Tag: politics

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Group Identity

An incident that took place yesterday got me thinking about a topic that is probably very appropriate at election season (in some ways more applicable after an election than before). That is, how and why we identify and associate within groups.

The reason I say this seems appropriate around elections is that part of the political process, at least for those who wish to make things happen rather than being content to simply express their views, is for groups to form from previously unconnected people in support or opposition of a candidate or proposed law or policy.

What happened yesterday reminded me of the psychological effect of identifying ourselves with a group.

I was driving to work when someone ahead of me began driving uncertainly as if the driver was trying to choose a route while driving. The driver was hovering near the lane line deciding whether to get in the turn lane or whether to go straight through the light ahead. As I was entering the turn lane the driver made the decision to do the same – right in front of me. That wasn’t a huge problem but it was mildly frustrating until I looked in the top right corner of the back window of their SUV where I spotted a sticker like the one pictured at the top of the post.

That picture was taken from the bottom left corner of my rear window and it identified the vehicle ahead of me as belonging to someone who lives somewhere near me. As soon as I saw the sticker all feeling of annoyance vanished with the thought that we were both on the same team (metaphorically speaking).

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Voting Record

Voting Record will allow recording of votes cast for display and reference purposes. Elected officials can record and display their votes and citizens can track and display the votes of an elected official they follow.

Latest Version: 2.0 (March 16, 2009)

Display templates are introduced here giving you total flexibility in deciding what to display. There is one set of template settings for recent votes and another for search results. Each template is made up of a header, a footer, and an item template. Template tags are used to display the variables specific to each recorded vote such as the vote cast or the vote description. There is also a setting for what to display when no votes are returned in the recent votes and another setting for when no votes are returned in a search.

Votes are entered on a dashboard widget:

Vote Record Dashboard Widget

A vote management page is available from the posts menu:

Manage Recorded Votes

Recent votes are shown by adding <?php recent_votes(); ?> in your theme templates. You can show a search votes form by using the shortcode [ SEARCH-VOTES ] on a page or post. Options for Voting Record include:

  • The option to specify a primary voter (if most or all of the votes being tracked are from one person).
  • The option to specify header text/code for the recent vote list.
  • How many recent votes to show – limited by number of votes or number of days.
  • What to show before a list of recent votes and what to show before a list of search results.
  • What to display at the end of a list of recent votes and what to display at the end of a list of search results.
  • The format for displaying your recent votes or search results lists, including which pieces of information to show.
  • What to display when no recent votes are returned or when a search comes up empty.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Voting Record page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later).

Categories
culture politics

Challenge vs Competition

I don’t recall what triggered the thought, but over the Thanksgiving break I had a little insight into the vital difference between a challenge and a competition. A competition is something like a sporting event where there can only be one winner (excluding ties). It is an event where the winner is determined as a function of relative position. A challenge is an event where there can be multiple winners because winning is determined as a function of achievement based on static criteria.

A marathon provides a good example of both. Winning a marathon is a competition. The winning time of any one race has no bearing on the outcome of other races. Your time in one race may be too slow to win while the same time in another race would constitute first place. Finishing a marathon is a challenge – any marathon runner will congratulate any other on the accomplishment of running that 26.2 mile race. Finishing a marathon in under 3 hours is a challenge – no matter how many people accomplish the feat, my finishing in under three hours does not diminish your success in finishing in under three hours.

The distinction here might seem trivial, but I believe that we can find valuable benefits from being able to distinguish between a competition and a challenge. For some non-athletic examples: getting elected to a political office is a competition (assuming you are not unapposed) while getting into heaven is a challenge.

Categories
politics

Economies of Scale

This news is disturbing but hardly surprising – our existing entitlement programs are unsustainable in the long term. The more I think about it the more I realize that this is like a lesson I learned as a child about ants. There’s an old movie that depicts 25-foot tall ants attacking people. What I learned as a child was that ants could not exist at that scale.

Ants at their existing scale are extremely strong. They can carry many times their body weight with their little exoskeletal bodies. Ants at the scale depicted in the movie would collapse under their own weight. As it turns out, people are the same way. I remember watching a documentary on giants and one thing that really caught my attention is that they have extra health problems because of their size. In fact, their life expectancy is decades shorter society as a whole because their organs tend to fail trying to maintain bodies that are larger than human organs are meant to support.

What I am realizing now is that the same principles of scale hold true for governments as well. Large, intrusive governments are unsustainable over time. The larger a government is, meaning the more it tries to do for citizens, the shorter it can remain stable. Either it must be scaled back or it will collapse. In our case we are staring at the possibility of economic collapse, but sometimes the collapse is a societal collapse.

If you want more proof that there exists a natural law of scale just remember that all the largest elements that have been “discovered” in the last few decades have actually been manufactured in labs. Without exception they rapidly decay into smaller elements because atoms larger than Uranium (weight 238 au) are not sustainable.

Categories
life politics

Personality II

Ever since I recognized my lack of personality I have been thinking about how that came to be. My first thought was that being highly introverted plays a part in it. I was thinking of a way to say that without implying that introverts lack personality generally but then I talked to Laura about it and she convinced me that it is possible for extroverts to lack personality as well – so my introversion is not a cause.

There is a difference between an extrovert without personality and an introvert without personality. An extrovert without personality is a chameleon matching the social climate around them. An introvert without personality is like the invisible man – going undetected in social settings. I have also begin to think of it as being something of an emotional albino – lacking any pigment of personality.

The question I am trying to resolve in my mind is, have I always been without personality or have I shed my personality. If I shed it – why? when? and how? If I have always been without it, why? Personally I lean towards having shed my innate personality. I have no hobbies, or substantial aspirations. My current goal is to get a job because I have to. That probably sounds really pathetic, but the truth is that I doubt my ability to be hired to do anything that will hold my interest. Everything that might set me apart from other people and make me interesting has been labeled (by me) unimportant.

Perhaps I have found something. I do have desires, but they seem to be so far outside the reach of my opportunities. I would like to make a difference in how we approach and manage education in this country, especially among our youth. I would like to make a difference in my community by making my voice heard about ways that we can make it an even better place to live than it is already. How can I do these things when nobody would listen to me.

Even if people would listen to me I am so caught up in trying to survive that I have no energy left after working full-time (back when I was) to expend the time and energy trying to make my ideas heard. The only way I could see to do both would be to get a job where I could work on some of those things as part of my work. Who would hire me to do that? Getting elected to an appropriate position is the only other way (besides being hired) to spend my time doing those things. I think it is patently obvious that getting a socially invisible person elected to any office is as likely as getting a squirrel to win the Kentucky Derby.

That is enough for now. I expect this is a theme I will follow while I try to unravel this mystery.