I've just read a fascinating and important book, The Social Animal by David Brooks. In it Brooks brings you up to date on recent findings in studies of the brain that are truly revolutionizing our conception of how people think, feel and interact. He does this through following the lives of two fictionalized but prototypical characters, Harold and Erica. I highly recommend this book.
The basic idea is that most of our brain activity takes place in the subconscious, including most of what we consider thinking, and that it's all infused with feelings and motives we're often not even aware of. We reference and prioritize virtually everything through emotional constructs, for instance. Our conscious thoughts are truly the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in our heads. Let me give you some examples.
From the chapter on culture, illustrating the power of identification: Researchers gave Yale students a biography of a mathematician named Nathan Jackson. In half the cases they listed Jackson's birthday as the same date as the student reading the bio. The students were then given some math problems to do. The ones with the matching birthdays worked on the problems 65% longer than those without.
Also from culture, on reasons for institutional effectiveness: "The United States is a collective society that thinks it is an individualistic one. If you ask Americans to describe their values, they will give you the most individualistic answers of any nation on the planet. Yet if you actually watch how Americans behave, you see they trust one another instinctively and form groups with alacrity."
From the chapter on society: "A cultural revolution had decimated old habits and traditional family structures. An economic revolution had replaced downtowns with big isolated malls with chain stores. The information revolution had replaced community organizations that held weekly face-to-face meetings with specialized online social networking where like found like....The webs of relationship that habituate self-restraint, respect for others, and social sympathy lost their power."
On social mobility: The biggest change here is not globalization but "cognitive load," the modern need to process so much more and different types of information than before. Brooks writes, "In the 1970s it barely made economic sense to go to college, some argued. But starting in the early 1980s the education premium started to grow and hasn't stopped." The median family income of someone with a graduate degree is $93,000 and a child born into that family has a 50% chance of graduation from college. The median person with a high school degree is in a family making $42,000 and a child born into the family has a 10% chance of college graduation. For high school dropouts the figures are $28,000 and 6%.
And you've got to see the "marshmallow test" results on page 123-124 that predicts future success much better than any IQ test! Brooks is known as a prominent moderately conservative social and political commentator, but does not let ideology control where the research leads. In fact it often leads away from his convictions. If you get a chance to read The Social Animal settle in for a treat.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
An Illness Gets Me Thinking
I've had something happen this week that once again underscored for me the importance of making sure that everyone has access to medical care. This past Monday around noon I came down with a case of the sniffles. It didn't seem too serious at first, but over the course of the afternoon the runny nose got worse.
I have had allergies before, though not for some years, and this seemed like such an episode. It is late spring/early summer and I'd just been noticing some new flowers, particularly the verbenas, in bloom around the house. The drip from the nose was very thin and watery and became constant, except when being interrupted by sneezing. Then my left eyelid got swollen and puffy and began to water incessantly too. I finally took some antihistamine and went to bed.
I suffered all day Tuesday, using one tissue after another all day. I kept taking antihistamines but my condition persisted. It seemed peculiar that only the left nostril and eye were affected. The right side side, to my relief, was still clear so I could breathe out of one side of my nose and see out of at least one eye.
The body's mechanisms and defenses are remarkable. Like Tuesday morning, when I woke up Wednesday at first the symptoms were much improved. Before long, though, they were back at full strength. It's as though the body makes a maximum effort to keep the air passages open so it can try to renew itself in sleep, and then, exhausted, is once again overwhelmed. By mid morning I was miserable. I resolved to go to the doctor, hoping for perhaps a stronger, prescription antihistamine that could overcome my body's allergic reaction to whatever pollens were bedeviling it.
Instead, I was surprised when he looked into my left ear and exclaimed, "My gosh, it's sure red in there!" The same was true when he peered up my left nostril. It seemed I didn't have just an allergy going on. A full-blown infection of the ear, nose and sinus was underway. He prescribed a five-day antibiotic treatment of Azithromycin (often called the Z-pack) and a nasal spray to dry things up. With these in hand, I was already considerably better by bedtime Wednesday and felt definitely on the mend by Thursday. Ah, the wonders of modern medicine!
Fortunately, I'm someone with good employer-provided medical coverage. It doesn't cost me much to see the doctor or get prescriptions. Yet I still waited two days, both because I incorrectly self-diagnosed what was wrong and because I therefore didn't want to waste even an insurance company's money on something that probably couldn't be remedied except by time.
What would I have done if I'd had no insurance at all? Well, I can afford to pay, so I might have waited another day trying to save the $90 doctor visit and $150 prescription cost. What if I were really hurting for money, like most of the community college students I teach? Well then, I can imagine waiting a long time, hoping it would go away of its own accord. $240 is a couple of weeks pay for some of them, or their share of a month's rent. They would just suffer and get worse for another several days or a week. Maybe an infection like mine left untreated for 10 days could cost someone an eye. And if it were something more dangerous, they might well wait until it was too late and even die. It happens. That's why Harvard Medical School estimated 45,000 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance.
That's also why it's such a moral imperative to make sure everyone does have some form of coverage. It needs to be treated as a human right. As Garrison Keillor has written, "if lower taxes are your priority over human life, then we know what sort of person you are. The response to a cry for help says a lot about us as human beings."
I have had allergies before, though not for some years, and this seemed like such an episode. It is late spring/early summer and I'd just been noticing some new flowers, particularly the verbenas, in bloom around the house. The drip from the nose was very thin and watery and became constant, except when being interrupted by sneezing. Then my left eyelid got swollen and puffy and began to water incessantly too. I finally took some antihistamine and went to bed.
I suffered all day Tuesday, using one tissue after another all day. I kept taking antihistamines but my condition persisted. It seemed peculiar that only the left nostril and eye were affected. The right side side, to my relief, was still clear so I could breathe out of one side of my nose and see out of at least one eye.
The body's mechanisms and defenses are remarkable. Like Tuesday morning, when I woke up Wednesday at first the symptoms were much improved. Before long, though, they were back at full strength. It's as though the body makes a maximum effort to keep the air passages open so it can try to renew itself in sleep, and then, exhausted, is once again overwhelmed. By mid morning I was miserable. I resolved to go to the doctor, hoping for perhaps a stronger, prescription antihistamine that could overcome my body's allergic reaction to whatever pollens were bedeviling it.
Instead, I was surprised when he looked into my left ear and exclaimed, "My gosh, it's sure red in there!" The same was true when he peered up my left nostril. It seemed I didn't have just an allergy going on. A full-blown infection of the ear, nose and sinus was underway. He prescribed a five-day antibiotic treatment of Azithromycin (often called the Z-pack) and a nasal spray to dry things up. With these in hand, I was already considerably better by bedtime Wednesday and felt definitely on the mend by Thursday. Ah, the wonders of modern medicine!
Fortunately, I'm someone with good employer-provided medical coverage. It doesn't cost me much to see the doctor or get prescriptions. Yet I still waited two days, both because I incorrectly self-diagnosed what was wrong and because I therefore didn't want to waste even an insurance company's money on something that probably couldn't be remedied except by time.
What would I have done if I'd had no insurance at all? Well, I can afford to pay, so I might have waited another day trying to save the $90 doctor visit and $150 prescription cost. What if I were really hurting for money, like most of the community college students I teach? Well then, I can imagine waiting a long time, hoping it would go away of its own accord. $240 is a couple of weeks pay for some of them, or their share of a month's rent. They would just suffer and get worse for another several days or a week. Maybe an infection like mine left untreated for 10 days could cost someone an eye. And if it were something more dangerous, they might well wait until it was too late and even die. It happens. That's why Harvard Medical School estimated 45,000 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance.
That's also why it's such a moral imperative to make sure everyone does have some form of coverage. It needs to be treated as a human right. As Garrison Keillor has written, "if lower taxes are your priority over human life, then we know what sort of person you are. The response to a cry for help says a lot about us as human beings."
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Back From Kansas City
I'm back from scoring AP European History exams in Kansas City. I avoided any tornadoes in the city on the wide Missouri River but couldn't completely avoid the heat. The daily highs ranged from 93 to 97, accompanied by the kind of high humidity we don't get in Visalia. Outside of the work-related, I set up a group trip of 14 of us to take in a baseball game at the very attractive Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals. The home town team fell to the visiting Minnesota Twins 8-2.
I was also able to partake in some famous KC barbecue at Jack Stack's. I had the sampler platter including beef, chicken, a baby back rib and even kielbasa. It was excellent. I came back with some BBQ sauce for home, including from a couple of restaurants I didn't get to, Arthur Bryant's and Gates.
Then there was an outing to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It has to be seen to be believed--spectacular. Monet's "Water Lilies" were there on tour. It also has Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Medieval, Enlightenment Era, American, African, Asian and modern. Architecturally, the building looks like it might have been put up by an 1890s robber baron, with marble columns in the monumental neoclassical style--very impressive. I didn't even get to the American and Asian collections but if I ever return to KC I'll be back for the rest of it.
On the topic of the work-related, I'll be incorporating some of the material from the AP test in my Western Civilization classes. There were some fascinating documents on England's Queen Elizabeth I and the gender-related challenges she faced when she ascended the throne, including how she handled the potentially fatal (for her) situation. I also learned a lot about the events leading up to the English Civil War. That is the interlude that ended with Charles I losing his head and determining that Parliament would reign supreme in Britain rather than following the course of absolute monarchy that was gaining the upper hand in France, Spain, Austria, Russia and Prussia. The developments of Britain and the Netherlands along constitutional rather than absolutist lines was of immense significance in setting the stage for their rise to prominence and bequeathing important elements of their systems to the subsequent democracies, including that of the United States.
I was also able to partake in some famous KC barbecue at Jack Stack's. I had the sampler platter including beef, chicken, a baby back rib and even kielbasa. It was excellent. I came back with some BBQ sauce for home, including from a couple of restaurants I didn't get to, Arthur Bryant's and Gates.
Then there was an outing to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It has to be seen to be believed--spectacular. Monet's "Water Lilies" were there on tour. It also has Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Medieval, Enlightenment Era, American, African, Asian and modern. Architecturally, the building looks like it might have been put up by an 1890s robber baron, with marble columns in the monumental neoclassical style--very impressive. I didn't even get to the American and Asian collections but if I ever return to KC I'll be back for the rest of it.
On the topic of the work-related, I'll be incorporating some of the material from the AP test in my Western Civilization classes. There were some fascinating documents on England's Queen Elizabeth I and the gender-related challenges she faced when she ascended the throne, including how she handled the potentially fatal (for her) situation. I also learned a lot about the events leading up to the English Civil War. That is the interlude that ended with Charles I losing his head and determining that Parliament would reign supreme in Britain rather than following the course of absolute monarchy that was gaining the upper hand in France, Spain, Austria, Russia and Prussia. The developments of Britain and the Netherlands along constitutional rather than absolutist lines was of immense significance in setting the stage for their rise to prominence and bequeathing important elements of their systems to the subsequent democracies, including that of the United States.
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