G as in Good H as in Happy

Stories as Cultural Capital

April 29, 2005

Who else but Grant McCracken at the Intersection could have put it this well? -- free of multisyllabic po-mo chin-stroking Narrative non-narrative.

...the Chudnovsky story tells well. All of us like to hear stories. It gives pleasure to hear stories. This is almost certainly hardwired and I will say no more. We like even more to tell stories. Telling good stories gives pleasure plus some kind of personal capital. As social actors, we are now more appealing, more credible, perhaps more charismatic. And this is a capital we can spend on a variety of things, some tangible, some not, all of them more or less influential in the disposition of our “life chances.” 

Most of all, the Chudnovsky story has “definitional” force. One of the pleasures that listeners take from this story is a confirmation that reads something like: “yes, this is the kind of city I live in. Yes, this is the kind of person I must be (if I live in the kind of city this city is).” Floridians might tell this story with a certain, “get a load of this for just plain nuttiness” and in this case the definitional force runs in the other direction. (“We’re not like this, thank God!”)

But for New Yorkers this story carries a deep confirmation of what the city and its occupants must therefore be.

The Anthropologist is Off and Running, with Surowiecki-and-beyond quality musings on social networks, museums, compelling story components, and more. Go there now. Here's the fourth bit, the promised synthesis soon to follow.

Chains, players, diversity, repurposed institutions, tipping points; new loci and foci of money, power, and engagement. Understanding networks -- and that means asking questions, performing thought experiments, not pontificating -- is the topic for the emergent ways of world. Or at least a big one that interests us.

Update: Analysis continues, we're expecting at least one more. So far it's got a bit of (appropriately enough) the famous New Yorker cartoon -- mathematician, blackboard, complex formula including the element: [miracle happens here]. We're hoping for better...

Best Description...

...of the "long tail" or niche market phenomenon fostered by the Web and other 21st century communications.

If you've got someone selling goth black-on-black cross-stitch projects and you can target the twelve goth-grrls who do cross-stitch you'll have something.

From discussion of Roger Simon's proposal to aggregate bloggers as pyjamasmedium.com.

"Meany"

April 28, 2005

We were reflecting with Relapsed Catholic and her readers' ideas on "being mean."  One of the folks who occasionally visits The Chez, "Barbara from Elsewhere," wrote

I'm reminded of the bumper sticker "Mean People Suck." The driver of said car almost always looks sub-intelligent, with a permanent not-nice resentful look on her face. 

I have a whole psychoanalytic theory of men requiring us to be "nice." The angry mother is the most frightening thing an infant can encounter... That's also why strangers will walk up to a woman and tell her to "smile."

She also liked Joseph Epstein's piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required, long excerpt follows):

If I could begin my life again I should like to arrange things so that the word got out that I am a fairly decent fellow, not entirely charmless, but with a mean streak that, wrongly provoked, has been known to run to violence. "I know a guy," I shouldn't at all mind having it reported of me, "who once saw Joseph Epstein so angry he strangled a bulldog."

...Somehow I am less interested knowing how hard Mr. Bolton was on people who he felt had failed to do their jobs than he has been on secretaries, waiters, and others who cannot fight back, which seems to me a truer test of a person's decency.

When [mythically "mean"] MacLean retired he wrote an essay for the alumni magazine in which  he said he took his own tough-guy model from a teacher of his own at the university, a man who, on the first day of class, assigned a 3,000-word essay for the second day  class, remarking as he did so that "This is just to show you that grandma has teeth."

Among recent presidents, Jimmy Carter is supposed to have ticked to the max fairly easily.  Lyndon Johnson's fury turned loose must have required measurement on a Richter scale. Bill Clinton, old Mr. Geniality himself, is said to have turned impressively ugly when angry, which he was fairly often.

It's interesting that sometimes regular everyday Grandmas are not expected even to possess incisors, whereas wolves may be lionized piecemakers.

Update:

...something in the way he said it made us believe that if we did not respond to this entreaty, he, too, might feel the Kennedy wrath.

Peggy Noonan has a little list, too, and believes many of us do.

"...all the way back. Jefferson was a man of public dignity and the meanest private plotting. Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. (I here invite all readers who work in government to give, in one paragraph, their memory of Most Obnoxious Hissy Fit by or Most Appalling Style of any unnamed government official with whom they have worked, and what they learned from it.)

Via Betsy's Page.

Bring On Da Optimum Sensory Stimulation

April 27, 2005

John Maeda's Sixth* Law of Simplicity:

#6 -- In order to "feel," you gotta have noise.
Too much noise, and all you've got is noise.

This law strikes us with less inevitability, or perhaps we mean more circularity. It seems to come from the same vat as #3, and expresses the general principle present in various approaches to learning enhancement that moderately stimulate the senses with color and movement to assist engagement and foster learning.

The question is always, what noise is good noise, and what amount falls short of overwhelming? What is the Goldilocks' Just-Right range?

Like garnish on a plate. Chez Dilys' cook, an aspiring 90-second gourmet, has been testing cooking-contest recipes, and struggles with whether jumbo shrimp tastes better with haricots verts, mango, or jicama. She's almost narrowed the choice to the hari weensy string beans. Garnish can make or mangle tempting food presentation.

Likewise background sounds, parallel activity, and multi-tasking can encourage or cancel effort. Not to mention individual difference by situation and temperament. We remember an aggressive T-shirt slogan: "If it's too loud, you're too old."

We saw it years ago. The wearer is no longer very young.

Heh.

*##1-5

And, darn, we missed Maeda's Austin lecture.

The Verb to Parent

April 26, 2005

Another absorbing City Journal issue.  Kay S. Hymowitz writes on the worldview of effective parents, and though the title references "Black Kids," she proposes that the data indicate

“the neighborhood is not responsible for the difference. Neither is race. Neither is income.” No, only the parents.

For one thing, as we here have always believed, parents best outnumber 'em -- we like the word conspiracy -- or at least be a team of two rather than a harried, single, one. And, yes, the schools have responsibility, well or badly carried out.  But the context is shaped by the parents.

The fact that he has two married parents is an immense advantage for Alexander: together, mother and father form a kind of conspiracy to develop him, a labor-intensive and emotionally demanding project difficult enough for two parents.

This entire consideration reminds us of the French documentary released in English as To Be and To Have. Anyone who wonders how to guide children would profit from and enjoy seeing a truly wholehearted teacher.  But behind the scenes, it turns out, there are the dairy-farming parents of the rather feckless little boy, sitting with him while he finishes his mathematics homework. Flies buzz, the parents seem baffled by the material, but they are insistent, steady, focused, there. The picture is worth all the words in a School of Education.

The promise and provocation of the Hymowitz article is that what goes on in the parent's mind and heart, translated into motivated & intelligent action, constitutes the pertinent difference.  And no, love is not enough. But money is not the deciding factor, either. The truth circles somewhere in the vicinity of self-discipline, curiosity, openness, hope, and a deep generosity.

Being a ...mother or father [who launches the child into the world with a greater chance of success] does not mean simply performing a checklist of proper behaviors. It does not mean merely following procedures. It means believing on some intuitive level in the Mission and its larger framework of personal growth and fulfillment. In the case of poor parents, that means having an imagination of a better life, if not for you, then for your kids.

The challenge is in the deep structures of the parent's perception, values, and motivation. The differentiating factors outlined in the article aim

at far more than promoting children’s self-reliance or ensuring that they make the soccer team or get into an impressive college. The [successful parenting] Mission's deepest ideal is the pursuit of happiness.

Addressing these issues at the level of a true understanding of the pursuit of happiness is a particularly American, as in truths we hold self evident, thing to do. We here, coach tools at the ready, truly long to help.

And by now you know what we think. Virtue, even if it is not the transcendent destination, is an intrinsic part of that pursuit, the path and the wheels.

Via the City Journal writer managing editor Brian C. Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives, referenced on Relapsed Catholic.

Update:  See Amy Welborn for an example of parents alert for teachable moments.

Media Comments from Sisyphus

April 25, 2005

Tim, at Sisyphean Musings, is on a news-rhetoric roll, with a series of comments based on DIKW information theory -- the Data / Information / Knowledge / Wisdom hierarchy.  It's always useful to know where we think we're perched, and the links here are mighty edumacational. The Rhetorica Rhetoric is also a cool resource, to which his links led.

Update: You know, just when we think all our former readers are in Machu Piccu, or somewhere, we post something that's too much off-the-cuff shorthand, and comments, phone calls, e-mails pull us up short.  Thanks guys. The point of the above paragraph is to highlight a 5-part series on the rhetoric of trust in media.  The hierarchy of data, which leads to information, which leads to knowledge, which, occasionally, leads to wisdom, was just the push-off topic.  Sorry for the confusion, and big thanks to Chrystal and DG.

In another vein, as if our own clumsy rhetoric leaves us any room to speak, sometimes at PressThink the discussion of "bias" goes right off the rails. Tim's several posts on bias based on underlying mental-model structure, through excellent links to Rhetorica (which also opens up the looming class issue), can help ground the discussion for anyone who wants to "get it." Just how intellectually curious is it to dismiss "MSM bias" perceptions as some kind of clanging symbol?

Hands over ears:  "la-la-la-I-can't-heeeeeeaaaarrrr-you!"

Update: See the comments. We do appreciate Jay Rosen, his engagement and interest. He elucidates the ways in which I got it wrong, especially in the realm of whether there is any more to say or any new places to apply a discussion of "liberal bias." He may have Heard It All and Then Some. He could be right. Either way, we appreciate him, all he has accomplished in PressThink and his astonishing energy. (Do we need a typographic symbol for non-sarcasm here. Somehow the smiley face doesn't strike the right note.)

Update cont'd: Nonetheless, the perception of liberal bias is embedded in the public discourse (see interviews with the author of South Park Conservatives), and unless the source of such a comment is to be dismissed out of hand (a biased thing to do, n'est ce pas?), the perception is a fact, its correlative up for discussion.

We here think the subject is neither dead nor futile, although we offer our friends full license to be tired of discussing it. We get mightily tired of a lot of stuff, too, and refuse to become enmired. De gustibus. Everyone has a right to triage his energies, which upon writing it begins to sound like a mantra for a typing exercise. Somewhat hysterically trailing off here.

Never mind, too complex....

Update:  Maybe there is a little something to the controversy and the crisis of confidence in the MSM, a little currency, after all.

Via Roger L. Simon

Update: Twice.

Bizarro April 25, 2005

Dilys thinks he has it backwards.

The Navajo...

...speak as a sovereign nation. 

And Kathy Shaidle uses language Dilys wouldn't. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Snippy Doesn't Begin to Describe It

April 24, 2005

Interesting lament from a  North Adams (MA)  Transcript intern who ended up in a scuffle about a summer job. Or no summer job.

A bit wide of our usual beat, but irresistible as an example that highlights familiar matters associated with practical happiness. If we were writing the ideal diary entry after this episode, we might inscribe the [tear-stained] following:

1. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. If you do, don't brag prematurely.
2. Don't burn your bridges. Even "failures" can initiate a relationship, especially in a professional field.
3. It takes two to tango/it's not all about "me."
4. The agenda may not be subject to my dictatorship, and I may need to discipline myself not to demand communication that meets my standards, satisfies my emotions, and 100% sings my tune.
5. Note to self: Analyze my position in the power equation before throwing a public fit of unbridled narcissism. Such displays may not, for the foreseeable future, serve the person sitting at the [job-seeking] downside. Bosses, regrettably, may be another matter.
6. Note to the world: Intergenerational style difference in the workplace is HUGE. Brace [y]ourselves.

Via PressThink's New Best Blogfriend ("truthtelling at its best"), First Draft, who generically pointed to Romanesko.

Update:  Letters to Romanesko ask, "What were her editors thinking?!," interspersed with "Awwwww, we were all young once..."

The Decline of the West, in Interesting Prose

April 23, 2005

David Mills of Touchstone ferrets out the storehouse of the Asia Times's Spengler-the-New columns.

We may expect that Benedict XVI "has a mustard seed and he's not afraid to use it."  It's not your [earthly] father's Church History any more.

Mills also points as well to an always-entertaining Mark Steyn, this time, on the radio.

[The press] seem genuinely bewildered that the Cardinals of the Catholic Church think differently on these issues, from Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times.