The U.S. working class and its role in electing Trump

Joan C. Williams wrote a very informative and cool-headed piece in The Harvard Business Review on what the Democratic Party's strategy got wrong about working class U.S. citizens, and how much this influenced the votes of masses of people.

Williams summarizes several ways in which working class people are misrepresented by Democrats and mainstream media. She emphasizes, that working class people in the U.S. are usually solid middle class, nevertheless are usually presented as poor. Also, often when Democrats focused on policies benefiting the poor, they didn't take into account that these policies would not affect in any beneficial way the middle classes, including working class people. These are surely important and significant points to make, and Williams makes them with admirable clarity.

In this entry I want to discuss two issues she mentions:
- The fact that some working class voters turned away from the Democrats because they detest professionals, teachers, and researchers, and the rhetoric of Democrats was too intellectual.
- That 'manly dignity', male pride, is important to several working class voters.

Williams doesn't say that either of these two things is good. She just highlights them as something that a party that wants to win the elections cannot forget. This is very sound pragmatic advice.

My main issue is the following: while there certainly are many neglected aspects of working class existence these days in the U.S. which should have been addressed by the Democrats, the two attitudes highlighted by Williams and mentioned before are very hard to accept for someone leaning towards enlightenment ideals. Endorsing that people can improve themselves and their society underlies the drive for continuous social improvement. And hence it is very hard to campaign in a way that caters to voters who oppose academics, intellectuals, and white collar workers. Of course this doesn't mean that such voters are bad people. But it does mean that their views of how the world works are very one-sided: while recognizing the importance of skills, experience and expertise in some fields, they play down the importance and legitimacy of these aspects in other fields.

This is what the Republican party, the Christian church, and Trump have both relied on in making many perfectly obvious questions seem controversial:
There is no serious debate regarding whether evolution is the process through which humans came to be what they are.
There is no serious evidence showing that allowing equal pay and equal rights regardless of gender and race has any bad implications for society.
There is no serious debate regarding climate change. It is happening and it will be devastating.
Still, Trump and others have managed to present these issues as if they would still be open questions in the sense, that they haven't been substantially argued for and supported by evidence. They have.
What Trump and others relied on in undermining such perfectly legitimate expert consensus was in part the fact that a number of voters don't have basic science and cultural literacy, they don't understand what researchers, scientists, managers, etc. are doing, and they are suspicious or even antagonistic towards them.

These attitudes surely need to be changed. What to do? Since it seems that simple explanation, fun talks, public intellectuals, politicians who campaign to get the word out are not enough, Williams might actually be right: maybe we should rely on the man-pride of those voters who couldn't get on board with the Democrats because they felt neglected. It might be that if they think they are being cared for, they matter, and they are on the winning team, they would be more open to think in progressive ways.
Still, their resistance is worrying, and it is sad that this is what we would need to rely on. In the long run one can only hope that most people come to understand that in itself neither their social position, nor their gender, or how important they themselves feel that their problems are, can justify ignorance. This in turn will hopefully lead to a more informed and critical acceptance to science and society related issues. Such a stance would enable to endorse the views of proper experts and to neglect fakes. The general idea that the world is too complex now for us to look to one politicians who thinks he himself is the source of authority on every question needs to seep through.

Of course such a change would be much better facilitated by conversations than by talking down. On the other hand it is hard to have the patience to do this all the time, just to save the egos of people who are unwilling to adapt, but whom we do want the best for, and also need them on our team.

If interested in more depth in the connection between work, traditional gender roles, and working class life in affluent Western countries, Williams also has a number of publications, and her recent books (2012 and 2014) discuss these issues. I'm sure many readers would find them interesting, and they can provide plenty of insight.

On voting and basic knowledge and understanding

"[J]ust having the right to vote is meaningless if a citizen is disenfranchised by illiteracy or semi-literacy. Illiterate and semi-literate Americans are condemned not only to poverty, but also to the powerlessness of incomprehension. Knowing that the do not understand the issues, and feeling prey to manipulative oversimplifications, they do not trust the system of which they are supposed to be the masters. They do not feel themselves to be active participants in our republic, and they often do not turn out to vote. the civic importance of cultural literacy lies in the fact that true enfranchisement depends upon knowledge, knowledge upon literacy, and literacy upon cultural literary. To be truly literate, citizens must be able to grasp the meaning of any piece of writing addressed to the general."

E. D. Hirsch What Every American Needs to Know: Cultural Literacy, p. 12.

The U.S. is a huge country, with a great population, lots of different school providers and standards, and myriads of beliefs and views. However one thing that became obvious lately - as it does during every election campaign - was that there are plenty of voters who are not really able to engage with complex information. Since they cannot do that they cannot form a realistic idea of what the U.S.'s position is like in the world, nor of what is going on in their own country. This led to many fruitless and silly debates. (This isn't just an issue for Trump supporters, although it is a pronounced one for many Trump supporters.)

What Hirsch proposed and argued for in part of his work, was that education should equip people both with the skills and some particular basics of how to handle and deal with knowledge about their nation. That this would be quite useful is now obvious. There is a danger of course that such proposals can be hijacked by the state to push its own agenda and teach students an ideology or a nationalist vision which fosters loyalty even if the governments is doing evil. However, Hirsch's recommendations are fairly particular and interesting, and an updated core knowledge elements might be a welcome and useful tool against technocracy and cultural illiteracy.

Here you can have a look at Hirsch's bio at the site of the Core Knowledge Foundation he set up.

 And you can go on reading a bit about cultural literacy and some connected debates in The Atlantic and The Guardian.

How to alleviate the career-parental leave tension, and keep your workforce up-to-date: A practical suggestion

I want to offer a practical solution to two interrelated problems that are usually treated separately. One concerns how to keep one's skills from becoming out-of-date while on parental leave, the other is how to support younger people who would like to have children early but see this as an obstacle to attaining their goals in education or at work.

Our traditional view of schooling is that one finishes the secondary stage and then either gets a job or goes into higher education. In higher ed nowadays it is increasingly common that learners obtain one or two master's degrees, and many even a PhD or other professional qualifications. I think all in all this is a good trend: it is linked to higher GDP levels, higher satisfaction levels of learners and workers, more skilled labour force on the job market, and in general a more educated society.
This phenomena of longer learning time is linked to the facts that people start working and settle later, and as a consequence also have children later. That people start working later is not in itself a problem, but it is surely true that people start contributing to their countries' GDP later, thus affecting the viability of the social, education, healthcare, pension and defense systems as well.
Late childbirth has two obvious effects: couples who have kids later are more likely to have fewer kids, and since grandparents and other relatives might be in their seventies or eighties, they can help less both with child-raising, financial support, and in general they require more support themselves too. Not to mention the fact that they have less time to spend with their grandchildren, which might be a significant emotional loss to the whole family. (I'm not saying that people used to be able to spend more time with their grandchildren in earlier times - that could be false since not only has the average age of having kids gone up in the countries with the largest per capita income, but also the average life expectancy is much higher. But there probably isn't a proportionate growth of time one gets to spend with one's grandchildren.) Of course I'm not arguing that we should all have kids early. But there are people who would like to but feel that they cannot. My suggestions are supposed to be helpful for them.

Another problem that the phenomenon of starting to work later is linked to is that people who want to have a career and start working in the second half of their twenties or even in their early thirties will be even less likely to have kids soon. Spending 1-3 years out of work seems to be a big loss for many individuals as well as many employers. Woman are especially often - implicitly - threatened not to have kids if they want to advance on the career ladder.

In light of this, the suggestion I want to make could help with three issues:
1) They could enable people to keep their skills and even acquire new skills while at home with their young children,
2) Being able to keep their skills up to date could in turn make it easier for them to choose to go on parental leave, as well as making this a more attractive possibility for employers, and
3) This could in turn lead to people being more likely to go into a job after a BA/BSc and pursue advanced studies at later stages, thus starting to contribute to production sooner and spending time later to upgrade their skills and abilities.

The suggestion is basically this:
Many universities are offering now distance learning options. There are excellent websites where one can enroll into academic courses for free, or enroll for a small fee and if completing all assessment successfully get a certificate testifying that one has acquired credits in that universities system for the course after having been  assessed by uni stuff.
Most such courses not only require people to listen to presentations and talks, but also to solve exercises and tasks, sometimes even to work in groups, and they almost always provide forums to talk with fellow learners and teachers.
Thus, such an experience has many benefits:
- It can help learners to acquire new skills, or keep their knowledge up-to-date,
- It can help parents who spend an increased amount of time at home alone without much adult company by enabling to be part of a community working towards the same goal, to make friends, and to experience something different from work,
- It can offer benefits to employers: parents on parental leave might get new skills and abilities, in any field - one might think of genetics, statistics, programming, computer literacy, marketing related knowledge, and so on,
- It can enable younger people who went into a job after completing their secondary education or their undergraduate education to pursue further studies that they are interested in, to keep their CV more competitive, and to recharge after a period in work without losing the opportunity to advance their career further,
and
- It can benefit the state by helping couples to have children at an age when they want to and see it fit for themselves, and they can at the same time become more skilled future employees.

Such programmes could be fostered by the state and employers. Higher education institutions (and probably also secondary education institutions in cases where needed) would be more than happy to offer such courses. Distance learning could be tailored to the time and needs of stay-home parents. In fact, one of the big advantages of distance learning is that many courses don't actually require that the learner always does things at set times. Videos uploaded to secured university sites can be viewed and reviewed at any time, exercises and tasks can be practiced and completed whenever most convenient, and so on.
Promoting such programmes could in the long run also be a tool for gender equality: parents - whether male or female - wouldn't have to worry that much about their career and could undertake parenting in any way that they can agree on. Mixed stay-at-home programmes could be encouraged, where for a certain amount of time one parent is at home and for another amount of time the other parent.

Of course the legal framework would be very important: such programmes should not become a tool for systematically requiring women to stay at home, nor be a tool by employers to force parents at home with their small children and newborn  babies to put in long hours into acquiring complex new skills and mastering large materials. This should be an opportunity, not a requirement.

In financial terms, the state could support families who want to participate in this programme in buying computers and enrolling into online courses, as well as offering initiatives and funds to universities that participate in such schemes.


A brief disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this topic, so, if my suggestions are outdated or very obviously flawed please let me know in the comments or in an email.

Coetzee on Humanities and Universities

The link is here, it makes a good read during lunch break:

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-11-01-universities-head-for-extinction/

I agree with Coetzee very strongly that a certain amount of universities should be financed in keeping up decent humanities units. The question how many and how many students should be supported by the state to study there is a more difficult question.

What I've witnessed so far is that most Humanities disciplines are too difficult for a great many of the students attending, who then tend to blame their education instead of realising that they are not cut out for it. Of course I'm not saying that failure is only their fault. It might be the result of many components: engaging in these disciplines is hard, one needs a good background in culture and history, one needs to be motivated and willing to work hard (you cannot pick literature to learn a bit about good books, or German to learn the language). At the same time many of these diplomas are not preparing you for a specific job, so you will have to gather other skills after or besides your education if you want to land a job not related to your education.

Also, due to terrible financing schemes on the part of the government many uni's needed to accept huge numbers of students to finance their departments. This is very destructive for humanities. Instead of valuing a good academic stuff tutoring few quality students, and doing important work on culture, social issues, education, and cooperating with local communities and government on such issues, the teachers have to conduct mass classes to people who don't really know why they are there and often do not read the compulsory texts.

All in all, I would opt for retaining larger research and public engagement oriented humanities units, with less students.

Your goals in life and your diploma

For a long time I bought into the currently dominant story with which governments are enforcing change in university finances. That is, I subscribed to the view that the universities should be used 1) to train people who can contribute to GDP, or 2) to train people who can do research on generally important topics, such as engineering, water cleaning, heart and lung diseases, etc.

I think this was a mistake and it was caused by a very one-sided view of things. Here is the stuff left out: the most often targeted courses and programmes for cuts are Humanities and Arts programmes. Critiques say that people finishing with such diplomas very often don't get jobs in the field in which they were trained. Thus, they spend years in the uni system, which is costly to the government, even if people pay high tuition fees.

But here is the deal. If a person is interested in a field, that means that he or she thinks the field important. If then that person studies the field she probably enjoys what she does. Even if she does not get a job in that field, a proper training might very well be necessary for properly enjoying works in that field (this is definitely true of literature, painting, music, but probably also of many other things). At the same time, many fields in the Humanities (teaching, pedagogy, linguistics) have lots of practical applications and there is need for well trained people in these fields.

Now, even if the people who received such training didn't get a job with it, it is very possible that 1) they acquired useful skills, and 2) that they can practice something that they like. Since money is not the only and most important thing for many of us, one can live a nice life with an average job, if one can at the same time do things in one's free time which one likes or loves. If the education has enabled one to do this in a fulfilling manner then it has bettered that person's life, and thereby also of those around her.

I think the main mistake that can lead us to forget that this might be a worthy goal of education in itself is that often in the media such people are represented as somehow having failed - they went to uni but they don't earn the big bucks. But many of us know since a long time: that's not necessarily what one wants to study for.

What is natural for children?

A friend of mine voiced the opinion that it is important for kids to spend much time in nature. I always viewed claims aspiring to tell us that we should do something 'because it is natural', 'because that's how we did it always', etc., with suspicion. And not without any reason.

You often hear claims like: 'we should eat food X because it is natural food for us and our ancestors ate it always, and they never had cancer', or that 'in my time kids used to play outside a lot and ... [insert your favorite beneficial outcome for your life]'. There are three problems with such claims.

First think about it this way: evolution is a slow process. Most of the features of our body have evolved a long-long time ago (tens of thousands of years ago) and have changed little. Our basic structure is the same, our basic bodily functions (blood circulation, digestion, hormone transactions, etc.) are the same. And our ancestors have lived a very different life from ours. So, our body is basically not really 'made' for the sort of lives most people in second and first world countries live.

Nevertheless we live much-much longer and healthier lives than did our ancestors. Thanks to the development of moral skills and cultures we aren't killed by other humans at first sight, stronger individuals cannot just simply take what is ours or kill off our kids, males don't regularly rape females, we don't have to use physical violence to get our food, and so on. And thanks to medicine, fertilization, crops growing, vaccines and a whole lot of other inventions we are not subjects to mass early childhood death, to 30-50 years of average lifespan and so on. So, our inbuilt mechanisms aren't necessarily a good guide to how we should live.

Thanks to our basic architecture we are pretty adaptive and can lead lives substantially different from the ones our bodies evolved to live. And thanks to the lucky cultural basics we developed we did not became a fiercely competitive but a very cooperative race. Furthermore, we can now use these bodies in much-much more efficient ways than 'nature told us to', and have far greater knowledge how to gain pleasure, fight inequality, fear, depression, death and pain, than any other animal, which lives a natural life.

Second, The 'keep to the well trodden path' style of arguments deserve no credit either. What was working as a good rule of thumb ten, twenty, or fifty years ago has not much to do with what will work nowadays. Don't misunderstand me: it might work. There are social settings and economic areas where the structure remained largely unchanged since long time. Also, these rules might work due to luck. But they surely aren't rules you should accept because they worked earlier, or someone found them useful. 

This does not necessarily apply to rules which pertain to personal matters, such as family or relationship matters. Since in these things it is extremely hard to get right what is beneficial both for individuals in terms of subjective feelings of happiness, security, etc., and what is good for society, plus these categories are - as we have them nowadays - almost purely social constructions, it is very much possible that a good constellation is one that we hit on earlier.

Third, what about the personal experience based views, for example when your friends say that kids should definitely start doing a part time job when they are 15, or when they want their kids to learn music, since it was such an important experience in their lives? There are two problems with these kinds of ideas: one is, that they are based on subjective thoughts formed here and now. But these thoughts do not reveal anything about the real processes that led up to the stage one is in. It does not underpin a relation between one's satisfaction with certain aspects of one's own life and the earlier experience. Also, it does not take into account all the people who had the same experience, but failed in life in all sorts of way - they ended up lonely and suffering from it, jobless, homeless, and so on.

The other problem with these sorts of views - held by everyone - is that they are very likely to be affected by cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological mechanism at work in all of us. It ensures that we have a picture of ourselves and our lives that is easy to live with. For this purpose it very often 'cheats us'. For example, if we are wrong about a factual question and someone points this out, and later we get to know that we were wrong, we like to look for explanations that suggest that the question is still open. There was a problem with the proof, with the evidence. We didn't understand the question in the same way. And so on. Everyone is good at giving excuses.

The same happens in cases of relying on personal experiences of what was and what wasn't useful for one. Most people would like to see their relatives, their partners and themselves in favorable light. So, they like to glorify and justify their methods and choices in raising them, living with them. Therefore we often adopt methods, or justify adopting method that have nothing to speak for them. Except that adopting them makes us feel better about our own lives.

Also, in many cases it might be true that it is useful to spend a lot of time outside. Kids might have hardwired, innate developmental segments which only activate or work really effectively if they receive particular stimuli. But whether this is so or not can only be decided by neurology, psychology and education studies. It is not something you should take guesses at, nor should you take advice from non-professionals.

Should we abandon all such rules of thumb? All such 'traditional' advice? I think not. The problem is, that we do not have anything better to rely on as long as we don't have sufficient relevant statistical data. Professionals in healthcare, education studies, psychology, sociology and other fields are working actively to gather such data. You can always find good books, correct websites with the most up-to-date positions, gathered and interpreted by professionals. 

If possible, do not rely on journals or websites run by journalists or other non-professionals. They might misinterpret the data, or even the interpretation of the scientists. Usually understanding research results is very difficult. Don't try it yourself. Let the professional explain it to you. If you don't understand it try again, try harder. It's no one's fault. You just lack the skills and education. We all face this problem and no one is good at everything. Take your time. Ask for help. Learn a bit. And don't run to easier solutions, don't read esoteric and alternative stuff. If it seems too plausible and easy, it's probably false. And it can seriously harm your kid's or your own development.

The critical way is hard, but the only good one. See this for example.

Arguments from most people

Most people fear that they run out of time. They want to enjoy their lives. Many of them are fine with their work, many of them hate it, nevertheless there aren't too many who can say that their work is a cherished part of their lives.

Accordingly, most of them take school, studying, learning, developing skills, work to be toiling, a mild or strong form of suffering, deprivation of the precious time they have so little of to spend on things they like and love.

Since this is so, they don't like to spend their free time on things difficult. (At least, not many of them do. I'm not talking of the few, who enjoy in their free time chess, philosophy, mathematical riddles, reading about biology or learning languages.) And as a result, they never learn and understand many things falling outside the field the help of which they earn their money. This is fair enough, problems only begin when these people, being completely ignorant of how education, science, research, politics or economics work still feel strongly inclined to voice their opinion. And not just to voice, but to be heard, to have an effect on the decision makers. Since the decision makers are politicians who have to take the easiest roots to get good points by the public whose votes they depend on, they like to attack education, educational institutions, academia, culture, etc. Anything, that the average Joe doesn't understand how it turns out more dollars, and helps in making his life-quality better.

As a result one encounters ridiculous arguments in public debate, concerning the role, the function (or the lack of it), the importance, the inner working, etc. of society, education, economy and what not. Many of these arguments are clearly faulty. If one is intelligent to grasp a reading as easy as An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments (about which see my earlier note) one can also understand how these arguments are rather rhetoric than to the point. They don't help anyone else, then the person uttering them. And even them also in their short sighted pursuit for power. Alas, the ignorance of the masses is not something to lament about. It's a fact we have to live by.

But just for fun I've compiled a list of arguments often put forward, just for fun. Of course the arguments don't run in these forms. The way I put them tries to make explicit what's wrong with them. But you can easily recognize them. Most of them use Philosophy as an example, as it is an especially popular boogie-man these days among the uneducated and the narrow-minded.

1. My knowledge is enough to guide me through my everyday affairs, so all the knowledge that is beyond that is unnecessary. Philosophy makes a lot of claims of re-shaping my knowledge, so it is also unnecessary. I don’t have to know anything I don’t use in my everyday life. (Also, I don't need to accept anyone else's measure of how successful I am in my life.)

2. Most people aren't interested in what philosophers are interested therefore philosophers are wrong.

3. Most people don’t agree with philosophers therefore philosophers are wrong.

4. The conclusions philosophers draw aren't changing what they are explaining therefore they are superfluous.

5. Philosophers don’t use mathematics therefore they are wrong. (Even if they do, they probably don't use for anything interesting.)

6. Philosophers do not apply one methodology and study one field of questions therefore they are stupid.

7. Philosophy hasn't changed in a long time. I don’t know philosophy, but I know this, therefore philosophy is unnecessary.

8. Philosophy is what I think most uneducated people not working in science think therefore it is wrong.

9. Philosophy is something everyone can do without training therefore it is wrong.

10. Philosophers aren't interested in what scientists say therefore they are wrong.

11. Philosophy is not science therefore it is useless.

12. Most people don’t understand philosophy therefore philosophers are talking nonsense. In contrast most people understand mathematics, physics and linguistics without training perfectly, so these are sensible activities.

13. People not working in philosophy don’t know why philosophy is interesting or important, therefore it is neither. Whereas everyone knows without any further thinking or education how useful it is to investigate the big bang, the distant stars, unknown tortoise species, sedatives and game theoretic situations, so these are useful things.

14. Philosophy, and the humanities in general, are about drinking and dreaming. I never studied philosophy or any humanistic discipline and know only people who were unsuccessful undergraduates in these fields, but they are perfectly representative of the fields, therefore they are useless.

15. Bad humanities students cannot explain to me convincingly why their field of study is important.  I don’t understand it either and I lack both education and intelligence to look after it, so they are useless. Whereas building especially fast cars, working out better investment strategies are amazing ways of making life on this planet better and fascinating in themselves.

16. I don’t understand this writing, therefore it is philosophy and therefore philosophy is wrong. (Also, it would claim that this is circular reasoning, which shows even more how wrong it is!)

17. I don’t have time for this, so it cannot be important (although I have time for drinking and/or hiking and/or tv and/or movies ...).

18. It’s hard to get a job with it therefore the people who do it are stupid/therefore it is easy. The clever people are successful and rich, so they must be the doctors, engineers, etc. and everyone else is just not clever enough for those professions.

19. Science makes sense. So, earlier philosophy and religion had to make sense in the same way. There is no other way in which they could have played a part in society and the world. There is no other way for them today either.

20. If philosophy and literature would do a good job there would be less violence, pain, stupidity. But there is a lot, therefore they are not doing a good job. It is not, that people who do philosophy and literature should first become better and then the descriptions which deal with them and their issues would also be better. It is that philosophy and literature should make people better. (The Pamela fallacy.)