America's Five Stages of Grief

Here we are. Almost one year into our collective state of confusion with the one and only Donald J. Trump at the helm of the American government. If nothing else, it has been an interesting year. It has also been a period of considerable disorientation and lack of understanding (or communication) on both ends of the spectrum. For all you never-Trumpers out there who have had some trouble processing these trying times, allow me to dissect our collective emotional state. Here the Kübler-Ross model (better know as the five stages of grief) will come in handy. Let’s begin...

Denial

Here is where our whole debacle begins. Very early. In a state of incredulity. During the entire lead up to the election we swam in a state of denial. Even as the first polls closed, the national consensus (at least in the popular media) seemed to be, “There is just no way this man is going to be elected. No way so much of this country could be swayed in his direction”...surprise! It happened. Now for some good ole fashioned...

Anger

Grab you torches and pitchforks! Time to get out in the street. March. Riot. Scream. Get on the Twitter. Get the word out. What better way to change people’s minds than lobbing insults into the infinite void of the Internet. Better whip out the big guns...racists, misogynists, bigots, white-supremacists, fascists, nationalists, xenophobes...Put simply, “Trump is the next Hitler and ya’ll a bunch of Nazis for putting him in office!!!” It’s time to get your aggression out and find someone to blame. If you aren’t visibly enraged by the sight of a Make America Great Again hat, than you are part of the problem. But there must be something we can do. Some way to make this waking nightmare come to an end...

Bargaining

One word. Impeachment. This is the key! We can make this all stop. We just need to find the smoking gun. Russia must be the missing piece of the puzzle. Back room deals, organized hacking, collusion, we know the evidence is there, we just need to find it. We don’t even care if Russia meddled in our elections if there isn’t a direct tie to Trump. We don’t want the truth, we want justice! Hmmm, this doesn’t seem to be panning out. Surely he can be impeached just for being an asshole. Just for being Trump. That will work right? Won’t it? Just...please...dear God, bring this to an end...

Depression 

Now we arrive at the current phase of our predicament. Here we sit. Resigned. Tired. Seemingly left with no more options. What is a good never-Trumper supposed to do in such trying times? It all seems so hopeless. So pointless. Our voices are horse and we are fresh out of idea for correcting course. Guess we should all just give up and recede into our nice, warm, safe bubbles.

Acceptance

We will get there soon enough. It is inevitable. We will all have to wake up to the cold, hard, sober facts and face our fate. Maybe, just maybe, we will all learn a thing or two in the process. Maybe we will see the faults in ourselves and not only those in others. Maybe we will be begin to understand that if we listened a bit more in the first place, opened our minds, and (dare I say it) our hearts...we could have avoided this whole mess in the first place.

Learning to Think

There is no shortage of critics bemoaning the mediocre performance to the US education system, offering a variety of structural reforms to curb the problem (see here, here, and here). These reforms take many forms such as improving incentives for teachers, charter schools, ending the age segregation of students, modifying grading systems, and reevaluating the underlying philosophy of teaching. As someone who believes that education (and the development of young people in general) is one of the fundamental elements to building a strong society, I fully support ideas like these. That said, I am also skeptical of the ability to create structural change of large, complex, and entrenched systems like the one in the United States.

Now for a quick story. Not long after I completed my post-secondary education I spent some time reflecting on the whole process and what I had learned. What smacked me in the face was not in regards to what I learned...but instead, what I didn’t. I learned a lot about what to think, but never how to think. I never had to take a class on philosophy, memory techniques, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, or logic. Maybe even worse I never learned how to defend myself against bad ideas and contagious thoughts. Where were the classes on cognitive biases, rhetoric, technology’s influence on the brain, and the subversion of our minds through advertising?

WHAT THE HELL!? How was I never told any of this? How was none of this considered relevant or important to my education? This insight served as a spring board for my own self-education that has carried on for years now. I been absorbing all the books, videos, podcasts, and techniques that can find. I’d like to imagine that I am a better thinker as a result and yet still a far cry from where I want to be.

Circling back to where this musing started...barring a systemic change in our education system (which may take years or decades) I think we need to focus on the more salient goal of making changes to our current curriculum. Namely we need to be teaching students how to think. Or maybe if that sounds a bit Orwellian, teaching them how to learn. This shouldn’t require wholesale reform legislation or demolition of teacher unions or a restructuring of public funding, merely a change in curriculum.

Giving students the tools they need to learn, rather than the thoughts they need to think seems to be an achievable goal that everyone can agree on. Maybe implementing such a change will allow the next generation to be better positioned to figure out how to reform the system overall. 

Eco-Frustrating

This story begins with trip to a poke restaurant that I frequent. Relevant to this story is the fact that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, more on that in a bit. As I enter the restaurant, to my surprise they have changed the containers they use for their poke bowls. Instead of round plastic bowls, they have begun using rectangular cardboard containers. This is mildly annoying given that I think the bowl is a better vessel for my food but that, dear reader, is not the point of this story. Instead, it was the reason the staff gave for the change which was frustrating, albeit not particularly surprising.

The change was made due to customer complaints regarding the use of packaging that was not “eco-friendly.” For those unaware of this particular issue, plastic is arguably more environmentally conscious packaging given the cost (externalities) of both production and decomposition of paper materials. Does this seem counter-intuitive? Well it is. As with most topics of science and our understanding of the world, the truth is non-intuitive. And if you don’t believe me (and you shouldn’t by default), read these sources here and here.

Living in the Bay for two years, this is the kind of low-level understanding of these issues that I have come to expect. Everyone wants to be an eco-warrior without putting in the work to understand the nuance of the underlying science. People are biased towards cognitive shortcuts like “plastic is bad” rather than considering the totality of production, use, re-use, and decomposition of materials. In this case, these changes could actually have the opposite effect of what the customers claim to care about.

I say all this not as environmental scientist (which I definitely am not) but as someone who is aware of the limits of my understanding. I certainly do not comprehend all the costs and benefits of every type of material but I do understand that it is not my job to run around from shop to shop chastising owners for their choice in packaging. I care for the environment and I am willing to speak up for causes that I believe in. That said, I make those choices very carefully and only after I have done the work required to hold a strong opinion. I just wish that more people took the same approach.