Jer's Intellectual Adventures

September 10, 2013

Once upon a time there was a universe…

Stories matter. The stories we tell over our lives affect our health and happiness (Tomasulo & Pawelski, 2012). Stories can be about specific individuals, but likely the more powerful ones are those which apply to big groups or time periods (meta-narratives or “big stories”) which invite us to play a small part in world-size drama.

Major religions get this–successful churches make people feel like they are a part of God’s plan of redemption. Great movements of philosophy have this–Descartes started the modernist project by saying that we can base everything on unquestionable truths and eventually create a perfect society. Successful politicians get this–Marx wrote a story that inevitably ended in revolution and the rule of the working class.

Postmodernism itself is often defined by (Middleton and Walsh for example) as “incredulity towards meta-narratives.” Postmoderns think that all ‘big stories’ are bullshit, so its stupid to be Democrat or Republican, Buddhist or Christian, or a part of any tradition at all.

Descartes wanted to establsih the modern project on the axiom, "I think, therefore, I am."

Descartes tried to establish the modern project on the axiom, “I think, therefore, I am.”

But there is some evidence that being story-less is not healthy. Humans have reason to want the meta-narrative. Positive psychologists define meaning as being a part of something bigger than yourself and have found that meaning defined in this way is a key pillar of deep and lasting happiness (Seligman, 2011). We crave a deep sense that life has order and direction. This passion often motivates the historian in each of us. We want to know who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

A skeptical moment from Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

We know that endings matter. Psychologists have found a phenomenon they call “peak-end theory” which maintains that the last few moments of an experience or human life (Rozin & Stellar, 2009) tend to define the entire experience (e.g. Kahneman & Wakker, 1997). In other words, you never get a second chance to make a last impression. One of the reasons why our meta-narratives are so important is because meta-narratives tell us the end of the story. Then we create meaning “pro-retrospectively” (looking forward to look back).

But all this stuff about story, endings, and meta-narrative was not on my mind this summer. For my masters thesis, I was just trying to figure out what judgements of the universe helped people live happier lives (full text here and non-academic summary here). I called these judgements “universal assessments” (UAs) and found 13 of them that seemed particularly good for increasing people’s strengths and positive emotions. Only after I finished the analysis did I realize that one of those 13, the following UA, is really all about the story people tell over existence:

The world is getting better vs. the world is getting worse.

Where are we headed? Where are we going? Will the world be renewed, or does it decay and die? Unlike the other 13 UAs , this one has handy-dandy terms that are already in use. A meliorist believes that the world is getting better (think bambi-eyed believer). The pejorist believes the world is getting worse (think grumpy old man). Together, these two positions represent the two major possible story-lines: is the universe a tragedy or comedy (as in Dante’s Divine Comedy rather than Comedy Central)?

Wether it be heaven, utopia, or just a kinder humanity, the meliorist believes that the world is getting better and the world will "...live happily ever after."

Wether it be heaven, utopia, or just a kinder humanity, the meliorist believes some variation of “…and they all lived happily ever after.”

Of course, many meta-narratives are too complex for these simple categories. For example, many Christians believe that the world is presently declining, but God will come back and the universe will end well (e.g. Romans 8:20-21). Other people might believe in human progress and look at how in the last decade 350 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty (International Fund of Agricultural Development, 2011), but still believe that humans will eventually destroy themselves in nuclear holocaust. However, for the time being, this UA is meant to encompass both ideas. First, it is concerned with present trajectory. Even if down the road the world is renewed, what is the trajectory now? Second, it is asking if the story ends with “happily ever after” or “and then they all died.”

A pejorist vision, perhaps?

Out of the 24 strengths in the CSV, I found 18 that could potentially be encouraged by meliorist stories and eight by pejorist stories. Also, out of 10 positive emotions identified by researchers, 9 might be encouraged by meliorism, and 3 by pejorism. Here’s an example of one connection between meliorism and strength:

Hope is an important psychological strength. It keeps people motivated and moving, even in dark times. Empirical studies indicate that those with lots of hope tend to say certain things that sound similar to meliorism. They include “I expect the best,” “I always look on the bright side,” “despite challenges, I always remain hopeful about the future,” and most strikingly, “I believe that good will always triumph over evil.” Believing that the world is getting better might be tied to being a hopeful person. Likewise, believing that the world is getting worse may make hopefulness elusive.

And here is an example of one connection to pejorism:

People who have strengths in humor can sometimes develop it as a coping skill. Thinking that “the world is going to shit” might push some people to be light-hearted about tragedy and pursue novelty and fun in the moment. This could be the thinking behind the popular paraphrase of Isaiah 22:13b: ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.’

Future research is needed to know for sure, but I expect that, overall, a beleif that the universe is improving helps us live better lives. In addition to developing strengths and increasing positive emotions, those with positive meta-narratives may enjoy other benefits too, like more close friendships, less depression, greater coping skills, and even higher incomes. But, first things first, I need to develop an assessment tool that captures what stories people have for existence and see if it correlates with life outcomes. Where do you fall on this UA? I’d love to know. Is the world getting better or worse?

I recently got to visit my brother’s family in Hong Kong and meet Daniel, my nephew, for the first time. What brings this UA home for me is the very simple question: will Daniel inherit a world which is worse or better than my own? My own personal intuitive answer: probably slightly worse. I’m not sure though. I have to think about it more.

What is so fun about this is that I know I have a damn good hypothesis. Hopefully, in a few years, I’ll be able to let you know for sure about wether I am right or wrong about meliorism having good effects on human life. Either way, it will definitely be interesting! It will be fascinating if I am wrong! : )

This post concerns one of 13 universal assessments that were identified in my masters thesis as being possibly critical for the ‘good life.’ An abstract and full download of the capstone project at the University of Pennsylvania is available here on scholarly commons. A non-academic summary (with pictures and bad puns) can be seen here. Also, this is the second UA I have elaborated on. The first was “the world is bad vs. the world is good” that I talk about in the post “Is my WIFE good, and does it matter?”

6 Comments | tags: Descartes, Happiness, meliorism, meta-narrative, modernism, narrative, pejorism, Positive psychology, postmodernism, story, the world is getting better, the world is getting worse, universal assessments | posted in positive psychology, Universal Assessments

August 24, 2013

Jer’s Thesis in Three Pages Using Non-Academic Language because Academic Language is for Silly Nits

By Jer Clifton

Psychologists have found a whole bunch of behaviors that are good for you, like staying positive and being persistent. Understandably, many people then pursue those behaviors passionately. “Be positive!” we say. “Keep at it!” we shout. But, like a many New Year’s resolutions, these efforts, these sheer acts of will, fail to produce long term results. Underlying and unaddressed reasons why you didn’t act that way before re-assert themselves. So how do we change the underlying stuff? Big time psychologists Ellis (Ellis & Ellis, 2011) and Beck (Beck & Weishaar, 1989) argued that emotions and behaviors are driven by a puppet-master behind the scenes: beliefs. Therefore, a key to happiness might be having certain beliefs that effortlessly fuel these positive behaviors across a lifetime. A type of these beliefs are universal assessments, and I focus on them.

Joe smiles at the 2nd 2012 VP debate in Danville, Kentucky. I think they are that pearly white in peson too!

Joe smiles at the 2nd 2012 VP debate in Danville, Kentucky. They are that pearly white in peson too!

Universal assessments (or UAs) are judgements about the universe as a whole. They may not be explicitly recognized, but, so my theory goes, they express themselves through words and behaviors. For example, Joe Biden, speaking at my graduation this summer at Penn, encouraged us to participate in the world and said repeatedly that the world is “open and full of possibilities.” This is a UA that Joe believes should inspire certain behaviors. As another example, here is the chorus and 2nd verse of It’s a Dangerous World by folk musician Bill Morrisey (1991).

There’s nothing you can say

That could get me up today

Nothing you have ever said

That can drive me from this bed

You can call me lazy, crazy

Call me stupid I don’t care

I ain’t getting up

It’s dangerous out there.

There’s a hunter from New Jersey

In my kitchen drinking beer

There’s a Texan out my window

With a chain saw and a leer

I can take a walk around the block

To shake me from my slumber

But there’s student drivers out today

And one has got my number

This is a perfect example of how a specific UA (the world is dangerous) is causing specific behaviors (staying in bed).

UAs are one component of worldview. Worldview is a set of assumptions, beliefs, and values that one uses to interpret life and make sense of the world. In my thesis, I briefly trace the development of the concept of worldview (or Weltanschauung in German), from its beginnings with Kant to its domination of intellectual life in the 20th century. Big-time philosophers agree (like Humboldt, Hegel, Fichte, Emerson, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Husserl, Hiedeggar, etc.): worldview matters. Chesterton thought that “the most practical and important thing about a man is his view of the universe” (Introduction to Heretics). William James thought that worldview is the most “interesting and important thing about you” (Introduction to Lowell Lectures).

Thomas Kuhn coined the now widely used term “paradigm shift” to describe the process in which a scientific community abandons and adopts worldviews. Scientists, Kuhn argues, rely on a common paradigm that allows for progress by providing a sophisticated set of common assumptions–the don’t start from scratch. Among others, Kuhn credits Piaget, Gestalt psycholgists, and B. L. Whorf’s “speculations about the effect of language on worldview” (Kuhn, 1962/1996, p. viii) for playing an important role in the development of his ideas.

By the 20th century, the power of worldview thinking had spread to other disciplines. I note three powerful examples: Max Weber applied worldview-thinking to socioeconomics in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1921/1958), Thomas Kuhn to scientific development in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1996), and Adolf Hitler to power politics in Mein Kampf (1925/1999).

Most know that Hitler's goal was Aryan dominance. Few realize that he was just as insistence on establishing a dominate worldview, and achieving power through creating "psychically homogenized creatures" (p. 393) with one "infallible philosophy of life" (p. 455) which alone can achieve victory.

Most know that Hitler published his goal of Aryan dominance in 1925. Few realize that he was also just as insistent on establishing a dominate worldview. His strategy for achieving power was creating “psychically homogenized creatures” (p. 393) with one “infallible philosophy of life” (p. 455) which alone could achieve victory.

Worldviews, and the beliefs that form them, are schemas. Schemas are an important notion in psychology which developed in this world dominated by Weltanschauung thinking. Schemas are defined as mental representations of objects and processes that generate expectancy. For instance, if I am narrating a story about a conversation in a Manhattan apartment, and then mention that a bengal tiger jumps out of a bamboo thicket and kills the speaker, you will grow annoyed with the story. Your schema of Manhattan apartments likely does not include tigers or bamboo thickets. It’s just not realistic.

Schemas define what is and is not ‘realistic’ — in art, movies, and in the real world too.

We have schemas about everything from human faces to Manhattan apartments to water bottles. We expect them to function in certain ways. Numerous studies have shown that (beware of a useful oversimplification here) we tend to ignore things that go against our schemas. For example, if one has a schema that poor people are incompetent, we will tend to ignore data that supports competence and highlight data that shows incompetence.

UAs, as schemas, are powerful because they generate expectancy. This affects how we interpret and learn new data AND also affects how we interpret and remember our past. Psychologists believe that memory bears little resemblance to data-retrieval. Instead, ‘remembering’ is an active process in which we use bits of information to piece together what we think should be true, a process which is shepherded by schemas. UAs, therefore, are prime candidates to play a big role in human life by creating expectations about everything we taste, touch, see, feel, and hear in this universe.

In Psychology of Worldviews (1919), Jaspers begins the process of operationalizing the construct of Weltanschauung in what he will later consider to be the most important work in his life. He defines worldviews as frames of reference in which mental life takes place (later called schemas) and categorizes Weltanschauung as 1) attitudes or 2) world pictures. Attitudes are approaches through which humans experience the world and World pictures, on the other hand, are mental representations of the world that we create in our heads.

In Psychology of Worldviews (1919), Jaspers begins a process of making Weltanschauung philosophy more practical in what he will later consider to be the most important work in his life. He defines worldviews as frames of reference in which mental life takes place (later called schemas) and categorizes Weltanschauung as 1) attitudes or 2) world pictures. Attitudes are approaches humans adopt towards the world and world pictures are mental representations of the world that we create in our heads.

I identify at least four types of UAs, with potentially dozens of each type. I base this typology on Jaspers distinction in Psychology of Worldview (1919).

Universal Characteristic Assessment (world picture)- What qualities does the universe have in and of itself? For example, is the world characterized by dynamic change or rigidness?
Universal Policy Assessment (attitude) – What attitudes or policies do I adopt in dealing with the world? For example, is the world best experienced alone or with others? Universal Policy assessments are of two types: our policies towards the universe and what we percieve to be the universe’s policies towards us (e.g., the world is out to get me).
Universal Meta-Assessment – These are the BIG paradigmatic assessments which take into account everything we think or feel about the universe and sums it all up–an “assessment of assessments.” Universal Meta-Assessments were what I was talking about in my last post: Is my wife good, and does it matter? There are at least four UMAs: 1) Is the world good? 2) Is the world worth existing? 3) Do I like the world? 4) Do I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the universe?

However, only three UAs have been identified and studied by researchers.

Is the world just or unjust? This UA is called BJW (belief in a just world) and is about whether one believes that the universe is a place where people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
Is the world safe or unsafe?
Is the world meaningful or meaningless?

Ronnie Janoff-Bulman wrote Shattered Assumptions in 1992. Her theories continue to guide much depression and trauma research.

There are three big takeaways from this list. First, three is very few (after all, there are at least four categories to fill!). Secondly, research indicates that all three play a very important role in human life (not an overstatement). For example, good data has tied BJW to better mental health, more positive emotions, optimism, less suspicion towards others, less depression, less loneliness, more kindness, more kindness when under stress, more productivity in the workplace, and more loyalty to one’s work place. At the same time, BJW causes people to blame victims for being victimized! BJW has been tied to prejudice towards the unemployed, those with AIDS, the elderly, and the poor. Thirdly, all three of these UAs are negative in orientation. Universal safety and universal meaningfulness, for example, were identified by Janoff-Bullman (1992), a trauma specialist, and have been studied exclusively in the context of trauma and depression. Rape, for example, can destroy a belief that the world is a fundamentally safe place. Many therapists feel that they must restore this belief before the person can “move on.”

I applaud all this work on trauma and depression. However, in addition to the question, “What UAs are essential for staying sane?” we might ask, “What UAs are essential for building the ‘good life?'” As far as we know, I am the first to do so, which puts me firmly in the vein of positive psychology. Positive psychology assumes that strengths and positive emotions are not merely the absence of the negative. For example, joy is not the result of a simple lack of sadness and hope is not the mere absence of fear. Rather, both the positive and the negative can be present in abundance, or both can be absent. Moreover, each strength and weakness, each negative emotion and positive emotion, has a unique physiological signature that does not simply mirror its “opposite.” In other words, strengths and positive emotions deserve study in their own right because they have their own qualities.

So, I conducted a conceptual analysis–an exercise in hypothesis generation–designed to identify major UAs which might contribute to the ‘good life.’ It involved a methodical process which identified relevant UAs and cross-referenced them with each strength and positive emotion that has been identified by positive psychologists. In the end, I examined (and re-examined) 884 possible connections between UAs and the ‘good life’ and 13 major UAs emerged which may help humans live particularly happy and fulfilled lives:

Is the world good or bad? Thinking that the world is good and having a gut-level positive response was the single most relevant UA I identified. It pays to have a little crush on existence.
Is the universe interesting or boring? It’s hard to imagine developing strengths like “love of learning” and “curiosity” without a strong belief in universal interestingness.
Is the universe beautiful or ugly? My wife’s top strength is “appreciation of beauty and excellence.” Why would she or anyone stop to savor (which research says is good for you) the roses if one does not expect roses, or much else, to be worth savoring.
Can the universe change or can’t it? My good friend Eric is remarkably politically informed AND remarkably politically apathetic. I think he imbibes the notion that nothing really changes in this world. This UA may separate “believers” and those who are at their heart grumpy old men.
Is the universe is getting better or getting worse? We know stories matter. What is the story you tell over the universe? Where are we going? How will this all end? I think religion can play a big role in all of these, but especially this one.
Is the world safe or dangerous? A sense of danger causes you to scan the horizon for threats while a sense of safety is a prerequisite to feeling good and being open to new things and new ways of thinking.
Is the universe to be explored or avoided? Of course, we cannot avoid the world completely, but we can try to stay away from it as much as we can. Alternatively, we could pursue immersion, novelty, and new experiences.
Is the universe comprehensible or incomprehensible? Why should I try to understand the world if I have no chance of doing so?
Am I at the center of the universe or not? If I do not get a job I apply for, does that mean that there is something wrong with me? Maybe, but someone who thinks that they are the center of the universe will tend to think it is definitely their fault somehow. Being at the center of the universe means that you are always in the right place at the right time for credit and blame.
Is the universe intentional or mindless? Is there a mind behind the scenes orchestrating events, or is it random? This mind might be Jesus, superstition, fate, Karma, etc. An example of this UA might be, “the world is out to get me.
Is the universe best experienced alone or with others? If the world is a war zone, we need buddies in our bunker. If the world is a paradise, we need playmates.
Is the universe as it should be, or should it change? When we approach something new, do we assume that there is a reason for it being the way it is and it likely needs to be accepted, or is there little reason for it being the way it is and should we prepare ourselves to change it? This might be at the core of conservative and liberal tendencies. This is the only UA continuum that did not have an obviously “better” choice.
Is the universe just or unjust? Strengths like prudence and self-regulation would be difficult to come by if one did not beleive that his or her actions affected outcomes.

Calvin seems to think the world has intentionality, that there is a mind to compete against, and that mind is after him.

Calvin seems to think the world has intentionality (UA #10), that there is a mind to compete against, and that mind wants to win.

Some UAs relevant to the miserable life are on this list, some are not, and several of them (like the world is beautiful) seem very unlikely to have emerged without a focus on the ‘good life.’ Also, like BJW, most of these UAs had positive and negative connotations. For example, thinking the world is good might be tied to 32 strengths and positive emotions but thinking that the world is bad still might be tied to 16. Still, in almost all cases, there was a clear candidate for a UA that was much better for you than the other. In other words, if Jack thinks that the world is good, interesting, beautiful, changeable, safe, comprehensible, just, intentional, to be explored, not centered on him, best experienced with others, and getting better, he is much more likely to have a good life than Jill, who thinks the world is bad, boring, ugly, dangerous, incomprehensible, unjust, can’t be changed, is centered around her, is best experienced alone, and is getting worse. That’s my hypothesis anyway. Each of these UAs require empirical research as all this is based on little more than my own thinking. Psychometrically valid assessment tools have to be created, results have to be correlated with life outcomes, etc.

James Pawelski, my thesis advisor, is very excited by the new and important realms of research my work has identified. He has strongly encouraged me to pursue running a UA-research lab. Ultimately this would address a series of nine empirical questions:

What universal assessments do people actually hold, who holds them, and what do the distributions look like?
How are they held (implicitly or explicitly, compulsorily or freely, strongly or weakly, etc.)?
Can certain UAs be tied to specific life outcomes, such as depression, divorce, subjective well-being, longevity, health, strengths, or even travel habits?
What is the causal relationship between UAs and life outcomes?
Which UAs are most likely to make people happy and fulfilled in life?
Where do UAs come from, and at what age are they typically formed?
Can UAs change?
Can interventions be developed which change UAs into those most likely to bring happiness?
Can these interventions be administered at scale (quickly and inefficiently to lots of people)?

In other words, I am interested in changing the world by examining and then potentially changing our beliefs about it. If interested, all 157 pages of the thesis are posted here on Scholarly Commons. About 30 pages are references, 60 are appendices, and 60 is the paper itself.

In the near term, I am creating a real world UA-bank, and I need your help. There is great need to create a well-thought out and respected list of UAs that can catalyze independent UA-research. In order to do that, in addition to researchers and resources, we need popular help finding and identifying UAs that people actually believe in the real world. Please be on the lookout for UAs that you come across, like the Calvin & Hobbes comic above, and send them to me. I just got this one from a friend: “One of my mother’s favorite sayings was, ‘I can’t see why not!'” This UA, specifically a universal policy assessment, is about saying ‘yes’ to the universe. Creating and analyzing a vast real world UA-bank is the only way to identify every UA that plays an important role in human life. I invite you to be a part of this project. Thank you!

Many people contributed to the success of my Masters thesis. I want to thank Bob Easton, Andrew Soren, David Yaden, Dan Lerner, Karen Warner, Bit Smith, Paul Giacomini, Marty Seligman, Kevin Lum, Brandon Allen, Clinton Montgomery, Kiran Thadhani, Hannah Lythe, Chris Major, Christa Fritner, Dan Tomasulo, Johannes Eichstaed, Amy Walker, and Judy Saltzberg-Levick, for your support and contributions to this capstone. Also, two people need special appreciation for the enormous help they provided. First, James Pawelski worked tirelessly on my behalf and continues to be my great advocate and supporter. He read my work carefully and offered thoughtful insight. On the basis of an epic three and a half hour phone conversation, I scraped a very solid draft and created an excellent one. He was the one who initially directed me towards schemas and towards Weltanschauung philosophy. He helped me find my voice as a promising and serious academic instead of what he hilariously identified as “a brilliant yet over-reaching undergraduate philosophy student” (the man understands me! : ) ). Thank you so much, James!

This handsome devil is James Pawelski. He is my professor, mentor, and friend. He works as a Senior Scholar at the Positive Psychology Center, Director of the Masters of Applied Positive Psych program, and Executive Director of the International Positive Psychology Association. He is also a philosopher who wrote his dissertation on William James. We have a lot in common and it was a pleasure working with him!

James Pawelski is my professor, mentor, and friend. He works as a Senior Scholar at the Positive Psychology Center, Director of the Masters of Applied Positive Psych program, and Executive Director of the International Positive Psychology Association. He is also a philosopher who wrote his dissertation on William James. We have a lot in common, and it was a pleasure working with him! He is possibly the most emotionally intelligent philosopher I know.

Finally, I want to thank my wife, Alicia, for her support and shaping of the project itself. For six weeks this summer, Alicia lived with a zombie as I neglected all my relationships, my health, and other projects to focus 100% on this thesis. I did not leave my nearly windowless basement apartment. I ate when I was hungry, went to sleep when I was tired, and skipped a few days in the process (my body seems to like 30-hour cycles). I often went for 10 hours straight without eating or using the bathroom. But Alicia encouraged me to eat and got me to sleep. She helped me brainstorm and prioritize. She was my sounding board. She’s vastly intelligent and wise. She helped us sprint towards July 24th, when we flew to Taiwan on a long-awaited trip. It was her first time to see where I grew up, the first time for me to be back “home” in a decade, and the first time to meet our new nephew. We had not seen my brother and his family in two and half years, my father in a year, and it was my 10-year high school reunion. Not only was it meaningful to show Alicia my roots, not only was she ever-interested in my nostalgic musings for two weeks (pics of the trip will be up on facebook soon), she spent most of her 15-hour flight from Chicago to Hong Kong doing a final read through and edit of my paper. It would not have been a success without her. Her fingerprints are all over the best parts.

Alicia, my beautiful wife, hiking up Lantau mountain in Hong Kong.

18 Comments | tags: Adolf Hitler, beliefs, continental philosophy, James Pawelski, Karl Jaspers, masters thesis, Max Weber, Philosophy, positive emotions, Positive psychology, Schema, strengths, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the assumptive world, the good life, Thomas Kuhn, universal assessments, Weltanschauung, William James, World view, Worldview | posted in Personal, Universal Assessments

June 11, 2013

Is my WIFE Good, and Does it Matter?

By Jer Clifton

My wife pisses me off. She has made me feel stupid hundreds of times. She has this strange ability to make me cry those uber-pathetic hiccup sobs that just make me look like an idiot.

And she brings me joy. I adore her. She makes me smile and laugh more than anyone else. She loves me, expresses her affection effusively, and helps me engage in activities that make me feel alive. In fact, she brings me more joy than arguably all my other relationships combined.

Alicia, Spring of 2013, Washington DC

Why am I talking about this?

In my last post, “Is the World Good, and Does it Matter?” I mentioned my opinion that the world is, in fact, good, and believing so can potentially lead to a better life. Since then, a number of blog readers, such as Eddie the Erudite, have written me with questions like, “what about sin?” and “what about suffering in the world?” and, my favorite, “what about immense suckiness?” Good questions!

Eddie, “The world is good” is one example of a type of judgement I call a “universal assessment” (UA), which are overall judgements we make about the universe. Example? My friend Dan Black is writing a dissertation on 19th century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Two days ago he told me about an assertion made by a music critic in 1987 while comparing Liszt to Wagner. “For Liszt,” the critic said, “the ‘reality’ is the divine vision; for Wagner the ‘reality’ is a cruel world.” (P. Merrick) This difference in their assessment of the world played out in the emotional valence of their musical compositions.

Before Franz Liszt died in 1886, he was a pianist, composer, and famous teacher —of Wagner and others—and a Franciscan.

My idea is simple: our universal assessments like “the world is cruel” matter in a variety ways—even musical expression. In order to answer Eddie’s question, however, I must dive a little deeper into what UAs are exactly.

Until his final years, Wagner’s life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors.

Universal assessments are not simply any belief one has about the universe. A few nights ago, I got out my logic textbook from college (logic class is sexy), and remembered that one can mean at least three different things when making a statement like the “the world is good.”

Option 1: I might be saying that the entire universe is characterized by goodness (and thus nothing is bad). This is the potential meaning Eddie the Erudite found concerning. The assertion can be represented by the category statement, “All X is Y.” In fact, since we are talking about the universe, the class of “X” consists of everything that exists—you, me, the box fan that is keeping me cool as I type this, and everything else. Thus we can simplify the category statement to “All is Y” or “All is good.”

Option 2: The second meaning of “the world is good” might be that there is some unknown measure of goodness in the world. This can be represented by the category statement, “Some is Y.” This means nearly nothing. In logic, “some” can mean hardly anything or almost everything.

Option 3: If one asserts “the universe is good” they might mean something like, “Most is Y.” This is closer.

When I say, “the world is good” I want to assert that the world’s moral valence, its gist, its core, its essence, its balance, its je ne sais quoi, is good. In doing so, we have to weigh all the world’s shittiness…

1.6 billion people lack a safe and healthy place to sleep at night (Habitat for Humanity Intl).
870 million people in the world do not get enough food to eat.
The 2009 USA Reinvestment Act spent 831 billion dollars by printing money and taking out loans.
The West Wing has been off the air for 7 years!

…against all the world’s awesomeness.

5.5 billion people slept last night in a safe and healthy place (see Jer’s crazy math skills).
6.2 billion people get plenty of food to eat (see Jer’s crazy math skills).
For every dollar spent in the 2009 Reinvestment Act, there are nearly 100,000 trees. Seriously, according to NASA there are about 400 billion adult trees in the world. At about 200,000 leaves per tree, that is 80 thousand quadrillion leaves (real word—I looked it up—it goes billion, trillion, then quadrillion). I love leaves. They are beautiful. Each one would be mounted in places of honor if they weren’t so damn abundant.
I have all seven seasons of The West Wing on my computer!

These stats barely scratch the surface of what is relevant to a universal assessment, but it’s clear enough that there is vast goodness and badness in the universe. Thus asserting the existence of some goodness or some badness (option 2) in the universe is boring because it’s obviously true, and asserting that existence is 100% good or 100% bad (option 1) is boring because it’s obviously false. The interesting question instead is which side wins (option 3). What side is bigger, more weighty, or more numerous?

our earth from the moon

Sidestepping the metaphors of size, kilograms, or quantity, at the heart of a universal assessment is some sort of balance point. There is a threshold which must be achieved before a given aspect of an object becomes characteristic of that object. In forming UAs, therefore, we treat existence as a single thing and assess its defining qualities.

So, in response to Eddie the Erudite: yes, sin, suffering and ugliness are huge. But just because they are huge, does not mean they are defining. Of course it is difficult to assess a data set that is so… large.

But we do it. We do it all the time. And it matters.

I met my wife 10 years ago the very first day of college. We were close for a year and a half, dated for three and a half years, and have now been married for almost five years! This decade has created a vast army of pros — the gross tonnage of awesomeness that I see in Alicia — and a monster force of opposing cons — all the shit-tastic things she does that piss me off. In other words, my wife is a large data set. Some is good, some is bad, but what is more defining? Is my wife good? Is she worthwhile? Do I like her?

The Honeymoon Shot: Jer and Alicia, 2008, Tobermory, Canada

Yes. I do. Thank God! The good radically outweighs the bad. In fact, the good outweighs the bad to such an enormous extent, that I am not afraid that the bad might outweigh the good any time soon. My wife is good. Whew!

And it matters. I have no data to support this, except a violently strong feeling in my gut that reaches from my jaw to my tailbone: my “wife assessment” has an enormous effect on my relationship to her. If I imagine, even for a second, a world in which I thought my wife was an ass, I quickly see relationship dynamics slipping into aggression, resignation, and divorce.

And just kidding! Psychologists actually do have data, lots of it, to support the notion that overall beliefs about one’s significant other affects one’s relationship. In one study, thinking your partner was “perfect” correlated with relationship health and longevity (Franiuk, R., Cohen, D., & Pomerantz, E. M., 2002). In another study (Showers, C. J., & Limke, A, 2006), researchers found that beliefs about a partner are related to breaking-up. And lots of work indicates that one’s overall disposition towards something affects one’s interactions with it — we make “school assessments,” “church assessments,” “friend assessments,” “job assessments,” etc., and they matter.

But I am especially excited about the comparison of “spouse assessments” for understanding UAs because: 1) Spouses are crazy personal. 2) They create an unfathomably large data set. 3) One has no idea how to “count” good and bad aspects. 4) Yet we make overall assessments of spouses all the time because we know its absolutely necessary for the health of our relationship. My own “spouse assessment,” my gut feeling about whether Alicia is in fact good or not, affects my life, and ultimately whether or not I choose to stay married. Likewise, perhaps my universal assessment affects my life, whether or not I choose to stay alive in it, and even add life to it.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. — Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus

While our own existence is thrust upon us without our consent, we can choose whether or not to pass this existence on to our possible offspring. Presumably, this choice will reflect our judgment as to the worthwhileness of existence. — James Pawelski (my friend, professor, & thesis advisor)

Beyond suicide and procreation, perhaps my UAs also affect how I get busy living. Will I suffer through life like a depressed spouse in an abusive relationship (world), or is there another option? Can I be head over heels in love with the universe and thankful for this gift of life? (I got chills when I wrote this.) Is it possible to be passionately, meaningfully, and levelheadedly in love with life like I am, or try to be, with my wife? I am not sure.

We’ll see…

10 Comments | tags: assessments, Franz Liszt, Habitat for Humanity, philosophical psychology, Philosophy, Psychology, Richard Wagner, universal assessments, wife | posted in Alicia, philosophy, Universal Assessments

May 29, 2013

Is the World Good, and Does it Matter?

By Jer Clifton

I think I have figured out what I want to do with my life. This post is one part autobiography, one part philosophy, and one part personal strategic plan.

I have three manuscripts my agent and I are trying to publish. One is a collection of auto-biographical short stories called Stuttering Gets the Girls: Stories from a Life on Three Continents. The other is about just war theory and pacifism. The last is called Therefore Joy: A Positive Theology for the Next Generation. The latter is the only one I really care about. It has a genuine shot at changing the world.

Therefore Joy rides a philosophical train of thought that winds through freewill, causal determinism, divine predestination, omniscience, and omnipotence. I find satisfying answers to many timeless questions that led me to believe in college, as I still do, that the world is objectively good. But at first I did not see the world this way. I saw a shit world—ugliness, suffering, and tears.

Why was I blind to the reality of a good world? I hypothesized that perhaps humans do not see the good in the world because we are not paying attention. To correct this, every night I started writing down five wonderful things about the universe.

These minutes somehow changed me. I got happy. I smiled incessantly. I imagined a social movement in which people helped each other explore all the reasons why God chose to make this beautiful universe. My hero became the tourist in their homeland, the one who flirts with the line separating enchantment and idiocy. I felt privileged to be alive.

by Banksy

What the hell? Philosophy is not supposed to make you happy, right? But it did! That seemed too easy. So the last day of college, six years ago, I walked into the office of Dr. Paul Young, the head of Houghton’s psych department, and said, “I want to study happiness.” He told me about Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, and the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the APA, speaker, and author of Authentic Happiness, Flourish, and other bestselling books. I had dinner with him recently and we chatted about my thesis topic. He is excited and promised to read the final draft.

Positive psychology is the study of what it means to thrive. It asserts that emotions like joy are not automatic in the absence of pain or fear; joy has its own substance and characteristics and deserves focused study. Positive psych examines all positive emotions, defines strengths and identifies their symptoms, and explores what it takes for a humans to maximally and holistically flourish. So, while Socrates pondered the nature of the good life 2,400 years ago, science, in the form of positive psychology, has only been doing so for the last 15 years. I went to “happiness college” (as children of my classmates call the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program) to learn what has been discovered so far.

Jer, Christa Fritner, and Allison Webster graduating from “happiness college.” (Allison’s kids coined the term.)

I found, for instance, that our lives, to a great degree, are determined by what we choose to focus on. Secondly, there is indeed a very, very well-established negativity bias that make people focus on what is wrong in the world. Finally, writing down three new things that you are thankful for each night before you go to bed is a formal exercise called “Counting your Blessings.” It has been subjected to randomized controlled trials and found to significantly boost well-being for months after the individual stops doing it (Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E., 2003 doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377). In fact, it turns out that my numerous and bold psychological assertions in Therefore Joy are testable and supported by a host of related theories and empirical studies. There is even a perfect Jer-size gap in the research right where I was headed anyway.

Goofing off at graduation with classmates Bit Smith and Andrew Soren.

This summer I am spending two months writing a masters thesis. My title is “Is the World Good, and Does it Matter?” The idea is that humans make quick and sweeping judgements that have a demonstrated effect on how we interact with the thing we are judging. For instance, we often judge a whole country after a single 2-day visit, a person after seeing their skin color, or an entire book after reading one page. I wish to explore what might be called the biggest of all possible judgements: our “take” on the whole universe. I call them “universal assessments” (UAs).

I am interested in what UAs people make, how they are formed, and how they affect life. Is the world a shit-hole to be endured or a wondrous place to be explored? Can I tie universal assessments to depression, subjective well-being, divorce, spirituality, suicide, social ability, income, education levels, culture…even travel habits—it seems likely that believing that the world is a dangerous place may keep one indoors. Finally, if UAs affect life outcomes, I want to create interventions to change them.

In short, I want to see if I can change the world by changing how we think about the world.

This is a ton of research, perhaps a career’s worth. So, in addition to my masters thesis, the second thing I want to do is get a PhD in psychology. I have come to this conclusion only recently, and it may surprise some of you. I have seven major personal reasons.

First, universal assessments are exactly what I want to study. At the risk of sounding overdramatic, this is apparently the big idea of my life and has been for a while.
Second, studying UAs is strategic. In Therefore Joy I argue that all monotheists must assert that existence is objectively good. But even if I could get folks to sit and listen, I would convince few. Studies have shown that people tend to believe convenient truths — truths that we want to be true. If I can show that positive UAs (such as “the world is good”) are not only true, but helpful, I can change the world. Additionally, I came to believe this convenient truth before I realized it was convenient so I am not likely to be accused of bias.
Third, professional philosophy is super duper boring (sorry Ben Lipscomb, Carl Fisher, and Chris Stewart). I have thought for years that a philosophy PhD was where I was headed, but I cannot stomach the notion of making fine distinctions for seven years. Practically, I found myself avoiding getting a PhD. I am a philosopher that struggles with academic philosophy. Incidentally, Martin Seligman got his undergrad in philosophy, as did Jon Haidt, and my capstone advisor James Pawelski, the director of my program, was formerly a philosophy professor who wrote his dissertation on William James. In many ways, philosophy and psychology has become increasingly interconnected. And if my topic is UAs, then I am looking at the nature of belief, its varieties, and its sources. It’s perfect!

James Pawelski, myself, and Assistant Instructors Dan Lerner and Dan Tomasulo

James Pawelski, Jer Clifton, and Instructors Dan Lerner and Dan Tomasulo. These are some of my favorite people!

Fourth, even though my stuttering has improved over the years, it is still especially awful in some contexts, such as learning languages. Psychology PhD programs don’t have language requirements.
Fifth, I remain very interested in practically helping people. I have loved working the past six years as a community organizer and at Habitat for Humanity. I want the flexibility to do more pro-poor work, and a PhD in psychology is recognized as exponentially more useful than one in history or philosophy. I love ideas, don’t get me wrong, but I love people more. A PhD in psychology is relevant to my vocation and my passion for helping people.
Sixth, the fit is right. I came alive during my masters program in a way that I have not since college. I believe studying and changing UAs will allow me to use my top strengths (creativity, bravery, love, curiosity, love of learning).
Seventh, I need a PhD to satisfy publishers, and it will help me build my platform.

Recently, Zondervan became very interested in publishing Therefore Joy. We were on the verge of signing (it felt awesome, like I was being considered by the L.A. Lakers), but they ultimately declined. They said emphatically that they loved my writing, and I should get back to them the moment I have a bigger platform and/or a PhD. My agent, author friends, and other publishers have been telling me the same thing.

I have been trying to build my platform around being Mr. Huggies Taiwan, 1987.

My efforts to build a platform around being Mr. Huggies Taiwan, 1987 has achieved limited success.

For years I have resisted platform-building. I thought it entailed, I don’t know, rescuing someone on a subway? I’m not sure. Whatever it was, it sounded like tons of self-aggrandizing or boring tweets about politics (seriously though, follow @jerclifton). And, because I found the good news of Therefore Joy via a winding road through philosophical theology, I thought philosophical theology was the only avenue available.

Talk about a bottle neck! Therefore Joy is entertaining, but it is still philosophy, and my arguments are complex and build on each other. For years I have been waiting for the book to come out, so people can read and understand all of my arguments at once. So I muzzled myself. I waited. I have not blogged about Therefore Joy. I have not tried. But now I realize that I can build a platform on the good news that Therefore Joy is all about in the first place.

So what exactly is that good news? Eight years ago, I made a shirt for my girlfriend. Today she is my wife (of almost five years), I have re-appropriated the shirt, and the quote I crafted for her has become my own mantra.

I want the world to look up, see that the world is beautiful, and, pending future research, enjoy the benefits of this belief. You can help me do that in four ways:

First, let me know your thoughts. Is this crazy? What advice do you have for platform-building or in general about UAs? Many of you have given me great advice already. Thank you!

Second, follow this blog, follow me on twitter, like my Facebook posts, refer friends, and tell me about people with similar interests.

Third, please send me any examples you find of universal assessments, both negative and positive, as you interact with others and with the humanities (art, religion, music, literature, etc.). Here are three great examples of universal assessments:

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” — Genesis 1:31a (NIV)

“Life is a shit sandwich and you just took your first bite.” — half-joking father-in-law

— Bill Watterson

Finally, reflect on your own beliefs and tell me about it. Do you think the universe is a shit-hole to be endured or a wondrous place to be explored? Which universal assessment do you want to have? I will be posting polls and ideas for interventions in the future. In the meantime, I encourage you to look up. Turn your gaze to the trees, the sun, the blue sky, or the face of a loved one, and consider what is right with the universe. Doing so changed my life.

Thanks for reading this very long and personal post! I promise I won’t make a habit of it. Looking forward, I plan to re-start weekly posts every Tuesday or Wednesday. Initially many will relate to the topic, “Is the World Good, and Does it Matter?” especially in this period of thesis writing. Thanks again!

9 Comments | tags: calling, Martin Seligman, Philosophy, Positive psychology, Social science, the world is good, Therefore Joy, thesis, universal assessments, University of Pennsylvania | posted in Ideas From Therefore Joy, Personal, Universal Assessments

April 16, 2013

Bombs Nationalize Patriots’ Day

By Jer Clifton

The Boston Marathon, begun in 1897 with 18 contestants, is the world’s oldest annual marathon and likely the most prestigious. These days about 500,000 people come to watch between 20,000 and 35,000 contestants each year. The race starts at noon on the third Monday of April, which is Patriots’ Day.

Patriots’ Day is an obscure Massachusetts holiday. No one else knows about it or cares much (Maine celebrates it too as they used to be part of Massachusetts, and a few people in Wisconsin and Florida take a day off I think), and it is mainly an excuse to get hammered (source). Officially, it celebrates the the battles of Lexington and Concord, which happened 238 years ago. In these battles 49 Americans and 73 British were killed. It was the first (minor skirmish really) of the American Revolutionary War. It is, essentially, a local holiday and unknown.

So why the hell was the Boston Marathon targeted? It’s a marathon! This is people at their best. People are running, disciplining themselves, losing weight, building relationships, etc. Moreover, runners start between 10am and 10:40am, and the bombs went off at 3pm. Everyone who is a super good runner would be done by then. If you started at 10:30am and ran 9 minute miles, you would finish around 2:25PM. The top runners are starting to finish at 12:15. These people are the fast ones who are kicking ass and taking names—the professionals some might say. So these bombs targeted the slower ones, the 10,000 or so who did not cross, I read in one report, were dads and moms and their families who showed up to cheer them on. They never got to finish. This runner was knocked down yards away from the finish line, and he is 78 years old. Kudos. I wish I am in that great of shape when I am 78. My apologies for running 26.19 miles and not being able to finish.

The bombs, it seems, were made to hurt people; they were packed with nails and shrapnel to do maximal damage to soft tissue. CNN says 176 people were injured, and so far 3 are dead, about a dozen or so remain critical. Among those killed was 8-year old Martin Richard, who came to cheer on his Dad at the finish line who had yet to cross. His mother and sister are seriously injured. Pray for them.

So, did I miss something? Is jogging ruining the world? Are families cheering on non-professionals crossing the finish-line a threat to anyone? Is Patriots’ Day a symbol of American greed and exploitation? Is it a recognizable symbol? No.

9/11 was different. Obviously it had more death and destruction, but at least the target made some tenous degree of sense. I do not want to overstate here (and of course am not endorsing it by any means), but it seems that anyone who knows anything about how multi-national corporations function around the world can understand some anger towards the capitalist system and the symbols of that system, such as the twin towers. Also, people who worked in these towers might be presumably (from the terrorists’ perspective) part of the system. Finally, targeting the World Trade Center did not imply targeting children explicitly.

The Boston Marathon attack, however, is an attack on baseball, hotdogs, and apple pie. It is an attack on American-ness, or even worse, an attack on Americans living out healthy lifestyles. Supportive families, including children, were targeted. This, much more than 9/11, gives some degree of credence to the bizarre phrase, “they hate us for our freedom.”

So I do not know what to make of this. I am distraught, angry, and if this is international terrorism, then it seems like an idiotic target.

Obviously, I know nothing. I do know, however, that this is exactly the wrong way to fight America. Historically, Americans will leave you alone if you leave them to baseball, hotdogs, and apple pie. We are isolationists at heart. Even if we currently have a far flung system of military bases, we do not like it, came to it reluctantly, and we will tire of it if you stop bothering us (or invading Poland).

But this is not the way to make us tire. This unites us and gives us energy. My prediction: about 200 million Americans will be joining Massachusetts in celebrating Patriots’ Day next year on Monday April 21, 2014.

Mark your calendars. I’m ordering kegs of Sam Adams Boston Lager now. Go Paul Revere! Go America! U-S-A!

4 Comments | tags: Battles of Lexington & Concord, Boston, Boston Marathon, BostonMarathon, international terrorism, Massachusetts, Patriot Day, Patriots Day 2014, Sam Adams Boston Lager, Terrorism | posted in Politics, Terrorism, War

March 6, 2013

10 Saddest States all Republican?

By Jer Clifton

As you may have heard, I am getting a degree in well-being, the psychology of optimal human flourishing, and all that jazz. So I found myself perusing Gallups new data on well-being which compares the 50 states. Each receives a score averaging six categories: life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment, and basic access—a reasonably holistic assessment methinks.

As I perused the state rankings, I found myself thinking about red and blue states, and correlating political affiliation with these well-being numbers. So I downloaded the data, color coded the states according to how they voted in the 2012 presidential election (blue democrat/red republican), and then took a look at the swing states according to Politico. Some items are worth sharing.

First, of the 10 happiest states, seven are democratic states and three are Republican. However, if we take out the swing states, it is five and five. Which tells us little it seems.

The states in the middle seem fairly mixed, there are just more Democratic ones (these days).

Rhode Island is striking for being a solidly blue state so low on the list. Its geographical neighbors are much higher, and the other blue states near it on the list (Nevada, Michigan, and Florida) are in truth pretty nominally blue.

It is also worth noting that Hawaii is not just on top, but 1.4 points away from #2. Likewise, West Virginia is not just at the bottom of the pile, it is, somewhat strangely, also a full 1.4 points away from #49. This is huge: all 48 other states are packed into a band from 62.7 to 69.7; only a 7-point range. West Virginia and Hawaii are major outliers.

Finally, by far the biggest takeaway here is the mass of red at the bottom. Of the 10 saddest states in the union, 9 are Republican. In fact, these states might be appropriately described as “uber” Republican. The only democratic state is Ohio, which is very much a swing state. If we take out all the swing states, all 10 slots at the bottom of the well-being pile go Republican. However, 8 of these 10 are also southern states, which means this might be a regional thing over and above a Republican thing.

So what do we make of this? Is there a correlation between one’s political views and subjective well-being?

I am not sure, but I spent some time this afternoon thinking about it. Here is the same Gallup well-being data from a geographic perspective:

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being index score is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment, and basic access.

I noticed that having “very religious” people seemed to correlate negatively with well-being (the more religious people in your state, the less happy our state is). Of course, there are marked exceptions, especially Utah. Also, West Virginia is not the most religious, nor is Hawaii the least; religion is not super relevant.

The percentage of state residents who say religion is important in their lives and say they attend church weekly or nearly weekly

I also looked at a number of other factors. Underemployment did not seem to correlate at all, neither did hiring rates, or firing rates. Economic outlook did seem to correlate a bit, except for the incredibly obvious exception of Wyoming.

Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index is based on state residents’ views of economic conditions in this country today, and whether they think economic conditions in the country are getting better or getting worse.

So, after this afternoon’s intellectual adventure, I do not have an answer for you: I do not know why the 10 saddest states in the Union are all Republican. I set up a question, I explored it, I brought you to the stream to drink, and the stream is dry. What a cruel thing to do!

I wanted to still post this not only to point out an interesting data point I observed (the 10 saddest states are Republican), but also to say that I do not have all the answers and continually look for them. I think that is why many of you read my blog; my mind is not made up and I do my best to treat the data honestly. I am constantly playing with live fire because I really do believe I can change my mind at any point as I go about learning more about the world. Which means you can change my mind too. A malleable worldview makes intellectual adventures more fun.

In other news, I just finished a Yale lecture series on the Ancient Greeks and am now working through another Yale series on the American Civil War. I want to post on my masters thesis topic, a speech I want Obama to give, and also my buddy Whit has one more post on gun control. Looking forward to reporting on these ongoing intellectual adventures! Thanks for reading everyone. You rock!

11 Comments | tags: gallup well-being, Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, Politico, politics, Red states and blue states, Republicans, Rhode Island, swing state, United States, West Virginia | posted in Politics

February 19, 2013

Loving Assholes

By Jer Clifton

I’m a confirmed idiot. After all, one time at a friend’s house I went to the bathroom and accidentally urinated entirely in my friend’s trash can (By the way, I was completely sober).

However, I am also awesome in this specific way: I value assholes.

Assholes, of course, can just be jerks who just enjoy hurting other people or don’t care when they do. These people are obnoxious. Nobody likes them, and for that reason, most of us are scared shitless at the idea of being thought of as one.

But I enjoy people who are willing to risk being mistaken for a jerk. I appreciate those willing to potentially hurt the other person for that person’s sake. They are willing to risk the relationship. They are willing to make you cry if it makes you better. I call them loving assholes.

Alicia took this picture when we were in Sri Lanka last summer. It is very related to this post (it is not related to this pose).

Alicia took this picture when we were in Sri Lanka last summer. We think it looks cool. It is also very related to this post (it is not related to this post).

Loving assholes are quite possibly the most important type of close friend to have in your life. They are valuable precisely because they care more about you than about being in your life. They call you out when you are being mean to your wife. They let you know your fly is down. They insist that you apologize to your kids when you have done something wrong. They stop you from buying that last round of shots. If your inner-circle consists of yes-men or yes-women, you risk becoming abusive; nobody is above it. We can all fall into habits of being, for example, short-tempered, verbally abusive, or generally unkind towards the people we love. If nobody in your life is a loving asshole, than nobody will call you out.

I am a loving asshole. Consider this example: it was two months before my friends wedding and I was his best man. I became increasingly concerned about my friend’s marriage. After a few cautions, I reached the point that I could not in all honesty support their marriage and I stepped down as best-man. I risked my entire relationship with my friend in an attempt to help him.

Artists easily shoot themselves in the foot by not seeking out honest feedback. In college, a buddy of mine wrote and directed a six hour play and had his friends perform it. I saw it, the first 1.5 hours was pretty good, but on the whole it was awful. It tied up his friends lives for a big chunk of their senior year, and nobody had the heart to tell him what they thought.

To the extent that I am a good writer today is the same extent to which I have managed to cultivate honest feedback. I reccomend this loving-asshole-cultivation technique in particular: marry one of them. I can count on Alicia to give me an honest and frank appraisal on, for instance, this post. I see it now, “It was good. You probably said ‘asshole’ too often. You probably could have come off as slightly less self-congratulatory. I thought it was hilarious when you peed in Jim’s trash can.”

Of course, if artists do not cultivate an inner-circle of loving assholes, all they risk is being a bad artist. If you or I do not have any loving-assholes as friends, you risk being a bad person.

Of course, I am not alone in being a loving asshole. There are millions of us, and we are asshole-ish to different degrees and in different varieties. However, I doubt that truly loving assholes are much more than 5% of the population (total guess).

One loving asshole that comes to mind was Jesus. Throughout the gospels, Jesus constantly ‘sticks it’ to the pharisees and others. One example is Matthew 15: 1-7a.

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

“These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.” (NIV)

The Pharisees prided themselves on being extra-devoted to the Law. This would have really pissed them off. In fact, we know it did. Two verses later the disciples warned Jesus, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” Jesus replies, “Leave them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.”

Of course, Jesus can get away with that sort of innapropriate behavior because he is all-knowing and what not. You and I should emulate Jesus in the other, Philippians Christ hymn sort of way; by being really really humble. But being really humble means being willing to forsake your clean image as a good person and occasionally that might mean making someone sad.

Fortunately, the world is hungry for honest feedback. Instead of feeling sad, we often feel invigorated and closer than ever when we confront someone out of love. I was inspired to write this post because I have recently started some life-coaching sessions with an individual who simply wants to learn how to get better at making conversation. She is eager for some frank appraisal and discussion. It’s inspiring to see.

And it makes me want to ask my reader’s, who do you need to be a loving-asshole for today?

4 quick tips on being a loving asshole:

Only be a loving asshole, generally, with people you know well. You can’t speak into someone’s life if you do not know what you are talking bout.
Take responsibility for your very good friends. Know when it is likely that nobody will speak certain truths into someone’s life unless you do.
When you confront as a loving asshole, you do so for the other person’s sake. Any defensiveness on your part when they push back (and they likely will), and you are just an asshole.
Loving assholes are only loving assholes occasionally. Usually, they are just loving. Don’t go overboard.

This post is #2 in my “I’m a Confirmed Idiot” series. You see, sometimes I have thoughts worth sharing, but I don’t share them because they are in various ways self-congratulatory. If subtexts had vocal chords they might scream, “See! Aren’t I great?” Don’t get me wrong. That’s a wonderful message which the world needs to hear. It is just problematic when it is so obviously preached by me. So sometimes I avoid ideas and messages worth sharing, things I believe in, that may help people, in the pursuit of looking like a nice guy. So, in the “I’m a Confirmed Idiot” series, I am requiring myself to, before getting into obviously self-congratulatory prose, start with a formulation in which I confess an entirely true and unrelated personal epic fail. This frees me to make my points with righteous passion, holding nothing back, for, as it says in Leviticus 27:35, “If you are humble for a moment, feast on the joy that comes from being full of yourself the rest of the time.” Look it up; it’s in the Bible.

Incidentally, this is also #2 in my series “Old Jer Ideas” and remarkably similar to my first post.

6 Comments | tags: asshole, friendship, God, Jer, Jesus, love, loving asshole, Matthew | posted in Old Jer Idea, Theology

January 30, 2013

2nd Amendment—What’s it really about?

By Jer Clifton

What gun-rights does the 2nd amendment really protect? When I studied the amendment itself, I was shocked to discover that much of what I thought it meant was bullshit. In fact, its an amendment only a Democrat could love.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This is, undoubtedly, a strangely worded sentence. I am not sure if the second comma means “and” or “which is.” Regardless, for the last few decades (Zakaria), the understanding of this amendment has come to mean that it protects an individuals right to bear arms. However, it seems more likely that this amendment is meant preserve the power of the states and other communities in the face of federal overreach. Washington DC, in other words, can take away the guns in your closets, but not the guns in your community armory; it can potentially take away your handguns, but not your well-regulated militias.

I want to explore some of these terms to better put us in the historic context.

Militia – In 1787, there was no standing federal army. For years, any attempt to create one was considered suspect. When Washington called one up to crush the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion, it was a highly contentious move. Most of the colonists wanted to keep federal military might to a minimum (they would be appalled at the size of the federal armed forces today); if a war was necessary, the militias should be called up, not a federal army. Of course, a federal army was eventually created, but the thought was that state and local militias would always serve as a deterrent to federal power. The single individual, one should note, was never thought of as a militia. Militias were always formed via a geographically bound cooperative—state, municipal, county, etc. After all, what could one man do with one musket? On their own, individuals had no ability to check federal power.

well-regulated – Militias, and individuals, were always seen as potentially destructive groups that could quickly turn into roving bands, plundering lands far from their own homes while unsympathetic commanders looked the other way. Indeed, the founding fathers loved democracy and feared the people at the same time. This was the rationale, for instance, behind the creation of the electoral college. It is also why we have a representative democracy, and not a true direct democracy like Ancient Athens, where we, as a people, would vote directly on policy (i.e., should we invade iraq?). With this fear, colonial Americans of all stripes expected that militias themselves would always be accountable to some sort of local government. In other words, there was no such conception as a “private militia.” The individual or group was not supposed to take the law into their own hands. They had to be connected to local government and subject to it.

being necessary for the security of a free State – The point of having militias, according to the second Amendment, is the security of a free State. Free states, in other words, required well-regulated militias that were more loyal to them than to the federal government. The whole Bill of Rights, after all, was an attempt to limit the power of the federal government; Washington must not be allowed to limit the states ability to arm themselves with responsibly-regulated militias.

the people – Is the right of the people to keep and bear arms an individual right or is it a group right? If “the people” is Joe and Ted, then yes, the 2nd amendment might guarantee Joe’s right to keep and bear arms at his house. But this is unlikely, considering the context of the first few clauses and how “the people” is used throughout the Constitution.

The phrase, “the people,” is used 9 times in the Constitution. It is mainly used to describe one enormous will—some sort of collective being even.

In the preamble, “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” It seems absurd to think that the people here refers to Joe and Ted. Certainly some Joes and Teds were not a fan of the creation of the federal government. Rather, the majority of the people were speaking through their representatives, and their representatives were in turn speaking together, with one voice. That voice is the people, and the wishes of “the people” is not the same as the wishes of every single individual.
Article 1, Section 2: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the Several States.” Obviously, “the People” here cannot refer to individuals, but the will of the majority—house members do not have to be unanimously approved by every individual.
In the first Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” In this instance, “the people” has the right to act as a group which assembles and petitions government. It is also noteworthy that in prohibiting free exercise of religion and condemning speech, or the press “the people” is not mentioned, which might mean that they are supposed to be individual rights.
In the 2nd Ammendment, it is mentioned in the context of groups, i.e. militias, but of course I cannot use this instance of “the people” to prove my point.
The fourth Amendment: “”The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” This appears to be an exception to my interpretation of “the people.” Here, it likely means “all individuals.”
The 9th amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” I am not sure about this one. Could go either way, but there is not much to go on.
The 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This one implies that “the people” are smaller than states. That might mean individuals, but it also might mean counties, townships, etc.
The 17th Amendment: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people.” Like the second instance, “the people” cannot mean to refer to “all individuals.”
Again in the 17th Amendment: “…the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.” Like the second and eighth instance, “the people” here cannot refer to “all individuals.”

So of the 9 instances where “the people” is used in the Constitution, 4 must be referring to collectiveness, 2 are likely referring to collectiveness, 1 is entirely unclear, and 1 is likely referring to individual rights, and 1 is definitely referring to individual rights. I conclude that the Constitution uses “the people” differently. Though usually it refers to groups speaking with one voice, context is king. Because the 2nd Amendments emphasis on militias, I think it highly likely that “the people” here does not refer to all individuals. Therefore, I cannot say that the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms is an individual right to own arms.

Arms – Today, you and I cannot imagine the advancements in technology that will be in place 226 years from now. Even 26 years ago, this was a phone:

This phone was built and in use in 1987.

This model was built and in use in 1987.

Today’s “phone” has a bit more uses:

iPhone with rotary phone app.

Do you remember when phones only made calls? I remember the old rotary phones. Of course, they, like iPhones, were called “phones.” But it would be absurd to think that all thinking about rotary phones 26 years ago applies to the iPhone of today. Imagine where “phones” will be in 226 years?

In other words, technologically-based concepts like “phones” are plastic; they stretch and change enormously across times. So too, is the term “arms.” 226 years ago, when the 2nd Amendment was written, this was an ‘arm’:

Revolutionary war-era musket

These muskets were accurate about 30-40 yards out and trained individuals could fire 3 rounds per minute. Pistols, likewise, had to be loaded the same way. After the civil war we slowly got automatic and semi-automatic weapons. And, of course, with the modern sniper rifle, scopes, etc., an “arm” has enormously more destructive power.

The AR-15 is a weapon protected as an “arm” under the 2nd Amendment. The Colorado shooter legally purchased one before shooting 70 people in the summer of 2012

The AR-15 is a weapon protected as an “arm” under the 2nd Amendment. The shooter legally purchased one before shooting 70 people in a Colorado movie theater in the summer of 2012

The AR-15, for example, shoots 800 rounds per minute and has an effective range of 400-600 meters. 226 years ago, the founding fathers would have been entirely unable to imagine that this was possible, they did not know about handguns (revolvers did not come for another 50 years), tanks, bomber aircraft (or any aircraft), and of course the atomic bomb. They were as clueless then as we are when we try to imagine what arms will be like in 226 years for today, in 2239 A.D.

If not now, at some point, shouldn’t we rethink what an “arm” is and what sensible rules around “arms” might be? Fortunately, the right to amend our constitution is a constitutional right too. In fact, Jefferson though that we should have a new constitutional convention every four years, and re-write the thing completely if necessary. He thought it was tyrannical to subject future generations to laws or systems that might no longer make sense, and that they themselves were not a part of creating. Prescient, but I would not go as far as re-writing the constitution. It has been and will be an extraordinary document for centuries to come. In fact, we do not need to change the 2nd amendment at all. We simply need to recognize what the Amendment protects and what it does not.

Based on my research, this what I have concluded about the 2nd Amendment:

The 2nd Amendment stops the federal government from disbanding well-regulated militias. States and local governments can form, equip, and train, and must strictly control, groups of individuals who are subject to the authority of local government and act on its behalf. The local government can arm that group with all the arms necessary for the security of the state.
However, if that group is not well-regulated, or is not a group at all, and is not subject to local government, the 2nd Amendment does not offer protection. Specifically, the 2nd Amendment does not protect the individual right to handguns, automatic or semi-automatic weapons of any type, conceal and carry, grenades, and especially not a basement arsenal. All “arms” must be used in the context of a well-regulated militia, or, in a word, community.
The is my conclusion on what the 2nd Amendment means, but not on what it should mean. That is another debate entirely, a policy debate, in this blog I have been attempting interpretation only.

Wars, in 1791, were fought by muskets and cannon, and that is all they knew. By allowing militias to use muskets and cannon, the founding fathers wished to ensure small communities would be free. Of course, this is no longer a viable defense when the weapons of war are so expensive (one F-22A fighter costs $150 million). We have to rely on larger and larger communities to be able to create serious security forces. But we forget that even muskets were very expensive for American farmers in the 1790s. Many did not own one. For this reason, the local township often kept an arsenal which they would use to supply its citizens in the case of, for example, native american raids. Armories, therefore, served an important function of providing a militia with weapons of war yet also controlling their use. Those who bear arms had to be supervised, trained, and made subject to the authority of the community.

This seems brilliant to me. Crazy people, like the Aurora shooter, would never have gotten guns if he had to participate in a community in order to gain access to them. So, I suppose you might say I am a supporter of 2nd Amendment rights, but my interpretation might be a little different.

7 Comments | tags: AR-15, arms, Constitution, founding fathers, Gun control, guns, Militia, Right to keep and bear arms, Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, the people, United States, United States Constitution, well-regulated | posted in History, General, Politics

January 24, 2013

My Segment on the Dr. Drew Show

By Jer Clifton

If I had a bucket list, disagreeing with Anderson Cooper on national television would be on it. And I would be crossing it off!

A few weeks ago, a man got pushed onto the tracks of a New York subway station. Someone managed to take the picture below, which wound up on the cover of the Post. You probably saw it.

The next day, in the context of a national bitch session in which America heaped blame on bystanders for their inaction (including the cameraman) and their own culture for producing a population of cowards, I was asked to join a “panel of heroes” on the Dr. Drew show on HLN, a CNN sister channel, to talk about why we acted in the face of danger when others did not. What was our awesome sauce? Why did I reach out and grab the guy’s hand, who was getting shocked by the third rail, when I knew I could die? (Checkout the 15 minutes of fame tab above, which I suppose now is my 15.5 minutes of fame, if you don’t know what I am talking about.)

Sorry it has taken a long time to post the video clip of my interview. I know many of you have been waiting. My segment is only 2 minutes and starts 12.5 minutes in. I was told the discussion with Anderson Cooper went long and they lost my feed for second. But for what it’s worth:

While I was super pleased to be on the show and enjoyed myself, I was frustrated that I did not get a chance to share a couple of important points, especially when I felt like we were all living in a fun little fantasy. While Cooper was right on some things, and the conversation was in many ways more substantive than I have come to expect from cable news, he is completely wrong about wider culture. It is ludicrous to think that emergency situations are some magical prism in which our true character is revealed. Keeping Your Head is a specific skill that is cultivated through practice. Most of us have little.

Instead, we do what we are trained to do. The modern human, generally, is good at whipping out phones and taking pictures. We usually have no clue what to do in pressure situations. A couple reasons might be that our lives include sitting in cubicles and exclude panicked flight from saber-toothed tigers. But, when the modern human does have a clue (read soldiers, fireman, police officer, etc.), we almost always act bravely.

After I grabbed the guy on the subway and it was caught on film, everyone in my life was calling me a hero, and it was obnoxiously irrefutable that I was one. I was uncomfortable with it, it made me reflect, and I came to a startlingly life-affirming conclusion that I have blogged about previously. Here is the elevator speech:

We are a brave and caring species: you, me, pretty much everybody. I am the same philosophizing-goofball I was when I was waiting anxiously for the train. My actions says something about all of us, about average people. We rise to occasions. It would be absurd to think, for example, that the folks on flight 93, which crashed in PA on 9/11, who acted way braver than me, were by some fluke of travel planning in the top 1% of brave people in the country, or even the top 10% or 30%, and that this flight full of super duper heroes happened to be one that was hijacked. Nah. The folks who stormed the cockpit on flight 93 were most likely a swath of regular folks. This tells me that the average Joe can be counted on to be brave and is most likely capable of incredible human kindnesses.”

Famous psychologist and Stanford proffessor Phillip Zimbardo agrees. He writes in “The Banality of Heroism”:

The idea of the banality of heroism debunks the myth of the “heroic elect,”…[which ascribes] very rare personal characteristics to people who do something special—to see them as superhuman, practically beyond comparison to the rest of us.

But if incredible bravery is normal, why are we so blind to it? Why did the country roundly condemn the bystanders who let the man die on the subway tracks? Good question. I’ll blog about that next time, but I’ll say this much: What struck me as I listened to Anderson Cooper and Dr. Drew talk before I went on the air is that negative news and looking down on others seems to serve an important social function that I had been reading about in Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis. Namely, gossiping about what’s wrong with other people helps us bond to the people that we gossip with.

More later…

Oh…and here is a picture of Alicia and I at a little shin-dig that happened 20 blocks away from our house. Thank you Derek Schwabe for getting us tickets!