College is a Poor Investment

Reading an editorial today by Walter Williams, a university professor of economics, he was reviewing an idea by another author that college is a waste of money and effort. If he disagreed with the idea, Dr. Williams didn't make it clear. As I read it I was filled with a Quixotic murkiness. The article was mad-making.

Dr. Williams decried that colleges no longer teach critical thinking, and that students can't work abstract concepts. I am amazed he is decrying it because he has followed the conservative agenda in America for years and, simply stated, the lack of critical thinking is the result of years of dirtying the idea of liberalism.

Let me explain. Before Bush the Elder's presidency -- where 'liberal' was demoted to the dirtiness of 'the L-word' (and wife Barbara said once that she was liberal; she never said it in public again and the incident was forgotten) -- colleges were called liberal arts institutions. This was because they taught a form of thinking called 'liberal', which means the same thing as critical thinking. In those days higher education taught a higher-order thinking process.

Enter an authoritarian era. History is rife with authoritarian types gaining control of government, spending on defense and neglecting education, and even arresting academics and intellectuals. It's easy to deduce that authoritarians are threatened by critical thinking. In this neoconservative era we have seen many challenges to education, including lack of funding and lawsuits against teachers who promote a liberal agenda.

Which clues us in to another feature of the authoritarian mindset. Such people believe that teaching means telling students what to believe. It reduces the threat that anybody thinks for themselves, sees into the machinations of the authoritarian agenda, and makes a stink. Critical thinking is a lot harder; it requires that you take a variety of information from a variety of sources, compare ideas with each other, compare them to previous experience and history, compare them to rules of logic and morality, and come to an informed decision on the topic. Rather than being taught what to think, liberalism teaches you how to think. Why would anybody object to someone learning how to think? I imagine it's a fear for those who are trying to rule by deceit.

Before Bush the Elder colleges taught critical thinking through a series of general education classes at a time when young people have begun thinking abstractly and have tamed it somewhat, but are still open to new ideas. They also had students focus on one or two areas as a major so that they would be prepared to enter the workforce as professionals. Trade schools only taught specific job skills in one area and those jobs were called, well, trades. We now have garbage haulers calling their jobs professions and careers, meaning we have lost the distinction.

This would explain the lament that college students can't think critically anymore, and that they can't use abstract ideas well. When liberalism is quashed and the students are only taught information about the job they will have afterward we have reduced college to expensive trade schools. We have lost the distinction, dumbed down the students, and lost the value of higher-order thinking.

So it is maddening that Dr. Williams decries this state of higher education when the mindset he champions created it. I don't know if he realizes it consciously -- he is certainly bright enough.

It is time for us to no longer allow authoritarians and their pundit mouthpieces to bash liberalism. It is time for us to remember what it really is, to expect colleges to teach it, to remand specific job training once again to trade schools, and to not let authoritarians grab control and wreck this portion of society again and not take responsibility for it.

Weighty Thoughts

Did a little research this morning purely out of curiosity about the rising percentage of overweight Americans. In six or seven websites I discovered a lot of recurrent information:

• The percentage of overweight and obese Americans is rising at an astronomical rate. In one two-year period ('02 to '04) the percentage nearly tripled.
• Being overweight contributes to a variety of health problems including Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
• For every pound of fat you put on the body has to develop a mile of capilaries for the blood to service that area. It puts more strain on your heart.
• Weight gain is directly associated with poverty (fatty foods are cheaper than healthy foods), race (blacks are at a higher percentage being overweight, and latinos are pursuing them), and lack of education. I was sidetracked by poverty statistics for a while and found some disturbing -- but true -- information.

I am a counselor for people with persistant mental illness and substance abuse problems. Weight gain is a constant issue. Some psychotropic medications have weight gain as a possible side effect. Most of the clients are poor and rely on the food bank or whatever they can minimally afford. With depression it's hard to care about one's health. Despite these things, though, there is something they can do: exercise. Yet it's like pulling teeth to get them active. I've had a couple of clients over four hundred pounds.

Lack of education about nutrition is often cited on the websites as a cause of obesity. This has to be taken with a grain of salt. It's usually nutritionists making this judgment and they're reflecting their area of expertise and concern. And if you think about it, we know far more about nutrition now than we did a hundred fifty years ago, and they had far fewer weight problems then. The also had no power tools, microwaves, TV's, radios, automatic washing machines, cars, or tractors. When I tell people I don't watch TV they look at me as though I were un-American, but I find that I have time to do more active things. And even though I bought a weed whacker a few years ago I've maybe used it five times. It seems more responsible, and a whole lot quieter with no pollution, to cut the weeds manually. The best illustration is in the fall when I'm raking my lawn and a neighbor a couple of houses away is using a leaf blower: he must weigh three times what I do. And will probably die a lot younger. Between now and death he will probably never climb to the top of a mountain like I do, not experience the charge of elation walking in the woods and enjoying my body's ability, and though I hate to envision it he may not be able to perform sexually as well as people more fit.

Just as an aside, don't you think we'd have gotten somewhere with the multibillion-dollar weight loss industry and pharmeceutical aids? At what point do we say they don't got it?

Not that I'm a fitness junkie or weight nazi, but I just enjoy a lot of things because I'm thin. I'm able to. And it's sad that a lot of people slow down and put on weight. I'd love to take long walks with them.

I keep thinking about the idea that we are either (primarily) controlled by forces inside us or by forces outside us. I am an internally controlled person, so it takes a bit of thought to understand the other.

Accepting that externally controlled people feel little or no control of forces or events, it makes sense that a form of community, of tribalism, is important. It is crucial to feel a sense of security for an increased faith in survival; if it is not within yourself it must be in forces outside. This would take the form of laws, enforcement, weapons, experts, and authority. There is strength in numbers. You would value loyalty to the community upon pain of harm or even death. This operates on the individual, community, and national levels.

It would make sense, then, that anything foreign or not understood could be a threat; how can you defend against something you don't understand or have the resource to fight? Thus other religions and cultures are automatically suspect. Or homosexual marriage would threaten your heterosexual marriage. Without a deep belief in internal ability, anything seen as a threat must be eliminated by means determined by those in authority.

It would also explain why so many people listen to, and believe, media personalities who repeat lies time after time and the people believe them. To think outside the box would be tantamount to giving up your membership to the club, and without the community it’s you against the universe. The thought is too frightening to even entertain. It allows marketers to determine fashions and then switch them every season, guaranteeing themselves an industry and livelihood. It would explain how large corporations perpetuate mistruths about their product acquisition, financial state, profit margin, dedication to the well being of people, etc. and are believed. It would explain how weapons manufacturers convince us they provide peace and security.

But like finally understanding why self-mutilators cut or burn themselves, it doesn’t mean that external forces are bad, wrong, or a threat. In pure logic, if you don’t understand something it could be either good or bad. You just don’t know. In the same sense, externally controlled people tend to idolize authority figures, yet without knowing strength within (and its sources and development) you couldn’t know how to discriminate which authority figures are legitimate and which are hucksters.

The research says that a predominantly internally controlled person with a realistic idea of what external forces are beyond his or her control is the most mature and healthy. And even more, while many external events are beyond control you can still develop the ability to deal with most situations with the least amount of harm occurring. It is also understood that the most advanced of these people would be the most capable of leading, and it only makes sense that the most advanced should lead others to control themselves individually and collectively, yet having conquered themselves they feel little to no compulsion to take control of others.

It is easy to say that marketing, profit, manipulation, and corruption in business, religion, and government are run amok. What’s more difficult is to design how to stop digging and crawl out of the hole we’ve dug.

That’s why I keep mentioning the Golden Rule. It’s pretty simple, even for simple people, and its widespread use would make a difference like we can’t even imagine. I would also suggest making cooperation more important than competition. These alone would make our nation the strongest and most advanced in world history, and the interesting thing is that we would probably bring all the other nations along with us.

Mind War Games

I've been on vacation and haven't blogged since returning. But here we go again.

On several news broadcasts today the U.S. military announced that, in association with Carnagie Melon University, they're developing some sort of 'mind-reading gadget' that will help with soldiers who experience PTSD. This is based on ongoing neurological research, which with wave patterns, neurochemical reactions, and so forth looks like a field that will finally get there. Until now it's just been the stuff of sci fi and farfetched movie scripts.

Critics have been quick to point out that such an invention could be used for interrogation and torture.

While the research continues and debate rages, I wonder if we should even be 'inventing' it at all. For all our knowledge there is precious little we know about how the brain functions, and when you combine it with emotion and spirit, each of which we understand even less, the potential for honest misuse and calculated abuse are frightening. We need to understand galaxies more about how we operate before probing where we don't know the parameters and permutations.

It's like the invention of the nuclear bomb. Sure, we figured out how to do it, but once we did we couldn't unlearn it and the existence of them in the world is one of the most frightening things humankind has accomplished. Many would argue that the bomb keeps us from destroying each other, yet I would assert that it introduces a tension unknown before in history, the possibility at any moment that all life on the planet could be wiped out in a half hour, and it hasn't stopped people from fighting and killing each other. It has done nothing toward peace, and in fact has taken us irrevocably in the other direction.

The potential for abuse by a mind-reading device is too horrible. What constructive use would there be? To cure soldiers of PTSD? Why don't we try ending war first and see what that does? To keep husbands and wives honest? Now that would destroy civilization. To screen potential employees? Hm. Ever see Liar, Liar? The entire population, made up of fallible humans who are so conditioned to live in illusion by the system that's inventing a mind-reading machine, will go unemployed. And can you imagine how the business industry would use it for marketing, spying, destroying the competition, and so forth? And what about religion? Ooh. Yuck. You think religious fundamentalism is a problem now?

For that matter, if military brass and politicos are so fond of the creation of this monster why don't we subject them to it first?

A mind reading device isn't needed. We first need to figure out how to live the Golden Rule consistently. Then the device won't be needed.