Modern anthropology would seem to indicate that concern for the well-being of others has been part of the human psyche from the very origins of humanity. I'd heard about this before, but this You Tube video from an excellent series explains one part of the evidence quite nicely.
This isn't to say that ancient societies were idyllic. There also seems to be evidence that fighting between tribes of stone age humans was endemic, if low-intensity. If memory serves, Gwynne Dyer says in his book War that if modern America were involved in low-intensity warfare of the sort that has been documented in stone age societies, it would be suffering about a million casualties a year. (It all comes down to percentages---very few people get killed in tribal warfare, but that is still a very large percentage of their population compared to modern wars.)
But tribalism is part of what I'm talking about under the label of "ideology". And that gets me to one of the main point I'm trying to make. Human beings are generally nice to other human beings. The problem comes about once we start to label others as being in some sense "less than human". And, I believe, that is what happens when we stop thinking about human beings as individuals with their own specific, personal history and instead as "place holders" for ideas that we have about the world.
I recently got into one of those dumb back-and-forth arguments on Twitter about housing in Guelph. A couple local politicians were concerned about the tendency of Council to routinely turn down high-intensity housing proposals being put forward by developers. They believe that this makes all housing more expensive because it means that the supply is not being filled fast enough to meet demand. (Something I generally believe is behind our housing crisis.) I offered the opinion that a large part of the problem comes down to people who already own their own homes not being able to put themselves in the shoes of those who do not. I also wrote that a huge part of the problem is that most of the land in Guelph already filled exclusively with single-detached homes and no one living in those neighbourhoods wants to allow some of it reused to build apartments.
One person pushed back at me and said that people can still buy their own home if they want to---they just have to be willing to save up for a down payment and do without other luxuries. When I pointed out that my home has quadrupled in value over 25 years and almost no one's wages have gone up that much, he countered that interest rates are now lower. He also said that people can buy a place out of town and commute. He also said that they can just rent a house and save up for a bigger down payment.
At that point I realized that this fellow wasn't really talking about Guelph. He wasn't even talking about home ownership. That's because there really aren't any places within reasonable commuting distance where someone can buy a house that much cheaper than in Guelph. And beyond relatively nearby commuting distance, the cost of transportation begins to nullify the money saved purchasing a home. As for renting, that makes no sense as rents have gone up dramatically too, which means that the days of saving lots of cash by renting are over. (The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Guelph---if you can find one---is $1785.)
As for the idea that interest rates are much less nowadays, that misses the point that if you borrow through the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation loan insurance program, you have to have 5% down for anything under $500,000 and 10% over---. That means that for the average-priced Guelph home---$570,000 as of today---a person would have to have a down payment of $31,000. (Not going through CMHC is not really an option, as private mortgage insurance is really pricey.) Let's assume a mortgage rate of 2.8%, with the minimum down payment of $31,000. That means that over 25 years, the people buying that home would be paying about $2,500/month and end up paying out about $210,000 in interest. (I bet that interest money would go really nice in a retirement savings plan!)
The obvious question that this guy totally was missing was that even if someone could afford to buy a home by borrowing to the maximum, living on potatoes and boiled cabbage, and, commuting four hours a day to get to work---why the heck should we expect people to do this in the first place?But that wasn't the point. I think the fellow I was arguing with wasn't concerned about what is happening in Guelph or how miserable the housing crisis is making life for working class and poor people. He was arguing from an ideological perspective. By that I mean that subconsciously he didn't really care about people who can't afford to find a place to live, or, the impact that this has on their lives. And because of that, the facts that anyone could throw at him were totally irrelevant.
Instead, he was talking about some sort of moral absolute, some ideal that he feels is more important than whether or not someone ends up sleeping in their car, or, never amasses any savings over her lifetime to retire with some dignity. In his case, I suspect that it could have been some sort of vague combination of the ideas that a: the 'free market' should be making decisions about the city, not planners or Council; b: that any problems people face in their life end up being caused by their poor personal choices, not because of forces outside of their control; and, c: that everyone who works hard should be able to live in a single detached house with a back yard where they can have their neighbours over for barbeques and play catch with their children. (I'm not suggesting that these three ideas are consistent, coherent, or, compatible. Ideological reasoning isn't really reasoning at all---it's pure emotion and not much else.)
Making decisions based on the way you think the world should be---even if that contradicts the facts---is ideological thinking. And part of not paying any attention to the facts involves being indifferent to the people who get crushed by the world your ideology creates.
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I put out this Op Ed because people tell me that they like them and because I wouldn't be able to get a "deep dig" out otherwise this week. But if you like, why not subscribe? I'm happy with a buck a month and that's easy to do through Patreon or PayPal.
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Hand-in-glove with the problem of ideology is that of division of labour. By this I mean the separation of the decision-makers from the folks who get affected by those decisions. I've noticed this time and time again when I research some sort of atrocity: someone far away from the "front lines" makes a decision but they never are forced to look the person they are jerking around in the eye and explain exactly why it is that this is happening. Instead, some poor flunky has to be the guy who tells such and such that they are just "sh*t out of luck". Moreover, said flunky has been given very clear instructions that they are never, ever supposed to tell the person who is out of luck exactly why it has to be this way.
I've noticed that when you find some front-line person can't tell people the real reason why they are doing something there is a specific conversational "tick". That is, they ignore the specific question and then look away. This happens so often that I call it "The X-Files answer", because in that television show characters often used to do that in response to Scully and Mulder's uncomfortable questions. I've had supervisors at work, a lawyer for police services, members of the planning department, etc, all do this with me. As near as I can tell, it's what relatively decent people do when their job puts them in a position of having to do or say something that makes them feel really uncomfortable.
One really nasty part of this is that people routinely "internalize" the dictates of an institution to the point where no one has to tell them what to do. Instead, they can predict what the result of being honest or "doing the right thing", so they anticipate and avoid "career limiting behaviour". I remember reading an account of this by someone who'd been a journalist in the old Soviet Block. He said that no one had to actually censor what you wrote because you just knew that if you passed an invisible line you'd stop being promoted. After that was another line, beyond which you'd lose your job and never get another one. (The same sort of thing probably exists here but I've just never seen it in my life because I'm such a "wild man" that I never got onto the "first rung" of a career ladder in the first place.)
But why do people high up in the food chain make decisions that ruin other people's lives? In a lot of cases, I think it comes down the ability of mathematics to abstract decisions out of context. People in business talk about "the bottom line", but people rarely put much thought into what exactly that phrase means. I'd suggest that in many cases it is simply a way to allow decision-makers to avoid thinking about the human cost of a decision. When someone says "we have to get payroll costs under control" they are avoiding the fact that they are talking about impoverishing specific human beings. I saw this where I worked. "Getting payroll under control" really meant getting rid of decent paying, full-time jobs with benefits and converting them to lower-paid, precarious jobs without benefits.
I don't want to fall into the trap of looking at one specific person in a chain and then blaming them for all the problems. The managers who push the human cost downstream by using numbers-based management procedures are themselves facing pressure from governments or customers who themselves are reducing everything to a number. The former are concerned about "tax payer revolts" and the latter about consumers that are always "looking for a deal".
I had a conversation with a local store owner before the last provincial election. He said that all his friends and business connections were enthusiastic about voting for the Conservatives. I said that a Doug Ford government would be a disaster because his party routinely screws things up, runs up big deficits, etc. The point is that no matter how much Conservatives cut government services, the savings made are always less than the revenue they throw away through tax cuts for people who don't need them. I said that this is a syndrome that is very clear if you look at past provincial and federal governments. (The only explanation I can think for this is that conservative politicians are the most driven by ideological thinking---which means that they routinely ignore expert advice.) The fellow I was conversing with was gobsmacked to hear this. He thought for a while and said "I guess all these people hear is that their taxes are going to be cut---".
The politician's need to be seen as "a tax fighter" and someone who "fights waste" can twist and pervert even the best of intentions. Consider mental hospitals. In the 1970s activists were concerned that they had been so chronically under-funded that they had become nothing more than the warehouse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A report suggested that for the price of warehousing these people the government could put most of these people into the community through the creation of group homes. The government follow through? They shut down the hospitals, pocketed most of the money saved and "never got around" to building those group homes.
There are benefits through disability pensions and welfare---but the rules governing these programs are Byzantine to say the least. (Are all these regulations designed to keep people entitled to supportfor from getting it? Ask that question from someone if you want to get an "X-Files answer".) People with mental illness, for some reason, have a hard time navigating complex bureaucracies. The payouts aren't enough to live on anyway, which is why so many of the folks begging on the streets are obviously mentally ill. But because the folks who make that decision to screw these people over---tax payers, politicians, accountants, middle-management, etc---rarely have to look these people "in the eye", the whole merry cruelty machine keeps grinding up the folks who end up in it's clutches.
And now a comment by Monty Python's Flying Circus.
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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
I put out this Op Ed because people tell me that they like them and because I wouldn't be able to get a "deep dig" out otherwise this week. But if you like, why not subscribe? I'm happy with a buck a month and that's easy to do through Patreon or PayPal.
&&&&
Hand-in-glove with the problem of ideology is that of division of labour. By this I mean the separation of the decision-makers from the folks who get affected by those decisions. I've noticed this time and time again when I research some sort of atrocity: someone far away from the "front lines" makes a decision but they never are forced to look the person they are jerking around in the eye and explain exactly why it is that this is happening. Instead, some poor flunky has to be the guy who tells such and such that they are just "sh*t out of luck". Moreover, said flunky has been given very clear instructions that they are never, ever supposed to tell the person who is out of luck exactly why it has to be this way.
I've noticed that when you find some front-line person can't tell people the real reason why they are doing something there is a specific conversational "tick". That is, they ignore the specific question and then look away. This happens so often that I call it "The X-Files answer", because in that television show characters often used to do that in response to Scully and Mulder's uncomfortable questions. I've had supervisors at work, a lawyer for police services, members of the planning department, etc, all do this with me. As near as I can tell, it's what relatively decent people do when their job puts them in a position of having to do or say something that makes them feel really uncomfortable.
One really nasty part of this is that people routinely "internalize" the dictates of an institution to the point where no one has to tell them what to do. Instead, they can predict what the result of being honest or "doing the right thing", so they anticipate and avoid "career limiting behaviour". I remember reading an account of this by someone who'd been a journalist in the old Soviet Block. He said that no one had to actually censor what you wrote because you just knew that if you passed an invisible line you'd stop being promoted. After that was another line, beyond which you'd lose your job and never get another one. (The same sort of thing probably exists here but I've just never seen it in my life because I'm such a "wild man" that I never got onto the "first rung" of a career ladder in the first place.)
But why do people high up in the food chain make decisions that ruin other people's lives? In a lot of cases, I think it comes down the ability of mathematics to abstract decisions out of context. People in business talk about "the bottom line", but people rarely put much thought into what exactly that phrase means. I'd suggest that in many cases it is simply a way to allow decision-makers to avoid thinking about the human cost of a decision. When someone says "we have to get payroll costs under control" they are avoiding the fact that they are talking about impoverishing specific human beings. I saw this where I worked. "Getting payroll under control" really meant getting rid of decent paying, full-time jobs with benefits and converting them to lower-paid, precarious jobs without benefits.
I don't want to fall into the trap of looking at one specific person in a chain and then blaming them for all the problems. The managers who push the human cost downstream by using numbers-based management procedures are themselves facing pressure from governments or customers who themselves are reducing everything to a number. The former are concerned about "tax payer revolts" and the latter about consumers that are always "looking for a deal".
I had a conversation with a local store owner before the last provincial election. He said that all his friends and business connections were enthusiastic about voting for the Conservatives. I said that a Doug Ford government would be a disaster because his party routinely screws things up, runs up big deficits, etc. The point is that no matter how much Conservatives cut government services, the savings made are always less than the revenue they throw away through tax cuts for people who don't need them. I said that this is a syndrome that is very clear if you look at past provincial and federal governments. (The only explanation I can think for this is that conservative politicians are the most driven by ideological thinking---which means that they routinely ignore expert advice.) The fellow I was conversing with was gobsmacked to hear this. He thought for a while and said "I guess all these people hear is that their taxes are going to be cut---".
The politician's need to be seen as "a tax fighter" and someone who "fights waste" can twist and pervert even the best of intentions. Consider mental hospitals. In the 1970s activists were concerned that they had been so chronically under-funded that they had become nothing more than the warehouse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A report suggested that for the price of warehousing these people the government could put most of these people into the community through the creation of group homes. The government follow through? They shut down the hospitals, pocketed most of the money saved and "never got around" to building those group homes.
There are benefits through disability pensions and welfare---but the rules governing these programs are Byzantine to say the least. (Are all these regulations designed to keep people entitled to support
And now a comment by Monty Python's Flying Circus.
&&&&
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Furthermore, I say onto you the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
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