photo © 2007 takomabibelot | more info (via: Wylio)

People continue to hit send on these missives with long e-mail header trains, as if, somehow, the tales within must be true for it to have mushroom clouded across the the internet.

Researchers from Ohio State University contacted 600 people after the 2008 election to discuss their exposure to rumors about the candidates on the websites, blogs and by email. The publishing findings indicate that fibbing on the internet itself is  to some degree checked because the facts are out there with a quick google search.  Email was more pernicious:

The more political e-mails that participants received from friends and family during the 2008 election, the more rumors they were likely to believe. And the more rumors they believed, the more political e-mails they sent.

In addition, receiving e-mails only promoted belief in rumors about the candidate whom the person opposed, the study found. And people were more likely to share e-mails as belief in rumors about the opposed candidate increased.

The filter effect at work, again.  You’re more likely to believe, seek out and forward media content that parrots your own opinions; facts be damned.

photo © 2009 Beverly | more info (via: Wylio

We found that the relationship between national satisfaction and
life satisfaction was stronger in the poorest countries of the world, for those with less income, and those with fewer household conveniences. The moderating role of GDP, income, and conveniences reveals that when individuals have greater trouble meeting their basic needs, external factors such as group evaluations come to have a stronger influence on SWB. . .

Those in poverty may elevate nationhood to a more central component of their social identity, thus making it more relevant in judging their quality of life. This might explain why ratings of  national satisfaction are higher on average than ratings of life satisfaction among relatively poorer individuals and those living in the poorer countries.

When faced with financial and material struggles in your own life, you’re more apt to look for that glimmer of hope in less immediate aspects of life. The current economic slump has a far reaching impact as working Americans face employment uncertainty, the mortgage crisis and financial challenges.

The personal experience of the recession makes a wavering American dream unacceptable. Accordingly, politicians pitch their policies as a way to prolong America’s greatness in the world and challenge fellow candidates who would deign to impugn the reputation of our country during campaign season. We’re going to have success and happiness with our lives any way we can, even if we’re trying to live vicariously through the very idea of greatness.

As important as it is take comfort and pride in your national identity, relying on it to buoy spirits means ignoring growing threats to the long term to health and vitality of the US.

The longer the recession, the longer it may take to face some hard truths for our country.

Take the health care reform debate, if it could even be called a debate. Serious shortcomings in our health delivery and insurance mechanisms were overlooked, if not completely ignored. America’s best cheerleaders plugged the ignorant, but carefully formulated, messaging that the US has the best health care system in the world.

Factually, it does not. Despite spending more on health care per person than anywhere else in the world, we rank 49th in life expectancy. As  much as health care reform oppositions liked to cite surveys of dissatisfaction with the waits for treatment in Canada or the UK, they rank 10th and 28th, respectively. We rank a lowly 33rd in infant mortality, against bested by the UK (22) and Canada (23). But those facts didn’t matter.

Or we could look at our students’ performance up against those of other OECD nations: in 2009 we ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science, 25th in math. Are those the scores of the next generation of leaders of industry and innovators in technology?

We could go on and on from failing infrastructure to our disproportionate incarceration rates, etc.

Even sadder, these challenges could give us a rallying point around which we could further strengthen our love of country and its performance for its people.

photo © 2009 Ed Yourdon | more info (via: Wylio)

But giving during last summer’s Gulf Oil spill didn’t see an outpouring of financial support.  BP and friends were quickly tagged as responsible by spectators and the government, which left Gulf Coast Residents on their own.

A recently published study in the European Journal of Social Psychology shows this bias in play. Holloway University researchers found subjects more willing to provide assistance to those suffering from natural disasters than man-made ones in 4 different scenarios.

“People perceive victims of humanly caused events in more negative terms, even when there is no information available about the victims’ blameworthiness,” Zagefka and her colleagues conclude. “This amounts to a systemic bias against people suffering from humanly caused disasters.”

The researchers attribute this unfortunate tendency to the Just World Hypothesis, which asserts that humans are strongly inclined to view the world as fundamentally fair, orderly and predictable. To defend this belief, “Potential donors are motivated to blame the victims when given the slightest chance,” they write.

That same attitude seems to apply to the social safety net that politicians argue endlessly about.  Post welfare reform in the 90s,  Americans who struggle to make ends meet are more likely to be demonized by politicians looking to score a quick rhetorical point or to save money via safety net budget cuts than they are to receive a helping hand in their community.

More than 15 million Americans are unemployed. 1 in 8 Americans is on food stamps.   One in 5 children lives below the poverty level. And roughly 1 percent of Americans will spend part of any given year homeless.

Some would have us believe those numbers are because a segment of the population hasn’t been making the effort to succeed, so it’s not my problem.

But how do we appropriately assign responsibility for poor life outcomes and provide the necessary support to break the cycles of poverty and crime, when we instinctively blame the person stuck in the cycle?  How do we acknowledge the contribution of the circumstances that led to a person becoming a sad statistic, so that we can begin to correct those common injustices for the next generation?

There’s a constant tug of war for media outlets, between making money by giving consumers what they want versus providing what we need at an acceptable cost. Amazon knows I’m apt to buy more books if it recommends reads similar (in content and in style) to ones I’ve already read, though I’d be more well-rounded if I read outside my comfort zone now and again. Print, online and television news sources develop their own framework for reporting based on the audience demographics being targeted: Fox News reports to the right of mainstream; MSNBC embraces the left. And their framework is typically meant to fire up their viewers to keep them coming back for more. As Jon Stewart pointed out this weekend at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear:

The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

Does ignorance of the full spectrum of information and interpretation available to the public, threaten our ability to exchange ideas and shake up the status quo to reach amenable compromises on urgent issues? Groupthink experiments point to the greater cost. Living in a media bubble, as conflict- free  and as comforting as it may seem to be, takes a toll on our ability to think as independent actors, which, may in turn, amp polarization in this country. It becomes increasingly difficult to express sentiment that falls outside the echo chamber that makes up our preferred media channels.

In The Element, Ken Robinson reviews the Solomon Asch conformity experiments of the 1950s. Subjects were placed with groups of fellow college students whose answers to a set of questions had been coached to be wrong the majority of the time; the experimental subject had no idea as to the preparation of fellow group members.  With planted group members repeatedly responding incorrectly to questions, the experimental subject answered incorrectly, as well, the majority of the time. Test respondents readily admitted that they responded contrary to  answers they believed to be true out of fear of being called out for straying from the majority opinion.  Subjects wanted to fit in and self-censored accordingly.

Our ability to voice opinions contrary to the majority, let alone consider alternatives to popular sentiment is limited in a media vacuum that constantly regurgitates the talking points we want or — worse — expect to hear.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Lately, the Daily Dish’s Andrew Sullivan has been posting reader comments about whether liberals should do interviews on FOX News. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Rachel Maddow regularly implores conservatives to be guests on her show for a fact-based discussion of trending issues.

There is tremendous value in even hearing varied opinions, whether or not they are your own. In Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, the Brafman brothers noted the power of dissent in another Asch study.  Repeating the same scenario, one of the control subjects in the group was directed to answer independently, while the others continued to respond with wrong answers.

The dissenting actor didn’t even need to give the right answer to inspire the real participant to speak up with the correct response; all it took to break the sway was for someone to give an answer that was different from the majority. (p.155)

If the mere presence of a differing opinion can change the participation choices of an experimental subject, what would hearty debate of the issues do for viewers at home? As it stands, we’re mostly standing in an echo chamber of reiterated talking points. Could it bring more voices into the fray?

And if we create space where we can be open to disagreement about the solutions, can we create space that allows us to more completely expose the range of options, including those in our worldview periphery, in such a manner that we could find the common ground we need to move forward on urgent issues?

Seafood is a $1.8 billion industry in Louisiana, with another $1 billion in retail sales  driven by recreational fishing.  If the estimates about possible environmental damage are proven conservative, Gulf Coast states are in for a world of financial pain, up to $4.3 billion in losses according to BBVA Compass Bank economist Nathaniel Karp:

Karp said Florida has the most at stake, facing potential losses of $3 billion alone, including $2.8 billion in tourism, $18 million in commercial fishing and $138 million in recreational fishing…

Louisiana could face economic losses of $948 million, including $880 million in tourism, according to Karp’s estimates. Louisiana’s commercial fishing business stands to lose $31 million, while its recreational fishing industry could lose $37 million, he projects.

And if the drip, drip, drip of information about this spill is anything to go by, the numbers may turn out to be much worse.  Christian Science Monitor reporting suggests upwards of 25,000 barrels of oil per day are spewing into the Gulf instead of the 5,000 barrel estimate being used in data crunching, a number which could skew upwards even further if the damaged piping is further compromised by the flow of gritty oil.   With that oil pocket rumored to be tens of millions of gallons full, an unplugged flow could spread for months.

Such projections take on more significance now that the first attempt to dome the spill failed this weekend.   It also still remains to be seen if the mushroom cloud of oil will reach the current that could pull the oil up the southeastern seaboard.

Our nation’s top experts are now suggesting “stuffing shredded tires, golf balls and other debris into the well’s failed blowout preventer,” while they work on a differently-shaped dome to repeat their attempts at sealing the leak.   Can we really justify offshore drilling if we aren’t truly capable of foreseeing and planning for the consequences that could cause permanent damage to delicate coastal ecosystems and our food chain? Can’t we admit that some technology is still beyond the scope of our knowledge?

Coastal citizens are realizing the stakes of such acts.   Support for offshore drilling in Florida (35%) has dropped precipitously (from 61% in 2008).

And yet politicians seem to be doubling down on their efforts to fill oil coffers, instead of promoting alternative energy sources that could yield new job sectors to partially replace the lost manufacturing jobs of this recession.  For instance, Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, who seems to continue jerking further and further right since his election, is pushing to drill off the coast of his state as soon as possible.

Then there are the conservative talk heads like Bill Kristol, who suggests drilling CLOSER to shore would limit the danger of offshore drilling, and Sarah Palin who still considers drill, baby, drill to be prudent and necessary for energy independence.

Indeed, we need to create a platform for home grown energy, independent of the Middle East, but real leadership on energy would take us to the next generation of energy creation: one that demonstrates that those who grace the top of the food chain have the awareness that environmental stewardship is a necessary factor in moving society and the human race forward in a sustainable manner.

We’re not particularly good stewards of anything when we can’t even acknowledge the boundaries of what we know before aggressively drilling in the abyss.

You can find my thoughts on why Hillary lost and what Michelle Obama represents to professional women over at Twenty Set.

Gloria Steinem spoke on a moderated panel at the California Governor’s conference this fall. At one point, moderator Farai Chideya asked feminist Steinem what her little 9 year-old girl self would say to the other panelist’s 9-year-old girl self.

In the ensuing discussion, Steinem suggested that “who you are at 9 or 10 is who we are at 60.” She noted that young kids at nine or ten have absolute clarity about their passions. They’re climbing trees and exploring the world and haven’t yet added the word impossible to their vocabularies. Tweens are “full of wonder.”

Given I’m in a major career transition, and have spent more than a year struggling with the notion of what I should do versus what my passions could fuel, Steinem’s comments gave me pause.

My inner child

As I hit middle school, I became thoroughly obsessed with social activism, in particular, saving the planet. I read about recycling and ocean pollutions and worried endlessly about the plight of sea turtles eating plastic bags, which is probably why the Santa Monica Plastic Bag Monster stunt tickled me recently.

While communities were just beginning to offer curbside recycling programs, our family always had the most recycling bins out in our neighborhood. In fact, my mom’s best friend used to tease her about the extent of our recycling: stacks of newspapers; bundles of junk mail and magazines; glass, aluminum and tin bottles, jars and cans.   Though I realized that one family recycling wasn’t putting a dent in the landfill problem, I dreamt of a day when everyone recycled as much of their garbage as possible.

In the 5th grade, I also began to realize that not everyone was equal, which lit my interest in social justice, as well as equitable and utilitarian treatment of all people.  I wanted to be unwaveringly fair in my actions, not just self-serving.  I sought to do what was right for everyone, even if it meant a temporary dip in my own life.  My experience staying silent while another kid was tease mercilessly for being different definitely contributed to that philosophy.

Full Stop

But I hit the metaphorical brick wall in high school.

At fifteen, I helped lead the charge against a 6-community referendum to break up a school district.  Adults rallied support for break up of the district using socioeconomic snobbery and even mock seances — yes, seriously.   After forming a student group, we attended public meetings and canvassed the neighborhood, though derided by local school administrators and parents on the other side.   The teenagers fighting the referendum spent hours in the library researching the economic and social costs of breaking up the district; in reality, more regionalization made fiscal sense than less.

And we fought the good fight.  I remember the day one classmate approached me and told me that she could never do what I was doing, but she was 100% behind me.  Someone needed to take a stand, it just wasn’t going to be her.

But we lost.  And the district was dissolved.  Ironically, the prognostications of teens came to be.  Over the next five years schools taxes shot up, the performance of the athletic teams (with slimmer pickings) diminished, and the number of courses offerings declined.  While we were satisfied to be right, we wished we had been wrong.

A few tiny details slammed the breaks on activism for me.  Afterwards, a story trickled down through the ranks.  A lot of favors were owed all the way up to the governor’s office. One way or another this district was being dismantled, even though it completely contradicted the Governor’s very public support of regionalization to streamline costs throughout the state.    When people questioned the legality of using a referendum to dissolve the district, all copies of the district charter mysteriously vanished.

Powerful forces beyond our control worked hard to ensure the appropriate “democratic” outcome. The people were squelched.  The little guy was silenced.  The power brokers made a decision, and the die were set.  And at 15 and 16, I just wasn’t ready to maneuver the shady back room dealings of politics. Though I fight fair, I hadn’t yet accepted that most at that level are just playing to win. It’s personal, not community- focused.

Waking up

This year,  I  found my spark again.  Watching Obama’s team out campaign the GOP made me realize that I am no less capable of gaming the system in the name of the greater good. Sometimes you have to play by the other team’s rules just to get in the game, but you don’t have to dump your own values in the process.

Excessive volunteerism allowed me to develop the skill sets I need to reconnect with activism.  I’ve revisited the development and ongoing review of the strategy that can take me from A to B.  As much as I hate public speaking, I’m more comfortable rallying the troops and inspiring people to act than anytime in recent memory.  And I’m well-versed in the nitty gritty of data management and manipulation.

At the moment, my search is on for the right opportunity to splice with my aptitude, because I’m pretty sure that who I was at ten is who I’ll be at thirty.   What feels like a quarterlife quagmire seems to be me coming full circle.

But enough about me; take your own trip down memory lane.  What motivated your ten-year old self to act?  Who did you want to be when you grew up? Are you there yet?

Thomas Jefferson said:

“In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.”

“It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party.”