Applying reason

Come, Let Us Reason Together

A jeremiad is a bullhorn--In a recent New Yorker article titled "Stockmania," James Surowiecki takes economist David Stockman to task for advocating the doctrine of laissez-faire, the conviction that even in bad economic times the government should just let events play out rather than use discretionary monetary policy to control them.  Says Surowiecki, "...the more closely you read The Great Deformation, the more you sense that the impulse behind it isn't so much economic as moral.  Stockman...uses language that is explicitly theological: Keynesian 'sin,' the 'demon' of debt, the 'devil's workshop' of the New Deal.  The Great Deformation looks like monetary policy, but it's really a classic example of the American jeremiad--a 21st century counterpart to Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'  Stockman laments our fall from the path of righteousness and foretells destruction if we do not repent.  This is bad economics--the economy is not a morality play--but it is excellent preaching, which explains why this is Stockman's moment.  In times of crisis, as the Puritans knew, Americans never tire of hearing how we've lost our way." 

Surowiecki is right to classify Stockman's book as a jeremiad, but the term need not always be taken in its pejorative, dismissive sense.  Jeremiads can be tonic as well as toxic.  The economy is a morality play.  Indeed, all aspects of human life, all practices engaged in or beliefs espoused, have religious/moral overtones.  "Cred" means "belief"; we extend credit in the belief that loans will be repaid; we have faith that our currency is legal tender for all debts public and private; we link trust in our monetary system with trust in God; our monetary system is faith-based; even secularists have faith in it.  Stockman's jeremiad is not necessarily bad conomics just because it's full of preachy warnings.  Adherents of a different economic sect, disciples of John Maynard Keynes like N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman, also ascend the pulpit to preach.  Theirs is a seemingly more compassionate message--that in times of severe recession or depression governments need to stimulate the economy for the sake of everyone in general and the suffering jobless in particular--but nevertheless one delivered as a stern moral imperative accompanied by forebodings that failing to "prime the pump" will exacerbate a sick economy and prolong misery for all but a few elites.  Most people would agree that in severe downturns some amount of stimulus is both monetarily and morally right.  But how severe is severe?  How high does the unemployment rate have to go?  How low does the GNP have to be?  When have you done as much as you can without risking an inflation conflagration while also creating so much debt that vast amounts must be devoted to paying it off, possibly placing the economy in even greater jeopardy?  Krugman himself admits that stimulus spending and low interest rates cannot continue forever; he just thinks they should go on indefinitely.  If they don't, he indicates, we will lose our way.  The recently imposed sequester may be viewed by Stockmaniacs as a bracing tonic that is helping to reduce our debt while at the same time impeding economic recovery little if at all and by Krugmaniacs as a cruel flagellation of the downtrodden that has left the economy mired and merciless.  Both views, however, are characterized by moral scolding.  (Note too that the language Surowiecki uses to characterize Stockman's approach--Stockman, he says, laments that we have "fallen from the path of righteousness" and predicts "destruction if we do not repent"--might very well be used to describe the dire sermons of the perceivers of human-caused climate change.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!  Americans do indeed never tire of hearing that they've lost their way.  Like the economy, the environment lends itself to moral judgments, and a jeremiad is a time-honored rhetorical vehicle for delivering them.)

Pulling out some of the stops--Some Americans--many of whom tend to be on the political right--insist that we can effectively interdict illegal drugs and illegal immigrants but claim that there is no way we can tighten controls on guns even if we wanted to, because there are just too many weapons already out there and the bad guys and the crazies will always find ways to gain access to them.  Some Americans--many of whom tend to be on the political left--insist that we can't stop illegal drugs or illegal immigrants but claim that we can effectively establish gun controls and can also curb obesity through such measures as taxing sodas and restricting cup sizes.  Whether we read from left to right or right to left, we reach the same conclusion: if I'm against something, it should--and therefore can--be stopped; if I'm for something, it shouldn't--and therefore can't--be stopped.

Social security--I'm not necessarily against increasing the number of armed guards in public facilities like schools and at huge public events like parades, marathons, and football games. It would be a symbolic attempt to eliminate the frightening problem of mass killings.  But I doubt that it would do much good.  Mass killers are motivated by ideological zeal and/or seek revenge for some perceived wrong done either to them personally or to a cause or religion or country with which they identify.  They want to make a public statement and are prepared to sacrifice their lives in the process.  It makes sense to have tight security checks in airports, where comings and goings can be controlled and all persons and their shoes, baggage, and carry-ons can be closely examined.  (Although one can imagine a different lethal scenario: a terrorist possessing an American driver's license and wearing a suicide vest buys an airline ticket, approaches the passenger I.D.-check area where there at times can be a huge number of people lined up waiting to be scrutinized, shouts "Allahu Akbar," forces his way into the middle of them before a guard can prevent the action, and blows up himself and the would-be passengers.)  But would armed guards in a school, say, deter a would-be mass killer or just present a new, exciting challenge?  Prepared, perhaps even eager, to die for his cause or his grievance, why wouldn't he simply approach an entryway where students are bunching up, pull out an AK47 hidden beneath his trenchcoat, and start firing?  A dozen or more students could be shot before the guards figured out who the shooter was and laid waste to him.  And how many guards would there be?  How many could a school district afford?  If there were just one, the killer could either find a different entrance or target the guard first and then start in on the students.  The killer would still be able to achieve his various goals: getting publicity, getting revenge, striking out in ideological zeal, making a personal or religious or political statement, and going out in what he would regard as a blaze of glory.

Fearing fear itself--We are told almost daily that in all aspects of our lives we should worry only about what we can control, not what is beyond our control.  Coaches and athletes in particular stress the necessity to focus sharply on skills and strategies and not worry about any other circumstances that may effect a competitive event, like the environment or the strength of the opponent or unlucky breaks--things that, to stretch the meaning of the phrase just a bit, golfers call "the rub of the green."  In my view, what you can't control is precisely what you should worry about.  Pay attention to what you can control, certainly, and do everything you can (practice, plan, focus) to gain or exercise control.  But that's not worrying, it's rationally coping.  It's the unexpected or unknown that we should fear.  When I drive my car, for example, I'm not worried that I'll hit somebody or something.  I'm confident (perhaps unjustifiably so, given my age) that I'm in control of what I'm doing; what I worry about is a careless or texting or drunk driver--whom I can't control--hitting me.  To say that you worry about only that which you can control is to engage in the not-to-be-believed bluster of fatalism.  We turn worriedly, and understandably, to prayer and ritual and even plain old superstition in an attempt to gain control in those situations where we know all too well that we lack it.

Mirabile dictu--Are there such thing as miracles?  No, it says here.  A seemingly reasonable definition of miracle might be: something that occurs when laws of nature are suspended and yet remain in operation at the same time.  Examples include making the sun "stand still," raising the dead, walking on water, and turning water into wine.  According to this definition, then, a 100-1 long shot winning a horse race is not a miracle, it's just an unusual, unlikely occurrence.  Nor would the existence of human life itself be considered a miracle; it's even debatable that the existence of life is unlikely becuase, given the size of the universe, there have surely been a large number of favorable opportunities for life to occur.  In any case, however, the definition is faulty.  Granted, the simultaneous suspension and operation of natural laws is certainly unusual; only God can accomplish it.  However, the accomplishment is not, in the strictest sense, a miracle.  Not even God can perform a miracle--not because He lacks the power but precisely because He is all-powerful.  Since He can do anything, nothing that He does is more challenging than anything else that He does.  Omnipotence does not admit of degrees of difficulty.  Therefore, whatever He does is not a miracle, it's just another example of His capabilities.  Paradoxically, an occurrence could only be a miracle if He couldn't bring it about, and of course if He couldn't bring it about, it not only wouldn't be a miracle, it simply wouldn't be.  Thus we must conclude that there are no such things as miracles.

Closing the door after the horse has fled the barn--Examples abound in the media of giving in to the temptation to reason from effect to cause.  For one, Brook Burke-Charvet, co-host of Dancing with the Stars, always says to the competitors after they have performed and the judges have determined, but not yet announced, their scores, "Let's get your scores.  Good luck!", not quite grasping that a positive wish post hoc can have absolutely no effect on a previous result.  And for another, newspapers reported that there was a Muslim woman who, after hearing about the Boston marathon bomb explosions and fearing the heaping of opprobrium upon her religion, prayed that the bombers weren't Muslim, not quite grasping that, post hoc, not even Allah could make that prayer come true.

The half-truth and nothing but the half-truth--Coaches and players of team sports often analyze games only from their own perspective.  In regard to a high-scoring football game, they are apt to say things like "We played great on offense, but our defense was weak" without recognizing that their opponent could, ipso facto,  say precisely the same thing.  "We couldn't stop them but we moved the ball well" requires that the very same statement be true of their opponent as well.  In baseball, if one team demonstrates excellent pitching but poor hitting, the same must be true of the other.  In basketball, if both teams have a large number of turnovers, both can claim to have played great defense on their opponent while being sloppy with the ball themselves, a claim which fulfills the human need to see the glass as half-full for themselves and half-empty for their opponents.

Misplaying the percentages--Speaking of the poor shooting of one of his players in a particular game, Phoenix Mercury coach Corey Gaines said of DeWanna Bonner, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take...She can go 0-10 and that means that she'll probably make four of her next five."  Actually, you miss 0%, not 100%, of the shots you don't take.  But beyond that, is it possible that a shooter, having gone 0-10, will make four of her next five?  Yes.  Is it probable?  No.  A person who flips a coin 10 times and comes up with heads each time is not "due" to come up with tails on the 11th flip.  Her chance of getting tails is 50% every time. Similarly, given a sufficient sample size to establish a meaningful season field goal percentage, a shooter's chance of making her next shot (granted, the shooter has a better chance of making a wide-open layup than a contested three-pointer, but we are assessing here the odds of making a shot selected at random) is precisely whatever her season percentage is to date.  If her average is 40%, she has a 40% chance of making her next shot, no matter how many she has made or missed in a row up to that point in the game.  (What actually happened in Bonner's next outing?  She went 0-13!  What then was the chance that she would make her first shot the next game she played in?  Whatever perentage her average had plummeted to after going 0-13.)

Eating poorly is the best revenge?--Martin Bruegel, editor of A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire, says: "Before we blame the poor and the overweight for their inability to manage their budgets or control their appetites, we might want to think not only about the foods they encounter in the supermarket and on TV but about a culture that relies ever more on unhealthy foods to breathe meaning and purpose into everyday life....In an era of stagnant wages, dystopian politics and cultural anomie, eating indulgent if unhealthful food has become a last redoubt of enjoyment for Americans who don't feel they have much control in their lives."  This is an example of the modern tendency to accuse an entire culture of conspiring to create and manipulate innocent "victims."  It is impossible to prove that higher wages would lead to an improvement in eating habits--that the poor and the overweight, given more money and more convenient access to stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joes and encountering fewer TV ads for McDonalds and KFC, would seek out more nutritious foods and would ingest fewer calories.  It is impossible to prove that dystopian politics are driving the poor to eat more than they should of food generally acknowledged to be less than healthy.  It is impossible to prove that the poor eat what they eat because legislative gridlock caused by bitter conflicts between political parties makes them feel angry or vengeful or hopeless.  It is impossible to prove that a "utopian" politics (characterized by what--compromise on issues like immigration, gun control, the Affordable Care Act, and the NSA collecting telephonic metadata?) would cause people to change their diets and undertake an exercise regimen.  It is impossible to prove that a breakdown of cultural norms has made the poor so confused or fearful or dispirited that they shun celery sticks and seek solace in French fries.

Latest comments

29.03 | 17:31

Hi Bruce,
I smiled a lot as I looked! Sometimes I didn't quite understand, other times I did! Keep doing this! You are a fun thinker!

05.07 | 23:04

hi! your blog is really fantastic! you are really lucky to have it. I have one but i did not have a single like apart from me

11.10 | 23:42

No longer pray for an outcome. Just do the footwork, if I can see any. I just pray for the grace to willing accept what the outcome will be.

30.06 | 02:37

yo that is so cool