The René de Menus Institute

Night. A bedroom with double bed. Light from a small bedside table lamp throwing a yellow circle across the bed. The naked leg of an apparently sleeping woman visible near the edge of the circle.

Moonlight entering through the only window mists the darkness with a frosty white.

A man is seated in a chair beside the window, his foot nervously wiggling. Putting out his cigarette, he stands and then heads into the bathroom. Bathroom light on. We hear him brushing his teeth. The man reappears, finds the telephone, picks up the receiver, then realizes he doesn't have the number and hangs up.

He begins looking for the phone book—in a drawer, on shelves, and under clothes strewn on a chair where he finally locates it.

Sitting down on the bed, he looks up the number, doesn't find it, looks on a second page, still can't find the number, looks in the Yellow Pages, finds it.

He dials the number, waits.

Ring. Pause. Ring. Pause. Interrupted ring.

A Male Voice: The René De Menus Institute is at your service.

A Female Voice: Thank you for your call. It is all important to us.

The Male Voice: If you know your party's extension, you may enter it at any time.

The Female Voice: Otherwise, please stay on the line.

The Male Voice: For English, press 1.

The Female Voice: Para espagnol, oprima—

The man makes his selection, producing a short tone.

The Male Voice: If you are male, press number 1.

The Female Voice: If you are a woman, press 2.

The Male Voice: If you are a—

The man makes his selection producing a tone.

The Male Voice: Thank you so much, sir. Now, carefully select from the following options the sector of the Institute that corresponds to the service that you wish to avail yourself of.

The Female Voice: If you wish to gain access to a database, please press 1.

The Male Voice: If you have experienced a significant increase in total bodyweight within the past six weeks, press 2.

The Female Voice: If you wish to secure greater financial independance, rid yourself of debt, or donate to the Institute, press 3.

The Male Voice: If future events appear to you in the form of unambiguous images, press 4.

The Female Voice: If you believe that people tend to avoid you or, at the very least, underestimate your talents, press 5 please.

The Male Voice: If you'd like to speak with our allergist, press 6.

The Female Voice: If you feel disoriented, press 7.

The Male Voice: If you are convinced you have a contribution to make to science, press 8.

The Female Voice: If wooded areas—

The man makes his selection, producing a tone, and lights a cigarette while continuing to listen.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation is primarily geographical, please press 1.

The Male Voice: If your disorientation is most often emotional, press 2.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation regards your proper place in society, press 3.

The Male Voice: If technology disorients you, press 4.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation is philosopical, press 5.

The Male Voice: If your disorientation is sexual, press 6, please.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation is sartorial, press 7.

The Male Voice: To hear the previous menu, press 9.

He is lost in thought and smoking.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation is primarily geographical, please press 1.

The Male Voice: If your disorientation is most often emotional, press 2.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation regards your proper place in society, press 3.

The Male Voice: If technology disorients you, press 4.

The Female Voice: If your disorientation is philosopical, press 5.

The Male Voice: If your disorientation is sex—

He makes his selection. Tone.

The Male Voice: If this philosophical disorientation of yours concerns the questions you harbor regarding the meaning of existence, please press 1.

The Female Voice: If your philosophical disorientation references God or another of the transcendental figures such as your—quote—higher power—unquote—, press 2.

The Male Voice: If your philosophical disorientation includes a preoccupation with death, press 3.

The Female Voice: If your philosophical disorientation regards truth, truths or the truth of truths, press—

He makes his selection. Tone.

The Male Voice: If you are attempting to come to grips with death as universal terminus, please press 1.

The Female Voice: If you are concerned with death as the destination of your own earthly itinerary, press 2.

The Male Voice: If you are distracted by the pothole of death into which three of the four wheels on your chariot have already slid, press 3.

The Female Voice: If you are disquieted by thoughts of the death of a fellow human being, press 4.

The Male Voice: If you—

He makes his selection. Tone.

The Male Voice: If the fellow human being whose death concerns you is a stranger of the opposite sex, press 1.

The Female Voice: If the fellow human being whose death is on your mind is a public figure, press 2.

The Male Voice: If you are concerned with the death of a relative or family
member, press—

He makes his selection. Tone. He lights another cigarette in a chain.

The Female Voice: If it's the death of your mother or a maternal figure thatweighs upon you primarily, please press 1.

The Male Voice: If it's the death of your father or a figure who could eventually turn out to be your father that is of concern, press 2.

The Female Voice: If it's the death of someone whom, at one time or another, you considered to be your wife, or the equivalent, that preoccupies you, press 3.

The Male Voice: If it's—

He makes his selection. Tone. He begins pacing.

The Female Voice: If the fact that, alas, your wife will someday depart this world is weighing heavily on your heart, please do your best to press 1.

The Male Voice: If you are concerned that your wife may be in her final approach , whereas you feel you haven't fastened your seatbelt securely about your lap, press 2.

The Female Voice: If you are primarily concerned that, God forbid, your wife may never depart this world, press 3.

The Male Voice: If your wife is already no longer with us, press 4.

The Female Voice: If, in a fit of jealous rage—

The man makes his selection. Tone. He stops next to the bed, contemplates the woman who still hasn't budged.

The Male Voice: If you and your late wife loved each other deeply and with great mutual respect, please press 1.

The Female Voice: If you were devoted to your wife, sir, whereas she loved you not, press 2.

The Male Voice: If your wife loved you, whereas you had little feeling for her, press 3.

The Female Voice: If the bond between you and your wife had become mutually intolerable, then press 4.

The Male Voice: To hear the previous menu, press 9.

He is deep in thought.

The Male Voice: If you and your late wife loved each other deeply and with great mutual respect, please press 1.

The Female Voice: If you—

The man makes his selection. Tone.

The Male Voice: If you are suffering following the death of your wife with whom you shared a deep and mutually respectful connection, please press 1.

He selects. Tone.

The Female Voice: If you killed your wife, press 1.

The Man makes his selection. Tone.

The Male Voice: If you would like to speak with the front desk, press 1.

The Female Voice: To continue, press 1.

The Male Voice: To hear the previous menu, press 9.

The Male Voice: To hear the previous menu, press 9.

He selects. Tone. Click. Pause.

The Female Voice: If—

He selects. Tone. Click. Pause.

The Male Voice: If—

He selects three times. Three tones. Three clicks.

The Male Voice: If you are attempting to come to grips with death as universal terminus, please press 1.

The Female Voice: If you are concerned about death as the destination of your own earthly itinerary, press 2.

The Male Voice: If you are distracted by the pothole of death into which three of the four wheels on your chariot have already slid, press 3.

The Female Voice: If you are disquieted by thoughts of the death of a fellow human being, press 4.

The Male Voice: If you are seriously considering committing suicide, press 5.

He makes his selection. Tone.

The Female Voice: If you have the means at your disposal, press 1.

He makes his selection. Tone.

A New Voice: Please be advised that the remainder of this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.

Panicked, he hangs up the phone violently. This awakens the woman in the bed.

“Honey? Honey?” says she.

“I'm here,” he replies.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“Three. I can't sleep.”

“Thinking?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“Oh . . .”

“Come to bed. You're going to be exhausted,” says she.

“In a minute,” he answers.

“I was having the strangest dream. You were in it….You smoked. And…”

She falls back asleep. The room is still. He moves to stand in front of the window. Silouetted, he lights another cigarette.

Ma chaleur danseuse

Tu m’oiseaus

Tu me mers
Tu me sables
Entières

Tes mijots
Tes froissées
Tu me dons
M’iroite soleil

Tu m’enlionnes
Tu me relits
Tu m’en violoncelle
Et chantes

Ta mainte
T’a fleuries
La chaleur
Champs de ri

Comprends qui sait
Saisis et saveuse
Profondr’élégance
De ma chaleur danseuse

Gifts

There are five types of gifts, five kinds of presents under the tree or on the breakfast table on the morning of your birthday. There are only five.

The first type, wrapped so stunningly, excites with its promise and, once opened, triggers glee. Glee which turns into satisfaction which becomes appreciation then respect and then the comfort of reliable familiarity.

The second type of gift, colorfully ribbonned and bowed, once opened, delivers delight. Delight that diminishes over time, not much time, and finally dissipates altogether. If any memory of this first type of gift lingers, it’s accompanied by bemusement that such a gift should have seemed so appealing in the first place.

No less initially thrilling is the third type of gift. Here, thriling turns into tolerable into mediocre into replacability into intolerable, ending, at best, in a garage sale. No more than a month or two has passed in the process.

The fourth type of wrapped  gift starts like the other two, but once unwrapped, immediately becomes a candidate for exchange or regifting to your cousin who likes that kind of thing.

The final type of gift starts smoking hot, burns its path through the years and, ever flaming, sears its way through your life and beyond.

Four of the five types of gifts actually exist in the real world.

There are five types of romantic relationships.

The Twelve Days of NRA Christmas

 

On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
A cartridge in an Uzi.


On the second day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Two moms a-mourning
And a cartridge in an Uzi.


On the third day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.


On the fourth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Four cowering elders
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.
 

On the fifth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.


On the sixth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.


On the seventh day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Seven closed asylums
Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.


On the eighth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me

Eight wackos plotting
Seven closed asylums

Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.
 

On the ninth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me

Nine Christian soldiers

Eight wackos plotting

Seven closed asylums
Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.
 

On the tenth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me

Ten school shootings

Nine Christian soldiers

Eight wackos plotting

Seven closed asylums

Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.
 

On the eleventh day of Christmas
My true love gave to me

Eleven urban war zones

Ten school shootings

Nine Christian soldiers

Eight wackos plotting

Seven closed asylums

Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me

Twelve pols a-sleeping

Eleven urban war zones

Ten school shootings

Nine Christian soldiers

Eight wackos plotting

Seven closed asylums

Six hotel gun shows
Wayne Lapierre
Four elders cow'ring 
Three spouses weeping
Two mourning moms
And a cartridge in an Uzi.

The New Normal

Two conditions characterize what some are calling “the new economic normal” by which they mean the intractable, seemingly permanent state of an economy limping along following the fiery crash that was the great recession of the last five years. The first of the two conditions: the redistribution of wealth from the pockets of the great majority (now poorer and less employed) and into those of the rich (now the super-rich,). The second: the unlikelihood for millions of American workers of a post-recession return to the America of old, where people found new employment or returned to their old jobs after a brief time out of work. The second condition and its apparent immutability is in some measure a product of the first. Political power is now fully purchasable by billionaires. Our politicians are now nearly indistinguishable from those of the third world drug-trade countries where civil servants, being human, are unable to resist the offer of pesos or dollars in unimaginable quantities taken from billionaires wishing to buy favor. With the political class in the pocket of the moneyed class the chances of political reform to reverse the slide of wealth from poor to rich no longer appears possible, thus the concept of "new normal".

I would argue that this is a good thing. (No, I am neither rich nor powerful. I am a teacher. Enough said.)

How can I think that a reduced quality of life for the majority of us is a positive development? I can think this because less money, fewer things does not constitute a reduction when it comes to quality of life in contemporary American culture. We are addicted to money as the druggy to his fix or the gambler to his game. The defining feature of addiction is that the addict obsessively prioritizes the acquisition of the addictive substance over the components of a healthy life. Even when the buzz is gone. Even when he realizes he’s neglecting his family, his friends, his health, his ethics, his sense of himself. Our relationship to the pursuit of material wealth is that of the addict to the drug, nothing more, nothing less.

The balance, the gratitude, the joy and the playfulness of a healthy life stand in stark contrast to the money-drug addict’s ever more consuming pursuit of monetary reward. “The ever more consuming pursuit of monetary reward.” Where the 19th century would have seen in those words a description of the exceptional extreme, of society’s Scrooges, today’s average American is perfectly captured therein. In contrast, there are cultures in the world where a modest living suffices to assure vitality and satisfaction. Relationships, time and space, rituals, physical activity, creative projects and the enjoyment of nature occupy the place that work and the paycheck occupy in our culture. In a new normal America, the conditions are being created for a reintroduction of these healthful components into the American lifestyle. The great recession has reset American society economically. We are now setting out on a much healthier path.

The first and foremost of these new realities: housing is no longer affordable for a hugely increased percentage of Americans. At least that is the way a society addicted to wealth views the current dearth of affordable housing. I see it differently. There is more than enough affordable housing for all. You have to be blinded by your addiction to the one-house-with-livingroom-diningroom-extra-bedroom-backyard-and-garage-per-generation-per-family idea of adequate housing in order to see the current supply of American housing as in short supply or as too costly for the American income. Now it is true that the available houses and apartments are expensive and out of reach for huge portions of our citizenry. However, I see housing costs as starting to reweave the parts of our shredded families back together. Underemployed children moving back in with their families after college, elders lacking adequate health insurance being cared for by their adult children – these are universally seen as sacrifices by our addicted culture. But what is really occurring is that the conditions for de-isolation of the lonely American are being stitched. Two or three generations living together brings their house to within financial reach for many, many more families and forces us to find the connections whose loss we bemoaned. It's a win-win.

Let me briefly address the issue of the two extremes: the poor and the super-wealthy. In a society organized around the procurement of the money-drug, the poor tend to exist in truly desperate conditions. Not because of a lack of riches. That has its benefits. Indeed, there are poor peoples around the country and the world (fewer and fewer, however, as the world Americanizes) whose satisfaction with their lives is measured at levels that most Americans can only dream of. The problem facing the poor is that among them live the most desperate of all money-drug addicts, those who do not possess the wherewithal to obtain the money-drug by non-violent means. It is crime, the threat of crime and the fear of the criminal, conditions that are fanned by illegal drugs that turn desperate people into monsters, promise instant status and ultimately doom them to prison and their families to deeper despair. There are easy answers to this dire situation: good schools, drug-rehab, good policing and jobs. Much cheaper than the war on drugs, the war on Iraq, the war on Afganistan or the exploding prison system.

The biggest losers in the new normal are the super-rich. Their misery is camouflaged by their caldelabres, obfuscated by their objets d’art.

Classroom Learning

Schools make learning hard. No matter the subject, it would be easier to learn it in its natural environment: basketball in the gym, government in the legislature, cooking in kitchen and agriculture in the fields. We like to think of the classroom as being the best place to learn. Actually, the average classroom is the last place I’d go to learn anything. Unless I was there to learn how to be a student in a classroom. Or a mediocre classroom teacher. 

THE THREE REASONS WHY

1. Learning is a product of practice not of book-based knowledge. You want an electrician who is practiced in his craft. Same with your lawyer and your restaurant chef and your mechanic. Imagine a tennis player who learned to play sitting in a classroom. A politician with only knowledge of, not practice in, the political system will be called Stalin or McCarthy or McNamara. Theory has its place. In fact, the masters in any field of endeavor from tennis to physics to plumbing to food service more often than not possess a deep understanding of the principles that underlie their application in specific cases. But theory learned separate from practice trains one to be a theoretician, a professor, not a competent, much less a masterful, practioner. As long as the primary challenge posed by our teachers to their students is the absorption of the textbook's contents, learning will not be occurring in our classrooms.

2. Teachers are woefully undertrained in the complex, subtle and demanding art form that is teaching. It takes as long to train a great teacher as it does to train a great M.D. or legislator or farmer or chef. The actual training requirements of teachers in the United States bespeaks a definition of teaching as requiring no more than a cursory exposure to the principles and challenges of the profession and a brief part-time apprenticeship. Furthermore, once the typical teacher is installed in a school, the scandalous reality that predominates is that while teachers are at work in immediate proximity to colleagues who are practicing the teaching profession day in and day out, teachers do not observe each others’ classes, do not request that others critique their classes, do not, in other words, see the need to continue their professional development. It is the exception that a teacher takes the initiative to forward his/her development beyond the silly requirement of attendance at the occasional conference. Additionally, teacher training, to the extent that it exists, focusses to a goofy degree on the policy dimension, and on management issues whereas the focus needs to be on dynamic, project centered, playful yet demanding classroom pedagogy. The school must be a place where the student loves to return each day.

3. The best and the brightest (i.e. those you want to attract to teaching your children and training your workforce) will have no interest in a poorly paid career working in under-financed schools functioning under a most uncreative system of regulations authored by bureaucrats and administrators with little understanding of the artistic freedom required by the exceptional teacher.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?
There is a very simple set of reforms and systemic changes that can be initiated to solve these three problems, and I shall describe below those that I would recommend were I asked. 

Unfortunately (1) teachers, especially teachers who see, and are willing to say, how increasingly empty this educational glass is, are rarely asked. And when asked, we aren't listened to. (Surveys today being designed by the established to illicit responses not outside of the range of proposals undisruptive to the establishment.) And when listened to, we are marginalized as a statistical minority, the majority, by definition, being those whose self-interest is served by the maintenance of the status quo.  (2) Truth telling -- in the "Hey, the king's naked!" sense -- is never the norm despite everyone agreeing tacitly with the truth teller. People's opinions are so easily swayed by simple membership and identification with a group. And, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the punishment awaiting anyone who is foolish enough to tell the truth is worse than that meted out to a murderer. (3) We have arrived at the period culturally where our mediocre educational system is fully ramped up and mass producing in vast numbers  Generic-Unconscious-Materialist-Worker-Opinionated-Consumers or GUMWOCS where once local citizen craftsmen individuals stood.  (4) The culture of schools at all levels now includes a farcical amount of self-celebration. It could not be clearer to the outside observer that the less confident the educational institution becomes in its excellence, the more of its energy is expended in celebration (of its excellence). Methinks you celebrateth way too much.

A program of reform will focus on three areas:
1. Educator training and support
2. Revocationalization of schooling (including apprenticeships)
3. Reinstitution of educationally oriented standards for broadcasting 

American Dreamers

I. We Americans take it as a given that we are engaged in the process of pursuing happiness. We define the daylight hours as the time available for that pursuit. For most of us, this means we're after stuff in the form of better goods and access to more services. It's what we call the American Dream.

Now, this pursuit thing works pretty well so long as you are a person who neither owns your own... nor has enough... to retire with enough..., meaning you'll likely have no choice but to .... until you can... no longer. Your accrual of stuff, though less and less rewarding as the pile of stuff grows, nevertheless yields a sense of security, of a buffer against calamity. You'll notice that this is a very different feeling from "happiness", but one finds a way to ignore the gap.

Now, people who have attained the dream -- those with the house in the magazine and the travel and the kids in the right schools and the friends in high places -- they're the ones in the fun house, but like all fun houses, it's mostly mirrors and not so fun.

For happiness is not derived from any of these things, and the possessors of these things -- faced with the demoralizing realization that more -- more expensive, more convenient and more exclusive -- doesn't increase happiness, and that friends in high places aren't really your friends, and flummoxed by their own kids who, fucked up from having too many options, choose rather to cut, smoke and have indiscriminate sex in order to escape into something real -- are among the most unhappy people you'll meet. Much more unhappy, just for instance, than those who live on a dollar a day in villages of mud-floored huts to whom it would not occur to think of happiness as something that one pursues.

The point is not that poverty makes one happy. Nor does it make any sense to idealize the poor. 

My focus here is on decoupling happiness and pursuit on the one hand, and, on the other, ascendance to the “top” of American society (a trip that actually takes one down and down in moral, philosophical and psychological terms) and an increase in joy, delight, satisfaction or well-being. The ivy league is replete with neurotics, with the anxious offspring of the arriviste, with the depressed superachievers. The BFD corporations are dog-eat-dog people shredders. The bottom line, the short term profit, the competition, the elimination of one’s rival, of deadwood, of those unwilling to put winning over everything, all prioritized above human connection and the simple pleasures of being or gratitude. 

II. There is a form of political and commercial discourse, based on the following principles. First, make the target audience feel like you’re on their side and they on yours. The use of “we” effectively implies this team spirit. Now, make a bold statement of a principle that “we” hold dear. A principle with which no one but a scoundrel could possibly disagree. Choose a principle which you yourself do not follow, a principle were you not to declare it yours might leave you open to attack. To ensure that your fake statement of principle persuades, elaborate by dividing the generality into its component parts thereby making your declaration appear to constitute a specific, substantial commitment. Make no actual commitments that might lead others to expect action. This is not a statement of intention, it’s an ad with which you lead the target audience to imagine you and they themselves positively. Here’s a good example:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

III. The ubiquity of American self-deception is such that the prospect of deconstructing our national character with an eye to straightening out the culture is inconceivably daunting. Where would you start?

With "the home of the free and the brave"? Free? Please. Is a woman who can't walk the streets of her prosperous town at night free? If the white male were similarly limited in his movement, freedom of walking would become a plank in the Republican party platform! Are children forced to live among armed camps of drug dealers free? American Freedom: the economic wherewithal to live behind the walls of a gated community. And the brave? If you've been to the graves of the American dead in Normandy, France and read the tombstones of the brave, you will have noticed that there is a preponderance of seventeen year olds from the most economically depressed areas of the American South. These were not the brave. These were the desperate, the uneducated, the manipulated. The throwaways. Some things never change.

Or should we start at the end instead? Let's look at our current efforts to solve the global warming crisis. Self-deception. Talk. "Not if it negatively impacts my (extravagant, wasteful, addicted and unhappy) lifestyle." We don't have lives, here in the U.S. We have lifestyles. Same thing, only bathing in the self-deception of an unhappy people pursuing happiness through materialist self-distraction. Harder and harder to talk to your children -- have you noticed yet -- because children see your truth, the truth you're madly paddling to escape.

Slave owners declaring that all men are created equal, manifest destiny as a rationale for genocide, elected officials spending nearly all their time raising money from wealthy interests who thereby purchase access and influence, corporations spewing public relations and advertising which is nothing more and nothing less than an officially sanctioned form of lying, war against those who possess natural resources, a judicial system that puts poor, barely defended blacks to death despite overwhelming evidence that mistakes are made all the time.

Why do attorneys accept a justice system devoid of justice? Why do businesses agree to lie to their customers for profit? Why do politicians allow lobbyists to monopolize their time? Why are the media used for sales rather than enlightenment?

The answer is that the United States is a society founded, developed and maintaining on self-deception. Hard to see for those who have grown up in it. Easy from abroad.

Seen from abroad, the U.S. is the nuclear superpower attempting to prevent others from having nuclear weapons. We're the profligate producers of carbon emissions telling the world to produce less carbon. We're the lovers of freedom who support dictators. We're the enemies of AIDS who deny support to condom distribution in third world countries resulting in hundreds of thousands of women contracting AIDS from their sexual partners.

Sports? Our heroes are uneducated millionaire drug abusers while the average person can't afford to take his family to a game.

Art? Removed from the schools, but we cherish our children (and believe in the power of art).

Cinema? We are proud of our Hollywood which is synonymous with mindless entertainment.

T.V, movies, food... American products are known as the lowest common denominator crap in the marketplace.

Education? How long will the U.S. be the leader in innovation when the average citizen can no longer afford to go to college?

Immigration? We treat our desperate Mexican immigrant workers so arrogantly while we enjoy the fruits of their labor...

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A Problem with Public Opinion Surveys

The notion that a multiple-choice opinion survey will render valid results is highly questionable.

Let’s imagine that we were to survey people on their opinion of the asteroid XR69P in the Migicue galaxy:

How do you feel about asteroid XR69P?

a. I like it.

b. It’s wonderful.

c. It’s too big.

d. It’s too small.

e. It’s too gaseous.

f. It’s too solid.

g. It sucks.

h. other.

Obviously, nearly everyone would choose reponse h. In the case of an obscure asteroid, as with other other utterly unfamiliar material, survey respondents are aware of their ignorance, their indifference and their absolute lack of basis upon which to form an opinion.

On the other hand, there are surveys on topics with which the respondents have some familiarity: 

How do you feel about David Letterman?

a. I like him.

b. He’s wonderful.

c. He’s too irreverent.

d. He’s too commercial.

e. He’s too old.

f. He’s too liberal.

g. He sucks.

h. other.

In this case, 98% of Americans know who David Letterman is. As a result, over 90% of those surveyed will express an opinion including the 65% of them who haven’t watched his show in twenty years and have not had a thought, much less a conversation about David Letterman. These respondents are mostly ignorant, mostly indifferent but forming a response because they are being asked for a response. 

Indifference to a question is not measured by the response that question illicits when posed. To put it another way:

Which is more reflective of public opinion on David Letterman?

a. the fact that  a great majority of the respondents live their lives without ever having a thought, much less an opinion, about David Letterman

or

b. the fact that a great majority of the respondents expressed an opinion about him when asked

Let's say that 80% of the respondents gave positive answers. And let's say that 50% of those never give David Letterman a thought and are only answering because they are being asked. (They are indifferent but, when asked, have more positive than negative feelings about Letterman.)

The pollster would be likely to conclude that the public feels very positively about Letterman. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this conclusion is false. For it counts indifference as a positive reaction.


Now, it makes little difference whether polls of opinion accurately assess attitudes toward a TV personality, but it makes a big difference when the opinions expressed concern public policy and political candidates. For when large swaths of uninformed, uneducated, a-political citizens vote (elections being a form of opinion survey), as has occurred in the most recent case with The Tea Party, the course of a country swings in their direction. It is as if we checked "It's too gaseous." and science, taking our opinions into account, therefore decided to turn its attention to studying (non-existent) asteroid gas.

American Self-Deception

The ubiquity of American self-deception is such that the prospect of deconstructing our national character with an eye to straightening out the culture is inconceivably daunting. Where would you start?

With "the home of the free and the brave"? Free? Please. Is a woman who can't walk the streets of her prosperous town at night free? If the white male were similarly limited in his movement, freedom of walking would become a plank in the Republican party platform! Are children forced to live among armed camps of drug dealers free? American Freedom: the economic wherewithal to live behind the walls of a gated community. And the brave? If you've been to the graves of the American dead in Normandy, France and read the tombstones of the brave, you will have noticed that there is a preponderance of seventeen year olds from the most economically depressed areas of the American South. These were not the brave. These were the desperate, the uneducated, the manipulated. The throwaways. Some things never change.

Or should we start at the end instead? Let's look at our current efforts to solve the global warming crisis. Self-deception. Talk. "Not if it negatively impacts my (extravagant, wasteful, addicted and unhappy) lifestyle." We don't have lives, here in the U.S. We have lifestyles. Same thing, only bathing in the self-deception of an unhappy people pursuing happiness through materialist self-distraction. Harder and harder to talk to your children -- have you noticed yet -- because children see your truth, the truth you're madly paddling to escape.

Slave owners declaring that all men are created equal, manifest destiny as a rationale for genocide, elected officials spending nearly all their time raising money from wealthy interests who thereby purchase access and influence, corporations spewing public relations and advertising which is nothing more and nothing less than an officially sanctioned form of lying, war against those who possess natural resources, a judicial system that puts poor, barely defended blacks to death despite overwhelming evidence that mistakes are made all the time.

Why do attorneys accept a justice system devoid of justice? Why do businesses agree to lie to their customers for profit? Why do politicians allow lobbyists to monopolize their time? Why are the media used for sales rather than enlightenment?

The answer is that the United States is a society founded, developed and maintaining on self-deception. Hard to see for those who have grown up in it. Easy from abroad.

Seen from abroad, the U.S. is the nuclear superpower attempting to prevent others from having nuclear weapons. We're the profligate producers of carbon emissions telling the world to produce less carbon. We're the lovers of freedom who support dictators. We're the enemies of AIDS who deny support to condom distribution in third world countries resulting in hundreds of thousands of women contracting AIDS from their sexual partners.

Sports? Our heroes are uneducated millionaire drug abusers while the average person can't afford to take his family to a game.

Art? Removed from the schools, but we cherish our children (and believe in the power of art).

Cinema? We are proud of our Hollywood which is synonymous with mindless entertainment.

T.V, movies, food... American products are known as the lowest common denominator crap in the marketplace.

Education? How long will the U.S. be the leader in innovation when the average citizen can no longer afford to go to college?

Immigration? We treat our desperate Mexican immigrant workers so arrogantly while we enjoy the fruits of their labor...