• „the number of specialists has fallen by 90% since the 1950s, and at least 40% in the last decade alone“
• „supermarkets […] now sell 97% of our food, with four chains accounting for 76%“

Research is cited showing that „after the arrival of a big supermarket, participation in local charities, churches, campaign groups and even voting declines sharply“.

The more immediate effects are a diminishing choice of products, especially in the „real“ sense of things like local varieties of produce as opposed to different toilet paper colors.

Together with pressure on producers (called monopsony in the article) the dominance of big chains means a monopolization of business. As the „Red Tories“, a conservative UK thinktank finds, the grocery sector is largely closed to to new entrants.

This problem seems to me apparent in all sorts of industries and areas of business — the free market naturally leads to bigger and bigger agglomeration both in terms of huge companies and geographical specialization (e.g. 90%+ of footballs (for soccer) produced in Pakistan, similar number of laptops assembled in China, …), indeed reminiscent of the worst days of Soviet planned economy and similarly damaging to the environment and vulnerable to changes in demand or geopolitical events.

The question that frequently comes to my mind when I read this kind of thing is: we like to think of the free market in analogy to evolution. But while we can observe stunning diversity in nature, we have the opposite development in economy. I think on simple but probably central answer is: Nature has very powerful negative feedback in the form of parasites, whose role for evolution is I think widely underrated at least among non-professionals (non-biologists). With increasing population and dominance of a species in a certain area come dramatic increases in vulnerability to predation and especially parasites maintaining the balance, while business almost only knows size benefits.

Would it help to try and implement something similar for businesses? Some sort of progressive business taxation? Should antitrust regulation be stronger and act earlier? Or is centralizing business the way after all, but in public ownership?

What do I mean with „bad love“? As this is a guide (and unlike the Nice Guy thing) it’s mostly about you — so bad love here means unhappy love. Means being involved romantically with somebody or wanting to be involved with somebody in ways that make you feel bad. They’re either not treating you right or outright rejecting you.

Reality

What does reality have to do with this? Basically that you should try to have your feelings „grounded“ in how the other person is actually behaving towards you. Where the „towards you“ part is at least as important as the other one. In a way that should go without saying, but it doesn’t. So often we have feelings for somebody based on what we see of them in other contexts, towards other people, or — even worse — what we imagine they could be like, what they maybe sometimes are like but most of the time not, or what they used to be like. Now, a certain amount of future orientation and expectation of change is good, and so is some tolerance for bad times. But expecting dramatic changes, expecting even to be able to bring these changes about yourself — no.

And this is where misunderstood romance comes in for the first time. Being unhappy in love in the sense of being in love with an idealized idea of somebody rather than their actual self makes us feel good on another level. We are the good ones, helping somebody to aspire to their higher being! Seeing the good in somebody, the soft core behind the hard shell! Suffering their mistreatment and ignorance until they finally see the light. Take a moment to think about how it would make you feel if somebody were in love with you like that. You see how patronizing that whole business is? You’re worse than an unwanted therapist, which is bad enough. With this kind of idealized love you are in the company of religious missionaries. So if you want to keep doing it, at least don’t call it love.

Respect

Not a big step to „respect“ any more now. Let’s assume somebody is actually treating you well, giving you all reasons to be in love with who they actually are towards you. Just one problem: You think that makes you a great couple, and they don’t. So you keep trying. You’re friends with them in a sad way, and whenever you can you sneak in some romantic advances. Again, try a quick change of perspectives. How would you feel on the other side of this? First of all, I’d say pretty creeped out at a certain point. Angry and guilty at the same time. And — disrespected. So this is somebody who claims to love you but doesn’t think you can make a good decision about who’s an appropriate partner for you? Furthermore: What are the chances that if somebody works you like this you’d give in for more than maybe a fling when you’re feeling bad about yourself? So realize that loving somebody and respecting their choice should go together. They don’t think you’re the right one for them? You probably aren’t. Respect is the right romance.

Romance

I’m realizing this was a little cruel. A lot of feelings which are pretty normal have been dismissed here. But that’s not really the point actually. These feelings (wanting to be with somebody who doesn’t want to be with you, hoping for somebody to realize your value, to treat you better, to live up to their good potential) are normal feelings, and it’s ok to have them. You have a right to have them. My argument is: they’re not love. And if you realize that, you’ll suffer from them less. If you want to be with somebody who doesn’t want to be with you it sure as hell hurts. It hurts your pride, your self-esteem, your trust in finding somebody to love eventually. What I’m saying is: don’t idealize these feelings. See them as something which is ok to have, but which you should and will get over eventually. The cruelty above was meant to show that you’re not loving better for staying with these feelings, rather the opposite.

The same is true in a more complicated way for the case of not outright rejection but bad treatment. What you get for staying in that kind of situation is the assurance to be on the right side, morally. Probably also somebody who doesn’t actually deserve you in a way, making them less likely to leave you. So you have to realize that to leave this kind of situation behind, you need to take two risks: To be actually rejected and hurt by somebody. And for you to get into situations where you reject and hurt people. And the second one might be worse. Again, to shy away from these risks is very human. Don’t feel bad for doing it. But don’t applaud yourself for it, either. Go look for somebody who treats you right, even though that will mean that sometimes you’re scared if you deserve them and if they’ll stay with you. Especially because sooner or later you will do stupid things that hurt them. Which is ok.

So this is the bottom line: the pains associated with love are certainly and always will be a part of life. But they’re not part of love, in the sense that love that makes a point of suffering them „in the name of love“ is not actually love. It’s passive-aggressive. It’s better to allow yourself the real aggressiveness sometimes. And then have a free chest to feel the real love.

PS: Of course, this is a limited approach to relationship troubles, and in being concerned mostly with the feelings around the „to be or not to be together“ situation is rightly titled „avoiding bad love“ — it has little to say on how to practice the good love in the long run. I don’t feel like writing about that right now, but I might someday.

First of all, what is the Evolutionary Psychology that is being criticised here? There are admittedly big misunderstandings among outsiders what the research agenda is, and I’ll summarize a brief outline from Schmitt & Buss (2011, see above). The central idea is that our mental setup, including thoughts, feelings etc., has to be seen as outcome of an evolutionary process just like our physical one, with natural and sexual selection as the mechanisms that shape them. The in my opinion first somewhat counterintuitive and heuristically relevant claim is that this evolutionary process is manifested in quite specialized „psychological mechanisms, information processing devices“ that also respond to specific classes of information. Our thoughts, feelings and behavior then are the result of combination, coordination and integration of a large number of these mechanisms (and consciousness itself can be seen as an evolved device to achieve this integration). To think of Evolutionary Psychology as biological determinism is thus a common and big misunderstanding, because appropriate response to and interaction with different environmental factors is what these mechanisms are all about.

The search for these mechanisms is what characterizes most of Evolutionary Psychology research as far as I can tell, and is indeed a unique heuristic approach. All the same, the basic idea that evolution has shaped our mental setup seems to me about as trivial (very) as the basic claim of Neuroscience, that mental processes take place in the brain. And the value in and of itself of showing this in concrete examples I also consider equally low in both cases — the mere existence of a psychological mechanism that can be predicted from evolutionary hypotheses is as exciting (not at all) as the mere demonstration of a certain mental process correlating with activity in a certain brain region. Thus my first critique of Evolutionary Psychology: the field needs to be legitimized as achieving something more in either philosophical self-understanding or practical application.

This leads to my preliminary position on what and how we can know about „reality“, and what the role of science is in that process. I think that an at least mild constructivism is the only reasonable stance to adopt there. That means what we bring to our inquiry of reality in terms of interests, theoretical frameworks and research procedures has (at least) some impact on what we find — and that because a correspondence with reality beyond these preconditions is impossible to establish, scientific results cannot be evaluated based only on this correspondence with reality. The most reasonable proposed alternative (or complement) to „correspondence to reality“ as the standard for good science has been beautifully described by Jerome Bruner (1990. Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London) as „the pragmatist’s questions — How does this view affect my view of the world or my commitments to it?“ And for me it follows from there that a critical examination of these influences as well as the „pragmatist“ consequences is indispensable.

If that sounded too abstract, be reminded of the myriad ways in which the design of a study, statistical techniques and interpretation of the outcomes influence the results. There is so much discouraging research on how findings are exaggerated in medicine (e.g. Thomas A. Trikalinos et al. (2004). Effect sizes in cumulative meta-analyses of mental health randomized trials evolved over time. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 57(11), 1124–1130. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2004.02.018), a field with very rigorous established standards of research and also a powerful party with interests opposed to those of the primary researchers (inventors and marketers of new medical procedures and drugs vs. governments and insurance companies who pay the bills) — imagine what happens in a field like Evolutionary Psychology where there are much less established procedures and which relies a lot on questionnaire research in Western culture contexts, often using descriptive correlational findings in a specific culture as support for universal claims about causal genetic mechanisms. Actually, you don’t have to imagine, read „Why Most Published Research Findings Are False“ by John P. A. Ioannidis (PLoS Medicine 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124) who concludes in the abstract: „for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.“

While this doesn’t render the idea of „better“ and „worse“ research in the sense of correspondence with reality useless, it certainly underlines the importance of examining which „mistakes“ in research are systematic due to an explicit or implicit agenda of the researchers and the dynamics inherent in the development of a theory. And to take into account the „pragmatist’s questions“ when considering accepting certain findings and whole research programs as part of our worldview.

I think this is not often made explicit by feminist critiques of Evolutionary Psychology, but I believe that most of them operate from a perspective on science similar to mine. And this is where evolutionary psychologist completely miss the point, and prefer to think of themselves as a purely „positive“ science describing „facts“ — dismissing criticism as committing the „naturalistic fallacy“. Let me illustrate this with two excerpts about „sexual coercion“ (the non-scientific term would be rape):

More generally, we believe that proponents of all theoretical perspectives should keep an open mind about the scientific hypothesis (and it is only that, a hypothesis), that men may have evolved adaptations for sexual coercion. It should go without saying that rape is illegal, immoral, and terribly destructive to women, and should in no way be condoned, whatever the ultimate causes turn out to be. Unfortunately, what should go without saying has to be repeated over and over, since those who advance evolutionary psychological hypotheses are unjustly accused of somehow condoning or excusing rape. The naturalistic fallacy, mistakenly inferring an ought from an is, seems to be a particularly stubborn error committed by critics of evolutionary psychology, despite the many published descriptions of this error (e.g., Confer et al. 2010). (Buss & Schmitt, 2011, see above)

In this spirit of simply stating the facts, this is the abstract of an article concerned with the connection between different female „mating strategies“ and sexual victimization:

Women show stable individual differences in mating strategies ranging from short-term to long-term. Short-term mating strategies may put women at greater risk of sexual victimization through increased exposure to risky situations or to men most inclined to pursue a strategy of sexual coercion. To test these predictions, we studied female college students who had experienced a completed rape, an attempted sexual victimization, or no sexual victimization. Women’s mating strategies were assessed through the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory. Victims further reported whether they engaged in consensual intimate behaviors with their victimizer before or after the victimization. Victims of completed rape scored highest on short-term mating strategy pursuit; non-victims scored lowest; women experiencing attempted victimization scored between these two groups. Victims of completed rape also more frequently reported consensual kissing and intercourse with their victimizer before and after the victimization than women who experienced attempted victimization. The findings of this study should not be interpreted as blaming the victim, but rather as identifying circumstances that put women at greater risk. Clearly, perpetrators are to blame for sexual victimization. Discussion focuses on future research directions and on practical implications for reducing rates of sexual victimization. (Complete Abstract of Carin Perilloux, Joshua D. Duntley, David M. Buss (2011). Susceptibility to sexual victimization and women’s mating strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 783–786. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.06.032)

From a feminist point of view it is cynical (and will often lead to an emotional rather than cool-minded response) that these statements which so obviously contribute to what is called „Rape Culture“ refer to aspirations of reducing sexual violence as their practical implications. The pillars of Rape Culture relevant here, in a nutshell, are the cultural believes around „men cannot resist sexual temptations and control their urges (at least some, and at least at a certain point)“ and „Women can and should avoid being raped in a variety of ways, especially through the way they dress and by avoiding casual sexual encounters“. These believes are at odds with findings in the feminist tradition that rapists are on the one hand a quite distinct group of men, and rape cases show a considerable amount of deliberation in choice of victim and circumstances, contradicting the „impulse“ trope. And on the other hand, they are enabled by widespread reiteration of exactly these believes, especially by other men.

A personal eye-opener for me was a seminar by „Men Can Stop Rape“ which I attended during my internship in a counseling center specialized in issues of sexuality (which means a lot of abuse and rape) in Glasgow. The seminar was attended by both men and women, and the facilitator started by asking the question „What do men usually do to avoid being raped“. After some laughter, the two responses from the plenum which were written on the blackboard were „avoid going to jail“ and „don’t pick up the soap“. The same question asked concerning women yielded a long long list of behaviors related to being in vulnerable places in public and especially in the dark, and all sorts of safety behaviors around going out and dating. So while recommendations for women on how to avoid getting into „risky“ situations may sound reasonable especially to male researchers and laymen at first, there is already a ridiculous amount of concerns women carry around on the issue, severely limiting their freedom to live a rewarding life. And while they don’t provide any real safety, because they don’t really causally relate to rape, they might help a little bit by at least avoiding to provide excuses to the perpetrators. But again, there are so many things women are supposed to do to avoid getting raped that it will be hard to find a single rape case where the woman didn’t do something that is seen as related to getting raped, tilting public opinion and the outcome of a court case in favor of the perpetrator.

What has here been illustrated for the problem of rape (which I consider one of the most pressing ones) applies in a similar fashion to questions of work, access to jobs in leading positions or political responsibilities. It applies to questions of housework and childrearing. It applies to domestic violence and abuse, where a recent publication by the same group (David M. Buss & Joshua D. Duntley (2011). The evolution of intimate partner violence. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16, 411–419. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2011.04.015) innocently reports findings like a link between sexual infidelity and being victimized.

The conclusion of this epistemological line of thought is that even though I cannot at this point provide the reasons (and they would be interesting to know), social science that doesn’t have an explicit sociopolitical agenda seems to always slip into having the same implicit one: maintaining the status quo. And I believe this to be especially true for Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology in general and, as I have recently begun taking up to demonstrate, Economics.

Related to this is my argument that all social sciences should be „reflexive“ in two ways: Be able to explain their own activity as scientists and researchers as part of the psychological and social theories they develop, and be aware of the effects of their descriptions of people and society on what people actually do. I have recently started to look into that for economics, and was especially surprised to find how ignorance of the way our social organization and the descriptions thereof shape our behavior leads economists to cling to a thoroughly disproved „founding myth“ of pre-market societies‘ economic structures. As a side note, as far as I can tell our actual knowledge about what life was like in the „deep evolutionary time“ that has a central role in Evolutionary Psychology arguments is very limited, and feminists have a point when they say that what evolutionary psychologists think about especially the gender relations of that era looks „suspiciously like the American 50s“.

For evolutionary psychologists who advocate that even complex high-level behavior such as romantic feelings and relationships are essentially governed by evolved psychological mechanisms in the service of self-preservation and procreation, the same assumption certainly has to be made for their research endeavors. It already does a lot to take the edge out of their claims to objectivity and universality if you view their activities and proclamations as a means of predominantly upper-class men to advance their access to desirable „mates“ by, e.g., claiming that what they have to offer on the „mating market“ is what women in general are (and most people will read: should be) looking for.

This naturally leads to the other side of the reflexivity issue. I strongly believe that a culture in which stories like this are passed around for facts will have different relationships than a culture with a different, or maybe just more diverse, story on the interactions between men and women:

Sexual conflict, for example, can occur on the “mating market” over whether or not sexual intercourse will occur or in the amount of time and investment required before sexual intercourse will occur. Deception and sexual persistence are two common tactics men use in the “battleground” of pre-mating sexual conflict (Buss, 1989a; Haselton, Buss, Oubaid, & Angleitner, 2005). Deflecting sexual attention, imposing longer time delays, and requiring additional signals of commitment are common tactics women use in the “battleground” of pre-mating sexual conflict. (Buss & Duntley, 2011, see above. Emphasis original)

First of all, take a moment to link the descriptions of normal and expected male „tactics“ like deception and sexual persistence back to the rape culture arguments. Second, while the argument makes immediate sense from a point of view of evolutionary logic, think about how well this describes what you observe in your own love life and that of the people around you. My personal answer to that is: not very. And while I don’t want to claim that personal experience is what science has to be measured against, I want to make the point that often to see the flaws in a certain argument you have to step out of the frame of reference of that argument (in this example: from abstract-logical to concrete-experiential). Thus my bottom line: A valid and successful feminist critique of Evolutionary Psychology does not try to disprove empirical claims to differences between men and women applying the same methods as Evolutionary Psychology does. It points out the flaws in Evolutionary Psychology’s objectivist scientific premise and holds it accountable for both motivations guiding the research process and practical implications of its results, including their public reception.

Where does all this leave Evolutionary Psychology as a field? In my opinion in need of an explicit agenda of why they are doing research and what they want to achieve with it. And a good argument as to how their products (both their explicit „findings“ as well as spreading their mode of thinking into popular culture) contributes to a better society. I believe that for some branches of Evolutionary Psychology, that can be done successfully. But for many others I am pessimistic, and this includes the whole field occupied with evolutionary gender roles and relations.

It also means that feminist critique that seems to misunderstand Evolutionary Psychology, especially where the „naturalistic fallacy“ comes into play, should be read as coming from some roughly constructivist-pragmatist viewpoint similar to what I have described, and as asking accountability for what findings and research process do to our actual social world. Which certainly doesn’t mean that all feminist critique is right. But a lot of it that sounds stupid if you stay within a positivist view of science suddenly makes sense if you appreciate what they are actually talking about.

The articles I found convinced me that I wasn’t wrong entirely thinking microcredit could help. But there’s a big BUT, or a number of them actually. An article in the New Yorker from 2008 titled What Microloans Miss provides a very readable introduction, but my primary source is an article called Microfinance Misses Its Mark from Aneel Karnani, published in the 2007 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. It says that, first of all, microcredits help the not-so-poor better than the poorest:

One of the most comprehensive studies reaches a surprising conclusion: Microloans are more beneficial to borrowers living above the poverty line than to borrowers living below the poverty line.11 This is because clients with more income are willing to take the risks, such as investing in new technologies, that will most likely increase income flows. Poor borrowers, on the other hand, tend to take out conservative loans that protect their subsistence, and rarely invest in new technology, fixed capital, or the hiring of labor.

Now, even though that is already quite a problem (the way the poorest tend to spend microcredit money often brings them into a debt trap not much different from the one created by informal money-lenders, and the interest rates are still high for microcredit, mostly between 30% and 60% p.a.) it is not very surprising, and the fact that it can’t help everybody who needs help does not mean it doesn’t do any good.

So here are other negative aspects that are mentioned, and make a lot of sense from my own observations of business here:

A microcredit client is an entrepreneur in the literal sense: She raises the capital, manages the business, and takes home the earnings. But the “entrepreneurs” who have become heroes in the developed world are usually visionaries who convert new ideas into successful business models. Although some microcredit clients have created visionary businesses, the vast majority are caught in subsistence activities. They usually have no specialized skills, and so must compete with all the other self-employed poor people in entry-level trades.14 Most have no paid staff, own few assets, and operate at too small a scale to achieve efficiencies, and so make very meager earnings. In other words, most microenterprises are small and many fail – contrary to the United Nations’ hype that microentrepreneurs will grow thriving businesses that lead to flourishing economies.

This should not be too surprising. Most people do not have the skills, vision, creativity, and persistence to be entrepreneurial. Even in developed countries with high levels of education and access to financial services, about 90 percent of the labor force is employees, not entrepreneurs.15

It seems very obvious once you read about it, but still I must confess I never drew that simple comparison between the ratio of self-employed versus employees in developed countries and how we imagine to improve the economy of developing countries. And especially the stiff competition on the „entry-level trades“ is very observable — the number of things you can do for business on your own are very limited after all, it’s simple.

The people themselves see that similarly apparently:

The fact is, most microcredit clients are not microentrepreneurs by choice. They would gladly take a factory job at reasonable wages if it were available. We should not romanticize the idea of the “poor as entrepreneurs.” The International Labour Organization (ILO) uses a more appropriate term for these people: “own-account workers.”

Creating opportunities for steady employment at reasonable wages is the best way to take people out of poverty. “Nothing is more fundamental to poverty reduction than employment,” states the ILO. And the United Nations Development Programme agrees: “Employment is a key link between economic growth and poverty reduction. Productive and remunerative employment can help ensure that poor people share in the benefits of economic growth.”

That microcredit-funded businesses don’t usually create employment for others was already mentioned. The New Yorker article has a good summary of what would do that:

What poor countries need most, then, is not more microbusinesses. They need more small-to-medium-sized enterprises, the kind that are bigger than a fruit stand but smaller than a Fortune 1000 corporation. In high-income countries, these companies create more than sixty per cent of all jobs, but in the developing world they’re relatively rare, thanks to a lack of institutions able to provide them with the capital they need. It’s easy for really big companies in poor countries to tap the markets for funding, and now, because of microfinance, it’s possible for really small enterprises to get money, too. But the companies in between find it hard. It’s a phenomenon that has been dubbed the “missing middle.”

The problem is a dearth not just of lenders but also of people willing to buy an ownership stake in companies, like the angel investors and venture capitalists that American entrepreneurs often rely on. Microfinance has led us to focus on lending, but it can be hard for young companies to get big purely on bank loans, which consume cash flow that could be reinvested in the business. Supplying the missing middle will require backers who want to invest in companies rather than just lend to them.

Interesting, especially the aspect of ownership, investing versus lending. Aneel Karnani, again, has a good image to make the advantage of bigger business easier to grasp:

To understand why creating jobs, not offering microcredit, is the better solution to alleviating poverty, consider these two alternative scenarios: (1) A microfinancier lends $200 to each of 500 women so that each can buy a sewing machine and set up her own sewing microenterprise, or (2) a traditional financier lends $100,000 to one savvy entrepreneur and helps her set up a garment manufacturing business that employs 500 people. In the first case, the women must make enough money to pay off their usually high-interest loans while competing with each other in exactly the same market niche. Meanwhile the garment manufacturing business can exploit economies of scale and use modern manufacturing processes and organizational techniques to enrich not only its owners, but also its workers.

Very convincing. And how can we get there? Karnani’s take-home message, together with only some country-comparison examples (that is an interesting bit in the article which I won’t quote more of here, because it basically backs the claims made before) is:

Overall, governments, businesses, and civil society would be well advised to reallocate their resources and energies away from microfinance and into supporting larger enterprises in labor-intensive industries. This is what is alleviating poverty in China, Korea, Taiwan, and other developing countries. At the same time, they should also provide basic services that improve the employability and productivity of the poor. Otherwise, they will miss the mark of lifting people out of poverty.

And how about what I, we (Action 5) can do? Maybe we could indeed help funding businesses that create employment, on the lower end of the „small-to-medium-sized enterprises“ mentioned. I feel that also education would probably improve if teachers and students had more of an idea what they are being educated for, instead of that almost magical thinking that with an education something good will happen in your life. Without jobs, usually, it won’t.

The only discernible „luxury“ items on sale are drugs — cigarettes, alcohol, meat if you want to count that here Apart from that you get pots for cooking, water containers, soap, notebooks and pens, and very basic and local food items — bananas for cooking, rice, beans, tomatoes. You don’t even see too much fruit around, which is a petty for me personally but also I believe for people’s health. The services offered are similarly essential — bicycle repair, barber shops, „motorbike taxi“ and transport. And there are typing services, where your hand-written pages will be put into a computer for printing and copying. And, last but not least, a lot of people I think are more or less formally employed in helping with household chores. Here in my house there are two, but I feel at other times youths of different age pop in, help and eat…

This leads already to the production side, which I feel offers a very clear view of the concept of „value added“. The lower end is the mentioned „work for food“ concept. And I was told by teachers that many of the students would spend their afternoons like this: Two hours of walking to the river and back for 20 liters (some 5 gallon for my old-fashioned friends abroad) of water for their home, maybe a second round if the need is there. Then scrambling the bushes for firewood to be used for dinner preparation. So at nightfall, there is no homework done, clothes washed, or pleasure had from life. And what is the value generated in the process? A small contribution to what will eventually be a very modest dinner, together with many hours of peeling bananas, cooking different things one after another in a single pot over a small wooden fire. I don’t even dare trying to express that in terms of money. By the way, this story also explains the emphasis a youth magazine I read at school put on solar lamps for homework — I had wondered why people don’t simply do it in the afternoon… Then, of course, to continue the hierarchy of labor, there is agriculture, transporting and selling things, and the few skilled labor opportunities — barber, typist, motorbike driver.

Many of these activities strike me as painfully inefficient. Take the exams that I recently participated in composing — I was the only one to do that on the computer myself, and the colleagues were half shocked and half thrilled by the idea. The others wrote by hand on loose sheets of paper, to be collected and brought to the typist, who earns 500 TSH (25 Eurocent) for one page of output. That is the next fascinating point: Even in relation to local goods, the incomes and margins of profit are incredibly low. For 500 Shilling I can buy 2 small packages of roasted peanuts, and the price for typing one page is the same as for printing one page. The difference between buying and selling prices for the many shops are also very low. Human work is definitely not worth much here. And I feel the relationship to the value, the use, it produces is quite clear, as I said. If I transport a bunch of cooking bananas from one place where they are sold for 4000/= (the usual sign for Shilling) to another where they are individually sold for a total of 5000/=, my transporting, cutting up and selling has produced a value of 1000/=, no matter how long it took me and that I also need a bicycle to do it.

I also feel the way a whole society (or at least a region) can be stuck economically is visible here: Somebody should start with a more efficient, aggregate way of providing any of these goods and services, like selling water. But in order for his or her potential costumers to make use of that, they need an income — in other words: they also need to provide something to people others than themselves and their family. And somehow it seems almost impossible to start that cycle at only one point, which I think puts an end to many of the myriad smart little business ideas one could come up with here.

Another aspect is certainly capital, investment. A shop-keeper needs to hold a stock, a street vendor needs a bicycle to transport his stuff, a barber a room with electricity, mirror and an(electric) razor/shaving machine, not to mention the obvious case of the motorbike taxi. And this capital is still almost impossible to get with just a good idea and job qualification, despite an abundance of (mostly for-profit) micro-credit institutions by now. A new project partner of Action 5’s in Kenya had a plausible social business plan that would return its investment within a year and a half as profits. But they said even the micro-credit institutions want to see either an already running business and/or securities for their money.

Now, of course, there is a romanticism to this way of life. Self-prepared food is delicious and wholesome to an extent our mostly mass-produced stuff back home can’t reach. And the dominant (and hardly profitable) businesses, the small shops, also have a social aspect. People tend to buy everything in very small quantities — a single cigarette or maybe two, kerosene to light the lamp for one evening, rice for one meal, petrol/gas for one trip to town and back. I already get surprised looks when I buy a small bank-note’s worth of peanuts at once, 5 packages. I pass the shop every day on the way to school and back after all. And people who go to a shop always hang out there, meet the shop-keeper and other customers, chat and relax. But still I don’t believe it’s justified to say that this is just the way people choose to live. To many are the complaints from everywhere, too many the requests for help I get.

And this is a last point, of which I’m still not sure how close its relationship to the economic desolation is: the presence of (white) help workers and help industries. Firstly, this impacts the job aspirations of even and especially the well-educated young people. Their first choice is the government (for the security it provides, and maybe also a relic of the not-so-distant „socialist“ past), followed by international NGOs, and only then private businesses. Also, in terms of entrepreneurship, many seem to prefer starting their own little NGO with foreign money over starting a business (maybe this has to to with the aforementioned capital-problem). And secondly, pretty much anything that moves here involves foreign charity money, from water tanks for my school to the hospital to the roof of the local church. Now take into account that even the few things payed for by the government are in part funds from abroad. This seems to have almost become a reflex: our school needs books — find an NGO; I want my child to go to college — ask the white guy. In any case, the society and economy here are pretty much impossible to imagine without all these foreigners and organizations which permeate its every corner right now. And I can’t build up to much hope that the „new development aid“ will lead the way into more independence, after decades of different new aids have so obviously and utterly failed at that.

I am pretty much stuck myself right now with trying to sort that out mentally, trying to come up with the deep causes and possible ways forward for this situation. Maybe this feeling of mine is equivalent to the „problem trance“ we learn about concerning psychotherapy with especially depressive clients. I can’t help thinking, though, that the aid industry does after all contribute a lot to sustaining the misery, a conclusion I had always seen as free-market-ideology judging from the new genre of anti-aid books alone. At the same time, I most definitely don’t believe in the „just leave it alone“ message they often imply. I wish I knew more about how African economies do in the globalized markets right now, and what role that plays.

Humility is not an end result of spiritual practices and denials. Humility is not an achievement, it is not a virtue to be cultivated. A virtue that is cultivated ceases to be a virtue, for then it is merely another form of achievement, a record to be made. A cultivated virtue is not the abnegation of the self, but a negative assertion of the self. […] You cannot become humble. The very becoming is the continuation of self-importance, which conceals itself in the practice of a virtue. How strong is our will to succeed, to become!

That makes a lot of sense to me, and is actually what I observe a lot in the practice of meditation and spirituality in the west. At the same time, it clearly leaves the question: If you realize you are not humble right now, and are told there is no way of becoming humble, what can you do?

To me, while I acknowledge that from a purely logical point of view this is indeed a paradox, there is a solution in viewing our mental and emotional activity on two levels — that what our primary thoughts and feelings are, and our thoughts and feelings about these. The realization came to me in attempts at meditation, and at quieting my mind. I realized I could not do that, but I could at least be quiet about that, not have the second order reprimands on top of the incessant flow of first order thoughts and feelings. Now, of course, the magic is that the moment I realized that, the first order thoughts and feelings do begin to be more quiet also.

I believe and feel it works the same also for the other qualities that we aspire for — I cannot make myself be accepting of everything, but I can start immediately by being accepting of not being accepting. I cannot make myself humble — but I can be humble about the fact of not being humble. And so on. And for me, that really feels like how I understand Krishnamurti: it’s not a process of becoming, it starts with a sensation of realization that is its own fulfillment, even though of course it leads to a slow process of change on the first level of mind and emotion.

As a closing remark: Only in writing this I realized how close the title I chose is to what Gestalt Psychology calls the „Paradoxical Theory of Change“, which in more worldly but also maybe more complicated terms basically says the same thing: In order to change, we have to first accept what is.

The second, by David Henderson, stays closer to the story, and tries to make an interesting point. The claim is that increasing government welfare is actually the „scroogeish“ thing to do, contrary to what many would think at first, and that it is individual charitable giving that follows the true spirit of Christmas. These two approaches are polarized as coercion vs. compassion. I’m blogging about it because I think it is a recurrent theme in discussions, and maybe one issue where political „left“ and „right“ are truly separated by contradicting perspectives.

The different perspectives stem from different ideas about the original or „natural“ state. The „compassion“ party takes the distribution of wealth as it is as it’s starting point. From there it follows that giving is a charitable act, and that having taken from you without your consent is, well, coercion. On the other hand, the party titled „coercion“ by Henderson could better be called „rights“ approach, in my opinion. Here, the basic idea is that an unequal distribution of wealth is itself result of a coercive system, or of random differences between the talents and heritages (both material and cultural) of different people. Thus, taking from the wealthy is not coercion, but an attempt at remedying a coercive state of affairs. If you are poor and receive money, you are not being treated charitably, you get what is rightfully yours.

I suppose that any sensible position will incorporate something from both perspectives, even though my own would be leaning more towards what I called „rights“ approach. That’s why I’ve always taken some offense when the extremely rich are applauded too loudly for donating money, and I do think that proudly paying taxes is superior to charitable giving. I think it is important that those who receive can do so with a certain sense of entitlement. On the other hand, I understand that compassionate giving probably feels better than feeling you have to give. But maybe that could also be changed: in acknowledging that having a lot is mostly a blessing, and then giving with a feeling of giving something „back“.

The third article (by Steven E. Landsburg) centers around Scrooges frugal lifestyle, and makes the point that refraining from consumption is pretty much a charitable act already. I hope that, coming from a university economics professor, the simple and compelling analysis of what happens if you produce without consuming is true:

If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer—because you produced a dollar’s worth of goods and didn’t consume them.

The claim becomes harder to follow when you view non-consumption in the form it usually takes nowadays: putting money in the bank with interest. But I think when you assume that money is never taken out of the bank and eventually consumed after being multiplied by interest, the point holds:

Saving is philanthropy, and—because this is both the Christmas season and the season of tax reform—it’s worth mentioning that the tax system should recognize as much. If there’s a tax deduction for charitable giving, there should be a tax deduction for saving. What you earn and don’t spend is your contribution to the world, and it’s equally a contribution whether you give it away or squirrel it away.

I’d like to know more before my final judgement on this, but it is an intriguing thought.

Here is an interesting example of how that could happen:

[…] the Amazonian language Matses, whose arsenal of verb forms obliges you not only to explicitly indicate the kind of evidence — personal experience, inference, conjecture or hearsay — on which every statement you make is based, but also to distinguish recent inferences from older ones and say whether the interval between inference and event was long or short. If you choose the wrong verb form, you are treated as a liar. But the distinctions that must be expressed by verbal inflections in Matses, Deutscher argues, can all be easily understood by English speakers and easily expressed in English by means of circumlocutions.

Now, the information is indeed very fascinating to me, and I also don’t quite follow his conclusion. First, to make the point that languages shape our thoughts, you don’t have to prove that certain things cannot be expressed in some languages — it is enough to show that speakers of different languages habitually use certain concepts more than others. And here you can say that the degree of evidence backing a statement seems to have much more everyday importance to Matses speakers than to us. Second, if you assume there is something that cannot be expressed in English — how do you think you could talk (and think) about that in an English book, review, or even mind? Almost by definition, this part of reality would get lost in translation…

Which brings us to another example: colors.

Although the strange sequence in which color terms appear in the world’s languages over time — first black and white, then red, then either green or yellow, with blue appearing only after the first five are in place — still has no full explanation, Deutscher’s suggestion that the development of dyes and other forms of artificial coloring may be involved is as convincing as any other, making color terms the likeliest candidate for a culture-induced linguistic phenomenon.

Other explanations are also possible, of course, and have been made, like here by the British statesman and Greek scholar William Gladstone, who

noting among other things the surprising absence of any term for “blue” in classical Greek texts, theorized that full-color vision had not yet developed in humans when those texts were composed?

Along with psychological experiments, this backs up one of the basic constructivist claims (as put forth, for instance, by Maturana and Varela), that there is hardly any connection between physical spectra of light and the colors we see.

I think if you don’t view languages as static objects, but as systems of thought and expression that keep evolving, and provide an enormous space for creativity and new thoughts, you won’t be too interested in what can and cannot be said (and consequently thought). And from my experience, there are many areas where different languages focus on different aspects of life, and make you more inclined to view reality in a different way. Like, for instance, I’m amazed by how the elaborate linguistic system that has evolved around „dating“ in English in my opinion makes you more likely to view the whole thing as some sort of game, with certain rules, and more importantly, with certain conflicting goals for the participants. And I would argue that while the relative lack of established expressions for this in German makes it harder to communicate with outsiders about what is going on, it leaves more freedom to the individuals involved.

Websites like RowdyKittens are popping up, sharing advice on simple living (I personally like The Only Guide to Happiness You’ll Ever Need that it links to a lot, I think my next important step is slowing down …). And Roko Belic made a Documentary called „Happy“ that I can’t wait to see, the trailer looks amazing. His bottom line seems to be:

The one single trait that’s common among every single person who is happy is strong relationships.

On the other hand, science has taken on the task of happiness again. The mission can be summed up by the introductory paragraph from a paper titled „If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right“ (supposedly forthcoming in The Journal of Consumer Psychology):

Scientists have studied the relationship between money and happiness for decades and their conclusion is clear: Money buys happiness, but it buys less than most people think (Aknin, Norton, & Dunn, 2009; Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Frey & Stutzer, 2000). The correlation between income and happiness is positive but modest, and this fact should puzzle us more than it does. After all, money allows people to do what they please, so shouldn’t they be pleased when they spend it? Why doesn’t a whole lot more money make us a whole lot more happy? One answer to this question is that the things that bring happiness simply aren’t for sale. This sentiment is lovely, popular, and almost certainly wrong. Money allows people to live longer and healthier lives, to buffer themselves against worry and harm, to have leisure time to spend with friends and family, and to control the nature of their daily activities—all of which are sources of happiness (Smith, Langa, Kabeto, & Ubel, 2005). Wealthy people don’t just have better toys; they have better nutrition and better medical care, more free time and more meaningful labor—more of just about every ingredient in the recipe for a happy life. And yet, they aren’t that much happier than those who have less. If money can buy happiness, then why doesn’t it?

Because people don’t spend it right.

And while they provide some reasonable and non-trivial advice („Principle 3: Buy Many Small Pleasures Instead of Few Big Ones“, e.g., or „Principle 5: Pay Now and Consume Later“ [!]), there’s something about that approach that worries me. I think two of the other recommendations illustrate that: „Principle 1: Buy Experiences Instead of Things“ and „Principle 2: Help Others Instead of Yourself“.

I follow the notion that experiencing something ultimately contributes more to our life than having something, and that a central part of our happiness is relatedness. I just doubt that money is the right frame to discuss these issues in. There are much simpler ways of both experiencing something and connecting with other people than spending money on either. And they both are prone to leading right into the next consumption wave, this time not about big TV sets, but amazing massage spas and, ahm, massage vouchers for our partners and friends?! Why not give that massage yourself?

On top of that, the „spend your money wisely“-approach keeps people working long hours, which for most people will tend to decrease happiness.

So the new talk about happiness seems to go right over the divide between a materialistic and spiritualistic view of life, and I’m quite excited to see how it will evolve.

Traditionell ist man geneigt, das Zweifeln als eine Tugend anzusehen, es ist in der Vorstellung fest mit der Aufklärung verbunden. Und nun tritt — meiner Meinung nach — der Zweifel immer öfter als reaktionäres Element in Erscheinung, was mich zunächst verstört hat. Ich denke, das liegt an den Folgen, die wir für unser Handeln ziehen, wenn eine Sache in Zweifel gezogen wird. Das aufklärerische Ideal ist ein wissenschaftliches Hinschauen, kritische Reflexion auf der Basis von empirischen Erfahrungen, und eine fundierte neue Entscheidung.

Was in der übermäßig komplexen modernen Welt dagegen oft passiert ist ein resigniertes Wegschauen, „ich kann es ja eh nicht wissen“, und — das ist der Knackpunkt — ein Handeln im Sinne des geringsten Widerstands. Am Beispiel Klimawandel sieht das so aus:

Die Experten sind sich nicht einig, bzw. sah es eine Weile so aus, als wären sie. Aber dann wird ihr kollektives Werk in Frage gestellt, da sind Unsauberkeiten, Mauscheleien, Interessenkonflikte, vielleicht sogar eine Verschwörung. Wie also soll ich als kleiner Mensch mit begrenzter Zeit und Klugheit wissen, was dran ist an der Klimawandel-Sache? Solange ich es aber nicht weiß, strenge ich mich lieber nicht unnötig an und schränke mich ein, um einem Klimawandel abzuhelfen, der vielleicht gar nicht kommt.

Und damit wird der Zweifel zum Agent der Nicht-Veränderung. Des Althergebrachten, des Einfachen, des Egoistischen.

Dass dieser Zweifel sich nicht immer ganz von alleine einstellt, ist auch klar. Aber welches schockierende Ausmaß das Geschäft mit dem Zweifel mittlerweile angenommen hat, ist mir erst auf einer kleinen Internetrecherche klar geworden. Sehr empfehlenswert ist in diesem Zusammenhang der Artikel „Doubt is Their Product“, der 2005 im Scientific American erschienen ist. Dort liest man zum Beispiel nebenbei von „Product Defense“ Firmen, die gezielt wissenschaftliche Evidenz verzerren, um gesetzliche Regulierungen bestimmter Produkte zu vermeiden oder zu verzögern — einige „Erfolgsgeschichten“ im Artikel. Und dort bin ich auch wieder auf ein Zitat aus der Tabak-Lobby von 1969:

Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.

Alles in Allem bin ich geneigt, die Verschwörung im Falle des Klimawandels wenn überhaupt auf der anderen Seite zu vermuten. Aber es fällt mir schwer, bezüglich des Umgangs mit Zweifeln und Unsicherheiten allgemein eine Empfehlung auszusprechen. Vielleicht fällt ja jemandem dazu was ein?