva advises conservationists to craft "a new vision of a planet
in which nature—forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient
ecosystems—exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes."
This
shift in thinking is already under way. For example, ecologists
increasingly appreciate (and study) the diversity of species and
importance of ecosystem services in cities, giving rise to the
discipline of urban ecology. That was unthinkable at the dawn of the
modern environmental movement 50 years ago, when greens loathed cities
as the antithesis of wilderness. ...
13. One of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I remember from my
childhood was when this woman ends up trapped in a department store at
night. The mannequins begin calling to her. She discovers she is actually a mannequin who
has over stayed her time out in the world and it is time for the next
mannequin to spend some time outside the store. This story confirms my worst nightmares: In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You
15. One of the biggest concerns about fracking technology is the enormous amount of water it uses. A company has figured out how to recycle water so that far less water is used in the fracking process. Solving fracking's biggest problem
... 3D printing represents the latest version of what industry experts call
"additive manufacturing" — a way to turn practically any computer
designs into real objects by building them up layer-by-layer using
plastics, metals or other materials. The technology could end up
affecting every major industry — aerospace, defense, medicine, transportation, food, fashion — and have an even bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing than the robot revolution. ...
20. Michael Cheshire has a great piece in Leadership Journal on "What I learned about grace and redemption through my friendship with a Christian pariah." Going To Hell with Ted Haggard
".... A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the
Denver area with a close atheist friend. He's a great guy and a very
deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the
wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted's fall. He pointed his
finger at the HD and said, "That is the reason I will not become a
Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that's what
keeps me away."
It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen
to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to
Ted's hypocrisy. "Hey man, not all of us do things like that," I
responded. He laughed and said, "Michael, you just proved my point. See,
that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and
forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys
can't forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you
talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say
he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I
stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy
failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to
him." Then he uttered words that left me reeling: "You Christians eat
your own. Always have. Always will."
He was running late for a meeting and had to take off. I, however, could
barely move. I studied the TV and read the caption as a well-known
religious leader kept shoveling dirt on a man who had admitted he was
unclean. And at that moment, my heart started to change. I began to
distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to
understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I
brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very
mention of Haggard's name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions
were visceral."
21. Leonardo Bonucci got a yellow card for faking collision during a
soccer game. It should have been a red card. No one deserves to be a professional soccer player with acting skills
this bad!
... Here’s what I bet goes on when this question is posed—and I want to
say up front that I think this way myself. I do not like long lines and
traffic jams. I do not like that I have to drive 60 minutes to get to a
decent natural area or that when I get to the Cascades for my hike, I’m
likely to run into dozens of others on the same trail. I do not like how
built up our coastline has become and how hard it is to get access to
beaches. And so on.
In other words, I do not like the impact of “too many people” on my
personal happiness. Rarely do we admit that this is the basis of our
concerns about human population. Instead, we couch them in terms of
“exceeding the Earth’s carrying capacity” or “causing the extinction of
species.” ...
... And when we so easily jump to the conclusion there are too many
people on the planet, what solutions does it suggest? Who should be
eliminated? Who should not be allowed to have children? And who gets to
decide? Is it really that there are too many people on the planet? Or is
it more about the kinds of settlements and economies we have built?
Lastly, the entire notion of too many people neglects those studies
showing that large numbers of people, especially concentrations of
people in cities, are engines for innovation and cultural advances. (4)
For example, new patents and inventions overwhelmingly come from
cities—and the larger the city, the more patents and inventions are
produced. ...
... More importantly, the question of whether there are too many people
is the wrong one for conservationists to ask. The right questions are:
What quality of life do we want all people on the planet to share? And
how can we achieve that quality of life while preserving as many species
and ecosystems as possible?
Conservation of nature has a lot to contribute to answering those
questions and to enhancing that quality of life. So don’t automatically
nod in agreement when a colleague says: “The problem is, there are too
many people on the planet.” People can be the solution as well as the
problem.
It is popular these days to decry consumerism ... and rightly so. Voices in our world tell us that our life consists of the
products we buy and the things we own. It is materialism.
But the irony is that many consumerism critics fall prey to is their own form
of materialism. They see human beings primarily as subtracting from a fixed
stock of resources. Human beings are parasitic, adding nothing. Reduce the number of humans and you save the planet.
Human beings do not just consume, though that is part of our reality. All forms of life consume. But human beings also add to the world in a way that other beings in the
created order do not. They add creativity and intelligence to the world. With
creativity and intelligence come beauty, ingenuity, community, and flourishing.
There are challenges. Through
unlocking powers of productivity and exchange we have found we can radically
improve the material status of people around the world. But we find we have to
adapt our methods and perspectives to sustain the changes we have made ... doing more and more
with less and less, as we minimize our destructive impact. We have to find ways to be stewards of the world that recognize more than just our material quality of life. As Christians, we
know that sin often twists our creativity and intelligence toward destructive behavior. The answer to these challenges is not to dehumanize people by framing them in materialistic terms as consumption units. Rather it is to work
toward unlocking and unleashing the creativity and intelligence of everyone as
we work for a flourishing shalom-filled world.
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation
below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it
full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the
lower left corner. ..."
4. There is a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, that shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as me grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle-age. Turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing and many people falsely believe this a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was highest and December was lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel
is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift
in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just
as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to
play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science
skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions —
they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel
construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit.
The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both
girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this
play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr.
Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before, when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable
Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the
National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National
Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every
industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise
of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to
manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has
far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology,
industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable
practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable
materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water
purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy
agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology.
There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable
manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and—
that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks.
Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products
exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before
that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via
memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave
sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the
announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook,
with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to
connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of
memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
Arnold Kling is a libertarian economist who blogs at askblog. His tag line for his blog is "taking the most charitable view of those who disagree." In a recent post, Being Uncharitable to Those Who Disagree, he began with:
In his recent book, Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jason Brennan writes,
American politics has two large camps. The first camp advocates an
American police state–one that polices the world at large while policing
its citizens’ lifestyles. It advocates having government promote
traditional Judeo-Christian virtues. It wants to marginalize or expel
alternative modes of life. The second camp advocates an American nanny
state–one that tries to nudge and control the behavior of its citizens
“for their own good.” Both camps support having the government manage,
control, and prop up industry and commerce. In rhetoric, a vicious
divide separates the two camps. Yet when in power, the two camps act
much the same.
Brennan’s book is in large part an effort to refute the uncharitable
views that others hold about libertarians. In that regard, it may be
valuable. However, the quoted paragraph offers what I believe is an
uncharitable view of progressives and, especially, conservatives. ...
He continues:
... I think that if you want to be convincing in an argument, taking an
uncharitable view of the opponent is a bad strategy. Just as
libertarians become scornful and defensive toward those who take an
uncharitable view of our beliefs (think of people who say “libertarians
just want to let people starve” or “libertarians believe markets are
perfect”), we can expect others to become scornful and defensive if we
take an uncharitable view of their beliefs.
I have written an essay, to appear next month, in which I suggest
that the core conservative belief is that civilization is always
threatened by barbarism. Think Lord of the Flies. Meanwhile, I
think that progressives also see a threat everywhere–the threat of
oppression. Think of the Biblical story of the Exodus. Libertarians do
not typically focus on barbarism or oppression. Instead, we focus on
coercion vs. free choice. We celebrate the fruits of voluntary
cooperation via markets. Think I, Pencil.
Suppose that my characterization of conservatives is correct. Then
libertarians need to address their concern. How do you keep
civilization from sliding into barbarism? Conservatives viewed
Communism as barbaric, and they saw a need for our government to defend
against it. Similarly, they see terrorism as barbaric, and they see a
need for our government to defend against it.
How should this concern with external barbarian threats be addressed? ...
Cleansing our conversations of all caricature and uncharitable characterizations is probably not realistic. It may not even be desirable. On occasion, such characterizations can sharpen communication as we passionately debate. Not every conversation is an attempt to persuade. But Kling's point is exactly right. If your point is to persuade or open a conversation, why would you resort to uncharitable characterizations of the person you want to persuade? It continues to amaze me how common it is to read a book, article, or blog post that starts out with stated aim of convincing readers of a particular view but then uncharitably mischaracterizes the audience that the author intends to persuade.
Do you agree about the prevalence uncharitable characterizations in conversations that are intended to persuade? If so, why are we so prone to it?
