American Individualism

In discussing Burke’s conservatism, Mr. Norman argues for the importance of the social, cultural background of society, as against the focus on individual liberalism - we are social animals, not individual maximizers. Norman argues that we have tended to overemphasize the individualistic assumptions, and one big way we do this is through social science itself.

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In 2010 the anthropologist-economist Joe Henrich and his colleagues showed how vast tracks of social science research are, in their provocative term, WEIRD - that is, based on samples drawn from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies. Not only that: there is a specific focus on American undergraduates, who are routinely tapped as experimental subjects by their universities.

Yet, as Henrich and his colleagues point out, Westerners, specifically Americans, and in particular American college students, are very different from the rest of the world, even to other Americans. They tend to be more egoistic in how they perceive the world, more independent in how they seem themselves, more confident of their own views, more analytic or rule-based and less holistic or situation-based in their reasoning, and more selfish in how they bargain. They are the most evidential source of most recent research in the social sciences, and they are probably the most individualistic people on earth.

-- Jesse Norman, “Edmund Burke: The First Conservative”

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Sunday Morning

Lunch time is upon me. It is well after eleven, and I did not even begin reading my book, nor managed one inky lick of writing. I did finish up a book-post, but it seems that I wasted another morning just catching up on LJ and reading the New York Times. If LJ were not so moribund, this might not be so bad, having conversations with people, including hot women, who I thought were my friends. But LJ is all but buried; so, what am I doing? Is this not a precious waste of ever more limited time. Of course, working on the Three Journal may not be, objectively speaking, all that much more of a meaningful way to spend my life. Regardless, I am thinking, again, that I need to re-prioritize and forget about LJ and even the New York Times, and at least give all of my mornings to writing and …

What about the reading? I actually feel tempted to think that my books should take a backseat to my writing. It is very late in my life, and maybe I should focus more on getting down what I have done, rather than trying to learn new stuff. However, I am not confident about this. It is not like I am writing a novel or even a haiku, or anything for publication; it is not that important. Reading books, on the other hand, always feel enriching. Isn’t that sense of enrichment what it is all about?

Maybe this is a false issue. It is not like I have the concentration and patience to give all of my mornings to one thing. 45 minutes on this and 45 minutes on that should be fine.

Maybe this is the way my afternoons should be, too. As for the blogging and the news harvesting, maybe I can shovel that into that drowsy time period between lunch and my afternoon nap, and I can wrap it up after dinner, when I am groggy and thinking about diving into bed.

I don’t suppose it really matters. I am just looking for a formula that makes me feel a little better about myself. I do know that a morning like this leaves me feeling terribly empty, and I have too many mornings like this. Fooling around on LJ and looking through the news feel like narcotics: it is a pleasant enough way to kill time, but that is all it does - throw away time that grows more precious every day.

The Natural World

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Was Shakespeare an Atheist? (6)

The article closes in the way all considerations of Shakespeare's private live and thoughts must: in mystery. A lot of us suspect that Shakespeare could have been God himself come down to play among the mortals for a spell and show us how it's done.

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