It is possible that some of our earlier comments, based on frustration, might have caused some to question our resolve to fight injustice. Regardless of the effectiveness of others, we will defend the nineteenth amendment, and the fifteenth, and all laws promoting equality and social justice “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.
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In an earlier post (Save Your Birthday – Vote For Clinton), I was hard on the voting record of women since the passage of the 19th amendment to the Constitution in 1920. We were just venting our frustration and apologize to anyone who thought our principles or commitment to justice and equality were wavering the slightest bit. Everyone gets frustrated. Mature adults don’t let their frustrations dictate actions or short-circuit already-well-reasoned practices. For that reason, prudent writers may not even mention their frustrations unless they already have a viable plan to address the causes of that frustration. Oops!
We will continue to fight for the equality of women and all other marginalized groups. To do otherwise based on their less-than-stellar history would be using their own higher expectations against them. We would be establishing a double standard of conduct, as men have done for centuries and America blatantly continued to do during this last election. Put another way, men have acted like idiots and have failed to follow through for as long as anyone can remember. To hope for better from women is understandable. To demand it is unconscionable. Consequently, We will continue to stand up for people who cannot stand up for themselves.
The United States has pretty much always had just two major political parties. I think now would be a good time for a change.
The Problems
It Promotes Polarization, Near-Sighted Focus, And Life-or-Death Loyalty
In regular sailboat racing, each party focuses on effectively and efficiently maximizing their capabilities to accomplish a common goal. In match racing, each vessel focuses only on their competitor. They will take action that would not ordinarily be in their own best interest as long as it puts the competition at an even greater disadvantage. In the two-party political system, beating up your competitor is soon everything. All other principles fall by the wayside. Each side tries to redefine the other in the most unflattering light. In the war of words an “us vs. them” mentality develops which justifies ever more flamboyant language, harsher conduct, and a slimmer and slimmer grip on reality.
It’s Shallow And One-Dimensional
If as a citizen, you are a one-trick pony, say all you care about is abortion, you just pick the party that has the “right” answer on that particular issue. Then you show your gratitude and undying loyalty by voting however you are told on all other issues. The platforms of each party have actually changed quite a bit over history. The Democratic Party has evolved lately into the “Yes” party and the Republicans becoming the “No Way”s. That’s about as one-dimensional and polarized as you can get.
One Side Is Always Guaranteed A Majority
Regardless of the atrocities of war, the ends justify the means. Being guaranteed an instant majority in every decision, the winner gets to bully all minorities to distraction, has no incentive to improve their capabilities or social skills, and basically enjoys all the characteristics that make monopolies so unpopular. Negotiation and compromise have no place in their vocabulary. Any independent thought is squashed to make room for blind obedience to the team. When the pendulum does change direction . . . .
I picture a child in a swing with one of its divorcing parents on each side. When a parent finally gets their hands on the swing they push as hard as they can in the opposite direction. The child goes faster and gets higher and more extreme every pass. Although neither parent notices, the kid is scared to death; I don’t see this ending well.
The Solution
Many times, when the two lead vessels in a regular race start focusing only on each other, it is possible for the rest of the fleet to pass them both by. I propose at least one more political party. In the past, third parties in this country have been forced to stake out the more radical ground left by the major parties, but since both parties have locked their focus and taken opposite corners, there is plenty of room in the middle for the rest of us.
I have pondered how the new parties should differentiate themselves. And although there is wiggle room here, I think maybe staking out a position as socially liberal & fiscally conservative might be the best option for the first party. It does, as any third party would have to do, introduce another dimension. And there is still room for a fourth party to stake out socially conservative & fiscally liberal if they like. But it’s not too late for you to offer a better suggestion for cutting up the pie using different parameters.
We need a position that people would readily accept and embrace to overcome inertia. But to succeed, we don’t need an instant majority. All we need is to take away enough votes from each existing party so that nobody is guaranteed a majority. That could be done by recruiting one third of the more moderate members from each of the existing parties. Then we could leverage our position with either party to restore some sanity to the political process. No party can just pick up their ball and go home if they don’t get their way. The one that is not willing to negotiate or compromise will be the odd man out. But if those in one party suspect that this is just a ruse by the other to divide their numbers, the plan will not work. The division must be genuine.
Some countries have many, many more than three parties, so your next question might be “Is it possible to have too many parties?” I don’t know and it is not something I think we need to worry about for another several decades.
I guess the only real question is “What are you going to call this new party?” I looked for possible acronyms for fiscally conservative and socially liberal (or words to that effect), but so far have come up empty. The “Mature” Party is probably out, but “Responsible” has a nice ring to it, yes? I’ll gladly leave this to the Madison Avenue types among us, but don’t dilly dally.
Other Changes
Reading the explanations of why we have only two parties, most writers make it sound like there is no other choice, but base their answers on explanations that are such simplifications of the facts that their validity should be questioned.
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If you Google “why are there only two political parties” you will find plenty of articles. They all mention Duverger’s law as the main reason that in the United States it is not possible to have it any other way. Only Wikipedia even mentions there are counterexamples, and some of their other assumptions (for example the Washington PostA (among others) claims that a candidate need only to get a plurality of the vote to be elected, even though there are many instances where that is not true.
Proportional Representation
Nonetheless, it is clear that the rules of the electoral process themselves add a bias to the results. For example, single-member districts, even without gerrymanderingD or plurality voting, tend to create a winner-take-all system that exaggerates the power of the larger party and completely neutralizes the impact of any lesser party. One alternative for a county with say seven districts, for example, would be to have all candidates compete in one election, and the top seven finishers would get a job.
The Electoral College
As I mentioned in an earlier article, I think the electoral college is obsolete. This opinion is, or was at one time or another, shared by both Donald TrumpA and Ruth Bader GinsburgA. Interestingly enough, the electoral college was established because our forefathers were concerned about the unwashed masses. Hamilton was concerned about somebody unqualified, but with a talent for “low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity”, attaining high office. Madison argued against “an interested and overbearing majority” . . . “or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, . . . adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”.
They reasoned that in the electoral college, the members of which were able to have information unavailable to the general public, the decision-makers could deliberate reasonably without “tumult and disorder”, ensuring the one who would ultimately be administering the laws of the United States would have both ability and good character (edited heavily from Wikipedia). As we now know, those electors that were supposed to protect us will invariably be cut from the same cloth as those they were protecting us against. Our forefathers didn’t see that coming (originally, they didn’t envision political partiesA), but in hindsight that insight seems obvious.
Conclusion
Both of these changes (and others that may help our elected officials better represent the will of all the people) will not be easy. It could be hard to keep up our third party into perpetuity without them. Difficult or not, something has to be done. If you have any other ideas, now would be a good time to present them. Thanks for listening.
Don’t get me wrong! There is a place for pendulums, but only because their imperfections are so predictable.
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Wikipedia has an articleD that gives more information about pendulums than most readers would like, including the math, history, and problems perfecting them. For a shorter version focusing mostly on the math, see The Department of Physics & Astronomy website at Georgia State University.
Pendulums try very hard to be in the right place at the right time, but they are dismal failures. The only time they rest or stop moving for even a moment is when they are as far from perfect as they can possibly get. They spend less time at their desired destination than they spend anywhere else on their route, and during that nanosecond of success, they are moving their fastest toward another extreme position. Why is that?
Pendulums cannot think. Pendulums cannot predict, they cannot anticipate. They cannot see the consequences of their own actions. Pendulums can’t even tell that they’ve been to their desired destination until they see it in the rear view mirror. They only react. And as a result, they are doomed to a life of constant searching, continually bouncing frantically from one radical position to another. Welcome to the real world. People who practice similar policies WILL suffer similar fates. And welcome to politics.
Well, the people have spoken! And I’m really disappointed. I’ve previously expressed my displeasure with some of Mr. Trump’s positions and rhetoricB1, B2, B3, but my main complaint has always been his severe lack of maturity, his complete disregard for the truth,
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and his extremely low ethical standards. That allows him to push the buttons of idiots and fan the flames of bigotry for his own personal gain, which he regularly puts ahead of whatever action might be better for the good of the country. Trying to understand why he was so popular, I listened to a lot of people, but found their arguments lacking in both fact
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and logic. Examples include those who insisted Clinton just couldn’t be trusted (in light of the above). And there’s the gentleman who praised Trump’s lack of political experience and then 30 seconds later bashed Obama for the same characteristic. It makes me wonder if my concerns for “Falling Into A Negative Spiral” have all come true.
But you won’t find me out protesting, because I don’t see the point to it. I understood the rules before the election (See Article II and the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States). I thought they were as good as you’re likely to find anywhere.
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There is that one question about the fairness of the Electoral College and whether it has outlived its usefulness (which in today’s world I believe it has). But because in all cases where the Electoral College differed from the popular vote, the Democratic (or pre-Democratic) candidate lost the electionA as they appear to have done this year, I don’t see any serious efforts to change that process any time soon.
Some argue that the Electoral College was intended to favor smaller states. Certainly our founders pondered the issue of individual power vs. state power. That’s why the Senate gives states equality while the House of Representative tips the scale toward the individual. Personally, I like the notion of ‘one person, one vote’ without taking a penalty if you can actually wave to your neighbor from the front porch.
The news that many of the protesters didn’t vote was also disturbing. I’ve long maintained that if you don’t vote you waive all rights to complain about the election for the next four years.
A Growing Frustration
It has been said that Mr. Trump was able to tap into America’s growing frustration with the gridlock in Washington. I can definitely understand such a frustration. The problem is that for a majority of Americans, that frustration was self-inflicted. I’m talking about the majority who four years ago voted for candidates specifically because those candidates promised to rip the word “compromise” from their dictionary and vehemently oppose every move the opposition makes (even if it was originally their idea).
As one might expect, their candidates had some success. Now this majority is complaining that nothing gets done in Washington. Really? To me, that is strong evidence of the negative spiral I was concerned about.
I predict in four years these short-sighted people with shorter memories will be even more frustrated. They will make even more desperate decisions, speeding the downward spiral even more. To see a discussion of one type of desperate decision-making and how to stop it, see my recent post When Sailors Should Split Tacks. Sadly enough, like the skipper in that post, these people are incapable of recognizing their faulty logic or seeing their own part in this mess. But as long as they have someone else to blame for their problems, I don’t expect to see much growth.
I’ve always liked to believe that whatever the results of an election, the people got what they deserve. But the truth is that the minority gets to suffer right alongside everyone else. Those who took the right steps to make America great over the last decade also have reason to be frustrated. Their frustration will be greater in another four years also, but they know that just waiting for others to mature won’t get the change they are looking for. That knowledge alone does not make the frustration any less. But they have to be mature enough to deal with it while they bide their time waiting for the next opportunity for improvement.
Wait And See
So that is what I’m doing. Mr. Trump isn’t President yet so there is really nothing yet to complain about. His lack of truthfulness, that characteristic that was the most bothersome during the campaign, is now the one thing that gives me the most hope in a strange way. If he only screws up one out of twelve of the things he promised to screw up, we should probably consider ourselves lucky.
Just hours after the election Mr. Trump praised Mrs. Clinton for her many virtues. This was 180 degrees off from everything he had said before then. (English translation: “I’ve been feeding you all a line of cr@_ all this time. Thanks for your vote”). How many of his promises has he already walked away from, just weeks after the election? There is the distinct possibility that some things could actually turn out reasonably well. But there is still plenty of damage that can be done.
We need to bide our time and look for opportunities for growth. To break the spiral, one thing I’d like to see is a strong, long-term commitment to education – an education that includes and even emphasizes critical thinking skills. And as always, I’ll be doing my part to put things into perspective and combat “conventional” wisdom while promoting uncommon sense. Thank you for listening.
After learning how to SCUBA dive while in high school years ago, my friends and I did most of our diving from the beach. The geography was fairly simple; from the beach the bottom had a gentle slope until reaching the (non-coral) reef of interest at a depth of around 30 feet a couple hundred yards offshore. Water visibility was typically 15 to 25 feet offshore, but could be less than five feet in the surf zone. After moving as fast as possible through the surf zone, we would regroup, sink to the bottom, and rely on our compass, backed up by our depth gauge, to find the most direct path (perpendicular to the beach) to our destination. Our depth gauge was supported by physical clues of our depth, like light intensity and even the spectrum of colors available.
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Of course light intensity drops steadily as one goes deeper, but also the colors disappear with depth, starting with the longer wavelengths (red)A.
At the end of the dive we would return straight to the surface, which would put us still a few hundred yards from the beach. We would inflate our life vests, as they were called back then,
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roll over on our backs, and leisurely swim back to the beach as we caught our breath. It was quite common on this return trip to look back past your fins and either see the beach behind you, or see one of your friends swimming out to sea.
But you don’t need to be a diver to see how poorly we maintain a straight and narrow path.
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Any resemblance to Matthew 7:13 & 14D is purely coincidental. 😉
To do your own experiment, start in the middle of a large field, put a blindfold on and walk in a “straight” line, dropping numbered markers or flags or let out a rope as you walk (the last time I heard of anyone relying on the bread crumb trick, it didn’t turn out wellA.) You should be able to take the blindfold off in less than a minute, look back at your path, and be happy nobody was watching. The moral of this story is that without regular “reality checks”, one won’t be taking the shortest path to your destination, and probably shouldn’t expect to get there at all. And so it is with life.
How To Maintain Your Grip On Reality
Make regular observations
Every nautical chart will tell you that “The prudent mariner will not rely solely on any single aid to navigation …”, which clearly means the same as that seventeenth-century proverb “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”. Failing to make regular observations is the simplest way to lose touch with reality.
Verify all information – “Google, don’t gossip”
If you don’t know the position or the reliability of the source, you can’t depend on it to find or even describe your own position.
Apply the same standards to all information
Don’t get all of your news from one source. Expect all sources to have some bias (that may not be clear). Politically, this means that you should not get more than 30% of your information from Rush Limbaugh or any lesser-known celebrity (regardless of political affiliation). Your sources should come from all around your horizon,
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Landmarks that are near each other may have similar positional biases, which will translate into errors in your own position estimate because using them will cause the errors to accumulate and negate any averaging or cancelling effect that you were hoping to get from independent sources.
and you should not treat the information that comes from one side of your vessel different from the information on the other side. Again, politically, you can’t demand higher standards from the other candidates than you expect from your favorite. This just exposes you as a bigot looking for excuses.
Don’t Throw Out Information Just Because It’s Unexpected Or Inconvenient
I’ve already discussed this in “How Large Is Your Universe”. If you are doing this, stop calling yourself a scientist and expect others to call you a bigot. We’ve all seen bosses who surround themselves with sycophantsD (ass kissers) and ultimately drive their Rolls-Royce off Reality Road into a ditch (Not surprisingly, none of their entourageD helps pull them out.) When scientists, whose job it is to describe reality, run across information that doesn’t support their theory they are forced to change their theory. Of course there are the occasional outliers,
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which need to be handled carefully. One clue to how far you’ve wandered from reality is the number of outliers you have to throw away.
And that is pretty much it. It is simple enough, but requires constant effort. If you think I left anything out, let me know. Other comments are welcome and appreciated. Now go apply this to your life. Thanks for listening.
I think Secretary Clinton could find somebody like Clara Peller (August 4, 1902 – August 11, 1987)A to go to all of Donald Trump’s events. She could have been in the front row at the last debate, and then whenever Mr. Trump failed to answer a question (which I believe was every time except the last question (I’ll leave the fact-checking to somebody else – I don’t think I could sit through that debate one more time)), or when Mr. Trump interrupted Ms. Clinton (which only happened 18 times, down from the 51 times he interrupted her in the first debateA), this Peller doppelgängerD would interrupt Mr. Trump with her signature line, “Where’s the beef?” I don’t believe Donald would even realize that she is questioning the lack of substance in his conversation or in his Presidential policies; with his adolescent “locker room” mentality, Mr. Trump would assume this old woman was referring to one of his male body parts, and he would feel deeply offended. And then as Mr. Trump walked by at the end of the event, this lady could assume an open, gropeable stance, with her arms outstretched, and maybe her lips all puckered up and ready. She could wind up becoming Donald’s worst nightmare.
For Trump’s other events, you would probably need a corps of such old lady hecklers, because each one would find herself uninvited after her first appearance. In fact, they would probably need to go in groups or be escorted, because Donald’s rabid fans would not be above “taking them out”. Donald himself is more likely to launch into a tirade, followed up at three o’clock the next morning with a volley of angry tweets.
Mrs. Clinton would probably take the advice of Michelle Obama, rather than mine. I understand. I’ve never believed that the victor in a race to the bottom could really be called a winner, anyway (What was the prize for the first man to get to Hell?). But a representative like Clara could put Donald Trump’s tactics into better perspective, and would be entertaining.
When I was growing up, birth was considered a significant event. When a girl got pregnant, it wasn’t assumed that the fetus would have a normal, uneventful life as it grew, got an education and a good job, got married, created their own group of fetuses, contributed to society for several decades, and then had a long, fulfilling retirement. In fact, for two of the three parties involved in the process, birth can be very traumatic. According to one articleA, 60 to 80% of all naturally conceived embryos never make that milestone. And of those who did make it, I don’t know of a single one of you that didn’t do a lot of crying about it. Similarly, in 2017 about 295,000 women died during pregnancy or childbirthA. In the United States, 18.5 women die for every 100,000 birthsA. That is twice the rate of Saudi Arabia, three times that of the United Kingdom, and (strangely enough) 250% as many as died in this country in 1987 (yes, the problem is actually getting worse here). In my mind, this is something we should be concerned about.
And then there’s the dad (or shall we say “sperm donor”). Of the two events, the conception is the only one he has to show up for, and for many (mostly Republican) men in Congress, it is apparently the only one that has any meaning – probably the only one he brags about or bothers to put on his calendar (and to save time and space, I’m guessing he doesn’t even bother to jot down the mother’s name). Some legislators have tried to pass laws making the mother personally responsible for everything that happens after that point. I’m surprised that they haven’t passed a law replacing your birth date with the date of conception on your driver’s license and all other official documents (Oops! sorry, my bad; it just occurred to me that the reason they haven’t done that yet is probably only because they haven’t thought of it. The good news is that nobody reads this blog anyway, so we are probably safe for now).
Call To Action?
If you are proud of your birthday, well actually the picture doesn’t look that rosy. The nineteenth amendment to the Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, was ratified 96 years ago and what a waste of time that was. Their major failures during my lifetime have been the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.), the Hyde AmendmentD – which says the government can only spend money on men’s health issues, not women’s (OK, I’m paraphrasing (maybe even exaggerating) here), and most recently any law that says women will get the same pay as men for the same work. Are my biases causing me to miss anything? Help me out, because I can’t think of a single success they can point to (if you remind me of such a success, I will publish it). I’m really afraid that until women finally grow the balls to exercise their rights, we are all screwed. Is that how you see it? Back in the late 1970’s I had a notion that the National Organization for Women (N.O.W. – which is now 50 years old) was apparently not the right group to lead the charge on the E.R.A. My thinking was that maybe a men’s group with a name like “Fathers Without Sons” (or something with a nicer acronym) would be required to really get the balls rolling. Is that really what’s needed to protect us? Somebody please step up to the plate. In the mean time, the rest of you could start small with a vote for Senator Clinton for President next time you get a chance. Thank you.
Not long ago, on the Facebook page of an acquaintance, a discussion was brewing about the Pope having the audacity to say Donald Trump was not a Christian.
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I won’t give you a link to the Facebook discussion, but here’s a New York Times article describing the Pope’s remarksA.
One person suggested the Ten Commandments were the true litmus testD of Christianity. This week I read that The Donald’s favorite Bible verse is “an eye for an eye”A. There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding here. Were this a characteristic peculiar to Trump supporters I would probably have let it slide, but I’m concerned that it is indicative of a growing segment of the population who call themselves Christians, but are clearly clueless about the concept.
My Background
I don’t consider myself any sort of theology expert. I’ve even been rumored to have nodded off in the middle of a sermon or two, and am not even guaranteed to come to the same conclusions as our pastor when reading any particular passage. On each of the few occasions I actually tried reading the Bible cover-to-cover, I was becalmed in one of the begat sections.
Although I’m not a Catholic, I have been impressed with the latest Pope; he didn’t just memorize verses, he actually seems to understand a Biblical concept or two. In fact, he is so different in my view from his predecessors that I’m amazed he was actually elected (maybe it was Divine Intervention).
The point is you shouldn’t take my word for any of this. Maybe you should just read the Book. I’ll give references when I can. But just beware the begats.
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OK, if you must know, you can find some of them at Genesis 5:1 to end, Genesis 11:10 to end, Genesis 36:1 to end, . . . , Matthew 1:2 through 17, Luke 3:23 to end. This list is not exhaustive. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Bible Background
The way I understand it, the Bible has two parts; the first, called “The Old Testament” could be considered the prequel. It includes the Jewish (who would prefer not to be called Christian) Torah, their most important text, and spans the period from the creation of the universe (now referred to as the “Big Bang”) up to, but not including the birth of Christ (from which the word “Christian” is derived), a.k.a. Jesus, a.k.a. all kinds of other titles. The New Testament is His story.
The Ten Commandments are in the Torah and therefore are in the Old Testament (Exodus 20:1–17D and then again in Deuteronomy 5:4–21D). “An eye for an eye” has an even longer history. According to Wikipedia, the principle of “an eye for an eye” goes back to Babylonian LawA, where it was actually an attempt to limit any retaliation so that it wasn’t worse than the original offense. In English, that means it represents the maximum allowed punishment, not the minimum required punishment (although that interpretation does not seem apparent to me in the language of the Bible). The rule is repeated three times in the Old Testament (Exodus 21:24D, Leviticus 24:20D, Deuteronomy 19:21D).
The Problem
As I hinted before, the Old Testament does not define Christianity. Christ (also known as Jesus) defines Christianity. The Old Testament repeats principles that are shared with half of the (non-Christian) population of the middle east. But we are in luck; Jesus did specifically address the “eye for an eye” idea. In Matthew 5:38 through 42, He clearly states
“38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I tell you not to resist an evildoer. On the contrary, whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go two with him. 42 Give to the person who asks you for something, and do not turn away from the person who wants to borrow something from you.”
(Is this where the Pope got his Communist streakA?)
But What Did Allah Say?
Since the “eye for an eye” idea seemed to be so pervasive, I decided to check one more reference: the Quran. As far as I can tell, it is only mentioned once:
“And We wrote for them in it: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and an equal wound for a wound; but whoever forgoes it in charity, it will serve as atonement for him. Those who do not rule according to what God revealed are the evildoers.”
I think this mirrors the sentiments of Jesus. While doing research, I found another interesting story that may support this view:
“A man came to the Messenger of Allah with the killer of his relative.
The Prophet said: Pardon him.
But the man refused.
The Prophet said: Take the blood money.
But the man refused.
The Prophet said: Go and kill him, for you are like him.
So the man pardoned the criminal.”
Conclusions?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you are not going to follow the teachings of Jesus (the Communist), then you can’t continue to call yourself a Christian.
Sometimes I come away from an issue with more questions than answers. In this case I’m wondering what Mr. Trump is really trying to say:
Is he, like the Babylonians, citing this rule as an upper limit on our retaliation? And recognizing that since September 11, 2001 we have killed far more Muslims (over 100,000 in Iraq alone) than we lost in those terrorist attacks (under 3,000) and the Iraq war (around 4,400) combined, is he suggesting we should end our war on terror?
Is the real reason he wants to bar Muslims from coming to America is that they make him look barbaric?
By quoting the Quran, I am not endorsing Islam; nor do I have any intention of converting to Islam. For many of you “Christians”, however, it sounds like it might be a step up.
When it comes to making mistakes, there are a lot of occupations that envy doctors. Although the quote by architect Frank Lloyd Wright may well be the most famous,
“The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.”
it wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last.
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Professions Wishing They Could Bury Their Mistakes
The oldest comparison I found was from farmers
“The farmer cannot bury his mistakes out of sight like the doctor; they remain above ground where they are seen and known by all men.”
but then there were journalists (who also envy lawyers)
“Doctors bury their mistakes. Lawyers jail theirs. But journalists publish theirs for all the world to see.”
and engineers
“Doctors bury their mistakes, but mistakes bury an engineer”
and even preachers?
“Doctors can bury their mistakes. Lawyers’ mistakes get shut up in prison—literally. Dentists’ mistakes are pulled. Plumbers’ mistakes are stopped. Carpenters turn theirs into sawdust.”
Not surprisingly, I found nobody who envied teachers. Somebody (perhaps a teacher, but more likely a disgruntled voter) quipped
“doctors can bury their mistakes. Lawyers can imprison theirs. Architects plant ivy around theirs. Teachers send theirs into politics.”
I want to explain why that may not be so funny.
Falling Into A Negative Spiral
During my first stint as a teacher in the 1980s, I developed a few theories, one of which was the possible consequences of an inadequate educational system. It seemed to me at the time that if we failed to teach important problem solving and critical thinking skills, the student would still go on to graduate, find a job, maybe even get married and have kids, all the while having no appreciation for the skills s/he missed, and therefore unable to pass that appreciation on to their heirs. Equally important, these voters would inevitably make bad choices on election day which, as their numbers continued to grow, would eventually result in the election of a political candidate completely unfit for their position.
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Maybe someday we will discuss what one should be looking for when choosing a politician.
Should these politicians ever reach critical massD, they could then pass laws or make other decisions (like funding) adversely affecting the educational system. This would complete what engineers call a feedback loop, where the outcome of a process affects the input, in this case accelerating the negative changes.
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but if you Google “smartest states” you will see a number of similar articles based on different criteria. Although the results will change slightly, the trends will remain about the same.
Being naturally curious, I compared this list to a list of red and blue states I found on Wikipedia. As you can see below, the results speak for themselves.
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Or do they? On page 35 of the latest Republican platform under “Attaining Academic Excellence for All” it states
“Republican Governors have led the effort to reform our country’s underperforming education system”.
Based on the map, I would have to disagree.
The top ten and the bottom ten on a list of smartest states on a map of red states and blue states.
To be fair, one comparison of lists of states does not prove anything. There is more than one way to define “smart”, but I think all the conventional definitions will give similar results. Even in defining “Red States…”, Wikipedia had three different maps, but although the second one gave a better indication of the degree of redness, unless you are planning to study this in much greater detail I’m not sure that really matters. I made this map for illustration purposes only.
But Do We Have ‘Cause & Effect’?
One very important question about my theory (like any other theory) would be that of cause and effect. When talking about downward spirals, the related question of “which came first” is no longer meaningful. But to have a feedback loop, the cause and effect issue must work both ways.
Do Republicans Hurt Education?
First, would education suffer in a Republican-controlled state? Their stated goals of a much smaller government, their rejection of science, and even a blatant disregard of factsA suggest so. The above map suggests so. If you have any evidence to the contrary, now would be a good time to present it.
Do The Uneducated Vote Republican?
Second, does stupidity lead one to vote Republican? If true, it would give the Republicans sinister ulterior motives for their cost cutting policies in the departments of education. It also gives them a huge conflict of interest.
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Unfortunately, unlike judges, politicians don’t have to recuse themselves in those instances.
And since the rich are predominantly RepublicanA, it could also help explain their interest in school vouchers and such (if they were deliberately underfunding education in an effort to dumb down America and maintain control, they would want an escape hatch for their own kids and they would have the chutzpah to expect the government to reimburse them for it).
This question is, nonetheless, a hard one. Even rocket scientists prefer simple solutions.
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The principle, now known as “Occam’s razor” after William of Ockham, a fourteenth century English Franciscan friar and philosopher, actually goes back before the Greek philosopher and teacher, Aristotle, who said “The more limited, if adequate, is always preferable”. Although that suffers in translation, it means that if there are two or more solutions to the same problem, choose the simplest.
When faced with a tough question like “Which candidate would do a better job of finding real solutions to important problems and working to get those solutions implemented”, someone without the necessary critical thinking skills may not be able to resist an appealingly simple, but flawed solution. Conversely, the same person might reject a more complicated solution s/he doesn’t understand, even if the conditions warrant such complexity. You could say I’m just guessing, however, since I have no studies supporting this notion. Any evidence either for or against this theory would be appreciated. At the very least, it seems likely to me that a poor education would make identifying the correct candidate more difficult, making the decision more random, which would increase the chances of an error, but could benefit either party. It could foreseeably cut the margin of victory of what should be a clear winner (in those cases where such a thing exists) to the point where other nefarious forces could use financial influence to carry the day in situations that would ordinarily be cost prohibitive.
I should point out that even if stupidity does lead one to vote Republican, that doesn’t mean the converse of that statement, that all Republican voters are stupid, is also true. If you are a “smart” Republican you already knew that, but are probably relying on the gullible to advance your agenda (an agenda for which they receive no benefit).
So Now What?
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to get us out of an educational death spiral. Even worse than alcohol’s ability to impair one’s judgement to the extent that one is more and more unlikely to know when it is time to quit, an uneducated person begins life already impaired; it is the “village”‘sA responsibility to lead (or drag) each of us toward competence (sort of like the first time you pushed your son or daughter’s bicycle until they had enough velocity to maintain balance (and maybe the second time, and the third…). Obviously, we are not doing our job. Maybe it is a motivation issue. Are the thrills and advantages of being able to handle life’s problems not clear enough?
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As a teacher, I’ve actually had some cases of the parents not wanting to make an investment in the future of one of their heirs with real potential. One of these parents was an itinerant farm worker. Their “reasoning” was (and I’m paraphrasing here) that if ignorance was good enough for the parents, it should be good enough for their kids.
Do we need to hire a slick ad agency to convince everybody that life would not seem so hopeless (and we wouldn’t have to rely so heavily on conspiracy theories) if we actually had the ability to get out of harm’s way? One might argue that coddling our children by downplaying their inadequacies and downplaying the advantages of competence so as not to hurt their feelings, socially promoting them to the next level regardless of effort, etc, may have the serious unintended consequence of reducing their motivation. While I’m inclined to let experts debate these issues, I am convinced that as you shrink one’s universe by throwing out more and more of the inconvenient truths, and as one’s grip on reality becomes less and less firm as a result of that policy, the consequences ultimately become more and more dire. Maybe you need to grow up so that your kids can grow up. And then insist that your community invests more heavily in education (and by “education”, we need the broadest, not the narrowest definition). I’m reminded about that old bumper sticker that said “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”; I don’t have such a bumper sticker because too many people are already eagerly accepting that offer. Education, however, is not an investment opportunity that we can afford to miss.
If you know the solution to this problem, let me know. Or better yet, send me a copy of the correspondence to your congressperson explaining the path we need to take. And thank you for listening.
I just learned from a number of sources that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is opposing President Obama’s plan to restrict American hunters from bringing home more than two elephant “trophies” a year,
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References:
“What does the Republican Party have against elephants?”A2 That’s a good question. In the last line of the article, the author Andrew Wetzler mentions that the elephant is the mascot of the Republican Party. He may have stumbled onto a motive. Could the Republicans possibly be thinking that if all the wild elephants were gone, then the law of supply and demand would make their mascot more valuable?
“The NRA Is Quietly Fighting For Your Right To Kill Elephants For Their Ivory”A3
ostensibly because that would make it harder for gun owners to get top dollar when they try to sell guns with ivory handlesA. Does that even make sense? It is interesting to see their priorities.
Here are my comments to the NRA:
Since we all know that “guns don’t kill elephants, people do”,
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I am expanding on the unofficial slogan of the NRAA here. People with rocks, no doubt, kill elephants. Possibly even people with tomatoes. That could explain all of those pink elephants you’ve been seeing lately.
and
since the NRA’s job is clearly only to push rifles, as their name implies, then
I don’t see how you have any standing in this matter (in English, that means “Why should anybody care what you think about elephants”).
The NRA needs to step away from this important issue on the fate of elephants and let the people speak for themselves.
