And... Action

The well-publicized behaviors of Amy Cooper and Officer Derek Chauvin strike me as odd. Not in the fact that they happened; that much is par for the course in the grand scheme of things. But in the sense that they didn't seem to realize that they were doing things, and being recorded doing them, that were more or less guaranteed to blow up in their faces once word got out. And, since they were being recorded, it was going to get out.

Perhaps I'm a bit too cognizant of the fact that just because one doesn't care, that doesn't mean that people aren't paying attention; I suspect that I'm too quick to ask myself how something would play in Peoria, as it were, even when it's something that I consider relatively (or absolutely) innocuous. And maybe that's what's at play here; it would never occur to me to engage in the sorts of behaviors that caught out Ms. Cooper and Officer Chauvin if I had any inking that I'd be performing for the cameras.

And these things do strike me as oddly performative in nature, which may be why they stand out for me. While I understand intellectually that they were heat-of-the-moment, when I watch them, I have to remind myself that it's not staged. That the act of performance, such as it were, was not deliberately intended as such.

In the end, it's harder than it should be, I think for me to see this as something that someone would just fall into. It seems strange to me that someone would openly note their intent to make a false report to the police or openly place someone at such grave risk of harm, while on camera, without that being somehow the whole point. It seems to be a situation in which someone is shouting "Hey! Look at me and what I'm doing!" and then is surprised when they find themselves the center of attention.

Bad Advice

The time to make the case for Trusted Advisor status to someone who doesn't believe they have a reason to trust is not when that trust is of paramount importance. And the case shouldn't be made by casting aspersions on the untrusting party. I am, at once, both impressed and not surprised that we don't seem to understand this. While the overall number of people who have decided that the public health community is untrustworthy is small, it's both motivated and vocal.

Despite appearances, the only thing we have to fear is not coronavirus infectious disease 2019. Mainly because there will always be other things that frighten people, and people are free to choose what scares them the most at any given time. Attempting to steamroll people into setting their fears aside rarely works. Or, I suppose, it's more accurate to say that it rarely has what people claim is the desired effect. It clearly works on some level, otherwise the practice would have died out by now. Which raises the question of what the actual goal is. But I suppose that like people's greatest fears, it's different for everyone.

No Difference

The man was sitting with a group of his fellows, under a tree in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. As was common for a Sunday, there were a number of homeless men in the park, minding their own business, and not bothering the tourists and other passers-by that wandered through, or stopped to take a photograph of the firefighter's memorial there. This particular man was either Hispanic or Native American - I'm leaving towards Hispanic, but not enough to be certain. As one might expect, his clothing was shabby and grimy, clearly wanting some time in a washing machine.

"Hey, man," I hailed him. "Could you use a sandwich?" I didn't really raise my voice, and so I wasn't sure that he'd heard me. I held up a ham sandwich, packed into a Ziploc bag. In a paper lunch bag there was an apple, a granola bar, some chips and a bottle of water. Not the least bit interested in how pretty the presentation was, the man nearly jumped to his feet and quickly walked over and took the sandwich and paper bag from my hands, while at the same time appearing to be careful not to encroach on my "personal space." I was sitting in the tailgate of my previous car (this was a while back), which counted as armor of a sort, so I wasn't really worried, but if I remember correctly, the homeless in the Pioneer Square area had earned the ire of local businessmen for being too aggressive in their panhandling, and so had dialed it back a notch or two.

Anyway, the man thanked me and gave a deep nod, then went back to his spot by the tree to settle into his meal. The three other men that he'd been speaking to, caught off guard by his sudden exit from the group, had watched him come over to the car, and now they looked at me, wondering. I didn't leave them hanging for very long, quickly fishing out another sandwich and proffering it. Without a moment's hesitation, the men hustled over to the car, and each received a sack lunch, for which they were appreciative. The park isn't very large, so it didn't take long for word to get around, and within the space of half a minute, an orderly line of homeless men had formed.

It's always interesting to deal with people in this way. Whenever the homeless make into the local news around here the coverage tends to revolve around fears that the homeless are only slightly less dangerous than an al-Queda cell in the neighborhood. Of course, the truth is nothing like that. Confronted with someone offering something, they're deferential and polite almost to a fault. One man was intent on telling me a good chunk of his life story and telling me that I was just like Jesus, until one of his fellows bluntly reminded him that he was holding up the line. He was particularly talkative, but most of them will have something to say. Thank yous are always in order, and some will tack on how long it's been since the last time they'd eaten. Many will be effusive in their thanks, and "Bless you" quickly becomes the word of the day. But some will have a story to tell. I listen as well as I can, mainly because it does seem to unburden them somewhat to relate these things to someone.

It's been a while since I last did this. My current car is a sedan, rather than a station wagon, and I haven't attempted to pile that much stuff into it yet. But I also never figured out if I was helping anyone in any real way. Sure, giving a meal, even a small one, to someone who doesn't know where their next meal was going to come from does them a service. And I suppose that it helps them to understand that someone out there cares enough to something for them. But does it do anything? I suspect that as I type this, those selfsame people are in doorways and on benches, hoping that it won't rain tonight. I came into their lives and swept right back out again.Their problems, however, remain. And with a pandemic working its way through the population, they have new ones. This is something that won't be solved by showing up out of the blue with a sack lunch once in a blue moon.

Perhaps I should focus on the immediate action that I'm performing, rather than trying to make a dent in the bigger picture. I never know. Or maybe I should concentrate more on deriving a warm, fuzzy, feeling for myself. I suppose that working with a group of people would be better than going it alone. That would give me a broader perspective on things. Or maybe the answer lies in the realization that making a difference is too large a goal. We'll see.

Out on the River

Placement

As I watched the House of Representatives debate its proposed $3 trillion relief bill last week, it occurred to me that no one was quite saying the obvious thing: We are all poorer now, and nothing the government does will fix that.
Megan McArdle. "We’re all poorer now. Nothing the government does can fix that."

This is going to be a post about language and baselining.

I find Ms. McArdle's use of the term "poorer" to be interesting, even though it is an accurate way of putting it. American English, as it is commonly spoken, doesn't require a positive, even when a comparative is used. It does, however, often imply one. That is to say, one can, as Ms. McArdle has, use the term "poorer" without someone or something having to be first "poor." But the use of "poorer" often implies "poor." And I wonder to what degree this sort of phrasing primes people to see themselves, either as individuals or in an aggregate, as poor. After all she could just as easily have noted that "We are all less wealthy now," and it would have conveyed the same point.

America’s per-capita gross domestic product stood at $58,392 in the fourth quarter of 2019. If that were to decline by a third, that would put our per-capita income back to roughly where it was at the end of 1993. Needless to say, 1993 was not a Hobbesian dystopia where lives were nasty, brutish and short.

But it was "poorer." And I wonder if that paints it as less desirable than it would appear if it were described as "less wealthy." Of course this all (quite literally) semantics, but I am curious about how the priming effect of such language works. If I say that Alice is poorer than Bob, and also that Daniel is less wealthy than Carol, how would a listener's mental images of Bob and Carol compare? Even though the listener knows nothing about how Alice and Daniel, or Bob and Carol, compare to one another, would they believe that they understand the ordering? While Daniel < Carol < Alice < Bob would be a perfectly plausible ordering of the four, would that be just as likely to come to mind as Alice < Bob < Daniel < Carol?

And this is where the baselining comes in. When we say that Alice is poorer than Bob, does it imply that both of them are poor, but in different degrees? Or only if it's also noted that Daniel is less wealthy than Carol? As you have likely gathered, I believe that it does in either case, but that could be just me.

And so I see an implication in that. An implication that 2020 and 1993 are both "poor," just in different measures, even though the positive measure of "poor" is never used to describe 1993 or 2020. Saying that to return to the GDP of 1993 makes us all poorer assigns poverty to it, even if we understand that life then was neither nasty, brutish nor short. In contrast, to say that one person, or one time, is less wealthy than another implies that both are wealthy; that they lie above whatever arbitrary baseline that divides wealth from poverty. But to say that we become poorer when we move from 2019's GDP to that of 1993 makes us poorer sets both of those times below the baseline. The tragedy is accentuated, as people become more acutely aware of their own feelings of poverty and deprivation and anticipate them becoming worse.

Or, maybe, it's just the language pedant in me, seeing a problem where none exists. Here's hoping.