Dave's Book List: 2018

Another end of the year book list . . . yuck . . . so let me boil it down to something practical. First some boilerplate: I read a bunch of good books this year, and I'm proud of that (or fairly proud . . . Stacey delivered a healthy whack to my self-esteem) but I understand that you're probably not going to enjoy the same books as me. Certainly not forty-three of the same books.

It's really hard to recommend a good book. Reading-- real reading-- is deeply personal. In the end, it's what you think about the words that makes the book good for you or not. Not that I subscribe to relative aesthetic ethics . . . I think some sentences are written far better than others. But once a book reaches a certain level of competence, then it's really up to the reader to appreciate and make sense of it. And if it sounds like "hillbilly gibberish," as Darryl McDaniels categorized the lyrics to "Walk This Way"-- then even if you sing it like you mean it, it still might not mean much to you at all (even if everyone else loves it).

So skip the list if you want, but grant me one sincere, universal, sure-fire recommendation. A list of one. I would trade all the books on my list for #39. Boom. Literally.

I'm talking about Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson. Anderson is so passionate about his subject matter that it doesn't matter if you're a Thunder/Flaming Lips fan, or a tornado junkie, or a history buff who wants to know more about the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889-- which Anderson says should either be called "Chaos Explosion Apocalypse Town" or "Reckoning of the Doom Settlers: Clusterfuck on the Prairie-- none of that matters, as the book races along at EF5 speed towards the inevitable explosion.

Read it.

1. The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik


2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


3. Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander


4. White Tears by Hari Kunzru


5. The Amateur: The Pleasure of Doing What You Love by Andy Merrifield


6. The Night Market by Jonathan Moore


7. Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth


8. The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann


9. The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson


10. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt


11. Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy by Noam Chomsky


12. Beartown by Fredrik Backman


13. Requiem for the American Dream by Noam Chomsky


14. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin


15. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson


16. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli


17. Drown by Junot Diaz


18. The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind by Michael S. Gazzaniga


19. When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought by Jim Holt


20.  The Changeling by Joy Williams


21. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students by Allan Bloom


22. Florida by Laura Groff


23. Ask the Dust by John Fante


24. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie


25. Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy


26. The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke by Andrew Lawler


27.  Calypso by David Sedaris


28. World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer


29. The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World -- An Us by Richard O. Prum


30. Borne by Jeff Vandermeer


31. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky


32. A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron


33. Authority by Jeff Vandermeer


34. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher


35. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt


36. The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher


37. Vox by Christina Dalcher


38. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh


39. Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson


40. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data Andrew Wheeler


41. American Prison by Shane Bauer


42. Middlemarch by George Eliot


43. Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven JohnsonFarsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most by Steven Johnson

Literacy: It's Not a Contest . . . Or Is It?

Over the past year, my friend (and fellow philosophy teacher) Stacey did something rather remarkable. I'm going to let her tell her story . . . but, before she begins, I have some rather remarkable commentary about her story (of course I do). I've conveniently put my words in vivid red, so if you want to skip them, you can proceed directly to Stacey's post. But you'd be missing out on some interesting context (and, not only that, you'd be missing out on all my thoughts and feelings, which-- if you've made your way to this corner of the internet-- you find either incredibly fascinating or so annoying that you can't stop reading them).

When Stacey started this project I was worried. Worried that she threw out the proverbial baby with the proverbial bathwater. I use the word "proverbial" here so readers unfamiliar with the idiom do not call DYFS and report Stacey for infanticide.

The "proverbial baby" Stacey tossed out of her life has more than a passing resemblance to an actual baby. It's immature, needs support in getting established, and possesses great potential. And it has a cute name. Podcast. Stacey threw out listening to podcasts, the nascent audio format that's still toddling around the media-milieu with an adorably anachronistic name. This freaked me out, because Stacey and I have both bonded with a number of different podcasts. It seemed kind of cold-blooded of her to cut ties completely with the art form (especially since we make one of our own). This would be like Steven Spielberg deciding not to watch movies (which might be the case, judging by how old the movies are that inspired him).

I'll let Stacey explain the specific ins and outs of why she quit this fledgling media cold turkey, but her general reason was so she could read more books. Now I'm all for reading books, but I don't like these kinds of arbitrarily strict deontological rules. I prefer case-by-case utilitarian ethics. The "deon" in deontological is Greek for duty, and Stacey decided it was her duty as an English teacher and an intellectual to change her ways. But I don't think you should completely quit something with as much potential value as podcasts. The right number of podcasts to listen to isn't zero. The right number is of podcasts to listen to is difficult to determine, but the golden mean, the amount of podcasts you can enjoy while still finding time to read, is probably somewhere around two per day. That seems reasonable. I wrote a long and winding post about the difficulties with this kind of Aristotelean morality and I do concede that it's easier to make a categorical rule if you want to get things done, but a good podcast is better than a bad book. I explained all this to Stacey, but she stuck to her principled guns.

I had other reasons for worrying about Stacey's project, some of them altruistic and some of them selfish. In all sincerity, I wanted Stacey to enjoy the new season of Serial. I wanted her to listen to two fantastic takes on human memory, one of them dead serious serious (Revisionist History "Free Brian Williams") and the other absurd and funny (Heavyweight "#16 Rob"). I wanted her to enjoy the weirdness of Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything "Victory is Ours." But she would not bite. She was determined and focused.

Slightly more selfish was the fact that I wanted to be able to kill time at work discussing these podcasts with Stacey. I'd recommend them and she'd tell me "Not yet. I want to finish strong . . . December 2nd." I'd tell her she was nuts, that life is too short for hard and fast rules, and she shouldn't deny herself the pleasure, but there was no talking to her.

I was also worried that she might be reading a bunch of crap, just to amass a huge list of books. Loads of Jojo Moyes and Liane Moriarty and Nicholas Sparks. Chick-lit and cheese. This was rather stupid and sexist of me, it turns out.

My greatest anxiety was a selfish one. I was worried that she would read more books than me. I average forty-some books a year, a number I'm quite proud of. I always post the list, and I'm always impressed with myself (which isn't difficult . . . I set the bar low). It turns out I didn't need to worry about this. It wasn't even close. Stacey read so many books that I'll never count how many books I read in a year again. Because I'll never live up to her list, so why bother to count? It's not a contest anyway. Right? And the point of this blog is to slow down . . . so perhaps with my shorter list, I'm winning the contest.

I'd also like to clear up what might be a misconception: if you think Stacey was doing some sort of analogue back-to-basics return to reading on paper from books checked out from the library, you'd be dead wrong. She spent a shitload of money on this project-- that's how she rolls. She checked zero books out of the library. She bought zero hardcovers with which to adorn her shelves. Instead, she purchased the Kindle version of each book and the discounted Audible version as well, so she blew through books in an efficient digital combination; she read for about an hour or so each day on her phone, and then when her eyes got tired or she was driving or getting ready for school or working out, she listened to the audio version. High tech.

Stacey's Story of Her Badass Book list (In Her Own Words)

Every year around this time, I try to reflect on my life. I evaluate my strengths and weaknesses and think about the type of life I want to lead.

My father and I had a conversation once about how New Year’s resolutions are always so strict and limiting. They force you to place unnecessary rules and restrictions on your life.  These resolutions tell you what you can’t do and seldom leave room for any fun. We both agreed we were sick of resolutions telling us “don’t drink soda,” “don’t eat sweets,” “don’t watch as much tv” and the worst: “don’t drink beer.”

We decided that, from that point on, we would make our resolutions positive. For a full year we resolved that we would curse more — much to the chagrin of my mother. Whenever I called, my dad would bellow: “How the fuck are you?!”

Cursing more was fun. It was funny. It was easy. At the end of the year, we wished each other a “happy fucking New Year,” and I set to work picking another positive resolution.

Last year, I realized I was wasting an inordinate amount of time listening to podcasts hosted by self-congratulatory comedians boasting about the importance of their work. Of course, there would be an episode of Serial or Waking Up With Sam Harris thrown into the mix, but overall, I was not listening to anything of real academic merit. The etymology of the dick joke could not be considered high brow media consumption. Clearly, this was not a valuable use of my time.

My resolution became clear: I wanted to read more. Anytime I would normally spend idly listening to a podcast - I would instead pick up a book.

I started December 1st (I am never ready to make big life changes on the 1st of January). I find I can keep my resolutions if I have a month to ease into them, but it didn't matter for this one. I did not “ease” into this resolution. In December of 2017 I read eight books. This quickly turned my resolution into a challenge. I wanted to see how many books I could read in one year. I didn’t think I could maintain the pace of two books a week while still working full time - but I wanted to see what I was capable of.

Any time one of my friends mentioned a book they were reading, I immediately added it to my list. I scoured the New York Times and Washington Posts “Best Books of the Year.” I joined Goodreads at some point in this venture (I can’t believe it took me this long). If a book was highly rated - I was going to read it.

I did not select books based on how long they were (even though Dave would like to believe I did). Maybe next year I will do that, so I can double my list — but that doesn’t sound very appealing.

As this year draws to a close, I can say that my resolution was a success. I am incredibly proud of myself for what I have accomplished. I’ve read more this year than I have in probably the past six or seven years combined.

I have not yet decided my next resolution - if you have a suggestion, I am open... As 2018 draws to a close, I can truly say “this was a good fuckin’ year.”

(Editors note: Dave has bolded all the books he has read, and therefore approves of. Thirty of them! So many good ones, but number 80 is my favorite book I read this year).

2018 Books:

1. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

2. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

3. Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris

4. The Power by Naomi Alderman

5. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

8. The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley

9. The Outline by Rachel Cusk

10. Little Fires Everywhere by Celest Ng

11. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

12. What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan

13. Atonement by Ian McEwen

14. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

15. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D Vance.

16. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

17. Tenth of December by George Saunders

18. Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers

19. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

20. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

21. Bear Town by Fredrik Backman

22. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

23. White Houses by Amy Bloom

24. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

25. Cemetery John by Robert Zorn

26. The Breakdown by BA Paris

27. The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand

28. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

29. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

30. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

31. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

32. Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin

33. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

34. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

35. I’ll Be Gone In The Dark by Michelle McNamara

36. Surprise Me by Sophie Kinsella

37. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jasmine Ward

38. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

39. The Woman in The Window by AJ Finn

40. Drown by Junot Diaz

41. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

42. Artemis by Andy Weir

43. Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman

44. Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

45. Calypso by David Sedaris

46. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

47. A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

48. The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

49. The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

50. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

51. The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

52. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

53. All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

54. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

55. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

56. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

57. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

58. The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

59. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

60. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

61. Ask The Dust by John Fante

62. Lamb by Christopher Moore

63. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

64. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

65. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

66. American Pastoral by Philip Roth

67. The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher

68. Straight Man by Richard Russo

69. Where the Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens

70. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

71. The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman

72. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

73. This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

74. Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson

75. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

76. Florida by Lauren Groff

77. The Other Woman by Sandie Jones

78. Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

79. The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

80. Boom Town by Sam Anderson

To Coddle or Not To Coddle

My take on Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt's new book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure is that it's based on a fairly reasonable premise:

prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child

and I think the authors do a great job extending the ideas from the viral Atlantic essay they wrote a few years ago . . . since then, there have been even more issues of "safety-ism" and the abrogation of free speech on college campuses and the book details these, including the shrieking girl at Yale, the assault at Middlebury, and the riots at Evergreen College; the authors worry that this new generation of students, labeled iGen, have been taught three great untruths:

1. what doesn't kill you makes you weaker

2. always trust your feelings

3. life is a battle between good people and evil people

and this has led to all sorts of logical problems, such as catastrophizing, call out culture, overgeneralizing, emotional reasoning, etc and that the fact that college campuses have become more and more liberal, with less and less representation by conservative professors, has led to a very sheltered and polarized, almost religiously fanatical us-against-them atmosphere on certain progressive campuses (I just read that more people identify themselves as LGBTQ than conservative at Harvard and Yale) and while this may have some very just causes-- the President Trump/Alex Jones nut job fringe right wing contingent-- there is still a serious problem with the lack of perspectives and the inability of many young people to deal with a diversity of thought, and this ability to debate and discuss ideas that might be slightly repulsive is an important part of a democratic nation; the first amendment is an extraordinarily powerful right, to not only believe and speak, but to amplify with the press, assemble other like-minded people and then petition the government . . . and the authors see some of the behavior on college campuses as a strike to dismantle this right . . . especially because administration rarely support the "offending" professors, who often meant well-- but intentions don't matter, only feelings-- and because college is so expensive, it's less a place of intellectual discourse and more of a luxury item, where "the customer is always right," but the book does offer hope and sees a way forward, away from "micro-agressions" and victimhood and blame, and towards CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and debate and dialogue . . . and this all sounds excellent to me-- I teach logic and rationality in my Philosophy and Comp classes, and regularly try to expose my students to controversial texts and topics (right now I'm presenting my sophomores  with Bundyville, a different take on the American Dream than they are used to) and I teach them to have reasonable and intellectual discourse on ideas that may be foreign to them . . . but apparently not everyone agrees with me about this book-- there's been some blowback-- and some view the book as a betrayal and a turn rightward by "elite liberals" in America . . . this Guardian review says it all, the advice is fine and good if your middle class and the book (horror!) was written by a couple of white guys, so it's easy for them to be reasonable-- and it might even have good advice if you're a minority attending one of these elite institutions, to help you navigate the waters, but if you're really progressive, then it's not enough to prepare the child for the road . . . you need to imagine how the new generation can change the road . . . but that's a little scary to me, to narrow and pave the road means serious revision to our first amendment rights, and in a society that's moving towards total surveillance, that may be all we have left . . . people -- especially kids-- are not that fragile, and the dangers that plagued humanity for most of our existence-- disease, constant warfare, threats of violence and crime, inequality and slavery-- there have been great inroads made in all these areas and so instead of seeking more and more safe havens, isolated from those that are different, we need to find common ground with the people that we don't necessarily share values with and understand that our children are going to come in contact with texts, words, people and ideas that they disagree with (and perhaps even disgust them) and that sunlight is the best antiseptic . . . anyway, read the book, see what you think, and perhaps even put some of the ideas into action, while raising your own kids or thinking your own thoughts.

Let's Get Political, Political . . . Let Me Hear Your Party Talk

Since the topic has generated some interesting commentary, here are some final thoughts on Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion:

1) while there are more than two kinds of people, our political system breaks us down that way-- unfortunately, there should be room for libertarians (who give even less of a shit about things than liberals do, but really care about liberty/oppression and have even less empathy than conservatives)

2) you can tell someone's political beliefs by the kind of dog breed they prefer: gentle and independent versus loyal, protective and wary of strangers;

3) Haidt admits that liberals go too far sometimes in their reflexive anti-business stance, and they could endorse the wonders of the free market to solve problems-- he makes a great analogy with food and the silliness of having food insurance, instead of knowing the prices for items and shopping around and buying what works, versus health insurance, where we have no clue what anything costs and so want to be insured for everything-- he brings up the case of lasix, which went on the free market and the price adjusted accordingly  . . . we've gone so far in the care/harm department with health care that the spending is utterly bonkers;

4) on the other hand, regulation can also have benefits-- the regulation of leaded gasoline in the late 70's and early 80's, despite Ronald Reagan's attempt to cripple the EPA and its ability to make that change (sound familiar, Scott Pruitt, bringer of asthma and global warming) was ill-founded . . . as are Trump's trade tariffs (it's Smoot-Hawley all over again . . . Smoot-Hawley! anyone? Bueller?)

5) the tug of war between these two groups is significant and important-- the debate between those that are primarily concerned with care/harm and making the world fair and free for as many people as possible-- and those that are concerned with groups and loyalty and liberty and authority and sanctity, as well as the former principles . . . and that's the most important thing that many liberals need to understand, that conservatives es still care about care/harm and fairness, just in slightly different ways;

6) Haidt's final advice is that if you want to truly understand another perspective, follow the sacredness-- I've had conservatives tell me that I don't actually care about endangered species and the environment, because they can't believe that someone would be sincere about that-- and I have trouble truly believing that people are sincere about religion or truly care if gay people get married . . . but we have to try to see why people believe these things, which all make sense in the context of what is sacred . . . and we have to remember that though there are more than two types of people, "once people join a political team, they get ensnared in its moral matrix" and follow the grand narrative of that party . . . but liberals are conservatives are yin and yang and both necessary for the health of a political system;

7) he ends by saying that libertarians and conservatives certainly provide a valuable counterweight to "liberal reform movements" but he sees two liberal points which are profoundly important to the health of society:

"governments can and should restrain corporate superorganisms"

and

"some big problems CAN be solved by regulation"

and I think these are the two points that we need to all come together about, we are rapidly destroying our environment and our resources, and we are rapidly being consumed by larger and larger corporate entities, which have captured the government, making all this tug-of-war and debating utterly useless, if the people no longer have any say in what happens to our country.

A Book to Help Liberals Understand Conservatives

If you're reading this blog, then you are probably a secular liberal like me (and you're most definitely WEIRD like me: Western and educated, from an industrialized, rich, democratic nation) and you probably need to read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion . . . I've written about Haidt's basic ideas here in previous posts, but his book goes into much greater detail and also describes the experiments and readings that helped him to understand the different moral matrices that liberals and conservatives use to understand the world; essentially, conservatives care about more stuff than liberals-- while liberals tend to base their morality on the principles of fairness and harm, conservatives-- who do care about those values-- are also concerned with authority, purity and loyalty . . . so conservatives tend to understand how liberals view things better than liberals understand how conservatives view things; most of these moral characteristics are due to deep-seated personality traits, which are mainly genetic-- things like being open to new experiences and agreeable and neurotic, so there seem to be differences in liberals and conservatives at the most basic level; the book really enlightened me about the benefits of religion-- I wish I were religious, but like a typical liberal, I consider it a bunch of supernatural mumbo-jumbo that wastes your time and money-- but while religion may have started because we have a natural proclivity to see agency everywhere, whether it's a face in the tree or gods behind the thunder-- it has become a valuable asset for members, who experience happiness and social capital, give more to charity, belong to an in group, and have costly rules of purity and sanctity which bond them to other members of the group . . . while it will never work for me, I can see how groups of humans that had religion could have outcompeted groups that did not have religion (and Haidt presents an argument against the principles of the Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins new-atheist crowd, who see religion as a parasite that takes over human brain and eventually leads to things like suicide bombers-- Haidt makes a compelling argument that suicide bombers, who might need insipration from an in-group, are historically only in response to boots on the ground appression and more of a military tactic from a tribe than a radical response based on belief) anyway, the WEIRDER you are the more you see the world as individual objects and not groups until you might eventually try to boil everything down to one set of utilitarian rules, as Jeremy Bentham did . . . Haidt speculates that Bentham might have been autistic, a high-functioning systemizer with very little empathy that made morality into a formulaic algorithm which computes the greater good but does not think about the individual moral emotions within the context of the decision-- while this method might be a decent way to formulate policy, it's often political suicide (economists know that immigrants lead to a net gain in the economy, but apparently many conservatives don't care-- they are more considered with the rule of law and the sanctity of our borders) and it took a long trip to India for Haidt to recognize that other people and cultures place a much greater value on group morality, while everyone cares about liberty/oppression and fairness/cheating and care/harm, only conservatives truly care about loyalty/betrayal and authority/subversion and sanctity/degradation . . . and these are all more important to the group . . . at first, Haidt had a typical WEIRD view of India-- it had rigid social classes and gender roles, it was a sexist society that had limited mobility and a lot of unnecessary rules about eating and prayer, but then he saw that though things weren't as fair as in the West, the connections and order between groups was strong and that was what was valued . . . it's really hard, as a liberal, to put yourself into a conservative's shoes . . . it's hard to feel sanctity towards a religious text or a symbol or an institution that you think is silly, it's hard to find a love for authority when your deepest desire is to see authority subverted, and it's hard to value loyalty when you think it leads to racism and oppression, but if the liberals in our country don't come to understand this, then they are going to destroy their chances of making utilitarian policy changes that can lead to the greater good and instead will remain mired in partisan ugliness . . . Trump is easily explained in this context-- he wants to make America pure and great again, and return us to rule of law, he's an authoritarian figure, totally loyal to our country and nothing else . . . Haidt gives liberals a tool to understand that conservatives are not all insane racist lunatics, and are quite sincere in the things that they care about, things which often do increase social capital, especially in groups . . . it's not my cup of tea, but at least I understand things a bit more after reading this book and can empathize with the conservative point of view . . . and I can see the roots of my genetics in my children, who are open to experience and care about fairness and harm, but couldn't give two shits about loyalty, sanctity, and authority . . . even though my wife and I sort of try to value these virtues, as most parents do, even at the basic level of don't cheat, respect your teachers, and stop picking your nose . . . but none of it is working with them and they're going to end up as WEIRD secular liberals just like their mom and dad.

Mold Spores Make Dave Smarter!

Not only did I survive yesterday's inhalation of dangerous stinky mold spores, but I think they may have made me smarter . . . so see if you can follow me here, as I intend on explaining and connecting all the issues of the day in one sentence; in a previous post I discussed social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's theory on the difference between liberals and conservatives, and why liberals have such a hard time stomaching conservative values and understanding conservative perspective; first he breaks down social/political concerns into five categories:

1) fairness/reciprocity;

2) harm/care;

3) purity/sanctity;

4) in-group/loyalty;

5) authority/respect;

and then he explains the results of his experiments: he has found that liberals care about number one and number two, while conservatives have a "five channel" moral system . . . and I find this to be true about myself-- if you take an issue like gay marriage, then I don't think it's fair to ban gay people from marrying, and why would I care anyway?-- it helps them and gay marriage doesn't harm me-- but conservatives will often have far more complex views about the sanctity and tradition of marriage-- which I could care less about-- or loyalty to their church or religion, or respect for authority figures who disdain gay marriage . . . again which is all stuff I would never even consider-- so take a typical liberal view and you'll see that conservatives have a lot more to worry about-- I just don't give a shit about things that conservatives care deeply about, and often find them silly, which makes me lack empathy for conservatives-- and it's a problem and I see no clear solution to it, even though I understand what I don't understand about conservatives-- but here is something I figured out: I think this five channel morality explains the reason conservatives fall for fake news and conspiracy theories far more than liberals-- which absolutely infuriates everyone on the left: this debate about what is real-- the fact that in America, people ask if you "believe" in global warming, like it's a religion-- and for some background, I recommend you listen to the new Planet Money: Finding the Fake-News King, because the fake-news king is actually quite smart (and a liberal) and was creating incredible fake-news stories first as a joke and then as a very lucrative profession, and he found that he couldn't make any money with liberal fake-news, it only worked on conservatives-- people on the left would quickly fact check the news and the fake-story would fizzle, but I don't think anyone has definitively explained why this is so-- until now! thanks mold spores!-- so here it is: conservatives are more likely to fall for fake-news because the stories trigger more of those five channels-- conservatives are more loyal, and thus more likely to trust something passed along to them from a friend or trusted source, conservatives are more likely to respect the authority of the internet and not go to Snopes or start fact-checking away, and conservatives find their views to be more pure and sanctioned, so they are more likely to buy more of the same . . . while liberals-- while callous and unsympathetic to many conservative views-- are also less likely to respect a source, or think of themselves as part of a big pure group that believes a certain thing . . . it's not that liberals never fall for fake news, but they often recognize that they are just "rooting for the clothes" and don't wholeheartedly believe in anything, so the fact that the right could push an email scandal into the media for the entirety of the election-- and that conservatives could focus on this issue for that long-- while a plethora of real issues like climate change and the fact that Trump is an anti-vaxxer who said NAFTA is terrible were pushed to the side . . . don't get me started-- anyway, that's why conservatives think liberals are nice people with bad ideas, and liberals think conservatives are horrible people with insane opinions, and that's why fake and silly news stories had such a profound effect on this election, and things aren't going to get better any time soon . . . because while I now understand this better, it's not helping me any, I still think it's crazy to care deeply about channels three through five, and I still think anyone who is getting their news from random Facebook feeds and passing it along is an idiot without any critical thinking skills . . . so maybe I need to sniff another batch of mold so I can figure out the next step.

Taking the Purple Pill: Trying to Step Outside the Moral Matrix

This sentence is going to be a random, stream-of-consciousness mess, but I think (for once) my form fits my function: lately, I have been trying my damndest to understand the polarization between liberals and the conservatives in our country, and how this is shaping the current economic policy and the election platforms . . . I've been doing my homework and listening to conservative talk radio-- some Rush Limbaugh and plenty of Mark Levin, and in between the overblown rhetoric, the ranting about Hillary "Rotten" Clinton . . . how she is a felon and a serial liar and the devil incarnate, the disgust with poor people and immigrants, the lack of empathy for people of color, the absolute hatred for the government and its programs and the possibility that our liberties might be curtailed (guns!), the fear of socialism and any redistribution of wealth, the paranoia that taxation and public works projects will just allow the government to get its dirty hands on our money, and like the mafia, take its cut-- as a public school teacher, it's hard to listen to this-- but in between all this vitriol, there is a kernel of an idea that these conservative blowhards are trying to espouse . . . that the government should be smaller and taxes should be lower and regulations should be less and that the best way to produce wealth is an unfettered free market-- and while is think this is true in a limited sense, for certain goods and products, I also think a free market is expensive and volatile with certain things, especially things that we wish to flow: electricity, water, health care, infrastructure . . . we just want these things to be reliable so that other things can work on top of them, and I also think there's a question of externalities, which the conservatives rarely mention . . . but underneath all the hatred there is something to talk about, and I find it interesting that the conservatives don't agree with all Trump has to say, especially on jobs and government infrastructure spending and protectionism and minimum wage . . . meanwhile, the liberals want a revolution-- free college, free healthcare, higher living wages, alternative energy, restrictions on corporations, control of externalities, and equal treatment for all people: rich, poor, immigrant, native, white, black, gay, transgender, and don't mind some redistribution of wealth to encourage this, and I've been listening to the ultra-liberal and fairly funny Citizen Radio to get a bead on some real radical left wing logic and emotions, and while I have more in common with those ideas, they can be really annoying and idealistic and insular and obnoxious as well . . . and it doesn't seem like any of these candidates or their followers are going to do what Jonathan Haidt suggests in his TED talk and "step outside the moral matrix" and actually look at what some smart people have figured out, which is that it's a combination of free markets and regulations that make economies work, and no one knows the exact balance . . . read some Ha-joon Chang to understand "kicking away the ladder," which is how many developed countries arrived at economic stability and wealth through complex and strategic protectionism, tariffs, regulation of foreign investment, regulation on imports and exports, and subsidies-- but then once these these nations (and he uses America, Britain, and his home country of North Korea as his prime examples) have reached a position of economic power, they use institutions such as the WTO and the IMF, treaties, embargoes, copyright law, and tariffs to force impoverished nations into adopting extreme free market policies despite the fact that these countries are not ready to compete in a free market . . . in other words, there's no magic bullet for an economy and it takes a mixture of ideology to understand this, which is what Jonathan Haidt's TED talk is about, his research shows that while there is some consensus between liberals and conservative on fairness/reciprocity and harm/care as valid moral concerns, conservatives tend to be much less open to experience and thus much more concerned with three moral traits that liberals don't interest liberals: purity/sanctity . . . so the strict interpretation of the Constitution . . . in-group/loyalty . . . so "real" Americans and patriotism and military jingoism and Ronald Reagan as God . . . and authority/respect . . . so law and order and belief in the police and a more traditional patriarchy and Christmas and religion and all that . . . and Haidt points out to the mainly liberal crowd (he polled them, and it's a typical TED talk audience: open to progress, science, and new ideas and almost entirely liberal) that BOTH of these mentalities are required to create a great society . . . there needs to be some revolution and progress, but order is also delicate and hard to maintain and actually requires the three moral traits that liberals tend to ignore . . . now Trump throws a bit of a monkey wrench in this because he doesn't seem to be concerned with some typical conservative values-- purity and respect for authority-- and so his economic and policy plans might be something entirely new (and unpalatable in some respects to the "true" conservative) while Clinton certainly can be more jingoistic about the military and more loyal to her group (the Democrats) than a typical rebellious, progress-minded liberal might like and while I know that these two sides are never going to love each other, or even see eye-to-eye . . . conservatives work on a five-channel moral system while liberals work on two-channels, so conservatives will always be annoying to liberals because they care passionately about more stuff and seem angry, and liberals will always seem to be amoral libertine radicals because they don't care about enough things, but we are going to have to embrace the fact that what makes America great is diversity, and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Ronald Reagan are part of that diversity, and those conservative views-- which I often find hateful and ranting and humorless-- are important, just as important as the stereotypical diversity most liberals embrace: multi-cultural, multi-gender, pan-religious, multi-ethnic diversity . . . diversity that appeals to people who are open to all kinds of experience, the diversity that leads to a wide-variety of good restaurants, many of them quite cheap . . . such as the new Tacoria in New Brunswick . . . and that's what this is all about, right?

Let's Get Ready to Coddle!!!!!!!!!!

The Atlantic article "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is an excellent and comprehensive overview of how many Americans are starting to view the world-- especially college students; the article's subtitle is "in the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like . . . here's why that's disastrous for education-- and mental health" but the article covers more than college campuses-- it connects social media, politics, and society as a whole to the thesis; the article is insanely long, and while I suggest you read it in its entirety, I will offer a summary here for those of you who like to be coddled:

1) social media makes it "extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors" so we've entered a new age of polarization, where it's easy to "like" a point of view skip the dialogue, debate, discussion, and negotiation that comes with actually listening to someone else's perspective;

2) the youth of America have grown up in a completely politically polarized environment-- surveys from the 1970s show that Republican and Democrat antipathy was "surprisingly mild" but the negative feelings of each party toward the other have grown steadily, a process called "affective partisan polarization," which is a serious problem for a country that considers itself a democracy;

3) hypersensitive college students have created a new term called "microagression," which can apply to any phrase or action that might be construed offensive-- whether it was overt, subtextual, or accidental-- and this led to the whole "shrieking girl" incident on the Yale campus protesting the hypothetical possibility of unregulated Halloween costumes;

4) hypersensitive college students are now demanding "trigger warnings" from teachers if they are about to encounter something uncomfortable in a text, so that they are not traumatized by something shocking or unexpected . . . even though this goes against all psychological logic, as this system will keep students in a state of anxiety about these issues-- racism, terrorism, abuse, etc.-- instead of the time-tested use of "exposure therapy," which rewires your brain to be able to deal with the difficult topic;

5) emotional reasoning has become the dominant mode of discourse on college campuses, with a subjective definition of offense-- if it offends you then it is offensive-- and this has bled into workplace harassment policies, where the same language is cropping up: there is no objective definition of harassment, it is simply if the person being harassed takes umbrage, then it is harassment;

6) cognitive therapy is a technique that probably needs to be taught on college campuses; "the goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately" and this is done by learning the most common cognitive distortions that people fall prey to-- overgeneralizing, dichotomous thinking, blaming, emotional reasoning . . . all twelve are listed at the end of the article and I am going to use them in class during my logical fallacies unit . . . this is one of my favorite things to teach in Composition class, though I warn the students that they may get in hot water when they start pointing out these "cognitive distortions" . . . especially when a parent or teacher employs one.