Pesky unecological habits

William James once wrote that "habit" functions as "the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent." (Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, p. 121). With regard to transportation, I'd like to think that I've taken care of more bad habits than most people. For instance, on most workdays, I commute by bicycle, and it's a 10-mile round trip (my odometer just rolled to 14,000 miles, accumulated over 11 years). Although I don't often go on trail rides for fun, I do ride 5-miles to work, 5 back home again, 5, 5, 5, 5 . . . . I also pride myself on walking one or two mile distances every few days, distances many people would insist on driving. A couple days ago, I was buying a replacement hard drive at a local computer store. After coming out of the computer store, I decided to pick up a few food items at a Trader Joe's that was located about 100 yards away, across a big parking lot. It occurred to me that I should get in my car and drive the 100 yards in order to shop at Trader Joe's, and I almost did get into my car for that purpose. Then it occurred to me what an absurd thing it would be, so incredibly unhealthy, to not walk 100 yards. To fail to walk would be to turn down a chance to get the blood flowing--free exercise. After scolding myself, I walked briskly across the lot, which took all of one minute, and then wondered how it ever got to be this way that anyone would consider driving such a short distance. I took a photo of that "long" walk after returning to my car (see below)--I wanted to drive the point home with an image, to remind myself that it should never be an option to drive a car 100 yards. Never. Yet I know that numerous people would have driven 100 yards rather than walked. It's part of American culture to waste fuel and avoid exercise. distance-to-trader-joes I used to live next door to a family that often drove their cars 1/4 mile to the nearby church and school, even though they were perfectly able to walk. I often see another neighbor taking almost 45-minutes to cut his small lawn with a power mower. He's needlessly out there breathing 2-cycle engine fumes three times longer than necessary. What gives? For some people, I think the problem is that they forget how to walk fast. Walking fast turns walking into a bona fide mode of transportation (the Obama Administration has recently recognized this). I know people who will always wait for elevators rather than walk even one flight of stairs. The St. Louis County, Missouri, Courthouse escalator has been broken for a few months, and I have seen dozens of people dragging their bodies up a single set of stairs as if they were about to die. I know what the problem is: they are not used to walking up stairs. Much of the time, these people weigh 50 - 100 pounds too much. Two-thirds of Americans are not physically active on a regular basis, and one-fourth get no exercise at all. Two-third of Americans are overweight or obese. It's so easy to slip back into bad habits, especially when in a hurry. We've designed our environment so that it's easy to not walk and it's too easy to eat lots of high-calorie non-nutritious food that we pop into our mouths with or fingers while we watch television. Anyone looking at our situation and our physiques from the outside would immediately know that we are living an unhealthy/dysfunctional lifestyle. It's not just a matter of opinion. I think that I'm getting more and more tuned to these issues of bad eating and poor exercise because I've been watching a fantastic new show called Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (on ABC). Check it out, and you'll be amazed at the dozens of hurdles we put up to keep ourselves and our children from being healthy. It's truly mind-twisting. And I've decided that Jamie Oliver is one of my heroes, and I'm not alone in this thinking--he was recently awarded the 2010 TED Prize. You can watch the Food Revolution trailer and all of the individual episodes on the Internet here. It's time to get angry about the way that we are abusing ourselves and our children, just like Jamie says on his show and at his recent TED lecture--it's time to join Jamie's revolution. Give just 20-minutes to watching this video and get angry enough to do something. Talk it up with the people you care about.

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Unordinary wedding photography

I've seen a lot of ordinary wedding photography, much of it from high-priced photographers. So have you. While riding in a plane from St. Louis to Los Angeles two weeks ago, I found myself sitting next to a man named Jon Abrahams. After a bit of conversation, he mentioned that he photographed weddings. I thought I knew what to expect. A few seconds later, after he showed me some of his images on his iPhone, I was a believer. I rarely find myself fully engaged when looking at wedding photos, even when the subjects are people I know, and especially when viewing the photos on a tiny screen. Jon's photos were unusual, however. He works the genre harder and more elegantly than most wedding photographers, in order to get artistic shots that nonetheless capture the mood. Jon, who often flies hundreds or thousands of miles to shoot weddings, kindly gave me permission to print the images you see at this post. His website offers a slideshow featuring many additional images. I hope you enjoy these images (including "The Last Supper" photo, below) as much as I did. last-supper

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Woody Tasch discusses destructive economics

In this three-minute video, author Woody Tasch compellingly illustrates that "Economic growth is not synonymous with well being." In fact, much of what we call "economic growth" is destructive. Woody concludes: "We can't just continue to grow our way out of our problem. In fact, 'economic growth' is often destructive.'" My strategy is to disparage the ubiquitous media reports that applaud when the GDP is "up," or when the "economy" is humming along. Those numbers assume that strip mining is better for the economy than conservation measures. They assume that rampant crime is better for the economy than fixing many of the root causes of crime-- e.g., the "war on drugs," injects violence into drug use and "allows" us to hire a lot more police officers, whereas decriminalizing drugs might cause the loss of law enforcement jobs. The many commentators who fetishize the GDP embrace a principle that prefers a violence-ridden police state. We need to dramatically shift our focus from measuring numbers of dollars flowing through the system to (admittedly more difficult task of) measuring the real quality of life.

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Sam Harris on objectively measurable moral progress

Within a tradition that extends backwards at least to David Hume, many people insist that science is utterly incapable of telling us what we ought to value, and that science is thus unable to weigh in on moral issues. This position has often been referred to as the naturalistic fallacy--the claim that what is "moral" can be defined in terms of natural properties. In this highly-engaging and wide-ranging TED talk, Sam Harris argues that this is a dangerous illusion, because whether humans are experiencing "well being," and whether communities "flourish" clearly depend on facts. He argues that questions of values reduce to facts about the brain functions and specific social circumstances of human beings. Science is thus relevant to values, and as we move further into the future this will be ever more obvious. Harris paused to make it clear that he is not claiming that science will necessarily provide answers to all values questions. He is not claiming that those trying to decide whether to have a second child, for example, will turn to science. On the other hand, meting out corporal punishment on children (which is still allowed by the laws of many southern states) raises a factual question: Whether inflicting pain, violence and embarrassment encourages positive emotional development. He also points to the wearing of burkas under threat of physical punishment as a practice that can can be factually analyzed as not likely to improve well being. Harris doesn't offer a single recipe for a "right" or a "correct" way to run a society. Rather, he suggests that the moral state space consists of many peaks and valleys; there might be many right answers, in addition to many wrong answers. This multiplicity of approaches doesn't mean that there aren't factual truths about the better and worse ways of achieving social well-being, however. He repeatedly makes the point that science has a lot to say about morality, and there is no good reason to be non-judgmental when the facts scientifically show that a particular practice leads to social dysfunction. In many human disciplines, some of the people weighing in are so ill-informed that their opinions shouldn't count at all -- not every person has a right to a wide audience on the topic of string theory. The same thing goes for moral expertise. Those who insist that the best thing to do when their young daughter is raped is to kill her out of shame lack moral expertise. Those who would behead their son because he is gay in order to keep him from going to hell do not have moral opinions that should count. There are right and wrong answers regarding questions of human flourishing (this can increasingly be fleshed out in terms of brain function) and "morality" relates to a specific domain of facts.

It is possible for individuals and even whole culture, to care about the wrong thing. It's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that lead to needless human suffering. Just admitting this will transform our discussion about morality.

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The other side of black holes

What happens to things that fall into black holes? Here is an admittedly highly speculative head-twisting suggestion published by National Geographic. It offers an explanation "certain features of our universe deviate from what theory predicts, according to physicists." I see that Science has reported on the same theory by the same scientist (BTW, his name is Nikodem Poplawski, and he works at Indiana University in Bloomington).

A long time ago, in a universe much larger than our own, a giant star collapsed. Its implosion crammed so much mass and energy together that it created a wormhole to another universe. And inside this wormhole, our own universe was born. It may seem fantastic, but a theoretical physicist claims that such a scenario could help answer some of the most perplexing questions in cosmology.

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