Author Archives: legallysociable

What to do with those extra years of life

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Virginia Postrel addresses how American society can move beyond seeing age 65 or retirement as the end of a career or life (“Floridization”):

It’s to change the pictures in our heads, to give up the images that “Floridization” evokes, as either a warning or an implicit ideal. People do not automatically become crotchety, backward-looking, and idle when they reach their 60s.

But changing that picture means exchanging today’s architectural metaphor, “building a career,” for another one: adaptive reuse. This is the human-capital equivalent of turning industrial lofts into apartments, factories into medical schools, power plants into art museums, or saw mills into shopping centers. Your original career may be economically obsolete, or you may just want a change, but your knowledge and experience still have their charms. Instead of equating success with a steady progression of better-paying jobs, each related to the previous one, this model emphasizes taking on new challenges and making new contributions, even if that means going back to school, taking a pay cut, or starting as a trainee when you’re middle-aged.

One version of this idea is the “encore career” advocated by Marc Freedman, who has made one of the most prominent attempts to think what how longer, healthier lives should mean for Americans’ careers.

This is an important topic to be discussing with longer life spans, limited funds for government retirement programs, and economic times that may require citizens to work to an older age. Those with more years have plenty to contribute to society and to simply write them off as past their time is foolish: it is not good for these individuals, their families and communities, and society.

Implicit in this discussion is an American emphasis on youth. Postrel cites one journalist who seems to suggest that youth equals progress and that being older automatically leads to loneliness. This may only appear to be the case because our society doesn’t leave much productive space for those who have retired. As I recently discussed, being older can lead to increased happiness and wisdom, two traits out society could use.

h/t Instapundit

The Glenn Beck rally and civil religion

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In a Washington Post blog, Amarnath Amarasingam offers some thoughts about how Glenn Beck’s rally is connected to the concept of civil religion, developed first by Robert Bellah and debated by sociologists of religion since. While invoking religious terminology and genres in common in political rhetoric, Amarasingam suggests it can be used for good or ill:

Robert Bellah noted long ago that American civil religion was capable of holding the United States to a higher moral standard. He also warned that it has often been used “as a cloak for petty interests and ugly passions.” In other words, civil religion could be a powerful tool to rally the masses and forge a new path, or it could drive the country into a narcissistic and idolatrous worship of itself. The choice must be made by America’s newly self-appointed high priest.

Of course, Beck’s words were much more specific than many cases of civil religion where leaders make bland and non-specific references.

Glenn Beck illustrates how Evangelicals are successful in American politics

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Sociologist Michael Lindsay examines Glenn Beck’s speech from this past weekend and argues Beck illustrates what Evangelicals do so well:

With those seven words, Glenn Beck accomplished two complementary but seemingly opposite objectives, much like [Rick] Warren does at the outset of his [The Purpose Driven Life] book. He diminished the crowd’s sense that they can do anything ultimately important while simultaneously endowing their attempts with a sense of sacred purpose. It’s as if Beck said to the throngs, “Put away your placards, and give up on your political machinations. We’re not in control.” But using the exact same words, he was exhorting, “We have a bigger obligation to play whatever role we are given in this larger divine drama.”

This relativizing/sacralizing of actions is precisely why evangelicals are so successful in American politics.

What Beck’s call to action will lead to remains to be seen. But, as Lindsay suggests, his uniting of faith and political action may very well influence the Republican Party in the near future.

Older Americans join social networking sites

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Social network sites, like Facebook, started as domains for younger people. But Pew Research suggests more and more older Americans are joining this online realm:

Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one-in-four (26%) users ages 65 and older now use social networking sites.

Half of online adults ages 50-64 and one-in-four wired seniors now count themselves among the Facebooking and LinkedIn masses. That’s up from just 25% of online adults ages 50-64 and 13% of those ages 65 and older who reported social networking use one year ago in a survey conducted in April 2009.

While Twitter is not as popular among older Americans, this rush to Facebook and other sites is interesting. If more older Americans are on these sites, does it change the online culture? How many of these older Americans join such sites to interact with younger people, particularly children and grandchildren?

Chicago police and meeting with gangs

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When the story came out last week that Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis had met with gang leaders to deliver a warning that the police would crack down if the violence continued, I wondered if there would be some backlash. Many people looking at this story might be incredulous: why didn’t the police just arrest the gang members? If they know who the people are who are responsible for the violence, why not crack down already? Why are the Chicago police negotiating with gangs?

Mayor Daley defended Weis today:

The mayor, who faces re-election in February, has been trying to address criticism about continued violence on city streets. One approach has been to send Weis out for more public appearances to talk about crime…

Today, Daley likened the idea to the negotiations between war combatants.

“It’s a good concept. You’ll sit down with anyone,” Daley said. “We’ll negotiate after the Second World War. We’ll negotiate with anyone to have peace. Even during the war. So you sit down with anyone. If you can save one life, if I can save your son’s life, you’d want me to sit down with them,” the mayor said.

While this may not convince people (just read the comments after the story), the story behind such negotiations is much more complicated. Sudhir Venkatesh’s research about poor Chicago neighborhoods reveals that the police and the gangs actually have a relationship. Gang members may be partaking in criminal activities but they are also active, powerful, and important actors in their community. It is not as simple as just going in and arresting everyone.

The TV show The Wire illustrates this gray area. In the series, the police are generally after the leaders of the gangs, the guys in charge. They could crack down on the small-time dealers or runners but others just pop into place. While the crack-downs may look good for the media (and outsiders looking in), it doesn’t solve the larger problems.

Both Venkatesh’s research and The Wire suggest the problems of these neighborhoods are deeper than the gang activity. There are persistent problems of poverty, a lack of jobs, a lack of opportunities, poor schools, broken infrastructure, and isolation from the outside world. How to solve these issues and the problems of gangs is difficult – and would require a much broader perspective than just counting the number of crimes, arrests, and meetings between the police and gangs.

The return of electric streetcars to American cities

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USA Today reports that electric streetcars may be on the comeback in American cities. Because of a successful line introduced in Portland in the early 2000s, other cities, such as Dallas, Cincinnati, and Charlotte, are looking to build new streetcar lines with the help of federal dollars.

The irony of these new streetcar lines is that many American cities had effective electric streetcar systems in the past. The article provides a little of the history:

Horse-drawn streetcars appeared on urban streets in the early 1800s and were replaced by electric versions in the 1880s and 1890s, says Jerry Kelly of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. In the 1930s, when the Great Depression put many people out of work, ridership fell. After a brief revival during World War II, affordable automobiles and cheap gas prompted many cities to pave over streetcar tracks, he says.

According to Kenneth Jackson in Crabgrass Frontier, the streetcars declined rapidly for several reasons:

1. The rise of the automobile, particularly in the 1920s. Millions of Americans bought cars.

2. Many streetcar lines were locked into cheap fares. Because many of the lines had been granted government licenses to operate, the fares were locked in for long periods. By the 1920s, many lines could only charge five cent fares when the costs of operating had risen. This led to less profit for the streetcar operators.

3. Public opposition to public subsidies for electric streetcar lines. While roads were viewed as a public good and deserving of government money, electric streetcars were viewed as private enterprises.

4. General Motors bought up a number of bankrupt or near bankrupt lines in the 1930s-1940s and replaced the streetcars with buses. While some see this as a conspiracy against mass transit, Jackson suggests streetcar lines were already in serious trouble and GM hastened their demise.

Overall, Jackson suggests the declining ridership plus the low fares and lack of government money meant that streetcar lines could not keep up: less riders meant less profit which meant fewer modernization efforts which lowered ridership further and so on.

Drinking and driving in Montana

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While many states have cracked down on drinking and driving, Montana has maintained a more accepting stance towards this activity. However, this era may soon be coming to a close:

Until 2005, when the state came under heavy duress from the federal government, it was legal to drink and drive in many places. And a few years before that there wasn’t even a speed limit on major highways and in rural areas.

But spurred by the high-profile death of a highway patrolman at the hands of an intoxicated driver, Montana’s Old West drinking and driving culture is retreating. Judges are rejecting lenient plea deals and law enforcement leaders are exploring different ways of keeping track of repeat offenders.

Even the Legislature, which just a few years ago struggled mightily to ban open containers of booze in cars, is beginning to promise tough new laws. This comes after years of virtually ignoring the state’s ranking at or near the top of per capita drunken driving deaths.

I didn’t even know this was possible in a country where drinking and driving has been a recognized social problem for several decades. Does Montana not have MADD or SADD groups or are such groups just ignored?

It would be interesting to track, as the article begins to do, how a state makes a transition from a culture open to drinking and driving to a place where this becomes defined as problem behavior. This would require a good amount of culture work among legislators and the average citizen.

The value of lawn mowing

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English professor Jerry DeNuccio discusses the value of mowing the lawn. In addition to being an important marker of a middle class lifestyle, he suggests it has additional value:

Cutting grass is transformative. Having finished, one can see, immediately, that the lawn is manifestly different than it was, manifestly better, improved, prettier. Mowing is applied art; in doing it, one edits the lawn, grooming the ragged, shearing the shaggy, making the unruly ruly. I value this transformation because it stands in such stark contrast to what I do for a living…

For me, cutting grass involves a kind of invisible growth. Ironically, the very routine of grass cutting, its essential mindlessness, clears mental space to fill with intentional, task-unrelated thoughts. I call it “the mull.” I experience regrets; weigh alternatives and make choices; plan upcoming events; sing songs I find meaningful, which almost always means songs from the 1960s…

But I find there’s another, less volitional mental activity that occurs while cutting grass, one that seemingly lowers a hook to snag things lurking beneath the surface of consciousness. Experts would call it “the incubation effect.” Most would call it “zoning out.” I call it “the dream-drift.” The mind wanders. Stray images and unkempt thoughts slipstream in from some far away cognitive Pacific…

This thinking aspect is intriguing. On one hand, DeNuccio suggests mowing the lawn is an accomplishment, giving the mower the ability to quickly see that one has “improved” the lawn. Man or woman has quickly tamed unruly nature with the force of a human-pushed machine.

On the other hand, the process of mowing the lawn grants one important time to let the mind wander. This sort of time seems to be in short supply in our modern world, particularly for younger generations where time tends to be filled with some kind of digital input. This time can be found in other places, such as driving on long car trips, but lawn mowing could provide a regular, uninterrupted place to mull.

How language affects our perceptions of the world

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The New York Times considers new research regarding Benjamin Whorf’s 1940 idea that language affects how we see reality. Whorf suggested language limited the abstract thinking abilities of its speakers. More recent research suggests this is not the case but language still is a powerful shaper of our perceptions. The conclusion:

For many years, our mother tongue was claimed to be a “prison house” that constrained our capacity to reason. Once it turned out that there was no evidence for such claims, this was taken as proof that people of all cultures think in fundamentally the same way. But surely it is a mistake to overestimate the importance of abstract reasoning in our lives… The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter, and their consequences probably go far beyond what has been experimentally demonstrated so far; they may also have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies. We may not know as yet how to measure these consequences directly or how to assess their contribution to cultural or political misunderstandings. But as a first step toward understanding one another, we can do better than pretending we all think the same.

Language is part of a package of culture that we all learn, particularly as young children. This framework affects our responses to reality, particularly our responses to human actions.

Suburban budget cuts lead to volunteer opportunities

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Many suburban communities have had budget difficulties in the last few years, leading to staffing cuts and other measures.

Naperville, Illinois, a prosperous Chicago suburb, had some similar issues. Because of some of the staffing cuts, the city is now looking for volunteers to help out at City Hall:

The pilot Municipal Volunteer Program is still accepting applications, said Community Relations Manager Nadja Lalvani, and has already drawn the interest of about a dozen people. Currently, the city is looking to fill a vacant front desk at city hall that used to be occupied by a greeter, but due to budget cuts, the position was eliminated…

The front-desk position at city hall will be the first volunteer opportunity opened to the public, Lalvani said. The greeter will be responsible for directing people to various parts of city hall, and could be trained to operate the phone switchboard in the future.

After the pilot period ends in six months, the city will evaluate the program. If all goes well, there could be more opportunities for volunteers.

Is a program like this only possible in generally well-off and well-run places like Naperville? How many citizens today would be willing to volunteer to help the local city government (as opposed to other volunteer opportunities or not volunteering at all)? Naperville does talk up its volunteer spirit so perhaps this ethos will come through and help the city fill a few positions.