The New York Times Magazine's parenting blog has a piece on why rewarding and punishing children doesn't teach them to be good people in the long run. Referencing Alfie Kohn, it says, "research shows that the more you reward people, the less interest they come to have in whatever they had to do to get the reward. The more you offer extrinsic motivators, the more intrinsic motivation tends to decline."
So first off, of course, we have to wonder about capitalism. We ask, "Have we just given up on adults becoming good people?" And then we get sick of asking the same depressing questions about the dehumanization of capitalism, and we ponder instead the recent shift to a carrot and stick model of government.
An NGO wants private companies and nonprofits to build start-ups in Africa; they'll incentivize it. A local government wants developers to stop putting gates around neighborhoods; they'll punish it (assume a nexus). Like bribing children, this approach works wonders. But is there really no way to make companies, organizations, and agencies learn to do the right thing on their own?
It does seem that the success of shareholder accountability and grantee evaluatory approaches have paled in comparison, at least since the tables the players sit at have reached orbitable circumferences.
I like to believe that the information revolution's greatest gift will be to deliver local transparency to a world dependent on global accountability, such that the intervals of reward and punishment become infinitesimally small, turning its extrinsic nature intrinsic. Suddenly, the fairy tale goes, groups start being good because they want to.
Psychologically, I'm not sure this is really what happens, but it seems a pretty mathematical model, doesn't it?
The interesting bit of this, I think, is to try to understand how individuals the world over can possibly review sufficient amounts of data to allow for this global accountability, thereby, essentially, eliminating the middle man, or at least shrinking him. I'd always assumed it wasn't possible, but if you combine the upcoming interfaces of iGoogle (or, surprisingly, the present interfaces of Windows Live) and the trainable and socially networked Digging processes with humankind's Matrix-scrolling ability, it seems both potentially feasible and potentially very, very good.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Silence on California's setback for civil rights sets back Obama's claim to change
My baby sister has a three year old son named Sincere. In modern American lingo, Sincere is black, but my family has always known him to be multiracial - black and white. My sister and I don't talk all that much, but when we do, I often realize that I'm frustrated by something that excites her and that I had thought excited me. That's what happened today when my sister's bubbling enthusiasm for the president elect interrupted my reading of the mass email an offended friend in California had just sent me. To me, the glaringly antithetical outcomes for civil rights of the US presidential election and California's vote on Prop 8 are what they are, but the failure of the Obama campaign and the media that cover it to grab both issues by the balls and try to make sense of them while they are center-stage is a huge disappointment.
Yesterday morning, my sister chattered, she and Sincere had been heading out to the parking lot of their apartment complex, each carrying with them the hopeful spirit of a child, on account of limited exposure to the world's injustices and the previous night's election of a president for change, respectively. As they approached the car, Mohammad, their forty year old neighbor whom they barely know, came skipping up to them, clearly overwhelmed with similar sentiment. He shook Sincere's little hand, looked him in the eye, and said, "Congratulations, son."
OK. So I'm the kind of person who turns off the radio when the topic turns back to race. The color of one's skin strikes me as interesting only when it comes to choreographing artistic dance pieces. The same goes for sexual orientation, although my interest there has less to do with dance and more to do with sex and orientating.
I didn't try to remind my sister of this, but I did mention that I was glad to be in Michigan so I could appreciate this win for change instead of being stuck in California with my depressed friends. She was clueless and sufficiently enthralled with her own outcome to sidestep curiosity.
Don't get me wrong. When Barack Obama took the stage Tuesday night, I cried. And when he walked off, I quickly turned to scanning major news channels for historic civil rights clips that would pull on my heartstrings the way singing "We Shall Overcome" had back in second grade music class. Then I stayed up another hour to watch people around the world celebrate in the streets.
It's taken me a couple of days to sort through my election-night emotions, but with the help of the glumness my sister's ignorance left me with today, I think I've got it figured out.
Tuesday night, I cried out of relief for an oppressed people who have, for way too long, had no choice but to carry on in the face of nonsensical deprecation. I've long believed that the biggest gift you can give another person is the belief that he or she is capable of doing the great things that he or she is capable of doing. So when Barack stepped up to accept the country's enthusiastic confidence that a black man can do the most important job on earth, what I saw in his humble smile and deliberate wave was a reflection of that gift of confidence across a sea of white neighbors, bosses, and teachers, to every black man, woman, and child in America. It was perhaps the most awesome irrevocable contribution of goodness to the world that I have ever witnessed. But these tears had nothing to do with me.
The celebrations, however, did. As a middle-class, well-educated white girl, I'm oppressed by ignorance too. I want to help the world, and I've always felt like I had to be secretive and solitary in my attempts to do so. Obama's call to action changed that. Suddenly, the weight I'd been shouldering alone due to antagonistic societal structures and an almost complete lack of camaraderie, was being raised by shouts and chants all over the world. No longer would I feel sandwiched between the hippie's paralyzing passion for fundamental change and the ivy grad's pragmatic infliction of talent for tweaking the system towards better. The two, both handed a massive gift of confidence in purpose, would become one and the same. For the first time in eight years, my breathing was smooth and seamless.
So the fact that I soon found myself struggling with depression amidst all this goodness is no small thing. It's even more striking when you consider that I was in no way personally offended by Californians' vote to protect the sanctity of marriage. In fact, I almost agree with them. Of course, I radically disagree that marriage has anything to do with the governance of a state.
If I understand correctly, most of the rights of civil unions for domestic partnerships can be drawn up by a lawyer in any state. Streamlining the process for civil unions, as California and many other states and countries have done, recognizes that the form of unions between people can vary beyond opposite-sex romantic relationships. However, extending that recognition only so far as same-sex romantic relationships is problematic. What's the argument for excluding a sister and sister-in-law pair who lost a husband/brother in Iraq and are now raising kids together? Sure, they may someday enter into committed long-term relationships that supersede their sororal domestic partnership, but for the time being, they deserve all the rights of a family unit working to do their best in the world. Personally, as a polyamorist, I think we should extend the rights to include not only these type of platonic relationships but also the sorts of romantic relationships that would make the folks in middle of the country, save Utah, scream. I even have faith that this will happen someday, although it will probably take the form a much more complicated and clickable individualistic juggling of union rights, but of relevance here is that I believe the outcome of Prop 8 puts us on the right path for achieving this separation between religiously significant marriage and legally relevant civil rights.
That said, I strongly disagree with Tuesday night's outcome; yet I had relatively little problem with it, especially when I saw that the ads Protect the Family was running did a decent job of selling the proposition as legally nondiscriminatory. Essentially, I accept the right of people to vote to protect a religious artifact. But that vote belongs in the church. Give it to the People to decide how their government works, and a vote for separate but equal means the same thing now as it did in 1954. So when the marches of understandably offended married and potentially married gays and lesbians went unmentioned in yesterday's frenzy of congratulatory back-patting for our country's achievements in civil rights, I was pissed.
I don't expect the masses of voters who have been brainwashed to the tune of 75 million dollars to understand the nuances here, but when one side is telling folks a yes vote doesn't discriminate against the gay couple that watches their dog, and that gay couple is simultaneously crying and marching in the street because they feel discriminated against, I do expect the civil rights movement to say something. I'd also had great hope that those who will be in the upcoming Obama Administration would feel compelled by either the need to explain the discord to the people they claim to share both the victory and responsibility for change with, or the need to take advantage of a rare opportunity to leverage political emotion for a more coherent structure of civil rights. The fact that they were compelled to act by neither and that right now my sister is unaware of the contradictions the country has imprinted on itself has me worried that little Sincere will actually grow up in a world where ridiculous and degrading policies can take up to one hundred and eight years to see their cultural end - not, in fact, in Obama's promised land where an honest and no-nonsense approach to collective problem solving will reign.
Yesterday morning, my sister chattered, she and Sincere had been heading out to the parking lot of their apartment complex, each carrying with them the hopeful spirit of a child, on account of limited exposure to the world's injustices and the previous night's election of a president for change, respectively. As they approached the car, Mohammad, their forty year old neighbor whom they barely know, came skipping up to them, clearly overwhelmed with similar sentiment. He shook Sincere's little hand, looked him in the eye, and said, "Congratulations, son."
OK. So I'm the kind of person who turns off the radio when the topic turns back to race. The color of one's skin strikes me as interesting only when it comes to choreographing artistic dance pieces. The same goes for sexual orientation, although my interest there has less to do with dance and more to do with sex and orientating.
I didn't try to remind my sister of this, but I did mention that I was glad to be in Michigan so I could appreciate this win for change instead of being stuck in California with my depressed friends. She was clueless and sufficiently enthralled with her own outcome to sidestep curiosity.
Don't get me wrong. When Barack Obama took the stage Tuesday night, I cried. And when he walked off, I quickly turned to scanning major news channels for historic civil rights clips that would pull on my heartstrings the way singing "We Shall Overcome" had back in second grade music class. Then I stayed up another hour to watch people around the world celebrate in the streets.
It's taken me a couple of days to sort through my election-night emotions, but with the help of the glumness my sister's ignorance left me with today, I think I've got it figured out.
Tuesday night, I cried out of relief for an oppressed people who have, for way too long, had no choice but to carry on in the face of nonsensical deprecation. I've long believed that the biggest gift you can give another person is the belief that he or she is capable of doing the great things that he or she is capable of doing. So when Barack stepped up to accept the country's enthusiastic confidence that a black man can do the most important job on earth, what I saw in his humble smile and deliberate wave was a reflection of that gift of confidence across a sea of white neighbors, bosses, and teachers, to every black man, woman, and child in America. It was perhaps the most awesome irrevocable contribution of goodness to the world that I have ever witnessed. But these tears had nothing to do with me.
The celebrations, however, did. As a middle-class, well-educated white girl, I'm oppressed by ignorance too. I want to help the world, and I've always felt like I had to be secretive and solitary in my attempts to do so. Obama's call to action changed that. Suddenly, the weight I'd been shouldering alone due to antagonistic societal structures and an almost complete lack of camaraderie, was being raised by shouts and chants all over the world. No longer would I feel sandwiched between the hippie's paralyzing passion for fundamental change and the ivy grad's pragmatic infliction of talent for tweaking the system towards better. The two, both handed a massive gift of confidence in purpose, would become one and the same. For the first time in eight years, my breathing was smooth and seamless.
So the fact that I soon found myself struggling with depression amidst all this goodness is no small thing. It's even more striking when you consider that I was in no way personally offended by Californians' vote to protect the sanctity of marriage. In fact, I almost agree with them. Of course, I radically disagree that marriage has anything to do with the governance of a state.
If I understand correctly, most of the rights of civil unions for domestic partnerships can be drawn up by a lawyer in any state. Streamlining the process for civil unions, as California and many other states and countries have done, recognizes that the form of unions between people can vary beyond opposite-sex romantic relationships. However, extending that recognition only so far as same-sex romantic relationships is problematic. What's the argument for excluding a sister and sister-in-law pair who lost a husband/brother in Iraq and are now raising kids together? Sure, they may someday enter into committed long-term relationships that supersede their sororal domestic partnership, but for the time being, they deserve all the rights of a family unit working to do their best in the world. Personally, as a polyamorist, I think we should extend the rights to include not only these type of platonic relationships but also the sorts of romantic relationships that would make the folks in middle of the country, save Utah, scream. I even have faith that this will happen someday, although it will probably take the form a much more complicated and clickable individualistic juggling of union rights, but of relevance here is that I believe the outcome of Prop 8 puts us on the right path for achieving this separation between religiously significant marriage and legally relevant civil rights.
That said, I strongly disagree with Tuesday night's outcome; yet I had relatively little problem with it, especially when I saw that the ads Protect the Family was running did a decent job of selling the proposition as legally nondiscriminatory. Essentially, I accept the right of people to vote to protect a religious artifact. But that vote belongs in the church. Give it to the People to decide how their government works, and a vote for separate but equal means the same thing now as it did in 1954. So when the marches of understandably offended married and potentially married gays and lesbians went unmentioned in yesterday's frenzy of congratulatory back-patting for our country's achievements in civil rights, I was pissed.
I don't expect the masses of voters who have been brainwashed to the tune of 75 million dollars to understand the nuances here, but when one side is telling folks a yes vote doesn't discriminate against the gay couple that watches their dog, and that gay couple is simultaneously crying and marching in the street because they feel discriminated against, I do expect the civil rights movement to say something. I'd also had great hope that those who will be in the upcoming Obama Administration would feel compelled by either the need to explain the discord to the people they claim to share both the victory and responsibility for change with, or the need to take advantage of a rare opportunity to leverage political emotion for a more coherent structure of civil rights. The fact that they were compelled to act by neither and that right now my sister is unaware of the contradictions the country has imprinted on itself has me worried that little Sincere will actually grow up in a world where ridiculous and degrading policies can take up to one hundred and eight years to see their cultural end - not, in fact, in Obama's promised land where an honest and no-nonsense approach to collective problem solving will reign.
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