The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Politics

Democracy and how we govern

  • Muhammed cartoons

    Wikipedia has an up-to-date overview of the whole brouhaha over the Muhammed cartoons.

    What many seem to be missing is this: The problem is not Islaam, the problem is fundamentalism. There are fundamentalist moslems, yes, but also fundamentalist christians, jews, hindus, anti-homosexuals, conservatives, communists, etc…

    And while fundamentalism seems to be on the rise these days, I believe there is cause for optimism. Today fundamentalist movements and organizations everywhere are being crowded by an increasing modernism driven primarily by science and mass media. Lately the internet has been pressuring them even further.

    Fundamentalists everywhere currently lash out in panic at seeing their base erode, and we’ll see it again and again, though less and less. In that light it’s hardly surprising. I mean, we can’t really expect fundamentalists to go out quietly, can we? :o)

  • Dangerous ideas

    What is your dangerous idea?

    The brilliant minds of The Edge community have been pondering that question and have come up with no less than 117 essays.

    Here are a few of my favourites:
    Carolyn Porco: The greatest story ever told.

    At the heart of every scientific inquiry is a deep spiritual quest – to grasp, to know, to feel connected through an understanding of the secrets of the natural world, to have a sense of one’s part in the greater whole.
    …
    And we don’t have one god, we have many of them. We find gods in the nucleus of every atom, in the structure of space/time, in the counter-intuitive mechanisms of electromagneticsm. What richness! What consummate beauty!
    …
    These are reasons enough for jubilation … for riotous, unrestrained, exuberant merry-making.

    So what are we missing?

    Ceremony.
    …
    We have no loving ministers, guiding and teaching the flocks in the ways of the ‘gods’. We have no fervent missionaries, no loyal apostles. And we lack the all-inclusive ecumenical embrace, the extended invitation to the unwashed masses. Alienation does not warm the heart; communion does.

    But what if? What if we appropriated the craft, the artistry, the methods of formal religion to get the message across? Imagine ‘Einstein’s Witnesses’ going door to door or TV evangelists passionately espousing the beauty of evolution.

    Could it work? Could we create institutions that filled the roles of religion but which were based on science rather than faith? That is one hell of a dangerous idea. Not to mention weird and wonderful.

    Philip Zimbardo: The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism

    This view implies that any of us could as easily become heroes as perpetrators of evil depending on how we are impacted by situational forces. We then want to discover how to limit, constrain, and prevent those situational and systemic forces that propel some of us toward social pathology.

    It is equally important for our society to foster the heroic imagination in our citizens by conveying the message that anyone is a hero-in-waiting who will be counted upon to do the right thing when the time comes to make the heroic decision to act to help or to act to prevent harm.

    This is a wonderful shift in thinking: Rather than thinking of people as potential nazis or executioners (common thinking has it, that under the right circumstances all of us could become either), think of people as potential heroes and foster that potential.

    Simon Baron-Cohen: A political system based on empathy

    What would it be like if our political chambers were based on the principles of empathizing? It is dangerous because it would mean a revolution in how we choose our politicians, how our political chambers govern, and how our politicians think and behave. We have never given such an alternative political process a chance. Might it be better and safer than what we currently have? Since empathy is about keeping in mind the thoughts and feelings of other people (not just your own), and being sensitive to another person’s thoughts and feelings (not just riding rough-shod over them), it is clearly incompatible with notions of “doing battle with the opposition” and “defeating the opposition” in order to win and hold on to power.

    Yes! I think more and more these days on how to create a better way of politics. This is an important insight.

    Also check out last year’s question: “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?”

  • Stop clapping, this is serious

    A great interview with Tom Lehrer. Sample quote:

    It’s 50 years since Lehrer’s first recordings, and 38 years since his last album of new material, yet word that we’ve secured an interview has people around the office launching into such unlikely yet infectious ditties as The Vatican Rag, Smut and Lehrer’s ode to spring pursuits, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.

    It also has people asking with a surprised tone: “Is he still alive?” Yes, Lehrer is very much with us, despite being quiet for so long (he once told The New York Times he had encouraged rumours of his demise in the hope of cutting down junk mail).
    …
    “With audiences nowadays I see it with these late-night [TV show] people, Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on the audience applauds the jokes rather than laughs at them, which is very discouraging.

    “Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny you laugh. But you can easily clap just to say [deadpan]: ‘A ha, that’s funny, I think that’s funny.’ Sometimes they cut to the audience and you can see they are applauding madly. But they’re not laughing.”

    Tom Lehrer is one of the funniest people I’ve ever heard. Check him out. Here’s another interview with Lehrer.

  • What would make a happier society?

    Richard Layard is the author of the excellent book Happiness, in which he argues, that most countries today overfcous on economic issues, and that it would be better to focus on what makes people happy. And what makes us happy is not increased spending but rather simple things like famliy, friends, health and values. There’s a review of the book here.

    Here are some notes from a lecture Layard gave called “What would make a happier society?”. A teaser:

    Not long ago I was asked to speak at a seminar in the Treasury and to answer the following question, “What difference would it make if we really tried to make people happier?” To my mind that is exactly the right question, so let me share with you my rather inadequate answer. In particular I want to bring out where it differs from the normal answers given by economists, especially from bodies like the OECD.
    My main message will be that happiness depends on a lot more than your purchasing power. It depends on your tastes, which you acquire from your environment – and on the whole social context in which you live. So, when we evaluate policies which increase purchasing power, we absolutely must take those other effects into account.

    Good stuff! Is there a single western politician who subscribes to this philosophy and puts happiness above economic growth? Drop a comment if you know any…

  • Is politics broken?

    There’re municipal elections going on all over Denmark next week, and consequently there are election posters everywhere. I don’t think anybody imagines that those posters will actually sway a single voter, but everybody else uses them, so we’d better too…

    This kind of rote thinking and sticking to business as usual is just one reason I’m convinced, that politics is broken. The political process has currently divided people into politicians, who formulate policies, and voters, who get to choose between those policies. That’s not good.

    And here’s another idea: If you’re brainstorming on how to improve your town/municipality/region/country – does it make sense to generate ideas together with people who disagree with you? You bet it does. It’s well known in business, that to stimulate innovation and creativity you need diversely populated groups, not just people who already agree with each other. And yet political parties formulate policies in isolation, unimpacted by the views of opponents.

    Here’s an article that repeats some of these views for American politics:

    So is our politics broken? Without a doubt. Does technology have a role in fixing it? Yes, in part technology, for example broadcast media, helped break it. I think we can look to the Net and open source as a way to help revitalize our democratic processes.

    Technology is one way, but only as a tool to create a more participative political process that gives everybody who’s interested a way to impact the political decision making directly.

    I’m currently thinking on how this can be done – if you have any ideas, let me know :o)

  • Beating the banks

    Zopa is a new approach to lending and borrowing money:

    Here’s the way the world works (and it must be right because it’s been like this for hundreds of years…)

    People who have spare money give it to a bank. Banks then do whatever they like with it. Some of it they lend to people who need to borrow. Some of it they give to their shareholders. Some of it they gamble on the price of tin, or the dollar going down, or whether there’ll be floods in Asia. Banks make lots of money from all this, a fraction of which they give back to their customers.

    Zopa though lets people who have spare money to lend it directly to people, like them, who want to borrow it. No bank in the middle, no huge overheads, no unethical investments.

    To minimise any risk, the money each lender puts in is spread amongst at least 50 borrowers (and likewise each borrower gets their money from a number of different lenders).

    I saw this mentioned on Businesspundit, and I have to agree with him that this is a seriously disruptive technology. The site just exudes happiness, energy, drive, disruption and fun. Check it out.

    UPDATE: I tried to register at the site, and the process failed. I got this very nice email from the site:

    Thanks for your email and your interest in Zopa. I’m sorry but in order to comply with UK Money Laundering Regulations all Zopa Members need to be UK residents and appear on the voters roll.

    We know this sounds incredibly inflexible, but at this stage in Zopa’s young life we have to be belt and braces with identification, money laundering and fraud.

    Clearly this is a big turn off for you so please accept our apologies. Once we’re better established we’ll be looking to increase the number of ways that we can admit Zopa joiners online.

    As Zopa grows we are planning to move into other countries by the end of the year and we hope very much that you’ll consider trying to join us again then.

    I’ll be back when they take it outside the UK.

  • The economics of crack-related violence

    Violence related to the sale of crack cocaine in the US is way down. Steven Levitt, the author of the excellent book Freakonomics, looks at why, in an article in the NY times:

    …as of 2000 — the most recent year for which the index data are available — Americans were still smoking about 70 percent as much crack as they smoked when consumption was at its peak.

    If so much crack is still being sold and bought, why aren’t we hearing about it? Because crack-associated violence has largely disappeared. And it was the violence that made crack most relevant to the middle class. What made the violence go away? Simple economics. Urban street gangs were the main distributors of crack cocaine. In the beginning, demand for their product was phenomenal, and so were the potential profits. Most crack killings, it turns out, were not a result of some crackhead sticking up a grandmother for drug money but rather one crack dealer shooting another — and perhaps a few bystanders — in order to gain turf.

    But the market changed fast. The destructive effects of the drug became apparent; young people saw the damage that crack inflicted on older users and began to stay away from it. (One recent survey showed that crack use is now three times as common among people in their late 30’s as it is among those in their late teens and early 20’s.) As demand fell, price wars broke out, driving down profits. And as the amount of money at stake grew smaller and smaller, the violence also dissipated. Young gang members are still selling crack on street corners, but when a corner becomes less valuable, there is less incentive to kill, or be killed, for it.

    So one of the most pressing problems for big cities in the US went away more or less on its own. Not through increased police presence, tougher laws or anti-drug programs. But through economics. This tells me, that we could use a similar approach to solve similar problems. Rather than fight it (by declaring war on poverty, terrorism, hunger or poverty) but by changing the economics involved. Interesting thought, huh?

  • Real debate

    When I saw that Rick Santorum (one of the more conservative conservatives) was going to be the guest on The Daily Show plugging his new book my first reaction was a heartfelt Whaaaaaa..?

    What did play out was a rarity on TV: A real debate between two people who obviously disagree, but who are interested in understanding each others views – and can even laugh about their disagreements. For once we saw a debate that wasn’t about beating the other person into admitting that he’s wrong (like that ever happens) but about true civilised discourse. Santorums views became clear for everyone to see, and we’re each free to decide if we agree. I disagree totally with Santorum, but that doesn’t mean that I want to see the guy attacked on TV.

    See the interview here.

  • Real security

    As usual, Bruce Schneier is a voice of sanity and reason in matters of security. Read his take on random bag searches on the NY subway and racial profiling in security checks. He basically believes that neither will increase security noticeably. This quote had me nodding agreement:

    If we are going to increase security against terrorism, the young Arab males living in our country are precisely the people we want on our side. Discriminating against them in the name of security is not going to make them more likely to help.

    I’ve been thinking, that security is not about making terrorist attacks impossible – it’s about creating a world where people are less likely to want to commit them. Imagine a society where security is so tight that it is impossible to detonate a bomb on public transportation, no matter how clever or determined you are. How good would security have to be? How Orwellian? How much freedom could be allowed in this society?

    There’s a trade-off between security and freedom and Bruce Schneier’s is the clearest and most reasonable voice pointing this out.

  • Jon Stewart for president

    During my recent vacation in the US it struck me how cool it would be, if Jon Stewart (host of The Today Show) ran for president. Of course I’m not the first one to think of it, so here’s an article explaining why that would be a great thing.

    And here’s a petiton you can sign.