Daily Tao – Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – 3

Daily Tao – Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – 3

Of course, this is not a uniform effect of religion; Norenzayan distinguishes between private and communal religiosity in surveying support for suicide bombers among Palestinians.17 In a refutation of “Islam = terrorism” idiocy, people’s personal religiosity (as assessed by how often they prayed) didn’t predict support for terrorism. However, frequently attending services at a mosque did. The author then polled Indian Hindus, Russian Orthodox adherents, Israeli Jews, Indonesian Muslims, British Protestants, and Mexican Catholics as to whether they’d die for their religion and whether people of other religions caused the world’s troubles. In all cases frequent attendance of religious services, but not frequent prayer, predicted those views. It’s not religiosity that stokes intergroup hostility; it’s being surrounded by coreligionists who affirm parochial identity, commitment, and shared loves and hatreds. This is hugely important.

An interesting quote I found that reflects much about human nature and why we tend to get into conflicts. Humans are capable of altruism towards members of their own group, but this same trend also reflects itself as people whom develop a group identity also tend to engage in conflict against other groups. People tend to find reasons to identify with themselves within a group.

Sapolsky also talks about intergroup hostility. As groups of people get into contact with each other, it provides a way to reduce the tension and build stronger bonds. However, contact can also elevate hostility. Getting groups to interact with each other can be a double-edged sword.

If you ever notice clique forming over at your workplace, or felt like a it is your clique at work against the rest of the company, it can also be a result of the above behaviour. Empathy is crucial as we should not only extend it to our friends and close one, but to those beyond our social group as well. It is only through taking a wider view that we can avoid unnecessary conflict. In some ways, the increasing divisiveness of the political landscape can be a good example of this.

January 1, 2021 by Daily Tao

Daily Tao – Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – 2

Daily Tao – Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst – 2

This is precisely the case. The time pressure of snap judgments is a version of increased cognitive load. Likewise, people become more conservative when tired, in pain or distracted with a cognitive task, or when blood alcohol levels rise. Recall from chapter 3 that willpower takes metabolic power, thanks to the glucose demands of the frontal cortex. This was the finding that when people are hungry, they become less generous in economic games. A real-world example of this is startling (see graph on previous page)—in a study of more than 1,100 judicial rulings, prisoners were granted parole at about a 60 percent rate when judges had recently eaten, and at essentially a 0 percent rate just before judges ate (note also the overall decline over the course of a tiring day). Justice may be blind, but she’s sure sensitive to her stomach gurgling.

Thou shall not judge when one is hungry.

Being in stress, hunger or any other form of distress does take away from our ability to make good decisions. It is also another reason as to why people whom are in financial distress also tend to not to make the best decisions possible. It is something we should definitely take not of.

On another note, the anecdote above really does show the randomness of outcomes that we have, and that it is inherently impossible to truly achieve equality of opportunity in the world that we live in. While it is an ideal that we might want to achieve, the randomness of life affects outcomes in ways we can never plan for.

Personally, I’ve found that it is way easier to accept the cards that one is dealt with when you internalize the concept that fairness in outcomes don’t exist. Outcomes happens from actions and random chance. Concerning oneself with whether you or someone “deserves this” tends to only lead to more stress. Rather, one should simply accept the situation are in and guess the best course of action that we can take. That seems to be the best way to be sane in a random world.

 

December 30, 2020 by Daily Tao

Daily Tao 1 – From Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

A classic example comes from a 1977 study of groups of male talapoin monkeys. Testosterone was administered to the middle-ranking male in each group (say, rank number 3 out of five), increasing their levels of aggression. Does this mean that these guys, stoked on ’roids, started challenging numbers 1 and 2 in the hierarchy? No. They became aggressive jerks to poor numbers 4 and 5. Testosterone did not create new social patterns of aggression; it exaggerated preexisting ones. In human studies testosterone didn’t raise baseline activity in the amygdala; it boosted the amygdala’s response and heart-rate reactivity to angry faces (but not to happy or neutral ones).

This will be a multi-part series from this book as I found that there are many interesting anecdotes that is fun to know!

What I’ve learned is that Tetosterone is typically used to accentuate current behaviors. So like how the monkeys will learn to be more aggressive towards the other monkeys down the “pecking order”, Tetosterone can also be used for prosocial behavior in other experiments.

The key reason being, as I’ve read, was that Tetosterone strongly influences our desire to achieve and maintain status. In that way, it is neutral. If we are able to frame things where being nice and helping others would help in improving one’s status, then yes Tetosterone can actually lead to positive outcomes.

December 29, 2020 by articles

Tao from How Asia Works, Joe Studwell

How Asia Works, Joe Studwell

Along with macro-economic stability, the IMF and the World Bank have consistently pressed the virtues of private enterprise, and the privatisation of state enterprises. In developed countries, there is considerable evidence that private firms tend to be more cost-efficient than public ones. 233 But in the learning phase of development, the public–private ownership distinction is framed differently, that is, in terms of what kind of company is able to absorb knowledge and make technological progress. When the state’s regulatory capacity is weak, it is sometimes easier for governments to pursue industrialisation objectives via state firms. Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China all made rapid technical progress using state-owned companies, particularly at an early stage; China is today making greater use of state firms than any successful developing nation before it. This does not prove that state ownership is superior to private. It merely demonstrates that it is not such an important consideration as developing countries have been told. In failed, autarkic socialist states like the Soviet Union, and India and China in their pre-reform incarnations, the absence of export discipline and competition were the real developmental culprits, not who owned firms’ equity.

Something really interesting that I found from this book from Joe Studwell. Above all, I think what the key point of this book, and what this passage highlights, is that free markets and liberalization of markets is not the magical solution that developing economies need to industrialize and develop.

In his book, Studwell even goes on to show that other other countries in South East Asia that whom have, based on conventional wisdom, deregulated their financial markets but were still unable to capture the growth that countries like Japan, Korea and China have.

The idea that a country needed to just open their country up to free trade, investments and let the markets develop never seemed to make sense to me, especially from my own personal experience in Singapore. The Singapore government took an extremely active approach in buying up and controlling land/property, most of the economy is driven by state-owned enterprises and the government takes a super active approach in developing industries and shifting our economic focus. This would never make sense to economists that promotes free markets and privatization.  The “inefficiencies” of the state managing these corporations would never make sense! But in our case, it helped us develop into a first world country economically and it seemed to make sense.

To me, the dichotomy between the left and right approach to economics just distracts us from being guided by first principles. When faced with different situations, we should always keep an open mind and do what what makes sense based on the individual facts.

December 28, 2020 by Daily Tao

Daily Tao From The evolution of everything: How New Ideas Emerge

Matt Ridley, The evolution of everything: How New Ideas Emerge

The foremost anthropologists of cultural evolution, Joe Henrich, Rob Boyd and Pete Richerson, have argued in an influential paper called ‘The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage’ that the spread of monogamy in the modern world can best be explained by its beneficial effects on society. That is to say, not that clever men sat around a table and decided upon a policy of monogamy in order to bring peace and cohesion, but more likely that it was a case of cultural evolution by Darwinian means. Societies that chose ‘normative monogamy’, or an insistence upon sex within exclusive marriage, tended to tame their young men, improve social cohesion, balance the sex ratio, reduce the crime rate, and encourage men to work rather than fight. This made such societies more productive and less destructive, so they tended to expand at the expense of other societies. That, the three anthropologists think, explains the triumph of monogamy, which reaches its apogee in the perfect nuclear family of 1950s America, with Dad going out to work and Mom at home cleaning, cooking and looking after the kids.

I really found the above passage from this book really interesting. It talks about how “monogamy” as a concept could have evolved and societies that practiced could have been a result of evolution. In general, Ridley takes a rather pessimistic view to central planning and speaks a lot about how the best things are result of decentralized, bottom-up evolution.

I don’t disagree with his general sentiment. After all, many top-down approaches tend to allow for perverse incentives, and sometimes do not have the flexibility to deal with issues on the ground. Many well intended approaches, from either top management or from the government can lead to inefficiencies and solutions that outright do not make sense at a lower level. Evolution does make sense.

Taking it too far and leaving everything to a decentralized approach may also lead to sub-optimal outcomes. Economies such as South Korea and Singapore have benefited from government intervention in its development that have led them to be the modern first-world countries that we see them today.

A lot comes down to wisdom, and being able to adapt to feedback from the “bottom”. Taking a dogmatic approach to things only keeps you close-minded.

 

December 27, 2020 by Daily Tao

Tao from “The Codding of the American Mind”

Jonathan Haidt’s previous book, the righteous mind was one of my all-time favourites. Hence, you can only imagine my excitement when I found out about his new book via a podcast. Here’s what it’s about.

 

Where’s my safe space?

Haidt asserts that the current generation of kids and those becoming young adults now have grown in overly protected and controlled environments. This tends to lead to difficulties for them  as they adjust to living in society as adults. This generation of young adults view the world in more binary terms of “good” and “evil, are more stressed out and easily offended when dealing with differing ideas and viewpoints and suffer from more mental health issues. They also tend to develop more of an “us vs them” mentality, hence causing increased tribalism across political groups (left vs right).

 

As a young adult, I’m now offended. What the hell are you talking about?

To answer this question, let’s look at …. Peanuts.

In his book, Haidt talks about how nut allergies actually increased when parents were advised to protect their babies from peanuts by not eating any of them. In a study of 640 infants, the group of infants that were “protected” from peanuts had 17% of them develop an allergy to peanuts, as compared 3% for the group that was exposed.

You see, kids like others, in his words, “complex adaptive systems” are antifragile. Anti-fragile basically means a property of a system that actually gets stronger from stressors. A glass cup that breaks when it hits the ground is fragile, so just imagine the opposite of a glass cup.

In other words, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

So while nut allergies are a physical manifestation of this idea, what Haidt contends is that the current and future generation of young adults grew up in an increasingly “helicopter parenting” environment. Basically, kids were coddled, given strict schedules, protected from failures (participation trophies and self esteem movements). There has also been an increasing trend where parents, afraid of the dangers walking in the streets, no longer let their kids take them to explore and learn as they interact with the world. While these might have given the kids a safe environment, it barely helps them face the “real world”.

 

Unsupervised time as key to development

Haidt speaks a lot about unsupervised time. As parents begin to obsessively plan for more classes, camps and learning groups for their kids, it might actually hinder the mental development of our children, especially in social situations.

Facing social rejection, making a fool out of yourself, getting embarrassed and failing at things that you have put work into are things you experience when you try to figure shit out on your own at school. And while it is true that some people might face lifetime issues due to things such as bullying, the majority of us do learn from our experiences and possibly develop “thicker skin” as we stumble our way through life.

However, it is the current generation of kids, of “Igen”, that grew up with Iphones and mobile devices that will have the least unsupervised time as compared to previous generations.

“The bottom line is that when members of iGen arrived on campus, beginning in the fall of 2013, they had accumulated less unsupervised time and fewer offline life experiences than had any previous generation.”

 

Facts don’t care about your feelings

This has not prepared the current group of young adults in dealing with disagreements, and they tend to see things in a more good vs evil context. One famous example of this can be seen in College Campuses. Bret Weinstein anyone? Our college’s have increasingly tended to the left in terms of political ideology, and while that might not be a problem, what is a problem is that there is an increasing intolerance of any alternative views.

This is exemplified in our political culture of today, which is becoming ever more polarised. Haidt believes that the only way we can deal with it is to have more open and civil dialogue, and have open and honest conversation without having an us vs them mentality.

 

“Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child”

Sometimes, less is more. When parents are anxious for their kids to succeed and be safe in an increasingly competitive and polarised world, there is always the temptation to shield your child from all the “dangers” out there and prevent them from facing any setbacks.

However, it is only through setbacks that we can learn and grow from. And sometimes, the best thing to build up grit is to make our own setbacks and learn from them, right from when we were kids.

August 5, 2020 by articles

Are Singapore’s schools unfairly located?

Distribution of Primary Schools by percentile

On the debate of schools geography distribution

One thing that I noticed about the debate this week between Chee Soon Juan from the SDP and Vivian Balakrishan (PAP) was the claim that our schools favour the rich by nature. This is due to the congregation of the best schools in the central parts of Singapore, such as Bukit Timah where property values are higher. As schools worked by balloting due to geographical proximity, the argument is that rich people could afford to buy property in central areas, and hence get better education.

It struck me as a strange claim to make, as the schools Dr. Chee mostly quoted were secondary schools which worked by PSLE scores, rather than balloting by geographical proximity. I didn’t really put much thought into it until I saw a whole bunch of posts online and discussions where I felt many people seem to have this impression that our school system, especially of balloting, was favoured towards the privileged.

I do think there is some bias towards people who are more financially secure, as in all countries, but we need to be clear of our facts. Certainly, I don’t want our young studying in these “elite” schools to be plagued by guilt due to a misconception (from a rgs/rjc girl on social media?). I also think we need to grasp a handle of what’s really unfair rather than just accept an assumption that all our schools are located unfairly. When we think that there is a problem but is unclear of the root cause, any proposed solution will not work anyways.

Looking at the data behind our primary schools

So with regards to balloting for primary schools, lets see if schools are really unfair 🙂 Here’s what the data says.

I pulled out all the data of all primary schools from data gov. Strangely enough, I missed out 2 top primary schools, Catholic high and St Nicks Girls school from that data set. I think it’s a mistake in that dataset but let’s proceed without them.

So the claim is that the best primary schools are congregated in rich areas i.e Bukit Timah. So I had to define what is a good/bad primary school. I couldn’t really find an official ranking of the primary schools by the government. After all, “All schools are good schools”, am i right?

However, I found this ranking done by this parents forum (https://blog.learnable.asia/singapore-primary-school-rankings/), where they ranked all the primary schools in Singapore, from 1 to 185. I think we can use this as a proxy of how the good schools are, as after all, we are dealing with public perception of what the best schools are.

 

So, after some painful manual matching, I grouped the schools by percentile. The top 25th percentile, and so forth. Here’s how it looks.

Green – Top 25%, Yellow 25-50, orange 50-75, Red Last 75-100

From what it seems, There doesn’t really seem to be a favoured distribution of the top 25th percentile of schools. It also seems like the North East seems to be unfairly favoured. A simple explanation though, is that the North East is a much newer estate with newer schools, so it’s obvious that the schools there haven’t had time to build their reputation as good schools.

To make it clearer, let’s look at the top 25th% percentile of schools, without the rest.

 

Again, seems to be evenly distributed. I decided to cut down to the top 10th percentile to narrow the list. Here is the list of the top 10th percentile of primary schools btw.

  • Nan Hua Primary School 
  • Nanyang Primary School 
  • PEI HWA PRESBYTERIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • RED SWASTIKA SCHOOL
  • ROSYTH SCHOOL
  • TEMASEK PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • Methodist Girls’ School
  • RULANG PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • RIVERSIDE PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • WEST SPRING PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • JUNYUAN PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • PUNGGOL GREEN PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • EUNOS PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • PEI CHUN PUBLIC SCHOOL
  • SHUQUN PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • WESTWOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • AI TONG SCHOOL
  • Fairfield Methodist School

So here it is. In fact, I guess we can say that there appears to be an unfair distribution to the west, rather than central areas. Since primary school balloting works by 1km, 2km radiuses, I decided to draw 1km/2km circle around these points and see what areas are covered.

From here, there is a small cluster of good schools in Bukit Timah, but it mainly also covers areas like Clementi and Buona Vista, which has plenty of public housing. I don’t think that this is very strong evidence of an obvious bias towards the central areas, and won’t certainly make that claim.

On the other hand, we’re not juxtaposing this against the geographical density of these locations. A fairer metric would be to judge how many young parents are able to ballot for these schools, and the range of property prices around these areas. However, I couldn’t really find reliable data on that. Also, if we have a more reliable metric rather than the “public impression”, i would love to have access to that but I think public impression is the best we can go for.

What is obvious is that if you want your kids to go to a “top 10th percentile” primary school though, don’t live in Yishun.

And of course, we could selectively slice the data to fit whatever narrative we want. But I chose to fix to a top 10th percentile even before deciding on any hypothesis, since I don’t really want to bias my findings to any direction.

On making conclusions based on good data

So I think this is a good start, and I don’t think we need to be worrying or panicking about the “unfair distribution” of schools by geography. I think there are many other things that impact the equality of opportunity, but we should be relatively sure that geography of our best schools is not at the top of the pecking list.

And I’ll just like to remind everyone that while things might be obvious at 1st glance, maybe we can be a little more careful before jumping to conclusions. Maybe do some research and keep an open critical mind. I’m also a little afraid that we jump to conclusions from statements that are based on unproven data. 

If anyone wants me to dig further, maybe for secondary schools, then let me know. Or if you have better datasets to share so I can dig further.  And I’ll share the links of my raw data at the bottom of the article.

Key Points

  • No obvious bias of the top 10th percentile of primary schools to the central areas (i.e Bukit Timah)
  • We should probably move on from geography as as a factor for equality of education opportunity, and direct discussion and efforts to more salient factors
  • Yishun is cursed

If you spot any errors (I don’t really check my work), feel free to reach out to yourdailytao@gmail.com

All raw data here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R7osmpxiFqU-ogGn7HRIvCTgEWNhqNFusgJkIJmvJTo/edit?usp=sharing

July 4, 2020 by articles

On Protests and Change

George Flyod

One recent topic that is at the top of everyone’s mind is the murder of George Floyd. His passing was a travesty and it drew strong reactions from many in the world. Protests, riots and huge media coverage took place. So many people began to campaign and speak about ending systemic racism.

Amidst all this craziness, one thing that recently caught my attention was from the sporting world. A NBA (National Basket Association) superstar named Kyrie Irving, along with some other players for support, led a coalition to voice out that he did not want to resume playing basketball to fight racial injustice.

Here’s a quote from his statement.

“This is not about individual players, athletes or entertainers. This is about our group of strong men and women uniting for change” the statement added. “We are all fathers, daughters leaders and so much more. So what is our BIG picture? We are in this for UNITY and CHANGE!”

Whilst this was still lingering in my short-term memory, I came across another story. The story of an English Premier League footballer, Marcus Rashford. 

 

#maketheUturn

In the United Kingdom, Rashford was advocating for a different cause. He was advocating for something close to his heart, the reversal of the cancellation of the food voucher scheme, which would have, in his words, would have caused over 200,000 kids to go hungry and starve. He wrote a beautiful, well thought out letter to the British Government.

https://www.manutd.com/en/news/detail/marcus-rashford-tweets-open-letter-to-mps-about-food-poverty

It pretty much garnered wide support across the nation. Boris Johnson, whose administration initially committed to cancelling the food voucher scheme, made a U-turn on the decision. This was due to the wide public outcry, leading to pretty bad optics to cancel such a scheme and leaving so many kids hungry during this period of economic distress for so many in the nation. At the end, it was a no brainer to reverse this decision.

I just wanted to draw parallels between these 2 athletes, their message and what they are trying to accomplish as I think this really highlights an important lesson to us all.

 

That progress comes in bits and pieces, not giant leaps

In my personal opinion, one of the worst fallacies driven in our heads by all the media that we consume., is that change, innovation or progress comes in brain waves, sudden inspiration, eureka moments etc. This is a topic thats really hashed out so I don’t wanna go too much into detail, but here’s an excerpt I could find from this website, innovation coach. 

http://www.innovationcoach.com/2016/08/innovation-myths-debunked-part-ii/

There’s the story of Archimedes life-changing discovery in the bathtub that supposedly caused him to shout, “Eureka! Eureka!” His eureka discovery was the principle of hydrostatics, which is the science of how solid bodies behave in liquid. Similarly, we still tell the story of how in 1589, Italian scientist Galileo is said to have dropped two balls of different masses off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to disprove existing beliefs about the way objects fall and to instead demonstrate that their time of descent was independent of their respective masses. And of course, one of the most famous (and embellished) stories in the history of science is the tale of a young Isaac Newton who was simply minding his own business and sitting in his garden when an apple fell from a tree and hit his head. And then, in a stroke of brilliant eureka insight, Galileo suddenly came up with his theory of gravity.

The eureka myth—the notion that all creative ideas come suddenly in a flash of a brilliant eureka moment—is certainly seductive; but for the vast majority of innovations, it is completely untrue. The problem with the eureka myth is that glosses over the tireless work and concentration required of the vast majority of innovative ideas. If innovation was easy, everyone would do it—but it’s most definitely not. Even genius inventor Albert Einstein is reported to have said, “Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”There’s the story of Archimedes life-changing discovery in the bathtub that supposedly caused 

 

Wait, what does this have to do with Irving or Rashford?

There are many different aspects that I can comment on about how they have gone about their movements. However, the one thing I would like to focus on is simply:

Specificity

You see, the biggest thing that struck me about the Black Lives matter movement online is that most of the vocabulary and words used are broad and extremely subjective. Terms like ‘racial equality’ are really abstract, and mean different things to people. No doubt, there are always broad and lofty goals that we should aim towards, but when these phrases dominate the discussion, there leaves a lot of room for empty discussion, strawman attacks and meaningless circular arguments.

Being the optimist that I am, I do believe that the leaders of these movements have specific solutions and plans to get to where they want. However, so much of this information gets lost in translation through the media. Rather, what we see is repetitive arguments, insults, and people speaking in circles about many things that have nothing to do with policy or solution.

A quick 5 minutes glimpse (all I can give with my poor attention span) of the black lives matter website made me feel like I proved my point. After going through the website, it was really difficult for me to pinpoint what they were trying to achieve exactly, in the short and long term.

Of course, we know they want to eliminate racism, push for racial equality and get people voting for the right choices. (We shall speak another day about the politics of the Black Lives Matter Movement). And this is ultimately a movement, there is a worthy discussion on whether they should be prescribing solutions or just driving up public support towards a cause.

However, when these are as broad as these, it’s hard to get results, especially in comparison to the issue of food vouchers in the UK, are overly broad with no specific goals.

 

And why are broad goals bad?

Broad high level objectives aren’t necessarily bad. They are essential. The thing is that these high level objectives require gargantuan efforts, years or decades of planning to get there. We need short-term and intermediary milestones to compliment these goals. Otherwise, these will be just empty words. Progress, like innovation, doesn’t happen all at once just because we want it to. It happens when we identify our milestones, and tackle our issues 1 by 1. Systemic and cultural shifts don’t happen overnight.

In fact, when people grow overly emotionally attached to these goals, it even draws hysteria when they feel like no progress is made. And we all know how difficult it is to negotiate with someone who is emotional and has no willingness to compromise even a single inch as they have grown too emotionally attached.

And that’s why I felt that Rashford’s efforts, and the movement in general, worked well. There was a clear goal, a realistic and achievable solution, and the merits of executing the solution was easy to debate. There was not much room (and I’m sure some must have tried) for personal attacks, strawman arguments about the wealth of professional athletes etc. This is because everyone’s attention could be easily drawn to the pros and cons of 1 specific issue, at 1 time.

And since he has achieved his goal, it doesn’t mean he has to stop there. Things need to move forward. But patience is key, and having the vision and wisdom to exercise that patience while breaking down barriers 1 by 1 will get you there. 

In comparison, I still don’t know what Kyrie Irving plans to achieve by sitting out. I really wish he found something specific and presented it on his platform to draw attention to it and get the policy makers to move. Saying that you will seat out while saying systemic racism has to stop is idealistic, but also might prove detrimental to his cause when it drowns out many other worthy causes.

 

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good

One of figures that have inspired me the most is Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and social activist who has pretty much dedicated his life efforts to ensuring equal justice for blacks in America. 

(Here is his ted talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tOp7OxyQ8 and book https://www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-story-justice-redemption-ebook/dp/B00PBVBL8S is brilliant by the way. Please read it if you have time)

This is what he says about the protest.

To be honest, it’s not that hard to protest. It’s not that hard to go someplace. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not important. It doesn’t mean that it’s not critical. But that’s not the hard thing we need from people who care about these issues. We need people to vote, we need people to engage in policy reform and political reform, we need people to not tolerate the rhetoric of fear and anger that so many of our elected officials use to sustain power. We need the cultural environments in the workplace to shift.

Protests are a signal of culture shift, and that shift in culture does enable us to execute better reforms. However, people with the platform and the eyeballs, and who are really sincere in driving change, need to get down and dirty with the details and engage in specific policy goals. Focus on change, 1 and at a time. Do not leave room for attention to be diverted, for meaningless arguments to be made, for people to conflate several issues into 1 big one. 

There are times when swinging for the fences works out. I just don’t think trying to fight for such a complex issue as racial equality is one of them. There are just too many complexities that are up for discussion. Such change doesn’t happen all at once. 

And I can’t resist quoting one of my favourite movie trilogies (The Dark Knight trilogy)

 

Bruce Wayne – “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy “

The video footage of George Floyd’s death was a horrific example that shook many out of their apathy. It conjured strong feelings among all of us. It was not an issue that divided people. Everyone from both sides of the political aisle agreed that it was horrible and something had to be done.

In my ideal world, we would have used that opportunity to start pinning down legislation and policies, drive the debate around solutions and start making incremental progress, bit by bit. However, the discussion has been drowned out by the looting, arguments about criminals, the definition of ‘defunding the police’. No doubt that politicians will push for things to satisfy their constituencies, but instead of having open debate about the merits of policies, we will just take at face value their legislation without ever really uniting people behind these decisions.

Strong feelings are not enough. What we need to be is to be more like Bruce Wayne, more like Batman. Logical analysis of what needs to be done and a willingness to take obstacles out of the way. 

June 18, 2020 by articles

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