The Captured Perspective

In the NY Times this past Tuesday, David Brooks outlines the differences between an individualistic and institutional approach to life. It is worth a read.  Citing Ryne Sandberg’s induction speech into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Brooks argues the former Cub shows a logic born of respect for the institution he represents:

“I was in awe every time I walked onto the field. That’s respect. I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponents or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. You make a great play, act like you’ve done it before; get a big hit, look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases.”- R.S.

Brooks goes on to suggest that institutional commitment is in decline, and with it a powerful source of collective meaning and purpose.  He implies that a movement towards individualism without institutions is misguided, even with all the problems institutional thinking propounds at its worst.

Brett Favre

While I agree with Brooks’ take on the importance of institutions for creating meaning, I disagree with his categorization of the alternative approach as necessarily individualistic. I would argue instead that we are not necessarily more individualistic than previous generations, but that we often stand between conflicting institutions without knowing how to resolve these tensions. I am not a man on an island… I am a man trying to land footing on too many islands and thus falling in the sea.

Ryne Sandberg

Take the arguably skitzophrenic behavior of Brett Favre in his false retirement/ retirement/ unretirement moves of last few years. At first we hear that Favre wanted to spend more time with his family.  Then it was that team needed him.  Then it was that he had to retire because he could not win the Super Bowl, the only real reason why he should ever stay.  Finally, it was that he loved the game and had to play again, though not with a team that showed him disrespect.

While it is easy (and perhaps fair) to characterize Favre as individualistic and self-centered, might we not also read his actions as reflecting a person who fails to consistently manage a multitude of institutions and their corresponding demands?  His family asks for time because it takes engagement to be a good father.  His team requires committment because leadership requires devotion to teammates.  His culture suggests that winning and respect are crucial for personal success. Even though he is a part of all these positions, he, like us, cannot play them all. The myth of the Renaissance man is dead! Thus, in cafeteria style, he picks the logic that best suits his current needs. 

And so, while Brooks makes some good points on the role of institutions in creating meaning, I think he misses out on the more interesting question on how we manage the conflicting meanings of the multiple institutions we represent.  What happens when we have a job, invest in a social life, live with a family, attend a church, support a political party, play for a sports team…. each with their own ‘institutional’ logic of how to behave? To butcher an already bad joke… a Jew, a lawyer, a father, and a republican walk into the bar… and they are all the same person. How do we best think institutionally when one does not have the “luxury” of being involved in a singular logic? Is the only way to resolve this tension by devoting ourselves singularly to one approach (Sandberg style), or opportunistically cherry pick the logic that best fit with our current needs (a la Favre)?

Why does it matter whether different cultures are protected from emerging global forces? Some would say it doesn’t, most anthropologists would argue otherwise. I guess I see both sides.

On the one hand, no humane person pines over the glory days of when we had a culture of slavery in this country. Or, for a more current example, do we really want to preserve our current American culture of excessive consumption and environmental degradation? Just because a culture exists doesn’t mean it should. Further, as Westerners, we shouldn’t deny remote cultures the vast material benefits of our system (if they desire those benefits) for the sake of being able to visit exotic peoples and discuss our neat differences.

From the anthropological perspective, it seems that all cultures ought to be equally valued by outsiders because it’s inappropriate for one group to determine the fate of another based on priorities and principles that are not shared. After all, who is to say that we got it right as Westerners?

Intuitively I believe in preserving distinct cultures because I see the beauty and concert in the thousands of unique expressions of human voice around the world. I would just like to unpack a little further what it is specifically that we ought to value about our culture and others’ to better understand how to think about things like globalization and international development both critically and constructively.

What do you think? How careful should we be about cultural imperialism when thinking about global “progress?”

Over at Text Patterns, Alan Jacobs ponders the end of book review periodicals:

I am not sure how much to be worried about this. For much of their history newspapers have not reviewed books at all — going back to the eighteenth century and through almost all of the nineteenth, book reviewing was largely the province of other kinds of periodicals — and few newspapers have ever had whole sections devoted to book reviews. Are we about to see considerably fewer book reviews altogether? Or are we just faced with a kind of dispersal of book reviewing into more and more varied locations?

I too am not exceptionally worried about the potential book apocalypse, and I say that as a guy who really likes reading.  What I am more interested in is the cause of people’s anxiety?  Perhaps the fear is that a lack of book reviews will lead to a drop in the number of readers.  Perhaps people are just worried that we will just look less cultured when historians look back over our newspapers to unearth the cultural zeitgeist.  I’m not so convinced, especially on the argument that the lack of book reviews periodicals will keep people from reading.  The last time I checked, the typical reader of the NY Times Sunday Book Review is not the type that who is on the fence for giving reading a shot.

What I do think will be interesting is how this lack of book reviews might undermine the convergence of tastes for people that tend to read book reviews (see my previous post on music best-of-lists for my thoughts on the role of reviewers in shaping preferences).  And contrary to what some people might think, this could be a good thing.  If, as Alan says, we see a “dispersal of book reviewing into more and more varied locations,” I think there might be a similar growth in the diversity of topics/ genres/ authors pursued.  Maybe people will have to begin forming their own opinions on the books rather than regurgitating the latest opinines of James Wood. Maybe this end of (book review) days could do us some good.

Since I can remember I have readily recited Milton Friedman’s old adage that the government should ensure that people have “equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.” The logic here is that if everyone is afforded the same opportunities (e.g. education, health, etc.), then it’s simply a matter of individual will, luck, and choices whether one gets “ahead” in terms of social and economic outcomes (e.g. income level). This line of thought also embodies a general disregard among conservatives concerning the role of government in mitigating inequality of outcomes. As with most others, it’s time for me to revisit this proposition.

Rethinking this raises two basic questions: 1) Is equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcomes a useful distinction? and 2) Why might inequality of outcomes be a proper focus of government? In regards to the first question, I’m not convinced that equality of opportunity vs. outcomes is a practical distinction.

Theoretically I understand the logic, but we live in a world where peoples’ opportunities are directly shaped by the outcomes of their families and communities. For example, if one’s parents are too poor to live in a neighborhood with high caliber schools, then that directly impacts their opportunity to get a high quality education, thus furthering educational inequality of opportunity.

I absolutely agree that we should focus on equalizing peoples’ opportunities, not outcomes, but in order to do that we need to restructure opportunities so they are not dependent on outcomes. This is where the typical conservative line falls apart. You cannot simultaneously advocate for more equal opportunities AND smaller government.

If the funding of healthcare and education continues to be largely decentralized, as conservatives advocate, then the quality of those services will mirror the economic circumstances of communities: poor areas will have weak basic services, rich areas have robust education and health systems. If we take Friedman’s logic seriously, I think it undermines his advocacy for small government. By the way, Obama’s quote on this point was spot on: “The fundamental question of our time is not whether government is too big or two small, it will be whether it works.”

On the second question, as usual, I think Amartya Sen says it best in this tour de force of an interview:

I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another [...] There are some people who say that they’re concerned only with poverty but not inequality. I find that very difficult for the reason that Adam Smith discussed a long time ago in The Wealth of Nations. He pointed out that the same thing that everyone likes doing, talking with others, appearing in public without shame, taking part in the life of the community, if you live in a community that’s relatively rich, you need a much bigger income to be able to do these elementary things.

If you are a villager in rural Bangladesh or Uganda, you might be able to meet with people very easily even if you’re not schooled or if you don’t have a car or if you’re not clothed in a way that’s regarded as obligatory in some cultures. But in, say, America, if you don’t have a television at home your kids might find it hard to converse with each other in school. The income that we need in order not to be poor is much higher in a richer society. So that relative poverty, which is really a matter of inequality, in terms of income can be the cause of absolute poverty, the inability to do the basic things which Adam Smith noted we all like doing.

The idea that we can be interested only in poverty but not in inequality I don’t think is a sustainable thought. A lot of poverty is in fact inequality because of this connection between income and capability. The same capability to take part in the life of the community requires a much bigger basket of commodities and therefore a much bigger income in a rich society. So you have to be interested in inequality. And since we live in a global village, events in different parts of the world influence each other. The Internet begins to penetrate in my country. Indians begin to find out how other people live in the rest of the world. Given these circumstances, the issues of inequality and the issue of poverty are not separable even globally.

They’re very closely linked, both in terms of the need to ask the moral question, Is it right that I should enjoy my privileges, and not feel I owe anything to others? As well as the other level, do I have a right to be content living in a world with so much poverty and inequality? Both these questions motivate us to take these issues to be central to human living. Ultimately, the old Socratic question, How should I live? has to include a very strong component of awareness and response to inequality.”

My apologies for the length of this interview segment, but Sen makes sense of why inequality matters in a way that I have never been able to articulate. In short, I still agree with Friedman’s basic proposition, but I would argue that taking it seriously undermines the libertarian solution he ends up coming to. Further, I think Sen’s argument forces us to reconsider the real difficulties surrounding inequality of outcomes, which may be good reason to believe that it is a proper thing for the government to focus on.

While I cannot answer Peter’s questions on restaurant density, quality, or the tipping point for turning a neighborhood, I can comment on another St. Louis neighborhood undergoing a similar transformation.
The stretch of Manchester east of Kingshighway, known to some as “the Grove”, is also undergoing restoration in the form of restaurants. These eateries may not have the cache of nods from Food and Wine, but they do serve some of the best food in St. Louis. Here is a brief rundown of my favorites:

1) Newstead Tower Public House. A beautifully refurbished pub on the corner of Newstead, which serves the best burger I’ve ever had—grass-fed beef with a melt-in-your-mouth bun. Good beer list, too.
2) Five. An upscale venue with changing daily menu features products from several local farms. Themed wine tastings are a highlight. Run by the same people as Newstead Tower.
3) Everest Café & Bar. Home to Nepalese, Indian, and Korean fare. The Chili Chicken appetizer is out of this world.
4) Agave. A gourmet Mexican café with an extensive tequila list and really good ceviche. Certainly pricier than your average Mexican food, but well worth if you like pork empanadas or seafood.
5) Mia Rosa. An Italian small plates restaurant with bold (in a good way) décor. Again, if you’re a seafood person give it a try. If you prefer your Italian with meatballs or (heaven forbid) provel, not the place for you.

The neighborhood has something, too, beyond excellent restaurants. Restoration St. Louis has a vested interest in the neighborhood—including many of the buildings housing the new restaurant scene. The stated purpose of the company (www.restorationstlouis.com) is to revitalize historic buildings and neighborhoods throughout the city. This, at least in principle, is not at the expense of the residents who have chosen to stay. Instead the restoration is intended to bring back local commerce—grocers, restaurants, small entertainment venues—for the benefit of those in the neighborhood and those who come to visit.

“There will be some new faces, but we want our work here to be an example to other developers that a community’s most irreplaceable strengths are its people and its buildings. With rare exceptions, displacement and demolition are better suited to theme parks than to neighborhoods.” Amrit Gill (Restoration St. Louis)

A Few Good Men:

“Col. Jessup: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. . . And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall; you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”

The Dark Knight:

“[After the good District Attorney Harvey Dent has been driven to madness and a killing spree, culminating with Batman finally killing Harvey to stop him…]
Gordon: The Joker won. Harvey’s prosecution, everything he fought for . . . undone. Whatever chance Gotham had of fixing itself, whatever chance you gave us of fixing our city . . . dies with Harvey’s reputation. . . . People will lose all hope.
Batman: No. They won’t. They can never know what he did.
Gordon: Five dead? Two of them cops? We can’t sweep that under—
Batman: No. But the Joker cannot win. . . . Gotham needs its true hero.
Gordon [realizing that Batman is expressing a willingness to take on the burden of Dent’s guilt]: You? You can’t—
Batman: Yes, I can. . . . You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I can do those things because I’m not a hero, like Dent. I killed those people. That’s what I can be.
Gordon: No! You can’t! You’re not!
Batman: I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be.”

Some similarities between what Batman has become at the end of The Dark Knight and the way Colonel Jessup sees his role in A Few Good Men:

1. The public cannot understand the price of peaceful, free society
2. In order to be effective, the protector must be (willing to be) reviled

However in A Few Good Men Jessup in the antagonist and in The Dark Knight Batman is the protagonist and at the end of the movies Jessup is in handcuffs and Batman is streaking through Gotham on his bat-motorcycle to fight another day.

The difference seems to be the setting. Back in 1992 the most dangerous wall upon which the screenwriter could set Col. Jessup was that between the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay and Cuba. The public wanted to put aside the worries and demands of the cold war and move to a more cheerful world in which Col. Jessup could be left as a memory of times past.

In 2008 however, a dark knight like Batman is more palatable to the American movie-going public. In a time of many fears, both real and imagined (today’s threat level is elevated in general, but high for airplanes!), Americans identify with the citizens of violence-ridden Gotham in a desire for security.

Rebecca Thorton in the latest American Economic Review, describing an experiment in Malawi where individuals were incentivized to get the results of a randomly assigned HIV test (h/t Chris Blattman). (Link to an older non-gated copy here)

Without any incentive, 34 percent of the participants learned their HIV results. However, even the smallest incentive doubled that share. Using the randomly assigned incentives and distance from results centers as instruments for the knowledge of HIV status, sexually active HIV-positive individuals who learned their results are three times more likely to purchase condoms two months later than sexually active HIV-positive individuals who did not learn their results (however…) HIV-positive individuals who learned their results purchase only two additional condoms than those who did not. There is no significant effect of learning HIV-negative status on the purchase of condoms.

The design of the study is that individuals from this rural Malawi were randomly selected for on-site HIV testing. Then, individuals in an incentivized group were given vouchers (monetary reward of less than a 1/10th of a days wage) to come get their results at a later time from the testing center, and  individuals in the non-incentivized group were not given any such reward.

Results indicate that vouchers did increase the number of people coming to get their results (doubled it in fact), and also increased the number of condoms purchased by those who were tested positive and had a parter (by 2 condoms on average).  The effects however were relatively limited in what group they reached and lacked other desired effects. Specifically:

Neither the knowledge of HIV status nor the personal attention and education from the nurses to practice safe sex during the VCT counseling sessions appear to have had significantly large impacts on sexual behavior after two months.

Thorton concludes by suggesting these high-cost testing strategies are not as cost-efficient as other methods of prevention.  

Studies like this make you realize the difficulty of addressing major international public health problems, and the critical role of culture and norms in suppressing the effects of incentivized approaches. Specifically, I am thinking of how individuals conceptualize and understand love, sex, death and dying.  That is why, if I were to ever write a book about Africa and AIDS, it would be called “Love, Sex, Death and Dying: The poetic barriers to public health interventions”… look for it in stores in Fall 2030.

The best area for dining in St. Louis is Sidney Street, a moderately quiet street in a historically transition neighborhood near the heart of the city. Located a few blocks east of the the famous Annhuiser Busch Brewrey, Sidney Street has by all accounts two of the top restaurants in town: Niche and Sidney Street Cafe.  Sidney Street Cafe’s executive chef Kevin Nashan is a gradate of the Culinary Institute of America and has spent time at The Danielle in New York, and the current top restaurant in the world, El Bulli in Cala Mantol, Spain.  A half a block down, Gerald Craft has recently moved into national prominence by being named one of Food and Wine‘s best new chefs of 2008. The interesting thing about both these restaurants is that Sidney Street is by no means the most chic part of town and is in fact moderately close to some of the more run down areas of town.  

In understanding urban revival, it might be interesting to consider the role of restaurants like Sidney and Niche in economic development.  Take this recent profile of the growth of the DC restaurant scene in today’s Times. 

In Petworth, Columbia Heights, the U Street district and even the dicier parts of North Capitol Hill, a little restaurant revival is under way. Washington neighborhoods that for years were considered too dangerous or too poor for a viable sit-down restaurant are suddenly entertaining quite a few…

You could trace the roots of the revival in part to developers who in the late 1990s took advantage of city-led urban renewal projects and began investing in neighborhoods that had been torn by riots, drugs and civic inattention.

In the ensuing years, Washington’s population began growing instead of shrinking, and crime rates started to drop. But lately, something has been going on that is harder to quantify.

“For the past two or three years, you kind of feel this energy, this current, going through D.C.,” said Neil Glick, who for eight years has served as the advisory neighborhood commissioner for Capitol Hill East. “It’s really kind of a hip place to be. Suburbia is dead.”

While St. Louis is no DC (hello… the President lives there), it does have some similar economic and cultural problems.  A victim of significant white flight and economic trouble over the last 100+ years (note to self: don’t bank on river travel as THE form of travel), St Louis has moved from a host of the World’s Fair and Olympics at the turn of the previous century to a mainstay on the most dangerous cities in America list. Though momentum for urban development is building in St. Louis, there are questions whether the economic downtown will halt the current phase of urban gentrification.

So what role can restaurants play in this process, in cities at large and St. Louis in particular? What the NYTimes article suggests is that restaurants play a role in urban revival in that they cultivate ‘chic’ness (if that were to be an actual word).  They bring people into town, increase the exposure, and as was the case with Niche following Sidney, bring in more of the same over time. But is that enough to build a city?  

A few follow-up questions might help enlighten the answer… what is more likely to be successful successful, when the foodie comes first (people/ apartments/ housing) or the food (restaurant)?  How ‘good’ does a restaurant have to be to bring in people to a substandard part of town?  How good does a restaurant (or set of restaurants) have to be to make people think of moving to the area as opposed to just visiting?

What do you think?

**Update- George makes a good point that Sidney St. Cafe may have been around before the neighborhood turned south… and then stayed throughout.  Will have to double check.

What is most remarkable about him as a person is that he is a grown-up.  Growing up is a task for everyone in every society and most of us don’t do a very good job of it.  Even highly gifted people, in the arts and sciences as well as politics, are often not very grown up, or have obvious personal flaws, even when we admire them.  I’m not saying that Obama is perfect—no one is.  But he shows the quality of maturity that the great classical philosophies, Confucian or Stoic for example, tried to inculcate in their followers.  Extraordinary intelligence helps but we know many brilliant people who are not very grown up.  Extraordinary ethical sensitivity is closer to the core of what it means to be grown up.  

-Robert Bellah

Bellah, sociologist at Cal Berkey, identifies one lens for understanding Obama as a person and as a leader; I think it is an appropriate one, but what does it really mean?

In an email tonight, Peter Tuuk pointed me to a quote today from a 1996 New Yorker interview with Obama before he entered politics. I think it demonstrates a bit of what this ‘ethical sensitivity’ might look like.

In responding to a question about his wife Michelle, he says:

… she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely,

Obama, circa 1996

 but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person 

Ethical sensitivity is openness to another person/ country/ political group/ etc. Ethical sensitivity requires, even for a moment, a suspension of the self as the central focus of one’s attention. The ethical sensitivity we typically offer offer is usually impermanent and conditional.

I tried to explain to Peter the part of me that is cautiously optimistic about this next phase of national leadership.  I am cautious for fear of being disappointed by the lack of alignment between our ideal versions of who Obama is, and who he ends up being.  But I am optimistic because I believe that Obama demonstrates a sensitivity to others and the nuance of their situations that is a core part of his decision making. I am cautiously optimistic that this man, even with all his faults, stands grown up and ready to lead in a time when ethical sensitivity is deeply needed.

So shall read the headline of my obituary, nuzzled into the back of my local paper.  I can only imagine the content of the article:

Peter, also known for resetting video games, and calling ‘do-overs’ in his youth, went on to get his PhD with a dissertation on the social influences on decision-making under uncertainty , a fact that in itself verifies that academics study their biggest issues.

*               *               *

Over at the new Culture11 blog Text Patterns, Alan Jacobs writes on all things technology, with a specific focus on, “technologies of reading, writing, research, and, well, knowledge.”  Jacobs asks, “As these technologies change and develop, what do we lose, what do we gain, what is (fundamentally or trivially) altered?”

While the topic of this post is not exactly technology and reading, Alan’s general thesis made me think a bit about the influence of a specific type of reading-experience, the game-book and its most popular interaction in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, on the way people of my generation approch decision-making.

In case you are not familiar, the CYOA series was one of the most popular children’s book series of my youth, selling over 250 Million copies in the 1980′s and 1990s.  The books are written from a second person point of view with the reader as the protagonist.  Instead of passively seeing what happens in the story, at crucial moments, the reader in fact gets to make a decision as the protaganist  using the form:

While this approach doesn’t show the whole array of options for the protagonist by its narrowing down to (often) two choices, repeated over the course of the book the author creates a multitude of possible worlds traversing the pages of the book.

So is it appropriate to blame CYOA books for decision-making hesitancy?  Shouldn’t it, by virtue of placing the author in the decision-making mode, create individuals who are more capable of making decisions and accepting consequences?

And here, I must take back some of the blame in suggesting it is not the book that results in decision hesitency, but rather the way I tended to read them.  In this approach however, I don’t think that I am alone. Specifically, if others were at all like me, they did read the books in their designed linear fashion, but rather through the exploring of the potential routes before deciding.  As an example, in reading a book like “The Cave of Time” pictured above, I would travel both branches of the tree before making a decision.  I would choose to fall in love with the princess, turn to the specified page and check out the outcome… then, I would go back, choose to leave for battle instead, turn the page and see what happens. Only after that research could I choose the superior route.

So what is the pragmatic impact of being influence by this reading style?  Last year in the NY Times Op-Ed pages, David Brooks identified the tendency of my generation to spend significant time in a new stage in the aging process he calls the Odyssey years.  In this post-college phrase, people in their 20′s test out multiple options and thus delay major decisions in life (career, spouse, family, etc etc.). He writes:

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another…

Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed (emphasis- mine).

While it is clear that this stage of life is a result of many things (shifts in how to view authority, hesitency towards marriage as divorce rates raise, the popularity of extended education in graduate school), I argue that having our imagination and view of the world influenced by CYOB does have an influence.

The problem is choice does not function like this in reality, at least not forever.  Real choices come at the expense of other options.  Deciding to go to graduate school comes at the expense of working during that time. Marrying one person means you are not marrying another.  The worldview developed by this popular approach to reading CYOA books (the ‘look and see’ approach) is unsustainable, as life has an inherent ambiguity which cannot be removed.

Some people get counseling to remedy issues with their parents…. my future psychological battles will be with the print-medium.