Home » Posts tagged 'Politics' (Page 3)
Tag Archives: Politics
Caravan to Midnight 2
It was my pleasure to be invited for a return interview with John B. Wells on Caravan to Midnight.
Listen to the interview here:
Winning Through Consensus
From the moment our current president began preparing for his ascension to power, the outgoing president began showing signs of concern — if not outright anxiety — over his legacy. And he had good reason.
Whether or not one approved of Mr. Obama’s policies or performance, there is one undeniable fact: as president, he made little effort to govern by consensus.
No Safety in Numbers
“While nobody knows what’s going on around here, everybody knows what’s going on around here.”
In his eerily prophetic 1975 novel, The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner describes the Delphi pool, a futuristic incarnation of the Las Vegas betting boards. It works this way:
Ask large numbers of people questions to which they can’t possibly know the answers. For example: How many victims died from influenza in the epidemic of 1918?
Even though few of the subjects know anything at all about the question, their guesses will cluster around the correct answer. In the novel, the principle held true even for things that hadn’t happened yet, creating a reasonably accurate window into the future.
As it turns out, Mr. Brunner wasn’t far from reality. Although his system doesn’t hold true for actual statistics, it’s right on target when applied to human psychology.
In a recent series of experiments, marketing professor Gita Johar of Columbia University and her team discovered that people in the company of others are more likely to accept unverified reports as true than people who are by themselves.
More compelling still is that the company we are in doesn’t have to be physical to impair our natural skepticism. Even in a social media setting – connected only virtually with other people – we are more likely to accept information at face value, especially if it fits in with our preconceived notions.
Professor Johar explains this as a manifestation of herd mentality, an unconscious response to the belief that there is safety in numbers. We don’t feel the need to question or fact-check because we rely on the group for authentication, even as everyone one else in the group simultaneously relies on everyone else in the group.
Welcome to the modern Delphi pool for the dissemination of fake news. The more people who hear a report, the more likely they are to believe it. In no time at all, news becomes accepted as fact regardless of accuracy, even when it is easily verifiable as false.
With groupthink becoming the standard of our times, we not only become less able to recognize the truth – we become less interested in doing so. We condemn reports as fake news not because they are factually incorrect but because they refuse to conform to our own vision of reality. As long as we keep company with others who are similarly disinterested in the difference between true and false, we have no reason to question the status quo.
In fact, probing for the truth can be positively dangerous. One word against the party line is guaranteed to bring down upon our heads the wrath of the ignorant majority among our own allies determined to hold fast to their fabulist misconceptions.
So as accusations of lying – real and imagined – fly back and forth across the aisle, we have to ask ourselves a question: do we want to do anything about it, or have we become too comfortable with our culture of falsehood to seek resurrection of the truth?
King Solomon says, A sophomoric person believes every word, but an insightful person minds his every step.
If we want to live in reality, we have to break away from the delusions of the herd and follow the path that leads back to the real world. If we want true answers, we have to be willing to ask hard questions – and then we have to be able to face up to the truth no matter how uncomfortable or how unpopular that might make us.
A bridge over untroubled waters
After 50 years, no one believed it would ever happen. That’s why they called it the bridge that was going nowhere.
But now that’s all water under the… well, you know. The new St. Croix Crossing Bridge opened last week to great fanfare, connecting eastern Minnesota with western Wisconsin and replacing the Stillwater lift bridge that was built in 1931.
Which just goes to show that two sides are never so far apart that they can’t be brought together.
The project was first proposed way back in the 1960s, but every imaginable obstacle conspired to prevent its construction. Needless to say, funding was the first challenge. Then came the predictable squabbling among federal and local agencies. Finally, the inevitable lawsuits brought by the environmental lobby threatened to kill the plan before it could begin.
People said it would take a miracle for the bridge to get built. What they got was something even more remarkable than divine intervention.
They got cooperation.
In 2012, an unlikely alliance formed between two Minnesota congresswomen, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and then-Republican Representative Michele Bachmann
Their task was herculean. They had to persuade, convince, and cajole U. S. representatives and senators, as well as state governors and local legislators, to sign off on the project. Incredibly, they had to get unanimous approval from all 100 U. S. senators to gain an exemption from the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Ms. Klobuchar personally prevailed upon every one of her colleagues in the senate to give their support.
The final product is more than just a river crossing. It’s a work of art, a thing of beauty. The bridge is a hybrid, a cross between box girder and cable-stayed designs, only the second like it in the country. The innovative design minimizes the number of piers in the water while keeping the tops of the towers below the tree-line. Even opponents of the bridge grudgingly conceded that their fears were unfounded.
Could there be a more fitting allegory for our troubled times than the new “miracle bridge” of St. Croix? In a time of knee-jerk partisanship, of hyperbolic rhetoric, of militant groupthink that drives all proponents of moderation to the far extremes lest they be slaughtered on the altar of ideology by their own comrades – in times like these it is the concerted effort to bridge the divide that can calm the waters below. All that’s needed is the courage set aside personal agendas and the willingness to work together for the general welfare.
Nothing puts an end to quarreling faster than a spirit of common purpose. Nothing builds trust more certainly than a shared commitment and collaboration toward a universal goal. The feeling of being united in a higher mission, combined with a sense of urgency to achieve results, raises the rewards of success above egoism and ideology.
Once we resolve to make the effort and take the first step, almost anything is possible.
King Solomon says, Like water reflects one face to another, so too the heart of one man to his fellow. By showing our adversaries that we are committed to peaceful cooperation, the chances increase dramatically that they will see themselves reflected in our sincere intentions and respond in kind.
Of course, there will always be those too petty to seek common ground. But strong, sure leadership will relegate them to the footnotes of history while inspiring others to discover greatness within themselves. With vision and determination, we can refashion the world into a place where human spirit can overcome any obstacle and truly soar toward the heavens.
Harry Potter and the Ashes of the Temple
In spite of its exceptional popularity, or perhaps because of it, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series produced its own share of controversy. Critics complained that Harry is a chronic rule-breaker, that the vividly depicted magical backdrop will divorce children from reality, and that the books instill no redeeming social values in the children who read them.
It is true that Harry does demonstrate a certain disregard for rules and regulations, but he is openly criticized by his friends and teachers alike for this, and he gets into trouble as often as not on account of his rule breaking.
It is also true that Ms. Rowling’s depictions of a magical world are mesmerizing in their detail and verisimilitude, but it’s precisely this vivid imagery that has turned millions of television-addicted preadolescents into avid readers. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine any book causing children to become more detached from reality than the glut of fanciful movies, video games, and trading cards with which they come into contact daily.
The third argument, however, is where Harry’s critics really miss the boat. The books are steeped in such universal ethical lessons as honesty, discipline, and loyalty, to mention only a few. And from a Jewish perspective, Harry Potter can offer our children (and us as well) a contemporary insight into the destruction of the Temple that we commemorate today, on the 9th day of the month of Av.
Throughout the Harry Potter series, many of the advocates of evil and the defenders of good share a common character trait: an irrational insistence upon the “purity of blood.” Although the leader of the forces of evil himself comes from a mixed background, his followers are dedicated to purging the wizarding world of “mudbloods,” those who have non-wizard blood flowing in their veins.
But it isn’t just the wicked who display this kind of genealogical prejudice. Many of the defenders of good, even as evil threatens to destroy them and their society, refuse to join forces with potential allies because of irrational prejudices.
J. K. Rowling may never have studied Jewish history, but her series provides a perfect parable for the causes of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Even as the Roman siege upon Jerusalem tightened, the Sadducees, the Zealots, the Sicarii, the Essenes, and other radical groups refused to address the common danger that threatened every Jew, sometimes even forming alliances with the Romans in hope of gaining the upper hand over their political enemies within the Jewish people. The Romans exploited this infighting until both the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish nation was broken.
The Talmud tells us the cause of the destruction was senseless hatred. Jew hated Jew not for what he did but for how he identified himself. Instead of recognizing how much they had in common, instead of strengthening their commitment to Jewish values, instead of working together in the face of a common enemy, Jews squabbled over political agendas and schemed for political gain, deaf to the entreaties of the sages that they set aside their differences, blind to the impending holocaust that Rome would bring down upon them.
Nearly 2000 years later, we are still quarreling senselessly with one another and overlooking enemies who seek our destruction. If we haven’t learned the lessons of our own tradition, perhaps we can learn a lesson from Harry Potter’s headmaster, Dumbledore: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Of course, the talmudic sage Rabbi Akiva said it more simply in aftermath of the Temple’s destruction: “Love your fellow as yourself: this is the great principle of the Torah.”
What makes him your “fellow”? That he chooses good over evil. And how do you love him? By setting aside your differences and seeing him for who he is, not for what he believes — and certainly not for what he calls himself.
Originally published in 2001 by Jewish World Review.
Yonason Goldson 