How to React When You've Been Wronged

Colombia's new President, Ivan Duque, will come to office facing a population that suffered hundreds of thousands killed by rebels who now are allowed to hold public office under the terms of a 2016 peace accord. Instead, many of his wronged constituents want retribution for crimes against their families.

     In The Monarchy of Fear, Martha C. Nussbaum writes about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the valid anger he faced as a leader of once-enslaved African-Americas in the United States. She also sees anger growing among those whose standard of living is threatened by automation and outsourcing of jobs, while others thrive from globalization.

     When President Obama was asked to deliver the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa this year, he too reflected on the way globalization and technology can benefit the rich and powerful while facilitating inequality. But he reminded his audience about how Mandela responded: 1) to his over 20 years of captivity under an apartheid structure that defined the artificial domination of whites over blacks by studying the thinking of his enemies, and 2) to his election as President of South Africa by abiding by the constitutional limit of his presidential term and by not favoring any group.

     Obama acknowledged, IT IS HARD to engage with people who look different and hold different views from you. But you have to keep teaching that idea of engaging with different people to ourselves and our children, he said.

     Each of us has to hold hard, as Nelson Mandela did, even while he was in prison, to the firm belief that being a human entitles each of us to a human inheritance. All people are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, Obama reminded his South African audience. What flows from that firm belief in the equality of rich and poor, woman and man, young and old, and every other human difference is Mandela's conclusion: "It's not justice if now you're on top, so I'm going to do the same thing that those folks were doing to me, and now I'm going to do it to you."

     Nussbaum expresses the same idea. Saying something is wrong and should never happen again is valuable, but deciding to fix it by making the doer suffer is not helpful. Put another way, an African-American, speaking on a panel at a forum, observed it is more productive to go forward with an attitude based on the Civil Rights movement than an attitude derived from slavery.

     Once you concentrate on your own value as a human being and that of all other humans and vow not to repeat past failures, there's hope for a better future.

   

   

   

AI Only Provides Opportunities for Rich People. Really?

     "He fixes radios by thinking!"

     The book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! recounts this answer a man gave someone who saw the Nobel Prize winning physicist walking back and forth, when he was supposed to be fixing a radio. The book also tells how Feynman learned trigonometry by reading a book he checked out from the library, when he was eleven or twelve.

     I was reminded of these items when I read a July 7, 2017 article (theverge.com) by James Vincent. He cites studies that conclude people from working class and poorer backgrounds lack: 1) the ability to retrain for AI and robotic automation, and 2) the "soft skills" of communication, confidence, motivation, and resilience. Job losses and inequality will increase as artificial intelligence eliminates the administrative positions that have traditionally enabled these employees without higher educations to move up the corporate ladder.

     Yet, I remember the way the movie Hidden Figures showed a woman who made a contribution to the early US space program learned computer language from a library book, and I began to question the inevitability of this prognosis.

     In another example, a young Muslim woman I know, who doesn't come from a family of means, taught herself to sew by watching YouTube videos. She spent her last year of high school writing the essays and organizing the portfolio she needed to gain admission to the Fashion Institute of Technology.

       During the summer, colleges and universities offer scholarships to programs in a wide variety of fields. During the school year, they sponsor debating, math, computer, chess, and other competitions open to all. And every school is beefing up the STEM courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that prepare students to land positions in fields that have no pay gaps for those from different socio-economic backgrounds.

     The rich cannot corner the market on walking and thinking.

Modern Masculinity

The "Men's Project" at the University of Wisconsin - Madison recognizes how modern masculinity is challenged to keep up with changing female roles. Around the world, women are rebelling against stereotypes that portray them as uneducated and unfit for positions in politics and government, athletic competition, business careers, and military service. Yet many cling to the image of tall, white heterosexual males surrounded by women competing for their attention and approval.

     In this period of transition, two dynamics are at play. While some men ad women have moved on to accept equality of the sexes, others have not. In the United States, for example, research in Lisa Wade's new book, American Hookup, found there are still men (and women) willing to embrace a culture where sex is a no-strings-attached form of fun that favors men.

     Marketers use age demographics to identify male segments, but careful attention to advertising also shows a gradual addition of male lifestyle segments. Loosely based o Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we might label this expanding list of male lifestyle segments as follows:

Philosophers: These men are secure in their manhood whether they are Bill Gates' types or stay-at-home dads. They think each person should do his or her own thing, and they are happy to help those in need.

Top Dogs: These wealthy, good-looking heterosexual players equate masculinity with the constant pursuit of hot women for meaningless sex. They look for wives who support their careers and enhance their status. 

Power Couples: College and graduate schools foster romantic bonds between men and women with similar professional, academic research, and business interests. Masculinity is not threatened in these relationships which are based on equality.

Pillars of the Community: These family me look for ways to serve the community. They coach children's soccer leagues, head organizations that sponsor food drives, enter local politics, look out for elderly neighbors, and attend religious services. Without trying, they meet women who also provide community services.

Providers: For men in this segment, masculinity means men don't do women's work. They don't prepare food, wash and mend clothes, clean the house, or care for children. They don't expect women to work outside the home, and they do expect to sit somewhere drinking a few beers and watching games uninterrupted. Break one of their rules and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and/or emotional bullying can follow.

     Marketers know change is possible. But changing a male's view of his masculinity requires a strategy like one a marketer would use to introduce a new product.

      The new view, such as the fact that a man can enjoy a meaningful relationship on equal terms with a woman, has to have an advantage over the old, and this advantage needs to be demonstrated. Males need to see other men enjoying meaningful relationships with women within their culture and/or by couples they admire. Change also is easier if switching to something new has an element of familiarity. When computers were introduced, for example, keyboards had built-in acceptance, because they had the look of a typewriter. If a brother has had a good, lifelong relationship with his sister or (I'm reluctant to say, because analogies all have limits) a man has the experience of a close bond with a pet, he knows the joy of friendship and intimacy, albeit platonic. Finally, change also requires minimizing risk. That's why marketers provide trial offers, guaranteed return policies, and free shipping. Men could be persuaded to move toward a new view of masculinity, if they would not suffer a financial loss, physical harm, or, possibly worst of all, the psychological pain of people laughing at them.

Maps Provide a Quick Study of the World

You may have heard about all that it takes to make Nutella. Well, the tenth map in the collection of 40 that the Washington Post published on its website (washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/01/13/40-more-maps-that-explain-the-world/) provides a map that brings all the information together. We can easily see that Nutella needs natural resources, such as sugar, cocoa, nuts, from four continents; manufacturing facilities in eight countries;and a global distribution network. That's just a beginning of how much can be learned quickly from the Washington Post's maps.

     Maps also are the subject of the earlier posts, "You Are Here" and "Map Gazing."