Tomato Sauce Fingers

Harold Pollock writes of his experiences with his brother-in-law with an intellectual disability.  He finds that lower-class restaurants seem more forgiving than those of the well-to-do:

I hate taking Vincent to pricey restaurants mostly filled with my own educational/income peers. People say all the kind things. Yet it’s not uncommon for customers at nearby tables to make us feel uncomfortable when a few chunks of Vincent’s chicken ends up on his shirt or to visibly fidget when he detracts from their elegant dining experience by allowing his fingers to migrate into the tomato sauce.

I was at an IEP meeting yesterday at a largely upper-SES middle school.  So far the child, who suffered greatly from anxiety, was having a terrific year.  The special education coordinator, new to the area, commented at how impressed she was by the tenor of the school: there was just a polite, friendly atmosphere among the students.  In fact, her friend, a substitute teacher, simply refused to take assignments anywhere else.

I was immediately reminded of the experiences I had teaching in various different schools, in various SES populations.  At the "nice" schools (read wealthier, whiter, parents more educated, etc.) one entered a campus of relaxed kids relatively calmly, playfully chatting before hustling up their well-organized bags when the bell rang.  At the "poor" schools (less income, less education, minority), the mood was tense, louder, argumentative, with negative comments and hostility in the air.  You can imagine how this carried over into the classroom.  Often the "best" teachers in the poor schools were those comfortable with an authoritarian, implicitly violent attitude that demanded (and got) obedience.  In the "nicer" schools, the teachers could be jovial, nurturing and compassionate and the students would generally respond in kind.

So these idyllic upper-SES communities are indeed delicate flowers in many ways.  The greatest irony of my life is for all my passion on issues of SES inequality, I send my two kids to upper-SES public schools surrounded by children who come from intact families, who were read to every night by parents who are doctors, lawyers, business-owners or otherwise highly educated.  Yet after having spent so much time in classrooms filled with children who come to school stressed-out, with not enough sleep, and not enough academic, emotional or cognitive preparation, and how this creates a learning environment in which a teacher is so overwhelmed in dealing with students with such need that s/he can only offer a lowest-common-denominator education, how could I in good conscience send my precious angels into such a mess?  I would be sacrificing my childrens' education at the altar of my political morality.

If everyone like me did the same, we wouldn't have this issue; the pain of inequality would be spread evenly.  But it is not.  I would vote for socio-economic integration in a heartbeat, because it would represent a collective will to change the system.  But there is a limit to one's personal political sacrifice, and this is especially true when the sacrifice is one's children.  Morally, I could do much to align my actions with my thoughts: go without most of my possessions, move to a poor neighborhood, volunteer my time for good causes, take in foster-youth, take in more shelter animals.  We could all follow Ghandi and live morally perfect lives.  I don't have the best answer for why I do not, other than to say I do what I can, and try to do more every day.

My children will grow up to be less comfortable with rough behavior.  Yet they will also grow up in many ways stronger for having been nurtured.  My hope is that they will thus be able to leverage their own strength to do better in the world.  In my own work, I deal with families who experience extreme hardship in caring for children with disabilities.  I do my best to relate my children my stories and experiences to impart the wisdom it has provided me - to be compassionate, accepting and supportive to the needs of others; to look past the discomfort, and to the beauty within us all.

Compassion and Violence

Among the relieved and somber celebrations of Osama Bin Laden's death at the hands of the military today, there exists a small chorus among the more meek among us to remember that all life is sacred, and that no death should be relished.

A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

He stands on the shoulders of giants.  Jonathan Zazloff quotes the Talmud:

Certain brigands were in Rabbi Meir’s neighborhood used to trouble him greatly, and he prayed that they would die.  Beruriah his wife said to him, “What is your opinion?” [i.e. on what text do you base your prayer]?”  [He replied,] “because it is written [Psalms 104:35], “May sinners vanish from the earth.”  [She responded,] “Does it say ‘sinners’?”  [No!]  It says ‘sins.’” [End evil, not evil doers.]  “Furthermore [she continued], go down to the end of the verse: ‘The wicked will be no more.’  Since their sinning will stop, will there ‘no longer be sinners’?  Rather, you should pray that they repent, then ‘the wicked will be no more.”
Rabbi Meir prayed for mercy upon them, and they repented.

This atheist finds complete sympathy with the Talmud here. It is rooted, I think, in an ancient human – likely mammalian (at least) cognition of empathy. We make a model of the world in our heads, and thus are able to see ourselves in others, and visa versa. I don’t see why any among us could not have just as easily been led towards the evil that Bin Laden was, given the proper environment. And to the extent that we could not have been, to what special power do we owe that privilege? I find the assumption that we would are somehow “above” depravity frankly narcissistic.

This insight to me is the key humility that man must learn, especially if we want to move towards the heaven on earth we are capable of. It is here where retribution dies, and forgiveness is born. Utility being what it is, we will often have to treat people in ways which we would rather not – but we can always be something more if we work at it. The Talmud here – like all great religious teachings – calls us to do just this.

The Science of Justice

Terry Eaglton writes on human nature, justice and morality in The New Statesman:

In fact, the word [evil] has come to mean, among other things, "without a cause". If the child killers did what they did because of boredom or bad housing or parental neglect, then - so the police officer may have feared - what they did was forced upon them by their circumstances; and it followed that they could not be punished for it as severely as he might have wished. This mistakenly implies that an action that has a cause cannot be freely undertaken. Causes in this view are forms of coercion. If our actions have causes, we are not responsible for them. Evil, on the other hand, is thought to be uncaused, or to be its own cause. This is one of its several points of resemblance with good. Apart from evil, only God is said to be the cause of himself.

It is a fairly common occurrence for particularly ghastly crimes to be referred to in subhuman terms.  It is as if by describing the acts in this way we somehow avoid any culpability as humans ourselves.  Surely we could never behave this way.  After a recent case in which a 7 year old girl was raped by a gang of older boys in a housing project, the mayor referred to them as "monsters".  One often hears the sentiment how could they do something like this?, despite the fact that evil things have been done since the dawn of history. 

There is no argument that terrible crimes are, well, terrible.  But what is strange is the persistence of the myth that there is no explanation for why evil is done.  For more than a century we have been collecting data on this very question.  And all of it points in the same direction: that human behavior is the result of a combination of biological and environmental development.  The type of brain you have, and the type of world you are raised in determines what kind of person you will be.

Wise people have always known this.  But until science lead us toward evidenciary claims, there was no real way of arguing it without appeals to nebulous philosophy or theorizing, which were often little more than aphorisms.  Today we know enough that, while unable to determine all of the causes and influences that caused someone to commit a particular crime, we are able to make pretty clear predictions as to what types of environments and brains are conducive to criminal behavior.

I've taught low-income children in Kindergarten as well as high school, and as a class they are much more likely to end up in prison.  The writing was on the wall the minute they walked in the classroom.  They often came from dysfunctional homes in which good parenting was not practiced - despite how loving and well-meaning the parents generally were.  But few were very successful themselves, and had difficulties with drugs, relationships, work - much less raising children. 

The research on early childhood bears this out.  Literally starting before birth, children are absorbing their environment, whether from toxins like lead paint and allergens more common in poor housing, to the mother's stress level and tone of voice.  Language becomes very important for the development of cognition and communication.  Socioeconomic status is a major predictor for how much positive (or negative) stimulus a child will receive before entering school. 

Teachers are then burdened with the task of trying to make up for concentrated communities of disadvantaged children.  As they fall behind in school, whether to lack of emotional development and behavioral control or academic struggle, the beginnings of criminality emerge.  There is nothing more tragic than looking at statistical averages for future success of poor populations.  "If only someone would step in and help these children," you want to ask.  The teachers and administration can only do so much.  Many fathers are in prison or simply absent, and many mothers are working or high - or unable for a variety of reasons to protect their babies from falling down the wrong path.

Yet this is all happening on our watch.  This is us.  This is what humans do in desperate situations.  We would all be exactly the same - facing the same odds of failure.   Instead of neglecting disadvantaged members of society, we ought to be targeting those most at risk for unhealthy behaviors and intervening.  The earlier we get to them, the better chance we'll have to correct their development.

At the same time, the adult population is not, nor likely will ever be, perfect.  There are some pathologies that are likely genetic, and may never be corrected for.  Certain individuals, such as serial killers or pedophiles, we may never be able to diagnose and respond to before they commit their first crime.  Their pathologies are still relatively mysterious, however seem to have a strong genetic component.  In the future, treatments might be developed to reverse their effects.  In the meantime, criminal justice agencies are grappling with appropriate levels of response.  Pedophilia presents a particularly troubling situation because lesser offenses may not call for a life prison term, yet there is no evidence that any "cure" exists.  Management programs have been developed to try and find a balance, but the problem is ongoing.  An encouraging sign is that, despite our traditional inclination to treat them as "evil" instead of mentally ill, we are moving toward a more rational and evidence-based assessment of their pathology.

Still, while these difficult cases continue to strain our scientific understanding of human behavior, they represent only a small portion of prison populations, thankfully.  Most criminals are very explainable, and sadly, highly predictable according to socioeconomic status.  However the good news is that we know that interventions are still possible.  The hard part is in crafting public policy that the rest of the public will view as not only effective, but at a cost sufficiently low to sacrifice their tax dollars for.  The moral case is clear: if these individuals have been, for all intents and purposes, created by society, then it is our duty to do everything in our power to help them.  Because as much as they have been created by society, so to have we.  And as our brothers and sisters we owe it to them to share what we have been "blessed" with.

But Republicans Don't WANT to Reform Health Care

And this is premised on far more profound disagreements than budgetary concerns. Let me put it this way, if the millions of Americans without healthcare were Al Queda, they would have built an extra wing on to the Pentagon devoted to them and got Lockheed Martin on the phone ASAP.


But they blame these people for their own "failure" (to borrow Glenn Beck's eloquence). Just like they blame anyone who might need social services. They know the "market" can't guarantee these people the help they need. That is their point. They don't deserve our help. 

Period.

Health Care Fantasy

Health care is often described as a "market".  But I think this is wrong.  How could anything like a market exist when some people are going to have life experiences that make them 100x more costly than others? If we compared health care insurance to auto, life, house, or other forms of insurance, it would be like certain people living in houses on fire, or driving cars with broken steering wheels that continually crash into other vehicles!

The reason we get around this today seems to be that there are structural systems that manage risk. The first would be employee pools, next pre-existing conditions, and finally just really high insurance costs. But such a system depends on a high degree of callousness. Those in fields where no employee pool exists, or the where wages don’t support it are kicked out. Then those with a pre-existing condition are left out. Finally those who can’t afford it are left out. And here we arrive at the high level of uninsured, those who don’t get medical treatment, and those who simply die.

To me this comes down to basic morality. We as a society can afford to cover everyone. Maybe more clumsily, but adequately. Our taxes will be higher, but our economic system won’t collapse. It hasn’t in every other Western country that guarantees some form of universal HC. Yet we choose not to. Throughout history societies have chosen different levels of compassion, having decided on different moral standards. Our American system of health care right now depends upon on tolerating a certain level of human suffering.
This is a moral determination. All sorts of fancy economic or philosophical reasoning is put forth. But in the end it seems a simple matter of morality. Yet one that also seems to depend (as limited compassion usually does), on a failure to empathize because of a failure to witness. Few people would argue that we deny people access to emergency rooms, should they not be able to pay. Yet having no insurance isn’t much different. Yet the situation is less clear-cut. It happens on calm afternoons, when medications are not picked up from pharmacies, when problems go undiagnosed, when bills pile up and homes are quietly foreclosed. The story becomes part of that elusive tapestry of unacknowledged, unwitnessed poverty.

It is here that the sweeping philosophical and economic rationalizations for our current system reside. Here in this emotional vacuum the specifics and details crumple into dust beneath grand gestures. The human lives that hang in the balance are absent. They cannot enter, for they would immediately disrupt the natural symmetry between our present system and a most basic level of human sympathy. In this way it is not that opponents of HCR are without compassion, but that they must actively disengage from the reality of their position’s consequence.

The Difficulty of Sainthood

I imagine very few of us are really moral, in the sense that we are making rational decisions about our lives based on what is always right.

Peter Singer's thought experiment on sacrifice illustrates this well: we in the first world make daily decisions that favor our own small benefit over less fortunate others who would experience vastly greater benefit, even though were we to face these individuals we would make the sacrifice in an instant. For those unfamiliar with his point, he asks you to imagine yourself witness to an ice-skating child falling through an icy pond, whose rescue would then depend upon you ruining your $100 fur coat.

I think the really moral thing for us all to do is to take vows of poverty and donate all our free time to charity work. The obvious response to this is that our pleasures serve as a reward, thus generating more overall behavioral efficacy. I think this argument is mostly lazy, and serves nicely as a convenient justification for immoral behavior. After all, losing our shoes and jumping into ice water would just as well diminish our reward-stimulus yet the moral imperative is as strong.

So then why are we not all more like Saints? What is it about them that allows them to possess such vigorous discipline and moral courage? And then, maybe, what is it about us that keeps us from acting saintly?

It seems very difficult to answer this question at the individual level. But at the larger, social level I think we can more reliably find structural trends, and possibly apply universal human behavioral patterns. I may not be able to see why right now, up until this point in my life I have rarely acted saintly. But I can find patterns in others with similar life experiences.

I know that the more comfortable and satisfied I am in my life, the more appealing the idea of sacrificing for others becomes. And much of my position in life is owed to the fortunate experiences I have had over the years. I have been able to learn sets of behaviors that generate for me the life results I desire. At the broader social level, similar experiences are predictive of similar capacities for self-efficacy. (Of course, sorting out causal relationships is enormously challenging. And any causal hypothesis, after identifying clean correlations, is dependent upon continued predictive strength.)

Yet getting structural factors involved in group compassion is complex. Determining social outcomes that support individual satisfaction in order to promote efficacy is part of it. There are also the cultural institutions that act as mechanisms for stimulating the compassionate response. Foremost among these would be the media as a way to deliver information. Then there would be the actual delivery of care, facilitated by NGOs and governments.

Depending on political persuasion, one might be more of an advocate for taxation as a way of embedding compassionate sacrifice into a governmental-social framework. This is dependent upon a choice of ultimate efficacy - broken both into belief in governmental efficacy and emphasis on a social contract specifically designating compassion by all member citizens. Others may opt for an emphasis on private delivery of services, either out of mistrust in government's efficacy or a de-emphasis on inserting compassionate sacrifice into any social contract.

In the end, we will all determine what is a comfortable level of sacrifice, even if, except for the saints among us, it is never quite moral enough. That sacrifice might look different for different people. It may take many forms, from the simplest act as smiling at a stranger, or volunteering at a soup kitchen. In our social behavior though, it is through our interactions that we experience compassion - as we communicate, then place ourselves in the minds and hearts of others, and then choose how to act towards them.

Health Care Is Not A Right

I've thought about this occasionally, but only recently have I come upon what I believe is a truer expression of a liberal philosophy of health care.

The political argument is obvious: by calling health care a "right", you automatically justify guaranteeing coverage to everyone. By evoking a natural principle, you are fundamentally answering opponents by claiming that health care is a moral, not economic issue.

But this is not generally how we think of rights. We usually think of them as simple freedoms that require little in the way of effort on the part of others. Freedom of speech, movement, worship, or privacy all require little other than being left alone. Of course, the definition of a social contract includes the quality of living with others. Thus it implies a level of engagement with one's fellow man.

It is within this expansion into the social realm that the liberal inserts an added clause: duties. Duties are all the things we must do for one another to maintain our individual freedoms, or "rights". They are of course more difficult to define, much less to achieve. But they are as elemental to the provision of man's rights as the established state itself.

Throughout our nation's history we have defined them differently, as have other modern democracies: We reserve the right to draft men into military service to protect from foreign threats. We reserve the right to declare martial law. We reserve the right to tax income and commerce. We reserve the right to guarantee things like education or legal defense. Though at times they may be defined differently, they are the same in that they represent an expression of duty towards the common good. Each requires a level of sacrifice - often different depending on the individual - to the idea of the "common good".

Universal access to health care is now being called for by liberals. It is being argued that, by virtue of being a citizen (for many like myself, simply a human being) one should be guaranteed a minimum standard of free health care. Or to put it another way, it is the DUTY of every citizen of this country to contribute in some way to ensuring universal health care coverage to every man, woman & child.

Health care is a duty.

Little Buckley

Andrew Sullivan posted this quote from William F. Buckley, Jr. on his blog Friday:

"I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth," from Up From Liberalism

My response:
As a liberal who has devoted my life to the cause of empowering the weak, whether be it delivering meals to people with AIDS in San Francisco, managing the medication for the Traumatically Brain Injured, mopping the floors for the sufferers of Schizophrenia, or now teaching science to low-income Hispanic children, I find Buckley's view deeply saddening.

For the fundamental truth I have discovered so far in life is that any power I possess is inseparable from the power of all of humankind before me, and all of its power to come. As the embodiment of all of our strengths and weaknesses, for me to claim ownership of any power is simply false. It is my one duty to find, to the best of my ability, the right balance between enjoying the experience of my own life, and contributing to the enabling of others to do the same.

We will likely never alleviate all inequality, nor suffering. (I sometimes laugh at the thought that were we to be truly concerned about suffering, we would endeavor to limit the suffering of the natural kingdom, possibly starting with the administration of anesthesia to sick or injured animals!) But what makes us human is our capacity for empathy - for compassion; for the ability to imagine life through the eyes of another. And it is through this profound gift that we come to realize that power does not come, as if by magic, into individuals. It comes to us though our culture, our health & welfare, our economy & technology, our education and tradition - from old to young throughout generations.

Any true conservative should recognize this. This is what our race has worked all of these years for. Not so that man can cower like a spoiled child in a sandbox, and say, "I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me." Instead, may he marvel at its glow and say, "I so cherish this power thus blessedly given unto me, that I will do all I can to spread it back out into this beautiful world so that everyone may one day experience its joy."