Thoughts and Times of Paul Zube

A friend of mine recently posted an Asimov quote: “Science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” This is true for a number of things, but this has been recently been salient to me regarding anger and how people cope with it. I’m entering a point in my life where those around me are struggling with this in a variety of their relationships; romantic or not. Unfortunately, the best behaviors that my friends have are the strategies that they developed in high school, and that’s not good enough. 

I believe that this is the case because as a society, Americans do a poor job talking about private and negative aspects of life. We appropriately shield young children but forget to stop shielding them. As young adults, we’re mostly on our own, and humans do a poor job of figuring life out in isolation, yet this is what we do for issues like sexuality, anger, mortality, etc.

One place that we can turn is scholarship. The fields of communication, psychology, social psychology, and even philosophy discuss how human beings interact and strategies for dealing with conflict. Communication looks at message characteristics in conflict, but also conflict focus. From this we know that blaming never works and that all manageable conflict focuses on the issue at hand, not the people involved. Once you start saying “you do this, you do that,” conflict is over as far as it being productive. Psychology has accurately identified that holding on to anger and bottling it up is a terrible thing to do. But people frequently forget the other element of that which is that one cannot just spout anger and express it as one pleases. Anger needs to be expressed, absolutely, but should also be expressed in a non-harmful way to others. This second element we often forget. 

What is particularly interesting to me is how often people mix anger and alcohol. I enjoy a good drink or two, but that’s because I’m with friends in a good mental place. Alcohol is a mood booster in terms of it boosts whatever mood you’re in. If you’re mad, sad, or in other tough mental spaces, alcohol boosts your feelings of intensity with that as well. If you’re fighting, having a drink will only make that worse. This seems to be particularly the case in romantic relationships. I’m currently watching too many couples with otherwise minor conflicts destroying one another because they drink and fight. One does not have to be an alcoholic in order to allow alcohol to negatively impact your life. 

Anger is not poison. Anger is a naturally occurring emotion, and it’s an important emotion. We should all get angry. We should all get angry and engage in conflict, particularly with those that we love. But we can do it knowingly. The American Psychological Association has a useful guide (linked here) that might be a good initial resource for those that are interested. I like science and I like human research, it helps us (or should) become better as a society and better as people. I cannot help but also look to the Dalai Lama for guidance as well, and so I’ll end with a meaningful quote from him that is also pertinent to the issue of anger and managing it: “My religion is kindness.”

lessig:

@jxchristopher writes of my latest piece in The Atlantic:

jxchristopher: Unusually partisan for you, Professor @Lessig - you’re much more persuasive when striking at roots rather than branches http://t.co/R856ldSV

It is true, the piece is, and it was difficult to write because it is….

Recently, a student passed this link on to me about rational reasons not to vote. It’s a well written article and worth reading. I’m planning on refuting it, though. I’ll do that in the next few days to a week, but I wanted to get the link out there because it’s important to have this kind of dialogue in our democracy. Participation isn’t mandatory (like it is in some countries), so people should have a solid reason for or against exercising their right to vote. So, enjoy the read and we’ll see how my rebuttal goes.

Why Vote? by Mark Brandly

That’s pretty much it today. There are some arguments out there not to, but I plan on addressing them tomorrow. For today, rest assured in knowing that voting is important, worthwhile, and also makes you feel good.

Hi blog, how have you been? It’s been a while since I have posted. I’ve been incredibly busy. I’m working on 4-5 projects at the moment and also there is all of the teaching work I have been doing lately. Perhaps most important has been my dissertation stuff, which sadly has received the least amount of attention.

Anyway, as a quick update, I gave the keynote speech for the Lambda Pi Eta induction. Lambda Pi Eta is a honor society for communication. I was pleased to deliver what I thought was a pretty good speech discussing the value of grades. Relatively short speech even shorter, grades matter in terms of feedback, but they’re not that important. Learning is what you’re actually trying to accomplish, not getting a grade. 

Critical information consumption has been on my mind lately. In fact, one of my students is going to be giving a speech about this in class, so that should be exciting.  The major concern is that we are surrounded by more information than we ever have been in the history of our species. It’s not all good, but if we don’t treat information as potentially suspect we flounder with what is true and what is more accurate. As a society, this is problematic because we make bad choices regarding who represents us and what we want to do. See climate change policy as an example. We don’t all have to be climatologists to consume this information. However, it appears that because experts demonstrate something means that it’s still up for debate. That’s troubling. Why have studies or experts if they’re information regarding that topic is then undervalued? We all have the freedom of speech, we all are entitled to our opinion, but we are not all free to be entitled to be right. In some instances, we’re wrong. And it takes critical evaluation of information to know this about ourselves. Others can persuade us, but we persuade ourselves best of all. It’s a sign of maturity and intellectual sophistication. Regardless of our “station” in life, it’s something we should all possess. 

My public speaking classes are all PEP (political engagement project) classes this semester. That means they’ll be doing political topics (I’m broad about that). I think that this is important considering my belief that college is more than about producing employees. Today my classes did a speaking exercise and the topics were: Politics are important to be part of, politics are worthless to be a part of, democracy is good, and finally, democracy is bad. These are tough questions and I didn’t expect answers…or even good answers at least. What I was surprised to hear is that my students stated that they didn’t know anything about politics (even basic stuff) and therefore they didn’t like them and thought it was something they wouldn’t do while also stating that politics are important. First, I thought most states had some sort of required politics class in high school. Second, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this response, but I was anyway. I was also surprised, however, when other students had a public discussion about how everyone needs to at least know something because everyone’s input is needed. Maybe the future isn’t so bleak.

I ended the the conversation with something along the lines of “I’ll be ok if you’re not part of our system, even though I don’t want that to happen. But if you’re not going to be part of our system, make sure it’s out of a place of knowledge where you are choosing not to participate. You shouldn’t make that decision from a position of ignorance.” Hopefully that makes an impression too. 

The semester is about to start so expect me to be inside a little more often and updating this blog more often as well. My presentation went well and I will likely link to here from here once it goes online. Let the semester begin! 

In order to prevent the summer lull in productivity that often sets upon me, I created a writing group with some of my colleagues. This idea was originally inspired after I read Paul Silvia’s How to write a lot (2007). If you are interested, here is a link to a book review as well as a link to the APA’s site regarding the book. 

The objective of this writing group is to have a weekly meeting between people working on writing projects (it’s pretty open regarding what counts) and providing feedback, support, and the necessary social pressure to keep us on task. Silvia argues that people can do a pretty good job of making excuses when they are writing alone. I have experienced this first hand, so I know where he’s coming from. I invited several colleagues, some of whom I thought would be interested, some I wasn’t sure about, and others who I doubted would come but thought were worth inviting anyway. 

So far, the group has been working pretty well. There are 3-4 core members who are there just about every week. It probably helps that we meet at a local pub and on Monday (it’s a good Monday break). Even though we are mostly from different disciplines (Art History, Communication, & Philosophy) the interactions have been informative and helpful when writing. I think it’s helping with the social pressure part; I find myself hitting more of my self imposed deadlines than I normally do after all. It’s also helped me think about problems from a different perspective which is always useful as well. I have some amazing colleagues that do great work with excellent project ideas! They may not always think this, but there is a lot of scholastic talent here that’s not always been tapped. The students of these professors are incredibly lucky to have such thoughtful teachers. I’m sure they don’t see it that way. 

Anyway, for any potential readers doing some type of writing in their life, I highly recommend forming a writing group. Silvia writes that writing as a practice is not easy. Although this is true, I think the process of writing is easier when it’s not lonely and solitary, but instead supported by others. It takes commitment to do this, as does anything worthwhile, but I think it’s paying off. We’ve even thought about creating an “Accomplished by” space to show off what we collectively have accomplished. Publicizing success is always a great motivator as well. 

This is just a quick post to remind me to write about the following things. A) Difference between summer and non-summer semesters. B)Teaching a new course….again. C) The writing group I co-created and how that’s working out. D) Movies and why they are awesome. E) Organizing my Connextions (it’s an on campus conference) presentation about academia and citizenship. And finally F) balancing new scholarship with re-reading “classics” or other important texts…..maybe. Anyway, for those of you that actually read this (1 if any), I hope all is well in your world. Sorry I’ve sucked as a blogger (thus why the likely readership of 0).

Just a short little post here (I start teaching my summer class in about 40 minutes), but I wanted to share the good, the bad, and the ugly from the GLCTL this last weekend. This is the first time that I have attended a conference without being a presenter, so it was an interesting and different experience.

First the good. There were several presenters that did a great job of describing how learning works in varying detail and how to utilize that in the classroom. Perhaps the most fascinating has a link to the slideshow here. Others did presentations along similar lines that were equally enlightening.

Now, the bad. There were also several presenters that followed the “I did this once and it worked” model of presentation. That’s not terribly helpful. There’s nothing generalizable about that. It’s frustrating when a session sounds like it is about to be good and then it falls flat on its face because it’s just a series of anecdotes.

Finally, the ugly. Being at a conference always generates conversations among attendees about what they do. This is the first time that I got negative feedback when I shared that I liked to do research and think that it’s an important part of being a professor. Not just “oh, I don’t”, but honestly negative feedback. For example, by doing research I am hurting my students’ educational development. This was a first to me. Now, I know that there are some faculty out there that do not concentrate on the teaching components of their job, but I don’t think that it negatively impacts learning. There are great researchers that are ok teachers. I would rather learn in an ok way from a great scholar than learn great from a hack. Just my preference I guess. I know that I also have research colleagues that look down on teaching professors. That’s equally problematic. Research and education are not mutually exclusive and we need to stop a) treating it that way and b) creating incentive structures at universities that encourage such a divide. Sadly, I’m in no position to solve this problem. I will continue to do research, however. I will continue to teach my students the best way that I think is possible while maintaining boundaries also. It’s what I like about this job. I get to do 2 (ok, 3 when you add in service) types of jobs at the same time. Now, if only we valued the difficulty of that job. We sure do respect professors, but we don’t always pay them that way. The same goes for any teacher really. Anyway, post done, next one coming relatively soon. 

This topic has been salient to me recently. Perhaps my position is unique because I work at a university and am part of an Arts & Science college that is most often the home of “general education” courses, but I believe that there is an increasingly prevalent mindset that the end goal of education is solely to be an employee. This mindset has manifest itself through the experiences of some of my colleagues, the discourse about general education at my university, and an increasing distrust of educated people who are not “professionals” such as doctors and lawyers. I’m concerned with this trend due to my interest in politics and political engagement as a research topic, but also because I’m a citizen. Without an educated citizenry, all the things we hold dear about democratic governance is essentially lost. That’s the gist, so if you wanted a short read, that’s it. Diatribe upcoming, so if you keep reading, hold on to your hat.

University Manifestation 

Currently there is a periodic review of general education requirements at my university. This is just a routine review process that happens at most universities. There are always pragmatic concerns such as “is my college going to lose out? Will we have to cut professor positions?” and other stuff like that. However, this time around, there seems to be a push from colleges not often considered “general education” (e.g. business, technology) to allow those colleges to handle the general education of their students. This would mean that instead of taking logic or ethics, students would take business ethics or business logic. That seems well and good, but it’s problematic when you consider that these fields have a specific and non-general take on those topics. Why is that problematic? Because students get one perspective and are put into knowledge silos when general education is handled within that students major college. Part of being education, in my opinion, is the ability to perceive differences of perspective and identify similar and dissimilar themes among them. That’s a useful “skill” for citizens even though it’s not a skill that might be useful as an employee.

I have a colleague who recently experienced this mindset in her class. In an essay exam for an art history class, a student replied that the question and the course was a waste of time because “in these economic times, things from the past has no value.” This should be a concern for everyone. When people don’t appreciate our cultural heritage, be it through history, art, literature, etc., we are doomed as a society that no longer creates or thinks. This should be considered a problem by employers as well. We are in need of thinkers more than anything else. Instead, we have students and parents who just want a set of skills. This benefits no one. 

It is particularly concerning because unlike in decades past, the current group of undergraduate students will likely have multiple careers, not just jobs. Employees no longer stay with one company for the duration of their working lives. This may require different skill sets and the ability to be flexible. In my mind, this is exactly what a liberal arts education produces; people able to learn on their own, demonstrate critical thinking, and be flexible in their thought process. A “jobs first” mentality strips this away. A recent book, Academically Adrift, found this lack of critical thinking skills as the result of higher education. This was particularly the case in jobs oriented fields. This isn’t surprising to me, honestly. If you are never challenged to think beyond your interest, how can you develop the ability to examine yourself and the world around you critically. This leads to my next point relatively well.

All Knowledge is Valid Knowledge

Let me first start with a disclaimer: I have not done research on this topic and my views are shaped solely by anecdotes and informal observations. What I have seen, however, is a general lack of an ability to take in new information, think about it, and come to a decision. The first two steps are pretty much handled. This is a good thing. John Stuart Mill argued that a free society should be open to unlimited free speech. He argued for this because good ideas should be continually tested against bad ideas. With the increase in cable news and the internet, there is no lack of ideas floating around in the public. What’s missing; however, is the ability to test these ideas in a logical, reasoned way. We have reached a point where because someone believes something, that makes it true. The ability to believe or articulate a perspective is very important, but we are missing the critical thinking skills that allows us as a society to determine what is good and what is not quite as good. A contributing factor is the decline of liberal arts education, at least in my opinion. Philosophy is essentially about testing ideas. Why are these good, why are these bad? The study of art history creates this skills. You need to be able to explain why you think feel art is good, because you’re saying what works for you or not. These may not seem like important things in our daily life, but like any skill, applying critical thinking requires practice. Instead, people believe things because someone told them to. They do things because their boss told them to. These are sometimes important things to do (I for one would like to keep my job), but it shouldn’t be the only way in which we believe or behavior. This is where it gets back to a public concern. Democracy works when there is free speech and an earnest debate regarding the value of the ideas expressed in those ideas. When we as a society are unable to follow or contribute to that debate, then democracy fails to function. I’m a social scientist, I recognize the various ways we make decisions. It’s not always egalitarian critical thinking. It shouldn’t always be. We would be overwhelmed by the amount of information and decisions we have to make. We do, however, have to value important decisions. Work is important. Acquiring work skills is important. But being a citizen is more important. Thinking about the collective goods for society is more important. The encouragement of being an employee first with employable skills above all else is incredibly problematic for our way of governance. We need to be engaged. I can study and help promote systems for that. But we also need to be able to use critical thinking skills. I can also teach this, but we need to have structures that support this. Education is more than an accumulation of skills. Education is life changing. Education makes you think about who you are, why you think what you do, and who you do things for. This is the heart of liberal education. We should support that. We should encourage employees to have these skills. We should require it. General education requirements with a good dose of “the humanities” sought to do this for students once. We should fight for them to remain or increase. Instead, the humanities are under attack. Perhaps it’s a bit hyperbolic, but I believe this is leading to our assumptions about being a citizen being under attack as well. I, for one, am concerned. 

Physicist Geoffrey West, as quoted by Jonah Lehrer in The Cost of Creativity (via visualturn)

Anonymous asked: Since you brought up the subject of unhappy marriage, I have another similarly related question. Dating. What is it that men look for? Do you prefer to make the first move?

That’s simple. If you’re interested, make a move. There is too much pressure on asking “the right way.”

So this post was difficult to title. As a child who lived through a divorce, I’m not really a fan of it. For me, marriage is a very important institution that brings happiness and stability to the lives of those involved and is worth fighting for and protecting. No, I’m not coming at this from a religious perspective. Marriage is an institution created by and upheld by humans. It’s a good institution though. As a side note, it’s such a good institution that it should be extended to all who want to have it’s benefits.

That being said, I seem to be disproportionately exposed to the worst marriages at the moment. I do have some friends and relatives with wonderful marriages that I would be happy to emulate. However, several friends and relatives are in terrible marriages, and I feel like I have stumbled across an interesting dynamic. I may be late to the party, and it’s not really my research area so I won’t pursue it but it appears that it is particularly difficult for woman to leave bad relationships/marriages. Yes, this is reflected in popular myths: “Nice guys finish last,” “Woman love bad boys.” I think this is beyond that, however. Woman seem able to leave relationships that aren’t working for a variety of reasons, but only if the person they are with is understanding and a good person for the most part. I’m not suggesting that if the guy is nice enough to leave you should stay. Sometimes relationships with good people still don’t work. What I’m suggesting is that the reason woman (and perhaps men, I haven’t seen that dynamic as much) don’t leave relationships, marriage in particular, when they are afraid of the person they are with. We as people tolerate a lot because of fear. And we, as a society, do a lot to support this fear.

I have a few examples in mind when I think of this. I have a family member who’s husband steals, has incredible substance abuse problems, and generally, seems unhinged to the point where physical violence is likely. She doesn’t like him as a person, their children have both left the house as soon as they could at 18 (the son at 17), yet she won’t leave because she is afraid of a)what society will think and b)of him. To me, this is a clear cut situation where she should leave. I also think it’s a situation where even people who believe in marriage would support her decision.

It’s a little less clear in my other examples. Whenever physical abuse is a potential, we as people seem to be on the right side of the issue. When it is psychological or neglectful abuse in nature, we don’t notice it as a much and put a lot of pressure on people to stay. Some of this has to do with what I’m going to cavalierly label the Mad Men effect. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a glorification of marriage in the 70s where men ran the show, the wife was an object of status, and mistresses were a pretty common object as well. As a media scholar, I don’t think this show has created this dynamic, but there has been a notable increase in hostility towards women as people. I’m not sure where it is coming from, but it’s there. Woman are increasingly being treated as objects as they were 30 years ago.  These are the types of marriages that I also think should fail, but there is a lot less  societal support for this. The examples I have in mind here are two friends, that I’ll mix the situations together to show what I mean. Their husbands may not be out and out having affairs, but they are certainly open to it and somewhat pursing them. They’re not going to turn down women when their wives aren’t around. It makes them feel younger, more powerful, or more relevant. I actually believe that in both cases at least one affair has happened, and in one case there is a strong likelihood that multiple affairs have happened. It has nothing to do with the woman they are married to or pursuing. They are just objects that they feel entitled to. 

This entitled dynamic I think is worth exploring a little more also. Recent research has found that the widening gap between rich and poor has also exposed an interesting gap in morality. Those that have more tend to do more cheating for financial gain, lying for status gain, and are more likely to at least inappropriately flirt because they deserve it. That’s why Tiger Woods did what he did, he was entitled. It’s why our politicians often get caught having affairs. It’s a troubling dynamic.

On a smaller scale, however, this mindset seems to have filtered down to our views on women in general. It bothers me when my male students seem to believe that women are money hungry sluts. It doesn’t help that major political talking heads perpetuate this feeling. These are the type of men that women shouldn’t marry. And my concern is that there are more men like this and more women trapped in these relationships by fear. If these woman brought these issues up, I’m certain that they would be met with terrible repercussions. Friends who should support them point out how much material stuff they would be giving up. That they’re getting older and no one would want to be with them (I hate this one in particular because I have a few friends who feel this about themselves as a result). Then there are the real consequences. People who view the world in this way and are challenged are willing to do vindictive things when they have the opportunity. 

I also have friends who are married and are separating. Both of them are incredible people. They have mutual respect for one another. As a group of friends, there is a great deal of confusion as to why they are getting divorced. We don’t know the issues, so that’s not fair. Why I use them as an example is because neither is afraid of the other. I’m sure they have some very difficult issues, but they respect each other which seems to make the divorce possible. The other examples I have in mind (family and friends) seem to be much better candidates for divorce in the first place, but because of the fear that makes those marriages problematic: physical abuse potential, vindictive mental abuse, a willingness to try to destroy the lives of others, they will remained married. And there is a society structure around them that supports the continuation of these marriages. This post was a bit brainstorm oriented and may not have flowed as a cohesive thought, but perhaps I was able to convey somewhat what I have been seeing and how troubled I am by this. Even as a person who truly believes in what marriage is for individuals, families, and society.