Impact of Empathy on Policy

I was watching Bill Maher’s show the other day where they were talking about Rob Portman’s recent change in position on gay marriage. It seems that his son came out of “the closet” announcing his homosexuality two years ago. Rachel Maddow, one of his guests, made a comment which struck a chord. She said something to the effect that since Republicans change positions when things strike close to home, maybe they should have poor sons and thus have more empathy with the poor. One of the things I have often pondered and have written about is the difference between conservative and progressive views and the notion of empathy may help me understand this difference. The human race has organized itself into various groups ranging from family to tribe, village, region, nation and species. There are other intersecting groupings such as religion, ethnicity, race, gender, occupation and I am sure there are still others I have not thought to mention. If the more closely we align ourselves with a group, the more we want policies favoring that group. The question then is how the value we place on membership in these groups is distributed. At the extremes are the individualists giving primacy to themselves and the globalists the human race. The Buddhists, and to some extent native Americans and some animists take it a step further and feel that we are connected to all things, even inanimate objects. Conservatives espouse individualism and place a higher value on groupings closer to the self and thus individual freedoms, family cohesion, local and regional institutions and their protection become paramount. The value of a nation becomes less important because of its separation from the individual and its diversity. All the overt enthusiastic patriotism and flag waving may just be to cover the guilt from the low value given the national citizenship, (as Shakespeare once said “the lady doeth protest too much”) and the patriotism is more focused on the military and security aspects and tends to be ethnic and not inclusive. To that point, Sarah Palin, while running for VP, talked about being glad to visit a “real America” when she was in some rural community. In her mind, the bowls of Newark NJ belong to some foreign nation, certainly not to her America. People living in rural areas tend to be conservative and in general are isolated from diversity. They tend to have a fear, distrust and misunderstanding of the “others”, be they the other by virtue of race, religion, intellect or culture. They are in favor of States Rights and local control which they can easily see and touch and distrustful of the strangers in a distant place. (You can’t get too much more distant than the UN) Progressives, on the other hand, placing greater value on society and identifying more with the human race as a whole, see the downtrodden, other races and ethnicities as part of their group and are less sympathetic to individual wants. They tend to speak more of American exceptionalism in terms of its ability to assimilate immigrants and care for the needy rather than its military and economic might, considering the latter to be the consequence of the former. Their patriotism though it may be deeply felt, tends to be less demonstrative. Protection of the environment and therefore our species, a global quest, is strongly advocated by progressives. City dwellers by nature of their diversity tend to look more to the federal government rather than the state which often has more of a rural lean. So I think that the degree of empathy may be determined by the relative priority given to the various groupings and to a great extent the resulting empathy drives policy. Though conservatives tend to place more value on groupings closer to the individual and progressives closer to the species, looking at Democrats and Republicans through this lens, one can see significant outliers. On the Republican side, true free marketers really are globalists with a large acceptance criterion, whereas members of unions support Democrats giving high priority to a very narrowly defined grouping. In fact the largest group that placed value only on a single factor was the now defunct Soviet Communists. In trying to “unite the workers of the World”, they gave minimal value to family and nation, none to the individual and made religious organizations illegal. So, is there hope? I heard of a phenomenon called the “Aunt Susy Syndrome”(?) which says that as we become more mobile, we bring into our circle of friend and relatives individuals (Aunt Susys) from unfamiliar groups. Through this interaction we note the similarity and humanity which contradicts the lore of bigotry and gradually come to like Aunt Susy and in so doing, others of her ilk become much less scary and we start expanding our circle or forming a new one to include her kind. If policies are indeed influenced by empathy, which I think they are, they should benefit an ever expanding range of our population as time goes by.

Potential Danger of Globalization

The world is constantly changing with some changes much more dramatic than others, leading to catastrophic events. The industrial revolution brought about technologies causing drastic changes to western societies and shifted manufacturing predominance from east to west. At the turn of the nineteenth century power shifted from England to Germany precipitating the First World War. In the early part of the twentieth century the Russian Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to communism. Fascism came into being in part to counter the threat of communism to the establishment. German fascism not only instigated the Second World War decimating Eastern Europe, but its ethnic cleansing brutally destroyed millions of innocent Jewish lives. We are currently in the midst of another revolution. The information age is greatly accelerating advances in technologies. The most dramatic, of these, social media, allows massive, inexpensive trans-global communication facilitating international commerce. One of the consequences of the globalization is the diminution of the significance of international borders and a potential shift in the balance of power. At the turn of the twentieth century, the threat to humanity came from the left fermented by communist revolutionaries. The risk, as I see it today, is that as power; military, financial and intellectual is more evenly distributed throughout the world and as environmental, security and economic threats require more collaborative responses, fear, xenophobia and the desire for time to stand still could drive us into another world conflict. In this era, the threat is from the right. Conservatives, by their very nature are more susceptible. They may even have a biological predisposition to fear, particularly of the unknown. They want exiting institutions and relationships to continue unchanged and tend to wave the flag with greater gusto. My worry about the future stems from the Republican Party’s need to pull into their tent people whose economic wellbeing is inconsistent with fiscal policies favored by the Party. Theirs is a dangerous strategy playing into these tendencies and using a mix of fear, prejudice and patriotism to expand their electorate. The threats posed by global terrorism and, in response our war on it, unfortunately supports this strategy. My other concern is that since the turn of the twenty first century I started seeing inklings of a dangerous similarity with the past coming from the right. Some of the rhetoric is starting to sound a little bit like that of the German fascists in the early nineteen hundreds. They promoted fear and the resulting hatred of Jews to rally their ill-informed lower middle class. In the west, the political right propagandizes the fear and hatred of Muslims and Islam and in our country the “southern Strategy is still alive and well. The Nazis stressed the superiority of the Arian race while our right constantly chastises its opponents for insufficient acknowledgement of our exceptionalism. In Germany the “fatherland” was part of their battle cry. Here the word “homeland” and the need for its protection is more and more often heard. Collaboration in the control of the political process by the government, church and the industrial complex is a hallmark of fascism. In the last few decades we have had a strong shift to political engagement on the part of the religious right and the rise in economic inequality gives the wealthiest a disproportional influence on government. With the pronouncement of a never ending war on terror, more and more power is placed in the hands of the president and fear has lead us to cede a number of our civil rights. More military operations are undertaken by paramilitary rather than conventional forces. These forces are not subject to the code of military conduct and are responsible to an ever shrinking portion of the government. Fear and the Neo Con’s quest for ever greater military superiority and interventionism could push us in the direction of the German quest for world dominance. Then there is the charismatic leader lacking “intellectual curiosity” with the ability to rouse fear and anger that also scares me. A number of irrational, charismatic contenders were put forth by the right who momentarily lead the pack in Republican primaries (Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, the Pizza guy). Happily they were voted down for now. Fortunately the above are just inklings and thus far not a firm indication of a dangerous direction. Globalization, if we figure out how to navigate effectively through all the technological, environmental, social and economic challenges can make, not only our country but the world as a whole a better place for everyone to live. To this end we need leaders who are intellectually capable of understanding and dealing with complexities which we will invariably encounter with a vision looking well into the future and with the skills to counter the fear and hatred sown by extremes on both the left and right. The electorate will need to be well informed and select senators and congressman to implement policies for not only today but that anticipate impending changes. I think that in time, the information technologies will make people better informed and thus see through the talking points, though I recognize the potential for the same technologies to more efficiently spread propaganda. We will see. Whatever happens, it will be an interesting but hopefully not a lethal time.

Free Will

At a stress reduction clinic in a local teaching hospital which I attended after an episode with my heart about 20 years ago, I was exposed to an antidote for guilt which goes something like this: If I could have done it differently I would have, the proof that I couldn’t is that I didn’t. This statement suggests that everything is exactly as it should be, including our decisions, and we have no free will. Somewhere in my travels I was also exposed to another notion that: Everything that was in place prior to this very moment was exactly as it should be. However, we have a say in what happens in the next moment. I would like to rephrase the later statement. Once an action is taken, the results of that action are exactly as they should be given the action. And all of the results of actions throughout the Universe are exactly as they should be given all the actions throughout the universe. However, going forward we can make choices and participate in determining what the Universe will look like tomorrow. I want to explore the second statement. The first part of the statement is obvious. If I hit a piece of granite with a hammer in a specific spot with a given force, it will shatter. The way is splinters is precisely the correct way (by correct I don’t mean intended but as it should, given the circumstances). If I struck the granite with the same hammer in the same place with the same force using the same trajectory and it being in the same space at the same temperature, it would fracture the same way. Actions leading up to the fracture of the granite determine the mode of splintering and the splintering is precisely as it should be given the actions. Today there is a saying that reinforces this. Lunacy (or something like that) is defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. However I am not sure I agree with the second part of the statement, going forward we can make a choice and participate in determining what the Universe will look like going forward. The granite has certain inherent physical properties which makes it granite, that determine its basic characteristics, like its chemical composition, strength, etc. These will be contributing factors to in how it will splinter. Other elements in how it shatters are, within the family of granite, its unique characteristics that make it this specific rock. These will determine things like the nature and locations of impurities imbedded in it along with the various local bond strengths. Beside this it also has a history that will contribute to the mode of shatter. How long ago did it break off from the mountain? What temperature cycles did it see over the period of its existence? How much water washed over its surface? How did it tumble and fall as the earth moved? Then of course there are the external conditions like the nature and weight of the hammer, the velocity and direction of the hammer head, the orientation of the granite and the precise location of the impact. All of these, its nature as a rock, its unique structure, its history and the external conditions at the time of impact, will contribute to determining precisely how the rock will shatter. This premise should be relatively easy to accept. Now let’s replace the piece of granite with a person and the nature of the splinter with the decision at a crossroads to commit a crime or not. As in the case of the granite, the person has an inherent nature possessed by all human beings. She is conceived through the merger of a sperm and egg, struggles to survive, seeks pleasure, grows, decays and dies. Then there are factors driving her inherent individual characteristics, traits specific to her that she was born with. Broadly speaking, these are her DNA determined by her ancestry, the culture and life style of her ancestors, and the mother’s environment during pregnancy. What did the mother eat and drink during the pregnancy? Was she a drug addict? How much stress was she under? What kind of prenatal care in general did she receive? These factors will determine the color of the skin, hair and eyes, her height, much of her physiological and psychological makeup (nature), her propensity for diseases, and her general health upon entering this world. As with the rock, she will also be influenced by her history. Was the family under stress during the first few years of her life? Did she grow up in a loving environment? Was there someone available to comfort her? Was there a good role model available? Was the family intellectually curious? Did she live in a violent neighborhood? Did she receive adequate health care? Was she educated? What was the religiosity of the parents if any? What roads did she travel during her life? What people crossed her paths? What joys and sorrows did she face? This history also contributes to her physical and psychological makeup (nurture) and will come into play when she is making the decision. What are the externalities at the moment the decision is made? Is it cold out? If poor, are poor people stigmatized, in her environment is such a crime acceptable behavior? So when she comes to a crossroad and needs to decide to commit the crime or not, like the way the rock splinters, that decision has already been predetermined. Is she a good or bad person? That may not be the right question since it suggests she had a say. The more appropriate thing is to recognize that circumstances beyond her control have led her to this point and the question should be what kind of a member of society and community is she. Should she be forgiven? Yes. If the crime is a serious one, should she go to jail? Yes. Though what she does is predetermined, society’s laws should apply, if not to rehabilitate her then to discourage her and others from committing that crime again. (The philosophy and effectiveness of incarceration is whole separate discussion.) This gets us back to the antidote to guilt. If I could have done it differently I would have, the proof that I couldn’t is that I didn’t. The older I get and the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to think that statement is true and there is no real free will for us as individuals. Since there is no free will for individuals, does society, being the sum of its individuals, travel along a predetermined path also? Are we just actors on a stage following a script? If so, the bigger question then is where, when and how was the script written?

"You Didn't Build it Yourself"

A comment President Obama made during the last Presidential campaign got a lot of attention. It even inspired the slogan used at the Republican Convention. Picking up on a response to a question Elizabeth Warren made early on in her campaign which went viral, the President reiterated her point that to succeed a business needs more than the ingenuity and hard work of an individual businessman but relies also on things provided by the population at large like infrastructure, education of the workforce and the system of governance established and fought for that allows for such success. He ended his comment saying “you didn’t build it yourself”. The conservatives took the last part of the statement out of context and used “you didn’t build it yourself” to attack the President. This attack of the Left by the Right points out a fundamental difference between the Right and Left emphasis on individualism and collectivism. The value of individualism, though an admirable trait, has diminished over time. Early man made his own tools and weapons with which he gathered plants, hunted and fished. Later in his development he also planted seeds and bred livestock. This continued over tens of thousands of years. As families formed tribal units and further expanded their societies, man started to rely more and more upon his neighbors and soon, to improve efficiency, started to specialize until full blown distribution of labor brought about the industrial revolution. So when frontiers were first settled by individual families separated by miles if not tens of miles, as in the prehistoric times, families had to fend for themselves. Today we romanticize about the strong, self-reliant individualist with a pistol in his pocket and rifle over his shoulder relying on no one but his own strength, cunning and courage. We overlook the fact that the pistol in his pocket and the rifle on his shoulder were made by someone else who got their metal from someone who mined it with equipment made by someone else. So even as independent as he is, he still relies on others for his survival. As the population grew and technologies evolved, the skill and efficiency with which we interact with each other as opposed to individual behavior becomes ever more important. As a practical matter, with today’s technological complexity, if all communication and information storage devices broke down we could not survive because we have become so specialized that no individual or small groups of individuals have sufficient skill to make even the most rudimentary item. (OK, OK, the primitive tribes who have not yet embraced any of the modern technologies may be able to survive, but only maybe.) I suspect that there are a number of causes including propaganda, underlying the different value placed on individualism and collectivism. Some of them may even be biological. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist was quoted in the Huffington Post on 1/4/13. “To use a powerful metaphor, we have two magnificent information-processing machines inside our heads. Our right mind focuses on our similarities, the present moment, inflections of voice, and the bigger picture of how we are all connected. Because it focuses on similarities, in my mind she is compassionate, expansive, open and supportive of other. Juxtaposed to that, our left brain thinks linearly, creates and understands language, defines the boundaries of where we begin and where we end, judging what is right and wrong and is a master of details. Because it focuses on our differences and specializes in critical judgment of those unlike ourselves, our left brain character tends to be our source of bigotry, prejudice, and fear or hate of the unfamiliar.” I believe different individuals are more inclined to use the right side of the brain others the left. Artists are right side of the brain people and accountants left. (We may have mislabeled the political right and left.) Getting back to “you didn’t build it yourself”. The left leaning people, using the right side of their brain more, and intuitively recognizing the connectivity of things, may by nature be more predisposed to giving credit more broadly and would have little problem with the notion that a business was built with many inputs by different people and society as a whole, not to mention a touch of luck. Yes, building a business did indeed take an effort of an individual, but it also relied on past and current efforts of others.

Honest People Built our Nation

“Not Gvt. but honest people built our nation” read the marquee in front of a beauty product wholesaler. I saw this a few weeks ago and assume it is in response to the Republican campaign against President Obama claiming he said that “you didn’t build your business”. That got me thinking about a couple of things. One is; what does it mean to “build” something, the other; what does being “honest” have to do with building anything including a business?

I will use the analogy of building a house for its simplicity. The process can be extended then to building a business or anything else for that matter.
· To begin with, there needs to be a concept of the house in the head of a thinker.
· Then, based on that concept, an architect needs to draw up the plans.
· Typically a bank provides the financing needed to retain the labor and buy the materials.
· A contractor manages the construction; taking the architect’s plan, he gets permits, hires workers, gets the materials and manages the construction.
· Workers with various skills put the materials together following the architect’s plans and the contractor’s instructions.
Beside the very direct activities listed above there are many tangential activities that the primary ones relied on for the finished house. Many of those required societies inputs to accomplish. The President spoke about the roads needed to transport the materials and labor, the education of the workers, and the system of governance that allowed all these things to happen. He stressed that, though individual effort is required, to build “it” there is a collective effort required on the part of society that makes the project possible.

Unfortunately we, and particularly the conservatives, take a simplistic view and pretty much ignore all but the effort of the heroic individual. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk writes about the difference between conventional thinking and “mindful” thinking pointing out that, for example, we think of our pulmonary system as primarily our lungs with other parts of our body participating. He says that in reality the system is much larger and more inclusive, extending well beyond ourselves. He points out that the air we exhale contains CO2 that is scrubbed by the trees returning the oxygen back into the air that we then inhale. So that as a minimum, our pulmonary system includes not only things internal to us but also external elements without which the process would not work.

Getting back to the building of the house. So who built the house? Was it the person with the concept; the architect; the contractor; the laborers or the banker? I think each would claim that they built the house whereas the fact of the matter is that it required all of them. Having approached the question in this fashion all would admit the other’s participation and the ensuing argument then would be their relative importance with each claiming their position at the top. (In the case of the beauty product wholesaler, he did non of the above, his parents having started the business.)

Now where does the notion of honest men come from? None of the interrelated tasks have honesty as a prerequisite for proper accomplishment. My guess is that in the mind of the individual displaying the sign, he may be thinking businessmen when he says people and attributing them with a virtue, which, though irrelevant, some may have while some don’t even know the meaning of the word. But he may be including the laborers in his “honest people”. Well the same can be said about them. There is no correlation between carpentry skills and honesty.

So, did honest people build our great nation? Ultimately most the activities required to build our nation were carried out by mepeople; the visionaries, architects, financiers, managers and not least, the laborers whether paid or as in the case of the slaves, unpaid (had to work the slaves in as a reminder). Those who think they built anything alone are delusional.

Did the government build our nation? We tend to confuse the terms government and society. There is a hierarchy that extends from the individual to family, community and society. At a philosophical level there is a difference between the order and more importantly, the degree of importance between the conservatives and progressives regarding this hierarchy. The conservatives put a strong emphasis on the individual and very little on society whereas progressives put strong emphasis on society and less on the individual. Once you get beyond the individual and family, to a community or society, they need governance. It is a system of setting rules and regulations and the means of enforcing them for the group to function. Gov Romeny wrongly stated that corporations are people. They are not. He should have said that their functions are performed by people and the profits derived accrue to people. In the same sense governments are not people but the functions are performed by people and the consequences of the activities, for better or worse affect people.

Government did not build our nation but people did. People built our great nation whether they worked for the governing bodies directly or for private enterprises. Whether they were writing the constitution, tilling the fields, creating businesses, building railroads and skyscrapers, allocating capital, picking cotton or teaching our youth.

Were the builders of our nation honest men? Were the slave owners honest men? Was taking the Native American’s land in exchange for trinkets or nothing at all an act of honest men? IBM during its early days competing with National Cash Register purchased their competitor’s cash registers, damaged them and then sold them as NCR products causing great damage to the NRC name. Was Thomas J Watson, IBM’s founder, who took the “traveling salesmen” who at that time had a reputation for lying, cheating and womanizing and dressed them in neat suits and ties without changing their behavior making them seem trustworthy, an honest man? Not all businesses succeeded using underhanded methods though many did. Government also had its share of shady characters.

So the marquee was partially right. Our great nation was built by people, some working for the common good of society and some driven by self interest with each including some honest and some not so honest people. And by the way along with a whole bunch of luck along the way.

Proposed New Capitalism

Today there is much discussion of income inequality. Though there are many complex reasons, most accept the argument that it is not good for a society, not just from the standpoint of justice but more because the loss of income for the larger portion of the population reduces demand affecting both business and labor. Following is a possible solution that may not be offensive to either end of the political spectrum. Capital is primarily risked on plant and to a slightly lesser extent materials. Labor then takes the material, using the plant and equipment, and converts it adding value. The resultant then is sold at a profit. Currently, the entire profit (with the exception of corporations with profit sharing plans) goes to the providers of the capital (owners)  My proposal would let the providers of capital reap the profit from its use on plant and materials and let labor claim the profit derived from the portion attributable to labor. (in labor I include direct, indirect, management and engineering and administrative) the distribution of profit to labor would be in proportion to base pay (the assumption is that there is some relationship between pay and contribution). Furthermore labor would have representation on the board of directors in proportion to the labor's input to the total cost.  Example: let's say there is a product selling for 10.00. The portion of the plant going into it  is $2.00, the material is $4.00 and the labor is $2.00. The $2.00 dollars remaining then is profit. Since the capital was at risk on the $6.00 and the labor was $2.00, let 3/4 of the profit or $1.50 go to the providers of the capital and 1/4 or $.50 go to labor.  A company with sales of $100 million with 500 employees making a 15percent profit and 50 percent of costs being labor, would have $7.5 million of profits divided  Between the 500 employees. The average employee would get $15,000. So if there are 400 workers earning $30,000 they would get $11,400 each, 90 engineers supervises and managers earning $70,000 get $26,000, 9 executives earning $100,000 would get $37,500 and the CEO earning $1,000,000 gets $371,000. Furthermore, to retain profits for growth,  regulations could be created allowing the corporation to pay some predetermine portion of the profit in shares of the company. This way everyone participating in the enterprise works toward the profit goal and shares in the success.

Conservatism, Religion and Status of Women

In recent months both Right and Left have entered into heated debate affecting society as a whole and particularly women. The left argues from a standpoint of women’s rights to contraception and the Right, religious freedom. This debate made me ponder a possible historic basis underlying the two positions.

Agrarian societies are by their nature patriarchal. One can think of a farm as a business enterprise requiring a number of chores and responsibilities. Because of man’s strength and aggression along with the fact that a woman is somewhat restricted before and after childbirth, the chores in the fields tended to go to the man. For maximum efficiency, in an undertaking involving a number of individuals there needs to be someone to organize the tasks. Because of their stronger involvement in the actual task of faming, the role of manager went to the man. The man became the head of the enterprise, the farm, and by extension, head of the household.

As societies evolved men left the farms and went to work in enterprises (factories etc.) where someone else was the manager and though they maintained the title of head of household, they did so out of custom only. The role of manager no longer had a natural rationale. (I guess some would argue that a household is an enterprise needing a manager. But if that were the case, for the same reasons a man was suited to manage a farm, the woman would be more appropriate.) Today the bulk of the Social Conservatives come from rural areas and not only tradition but their experience, tends to supports an inferior position for women.

Religion is another factor that influences thinking regarding women’s issues. As societies grew, with larger numbers of people living in close proximity, it became necessary to constrain some natural human behaviors and religious institutions became the law-makers. A key issue requiring laws was the transfer of lands from generation to generation and it became imperative that paternity was clearly established. The only way to do this was to make sure that the woman mated only with the head of the farm so any offspring were surely his. Therefore a major role of religious establishment became control of sexual behavior, particularly of women, pretty much banning all sexual activity except that required for procreation. Since most, if not all, modern religions had their origins in primarily agrarian societies, and early societies being patriarchal, it only made sense the religious institutions not only controlled sexual behavior but reinforced the position of man in the family. Beside coming from rural cultures, Social Conservatives tend to also be more religious and more fundamentalist all of which reinforces not only the belief in the naturally inferior position of women but also in restricting their sexual activity.