Category: Society

A CASE OF WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU DON’T KNOW

The words refer to wise men and their wisdom, and derive from Sanskrit. But in our era of talking heads it has come to mean an ability to forecast the future. In a world that plans for the future, that invests in change, that seeks and prepares for growth, we want and we need to know what to expect. It is no surprise, then, that an industry has grown up around this demand to know what is going to happen, whether in financial markets, elections, consumer trends, or foreign affairs.

But do pundits actually know what they are talking about? Or would it be more accurate to say that the business of punditry exploits our fear of not knowing, our need to defend ourselves from the anxiety of ignorance in a world that bases so much importance on understanding the future?

In his new book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer cites the research of Philip Tetlock at the University of California at Berkeley into the actual performance of pundits. Comparing their predictions with actual outcomes, he found that “they tended to perform worse than random chance.”

This should not be a surprise to those who have come to appreciate how much desire and need shape perceptions. It is very hard to live with such intense and persistent pressures without unconsciously crafting a solution, an answer that appears to solve our problem.

But Tetlock’s research tells us more. Far from predicting the future, pundits tend to confirm the prejudices and assumptions of those to whom they speak. This is why, no doubt, their predictions are worse than randomly wrong. If they simply shot in the dark, they would do better. But by confirming what we want to believe, they tend to systematically avoid seeing what is new and significant. Confirming our prejudices, they also close our minds to the new information and thoughts we need to take into account of we are going to see what the future actually has in store for us.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

With all the rampant corruption and financial ineptitude now on display, our propensity for blame is getting a thorough workout. What are we up to when we blame others for what has gone wrong?

An obvious explanation is that blame is a form of scapegoating. We single merely out one of the many contributors to a misfortune, and we place the blame squarely there. That allows us to go scott free ourselves, were we in danger of sharing the blame, and it lets many many others off the hook as well. Since most things that happen have multiple causes, we can target carefully just the one we want to punish. And, in so doing, we can allow others to escape.

A recent conversation on the ISPSO listserv added some other reflections on blame, pointing out how it is tied in to our litigious society, and how it fosters an avoidance of reflection on the system as a whole which produced the unfortunate incident, guaranteeing that such incidents are all too likely to recur. (If you want to check out ISPSO, an organization devoted to exploring the psychoanalytic underpinnings of organizational life, go to www.ispso.org).

But I have another thought about blame. Finding the right person to blame makes our world whole again. The danger, the flaw, the hurt, the problem has been abolished. The rent in the fabric of reality has been fixed, the abyss filled in and paved over. We can go back to life as it was before.

This is the aim of blame. It seeks the goal of restoring the status quo ante.

I recall sitting on the dining room floor with my young daughter who had just banged her head on the corner of the table. As I held her in my arms, we hit the table again and again: “bad table.” She was distracted and appeased, while the pain gradually subsided. But I don’t think that she was really convinced it was the table’s fault.

And so it is with those of us who succeed in temporarily finding an object of blame. It consoles us and restores us to the world before — but we don’t really believe it. We have to do it again and again.

Can They Mix?

They need to mix, of course. Science illuminates problems that require political solutions, such as global warming, epidemics, earthquakes, and so on. It also creates opportunities for technological advancements that can be immensely beneficial to us all — if and when politicians take up the challenge of making them available beyond what markets can do on their own.

In the Science section of the New York Times this Tuesday, John Tierney comments on Obama’s nomination of Dr. John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Tierney argues scientists too often pass off their own political views as scientific truths, and he cites examples of Holdren’s alarmist predictions and intemperate “debating tactics.” Referring to Roger Pielke Jr.’s new book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, a book that tried to clarify these issues,Tierney notes Holdren’s harsh criticism of colleagues as well as his all-too-confident prediction that a billion people would die by 2020 as a result of global warming. (To see the Times article, click here.)

My point is that it is easy to understand how “scientific” debates about such issues as global warming or stem cell research or abortion can escalate into virtual shouting matches. Some issues are felt to be simply too potent, and some facts too insistent, especially when some else is playing them down. How to retain scientific objectivity and restraint, while also engaging in one’s rights as a citizen and advisor to advocate for action when action seems essential?

As Pielke’ book suggests, it is useful to have a clearer understanding of one’s proper role as a scientist when working with politicians, but that is not enough: it also requires an awareness of the inner and interpersonal forces that pull us into a fight. Enemies are always dangerous, but all the more so when they prevent us from seeing them as thoughtful alternatives to our own points of view. We don’t converse with enemies. We want to vanquish them.

Scientists, like the rest of us, can easily succumb to adolescent competitiveness or adult grandiosity. We all are vulnerable to an inflated sense of our own importance – or of the importance of the issues we are invested in. And if we are part of a group committed to political activity, it is even more difficult to restrain ourselves.

Perhaps public awareness of the danger – the danger that science will become unduly politicized – can act as a restraint on such debates. Perhaps the political groups themselves, becoming more fearful of the danger, can remind their members of their need for appropriate restraint. The most effective advice often comes from the friends who have our best interests at heart or the colleagues we trust.

and How to Tell it From Good

Competition is so enshrined in our culture as a virtue, so essential a motivation to our economy, that it is hard to be critical of it. If it goes bad, if it drives individual to cheat, say, to take performance enhancing drugs, or injure others or lose sight of their other needs, we punish the individuals who succumb to temptation.  In fact it seems as if we punish them doubly:  first for the transgression itself, but then for the disappointment and let-down we experience in having our ideals sullied and our role models tarnished.

We see this now clearly in the treatment of the baseball players who took steroids but it is also echoed in the current villification of CEOs and hedge fund managers in the wake of the collapse of Wall Street.  I am not suggesting that those who cheat, who are greedy or use poor judgment should not be punished.  On the contrary, I am suggesting that singling them our for blame can stop us from fully understanding why it happens and where useful changes might be made. 

Competition in its essence is not an individual phenomenon. At the very least, it takes two to compete. Actually it take classes of combatants as well as teams – and observers – to sustain a viable competition.  Look at the Olympics industry, subdivided into associations and leagues for dozens of individual sports throughout the world.  Look any any market.  Or any spectator sport with its season ticket holders, avid fans and spin off products.  So much is at stake for so many.  The individual competitor is only the tip of the iceberg.

Bad competition for the individual is where it comes to mean too much, where the difference between winning and losing is catastrophic, unacceptable.  Such devastating pressure can come from parents of little leaguers who are over-invested in the child’s success, coaches whose own careers are at stake in their team’s performance, and certainly it can come from individual competitors whose insecurities find failure too painful to endure.  Not for nothing do we do our best to inculcate pride and sportsmanship in our children.

But the bigger problem is the larger system, when we ourselves demand that the competitor succeed for our own sakes.  If our self-esteem is invested in the performance of an athlete or our self interest  bound up with the achievements of a financial guru, we lose tolerance for disappointment and loss.  In such circumstances, all too often, there are no inner restraints to mitigate our response, no sign that our expectations and demands  are out of hand, that we are asking others to do more than they possibly can.  In essence we egg them on and on.

We create, in effect, a double pressure, without restraint and without forgiveness, and we do this largely without knowing that that is what we are doing.  It’s not fair that we do this, of course;  but, worse, it is counterproductive because we encourage corruption and ultimate failure.

So how can we tell when good competition become bad?  We have to look at ourselves and our stake in the outcome.  This is not a foolproof test, but it is something we are not used to doing — and something that will make a difference if we try.

DOES IT ONLY HAPPEN IN GERMAN?

The recent flood of news about financial scandals and economic reversals afflicting the wealthy and prominent have given a real workout for schadenfreude, the most embarrassing of our emotions.

We like to think of ourselves as empathic to those who suffer, good hearted and generous to those in distress — and sometimes are actually are.  But all too frequently we are not.  In fact, we work hard to suppress our wan smiles or smirks or to conceal our spiteful thoughts when we hear about the victims of Bernie Madoff who can no longer afford their five houses, their private jets, or even, merely, the country club fees they used to pay without a thought.  We don’t want others to know about those feelings;  worse, we don’t often even want to know about them ourselves.

Recent research has confirmed what psychoanalysts have known for sometime: schadenfreude is a cousin of envy.  Because we do envy others for what they have that we don’t, we take a special pleasure when they lose it.  And we don’t like the fact that we are envious, either, and seldom will we openly acknowledge it.

But Natalie Angier has reported in Science Times on recent research that shows the actual  links in the brain.  New scanning techniques illuminate the areas of the brain activated in response to scenarios of envy and, then, the extended scenarios in which the envied person has a downfall.  The evidence is unmistakable:  we suffer with envy and we enjoy the reversal. (To see the Times article, click here)

In a society characterized by a widening gap between the rich and the poor, this happens more and more.  And in a recession such as the one we are now experiencing, our own pain only intensifies the pleasure we take in the pain of others.  This too can be amplified when we band together to enjoy punishing the “greedy” investors and managers to led us down this lane.  Indeed, the collective pleasure of schadenfreude can become irresistible, and a powerful political force.

Another aspect of this worth considering:  how much we don’t want to know we are the object of other’s envy — and subsequently, of course, the fact of being a source of pleasure for others when we suffer a loss or reversal.  This may be a key element in humiliation, where we suffer not only the loss of esteem in the eyes of others but sense as well that we will continue to be punished for having been envied in the first place.

I have often wondered why our language has not come up with a native term for “schadenfreude.”  It’s not as if the German word is so mellifluous or, even, easy to say.  Perhaps it is yet another way for our culture to keep awareness of such feelings at a distance.  Without a convenient label, maybe we won’t notice it so much.