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Low-Effort Thinking

Published February 11, 2013 on Society 1 Comment
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A study published in the journal Personality and Social Science Bulletin last year showed that those who score low on intelligence tests eventually gravitate towards “socially conservative political views.” The study concluded that “low-effort thinking” promotes political conservatism and acceptance of hierarchy. Who’da thunk it?

In the military blaming a subordinate for a mistake or failure made on your watch could result, at minimum, in a reprimand, or at worst being brought up on charges of conduct unbecoming of an officer. In New Mexico we are witnessing a scandal brought about by a Republican State Representative, Cathrynn Brown, blaming a bill drafter for making errors in a bill she requested, subsequently reviewed, signed and introduced to the Chamber. I fully understand that charges of “conduct unbecoming a politician” would be a conundrum of challenging proportions, but they should certainly be pursued, if only by the rational voters in her district. The legislation proposed was most certainly antisocial and demonstrated a lack of conscience and empathy. It is / was a piece of sociopathic legislation designed to punish women who have been raped for not carrying the child to term. Denials of responsibility followed public disclosure of the bill.

This was religious zealotry and low-effort thinking attempting to become law plain and simple. What you have here when you shovel your way through the “don’t-blame-me” propaganda is a bill that makes criminals of rape victims who don’t want to carry the rapist’s child. What’s next on this agenda? Perhaps witch burning such as took place in Papua New Guinea this past week. A 20-year-old mother was burned alive there in front of hundreds of witnesses (taking photographs no less), she having been accused of sorcery. It was, along with photographs, front-page news in the biggest newspaper in the country. Irrational, dogmatic religious zealotry takes its toll on a society; it makes mockery of claims of being civilized.

In New Mexico we have Cathrynn Brown, and in Missouri they have Todd Akin, a former US Representative who claims there is “legitimate rape” and that women’s bodies have a built-in mechanism for “shutting down” so pregnancy from rape won’t occur. Next we have Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, an MD, who claims that evolution, embryology, and the “Big Bang Theory” are “… lies straight from the pit of Hell.” I would be remiss if I forgot to mention Terry England, a Georgia legislator who wanted to pass a bill requiring women to carry still-born fetuses to term. His rationale? Cows and pigs do. I should also include Richard Murdock, the Republican state treasurer of Indiana who opined: “Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” There you have it, ladies, Grin and Bear It – God “intended” that you should be raped.

In Mississippi recently a five-year-old child was taken home from kindergarten in a police car “to teach him and his mother a lesson.” What was the crime? The school requires all students to wear black shoes, and this kid’s family was too poor to buy him black shoes. Mom, being resourceful, colored over his red and white sneakers with black marker. Unfortunately she missed a few places and so had to be “taught a lesson” in low-effort thinking by school officials.

Every example of low-effort thinking throughout history that failed to embrace and maintain common compassion, justice, equal economic opportunity, and respect for individuals did so as their social contract ceased to be viable. As in 14th-century Venice, people do not long subscribe to a social contract they perceive as being unfair and delimiting. The United States has the fifth-highest wealth disparity among 150 countries. It has happened before and it could be happening again. Even the Greek-born Roman essayist Plutarch recognized that “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” It is not simply the disparity of wealth that matters, so much as the disparity of opportunity that in itself is the measure of a nation, of a society.

The most serious question certainly is: What does this low-effort thinking in the simultaneous trends of zealotry and material greed portend for the American social contract? The recent election and its aftermath have shown how conservatives such as moderate Republicans and Tea Party activists cannot connect with each other even to win an election. Tea Party zealots have now vowed to run candidates against moderate Republicans in future elections. Like everything else involving people, low-effort thinking is a spectrum across which people and ideas are spread, ranging from virulent to somewhat reasonable. Every form of sociopathy has its destructive consequences.

It isn’t a joking matter that scores of people in states across the South and in the West have signed petitions demanding their state secede from the United States. When thoughtful engagement is required to sustain a society, low-effort thinking is the kiss of death.  The wisdom of Shelley’s Ozymandias rings true to this day:

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
What better example of low-effort thinking need there be? Perhaps the Texas GOP has the solution: Do not teach “critical thinking” in public schools.

Infantile Analysis: Some Thoughts on Simplistic Right-Wing Thinking

Published November 27, 2012 on Society Closed
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An article in the Nov. 20 New York Times detailed the genesis of Grover Norquist’s  creation, Americans for Tax Reform. Grover claims to have invented the idea when he was 12 years old, and that explains a lot about him and his ideas. Norquist’s post-election comment about Romney’s “poopy-head” behavior offers further insight into a quintessential conservative mind or, rather, its equivalent of “mind,” And even more to a text-book case of arrested development. What we have is a 56-year-old body containing a 12 year old mind.

No matter the complexity of any problem, the right-wing responses from Ronald Regan to Grover Norquist to the Tea Party glide over the surface without ever touching down on planet Reality. In fact this wishful state of mind resonates with fairy tales and visions of life in La-La-Land where poverty and sickness do not happen to “good” people but only to the lazy and dissolute. Reality for these delusionistas is Welfare Queens tooling about in Caddies and the chronically unemployed looking for gifts and hand-outs from the hard-working members of society, which category, by the way, does not included themselves. And it is amazingly easy to convince some middle-class people who are themselves living not far from the edge that those who have fallen off have done so through their own fault—because this is what they want and need to believe.

It isn’t easy for some middle-class and Tea-Party people to acknowledge that fate can deal a cruel hand to hard-working people like them. The precariousness of their own situation and the capricious nature of fate frightens them; they live in denial.  The antics and peccadilloes of the wealthy are taken in stride while behavior of the lower-classes is taken as the cause of their dire circumstances and illustrative of their poor character. Politicians, show-business celebrities, billionaires, and even generals engage in rent-seeking and licentious behavior with near impunity, but woe unto the welfare mother who needs food stamps. There is no, “There but by the grace of circumstance go I.” The personal perceptual moat is guarded by the three horsemen of denial, delusion, and dreaded fear of their mountain of debt.

Fear, like the guardians of the circles of Hell, censors rational thought and distorts perception. It is the power of this fear that is constantly exploited by those who manipulate the economy, as for instance in the buying and selling of the questionable mortgages that led to the great economic crash we have just endured. Greed drives the economy at the highest levels and does not limit itself to economics but politics and notoriety as well. Just think for a moment about the antics of Donald Trump and you’ll get the idea. Greed is, in fact, the engine of a great deal of what goes on in the society at large.

Greed takes many forms, from material goods to power, and operates in every realm of human activity. Consider the following example of political greed: “We need an ambassador who has the trust of the president and the Secretary of State,” John McCain said on the Senate floor in defense of John Bolton. (Remember him?) Then McCain went on to say, “… elections have consequences, and one consequence of President Bush’s re-election is that he has the right to appoint officials of his choice.”  “The president”, McCain said, “has a right to put into place the team that he believes will serve him best.”

Contrast this with McCain’s position vis-à-vis President Obama’s probable choice for Secretary of State to replace Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice. Since McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, a gift that keeps on giving, as his running mate in the 2008 elections and his behavior from that time forward, I wonder about McCain’s ethical foundations. In this instance of greed for power, nowhere is to be found a clearer example of blatant use of double standards and a fundamental belief that the American public is composed entirely of idiots with 15-minute attention spans. McCain and Norquist share a dismissive view of the public, of the society at large and a lust to control the social narrative at everyone else’s expense.

The American Taliban – a denouement.

Published October 9, 2012 on Society 1 Comment
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There is much more to say about what the American Taliban has done so far and will continue to do to undermine and destroy the American social contract. However, I think now it is time for me to let events speak for themselves, as I believe the plot, if not the ultimate course of events, has been made clear. The recent expose of Mitt Romney’s feelings about his fellow Americans who weren’t born with his silver spoon in their mouths pretty much tells the story. That his remarks were well received by a private audience of high-rollers who paid $50,000 a piece to hear his remarks tells another story. What remains to be seen is whether or not average American voters understand the depth and import of Romney’s put down of them. Together these stories spell out a difficult and interesting future for the United States.

I have received emails from Romney supporters depicting the president in racist terms, spouting a litany of untrue accusations that seem to be the stuff of their disaffection. I was sent a link to the web site of an apparently deranged “artist” who has made a depiction of Obama standing on the Constitution while all previous Republican presidents stand behind him aghast. Throughout the disparaging accompanying narration denouncing Obama for destroying the Constitution not one, not one single example was offered to illustrate the accusation. In all of my years, and that would be 74 of them, have I ever seen anything like this. I can even recall the anti-Catholic campaign against John Kennedy and thought, at the time, it was disgusting, but nothing before or since has prepared me for this campaign.

I have come to the conclusion that this presidential campaign is about two things, race and class. If Obama were a white man nothing resembling this sordid rhetoric would be happening. While I am not a great Obama fan myself I despise the gutter politics being carried out by the American Taliban-headed Republicans with the tacit support of Romney.  Further, for a political rent-seeker to characterize nearly half of the American population as lazy charity seekers goes beyond civility, as does the suggestion that seriously ill people go to emergency rooms for care. It is, frankly, stupid. Anyone who has lived a normal life in this country knows that hospital emergency rooms are overflowing with indigents, and this jerk wants to make it public policy? But then what would you expect from someone who had his face made up to look darker skinned for a pandering interview in which he would appear more appealing to Hispanics?

In a rather blatant bit of hypocrisy, Romney has recently suggested that teachers’ unions should not be allowed to contribute to the Democratic Party. He has no problem however with billionaires contributing to a billionaire Republican at $50,000 a plate private “dinners” where he “takes the gloves off” and bad-mouths everyone but his wealthy contributors. Romney’s next best idea is that people without health insurance can go to hospital emergency rooms for treatment when they are ill is on a par with his suggestion that jet airliners should have operable windows in flight. This is how one gets a case of “romnoids,” a condition similar to cognitive dissonance caused by the stress of listening to someone talking out of both sides of their mouth.

The original Taliban is a loosely organized association of religious and political fanatics who destroy anything in their path to political and social domination. They make no distinctions between participants and non-participants, civilians and military, religious and secular, adults or children. They destroy whatever chances to be in their path. The American Taliban, funded by the wealthiest people in the US, is no different except for their lack of guns, explosives, and suicide bombers—they are out to destroy the American social contract and everything that goes with it, including Big Bird.  What do the American Taliban think they are leaving in the wake of this campaign of filth and lies?

Make no mistake about it, there are many Americas, and not all of their inhabitants see democracy in the same light.

The American Taliban – Part 5

Published September 13, 2012 on Society Closed
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The Political Utility of Poverty – Part 1

Put simply, if poverty wasn’t useful it wouldn’t exist. And what then  is its perceived value? Social control.

Consider: One American family who inherited a vast national retail chain, hold wealth equal to the entire bottom 30% of American society. Their stores, which do not pay local income taxes, sell to generally low income Americans  low cost goods mostly made overseas by Third World people earning poverty wages. This family donates millions of dollars to groups seeking, among other things, to privatize public education.

The other side of the coin: As of March 2012, 24 million Americans could not find a full-time job and have been characterized by American Taliban politicians as lazy, unmotivated, and unwilling to work and whose benefits and entitlements should be cut or eliminated. It is estimated that 46 million Americans live below the poverty line and 1 in 6 Americans struggle with hunger including 17 million children. These numbers apparently represent the American “exceptionalism” politicians are crowing about because they are not duplicated elsewhere in the Western world.  How does this work for you?

Strapped and fearful, middle-class people aren’t about to make waves; they have jobs, albeit low paying jobs and getting lower, to protect, mortgages to pay, medical insurance to pay for, credit card debt to service, and very little in the way of savings to fall back on should things go amiss. Middle-class people are trapped into a politically conservative mind-set because it is believed to be, at the very least, protective of their fragile status quo. In Wisconsin in the gubernatorial recall election earlier this year union members and their families voted for the candidate who vowed to shut down unions. Say what? Were these people fearful of losing what they have, were they delusional? Whatever else that might have motivated them they seemed to believe that voting as they did better protected their interests. The key word in this being “believe”.

Poor people on the other hand are dangerous politically because they believe they have nothing much to lose and so will be inclined to vote for candidates inclined to improve their lot hence the strategy to take away their power to vote, to disenfranchise them. Passing voter ID laws is a weapon of social control that deliberately targets  that segment of society who are more inclined to vote for socially liberal rather than American Taliban candidates. The Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania legislature, Mike Turzi, unashamedly boasted of accomplishing exactly that when a law requiring voter ID was passed in that state.

All social organization is predicated on beliefs; it is mutual beliefs that bind its members to it. All functioning societies, primitive or sophisticated, are and have been established on beliefs. Beliefs are thus the foundation stones of human association and the attendant social contracts. No shared beliefs no social contract is a hard and fast rule. To be civilized a society requires personal commitment to behavior which promotes the common good even if not all are direct beneficiaries as in the exercise of charity. Perceived fairness may be the most binding dynamic of a social contract. As John Rawls defined it in “A Theory of Justice” ,”… inequalities within a society must work to benefit the least advantaged.” In order for people to believe in and thus commit to the social contract they must believe it to be fair and it must benefit a broad social spectrum including the least advantaged.

If the bonds of belief are broken and social agreements violated a collective good no longer exists, the social contract is dissolved and so follows the society itself. The subordination and commitment of individuals to that society and its social order devolves into alienation followed by anarchy. When the number of people with nothing to lose reaches critical mass social control shifts from the personal commitments of individuals to the social order to social control via coercion and condign measures by a self-designated elite – that consequence, as has been demonstrated throughout history, is inevitable.

The smaller the portion of a society a state represents the greater the force required to maintain control. Based on the current militarization of police forces around the country and the incessant universal monitoring and covert spying on everyone (Yes, everyone- including you dear reader.) by federal agents someone somewhere has thought about these consequences. Social control replaces and trumps the social contract whenever the status quo is threatened. Correspondingly the greater the mass of those disenfranchised from the social order becomes the greater their potential force and threat. Exponentially higher levels of control as in the form of a police state must follow resulting in higher levels of resentment and resistance. One only has to watch news videos of police in action, as at the Occupy Oakland demonstrations this year, to see this is already happening. Local police departments have been given millions of tax dollars to “upgrade” their gear with military equipment to deal with anticipated future protests. The two forces, threat and control, will inevitably circle each other until one destroys the other or the destruction is mutual. Chaos ensues. Those who would conspire to demean, devalue, and destroy the civil society are playing with a Promethean Fire of grave consequence.

Poverty can no longer be acceptable if we are to have a viable society and that is not just financial poverty but spiritual poverty and opportunity poverty as well. Young people cannot graduate from college thousands of dollars in debt with no expectation but being hounded by debt collectors for the rest of their lives or menial jobs just short of servitude. Historically no amount of state sponsored suppression of an under-class majority has succeeded – those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to repeat them and poverty may prove not to be so useful as once believed.

Worlds of Belief

Published April 26, 2012 on Society Closed
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In an odd paradox we live in a world which is simultaneously propelled and constrained by belief. More often than not, believing also means not seeing what is actually there. While it is said that “seeing is believing” that  isn’t always the case. Unfortunately, what is believed is taken to be true. True believers and other zealots of every stripe “see” the world in terms coinciding with their beliefs, refusing as unnecessary and irrelevant, any facts contradictory to what they believe; cognitive dissonance be damned. This conundrum is true across human experience whether about food, sexuality, education, race, religion, or politics; it’s a very long list, sometimes benign and sometimes dangerously destructive. Consequently this equation factors to what you believe is what you get and, perforce, what the rest of us get as well. This aspect of the human condition makes social progress, among other things, excruciatingly difficult and has been doing damage to social justice for millennia.

Belief systems are powerful and their effect on the social contract is both a phenomenon and a constant. Consider the common clichés in the pledge of allegiance mouthed by nearly everyone as they grow up in the United States, “ … one nation …, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” Just what does that mean in light of the social behaviors we witness today and, for that matter, throughout the history of the United States? Is the declaration of justice for all merely a slogan and not a shared belief? Where does belief in justice for all fit into comparing women to pigs and cows or caterpillars? What does an seemingly senile congressman believe when he publicly declares the president “stupid”?

If President Obama were a white Caucasian, would Congressman Grassley of Iowa believe he could make such a remark publicly? In the case of the recent fatal shooting of a young black man, Trayvon Martin, in Florida by a self-ordained vigilante who was up to his ears in beliefs about wardrobe, black people, and his own role in society. would we have had the same scenario if the roles been reversed or would a lynch mob have been quickly formed?

As an example of political belief betrayed, voters in New Mexico, particularly business people, believed the Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez would be pro-New Mexico business. Yet as governor, she vetoed Senate Bill 9, the “Corporate Fair Tax Act”, a truly pro-New Mexico business law. Looking at the roster of donors to Republican political campaigns you will find out-of-state corporations such as Wal-Mart that will now continue to enjoy paying low wages and no taxes on their New Mexico income at the expense of New Mexico businesses. Obviously the belief that their campaign contributions would protect their profits was well founded.

Do you believe, as apparently the majority of US Supreme Court justices claim they do, that corporations are “people”? Are corporations called to jury duty? Of what gender are they? Can a corporation marry a woman or a man? Can corporations be drafted into military service? Do you believe the justices truly believe corporations are people? Of course they don’t, but they did believe they could get away with the outrageous ruling.

US Senate Republicans recently blocked what was called the “Buffett Rule” which would have disallowed loopholes permitting lower tax rates for the wealthy than those imposed on middle and lower class taxpayers. Why would they betray the majority of American taxpayers in such a blatant manner? Because they believe they can get away with it, that’s why. In Michigan, using a questionable and now legally challenged tactic to circumvent hearings on bills before passage, the Republican legislature repealed a law which provided health care for domestic partners. There is obviously an underlying autocratic belief system that emboldens these guys.

My favorite belief canard of late was when the Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, sounding a bit like a peeved Marie Antoinette, whined about “class warfare”. It was rather revolting to witness one of the leaders of, arguably, the most corrupt legislative body in the history of civilization complain to the press that the #occupywallstreet demonstrators were engaging in class warfare. Well, of course they are and why not? Class warfare has been going since time immemorial, Mr. Speaker, except it has been working in yours and your sponsors’ favor, which is why you wish the unwashed masses would’t notice and call attention to it. And you did believe you could get away with such a declaration, didn’t you?

When people’s beliefs and experience don’t add up they have nothing left to lose. As with any social revolution in history the populace becomes problematic for the status quo and consequently for the extant social contract. The #occupy activists apparently continue to believe in something resembling the propaganda of equal opportunity and justice for all and refuse to accept being drafted into a society of drones serving the 1%. Young people are refusing the status quo because they perceive they have nothing to lose but are defending their dignity as human beings by objecting, demonstrating, and forcing change. In their perception everything, including the future, is being gobbled up by greedy sponsors and politicians of the 1%. The propaganda of equal opportunity and equal social justice isn’t working because opportunity is perceived to be already owned, patented, and monopolized; reality and the promise don’t add up.

No social contract has ever been viable except when the beliefs and the experience of the society and individuals have been in accord. That’s a belief to live by.

This essay first appeared at: The Light of New Mexico

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