Tag: Politics

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This interview with Bill Bishop, about the increasing social segmentation in America, has some cool tie-ins with a book I’ve been loving lately, Lawrence Levine’s Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Levine touches on the changing use of public space in the early 1900s as “Culture” was increasingly associated with the wealthy, and patrons and directors exerted more control over how we experience art:

The relative taming of the audience at the turn of the century was part of a larger development that witnessed a growing bifurcation between the private and public spheres of life. Through the cult of etiquette, which was so popular in this period, individuals were taught to keep all private matters strictly to themselves and to remain publicly as inconspicuous as possible… People were similarly taught to remove from the public to the private universe an entire range of personal reactions… The individual mirrored the increasing segmentation of society in a segmentation of self.

Bishop mentions in the interview that “The best-educated citizens are the least likely to have a political discussion with someone with a different opinion.” Public spaces and self-selection. Two interesting ideas that I hope Bishop talks about in his upcoming book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. It’s on my reading list. [via book design review]

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (review: 5/5)

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Cadillac Desert was pretty awesome. Marc Reisner tells a story (in sometimes overwhelming detail) of the American West, and how we have explored, settled, and altered it. And how it was maybe a little idiotic to do it the way we have.
The Mormons were the first to understand and refine large-scale irrigation projects. Later we get into the geographic discoveries of the Powell expedition, the explosion of Los Angeles and California farming during the Mulholland era, the massive federal projects of the Depression and World War decades, and the competition between two federal agencies that LOVE to build: the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Where great rivers ran we now have dams and reservoirs—around 75,000. Not to mention canals and levees and aqueducts. They’re a mixed blessing at best. Aside from the environmental impact, the amount of political maneuvering, folly, thuggery, and outright deceit that has gone into some of these projects is just incredible. Very few of the projects would have been possible without Federal involvement (read: subsidized by Eastern tax dollars). I don’t even consider myself “environmentalist” but still found it all pretty outrageous. Great book.

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The Story of Stuff, a big-picture overview of consumption. The animation is surprisingly good at times and there’s some clever sound, too (shaky economics and eco-paranoia aside). “You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely.”

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“The reality is that democracy is a very blunt instrument, and in today‚Äôs environment we are choosing between ways of muddling through. We may hear that the election is about different visions for America‚Äôs future, but the pitches may be more akin to selling different brands of soap.”

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Arnold Kling on politics and cults:

I do not know Ron Paul. He may be wise. He may be decent. But to dismiss all doubts about his judgment and his character would be to succumb to a cult.

Let me hasten to add that I do not think of the Paul cult as unique. I am equally loathe to join the Clinton cult, the Obama cult, the Guiliani cult…you name it.

For me, democratic politics is a “lesser of evils” game, and I’m never sure how best to play it. But I have to say that when I read that this year’s New Hampshire primary had a record turnout, it made my heart sink rather than warm. Not that I’m against voting, but I hate to think of people as buying into anyone’s political campaign.

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A plea for more anthropology of ideology: “I’d like to propose a new research convention. Anytime a writer or blogger talks about what The Right or The Left (or some subset thereof) really wants or means, I’d like them to list their personal anthropological experience with the subjects under consideration.”

Making Memes

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Tim Walker writes about meme entrepreneurship. I love it. Go read it. Unless I misunderstand the point, it seems like a lot of folks are already working in that vein—writers. Just glancing at my bookshelf, there’s Florida and his Creative Class, Friedman and his Flat World, Weinberger‘s Miscellany, Anderson‘s Long Tail.
I don’t mean that to sound flip, because I think these all occupy an interesting middle ground. The ideas aren’t quite as heady and broad as, let us say, praxeology (brilliant though it is). But they’re a step up from the mundanities of something like Six Sigma. For the most part, the far ends of that bell curve can be safely ignored, unless it happens to be your pet interest. But if you’re paying attention, strong arguments in that middle ground can force a conversation. That is what great memepreneurs do well.

Tim brings out a political example to contrast bad memes with fruitful memes. “Bush is stupid” vs. ‚ÄúBush pursues dangerous ideas—expensive dangerous ideas.‚Äù The latter is more effective because it comes across as not a simple couched argument or opinion, but an invitation to explore. Provocative, sure. Good memes usually are. But more than that, it’s actually a functional starting point. The best memes are forward-looking.1 That’s one reason I always liked political theory more than any other field of political science. I get to escape those messy details of policy and history and think about what could be.

I’ll let Tim close it out:

We need better memes in the world to counter all the stupid ones that drive so much of our behavior. I would say “that drive so much of our thinking,” but in fact the purpose of many of these memes is to relieve us from thinking, so that we reflexively reach for the products we’ve had marketed to us, or reflexively reach for the attitudes that favor certain special interests within the society. (Note that these special interests can be political, commercial, religious, or what have you. I take the broad view here.) But those of us who are awake to these tendencies can work to shape them in other, better directions.

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1. Bureaucrats and pundits are not. Though I’m willfully ignorant talking-head culture, I’ve seen enough to convince me that they tend to be far more concerned with digging up old grievances and winning now than actually caring about the future. It’s the nature of the gig. See “Property Rights and Time Preference” [pdf]

The 9/11 Report: A Graphical Adaptation (review: 2/5)

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At the least, I can say that I’m now more interested in the original 9/11 Report than I was before. I really wanted this one to be good; it was just frustrating.
Jacobson and Col??n got off to such a good start with a slick 10 page fold-out timeline that tracks the four flights concurrently. It was a truly powerful experience to juxtapose the events of my own morning with what happened in the air. But it all went down from there. The illustration was disappointingly inconsistent, mixing some really clever, accurately rendered scenes next to some that are just a little sloppy. I’m not sure if scattershot, somewhat arbitrary imagery is due to the nature of the original Report. The lettering and narrative boxes really killed me, though. The box geography was awkward, so I ended up stumbling around the page. Out of hundreds of comics I’ve consumed, I’ve never had so much trouble doing the basic task of reading.

Regarding the actual Report material, it’s not so bad. For someone like me, who generally steers clear of popular politics, it’s a nice intro to the history, who is who among the terrorists, and who is who among the white men in suits. Here’s my #1 piece of loveably laughable advice the Commission offers: “It is crucial to offer a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.”1 Oh, I really wanted this to be good.

Some other links for your curiosity… here’s a good review over at Salon, an NPR interview with Jacobson and Col??n, and Slate offers an excerpted version online & an interview as well.

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1*ahem* Some other important thoughts on bureaucracy…