Just wondering aloud about the rugged individual's chance at love

Poets, mystics, and romantics talk about love as a loss of self, a transcendence of the ego.

On Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions measure, the US has the highest Individualism ranking in the world.

The US also has the highest divorce rate in the world.

Just wondering about a connection. That's all. I have nothing more to add.

Cynics Alert - Oddly Optimistic Blog Posting About America

Monday night, I flew into Washington National airport about 8 PM. The flight path sometimes goes right over the mall and I find the view inspiring every time. The monuments all lit up. The capitol dome behind Washington's monument. (Okay, Washington's monument is admittedly odd. Could we have erected a more phallic symbol to honor the father of our country?) The Jefferson Memorial aglow along the Potomac River. Then, as I drive south, I again see the beauty of the mall from another angle. It's a view that would have to inspire at least a temporary love of country in even the most jaded lobbyist.

This country is such a fabulously interesting experiment in social invention, such a brilliant bit of daring on the part of the founding fathers. And for all our kibitzing and whining about the way things are (I sometimes think that blogging is the equivalent of talking back to the TV), the results have been unpredictably spectacular.

When this country was founded, in the late 18th century, life expectancy was not even 30 years. Monarchs dictated even your beliefs. "All men were created equal" are among the most revolutionary words ever written.

Tonight, the pundits are analyzing Hillary's win over Barack Obama. Putting aside politics and who one would like to see win, I think that the Obama - Clinton victories are a beautiful thing. The Democrats are favored to win in the fall, so their primaries really do matter. And that a black won the first caucus and a woman the first primary is truly extraordinary.

It seems to give evidence to the claim that we are, indeed, still making progress. For the sake of your blood pressure, take a day to revel in this fact. This country was founded by idealists with a sense of urgency, possibility, and nearly inexplicable optimism. We've no reason to give up on that combination now. History is still being made and this is a fascinating time to be alive.

As American as Baseball & Apple Pie

Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are certainly the most interesting and provocative candidates running for president. I love that Kucinich wants to set up a Department of Peace and that Paul wants us to stop acting like an empire. They have no chance of winning, though, and for good reason. Liberals are more sensitive to market failures and more willing to step in where businesses fail. Conservatives, by contrast, are more sensitive to government failures and are more willing to stop subsidizing failed government programs. But some liberals simply go too far and just don't trust markets, ever. Same goes for some conservatives and government programs.

It's not true that Ron Paul wants to abolish all government or that Dennis Kucinich wants to abolish all businesses. But they both stray close enough to such positions to have earned Americans skepticism and distrust. Kucinich's health plan isn't just an attempt to step in to rectify market failures. He makes explicit his distrust of markets when he says that companies ought not to profit off of illness. It would be hard to pack more misunderstanding about capitalism into a single sentence. Ron Paul basically wants to do away with all government programs save defense. (Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but not by much.) He wants to keep us from the pitiful lifestyle of the Swedes (where the tax burden is over 50%) and imitate instead the enviable lifestyle of the Mexicans (who suffer a tax burden of only 18.5%).

The reason that Paul and Kucinich have never gained much traction in the polls is that the average American - however much he's become disgusted with businesses or government - still fundamentally believes in markets and elections and the results they produce. Most of us have caveats about such beliefs, but very, very few Americans believe in doing away with government programs or company profits. For that reason, the two men who carry suspicion of these two institutions the furthest have found themselves the furthest from the center of the American polity and of any hope for victory. For Americans, disgust with government programs and profitable companies is like disgust with family; it's inevitable but not to be construed to mean they're ready to be estranged. For all their kvetching, Americans love their markets and elections and are not only willing to live with the results but are unwilling to live without them.

Why Americans are More Religious than Europeans

Ross Douthat writes in the latest issue of The Atlantic

Nothing divides the United States from Europe like religion. America has its public piety and its multitude of thriving sects, Europe has its official secularism and its empty, museum-piece churches. Ninety percent of Americans say they believe in God, while only about 60 percent of Britons, French, and Germans say the same. American politics is riven by faith-based disputes that barely exist across the Atlantic, while European debates take place under a canopy of unbelief that’s unimaginable in the United States, where polls show that a Muslim or a homosexual has a better chance of being elected president than an acknowledged atheist.

Americans don't just say that religion is important. We head off to church with greater regularity than our peers in other developed nations, as reported here:

Fully 44 percent of Americans attend church once a week, not counting funerals, christenings and baptisms, compared with 27 percent of people in Great Britain, 21 percent of the French, 4 percent of Swedes and 3 percent of Japanese.
Moreover, 53 percent of Americans say that religion is very important in their lives, compared with 16 percent, 14 percent, and 13 percent, respectively, of the British, French and Germans.

Among the variety of reasons for this, I would put entrepreneurship at the top of the list. I've previously argued that an entrepreneur is someone who establishes a new organization in order to institutionalize a solution to a need or want, and / or to realize a personal vision. By this definition, Martin Luther was an entrepreneur, as was Joseph Smith and John Wesley.

Beliefs, like taste in shoes, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. In Europe, if your particular beliefs don't fit, you're unlikely to translate your belief into religious practice. Within a generation or two, your children and grandchildren are unlikely even to express a spiritual belief. In America, by contrast, a religious entrepreneur is more likely to create a religion that matches your own belief. Supported by a religious practice, your spiritual belief is more likely to be passed on to later generations.

At Adherents.com, they have listed "distinct religious movements and their countries of origin." India and England are near the top of the list, each with six (e.g., Anglicanism, Quakers, Hinduism, and Buddhism). At the top of the list? The U.S., with 11! (e.g., Latter Day Saints, Southern Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Black Muslims, and Scientologists).

If pop music selections were limited to just 50 Cent and George Strait, many people might conclude that they don't really like music. But with today's wealth of musical choices, it is the rare person who can't find something to enjoy. The more diversity we have in music, the higher the percentage of music lovers. I'd argue that the same holds in religion.

In the United States, we've done more to translate our religious dissatisfaction into new religions. I would argue that this, as much as anything, contributes to a higher percentage of the population practicing religion and expressing a belief in God.

The Future of Prosperity - When More is Less

A fascinating post at http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/virtualeconomics/ leads with this:

"Jeff Jarvis is blogging from the Davos world leaders conference, finding (amongst other things) that 53% of Western Europeans think that the next generation will be less prosperous than this one. That's compared to 37% in the US, and just 14% in China."

Why the optimism gap? It could be that the West has an intuitive sense that the model we've been using for more than a century may be appropriate for a place like China but is increasingly less so in the West. China's per capita income is about 5% what it is in Western Europe or the US and Canada, making their perspective very different.

A single scoop of ice cream is nice - two can be fine ... but at some point (3? 6?) the enjoyment turns to nausea. More is nice for those who have little but after a while more becomes less desirable. Many Chinese are only now beginning to enjoy the benefits of prosperity - getting bikes, cars, stereos, and fashionable clothes for the first time. But once they have that, what is the next stage of prosperity? What happens when more is no longer better?

For decades we have confused quantity of goods with quality of life. Given that the prosperity of the last couple of centuries was the equivalent of our first scoop or two of ice cream, this confusion has not been particularly important. But now that we're facing our third or fourth scoop, it is important to make the distinction.

Our economies are still largely geared towards more, towards quantity of goods. Walk through a Costco or a landfill to see how voluminous our appetite for "goods" is. Yet these goods to have are not the only kind of goods. In fact, philosophers distinguish between goods to have and goods to do - considering the goods to do a higher good than those we have. Quality of life is related to goods to have - it is hard to imagine aspiring to a quality of life that didn't include at least some modicum of shelter, clothing, and food - much less those delightful bits of technology like laptops, mp3 players, or cell phones. Yet the marginal utility - the additional joy we get - from more goods (to have) does gradually drop. Eventually, goods (to have) simply do less to increase our quality of life.

Those in the West may well see that we're geared for getting more even as getting more has less and less impact on our quality of life. This may be the reason for the optimism gap between the West and China. Until the West has shifted its economies to more directly go after improvements in quality of life, this sense of pessimism in the West may only get worse.

George: Hero or Villain?

"By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
WASHINGTON Dec 28, 2006 (AP)— Bad guy of 2006: President Bush. Good guy of 2006: President Bush. When people were asked in an AP-AOL News poll to name the villains and heroes of the year, Bush topped both lists, in a sign of these polarized times."

Somehow, this makes a great deal of sense. This is, after all, the USA, land of contradictions. We have more Olympic athletes and more obese people than any other country. We have more extremes of wealth and poverty than any other developed nation. We lead the world in the export of pornography and religion. We are the United Schizophrenics of America.