Quick! Do Something! Anything!

It's often been said that "haste makes waste." I happen to agree. Unfortunately, most people do not.

In a stunning admission over the weekend, one of my far-left friends said that free speech absolutism was a conservative position. I call this "stunning," of course, because free speech absolutism has been, for the majority of my lifetime and that of my parents and grandparents, the liberal position. If anything, it has been a left wing position, held only by the most ardent of leftists. 

While I'm pleased that the right has discovered a newfound appreciation for freedom of speech, I'm disturbed by how quickly the left has shrugged it off completely. They now accept without question that there should always be some restrictions on the freedom of speech.

Before I continue, let's get the obvious out of the way: In this blog post, I'll be focusing mainly on the ethical principle of free speech and open dialog, the belief that society is freer and better off when all viewpoints are expressed than it would be if certain kinds of ideas were banished from conversation, even informally. I will not be referring to the merely legal concept of a constitutionally protected freedom from a government's legally denying people speech rights. The reason I'm making this differentiation is because it's possible to shut down a conversation without violating any law or civil right. 

The impulse is understandable on some level. When one encounters very abhorrent views, it's natural to want to get the hell away from them. In our personal lives, we can manage to do so very easily, by walking away. If someone decides to follow us around with a megaphone and scream abhorrent views at us no matter where we go, we have a tort to deal with that kind of harassment, and there is really no issue of free and open dialog at play.

But when a cadre of very powerful media moguls decide to collude against a particular strain of free expression, severely limiting society's access to that strain of thought, even if they're within their rights to do it, free and open dialog has been abridged. Not legally abridged, mind you, but abridged.

This, in turn narrows the available array of ideas. In the moment, that might achieve a given end. You might temporarily stamp-out a particular strain of thought, at least until the people who believe that strain of thought figure out a more reliable way to broadcast their beliefs. (I understand that Ham radio is still an option...)

The next time society encounters a strain of thought that it thinks is abhorrent, they will have that much easier a time squashing it out. The problem arises when the thought they're squashing out isn't truly abhorrent with respect to the arc of history. For example, interracial marriage used to be considered abhorrent, and those advocating it used to be reviled. In the long run, though, interracial marriage is good for humanity, and most of us now fully recognize that it's not an abhorrent thing at all.

How did society go from reviling interracial marriage to tolerating it, and then to appreciating it? I think society accomplished this through free and open dialog about interracial marriage. We started by talking about it and making people mad; then we talked about it and made people bored; now we talk about it and make people happy. That's evolution, for you.

Notice that the people who reviled interracial marriage did not know at the time that they were reviling something that was actually not a problem at all. Instead, they thought they were standing up for what was right! Sticking to you own!, they thought. That's how it's supposed to be!

They were wrong, and needed convincing. That's what free speech does for us.

Free speech does something else for us: It lays bare the arguments for bad ideas, and enables smart people to defeat those arguments. Imagine a bad idea that everyone knows about, but that no one is allowed to discuss. Take teenage sexual intercourse, for example. Many teens are unable to discuss sex with their parents, because their parents forbid such discussions from being had. So those teens often grow up either sexually repressed or they get themselves into a kind of trouble that they could have avoided if they had had better information from a trusted source. Talking about teenage sexual activity doesn't lead to teenage sexual activity. The data on that are all pretty clear, and they state that teens who are able to have supportive and informative conversations about sex with their parents grow up to be better adjusted and to avoid more of the pitfalls of sex, such as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. That's because having conversations out in the open about bad ideas enables us to respond to all bad arguments with good counterarguments.

The critic may here respond, "But some of these people don't care about or won't listen to counterarguments!" No, they won't. You can't control how other people respond to your arguments, however. Preventing them from being able to speak at all -  on whatever platform we happen to be talking about - is the authoritarian impulse. It won't work. 

The left used to understand this quite well. I am sad that they no longer do.

Virtue Signals

Here's another post I've been trying to write for a long time. This one's about letting other people know that you're a good person.

Ordinarily, we might call this kind of behavior "virtue signaling," but that, of course, is a loaded term these days. Nonetheless, there are ways that all of us try to demonstrate to other people that we are not fiendish knaves. 

After having spent decades of my life living among religious conservatives of different stripes, I've come to realize that, for many if not most religious adherents, the religion itself is less an expression of a person's metaphysical beliefs as it is an expression of the fact that a person wants to let other people know that he or she is good.

This is why "the one, true faith" is always the one you were born into. It's never the case that the great cosmic truth is the one that was taught to people on a different continent somewhere, it's always the one right there within your own community. There are plenty of people who study religion and come across one that profoundly speaks to them for various reasons, but for the average adherent, it's much more common that people follow the predominant faith because "that's what good people do." They want to be good people, so that's what they do: they go to church, they present themselves as god-fearing people, they wear the right clothes, say the right prayers, and use the right terminology. All of this is to let the people around them know that they are committed to being ethical by the standards of the surrounding community.

It is much more difficult to convince people that you are a good, ethical human being if you belong to a minority faith, or to no faith at all. Believe me, I've tried to explain to people the basis of my ethics and the fact that I live by good morals every day of my life. It's a tough sell to them, because what they know of good people is that good people are "good Christians," or "good Muslims," or whatever the case might be. To them, I have some explaining to do. It might not be fair, but it is what it is; whereas a person wearing a crucifix or a hijab has much less explaining to do within their own communities. Everyone can see that they are people of faith. Additional conclusions about their moral character naturally follow. 

And so it is that religion, especially nowadays, functions as a sort of social shorthand for "I'm a good person." 

I started thinking about this today because I discovered a newer kind of social signal that serves the same function. To a large extent, leftist politics are not so much a set of policy views as they are a signal to like-minded people that "I am a good person." Someone recently told me about his new favorite guitar player, and he was extremely excited to point out that she was also a woman, and a woman of color at that. We all listen to music with our ears, not with our implicit biases, so her gender and race identities were completely beside the point. Why even bring them up? Well, it's simple: he wanted to tell me that not only is this a great guitar player, but rest assured, he himself is also a trusted "ally" in the leftist cause. He didn't know that I didn't care about that, either. (Really, just tell me about the music, please.) But that's how it works.

Similarly, some people are very keen to tell me, when they learn that I used to live in Canada, that they themselves often dream of moving to Canada. I think the assumption there is that we are supposed to bond over the fact that Canada is more appropriately leftist than the savage United States. The information is presented as a signal to me, and I am suppose to use it to note that the person with whom I am speaking is a good person.

They are, in fact, just as much a good person as the other person I spoke to earlier, who might have said goodbye to me by saying, "Have a blessed day." 

It's easy for me, an atheist and a libertarian, to allow these kinds of comments to get on my nerves. Indeed, when I was very young and stuck in an incredibly closed religious conservative community, I considered it to be a kind of bullying. Over the years, however, I've grown to realize that the true purpose is simply to signal conformity to the idea of The Good. For the religious, it is the trappings of religion; for the left, it is the trappings of leftism. The point is not to spread or even to highlight either thing. The point is merely to present oneself as good.

Ever since I realized this, I've been interpreting these signals that way. It reduces a lot of conflict and confusion.

Stationary Waves And Coronavirus

The concept of temperance has been a feature of this blog for many years. When I talk about temperance, I'm not talking about eschewing alcohol, but the two ideas do have commonalities. Temperance, broadly construed, means having enough restraint to not just do, you know, whatever the hell you want to do, whenever the hell you want to do it. Temperance means keeping your hedonic urges in check long enough to make sensible decisions in accordance with your longer cognitive time-horizon. See this old post on the issue for a brief primer.

There are many articles and blog posts out there discussing the matter of what is the correct policy response to the coronavirus epi/pan-demic. There is plenty of criticism to go around. Who did what, and did they do it how soon? What aspect of testing or messaging did the CDC botch, what can be learned from the mass quarantines in other countries?

In one sense, I think it's natural that people want to look at it from those angles. I can sympathize with that inclination. It's much easier to have a debate about public policy and to get worked up about all the wrong things someone else did than it is to simply acknowledge that pandemics occur approximately once every one hundred years, and that using political machinery to stop the spread of viruses is ultimately a futile endeavor. We'd have better luck stopping an incoming asteroid.

The fact of the matter is that there is nothing that the government can do to protect you from communicable viruses. They will spread, because that's what viruses do. It's the circle of life.

On a personal note, most readers will probably have nothing to worry about with respect to COVID-19, anyway; the death rate for most people appears to be somewhere between 0.1% and 1.0%. Those are very good odds for a virus like this. But for me, it's different. I'm "immuno-compromised." I'm a type 1 diabetic. For me, the death rate might be something more like 9%, and the rate of hospitalization independent of death is much higher for me than it is for the population at large.

This thing can kill me.

On the one hand, we could say that coronavirus is a public health emergency. On the other hand, we should probably say that the public health emergency already exists. I see just how much other human beings spread their germs around on a daily basis. You people are absolutely filthy. I see multiple people per day walk out of public restrooms without washing their hands. I see people playing with their noses, mouths, eyes, and then putting their hands all over public surfaces. I see people cough without covering their mouths, I see people spit out of their car windows, I see people blow their noses by plugging one nostril, leaning to the side, and blasting debris onto the sidewalk. It's disgusting. And these aren't low-brow "others" in some "other" part of town. These are the middle and upper class people in "nice" neighborhoods. These are the normies. And they're filthy, filthy people.

Earlier this morning, I saw a Facebook advertisement for a bidet. The comments under the ad were everything I've come to expect from filthy Americans. They expressed incredulity and skepticism, they laughed, they mocked, they teased... This is happening during a global pandemic. Here we have a centuries-old device that can vastly improve American hygiene and reduce the spread of communicable illness, and even during a global pandemic Americans' response is one of mockery and skepticism.

That mockery and skepticism, combined with Americans' refusal to wash their hands, cover their mouths, and avoid blowing their noses on the sidewalk, is what will ultimately be to blame for the spread of coronavirus and diseases like it. It's easy to point fingers at the CDC for botching "testing," but the demand for "testing" would be decidedly low if Americans knew how to wash their hands, backsides, and faces, and knew how to keep public surfaces clean and disease-free.

Naturally, there's nothing I can do from my perch above my keyboard, writing on an unread blog about how Americans are a travesty of public filth. But maybe things could get a little bit better on the margins if we all thought a little bit more about temperance.

If you find it tempting to blow your nose on the sidewalk, exercise a little temperance. Find your way to the nearest tissue, and use that instead. If you find it somewhat of a hassle to wash your hands every time you use the bathroom, exercise a little temperance. The expedient thing is to skip the hand-washing step, but the right thing to do is to wash your hands. You might not see the point of covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze in the privacy of your own work cubicle, but I urge you to exercise a little temperance on the margins. Cover your mouth, then go wash your hands. And, for god's sake, get a bidet. They are $15 and install in seconds. Jesus.

Practically speaking, it's unlikely that you'll be able to prevent every cough, sneeze, and itch that needs scratching. You won't always be able to find your way to a bathroom in time to wash your hands or do whatever else you need to do. But if you can exercise a little temperance on the margins, then there's a slightly better chance that people like me won't die.

Please, I beg you, exercise a little temperance. Be a little bit more hygienic. This disease does not really need to spread widely in an environment in which people practice good hygiene.

Ethical Veganism: A Critique

Inspired by the latest Cato Unbound symposium, I'd like to argue for why I think ethical veganism is possibly disingenuous.

Problems With Utilitarian Calculus

The first series of issues I would like to address involve ethical vegans' claims about mitigating the suffering of animals.

Their basic argument goes something like this:

1. Animals experience at least some level of suffering and pleasure.
2. Modern meat production imposes widespread suffering on animals.
3. Even if animals are less morally important than humans, there is so much animal suffering in modern meat production that it overwhelms the human benefit of meat consumption.
4. Therefore, we should not eat meat.

The first problem with this argument is that it presupposes that humans' pleasure from meat consumption is trivial. There is no amount of human pleasure that would be enough to convince an ethical veganism that eating meat was worthwhile. This suggests to me that the utilitarian calculus involved in this argument is disingenuous. Vegans simply assume from the outset that eating meat fails to generate enough human utility to justify industrial meat production practices. 

The problem is that actually demonstrating that animal suffering is so terrible that it demands we eschew meat was the very task ethical veganism was required to demonstrate in the first place. You had one job, ethical vegans, and you merely assumed what you were supposed to prove. Or even substantiate.

The second problem with this argument is that it discounts all utilitarian benefits to animals that come from industrial meat production. The most obvious benefit is existence itself; were it not for the meat industry, many if not most livestock animals simply wouldn't exist. There are other benefits, such as secured living space, protection from natural predators, opportunities to breed, veterinary care, and so on. All of these things are provided at no small expense to humans and confer at least some utilitarian benefits to livestock animals. Even if the utilitarian value of these things is very low, it's not zero, and thus it belongs somewhere in the moral calculus. The fact that vegans omit this step in the calculus, however, suggests that their utilitarian calculus itself is disingenuous.

A third problem with the utilitarian argument for veganism is that vegans already have responses to the arguments I've made above, but their responses are not utilitarian arguments. 

For example, when asked to demonstrate animal suffering, vegans often present explicit descriptions of what life for an animal is like on a factory farm. This is an emotionally gripping argument, indeed; but it is not a calculation of utility. We might agree that animals experience suffering on factory farms, but until that suffering is quantified in a way that counter-balances against the human pleasures of meat consumption, it is merely an emotional argument, and not a utilitarian one. If ethical vegans respond to utilitarian critiques of their utilitarian arguments with non-utilitarian reasoning, this suggests that their real reasons for ethical veganism are non-utilitarian reasons.

So, in three different ways, I have shown that the utilitarian arguments for ethical veganism are disingenuous. 

A Problem With "Animal Suffering"

Non-vegans frequently point out that plant foods must be grown, and therefore require farmland. Farmland deprives animals of their habitat, and thus also causes animal suffering. 

Vegans typically respond to this by reminding us that, on a per-calorie basis, plant foods require less farmland than animal meat. But, there are two problems with this argument.

The first problem is that, in making this argument, vegans have already conceded that their food causes animal suffering. They are no longer suggesting that veganism is an ethical alternative to meat-eating; they are only saying that veganism is not as bad for animals as meat-eating is. But ethics is about more than merely avoiding the most harmful thing, it's about avoiding any harmful thing at all, wherever possible. So, the problems with agriculture aren't limited to meat-eating; an ethical vegan ought to avoid any avoidable food that causes animal suffering "unnecessarily."

This brings me to the second problem of the argument. On a per-calorie basis, surely grains and many nuts are more efficient agricultural products than meat. But this cannot possibly be true of many vegetables, such as celery (a net-negative-calorie food), herbs, lettuce, spinach, and so on. These vegetables are extremely low in calories and therefore may actually be worse for animal suffering than the raising of traditional livestock animals. And I hasten to add that this is true of the environmental impacts of such products, as well. 

Ethical vegans who wish to remain philosophically consistent should not just eschew meat, but also any vegetable product that causes more animal suffering than it's "worth." Yet, the dearth of animal-welfare arguments against the consumption of celery and parsley among ethical vegans demonstrates either that they haven't thought through the implications of their own arguments very carefully, or that the arguments themselves are disingenuous.

A Conclusion

Now, when I say "disingenuous," I don't mean to suggest that ethical vegans are trying to pull the wool over our eyes. I'm only suggesting that the arguments in favor of ethical veganism, as presented by ethical vegans, cannot possibly be the real reason these vegans believe in veganism. If, for example, a person came to believe in veganism based on utilitarian arguments, then that vegan would either be capable of providing utilitarian responses to utilitarian criticisms, or he would have to admit that the matter is as-yet unresolved. When was the last time you heard a vegan do either?

So why are people ethical vegans? 

One possibility is that they have an emotional attachment to animals that causes them to look upon industrial meat production with disgust. It's an emotional reaction, but not a hard one to understand. It's also thoroughly unobjectionable. If the way cattle are butchered makes you sick to your stomach, why should you have to eat beef? That, alone, is a valid reason to eschew beef. There is no need to pretend to be an ethical vegan. There is no reason you can't avoid meat for the simple reason that meat production seems icky to you. If so, it would be better to simply acknowledge things as they are.

Another, more unsavory, possibility is that ethical veganism is a type of moral grandstanding. To have extremely high levels of empathy is a high-status position. Imagine how much higher-status it is to have so much empathy that you are even capable of extending it to other creatures. Some people even extend their empathy to trees, even to rock formations. The more we proclaim our concern for increasingly more inanimate non-human things, the more we seem to say to our fellows, "Look here, I am the caring-est one of us all. Behold the extent to which I care for things!"

It seems likely to me that most self-proclaimed ethical vegans are some combination of the two. They don't like meat, they are grossed-out by meat production, and they want other people to know how much they care deeply for the welfare of all things. I have no objection to people's taste in food, and I don't fault anyone for being grossed out by the meat industry. My only "beef" (get it?) is with disingenuous arguments and moral grandstanding.

Cleaning Your Room

For many years, I was the sort of man who believed that the path to success and the solution to every problem was to simply work harder and become the best at whatever it is he happened to be doing. While a strategy like that bears sweet fruit in the teenage years, the so-called real world has a way of making mincemeat of it.

So it was one morning, when I found myself sinking into the earth-toned cushions of an old, uncomfortably squishy sofa at the far end of a psychiatrist's office. He was an incomprehensibly thin man with a patch of white hair bursting from the top of his head like water from a lawn sprinkler; his shirts were always plaid, and always of the same earth tones as his sofa; he spoke with earnestness, but I could always tell that he left too much unsaid, usually in response to something I had said -- a terrible quality in a psychiatrist. He also kept two small dogs on the premises with them; they, at least, were a soothing presence in the office.

I found my way into his office by route of my career: No matter how hard I worked, and no matter how good I became at my work, the assignments got worse, the company struggled, and the attitude in the office got darker and darker. A level-headed man could take such things in stride, but this was my first venture into the world of not being able to turn the beat around when the song started to drag, as it were. And this song, to be sure, had become a funeral dirge.

I hadn't much experience in therapy, so like most folks, I went into it with preconceived notions. We would talk about my feelings, I thought. The good doctor would identify some problems with my way of thinking, and help me correct course. Before long, my attitude would be adjusted, and I could go back to doing my work with the kind of pep and ambition I longed for.

In the long run, it didn't quite happen that way. After making weeks of appointments, I eventually figured out the solution to my own ennui. I told the doctor at my final visit that I wouldn't be making another appointment, since it didn't seem necessary. He asked me then, "Would you mind telling me what worked for you?" I told him was something he said -- focus on the things you can control -- that made all the difference. I did that, and life got better. He seemed puzzled.

What brought the old doctor to mind this morning was the sad story of Jordan Peterson, and the memory I had of my first visit to a clinical psychologist.

Sitting in that earth-toned tar pit of a sofa with a small dog rubbing its wet nose against my dangling fingertip, my doctor asked me whether I'd considered antidepressant medication. I told him no, and that I would like to avoid doing so. He accepted my wishes, but first went on a brief soliloquy about the virtues of psychoactive medication. He told me that when he first started his practice, he, too, was skeptical of medication, but eventually came to see it much the same as taking an aspirin. We take an aspirin when we have a headache, and we think nothing of it; the doctor's position was that we ought to think similarly of antidepressants. He delivered his monologue in a pleasant and reasonable way, with calm and academic vocality. I did not come away with the impression that he was either arguing with me or trying to push medication on me. Instead, it seemed as though he wanted his office to be a safe place to discuss the therapeutic benefits of short-term psychoactive medication. But I did not pursue the matter any further, and so neither did he.

Yet, I can't help but wonder what a less thoughtful -- or more deeply troubled -- patient would have done in the face of such a calmly put suggestion by a qualified mental health practitioner in a time of need. It's not difficult for me to imagine that the marginal patient could be persuaded to fill a new prescription for psychoactive medication. In some cases, this might be entirely justified; in others, it might indeed be the wrong course of action. We trust our doctors to make that determination for us, but maybe we shouldn't.

The psychiatrist I saw that day was both an academic working at a university and a practicing clinical psychologist. Jordan Peterson can also make that claim. I point this out to venture a guess that perhaps these two men, similarly aged and of similar pedigree and professional background, held similar views on medication.

The National Post reports that Peterson began taking his medication "to treat anxiety after what [his daughter] described as an autoimmune reaction to food." This is a familiar issue to me: I once suffered anaphylaxis in response to eating a Brazil nut, and for years dealt with the fear of accidentally eating a nut and dying. Such fear is a very real and very palpable thing, and I would never minimize it. Still, it would never occur to me to address a problem like that with anti-anxiety medication, much less with hefty compounds like benzodiazepine tranquilizers.

But perhaps a man like Jordan Peterson, educated in accordance with modern of psychiatric medicine, would think almost nothing of it, just as we don't think twice about taking aspirin for a headache. If so, it would be a terrible lesson to have to learn the hard way.

I'm fond of Jordan Peterson's philosophy of life. I think it's a difficult road to follow, but a very worthwhile one for those capable of doing so. It saddens me to see such a strong advocate of living a deliberately moral life come face-to-face with his own moral failings in such a painful way, a way that risks such terrible long-term neurological damage, and in so public a fashion. The weaker thinkers among us, and those with a taste for schadenfreude, will (and have) pounce on this opportunity to denigrate a man who simply advocated that we live life according to our own moral compasses.

As hard as it will be for the critics to understand, Jordan Peterson's moral compass didn't actually fail him. He most likely took tranquilizers because he genuinely believed that they were the correct way to treat his anxiety. He most likely arrived at that belief through his own scientific expertise in psychology. When his addiction became obvious, he submitted himself to treatment. These are, simply stated, correct moral decisions. Unfortunately for Peterson -- and for all of us -- the world of psychology has not yet caught up with what the rest of the world already knows about tranquilizers.

Jordan Peterson nearly got himself killed. On the wrong day, for the wrong person, at the wrong doctor's office, it could have plausibly happened to me, or to you. Let us remember this episode, then, and learn another important thing from Dr. Peterson. Psychoactive medications are no mere aspirin, to be taken as for when we have headaches. They are powerful, dangerous substances that can leave a lasting and negative impact on your life, even on your legacy.

Be careful out there.

Book Review: The Proper Care And Feeding Of Husbands

"Dr. Laura" Schlessinger rose to fame during what one might call a golden age of conservative talk radio, in the 1990s. Compared to today, this was a very different time. Angry talking heads had not yet been completely discredited, and traditional media still ruled the roost. Everyone got all of their information from major, corporate news conglomerates. Conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh represented a sort of "underground," where overtly conservative viewpoints could be discussed. Perhaps best of all, every-day listeners could call in and interact with those ideas in a way that didn't happen on, say, CBS Nightly News.

Dr. Laura, of course, was not a conservative political commentator. She was a practicing marriage and family therapist who ran a call-in radio program to help people sort through their ethical dilemmas. But her traditional approach to organizing the family, coupled with her firm take on human morality, found a ready audience among the listeners of conservative talk radio, who then fueled her fame.

As tends to happen with famous conservatives, mainstream media found plenty of offensive-sounding quotes and private scandals in Dr. Laura's past, and amplified them. There is nothing the liberal media likes more than a conservative hypocrite they can parade around and lampoon. Dr. Laura's core fanbase was able to accept her explanations at face-value and her apologies as genuine, but I definitely have the sense that media attacks prevented Schlessinger from rising quite as high as similar 90s talk icons, like Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil.

Published in 2006, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands hit bookstore shelves at a time when Dr. Laura was still quite popular, before she moved her website to a subscription-based model, and before she moved her radio show to Sirius XM. While I believe it is a successful book (in terms of book sales), it has a terrible reputation for being "anti-feminist propaganda."

To be sure, some women who read the book will end up feeling attacked. These women have probably never heard Dr. Laura's radio program, or if they have, find it to be highly offensive for its non-feminist bent. Also to be sure, there are plenty of passages in the book that directly criticize the prevailing views of feminism circa-2006. Anyone who sympathizes with those feminist views will probably object to the book from start to finish.

I, however, committed to reading the book with an open mind. I'm tolerant of people with so-called "black-and-white" moral views, mostly because I, too, lean toward the belief that there is a mostly objective moral right and a mostly objective moral wrong. I believe that it is right and important to "judge" in the sense that judging human behavior helps clarify one's own moral beliefs. Consequently, reading or listening to someone else's view of concrete right and wrong serves the same purpose for me -- it helps me better understand my own moral philosophy.

What I found from reading The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands is that its ideas -- even the non-feminist ones -- have aged remarkably well.

For one thing, Dr. Laura's view of marriage is founded on the belief that men and women simply think and act differently. This was a stark and unpopular contrast to the 2006 feminist view that sex is a social construct. Even so, subsequent research has proven increasingly clear and robust; there are unambiguous cognitive and psychological differences between the sexes, and those differences are precisely the ones that common sense would suggest. Dr. Laura was right.

For another thing, the central principle that permeates the entirety of the book, if only openly stated a time or two, is that people can derive great and profound meaning in their lives from the act of tirelessly dedicating oneself to one's marriage. That dedication, in Dr. Laura's view, should come first and foremost, ahead of all other things. One's commitment to marriage should come before career; it should come before good times, before girls-only weekends, before fatigue, before one's commitment to one's parents, and sometimes even before the children. Such a commitment is obviously difficult, but Dr. Laura's position is that it is worth it. When one commits to the marriage ahead of all other relationships, then that enables people to better raise their children, draw better boundaries between themselves and their friends and family, and most importantly, find profound joy in the bedrock relationship of our adult lives: our marriage.

This notion of meaning found in living a better life at home certainly presages the ideas of Jordan Peterson, although the target demographic is obviously quite different.

Another aspect of the book that might raise liberal hackles is Dr. Laura's approach to sex. Her belief is that men only really find a meaningful bond with their wives through the act of sex. This idea rings true to me, and anyone who has bothered to listen to Schlessinger's radio program can attest to the vast number of men who have thanked her profusely for saying so. The truth is, Schlessinger has a keen understanding of what physical intimacy means to a man, and she incorporates it into her marriage philosophy. Where others might object is when she advises women to try to please their husbands even if they're "tired" or otherwise not in the mood. While a feminist objector could protest quite loudly at that, it's important to understand it in context. Dr. Laura's advice is for wives who are married to loving husbands; it's for wives who have good lives, but who have let their relationships deteriorate through the inertia of a hectic, modern life. So, when she writes that women can often find themselves in the mood if they just get started with their husbands, she's pointing out that two people who love each other can ultimately have a lot of fun, and grow closer together, if the "tired" wife can simply get herself started, even if grudgingly.

I hasten to add, as Schlessinger herself adds at the outset of the book, that her advice is not intended for women who are genuinely abused. In fact, she refers to what she calls "the three A's" throughout the book: adultery, addiction, and abuse. Any of these three A's are, in her view, grounds for divorce.

What's left is a book full of practical tips for wives in less-than-perfect marriages on how to improve the quality of their marital bond. That is, Dr. Laura wants women to take responsibility for and control of their lives, and argues that in doing so, they will be happier and have more profoundly meaningful lives than they ever imagined. Despite its conservative bent, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands is a manual for empowering married women.

This brings me to my main point: The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands occupies a very unique space in the world of ideas, because it articulates a philosophy of conservative sex-positive feminism. Conservatives, as you know, are not typically known to be either feminist or sex-positive. The fact that Dr. Laura seems to be all three things highlights the fact that concepts have far more potential for overlap than our polarized world would like to believe.

If today's feminists could manage to do so with an open mind, I believe reading this book would greatly expand their understanding of what feminism could be. Meanwhile, conservatives have their own lessons to learn from this book, lessons about practicing what they preach, lessons about the importance of sex in a committed relationship, and lessons about putting one's spouse ahead of one's meddling extended family.

It's an excellent book, a very short read, and I highly recommend it.

See What I Mean?

I unfortunately must follow-up on yesterday's post with some incredibly sad news. Frank Meza appears to have taken his own life yesterday.

These insatiable internet mobs are absolutely poisonous. Just because a person cheats in a game or a road race, that does not make him a despicable person. I reiterate that by all accounts, Frank Meza was a beloved member of his community. There was much more to his 70 years of life than his road racing career as a senior citizen.

The lesson to be learned from this is: Be gentle and merciful when you choose to criticize others. Don't gloat. Don't revel in someone else's disgrace. Don't partake in schadenfreude. Don't participate in a mob.

When you see a crowd turn against someone, exercise extreme caution. The power of mobs, mob mentality, and groupthink is awesome and terrifying. In those situations, go out of your way to look for reasons to doubt the crowd. When there can be no doubt, go out of your way to look for reasons to be kind, forgiving, understanding, and merciful.

Wrongdoing is unavoidable in life. The best thing that can happen to wrongdoers is that they find a way back to ethical behavior with dignity and humility. As onlookers, we owe it to people like Dr. Meza to offer an ideological path back to society's good graces. We ought not seek to condemn, revile, and exile people. We ought to look for ways to bring people together, even people who do the wrong thing at road races.

Because if we don't, then terrible things happen. How many of the gloaters will invest more than 30 seconds of their lives in hindsight, considering what they may have contributed to Dr. Meza's end? Too few. It's sad.

Remember this.

Frank Meza And Ideal States

In April, I blogged about the website MarathonInvestigation.com.

It seemed so strange to me that ordinary people would cheat in road races, even with nothing on the line. For example, some people cheat just to be able to say they finished a race; they're not good runners, and they're not earning a top place, not even in their age group. Others cheat just so that they can "qualify" for the Boston Marathon, as though running the Boston Marathon itself is the accomplishment, not qualifying for it in the first place. Others cheat for no other reason than to collect their finisher's medal and have their photo taken at the finish line. Such small stakes, and yet people will cheat.

It also seemed strange to me that so many people would become emotionally invested in the fact that other people cheat for meaningless accomplishments. Don't get me wrong, I'm against cheaters, but I cannot fathom the mindset of a person whose hobby it is to pore over GPX files and race photography in search of evidence of cheating. In my spare time, I like to actually run, rather than prove that someone else didn't run. Or, I like to play music, or kiss my wife, or play with my daughter, or go on a bike ride, or do literally anything other than trying to figure out if some Instagram poster actually finished the race she claims to have run.What an odd hobby.

Well, the latest scandal in the world of cheating at road races is the strange case of Dr. Frank Meza, or Mezza, a retired physician and boys track coach, who was recently disqualified from the Los Angeles Marathon. Here's an LA Times article that neatly summarizes things. I won't rehash the whole thing here, but the basic synopsis of it is that Meza has spent the last ten years posting increasingly better marathon times while running one marathon about every three months! That's astounding in its own right, and his most recent time - the time for which he was disqualified - was an age division world record. No 70-year-old had ever run as fast as that before. Of course, the best evidence suggests that Meza cheated, not only in the most recent LA Marathon, but also in many previous marathons over the years.

People will naturally have a wide variety of reactions to this. In my reading of internet comments, I have found the overwhelming majority of people seem to be either outraged that a man would cheat at all - and the more you cheat, the more terrible a person you are - and smug gloating over the fact that Meza was finally caught.

To be perfectly honest, I cannot understand either of these reactions. I think cheating is wrong, and I think low-level cheating of the sort that Frank Meza is alleged to have done is pitiful. To waste anger on such a pitiful thing is, to me, equally pitiful. How pitiful must a person be to squander time and emotional energy on being angry at some loser for cheating his way to the top of 70-year-olds? And to gloat over something so pitiful is... really nasty. It's pathetic to revel in someone else's shame; and the more pitiful that person is, the more we debase ourselves by reveling in their downfall.

Have these people no dignity? It's understandable to want a cheater to be caught and to be passionate about doing the right thing, but when you see someone like Frank Meza - who is by all accounts an upstanding member of his community and a good mentor to young Latino boys - hit rock-bottom in such a pitiful way, the time for gloating is over. In the end, Meza's downfall is sad, not satisfying. What kind of person would be satisfied by that at all?

Although I can't locate the link now, one of the stories I read about Meza included some quotes from the current world marathon record holder for Meza's age group. He said it would be too bad if Meza cheated, because he was looking forward to racing against him. That's a healthy perspective. It's disappointing that Meza cheated, if that's what happened, and it's sad that it all came to this. Sad and disappointing, not outrageous or satisfying.

During times like these, it's elucidating to ask oneself, "What would the ideal resolution of this look like?" Many commentators on the Meza case hope that Meza is banned, panned, reviled, and that he just goes away. But I don't think that's an ideal resolution.

In my ideal world, Frank Meza would train hard and try to post a great marathon time. Maybe he'd come close to the times he's been posting. Maybe not. Maybe he'd find that running a genuine marathon is more satisfying than cheating. In my ideal world, Meza would humbly attempt to regain his dignity, the running community would forgive him, stop gloating, stop making a spectacle of him, and we'd all go on about our lives - happily.

What surprises me about all of this is that for many people, the ideal resolution to a situation like this is one in which a lot of people still feel really badly.

Nita Strauss And Hard Questions About Sexism

Blabbermouth.net is an online tabloid that covers heavy metal and hard rock music, musicians, and their attendant muckraking. It is essentially a clickbait platform that uses out-of-context quotations and sensational headlines to drive ad revenue though clicks and other such dirty tricks. It has a negative reputation, but despite that fact can be entertaining thanks to the heavy metal community itself, which is comprised of many people who like to joke around.

The typical Blabbermouth news cycle goes something like this: First, some legitimate news outlet reports on something happening in the music world. Second, Blabbermouth re-blogs it on its own spammy website. Third, music fans on social media exchange funny and/or belligerent comments with each other under Blabbermouth's comments threads.

Recently, Blabbermouth reported on guitarist Nita Strauss' latest project, which is called "Body Shred." Although the promotional video (see below) doesn't explain how to "win" the challenge, based on what I can infer from the website, it appears to be somewhat of a cross between DietBet, PledgeMusic, and a private Nita Strauss social media fanclub.

I have nothing against Nita Strauss or this projects, and I wish her all the success she deserves.

Predictably, the Blabbermouth commentariat focused in on Nita Strauss' physical appearance, and not necessarily in a way that emphasized physical fitness, if you know what I mean. Many of the ensuing comments were vague or not-vague sexual references, approving comments on Strauss' worth as eye candy, suggestions that the promotional video looked like the opening scene of a pornographic sequence, and so on.

One can easily imagine that Nita Strauss, being an attractive woman in the music industry, has dealt with her fair share of objectification and harassment, but if these comments are any indication, she has had to deal with even more than I would have expected. Every time I start to gain the impression that society has for the  most part moved on from overt sexism, something like this proves me wrong.

Thus, my first impression of Nita Strauss' Body Shred was sympathy. I felt bad that she would go through the work of putting together what looks like an interesting and worthy project with her partners and sponsors, only to have to try to overcome a dark cloud of sexist mockery. She'll need to overcome that mockery in order for her project to be successful, because no heavy metal fan is going to sign up for "Nita Strauss' Body Shred" if all their friends are winking and nudging each other and making sexist jibes about the whole thing.

That was my first impression, but then I started thinking about it a little more carefully.

As you can see from the photo gallery on Nita Strauss' website, Ms. Strauss dresses pretty modestly compared to some women in the world of rock. She's also an excellent guitar player and performer. The point is, it would be incredibly wrong to suggest that Ms. Strauss has relied on her looks to establish herself and her career.

On the other hand, it would be downright foolish to assert that her looks have played no role in making her famous; after all, she is a beautiful woman in addition to being a good guitar player. Like it or not, "great guitar player who is also beautiful" is a much more marketable entertainment product than "just a great guitar player" is. Furthermore, a simple web search reveals that there are plenty of promotional photos of Nita Strauss that emphasize her physical appearance more than her guitar-playing. I don't fault her for this, and I would certainly do the same if I were in her position. Who knows, maybe I'd even go further. And maybe the fact that she hasn't gone further is one of the reasons she's had as successful a career as she's had. I don't know; I'm no expert here.

The fact remains, however, that Strauss' looks have played an important role in her music career. There's just no use denying it. The release of an exercise program, or fitness challenge, or whatever Body Shred actually is, certainly plays into that aspect of the Nita Strauss business entity. "Ugly Chick Fitness Challenge" would not be a particularly successful business venture; but I think "Nita Strauss' Body Shred" will be. That's an important attribute of the whole endeavor.

So, in light of all that, how do we grapple with this? What is the right way to conceive of a project that ought not become an excuse to objectify someone, and yet which relies on a certain level of objectification in order to be interesting in the first place?

By the way, this question is not unique to this particular fitness challenge. We can go all the way back to the Jane Fonda Workout program, if we want to. Heck, I'm told that my great-grandmother on my mother's side had a big crush on Jack LaLanne. Fitness programs offer us a chance to make ourselves look, not just healthy, but sexy. Fitness videos very often cast professional fitness models, people whose sole livelihood is working out and looking as sexy as possible. Part of the audience they're selling to is the kind of people who watch the jumping jacks in slow motion. If there weren't so many of those kinds of people, the fitness industry would be a lot smaller and less profitable than it is today.

To some extent, fitness is always about looks. But is that good, bad, or neutral? Is it shallow to be motivated by the prospect of looking sexy? Is it wrong to be motivated to get fit just so that you can gain access to videos of Nita Strauss doing jumping jacks in a sports bra? If that's your motivation, but you end up getting fit, winning the contest, meeting Nita Strauss, and being perfectly nice and polite to her, is what you've done still "problematic?" Is it wrong to want to work out at the gym just because a lot of the other gym patrons are good-looking?

All these questions should be relatively easy to answer. The reason they're not is because whenever people like Nita Strauss release fitness videos, people like the Blabbermouth readership post insane and hurtfully sexist comments. I don’t think it's morally wrong to have private, racy thoughts about famous people, and I'm not even sure that it's morally wrong to be motivated by such thoughts (even if it is odd). But there is a line we shouldn't cross. It's obvious when people cross it, but it's virtually impossible to explain in advance of crossing it. And if we only ever approach the line in our imagination, what does morality say then?

Or is everything fair game in the imagination?

Cheaters

Today, I became aware of a website called MarathonInvestigation.com, and I'm experiencing a flood of emotions.

The website, which is independently run and appears to be funded by the voluntary PayPal contributions of its readers, investigates claims of cheating in road races. Many of these races are, of course, major events like the Boston Marathon, but not all of them are. Many of the runners being investigated - in fact, most of them, as far as I can tell - are not race winners. Many of them aren't even age group winners or frontrunners. A lot of the people who are investigated, and generally confirmed as cheaters, are just average people who are middling or even bad runners, but who somehow end up cutting their races short and then claim later to have run the full race.

This is a mentality that I cannot understand. On some level, it makes sense for an athlete to attempt to cheat in order to win. I don't personally believe in cheating, but at least I can reason out why someone would cheat in a bid to win a race. But I cannot even begin to understand why someone who had no hope of winning would pretend to have finished a full race.

First of all, if you try your hardest on race day, there's no shame coming in second, third, or even last place. Disappointment is certainly understandable from anyone who ended up performing worse than they wanted to. But there's no shame in it. It's not shameful to run poorly, it's not shameful to run slowly, it's not shameful to finish last, it's not even shameful to drop out of the race. It is shameful to cheat. No one should be so afraid of a bad day at the races that they would be willing to cheat to avoid it.

Second of all, unless you're a professional runner in a major race with real prize money attached, there isn't much at stake in the average road race. Many major races won't even let someone collect prize money unless they are registered as an elite racer in the first place. No one actually cares if you finish the race or not. Your spouse will give you a hug and take you out for pizza to cheer you up, your colleagues will politely ask you why you had to drop out, and then everyone will go back to living their lives. Finishing a road race doesn't actually impact anyone.

So, why are people cheating?

One explanation involves stealing bibs. I only learned about this today, but it is apparently possible to make a little money by fabricating race bibs and then selling them online. You put up an ad that says, "Oh, I registered for this race, but now I can't run it. I'll sell it to someone who wants it." I don't think re-selling a legitimately purchased race bib is morally problematic even if it is against a particular race's rules, but making phony bibs and selling them is obviously a form of fraud and a type of stealing. In many cases, people who purchase these illegitimate race bibs know they're buying fakes, and do it anyway, to save money on the race or to gain access to the extras that races often make available to participants: t-shirts, coupons, freebies, swag, and the like.

So, that explains people who steal bibs.

Another explanation is that many people who cheat appear to have a strong social media presence and sizeable community of followers and friends. If I enter a race and find that I can't finish for some reason, all I have to do is stop running; but if I were running to benefit a major charity or to advertise for a business venture, logging a DNF ("did not finish") might be a problem. If people essentially paid you to do a thing, and you couldn't finish the thing, you might feel obligated to give them their money back. Pretending to have run the whole race anyway enables you to run away from that particular issue.

I'm sure there are also people out there who are either too poor or too stingy to pay the registration fee. They cross the starting line, run the full race, and then the expectation is that they step aside near the finish line, without crossing it, so as to make clear that they are not official race participants. In the past, I have jokingly referred to these folks as "race bandits" or "race pirates." I've never seen any of them steal participation medals or pretend to have registered. Most of them, in my experience, are people who want to do a time-trial but don't want the pressure of real competition. Or sometimes they only heard about the race the night before and wanted to jump in to get a faster trial time, but didn't want to bother with proper registration and wanted the option of canceling at the last minute without losing their registration fee. I myself have never done this, but I've also never considered it morally problematic. As long as you step out of the race before you cross the finish line, and don't ruin anyone else's race while you're there, I don't see that you've committed any moral infraction.

This last point puts me a little at odds with the people who run the website. Apparently they, and probably lots of other people, consider this kind of "banditing" unethical. I think, big deal. As long as someone doesn't help themselves to race freebies and amenities, they're only really cheating themselves.

…And I guess that's one my strongest reactions to this whole concept. People who cheat in fun runs and road races, especially when there's nothing important at stake and they have no chance of winning, are only really cheating themselves out of a legitimate race-day performance. If they care about tracking their performances over time, cheating in the race gives you, at best, an asterisk. It's a data point you'll always have to ignore, knowing that it doesn't accurately reflect your performance.

Then there are people like this guy. This guy apparently ran a legitimate Boston Marathon in 1996, and clocked a 3:05, which is a very respectable time for a recreational runner. Good for him. For years, though, he's been re-using his 1996 race bib to run the marathon, cross the finish line, pose for photos, and collect swag. Why would he do this? Marathon Investigation discovered that the man is a graduate of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. So he is a good runner, a smart person, likely very successful in life. Why would a guy like that steal Boston Marathon entry year after year? What's going on with that guy?

There's another side of this that has a big impact on me. As far as I can see, Marathon Investigation is run by just one person, who appears to have made a hobby out of outing road race cheaters. On the one hand, this is a valuable service to race organizers who want to minimize theft and fraud and improve the reputations of their races. On the other hand, what kind of person spends his free time outing race bandits? It is definitely pathetic for a person to cheat on a fun run when there's nothing at stake; but spending your hard-earned free time basically tattling on pathetic people who cheat at pathetic things is… weird. Wouldn't you rather spend your free time with your friends or your family, or writing a novel, or making music, or watching a movie, or having a beer, or… What is the mentality of a person who makes it his hobby to get riled up by petty race fraud and diligently report on it?

The last major emotional pull I experienced from discovering this website was reading the story of a woman who won a marathon, but in order to do so, had to almost come to blows with another racer. The other racer kept "boxing her in," not letting her pass. When she tried to pass, she'd get run over of blocked, and when she finally made it past, the offending woman shoved her hard in the back.

I had an emotional reaction to this because it reminds me of an experience I once had. The story quotes a USATF (USA Track and Field, the official governing body of major race competitions in the United States) rule that expressly prohibits this kind of behavior. You're not supposed to obstruct other runners, and of course it goes without saying that you're not supposed to run them off the course or physically accost them.

During my senior year of high school, I competed at "regionals," where all the high schools in my region got together and had a track meet. Going into the 3200m race, I had the second-fastest time in the region and was a favorite to win. I had a plan to beat the first-place-seeded runner, and I felt fresh and confident. The weather was gorgeous. I was ready. When the race started, though, two slower runners deliberately boxed me in and prevented me from passing them. Then they ran a deliberately slow race. Frustrated, I moved over to the third lane and sprinted past them. I successfully passed them, but used all my energy to do it. I blew it and ended up taking third or fourth, I'm not sure which.

A lot of people were disappointed in my decision. They wanted me to hang back with the people who were blocking me, and then maybe out-run them in the final lap. But I was already over 100 meters behind the first-place seed when I blew the race, and the obstructionists were pushing me further and further behind. I could have placed second, but not with a respectable time. It would have been pointless for me to run a race like that. I may have blown it, but at least I went out trying.

But I've never seen that USATF rule before, and USATF rules applied to my high school track and field career. In other words, I just discovered this morning that one of the great "failures" of my running career was actually a case of other runners violating USATF rules in order to beat me. In short, they cheated.

I don't really know how I feel about that. I've spent many years feeling stupid about that race and wondering how I could have overcome their "strategy." It never occurred to me that I didn't have to overcome it in the first place, because they broke the rules in order to beat me.

Kindness, Not Sex, Is A Woman's Real Power

An interesting conversation sprung up at Marginal Revolution. What started it was a rather silly trio of tweets from a journalist who put forth a two-penny theory about how feminism was initially aligned with "raunch culture," and then over time, anti-feminism became aligned with "raunch culture." To be clear, I don't think this idea has any explanatory power whatsoever, and I don't even think there is such a thing as "raunch culture" to begin with. But, that's what started the conversation.

Before you know it, many commentators were presenting their own theories to account for what we see today: a confluence of shrill feminist rhetoric paired with an ever-diminishing rate of sexual activity among young people. One smart person called "derek" argued that the sexual mores of the world that existed before the (1960s) sexual revolution were designed to facilitate, rather than restrain, coupling. As he put it,

The sexual revolution was about defining sex as simply a source of pleasure, and that any restraint is unnecessary. It obviously is far more than that. The most interesting thing is that a couple of generations with no restraint ends up not doing it very much. Who would have thought that the rigid sexual morals were a societal basis for vigorous horniness? I doubt that any religious person would be surprised by that finding…. 

The most interesting thing is that the upper middle class largely lives a life of chastity, honor and faithfulness because it works very well. And it does, but no one dares say so.

This is not such a radical idea. Hundreds of years after its development, people in society still have trouble absorbing the concept of "Rule of Law." When we sketch out the clear boundaries of acceptable behavior, we all have more freedom within those rules than we do when we eliminate all rules and the boundaries become fuzzy. Certainty, it turns out, is good for freedom; even sexual freedom.

Next came a fascinating game theory treatment written by a person called "asdf." I post it here in full:

Both sexes would like to be strategically promiscuous (in different ways, but still promiscuous).

However, this is a prisoners dilemma. If the double cooperate box is "pre-sexual revolution mores", then the other two boxes (my sex does as it pleases, the other sex continues to play cooperate anyway) seem to be what playboy and pro-sex feminism we're going for for either sex. Turns out defect/cooperate combos weren't too stable, and you tend to end up in a defect/defect equilibrium.

Conservatives though such an equilibrium would mean lots of teenage mothers, and for a time it did, but it seems that equilibrium can also mean sterility due to lack of ability to form the trust necessarily to facilitate sex for most normal people (long term monogamous pairs).

"Feminists" seem to think we can still get to that "women defect, men cooperate" box if only we implement enough Orwellian pressure. Hence the kangaroo courts and such. Mostly it just seems to push us further into defect/defect.

There is a lot of wisdom in that comment, so read it a couple of times over. I won't belabor any of "asdf"'s great points by repeating them in my own words.

For now, let us merely consider where our inquiry is taking us. "Derek" tells us that well-defined sexual mores promote sexual behavior by defining where freedom exists. "Asdf" tells us that, as in a "prisoner's dilemma," stable social equilibria in sexual behavior exist only when both sides either cooperate or refuse to cooperate; when one side wants the other to cooperate, but refuses to cooperate themselves, the situation is both unpleasant and unstable. Note here that "double cooperation" is a more optimal equilibrium than "defect/defect." That is, people are happier when they're in stable, cooperative romantic relationships than they are when they're only ever taking what they can get and looking for the next best thing.

Next came an exchange between "Hazel Meade" -- a ubiquitous econ blog commentator whose comments are almost always of stellar quality -- and myself. [Note: I have no idea if "Hazel Meade" is a nickname, pseudonym, nom de plume, or real name; for our purposes here, I will treat it as a real name merely to avoid having to over-use quotation marks.]

Hazel rightly pointed out that "raunch culture" can be sexist, but can also not be. She then opined that she preferred the brand of feminism that was attached to "raunch culture," typified by the pop culture of the early 1990s, to the more Victorian feminism of today. I responded by recounting an interview with Prince, in which he revealed that the mere act of being raunchy attracts unsavory characters, making it something that we generally can't do often, if we care about respecting each other as individuals.

Then Hazel presented an opinion that seems wrong to me. She suggested that the right way forward is to put women, and only women, in complete control of sexuality. After all, they're the ones with the "scarce resource," and men who want to increase their chances of "getting laid" will allow this to happen if they know what's good for them.

There is plenty to object to about that position, but what made the biggest impression on me was Hazel's simultaneous demand for complete control of all sexual decision-making and her veiled threat of withdrawing sex. It was as if she was saying, "Give women all the sexual power in the romantic marketplace, or else we will take sex away from you."

Let me outline a few problems with that.

First, any man who would trade self-respect for sex is not likely to be a man that sexually appeals to most women. It's been my experience that most women want a man who is confident in who he is.

Second, any man who is willing to do pretty much anything in order to get sex is also unlikely to appeal to most women. A man who can be convinced to do what you want him to do simply by offering him sex is also a man who can be convinced to do what someone else wants him to do simply by offering him sex. His cooperation comes cheaply, and yours is not always the most attractive offer.

Third, any woman who would attempt to manipulate a man in such a way is unlikely to appeal to most men. Men don't want sex to be used as a bargaining chip. Men also don't want to pursue long-term relationships with women who threaten to withhold affection in order to get their own way. That's pretty much the definition of a dysfunctional relationship.

Fourth, this grand ultimatum requires total cooperation from all other women. Unfortunately for Hazel, there will always be women who are willing to give a little ground in order to land a good relationship with a good man. I say "unfortunately," but that's actually a wonderful thing. Humans should generally be willing to give a little ground for the sake of a great romance. That's the foundation of a successful marriage.

Fifth, and finally, Hazel's presentation of the matter only applies to young twenty-somethings. By the time people start to reach their thirties, the power dynamics have completely shifted in favor of the men. At a young age, women can dangle their attractiveness in front of all the young boys and make them dance to the snapping of their fingers. But youth and beauty are both fleeting, and more so for women than for men. A 30-year-old woman can still be beautiful, but she cannot afford to demand as much from men, or else they will simply trade her for another beautiful 30-year-old woman who demands less, or a beautiful 20-year-old woman who expects less. Either option is a Pareto improvement. A beautiful 20-year-old woman likely has more than 20 childbearing years ahead of her; a 30-year-old woman has half that, and maybe less than half. As we age, the pool of quality mates shrinks, but an attractive middle-aged man appeals to both middle-aged women and young women, whereas an attractive middle-aged woman only appeals to much older men. Thus, a woman's insistence on being in complete control of sexual decisioning in her thirties and beyond is unlikely to yield anything positive for her. At best, it might buy her some time; at worst, it'll cost her one of her last good chances with a quality man. That's a fool's bargain.

The point of view I attempted to advance, contra Hazel Meade, was that sexual decisions must be arrived mutually between two equals. For all the reasons outlined above, I think it's a foregone conclusion. The modern feminist notion of putting women in control of romantic decision is an unstable equilibrium that is unlikely to get women what they actually want from their relationships.

Feminism is not the answer; equality is the answer. Two people in a romantic relationship must negotiate the terms of that relationship as equals. If they don't, they jeopardize the integrity of the relationship itself.

In the old days, this was all laid out in no uncertain terms in the form of traditional sexual mores. That's where "derek"'s comment comes in. We had more freedom, and better-quality relationships when we had clear rules and everyone understood when they were being violated. Today, by contrast, we're stuck trying to negotiate the terms of our acceptance of each other. Men and women push each other's boundaries and challenge each other in unhealthy ways, at all points demanding to know, "Do you still accept me now? And how about now?" How much sex can she get away with depriving him of? How much domination can he exert on her before she protests? How long can they afford to wait before they're willing to cut-cord and find someone more compatible?

In the end, women can offer men sex, but in the long run they must offer us kindness. Sex is not a good enough offer from one woman to justify a man's full cooperation. He can always find sex. He cannot always find kindness. Kindness is the truly scarce resource, and it's the one that determines whether she will be a good wife, a good mother, a good in-law, and a good life-partner. Besides, women can only bargain with sex for about ten years before they must start to bargain with other things by necessity.

Men, who never get pregnant or carry a child to term, whose bodies never change to accommodate pregnancy or the nursing process, who remain sexually virile deep into old age, are the ones with the true bargaining power. We can afford to hold out for as long as it takes to find a truly kind, non-manipulative woman. And we can obtain sex in the meantime.

The good news for women is that kindness is an easy offer to make, it doesn't cost a woman any self-respect or challenge her self-worth as a woman. It doesn't make her less a woman and it doesn't compromise her feminist ideals. Kindness is also an offer that is unlikely to be taken up by men who are knaves. A man whose only interest is in taking advantage of a woman and using her will generally make that clear, whether or not she offers him kindness. But a good man will respond to kindness with a clear, obvious, and unambiguous devotion to her.

Kindness, not sex, is a woman's real power.

Libertarian Fairness

Classical liberalism arose in an era in which kings ruled and everyone else simply obeyed. Rulers and royalty believed that they had a divine right to make all the decisions within a society, and everyone else was resigned to curry favor in order to extract what little bit of self-governance they could squeeze out of the king. As philosophy and economics developed, it became obvious to the learned that leaving people alone to pursue their best sense of wellbeing just so happened to make any kingdom more prosperous. Eventually, the rulers of Western Europe realized that leaving their subjects to the greatest level of freedom possible also happened to produce the best and most prosperous outcome for the rulers themselves. We all know this story relatively well.

We could also tell a story about the same set of events using the lens of "fairness." In a world in which the subjugated are idiots and only the royals know what's best for society, the fairest outcome is that in which the rulers make the best and most reasonable proclamations. As subjects become more educated and less idiotic, fairness demands that they also enjoy some participation in the decisions of a nation. As the education and capability gap - and indeed even the wealth gap - between ruler and ruled becomes even smaller, then fairness demands that all people face more or less the same laws as all other people. Hence the end of monarchy and the rise of egalitarian democracy. Liberalism isn't only more prosperous, it's also fairer.

This brings us to about the 19th Century, when humankind started to apply concepts of fairness to concepts of prosperity, i.e. economic equality. Many people believe it to be unfair that some of us end up millionaires while others remain working-class. Few of us pity the middle class, but the middle class will always have expenses to worry about, while it is the perception, at least, that millionaires don't have to worry so much about expenses. (I think the point at which a person no longer has to worry about money is actually several million dollars into it, but for now let's concentrate on popular opinion rather than absolute accuracy. It is enough to say that there exists a class of millionaires who do not have to worry about money, unlike the middle and working classes.)

So, some of us have to worry about money a lot, while others of us do not have to worry much about money. Part of this comes down to different life choices; for example, someone who becomes a school teacher will never make as much as someone who becomes a heart surgeon. In a fair world, we're allowed to pursue different life choices as long as we are willing to live with the consequences of those choices. But another part of our wealth differences comes down to heredity. Some of us inherit an awful lot of wealth, and thus begin their lives with more prosperity than working class people will perhaps ever be able to earn, even if they make nothing but good choices for a hundred years straight. This inequality over the luck of being born doesn't seem fair to most of us.

When that unfairness is coupled with great financial hardship - such as crushing medical debt or the inability to afford decent housing - it's natural for some people to consider the merits of wealth redistribution. Perhaps taxing the very wealthy for the benefit of the very poor could alleviate more suffering than it causes. If so, society can gain, both in terms of fairness and in terms of prosperity. If it were possible, it would be a win-win: the poor would have much of their suffering alleviated while it would cost the wealthy comparatively little, and yet poor and wealthy alike would stand to gain from the benefits of a more egalitarian society, and perhaps a more prosperous one.

In the abstract, that all seems right. In the real world, however, we already live under a well-established regime of progressive taxation and wealth redistribution. This is true in every country I am aware of. Despite that fact, in every country I am aware of, there exists some debate about whether "the rich" should pay even more taxes and whether "the poor" should receive even more redistribution. The best answers to these debates, in my opinion, appear to be empirical. That is, we can analyze with reasonable accuracy the impact of variously imposed tax rates on economic behavior and determine relatively robustly which tax and redistribution rates are better, compared to others.

None of those economic analyses, however, can address the question of fairness.

For about a hundred years, libertarians and their precursors have been alone in the opinion that the wealthy should have some say as to the fairness of any wealth redistribution proposal. Most moral analyses will tell you that it's only morally fair to give money to a beggar who asks; it is only libertarianism that is willing to consider whether it might be immoral of the beggar to ask in the first place. It is most certainly only right-leaning strands of libertarianism that would suggest that the person being begged-from has a moral right to refuse.

This moral right to refuse is something that gives libertarians a bad name. We're often thought to be heartless and cruel because we believe that it's not fair to demand that the wealthy pay literally any tax rate approved through a democratic process. It's not that libertarians think that the poor should suffer, of course, it's just that many of us don't think it's fair to subject the rich to literally any tax rate, no matter how high.

Even some libertarians are uncomfortable phrasing it that way. Many would prefer to talk about the deleterious effects of high tax rates on the economy, or the non-existent benefits and ill effects on the labor market of wealth redistribution. They would much rather say that wealth redistribution is harmful rather than simply unfair.

The cynical explanation would be that libertarians are greedy knaves who want to keep all their money for themselves. This explanation fails mainly because few libertarians are millionaires, and the vast majority of millionaires are non-libertarians. There is something about libertarians that makes us keen to defend the rights of those whose tax burden is steepest on grounds of fairness.

What could it be?

A Soul-Food Model Of Morality

"It is possible to oppose evil without doing violence." Her voice held the simplicity of someone stating an obvious truth.

Perrin grunted sourly, then immediately muttered an apology. "Would it were as you say, Mistress Leya."

"Violence harms the doer as much as the victim," Leya said placidly. "That is why we flee those who harm us, to save them from harm to themselves as much for our own safety. If we do violence to oppose evil, soon we would be no different from what we struggle against. It is with the strength of our belief that we fight the Shadow."

-- Robert Jordan, The Dragon Reborn, pp. 38-39.

If your quest to attain a good end requires that you first do something evil from which you expect the good to come, you have fatally undermined your quest from the get-go. This seemingly obvious proposition may well be the most poorly understood and most often rejected moral precept in the world today.

-- Robert Higgs, Facebook post, December 20, 2018.

I happened to read both of these things within an hour of each other, and it set my mind ablaze for a while.

Coming from the Midwestern United States as I do, I am used to viewing morality from a sort of "redemption framework." In the typical Judeo-Islamo-Christian framework, we do good so that we can meet our salvation in the afterlife. All sin stems from the actions of Adam in the Garden of Eden, and we are doomed to live as imperfect sinners, struggling to be worthy of the love (and rewards) of our god.

Most people I know think of ethics this way, even if they don't believe in any Abrahamic religion; even if they don't believe in any religion at all. The Western view of ethics is that we are struggling against our nature to be better than we are naturally inclined to be. All ethics in Western philosophy are presented in this way. Left to our own devices, we would behave no more ethically than the beasts, so we turn to moral principles and ethical philosophies to improve upon our nature. Doing so successfully means, if not salvation, then at least moral achievement.

There are many strengths to this approach to morality, and I don't mean to criticize it in the slightest. The two quotations I cited above, however, present a way of looking at morality that offers a strength that is not readily available from the traditional Western framework; or at least, one that hasn't played a large role in Western ethics since the time of the Stoics.

An alternate way of seeing ethical behavior is in considering what it does for your "soul" (broadly construed). In this model, good behavior -- ethical behavior -- nurtures your spirit, while bad or sinful behavior is self-corrupting. The Hindus and Buddhists have the concept of karma to serve them here: the more you exhibit good moral behaviors and right thinking, the more it fosters goodness from within you. The more you exhibit bad behaviors and thinking, the more it sort of poisons your life.

It's possible to think of this in a mystical sense, but that's not how I mean it. It is generally true that if you walk around with a smile on your face, being kind to people, your mood improves. One of the key findings of happiness research is that the more a person lives for something larger than himself, the more a person chooses to serve his friends, family and community, the happier he tends to be. The more a person keeps to himself, dwells on negative thoughts, and/or pursues hedonistic pleasure-seeking and pain-aversion, the more unhappy that person tends to feel. It's simple cause-and-effect. As in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the worse is the life we choose to lead, the uglier our picture gets. The better the life we lead, the better the picture.

This is a useful way of thinking about ethics because it reminds us of the journey as well as the destination. Moral valor is not necessarily an achievement, but rather a lifelong set of choices that build upon each other. Start with small decisions to do the right thing, and gradually build up to the point where doing the right thing becomes second nature. And every bad choice you make takes you marginally in the other direction, toward moral poverty.

This need not be either-or, of course. We can see morality both ways, or neither way. But there are strengths to every kind of moral reasoning, so it's nice to keep this particular moral model in mind.