Is It Unfair To Be Born Faster Than Everyone Else?

NBC news reports:

The IAAF wants Semenya, Niyonsaba and other female athletes with high levels of natural testosterone to lower them — either through medication or surgery — to be eligible to compete in events from 400m to the mile at top track meets like the Olympics. The IAAF argues that female runners with abnormally high testosterone levels have an unfair advantage.

When is an advantage unfair?

Steroids are made from synthetic testosterone, which is why they call them ster-oids. The issue in this case seems to be that athletes who are born with naturally elevated testosterone levels are capable of building larger, stronger, more powerful muscles than other athletes.

It's true that steroids give athletes an unfair advantage. Steroids create the kind of athletic advantage that cannot be overcome by training alone. They're also hazardous substances that cause major health problems for users over time. The reason steroids are banned substances is because, if they weren't, all athletes would be required to permanently jeopardize their health just in order to be able to compete, let alone win. Officials don't want to foster a sports atmosphere in which medical intervention is the major determinant of elite competitiveness. That all makes sense.

But, in this case, we're not talking about any of that. We're talking about women who have naturally elevated testosterone levels. They didn't ask for elevated testosterone levels. They didn't aggravate their levels. They were simply born on the upper tail of the bell curve and found a way to make use of their natural hormonal profile: Train hard, and win races.

At the elite level, every advantage counts. It is probably true that an athlete with abnormally low testosterone levels will always lose to an athlete with abnormally high levels. In a cosmic sense, that might not be fair. It certainly comes down to pure, dumb luck. But in the sense of starting from a blank slate and rising to the upper echelons of competitive sports through hard work, isn't it impossible to call this "unfair?"

There are a few problems here. First, "normal" testosterone levels are not a static thing. We don't have testosterone records that go back 500 years, but I'm willing to bet that, just as humans have grown taller over time, so human testosterone levels have changed. So who's to say that the line drawn today is worthy of setting a competition policy on?

Second, elevated testosterone is something experienced by multiple athletes in the same competition. There is no evidence that these races have come down to "whoever has the highest testosterone levels on race day wins." Instead, there has simply been a trend showing that those who test high also tend to perform well. The correlation is clear enough, and perhaps also the causation, but there's still a lot more to it than hormones.

Third, if the IAAF can make a determination about how much is too much testosterone among women, does that mean they also plan on doing so for men? Or is "too much testosterone" only something that matters among women? If this rule applies to both sexes then the IAAF will have a lot to account for when they start demanding medical intervention for qualification. And if the rule only applies to one sex and not the other, despite the fact that both sexes make testosterone, it's impossible to see this as anything other than sex discrimination, even beyond the medical discrimination issue already being discussed.

And finally, what does it mean to become a great athlete if the very biological differences that give us an advantage over our competitors are outlawed from competition? Will the IAAF eventually decide that only people of average height be able to compete? Only those with average-sized hearts or average hemoglobin levels? Should people of above-average intelligence be banned under the argument that they can train smarter than all other athletes?

If the body an athlete was born with - naturally - disqualifies them from competition, then what if anything is fair?

Above All, Laud The Winners

Whatever happened to cheering for the winners?

All the news outlets are pumping the story of the Boston Marathon marine guy who crawled across the finish line. I understand the superficial value of the story: all-American boy does good; guy who lost his friends (in 2010) decides to do something difficult in their honor and manages to complete the task through the force of true grit. What I don't understand is why anyone thinks his story is more significant or amazing than the story of the winners.

Congratulations to marine guy for running the Boston Marathon, and my sincere condolences for his fallen friends. Still, there were hundreds of other runners at the Boston Marathon this weekend who were running for similar reasons, and who managed to finish ahead of this marine without crawling to the finish line. Why does marine guy deserve a disproportionate share of attention and accolades? He doesn't, at least, not for his marathon performance.

Every year, tens of thousands of human beings finish a marathon. It's difficult to complete a marathon, and it requires a lot of training, but it's feasible for most healthy people to run a marathon at some point in their lives without being the high-water mark of their existence. It's not that I want to pour cold water over people's accomplishments, but neither should we over-inflate the significance of a thing. The continuum between a huge accomplishment and a mundane task is long and granular; if we cheer loudly for any minor accomplishment, we risk ignoring truly great things. If we waste all our energy on cheering for people who merely finish a marathon, how much energy do we have left to cheer for the leaders?

Nor am I impressed that he crawled across the finish line. Crawling across the finish line is not the mark of great will power and determination, it's the mark of someone who did not adequately prepare for the marathon. We should not ignore that fact just because he ran for a noble cause. As runners, we must train in order to finish our events safely and strongly. This is a serious matter, and we ought not lose sight of its seriousness just because the media attempted to pull our heart strings and mouse strings. Every year, thousands of athletes use the Boston Marathon to fund-raise for charity and to call attention to many noble causes. They manage to train effectively and they manage to finish the race. If we're being frank, we must acknowledge that their accomplishments at the Boston Marathon are superior to the guy who crawled across the finish line.

Marathons are tricky business. Even a well-trained athlete can have a bad day and not finish the race. Perhaps the marine came down with a cold or flu a few days before the race, and ran despite being physically ill or exhausted. That's not worthless, but it's also not particularly great. The marine's friends did not lose their lives so that this guy could hospitalize himself in an effort to pay them tribute. It's good that he finished, but it's not newsworthy.

And we ought to be able to say so.

We also ought to be able to say this: the people who had the greatest accomplishment yesterday morning were the top finishers: Lawrence Cherono and Worknesh Degefa. They may not be former US marines who have seen active combat, but they had the best marathon performances in Boston this year, and they deserve the highest marathon accolades.

In My Body Or In My Head

How's my training going?

This past Sunday, I was scheduled to run a 10K race. I couldn't find any local 10K races for April 14th, and the one I signed up for on April 13th was rained-out. So I did the next best thing, was to run what the kids are calling a "virtual 10K." In other words, I ran ten kilometers all by myself, pretending it was a race. It's definitely not the same thing as a real race, but it's also better than nothing.

I aimed for an average of 6:00 per mile and started off strong at 5:50/mile pace. During the second mile, I ran up a steep hill, which was followed by a two-mile stretch of running into the wind, followed by another steep hill. The next four miles were all over 6:20/mile pace. My final two miles came in under 6:10 pace and I finished with a 38:38. Final average pace was 6:12/mile. That's quite a large difference from my goal pace of 6:00, so I was disappointed on the one hand. On the other hand, it's hard to run at race pace when you're all by yourself; so, with that in mind, I wasn't all that disappointed. Overall, I was satisfied, as far as it goes.

Still, this training regimen I've been working on has taken up a lot of time and effort. I last ran a 10K on August 25th, 2018, and my time was 37:29, more than a minute faster than Sunday, and I managed to do that with very little training and on an extremely, unpleasantly hot day. I was facing stronger winds and steeper, longer hills this past weekend, but I've been training hard for eight solid weeks.

At the halfway point of my half-marathon training, I am not where I would otherwise expect to be. Why not?

One explanation is that heart rate zone training doesn't work for me. During my competitive racing days, the first mile of any competition was always the most crucial for me, since it set the pace of the entire race. If I ran a good first mile, I knew I'd have a chance of running a good race. By contrast, I have never successfully recovered a race from a bad first mile. Heart rate zone training, in which I am required to run 7:30 pace, 7:45 pace, 8:00 pace during recovery runs, might be habituating me to slower running. If so, it's making faster runs more difficult for me.

That's a plausible explanation, but it's also a bit of a weak excuse to claim that the reason I can't run a fast 10K is because I have to run slow on my easy runs.

This brings me to my second possible explanation: Maybe I am not trying hard enough during my threshold runs. In the moment, some of these threshold runs have felt quite difficult. After they're finished, though, I always feel… fine. I don't necessarily want to believe that I'm leaving something in the tank, especially when I think I'm pushing it. But how energetic should a person feel after a very hard workout? It's one thing to feel fully recovered the next day, but it's another thing to never feel like my muscles have gotten a good, solid workout. I remember in the good old days, if I had a tough track workout my muscles were always burning the next day. Not my joints. Not my tendons. My muscles felt like they'd been through an hour of heavy lifting at the gym, all from a track workout. The truth is, I haven't felt like that at all since starting my half-marathon training -- with the exception of today, this morning, the day after my 10K time trial.

Now, again, part of this might be the Z4 upper heart rate limit on my hard workouts. My watch beeps when I hit "Zone 5," and I try to keep it at Z4. But should I? Why shouldn't I push as hard as I need to in order to hit my goal pace? Why should I slow myself down during speed workouts? And who's to say that the heart rate zones on my watch are even accurately configured? They're based on an algorithm. It might be a good algorithm, for all I know, but there is no guarantee, and if my times aren't dropping despite running hard workouts and 60-mile training weeks, isn't that a problem?

Of course, in the back of my mind, there is another invidious little voice whispering about a third reason: It's all in my head. Maybe taking on a big, 16-week training plan has gotten into my head and I haven't been able to relax and stride out like I need to. Maybe more casual running works for me specifically because I don't put this kind of pressure on myself. Or maybe the pressure would be good for me, if I could handle it.

Coincidentally, my daughter had a sports experience this weekend in which she may have put a little too much pressure on herself, to deleterious effect. Perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Perhaps the tree needs to get out of his own head about running and get back to pushing hard and enjoying himself.

Take The Time To Notice Your Loved Ones' Accomplishments

An ex-colleague of mine once told me that, when he had his first child, he created a spreadsheet that charted his son's first words. He listed each new word his young son learned, and the date on which it was observed. Then, after some time, he created a graph with time on the x-axis and the count of known words on the y-axis. He said it was interesting to see the line. It was roughly "exponential" in shape.

(I guess I should say that the line was convex and increasing. I have no idea whether it truly resembled an exponential function, and likely neither did my coworker. Hurray for pedantry.)

When you learn Bangla, it can be hard to learn all the different written verb conjugations that exist, and then to learn all the different spoken verb conjugations. Written and spoken conjugations in Bangla all line up one-to-one, but they're different. Khaisi is a different word than kheyechhi, even though they mean the same thing. One you'll only ever experience in written form, and the other you'll only ever experience in spoken form. Written and spoken conjugations each have their own rules, but luckily they both do have rules, and the rules can be learned and applied. The hard part is figuring out what the rules are. Once you know the rules, though, it's no more difficult to conjugate khawa than it is to conjugate kora or any other verb.

It took me about six months of daily practice to get good enough at playing chords on a guitar that I could learn and strum any old pop song I wanted to. That first six months was excruciating. My fingers hurt, and it wasn't any fun trying to sing and play a song because there was a large gap between the strumming of each new chord, as my fingers fumbled for the correct position. That, too, if I didn't have to look up how to play the chord in a book or chart! Memorizing a chordal lexicon and then training your hands to play each chord via muscle memory fast enough to be able to play a song on-tempo is a difficult and slow-going process on the guitar. But it's about six months of work. After that, the number of songs a person can learn increases at an increasing rate.

So, I think it's safe to say that the concepts described above generalize. The hardest part of learning anything is learning the fundamentals. Once you know them, applying them is a relatively straight-forward process. It takes more time to learn and understand the fundamentals than it does to apply the fundamentals to new concepts, so our rate of learning will tend to increase over time. When we know nothing, the learning is slow; when we know a little more, the learning comes much easier.

Of course, learning to communicate, learning to speak a new language, and learning to play a new instrument are activities that all involve much more than the fundamentals. There are subtleties and implications. There are inferences that must be made. There are greater levels of accomplishment to be had. Even though we learn at an increasing rate as time goes on, there are perhaps an infinite number of concepts leading up to mastery, if mastery is even possible. And thus, after a time, our additional accomplishments become less noticeable to outsiders even if we're learning more now than ever before.

This morning, my daughter correctly guessed how to spell the word "habitat." She's four years old, so this is somewhat impressive. She can read, and that was impressive when it finally happened. She knows some good words, words beyond what the average four-year-old knows, among which I count the word "habitat;" and her having a good vocabulary is impressive to me. Still, it doesn't elicit the same kind of emotional reaction in me the way it did when I heard her say "Dada" for the first time. That's not because it isn't equally as impressive, it's just because hearing a child's first word is a leap into interpersonal communication, whereas hearing a young child spell the word "habitat" is a fully anticipated outcome of her having been taught the phonic principles of reading.

Ironically, her spelling "habitat" is probably more impressive on objective terms, even though it didn't rock my world quite the same way. She spoke her first word at about an "age-appropriate" time. It was a developmental milestone that she crossed at roughly the time the average parent might expect. By contrast, she learned to read earlier than average, and I don't know any other four-year-old who knows the word "habitat," much less knows how to read it or spell it.

So, in fact, I am more impressed that she did this today, but it requires some introspection on my part to fully appreciate it. That got me thinking: How many other things will she learn today that would impress me this much, if I but merely took the time to think about it for a second?

I'm not writing this to brag to the world about cool stuff my daughter did. The lesson to be learned here is that I think we should occasionally take the time to appreciate the remarkable things our friends and loved ones do. We don't always notice what's going on. We don't always take the time to consider how impressive it is that they've managed to accomplish what they have. We're naturally impressed when people learn a new set of fundamentals, but after that, we stop paying attention. It becomes harder and harder to differentiate between a person's being able to play The Entertainer and The Moonlight Sonata, except to people familiar with piano-playing. But we don't have to be familiar with piano playing if we merely take the time to follow along with our loved ones as they work through their own sets of accomplishments.

So, the bottom line here is to take that time. Recognize what your loved ones have done. They'll amaze you, if you're paying attention!

Lateral Oscillation: The Running Form Problem Good Runners Have

This morning, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed, and I came across a video of a team of runners somewhere in Colorado, running together during a workout.

That's not unusual. I come across similar videos all the time, and have been doing so ever since I started following elite distance runners such as Mo Farah and Eliud Kipchoge on Instagram. What caught my attention, however, was the running form of these American distance runners in Colorado as compared to African-native professional runners I follow.

While there are many small differences I could discuss between the two running forms, there was one huge difference: lateral oscillation. "Lateral oscillation" isn't something you'll find in running physiology books, because it isn't generally a factor worth discussing scientifically. This is because most everyone already understands that bounding from one side and then to the next is a bad and inefficient way to run. A runner should always be stepping forward, never sideways. A runner's torso will naturally twist as his or her center of gravity moves to support one leg's stride and then the next leg's stride. But sideways motion in the body should be as minimal as possible. To the extent that runners do it at all, it shouldn't be noticeable; and it shouldn't be so pronounced that a casual social media observer would take notice of it.

Perhaps one reason I reacted so strongly to seeing the video is that I recently took a slow-motion video of myself doing a few strides after a long run, and caught myself engaging in a surprising amount of lateral oscillation. Mine wasn't nearly as bad as what I saw in these Colorado runners, but it was enough that I had to do a bit of a double-take. "Huh," I thought to myself, "that doesn't look quite right." I chalked it up to the fact that I had just run fifteen miles, my farthest run in a decade. Surely diminished running form is partially excusable after a two-hour slog. I don't think these Colorado runners had the same excuse, but at the same time, I can't dismiss the fact that both they and I were caught on video making the same mistake.

Mistakes like these are often more psychological than they are biomechanical. The major reason I tell people to run, not jog is because the very concept of "jogging" calls to mind an unnatural running gait, slow and lumbering, shoulders too high and tense, legs too low to the ground. This "jogging" form is unlike anything you'd use to escape from a man-eating tiger and unlike anything you'd observe in "the wild," if you somehow managed to see "wild" humans. A running gait, by contrast, defined to be the motion that comes most naturally to you, the gait you'd use to flee from a man-eating tiger, is safe and efficient. It is the motion that human beings evolved to perform, no different than the fact that cheetahs evolved to run the way they run. It's what nature demanded of our species, and it's what we'll have the most success with if we choose to embrace it as our running form for exercise.

This lateral oscillation, though, is a bit more complicated. It's not something a jogger would do. Instead, it's a kind of swagger; it's something that someone would do if they got it in their head that they were running fast and being awesome. It's conceited and performative, exactly what you'd expect from a glamorous social media video clip of a group of tough-guy runners being awesome on Instagram. In a way, it represents the opposite of the "jogging" problem. Where a jogger jogs because he's often a bit self-conscious and wants to look like what he thinks a fit person looks like, a lateral oscillator moves side-to-side because he's feeling confident and wants to project an air of speed and ability. Ironically, the result is a lot of energy wasted through inefficient motion, a corresponding reduction in running economy, and, ultimately, a slower and less-capable runner.

The moral of the story is that good runners aren't immune to form problems. The solution is to somehow find your zen. When running is done right, it feels magical, like flying. One hardly has to think about it. It's a comfortable and efficient glide. The more you get into your head when you run, either due to too much or too little confidence, the greater your risk that your attitude will adversely impact your running form.

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.

Getting Outside

Last night, I watched the movie Free Solo, which is a National Geographic documentary film about Alex Honnold's successful free solo climb of "El Capitan" in Yosemite National Park. The film has been positively reviewed elsewhere, and I won't do so here. My short review of the film can be summarized as follows: Free Solo is a wonderful film for people who have familiarity with rock climbing or the rock climbing community, while non-climbers may find the pace of the movie a little slow and will almost certainly miss out on some of the technical details of the climb. This movie is not merely "guy does amazing thing," it is specifically "guy who is an amazing climber does an amazing climbing thing." The better you understand climbing, the better you will appreciate the movie. That said, my wife enjoyed it, and she knows nothing about climbing.

Beyond the element of rock climbing in the movie, the film jolted my memory about a great many things I haven't been in touch with for a very long time. Watching the film, I was impressed by the rock climbing community, people who hang out at the same national parks and wilderness areas, pursuing the same outdoor hobbies, with a sort of similar attitude toward nature and toward technology. It's not merely a rock climbing community, it's a subset of the broader "outside" community.

This is a community that surrounded me as I grew up. It's impossible to avoid this community in Utah - or at least, it was when I lived there - because Utah is such a wonderfully special place for outdoor sports. In addition to featuring bar-none the best skiing in the entire world, Utah is home to impressive red rock formations that attract rock climbers and mountain bikers from all over the world. The northern part of the state is home to some of the best single-track mountain biking trails in the Rocky Mountains, along with plenty of limestone climbing routes, national and state parks, mountains for hiking and ice climbing, rivers for kayaking and fishing, reservoirs for boating, and endless routes for trail-running, camping, caving, and exploring. In short, if an outdoor sport exists, there are many beautiful places where you can do it in Utah. I am not sure that any other place in the world has so many great, world-class outdoor sporting locations as Utah does.

Consequently and unsurprisingly, the outdoor sporting community thrives there, so much so that when I moved away I slowly had to adjust to the fact that people who live in other places don't necessarily do something. In Utah, everyone does something. Some fish, some bike, some run, some climb, some ski, some camp, and some do more than one of the above, but everyone does something. Outside of that world, though, a lot of people don't do something. Outside of that world, it's not uncommon to meet people whose only real hobbies involve watching TV and eating. The point I'm trying to make here is that I literally didn't understand this until I left Utah, because I had never really met such people when I was there. The outside community is everywhere there. I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I watched Free Solo.

This outside community is an interesting group. They're a people who like to spend the majority of their time in nature, doing very low-fidelity things - they're campers, not glampers - but who are also extremely tech-savvy. In fact, the outside community has their own thriving world of gadgets and gizmos that many people don't know exist, but again, this is all in support of fundamentally low-tech passtimes. These are people who eat extremely healthy diets, and yet who are also stereotypically passionate about beer and coffee. They're among the most physically fit people in the whole world, and yet they spend little time in gyms and don't tend to bulk-up like body-builders. (Indeed, one of the more impressive things about Alex Honnold is how incredibly strong and muscular he is, despite his somewhat gangly appearance. That's not something you'd encounter in your average gym rat.) The gear they need to do their thing is horrendously expensive, as anyone who has tried to assemble the most basic, fundamental rock climbing kit can attest, and yet they are generally not a community of people who exude affluence or wealth.

Stepping into this world means stepping into a world of people who have made it a point to spend most of their time outside, and who have figured out the means to do so. Why run on a sidewalk when there is a trail available? Why take a car when you can take a bike? Why eat indoors when you can eat outdoors? Why sleep under a roof when you can sleep under the stars? It's a romantic world, borne out of the community's close proximity to the kind of wilderness that is capable of being enjoyed. That is, you're unlikely to meet a great outdoorsman living in the Sahara desert; you're much more likely to meet one at the foot of Mount Rainier. Like people who live on the coast and cannot imagine life in a place where one can wander miles without seeing a drop of water, so the outside community lives in places where there are copious trails and fun things to do outside, and they cannot fathom what it might be like to live in an urban center, or a flat, sprawling suburbia like you find in the South.

It's a great world, and I miss it. I like living in north Texas, but it would be nice to be able to transport my lifestyle and resources from here to a place closer to the community of people I grew up around. Maybe a better choice would be to make small changes to my own life, to see if I can enjoy a little more of that lifestyle than I otherwise would.

The Unaffordable Decadence Of Cycling

The trouble with a bicycle is that its two primary benefits are at odds with each other.

Bicycles are a technical marvel. The more one learns about bicycle mechanics the more impressive it seems. Or, perhaps the reality is that bicycles present various aspects of mechanics in ways that laymen like myself can easily understand. At any rate, the story of the development of the modern bicycle is a story of the development of the industrial revolution. We go from wooden frames propelled by legs on the ground, like a toddler's "balance bike" (they were called "dandy horses" at the time) to tubular frames and spoked wheels, to rear-drive "safety bicycles" with chain-driven hubs, to interchangeable parts and pneumatic tires… and so on. Every new development in the world of mass-production and industry has a corresponding development in the world of bicycles, to the point that even today the world's leaders in electric cars are also manufacturing futuristic electric bicycles.

In short, the bicycle is the ultimate case study in applied mechanics, and this plays directly into the first of the bicycle's two primary benefits: It is an extremely energy-efficient machine. This accounts for its popularity as a pure utilitarian means of transportation. Some estimates state that a bicycle traveling somewhere between 14 and 25 miles per hour requires the same amount of energy from the rider as the rider would spend walking. I don't know about you, but I certainly can't walk 14-25 miles per hour.

The bicycle's other primary benefit is, for the most part, totally unrelated to the first. Bicycles are extremely fun.

For those who do not ride, it's impossible to understand. No description can give it justice. Is it the act of balancing, or the ability to achieve high speeds in a short period of time, with minimal effort? Is it the wind in your face, or the gravity working with you as you lean into a turn? Is it the communion with nature, or the connection to the road? Perhaps it's all of those things. It is a multi-sensory experience that is continually satisfying, from beginning to end. Oh, sure, there are times when one must ascend a steep hill at great effort, or ride mile after mile into a strong and unforgiving headwind. That isn't always fun. Still, it isn't exactly miserable, either.

There's something magical about it. The same stretch of road looks and feels different from a bicycle than it does from a car. When you have a tactile connection to the slope of the hills and you can hear the birds, you find appreciation in a place that, from a car window, might look otherwise boring. You certainly won't discover a blue-jay's nest while speeding by an empty lot in a sedan at 45 miles per hour. On a bicycle, though, you might hear the jay's song, which will cause you to turn your head and catch it flying by; you follow it with your eyes until it lands in a tree up ahead, and then you take a look as you ride past, spotting the nest, the bird's mate, and possibly even hearing the chicks peep as they cry for food. All that in an empty lot, a potentially dirty lot, on an ugly side of town that makes you frown when you see it from your car. Bicycles give you access to the hidden lives of the city.

But that's romance. Bicycles also offer us thrills. Is there any better word than "thrilling" to describe the feeling of speeding down a long, steep, empty hill at speeds well exceeding 30 miles per hour, with nothing keeping you from scraping your face across the pavement than your own sense of balance and your ability to control your vehicle? There are many cyclists who make the trek miles and miles up a steep mountain road, solely so that they can have the experience of coasting back down it. We do this because we cannot help ourselves. It's dopamine, pure dopamine, pumping through our brains as we descend. To hell with the station wagons honking at us to move. They don't know what it's like, because they can't feel the wind on their faces.

It's almost worth the inevitably inhaled insect, although I could do without the coughing fit.

A bicycle's two primary benefits are its mechanical advantage and the fact that it is unbelievably fun to ride. These two features combine to present an experience that a rational person capable of riding will want to take advantage of at every available moment. In doing so, however, the rider must make a sacrifice. Riding a bicycle can be physically strenuous, but it's designed not to be. The whole point of bicyclical transportation is to avoid energy loss. That's why, in many countries, even old ladies ride bicycles. Bicycling itself won't make you a sweaty mess, not like a ten-mile run will. When you finally dismount, you'll feel a little wobbly, as if you've just been on a long boat ride; but it's not wobbly from physical expenditure, it's wobbly from having spent a long time atop a fast-moving gyroscope.

For some, lengthy bike rides might be a good form of fitness. It would certainly be better than nothing at all. But for someone who enjoys dedicating a lot of his free time to physical fitness, bike riding is a decadence I can seldom afford. I enjoy my "cross training days," when I can get out on a bicycle and just enjoy a ride. I don't have to worry about the workout I'm missing, because the point of the day is to rest my muscles and to give them a change of pace. But on an "on" day, who can afford to do something that's equivalent to walking? Even a very long walk can't give your muscles, heart, and lungs the same kind of workout that a run will. So, much to my chagrin, I must leave the bicycle home.

Still, I am a middle-aged man. I know that life is short, and virility even shorter. One day, I won't be able to run like I do, and on that day, I'll be glad to have my bicycle. It's a wonderful machine.

Broken People

Yesterday, I had an experience that most of us have had once or twice. I was confronted by an angry, aggressive person who thought he could push me around by yelling and attempting to dominate me. In the past, when this has happened, it has made me angry, too. Yesterday was different. I didn't feel any anger at all. I felt sorry for him.

I was driving home from work. As I stopped at a stoplight, a large SUV from an adjacent parking lot pulled out into the road and attempted to cross four lanes of traffic into the left-most turning lane. The driver made it across two of the lanes before coming to a point where he had to stop, because the front of his car was aimed directly at the side of my car, just off the passenger-side rear bumper. This left the SUV blocking at least two lanes of traffic. There were two cars in front of me, so I wasn't exactly going anywhere myself, and I was in the correct lane for the left-hand turn I had to make.

Ordinarily, in a situation like this, I might pull forward a bit to see if the truck can get around me if I'm a little further forward. I started to make this move when the driver of the SUV suddenly started honking, repeatedly, and yelling profanity at me.

One of my character flaws is my sensitivity to bullying. I don't like it, and I tend to resist it whenever I see it. This man had made an aggressive move in the middle of a busy traffic signal and wanted people to simply move out of his way, just because. I would do it to be polite, but I won't do it just because some aggressive bully demands that I do it.

But, all of these thoughts merely passed through my mind in a moment or two. The driver had scarcely been honking at me for 20 seconds before he decided to hop out of his car, run up to my window, pound on it, and demand that I move. He told me to "stop being a dick," screamed that he was trying to get into the far left lane, bellowed out a few F-words, and then ran back to his truck.

Throughout all of this, I merely looked at him. I looked him in the eye, but my facial expression was calm and neutral. I did not roll down my window. I did not engage in conversation with him. I simply looked at him, as flatly as I could, considering that his aggressive confrontation was a little startling.

When he got back to his truck, there was some more honking and some more yelling, and then after a few more seconds -- again, we are talking about matters of seconds here, not minutes -- he managed to drive around my car and pull up beside me in his SUV.

N.B.: he drove his SUV around me. That means he never had to honk, scream, swear, or get out of his truck in the first place. He could have simply begun by driving around me and going on his way. He chose to honk, scream, and aggressively confront me.

Now that his SUV was beside my car, he had a clear path to continue on in the leftmost lane. Instead, he rolled down his window and continued his verbal onslaught. Once again, I retained a neutral facial expression, but this time, I picked up my cell phone and began snapping photos. When he realized what I was doing, he quickly shut his mouth and sped away, and that settled that.

When I got home, I took a look at the photos I had taken. One of them clearly caught the man's face as he was screaming and swearing at me. I zoomed in on it. The anger was obvious, but there was something so incredibly sad about it. His dark eyes seemed to lack something. My thoughts ran through the events a few times, and the key points played themselves out again and again.

The man pulled out of a parking lot at a busy intersection as approaching cars were lining up to stop at the stoplight, and yet to him it was obvious that his goal of crossing all of these lanes despite all that other traffic should take precedence. Other people should move out of his way. He's trying to go somewhere.

He stops for a car that is obviously stopped, waiting for the red light to turn green, and then rather than giving the car the chance to move out of his way, proceeds to honk, scream, yell, and so forth; and all this, despite the fact that he had enough room to simply drive around.

He takes the time to try a physical confrontation, despite the fact that he is walking on the street on foot at a busy intersection during rush hour. He continues his verbal assault.

He then drives around, and when his path is unobstructed, he chooses to waste additional time yelling at someone who has not responded to anything he has said or done thus far.

There is something broken in a person like that. I am not quite sure what it is, but it's obvious that it is broken. Is it that the sense of his own objectives prevents him from being able to put himself in someone else's shoes? Is it that he has never considered how his actions impact other people? Is he suffering from uncontrollable rage?

I don't know. But the extent of his brokenness awakened in me not anger, not defensiveness, not resentment, but sadness and pity. No one should ever be so damaged. I hope he will be okay. I hope he gets help.

Say Yes

Early in a relationship, partners generally say yes to each other a lot. Want to go check out this band? Want to go see this movie I've been dying to see? Want to go to this one restaurant I want to go to? Want to go to the zoo? Want to play a board game? A video game? Take a dance class? Use finger paints? Cook together? Do laundry together? Have sex?

Yes. I want to do all of those things. Because I am in the early stages of a relationship with you, and I want to show you how fun I can be. I'm up for anything. Let's go have fun. Yes!

The early stages of a relationship are so fun that, in hindsight, it seems incomprehensible that we eventually grow into the cantankerous "No" Monsters that we become later. No, I don't want to see some dumb band or some lame movie; no, I don't want to try a poke restaurant; no, the zoo smells bad; no, board games suck; no, video games are for nerds; no, finger paints are for children; no, I hate cooking; and I definitely hate laundry, just get outta my way so I can get it done quickly; and no, I have a headache.

Jesus Christ. What have we become? Do you want to improve the quality of your relationship? Start saying yes to things. It's as simple as that. Has your partner given up on making suggestions? Then you try making some. But, whatever it is, say yes for god's sake. Say yes to fun, say yes to being silly and goofy, say yes to new experiences, and definitely say yes to sex with your committed, monogamous, respectful partner! Say yes.

There is a lesson here that extends far beyond your romantic relationships, of course. Friends, coworkers, supervisors, customers, and strangers all appreciate an easy-going person who expresses a general air of wanting to be supportive and helpful. Realistically, you cannot be supportive and helpful of everyone, of course, but it's really easy to simply stand aside and let other people do their thing. As long as it costs you nothing and doesn't harm anyone else, you ought to shut your trap, smile, and stand aside.

I think this is one of Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules." I think it falls under the category of "Do not bother teenagers when they're skateboarding." When I was growing up, skateboarding was a big issue. Adults would get really angry at youths who were skateboarding in parking lots and other public spaces. I never understood the anger. They weren't hurting anyone. Why not leave them alone?

Recently, a friend of mine asked me if I'd be interested in getting together and writing some songs. Sure, I would. I'm really pressed for time these days, but if I can spare a couple of hours, you bet I'd like to get together and play some music with my friend. Will it be 100% the kind of music that I've always wanted to write? I don't know; probably not; but maybe? That's not the point. The point is that it's fun to play music, and I like my friend's company, and it's important to be easy-going and to say yes to experiences that have literally any level of upside against almost no downside. I'm not going to waste my time pontificating about what a song "should" be. Let's get together and try it out. Maybe I'll like it. Say yes!

This might all sound obvious, but it's astounding how many people make a point of saying "no" right off the bat, make a point of having to be convinced to say yes to anything. I don't want to be too harsh, but it's hard not to think of people like that as anything but losers. If someone has something better going on, or a prior commitment -- in other words, if someone has already said yes to something else -- that's one thing. But if your general disposition is "no" then you suck.

When your wife hands you a funny looking shirt and asks you to try it on, or even to wear it at your next special occasion, say yes, dammit! It costs you nothing to put on a funny shirt when your wife asks you to. When someone invites you to write some songs, say yes! When your boss asks for volunteers, volunteer. When someone asks you to come check out their dance recital or their whatever, don't be the jerk who refuses to show up.

Say yes. Have some fun. Live a little.

A Simpler Way To Reduce Corn Production

A recent report claims that corn production "causes 4300 premature deaths" each year. The report appears to be some sort of propaganda effort by ecological conservationists, aimed at reducing the use of certain chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and things of that nature.

I choose not to take a position on the environmental issue, except to say that I am skeptical of researchers' ability to pin 4300 deaths per year on the growing of a crop. After all, if farmers weren't growing corn, they'd be growing something else, presumably something with similar fertilizer and pesticide needs. But, perhaps they're right.

At any rate, reports like this won't change the course of American agriculture. What would really help reduce corn production, and free up valuable agricultural resources for better products, maybe even products with a lower adverse environmental impact, would be to reduce or eliminate corn subsidies. Subsidies provide incentives to producers to make the good in question; eliminating those incentives means producers will make less of it.

Perhaps the people who commissioned the report, whoever they are, should simply start making the case for eliminating the corn subsidy. Corn prices would fall, and that would lower food costs, which are disproportionately onerous for the poor. So, not only would eliminating these subsidies lower all food prices, it would also help the poor. It would also reduce the prevalence of corn syrup -- and therefore high-fructose corn syrup -- in the American food supply, which would improve health outcomes on a national scale. It's also the fiscally responsible thing to do, since ending corn subsidies would relieve the US government of millions of dollars in outlays and reduce the budget deficit. If paired with a liberalization of trade policy, food prices would fall even further without impacting corn supply in the country whatsoever.

Ending the corn subsidy simply makes sense, from all sides. I think the authors of this report ought to have spent their time attacking the subsidy directly to achieve their goals.

Against Sleeves

If you've spent any amount of time looking at photographs of today's professional runners, then you've noticed a major trend: sleeves.

Wait, it's not what you think. It's not that runners are running long-sleeved shirts. They're still wearing the same tiny singlets they've always worn. But now they're pulling on sleeves, sleeves that are unattached to any accompanying garment. The sleeves themselves are the garment. So, what you end up with is a guy or gal wearing a tank top and a pair of spandex sleeves. In Mo Farah's case, there often isn't even a singlet involved. He's shirtless, but for a pair of spandex sleeves.

The first question to ask here is why? The answer is relatively straightforward. Running sleeves offer protection from the sunlight, often up to and beyond 50 SPF. They also provide "temperature regulation," meaning that when it's cold outside, the sleeves will help keep you warm. Depending on the material from which they're made, they may also be capable of cooling you in warmer temperatures: as they wick moisture away from the skin and into the fabric, and the breeze hits the fabric, the runner wearing the sleeves feels a rush of cooling air. Lastly, one article I read floated the theory that the sleeves provide more "real estate" for a pro runner's brand endorsements. In other words, he or she can wear a logo all the time, over and above whatever logo exists on their other garments.

These all seem like sensible answers, until we stop to acknowledge that all of the above is true of any garment that already has sleeves.

Now, we've all been in situations where we wished we were wearing long sleeves. Most typically, in those situations, we put on a long-sleeved shirt, or a jacket. I cannot say that I have ever been in a situation in which I wished that I was wearing a tank top, exposing all the parts of me that a tank top exposes, but that I wished desperately that my arms were covered from the bottom of my deltoids to my wrists. Not only is that oddly specific, but it's also just plain odd. After all, it is far easier to put on a long-sleeved shirt than it is to go shopping for the sleeves, minus the shirt. What could possibly be the advantage of just the sleeves, not the shirt?

In speaking with a few different people, one advantage to the sleeves kept coming up: They're great sun protection. The wearer doesn't need to bother with sunblock, and the sleeves are cool enough that they can be worn in very hot and sunny weather.

With this sun-blocking advantage in mind, I did a little online window shopping to see what sort of "sun sleeves" were available out there. Guess what I discovered: sun shirts.

That's right, for many years now, surfers have been wearing long-sleeved shirts that wick away moisture and block the sun's rays while keeping them (the surfers) cool and allowing the full range of motion that a surfer requires. These shirts have high collars, too, so your neck doesn't miss out on all that great sun protection.

So, once again: with products such as these, there is no need to wear just the sleeves. You can have a whole sun-blocking, moisture-wicking, self-cooling shirt. I bought a pair of these shirts to test out. In the cool spring air, they've been very effective as sun block, and they've helped me keep a little cool. The real test will come in the infamously difficult Texas summer heat.

I suspect, however, that these shirts will perform no worse than stand-alone sleeves. Don't wear sleeves. Wear the whole shirt.

The Dominant Theory Of Human Pairing Is Wrong

Those who discuss things on blogs and across social media have been discussing a recent report, highlighted in The Washington Post, that the share of Americans reporting "no sex" within the past 12 months is at an all-time high, meaning that Americans are having less sex than they ever have, for as long as people have been answering this questionnaire. The report further states that this decline is driven mainly by young people, twenty- and thirty-somethings, and the implication there is that this is a generational shift away from sex.

This report corroborates prior evidence of the so-called "sex recession," reported in The Atlantic by Kate Julian.

Over time, the media has been influenced by an old social media theory first pitched by the "PUA/Red Pill" community, an early precursor to the "alt-right." (Here I am talking about the real alt-right, not the spooky neo-nazi media caricature. The two are different concepts, although there is some overlap.) That old social media theory on the sexes itself traces its lineage back to such old internet tropes as "Ladder Theory," and other such high-school nonsense.

The theory is not difficult to describe or understand, hence its prevalence and appeal. It goes like this: Women are primarily "hypergamous," meaning that their objective is to seek out and marry the highest-status male possible; men, meanwhile, are evolutionarily programmed to spread their seed as far and as wide as possible. Thus, under the framework of a traditional conservative culture, men will attempt high-status activities such as career advancement and athletic prowess in order to attract the most beautiful women, who will then respond to men by offering them lots of sex in exchange for monogamous exclusivity. If the men get the sex they want, maintain their high status, and treat women the right way, the marriage will be happy and last a lifetime; otherwise, the relationship fails and the parties play again, up until the point where a woman can no longer attract a higher-status male and a man can no longer achieve any higher status than he possesses. Solve for equilibrium seven billion times.

On the surface, this theory is appealing. It seems to have all the moving parts we need for a complete description of human mating activity: sexual bargains, an explanation of how "that guy" ended up with "that girl," an implicit set of instructions for maintaining a happy marriage (men bring home the bacon while women put out), and a shiny evolutionary biology façade.

Armed with this theory of pair-matching, the internet commentariat has sprung forth with their various opinions on why there is a sex recession, and why it is being driven by young people. Young men don't graduate from college, and they stay home and play video games all day; thus, women aren't attracted to them. Young women are either having sex with higher-status older males or not having sex at all. Young men find the game costly and the odds of winning highly unfavorable, so why not stay home and play Call of Duty instead? Only high-status college graduate men who are physically attractive are capable of offering a woman anything at all; ergo, they're the only ones having sex; and they're having all the sex of their generation. Everyone else is an "incel."

It doesn't take a lot of effort to explode this theory. All one really needs to do is travel the world a bit. There are places where men tend not to have college degrees and where financial security is a pipe-dream; people still have sex in those places. The fact that men have "nothing to offer" (at least, according to this alt-right theory) has not stopped very many of them from getting what they want from women. The PUA crowd will have you believe that, despite their lack of money and social status, they have really great "game" with women, but this is preposterous. No one can make up in personality what they lack in social status.

…at least, not unless the whole theory is bogus and what really attracts people to each other in the first place is, you know, PERSONALITY.

Besides that, surveys consistently show that people outside of the United States enjoy higher rates of sexual satisfaction than people here do. We're not just doing it less often, we're worse at it. Why?

One reason might be what I've just discussed above. When you wrap your romantic relationship up in a theory of species survival, and use that fact to play mind-games with your partner for the sake of maintaining an evolutionary bargain, you're not likely to be very satisfied. If you think about it, this puts the entire relationship up to external validation. The woman thinks "I'll put out, because society says he is high status," and the man thinks, "If I dominate her then people will continue to see me as high status."

You see where this goes, right? It's narcissism again, folks, and no matter how many articles you've read about society's increasing levels of narcissism, no sane person manages a relationship in this way. Only narcissists do that, and they are still quite rare in our society. No theory of narcissistic relationship management can account for a sociological trend.

Ms. Julian's article offers a much better starting point. In it, she highlights how the prevalence of pornography combines with young people's ever-diminishing social skills to produce a perfect storm of stay-at-home autoerotic behavior. Of course, Julian isn't the first to observe young people's waning social skills. That's been a common refrain since the digital age became a thing. Going further back, it seems to be a common refrain from old codgers for generations, dating back centuries, when older folks would complain that younger folks don't know how to exist in civil society.

Two years ago, The Atlantic published a different article, this one apocalyptically entitled "Has the Smartphone Destroyed a Generation?" While the article is a bit hyperbolic in places, in many points, it gets right to the heart of important social trends. One that sticks out to me is this:

In the early 1970s, the photographer Bill Yates shot a series of portraits at the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in Tampa, Florida. In one, a shirtless teen stands with a large bottle of peppermint schnapps stuck in the waistband of his jeans. In another, a boy who looks no older than 12 poses with a cigarette in his mouth. The rink was a place where kids could get away from their parents and inhabit a world of their own, a world where they could drink, smoke, and make out in the backs of their cars. In stark black-and-white, the adolescent Boomers gaze at Yates’s camera with the self-confidence born of making your own choices—even if, perhaps especially if, your parents wouldn’t think they were the right ones. 

Fifteen years later, during my own teenage years as a member of Generation X, smoking had lost some of its romance, but independence was definitely still in. My friends and I plotted to get our driver’s license as soon as we could, making DMV appointments for the day we turned 16 and using our newfound freedom to escape the confines of our suburban neighborhood. Asked by our parents, “When will you be home?,” we replied, “When do I have to be?” 

But the allure of independence, so powerful to previous generations, holds less sway over today’s teens, who are less likely to leave the house without their parents. The shift is stunning: 12th-graders in 2015 were going out less often than eighth-graders did as recently as 2009. 

But it's not all poignant prose. The article also presents a set of hard-to-ignore data, cold hard facts, that show that younger people are becoming less socially engaged. And when I say "socially engaged" I mean IRL socially engaged, not just plugged into a social media rectangle. The article shows that today's teenagers spend less time meeting their friends, delay getting their driver's license to later ages, date less, have less sex, are more likely to feel lonely, and are less likely to get adequate sleep.

The author, Jean Twenge, argues that this is all caused by the smart phone. But this is a bit like arguing that Twinkies cause obesity. No, too many Twinkies causes obesity, while the right amount of Twinkies causes fun. And so it is with smart phones; they're a blessing in the right amount and a curse in the wrong amount. The problem isn't that the technology sets us up to consume the wrong amounts of its use.

No, the problem is that young people today prefer living life on their smart phones to living life in the flesh. This is perfectly clear when we consider sex itself, for it is arguably the apex of living life in the flesh. Anyone who prefers porn displayed on a rectangle to being in the same bed with another tantalizing human being has more than a mere smart phone problem. Such a person has a life problem.

I see something similar with music. People spend most of their time listening to music on tiny ear buds or tablet speakers. Or even monaural Bluetooth speakers! When they go to live concerts, they spend much of their time recording the performance on their phones and posting the videos on social media so that other people can consume that music on their earbuds, tablets, and monaural speakers.

That is, when people are at home, they prefer a greatly diminished sonic experience to what I had when I grew up: a massive analog stereo system with speakers higher than my waist, blasting impeccably recorded, mixed, and mastered music. When I got to a symphony, I feel the air move as dozens of expertly trained professional performers gather in one place and play the greatest music ever written. It literally hits me in the chest as I hear it. It is a tactile experience as much as it is an aural one. The same is true for any great live music performance, if you but take the time to set aside your digital life and appreciate the moment for what it is. It's stunning!

If young people still did such a thing, they would discover the thrill of going out into the night, to a bar or a club, hunting for a romantic interest. It's the same sort of visceral experience; the thrill of the chase, the uncertainty of it all, the sounds of the city, the excitement of being out among your fellow human beings, in search of a strong enough social connection. It's not something that can be had through an app or an on-screen experience. It's not something that you can do in your bedroom. It's not something that you can do alone. But it's a way to engage with life.

Through this engagement, we find others, we draw them near to us, and they become partners. You meet many different kinds of people living different kinds of lives. You discover commonalities with those people, despite their different lives. You interact with the world as it is, as a messy conglomeration of all types of human beings, rather than it appears on social media, as a neatly curated "feed."

It's an experience unto itself, and the power of new experiences is that they shape us into new human beings. We discover things we never would have otherwise realized that we like. We discover people that we never would have otherwise realized that we like. It creates the impetus to become the kind of person who maintains similar experiences with similar things and similar people. And, inevitably, we find partners who want to share those experiences with us.