The Topmost Apple
Life and Fruitblshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07627725321531151309noreply@blogger.comBlogger2596125
Updated: 1 hour 8 min ago
"Why French Parents Are Superior"
It's because they teach delayed gratification. From the Wall Street Journal:
I have spent the last several years investigating French parenting. And now, with [her daughter] Bean 6 years old and twins who are 3, I can tell you this: The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.
I first realized I was on to something when I discovered a 2009 study, led by economists at Princeton, comparing the child-care experiences of similarly situated mothers in Columbus, Ohio, and Rennes, France. The researchers found that American moms considered it more than twice as unpleasant to deal with their kids. In a different study by the same economists, working mothers in Texas said that even housework was more pleasant than child care.
Rest assured, I certainly don't suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I'm not even sure that I like living here. I certainly don't want my kids growing up to become sniffy Parisians.
But for all its problems, France is the perfect foil for the current problems in American parenting. Middle-class French parents (I didn't follow the very rich or poor) have values that look familiar to me. They are zealous about talking to their kids, showing them nature and reading them lots of books. They take them to tennis lessons, painting classes and interactive science museums.
Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.
I'm hardly the first to point out that middle-class America has a parenting problem. This problem has been painstakingly diagnosed, critiqued and named: overparenting, hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and my personal favorite, the kindergarchy. Nobody seems to like the relentless, unhappy pace of American parenting, least of all parents themselves.
....
One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.)
One Saturday I visited Delphine Porcher, a pretty labor lawyer in her mid-30s who lives with her family in the suburbs east of Paris. When I arrived, her husband was working on his laptop in the living room, while 1-year-old Aubane napped nearby. Pauline, their 3-year-old, was sitting at the kitchen table, completely absorbed in the task of plopping cupcake batter into little wrappers. She somehow resisted the temptation to eat the batter.
Delphine said that she never set out specifically to teach her kids patience. But her family's daily rituals are an ongoing apprenticeship in how to delay gratification. Delphine said that she sometimes bought Pauline candy. (Bonbons are on display in most bakeries.) But Pauline wasn't allowed to eat the candy until that day's snack, even if it meant waiting many hours.
When Pauline tried to interrupt our conversation, Delphine said, "Just wait two minutes, my little one. I'm in the middle of talking." It was both very polite and very firm. I was struck both by how sweetly Delphine said it and by how certain she seemed that Pauline would obey her. Delphine was also teaching her kids a related skill: learning to play by themselves. "The most important thing is that he learns to be happy by himself," she said of her son, Aubane.
It's a skill that French mothers explicitly try to cultivate in their kids more than American mothers do. In a 2004 study on the parenting beliefs of college-educated mothers in the U.S. and France, the American moms said that encouraging one's child to play alone was of average importance. But the French moms said it was very important.
More at the link.
I have spent the last several years investigating French parenting. And now, with [her daughter] Bean 6 years old and twins who are 3, I can tell you this: The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.
I first realized I was on to something when I discovered a 2009 study, led by economists at Princeton, comparing the child-care experiences of similarly situated mothers in Columbus, Ohio, and Rennes, France. The researchers found that American moms considered it more than twice as unpleasant to deal with their kids. In a different study by the same economists, working mothers in Texas said that even housework was more pleasant than child care.
Rest assured, I certainly don't suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I'm not even sure that I like living here. I certainly don't want my kids growing up to become sniffy Parisians.
But for all its problems, France is the perfect foil for the current problems in American parenting. Middle-class French parents (I didn't follow the very rich or poor) have values that look familiar to me. They are zealous about talking to their kids, showing them nature and reading them lots of books. They take them to tennis lessons, painting classes and interactive science museums.
Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren't at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this. "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time." French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves.
I'm hardly the first to point out that middle-class America has a parenting problem. This problem has been painstakingly diagnosed, critiqued and named: overparenting, hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and my personal favorite, the kindergarchy. Nobody seems to like the relentless, unhappy pace of American parenting, least of all parents themselves.
....
One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait. It is why the French babies I meet mostly sleep through the night from two or three months old. Their parents don't pick them up the second they start crying, allowing the babies to learn how to fall back asleep. It is also why French toddlers will sit happily at a restaurant. Rather than snacking all day like American children, they mostly have to wait until mealtime to eat. (French kids consistently have three meals a day and one snack around 4 p.m.)
One Saturday I visited Delphine Porcher, a pretty labor lawyer in her mid-30s who lives with her family in the suburbs east of Paris. When I arrived, her husband was working on his laptop in the living room, while 1-year-old Aubane napped nearby. Pauline, their 3-year-old, was sitting at the kitchen table, completely absorbed in the task of plopping cupcake batter into little wrappers. She somehow resisted the temptation to eat the batter.
Delphine said that she never set out specifically to teach her kids patience. But her family's daily rituals are an ongoing apprenticeship in how to delay gratification. Delphine said that she sometimes bought Pauline candy. (Bonbons are on display in most bakeries.) But Pauline wasn't allowed to eat the candy until that day's snack, even if it meant waiting many hours.
When Pauline tried to interrupt our conversation, Delphine said, "Just wait two minutes, my little one. I'm in the middle of talking." It was both very polite and very firm. I was struck both by how sweetly Delphine said it and by how certain she seemed that Pauline would obey her. Delphine was also teaching her kids a related skill: learning to play by themselves. "The most important thing is that he learns to be happy by himself," she said of her son, Aubane.
It's a skill that French mothers explicitly try to cultivate in their kids more than American mothers do. In a 2004 study on the parenting beliefs of college-educated mothers in the U.S. and France, the American moms said that encouraging one's child to play alone was of average importance. But the French moms said it was very important.
More at the link.
"Addicts' Brains May Be Wired At Birth For Less Self-Control"
From NPR:
Many addicts inherit a brain that has trouble just saying no to drugs.
A study in Science finds that cocaine addicts have abnormalities in areas of the brain involved in self-control. And these abnormalities appear to predate any drug abuse.
The study, done by a team at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., looked at 50 pairs of siblings. One member of each pair was a cocaine addict. The other had no history of drug abuse.
But brain scans showed that both siblings had brains unlike those of typical people, says Karen Ersche, the study's lead author.
"The fibers that connect the different parts of the brain were less efficient in both," she says.
These fibers connect areas involved in emotion with areas that tell us when to stop doing something, Ersche says. When the fibers aren't working efficiently, she says, it takes longer for a "stop" message to get through.
And sure enough, another experiment done by Ersche's team showed that both siblings took longer than a typical person to respond to a signal telling them to stop performing a task. In other words, they had less self-control.
That's what you'd expect to find in addicts, Ersche says.
"We know that in people who are addicted to drugs like cocaine, that self-control is completely impaired," she says. "These people use drugs and lose control on how much they use. They put everything at risk, even their lives."
But the fact that siblings without drug problems also had impaired self-control offers strong evidence that these brain abnormalities are inherited, Ersche says.
And she says the finding also raises a big question about the siblings who aren't addicts: "How do they manage with an abnormal brain without taking drugs?"
Ersche hopes to conduct another study of the sibling pairs that will answer that question.
In the meantime, the findings about self-control have implications that go far beyond drug addiction, says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"Self-control and the ability to regulate your emotions really is an indispensable aspect of the function of the brain that allows us to succeed," she says.
That's because the part of the brain that decides whether to take a drug is also the part that helps us decide whether to speed through a yellow light or drop out of school, she says.
And this brain circuit seems to be involved in a lot of common disorders, she says.
"One of the ones that attracts the most attention is ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], where kids are unable to control their response to stimuli that distract them," Volkow says.
Impulse control is also central to behaviors like compulsive gambling and compulsive eating, she says.
The new study shows it's possible to identify people who have inherited a susceptibility to these sorts of problems, Volkow says. And it should help researchers figure out how to help susceptible people strengthen their self-control, she says.
"Predetermination is not predestination," Volkow says.
The image above is captioned this way:
The red areas show gray matter that is abnormally increased in drug users. Blue shows gray matter that is abnormally decreased in drug users. Yellow shows white matter tracts, called fractional anisotropy or FA. FA is significantly reduced in both the drug users and in their siblings, which suggests that the white matter tracts work less efficiently.
This is one reason for the saying "It's the first drink that gets you drunk" - and why A.A. taught from the beginning that alocholics cannot drink safely, at all, ever. (EDIT: It doesn't explain - I'd thought it did at first, but no - the phenomenon of "craving" that gets activated upon alcohol - or drugs - entering the body of the addict. That, too, has been talked about in A.A. since the earliest days. Perhaps these things are related; it will be interesting to see what sorts of things are found in the future. I do wonder, though, if there's a bias in the research going in; scientists apparently believe that "lack of control" is the dominant problem here - but I don't think that's true. "Craving" is the issue - but of course, scientists studying these things are looking at them from their own point of view and may not realize that there are other things to look at, at all. Some addict has to let them know!)
It also doesn't explain the reason(s) that alcoholics continue to attempt to drink normally even despite all the anecdotal evidence that piles up around the disastrous effects of "the first drink" - except to say that most folks really do believe, every time they pick up a drink, that "This time, it'll be different." It also doesn't explain the reason(s) addicts feel the need to drink or take drugs at all; I wonder whether they will find that this "wiring" has other manifestations in that connection.
But, this is the first research evidence I've seen that does show a "hard-wired" connection to addictive behavior - even though people have been telling this story on an anecdotal level for decades (and possibly lots longer)!
What's really interesting, of course, is that A.A.'s approach doesn't deal with this hard-wiring at all; it long ago simply accepted empirical evidence for something it didn't have hard proof of, and dealt instead with the personality, and with the emotions.
Many addicts inherit a brain that has trouble just saying no to drugs.
A study in Science finds that cocaine addicts have abnormalities in areas of the brain involved in self-control. And these abnormalities appear to predate any drug abuse.
The study, done by a team at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., looked at 50 pairs of siblings. One member of each pair was a cocaine addict. The other had no history of drug abuse.
But brain scans showed that both siblings had brains unlike those of typical people, says Karen Ersche, the study's lead author.
"The fibers that connect the different parts of the brain were less efficient in both," she says.
These fibers connect areas involved in emotion with areas that tell us when to stop doing something, Ersche says. When the fibers aren't working efficiently, she says, it takes longer for a "stop" message to get through.
And sure enough, another experiment done by Ersche's team showed that both siblings took longer than a typical person to respond to a signal telling them to stop performing a task. In other words, they had less self-control.
That's what you'd expect to find in addicts, Ersche says.
"We know that in people who are addicted to drugs like cocaine, that self-control is completely impaired," she says. "These people use drugs and lose control on how much they use. They put everything at risk, even their lives."
But the fact that siblings without drug problems also had impaired self-control offers strong evidence that these brain abnormalities are inherited, Ersche says.
And she says the finding also raises a big question about the siblings who aren't addicts: "How do they manage with an abnormal brain without taking drugs?"
Ersche hopes to conduct another study of the sibling pairs that will answer that question.
In the meantime, the findings about self-control have implications that go far beyond drug addiction, says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"Self-control and the ability to regulate your emotions really is an indispensable aspect of the function of the brain that allows us to succeed," she says.
That's because the part of the brain that decides whether to take a drug is also the part that helps us decide whether to speed through a yellow light or drop out of school, she says.
And this brain circuit seems to be involved in a lot of common disorders, she says.
"One of the ones that attracts the most attention is ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], where kids are unable to control their response to stimuli that distract them," Volkow says.
Impulse control is also central to behaviors like compulsive gambling and compulsive eating, she says.
The new study shows it's possible to identify people who have inherited a susceptibility to these sorts of problems, Volkow says. And it should help researchers figure out how to help susceptible people strengthen their self-control, she says.
"Predetermination is not predestination," Volkow says.
The image above is captioned this way:
The red areas show gray matter that is abnormally increased in drug users. Blue shows gray matter that is abnormally decreased in drug users. Yellow shows white matter tracts, called fractional anisotropy or FA. FA is significantly reduced in both the drug users and in their siblings, which suggests that the white matter tracts work less efficiently.
This is one reason for the saying "It's the first drink that gets you drunk" - and why A.A. taught from the beginning that alocholics cannot drink safely, at all, ever. (EDIT: It doesn't explain - I'd thought it did at first, but no - the phenomenon of "craving" that gets activated upon alcohol - or drugs - entering the body of the addict. That, too, has been talked about in A.A. since the earliest days. Perhaps these things are related; it will be interesting to see what sorts of things are found in the future. I do wonder, though, if there's a bias in the research going in; scientists apparently believe that "lack of control" is the dominant problem here - but I don't think that's true. "Craving" is the issue - but of course, scientists studying these things are looking at them from their own point of view and may not realize that there are other things to look at, at all. Some addict has to let them know!)
It also doesn't explain the reason(s) that alcoholics continue to attempt to drink normally even despite all the anecdotal evidence that piles up around the disastrous effects of "the first drink" - except to say that most folks really do believe, every time they pick up a drink, that "This time, it'll be different." It also doesn't explain the reason(s) addicts feel the need to drink or take drugs at all; I wonder whether they will find that this "wiring" has other manifestations in that connection.
But, this is the first research evidence I've seen that does show a "hard-wired" connection to addictive behavior - even though people have been telling this story on an anecdotal level for decades (and possibly lots longer)!
What's really interesting, of course, is that A.A.'s approach doesn't deal with this hard-wiring at all; it long ago simply accepted empirical evidence for something it didn't have hard proof of, and dealt instead with the personality, and with the emotions.
"Apostates for Evensong"
From the Sydney Morning Herald; HT Sed Angli.
The St Paul's Cathedral Choir at Evensong. On Thursday, the choir celebrates 120 years since its formation. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones
There are many crimes that one would flay the Anglican Church for. The heinous felony that concerns me today is an appalling sin of omission. I accuse the Anglican Synod of concealment.
The secret of which I speak is Evensong. Daily in Anglican Cathedrals around the world, observant Anglicans sing and chant their way out of the working day in a short but outstandingly beautiful ceremony known as Evensong. It is a quotidian calming. It is an opportunity for rest and reflection at the end of a day's travails. It would move the iciest atheistic soul as it indeed moves mine. In fact, I am a bit of an Evensong junkie having gravitated these Evensong ceremonies in the great choral centres of Anglicanism.
More accessible than the Sistine Chapel, more inspiring than the Western Wall, more easily reached than the Dome of the Rock, sung Evensong represents at once the most rousing and soothing aspects of faith.
In my home town of Melbourne, Evensong is celebrated at St Paul's Cathedral at 5.10 (during school term) frequently to an almost empty house. St Paul's is the sort of place that can look empty even when it is full. On occasions, the only attendees at Evensong might be the choir and other functionaries. This is an abomination. It is criminal PR neglect. And the risk is that if no one goes, it might be canned. That would be a disaster – a financially rational disaster but a disaster nonetheless. Evensong is practised less regularly in other cathedrals for example Sydney's is on Thursday at St Andrews. Perth's St George has one on Sunday.
Evensong also has costumes, solemnity and parading. In the capital city cathedrals, there will be a wonderful choir. In Melbourne, the choir is competent at times verging on sublime. Originally formed in 1888, the choir today consists of 20 boys (on scholarships) and 16 men. It must cost a fortune to fund.
When I sit in the cathedral, I see history, music and architecture paraded before me. One of the great duties of faith is to be the carrier of culture. Religions are the repository of our wonderful liturgical music and the majestic language of the King James Bible. The soaring architecture evokes images of both the Medieval roots of our European history and the Victorian English who, whether we like it or not, shaped much of the Australian persona. The art and painting, while less than genius, are the greatest of religious art (unfortunately to be found in other places). And the music is, for aficionados, deeply moving. It is the total package.
One can sit there at the end of the day and drain your brain of all earthly distractions and let it recover in this precious anachronism. The cavernous acoustics carry the peerless multilayered choral offerings to you and through you.
The irony is that when I speak to some Christians about Evensong they sort of pooh pooh it, arguing that such ceremony is about form not substance. They are Bible-centric believers for whom the archaic liturgy is a distraction from the text. I demur. Part of the power of faith is the excellent methods they have of helping the congregation transcend the daily grind. Music and architecture can be a legitimate method for reaching an emotional rather than logical state.
One of my most touching Evensong experiences was in King's College Chapel in Cambridge. It was packed and I was stuck in the back. In front of me were two women — a mother and daughter. The daughter cried throughout. Clearly some trauma had assailed her and she and her mum had repaired to Evensong for sustenance. Parental love twinned with Evensong was the chosen balm. I hope it worked – her heaving sobs trouble me to this day.
If you go, you can think spiritual thoughts, or like I do, think secular thoughts about the history of Australians who carried the culture to this land, struggled to build mighty edifices and bothered to preserve this timeless liturgy. And even the costs of our culture are manifest with the war memorabilia and token nods to indigenous culture. It is a complete picture of a part of Australia that is disappearing down the drain. For all this sacrifice and achievement, the modern Australian ignores it. The poor old demoralised Anglican Church lavishes this jewel with institutional neglect. And we are in danger of losing what we don't appreciate.
Well I am sick of it. I believe we need to support this glory box even though it goes right against my godless ways. I propose that we have a society, Atheists and Apostates for Evensong. And I further suggest that we gather and attend sung Evensong in every city that it is sung. None of us should let this atrophy continue.
Please blog me now on what gives you feelings of transcendence.
What gives you a sense of the non-logical, the spiritual and the numinous?
Is the search for mystical highs a noble one or merely a distraction from biblical truths?
Is it bad for Evensong that an incorrigible atheist loves it?
What rocks your spiritual world?
Over to you
By the way the choir's 120th birthday bash is on Thursday September 15.
St Bridget of Kildare
An interesting post from catholicity and covenant. I like the last para especially:
There was no such thing as a Celtic Church; the concept is unhelpful, if not positively harmful.
On the feast of St Brigid of Kildare it is good to be reminded of Wendy Davies iconoclastic 1992 paper The Myth of the Celtic Church. What is striking about Davies' paper is the implicit conclusion that, while the churches in Celtic lands were not 'un-Roman', their geographical existence on the periphery of Europe did shape their existence. This was particularly evident by the late 11th century when the churches in Celtic lands remained untouched by the various reform initiatives and movements that had defined the early medieval church elsewhere in Latin Europe.
What Davies does not touch on, however, is the very fact that churches flourished in the Celtic lands - lands which had been outside the Roman imperium (Ireland and Scotland) or on its very margins (northern England and Wales). In so doing, they witnessed to the fact that the community called into being by the Crucified and Risen One could take root and transform social relations where the mighty imperium itself, despite its armies and its wealth, was unable to do so.
Which brings us to Bridget of Kildare, at the edge of the known world, doing that which was beyond the power of the military and economic superpower of late antiquity. Here, perhaps, is the particular relevance of Bridget and her follow saints of the churches in the Celtic lands. We too live in an age of turmoil - of post-Christendom, of declining empires, of falling markets, of terror and anxiety, of cultural and social uncertainity. But in this uncertain landscape, a landscape without the certainities of imperium, today's Church, like Bridget's Church, can - by forming communities of hope, orientated towards the Kingdom, not the imperium - take root and shape cultures.
There was no such thing as a Celtic Church; the concept is unhelpful, if not positively harmful.
On the feast of St Brigid of Kildare it is good to be reminded of Wendy Davies iconoclastic 1992 paper The Myth of the Celtic Church. What is striking about Davies' paper is the implicit conclusion that, while the churches in Celtic lands were not 'un-Roman', their geographical existence on the periphery of Europe did shape their existence. This was particularly evident by the late 11th century when the churches in Celtic lands remained untouched by the various reform initiatives and movements that had defined the early medieval church elsewhere in Latin Europe.
What Davies does not touch on, however, is the very fact that churches flourished in the Celtic lands - lands which had been outside the Roman imperium (Ireland and Scotland) or on its very margins (northern England and Wales). In so doing, they witnessed to the fact that the community called into being by the Crucified and Risen One could take root and transform social relations where the mighty imperium itself, despite its armies and its wealth, was unable to do so.
Which brings us to Bridget of Kildare, at the edge of the known world, doing that which was beyond the power of the military and economic superpower of late antiquity. Here, perhaps, is the particular relevance of Bridget and her follow saints of the churches in the Celtic lands. We too live in an age of turmoil - of post-Christendom, of declining empires, of falling markets, of terror and anxiety, of cultural and social uncertainity. But in this uncertain landscape, a landscape without the certainities of imperium, today's Church, like Bridget's Church, can - by forming communities of hope, orientated towards the Kingdom, not the imperium - take root and shape cultures.
"The Great Divorce"
From David Brooks' column today:
I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart.” I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.
Murray’s basic argument is not new, that America is dividing into a two-caste society. What’s impressive is the incredible data he produces to illustrate that trend and deepen our understanding of it.
His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricy, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today.
More important, the income gaps did not lead to big behavior gaps. Roughly 98 percent of men between the ages of 30 and 49 were in the labor force, upper class and lower class alike. Only about 3 percent of white kids were born outside of marriage. The rates were similar, upper class and lower class.
Since then, America has polarized. The word “class” doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes. You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.
The upper tribe is now segregated from the lower tribe. In 1963, rich people who lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan lived close to members of the middle class. Most adult Manhattanites who lived south of 96th Street back then hadn’t even completed high school. Today, almost all of Manhattan south of 96th Street is an upper-tribe enclave.
Today, Murray demonstrates, there is an archipelago of affluent enclaves clustered around the coastal cities, Chicago, Dallas and so on. If you’re born into one of them, you will probably go to college with people from one of the enclaves; you’ll marry someone from one of the enclaves; you’ll go off and live in one of the enclaves.
Worse, there are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he’s mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.
Roughly 7 percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad.
People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.
Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.
Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.
It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.
The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.
Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.
I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.
If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.
I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart.” I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.
Murray’s basic argument is not new, that America is dividing into a two-caste society. What’s impressive is the incredible data he produces to illustrate that trend and deepen our understanding of it.
His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricy, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today.
More important, the income gaps did not lead to big behavior gaps. Roughly 98 percent of men between the ages of 30 and 49 were in the labor force, upper class and lower class alike. Only about 3 percent of white kids were born outside of marriage. The rates were similar, upper class and lower class.
Since then, America has polarized. The word “class” doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes. You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.
The upper tribe is now segregated from the lower tribe. In 1963, rich people who lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan lived close to members of the middle class. Most adult Manhattanites who lived south of 96th Street back then hadn’t even completed high school. Today, almost all of Manhattan south of 96th Street is an upper-tribe enclave.
Today, Murray demonstrates, there is an archipelago of affluent enclaves clustered around the coastal cities, Chicago, Dallas and so on. If you’re born into one of them, you will probably go to college with people from one of the enclaves; you’ll marry someone from one of the enclaves; you’ll go off and live in one of the enclaves.
Worse, there are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he’s mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.
Roughly 7 percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad.
People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.
Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.
Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.
It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.
The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.
Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.
I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.
If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.
"The New Theories of Moral Sentiments"
From the Wall Street Journal online:
Deirdre McCloskey certainly leaves an impression. With her robust frame, hoarse voice interspersed with an occasional stammer, and extraordinary charisma, she is anything but your typical economic historian.
On a recent trip to England, she gave a talk at Hartwell House in the heart of Buckinghamshire that felt like a good stand-up comedy show, on par with the better performances of Eddie Izzard or George Carlin. But humor and witticisms aside, the talk revealed her conviction that economists should not shy away from the subjects of love, friendship or virtue.
Ms. McCloskey sees a problem in the way that economic models are dominated by a strange, sociopathic character—"Max U" as she calls him, referring to the standard economic problem of maximizing utility subject to various constraints. Her own scholarly work has become increasingly focused on bringing love, hope, faith, courage and other virtues back into economics.
Ms. McCloskey enjoyed a stellar career in economic history before her apostasy, being among the earliest pioneers of cliometrics—the quantitative study of economic history. In her career as an economic historian, with appointments at the University of Chicago and the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, she built and used historical data sets to answer seemingly arcane questions about the British steel industry during the 19th century and medieval agriculture.
But then Ms. McCloskey started crossing boundaries. She became interested in the way economists formulate their arguments and use persuasion in public discourse. Her research, questioning some of the fundamental tenets of neoclassical orthodoxy, was not always met warmly by her colleagues. In the context of her scholarly transformation, she is fond of quoting Mae West: "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."
In the mid-1990s, Ms. McCloskey went through another radical transformation, changing her gender and ditching her given first name, Donald, to become Deirdre. Although many of her colleagues in academia were supportive of her crossing, that period was difficult for her and her family. Her children have cut ties with her, and she has never met her 13-year old grandson. "People throw away love too easily," she told me as we drove to Hartwell House.
If her talk of ethics sounds fluffy, recall that in 1759 Adam Smith earned his reputation by publishing "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," in which he accounted for the emergence of sympathy and moral judgments. It was only in the 20th century that ethics disappeared from economics, partly as a result of the increased mathematization of the discipline. Ms. McCloskey says it was a fundamental error for economists to start making their arguments in terms of "Max U" alone. "In fact, 'Max U' would be a much more sensible person if he had gender change and became 'Maxine U,'" she chuckles.
In 2006, Ms. McCloskey published a 600-page book, "Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce." In a meticulously documented volume, drawing from a range of philosophical traditions, she asks whether one can participate fully in the modern capitalist economy and still be a moral person. Ms. McCloskey is a free marketeer and used to be a close personal friend of Milton Friedman, as she eagerly points out. Her answer is therefore an emphatic yes. It would be ill-advised, she thinks, to claim that profit-seeking makes one inherently corrupt, especially if it is balanced by other virtues.
Four years later, she completed a 600-page sequel, "Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World." "I've forgotten how to write short books," she says apologetically, adding that she would like both to be part of a four-volume series on the bourgeois era.
Unlike "Bourgeois Virtues," "Bourgeois Dignity" makes a historical argument. Modern economic growth, she claims, is a result of an ideological and rhetorical transformation. In the Elizabethan period, business was sneered upon. In Shakespeare's plays, the only major bourgeois character, Antonio, is a fool because of his affection for Bassanio. There is no need to dwell on how the other bourgeois character in "The Merchant of Venice," Shylock, is characterized.
She contrasts this with attitudes 200 years later. When James Watt died in 1819, a statue of him was erected in Westminster Abbey and later moved to St. Paul's cathedral. This would have been unthinkable two centuries earlier. In Ms. McCloskey's view, this shift in perceptions was central to the economic take-off of the West. "A bourgeois deal was agreed upon," she says. "You let me engage in innovation and creative destruction, and I will make you rich." A commercial class that was not ostracized or sneered at was thus able to activate the engine of modern economic growth.
Ms. McCloskey insists that alternative explanations for the Industrial Revolution fail, for a variety of reasons. Property rights, she says, could not have been the principal cause because England and many other societies had stable and secure property rights for a long time. Similarly, Atlantic trade and plundering of the colonies were too insignificant in revenue to have made the real difference. There had long been much more trade in the Indian Ocean than in the Atlantic, moreover, and China or India had never experienced an industrial revolution.
By elimination, Ms. McCloskey concludes that culture and rhetoric are the only factors that can account for economic change of the magnitude we have seen in the developed world in past 250 years.
The danger of our era is that the bourgeois deal is slowly crumbling away. It is under attack from the political left and also from economists whose work revolves around one sole virtue—prudence—thus eroding the public understanding of markets and economic life. Looking at the West's current economic woes, it is easy to share Ms. McCloskey's concern that unless we revive a sense of dignity and approbation for entrepreneurship and innovation, we might easily kill the goose that lays the golden eggs of our prosperity.
Deirdre McCloskey certainly leaves an impression. With her robust frame, hoarse voice interspersed with an occasional stammer, and extraordinary charisma, she is anything but your typical economic historian.
On a recent trip to England, she gave a talk at Hartwell House in the heart of Buckinghamshire that felt like a good stand-up comedy show, on par with the better performances of Eddie Izzard or George Carlin. But humor and witticisms aside, the talk revealed her conviction that economists should not shy away from the subjects of love, friendship or virtue.
Ms. McCloskey sees a problem in the way that economic models are dominated by a strange, sociopathic character—"Max U" as she calls him, referring to the standard economic problem of maximizing utility subject to various constraints. Her own scholarly work has become increasingly focused on bringing love, hope, faith, courage and other virtues back into economics.
Ms. McCloskey enjoyed a stellar career in economic history before her apostasy, being among the earliest pioneers of cliometrics—the quantitative study of economic history. In her career as an economic historian, with appointments at the University of Chicago and the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, she built and used historical data sets to answer seemingly arcane questions about the British steel industry during the 19th century and medieval agriculture.
But then Ms. McCloskey started crossing boundaries. She became interested in the way economists formulate their arguments and use persuasion in public discourse. Her research, questioning some of the fundamental tenets of neoclassical orthodoxy, was not always met warmly by her colleagues. In the context of her scholarly transformation, she is fond of quoting Mae West: "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."
In the mid-1990s, Ms. McCloskey went through another radical transformation, changing her gender and ditching her given first name, Donald, to become Deirdre. Although many of her colleagues in academia were supportive of her crossing, that period was difficult for her and her family. Her children have cut ties with her, and she has never met her 13-year old grandson. "People throw away love too easily," she told me as we drove to Hartwell House.
If her talk of ethics sounds fluffy, recall that in 1759 Adam Smith earned his reputation by publishing "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," in which he accounted for the emergence of sympathy and moral judgments. It was only in the 20th century that ethics disappeared from economics, partly as a result of the increased mathematization of the discipline. Ms. McCloskey says it was a fundamental error for economists to start making their arguments in terms of "Max U" alone. "In fact, 'Max U' would be a much more sensible person if he had gender change and became 'Maxine U,'" she chuckles.
In 2006, Ms. McCloskey published a 600-page book, "Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce." In a meticulously documented volume, drawing from a range of philosophical traditions, she asks whether one can participate fully in the modern capitalist economy and still be a moral person. Ms. McCloskey is a free marketeer and used to be a close personal friend of Milton Friedman, as she eagerly points out. Her answer is therefore an emphatic yes. It would be ill-advised, she thinks, to claim that profit-seeking makes one inherently corrupt, especially if it is balanced by other virtues.
Four years later, she completed a 600-page sequel, "Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World." "I've forgotten how to write short books," she says apologetically, adding that she would like both to be part of a four-volume series on the bourgeois era.
Unlike "Bourgeois Virtues," "Bourgeois Dignity" makes a historical argument. Modern economic growth, she claims, is a result of an ideological and rhetorical transformation. In the Elizabethan period, business was sneered upon. In Shakespeare's plays, the only major bourgeois character, Antonio, is a fool because of his affection for Bassanio. There is no need to dwell on how the other bourgeois character in "The Merchant of Venice," Shylock, is characterized.
She contrasts this with attitudes 200 years later. When James Watt died in 1819, a statue of him was erected in Westminster Abbey and later moved to St. Paul's cathedral. This would have been unthinkable two centuries earlier. In Ms. McCloskey's view, this shift in perceptions was central to the economic take-off of the West. "A bourgeois deal was agreed upon," she says. "You let me engage in innovation and creative destruction, and I will make you rich." A commercial class that was not ostracized or sneered at was thus able to activate the engine of modern economic growth.
Ms. McCloskey insists that alternative explanations for the Industrial Revolution fail, for a variety of reasons. Property rights, she says, could not have been the principal cause because England and many other societies had stable and secure property rights for a long time. Similarly, Atlantic trade and plundering of the colonies were too insignificant in revenue to have made the real difference. There had long been much more trade in the Indian Ocean than in the Atlantic, moreover, and China or India had never experienced an industrial revolution.
By elimination, Ms. McCloskey concludes that culture and rhetoric are the only factors that can account for economic change of the magnitude we have seen in the developed world in past 250 years.
The danger of our era is that the bourgeois deal is slowly crumbling away. It is under attack from the political left and also from economists whose work revolves around one sole virtue—prudence—thus eroding the public understanding of markets and economic life. Looking at the West's current economic woes, it is easy to share Ms. McCloskey's concern that unless we revive a sense of dignity and approbation for entrepreneurship and innovation, we might easily kill the goose that lays the golden eggs of our prosperity.
A solis ortus cardine, the hymn for Lauds in Christmastide
Here's a really lovely version of A solis ortus cardine, the Lauds hymn for Christmastide. The hymn has 7 verses, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet (in sequence).
The text comes from a 23-verse alphabetic poem, Paean Alphabeticus de Christo, written by Caelius Sedulius (died c. 450); the poem is the story of Christ's life, birth to resurrection. The first seven verses - the ones in this video - make up the Christmastide Lauds hymn; verses 8, 9, 11 and 13 of the poem are used for Hostis Herodes impie, the Epiphany Vespers hymn.
Here's the Latin text of the entire poem. Below is the section used for this hymn, with an English translation by John Ellerton below the Latin.
A solis ortus cardine
Adusque terre limitem
Christum canamus principem
Natum Maria virgine.
Beatus auctor seculi
Servile corpus induit,
Ut carne carnem liberans
Non perderet, quos condidit.
Caste parentis viscera
Celestis intrat gratia,
Venter puelle baiulat
Secreta, que non noverat.
Domus pudici pectoris
Templum repente fit Dei,
Intacta nesciens virum
Verbo creavit filium
Enixa est puerpera,
Quem Gabriel predixerat ,
Quem matris alvo gestiens
Clausus Johannes senserat.
Feno iacere pertulit,
Presepe non abhorruit
Parvoque lacte pastus est,
Per quem nec ales esurit.
Gaudet chorus celestium,
Et angeli canunt Deum,
Palamque fit pastoribus
Pastor creator omnium.
From east to west, from shore to shore,
let every heart awake and sing
the holy child whom Mary bore,
the Christ, the everlasting King.
Behold, the world's Creator wears
the form and fashion of a slave;
our very flesh our Maker shares,
his fallen creature, man, to save.
For this how wondrously he wrought!
A maiden, in her lowly place,
became, in ways beyond all thought,
the chosen vessel of his grace.
She bowed her to the angel's word
declaring what the Father willed,
and suddenly the promised Lord
that pure and hallowed temple filled.
He shrank not from the oxen's stall,
he lay within the manger-bed,
and he, whose bounty feedeth all,
at Mary's breast himself was fed.
And while the angels in the sky
sang praise above the silent field,
to shepherds poor the Lord Most High,
the one great Shepherd, was revealed.
All glory for this blessed morn
to God the Father ever be;
all praise to thee, O Virgin-born,
all praise, O Holy Ghost, to thee.
From the YouTube page, describing the video:
EN: Schola Gregoriana Monostorinensis performing in the Calvary Church from Cluj (RO)
HU: a Schola Gregoriana Monostorinensis előadásában, a kolozsmonostori Nagyboldogasszony (Kálvária) templomban
www.hhrf.org/schola
Here's Guillaume Dufay's 15th-century version of the hymn; he uses chant and polyphony in an alternatim style:
The text comes from a 23-verse alphabetic poem, Paean Alphabeticus de Christo, written by Caelius Sedulius (died c. 450); the poem is the story of Christ's life, birth to resurrection. The first seven verses - the ones in this video - make up the Christmastide Lauds hymn; verses 8, 9, 11 and 13 of the poem are used for Hostis Herodes impie, the Epiphany Vespers hymn.
Here's the Latin text of the entire poem. Below is the section used for this hymn, with an English translation by John Ellerton below the Latin.
A solis ortus cardine
Adusque terre limitem
Christum canamus principem
Natum Maria virgine.
Beatus auctor seculi
Servile corpus induit,
Ut carne carnem liberans
Non perderet, quos condidit.
Caste parentis viscera
Celestis intrat gratia,
Venter puelle baiulat
Secreta, que non noverat.
Domus pudici pectoris
Templum repente fit Dei,
Intacta nesciens virum
Verbo creavit filium
Enixa est puerpera,
Quem Gabriel predixerat ,
Quem matris alvo gestiens
Clausus Johannes senserat.
Feno iacere pertulit,
Presepe non abhorruit
Parvoque lacte pastus est,
Per quem nec ales esurit.
Gaudet chorus celestium,
Et angeli canunt Deum,
Palamque fit pastoribus
Pastor creator omnium.
From east to west, from shore to shore,
let every heart awake and sing
the holy child whom Mary bore,
the Christ, the everlasting King.
Behold, the world's Creator wears
the form and fashion of a slave;
our very flesh our Maker shares,
his fallen creature, man, to save.
For this how wondrously he wrought!
A maiden, in her lowly place,
became, in ways beyond all thought,
the chosen vessel of his grace.
She bowed her to the angel's word
declaring what the Father willed,
and suddenly the promised Lord
that pure and hallowed temple filled.
He shrank not from the oxen's stall,
he lay within the manger-bed,
and he, whose bounty feedeth all,
at Mary's breast himself was fed.
And while the angels in the sky
sang praise above the silent field,
to shepherds poor the Lord Most High,
the one great Shepherd, was revealed.
All glory for this blessed morn
to God the Father ever be;
all praise to thee, O Virgin-born,
all praise, O Holy Ghost, to thee.
From the YouTube page, describing the video:
EN: Schola Gregoriana Monostorinensis performing in the Calvary Church from Cluj (RO)
HU: a Schola Gregoriana Monostorinensis előadásában, a kolozsmonostori Nagyboldogasszony (Kálvária) templomban
www.hhrf.org/schola
Here's Guillaume Dufay's 15th-century version of the hymn; he uses chant and polyphony in an alternatim style:
"Religion Can Aid in Self-Control"
From Psych Central News. Not, again, news to people involved - but I suppose it's to the good to have one's lived experience confirmed experimentally:
Thinking about religion gives people more self-control, according to a new study from Queen’s University.
“After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control,” said Kevin Rounding, a psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study.
Study participants were given a sentence with five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not. After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete a number of tasks that required self-control, such as enduring discomfort, delaying gratification, exerting patience, and refraining from impulsive responses.
Participants who had unscrambled sentences containing religious themes had more self-control in completing their tasks, the researchers said.
“Our most interesting finding was that religious concepts were able to refuel self-control after it had been depleted by another unrelated task,” said Rounding. “In other words, even when we would predict people to be unable to exert self-control, after completing the religiously themed task they defied logic and were able to muster self-control.”
“Until now, I believed religion was a matter of faith; people had little ‘practical’ use for religion,” he continued. “This research actually suggests that religion can serve a very useful function in society. People can turn to religion not just for transcendence and fears regarding death and an afterlife, but also for practical purposes.”
The study was published in Psychological Science.
Source: Queen’s University
Thinking about religion gives people more self-control, according to a new study from Queen’s University.
“After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control,” said Kevin Rounding, a psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study.
Study participants were given a sentence with five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not. After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete a number of tasks that required self-control, such as enduring discomfort, delaying gratification, exerting patience, and refraining from impulsive responses.
Participants who had unscrambled sentences containing religious themes had more self-control in completing their tasks, the researchers said.
“Our most interesting finding was that religious concepts were able to refuel self-control after it had been depleted by another unrelated task,” said Rounding. “In other words, even when we would predict people to be unable to exert self-control, after completing the religiously themed task they defied logic and were able to muster self-control.”
“Until now, I believed religion was a matter of faith; people had little ‘practical’ use for religion,” he continued. “This research actually suggests that religion can serve a very useful function in society. People can turn to religion not just for transcendence and fears regarding death and an afterlife, but also for practical purposes.”
The study was published in Psychological Science.
Source: Queen’s University
Kings College Choir: "Evening Hymn"
This is Balfour Gardiner's version of the Compline hymn Te Lucis Ante Terminum. It's irresistible to me: all that Victorian drama! And very fun to sing. Latin and English words below.
Te lucis ante terminum,
rerum Creator, poscimus,
ut solita clementia,
sis praesul ad custodiam.
Procul recedant somnia,
et noctium phantasmata:
hostemque nostrum comprime,
ne polluantur corpora.
Praesta, Pater omnipotens,
per Iesum Christum Dominum,
qui tecum in perpetuum
regnat cum Sancto Spiritu.
Amen.
To thee before the close of day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That, with thy wonted favour, thou
Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.
From all ill dreams defend our sight,
From fears and terrors of the night;
Withhold from us our ghostly foe,
That spot of sin we may not know.
O Father, that we ask be done,
Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son,
Who, with the Holy Ghost and thee,
Doth live and reign eternally.
Amen.
Te lucis ante terminum,
rerum Creator, poscimus,
ut solita clementia,
sis praesul ad custodiam.
Procul recedant somnia,
et noctium phantasmata:
hostemque nostrum comprime,
ne polluantur corpora.
Praesta, Pater omnipotens,
per Iesum Christum Dominum,
qui tecum in perpetuum
regnat cum Sancto Spiritu.
Amen.
To thee before the close of day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That, with thy wonted favour, thou
Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.
From all ill dreams defend our sight,
From fears and terrors of the night;
Withhold from us our ghostly foe,
That spot of sin we may not know.
O Father, that we ask be done,
Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son,
Who, with the Holy Ghost and thee,
Doth live and reign eternally.
Amen.
