Underconsumed Knowledge Underconsumed Knowledge

Much politically-minded discourse today argues in favor of censorship to combat “misinformation,” and ultimately, against the spirit of The First Amendment of The Constitution of the United States.  Amongst mainstream outlets, there is a paltry defense mounted in favor of the First Amendment.  So, as a starting point,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The idea of democracy is that The People rule.  Today, this remains the First Amendment’s most compelling defense, even if our supposed self-rule may seem suspect at times.  If the United States is a democracy, free discourse must be allowed to exchange and flourish.  That we have actual lawmakers at the Federal level calling for internet censorship is an atrocity.  If it turns out that the United States is, in fact, an oligarchic dystopia and not a democracy, how then are we to fix it?  Should The People want review-panels at Facebook, bribed Congress-people, or both making calls on what is and is not accurate “information?”
How do you fix problems you can’t talk about?  Therein lies the problem of any form of speech regulation or censorship.  In Thomas Edsall’s recent NYT op-ed, political scientist Richard Hanania is quoted as saying,
Women are having more of a role to play in intellectual life, so we’re moving toward female norms regarding things like trade-offs between feelings and the search for truth.
Whether or not you agree with Hanania’s assessment of truth being a non-female norm, there can be a hard-heartedness to the truth.  The truthful answers to a lot of questions in life are not always pleasing or pleasant, if someone honestly answers.  Furthermore, teasing out the truth is not always a straightforward task.
If we are to care for one another as human beings, and indeed, to run our own government, free discourse is tantamount.  If answers to questions are written off before they can be asked, potentially correct answers dismissed from the get-go.  “Blaming the victim” suggests that everyone with a problem is always a victim of some external cause.  If potential suggestions to fixing problems (personal or political) are deemed hateful Wrongthink (things which, “You just cannot say”), how do We The People run the government and regulate ourselves?  If it is deemed “racist” to suggest that the Coronavirus could have originated in a lab in China, a strong contender for the virus’ origin is eliminated.  If it is deemed “marginalizing” to suggest there is a strong correlation between methamphetamines and homelessness, potential solutions to fix homelessness will remain forever feckless.
The idea that words can cause harm is easily brushed aside by brash types like Joe Rogan.  Yet, the pop-psychology books I read offer compelling evidence contrary to this dismissal.  But the diagnosis and the prescription are two different things.  The lifeblood of a liberal democracy is freedom of expression.  Without it, the road to Orwell’s Oceania is but a blip in the history of humanity.  In the words of Jonathan Rauch, “[T]he liberal intellectual system, whatever else it may be, is not ‘nice.’”  Some might retort, “Well, it should be nice!”  But therein lies the problem; some third party then gets to decide what is nice and what is not, and potential avenues for problem-solving are off the table.  And in the blink of an eye, the oligarchy that already basically controls everything actually controls everything, and life becomes a permanent afternoon in line for Josef K. at the California DMV.
“Words aren’t violence, violence is violence” is thus a more nuanced statement than it might seem.  In a liberal democracy, words must never be violence, by definition.  If wor

This is an interview with Andrew, a fellow car-less cyclist, who rode his bike from his current home in Santa Monica, California to the opposite coast where he is originally from in New Hampshire.  I thought the photos of his trip were amazing and wanted to learn more about it from him.  Here is the link to Andrew’s trip photos and all his trip stuff: https://linktr.ee/andrewsbicycletour. Andrew just started riding a bike as a means of transportation less than five years ago, and I think his cross-country story is incredibly inspirational. “I think a lot of people think they can never do something like that. It sounds so difficult. And as flippant as it might sound, it was surprisingly not that difficult.” Listen to our talk above and be sure to check out Andrew’s own trip photos as you listen along.
Andrew’s mother in her mid-sixties did over 800 miles with him! From Ohio to New York:



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Yesterday I saw a re-run of Jerry Springer on a television at a restaurant. The episode was about "Sex With a Pregnant Stripper."
This led me to do some Googling about Jerry Springer, and I discovered that he delivered Northwestern Law School's 2008 Commencement Speech. I couldn't find the video online, so I have reverse-transcribed it to audio. The text is hosted on Northwestern's website. It regards life, ethical considerations, and the American Dream.
Forty years ago this week I sat where you now do, degree in hand, the prestige of this great law school on my résumé and, perhaps immodestly, a real sense of achievement in my heart, but no sense of what my future would be or if in fact there would even be one.
Please understand, I was not alone in my uncertainty — for this was 1968, and America was unraveling.
Our cities were burning, and Vietnam was beckoning. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was about to be, and within a few months and a few miles from here, Chicago would explode around the dysfunction of the Democratic National Convention. I remember thinking that our sheltered existence at law school, however prestigious, seemed totally detached from the chaos that consumed the world outside.
There were 190 of us in my graduating class, and believe it or not, only two of the 190 were women. Of the 188 men, only one was African American. As a class we were too white, too male and too privileged. And though it certainly took too long to change, what comfort it is today to look out at all of you and see the racial, gender and ethnic diversity that really is America.
But as happy as I am to look out and see all of your faces, I understand there are a number of you who aren't too happy to see mine.
To the students who invited me — thank you. I am honored. To the students who object to my presence — well, you've got a point. I, too, would've chosen someone else. But once asked it would've been kind of arrogant, or at least unappreciative, for me to have said "no." So, here I am.
I've been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers, but let's be honest, I've been virtually everything you can't respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major market news anchor and a talk show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we're all going.
Let's assume that your prime discomfort with me is based on the ethics of what I do for a living. Well, that's a fair question, worthy of a serious response. I can tell you with some confidence that you, too, will likely deal with these very same ethical considerations, no matter what path your career takes.
Surely, in every one of my chosen professions there were ethical "red flags" rising virtually every day. When I was Cincinnati's mayor, there were two or three issues I really wanted to focus on. But how much would I compromise on other legislation just to get the votes I needed on my priorities? And how much pandering would I do to the voters, rationalizing that if I didn't get re-elected I wouldn't be able to get anything done?
Then for 10 years I became a journalist — perhaps the most ethically challenging profession of all. You see, I knew that 90 percent of what's in the paper or on the television news, we don't really need to know. And yet, how often do we go with a story anyway because it will make a great headline, sell papers or drive up ratings, even if we know it might embarrass or hurt the business or career or family or reputation of the person we're reporting on? That is a daily ethical question that I can tell you is almost always ignored.
And then, of course, there is my profession now as host of a crazy talk show. Well, at least I can rationalize that the show is only open to those who really want to be on it, and they get to choose the subject matter, what is revealed and what must not be revealed. Even with this I grapple with ethical questions.
What about t

This is the audio version of a blog post I wrote in May 2021.
Everyone eventually reaches a point in life where the need to question assumptions arises; this may manifest in different ways at different points in life.  Whenever I pass the apartment nearby my girlfriend’s house where the teenager loudly plays the electric guitar, I like to joke, “You don’t understand me, mom!”  My girlfriend says the teenager and the mother actually seem to get along quite well.
A lot of people might look around in their twenties and say, “Why are all these people doing this?” Or, they might pose this question’s twin sibling, “Why am I not?”  Cultures, beliefs, assumptions evolve over decades, centuries, millennia.  The end result for beings who can think and feel is, ultimately, the perpetuation of the human race, the reward of evolution.  So, if you feel like something is “missing” or if you aren’t happy, maybe it’s time to take a step back and evaluate, because evolution doesn’t necessarily reward us with happiness.
Karen Horney was a psychoanalyst.  I, decidedly, am not, nor am I a psychologist or a therapist; I’m just a person trying to figure things out.  I excitedly read Karen Horney’s 1950 book Neurosis and Human Growth after finding it as a footnote in another book by a social psychologist named Carol Tavris (I would recommend both her books Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion and Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)).  I really liked Neurosis and Human Growth, though I am told by Dr. Tavris, whom I emailed about it, that psychoanalysis has fallen out of vogue and is quite dated.  But, I still find a number of things Ms. Horney has to say to be extremely compelling.
She talks about our expectations of life, of others, and of ourselves, dubbing this, “The Tyranny of the Should.”  This is how things “should” be, as we esteem them, as individuals, societies, and cultures; I “should” be doing this, you “should” be doing that, you “should” be treating me a certain way.  She illustrates what she calls a “neurotic claim” (Dr. Tavris also informed me psychology students today would no longer use the word “neurosis”) with an example about a train not being available when she wants to take it, and the resulting frustration that can result.  The train “should” be available at 2:30PM, when I want to take it; how stupid that it is not available then!  Certainly some injustices in our day-to-day life are more grave than others, but when you learn to see how you think about little things such as the dawdling pedestrian crossing the road or the driver who is having a hard time parallel parking, you can start to calm down a bit and go through life giving other parties a bit more benefit of the doubt.
People often assume they are omniscient, as any connoisseur of Fox News or CNN might notice.  We think we have all available facts, that if you just do X, Y, and Z, life will fall into place, and a magical happiness and utopia will result.  And in a lot of ways, if you do the things you “should” do, you might be setting yourself up for success.  But, evolution didn’t reward human happiness; it rewarded the conditions that led to seven billion humans on Earth, a number that has increased over 10-fold in the last 500 years.  If you’ve ever been to the natural history museum, humans are really old;like hundreds of thousands of years old.  So, you don’t have to be a math whiz to gather that modernity and civilization are, relatively speaking, kind of a new thing.
In light of this, if you are feeling unsatisfied, unfulfilled, unhappy, maybe that, actually, makes quite a bit of sense.  Modernity isn’t quite as soul-crushing as history was, so we have a lot more time to think, take it easy, and ponder what exactly is going on.  If you are feeling “something is missing,” maybe a personal re-evaluation of your philosoph

Orwell explains in 1937 the disposition of the typical “socialist” living in England, and why it is so many people become averse to socialism because of these people alone, comprised of bourgeois intellectuals who have no actual affinity for the working classes, and working-class scribblers who work their way into the intellectual literati but are so hostile to everything that it seems they just want to burn it all down.  Orwell questions, what is it these people, these “Socialists”, really want?  When they seem to have no love for their fellow man.  He suggests that, for many of them, socialism is a way to institute control on society, to implement order amongst those who do not share their cultural values.  Orwell begins with descriptions of working conditions for miners in Industrial England, whom he went to live among and observe; it sounds like very difficult and back-breaking work, indeed, and their living conditions do not sound so great; many went without luxuries such as sheets, taken for granted across the world today for many years now.  In the second part of the book, he gets to the meat on class and the reigning economic order of things; though I believe his beliefs that central planning and “socialism” are not the answer, he thoroughly explains issues of class, and why it is that socialism so quickly morphs into Fascism.  He explains how the average socialist does not see what socialism would actually be as truly revolutionary – which, it is, in theory.  The socialist, whether he is of proletarian origin or middle-class, imagines a World much like the existing one, except one maybe with less poverty, but still having the pub down the street, and the corner store selling all the wares you would want.  In England, the bourgeois classes would disdain someone more “conservative”, who spoke of the superiority of England to other nations; but those same people would speak of the superiority of their own region in England to the other regions as if it were nothing.  He outlines how little actual commitment to the idea of brotherhood and love for one another there is amongst the ranks of socialists, hateful men such as George Bernard Shaw who disdain the non-intellectual classes, and whose “radical” ideas “change to their opposite” at the first sight of “reality.”  He explains the typical middle-class socialist as a 1937-era stereotypical Ultimate frisbee-playing type hippie, a “Sandal-wearer” who wants to go around doing yoga and ordering others about.  As Dostoevsky points out, the normal human response to such a person is to give them the middle finger and to tell them to pound sand.  If you look beyond the fact that Owell was not an economist, his argument is really that we ought to love our fellow man, which is in essence his argument for socialism.  His illustration of class difference points out the inherent fact that humans have values.  These value judgments are made from the conservative religious classes to the woke vegan-cheese eating, Prius driving classes.  Orwell really argues for the need for mutual toleration, at the very least. 
* “A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role.  He does not act, he is acted upon.  He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that “they” will never allow him to do this, that and the other.  Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union.  I was told immediately that “they” would never allow it.  Who were “they” ? I asked.  Nobody seemed to know; but evidently “they” were omnipotent.” 
* “A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants... “educated” people tend to come to the front... their “education”