Month: August 2016

Writing Ourselves: An Interview with Jack Harrell

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Over at Worlds Without End, I’ve written a review of Greg Kofford Books’ new publication Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism by Jack Harrell. I explain,

As one who does not consider himself a creative writer (at least not a fiction writer), I was a bit hesitant to attempt a review of a book almost entirely dedicated to the art of writing. Yet, as I made my way from essay to essay, it became clear to me that Harrell was not merely talking about writing, but was describing the essence of Creation itself. In short, Harrell is discussing what has become known as the “cultural mandate” in Genesis 1 to become co-creators with God. And this in turn is about transformation and new creation; the first steps of eternal progression (at least from a Mormon perspective). As Harrell explains in the touching first essay, “…I’ve learned that God is with us in every desire to improve. Anyplace can be a starting place with him…Whatever we make of ourselves, whatever circumstances we come to, God can turn it to good.” He imagines God saying, “Now is a good time…This is a good place to begin” (pg. 5). For me, the essays are connected by two major strands of thought: a Mormon theology of creativity and the meaning and morals of the work itself.

…There is much more in Jack Harrell’s book that I have not touched on: the place of violence in literature, authenticity, the agenticity of imaginary characters, the euphoria of peak performance, etc. But the themes above struck me the most. Harrell’s way of weaving together tales from his childhood, reflections on Mormon theology, and writing insights as an expert craftsman calls for contemplation. It is a meditation on ordinary life; an invitation to construct meaning out of life’s chaos and disorder and put it into words. It encourages readers to be creative in their ventures, to become co-creators with God, and to transform this world for the better. It encourages them, much like the Maclean boys, to “glorify God, and to enjoy him” in their craft. But most of all, it encourages them to write about it. Readers will find themselves exploring old feelings and new thoughts. Even better, they may find themselves putting pen to paper soon after.

You can hear an interview with Jack Harrell on Greg Kofford Books’ Authorcast here.

DR Editor in New Book: As Iron Sharpens Iron

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This past week, Greg Kofford Books–what I consider to currently be the best publisher in Mormon Studies–released a new volume edited by Julie Smith titled As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture. As the description explains,

Our scripture study and reading often assume that the prophetic figures within the texts are in complete agreement with each other. Because of this we can fail to recognize that those authors and personalities frequently have different—and sometimes competing—views on some of the most important doctrines of the Gospel, including the nature of God, the roles of scripture and prophecy, and the Atonement.

In this unique volume, fictionalized dialogues between the various voices of scripture illustrate how these differences and disagreements are not flaws of the texts but are rather essential features of the canon. These creative dialogues include Abraham and Job debating the utility of suffering and our submission to God, Alma and Abinidi disagreeing on the place of justice in the Atonement, and the authors Mark and Luke discussing the role of women in Jesus’s ministry. It is by examining and embracing the different perspectives within the canon that readers are able to discover just how rich and invigorating the scriptures can be. The dialogues within this volume show how just as “iron sharpeneth iron,” so can we sharpen our own thoughts and beliefs as we engage not just the various voices in the scriptures but also the various voices within our community (Proverbs 27:17).

I’m honored to be included among the contributors. My essay features a fictionalized dialogue between Mormon and the patriarch Jacob (Israel) on the subject of wealth. As I explain in the opening of my essay,

Mormon’s entire life was consumed by war and violence brought by what he saw as divisions created by wealth, vanity, and economic inequality. His abridgment of the Nephite records often highlights the pride of the rich and inequality as the source of conflict. Yet, the patriarch Jacob—later renamed Israel—is depicted in the Genesis account as being very prosperous and often pursuing wealth at the expense of others.

Be sure to check it out. You can read a Q&A with Julie Smith on the book here.

 

Peer Effects in Production

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Want to increase production among low-output workers? Place them among high-output workers. From a new NBER paper:

Workers respond to the output choices of their peers. What explains this well documented phenomenon of peer effects? Do workers value equity, fear punishment from equity-minded peers, or does output from peers teach them about employers’ expectations? We test these alternative explanations in a series of field experiments. We find clear evidence of peer effects, as have others. Workers raise their own output when exposed to high-output peers. They also punish low-output peers, even when that low output has no effect on them. They may be embracing and enforcing the employer’s expectations. (Exposure to employer-provided work samples influences output much the same as exposure to peer-provided work.) However, even when employer expectations are clearly stated, workers increase output beyond those expectations when exposed to workers producing above expectations. Overall, the evidence is strongly consistent with the notion that peer effects are mediated by workers’ sense of fairness related to relative effort.

An older, ungated version can be found here.

So Proud of My Humility

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A recent Aeon article highlights the importance of what Nathaniel has called “epistemic humility” and the dangers of overconfidence:

The internet and digital media have created the impression of limitless knowledge at our fingertips. But, by making us lazy, they have opened up a space that ignorance can fill. On the Edge website, the psychologist Tania Lombrozo of the University of California explained how technology enhances our illusions of wisdom. She argues that the way we access information about an issue is critical to our understanding – and the more easily we can recall an image, word or statement, the more likely we’ll think we’ve successfully learned it, and so refrain from effortful cognitive processing.

This lack of intellectual humility often leads to the trolling we see in online discussions:

Intellectually humble people don’t repress, hide or ignore their vulnerabilities, like so many trolls…People who are humble by nature tend to be more open-minded and quicker to resolve disputes, since they recognise that their own opinions might not be valid. The psychologist Carol Dweck at Stanford University in California has shown that if you believe intelligence can be developed through experience and hard work, you’re likely to make more of an effort to solve difficult problems, compared with those who think intelligence is hereditary and unchangeable.

One of the more exciting portions of the article is its discussion of the

Thrive Center for Human Development in California, which seeks to help young people turn into successful adults, is funding a series of major studies about intellectual humility. Their hypothesis is that humility, curiosity and openness are key to a fulfilling life. One of their papers proposes a scale for measuring humility by examining questions such as whether people are consistently humble or whether it depends on circumstances. Acknowledging that our opinions (and those of others) vary by circumstance is, in itself, a significant step towards reducing our exaggerated confidence that we are right.

The key takeaway, however, is the following:

Intellectual humility relies on the ability to prefer truth over social status. It is marked primarily by a commitment to seeking answers, and a willingness to accept new ideas – even if they contradict our views. In listening to others, we run the risk of discovering that they know more than we do. But humble people see personal growth as a goal in itself, rather than as a means of moving up the social ladder. We miss out on a lot of available information if we focus only on ourselves and on our place in the world (bold mine).

Most of my anxieties when it comes to research, writing, and learning are ultimately anxieties over my place in the social pecking order. I have a long way to go when it comes to learning intellectual humility.

The Preferences of Non-Voters

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I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how important it is to vote. Supposedly, if you vote for alternative Candidate X, then it is a de facto vote for Candidate Y. This Candidate Y could be either Trump or Clinton depending on the ideology of the one spewing this rhetorical nonsense. Nevermind that this line of argument places way too much stock in the value of a single vote. As political philosopher Jason Brennan points out, the disutility of driving to cast your ballot (i.e., the risk of harming others via an automobile accident) is higher than the actual utility of your single vote (i.e., the chance it has of changing the election outcome). The value of a single vote is vanishingly small, even in swing states. You have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot 100+ times in a row than you do of casting the tiebreaker in a presidential election.

But when only 9% of the American public is behind the nominations of Trump and Clinton, shouldn’t we encourage more people to vote? I suppose that depends on how your political preferences match up with that of non-voters. So what are the preferences of non-voters? According to a 2014 Pew study, non-voters are a largely younger, poorer, uneducated, racially diverse group. More important, however, are their political affiliations and views: while the largest portion identified as Independents (45%), 29% identified as Democrats, leaving only 18% for Republicans. Furthermore, 51% indicated that they “lean Democrat” with only 30% “lean[ing] Republican” (20% said they had “no lean”). Fifty-three percent of non-voters held unfavorable views of Republicans (35% favorable), while only 40% held unfavorable views of Democrats (48% favorable). Their views on the Affordable Care Act were mixed (44% approved, 49% disapprove). Their views on government efficiency (54% think government is almost always inefficient, 43% think the government deserves more credit) and aid to the poor (44% said it did more harm than good, 51% said the opposite) were a bit more divided.

A 2012 Pew study highlighted the policies preferred by non-voters. At that time, Obama held a favorable view among non-voters (64%), 59% of which said they preferred him as their presidential candidate. The majority of non-voters believed that government should do more to solve problems (52%), should raise tax rates for incomes above $250,000, remove troops from Afghanistan ASAP (67%), allow same-sex marriage (49%), and legalize abortion in all/most cases (54%). They were more mixed on the United States’ stance toward Iran’s nuclear program (45% said take a firm stand, 40% said to avoid military conflict) and the growing population of immigrants (27% said it is a “change for the better,” 34% said it is a “change for the worse,” 34% said it “hasn’t made much of a difference”).

As reported in The New Yorker,

In 2013, the political scientists Jan Leighley, of American University, and Jonathan Nagler, of New York University, published the results of a study that compared, among other things, the political views of voters and non-voters, dating back to 1972. On most social issues (abortion, L.G.B.T. rights), there was no measurable difference between them. Non-voters were more inclined toward isolationism. (Leighley and Nagler thought this might be because non-voters knew more soldiers than voters, and were more reluctant to see them sent into conflict.) The difference on economic matters was much more dramatic. Non-voters, Leighley and Nagler found, favored much more progressive economic policies than voters did. They preferred higher taxes, and more spending on schools and health care, by margins that hovered around fifteen per cent. “The voters may be representative of the electorate on some issues,” Leighley and Nagler wrote, “but they are not representative of the electorate on issues that go to the core of the role of government in modern democracies.” That non-voters had the same partisan preferences as voters only seemed to strengthen the finding—they wanted more redistribution regardless of whether they were Democrats or Republicans.

These results have been substantiated elsewhere. As reported in The Atlantic,

Four questions from the American National Elections Studies (ANES) data show a stark divide on issues related to economic inequality. Nonvoters tend to support increasing government services and spending, guaranteeing jobs, and reducing inequality—all policies that voters, on the whole, oppose. Both groups support spending on the poor, but the margin among nonvoters is far larger. Across all four questions, nonvoters are more supportive of interventionist government policies by an average margin of 17 points. 

Similar results were found with numbers from Pew and YouGov comparing “registered voters with the non-registered population. These polls were not taken close to elections, so registration can serve as a rough proxy for the voting and nonvoting population. The polls show the same dramatic differences. In every instance, net support for greater government intervention in economic affairs was higher for the non-registered populations—sometimes dramatically so. For instance, while net support for free community college was 7 points for the registered population, it was 46 points within the non-registered population.”

In short, non-voters tend to be more ideologically liberal than voters.

Positive numbers indicate that nonvoters are more liberal than voters. (Source: Griffin and Newman, 2005)

If you’re wanting to galvanize non-voters, you should know your audience. Liberals may have a more vested interest in doing so than conservatives. Libertarians will likely have mixed feelings.

The Anti-Foreign Bias of Voters

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I’ve mentioned the populist trade problem before. GMU economist Bryan Caplan has published on the irrationality of voters, demonstrating that voters tend to suffer from biases that disagree with the findings of actual economists. Given our current political climate, consider what he calls “anti-foreign bias”:

Harvard’s Greg Mankiw writes in The New York Times,

Voters clearly aren’t listening to economists. In a recent poll, an overwhelming number of leading economists agreed that Brexit would most likely lower incomes both in Britain and in the rest of the European Union.

Similarly, in the United States, most top economists agree that “past major trade deals have benefited most Americans” and that “trade with China makes most Americans better off.” But those aren’t sentiments we will be hearing anytime soon from Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton.

In one respect, it is easy to understand why. According to a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted last month, only 35 percent of registered voters thought the United States gained from globalization, while 55 percent thought it lost. On issues of international trade, the current crop of candidates is following public opinion. (Henceforth the president, rather than being our elected leader, may be called our elected follower.)

So why are voters so out of touch with the evidence? Mankiw explains,

In particular, Edward Mansfield and Diana Mutz, professors in the political science department of the University of Pennsylvania, have written a pair of research papers exploring attitudes toward free trade and offshore outsourcing. This work gives some clues about what may be happening inside the minds of today’s voters.

…In actuality…people’s attitudes about free trade and offshore outsourcing are unrelated to the characteristics of the industry in which they are employed. After analyzing their survey data on individuals’ attitudes and attributes, these political scientists conclude that voters embrace policies based on the broader national interest…The data analysis of Mr. Mansfield and Ms. Mutz suggests that skepticism about trade and outsourcing is closely related to three other sets of beliefs.

These beliefs are:

  1. Isolationism: the belief that “the United States should stay out of world affairs and avoid getting involved in foreign conflicts. They are not eager for the United States to work with other nations to solve global problems like hunger and pollution.”
  2. Nationalism: the belief that “the United States is culturally superior to other nations. They say the world would be better if people elsewhere were more like Americans.”
  3. Ethnocentrism: the belief that the world is divided “into racial and ethnic groups and think that the one they belong to is better than the others. They say their own group is harder-working, less wasteful and more trustworthy.”

Mankiw concludes,

As Mr. Mansfield and Ms. Mutz put it, “trade preferences are driven less by economic considerations and more by an individual’s psychological worldview.” They also report that this isolationist, nationalist, ethnocentric worldview is related to one’s level of education. The more years of schooling people have, the more likely they are to reject anti-globalization attitudes…In the long run, therefore, there is reason for optimism. As society slowly becomes more educated from generation to generation, the general public’s attitudes toward globalization should move toward the experts’.

Let’s hope so.

Going Along for the Ride

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DTSP-RideorDie-8-Small

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

We’re covering the Sunday afternoon session of the April 1973 General Conference today, which means the General Conference Odyssey is wrapping up its fifth conference. There currently 51 general conferences on line—and two more get added every year—so you can see why we call this an “odyssey.”

The first and last talks from this session stayed with me. In the first talk, Elder Mark E. Petersen taught that “salvation comes through the Church” and that as a consequence, “if persons separate themselves from the Lord’s church, they thereby separate themselves from his means of salvation.”

This is one of those hard teachings for someone like me. I’ve never been a full-out spiritualist—the kind of person who says, “Why go to Church when you go be in nature?”—because it does makes sense to me that a religious life should be a communal life. We’re social animals. It’s in our (I believe) God-given nature to exist only in relationships with others. Whether or not you meet in a building is irrelevant, but meeting in groups is not. And, at its heart, that’s what the Church is: a group of people.

But the Church is also “a house of order,” and that’s the part with which I never feel comfortable. I have a problem with authority, and I don’t like large institutions. I don’t trust governments, I hate working for big companies, and I try to stay as far away from SLC and leadership callings of any description as I possibly can. I don’t want to have one myself, and I try to fly under the radar so that the people who do have them will basically leave me alone. As long as “order” is synonymous with “hierarchy,” it seems that my membership in the Church is going to be tinged with unease.

President Harold B. Lee’s talk means a lot to me in this regard. It is called “Stand Ye in Holy Places,” which is a pretty profound way to make the point that I made earlier: for a group of people to share a cause and a faith they have to have a point (literal or metaphorical) at which they come together. As long as religions are communal, religions must have shared, holy places.

President Lee also makes this interesting point:

I call your attention to one of these requirements [of baptism], particularly that which has been stressed by direct and indirect words in this conference: “are willing to bear one another’s burdens that they may be light.” If I were to ask you what is the heaviest burden one may have to bear in this life, what would you answer? The heaviest burden that one has to bear in this life is the burden of sin. How do you help one to bear that great burden of sin, in order that it might be light?

What this tells me is that even our most personal struggles—our wrestles with our sins and weaknesses—can and should be communal in a sense. We should trust each other, help each other, and rely on each other.

President Lee made two more statements that I’m not sure are connected, but that I have not forgotten. First, he said “You cannot lift another soul until you are standing on higher ground than he is.” That’s another one of those statements that can grate on modern sensibility. When I was a kid I played a card game called Legend of the Five Rings. The game came with its own make-believe religion and spiritual text, the Tao of Shinsei, and I loved one of the quotes from that make-believe spiritual book from a card game for nerds: “One must bow to offer aid to a fallen man.” It’s a quote that hits the notes of egalitarianism and humility. It’s easy to love. President Lee’s quote, by contrast, does not have the same connotations. But it’s certainly just as true. You can’t help up someone who has fallen if you fall down next to them. Bowing is fine, falling over isn’t. Or, as President Lee said in his second quote, “You cannot light a fire in another soul unless it is burning in your own soul.”

So here are my two points:

First, the hard teachings are the most important teachings. What good is a religion that is comfortable in every way? It could, by definition, offer you no potential for growth. Being challenged by your own religion is not a bug. It’s a feature. We are disciples only to the extent that we are allowing an outside set of principles to act as a discipline on our lives.

Second, I don’t really understand why order requires hierarchy. I’m a complex systems guy. I’m all about emergence and spontaneous order. So I don’t really understand the leap from the necessity of having a Church—a group of people coordinating with each other to aid and support one another—to having a top-down, hierarchical institution like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I don’t get it.

But the goal of reuniting the human family is one I passionately believe in and I’m willing to get with the program based on faith. I don’t know why this is the road we have to take, but I know that the destination is where I want to be and I trust in God that He knows what He’s doing. And so, comfortably or not, I’m along for this ride.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

“As I Am”

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

It’s been a couple weeks since my last post on this. I don’t have much to say about this session. But a portion of Marion D. Hanks‘ talk really stood out to me:

Christ knows the worth of souls. He came as Isaiah had prophesied and as he affirmed in the synagogue in Nazareth: “… to preach the gospel to the poor; … to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke 4:18.)

He taught the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost son, and he lunched with accused Zacchaeus; admonished men to emulate the compassionate act of the demeaned Samaritan—“Go thou and do likewise.” He exalted the humble Publican, who, in contrast to the self-righteous Pharisee, “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13); and he confronted the accusers of the repentant woman.

So closely is he tied with his fellowmen that in one of the most powerful parables he taught that bread given to one of the least of his brethren is bread given to him, and so is any kindness or act of grace or mercy or service. To deny help to one of the least of his brethren, he said, was to deny him.

His message is one of hope and promise and peace to those who mourn the loss of loved ones: “And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” (John 16:22.)

To the lonely and the hopeless and those who are afraid, his reassurance reaches out: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Heb. 13:5.)

As Elder Hanks summarizes, these things “represent the manner of person [Christ] was.” Consider how inclusive this list is: the poor, the captive, the wayward, and even the rich. Both the Samaritan and Publican could be an example to all so long as they were compassionate and humble. More important, both were considered capable of these traits.

Something to consider before harshly judging others or yourself.