Let’s have a concert.
Los Angeles, give me Norfolk Virginia
Tidewater four ten O nine
Tell the folks back home this is the Promised Land callin’
And the poor boy’s on the line
Let’s have a concert.
Los Angeles, give me Norfolk Virginia
Tidewater four ten O nine
Tell the folks back home this is the Promised Land callin’
And the poor boy’s on the line
Next year, maybe I’ll wish a Happy New Year to the haters and losers, but this year this is still my country.
Dude, that would be so middle school of you…
Hey CG … have a great evening and best wishes for the New Year. Take care of the bum. 🙂
Thanks, Oui. I wish you and yours the best in the coming year, and I think we have a quiet evening with friends ahead. Followed of course by Finn’s 7th birthday celebration tomorrow!
Wow! A big guy … congratulatons. Best way to start a New Year indeed!
Middle school, this year.
Next year?
Presidential.
Been there. Done that.
’68, ’72, ’84, ’94
Just one foot after another.
There is a legend about the comedian W. C. Fields as he lay dying in his hospital bed, surrounded by family. It was winter in New York City, and from outside came the sound of a newsboy shouting, “Wuxtry! Wuxtry! Stock market prices fall!” Stirred out of his stupor, Fields signaled those assembled to his bedside and whispered, “Poor little urchins out there — undernourished, no doubt improperly clad — something’s got to be done about them, something’s got to be done.” He dozed off, but seconds later, opened his eyes again. “On second thought,” he said, “Screw ’em.”
You are probably not a misanthrope like W. C. Fields. But as we look out at 2017, from the radioactive rage of national politics to a constant stream of tragic world events, our problems seem large and intractable. It’s easy to reach the Fields conclusion.
To throw up our hands in the face of tragedy is a normal cognitive phenomenon that social psychologists call “psychic numbing.” Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon shows in his research that when events are large and remote, we become insensitive to them. For example, there was concern, but hardly an outpouring of support, for Syrian refugees after half a million people had died in the civil war.
Adam Smith wryly observed the principle of psychic numbing 250 years ago in his classic book “Theory of Moral Sentiments.” He asked readers to imagine how “a man of humanity in Europe” would react to news of a dreadful earthquake in China, killing millions. He may regret the calamity in theory, but so long as he never sees the victims, “he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren.”
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Opinion Room for Debate
Does Empathy Guide or Hinder Moral Action? DEC. 29, 2016
Arthur C. Brooks
Economics, social science and happiness.
Those Who Don’t Understand Trump Are Doomed to Repeat Him
OCT 7
How to Get Americans Moving Again
MAY 20
Bipartisanship Isn’t for Wimps, After All
APR 9
Narcissism Is Increasing. So You’re Not So Special.
FEB 13
To Be Happier, Start Thinking More About Your Death
JAN 9
See More »
There is a solution, however, to psychic numbing: Think small. In the fund-raising business, there’s an old axiom that “one is greater than one million.” This isn’t bad math; it is a reminder that when it comes to people in need, one million is a statistic, while one is a human story.
Every charity worth its salt knows that people are more likely to give in response to a child who has lost her parents than to the news of thousands of victims of a tragedy. The example above of Syria is a case in point. International philanthropic support increased only after a news photo spread around the world of a small boy dead on the beach, drowned as his family made the dangerous crossing from Turkey to Greece.
The 1 > 1 million axiom is more than a fund-raising secret. It is a formula for each of us in an existentialist funk to connect to our deepest values and apply them to a hurting world.
The first step is to see individual faces in our own beliefs. There is an old joke that a Marxist is someone who loves humanity in groups of one million or more. While I am no Marxist, I confess that my arguments sound like this at times as well. For example, as an economist I have for years waxed rhapsodic about globalization. Billions have been pulled out of starvation-level poverty because of free trade, my data say.
The trouble is that, from left to right, politics of late has turned against globalization and even converted the word “globalist” into an epithet. My data about the billions haven’t stood up very well to the winds of populism.
This has led me to focus on the actual people in my life who have been saved by a globalized world. I think of my friend Krishna Pujari, who was born into extreme poverty in a village in India and is today a middle-class entrepreneur giving tours to Westerners of micro enterprises in Mumbai. Deeper still, I think of my own daughter, Marina, whom my wife and I adopted 12 years ago from an orphanage in China and who today is like my own beating heart.
The second step is to move our ideals from politics and opinions to action. The way to do so is by finding a way to exercise my beliefs in the life of another person — today.
Pope Francis gave his followers a wonderful lesson in this principle in the recently concluded Jubilee Year of Mercy for the Roman Catholic Church. It sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card for sinners. In reality, it was an exhortation to all Catholics to forgive another person this very day.
The pope’s insight is not just useful for Catholics. Good people of all beliefs, on facing harsh global realities, can retreat to cynicism. It seems like naïve kumbaya to bless a world full of cruelty and exploitation, right? The pope invites me to remember that it is well within my capacity to look with mercy on one person — and thus in that one person, to see my own face. I crave forgiveness and love; I get it by forgiving and loving others.
As we head into 2017, do you want a solution better than “Screw ’em”? Maybe your problem is that you are thinking too big. This year, start with one, not one million. It might just be a happy new year after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/to-make-the-world-better-think-small.html
Save yourself.
Thanks for your inspiring words!
. . . yourself”, you mean?
Because neil doesn’t adhere to norms for quotation and attribution, it wasn’t clear from the outset that the rest wasn’t him (though long before reaching the end, I was pretty convinced it wasn’t; the link — the only indication that he might be quoting someone else — without even including the actual author’s name! — confirms it).
Wishing Der Leader T. for 2017, plenty of these coming out of the closet …
Wishing all bloggers at the Pond, good health and personal riches!
Music that supposedly makes you poop!
.
At this time of year it’s good to be reminded that there are heroes all around us. It’s even more important now, when we are staring into the abyss.
.
Something different:
Fifty years ago — a different world.
Happy New Year, BooMan and Cabin Girl.
May the coming year disappoint our worst pessimism and most abject cynicism and dispose of our national Trumpster fire in short order.
And may Democrats awaken to power and the people, especially the politicians of the species.
This concert is fantastic. It fits my mood tonight:
Pictures of the merchandise
Plastered on the wall
We can look so long as we don’t have to talk at all
You say you’ll never know him
He’s an unnatural man
He doesn’t want your pleasure
He wants as no one can
He wants to know the names of
All those he’s better than
Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
One little Hitler does the other one’s will