The author Daniel Foster observed [in Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks] that an epic poet’s protagonist embodied the virtues and values of an entire society while the protagonists of a lyric poet embodied specific virtues accepted as exemplary traits for an individual. Foster also made the point that lyric poets whose protagonists’ values differed as society changed became less relevant and less widely read, as did those whose referents became less familiar. 

While Foster used the Greek poet Pindar as his historical example, his observation, it seems to me, also applies to novels today.  While some fantasy labeled as epic meets his definition, much of current large-scope fantasy presents values often at variance with the idea of a single unified culture represented so often in traditional epic works, and situations where the individual is pitted against the culture rather than acting as its champion against outsiders.

At the same time, over the past twenty years or so in my intermittent teaching and continual observation, I’ve seen that poets of the first half of the twentieth century have been read less and less, and, more important, when read, are understood less and less.  Part of that loss of understanding certainly lies in the loss of meaning of the references and allusions, because today’s young people are such a culture of the present that the majority of them know very little of the culture of as little as a single generation past, and without an understanding of what those references represent, the poetry loses much of its power. Most contemporary verse appears to appeal to shallow but universal feelings, interestingly enough, even as most novels pit an individual against at least some “universal” societal values. 

This trend in contemporary novels also exemplifies a change in basic societal values in the United States, or at least in the idea that there are some basic societal values that trump individual freedom of action. The belief held by many that the right to bear any kind of weapons is one example of this turn away from the idea that a society represents certain universals. Instead, we have ideological splintering, where various segments of society each believes that society should adopt its universals.

According to Foster, the composer Richard Wagner believed that the evolution of the poetic tradition ran from epic forms to lyric and finally to dramatic, where, in the dramatic form, the writer’s protagonists portray an out and out struggle against societal norms while still striving to live out individual virtues – in essence, a totally futile struggle because, in the end, without societal standards, there is no society.

I’m most likely overgeneralizing, but it seems to me that we’re seeing this conflict today in what is being published in current fantasy and, to a lesser degree, in science fiction.  One could actually characterize the fascination with zombies as a metaphor – with zombies representing a dead and somehow alien past that the protagonists are struggling against.  Vampires are a bit more ambiguous.  Are they the blood-sucking past drawing life from the vital present? Or are they the misunderstood new future nourished by the past?  Either way, both sub-sub-genres – as well as that of werewolves – represent a dramatic conflict embodying the premise that a society with unified and widely accepted common values is a thing of the past, and this represents a major change in western cultural values, largely among the younger readers… possibly another manifestation of both the generational gap and why the poets of the past no longer speak to the readers of the present.

The most disturbing aspect of the latest mass shooting in Aurora, to me, is the fact that, on paper at least, James Holmes was a comparatively privileged young man… as were both of the Columbine High School shooters ten years ago. We’re not talking about poor oppressed minorities, but about young people who grew up in moderately affluent family situations.  In the case of Holmes, he was even an honor student at the University of California, Riverside, but he couldn’t get a job better than minimum wage, and he entered a doctoral program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he struggled and then dropped out.  Somewhere around that time, he began to buy weapons and ammunition.

So why would a quiet young man from a comparatively privileged background commit such a terrible crime?  I’d submit that one of the key factors was precisely that background.

As I’ve expressed more than a few times, the continual expression of the Lake Wobegon theme [the place where all the children are above average] is not only false, but has been incredibly damaging to the younger generations.  Because they’re not all outstanding.  By definition, only a small percentage can be well above average, and the perks and privileges and jobs are going to go to that small percentage.  Even if a greater number of young people are brighter than their parents – which I doubt, but even if it is so – it doesn’t matter.  The positions at the top are limited.  They are in any society, and more education doesn’t mean better opportunities.  It means that college graduates essentially have the same opportunities as high school graduates had two to three generations earlier.

As noted by Joel I. Klein, the head of the New York City School system in 2010, “In 1950 high school dropouts made up 59% of the United States workforce, with just 8% represented by college graduates. As recently as 2005, these numbers have nearly reversed: 32% of workers have a college degree, while 8% are high school dropouts.”

This change in work-force composition has several ramifications.  First, an undergraduate college degree is likely not going to be the passport to a high paying job that it was in past generations. According to initial reports, that was one of the frustrations expressed by Holmes, that even with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience, he could only find McDonald’s level jobs.

In addition, the dumbing down of both high school and collegiate undergraduate curricula and requirements has resulted in an entire generation of young people, of whom only a tiny percentage have been truly tested, and who have been told time after time how special they are.  In general, they’ve been shielded from failure and told they’re wonderful. In essence, not until his mid-twenties did Holmes discover that he really wasn’t that special and that the world didn’t care. The fact that our culture also values “personality” over technical and subject matter excellence, no matter what anyone says, adds even more fuel to the fire for those who are bright and socially awkward, as Holmes was said to be.

The pattern manifested by Holmes – and others – is familiar to forensic psychologists.  While not all young people who are alienated, depressed, and angry are violent, it appears that almost universally the violent are alienated, depressed, and angry. In the case of Holmes and the Columbine killers, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, it is highly likely that a key motivating factor is anger by those from a privileged background who couldn’t deal with failure and wanted to blame others for it. They believed they deserved more, and the fact that they hadn’t gotten what they wanted must have been the fault of others.  Hadn’t everyone told them how special they were?

Now… there will be years of study, and debate and counter-debate, but I’d be very surprised if anyone actually discusses the issues I’ve raised.  After all, how could we go wrong as a society by telling our wonderful children how special they are?

Although business/economics has become the foundation of western culture, its practitioners have circulated and tend to believe a number of myths and truisms, many of which are in fact half-truths.

You get what you pay for.

No.  You can’t get what you don’t pay for, but between over-inflated prices of certain goods (ranging from luxury products to certain prescription drugs and other aspects of health care), counterfeits, and cheap knock-offs, you often don’t get what you pay for.

 High pay is required to assure competence, especially in upper management.

High pay attracts people who are motivated by money, and higher than average pay is required for people with specialties that require long and expensive training, but there’s an upper limit, and this half-truth varies greatly in different segments of society.  More than a few studies have shown that comparatively lower-paid CEOs who are not “personalities” in general out-perform the highest-paid CEOs.  In addition, a significant percentage of the highest-paid money managers actually lose more money over time for their clients than gain it.  Likewise, money-motivated competence varies tremendously across fields.  A professional academic musician generally has more education than any MBA, but makes a fraction of the income of those MBAs in business and usually at least 30%  less than a business professor with an MBA and more like 50% less than a law professor with a J.D.  The same salary differentials apply to other academics teaching “humanities,” as well as most teachers.

Supply and demand always works better than regulation.

 This is a half-truth because it’s true as far as it goes, but doesn’t consider the implications, or what is meant by “better.”  Supply and demand is indeed the most “efficient” way to determine the allocation of goods and services, but that efficiency doesn’t take into account other values.  In a total free-market economy, in a famine, those who have money will pay higher prices for food… and will survive.  The poorest would not.  In addition, in a high-tech society, as noted above, even the most sophisticated consumer cannot determine the quality of certain goods, such as drugs, some beverages, even some foods, and therefore may well pay more for goods than “true” supply and demand would require. We’ve seen a similar issue in health care, where the “supply” of certain health care services costs more than many people can afford, which is one [but not the only] reason why tens of millions of Americans cannot afford health care.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

It is often true, in the case of dividend-paying stocks and bonds, that higher-risk issues have to pay out more than less risky ones, but this analogy truism breaks down in society.  Fire-fighters and police officers certainly face far greater risks than hedge fund managers, but they make a small fraction of the income that financial professionals do.  In professional sports played by both genders, such as basketball or golf, the risks are the same, but the males make more.  Now, this is justified historically by the argument that the demand for watching males is higher, and that can’t be disputed, but that points out that all of these myths/truisms are anything but absolute, even though they’re all too often dragged out as absolutes, especially by business people in pursuit of the bottom line and more of everyone else’s money.

The business model works better.

This half-truth has recently been promoted as the answer to virtually every ill in public institutions ranging from schools and universities, to municipalities, charities, public hospitals, and prisons. And, of course, the question is, again, what is meant by “better.”  In education, the business model has been applied in terms of teacher-pupil ratios or in higher-education, what disciplines are most “cost-effective.”  Unsurprisingly, the hard sciences and the performing arts are the least cost-effective educational disciplines, because the sciences require expensive equipment and additional laboratory sessions and the performing arts require intensive one-on-one training, especially in vocal music. While good financial management is clearly a necessity in any organization handling significant resources, the bottom line of the business model is to cut unnecessary expenses, and services/products which do not cover their costs, and to maximize revenues.  The business imperative is to look out for the business, and only to look beyond the business as necessary to assure its profitability and survival.

Public institutions, by their nature, provide goods and services that society has deemed necessary, even if not “profitable” for the specific institution.  That is why they are public institutions. Public hospitals are mandated to provide health care to people who will never pay their bills.  Schools must handle problem students and disabled students whose education is anything but profitable or cost-effective from the business standpoint.  Fire-fighters will often spend more time and effort putting out a fire than a structure is worth, even when no others are threatened.

So… the next time someone starts spouting these economic “truths,” it wouldn’t hurt to think about just how “true” they are in the case in point, especially if it’s a politician doing the spouting.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah protested the representation of his position on the television show “Newsroom.” On the show the lead character, a news anchor, states that Lee is for the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment.  He also says that Lee has a double-digit lead over Senator Bennett, the most conservative member of the Senate. For those who actually follow politics, the show is only partially correct.  Lee only favors repealing the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that allows citizenship to any child born in the United States of foreign-born parents here illegally, and Bob Bennett never got to a primary election because he didn’t even get 20% of the votes in the Republican state caucus.  The problem the writers of the show faced was that trying to explain what really happened would have lost most of the audience.  So they opted for a simplification that was essentially true to the spirit of the situation, showing Lee’s ultra-conservatism and his appeal to the far-right Republicans, but, factually, it was a misstatement, resulting in a half-truth, if you will.

This whole tempest in a Utah teapot, however, raises a much larger issue.  How does one raise vital issues in a complex world with a twenty-second attention span without either losing the majority in the details or oversimplifying into half-truths that can often be misleading? In the case of Mike Lee, the half-truth is partly incorrect, but not misleading.  He is now in all probability the most right-wing senator serving in the Senate, and if not, so close to it that in political terms it makes little difference.

Although I’ve criticized the opponents of the Affordable Health Care Act for their misleading statements and half-truths, the fact is that, for all its virtues, its supporters have also engaged in a campaign of half-truths, because the act won’t solve all of the health insurance problems facing the United States.  Even the individual mandate features won’t force full coverage, because the fines imposed for not having coverage are most likely to cost non-compliers less than insurance would, for those who could afford insurance, and for those who cannot, it’s rather difficult to obtain funds from those who have none.

Senators and U.S. representatives who head to Washington promising to balance the federal budget and get spending under control are spouting half-truths, if not total falsehoods, because no senator and no representative can do that by himself or herself.  Any successful legislation requires in these days 60% of the Senate and a majority of the House of Representatives, and all the rhetoric in the world won’t change that.

Part of the problem is the complexity of the world in which we live.  As I’ve noted before, we all prefer simple answers and explanations, but most of the problems we face don’t have simple answers.  The tax code, for example, is a complete nightmare of complexity.  Why?  Because straight and simple taxes are often unfair and fall disproportionately on certain individuals or people who live in different places or under differing circumstances. New industries might never develop without certain tax breaks, and so Congress, almost as soon as an income tax was made constitutional, began to amend and change the tax code, both in the interest of “fairness” and in order to encourage and discourage certain behaviors. Those who wanted those changes certainly didn’t tell the “whole truth.”  They said what they hoped would get what they wanted.

In the end, everyone wants the “other guy” to tell the whole truth, but not to tell it themselves, and that hasn’t changed a lot since the dawn of government, and certainly not since the founding of the United States, but too many half-truths result in fundamental misunderstandings and problems in a time of greater complexity and greater ramifications arising from all too many business, political, and technological changes.

That said… will half-truths persist?  Of course. They’ll even multiply, based on the all too human need for a simplicity that doesn’t exist in a modern world.

The other day I was reading a report on the results of a psychological survey.  I can’t say that the results shocked me, but they were interesting.  Controlling for all other controllable factors, those people who are the happiest are married, religious, conservative extremists.  The next most happy are married, religious, liberal extremists, but there are a whole lot fewer of them, because very few extreme liberals are also religious.  And needless to say, according to the study, the most unhappy are unmarried, non-religious moderates.

The study didn’t attempt to analyze the reasons behind those findings, but from what I’ve seen, people tend to be the happiest when their lives are the most stable.  Being married, especially for a long time, makes for stability.  So does a philosophical mindset that remains stable and undisturbed by facts contrary to that mindset, and extremists almost never consider that which might upset their beliefs.  Likewise, for the religious, religion provides great stability and comfort.

Now… it’s no secret that the American political process has become polarized, and each of the major parties has come to embrace platforms and issues tending toward the extreme.  Yet, as each election in recent years has come around, there’s been an apparent groundswell of voters saying that the parties don’t represent them, that they’re more middle of the road. I’m beginning to wonder about that.

And there’s another factor involved.  When I was a much younger man, in high school and in college, when young people were asked what they wanted to be, most had fairly concrete ideas, not that many didn’t change their minds.  They wanted to be pilots, doctors, electricians, even plumbers, and some even wanted to be President. Today, when I or my wife asks college students what they want to be, the single largest response, dwarfing all others, is:  “I want to be happy.”

So does anyone who is sane, I think.  Who really would want to be unhappy [although I’ve known a few people in that category]?  But the problem with that response is twofold.  First, in practical terms, happiness isn’t really a goal;  it’s a mindset and response to what else you’re doing in life.  Second, if happiness does become a goal, what makes it most possible?  Apparently, a mindset that, over time, is incompatible with a representative democratic republic comprised of a population with a growing economic and ethnic diversity.

Just a few thoughts….