Greg Proffit Writing

Category: Daily

  • The Ultimatum Game

    How many of these could you win?

    There are two basic motivators for humans. These are fear of loss and hope of gain. This dynamic animates every choice we make. There is overlap. There is some vicissitude from one decision to the next, but most people will generally align themselves into one camp or the other over their lifetimes. ”Fear of gain” and ”hope of loss” do not exist as motivators, but the way people perceive gain and loss, are relative. The concept of value comes into play. And human interaction, with its perceived value, has an impact. The two basic motivators then, nudge people toward what they value. 

    Interesting studies show that in general, persons place a higher value on things they possess or think they are owed, than they value the very same things if they were trying to obtain them. Your used car, or your house is worth more to you as the owner/seller than the same car or house would be if you were trying to buy them.

    A study on the psychology of economics (Neuroeconomics) called the Ultimatum game presents some interesting findings. First developed in 1982, it has been repeated many times, across many different cultures and countries, and with many variations. There is an abundance of information online if you care to indulge yourself further.

    The typical format for the basic version of the Ultimatum game groups participants into pairs; a proposer, and a responder. They are endowed with a sum of money. Both the proposer and the responder know the amount of money being gifted. The proposer is told to make a single, one-time proposal on a split of the money between the participants.  If the proposal is accepted, the pair will each receive the amount of the proposed split. If the proposal is rejected, they each receive nothing.

    What is being studied is whether or not the participants will make rational decisions enabling them to agree on a proposed ratio and pocket their cut of the provided money. If not, what other considerations are at work?

    Example: Al and Barbara are given $10 in ones to split between themselves. Al has to make a proposed split that Barbara will accept, otherwise, neither of them takes home any of the free money. Al can make only one offer. Barbara knows there are ten dollars on the table. What does Al propose? What do you propose if you are Al? What are you willing to accept if you’re Barbara?

    Pure rationality, expressed as the expected utility theory of economics, dictates that the responder should accept any proposed split, even if it is only $1. Any amount is more than zero, comes at no cost, and is more than the participant entered the study with. In actual results, any offer of less than 20% of the total amount is rejected more than 50% of the time. Offers of only $1 are rejected almost all the time. Offers of between 30% and 40% are accepted almost all the time by responders, albeit, the further from 50%, the more reluctant the responder is to accept, and the less happy they feel about their share.

    Why is this? Researchers in economics are puzzled by these findings since they defy rational behavior, and therefore don’t fit neatly into economic theory. Psychologists dig deeper and discover that an emotional component exists in humans that causes perceived unfairness to be rejected. But it goes further than just rejection of an unfair proposal for one’s cut of ten bucks.

    Interesting fMRI findings show that some respondents declining to receive an offer they feel to be unfair, prefer to punish the proposer, causing both themselves and the proposer to receive nothing. The part of the brain that is stimulated to release dopamine as a pleasure response can be triggered by the rejection of the offer, specifically because it punishes the proposer for his unfairness. Let me say that again: The research shows that there is pleasure derived from punishing the unfair actor. 

    Turning down an unfair offer, induces physiochemical and psychological gains to the responder greater than free money in their pocket would provide. They are willing to punish themselves financially, forfeiting the purely financial gain, because it literally feels better to them to walk away with zero, rather than to walk away with a gratuitous dollar and be treated unfairly.

    Researchers surmise that since the responder knows the total amount of the endowment (which in some experiments is significant, totaling $100 or more), they calculate that ”fair” would be a 50/50 split of the pot. They proceed to take mental and emotional ownership of that 50% portion. Any proposal offering less than that amount, even though it is a positive gain in terms of money, feels like a loss in contrast to the 50% portion emotionally banked in the responder’s mind. Though fictitious, having no basis in reality or rationality, this is a loss that many responders are not willing to bear.

    In such cases, the feeling one receives from punishing an unfair partner is greater than the feeling one has from walking away with money on the house. The punisher is placing a much higher value on the amount of money they believe they are ”losing” by accepting an unfair offer, than the value they place on the non-zero amount they could have by accepting whatever offer is made. And…they get some dopamine as a bonus for punishing the unfair partner guaranteeing that they will get zero as the wages of their perceived greed.

    These findings are skewed to a statistically predictable significance when factors such as ”pro-social” or ”individualistic” personality types are factored in for comparison. Surprisingly, researchers find that the more a participant identifies as individualistic, the more they are willing to accept the most unfair of offers. The flip side is that pro-social participants will more often reject offers even at the 30% range to ”teach a lesson” to the unfair proposer. Pro-social persons value cooperation and fair play. They exemplify a ”win/win” attitude. 

    Individualists, on the other hand, do not expect fairness, are not surprised or angered when unfair offers are made, and they are not out to correct the unfair proposer’s future behavior by giving them a ”lesson”. To the individualist, there are winners and losers, and that’s that.

    Remember, there is no negotiating in the basic version of the Ultimatum game. Reciprocity is not a factor. It is a one-time, take-it-or-leave it proposal. The proposer has an incentive to be fair if she wants to walk away with anything, but the selfish greed of human nature dictates that even when an 80–20 split is proposed, it’s still accepted about half the time; and the proposer gets to keep 80% of the endowed amount.

    I find it fascinating and a bit counter-intuitive that individualists are more willing to be treated unfairly and not feel bad about it, at least in purely economic transactions. Especially in light of the fact that researchers have found that there is a correlation between behaviors in the Ultimatum game and other aspects of life that are not purely economic. 

    Sociologists study these kinds of psychological tests and their results to determine people’s ability to recognize, and willingness to tolerate, social injustices and economic inequalities. Apparently, self-declared individualists would rather be taken advantage of than have to suffer the indignities of cooperation and teamwork. At least according to the Ultimatum Game results.

    I don’t know anyone who relishes being treated unfairly, but then I suppose some people will sell themselves cheaply if they don’t have the kind of wealth or principles that are more valuable than what can be bought with a dollar. Especially if they can pocket that dollar and still cling to their illusion of self-reliance. Maybe to such a one, that feels like being a winner. After all, a dollar is a dollar, and self-respect won’t buy a cold beer.

  • Reality Can Be Limited By Perspective

    One of my favorite lines in a Grateful Dead song comes from the tune, Scarlet Begonias.

    “Once in a while you can get shown the light,

    In the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

    This has been true for me. All that it sometimes takes to see a previously hidden truth is my own willingness to look at the subject a different way. 

    This act of taking another look at something is what is colloquially referred to as ”open-mindedness”. I find a lot of people are afraid of this term. I find they are afraid of it because they misunderstand it. Being ”open-minded” doesn’t mean abandoning anchors of belief, or intellectual boundaries, putting you in danger that your brain will fall out. It means accepting the possibility that there may be more than one valid viewpoint to a particular issue.

    Ideally, this would be a universally applied truth. But, before any truth can be applied, it must first be known. Here then, is my attempt to say, 

    ”Hey, here’s something cool. There’s more than one way to see a lot of issues. Have you tried looking at it from another perspective? Have you tried putting yourself in the other guy’s shoes, for instance?”

    A few months ago, I was sitting on the front porch with my seventeen year old. We were discussing a problem he was facing. His ability to solve the problem was limited by two things. One, he had only seventeen years of experience to draw from. Two, this lack of experience forced him in to a very narrow perspective, which blew the problem out of all proportion.

    I was sitting in my normal spot on the front porch. It is wide enough to accommodate my frame. He was sitting in a chair to my left. A cloud moved in the sky, the sun peered from behind it, illuminating a perfectly crafted and quite large spider web just as I glanced up to notice it. The web had been there the whole time we had been talking, but I couldn’t see it against the gray overcast. It took the light hitting it just right for it to come into view. What had been real the whole morning, was now real to me.

    I asked my son, sitting to my left at the end of the porch and at an acute angle to the web, if he could see it. He shook his head. Interesting, I thought. Nature has provided the perfect metaphor. 

    ”Come look at this,” I said.

    He got up, came over a few steps and looked up at the intricate web. 

    ”Wow!” he said. He was amazed by both the intricacy of the web, and that something so large had been completely hidden from view.

    All he had to do was look at it right.

  • What Is Your One Question?

    As a kid, I asked questions non-stop. I have early memories of car rides during which I looked out the windows and posed a non-stop  litany of one question after another to my bedraggled mom as she tried her best to answer.

    Being an early reader eventually helped to quiet some questions. I could read STOP signs and such. But it opened up other questions. I must have been about five when driving along one night, we passed a large, brightly lettered sign that I sounded out, ”T-o-p-l-e-ssss G-g-rrr-ll-ss”. ”Mom,” I asked in alarm, ”why don’t the girls in that place have tops?” My five year old imagination was distraught that the poor girls were cut in half.

    My firstborn was quite precocious, and also very inquisitive. She did something unique among her siblings. She created a catch-all word for any object that she didn’t know about. Her word was ”pumen.” When she used it she would scrunch her shoulders up around her little ears. This was her physical question mark to punctuate her inquiry.

    Pointing at something she didn’t know about, she would ask, ”What’s that pumen?”<<scrunch>> For a while we lived in a world chock-full of pumens…and shoulder-scrunches.

    Funny, right?

    And Beth tells the story of her firstborn asking so many questions that after answering her for hours on end, she would finally have to tell her, ”Questions are closed” just to get her to quiet down a moment and take a breath.

    I find that level of curiosity delightful!

    You may have been the same. Or maybe your children, or grandchildren, are similarly filled with curiosity about the world, and they want to know EVERYTHING, right now!

    But what about you? Now? Are you still curious to learn new stuff? Do you have any burning questions?

    It is said of lawyers that they try to never ask a question in court they don’t already know the answer to. Surprise and court are not a good mix. Most of us don’t have that luxury. 

    What I’m wondering is this:

    If you could know the answer to only ONE question, what would that question be?

    That may be worth taking some time and pondering, because if you can nail down that question, you’ll learn what is REALLY important to you.

    If you decide to figure out what your question is, pay attention as well to what it isn’t. I’m guessing if you’re anything like me, a lot of clutter that consumes your mental and emotional energy just isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

    If you feel like sharing your question, feel free to do so in the comments. Not that any of us will have the answers, but we may all benefit from the questions. 

  • He Hears

    My oldest son, Simeon, is 23 today.

    I caught him, slippery, broad-shouldered and born in the veil, on a cool, cool morning in 1998. I had trimmed my nails close in anticipation of playing the role of midwife again, so when he was born shrink-wrapped in the caul, the amniotic sac completely intact around his little body, I couldn’t get a purchase with my fingertips to tear it.

    Fortunately, Lisa was there with her fingernails and did the trick, opening the package of the amazing gift he has been from that moment up to the moment I sit writing this.

    He is a good kid.

    When he was younger, he learned to ice skate at the old rink where Eastland Mall used to stand. We fell in love with hockey from some other dad’s and kids that skated there, and it wasn’t long before he began to play. 

    He is a fantastic skater, built with a low center of gravity and powerful legs and he developed a wicked wrist shot at a young age. 

    But…hockey rewards aggression. My oldest son is not aggressive. He is the kindest kid of all my seven. He is quite literally the second kindest person I know, behind only Beth-The-Kindhearted herself. He is so kind that in games playing travel hockey on a team with the best players of his birth year, when he would score on an opposing goalie, he would never show off with a big celebration. Often, he would tap the goalie’s pads with his stick and encourage him!

    ”You’ll get the next one,” he would say, not wanting the kid to feel bad.

    And he’s wise for his 23 years; the living, breathing demonstration of what people mean when they talk about an old soul. I think those two qualities are inseparably linked. His wisdom is born out of his kindness. In Hebrew, his name means, ”He Hears”, and he does, he really does. He hears with compassion and empathy. 

    Can you tell I’m proud?

  • Happiness Equations

    Someone once said this about goals,

    ”Aim at nothing and you will be sure to hit it.”

    That’s a paraphrase from my memory. I did not look it up for attribution. 

    The quote makes a good point. If you don’t have a goal in mind, a destination to reach, then any result will do. All outcomes are equally good if you haven’t bothered to select a specific outcome.

    In practice, satisfaction in life is measured by how well we are doing at meeting implicit expectations. There is a mathematical formula that is descriptive of this phenomenon:

    Happiness = Reality – Expectations

    If true (and my experience has proven to me at least that it is), a  thoughtful look reveals that the only part of that equation in your direct control is the Expectations part. The more accepting you are of however Reality unfolds, without imposing any particular expectations on its unfolding, other than the expectation that it will unfold, the happier you will be.

    Can we reconfigure the equation to get any different outcome? Let’s try. By the magic of algebra, solving for Reality, we have:

    Reality = – Expectations – Happiness

    This equation posits that Reality unfolds regardless of either your expectations or feelings about it.

    And then we can also solve for Expectations, and we get:

    Expectations = Reality – Happiness

    This final look shows that Expectations are True (in the sense of accurate) when you accept what Is ( how Reality unfolds) and disregard how it makes you feel.

    So, no matter how we slice it, you can guarantee un-Happiness by expecting to be Happy.

    Happiness then, is a poor goal for one who expects it. The rejection of the expectation of Happiness as irrational is the surest way to experience it in Reality. You’re welcome.

  • Once In A while, You Can Get Shown The Light

    Typical NYC alley. Similar to the one in this story.

    I’ve heard God speak to me on a number of occasions. I’m not claiming to be unique in this. In fact, I don’t think anyone can have a genuine relationship with Him without hearing him speak directly.

    Now, I’ve never heard Him with my ears, unless it was when He used someone else’s voice. Most times, I didn’t need ears. Ears aren’t the part of us that hear anyway, anymore than eyes are the parts that see.

    One such occasion was in New York City in 1995. I was engaged in full-time street ministry in Charlotte. I went to spend a week learning from the best at Times Square Church, the ministry founded by the late David Wilkerson, author of The Cross and The Switchblade. They had a program encouraging visiting clergy to come and learn by participation.

    In 1995, TSC was running several food trucks to serve hotdogs, street food, and the gospel to homeless locations throughout the five burrows. It also ran a permanent, physical location off of 5th avenue in what was then known as ”Crack Alley”. This ministry was well known on the NYC ”street-sheet” for homeless and impoverished people. It was housed in a three story building situated in a row house in what was a very, seedy, high crime area at that time. 

    I was used to being alone in bad neighborhoods in Charlotte, but I was not used to being in an architectural canyon that felt very much like a one-lane trap. I was told to arrive by 10 am, two hours before the mid-day lunch would be served. Getting there meant my first trip on a train from across the East River in New Jersey, then my first subway trip, and then a stroll down a garbage-strewn block that seemed a mile long. I looked over my shoulder so many times while trying to get to the correct number, it’s a wonder I didn’t have a crick in my neck.

    Finally, I reached the address I’d been given. It was unceremoniously identified by a hand-lettered cardboard sign on the outer wall by the heavy steel door, ”Upper Room Ministries”. I rang the buzzer, waited for a long minute, and heard a voice in a Brooklyn-tinged accent over the scratchy intercom, ”Yeah, who are yous?” I gave my name, told them I was a visiting minister from North Carolina, and that I was there to minister for the noon service.

    The door gave a heavy clank, unlocked from within and popped open an inch. I pulled it open and stepped inside onto a three square foot landing of chipped black and white tile that looked like a dirty, miniature checkerboard. Directly to my front was a steep stairway covered by gray, industrial, non-slip treads leading straight up from the street. As soon as I cleared the door, it swung shut and locked behind me. Serious security, I thought to myself. 

    I had been involved in several outreaches with other ministries in Charlotte that served soup and sandwiches, hotdogs and potato chips to the homeless. But an aroma wafted down to greet me as I traversed the narrow stairway lined with ancient dark-stained bead-board walls. I wasn’t smelling vegetable soup or chili. It smelled like I was climbing up to the dining room of a five-star restaurant!

    I got to the top of the stairs to a small vestibule where the door had been propped open. I stepped in to a room with a long hallway to the right, a large room to the left, and a wall of windows on the opposite side from where I stood.  Glancing down the hall to the right,  I could see restroom signs beside some doors. The huge room to the left seemed to take up the whole floor. A couple of people were unfolding metal chairs from stacks along the left-hand wall, dragging them across the linoleum and forming them into rows. They gave me cursory nods without speaking and kept at their task. ”Yankees,” I thought to myself. There was no dais, only a simple wooden lectern at the far end of the main room. On the far wall, behind the lectern, was a large screen for an overhead projector. I could see one set up on a small table in the midst of the chairs. 

    The windowed wall across from the entry allowed for some daylight, but only provided a view of the dingy building across the narrow street. Folding tables lined the wall beneath the windows. On the tables were baskets and containers of plasticware, napkins, and straws. To the far right end was a small city scape of stacked plastic and styrofoam cups. I walked in that direction and saw there was a large opening at that end of the room. It was from here that the aroma was coming. That was the kitchen.

    I walked into the kitchen where two grandmotherly ladies were bent over their tasks tending to the mouth-watering food that was in the two ovens. I saw no soup pots on the stoves. On the prep tables were baking pans filled with chicken breasts and pineapple rings. There were a couple dozen buttered french loaves sitting on sheets of tinfoil on another table, ready to be wrapped for their turn in the ovens. 

    Peering over the shoulder of the nearest lady, I said, ”Hawaiian Chicken?” in a tone of evident delight and surprise. I thought maybe it was being prepared for the ministry team and that was why I had been told to arrive two hours early. I was salivating from my walk up the steps and now seeing the delicious food, I was hoping they were preparing for the team to eat.

    She finished fussing over the pans of caramelizing chicken in her oven, stood up to wipe her hands on her apron, and stated matter-of-factly, ”Only the best for souls.”

    That was lesson number one. It was a lesson I saw demonstrated many times over in my week there as a visiting minister. Times Square Church, housed in the fabulous old Heller Theatre, former venue of ”Jesus Christ Superstar” at 51st and Broadway, was all about souls. Period. It existed as a way to bring church to the unchurched, to bring salvation to the lost, to bring Jesus to the world.

    On this particular day, I had another important lesson to learn. 

    As more of the ministry team filed in, after first providing their bonafides into the street level intercom before being buzzed up, I began to wonder when I’d be told how long I would be given to speak to the crowd of homeless and hungry that would soon be arriving. Usually these messages are kept pretty short so the food doesn’t get too cold, but I’d never been at one that served anything but soup or peanut-butter and jelly, so I didn’t know what the format might be. 

    I figured I would be told when I’d speak when the time was right, so I pitched in to help with the chairs, and had helped arrange chinet plates on the long tables. The ladies even trusted me enough to cover the chicken with foil and place it into warmers further in back of the kitchen. But I had come to ”minister the Word” and I was getting a bit anxious to know when I’d get to preach. I mean, no one had really even asked my name to that point.

    Finally, I got up enough nerve to ask the powerfully built, jean-jacket clad black man who seemed to be in charge if they served the meal before or after the message so I would be ready. He looked at me quizzically, the way I’ve looked at my wayward children, with a look of bemused curiosity. His large brows raised and seemed to pull up the corners of his mouth into a huge grin. ”Oh, pastor Proffit, we thought we’d let you serve today by offering juice or coffee to the people as they come in.”

    ”Juice or C-coffee?”, I stammered.

    ”Well, actually, we serve that to them ourselves, what I meant was you’ll offer them juice or coffee and then give them a plastic cup if they want juice or styrofoam if they want coffee.”

    He peered at me to make sure I understood, and when I hesitated a moment, he said, ”You can put your bible over on the table next to you. It will be fine. Just stand there next to the stack of cups, ok? When the people enter they will be coming right past you to get to their seats.”

    I nodded, tucked my tail, and went to my station. Plastic or styrofoam, I never.

    A little before noon, the buzzer from the street started sounding. They sent someone down to stand sentry and to keep the assembling crowd from pushing the button over and over until it was time to come up. By this time there were a couple of musicians tuning guitars at the front, and ”Mr. T” in a jean-jacket was praying, pacing back and forth behind the lectern. 

    Finally, he called us all to attention and led us in a prayer that God would use us all for His Glory, that he would speak to the people present for the service, and that people would see and experience a living demonstration of Jesus. We all said ”Amen” and took our places.

    I was surprised by the throng of people that burst through the vestibule doors when they were finally allowed upstairs. I kept up pretty well asking each visitor their drink preference as the filed by my station on their way to take a seat. 

    It was an orderly, organized process with several people acting as ushers gently, but firmly guiding the comers into the first rows, filling from front to back as they went. Other teams carried pitchers of juice and coffee, serving and pouring as the people found their seats. 

    I heard languages of every sort around me and the English I heard was often heavily accented by a foreign flavor, not just the Yankee-fied English of New Yorkers. It was delightful to see such a turnout.

    As the chairs were filling, I noticed a black couple come in near the end of the line. A tall and unhealthily thin man wearing dirty jeans and worn out Nikes and a woman almost as vivid as he was gray. His eyes were downcast, the lids drooping. When they got closer I could see that his hair was patchy and I noticed his skin was scaling around his temples. 

    ”Aids”, I thought to myself, having seen its ravages before. 

    He was leaning heavily on his female companion. I could imagine the toll the climb up the stairs must have taken, but he obviously needed the meal. The woman had a bright floral scarf with coral accents tied around her head. I could see rivulets of geri-curled black waves flowing from underneath it. Her dangling gold earrings would have put Dionne Warwick to shame. They nearly touched the shoulders of her lime green summer dress. The combination of colors and jewelry reminded me of the characters you might see on the label of a bottle of rum. 

    When they got near enough, I asked, ”Juice or coffee?” as I had for all the others previously.

    The woman answered for both, her boyfriend or husband or lover too out of it to acknowledge my question.

    ”Cawfee”, came the answer in the deepest voice I had heard that afternoon.

    I glanced up in alarm, and then noticed the prominent Adam’s apple framed by the lime green V-neck of the cheap polyester dress. My stomach lurched and involuntarily flipped on itself. Gathering my composure, I gingerly pulled two styrofoam cups off the top of the stack and handed them over to ”her”. In my imagination, I was trying to extend my arm as far as I could reach, holding the cups by the very tips of my fingers to avoid any possibility of contact and contamination. She gave a curt, clinking, nod of appreciation and moved on as I let out what felt like was an audible sigh of relief that they had passed.

    It was then that I heard God.

    ”Do you think I love them any less than I love you?”

    I stood in stunned silence as the musicians started singing an old hymn. Then the tears started.

    ”There is fountain filled with blood

    Drawn from Immanuel’s veins. 

    And sinners plunged beneath that flood,

    lose all their guilty stains.”

    ”Lose all their guilty stains,

    Lose all their guilty stains,

     And sinners plunged beneath that flood

    Lose all their guilty stains.”

    I had come to minister, to preach the Gospel, to bring Jesus to the lost, and hope to the desperate, but I had been deemed qualified for the job of handing out cups. 

    And it was there, beside the plastic and styrofoam that God, My Savior, reminded me that His Grace is Sufficient, and taught me afresh of His own confidence in His both His ability and willingness to Love a sinner out of sin by Grace and not by judging them out of it, by law. The way He was continuing to do for me.

  • Habits

    You are what you…
    Early mornings & freshly ground coffee…it’s all downhill from there.

    It has been said that you are what you do…habitually.

    If that’s true, what are you?

    I’m an early-rising, coffee-drinking, Beth-loving, blog-writing, compulsive-reading, tele-marketing, tv-watching, over-eating, guitar-playing, Gabriel Allon and Carolina Hurricanes fan.

    Some of those habits I’m pretty proud of. Others, not so much. A year ago even, my list was different. I was a different person then. Hopefully you were too. I have developed some habits I didn’t have then. I’ve replaced some. I had a couple other serious habits on that list. One needed to go, one needs to come back.

    A year ago, I was 3rd on the American server for the online game Forge of Empires. Yeah, that was me…ugh! 

    I was also a habitual walker. Like…habitual, as in almost 5 miles a day.

    The walking is coming back. The gaming is staying in the coffin.

    I wrote a post a few weeks back about exploration vs. exploitation. It occurs to me that good habits, while certainly in the exploitation column, also offer some of the aspects of exploration. And let me qualify my use of the adjective ”good” above. By good habits, I don’t mean ”healthy”, I mean ”fun” or ”pleasurable”.

    Most of my habits have those qualities. Only one is done out of sheer necessity…unless you also count coffee-drinking, which I probably should. 

    Make your own list. Check it twice. Which habits are naughty. Which are nice? Which add to your life and make it worth living? Which are detriments, and make you not the person you want to be.

    The wonderful thing about habits is they’re like that old Steve Martin joke about keeping a litter bag in your car. They don’t take up a lot of room, and if it gets too full, you can always chuck it out the window.

  • Monopoly

    When my kids got old enough to play board games, we had a family tradition of playing Monopoly on New Year’s Eve.

    We would begin just after dinner time, maybe have a dessert of chocolate fondue while playing, and the kids and I would battle it out to see who would be the last Monopolist standing. There is at least one New Year’s Eve pic of me with my pocket’s turned out and empty after midnight, some lucky kid or other having bankrupted me as a result of me making one too many visits to her land of high-rent hotel properties.

    Monopoly is fun if the dice fall the right way early on in the game. Get the right properties, move quickly around the board, begin to collect the income of passing go, or land on some fortunate ”Chance” card telling you to collect $50 from every other player, and you create an early advantage.

    Play more than once, and you realize the central role that luck plays. Which is also what makes the re-playability factor high. You know that next time, your luck might change. 

    IRL, the luck for some people never changes. They can be the smartest guy at the table, but they start from a position so disadvantaged that they are always forced to pay out more than they can take in. Or they are forced into a life expending all their time and energy just to race around the board, hoping to get paid a humble and unchanging salary just for passing ”Go”. The cost of mere subsistence is so high they are never able to part with enough money to buy anything that will produce income. They fall further and further behind the ones who started with huge advantages to begin with.

    To such, words like ”personal responsibility”, and ”free market capitalism” don’t inspire loyalty, or hope. They create hardness, and division, and resentment, and ultimately rebellion. 

    Only one year did a kid of mine who had previously won become so upset at falling behind that we had a problem. She was not yet mature enough to recognize that luck was against her this go round. She erroneously thought that it was her skill alone that had gained her prior victory. At any rate, after growing increasingly frustrated at her change of fortune, without warning she grabbed the edge of the board and flung it upwards, disrupting the entire game for everyone. 

    We had our own little outraged Robespierre giving us all a micro-demonstration of the French and Bolshevik revolutions. Once we boxed up the mess, we laughed and dunked more marshmallows and strawberries into the creamy, warm chocolate. 

    To him who has ears to hear, let him hear. For your further consideration: 

  • Consent? Of The Governed

    Over the course of the past year, I have changed my mind about many things, political in nature, that are still surprising to me. 

    Before I explore any of those particular changes over the next couple of days, I am obliged to state that I do not believe that any political system can provide the cure to what really ails mankind. I believe there is, at root, an underlying spiritual problem producing all the bad fruit that renders the enactment of governments necessary.

    One of my favorite Christian thinkers, St. Augustine, famously said, ”Love, and do as you please.” 

    One of my favorite secular thinkers, Henry David Thoreau said, ”Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?”

    I believe they are saying the same thing. There is no law against the law of Love, for none is necessary. A nation comprised of the practitioners of love would be a nation whose cup would overflow with both liberty and charity.

    However, we do not live in such a nation. We fail at love ourselves, and are surrounded by other co-equal failures. We therefore appeal to a government for protection of some of our rights, while we relinquish others.

    We comfort ourselves by assigning the submission of our liberties high sounding phrases like ”social contract’, and ”Constitutional Federal Republic”, and ”consent of the governed”, but as citizens, we have reserved no ”safe word” for those times that usurpation of individual liberties exceeds the boundaries of our consent.

  • You Ain’t Gonna Learn What You Don’t Want To Know

    Grateful Dead ~ Black-Throated Wind

    Learning takes courage. It is humbling to admit that you do not know. And it is impossible to learn what you don’t want to know. Learning affects the ego with the possibility that you have been mistaken about a subject you thought you knew, or, it can introduce facts and concepts you’ve never heard before. Uncomfortable, unfamiliar, challenging truths make us confront our biases. Since it is the accumulation of knowledge and experiences that make you, YOU, a metamorphosis akin to an ego-death might be needed to emerge as the new, more enlightened version of YOURSELF.

    Learning also requires intelligence, which can be defined as an aptitude for grasping truths. The greater this aptitude, the greater the chance that learning occurs even without specific intentionality. To be sure, there are very smart people who use their intelligence, not in pursuit of truths to grasp, but in devising systems for denying truth and for creating, protecting and propagating lies. To me, using intelligence this way is the essence of evil. 

    Rather, a good life is built around using intelligence to pursue and discover truth, and once found, to act on it. If a new discovery forces a change of belief, or a change of direction, so be it. How many ideas in your life are you absolutely certain about? How certain are you that you’ve been exposed to all the truth you’ll ever need? It is written that, “Every man’s ways are right in his own eyes.” But that verse is a warning that absolute certainty is a luxury reserved for a very limited handful of truths. 

    Seeking out, learning, and acting on truth sounds good until you realize it forces you to act like an intellectual nomad. Your concept of self must be fluid and dynamic, as new facts overturn previously staked out beliefs. So, the learner lives in an intellectual tent that can be quickly taken down, moved, set up elsewhere, maybe enlarged, maybe subtracted from. Brick and mortar rigidity is unhelpful here.

    There is a kind of false security that comes from past knowledge. But tradition must never become a replacement for truth. Truth can move with us into the present and will guide us into the future. So let those who claim to be learners be courageous and determined to tear down any house of lies they encounter. Ruthlessly reject untruths, falsehoods, and biases as soon as new facts and new information is discovered. Pitch your tent upon newly learned truth.