The insecure evangelical

As I was reading yet another article on the single vs. married life style of young adults, I was reminded that a non-insignificant portion of the drive to evangelize stems from insecurity. Indeed, one reason why proselytizers are so fanatical in their chosen course is because they doubt the choices they have made in their own lives. The more people they can convince/browbeat/persuade to follow the same course and to make the same choices, the more acceptable their own choice becomes. There are few faiths more fervent, more evangelical, and more fragile than the faith of a new convert.

Religion is the most obvious example, but it is certainly not the only. The reason I linked the above article is that it highlights so much of the tension between the singles vs. the marrieds, and how each side keeps looking across the fence to see the color of the grass. The gazer will inevitably sniff at the inferior quality on the other side of the grass, inevitably enough they lose the authority to sniff persuasively. The central mentality is that the more people you can convince to follow the same path, likely for the same reasons you did, the safer your choice. Just because you create the bandwagon for everyone to hop on to doesn't make it any less of a bandwagon; the fallacy is the same whether you help others on as when you hop on yourself.

Mea culpa. I've noticed that as I approached my choice to enlist, I become much more vocal about the merits of patriotism and service. I think I've made the right choice, and I stand by it, but I am all too away of the risks, both physically and emotionally, my choice entails. My choices are my own, but when other people make the same choice for the same reasons, it's easier to feel it is a safer decision.

To be sure, some bandwagons, like electricity or showering, are good to be on. But just because someone makes a logical, cogent argument for doing something doesn't mean they are secure in their choices. So my caution is simply thus: the harder someone tries to convince you of something, their show is probably more for their own sake than for yours. If the truth really will set you free, sussurration will be just as moving as shouts from the rooftops. So evaluate the argument, but don't forget to evaluate the arguer.

Obesity and the middle class as environmental hazards

So, as a totally random connection, it seems like being obese is better for tax-payers dollars and that the burgeoning middle classes of the third world will ruin the environment. Cheers eh?

Interestingly enough, it appears that if we wanted to target the most expensive group to eliminate their costs of health care as burdens on taxpayers, we should go after octogenarians, not the fat. Despite the number of studies discussing how expensive state-subsidized health care and prevention of obesity is to the tax-payer, it emerges the elderly consume a far greater proportion of the tax pie. In fact, despite the elevated costs of direct treatment associated with obesity, the decrease in life-span ends up saving money (although I don't think the years of unearned wages, i.e. tax revenue, is factored in). It's a good day when we can argue that letting people die of heart failure is their patriotic duty to help balance the budget and cut profligate spending, no?

Likewise, the per capita costs of sustaining a middle class on standards of living on par with the US and Europe would obliterate the environment. These effects extend beyond just the direct exhaust of cars (although the Tata's "People Car" will do a great job in making it cheaper and easier for everyone to pollute... isn't development great?) to include food production or oil. Even if we accept their exists sufficient carrying capacity of the globe to sustain the current population, I seriously doubt (although I don't have the stats to back this up) that the globe has a carrying capacity to sustain the current population at least middle class standards. Issues like the price of foodstuffs and potable water is already causing social upheavals and violent conflict.

So the confluence between these two articles is that in two actions more or less regarded as indisputably good, i.e. living healthier and living better quality lives, are bad for you, your friends, and society. Living longer and healthier is more expensive than living lives that are short, brutish and ugly.

But to give this post a point more interesting than just being cavalier, we need to seriously question assumptions, both about living longer and about living better. If you push your life expectancy back from 75 to 95 by eating better and exercising more and spend the last 10 years going in and out of hospitals fighting cancer, diabetes, and mental degeneration, does your quality of life improve and do you account for the tab you ask your friends, family and society to pick up on your behalf? Then again, maybe we just need to learn that paying the $200 billion to $1 trillion annually to help people live healthier lives might just be the cost of doing business in a modern world.

Whereas if the goal of development is really to put a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot, then all of us, rich and poor, might need to learn how to make do with a smaller car and a scrawnier chicken... hopefully a car that'll get us to work and a chicken sufficiently healthy to feed us; divided too many ways, no one "wins". And if national and global economic inequality is causing such social angst and conflict, and if the inequality is not reconcilable by giving everyone a seat at the adult's table, then maybe the price of international peace and stability between the haves and have-nots is sticking everyone at the kiddie's table. And before you start figuring out how fewer material possessions that might entail, remember the price could very well include things like health care and years of life expectancy. You might be able to give up the new H3, but how attached are you to your 80th birthday?

CNN: News Porn

I've been meaning to write about how CNN (and CNN.com especially) for a while, but this story about a kitten taken surfing pushed my last button. It's a nice and benign enough story in it's own right, and who doesn't love kittens? Especially wet and clearly unhappy kittens taken on a weird stunt that was oddly filmed on high quality equipment (whether commercial or public, I don't know, but this clearly wasn't some guy with his cell phone filming this). But when we just had giant primaries (covered above), a war in Iraq (no stories), at least three prominent African disintegrations (no stories), Pakistan spiraling dangerously (nothing), global warming (silence), more comments from the director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA about waterboarding (*crickets*) and CNN wants to talk to us about Heath Ledger (who apparently was consuming a personal pharmacy) and surfing cats, there is no better way to frame CNN than as news porn. The most trusted name is journalism has become a tabloid. They even have articles on why bad kissers don't get action (shocker!).

For years now, it's been my personal metric that at any given time, CNN.com will have around 10 prominent stories as their headline links. Of these links, 3-5 will be entertainment related or titillating. At time of writing: Ledger's autopsy; Holloway's dad being pissed about a disrespectful laugh (I consider myself a news junky and I had to google this one); an article about Conan, Stewart and Colbert's antics during the writer's strike; a defendant hitting their lawyer in court; and the stupid surfing cat. Any death is tragic, but this type of coverage from an ostensibly serious "paper" of record is just shameful.

But, in their defense, they're only responding to what people click on and read. Looking at the lists of "most read" articles on CNN or Newsweek (#1: 6 Gym Health Hazards) or Time and you'll almost always see 2-3 of the top 5 places taken by the same ilk. Funny/amusing stories make reading the paper fun, rather than just reading about tragedy after tragedy, but they need to be justified with thoughtful, legitimate journalism if one wants to treated more seriously than gossip rags or blogs. The people are saying what they want, and one can't really fault the media for giving them what they want. But one can fault them for pandering, and for not striving to elevate the public discourse. UNHAPPY SURFING CATS ARE NOT NEWS!!! ahem.