In light of the politically driven Culture Wars in the US, I googled ”how many cultures are in America?”
I found an interesting article in business insider, claiming 11 different US ”nations” with territorial borders and unique cultural and political affinities.
There are a number of other returns to my query that run along the same lines. They universally declare that cultural diversity and plurality is a characteristic of life in the United States.
That doesn’t begin to touch the innumerable sub-cultures that exist in America.
These are legitimate cultures in the sense of shared values, experiences, practices, beliefs, and norms. Some of them even have their own shared languages, art, rituals, and ceremonies.
These are facts.
No intelligent person would dispute them.
I cannot remember the last time someone forced me against my will to adopt their cultural norms, or join their culture.
I have been unsuccessful forcing people to join my preferred sub-culture: DeadHead.
And even less successful forcing them into my preferred sub-sub-culture: Christian DeadHead.
Have you been the victim of Cultural Coercion?
If so, how did it happen? Can you share how you were made to become part of a group, speak a language, appreciate the art, or literature, or music, or eat the food and drink the kool-aid of that group who made you join against your will?
If no Culture has thus far successfully forced your membership, are you participating in a war against some other Culture trying to force them to join yours?
I think the Culture Wars are just as stupid and just as failed as the Drug Wars.
I saw a revealing article this morning about a French actress stripping bare on a stage during an awards ceremony with the words ”No Culture, No Future” written on her front.
French actress Corinne Masiero stands naked on stage next to French actress and Master of Ceremony Marina Fois – BERTRAND GUAY /AFP
I beg to differ with her view. Without getting into the weeds about her own protest, which really seems to be relegated to whether French people should have the right to crowd into movie theaters together, regardless of whether they make each other sick and possibly dead, I’m quite positive there will be a future, with or without culture, unless there aren’t enough people left to attend.
I will spare you the photos of my own planned protest. I have in mind to use some of Beth’s lipstick and write across my ample front, ”No People, No Culture” as a repartee.
This brings up one of the most troubling basic premises of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He posits the maxim survival of the fittest to describe those members of a species able to remain in the gene pool and pass on their genetic material to insure the species survives.
Western culture seems determined to have a PASS/FAIL test as to the veracity of this theory. Like, this year.
It’s already troubling to me that what is supposed to be one of the smartest sub-groups of our species has developed technology that, if deployed, would assure the destruction of our species. So, there’s that.
Then, there’s the current fact that a significant portion of our fellow homo sapiens seem hell-bent on deploying brilliant and ”free” behaviors to the same end.
This begs the question, what is fitness, n’est pas?
Obviously, nuclear physicists need not apply.
And the shrinking freedom brigade is cancelling itself by its own proficiency at using freedom to kill off a large number of its practitioners.
This ”give me liberty, or give me death” crowd seems too ideologically pure to be bothered with the concern that they’re killing a lot of the rest of us, too. Maybe a better mantra for these folks would be, ”give me liberty, or give everybody death.”
It’s becoming apparent that anyone who would rather die, or kill someone else, than wear a piece of fabric over their mouth and nose when they’re near other people doesn’t meet another of Darwin’s fitness qualifications either, that of adaptability.
I like Me & Bobby McGee as much as the next fellow, but come on, now, that’s pushing the chorus a little far.
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’? Literally? Click the link above for some culture. Photo is screenshot of video. Thanks YouTube.
Forgive me, but I think there’s a pretty simple sequence here: People before Economy and, People before Culture, and People Before Freedom. Seems right. Check me if I’m wrong.
For my math nerd friends: People>Freedom>Economy>Culture
I’ve got plenty of room to scrawl No People, No Economy on my backside. Heck, there’s probably room to get No People, No Freedom drawn on too. That way, I too, can have my moment of performance-art protest fame.
Note: I’m gonna need help writing this on myself. If those persons who helped write on the bare ass cheeks of those other Darwinian genii, the Proud Boys, could give a guy a hand, I’d be much obliged.
Screenshot capture of widely available video. (Someone wrote with that marker, y’all)
Note on note: I got a good chuckle when looking for the image above when I saw that those pretty yellow plaid kilts were made by a gay-owned Virginia company, Verillas, known for its support for the LGBTQ community. Has anyone noticed any Proud Boys Indeed job postings for the position of ”Kilt Procurement”?
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.
Marshall McLuhan wrote a seminal work in 1964 called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In it, McLuhan posits that various media types (print, radio, television) affect society by the direct impact of the medium itself on the reader, listener, viewer, more than by the content portrayed. He coined the famous phrase, ”The medium is the message”, as a concise statement of this phenomenon.
McLuhan used the terms ”hot” and ”cool” to describe this property of various media. A hot medium gives the recipient lots of information, stimulates multiple sensory inputs, and requires little interaction from the user for the extraction of meaning. A cool medium may only stimulate one or two senses and requires much more participation from the user for the user to determine and extract meaning.
Think of the difference between a book you’ve read (some people still do that), and seeing the movie adaptation of the same book. A book is much ”cooler” than a movie, because the reader must imagine in her own mind everything sensory: how the characters look, the colors in the settings, the sounds of the voices in dialogue, etc. A great author creates a world not only for his characters to inhabit, but for the reader to inhabit with them. Television and movies provide all, or nearly all, of the visual and auditory information to the watcher. Great directors, like Hitchcock, for example, knew this to be true, and left only the suggestion of violence in some of his scenes, counting on the viewer to fill in the blanks in her own mind. This interactive component, he believed, would make them even more frightening than anything he could put on film. Count in your own mind how many senses you use when reading vs. watching television or a YouTube video.
In 1967, McLuhan wrote anther book, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. In this book McLuhan points out the entire array of effects on the sensorium of the user of each respective type of a particular medium. This has application to sound (volume), and sight (colors, movement, screen refreshes, etc.), but the accumulated affect is amplified. McLuhan explores how various media types ”massage” the user, and how that effect, in turn, impacts how the user both receives and perceives content.
McLuhan is oft criticized for his concern over what was derisively called ”technological determinism”. That is, his critics believed McLuhan was a Luddite, afraid that emerging technologies, especially visual media forms like television and video would somehow adversely affect the user, ”determining” cognition, comprehension, and responses, by means of the medium itself and not by means of the users interaction with the content conveyed.
McLuhan died in 1980 prior to the proliferation of the internet and prior to any so-called social media platforms at all. Little did McLuhan’s critics realize in 1967 just how much conscious participation is surrendered, the better technology becomes at immersing the user in an environment in which the triggering of predictable responses is the goal. Neither McLuhan nor his critics had access to brain-imaging technologies, or they could have seen visual evidence of the neural impact of ”hot media” on various regions of the brain. And when McLuhan died, the field of neurophysiology was brand new, it’s insights into brain-chemistry and neurotransmitters like dopamine with its role in addiction and compulsion a complete unknown.
Today we know that McLuhan was right. The medium is both the message and the massage. Both environment (with its sensory stimuli), and content are customized for the responses desired. And the medium is engineered to maximize attention capture. A hot medium masquerades as a cool medium requiring interaction ( a swipe of the infinite scroll, please), while behind the curtain it is controlling everything. Software engineers collaborate with psychologists to experiment with every element from the color of the background, to the placement (and colors) of labels & buttons, to the tactile feel and sound of a ”click”, to the algorithms determining what information the user does or does not see. All of this happens while massaging the user into feeling good about what kind of person they are for using the particular platform, flooding him with dopamine when he sees ”likes” and hearts, and other emoticons so he’s sure to come back for more.
Sadly, this overall ”massage” phenomenon isn’t relegated to social media platforms. The so-called News Media, especially the ”hotter” variety, exist in a marketplace where viewership pays the bills. Let’s face it, we choose the media we consume the same way we choose our food. What flavors do we like better? Which has the larger portions? Which has the prettier or more handsome ”talent”? We trust that if a program is on what is called a ”News” network, then the content is actually ”news” in the sense of being factual and true.
But media magnates realize that we consumers choose our channels like we’re in the McDonald’s drive-thru. We want to eat what we’re familiar with. We want to hear what we already believe. So, we watch, listen to, and consume the ”news” from networks and personalities expressing opinions that are our own. This satisfies our confirmation bias. It doesn’t require any thinking, or interaction. This makes us feel better about the kind of persons we already are. We don’t come to the news the way we would approach taking medicine. It is entertainment masquerading as fact. And we fail to recognize that all the while we’ve been laid out on a carefully prepped table enjoying the massage.
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:
