Monthly Archives: January 2019

About the Shutdown

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Mariner had a group meeting with his three alter egos. It seems the group has serious concerns about the shutdown. The US is very much in the roiling currents of change on many fronts including economy, governance, industry, civil rights, Constitutional rights, technology, society norms, religious rights, and international relations – indeed a plateful. The shutdown is larger than life, larger than myopic news that broadcasters describe, and very much a pivot point in US history.

Not wanting to eat the whole pie at once, mariner has a few observations that may be more important than the daily hodgepodge may imply.

Mariner recommends that readers take some time to study the situation in Egypt. The conflict is between a Trumpian dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the majority Islamic citizenry in Egypt. There are fewer players than in the US but the manner of governance under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is very much dictatorial and he has imprisoned, under the term ‘terrorists,’ all citizens who oppose his reign. Only 47 percent of Egyptians voted in 2018 (same as US in 2016); Abdel Fattah el-Sisi garnered over 90 percent of the vote (US did not mess with ballot boxes; it used the Electoral College). It should be noted that Abdel has imprisoned over 60,000 citizen ‘terrorists.’ Type Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in your search engine for further awareness.

There are many parallels between Egypt and the US (typically, abolishing free press, the right to due process, justice by law, and democratic governance). Granted, the US is more mannerly only because for 241 years it has been a Federal Republic with three established branches of government and relatively independent state governments. Egyptian governance has suffered the disruption of Middle Eastern politics, religious rebellion and recent civil war. Nevertheless, in terms of citizen abuse, manipulation of ‘justice’ in governance, and attempts to impose the authority of a tenth century king, Egypt is on the same path as the US. Given the civil constraints of US history, one can respell Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as Donald Trump.

True, mariner may have overstated some similarities but the mechanics of change – particularly under the influence of a leader who would be king – are quite similar. Comparable is the citizen rebellion in Egypt versus the rebellion against Donald, a castrated Senate, and a 35 percent minority of citizens (AKA the ‘base’). As for Senate neutering, Senator McConnell holds the knife. While Abdel imprisoned 60,000 citizens, Donald has put 800,000 government employees under house arrest and garnered their income; while Abdel attacks mosques, Donald attacks nonwhites, immigrants, green card children, and ignores critical support needed for US citizens in Puerto Rico after a destructive hurricane. There are several more comparisons on the personal level, all dealing with corrupt financial dealings, international cronyism and deliberate showboating. We can only hope that the new Congress, the State Attorneys General and Robert Mueller will slow the rotting of our democratic process.

The shutdown is an act of war. Like Abdel, independent power is used to disrupt normal governance. It is an act that Donald must not win. This is a terrible position for mariner to take, given the imprisonment of 800,000 fellow citizens, but the nation’s democratic process and its citizen rights to representation are at stake. Lest prejudice sway one’s commitment to Congressional resistance, Congress, sans McConnell, is willing to pass six budget bills that will fund all government functions except the TSA and related security/immigration functions. Donald knows that if the government reopens generally, his strong-arm position will be diminished. Think of a New York mob enforcing protection from threatened abuse on local businesses.

A few posts ago, mariner suggested that if Donald were not impeached or otherwise removed from office, the new Congress would get little done because Donald and McConnell can control unwanted legislation. Mariner and his fellow citizens don’t need Donald’s disruption during times of change on many fronts including economy, governance, industry, civil rights, Constitutional rights, technology, society norms, religious rights, and international relations.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Power Corrupts

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The last post, “The mice warned us,” dealt with the self-destructive nature of overcrowding. Calhoun’s mice experiments showed that unity broke down into have and have not classes, that violence erupted in self-destructive ways, and social mores disappeared. Eventually the physiology of procreation completely failed. Violence was common; illness and flagrant disregard for the wellbeing of other mice became universal. Across several experiments, the population fell to an average of 116 mice before beginning to grow again.

– – – –

Just to get the reference out of the way, it was John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton who, in 1887, said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

This post deals with an imbalance in power. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” (SPE) was a 1971 social psychology experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. It was conducted at Stanford University between August 14–20, 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students. In the study, volunteers were randomly assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison, with Zimbardo himself serving as the superintendent. Several “prisoners” left mid-experiment, and the whole experiment was abandoned after six days. Early reports on experimental results claimed that students quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and ultimately subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture, while many prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the officers’ request, actively harassed other prisoners who tried to stop it.” [Wikipedia][1]

This experiment has been challenged because of questionable methodologies and unwarranted suggestions to participants by Zimbardo. In fact, other similar experiments with more disciplined methodologies suggest that the breakdown of social roleplay was caused by the manner in which Zimbardo exercised dictatorial control over participants, whether guards or prisoners. It was Zimbardo himself who proved Lord Acton’s quote.

In a similar experiment in England, it was found that tyranny (cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control) can only arise when groups become dissatisfied with their circumstances. Organized social structure that is fair and reinforcing will not let tyranny take form. In other words, fragmentation of society (we call it identity politics) will permit extreme reactions to occur in an effort to rebalance group ethos. Mariner found the English study highly relevant to the history of democracy in the US and those troublesome times when privileged groups took advantage (as in Calhoun’s mice studies) or when there was dissatisfaction on a broad scale (one example is the Vietnam War along with inflation). The conservative voters Reagan met that year became the core of his support in the decades ahead. They embraced Reagan not just for his moving pro-America rhetoric, but also for his anti-tax, small government policies and his strong stance against communism and the Soviet Union. Today, the issue again is economic imbalance as old style capitalism begins to fail in an international economy.

Forty years later, the US President seeks to restore Reagan’s policies by tyrannical behavior and disregard for a fair and reinforcing society.

Ancient Mariner

[1] For the 2015 film, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanford_Prison_Experiment_(film)

The mice warned us

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The early pioneers in psychology, the standard list around the western world is Pavlov, Skinner, Jung, Maslow, Erickson, Rogers, Freud, and Piaget, focused on an individual’s response to reality. These folks helped us understand the physiology of the human brain and mind; they provided insight into the human response to love, fear, success, failure and a myriad other emotional behaviors. It wasn’t until the Second World War and after that psychology partnered with sociology and history to investigate group behavior. Similarly, management theory and economics incorporated psychology and sociology to uncover new approaches to management; one thinks of Deming, Drucker, Chandler and Aldrich among others.

An interesting observation is that the study of group behavior began about a decade before differences in individual behavior versus group behavior began to be documented in contemporary terms. Two world famous experiments were conducted that have become common knowledge. The first was one of a series of studies of mice by John B. Calhoun in 1972; the second was a college experiment performed at Stanford University in 1971 covered in the next post.

CALHOUN’S MICE

The mouse study was performed to answer the question, ‘what happens when overcrowding occurs?’ (The human brain is optimized for a social group of about 150-200 people). Calhoun was careful to eliminate the lack of resources as an influence and fed his mice with an endless supply of food, water and nutrition. Calhoun provided a mouse utopia with apartments and different levels called Universe 25; the initial number of mice was 8. The landings of the pilgrims and the first migration to the Middle East from the Rift Valley in Africa come to mind.

Brackets [] in the quoted material below are added by mariner.

“At the peak population [2,200 by day 560], most mice spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. [Nations live this way now on every continent except Australia and Antarctica] Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies. They’d move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. [Forced migration] Sometimes they’d drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it. [Closely approximates behavior in estranged communities and certain starving populations in Africa; mice had no chemical alternatives or voluntary abortions]

The few secluded spaces [owned territories] housed a population Calhoun called, “the beautiful ones.” [wealthy class] Generally guarded by one male, the females—and few males—inside the space didn’t breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young.” [Comparatively, humans in their teens and twenties today have significantly less sex than their elders at the same age] [Add to that the lessening need to socialize with other humans directly because of the smartphone, TV and other electronics]”

A notable side effect as the population approached its maximum was that mice that still had a bit of territory chased other male mice into specific corners at the opposite end of the cage. Mariner wonders whether suppressed groups in Africa and other nonproductive locations are simply ignored because there is no forced limit of territory at this time. Oh to live in Silicon Valley….

Now, in 2015, interpretations of Calhoun’s work have changed. Esther Inglis-Arkell (UCSF) explains that the habitats he created weren’t really overcrowded, but that aggressive mice enforced territorial prerogative to keep the beautiful ones isolated. She writes, “Instead of a population problem, one could argue that Universe 25 had a fair distribution problem.

“In 1972, with the baby boomers coming of age in an ever-more-crowded world and reports of riots in the cities, Universe 25 looked like a Malthusian nightmare. It [collapse of society] even acquired its own catchy name, “The Behavioral Sink.” If starvation didn’t kill everyone, people would destroy themselves. The best option was to flee to the country or the suburbs, where people had space and life was peaceful and natural.

“The fact remains that it [Universe 25] had a problem, and one that eventually led to its destruction. If this behavior is shared by both mice and humans, can we escape Universe 25’s fate?” [Inglis-Arkell]

Mariner leaves the door open for readers to have further speculation about group behavior in unbalanced societies.

Next post, the effect of power.

Ancient Mariner