The Emperor's New Clothes

Everyone knows this Hans Christian Andersen parable.  A vain emperor is hoodwinked by conmen who pretend to create a new suit for him.  No one is willing to question the hoax for fear of appearing stupid or ignorant.  The emperor proudly models his new outfit to his subjects, who are similarly reluctant to appear unsophisticated or uncultured, or even worse, to provoke the wrath of their emperor.  Finally, a young child calls out: “The emperor has no clothes!”

There are multiple themes and interpretations associated with this story but I love this simple parable because it illustrates how conformity, a herd-instinct and a fear of appearing ignorant have such a powerful influence on our culture.  The examples are everywhere: movies, music, technology, fashion, sports.  

I have watched numerous movies that have been heralded by critics and thought to myself ‘how can this possibly be acclaimed’?  I have gazed at some pieces of modern art (granted, I am no connoisseur . . .) and smiled at the sheer absurdity of praising these works.  I have listened to rock, pop, rap and hip-hop songs that have childish lyrics and simplistic musical themes and marveled at the serious analyses that music critics will undertake as a means to provide a veneer of sophistication for them.

Technology and financial trends are also areas that attract lemming-like sycophants who desperately want to appear savvy and in-the-know about the latest innovations and breathlessly endorse them regardless of how truly revolutionary they may be.  The giddy hyperbole greeting the appearance of chatGPT and crypto are perfect examples.  

And perhaps the silliest of all these areas of conformity and slavish adherence to the popular is the fashion industry.  We jettison mounds of apparel each year and purchase brand new items to replace them because the newest trends have been paraded before us.

The irony is that the herd instinct in all of these areas becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in the most fundamental and powerful way of all – money!  Our conformity guarantees the financial success of these ventures. We flock to the stores, the theaters, the art shows, the concerts; we stream the videos and purchase the crypto and meme stocks; we devote hours to mind-numbing social media and video games.  

How many of them truly deserve the success they obtain?  Of course, there are many things in this world that are incredibly creative and worthy of our awe and praise.  And not everyone has the same taste or interests. But too often we allow ourselves to be herded into an echo chamber rather than make our own honest and careful evaluation of the world around us.  We should have the agency and the courage, when appropriate, to be the one who calls out ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’!

Nations and Culture

The USA has always been a nation of immigrants, where all are accepted with no single dominant culture or ethnicity (ha!) - or at least that’s what we like to tell ourselves.  But that fact has rarely been embraced by its citizens.  The early settlers of English ancestry were appalled at the surge of Irish immigration in the mid-eighteenth century.  And subsequent waves of immigrants were often met with disdain, prejudice or outright hostility.  Our current polarized view of Hispanic immigrants is not that dissimilar to our historical habit of resenting the latest arrivals.

I would be hard-pressed to describe an average American citizen. He or she could be any skin color, adhere to any religion or none at all, and have a wide variety of cultural traits.  There may be certain characteristics that visitors to our country would point out – our love of large vehicles, our obsessive commercialism, our customer-service orientation, our ambition and workaholism, our friendliness, our patriotic fervor and perhaps a few others.  But are those really cultural traits?  

 

European nations were more homogeneous than the USA in the past and seemed to have a common ethnicity, language, cuisine and culture.  Of course, there were regional differences – a native of Bavaria would never say that people from Berlin had the same culture! -  but the similarities seemed to outnumber the differences and there was a sense, whether exaggerated or not, of each nation having its own unique identity. 

 

But in the last 50 or 60 years this has changed.  The ethnic and cultural mix of most European nations has changed pretty significantly and is likely to change even more in coming years.  Some of that change is due to the flow of formerly-colonized people into the country – primarily in France and the UK, and to a lesser degree the Netherlands.  In other countries, such as Germany, the immigration is similar to the USA, sparked by war, famine, economic hardship and the search for opportunity in a more successful economy.

 

For nations that have long had relative homogeneity and a somewhat well-defined cultural identity, these changes are often unsettling and disorienting.  Is a person of recent Turkish descent who doesn’t drink beer or eat pork really a German, even if he or she has been born there?  What defines a German?  Will a person of recent Algerian or sub-Saharan African descent ever be accepted as a true Francais or Francaise?

 

What defines a nation or the people of a nation?  As globalism, climate change, conflict, economic uncertainty and other historical forces mix up the peoples of this world, will nations retain their so-called cultural identity (which of course was never really that well-defined anyway), or will they simply become collections of people with a common language and government?

 

When the French soccer team walks out onto the field and more than half the players are Black- Beur, (the expression Black-Blanck-Beur is used to describe the mixed nature of the French squad) part of France celebrates its cultural, racial and ethnic diversity, but another, and perhaps growing, part of France doesn’t feel comfortable at all with this phenomenon.  

 

Almost every European nation is struggling with this question.  And it is a question that the USA has struggled with for its entire existence.  Asia is still much more homogeneous, but is there any doubt that as it becomes more economically successful it will eventually experience a similar mixing? 

 

Will the world one day become one big melting pot with races, ethnicities, cultures all mixed up throughout?  And will all of the nations and peoples in this big melting pot simply be molded into the prevailing forms of social media-dictated culture?  Will there even be such a thing as a cultural identity, or will the Internet, Hollywood, and giant corporations herd us all into the same cultural corral?  

 

Perhaps the only remaining pure cultural outposts will be the most impoverished countries, where there is no profit in implanting the world culture.  And we will all plan bucket-list trips to visit them so as to experience these very rare and unique places, then retreat hastily to our Starbucks and Pizzerias and scroll through our Instagram reels to hear the latest world pop sensation.

 

Wow, that took a rather sudden dark turn, didn’t it?  The future may not be as much of a cultural desert as those last couple of paragraphs suggest, but the evolving nature of nations and associated peoples is accelerating and it is not at all clear where it all will lead.

Male/Female Friendship

I heard a French podcast recently that explored the nature of male/female friendship and why it so rarely occurs.  At first, I was skeptical, thinking that in this modern era the stereotype of men and women unable to be friends seemed outdated and could no longer be true.

 But then I thought about my life and the fact that I have no close female friends, and it didn’t seem quite so unlikely.  And as I thought more deeply about the challenges that male/female friendships must overcome I realized that it is not so strange that it is a somewhat rare occurrence.

 

Men and women seem more likely to forge strong platonic bonds before they get married or have long-term partners.  Developing a friendship with someone of the opposite sex after one is married requires a high level of trust in the partner, not to mention a measure of fidelity in the one embarking on the friendship.

 

After all, the elephant in the room with any male/female friendship, if both are heterosexual (or even bi-sexual!), is the lurking possibility of infatuation.  If one or both are physically attracted to the other, then a blossoming friendship can easily morph into a romantic attachment.  Both parties may be strong enough in their own partner relationships to resist any significant expression of that infatuation, but the tension may still be there.

 

It is easy to fall into stereotyping the predisposition of male/female relationships to become difficult in this fashion.  Perhaps it is hyperbole to presume that every male/female encounter has the potential to become an infatuation.  But aren’t we programmed to seek out romantic partners?  The fact that we may already have one may make us resolute in avoiding actual liaisons, but that does not mean that we are indifferent to the temptation or the desires that naturally occur.

 

If the early stages of a friendship are not accompanied by a physical attraction, then the friendship may be built on a purely platonic basis.  But the danger of a future attraction still lurks.  There are many examples of ‘friends’ becoming lovers over the course of time as a strong emotional or spiritual attraction slowly awakens the physical/chemical one.

 

Therefore, it is somewhat understandable that our culture looks askance at such seemingly innocent male/female activities as going out to dinner or meeting for lunch if one or both participants are married or in long-term relationships.  Jealousy, that ‘green-eyed monster’, is always ready to rear its head even in the most solid relationships.  And there is at least some justification for jealousy given the numerous instances of friendships becoming romantic and ending marriages.  

 

The other side of the male/female friendship coin is the diminished value of being ‘just a friend’ in the eyes of many men and women.  This is the infamous ‘friend zone’.  For many, being perceived as a friend, i.e. not a potential romantic partner, is tantamount to being relegated to a lower status.  It implies that you are not attractive enough to qualify for infatuation.  This derails many potential male/female friendships in their early stages. And it raises the question: In every male/female friendship is there always one person who is slightly or even hugely disappointed that the relationship is not romantic?

 

Perhaps it is not surprising that male/female friendships tend to languish after one is married and few new ones are initiated.  Most couples tend to focus on family and on a few friendships with other couples, where there seems to be less risk of temptation (though certainly not a guarantee!)

 

Once in a long-term partnership, most men and women only nurture the same sex friendships from their past, though even those friendships often stagnate due to the time demands of family and work.  Male/female friendships, if they continue at all, are typically conducted as trios rather than duos, with the spouse included and watchful for any hint of danger!

 

This is the rather strange nature of friendship relationships between men and women.  It matters not how old or how young one is, there is always the potential for fascination, leading to infatuation, leading to flirtation, leading to romance, leading to trouble.  Does this mean that we are destined to never have fulfilling male/female friendships?  Sadly, it seems so, and we are no doubt the poorer for it.

 

 

 

 

The Battle Over Education Materials

One of the most fraught areas of the culture wars is the debate about how children and teens should be taught, what materials are appropriate and how history should be presented.  Parents and politicians have accused educators of manipulating our youth and fear that they are being indoctrinated with sexually deviant ideas and other ‘woke’ ideology.

In the realm of sexuality and gender, there is great concern that introducing gay and transgender topics at an early age may influence vulnerable children to explore or embrace these behaviors when they would otherwise not have been inclined to do so.

 

The rationale for carefully exposing children to these concepts and topics is twofold: (1) to reassure children or teens who are gay or ‘gender fluid’, or who may be starting to question their sexuality or gender, that their questions, inclinations or feelings are legitimate and not something to be ashamed of.  And (2) to make all children aware of the range of sexuality and gender so that they will not be inclined to bully or ostracize the children or teens who are beginning to show signs of non-heteronormative behavior.

 

The big question is whether introducing these topics at an early age, with all good intentions, can actually change or influence one’s natural inclinations.  The argument is that children and teens are very impressionable and often insecure.  They are just beginning to establish their social and sexual identities and relationships.  Will they be motivated by these educational materials to experiment in ways that cause long term aberrations in their sexuality or concepts of gender?  Will they take steps that will be difficult or impossible to correct or change in the long term?

 

Recent Gallup polls on LGBTQ+ identification show a rising percentage of people who identify as other than purely heterosexual – from 3.5% in 2012 to 7.2% in 2022.  More striking is the difference between generations, with 19.7% of Gen Z and 11.2% of Gen X (Millennials) identifying as LGBTQ+ and only 3.2% in the older generations.  Whether the fairly dramatic increases across the generations are indications of more honest self-appraisals or of the effect of social awareness and peer, social media, or educational influence is of course very difficult to determine.  

 

If partisanship were less vicious, one could hope for a thoughtful dialog about what the best educational strategy would be for these topics.  It is naïve to think that children aren’t already confronting these issues in many other domains – social media, friends’ circles, movies and series, etc.  Wouldn’t it be wise to give a more measured and fact-based presentation in schools to provide perspective?

 

A similar battle is being fought over history.  Specifically, how to portray the history of the United States in confronting the less savory aspects of our history such as slavery, racism, treatment of Native people, imperialism, workers’ movements, immigration and other non-exceptional parts of the story.  Finding a balance that does not whitewash our nation’s history but also provides insight into the very admirable people and events that populate it is critical for creating citizens who will guide our nation into the future.

 

It is sad that we have such fierce cultural clashes on education.  I am confident that children and teens are capable of making sensible decisions and drawing appropriate conclusions from a full exposure to the complexity of human sexuality and world history.  It is far better for them to learn critical thinking through debate and discussion about wide-ranging subjects in the relative accuracy and neutrality of the classroom and the home than to have their only resource be the wild west of social media.

Project 2025 – A Simplistic Longing for a Mythical Past

I downloaded the PDF for Project 2025 recently and I read all of the Forward and much of the content.  I will try to characterize here what it is attempting to accomplish and what its strengths and weaknesses are.  In my reading, I sense an almost infantile temper tantrum over the natural evolution of human society and politico-economic systems.  It expresses a simplistic longing for an imagined prior society that never truly existed and that few today would want to recreate even if it had.

 

The first thing that struck me was its use of almost laughingly silly descriptions and condemnations of liberal trends or policies.  The first note from its director, Paul Dans, declares that ‘The Long March of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass’.  Either Paul Dans has no idea what Marxism really is or he is purposely using a description that makes no sense, simply as a way to toss red meat to his audience.

 

No one in any position of power in the left is espousing Marxism.  Indeed, US liberalism is quite a bit more conservative than the current governments of most European nations, who are seen as middle-of-the-road by their constituents.  And those citizens, by the way, seem generally quite a bit happier and more fulfilled than we are in most polls.  

 

The project goes on to describe an America in free fall where the ‘very moral foundations of our society are in peril’.  This type of hyperbole is disingenuous at best, but at worst can lead to dangerous consequences when taken at face value by Christian nationalists and right-wing extremists.

 

The first of four promises the project makes is to ‘restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children’.  It sees government as an evil that subverts the family and promotes fatherlessness.  It lays at its feet a litany of ills – poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts.  It characterizes the efforts of liberals to use government programs to improve society as some sort of malevolent, Godless force.  

 

Rational people can disagree over the reasons for the 50+ year intractable and complex nature of single parent households, drug addiction, homelessness, and crime, but the implication throughout this document is that this is a war between good and evil. This is not only simplistic and ignorant, but also by its religious and moral proclamations is an attempt to preclude further reasonable debate, compromise and progress on these important issues.

 

The second promise is to ‘dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people’.  This section laments the growth of government and implies some sort of corrupt agenda of the executive branch and other ‘liberal elites’.  It seeks to return to a simpler government that reflects the original intent of the founders, as if there is any more than a very tenuous relationship between that simple, isolated agricultural society and today’s incredibly complex, globally interwoven nation.  This quasi-religious fixation on the original intent of the constitution and the simple world that it encompassed, including the societal mores and prohibitions of that time period, is at the heart of this document. 

 

There is no doubt that any government can be bureaucratic and inefficient, and that continuous efforts must be made to eliminate waste and control its growth, but Project 2025’s fantasy of dismantling the so-called administrative state is a delusion that would exacerbate the already huge disparities in income and wealth and gut the protections against pollution, financial fraud, tax evasion, climate change, hunger, homelessness and other well-documented pitfalls of a complex, urban society.

 

The third promise is ‘defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats’.  This voices the paranoia that the extreme right has regarding international cooperation, treaties, NATO, climate agreements, globalization, engagement with China and any other attempts to join with the rest of the world in addressing common interests and preventing conflict.   Again, the bogeyman of ‘global elites’ is offered up as the root of all evil.  This type of isolationism has been an undercurrent of American political thought for two centuries, but it is particularly absurd in a world that is so obviously integrated and co-dependent.  

 

The 4^th and last promise, to ‘secure our God=given individual right to enjoy the blessings of liberty’, is a vague jumble of half-baked complaints that somehow Americans are not really free to enjoy the blessings of liberty because of elites that want to limit the free market and tell everyone what they should think.  Again, the tired labels of Marxism, socialism, fascism, wokism and other liberal epithets are invoked with scant concrete or analytical evidence of what the hell these horrors are inflicting on our brave, freedom-denied citizens.

 

The Reagan years are intoned repeatedly and reverently in the project as a brief golden age where the true American values revived our economy, brought back religion and morality and forced the Soviet Union to its knees.  It neglects to mention that the economic success of that era paled in comparison to that of the 90’s under Clinton (and the deficit increased dramatically under Reagan due to tax cuts) and that the societal ills that Project 2025 blames on liberalism grew worse – more drugs, more incarceration, more births to single mothers, more crime.  Moreover, Project 2025 might want to take note that the rest of the world, including our closest European allies, credit Gorbachev and other factors for the breakup of the Soviet Union rather than Reagan’s ‘tear down this wall’ and ‘evil empire’ approach.

 

And even Project 2025, despite its fervor to promote anti-globalism, cannot help but acknowledge the complexity of economic policy and it devotes some 50 pages to two diametrically opposed views on free trade (one for and one against).

 

One of the main techniques Project 2025 envisions for taking down the administrative state and accomplishing its goals is to use an executive order to change career civil servants into political appointees and replace much of the current so-called ‘deep state’.  The chaos and inefficiency that would follow this type of drastic maneuver is almost unimaginable.

Some of the most aggressive goals of the project are not surprising - the plan to completely outlaw abortion, including pharmaceutical products, and jail any who attempt to sidestep these laws, and a crusade against the so-called woke agenda - outlawing transgender therapy, pornography (whose definition one might ask) and arresting/labeling as sexual deviants librarians or educators who allow educational materials that address these subjects.

 

The champions of Project 2025 are living in an illusory world, longing for an America that never was what they imagine it was, and certainly could never be recreated.  They are particularly frightened by the changes in society that have occurred in the past 50 years – sexuality, birth control, abortion, gay and transgender rights, racial and ethnic mixing, feminism, decreases in churchgoing and religious affiliation, birthrate decline.  Rather than engage in healthy dialogue on how these changes can be managed in a way that limits any negative ramifications, the proponents of Project 2025 want to destroy their perceived adversaries and initiate changes that every poll of public opinion says would be deeply unpopular with the overall population.

 

Project 2025 zealots may see themselves in a holy war of good versus evil, but in reality, they are fighting a doomed rearguard action against human evolution.  It is certainly possible that Donald Trump could win the election and that they would get to implement some of their mean-spirited vendettas.  But in the end they will find themselves stymied and gnashing their teeth as the world, in all its messy complexity, moves onward. 

Perfectionism and Mastery (or the lack thereof)

I recently read an article extolling the virtues of mastery – becoming so accomplished at something that one is a recognized master.  And as so often happens after I read an article like this, I became a bit depressed.

 

Mastery and perfectionism are not exact synonyms, but they have elements in common I believe.  It is hard to completely master something without having somewhat of a perfectionist nature.  Mastery also requires a high level of persistence, as one must overcome frustration, boredom, long plateaus and other obstacles to achieve true mastery of something.

 

No one has ever described me as a perfectionist.  When I perform tasks, I generally try to get them done quickly and adequately.  Perfection is rarely if ever my target.  In fact, I will confess to occasionally completing things in a rather slipshod manner.  I have always been eager to check things off my list and get on to the next thing.  Quantity over quality! Sometimes, that leads to a less than ideal end result.

 

When it is clearly important that something be done carefully and with attention to detail, then I do my best to comply, but again, I will only go so far.

 

The fact is that I get bored easily.  I love to do interesting things, and I am especially enchanted by the first period of acquaintance with a new hobby or interest or task, but I lose interest if a long plateau arrives and I make little or no progress for an extended period of time.

 

I have developed a lot of interests and a lot of capabilities in my life.  I am fortunate (or perhaps not?) to have a wide variety of talents and I have spread my passion across many, many things. In my youth and early adulthood, I pursued sports with an almost manic energy.  I have been writing essays and some fiction for many years, including one novel.  I have picked up four different instruments – guitar, piano, banjo and mandolin –  with varying degrees of commitment.  I have written songs and I played in a band for a few years.  I have had periodic bouts of woodworking fervor.  I have studied and obtained reasonable proficiency in German and French, and am working on Spanish.  I have read books at a fairly decent clip my entire life – both fiction and non-fiction.

 

I am reasonably accomplished at most of the above but I would never claim to be a master of any of them. Was I remiss in not pursuing one or two to a truly advanced state?  I had my moments of trying.  I have worked on chords, riffs and scales in guitar and become a reasonably good guitar player, but have never been able to achieve a really high level.  It just doesn’t seem worth the effort and the tedium.

 

In my academic and professional life, I went through various phases of commitment, sometimes just relying on my native intelligence and capabilities to achieve things and other times really applying myself quite assiduously to the work.  But again, never really a true perfectionist.

 

I think the closest I ever came to true mastery was with soccer in my senior year of college. But that was a relatively short-term period of focus.

 

The old expression ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ is one I often use to describe myself, though in moments of self-flattery I am happy to embrace the term ‘renaissance man’.  I suppose I am a renaissance man in the sense of having a very wide range of interests and knowledge in both the sciences and the arts.  But of course many of the classical renaissance men were true masters in some things, so I guess that’s where the comparison might be a bit self-delusional!

 

Would I be more fulfilled if I were a true master of something?  I don’t think I would.  One is never fully self-satisfied if one is honest.  Self-doubt is a very human trait, and one always poses ‘what ifs’ at various times in one’s life.  Generally, I am at peace with the path I took and the ‘breadth versus depth’ nature of my passions.  But of course I cannot help but wonder what it would be like to be a true master.   Perhaps in the next life!

  

Of Cat Women and Population Decline

JD Vance’s much-ridiculed comment about cat women who have no children and the hysteria on the right about the decrease in child-bearing deserve some careful analysis.

First of all, Vance’s comment is a sad reflection on both his intellect and capacity for empathy. It is true in political life that one often exaggerates or makes a statement for dramatic effect.  But his cat women critique was such a cruelly contemptuous statement that it calls into question his character and integrity.

 

People are childless for so many reasons.  Many of those reasons are deeply personal or painful – infertility, miscarriages, failed IVF, lack of a suitable partner, domestic violence, weak financial status, health issues. Vance’s callous disregard for this large segment of childlessness is simply pathetic and contemptible.

 

There seem to be three general reasons why the right is so concerned with a declining birthrate.  The first is what is generally known as ‘replacement theory’.  Since it is the white population where birthrate decline is the fastest, conservatives fear that the US population will rapidly become non-white.  This is an unsettling thought for many both for political and cultural reasons.  However, it is also a lost cause, as there is no practical way to stop the growth of diverse racial and ethnic populations in our country.  As one of my coaches used to say about almost everything - "get used to it"! 

 

The second reason is a religious one.  Conservative Christians believe that God commanded us to be ‘fruitful and multiply’, and the choice to have fewer or no children is almost sinful in their worldview.  This ties into their general fear of the breakdown of the traditional family and their horror at what they see as its attendant modern expressions – premarital sex, abortion, gay relationships and marriage, gender issues, mixed families.  This is also a lost cause short of implementing Handmaid's Tale types of laws and forcing women to give up careers.

 

The third reason is economic.  A rapid decrease in population can have serious consequences on a nation’s economy.  There can be a mismatch between the number of older citizens who are drawing down social security and Medicare and younger workers who are funding these things. 

 

Additionally, the growth of GDP will slow with slowing population growth and could even potentially decline once the overall population actually begins to get smaller.  This could make paying off the national debt more difficult among other things, if this occurs too rapidly.

 

This third reason is actually a reasonable concern.  But the basic question is whether it is desirable for the USA, and indeed the world, to continue to increase its population.  If one believes, as I do, that ultimately the earth needs to have a smaller population that can thrive in harmony with the rest of nature, then the transition to that smaller population must be very slow and steady so as not to cause major economic disruptions.  

 

Ironically, the best way for the USA to manage this transition is to throttle immigration up and down to very slowly reduce the population.  But this is such a fraught political issue and the immigration surges brought on by world events and climate change make this type of fine tuning extremely challenging. 

 

In the end, people evolve, cultures evolve.  We will never again become like the farm families of yesteryear with 6-9 children in each household (not to mention the several that would die before they reached adulthood).  Public policy should not try to fight a rear-guard action against the modern cultural forces. Instead, we must acknowledge them, adapt to them and find ways to mitigate any negative effects through positive social and economic policies.