The Amazing New Science of the American Dream
“If Americans want to live the American Dream, they should go to Denmark”
So says Richard Wilkinson in his TED Talk below. Wilkinson is Professor Emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham and co-author of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, a study of the pernicious effects of inequality in modern industrial democracies.
A whole array of social pathologies — including infant mortality, homicides, mental health, teenage births, life expectancy, etc. — are significantly worse in more unequal societies, regardless of the absolute level of wealth of that society as measured by GDP per capita.
In other words, poorer but more equal societies (like Denmark) fare better on this scale of social health than do richer but more unequal societies (like the U.S.).
If you want to live the American Dream, move to Denmark.
What, if anything, does this have to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement?
Just this: Many fearful critics of that movement[1] [2] are afraid that the protesters want simply to redistribute wealth, rather than — as is actually the case — make sure that the rules of the economic game are applied more equally and fairly.
In other words, fairness at the starting gate of the economic race — not absolute equality of wealth at the finish line — is the demand.
Professor Wilkinson’s research, which he describes clearly in this short TED Talk, illuminates vividly the unrest we see all about us now.
His work, though not limited to the U.S., could also be thought of as a “Science of the American Dream,” and should interest anyone who is worried about why that dream is dying.
- See, for instance, cartoonist Bob Crabb's recent Halloween cartoon [↩]
- See also "Eric Cantor criticizes 'wealth redistribution' and Occupy protesters during University of Michigan speech" [↩]
Partisanship: “In Each Human Heart There Are Two Wolves Battling Each Other”
I recently had the ordinary experience, in a political conversation with another person, of trying (and failing) to overcome a partisan difference.
This sort of thing happens all the time in our polarized and dysfunctional political culture. Usually in these situations there’s plenty of blame on each side.
Because of the pervasiveness of fear and anger, none of us is above the tendency to prefer battle over reconciliation. We get so attached to winning that it takes some determination — perhaps even a bit of self-awareness — to avoid getting stuck in the usual conflict.
A day or so after that most recent conflict, I fell asleep in bed at night listening to some political program on my iPod. In one of those strange moments of synchronicity, I woke later in the dark hours of early morning (still in my earphones) to the voice of Tara Brach, the Buddhist psychologist, speaking about fear and anger as the source of human conflict (2 minutes and 59 seconds into her talk, “Causing No Harm“).
To illustrate her point about how each of us (not just some of us) contains the source of this conflict, she told the following story:
An old grandfather is speaking to his grandson, and he’s talking about what causes violence and cruelty.
He says, “In each human heart, there are two wolves battling one another. One is fearful and angry, and the other one is wise, understanding and kind.”
And so the young boy looks at his grandfather and says, “Yeah, and so which one is gonna win?”
The grandfather smiles and quietly says, “Whichever one we choose to feed.”
Brach claims that, through meditation, it’s possible to act more consistently under the direction of the neo-cortex (where the wise wolf lives), rather than under the terrible influence of the more ancient part of the brain (where the fearful wolf lives).
I’m intrigued and encouraged by Brach’s suggestion that wise action is a choice (the point of the grandfather’s story, after all), and that it’s possible to practice and become more skillful in making that choice.
Like everyone else, I still need a lot of practice.
Twelve Particles of Matter, Four Forces of Nature
Here the latest bit of poetry/science from Symphony of Science:
Did Fracking Cause the Virginia Earthquake?
Reprinted from OpEd News.
Earthquakes in the nation’s capitol are as rare as hen’s teeth. The epicenter of Tuesday’s quake was in Mineral, Virginia, which is located on three very quiet fault lines. The occurrence of yet another freak earthquake in an unusual location is leading many anti-fracking activists (including me — they have just started fracking in Stratford, which is 40 minutes from New Plymouth) to wonder whether “fracking” in nearby West Virginia may be responsible.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of initiating and subsequently propagating a fracture in a rock layer, employing the pressure of a fluid as the source of energy. The fracturing is done from a wellbore drilled into reservoir rock formations, in order to increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of oil and natural gas and coal seam gas.
How Fracking Causes Earthquakes
According to geologists, it isn’t the fracking itself that is linked to earthquakes, but the re-injection of waste salt water (as much as 3 million gallons per well) deep into rock beds.
Braxton County West Virginia (160 miles from Mineral) has experienced a rash of freak earthquakes (eight in 2010) since fracking operations started there several years ago. According to geologists fracking also caused an outbreak of thousands of minor earthquakes in Arkansas (as many as two dozen in a single day). It’s also linked to freak earthquakes in Texas, western New York, Oklahoma and Blackpool, England (which had never recorded an earthquake before).
Industry scientists deny the link to earthquakes, arguing that energy companies have been fracking for nearly sixty years. However it’s only a dozen years ago that “slick-water fracks” were introduced. This form of fracking uses huge amounts of water mixed with sand and dozens of toxic chemicals like benzene, all of which is injected under extreme pressure to shatter the underground rock reservoir and release gas trapped in the rock pores. Not only does the practice utilize millions of gallons of freshwater per frack (taken from lakes, rivers, or municipal water supplies), the toxic chemicals mixed in the water to make it “slick” endanger groundwater aquifers and threaten to pollute nearby water-wells.
Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracking (which extend fractures across several kilometres) were introduced in 2004.
The Research Evidence
I think it’s really hard to deny there’s a connection when the frequency of Arkansas earthquakes dropped by two-thirds when the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission banned fracking (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/21/fracking-shutdown-earthquakes-arkansas_n_851930.html). Note that they didn’t stop entirely, which suggests that fault disruption may persist even after fracking stops.
Braxton County West Virginia also experienced a marked reduction in their quakes after the West Virginia Oil and Gas Commission forced fracking companies to cut back on the pressure and rate of salt water injection into the bedrock (see http://www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scripts/articles?Action=user_view&db=hurheral_articles&id=43334).
According to a joint study by Southern Methodist University and University of Texas-Austin, earthquakes started in the Dallas/Fort Worth region after a fracking disposal well there began operating in 2008 and stopped when it was closed in 2009 (see http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/does-gas-fracking-cause-earthquakes).
Blackpool, England banned fracking immediately, without waiting to see if more earthquakes would occur.
The Need for Federal Action
Despite strong anti-fracking movements in New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — based on dozens of cases of contaminated well water, poisoned livestock, destruction of wildlife, and tap water that catches fire and explodes — fracking has proved extremely difficult to regulate on a state and local level. New York governor Andrew Cuomo seems intent to allow the New York fracking to lapse. And a West Virginia judge has recently overturned Morgantown’s ban on fracking, on the basis that it violated the constitutional rights of Northeast Natural energy company.
Hopefully today’s events have caused some chickens to come home to roost for federal lawmakers. They need to send a clear message to Obama and the EPA to stop “studying” the issue — that he needs to show some testicularity in standing up to the energy companies that are financing his 2012 campaign.
Meanwhile there is a legal precedent of an Arkansas man suing a fracking company for earthquake damage to his home. For people with earthquake damage from today’s quake, there’s a very nice lawyer at http://www.fracking-lawsuit.com/ who would be delighted to give you a free consultation.
“These Beings With Soaring Imaginations” (Symphony of Science)
The latest in John Boswell’s beautiful Symphony of Science series:
Science, Mental Frames, Led Zeppelin, “Stairway to Heaven,” Satan and the Big Bang
If you watch this short science demonstration about the power of mental frames, I guarantee that you will hear the Satanic lyrics in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” when it is played backwards:
Scientists Discover the Reason For Sex
My favorite sentence in the following interesting article is this:
“The coevolutionary struggle between hosts and their parasites could explain the existence of males.”
Finally! I now have an explanation for the vexing puzzle of my very existence, which has kept me awake … well … not at all.
“Cross-fertilisation helps creatures stay a step ahead in the continuous “arms race” with parasites, which are forever evolving to try and infect them.
“Biologists have described the situation as “Running with the Red Queen” in reference to the character in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, who tells Alice: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
“Despite the popularity of the theory, there has until now been little solid evidence to support it.
“But experts at the University of Indiana may have provided the best evidence yet after engineering two types of worms, some which could only reproduce by mating with each other and some could only clone themselves.”
Read full article: “Scientists discover the point of sex”
Or, you might want to consider the following theory:
How to Have a Rational Discussion
Editor’s Note: Brandon Scott Gorrell, who created this graph, admits that “perhaps it is mere wishful thinking, this diagram; perhaps reasonable discussion is altogether impossible (esp. on the internet), and we only hope in vain to one day live in a world where people are ready and willing to, you know, talk it out reasonably.”
