I’ve written about James K.A. Smith’s work before, especially his You Are What You Love. According to Smith, that was what he thought he was writing when it wrote Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Instead, he ended up needing to write a popular introduction to the Cultural Liturgies project, the first of which was Desiring the Kingdom. To recap, Smith argues against the modern idea that we are simply “brains on a stick” and that Christian life is achieved by downloading the right spiritual data into our heads. We are not so much thinking creatures as we are lovers, i.e. creatures of desire and habit. He points out the gap between what we think and what we actually want. More disturbingly, he notes that we may not actually love what we think. Our wants are often shaped by what he calls “secular liturgies”: repetitive practices and rituals that orient our desires and shape our habits. Take for example (as Smith does) the mall: the mall doesn’t tell you what to think. It doesn’t hand out a tract with a list of propositions that the mall believes. Instead, it shapes your consumerist desires as it assaults your senses with sights, smells, comforts, etc. This is why Christian liturgy is important and necessary. Christianity is not just a rival worldview, but a rival set of desires. And those desires are shaped through repetition.
The book is excellent and one of my favorites so far this year. It is far more in depth; the academic approach to the ideas found in You Are What You Love. As someone who is drawn to religious liturgy, but often bored by my own faith’s offerings of it, this was a much-needed read on a personal level.
This week, we’ve come to the end of another General Conference. We’re closing out the April 1975 General Conference, and next week we will start with the October 1975 General Conference. Nine down; 175 (and counting) to go.
There were several really good talks this session, but there was one that really stood out for me, and that was Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s The Man of Christ. In 1975, Elder Maxwell was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He wasn’t called as an apostle until 1981, the same year that I was born. He served in that position until his death in 2004. I’m sad to say that—although I was certainly old enough to have developed an appreciation for him by that time—I didn’t. I watched plenty of General Conferences, and sometimes individual talks had an impact on me, but I didn’t follow them closely to develop an appreciation for individual speakers over the course of years. And I’m sad, now, that I missed out on Elder Maxwell. I hope we get someone like him again, some day.
The problem I have in writing this post is that I basically just highlighted his entire talk. But if there’s one theme that I could pull out, it would be what I like to think of as righteous avarice. Righteous avarice is the refusal to pick and choose even from seemingly contradictory Gospel themes. It is the attitude that says, “I’m not sure how all of this fits together, but I intend to hold onto all of it anyway, until I figure it out.” Here, let me show you an example.
According to Elder Maxwell, the man of Christ “does not divorce the Sermon on the Mount from the sermon at Capernaum with its hard teachings which caused many to walk “no more with” Jesus.” Further:
He knows that “the gate of heaven is open unto all,” but that the Man of Galilee will finally judge each of us on the basis of a rigorous celestial theology, instead of the popular “no-fault theology” of this telestial world—for Jesus is the gatekeeper “and he employeth no servant there.”
There are plenty of people who will celebrate the cuddly aspects of Christ: turn the other cheek, do unto others, the Good Samaritan, but who will recoil from some of the harder messages that Christ also taught. They believe in a Savior who is not only gracious but also permissive, and forget that Christ also said things like, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” or that “Lord of Hosts” (e.g. lord or armies) is also one of His appellations.
On the other hand, there are also people—a smaller number, I think, but an especially hardened lot—who are too enamored with brimstone and judgment and forget that God is a love.
This is the kind of contradiction that I’m talking about. How do we simultaneously believe in a God of love and a God of judgement? And to this, righteous avarice replies: I refuse to pick just one.
There is much, much more to take away from Elder Maxwell’s talk. I just picked a personal favorite. Go ahead and read it yourself, and I’m sure you’ll find your own gems.
Some claim that corporate “short-termism“–or what Hillary Clinton called “quarterly capitalism“–has negative effects on the economy. But is there any evidence for the claim? A new McKinsey report answers in the affirmative:
From 2001 to 2014, the revenue of long-term firms cumulatively grew on average 47 percent more than the revenue of other firms, and with less volatility. Cumulatively the earnings of long-term firms grew 36 percent more on average over this period than those of other firms, and their economic profit grew 81 percent more on average.
Long-term firms invested more than other firms from 2001 to 2014. Although they started this period with slightly lower research-and-development spending, cumulatively by 2014, long-term companies on average spent almost 50 percent more on R&D than other companies. More important, they continued to increase their R&D spending during the financial crisis, while other companies cut R&D expenditure; from 2007 to 2014, R&D spending for long-term companies grew at an annualized rate of 8.5 percent versus 3.7 percent for other companies.
Long-term companies exhibit stronger financial performance over time. On average, their market capitalization grew $7 billion more than that of other firms between 2001 and 2014. Their total return to shareholders was also superior, with a 50 percent greater likelihood that they would be in the top decile or top quartile by 2014. Although long-term firms took bigger hits to their market capitalization during the financial crisis than other firms, their share prices recovered more quickly after the crisis.
Long-term firms added nearly 12,000 more jobs on average than other firms from 2001 to 2015. Had all firms created as many jobs as the long-term firms, the US economy would have added more than five million additional jobs over this period. On the basis of this potential job creation, this suggests, on a preliminary basis, that the potential value unlocked by companies taking a longer-term approach was worth more than $1 trillion in forgone US GDP over the last decade; if these trends continue, it could be worth nearly $3 trillion through 2025.
The report concludes that “the potential value that could have been unlocked had all US publicly listed companies taken a long-term orientation exceeded $1 trillion over the past ten years” (pg. 7).
How do the researchers determine that a company is “long-term”? Their Corporate Horizon Index consists of five financial indicators:
After running the numbers on these indicators, two broad groups emerged among those 615 large and midcap U.S. publicly listed companies: a “long-term” group of 164 companies (about 27% of the sample), which were either long-term relative to their industry peers over the entire sample or clearly became more long-term between the first half of the sample period and the second half, and a baseline group of the 451 remaining companies (about 73% of the sample). The performance gap that subsequently opened between these two groups of companies offers the most compelling evidence to date of the relative cost of short-termism — and the real payoff that arises from managing for the long term.
…While we can’t directly measure the cost of short-termism, our analysis gives an indication of just how large the value of what’s being left on the table might be. As noted earlier, if all public U.S. companies had created jobs at the scale of the long-term-focused organizations in our sample, the country would have generated at least five million more jobs from 2001 and 2015 — and an additional $1 trillion in GDP growth (equivalent to an average of 0.8 percentage points of GDP growth per year). Projecting forward, if nothing changes to close the gap between the long-term group and the others, then the U.S. economy could be giving up another $3 trillion in foregone GDP and job growth by 2025. Clearly, addressing persistent short-termism should be an urgent issue not just for investors and boards but also for policy makers.
When it comes to enacting social change, are broken windows and displaced limousine drivers merely the cost of doing business? No. In fact, violent and destructive protesting is less efficient than nonviolent protesting, according to the research.
“Why Civil Resistance Works,” a study written by Maria J. Stephan and EricaChenoweth, found that nonviolent tactics were much more effective than violent tactics. Researchers surveyed anti-governmental resistance movements in the 20th century in a variety of countries: nonviolent means achieved their aims 53 percent of the time, while the violent means worked only 26 percent of the time.
“Whereas governments easily justify violent counterattacks against armed insurgents, regime violence against nonviolent movements is more likely to backfire against the regime,” wrote the authors. “Potentially sympathetic publics perceive violent militants as having maximalist or extremist goals beyond accommodation, but they perceive nonviolent resistance groups as less extreme, thereby enhancing their appeal and facilitating the extraction of concessions through bargaining.”
Another study, by Princeton University Assistant Professor of Politics Omar Wasow, found that violent extremist movements in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s inspired a conservative backlash that helped elect Richard Nixon to the presidency. Nonviolent protests, on the other hand, did not provoke a backlash.
“In the 1960s, black-led protests that escalate to violence cause increased conservatism in white voters who live nearby,” Wasow wrote in an email to Reason. “Conversely, I find that proximity to black-led nonviolent protests, particularly those in which the state engages in brutal repression, are associated with increased liberalism among white voters.”
The science isn’t exactly settled: Wasow said other scholars have found that violent protests occasionally prompt the government to implement favorable social policies as a means of de-escalating the violence.
“If the recent modest amount of protest-related property damage remains an outlying event, I’d expect very little effect,” wrote Wasow.
Still, violent tactics—such as those displayed against Spencer—run a risk of provoking a conservative counter-reaction. Historically, authority figures have known this. When President Nixon was informed by an aide that campus violence was expected to increase in the coming year, his response was, “Good!” Nixon understood what too many leftists do not: Violent resistance is often the health of the state.
The article concludes,
The Women’s March sent a message that Trump is unpopular. The black bloc rioting likely accomplished the exact opposite: undermined public sympathy for Trump resistors.
It certainly seems like the organizers of the Women’s March chose the more tactically effective route. Wasow said the march might have the same kind of lasting effect as the Tea Party movement, which accomplished many of its political goals…I won’t say violence never works as a means of advancing social progress, but the Women’s March is powerful evidence that orderly resistance is the better tactic for the struggles that lie ahead. And recall that during the primaries, when protesters shut down Trump’s speeches, this made Republican voters more favorably disposed toward Trump.
With that, enjoy this rap battle between two advocates of nonviolent resistance.
Hitler and the Nazi’s have long held a quasi-mythological status in the American psyche. I do not know when this began, but it has simply been a fact for my entire conscious life. I can only imagine that, in centuries gone by, Satan and his devils filled the niche in the collective social consciousness that Hitler and his Nazis serve today.
Deep down, the people of all Western democracies wonder if their nation could–given the right historical circumstances–follow in the path of Nazi Germany. And all the citizens of these nations have wondered–at least at some point in their lives–if they would have had the courage and the foresight to have opposed Hitler’s rise. Because everyone wants to believe in their own heroism, and because the only evidence that they would have opposed the last Hitler is to oppose the next Hitler, there’s latent desire for someone to fill that role, just so that they could prove to themselves that they would pass the test.
But lately I get the feeling that Trump’s critics have evolved from expecting Trump to be Hitler to preferring it. Obviously they don’t prefer it in a conscious way. But the alternative to Trump becoming Hitler is that they have to live out the rest of their lives as confirmed morons. No one wants to be a confirmed moron. And certainly not after announcing their Trump opinions in public and demonstrating in the streets. It would be a total embarrassment for the anti-Trumpers to learn that Trump is just trying to do a good job for America. It’s a threat to their egos. A big one.
And this gets me to my point. When millions of Americans want the same thing, and they want it badly, the odds of it happening go way up. [emphasis original]
Adams hastened to clarify that he wasn’t “talking about any new-age magic.” Instead:
I’m talking about ordinary people doing ordinary things to turn Trump into an actual Hitler. For example, if protesters start getting violent, you could expect forceful reactions eventually. And that makes Trump look more like Hitler. I can think of dozens of ways the protesters could cause the thing they are trying to prevent. In other words, they can wish it into reality even though it is the very thing they are protesting.
I don’t agree with Adams on a lot of thing, even here. I don’t, for example, find the idea that “Trump is just trying to do a good job for America” to be credible. It seems clear to me that Trump is just trying to do a good job for Trump. However, I do think he’s right that the anti-Trump movement has become so invested in their own narrative of manning the barricades in a last-ditch defense against tyranny that they kind of need Trump to come through for them. Everybody wants to be a hero and so, deep down, everybody wants their enemies to be villains.
This is all a little bit abstract, however. Adams tries to make things concrete with his example of protesters going overboard, but there’s a much better example of how this can play out. It comes from Damon Linker’s piece: America’s spies anonymously took down Michael Flynn. That is deeply worrying. Linker makes a couple of vitally, vitally important philosophical points, like this one: “In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens. Procedures matter.” Along those lines, he points out that–even though the resignation of Michael Flynn is a good thing–the fact that he was essentially removed by intelligence professionals as part of a “soft coup (or political assassination)” is a serious concern. In particular:
The chaotic, dysfunctional Trump White House is placing the entire system under enormous strain. That’s bad. But the answer isn’t to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage — or with a disinformation campaign waged by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.
As Eli Lake of Bloomberg News put it in an important article following Flynn’s resignation,
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do. [Bloomberg]
Those cheering the deep state torpedoing of Flynn are saying, in effect, that a police state is perfectly fine so long as it helps to bring down Trump.
I haven’t had an awful lot to say–on my blog or even to friends and family in person–about Trump since the election. This is why. I haven’t figured out a good method of opposing Trump that doesn’t feed into the larger pendulum-swinging crisis in American politics. A lot of the opposition to Trump–both before and especially since the election–has been not only hysterical and unprincipled, but deeply, seriously dangerous. The reality is that at this point opposing Trump–in most places and for most people–is not an act of courage or bravery because it doesn’t carry any substantial risk. Take Attorney General Sally Yates. She was lauded as a hero because she ordered the Department of Justice attorneys not to defend Trump’s immigration executive order and was subsequently fired. Her opposition to the executive order is laudable, but there’s not even a glimmer of heroism in how she went about it. She was a political appointee on her way out anyway. Her grandstanding cost her literally nothing and earned her endless applause and praise. Heroism has certainly never come cheaper than that.Whether it’s violent protests at Berkeley, punching Richard Spencer, or applauding the growth of an unaccountable police state (see above), the anti-Trump movement is increasingly dominated by a radical fringe hellbent on racing Trump down the downward spiral of dishonesty, hysteria, and extremism.
I believe in defending our nation from Trump’s cavalier disregard for law and principle. But I also believe in defending our nation from the escalating cycle of co-dependent extremism. Journalists, who fall over themselves to run 16 fake anti-Trump news stories in the first month of his presidency, are making King Pyrrhus proud; even if they win they will find they have shredded the last vestiges of their credibility in the process. It’s time to reiterate that one Nietzsche quote everyone knows:
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Maybe Trump is the next Hitler, but I doubt it. He’s probably not the next Stalin or Mao or Mussolini either. He doesn’t have the commitment, the talent, the opportunity, or the ideology to pull it off. But if we keep pushing the pendulum further on every swing with escalating hyper-partisanship and if we sabotage our own institutions–from the civil services to the mainstream media to expectations of basic decency–we will find that on the day when an American Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Mussolini steps up onto the stage, we will have ripped all of our institutional safeguards to shreds already.
Trump got elected because the American right keeps crying wolf when it comes to illegal immigrants and terrorists and because the American left keeps crying wolf when it comes to fascism and bigotry. Neither side has learned their lesson. And so the crying wolf continues. The reality is, we haven’t seen the wolf.
Here is a quote that I stole from my father a long time ago:
To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist. – Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard
And here are the words of (then) Elder Gordon B. Hinckley in The Symbol of Christ in response to a minister who asked, “what is the symbol of your religion?”
I replied that the lives of our people must become the only meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship.
Later on, he clarified exactly what he meant by this:
As his followers, we cannot do a mean or shoddy or ungracious thing without tarnishing his image. Nor can we do a good and gracious and generous act without burnishing more brightly the symbol of him whose name we have taken upon ourselves.
And so it is in that sense that “our lives must become a meaningful expression, the symbol of our declaration of our testimony of the Living Christ, the Eternal Son of the Living God.”
“It is that simple, my brethren and sisters,” he said, “and that profound and we’d better never forget it.”
“By and large,” writes economist Bryan Caplan, “I think news is a waste of time. If I want to increase my factual knowledge, I read history – or Wikipedia. News, I like to say, is the lie that something important happens every day.” With the influence of “fake news” being overblown, is this really a legitimate claim on Caplan’s part? To help make his case, he links to a paper by Swiss writer Rolf Dobelli entitled “Avoid News.” In Dobelli’s view, “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body” (pg. 1). He lists the following reasons:
News misleads us systematically
News is irrelevant
News limits understanding
News is toxic to your body
News massively increases cognitive errors
News inhibits thinking
News changes the structure of your brain
News is costly
News sunders the relationship between reputation and achievement
News is produced by journalists
Reported facts are sometimes wrong, forecasts always
News is manipulative
News makes us passive
News gives us the illusion of caring
News kills creativity
What does Dobelli suggest instead? “Go without news. Cut it out completely. Go cold turkey…If you want to keep the illusion of “not missing anything important”, I suggest you glance through the summary page of the Economist once a week” (pg. 10). He notes that if there is indeed “some bit of information is truly important to your profession, your company, your family or your community, you will hear it in time – from your friends, your mother-in-law or whomever you talk to or see” (pg. 10). But the clincher is the following:
Read magazines and books which explain the world – Science, Nature, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly. Go for magazines that connect the dots and don’t shy away from presenting the complexities of life – or from purely entertaining you. The world is complicated, and we can do nothing about it. So, you must read longish and deep articles and books that represent its complexity. Try reading a book a week. Better two or three. History is good. Biology. Psychology. That way you’ll learn to understand the underlying mechanisms of the world. Go deep instead of broad. Enjoy material that truly interests you. Have fun reading (pg. 10).
the Mexicans were participating in the bracero programme, which allowed almost half a million people a year to take seasonal work on America’s farms. But the parallels with the present are plain. Donald Trump has also complained that immigrants are keeping Americans from good jobs and has promised to do something about it (another parallel: not since Kennedy has America seen such an astonishing presidential coiffure). So it is a good moment for a bracing new assessment of the bracero scheme and its demise.
Did it work? According to a new study, the answer is ‘no’:
We find that bracero exclusion had little measurable effect on the labor market for domestic farm workers. Pre- and post-exclusion farm wages and farm employment were similar in states highly exposed to exclusion—which lost roughly one third of hired seasonal labor—and in states with no exposure. Bracero workers were not substantially replaced in the years immediately following exclusion with domestic workers, unauthorized Mexican workers, or authorized non-Mexican foreign workers. We find instead that employers adjusted to exclusion, as predicted by the theory of endogenous technical change, with large changes in technology adoption and crop production. We reject the semielasticity of wages to labor scarcity implied by the model in the absence of endogenous technical change, and o er direct evidence of induced technical advance. These findings suggest that new theories of technological change can inform the design and evaluation of active labor market policy (pg. 2).
They conclude,
The exclusion of Mexican bracero workers was one of the largest-ever policy experiments to improve the labor market for domestic workers in a targeted sector by reducing the size of the workforce. Five years after bracero exclusion, leading agricultural economist William E. Martin uncharitably assessed the advocates of exclusion in a little-read book chapter. Those who had believed exclusion would help domestic farm workers “were obviously. . . extremely naïve”, he wrote, and the hoped-for eff ects in the labor market never arrived because “capital was substituted for labor on the farm and increased e ffort was exerted by the agricultural engineers in 30 providing the farmers these capital alternatives” (Wildermuth and Martin 1969, 203).
…The theory and evidence we discuss here contradicts a long literature claiming, largely without quantitative evidence, that bracero exclusion succeeded as active labor market policy. We find that bracero exclusion failed to raise wages or substantially raise employment for domestic workers in the sector. The theory of endogenous technical change suggests a mechanism for this null result: employers adjusted to foreign-worker exclusion by changing production techniques where that was possible, and changing production levels where it was not, with little change to the terms on which they demanded domestic labor (pgs. 30-31).
The Oscar nominations for 2016’s Best Picture have been announced. I’ve seen all the nominees and while my list is very similar, I have a few changes. Here is my top 10 list for 2016:
*Update: I’ve changed the order since the original posting, moving Your Name to the top. I saw it for the second time this week since it was released in the U.S. over the weekend. Not only was it the best of 2016, but it’s one of the best films of the 2010s.*
1. Your Name: One of the most unique films I’ve seen in some time, mixing elements from romantic comedies, coming-of-age dramas, fantasy, and disaster films. The film is gorgeous to look at and the meditations on time, longing, and connection stay with you long after the credits have rolled.
2. Manchester by the Sea: A quiet, humorous yet heart-wrenching look at grief, love, and family. Affleck’s subtle, aching performance is fantastic as he navigates this case study of the fractured human condition and the burdens of mortality we all have to bear.
3. Moonlight: Much like the two films above, this explores the desire for human connection and, with it, the need for identity. The brokenness of the main character’s life–from adolescence to adulthood–triggers our own cravings for belonging and awakens us to the completion and healing we find in even the most unlikely of people.
4. Zootopia: Tackles the subject of prejudice—from the explicit to the more subtle—and the barriers and suspicions it creates: all done with humor, emotion, superb animation, and a message of inclusion and friendship. A thoroughly entertaining and moving slam-dunk from Disney.
5. La La Land: A charming, nostalgic homage to classic musicals with a modern twist and uncommon finale (for Hollywood musicals, at least). Gosling and Stone both give strong performances, exuding wonderful chemistry. Justin Hurwitz’s jazzy score is both foot-tapping and grand, complementing the more fantastical elements of the movie.
6. Arrival: A thinking person’s sci-fi movie exploring the themes of language and communication. Drawing on the controversial Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the film probes questions about how language shapes our understanding and experience of the world around us and our interpretations of those different from us. Less about aliens and more about us.
7. The Wailing: This disturbing South Korean film is one of the best horror films I’ve seen in a long time. Most modern horror films rely on cheap scares, rehashed plots, and/or an excessive amount of gore (“torture porn”). This instead offers an atmospheric slow burn wrapped in a foreboding sense of dread and haunting ambiguity, driven by powerful performances, particularly those of Kwak Do-won and Kim Hwan-hee.
8. Lion: An uplifting true tale of courage and resilience that doesn’t shy away from the grim realities of poverty and child homelessness in India. The two strikingly different halves are woven together by the concepts of home and identity, resulting in a tear-inducing, ultimately satisfying whole.
9. Silence: The majority of modern Christian films–Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, Left Behind–are superficial fluff; the equivalent of what Jeffrey Holland referred to as “a kind of theological Twinkie.” But Martin Scorsese’s latest engages subjects like faith vs. doubt, discipleship vs. orthodoxy, belief vs. action, and the problem of evil. In essence, it’s what lived religion looks like.
10. Hidden Figures: No doubt sentimental and perhaps formulaic, this is nonetheless an incredibly well-done, feel-good, family-friendly film. Henson, Spencer, and Monae each deliver stirring performances, which in turn bolster the already incredible story. While it doesn’t break new artistic ground, it’s about as pitch-perfect as a lighthearted crowdpleaser can be.
When it comes to management research, Stanford’s Robert Sutton is someone I often look to. I follow his blog (which has unfortunately been dormant for some time) and take his book recommendations seriously. A year or so ago, I read his The No Asshole Rule. The main idea is that bullies and other toxic people–you know, assholes–negatively affects worker morale and productivity. I’ve written about his follow-up book Good Boss, Bad Boss here at Difficult Run. Needless to say, I like Sutton’s work. So when I read his Amazon review of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace by Georgetown’s Christine Porath, I knew I had to check it out. Sutton writes,
In the name of full disclosure, I read an advance version of this book and wrote an endorsement. That said, because I wrote a related book on “”jerks” a decade ago, I’ve since read many books on workplace jerks and what to do about them, and related matters, over the years– and I’ve endorsed a lot of them too. Mastering Civility is the best of the bunch. It is the most useful, most evidence-based, and the writing is delightful– Porath’s voice is strong and engaging. The blend of stories and studies and advice you can use right away are pitch perfect. If you like books by Adam Grant or Robert Cialdini, you will like this as Porath is one of those rare top-notch researchers who is devoted to making people’s lives better, and making our organizations more effective too. She also presents one of the most compelling arguments against treating others in rude and disrespectful ways that I’ve ever read. It’s a gem.
Porath’s survey of the research finds that rudeness and incivility can decrease creativity, disrupt attention, and increase errors. However, leaders and co-workers that practice civility a viewed more favorably by others, have more engaged employees, boost creativity and performance, help create a reciprocal, civil organizational culture, and improve decision-making. All those who work–which is pretty much everyone–should take note.
