fast and slow thinking? OR? Bourgeoise psychology??

I've been reading Daniel Kahneman's book "Fast and Slow Thinking".

Of course, it's a good book, worth reading.

But I have this doubt. Kahneman is discussing the danger of jumping to conclusions. That part of our mind/brain which works quickly is prone to make predictable mistakes. The book (though I've not finished reading it) gives a variety of examples.

But, so far---and I'm only into the early chapters--Kahneman seems to make a typical or characteristic USA fallacy: blaming the individual and ignoring social forces. Well, K. doesn't exactly "blame" anyone; however the book is aimed at the individual and ends with sentences that can be used to describe the problem as it arises. To be honest, I think the problem cannot be solved without more autonomy in the workplace than is currently imaginable. We need something like "participatory economics", or more democratic workplaces. And we need good public transport. Moreover, people should work fewer hours and be freed from the worry of paying for health insurance. If and only if all of those social changes are made, I predict, can the real message of K's book be put into force. If it is simply left up to individuals, that just won't be enough.

In other words, many people live lives burdened by too many demands, in the workplace, at home, in traffic. I wonder if Kahneman is going to discuss what we, as a society, can do

to prevent a tendency to rely upon quick and dirty but inaccurate and systematically prone

to error heuristics (intuitive thinking).......

I've discussed this before in the context of advertising, where I really was only developing some remarks made by Keith Stanovich....

I'll try to have a future post in which I tell you what I find out as I read further into this valuable book. It is important that I add and stress that: early on K. promised to discuss some more social issues in a later chapter. But even if there is a later chapter devoted to that, I wonder if the book is not individualistic in its orientation. (Quick Quip: Hell, Man! He's doing psychology not sociology! ---Yes, but, the problem I'm talking about is that the USA, as a society, is inclined to ignore the social; and to that extent, this book--no matter how valuable it really is----may be feeding into that tendency.)

Okay. Maybe; maybe not. These are just first thoughts. "teda uvidime..."

El Paso, Texas: Weather Report

no beauty

nothing beautiful to be seen

nothing

US Postal Service

I had a conversation the other day with a mail carrier.

It seems that in addition to his regular work, he is now asked to deliver mail for an extra route.

Exactly why this has happened is not clear to me. It is partially due to illnesses and absences among the other mail carriers.

However, he described one important detail. He was being given two hours work, but with a supervisor's note or official document describing it as an extra 1.5 hours.

In other words, the supervisor is stealing from those whom he supervises.

The guy suggested that the supervisor intended to get the mail carriers moving more quickly,

and that it would be impossible to carry out 2 hours of delivery in 1.5 hours.

On the other hand, there is the case of my mother complaining that the local mail carrier has been dropping mail at the wrong address. Not hard to explain if supervisors are pushing the carriers to work faster.

This smells. It is exactly the same as speeding up an assembly line.

I have to add one comment.

It is easy enough--or natural in the USA--to focus on individuals. That would be a mistake. It is not a question of one bad supervisor. There is a real system here. And until that system is changed, the individual efforts of individual workers or supervisors or bloggers won't make a big difference.

I know people who might say that I am advocating "fatalism" when I say that. But it would not be fatalism unless I said the system is inevitable; and it is not. It exists because a small number of powerful people benefit from it--not because it is in any sense an efficient or just system. On the other hand, there is a powerful ideology or secular religion which confuses people--especially in the USA--and makes it impossible for them to see their actual situation. One component of that system of confusion, that ideology or secular religion, is a focus upon the individual, and a concordant denial of the existence of social forces, or systemic forces. This makes it literally impossible for them to understand their own lives. Where something exists and has effects, they are literally blind to the thing itself or its effects. It is a cruel fate to be blind in that way, but it is a common fate. (I much prefer to live among a cynical people than a blindly optimistic individualist people.)

Easy and Hard

In a capitalist plutocratic class society like the USA:

If something is good for you (like health insurance or education or public transport)

Then it is HARD and TOO EXPENSIVE

If something primarily benefits the ruling class (like imperial wars) then it is a

necessary expenditure

If something is easy to do (purchase of low quality consumer items produced

in sweat shops) then it primarily benefits the ruling class.....

There is a logic to this evil system.

30 October 2011

The misery which is the United States has never been adequately described.

There are hints and suggestions of the reality here and there.

But no artist has yet had the courage or the skill to get into the cage with the ugly beast.

in passing

About two years ago--just before I began my enforced exile in the leading exporter of violence--I recall there was a military coup in Honduras. The democratically elected President was escorted out of the country by a bunch of thugs--roused from his bed early in the morning.....

Just before the coup, the President had expressed a desire to raise the minimum wage. (So-called "minimum wage" because we know that these wages are never something anyone can really live on.)

Recently, in this desert outpost of a cruel empire, I have done a little browsing in the shops. I have been horrified and disgusted to notice that most of the clothes for sale seem to have been produced in Honduras.

So, in the USA, when we shop, if we purchase, say a t-shirt or a sweatshirt, we are supporting a military dictatorship. The problem can't easily be solved by a mere consumer boycott because we cannot simply stop purchasing things----bananas, underwear, coffee, etc. Whatever you name, it's been produced in an exploitative manner. Our very lives are purchased at the cost of someone else's misery.

I don't think that is a good thing or anything to be proud of. Quite the opposite.

misery in the USA

The disaster which is the USA' s Don't-Care Medical system is ugly in countless ways.

Young doctors sit enshrined behind countless support staff, seeing the elderly and crippled who struggle to travel to the doctors----instead of the more logical idea that young healthy doctors should travel to their old and frail patients.. And then in El Paso, Texas. U.S.A., at any rate

(where unfortunately I am now trapped),.....nine out of ten doctors' offices are located in

buildings without proper handicapped access...

And then there are the all-knowing supervising visiting nurses, full of impractical suggestions, and totally unattentive to the fact that three people living in a crowded house constitute a complex living arrangement which one interferes with only at the risk of destroying a functional system of operation....something one shouldn't tinker with unless one studies it carefully first....

But, no, our visiting nurse-supervisor is full of impractical recommendations and suggestions made without any advance thought about the particulars of our situation.... in other words, suggestions made in ignorance of the actual situation.

Would that she had studied anthropology and learned something about the complex patterns of cooperation which can emerge among small cooperative groups, patterns not readily visible, and patterns which shouldn't be disturbed casually.......

No, I have nothing, absolutely nothing good to say about this nurse-supervisor. She seems to pull isolated facts from the lectures she attended as a student or from something she has read, and then use them to assert her (wholly imaginary superiority---but, then, she is better paid than those who deliver essential services, those who she has the job of checking up on----do you sense disgust in my voice? Indeed this sort of hierarchy and the poor pay of those doing the real work, yes that makes me sick....).....

No, I have nothing, absolutely nothing good to say about this Don-t-Care System .....

After-thought:

Among decent people, you don't keep someone waiting for two hours...and, if you do, you apologize. Not so with doctors.....