This just might be a bonnie day. Not perfect mind you, but better than the last few. When you get ORFish and crotchety and such week out days are irrelevant because they are always miserable even in good weather. Especially in a town like Greater Metropolitan Arab that closes its senior center on weekends. But yesterday was entirely too windy and didn’t turn middlingly comfortable till almost dusk. It was a shiver day.
There was a bit of rain this morning but more to be ignored than endured, and while I managed to (probably) sprain my ankle at gym this morning it is a minor strain, if that, and the day portends to be passable. It smells well.
So in this vein we can nudge a couple of tabs and perhaps find something fulfilling in them. The first is an article [Link] from Stanford U that looks at interdependent behavior among humans, specifically, Amerikan humans. Examples of interdependence include disease vector control (everything from getting a flu inoculation to covering one’s mouth when sneezing,) to recycling. An out-of-context quote merits reproduction,
“the researchers found that white American participants were less motivated to persist at these challenging tasks when ideas of interdependence were brought to mind.”
My first thought, hearkening back to yesterday’s blot, was ‘why isn’t this racism?’ Evidently it isn’t racism even when the commentary is negative when “Caucasian” people are being discussed. But is making that assessment itself racist? It might be.
Since the researchers only described the sample population as Stanford U students, with no indication of further characteristics, we may infer that the population had some sort of ethnic mixing but we can infer nothing about anything else, especially the proportions of bogs to geeks to nerds. The message that the academics want to convey is apparently that the descendants of founding father types don’t like interdependence.
Two views can be advanced here. One is that some humans are better than others at recognizing the interdependent nature of society and civilization and have internalized it. Another is that some people are less able to survive in society without overt dependence on others. Alternately, a view may be that we are forced to be interdependent by the nature of modern society but independence is worth sacrificing for.
None of this type of consideration is forthcoming. Is the absence of analysis racist?
I am even entertaining the hypothesis that the assumption that students are representative of the general population is inaccurate. In popular terms, college is when students express their independence. Yes, this is most pronounced among those who are naturally independent, such as introverts and nerds, but absent any demographics of any form that factoid is orthogonal.
Why would this be stronger among pinks?[1] Could it be because they have to work a bit harder to individualize themselves? Or is it really because only pinks really value independence?
On a more practical and personal basis, I have to admit to being repulsed by interdependence. Nonetheless, I recycle, part of the about 0.4 in Greater Metropolitan Arab who do. I do it because it makes sense for the species but I avoid thinking of any social interaction. It’s general altruism, not partying, which is so repellent as to be unspeakable. I get a flu inoculation because I have had the flu and I don’t want it again, and I cover my mouth when I sneeze because (a) my mother programmed me to, and (b) it requires less clean-up after the fact. Getting mucus out of keyboard crannies is odious. And despite being a Linux user I do have anti-virus on my box so I don’t serve as a malware vector. But that’s not about interdependence, it’s about not being nekulturny. And I get a lot of kidding from other Linuxites about being nice to MegaHard serfs and Fruit slaves. Just because they’re neuroneg doesn’t mean they’re asentient.
Anyway, bottom line is that it might be that this is a type of thinking that is not universal. The implication in the journalism is that Amerikans are evil, which sound suspiciously like social engineering politicization propaganda. So how is this different from diversity?
[1] “White” people ain’t; they’re pink. And that has nothing to do with being socialist leaning.
Simple Country Physicist 