On: Dignity.
Episode: N/A
Date: July 2019
Background: photographer, author, and former Wall St. trader. Traveled across America photographing and getting to know the addicted and homeless who struggle to find work and struggle to survive.
Key Subjects:
- Human need for community and socializing.
- Example: communities that evolve inside McDonalds in poorer areas.
- [Human pro-social tendencies drive the emergence of social order – see also Blueprint].
- Narrow road to financial well-being.
- Path to financial well-being is narrow, weaving through elite (educational) institutions.
- Driven by the emergence and dominance of post-industrial knowledge-based economy.
- Widening gap between the educated (front row) and the non-educated (back row).
- Growing number of people lack access to this “credential machine”:
- Not aware of its existence.
- Not willing or able to enter (for instance, can’t or don’t want to leave their homes).
- Lack understanding of the “rules” (in order to be successful inside these institutions, you have to behave and think in certain ways).
- The front row and back row:
- Front row:
- Tend to value things that can be measured.
- Focus on credentials.
- Better prospects of materialistic rewards.
- Move around more easily (why limit yourself?).
- Willing and able to pursue personal growth opportunities as and where they arise.
- Break old and form new connections.
- Back row:
- Tend to value things that are more difficult to measure.
- Non-credentialed forms of meaning.
- Limited materialistic rewards; focus on intangible rewards (place, faith, community).
- Less willing to move (“the problem of poverty is luggage”).
- Less incentivized to pursue opportunities elsewhere (“why should they sell their luggage at a low, in a market that has crashed?”)
- Retain and value existing connections.
- Front row:
- [Trade-off between immediate material rewards of making new connections and longer term intangible benefits of deepening existing connections].
- Tension between (the pace of) economic change and social displacement.
- Positive story:
- Economic change produces steadily rising standard of living.
- Perhaps disproportionately so for the “front row”.
- Globally good.
- Negative story:
- It can also disrupt communities, weaken social ties and leave groups of people behind.
- Perhaps disproportionately so for the “back row”.
- Locally bad.
- Positive story:
-
- Dangers of utilitarian (spreadsheet) thinking:
- Add up the good and bad stories, when outcome is a net positive: proceed.
- Unlikely to capture or properly quantify all of the good and bad outcomes.
- Difficult to think through the first, second, third waves of (social) impact of economic changes:
- For instance, the impact of a small town factory closing or brain drain (loss of jobs, loss of resources, loss of community stability, rise of drugs, dysfunction and suicides, etc.)
- Alternative way of thinking or decision making:
- What is morally right to do [but how do you determine that..?]
- A desire for a less materialistic outlook [pushing on a string…?]
- Limit to the amount of change humans are capable of dealing with over a given period of time.
- What matters is the pace of change (“the first derivative of change”).
- If the pace of change is too fast, can be socially disruptive:
- Loss of meaning, loss of connectedness, loss of dignity.
- [Loss of social cohesion, loss of long-term deep connections].
- The challenge is to determine the appropriate pace of change.
- For instance, is it possible or beneficial to have a less-free market system, dialing down the level of economic growth?
-
- The way it unraveled, is the way it will be put back together.
- Not through economic policies.
- Through the ongoing evolution of culture and norms.
- Changing social norms of what is acceptable and not acceptable change.
- [Fast enough? Forceful enough?]
- The way it unraveled, is the way it will be put back together.
- Dangers of utilitarian (spreadsheet) thinking:
- The value of religion.
- First, utilitarian: access (no barrier to entry), like-minded people.
- Then, essential tool: for people living at “the boundary conditions”.
- Acceptance that some things “can’t be figured out”.
Key Takeaways:
- Path to financial well-being is narrow, weaving through elite (educational) institutions.
- Growing number of people lack access to this “credential machine”
- Trade-off between immediate material rewards of making new connections and the longer term intangible benefits of deepening existing connections.
- Tension between (the pace of) economic change and social displacement.
- Difficult to think through the first, second, third waves of (social) impact of economic changes.
- If the pace of change is too fast, can be socially disruptive.
Worth Listening:
9/10