Christmas is a shining growth in the social institutional landscape, a holiday rich in various heritages, colorful, good-humored, and devoted, for most, to a sentiment of universal goodwill. As a Jew without conventional religious beliefs (but with an emotional and intellectual appreciation for the sublime), the Christianity of this ostensibly Christian holiday is as relevant to me as Halloween’s Celtic connection, which is to say, relevant, but not centrally so.
Christmas is a cultural snowball rolling down a seemingly endless slope, growing as it goes. Its journey began long before the birth of Christ (which certainly did not occur on the 25th of December, which just happened to be the date of the biggest Roman holiday beforehand, the Saturnalia, chosen to make the early Christian celebration inconspicuous), and has traveled through diverse cultures and religions ever since, accumulating their material along the way.
We all know that Christianity began as a Jewish sect, building on the Torah (“Old Testament”) of the Jews. But Judaism as well had built on pre-existing near eastern religions and mythologies, incorporating the story of the flood, for instance, which had existed long before the Habiru (“desert wanderers”) began to promote Yahweh beyond his original status as a local tribal god. And the Romans, in the period preceding and during the early rise of Christianity, were in the market for new religions, gravitating to several “mystery cults” that were popular in the Roman Empire (of which Christianity was one), born in one or another of its provinces (e.g., the Dionysian and Orphean Cults of Greece, the Cult of Isis and Osiris of Egypt, Mithraism of Persia). Some of the materials of these other cults sloshed together and entered into early Christianity (transforming the Hebrew concept of “messiah” –translated into Greek as “Christ”– for instance, which was of a human prophet, into an incarnation of God; and the imagery of death and resurrection).
The Roman Empire itself, once Christianity became the state religion (thanks to Constantine’s perhaps politically motivated conversion), changed Christianity from a religion devoted to the poor and humble into an instrument of state power. When Rome fell, that instrument was all that was left of the empire in the West, and became the overarching political force of Medieval Europe. In this way, Catholicism (one of the two major branches of pre-Reformation Christianity, the other being Greek Orthodoxy, residing in the surviving half of the Roman–renamed in retrospect “Byzantine”–Empire in the East) adapted to and absorbed the indigenous cultural and religious material of Western Europe. Catholicism also became the improbable repository of classical scholarship, protecting it from the ravages of the Middle Ages, to be rediscovered and revived centuries later, only to transform itself into the most powerful of all countervailing forces: Applied Reason (further invigorated by the umbrella of monotheism itself, for monotheism reduces the caprice of multiple gods with multiple wills, and implies that there is a coherent order to Nature to be discerned).
The Christmas tree, for instance, is a blend of several traditions and innovations, none of them related to the religion itself, except for the possibility that Martin Luther introduced this custom into Christianity as part of the differentiation of Protestantism from Catholicism (see http://www.christmas-time.com/ct-ctree.htm). The decorated tree itself began in Rome, during the Saturnalia (the Pagan Roman holiday on December 25 historically antecedent to Christmas). The star on top appears to be derivative of the Roman custom of placing an image of Apollo, the sun god, on top of their decorated trees. The Teutonic tribes of northern Europe also decorated trees, in honor of Odin, and the Druids brought evergreens inside during the winter solstice to celebrate the renewal of life, a custom co-opted by Christianity as a celebration of Christ as “the bringer of new life into the world.”
Santa Claus, originally a 4th century bishop from Asia Minor known for his generosity and fondness of children (hopefully not in the modern sense too often associated with Christian priests!), blended into an anglo-saxon “Father Christmas” who wore garb associated with the gods Thor and Saturn (http://www.christmas-time.com/cp-santa.html). (See http://www.christmas-time.com/ct-trad.htm for similar discussions of other Christmas traditions).
Others have added to the imagery since, such as Charles Dickens, adding a repentant ghost of an avaricious businessman trying to convince his surviving and equally avaricious partner of the value of kindness and generosity, with the aid of three spirits (Christmas Past, Present, and Future); and Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart giving us a somewhat opposite image, of someone who had spent his life sacrificing his own dreams to the welfare of others, and in his own time of tribulation, being shown by an angel how much he had meant to the world by doing so. (See my political versions of these tales: A Political Christmas Carol and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” American Political Edition (Parts I-V), though it’s worth noting that Dickens originally intended “A Christmas Carol” as a rebuke of the Neo-Malthusians of Victorian England, who had recently succeeded in rolling back Englands relatively generous-for-the-time social welfare policies, and Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life, was seen by the McCarthyists as socialist propaganda, so both were already political statements from the get-go.)
Every generation adds to the repertoire of songs and stories, reworking old ones, inventing new ones. An inspired answer by a hardened newspaperman to a little girl’s innocent question; a movie that plays on our desire to believe and the confluence of convenience and (an ironically anachronistic) trust in our governmental institutions; songs that cover the gamut of genres and styles, and throw in a fair amount of humor from time to time; all of these are the stuff of Christmas.
Now thoroughly secularized for many, with a jolly white-bearded magical entity of various pagan roots, assisted by quintessential European magical pagan creatures (elves) and flying reindeer, bringing joy to children everywhere on a snowy winter solstice (ironically, imagined as snowy even in tropical Mazatlan, where I was staying at the time of this writing, among a people very conscious that they are celebrating a desert birth), Christmas has become a shining multicultural gem, evoking feelings of mirth and goodwill in any and all who surrender to its magic. Full of music and rituals, feasts and games, gifts and giddiness, Christmas is the matured Saturnalia, a timeless celebration that belongs to many generations and places, rich with the influence of many cultures.
The compassionate, generous, joyful celebration of life has always been an ideal too beleaguered and too much in need of cultural reinforcements (see Meta-messaging with Frames and Narratives). Christmas, for all the legitimate complaints about its commercialization, remains perhaps the grandest and most powerful national and international celebration of joy and kindness. And so, with that, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas! May the winter solstice be as magical for you as it has been for so many who have celebrated it before, in all their myriad ways.
No Comments »
Discipline, both individual and organizational, is an essential component of all successful endeavors. Monks and swamis seeking enlightenment, teams and armies seeking victories, entrepreneurs and corporations seeking profits, scholars and universities seeking empirical and theoretical knowledge, courts and litigants seeking justice, effective activists and successful social movements seeking social change, all adhere to disciplines in service to their goals.
The most robust disciplines channel and activate the genius of those involved, rather than suppress it, but they do so in a disciplined, purposeful manner. The notion that everyone pursuing their own individual whims is the best way for an organized effort to pursue its goal is as detached from reality as the notion that health is best served by being a junk-food gorging couch potato, or that love is best served by selfish disregard of others, or that a broth is best served by having as many chefs as possible each seasoning it to their own taste.
Certainly, everyone is free to say and do as they please, within the limits of the law and their own conscience. Discussing public issues in ineffective ways is as legitimate a pastime, as legitimate a diversion, as bowling or doing crossword puzzles. But for those who claim to be acting with a purpose, who claim to be trying to contribute to positive social change through their actions, the question of whether their actions are actually serving that purpose should always be foremost in their minds. And for those who share the same purpose, the mutual insistence that that question remain foremost in all participants’ minds is the essence of the organizational discipline required for success.
People organized into social movements can change the world, for better or for worse. I believe that Progressives today are unusually well positioned to launch the United States down a sustainable path of accelerating political-economic and cultural progressive development (see, e.g., A Major Historical Threshold or A Tragically Missed Opportunity?). The more those who want this to happen work in disciplined and coordinated ways to make it happen, the more likely it is to happen. I have offered on this blog an outline of one possible framework through which to exercise such disciplined coordination, one which is comprehensive and focused (see A Proposal: The Politics of Reason and Goodwill and The Politics of Reason & Goodwill, simplified). It is right and good that those ideas should be subjected to the crucible of debate, and challenged by competing views, hopefully working toward a synthesis of the best ideas.
But the primary focus should be: What actions, by each speaker (not by remote others), working individually and together, best promote a sustainable progressive path for this nation and this world? The best answers are likely to be, in my opinion, the ones that are least reductionist, most systemic, least dogmatic and intransigent, least bombastic, most analytical, and, in general, most committed to a procedural discipline which ensures both the long-term success of the political agenda, and the wisdom of the ideas it is promoting.
I know many people who devote a lot of time energy to political activism, many of whom are then bitterly disappointed when the candidates they supported either lose, or win and almost invariably fail to satisfy their expectations. They conflate political outcomes with the realization of the ultimate goal they expect those outcomes to serve, rather than distinguish them as partial and insufficient means to the realization of those goals.
Social change is both more than and distinct from politics. It both facilitates and is facilitated by electoral outcomes, but is not determined by them. It both facilitates and is facilitated by governmental action, but is not determined by it. Those who, reasonably enough, identify social change, or public policy changes that depend on it, as the ultimate goal, would be well-advised to diversify their investments of time and effort (individually or collectively), investing more in the (narrowly) non-political dimensions of contributing to social change. Otherwise, they should expect their current investments to continue regularly to yield highly disappointing returns.
The widely (implicitly) held notion among many political activists that the distribution of political ideological orientations is by-and-large a given, and that political outcomes determine public policy independently of any changes (or lack of changes) in that popular ideological distribution, relegates a great deal of political activism to the status of a semi-ritualistic activity, noisy conflicting group-therapy sessions and social events that have far less enduring impact on the evolution of our social institutional landscape than its participants would like to believe.
Activists mistakenly expect, with slightly exaggerated optimism, that their efforts determine desired electoral outcomes better than alternative “sub-political” activities, and, with vastly exaggerated faith, that desired electoral outcomes will result in desired public policies, without addressing the underlying issue of where the center-of-gravity of public opinion and popular support lies.
Focusing on social change, including but not limited to political activism, informs a more rational and functional distribution of resources (e.g., time, effort, and money) across the spectrum of interrelated challenges involved in accomplishing social change. Our most memorable social movements (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, the Environmentalism Movement, the Gay Rights Movement) were not as successful as they were primarily via electoral victories, but rather via facilitated shifts in public opinion, which then increasingly translated into electoral and public policy victories. Neither Gandhi nor Martin Luther King, Jr. ever held public office, though they both had larger effects on the world than most who have, because they affected the context in which political decision-making takes place, and it is the context which is ultimately determinative.
Not each individual activist necessarily has to reallocate their personal political investments (time, energy, and money) for a more optimal distribution to be achieved; most efforts currently in place are vital ingredients to a larger effort, and there is much to be said for a division of labor, in which some focus on some aspects and others on other aspects of the overarching challenge. But, due to the seduction of quick-fixes, and the more accessible emotional gratification of being noisily in the fray rather than more subtly effective, the overall investment of progressive (and other) activists is skewed heavily in favor of political theater (something that activists engage in as much as elected officials). Until we, as a movement, address that imbalance, we will be yielding the field to those who do, and giving those ideologies we oppose more opportunity to proliferate.
(See the following related posts: A Proposal: The Politics of Kindness, Changing The Narrative, Community Action Groups (CAGs) & Network (CAN), A Blueprint for a Progressive Future, The Power of “Walking the Walk”, The Ultimate Political Challenge, Second-Order Social Change, The Foundational Progressive Agenda , The Politics of Anger, The Politics of Kindness, “Messaging” From The Heart of Many Rather Than The Mouth of Few, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Part 2, A Major Historical Threshold or A Tragically Missed Opportunity?)
No Comments »
As part of A Proposal: The Politics of Kindness, I discussed the importance of organizing and acting in our communities, in non-partisan ways for non-political immediate purposes, in service to the ultimate social and political goal of deepening and broadening the shared commitment to reason and goodwill, in our private lives, in our communities, and in our public policies. I believe that doing so should become a social movement, akin to the Civil Rights Movement, but rather than dedicated to a single issue or set of issues, dedicated instead to a comprehensive attitude that implicates all social issues.
Clearly, the time is ripe for such a movement. Just as the Civil Rights Movement was blessed with a ready-made organizational infrastructure (the southern black church network), so too are all reasonable people of goodwill today blessed with an even more powerful and extensive organizational infrastructure: The Internet and Social Media. I’ve already written about the implications of this technological and social paradigm shift, the possibilities and potentials of which we have just barely begun to explore (se, e.g., A Major Historical Threshold or A Tragically Missed Opportunity?, Wikinomics: The Genius of the Many Unleashed, Tuesday Briefs: The Anti-Empathy Movement & “Crowdfunding”, Counterterrorism: A Model of Centralized Decentralization).
A Tea Partier told me on a Facebook thread recently, “just remember who’s better armed.” When it comes to the more powerful weapons of Social Media, it may be the progressives who are better armed. In any case, the implication of these particular arms is that they accelerate the sifting out of rational from irrational arguments, the lathe of public discourse and debate, which favors reason and goodwill in the long run. Certainly, when it comes to Reason and Goodwill, progressives are better armed, and will inevitably prevail. It is our job to expedite that eventuality, reducing the short-term detours into irrationality and belligerence constantly elongating that path.
The best way to do so is to change the game, the frame and the narrative. Right now, America is stuck in a tug-o-war between progressives and conservatives, both broadly perceived by the vast silent middle to be two opposing extreme camps (with perhaps slightly greater affinity for the conservative than progressive pole). But those same occupants of the vast silent majority would not perceive a movement of community volunteerism and community solidarity building to be either extreme or unattractive. And they would not find it offensive if such a movement included in its “mission” improving the civility and reasonableness of public discourse. But what is the progressive movement if not the commitment to mobilize reason and goodwill, and apply them to our public policies?
The most effective thing progressives could now do is to mobilize a network of Community Action Groups (CAGs) into a nationwide Community Action Network (CAN), dedicated to this component of the proposal linked to above. The only challenge is to create an emerging awareness of the power of such an effort, of the degree to which it can become a game changer if enough progressives were to commit themselves to it. Every local progressive group now in existence, every state house and senate district democratic party organization, every OFA chapter, every MoveOn chapter, every other local group with even moderately liberal leanings, can and should organize into a Community Action Group that seeks to do good works in their own communities, and to foster civil discourse based on no ideology other than a commitment to reason and mutual goodwill.
I ask everyone who reads this to please help me to promote this idea, because the way to become a nation of reasonable people of goodwill is for all who are committed to that end to strive to be reasonable people of goodwill in their own lives, and in their own communities, and to allow that to be a model to others, and to coalesce into a national level commitment. The reason why progressive advocacy is so much less effective than one might think it would be is because progressive advocates are so much less effective, permitting the frames and narratives of the far-right to take root and define the debate. Removing that power from them, and owning it ourselves, is not a function of better sloganeering, but rather of more compelling demonstration; we can and should, we must, demonstrate what it is we are advocating for, if we want our advocacy to become a truly powerful and transformative force in our national history.
Buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards
The bulk of my posts aggregate to inform A Proposal for a social movement, one which combines devising the best policy analyses in service to humanity with the best and most innovative and cognitively sophisticated messaging in order to attract an ever-widening range of the public to the agenda of Reason and Goodwill. The element that may be most novel and most powerful, however, is not this combination of the essentially familiar ingredients of policy analysis and messaging, but rather the one that can be a game changer, the one that may prove to be an irresistible force: Organizing not to change government or implement particular public policies so much as to create a simultaneously personal and social commitment to one another, by actually “walking the walk” of goodwill, of mutual interdependence and support, associating with “the progressive agenda” the attraction of a lived commitment to other people’s welfare.
As I wrote in The Ultimate Political Challenge, a single Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. captures the imagination and, in time, wins over the hardened hearts of much of the opposition. They both knew the power of their goodwill, of their personal commitment to it, and acted with the discipline to turn that goodwill into a social force. These two “political entrepreneurs” mobilized their “charismatic authority” in service to specific issues within a Progressive world view (Indian Independence and African American Civil Rights, respectively). What we lack today are similarly compelling political entrepreneurs, mobilizing similarly dedicated charismatic authority. And the step that hasn’t yet been taken is to mobilize those forces not to address a single issue, but to address the underlying issue of being a people dedicated to reason and empathy.
Today, there are many progressives angrily striving to implement progressive policies, but too often doing so with little or no internalized, personalized, and dedicated goodwill toward fellow human beings. It is just another blind ideology in their hands, not a commitment, not something they’re willing to sacrifice for. I challenge each and every one of them –AND MYSELF– not just to talk the talk, but also to walk the walk, to be, to some small degree, a tribute to those who were willing to give their lives to humanity, by giving some portion of our own. I challenge us all to strive to be “political entrepreneurs,” to strive to invoke our own “charismatic authority,” to demonstrate that individual initiative does not have to be mobilized only in service to the accumulation of individual wealth. I challenge us all to do good by being good, and by being good, vastly increasing our credibility as advocates for public policies aligned with that spirit.
The Tea Partiers, and other extreme individualists, who have managed to rationalize an indifference to the suffering of others and a denial of the responsibilities to others that come with the blessings of good fortune, are able to dismiss Progressives as people who want to spend other people’s money against their will, because, in fact, that’s all they see. But what if they saw instead the people who organize to mentor neighborhood kids, to help out those who are facing a crisis, to counsel and assist people in need, to be what they preach we as a society should be, and only in conjunction with that lived commitment, only as an auxiliary to it, are struggling to create a government that facilitates what they are already doing every day, in every way, as a natural part of our shared existence? Can you imagine the force of such a social movement?
All reasonable people of goodwill, who want to promote reason and goodwill, need to do so on the ground, in daily life, independently of government, if they want the advance of reason and goodwill to prevail. Those who can’t summon enough commitment to model for others what reason and goodwill look and feel like need to recognize that they are no better than those they oppose, no more than a bunch of people trying to impose their will on others without being willing to live up to the demands they themselves have made. No wonder the Progressive Movement is making so little headway! Who can trust armchair altruists, who talk a good game but live lives no more noble or generous than those they condemn?
I passionately want for us to become a kinder and gentler nation, a nation of people lifting one another up, a nation aspiring to realize the potential of the human spirit. There is one clear path to that end: For all of those who want the same to commit themselves to its realization, by becoming the kinds of irresistible beacons to reason and goodwill that Gandhi and King were, that each of us can be, even if to some smaller extent. By as many of us as possible striving to do so, we will give the Progressive brand a reputation for sincere goodwill that ever fewer will be able to deny. And the future will increasingly belong to what is best and most admirable in human beings.
This is what a commitment to Progressive policies demands of us: A commitment to personal progress in service to social progress, to being as individuals what we are advocating that we become as a society. Striving to rise to that challenge is the greatest gift we could give to our children, to their children, and to ourselves.
No Comments »
(Formerly titled “Improved Communications Technologies & Techniques + Personal, Organizational & Methodological Discipline = Historic Social Change”).
For those who are serious about working for social progress based on reason and goodwill, despite the momentary resurgence of regressive “Political Fundamentalism”, the confluence of factors is currently conducive to a major paradigm shift. The power of decentralized mass media (“social media”), combined with improvements in our knowledge of relevant disciplines (e.g., cognitive science, microeconomics and game theory, learning theory, complex dynamical systems analysis, network analysis, epistemology and epidemiology, evolutionary ecology, etc.), as a tool for intentional and potentially revolutionary social change, is a theme which requires the weaving together of several separate threads of thought I’ve been developing on this blog.
I’ve posted previously about the processes of cultural evolution and revolution, involving “memes,” groups of memes called “paradigms,” and the revolutionary effects of the accumulation of anomalous memes within a paradigm, leading to “paradigm shifts” (The Politics of Consciousness). And I’ve continued that theme down several avenues, including a discussion of the acceleration of the cultural evolution effectuated by two products of that evolution itself: scientific methodology, and evolving communications and data processing technologies (Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix).
In another, related, series of posts, I’ve written about the power of decentralization for liberating and mobilizing “the genius of the many” (a term for evolving decentralized but coherent sets of memes and paradigms) to an extent never before possible (Wikinomics: The Genius of the Many Unleashed, Tuesday Briefs: The Anti-Empathy Movement & “Crowdfunding”, Counterterrorism: A Model of Centralized Decentralization), itself a product of the processes discussed in the “human social evolutionary ecology” series. (See also http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html). And in two series of posts largely unrelated to these, I discussed the importance of creating a methodology akin to that of science or law for disciplining the development of political beliefs (Ideology v. Methodology, A Proposal, The Elusive Truth), and the importance of each of us truly committed to social change becoming equally committed to individual change, adopting a personal discipline that will make us the most capable and compelling of messengers (“Messaging” From The Heart of Many Rather Than The Mouth of Few). There are some posts, as well, which combine these latter two themes to some extent (The Foundational Progressive Agenda, The Voice Beyond Extremes, The Ultimate Political Challenge).
But, though these disciplines and methodologies, to some extent yet to be developed, are the key to robust sustainable social progress, we do not have to invent either the products or procedures of reason applied to politics from scratch. We have the academic disciplines I listed above (as well as all others) to draw on. I hope that some of my posts have helped to disseminate a glimpse of their relevant fruits, which is as much as any of us can unilaterally accomplish (e.g., The Economic Debate We’re Not Having , The Real Deficit , The Restructuring of the American and Global Economy , The More Subtle & Salient Economic Danger We Currently Face, A comprehensive overview of the immigration issue, Real Education Reform, The Most Vulnerable Americans, The Vital Role of Child, Family, and Community Services).
“The genius of the many” extends the concept of division and coordination of labor to the development of human consciousness; the ecology of memes that transcends the individuals whose brains are its physical medium (see The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia). A simple example of the genius of the many is that if a thousand random people guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, the mean of their guesses will be closer to the correct number than any individual guess, including the one made by the most mathematically capable of doing so.
Ironically, the far-right, relying on caricatures of reality, reduces all progressive thought to a hierarchical top-down “statism,” whereas the philosophy I am espousing is just the opposite: A coordinated bottom-up aggregation. The far-right, conversely, advocates for a tyranny of the lowest common denominator, never mobilizing more genius than the least informed among them is already in possession of, and imposing that state of relative ignorance on all of us in the form of information-stripped public policy.
One academic discipline not only informs the progressive policies we should be seeking to design and implement, but also the challenge of bringing more people on board in the effort to design and implement them. George Lakoff, in The Political Mind, explores the underlying metaphors upon which our minds are structured, the differences between conservative and progressive metaphors, and the techniques of messaging that should be employed to activate the narratives of empathy that exist compartmentalized in almost every mind –including conservatives’ minds– in advocacy of progressive policies. Combined with other advances in cognitive sciences (e.g., Evolutionary Psychology, such as espoused by Stephen Pinker in The Language Instinct and How The Mind Works; Semiotics; Frame Analysis), this body of thought provides an encouraging foundation for accelerating the reproductive success of progressive memes and, by doing so, the coming paradigm shift that will favor them.
If enough of us dedicate ourselves to these personal, organizational, and procedural disciplines, utilizing to as great and effective an extent as possible these new decentralized media of mass communications, then the power of that movement will be unstoppable. I have frequently quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. (“The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice”) and John Maynard Keynes (“[People] will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives”) as a reminder that the momentum of history is on our side. Bigotry and various forms of violence (including institutionalized mutual indifference, and politically organized ignorance) keep rearing their heads and wreaking havoc in the short run, but they are not what defines the historical progression of humanity, which has, overall, been characterized by gradual, inconstant, unequally distributed gains in both prosperity and social justice (and though sustainability has still been woefully insufficiently addressed, there are indications that the momentum of reason will favor it as well, though whether in time to avert disaster remains to be seen).
Those of us who strive to be reasonable people of goodwill are the ones with the wind of time at our back. Those who oppose reason and goodwill are the overabundant debris resisting that wind, stinging and bruising us as we rush through and past them.
Here I am, conveying this matrix of interrelated memes, this paradigm, on a blog, and on Facebook, utilizing the very media that form one component of what I am discussing, in order to discuss it, to disseminate the information and attempt to persuade others to do so as well, and to refine our efforts in accord with these opportunities and lessons. We can see the acceleration of innovation resulting from some of the variables described above in many spheres of life: “Chaos Theory” (aka “complex dynamical systems analysis”) and numerous non-computer-related technological advances that have resulted from it (in fields such as medicine, engineering, meteorology, etc.), fractal geometry, the internet, the computer revolution, wikis, vastly reduced economic transaction costs, vastly accelerated processes in almost every sphere of life.
Social systems, which have been in so many ways so resistent to reduction through scientific methodologies (though not as resistant as conventional wisdom maintains), are opened up in a variety of ways, as themselves comprising the quintessential complex dynamical system, amenable to the new analytic techniques that come with that paradigm. Social systems are a complex network of linkages and impulses across them, triggering cascading state changes among nodes and clusters of interlinked nodes, reverberating, self-amplifying, mutually reinforcing or suppressing, not unlike the brains that provide the physical medium of their primary constituent unit (memes, or cognitions).
I am not suggesting that we now have the magic bullet, the panacea that will resolve all problems and meet all challenges. Nor am I suggesting that our efforts will suddenly yield spectacular results. Even in our accelerating world, dramatic change takes time, and is dramatic only in retrospect. Few people have recognized any non-military revolution at the time it has occurred, but they occur nonetheless, and are marvels to behold once they become apparent.
Past modern historical occidental social revolutions have been partial and cumulative: the Renaissance recovered some of the grace and aesthetic rationality of classical Greece; the Scientific Revolution gave us a robust methodology for improving our knowledge and understanding of nature; the Industrial Revolution gave us new machines of production and distribution; the very recent and equally consequential Computer Revolution created a quantum leap forward in the speed and capacity of data processing and communication.
At some point, whether now or in the future, these accumulating revolutions will embrace aspects of social organization that have remained thus far elusive, advancing with accelerating leaps forward in the liberation and implementation of the genius of the many in service to humanity. We will look back on that threshold as we look back on those that came before, recognizing that it transformed the world to human benefit in ways that were almost unimaginable prior to it. That inevitable threshold will usher in a new standard of human welfare that becomes completely taken for granted by those who enjoy it, which will be an expanding portion of humanity, both geographically and temporally. Whether that moment has come or not, it behooves those of us who want to speed its (sustainable) arrival to work, in individually and collectively disciplined ways, using the cognitive and technological tools at our disposal, to facilitate that transformation.
The world has been changing dramatically, in cumulative and accelerating ways, and will continue to do so. But those changes have provided humanity with a mixed blessing, creating riches beyond belief to all but those born into them, but also tools of violence, oppression, and depletion and destruction of the Earth on which we depend. There are those who would like to barrel blindly forward, ravaging the Earth and prospering on the backs of the suffering of others. And there are those who want to harness the forces we are unleashing, to create the sustainable and just future that all reasonable people of goodwill should strive for. Our ability to organize to that latter end has never been greater. Now, we have only to see if our determination is sufficient to rise to that opportunity.
No Comments »
Click here to buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards for just $2.99!!!
I sometimes hear progressives saying “It’s time for us to get angry; it worked for the Tea Party.” It also defines the Tea Party, and is among the reasons I oppose the Tea Party. I’m not saying that there’s never cause for anger; I’m saying that it should never be allowed to define us.
Instead, we should define ourselves first, and act in the world in service to that ideal, rather than allow ourselves to be defined by our frustrations, by some negative reaction to the world around us. Let others be the chest-thumping mindless apes. Someone has to strive to be the sentient beings, who lead the way toward something better.
What does it take to be sentient beings? A commitment, a desire, a discipline, an endless hunger to grow and aspire and invite and attract others to do the same. Let others thrive on their calls to arms; let’s instead engage in a call to minds. Let’s instead engage in a call to hearts. Let’s instead engage in a call to souls. We have called enough to our baser nature; it’s time to call to our nobler one.
This may be getting repetitive, and for that I apologize. I enjoy, more than anything, to tease out some hidden insight, some novel perspective, some aspect of the dance of nature around and through us that is not obvious, but is worthy of attention. But some things are less delicate, less unfamiliar, but no less worthy of attention for being mundane.
One such thing is our need to move, in as organized and passionate a manner as possible, in the direction of becoming advocates for a discipline that can be more effective, on multiple dimensions, than the sham of activism in which we are, in general, now engaged.
Some may recognize that this isn’t the first time I’ve referred to social institutional shams. I used the phrase “Kabuki Theater” not long ago to describe professional development workshops in public education, which are largely rituals of signifying a commitment to doing better rather than engaging in the actual discipline of doing better. But it is not a defect relegated only to ossified bureaucracies; it is a defect also found in our most passionate social institutional rites. No, the faces are not impassive in the shams of activism, but the results are as hollow.
WE ARE ABLE TO DO BETTER!!!! I can’t emphasize that enough, or often enough. We can do better. Just as for millenia humanity exercised the power of the mind through the haphazard accumulation of cultural belief systems, finally stumbling upon a methodology that unleashed its powers in phenomenal new ways; just as there was a time when trials by ordeal were all the rage, giving way to systems of law whose procedural discipline seems excessive to those who don’t realize what a triumph it really is; so too can we do better in every sphere of life, in every aspect of our endeavors.
The value of discipline, of methodology, of procedure, is not a new discovery; it has been a hallmark of spiritual and philosophical schools throughout history. The quest for nirvana may seem trite today, but it is no less compelling, no less authentic, than it was two and a half thousand years ago. It is, in essence, some shade of nirvana that we seek, some spiritual success realized through our own ability to tame our egos and realize our full potential in the process.
We do not necessarily have to sit in the lotus position and chant “om mani padme hum” to be, in essence, exercising a discipline that liberates the human spirit. We can, instead, escape the illusion of activism that is blindly invested in a superficial cycle, the endless trials by ordeal, of changing leadership and representation, and embrace in its place the realization of an activism that is more profound, more effective, and more compelling.
I have already sketched out what that discipline looks like (see, e.g., A Proposal, The Ultimate Political Challenge, The Voice Beyond Extremes, The Foundational Progressive Agenda, “A Theory of Justice”, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Part 2, and “Messaging” From The Heart of Many Rather Than The Mouth of Few). But words are cheap, and acting on them is essential. To those who are already involved in this effort (e.g., “the coffee party”), let’s form bridges among our groups, form new groups, draw in new members, link to groups that are somewhat different in nature (e.g., Kiwanas,Rotary, church groups, HOAs, PTAs, park districts, school districts, everyone who is organized to do good works of any kind), trying to transcend rather than deepen the ideological divides, trying to create common ground rather than merely to smite enemies (and by doing so ensure that they remain enemies), building more hubs and spokes in expanding social networks all coalescing around the will to do better.
There are those who are quick to say that the opposition is not reasonable, and that trying to reason with them is the mistake that they are so angry about. And I say, the world is subtler than that. I do not argue that there is no place for hardball politics; I only argue that not every place is that place. I do not argue that there are not irrational and intransigent ideologues opposed to progress; I only argue that not everyone across the ideological divide is such a person. The real political battle has always been, and remains, the battle over the middle, over those who are not raging ideologues, over those who can be swayed. Such people are not swayed, but rather are repulsed, by raging ideology. While the Tea Party may seem to have been successful by trying to sway them with contorted faces and angry slogans, what they really did was to coalesce a base, and alienate the middle, at exactly the same time that many on the left thought that the smartest thing to do would be to alienate the middle as well, and thus lose the opportunity to be the only attractive political force left.
Obama won not because there was a huge mandate for expansive government, but rather because there was a huge mandate for hope and reason. Not everyone defines those virtues in the same way, and not everyone stayed on board as the policies themselves involved more government involvement than they were comfortable with. But hope and reason, not rage, are the truly attractive forces, the ones that attract not those who are already full of rage, but rather those who are not and don’t want to be.
So let’s recover that force, that momentum, that Obama unleashed in 2008. Let’s recover a commitment to hope and reason. Let’s agree to be slower to refute and quicker to consider; let’s agree to strive to find the words and attitude that resonate with those who can be swayed. Let’s agree to be reasonable, and humble, people of goodwill, working together to do the best we can. And let’s make that an attractive place to be. Real, and sustainable, progress depends on it.
Contact me, here or by other channels, if you’d like to be a part of an effort to organize along these lines. All reasonable people of goodwill have a responsibility to work as hard at turning this vision into a reality as others, all across the political spectrum, work at obstructing it.
Click here to buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards for just $2.99!!!
No Comments »
Click here to buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards for just $2.99!!!
Not long ago, I created a page describing A Proposal for a project that I consider the core dual mission of the progressive movement: 1) Mapping out the social institutional landscape, including all known public policy experiments here and elsewhere, all known suggestions, and all identifiable new ideas, evaluated on the basis of sound analysis applied to reliable data in service to human welfare, allowing for ranges of uncertainty and legitimate debates; and 2) working toward creating a national (and perhaps eventually international) system for communicating this universe of information, not only to those already inclined to make the best informed and best intentioned political choices, but also in ways that resonate with existing frames and narratives that are to varying degrees resistent to doing so.
From various angles, and somewhat haphazardly, I’ve been exploring the various dimensions and aspects of this mission on this blog, even before I clearly identified the mission itself. A crucial piece of the puzzle is the relationship between individual action and social change, a relationship which generally suffers from either oversimplification or underemphasis, or both. As I noted very recently, too many political activists believe that their only job is to get preferred candidates elected, and then are angry but unchastened when that inevitably proves insufficient (An Open Letter To Angry Progressives). The critical question for each of us, too often unasked, is what do we each need to do to best contribute to the realization of the progressive mission described above?
One starting point for addressing that question is consideration of The Variable Malleability of Reality, a careful recognition of how changeable each aspect of the social institional landscape is, and how to work through those interconnected threads of variable malleability in service to effecting widespread and profound positive change. The necessary attitude with which to address that systemic challenge is a combination of realism and idealism, or “Cynical Idealism,” knowing and acknowledging what is, in order to create what can be.
But another aspect of the question of the intersection of individual action and social change is a more personal one, an identification of just what exactly “personal responsibility” means in the context of social responsibility, or being an agent of positive social change. While no one has to be saint to be a sincere participant in our shared efforts to improve the world, the on-going commitment on the part of each of us to walk the walk as well as talk the talk is more vital than we often acknowledge.
In one series of posts, I explored this nexus between the personal and social aspects of the challenge, recognizing that those of us who want to dedicate ourselves to improving the world really do need to try to improve ourselves as well (The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Part 2, The Ultimate Political Challenge). Referring back to the “Proposal,” the challenge of cultivating a gravitational pull to the progressive agenda, making it a more attractive force than its ultimately anti-social competitors in the political arena (Liberty Idolatry, Small Government Idolatry, Liberty & Interdependence), involves modeling the spirit of the movement, showing people that it not only is what we can aspire to together, but also what we can be individually.
An earlier, related set of posts explored the ways in which our individual foibles aggregate into political ineffectiveness and dysfunctionality (The Politics of Anger , The Foundational Progressive Agenda). Numerous other posts delineate how such foibles have matured into a new incarnation of populist anti-intellectualism, combined with extreme individualism, giving us the worst of both worlds in the form of “The Tea Party” (“Political Fundamentalism”, “Constitutional Idolatry”). Other posts continue to trace the historical continuity between this movement and its anti-progress, anti-intellectual predecessors (The Tea Party’s Mistaken Historical Analogy, Social Institutional Luddites).
Following a discussion of such ideological foibles in general (The Elusive Truth , The Hydra’s Heads, The Signal-To-Noise Ratio, Pro-Life Dogma v. Life-Affirming Sentiment), I identified the basic duality involved: Ideology v. Methodology. The two institutions most committed to a careful pursuit of truth, science and law, rely first and foremost on a methodology, on procedural reductions of the influence of bias and caprice. While we have a process in politics for resolving conflicts, we don’t have a process in place for reducing bias and caprice. This is a dimension of the challenge which requires concentrated attention, and which inspired the proposal mentioned in the first paragraph of this post.
Despite the anti-intellectual rejection of the notion (while, ironically, always claiming to represent the more rational position), no enterprise suffers from an improved methodology, and no effort to confront the challenges of the world suffers from the increased application of reason. Reason isn’t everything: Passion and imagination both are vital ingredients as well. But reason is crucial, and plays an integral role in any enterprise, including the enterprise of self-governance.
A Framework for Political Analysis provides a very sketchy look at one aspect of the analytical paradigm that I developed during my work as a sociologist. I’ll need to develop this more fully in future posts, with a more complete description of how to use the techniques of microeconomics; game theory; evolutionary learning theory; linguistics, semiotics, and epistemology; and network analysis (along with tools from complementary fields, such as evolutionary psychology and cognitive science and evolutionary ecology) to explore the social institutional landscape that is characterized by various combinations of hierarchies, markets, norms, and ideologies (along with the primal social institutional material of emotions). While not everyone, necessarily will want to get into the weeds of these esoteric academic methodologies, awareness of them, and allowance for their ability to produce insights beyond those produced by casual observation and precipitous ideological assumption, certainly has a place in our collective efforts to continue to improve the human condition.
Some of the fruits of that methodology indicate its value. As I described in The Politics of Consciousness, human history is, in the abstract, a story of interacting evolving memes, aggregating into paradigms, which gradually accumulate anomalies (in the cultural context in the form of doubts and discontents; in the scientific context, in the form of inconsistent observations), which eventually generate paradigm shifts. In a series of subsequent posts, I explored various aspects of this dynamic, and contemplated some of its implications for the future (Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia), The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix).
In Adaptation & Social Systemic Fluidity, I explore the ways in which adaptations large and small ripple through the social institutional and technological landscape, triggering adaptations and modifications in both forward and backward linkages. In The Evolutionary Ecology of Human Technology, I continue the focus on the role of technology (drawing heavily on Brian Arthur’s recent book, The Nature of Technology), exploring the cumulative dynamical architecture of purposively programmed phenomena carved into and growing in conjunction with the social institutional landscape. In Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, I outline and speculate upon the interplay of the title two defining elements of the social institutional and technological landscape. In The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia), I take a more precise look at one particular thread in that evolving social institutional and technological landscape, something that this project would seek to do, over time (perhaps over generations), comprehensively, compiling an encyclopedic dynamical mapping of the entire social institutional landscape. In The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix, I delve into the complex ecology of the interface of natural, human, and technological systems. In Counterterrorism: A Model of Centralized Decentralization, Tuesday Briefs: The Anti-Empathy Movement & “Crowdfunding”, Wikinomics: The Genius of the Many Unleashed, , and A Major Historical Threshold or A Tragically Missed Opportunity, I consider the role of modern communications and data processing technologies in continuing the process of unleashing “the genius of the many.” In Collective Action (and Time Horizon) Problems, I describe this driving force of social institutional evolution.
I also posted on specific aspects of the social institutional landscape, more relevant to the challenge of forging the best public policy. Economics is, of course, a topic of primary concern, and one which we all need to become better educated about. To that end, I’ve posted on various aspects of economics, including how to contemplate the question of public spending, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic priorities (The Economic Debate We’re Not Having , The Real Deficit , The Restructuring of the American and Global Economy, The More Subtle & Salient Economic Danger We Currently Face ).
Similarly, I’ve explored other aspects of the social institutional landscape, including international relations (Lords and Serfs on the Global Manor: Foreign Aid as Noblesse Oblige , Problems Without Borders , “Democracy IN America,” But Not BY America, The Brutality of War is Relevant), environmental issues (Environmental Open Forum, Deforestation: Losing an Area the Size of England Every Year, What One Marine Bacteria Might Mean to the World, Back to the Future, Sort Of: Sod Houses & Environmentalism, Energy and the Environment), child and family issues (The Most Vulnerable Americans, The Vital Role of Child, Family, and Community Services, Community, Family, and Crime Prevention, Solving Rather Than Punishing Problems), educational issues (Real Education Reform , The Importance of Mentors), health care issues (Sound Mind, Sound Body, Sound Society; Sound Good?, Is It Wrong to Require People to Buy Health Insurance?), immigration issues (A comprehensive overview of the immigration issue), and social/moral issues (Pro-Life Dogma v. Life-Affirming Sentiment). Many other posts flesh out various other aspects of our social institutional landscape (Should Political Libel Be Legally Prohibited?, Predators, Prey, and Productive Praxis, Free Will, Determinism, Quantum Mechanics, & Personal & Social Responsibility, The Meaning of “Representation”, Why Fame Is Attractive, “Is Religion A Force For Good?” ).
Finally, as several of the above posts linked to indicate, I tried to apply this improved mapping of the social institutional landscape to issues of public policy. Some of the overarching statements of general attitude and policy include “A Choice Between Our Hopes and Our Fears”, A Positive Vision For Colorado, What’s Right With America, and “A Theory of Justice”.
This blog is a somewhat haphazard nascent contribution to the paradigm I describe in the first paragraph, and in A Proposal. The paradigm is comprised of sets of interrelated memes, covering a broad territory, and involving various branches of the human endeavor, including: 1) methodologies both of how we form our understandings, and of how we attempt to implement them as public policy; 2) the products of the former methodologies, in terms of mapping out our social political landscape and its underlying dynamics; and 3) the myriad challenges we each must confront as individuals to become most effective in contributing to the development of this paradigm, and of its expression in the form of improved public policy.
Click here to buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards for just $2.99!!!
No Comments »
Buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards
There is much about the Tea Party mentality that is similar to anti-progress attitudes of the past, such as the fear that any improvement in the production or distribution of wealth comes at the expense of those who are invested in the status quo, and that the local and immediate interests of those who are inconvenienced or made worse off in the short run should trump the global and long-term interests of the many who would benefit from advancements in the production and distribution of wealth.
Throughout human history, in varying balances, there have been those who cling to a familiar past and those who reach for an improved future. The progress made despite the former has included a shift in balance in favor of the latter. Whereas traditional societies anchored themselves in ossified rituals and beliefs, modern societies have increasingly embraced the possibility of progress. But, as many have noted, modernity is “a candle in the darkness” (Carl Sagan’s phrase to describe science, still today), flickering in the midst of howling hordes of gods and demons, superstitions and arbitrary certainties, that continue to hold us back.
Early in the industrial revolution, British artisans protested mechanized production by destroying the power looms that were displacing them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite). There are two important things to note about this: 1) Progress does indeed cause dislocations, and, unless we take pains to address it, localized losses amidst generalized gains; and 2) to the extent that these victims of progress, whether their victimization is real or imagined, succeed in obstructing progress, we all lose in the long run, for the improved techniques that were obstructed would have created far greater wealth and opportunity in the long run than the archaic techniques that were preserved.
The Tea Partiers are modern Luddites, taking mallets to social institutional rather than technological innovation. As I discussed in several previous posts (see, e.g., The Politics of Consciousness , Information and Energy: Past, Present, and Future, The Evolutionary Ecology of Audio-Visual Entertainment (& the nested & overlapping subsystems of Gaia), The Nature-Mind-Machine Matrix), both technological and social institutional innovation are part of cultural evolution, the reproduction, mutation, and selection according to differential reproductive success of “memes” (i.e., ideas). And as I’ve also discussed in several previous posts (“Political Fundamentalism”, “Constitutional Idolatry”, Liberty Idolatry, and Small Government Idolatry), the political fundamentalism of the Tea Party is akin to the religious fundamentalism from which it mutated, and to the Inquisition which is the historical model of such fundamentalism, clinging to archaic orthodoxies that do not stand up to rational scrutiny (see Real Fiscal Conservativism for an economic analysis of this vis-a-vis the Tea Party), and fighting against the heresies of progress.
We are simply embroiled in one of the on-going battles of human history, constantly reincarnated, and constantly obstructing our ability to do better. It is incumbent upon us to open as many eyes as possible to this fact, and leave those who prefer to be champions of avoidable human suffering to become increasingly marginalized and reviled, while those who prefer to be champions of human welfare and true spiritual growth can join all other reasonable people of goodwill in the shared enterprise of forging a progressive path into the future.
No Comments »
Buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards
The Economist magazine, echoing a theme of mine that has permeated several posts (the evolutionary ecology of human social institutions and technologies ) discussed two unconventional examples of managerial efficiency: Somali pirates (http://www.economist.com/whichmba/somali-pirates) and the North Korean government (http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2010/10/succession_planning). Somali pirates provide a purely predatory and parasitic example of how smaller start-ups can break into markets dominated by established behemoths, and North Korea provides an example of successful succession planning (as important in corporations as in governments). While the details of the comparisons are interesting (read the articles), what is most interesting to me is the issue of the balance between productivity and predation that these and other successful strategies are used in service to.
We tend to see the world in absolutes, dividing it into production and predation according to our location and ideological predisposition. Anti-corporatists (mostly on the left) view corporations, and anti-imperialists view powerful nations, as entirely predatory, while those who benefit either directly or indirectly from their activities, and are aware of it, see them as primarily productive. But there are objective measures by which we can untangle the two, such as contribution to global GDP, or to other forms of utility production, versus contributions to global utility reduction. Some enterprises are clearly purely redistributive (such as piracy), producing no new wealth at all, and in fact reducing its production by throwing gravel in the gears of the productive engines of the economy (i.e., increasing transaction costs). This is true even though they are siphoning some of that wealth produced elsewhere to grateful populations, complete with forward and backward linkages from which other enterprising souls might benefit (e.g., outfitting the pirates with equipment, benefiting from their increased spending of their loot, even generating business for security services to defend against them).
The strict Libertarian philosophy places minimal constraints on these processes, differentiating little between production and predation, as long as it occurs within a context of legally defined and protected private property rights. But even within that legal context, there are opportunities for predation constantly arising, such as those that led to the Enron-engineered California energy crisis of 2000-2001 or the 2008 financial sector meltdown. There are many more innocuous activities in the market economy which do not produce wealth, but rather only siphon it off, such as high-volume, high-velocity, extremely short-term stock trading using computer algorithms, or shady personal injury legal services (not to imply that all personal injury legal services are shady) that rely on massive advertising, high volume business with rapid turnover, and quick settlements that may not reflect the clients’ best interests or even outcomes superior than could have been achieved without the lawyers’ assistance. These are perfectly legal forms of what are largely predatory practices.
Economist Mancur Olsen wrote a book titled “The Rise and Decline of Nations” in the 1970’s or 80’s about how nations become wealthy by developing production-oriented economies, and then are weakened by an increasing over-emphasis on distributional struggles, which divert an increasing proportion of people’s time and effort from productive activities. Of course, a nation doesn’t have to be wealthy for too many people to be investing too much in distributional struggles (a common trap of many underdeveloped nations). The point is that what proportion of human effort-hours is invested in productive activity v. redistributive activity is relevant to how much wealth and utility is being produced.
There is nothing wrong with attention paid to distributive implications of policies, as long as that attention is paid in conjunction with attention paid to the balance of productive and redistributive efforts. Given a choice between two equally productive economic models, the one that produces greater distributional equity is preferable. Nor is it wrong for a large market economy to invest some of its resources in consideration of how to divert wealth in economically and socially productive ways. Distributional struggles exist with or without the intentional intervention of government, and government subsidies are often captured by those least in need of distributional assistance. Both government and the public which overseas it has an inescapable challenge in monitoring distributional choices to ensure that they are both efficient and fair.
Indeed, many public investments that are perceived to be primarily redistributive, or predatory against tax-payers on behalf of “special interests,” are in fact primarily productive, addressing social problems, infrastructural maintenance demands, and human capital development demands in ways which increase aggregate utility (both directly, and indirectly through decreased transaction costs) as well as lead to a more equitable distribution of it. But increasing diversion of resources to battles over how to divide the pie ends up shrinking the pie that is divided, and those enterprises (like Somali pirates) that not only divert resources to distributional struggles, but do so through violent predation, decrease the size of the pie even more.
One of our collective challenges as we continue to refine our social institutional landscape is to create regulatory regimes that increase the amount of productive praxis, and decrease the amount of non-productive predation, in both our market and non-market activities. Just as ecosystems can be ravaged by locusts, or overly extractive human beings, so to human economic systems can be ravaged by those actors that swoop in and ravenously extract wealth without producing any. The fact that it can be accomplished in the context of well-defined and well-enforced private property rights is just one more argument why a regime of well-defined and well-enforced private property rights, and no more, is not the ultimate culmination of political economic development. Private property rights are just one thread in a more complex tapestry, a tapestry which we are continuing to learn to weave.
Libertarians rely on the assumption that government is predatory, and that private corporations aren’t, but, in reality, either or both can be, and our challenge is to prevent either and both from being so. Crippling the one that is organized to serve the public interest (and is designed, with limited success, to be answerable to the populace as a whole), in order to leave the field clear for the one that is organized to serve only private interests (and is organized comparatively efficiently to do so) is not a recipe for reducing predation. Rather, it is a recipe for increasing it, and reducing only our means for reining it in.
