Everyone's a Teacher

I always bristle a bit when someone implies that I don't have anything to learn from someone else, because of the simple fact that they're different from me, and that they've lead a much different life than mine. The world is a very big place, and I'm a small (in the cosmic sense) and limited person. There's all kinds of stuff that I just don't know, and whenever someone is willing to share some of it with me, I'm all ears. And I'm starting to learn that I should be that way even when my initial impression is that they're full of crap. Because, trolls aside, I'm not important enough for people to put a lot of effort into leading astray. As much as it stings to come away from an interaction with someone feeling like an idiot, sometimes, when someone says that I'm doing it wrong - it's because I'm doing it wrong. And at the very least, I'm doing it differently than the way that they found works for them. And even though I'm not them, and we're all unique, I'm not so alien as to be above doing things that other people have identified as worthwhile.

Sometimes, I think that the most difficult thing to learn in our lives is that we spend our lives learning. I've done some really boneheaded things in my life because I didn't know any better. But now I do. It was a learning experience, just as much as the things that I blundered into (or even meticulously planned) that worked out gloriously. I know things that I should do again, and things that I should never, ever think of repeating. But tomorrow, something is going to happen and my first thought is going to be: "Oh, damn. What the crack do I do now?" And part of me will be upset that, after decade upon decade of gathering knowledge, from the profound to the trivial, into a great big pile, I'll have no idea of what choice I should make. Because it will be a novel situation. To me, anyway. But someone will have already been there. And even if their life up until that point was completely different than mine, they might have a useful insight. And if they offer it, it's my job to take it in good grace, rather than feel put down by it, or ashamed that I hadn't thought of it already.

As people, we are teaching machines. We instruct one another without even thinking about it, even when it's the furthest thing from our minds. Therefore, the opportunities to learn are everywhere. It's only natural for us to take advantage of them.

Buzzy

Bees would be a lot more photogenic if they stood still once in a while...

Scrooge McDuck and Company

Seattle is moving forward with a plan to raise the local minimum wage to $15 an hour via a graduated plan that will roll out over the next several years. (By the way, before you chalk this up to "Socialism," understand that the one actual Socialist on the Seattle city council doesn't think that the plan moves quickly enough.) One of the benefits of this plan that I've heard on a few occasions, goes something like this:

[T]his will likely increase demand, by putting more money in the pockets of people who spend in the regular economy. This increased spending may lead inevitably to more hiring, as businesses look to capture more of the increased demand. I don't think a negative outcome is an inevitability, but I think what is likely is that places like McDonalds [sic] and Subway will just raise their prices a little (I'm willing to pay a little more for a McDouble if the person who makes it can afford to live a decent life). It would be foolish of businesses to layoff a bunch of people, and lose a share of the demand. I.E. businesses hire based on demand, not on the minimum wage.

Milkshakes are wonderful, but any politician will tell you, to REALLY bring all the boys (and girls, for that matter) to the yard, what you have to do is offer a free lunch. While I understand the sentiment expressed above, it works under the assumption that the extra money that goes into the pockets of minimum wage workers has two characteristics: 1) That were it not for newly-flush minimum-wage workers, it wouldn't be spent into "the regular economy" and 2) That the minimum wage worker who is now making about 160% of their old salary will still be living hand-to-mouth and won't be able to either place the new money into savings or pay down old debts. And so, to "the regular economy," raising the minimum wage effectively adds new money, created out of thin air.

To be sure, the assumptions that I've pointed out are not entirely implausible. The money that goes to workers under Seattle's new minimum wage may, in fact, come from funds that were simply sitting around somewhere doing nothing, rather than being transferred from one possible expenditure to another. It could be that most of the costs will be borne by people who have been hoarding money they will never otherwise have a use for, and that converting some of that excess wealth into income will boost the velocity of money in the local economy. And it's entirely possible that someone who needs to spend their entire paycheck to get by at $9.32 an hour (Washington's current minimum wage) while they will find their situation eased at bit at $15 an hour, will still be in a position spending their entire paycheck to get by every pay period. It's possible that people trying to make ends meet as independent adults on the current minimum wage are so deep in a hole that even a 60% increase in wages merely slows their rate of descent. But they strike me as unlikely, especially in combination.

In a republic, you don't normally get the best answer to a thorny question. You normally get the first answer that appears (correctly or not) to have no or minimal costs for the majority of those motivated to vote. The idea that raising the minimum wage will have a magical Keynesian multiplier effect through boosting aggregate demand fits the bill. There are plenty of people who feel that wealthy Americans have been amassing large stockpiles of case in vaults, and that the primary effect of raising the minimum wage will be to force them to pay some of that money out to the working poor in salaries. But, as the saying goes, wealthy people didn't get that way by giving away money when they didn't have to. So even if the economics somehow supported the idea that a boost to the minimum wage could be a free lunch, human nature dictates that there will be a bill for it anyway.

Jackasses for Freedom of Speech

Politically Correct adjective
     : agreeing with the idea that people should be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people
     : conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated

Note the conspicuous absence of ": not being a jackass."

Political correctness has become something of a favored whipping boy (": a boy formerly educated with a prince and punished in his stead") especially on the American political Right because it becomes a really convenient way to push back against other people's rules around language in the name of "Freedom." But in so doing, "being politically correct" has become synonymous with "not being a prick," and so we're starting to see many people deciding that showing basic courtesies to others is somehow a transgression on their freedom of speech.

I've noted before that the baggage that comes with language is something that the listener carries around with them - it's impossible to insult or offend someone who either refuses to be bothered or doesn't realize that what you're saying should violate their sensibilities. I think that a number of people honestly do understand that, and many of us understand our own responsibility in this. But that doesn't obligate people to be sanguine in the face of intentional insults that are then cloaked in pushing back against the excesses of political correctness. In other words, even if I were to feel that using the words "jew," "welsh" or "gyp" as synonymous with "cheat" shouldn't be considered a punishable offense, I have no business using those words when I'm speaking to someone I know to be Jewish, Welsh or Gypsy (Romani). Or, for that matter, Egyptian. And if I do, I shouldn't claim that they have no business being offended, because I'm simply pushing back against "political correctness," any more than that claim is an appropriate defense against treating the word "bitch" as synonymous with "woman" or "girl."

One of my rules of life is: if you're going to do it, own it. If you want the freedom to say that you were gypped when your buddy jewed you after welshing on a bet, with the full knowledge of how that's going to be taken, go right ahead. But freedom comes with responsibility - in this case, the responsibility to deal with the fact that people you've offended are going to decide that you deliberately disrespected them by placing your freedom to offend their sensibilities ahead of treating them with what they understand they deserve. And whether or not the freedom argument is made from ignorance or intentional disingenuity, it's conflating two things that aren't actually the same.

For me, political correctness has always been problematic because it requires people to be aware of not only any number of potentially problematic words in however many languages one speaks, but the shifting preferences of any number of other groups (and sometimes, it seems, individuals). That's a really tall order. Understanding what it really means to be politically correct, however, is fairly simple. After all, it's in the dictionary.

Masked

It was a simple enough question, if entirely random: (We had a lot of time on our hands when I was in college.)

"So, aliens are attacking the Earth, and appear bent on destroying humanity. What would you do?"

Ever the misanthrope, I answered: "Ask if they're taking applications."

I've mellowed to only being mildly cranky in my old age, but I still find that the tendency to see humanity as a blight upon existence lurks in corners of my mind, waiting to re-assert itself. And Ta-Nehisi Coates, over at The Atlantic, tends to know just how to awaken it.

As Bomani Jones noted back in 2006, Donald Sterling has long been a practitioner of racism and the NBA could not have cared less. Jones is rightfully apoplectic at the present response. That is because he understands that the NBA, its players and its fans, don't so much object to Donald Sterling's racism—they object to his want of elegance.

Like Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling confirms our comfortable view of racists. Donald Sterling is a "bad person." He's mean to women. He carouses with prostitutes. He uses the word "nigger." He fits our idea of what an actual racist must look like: snarling, villainous, immoral, ignorant, gauche. That the actual racism that Sterling long practiced, that this society has long practiced (and is still practicing) must attract significantly less note. That is because to see racism in all its elegance is to implicate not just its active practitioners, but to implicate ourselves.
This Town Needs a Better Class of Racist

The words resonate with me, and the misanthropic impulse stirs. Part of me wants to welcome it back. But Mr. Coates makes is clear than ownership of the present circumstance belongs to all of us. So I have to own up to my piece of it, too. I spend a lot of time not caring about issues that I really wish would go away, but am not interested enough in to actually want to see them go away. And through that disinterest, I am implicated.

Owning that is a difficult thing because we've always been taught that only in blamelessness is there morality. Sometimes, even as tenuous a relationship as a single shared belief is enough to mark you, and so we argue against the association. We become caught up in a need to be free of anything that the people around us may find objectionable. And eventually, as we realize that it's simply not possible to completely unshackle yourself from anything that might be less than ideal, we become saddled with an acute understanding of human imperfection.

And when we see those imperfections as transgressions against us, anger sets in. Sometimes, it's anger at a subset of humanity. Sometimes, it's anger at the species as a whole. Always, I think, it reflects on the requirements that we've placed on our own self-respect.

Owning up to the idea that I would likely turn a blind eye to a deal that injured someone unlike me for my own benefit is hard. I don't want to be a bad person. I don't want to be snarling, villainous, immoral, ignorant and gauche (although I am, to be sure, left-handed, which I suppose makes me sinister, as well). But it's the very unwillingness to see these things in myself, and to uncouple them from the economics of my life that allows me to be, whether I want to our not, a racist. Racists are no more intentionally evil than potholes. They understand themselves to be every bit as justified in their actions as everyone else, and so they rationalize.

The only way to not do evil is to recognize that one is capable of evil, and to be okay with oneself anyway. It is our inner critic, pushing us to live up to the impossible standards it sets that drives us to do those things that we should not do, and then rationalize having done them. While, at the same time, prompting us to sneer at those who mirror our feared selves back at us and to envy those who don't.

I've mellowed in my old age because I now understand that I am not owed a certain standard of treatment by anyone. And that includes myself. They are not bad people. There are no bad people. There are only choices.

Somewhere, entwined together, are unconditional respect for others and unconditional respect for self. I don't know that I'll ever find them. I don't know that I'll ever be free of the hint of misanthropy - or the hint of self-anger that goes with it. But I continue to strive for it (and work not to become caught up in the striving). Serenity in the face of oafishness is difficult. But without it, what we have is self-deception, masquerading as elegance.