The Problem with Honesty

I was having a discussion a few days ago about a great number of subjects and the person I was speaking with brought up a question that initially had me in complete agreement. The question was:

‘Why don’t we accept that the races are different mentally? Most people are willing to accept that there are physical differences, such as black people’s general greater capacity at sports, so why can’t we accept that there are other differences? If we did, then we could do the tests and the experiments to find out who is better suited for what and where people could reach their fullest potential.’

What he said seemed sound. If no differences are found, well then the racists would finally be completely silenced. If some differences were found, however, then we could utilise those differences to do better overall.

When I thought about it some more, though, I realised the one great danger that lurked behind this open honesty and it was this: What if one group turned out to be intellectually weaker than another? What if tests reveal that one group, for example, is intellectually inferior to the others, or not as good at higher concept thinking?

Instead of crushing racism it would enflame it. Racism would explode, blossoming into a bloom of discrimination and violence. The other racial groups would consider themselves superior and especially the stupid and the dull minded (i.e. the truly inferior) would use this as an excuse to abuse people from a perceived inferior group. A gap of only a few points (it wouldn’t have to be big) would become an unbreachable chasm, with parents warning their children to stay away from ‘their lessers’.

No, even though the danger of one group being found out to be weaker than the others is relatively limited, if it were discovered it would open Pandora’s Box. I feel the danger would outweigh any potential gain from the differences we’d discover. Better to leave this sleeping dragon lie.

It isn't really that bad!

I’m not suggesting that everything about life is good. I just reject this premise that everything is going to shite. Yes, there are problems that need solving, yes there are things that need fixing and yes for some people life isn’t easy right now, but that has always been the case.

If life was so perfect at one point or another, why did people change it?

Obviously they believed that there was definite need for improvement then, as we do now.

Right now we’re in the middle of a revolution. Not of people, not of governments, not of ideology, but of economics and science. Revolutions shake up life and make a lot of people feel very uncomfortable and uncertain. They require a massive shift in mindsets and they drag everybody along with them, kicking and screaming, into the new paradigm. But when all is said and done, people always look back at revolutions and say ‘that must have been an amazing time to live’.

If you ask me, they are (will be?) right. This is an absolutely amazing time to live. The problem is that most of the people in the West are only seeing the downside. They can only see the increased insecurity, they risk and the change. You see, for most of them what the rest of the world is now getting they’ve already had for the most part for a long time. The jump doesn’t seem to be that big for them and they can’t believe that it’s causing such a big shake up.

They don’t understand that there are three billion people around this world who are being dragged hundreds of years into the future (our present) in the space of a few decades.

Those people that are pessimistic about this time and say that things are bad are rejecting, out of hand, the immense improvements going on in all these people’s lives. Don’t worry, though. The West has largely rejected most of these people out of hand for centuries, so it isn’t really that surprising that they continue to do so now.

Many of the problems arising right now are outmoded governmental and social models breaking apart as the world rides a tsunami which grows continuously stronger with each new earthquake of scientific and economic advancement.

That’s a good thing, though, as people rarely willingly change. You have to force them into a corner, where they really only have one way out. Then they will change and alter the status quo. Then they will make the sacrifices that future generations will thank them for.

You suggest life is so bad, I believe we’re in a new golden age. We’re just so busy being worried that we’re not taking the time to see the golden city rising all around us.

Is it really that bad?

I think we should define pessimism as an actual intellectual pastime, considering how many supposed educated people engage in it. ‘Things were better before’, ‘I remember when things were good’, ‘when I was a lad’ and so forth and so on. It has actually started to annoy me, off late. Are things really that bad? I don’t believe it, to be honest. Especially considering how one of the main constants of our existence as a species has been the doomsayers. They’ve always been there and they will always remain.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that there is a constant tendency to see the past through rose tinted glasses. The bad things are forgotten, while the good things become even better. Most people already do this in their own life time, oh, I remember when I was a child, life was so much better then. Was it? If you ask any child what they think, they generally can’t wait to grow up! They hate the disrespect, they hate not being listened to and they hate not having control over their lives. What we come to view as their innocence and freedom from responsibility in their lives, they see as a ball and chain.

In the same way we now idolize the fifties, sixties and seventies, yet it was those thirty years that spawned the biggest civic rebellion in the western world, in terms of the hippy movement. The hippy movement wasn’t just a rebellion against the war, it was a rebellion against the very norms and values that were held in such high esteem during those years.

I’m convinced that in a few decades from now we will look back at the 0s and say ‘now that was our golden age, I wish life were like it was then, during those years of unbridled expansion and unlimited possibilities’. People will forget restrictions of freedom, they will forget those that didn’t manage to get dragged along and they will forget the uncertainty everybody is now feeling about the future as we move from one system to another. Just like now we’re starting to forget about the racial riots, the cold war and inherent sexism that were all a part of those decades at the end of the 20^th century.

Yes, we’re in the middle of a new revolution. Yes, most of us have no idea about what we’ll be doing and where we’ll be even ten year from now and yes that is very stressful, but I think suggesting that we’re all doomed might be jumping the gun a bit. We seem to thrive when we think we’re at the brink of destruction. I think it’s only at this perceived brink that we can change our society for the better.

That’s why these doom sayers do it, they’re trying to change society, or maybe it’s better to say that they push society to renew itself. That’s a good thing and something that shouldn’t be discouraged. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t let yourself be fooled, most things now are better than they ever were before and getting better. Let’s keep changing, but lets also be proud of what we’ve already accomplished and be happy with where we are.

The Equality Illusion

We’ve got this thing in our modern day world, where we propose to all believe that all of us are equal. It’s one of the tenets on which a large chunk of the world’s political systems are based. Everybody is equal and therefore deserves an equal say in who rules them; everybody is also, according to western beliefs, equal before the law and, strangest of all, people say that everybody has an equal opportunity to make it big, if they work hard enough.

Yet, if we’re really honest with each other, we all know that we’re not. Men are different from women, Asians are different Africans, those born in developed nations are different from those born in developing and those born to rich parents are different from those born to poor. (for the record, some of these differences are genetic, while some are completely cultural and circumstantial)

Now some of these differences are only superficial, but some of these reasons are quite substantial. Men and women, for example, work in considerably different ways. Though it might not be PC to suggest it, their physiologies are substantially different. Where one gets a shot of testosterone, the other gets a shot of oestrogen, where one has been programmed to ‘go forth and procreate’, the other has been programmed to nurture. Of course, undoubtedly, many of these changes can be de or re programmed, but they are nonetheless there at the beginning.

To act as if these differences aren’t there would be to ignore the rather large elephant in the middle of the room.

Warning bells are probably now ringing in a great many minds. Across mental maps from America to Amsterdam and from Sydney to Singapore the words ‘Here there be dragons’ appear. I realise the perceived danger in what I suggest. If we start accepting some of the smaller differences then how long will it be before prejudice and discrimination rule our world?

The fear is that we A) won’t know where to stop (which is a slippery slope argument) and, for many people far more important, that B) it’s unethical to suggest that some people are just intrinsically ‘better’ than others. Because, of course, when you suggest people are not equal, then for most the automatic next step would be that one must then be better than the other.

The truth is, of course, that ‘better’ and ‘worse’ are concepts that only come about once you’ve first created a scale to measure with. Creating these scales seems, till now, to be a completely human past time, with no necessary grounding in reality.

So what does that mean? Only that that second step need not necessarily be taken and that there might be an alternate route that allows us to accept our differences, without embracing prejudice and discrimination.

I admit freely, that it might be a dangerous route, but I can’t help but think that the route we’ve tried so far hasn’t done a great job of eliminating the ‘isms’, to date. Why not try something new? Because, paradoxical though it seems to us, we’re all different - just like everybody else.

of Passion and Weakness

How ever much I might complain, I love being busy. I whinge and bitch, but in truth I enjoy every second of it. I love the exhaustion, I love the stress, I love the feeling that I’m actually doing something worthwhile.

No, my worst enemy is not doing too much, it is doing too little. The problem, I’m afraid, is that laziness often pushes me towards not doing enough. I’m quick to waste a few hours here, a bit of time there, even when I feel guilty as hell afterwards.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I’m getting over it. The laziness is in retreat. The computer games are a rare indulgence now, and often bore me within a few days. I’ve forced my sleep from the half day phenomenon from university down to about seven and a half, even on weekends, and I’ve thrown out the fantasy and trash fiction in favour of slightly sturdier reading (as you might have noticed). Still, there is a way to go.

I still remain far too reactive. How ever much I might expound the value of the proactive individual, I myself am not always active enough. I often mentally let things sit till just before their ‘expiry’ date (like my taxes), nor do I go out of my way to find work to keep me busy.

For example, I’ve been asked to send some work samples last Wednesday and I haven’t done it yet. True, this is the first moment I’ve actually had time to do anything of the sort, but instead of doing it I’m sitting here typing on my Blog.

I think of all my short comings – including my brusqueness, my pride, my judgemental nature, my inattention to details and my selfishness – my laziness is the one that holds me back the most. So that’s the one that I’m tackling. For those of you reading this, I’d appreciate it if you can give me a kick upside the ass, every so often, just to help me along. That’d be much appreciated.

Deluded

I think it’s about time that we all realise something very important, there is no such thing as pure thought. How ever much the philosophers of old might have praised it to the heavens as the only true tool of finding out how the world around us works, it doesn’t really exist, as such.

Pure thought is an impossibility for us, as we exist right now. The reason is quite simple, though we might think things can actually be separated in our brain, they can’t. Our emotions, desires, passions and thoughts are all interwoven into a tapestry that is us. Though we can sometimes rely more on one region, than another, it is impossible to rely upon one area alone.

You can see this back in the problems brain scanning teams have in defining the boundaries between one zone and another. The reason, in my opinion, is that there aren’t any. Yes, some areas seem to be more dedicated to one thing than another, but they meld into each other, just like almost everywhere else in nature.

Our desire to zone and create borders is just a tool that we use to define the world around us. With it we can react quickly enough to our changing surroundings to survive, without it we would constantly be stuck in a state of indecision, until finally we get eaten by one of those four legged things with fur, claws and big teeth that is generally carnivorous but sometimes does eat plants if there is no other choice.

Since the world was created through an unintelligent process called evolution, nobody ever sat down to categorise different things that were slowly coming about till after we came about.

In the same way our brain has evolved, with different zones being hijacked by different processes and then being taken over by something else, without anything ever being taken away. The flying spaghetti monster lives in our head (read the God Delusion if you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about).

We have to get past this notion that there are clearly defined zones in our head. It’s a former tool that has turned into a modern crutch. As long as we keep thinking that there is such a thing as pure emotion, pure thought and pure instinct we do not truly understand ourselves, or each other. Once we’ve accepted that they’re different dimensions of the same shape, then we can adapt our sciences and our philosophies to take this into account and we get tools better suited to what we are, rather than what we want to be.

Compared to what?

I’m currently reading the book Th!nk, by Michael R. LeGault. I’m not even 26 pages into it and I’m already getting annoyed with him. The premise of the book isn’t bad, it’s a rebuttal of the book ‘Blink’, which I discussed a couple of months ago. He believes that it’s terrible that people are relying too much on their intuition and not enough on their abilities of critical thought.

What really annoys me, though, is his negativity.

To take an example, he rips into modern media and accuses it of being low brow and stupid. As an example he names Reality TV and how it’s destroyed all the good and intelligent shows of the days of yore. Now, I admit freely that Reality TV isn’t the height of intelligent entertainment, but I’ve got to agree with the book ‘Everything Bad is Good for You’, by Steven Johnson, that most people that attack Reality TV are really comparing it to the wrong thing. Reality TV shouldn’t be compared to the serials of yore, no, instead it should be compared to the game shows of yore.

It isn’t serials that have died out at all, instead they are going as strong as ever and getting more and more complicated by the season (Deadwood, Heroes, Lost, Prison Break, etc.) with each one needing you to follow multiple stories and threads, as well as pay close attention, with innocent appearing moments from one episode suddenly coming back to haunt characters eight episodes later. Deep involved storylines certainly knock the socks off any of the older comparable series, such as Star Trek, Miami Vice or 21 Jump Street.

Game shoes, on the other hand, seem to be in drastic decline and that’s a good thing too. Though admittedly there were many that were intelligent enough, shows like ‘The Price is Right’ were certainly not great contributors to the average IQ. And among the Reality shows one can also argue there is an attempt to educate, with such shows as ‘the Amazing Race’ at least occasionally nods to local culture in the challenges that participants take part in.

There is still enough stupid garbage broadcasted worldwide, but people should really rethink this constant need to bash TV and its many relatives. In my opinion there is a real attempt among modern media outlets to not only play to the common denominator. 20 years ago, were there such things as Discovery, CNN, the BBC, National Geographic or the Science Channel? Did movies such as ‘Fahrenheit 911’ and ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ become international hits? I don’t think so.

So, I'll keep reading the book, but so far I'm not very impressed. For a book about critical thought, Mr. LeGault didn’t bother to think very critically.

What they deserve

Of the responses I’ve read to the entire salary debate in Singapore one argument keeps leaping to the forefront. ‘Why should Singaporean civil servants salary rise when so many people live off a salary one thousandth of what the ministers get?’

Let’s start with the simple answer, they deserve it.

Now for the long answer: Singapore is a capitalist society. The capitalist model has turned Singapore from a third world country into a first world country in 50 years. Not only is that an amazing feat, but anybody that would argue that it could have been achieved without capitalism is either dangerously idealistic or an idiot.

There have been few or no parallels in history to this small island model and other societies are now modelling themselves on Singapore, in order to achieve the same sort of growth. The Singaporean government didn’t model itself, however; instead they experimented, using economic concepts in practice that had only been theory up to that time. It worked beautifully.

No, I’m not arguing that they should therefore reap the benefits of what they’ve sown, though I certainly could, no my argument is a little more refined than that (I hope). Though the Singaporean government should certainly be proud of what they’ve achieved, this alone does not give them the right to ask the salaries they are asking.

The reason they are allowed to do that is because if Singapore is capitalist, than that capitalist model should be extended to the government. In other words, people should get paid according to what their services are worth to the population as a whole. A bloke working in a chicken rice stand in the heartlands gets paid $1,200 because he’s running a food stall and people believe his services are worth $1,200. Ministers should be paid $1.2 million because they are running an entire country and people believe (or should believe) that they deserve to be paid that much.

Under capitalism, you get people the most intelligent and educated people to do the most important work. In order to pull these intelligent and educated people away from other sectors you pay them a large amount of money.

The Singaporean government is in direct competition with the private sector. If they don’t pay an adequate salary they won’t attract candidates of an adequate skill level. Those people that they do draw deserve the salaries they are paid.

If you don’t agree with that, then you don’t agree with the entire Singapore model. That’s your choice, of course, but in that case you shouldn’t be attacking the Ministers for their salaries, but instead be attacking the model as a whole. You should try to turn Singapore socialist or, better yet, Marxist. Only then will people draw more average salaries.

Of course, if you do that there’s a good chance those salaries will be a great deal lower than they are now.

Pay them what they deserve, or you'll get what you deserve, namely a bad government.

of Bonuses and GDP

In the Singapore Government's continuing arguments about the salaries of civil servants the discussions have turned to a new system for bonuses. The suggested (implemented?) system for bonuses for civil servants is linked to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If the country’s GDP grows by more than 2% the civil servants get a several month bonus, the number of months is dependant on the amount the country’s GDP growth is above 2%. In this way, the argument goes, the government will be driven to make the country not just by some underlying moralistic urge, but also by a financial urge.

It’s not a bad idea, linking governmental officer’s pay to the country’s performance as a whole. The big question I have, just like many of the minsters in parliament, is whether it’s really a good idea to use GDP. Why are we so hung up on GDP? In most economic reviews and magazines they tout the GDP growth of countries and we all accept it blindly, but what is GDP really and is it really a good measure of how well we’re doing?

I mean, I know that GDP is the total value of goods and services produced by a nation and that it’s considered a very good measurement of how well the economy is doing. That’s not what I’m talking about, what I’m talking about is how valuable is it really to measure how much a country produces? Wouldn’t it be better to measure something else, like the average wages of the people in the economy, or the average happiness of individuals in that economy? Isn’t that a better measurement than how much extra the factories can produce?

For example, if a company automates its entire production line and becomes 20% more effective, while laying off half its staff, GDP goes up and the economy is supposedly better off, but the same can’t be said for those workers who’ve been laid off. No, I’m not touting protectionist or socialist principles here (I’m all for making production more efficient), what I’m questioning is this blind following of quantitative economic growth.

If civil servant’s find their salaries linked to GDP then they will obviously try their best to jack up GDP. In many ways this will be a good thing, but it will also have the effect that those same people will concentrate less on other things, such as social cohesion, wellbeing and satisfaction. For example, if a health minister has to choose between pumping money into researching drugs that boost productivity, or drugs that increase longevity, they will probably chose productivity. After all, this will boost GDP, while longer living people will probably have an adverse effect on the economy, as they will probably still retire around the same time.

What’s more, short term GDP boosting will be encouraged (a bonus this year is better than one next year) while long term GDP growth won’t be very interesting (as the civil servant might not even be working for the government then anymore). This will shift the focus in the wrong direction, away from the long term, towards the short term. We can see what effect that has in many countries around the world already (where ministers are afraid of getting voted out of office) and it’s not a good thing.

No I think this needs to be rethought. Normally I agree with the economic policies of the Singapore Government, but not today.

The Free Will Illusion 2: Responsibility

On the one hand you have God. God knows everything and is able to do everything. That is the point of omnipotence and omniscience. God created everything, including us, and then, the stories say, gave us free will. Now, there is a paradox in that. The concept of Free Will demands that we have the ability to make our own choices, but that’s impossible because God already knows exactly what those choices are going to be. What is more, he could have changed any of them simply by having things develop slightly differently right from the beginning. The moment he creates the initial starting conditions he knows exactly how everything will end, thereby undermining and concept of Free Will. This is called determinism and, within our logic system as it exists right now, is very difficult to refute.

On the other hand we have cold hard science, which won’t accept the existence of the soul unless it is proven. According to our current scientific models we are a series of chemical reactions and electronic impulses, which move and act according to what chemicals are predominant and which nerve endings are firing. Science also teaches us that any process, if all the variables are known, can be predicted. This means that according to science everything has also been predetermined, even if it remains beyond our ability to know what that path will be.

So, if you’re honest about it, both science and monotheistic religions do not accept the existence of Free Will. So what does that mean for us? The biggest problem with the absence of Free Will is that it means there is no longer any responsibility. It becomes very easy for anybody to say ‘yeah, but I didn’t have a choice, did I? Everything has already been decided.’

That’s a real pickle, because our entire law system as it exists right now is based on the principle of responsibility. If somebody isn’t responsible for his actions, well then they can’t be punished for them either. This is what the insanity defense is based on, as well as the reason that information acquired under coercion is not admissible in court (torture takes away choice from the tortured).

For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to figure out what to make of this. There is some vague notion running around in my head, at this point, about the Illusion of Free Will (i.e. the idea that we are incapable of predicting somebody’s choice, therefore they can be considered to have Free Will even when they don’t) being just as useful as actual Free Will (especially since it’s impossible for us to tell the difference), but the pieces haven’t quite clicked together yet. It still feels that if you take away Free Will then you take away responsibility.

Does anybody know any way out of this predicament?

Singapore Pays

I just heard on the BBC that there is a serious debate here in Singapore right now about a suggested hike of the salaries of senior civil servants, who are already some of the best paid civil servants in the world. The wage increase would be 25%, from 800k to one million dollars, though I’m not sure if that’s American or Singaporean.

Even if we ignore for the moment the fact that I’m obviously not keeping a very good eye on local news - seeing as I had to hear this bounced back from England - this still remains an interesting story. Apparently it has caused quite an uproar among Singaporeans, something that is quite out of the ordinary, in itself (though admittedly Singaporeans have become more outspoken over the last few years).

They feel that this is too much of a good thing and that the senior civil servants are taking advantage of the situation. Some complained that civil servants shouldn’t do it for the money, but for a desire to do good for the community, others felt that there was no correlation between salaries and corruption, the supposed reason for the hike.

Both admirable arguments I thought. Let’s look at the second one first. At lower levels the argument doesn’t hold true whatsoever of course, as even the best people will become corrupt if the only other choice is watching their families starve. I don’t think that was what the person bringing that argument forward meant, however, I think they were talking up at the higher levels. There the argument probably has more merit, as people quickly feel that they deserve what they are getting, if not more.

On the other hand, Singapore is a very clean city with a very low rate of corruption. That is quite admirable in Asia, where corruption is rampant. Part of the reason that this is the case is that they pay their civil servants well. There is less reason for these people to take bribes when they’ve already got a good income.

The first argument is, in my opinion, just fairy tale talk. Yes, in a perfect world the best people sacrifice themselves willingly for the good of everybody else, nobody spits on the street and we give half our meal to those less fortunate than ourselves willingly. This isn’t a perfect world though. The only way you get the best people is by paying them the best salary. This is also true for government.

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Government is the most important ‘company’ in a country and its leaders should therefore be paid accordingly. It’s ridiculous that middle managers often earn more than country presidents. The best and brightest, instead of dedicating themselves to their countries, instead dedicate themselves to helping some company make billions.

I’m all for the moral argument. People should dedicate themselves to doing good and helping their fellow man, I just happen to believe that morality can go hand in hand with a good paycheck.

The Free Will Conundrum

The more I read the less place there seems to be left over for Free Will. A couple of months ago (in December or January, if I remember correctly) The Economist ran a story about neuroscience and the impact of recent advances in neuroscience on law, philosophy and society as a whole.

One of the stories they talked about was of a very ordinary man who suddenly started displaying paedophilic tendencies. He was caught with a large amount of kiddie porn on his computer and was then prosecuted. While this was going on he went to the hospital and had a brain scan done. A large tumour was found in his head. When they cut it away, the paedophilic tendencies suddenly disappeared. Later, when he noticed that they were returning, they scanned again and, lo and behold, the tumour was growing again. He wasn’t prosecuted for his behaviour, seeing as he had no control over his actions.

Not a bad story, right? Well, not if you’re a judge who strongly believes that people should be held responsible for their actions, or a philosopher who strongly believes in the precepts of free will. When tumours can influence how we behave, then what does that mean for our law system? After all, our entire law model is built on the idea that a person is in control of his or her actions, that’s why we have the insanity defence; if people are insane and not in control of their actions, they are not considered criminals but instead as suffering from an illness.

Other stories talk about a family that has a genetic propensity for violence (making it very hard to hold them responsible for their behaviour), as well as numerous studies that are slowly revealing which substances in the brain are responsible for what types of behaviour (including substances which block out common sense in times of extreme excitement). We already have some legal and medical recourse for these things, such as ‘crimes of passion’ arguments, but are they really enough?

And what about Free Will itself? As we understand the brain more and more, what room will be left for our ability to choose? This becomes even more difficult when you no longer believe in the existence of a soul (like me), though I think I prefer my position to the unenviable one of later on finding a new place for the soul to reside, if – when we’ve fully mapped the brain – no connection is found between the brain and ‘something else’.

The problem is that when you see the brain as purely chemical, it becomes very hard to find any process for making choice. You see, all chemical processes can in theory be predicted. Yes, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle does eventually lead us down a street where we can no longer predict what is going to happen, but simply because we are incapable of predicting it doesn’t mean it isn’t still predictable.

Choice isn’t logical. Choice means that even when a set of circumstances is exactly the same (in every single way) twice over, a different outcome might still happen. That’s the principle of free will. Chemicals don’t work that way, if you have exactly the same circumstances a billion times over, you will get the exact same result a billion times over (yes, we can’t do it; but again, just because we can’t do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done).

Even with the utmost complexity of our brain, the underlying chemical reactions can in theory still be predicted and built upon to show us how the complex decision making processes in our brain will work. Not being able to make those predictions doesn’t mean we have Free Will, it just means we’ve got the Illusion of Free Will.

I really wonder if we have choice, or just the illusion of choice, much like very advanced computer AIs in computer games that seem to react intelligently, but in truth are just following a very complex program. And no, an extremely complex program that mimics free will in every way is still not the same, conceptually, as Free Will itself.

Though admittedly we might never be able to tell the difference.

The Value of Capitalism

There is an interesting trend taking place in many modern books (or maybe it’s been there all along, but I just haven’t noticed) about what is really wrong with the capitalist model and it goes a little something like this: capitalism is efficient, but it isn’t very compassionate.

I’ve come to realise that I’ve started falling into a trap. I’ve let the capitalist model prove its value mainly on the basis of capitalist values. I’ve argued that capitalism is the best because it brings the greatest economic gains, causes the greatest growth in personal wealth over the entire population and leads the largest productivity gains. Other systems, in comparison, haven’t done very favourably.

What I’ve come to believe is that economic growth, personal wealth and high productivity shouldn’t be goals in themselves. It’s a bit like that age old one about some people making money just for the sake of making money, with the original reasons for making money having long since fallen by the wayside.

I’m afraid many of us have fallen into the same trap with capitalism. When we started capitalism was all about generating a way out of absolute poverty towards some imagined better state. It was thought for a very long time that as wealth would increase, so would happiness. It has become clear, however, that this isn’t actually what is happening. Beyond that most basic jump from not being able to survive without help to getting by happiness doesn’t actually increase at all.

For the last fifty years in Japan they’ve been measuring the happiness of the population, as they went from an economy that had been smashed into little bits by the war to the powerhouse that they are today and though individual (and nation wide) wealth increased dramatically, happiness didn’t shift even a millimetre on any of the scales. Further studies have shown that those communities that are the happiest in the world are actually often ones that are the poorest.

Now, I’m not sure whether it is individual wealth, individual happiness, or something else entirely that we should be pursuing, but I do feel that it might be a good idea to explore the value of capitalism more closely, to make sure that we’re on the right path. This doesn’t mean I’m rejecting capitalism, mind you, it just means I’ll be taking a closer look at the tenets that underlie it.

If I seriously question the existence of God, then I should certainly do the same with things that are further down the scale, don’t you agree?

The Nature - Nurture Argument

I’ve almost finished the book ‘Social Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman. It took me a bleedin’ long time, actually. I’ve been hammering (shying?) away at it pretty much ever since I posted about the book Blink, on February 15^th. For the record, it didn’t take that long because the book isn’t good, it is. I was just occupied with other things.

Social Intelligence is a quite meaty book about a great deal of neurological research into our social side. It discusses a plethora of different social interactions, starting from the emotional/ intellectual divide and then diving into child rearing, racism, health care and many other areas.

I’m sure it will come up frequently enough in the next couple of weeks in my posts.

What I want to talk about today is an interesting section where Goleman discusses the nature – nurture argument. For those people unfamiliar with it, the nature – nurture argument is basically about what has shaped us, our genes or our surroundings (eg. our parents). Some people believe that almost everything is pre-decided by our genes, while others argue that a person is largely free to be shaped by his upbringing.

In Social Intelligence Goleman says that it’s actually a third option, that hadn’t really been considered by the general public, namely that genes predict the path our lives will take, but our surroundings influence which genes will be active and which will be dormant.

When we interact with each other we secrete huge amounts of substances, from serotonin when we’re happy, to testosterone when we’re angry and cortisol when we’re stressed or afraid. Each of these has a huge impact on which genes are active and how our body develops. So our genes, therefore, influence our surroundings (by influencing us) and our surroundings in turn influence us. Arguing about which is more important and more significant is like arguing whether hardware or software is the most important part of a computer.

With this argument sorted out we can now move onto more important things, like how to use both sides of this argument to make life better for all of us.