The "Last" Blog

The title of this post is somewhat misleading; I do not intend for this blog post to be my final one on this blog. However, as the academic year comes to an end and as I prepare to move on to a very different environment, it's a good time to look back and talk about some of the most important ideas in this blog.

Like most of us, I've spent some time (possibly too much) thinking about what others think of me or say about me. I often think about what my legacy will be, what people will say about me when I'm gone. Personally, I hope that when they talk or think about me, they will be able to say that I handled whatever life threw at me as well as possible under the circumstances and that I made the right choices when given the chances.

A lot of this blog has focused on the people and societies that have been unable to make the right choices when they were given a major change. Whether it was American society reacting poorly to the modern world, resulting in chemophobia, or the modern protectionists lobbying against free trade, these posts would discuss the logical failings of the people that were making the decisions. The result was irrationality, which was and is both dangerous and detrimental to the decision-makers.

The reason I chose to write my blog about irrationality and poor decisions is because I pride myself on my logic. Of course, like everyone else, I can be irrational or illogical, but when I really want to be logical and clinical, I am able to do so, and I can use that side of me to think clearly about a situation and come up with the most logical and, hopefully, the best option possible. I try not to fall into the fallacies that we've explored, including excessive conservatism or foolish hope.

I often am criticized for this clinical approach to decision-making. Many people often say that I need to try to inject more emotion or hope into those decisions. Granted, they may very well be correct. It's likely that I would be benefited in many respects by finding a way to think emotionally and logically at the same time. But that's exactly the point -- I can't and don't want to throw out the logic in my personality. My logic and my ability to think through situations logically is one of the things I am most proud of. The lack of logic some people display in certain situations bothers me more than most other things, and that's why I chose to write about that topic for this blog. Logic and rationality, especially in response to change, is a major part of who I am, and I sincerely hope that when I'm gone, people will say I met my standards for those traits.

Ecocriticism and Change: How Humans, Nature, and Change Interact

It's a rather obvious fact that humans are affected by the natural world. Changes with regards to the natural world, therefore, are of critical importance to people. These changes can range from earthquakes to new discoveries of fuels to the topic of tonight's post, climate change. All of these changes are met with varied reactions from people that reflect their view of humans' relationship with the natural world.

As I said before, tonight's post is about climate change. Over the past several decades, a considerable store of data has indicated that the Earth's climate is changing, with the trend indicating an increase in the average temperature of the Earth as well as significant increases in extreme weather patterns, including tropical storms/hurricanes and the recent polar vortex that the Chicago area went through earlier this year.

As with all the other topics we've examined this year, the climate change debate raises some interesting reactions. This is a situation in which something that affects everyone -- the Earth's climate -- is changing in many different ways, and humans have been given time to react to that change.

Some of those people have chosen to become environmentalists. These groups are the kinds that are, for example, opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline and advocating for lower carbon dioxide emissions so that the human impact on the climate is minimized, thereby protecting nature and the Earth. Not all of these people are very vocal, but there are vocal elements to this group, particularly in the form of organizations such as the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and other environmental groups. These groups tend to be the public face of the environmentalists.

By contrast, there are others that argue that humans do not need to worry about climate change very much, with some going so far as to deny that climate change even exists. This group includes those who say that the human impact is not yet fully clear or those that say that the human impact is negligible. These people are often associated with being right-wing, and they oppose the environmental groups on many grounds. A major such ground is economic, saying that the economy would be adversely affected by some of the changes proposed by the environmentalists.

Though I have an opinion on this matter, the point of this post is not to explore that opinion. Rather, it is to examine a rather curious phenomenon: the views of humans' relation with nature results in certain views of climate change. Those who feel that the humans have an obligation and ability to change the way the Earth operates and have more faith in the ability of humans to affect nature argue for greater control, regulation, and environmentalism. On the other hand, those that say that the ability of humans to affect nature is very limited say that climate change is not a major human issue. This is a very interesting and timely example of a difference in ecocritical lenses resulting in different reactions to a change.

Economics and Change Part Two

In the previous post, I alluded to the financial crisis of 2008, which turned a recession into an economic nightmare and plunged the United States and world economies into a deep recession, the deepest since the Great Depression. A little while back, I read a book on the topic that lends itself very nicely to the subject of this blog. That book was The Big Short, by Michael Lewis.

The Big Short discussed the build-up to the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing bubble, following the story of the people who saw the storm coming and acted to profit from it. In essence, they created the market for credit default swaps on collateralized debt obligations. Essentially, these collateralized debt obligations were debts owed with collateral behind them, which, in this case, were largely mortgage-backed securities. These CDOs would be divided into several levels, or tranches, which would bear varying levels of risk of loss in the event of some of the loans on the CDOs defaulting, and to compensate for the varying levels of default risk, varying interest rates, with riskier tranches being given higher interest rates.

The biggest problem with this was that, due to the easy-credit bubble of this time, many of the loans and mortgages that these CDOs were based on were subprime. They had been given to people who had no or low-paying jobs, few to no other sources of incomes, and no ability to repay. Many of these loans were destined to default. This would have been bad enough, except the rating agencies were essentially deluded into thinking that these loans given to people who could not repay them were safe and not very risky, especially when packaged together. To paraphrase the book, it was as if the rating agencies believed that if a big enough pile of garbage was collected together and wrapped up nicely, it would turn into a pile of gold.

And so, the banks refused to believe that the dynamic of the rating agencies had changed, even in the face of logic. Despite being the ones to put pressure on the rating agencies to give the CDOs higher ratings than they were actually worth, the financial system largely refused to understand the new and changing paradigm and essentially believed their own lies. They put their faith in these ratings, and so, they started betting on these CDOs as a way to make money. 

The story in the The Big Short was one, however, of some people being able to recognize the changing paradigm. They were able to see the bad loans for what they were and bet against them in time to make a killing by establishing a market for credit default swaps -- essentially a bet against the CDOs, where a premium was paid as insurance against a default of the CDO. Because the CDOs were presumed safe, the premiums were very low, meaning that very large quantities of "insurance" could be taken out for very little.

These few people, who saw the changing paradigm in time to act, reacted in the most rational and most beneficial way (at least, to themselves). In refusing to go along with the standard ratings-can-be-taken-to-the-bank (pun absolutely intended) concept and in seeing the change in the rating agencies that helped form such a shaky foundation to the financial system, these people were able to make a boatload of money. Those who chose to act irrationally, get sucked in by their own game, and believe that the rating agencies that they had worked so hard to delude were making good calls ended up getting destroyed in the market and helping cause the financial crisis once the first parts of the recession hit and started causing defaults. Once again, irrationality and resistance to change resulted in chaos.

Economics and Change

In hindsight, I'm surprised it took me so long to write a post devoted so significantly to economics, for two reasons. The first is simple: I love economics. It's one of my favorite subjects, and I find it absolutely fascinating. The second reason is that it relates so clearly to the topic of this blog. Economics is, at its core, a psychology game, riddled with people who are affected by changes and make decisions based on those changes that, when aggregated, have a significant effect on the flow of money, which, in turn, results in changes in the way people live. It's really a remarkable subject area, and tonight's blog will be about a time when the entire economy changed: September 2008.

In the months prior to the financial crisis of 2008, the United States economy was already in a slump. Following the bursting of the United States housing bubble, unemployment was up, the market was somewhat down, and the value of many securities fell dramatically. The economy was in a recession. However, this recession didn't reach crisis levels until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Suddenly, the fourth-largest bank in the country was wiped out by this crisis, the perceived risk in these complex securities came into even more question, and the faith in the financial markets dropped significantly almost overnight.

Most of us have probably heard that story, but what really fascinates me is the data. Several data series are able to show us the lingering effects of that crisis. One of the most significant, in my opinion, is the M1 Money Multiplier. This multiplier essentially measures the willingness and ability of the financial markets to loan out money.

On the graph, it's pretty clear where Lehman Brothers collapsed (where the sharp decrease in the multiplier is), but what's really interesting is the stuff that comes after it. Since the financial crisis, almost six years have passed. The economy has, to a significant degree, recovered. The stock market is reaching record highs, initial jobless claims have decreased, and the Fed is tapering off QE. And yet, the banks are still not loaning money at the levels they were willing to before.

That's a classic story of being burned by a massive change and reacting to it logically. It is absolutely logical for the financial institutions to be more conservative with their lending practices, and it may not be a bad thing. However, there is no doubt that this reaction to the change, while logical, also has a net negative effect on the economy. The financial markets are the oil for the economy to run on, and the decreased lending has greatly reduced the ability of the economy to grow out of this recession and slow recovery. The reaction to the massive changes brought about by the financial crisis may be logical, but they're also negative to the economy as a whole, and that is a problem that deserves much more attention.

A Changing Educational Model

Recently, my little sister came home from school confused about something they had learned in math. It wasn't the method itself that confused her -- she could apply the method they had learned just fine. No, what confused her was the reason why it worked, and when she asked the teacher, the teacher blew her off, saying that it wasn't important to understand why it worked because on the tests, they would only need to plug and chug.

Today, while our math teacher was out, he had us read and respond to an excerpt from Professor Jo Boaler's What's Math Got to Do with It? Particularly because of stories like my little sister's or reports on how terrible our educational system is, this touched a nerve with me, and I started thinking about how this is a reaction to a change in the world.

For the last several decades, technology has been increasing steadily. This has had many implications for humans, changing how we work, how we communicate, and so forth. Technology has taken a key place in our lives. Additionally, the countries of East and Southern Asia have started accelerating their growth, and there are fears that the United States is falling behind those countries. One place in which that fear is particularly strong is the realm of education. Our students have been falling behind, especially in math and science, which does not bode well for the future.

And there is ample reason for concern. Falling educational standards vis-a-vis the rest of the world is a serious problem and must be addressed as such. However, as of late, the country's response to this change has largely been to emphasize the STEM fields at the expense of the humanities, and to do so badly. Instead of trying to focus on learning to innovate and be creative, as Professor Boaler points out, the United States largely focuses on the memorization and plug-and-chug aspects of the subject. And that is why you get stories like that of my little sister or stories of students that can't apply themselves to do the most basic of things. Those students have learned to only do one thing, not think about the methods more critically.

This reaction is, on the surface, logical. China et al. are becoming far stronger, and they have educational systems that are lauded as great, so to respond to the change, it would be a good idea to shift to their version of education, right? Unfortunately, there are some problems with this. The Asian model tends to focus very heavily on memorization, and while that does work for their needs (people to work in their manufacturing and engineering sectors, which are key to their economies), it would not work as well for America, which tends to have a far greater stake in being the innovators and coming up with the products that need to be produced. And this is where the money is. As Fareed Zakaria says in The Post-American World, the cost to build the iPhone is minimal. Most of the profits go to Apple, the innovators, not the overseas builders.

That is the model that America should be focusing on, not a model that emphasizes memorization and STEM only. We should be emphasizing critical thinking and innovation, using all fields, not just a select few that we think will be important. Yes, the Asian model works for Asia. But to respond to the growing power of Asia by trying to emulate them exactly is, while well-intentioned, an irrational and wrong response to the change.

Shakespeare, The 21st Century, and Change

It's very easy to view Shakespeare as something completely removed from modern society. I know I certainly did until a few years ago, and I know many people who still feel that way. However, despite what the dated language and culture may seem to imply, the central issue of Shakespeare is something that is still very relevant today. In many Shakespearean plays, the characters are pushed into a very significant change, and the remainder of the play is spent watching how they react to this change. That not only makes the plays extremely relevant to this blog, but it also makes the plays relevant to today's ever-changing world, in which people are pushed and left to react to the change.

One of the best examples of this push from a change happens in Hamlet. After Hamlet finds out that Claudius killed King Hamlet to take the throne and marry Gertrude, his entire reality and purpose in life has changed, and for the rest of the play, we are able to see how he reacts to this play. His reaction is to become obsessed with this change, letting it consume him and become an ever-growing part of who he was. What was most interesting, however, was his ability to, in his obsession, twist his mission. Hamlet's mission, as given to him by the late King Hamlet, was to kill Claudius. That was it.

Instead, over the course of the play, Hamlet's mission changes, turning into a mission to kill Claudius in a way that would not send him to heaven, then a mission to show his mother how terrible she was, then a mission to kill Claudius, but in the bloodiest way possible. Along the way, this obsession twists his view of the world, making him more paranoid and delusional, causing him to do irrational things like killing someone behind a curtain with no evidence it was Claudius.

This sort of a reaction might seem fairly unrelated to the modern world, but that kind of a reaction to a change is depressingly common. Granted, it may not be as violent as Hamlet's reaction, but quite often, changes can cause obsessions and refusals to look at reality in a more objective light. In other words, dramatic changes cause ideologues, and that is something easily seen, especially in politics. For example, the Tea Party, the extreme right-wing branch of the Republican Party, saw a major change with the Obama administration, especially with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and so, they became obsessed with it, making it their mission to repeal it by any means necessary, then eventually twisting that mission to oppose anything that didn't exactly meet their demands, all while being delusional enough to think they could get widespread support that way.

This isn't the only relatable example of change and reaction in Shakespeare, nor do all the examples deal with negative reactions. For example, Kent and France both had rational, intelligent, and well thought-out reactions to the changes they faced in King Lear, and famously, Capulet and Montague had surprisingly sane reactions to Romeo and Juliet's deaths. The point is, Shakespeare, though it may seem antiquated, is all about stories of change and reaction that are ever-present in our modern society, and to that end, it remains highly relevant in the 21st century.

The Conservative's Approach to Change

Conservatism, according to Wikipedia, is "a political and social philosophy [that] promotes retaining traditional social institutions." Of course, within this, there are a million and one ways to be a conservative. One can be a libertarian, a fiscal conservative, a reactionary, and so forth. Personally, I would classify myself as a moderate, run-of-the-mill conservative. However, in all of these branches of conservatism, there is a common thread: an aversion to change. This aversion to change has significant implications for our political situation and discourse, and to that end, it is extremely important.

One of the biggest reasons for this aversion to change is a preference for security. Conservatives tend to see a world in which traditional institutions, while not perfect, have led to stability and growth, and thus are beneficial and should not be abandoned willy-nilly. Again, there are many brands of this claim. I, for one, prefer slow changes so we can easily evaluate if we like the course we are taking and take steps back if necessary. Others, like reactionaries, might be so in favor of traditional stability that they think we've gone too far and want to go back to the way things used to be. Regardless, the preference for the security of the traditional or current state is a constant.

This attitude is in stark contrast with the attitude taken by liberals, who tend to more believe that change is good and necessary. The reason for the conservative's hesitance with regards to change likely draws from a number of sources. First of all, there is a large self-interest component. The conservative likely things don't need to change very much because in the current situation, the conservative is better off than in another proposed situation. Secondly, there is a large cultural component to conservatism. There is a reason that most of the southern United States, for example, is largely red. It's not because everyone in the south is much more affluent than other parts of the country (indeed, data seems to suggest otherwise), but rather, because there is a strong cultural tradition in that part of the country that strongly favors conservatism.

So in many ways, the conservative's aversion to change is a rational response, brought about by self-interest and cultural factors. Of course, as I've stated before, I'm a moderate conservative, so I can't fully step back and be objective in this regard. However, in politics, the problem lies in that aversion to change. Everyone, while they may not want quick or significant change, has something that they want to change. Indeed, that's one of the first things we learn in economics: wants are unlimited, and people want to change their situations to get those things that they want. Therefore, it becomes easy to target people who want to avoid quick change; such people are quickly characterized as the people who want to make sure that people don't change their situations to get what they want.

And to a large degree, those attacks work. And yet, it is clearly a rational response to the changes in society to be a conservative, depending on one's personal beliefs and situation. Usually, most people who make that point are dismissed as "right-wing loonies" (a phrase I will admit to using regularly). As a society, we often are so focused on our desire for change that we demonize those who don't agree with us. In doing so, however, while we are making our own rational responses to the change, we discourage others from making their own rational responses, and that's unfortunate.