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An Anecdote About Campus Microgressions and Intolerance

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On a brisk autumn evening, I was about to cross Campus Drive when I noticed an acquaintance waiting for the shuttle. He was a retired Eastern European diplomat and consequently had something of an old world feel about him. After we shook hands and started chatting about politics, another acquaintance happened by. She was a graduate student versed in women’s studies.

After I had introduced them, the diplomat whipped off his glove and extended a hand for her to shake. He had kept his glove on while shaking my hand, and the female graduate student noticed the difference.

If you have been reading Conor Friedersdorf’s or Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s writings about campus culture in The Atlantic, you can imagine what happened next.

The women recoiled from the gendered micro-aggression and lambasted the diplomat: “Do you think women are too frail to touch a gloved hand or is this some kind of creepy come on?!!”.

The diplomat’s face registered shock and he began stammering “I didn’t…I don’t understand..”

The student continued “Well you should understand and it’s not my job to educate you. I don’t have to put up with your patriarchal bullshit!”.

Red-faced and near tears, this gentle, cultured man apologized repeatedly to both of us and retreated down the sidewalk, so upset that he forgot his briefcase on the shuttle stop bench as he fled.

Continue Reading…

The Economic Value of Trust

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I was digging through some boxes and found an old calabash pipe and stand. It’s the sort of pipe that people think of Sherlock Holmes smoking even though in the books he didn’t (William Gillette added the calabash for a stage adaptation over a century ago and it stuck). pipe

Gourd pipes have gone out of style, being largely replaced by mahogany. That makes this calabash if not an antique at least a curio I could put in my office as a conversation piece. But the decades-old cork ring is eroded and the whole thing is smoke scarred and tobacco encrusted. What to do?

I talked to a local tobacconist who gave me the phone number of a pipe maven in Tennessee who might be able to help. I talked to said Tennessean on the telephone and he said he could probably restore the pipe, so I have mailed it to him.

What is striking about this relative to other business transactions is that this is all done on trust. I don’t know the pipe expert from Adam (not even his last name); he could keep my pipe and there would be nothing I could do about it. On his end, I didn’t send any money so he could do the work and not get paid. But I just had a feeling that I could trust him and I guess he felt the same as we didn’t even agree on the price — we will work that out later on the basis of reason and good faith, jointly applied.

No receipts, no travel to meet in person, no insurance, no contract — all of those costly things are not needed because we exist in an atmosphere of trust.

It reminded me that one of the early stamp collecting companies used to mail sets of valuable old stamps to collectors who were asked to take what they wanted, mail in a check to pay for it, and then mail the stamps directly to the next collector on a list. Anyone could have easily stolen stamps under this system, but apparently few people did because the company was highly profitable.

We spend so much money because of distrust, whether it’s locks on our doors, liability insurance, receipts in triplicate or certified mail. We accept that we can’t trust each other and endure much deadweight financial loss on that basis. We would reap enormous economic benefits if we were more trusting and trustworthy. We think of these things as virtues and they are, but they also have large economic consequences (Did you know that the Amish are so dutiful about paying back loans that banks give them extremely low interest rates?).

I could never prove it, but I think the decline in trust in the country reduces GDP as much as many other factors that are blamed for poor economic performance. Just one more reason why the coming years are not likely to be good ones for our country.

Despite Congress’ Best Efforts, Prisons Keep Shrinking

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Congress failed this year (again) to pass criminal-justice reform legislation, despite strong bipartisan interest in curbing mass incarceration. Nevertheless, a Bureau of Justice Statistics report released Thursday shows that the U.S. imprisonment rate dropped for the seventh straight year in 2015, reaching its lowest level since 1997. How is the country sustaining progress on de-incarceration, congressional paralysis notwithstanding?

For more see my latest Washington Post Wonkblog.

Christmas Viewing Suggestions

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For laughs, winces and surprising emotional weight try The Office Christmas Special. It was described by Johann as “a beautiful, bittersweet, and downright painful final send-off to the UK version of The Office. To enjoy the Christmas special it’ll be fine if you haven’t watched the first two seasons (even though you must have been living under a rock). But everything about this powerful ending to the show plays with the investment an audience has made with each of the characters—whether out of sympathy or pity.”

For nostalgia, warmth and wry observations it would be hard to do better than A Christmas Story, which I described as a film that “charms because it pokes fun at children’s capability for silliness yet also respects their capacity for earnestness (e.g., It *is* a breach of etiquette to go straight to a triple dog dare without an intervening triple dare). Though sweetly nostalgic about childhood in some ways, the film does not overly romanticize it: A Peter and the Wolf-esque subplot features a fearsome bully named Scut Farkas.”

And for a darker yet ultimately uplifting Christmas story, there’s always Dickens’ masterpiece about Ebeneezer Scrooge. Two markedly different but top notch adaptations are described here.

An Exercise in Gratitude

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Hardly anything I have written at RBC gets as much sustained, positive reaction year after year as this utterly unwonky Christmas post. I thus re-post it here, having just done my letters of thanks again this year.

One of these days, gonna sit down and write a long letter, to all the good friends I’ve known.—Neil Young

For people of a range of faiths and of no faith, this week is a time to reflect upon the good things that happened to them over the course of the year. A few years ago, I added a step to this reflection process that has benefited me and a number of other people as well. I share it here for what it might be worth to others.

Each year, I sit down and think about 5 or 10 people who have brought good things into my life. Sometimes it’s a specific action (A neighbor who took me to the hospital when I fell and broke my wrist) sometimes it’s something larger (enduring friendship, inspiration and kindness). I then write to those people and thank them, not with an evanescent, dashed off email or text but with a real, honest to God letter.

Consciously reflecting on the blessings we have received has been shown empirically to make us happier and less anxious. I feel those emotions as a write my annual letters of gratitude: I am happier even before I have mailed them. More importantly, they build character by producing humility. The natural tendency — perhaps particularly for Americans — is to take individual credit for all the good things we have. But the truth is that none of us make it through life alone, and all of us are dependent on the kindness of strangers and intimates to make our lives livable.

The other aspect of this exercise which is truly win-win is how happy it makes people I care about to receive the letters. Clearly, no one does kind things in the hope of a letter of thanks. Yet the experience of receiving one often brings joy nonetheless. At their best, the thank you letters help people appreciate things about themselves: Not all patient listeners realize the healing they facilitate, not every remarkable person realizes the inspiration they give to others, not every funny person knows how their wit lifts low spirits at critical times.

This isn’t a self-help website and I am not selling anything, so I guarantee nothing about how an annual exercise in expressing gratitude may affect you and those you care about. But if something about this practice resonates with you, I hope you will try it and see what happens.

Best wishes to all for a happy and fulfilling 2017.

Keith’s Weekend Film Recommendations Come to a Close

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Five years ago today, I for some reason decided to recommend a classic movie (Bullitt) to RBC readers. It was fun to do and I kept on doing it, week after week except for the occasional guest reviewer. I felt my energy flagging after 150 or so movie recommendations, but then the site was blessed with Johann Koehler’s arrival, who lightened the load with his own recommendations several times a month and thereby kept me going for a time.

I know it’s a popular feature and many people have written me over the years to thank me for recommending a film that they saw and enjoyed,which is always a good feeling. I have also learned some intriguing details about movies and actors from the film buffs who read the site, and I am grateful for that.

But a few months ago, I realized it was starting to feel like a job, even at the reduced level of work made possible by Johann’s contributions, so I have decided to end my recommendations here on this fifth anniversary.

Thanks for reading, and happy movie watching. And with that, over to Porky…

Mass Incarceration is Disappearing Among Young Adults

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prison

In another one of my “the kids are alright” posts at Washington Post, I focus on the extraordinary drop in imprisonment among the young. Even the large percentage decreases in the chart may not give a sense of how significant the change is: because incarceration rates are highest among young adults, it takes huge moves in the numbers to produce the big percentage drops seen in the chart.

If you believe that the criminal justice system simply is a New Jim Crow whose sole purpose is to lock up people of color consider this: As America is becoming more diverse with each generation, the rate of imprisonment is falling through the floor rather than increasing.

Other implications in my latest Wonkblog.