The other Sunday, I was finishing up my morning walk/run with the crazy sweet Aussie-Saluki some two blocks from home, and the church bells rang the hour.  A few minutes later, as we passed the church, I saw cars speeding in and people hurrying into the church.  A block later, people were still hurrying to the church [not my church, since I confess to being a less than diligent congregant at another one]. Once upon a time, I was indeed a most religious young man, president of a church youth group and an acolyte at services every Sunday. Consequently, I had the chance to observe just how many people were late to services, and, frankly, late-comers were rare, extraordinarily quiet, and invariably their body posture reflected a certain discomfort. I doubt I saw as many late-comers in all the years I served as an acolyte as I saw on my walk on that single recent Sunday morning.

This observation got me to thinking, realizing that lateness and/or lack of interest in punctuality has become an increasing staple in our society.  When my wife produces an opera at the college, there are always between twenty and fifty attendees who come in after the first break, and that doesn’t count those who struggle in during the overture.  When we attend local concerts, the same thing is true.  More and more college professors I encounter relate their tales of students who cannot seem to arrive on time, and some have had to resort to locking doors to avoid disruptions from late-comers.  My wife even got a jury notice emphasizing that, if she were picked for jury selection, she needed to be punctual or she could face a stiff fine. This morning, in the paper, there was a story about a surgeon who was late to a court appearance — and who was imprisoned when the judge was less than impressed.

What exactly has happened to a society where cleanliness was next to Godliness and punctuality was a virtue?  And where even professional people who should know better don’t?

Oh… I know this is a western European-derived “virtue.”  When my wife did a singing tour of South America, no concert ever started “on time,” and in one case, the performance actually started more than an hour after the announced time because there was social jostling among the “elite” to see who could be the most fashionably late… as if to announce their power to make others wait.  And I have to confess that I tend to have an obsession with being on time because my father almost never was.

Still… what is it about being late?  Is it because, as our lives have gotten more and more crowded [often with trivia], we have trouble fitting everything in?  Is it because, with an internet/instant communications society, each of us feels more and more like the center of the universe, and our schedule takes precedence over that of others?  Is it merely a way of demonstrating personal power and/or indifference to others, or a lack of caring about the inconvenience being late can cause to others?  Is it a symptom of the growing emphasis of “self” over others?

I don’t have an answer… but I do know that I think most uncharitable thoughts about late-comers to anything, apparently oblivious or even enjoying the scene, whose lateness disrupts everyone else’s concentration and enjoyment… or even more important activities, like judicial proceedings.  And I seriously doubt I’m alone in those thoughts.

The December issue of The Atlantic Monthly contains a rather interesting article [“I was wrong, and so are you”] by Daniel Klein, a conservative/libertarian, who had published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in June of 2010 arguing that, based on a study that he and another economist had earlier conducted, liberals/progressives had a far poorer grasp of basic economics than did conservatives.  Right wing and conservative groups trumpeted the results, and comments on the study were the second-highest of anything published in the Journal for the month in which it was printed. Klein’s in-box was also filled with messages suggesting that he had rigged the study.

After considering the reaction and the criticisms of the analysis of that study [which had been designed for another purpose], Klein and his co-author designed a second study specifically for the purpose of evaluating the accuracy of people’s economic perceptions and comparing their political outlook to the accuracy of their economic views on various issues.  To Klein’s surprise, the second study indicated that [astonishing] that all across the political spectrum of the respondents, each group was equally wrong when evaluating the accuracy of economic statements at variance with their political beliefs. As Klein wrote, “the more a statement challenged a group’s position, the worse the group did” [in accurately evaluating the statement].

In short, in all cases, respondents were less accurate in economic judgments that conflicted with their underlying biases and views, and the greater the conflict, the lower the accuracy.  What was even more interesting was that the level of education seemed to matter very little or not at all.

To me, all this was scarcely surprising, but what was surprising was that, while scholarly reviewers found the new study accurate, there was essentially no public or media reaction to the release of the results of the follow-up study, even though Klein was very clear in declaring that the new study invalidated the results of the earlier work.  Given that the results of the second study were also at variance with Klein’s own political predilections, it would seem likely that there might be at least more than polite notice of the second study.

There wasn’t. The few academic/critical reviewers who did comment essentially said, “there’s a lot of confirmation bias out there.”  The conservative/right wing types have said nothing, in contrast to their trumpeting the earlier [and incorrect] work, and there seems to be little liberal reaction either.

In short, we all want to hang on to our biases, even in the face of information to the contrary, and the more that information challenges what we believe, the more strongly we dispute it.

Is it any wonder Congress can’t get anything constructive done?

One of my smallest granddaughters is enchanted with the “aps” on her mother’s smartphone [she can’t be enchanted with mine, because I only have a new version of an old-fashioned cellphone], and everywhere I look or read, there’s another “killer ap.”  And I don’t have a problem with “aps.”  I do have an enormous problem with what they represent… in the deeper sense.

The other week, I was reading an article about the difference between inventors and “tweakers,” and one of the points made by the writer was that, in general, initial inventions seldom are what change society.  It’s the subsequent “tweaks” to those basic innovations that make the difference.  Bill Gates didn’t invent the personal computer, but the tweaks provided by Microsoft made it universal.  Steve Jobs was a superb tweaker and marketer, and those abilities led to the I-Phone, among other commercial and societally accepted and successful products, and all the smartphone clones that are changing communications patterns in technological societies.  And, of course, killer aps are another form of tweaking.

But… as I’ve noted before, for all our emphasis on tweaking and commercialization, we’ve seen very little development and implementation of basic technological innovation in more than a half century. We still generate the vast majority, if not essentially all, of our electricity based on 1950s (or earlier) principles; aircraft and automotive propulsion systems are merely tweaked versions of systems in use more than a half century earlier, and we don’t travel any faster than in 1960 (and actual travel time is longer, given security and other problems).

In some areas, we’ve actually shelved technology that was superior in performance to currently used technology for reasons of “economic efficiency,” i.e., cheaper. That tends to remind me of the ancient Chinese and the Ptolemaic Greeks, and even the Romans, who never implemented technological advances because slaves or servants were cheaper.

Take Burt Rhutan, one of the most prolific and dynamic aircraft designers of the past generation.  What I find most interesting is that for all of the technical success of his designs, few indeed have ever resulted in being produced in large numbers – and it’s not because his aircraft are particularly expensive [as aircraft go, that is].

Of course, all this raises the question of whether we’ve reached the effective limits of technology. This issue was raised more than a century ago, when some U.S. luminaries proposed closing the patent office because there was nothing new to discover.  It certainly wasn’t so back then, but all the emphasis on tweaking and commercialization I see now raises that same question once again, if in a slightly different perspective.  Have we hit the limits of basic science and technology?  Or are we just unwilling to invest what is necessary to push science further, and will we settle for a future limited to “killer aps”?

I hate sticky traps. But sometimes, there’s no recourse, not when the rodent hides in crannies where the cats can’t follow, and in spaces where it’s impossible to place “humane” or regular traps.  But sticky traps create another problem – and that’s what to do with a living creature that looks at you with fearful eyes.  Despite having seen the damage mice can do when uncontrolled, I still hate having to dispose of them.  But it takes days to clean and sterilize the mess even one mouse can leave… and, like other creatures that sample domestic comfort, mice that are released have this tendency to return.  So I have a simple rule with various pests – stay out of the house, and I’ll leave you alone.

In the aftermath of the rodent, however, I was reading a commentary by a reviewer on “ethics” and whether characters by various authors lack ethics when they kill without showing remorse and angst, even when those they kill are people who, by any reasonable standard, are truly evil.  Since some of my characters have been charged, upon occasion, with such behavior, I couldn’t help thinking about the issue.

What it seems to me is that the issue for all too many people is either whether the “killer” feels sorry or concerned about his acts or whether the acts take place in a setting where the one doing the killing has “no choice.”  And over the years, I’ve realized that, for many, many, readers, the ones who are dispassionate or don’t feel “bad,” regardless of the impact of their actions, are generally considered as bad guys, or antiheroes at best, as in the case of Dirty Harry or others, while the good guys are the ones who reluctantly do what must be done.  If a protagonist doesn’t show reluctance… well, then he or she is either a villain, soulless, or an anti-hero without true ethics.  Part of this attitude obviously stems from a societal concern about individuals without social restraints – the sociopaths and the psychopaths – but is it truly unethical [and I’m not talking about illegal, which is an entirely different question, because all too often application of the law itself can be anything but ethical] to kill an evil person without feeling remorse?  And does such a killing make the protagonist unethical?

How can it be more “ethical” to slaughter other soldiers in a battle, other soldiers whose greatest fault may well be that they were on the “other side,” than to quietly dispose of an evil person on a city side street?  Well… one argument is that the soldiers were ordered to kill, and no one authorized the disposal of the evil individual.  By that reasoning, Nazi death camp guards were acting ethically.  Yet… we don’t want individuals taking the law into their own hands.  On the other hand, what can individuals do in such a circumstance when the law offers no protection?

These are all issues with which we as writers, and as citizens, must wrestle, but what bothers me is the idea that, for some people and some readers, the degree of ethics rests on the “feelings” of the individual who must face the decision of when to use force and to what degree.  Was I any more or any less ethical in killing the rodent vandalizing my kitchen because I felt sorry for the little beast?  It didn’t stop me from putting an end to him.  Isn’t the same true in dealing with human rodents?

And don’t tell me that people are somehow “different”?  With each passing year, research shows that almost all of the traits once cited as distinguishing humans as unique also exist in other species.  Ravens and crows, as well as the higher primates, use tools and have what the theorists call a “theory of mind.”  The plain fact is that every species kills something, whether for food, self-defense, territory, or other reasons.

So…perhaps a little less emphasis is warranted on whether the feelings about the act of killing determine whether the killing is “ethical” or not.  Admittedly, those characters who show reluctance are certainly more sympathetic… but, really, should they be?  Or should they be evaluated more on the reasons for and the circumstances behind their acts?

At the end of the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the protagonist says something like, “Insanity is doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result.  All of us are insane at times, but what happens when more and more of us are insane at the same time?”

Recent off-year city council elections here in Cedar City reminded me of this rather forcefully.  Two of the candidates running for re-election were incumbents, and both were handily defeated – and replaced by candidates with exactly the same backgrounds, views, and general attitudes of the incumbents – and those new councilmen have absolutely no experience in municipal government. As I noted more than a year ago, the voters of Utah did essentially the same thing in replacing the then-incumbent ulrea-conservative Republican Senator with an ultra-conservative clone.  In a national politics generally, the Democrats continue to reinforce their ideology and the Republicans theirs, and in general each party is continuing to do the same thing they’ve always done with the hope of a different result.

And that different result isn’t going to happen, because increased taxes [the Democratic view]can’t cover the annual deficit, let alone the debt ; and there’s no way to cut federal programs and regulations [the Republican view] to the degree necessary to reduce massive deficits without destroying both government and the economy.  But both sides resist compromise, and continue to do the same thing… and that is truly insanity, and no one is calling them on it.

From what I can see, this is exactly what’s happening politically in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere around the world as well.

Have we reached the point in society where our illusions mean more to us than the survival of our society?  Where ideological “purity” is all, and practical compromise is a dirty filthy thing not to be mentioned anywhere?

Well… certainly various forms of purity have run rampant before, such as the Nazi effort for racial purity, the endless wars/massacres over religious/ethnic/political purity, ranging from those that plagued Europe for some 500 years, to the Chinese and Russian revolutions, to Pol Pot in Cambodia, to even the Mountain Meadows massacre in Utah.  And somehow, after all the fighting was over, and the hundreds of millions of dead bodies buried or ignored, there were still two sides left, two views conflicting, if temporarily more quietly.  Protestantism and Catholicism still exist in Europe, Ireland, and the British Isles.  The Mormon Church remains predominant in Utah, but it’s far from exclusive, and non-Mormons outnumber Mormons in Salt Lake City itself. Both China and Russia have had to come to terms with capitalism, and right wing racial hate groups still exist, if in far smaller numbers, across Europe.

Perhaps… it just might be well to recall that when “ideals” ignore reality, they all too easily become illusions.  Yet, without ideals… everything is sold to the most powerful or wealthiest.  And balancing ideals with reality is also a compromise… like life.

Insanity is not only doing the same thing time and time again and expecting the same result; it’s also failing to recognize that inflexible adherence to any ideal inevitably leads to unrest, disruption, and all too often… death and destruction… all the time while each set of true believers claims that everything would be fine – if only the other side would realize the error of their ways.