Richard’s Neighborhood

There's a tiny pile of presents in front of the tree - one from each member to each other member. It's the most "special" in a long time, being the first of our newborn girl. It's also the first in this house, and I have the feeling we're starting the traditions that will be with our little family for the next few decades. Better make them good ones.

Rigellights

For me, Christmas is when I celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and the message of new hope He represents. The message is that everyone and anyone, regardless of their past, can have a relationship with God and become a different person -- specifically a better person. It's a time of celebration, a time of remembering to show the people we love that we love them, a time of warm fuzzy feelings and a time to be grateful for how our lives are blessed.

For many, it's also a time of "what ifs". What if I didn't have loved ones to be with? What if the "big Christmas dinner" was half a chicken? In short, what if my life wasn't as blessed as it is? Following that is the recognition that for many, many people around the world this is the case. There's a big spurt of giving at Christmas, partly because people think Christmas should be good for everybody but I think mostly because people are happy, feel blessed, and are therefore more generous.

I recognise this isn't always the case: I see people rushing around shopping centres and the like, trying to find yet another gift for someone they just remembered they had left off the list, I hear of families where the annual get together is always a disaster. I like to strive for the best though, especially when it's my own life I am most affecting. I also try and extend that feeling of love and generosity throughout the year; I don't always succeed, but I try.

So I hope and pray that you all have a wonderful Christmas, that it reminds you again of the joy of living and maybe gives you hope that, yes, the world can be a better place.

Just in case you missed it.

Mexico City, one of Latin America's largest metropolises, on Monday legalized same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.

By a vote of 39 to 20, the city's legislative assembly approved revisions to the civil code to permit same-sex marriages. Five legislators abstained.

In a separate motion, the assembly voted 31 to 24 in favor of legalizing adoption by same-sex couples, with nine abstentions.

Plenty of Spanish-language stuff about it, but here's CNN in English.

I just saw this summary of the results of the Copenhagen meeting, including this paragraph (bold mine):

Mr Obama had been in Copenhagen for less than 14 hours.

In that time, he had done a deal with the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, that steamrolled over the UN climate negotiations. The US and China had wrested control of the strategic decision-making from the Europeans. Any future climate change agreements will be dictated by their joint level of ambition.

Then we're fucked. China won't do anything that will slow its path to being as powerful as the United States, and the US has consumerism as it's core spiritual belief. I'll be working on the assumption the planet will heat by 3 degrees celcius from now on.

Michael Leunig has turned his whimsical eye towards trees in the SMH, examining the ubiquitious tree of the season and expanding to cover the effect trees have on us, and the effect not having trees has on us. Well worth the read if you like trees, or Christmas, or Christmas trees, or just like being able to see the whimsical in bleakness.

Sometimes when you read something thought-provoking examples pop up everywhere. For example, yesterday I heard this quote by Steven Colbert: "And folks, there is still time for you to get on Santa's "nice list" by going to Colbertnation.com and donating to US speed skating. It counteracts any naughty deed, from falsifying climate data to tagging anything that moves." Then Emmi talked about how she "tries to alleviate guilt", albeit in a light-hearted manner.

The catalyst for this grabbing-of-attention was this article in Slate, which stated:

In an experiment, participants were randomly assigned to select items they wanted to buy in one of two online stores. One store sold predominantly green products, the other mostly conventional items. Then, in a supposedly unrelated game, all of the participants were allocated $6, to share as they saw fit with an anonymous (and unbeknownst to them, imaginary) recipient. Subjects who had chosen items from the green store coughed up less money, on average, than their counterparts. In a second experiment, participants were again assigned to shop in either a green or conventional store. Then they performed a computer task that involved earning small sums of cash. The setup offered the opportunity to cheat and steal with impunity. The eco-shoppers were more likely to do both.

This is not a "hypocrital greenie" rant, the same results came from a lot of other experiments testing other aspects of our psyches:

Earlier this year, researchers at Northwestern reported that subjects who wrote self-flattering stories later pledged to give less money to charity than those who wrote stories that were self-critical or about someone else. In another recent study, participants who recalled their own righteous deeds were less inclined to donate blood, volunteer, or engage in other "prosocial" acts. They were also more likely to cheat on a math assignment.

There are some other examples as well. The general upshot is if we've just done something we consider to be virtuous -- or even if we're just reminded of something virtuous we've done in the distant past -- we are less likely to do another thing that is virtuous. It's not surprising that "I gave at the office" is a cliche.

I've encountered plenty of people like this across all spectrums: Environmentalists, religous people, feminists, atheists, political activists, social activists, and so on. I'm sure others have noticed this as well. Of course the question that comes to mind is: Do I do it? I'm not going to cast aspertions, ("I've just told everyone how selfish they are and to buck-up, that's my good deed for the day done"), I just think it is a valuable piece of information for people to know, especially people who are interested in becoming better people. Just knowing about it can work against it, kind of like the "suggestion bias" made famous by lawyers and Glenn Beck.

A couple of suggestions are put forward in the article to explain this: The "I just proved I'm a good person, so what I'm doing now must be okay" suggestion, an idea which works best in ambiguous circumstances; and the "heavenly scales" suggestion, where people have moral credits as a kind of currency we accrue and spend. The article also notes that it's not a linear relationship -- often doing something good inspires us to do something else good, and "if you think of yourself as generous or honest or environmentally responsible (and others see you that way too), it seems that you'd be motivated to affirm that image". So when does it go one way rather than the other? There still working on that, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a subconcious cost-benefit analysis going on.

A couple of other ideas also come to mind. There are some religions -- which I won't bother naming -- which promote humility and often remind their followers they are flawed, and they should recognise their failings. The main call is for the congregation not to feel morally superior and self-righteous, but another upshot is that it encourages people to do more good things: Apparently some studies have shown that when our moral self-image is threatened we want to restore it, by doing good deeds. Personally, I haven't noticed that banging on about everyone being dirty sinners achieves this, but a gentle reminder not to feel pleased with ourselves because we, for example, slipped five bucks into the collection plate, tends to work wonders.

I also wonder if there's the opposite effect. There's a lot of people who spend a lot of their time pointing out how no-one else is really doing anything, even though they have more. For example, "Kerry Packer didn't donate much to charity, and he had much more than me!", and "Why should we make sacrifices to save the planet when the Chinese aren't? They're much worse than us!". I've noticed that whenever someone makes some uplifting speech (or blog, or comment) about how with a little bit of effort we can make a difference these people come out of the woodwork, with comments like "get off your high horse" and "how do we know you're really doing anything?" Putting them down as self-righteous is an attempt to fit into the average morality scale by bringing down the good rather than improving yourself, and the second comment misses the point. Saying that you're not going to do anything until everyone else in the world does first is safe, because there's always quite a few people saying this. Also, there's all those times people justify bad behaviour by saying "everyone else does it" or "it's natural selection baby, deal with it". These people seem to put in a lot of effort to justify why they don't do good things, or do do bad things.

For those keen to become "better people", however you define it, there's a few more good points. One is that once something you do that's "virtuous" becomes habitual it ceases to weigh so much on the good side of the scale, it just becomes something you do. So you seek out something else to do that's good. Another one is to watch the company you keep -- people tend to slide towards the cultural norms, so hanging around with "good people" will make you a better person.

The meeting at Copenhagen ... is a battle between two world views. The angry men who seek to derail this agreement, and all such limits on their self-fulfilment, have understood this better than we have. A new movement, most visible in North America and Australia, but now apparent everywhere, demands to trample on the lives of others as if this were a human right.

The angry men cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. They accuse those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but know at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings.

This is from an interesting column in the SMH (from the Age, and possibly the Guardian), which I think succinctly points out what is going on in the world today.

What one film do you think everyone should see?
Sponsored by The Official AVATAR Community on TypePad. See AVATAR in theaters December 18, 2009.

Fight Club.

What's the worst book you've ever read?

Wicked by Gregory Maguire.

One of the most common refrains when talking about people's wait is "I've got a diet for you, eat less and exercise more! herr herr herr", This is often followed by something along the lines of: "it's a simple equation, calories in - calories burned equals weight gained". The idea behind this is that everyone's metabolism is the same and a thinner person is just more strong-willed and disciplined than a heavier one -- although I've noticed this incredible discipline rarely spills over into other aspects of life.

The problem with these flat-earthers is that their position just isn't supported by science. There are the genetic disorders and thyroid problems which cause people to be heavily overweight, although these are a minority. However, at least 60 genes have been identified with variations that affect weight, and researchers feel there's a lot more to come. Each gene might only cause a difference of a pound or so, but when they're all added together there's a big effect: "About 70 per cent of body size and shape was determined by genetic inheritance". That means body shape is affected by genetics more than intelligence is. Of course, there still is that 30 percent so people have some lee-way...

Being overweight is not always unhealthy in terms of cardio-vascular fitness, if the food intake is mostly fruit and vegetables -- although if it's saturated fats and chocolate then it's going to be unhealthy no matter what you weigh. The good news is that as these genes become better understood they should be able to tailor exercise and diet regimes to individual types of people.

(The article is based on a paper published in Nature on a particular genetic issue, which may get debated back and forth as new evidence comes in, but it seems there's enough evidence of enough genes to give the general issue credence. Oh, and the "I" in the title is rhetorical.) 

Source: SMH