Are there any particular economists you are liking these days?

Thanks, Aunt Sam.  I feel as though there is so much injustice in the world that no matter how hard I tried, if I had no other responsibilities or desires, I would fail to speak out against all but a small portion of them.  Yet all of us can do something, can act at times and in some ways to try at least to look out for others.  Do you believe all humans have a moral obligation to do so?  Do you have a personal credo or moral code you try to live by?  Does the Niemoller quote sum it up well for you, or come close?

Thanks, stilli. In writing about this shift before you mentioned that one of the things that made it so tough was that just about everyone in your social circles thought about things very differently than you did, and that they treated you at times almost as though you were losing your grip on reality.  That must have been tough.  What helped you stay true to your own course?  Have some of those in your social circles come to accept where you are now on public affairs matters?

Do you go to church sometimes these days, Q?

"Knowing" you from these parts, moat, I'm confident that yours is a perceptive insight. I might be the only one reading it who does not understand it.  But I'm afraid I don't.  I'd like to. Could you elaborate a bit, maybe give an example?

Does agreement with this view (if you do, that is) represent something you have changed your mind about at some point?

Which among God's commandments is adherence to our "whole duty"--the Ten?  As recorded 2 or 3 millennia ago?  Do they suffice, in your view, to constitute "the whole duty of everyone"?  For our times?  For all time that humans inhabit this planet? 

I would grant that if all humans on the planet would just shut up, stop thinking for themselves, and adhere to the 10 Commandments, it is possible humankind would be in better shape than we are now.  I can't help but think it would be a dystopia, however, if all human beings were somehow to cease questioning and forego independent thoughts, even if so. 

None of the above is to deny the deep wisdom contained in the Bible and other canonical religious texts.  I am of two minds on whether the practice of religions taken as a whole has been, on balance, more good than bad for humankind.  I can see, and consider plausible, the case for both views on that.  In any case I think we humans are probably wired at this point to be disposed in favor of religiosity broadly construed (not equivalent to adhering to an organized religion).  The basic impulses that lead us in that direction are deeply part of what it means to be human.  We humans are meaning-makers.  We probably have to find--or create--meaning in order to survive.

Some of the Ten Commandments seem pretty clear cut, regardless of whether one would if pressed today to develop one's own list of 10, put them there, or even privately agree with each of them.  Of course the Golden Rule, which has always seemed a good one to me to at least get a person asking some of the right questions in considering what to do, isn't even on that list. 

To those who consider the Ten Commandments the literal word of God, then even to question any of them amounts to heresy, arrogance, or extreme disrespect, rudeness, or chutzpah, take your pick.  To any I offend with these questions, I mean no offense.  If it were clear to me that there is a God with qualities or characteristics that make it, whatever it is, a supreme moral authority for all things human, that such a God had seen fit to issue such guidance in the form of the Ten Commandments, and that the version that is most widely accepted in our day is literally "correct" in some sense, and not the product of negotiations among fallible humans, some of whom believe they had "heard" somewhat different versions of them, then I might plead guilty on those counts. 

For awhile now I guess I've been inclined to believe it more likely than not that humans essentially "invented" god(s), for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons which also, so far, seem to be unrelated to any broadly knowable and shareable big "T" Truth about the matter.  Since I no more claim to know any of this than I feel bound to accept contrary views because so many of my fellow humans do, that would seem to make me an agnostic and not an atheist, if there is a desire or a need for labels.  Or maybe that makes me a Jewish Unitarian, or vice versa.  :<)

By no means do I think the universe is something we humans, if we survive awhile longer, will come close to knowing everything about, although striving for that will continue to lend meaning, purpose, joy, beauty, and anguish to our lives.  I suffer from no Awe Deficit about the vastness of what humanity including me does not know or understand, perhaps much of which we will never know or understand (infinite universe(s), implications of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, how to get rid of Stinkbugs, why Katie Holmes married Tom Cruise, to name a few). 

We humans are capable of some pretty extraordinary things yet all in all we are notably limited and vulnerable, both as individuals and as a species.  At this point, anyway.  

I used to think that people could be persuaded on the big issues through reason and an appeal to verifiable facts.

Now, I think they are held captive by emotions and deeply held networks or webs of belief and by "proxy" views that make it even harder to sort out what is what.

Like you, I have become more and more impressed by the limits of what reason and oral persuasion through discussion usually yield.  It seems to me that people are more likely to change their minds about things, if they do, as a result of their experiences.  When I consider the civil rights movement, as an example, and how in the hell did that ever happen, a turning point came when Bull Connor unleashed firehoses and dogs on African American children in Alabama, in front of a nationwide television audience.

For many Americans it became just too much of a stretch to believe that children--or in the case of some of the televised footage of marches, bus rides and sit-ins, obviously unarmed and unaggressive individuals who refused to respond to violence with violence--were anything other than victims of outrageous cruelty based on the color of their skin and nothing else.  That seemed to pry open many minds.  Watching events on TV is one kind of experience, of course, one that probably produced much more in the way of changed views than direct participation in those events, which was limited to a relative handful of Americans.

This is why I believe that one or more social movements are necessary if we are to break through the paralysis, to the point where our policymakers are able to actually make some decisions which might lead to significant improvement in addressing some of our most severe problems. 

Democrats--still much more the party of hope, idealism and a belief in the possibility of something significantly better for our country, in my experience--these days usually don't seem to win re-election on the basis of their positive appeal.  Arguably our current system the way it is actually operating for the past few decades makes it all but impossible for them to sustain their initial positive appeal.  It's too easy for the Republicans to block.  And they do.  Rather, when Democratic presidential candidates win re-election it has been because Republicans have overstepped and appear simply too gross and horrible to tolerate. 

In order to win their initial election, Democrats seem more frequently to require a strong "hope" element that appeals positively, and not just a "fear" one.  98% of that seems to be about image creation and symbolism rather than "rational" policy argumentation with the public.  The last several Democrats who won their initial presidential races--Carter, Clinton and Obama--all benefited from generating hope that things could get better, while also benefiting from poor Republican governance and/or campaigns, or circumstances which were seen as bad when Republicans were in charge. 

I wonder whether as many as even 5 or 10 percent of the public has any real desire to try to have reasoned conversations based on public policy choices at stake in elections.  Folks here at dag, who do have such interest, are highly unrepresentative in that, among many other ways, it seems.  And you see just how successful we at dag are at reasoning with one another--occasionally, but not all that often.  That doesn't mean what is written here never changes minds--I know it has in my case at times.  It's just that it's unusual in back-and-forth discussions for one person, publicly here and in the midst of an exchange, to just state that they have been won over to a different point of view.  Things just don't seem to work that way usually.

Thanks for responding.