The American citizen thus lives in
a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has
more dignity than the original.
(Daniel Boorstin, American
historian)
Blissfully ignorant
Watching the United States commit its
self-inflicted unraveling (budget and debt ceiling nonsense being
merely two of many reasons), ought not to give any real comfort to
those outside the U.S. Waiting in the wings to “take over” is
nothing to make one gleefully optimistic.
The Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently issued its 2-year study,
which included 23 countries and thousands of adults. The study tested
for skills in literacy, basic math and technology. We Americans—along
with the British--didn't do so well, especially in technology and
math. See blow for the actual results.
One of the many things the study
concluded is that poor educational opportunities in school as
children continues on through adulthood. Inequality of access to good
education is “harmful” to adults, and the increasing inequality
in America is only making things, overall, much worse. While a lot of
information that is in the study may appear to be obvious and the
correlations striking, it clearly has not translated into any wide
scale public policy changes. If anything, we're going in the opposite
direction in the United States.
The DNA thing
Shortly after the OECD study came out
an interesting article appeared in the NYT entitled, Are OurPolitical Beliefs Encoded in Our DNA? The article was about the new
field of genopolitics, which this blog has written about previously.
Did my genes make me do it or was it all my mother's fault? I will be
surprised if we don't see more articles about this subject, outside
of scientific journals.
The science however, as the article
points out, is only in the earliest stages and disagreements abound.
To say the least, it's complicated. Political scientists have now
joined the field along with evolutionary biologists and molecular
geneticists. Will we have to understand human biology in a
“sociopolitical context.” Did the human brain develop to solve
social problems—which are political? But as Thomas Edsall, the
author of this article points out, “If genopolitical analysis holds
up under continued scrutiny, its explanatory potential is enormous.”
Edsall is right. A better
understanding of all sorts of conflicts in the U.S. and across the
globe is absolutely essential if we humans have any real chance of
succeeding as a species. The “chickens” are coming probably
sooner than we think.
Additional Reading:
