Why do we get so hung up about consistency?

The US presidential campaign has thrown our obsession with consistency into sharp relief. Over and over again, the words ‘flip-flopping’ are brought into play as a form of attack. Past speeches and writings are combed for supposed — or even real — inconsistencies with what is being said today. Once found, these changes of opinion are waved over the candidate’s head like weapons. “Look, he once said this and now he’s saying this. He’s flip-flopping!”

If you stop to consider this, free from the synthetic excitement the media try to whip up, the only thing worth wondering about is the extent to which people’s opinions fail to change — even over long periods.

Times change. Contexts change. We learn new things, find new possibilities, ought to forget old grudges and hurts. Why shouldn’t our opinions change in line with the new realities?

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
~William Blake

Continued

To be free is a choice, not a right

Portrait of John Surart Mill
via Wikipedia

This article by Richard Reeves on The Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ blog should be compulsory reading (“The value of a self-governed life”). John Stuart Mill was one of the most influential writers of his time, or the times since, and his exploration of the relationship between liberty and choice has probably never been bettered.

Despite all the protestations of commitment to liberty and freedom today, it has rarely been under greater threat, whether from those who wish to stamp their own religious or political views on the world at large; those who claim to be saving us from terrorism by removing our liberties to resist being saved in their chosen way; or those who see conformity as the best route to profit, and freedom as inefficient in economic terms.

For Mill, liberty was always a choice. As Reeves says:

Mill’s idea of liberty requires freedom of opinion, expression and lifestyle in order to produce the broadest possible palette of ways of life for us to choose from. The state should not impose a single view of the best way to live – for Mill, the idea of a centrally imposed national curriculum was horrifying. Equality before the law, and rights to fair trial were important precisely because they allowed people to live the way they chose, even if eccentric or even disgusting to the majority, so long as they did not actively harm others in so doing.

Continued

You can’t avoid the truth by avoiding plain speaking

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

George Carlin, the American comedian, died recently. He was famous for his no-nonsense, sometimes crude attacks on all kinds of hypocrisy in society. One of his strongest dislikes was the use of euphemisms to avoid speaking the truth about aspects of life people don’t like to think about. Life, he proclaimed, is sometimes nasty and brutal. Sometimes it sucks. Pretending it doesn’t won’t help you avoid the bad times or find a way out of the difficulties.

Whether it was the indignities of aging, the rich manipulating the poor, the hilarious oddities of sex, or that ultimate taboo, death, Carlin pushed his audiences’ noses into the creative muck that life is made of — and most of them loved it. Continued

Do you need to be more skeptical to survive in the world of business?

Barry Maher, author of Filling the Glass: The Skeptic’s Guide to Positive Thinking in Business, offers a quick quiz to help you decide if you need to be a little less trusting of those around you in the world of business.

My favorites include these:

10. You believe the numbers in the business plan. I can’t believe anyone is that dumb, but maybe I’ve written to many myself in the past.

7. When they tell you this is a “people company,” you think one of those people is you. Only one group of ‘people’ truly count and they’ve all got corner offices and vast numbers of stock options.

5. When the CEO says that customers come first, you think that means BEFORE short-term profits and driving up his stock options. I’m almost sure nobody can be that dumb, but . . .

2. You accept a lateral move and relocate to East Cowflop, North Dakota, because you think that puts you in line for the next promotion rather than at the top of the list for the next hellhole where nobody else is willing to go. Yes, well, if that’s how you think, East Cowflop is probably where you need to be.

Check out the entire list here.

Technorati Tags: gullibility, trust, humor

Ruth Ostrow, writing for one of The Australian’s blogs, shares a story that illustrates that it’s never safe to assume you know whether something is going to turn out well or badly (“Despair’s serendipity”).

We all know that some people see a glass as half full, while others see it as half empty. What’s worse is when you see some unpleasant event as directed at you personally, instead of the chance event that it is. There’s something about the human mind that seems to want to find a specific meaning in whatever happens — usually one that has some personal reference. Continued

Does America (and other countries) suffer from a nasty strain of anti-intellectual ‘elitism’?

Photo credit: D. B. King

When is being part of an elite — or having an ‘elite’ level of knowledge, attainment or expertise — a handicap? It seems the answer is “when someone wants to denigrate your ideas without having any evidence to support them.”

To be accepted as part of an elite used to be a source of pride: a recognition that you had finally arrived amongst the best in some field (which is what ‘elite’ means). Now it’s an insult — branding people as “not one of us” and therefore to be treated with suspicion or disdain. That’s the message in this article by Susan Jacoby in The New York Times (” “Best Is the New Worst”)

What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.” But the newest and most ominous wrinkle in the denigration of all things elite is that the slur is being applied to knowledge itself.

It looks to me as if the causes of the problem are a potent mix of envy and fear: envy of anyone who seems to be ‘better’ than us in some way, and fear that we will lose out in some way if their superiority is recognized. Continued

This Sunday, May 11th is Mother’s Day in the USA — an annual bonanza for Hallmark cards, florists, restaurants and those of a sentimental disposition.

Maybe that’s why I was intrigued by this article (“Semi-detached”) which appeared in (perhaps predictably) a blog operated by a British newspaper, The Guardian. Britons are not immune to sentimentality, but usually reserve it for animals — at least in public.

Since I always enjoy and applaud heresy, here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite for the whole thing:

Motherhood isn’t something my mother made a point of celebrating, for she was notably unmaternal and seemed to resent, somewhat, having children . . . For many years, we’ve been engaged in a classic post-feminist row. My side believes that almost everything you do with your body is your personal responsibility. On her side, women are permitted to say “I didn’t have a choice” when a younger woman might think “I made the wrong choice.” We both refuse to budge from our opposing camps, but I would rather be arguing with my mother about the meanings of choice than how many children I should have or when I’m going to have them. A surprising number of women I know are pressured by their own mums to procreate. To abstain from producing grandkids might be seen as a rebuke by their mothers. Not by mine.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that my mother was thoroughly unsentimental (save with animals). Perhaps that’s where I got the trait from. Certainly, neither I nor our children make any fuss about Mother’s Day — and my wife view’s it as nothing more than marketing.

Call it disloyal, but I suspect we’d all be better off with more genuine respect for women and less sentimental flummery.

But then, I cannot spend more than a few minutes inside a Hallmark store at any time of the year without suffering from nausea.

Technorati Tags: Mother’s Day, sentimentality, special days, motherhood,