On Dementia

There has been a flurry of research into dementia. This is most welcome and not before time. Because medical advances are enabling us to live longer, most of us will reach the point when our brains become our weakest link and succumb to dementia. I have witnessed how dementia can destroy quality of life, so anything that can understand it, defer it, ameliorate it or simply cope with it has immense value.

Just this last week I have seen references to two reports about factors appearing to make dementia more likely. One was about sports, and especially sports involving knocks to the head and possible concussions. The indication is that soccer players who head the ball a lot are three to five times more prone to dementia than most of us. I can only imagine what this would imply for NFL players or boxers. It calls to mind those sad last years of Muhammad Ali. It seems to make sense that bashing the brain repeatedly is not the healthiest thing for us to be doing. Within a generation, these sports will be outlawed or have been radically changed. Perhaps in soccer there is already enough relief through using less dense balls with softer impact.

The second report had more subtle conclusions. We have long thought that exercising the brain helps to keep it in shape, hence the craze for mind puzzles like word search or even Candy Crush. That can only be good for the mobile phone generation – so long as those benefits are not more than offset by any damage to the brain from electrical pulses and the like. This report confirmed the benefits of mild brain exercise, but concluded that too much brain exercise may be a bad thing. People with stressful brain occupations seemingly are more prone to dementia.

My guess is that this may be about sleep. Sleep is emerging as critical for health in so many ways. It feels intuitively correct that, since sleep is the sort of cleaning reset function for the brain, good sleep patterns will help to fight off dementia. Perhaps those rocket scientists are thinking so hard and so often that they take their problems to bed with them, and that disrupts sleep and its positive effects.

While it is good to understand the causes of dementia, for now the more urgent priority is what we can do about it. For a life with dementia can be a horrible one.

The clearest symptom of dementia is the loss of short-term memory. We all start to suffer from a bit of that from our fifties or earlier, and initially it can seem rather harmless and even quite funny. At the home where we volunteer, the majority of residents have some issues with short-term memory. Many times we will be asked for a bowl of soup by a resident who had already eaten one just five minutes before and forgotten all about it. At this stage the resident can share the joke: we point out that their soupspoon has vanished to the kitchen and they can accept that they must have already eaten their soup.

But as the short-term memory weakens the impact quickly ceases to be funny at all, and our experience is that the onset can happen within a few short weeks. First the resident can become frequently lost, and anxious about it. Then, they see themselves in a different scenario to the one they are really in, often regressing to moments from their youth.

I liken this to being awake in a dream. We often dream about situations from our past. The resident responds to that situation much as we imagine ourselves doing in dreams. Sadly, for many of us our most commonly recurring dreams recall stressful situations requiring urgent action, such as getting lost as a child or being betrayed by someone like a parent, or reliving situation where they may have behaved shamefully. As dementia takes hold, residents imagine themselves in these situations more and more frequently, and they become stressed, angry and even violent as a result.

Much though I have always admired the nuns and staff at the home we visit, I used to think that they sometimes did not treat all their residents well. Often you hear desperate cries emanating from bedrooms, with nobody seeming to rush to help. On other occasions staff could appear brusque or heartless. Now that we have witnessed late stage dementia ourselves we know better. If such a resident calls for help, it might or might not be possible to mollify them. But the likelihood is that the scenario is repeated only a few minutes later. Short of sitting with somebody 24/7, requiring an infeasible level of staffing, what can they do?

This is the real world described in the best article I have read about dementia, in last week’s Guardian Weekly by Sarah Boseley. The author struggles to help her own mother and writes with compassion and intelligence. It emerges that good practice dementia care has progressed, albeit slowly. My grandmother had dementia in her later years, and, like many, ended up in a cruel home, often chained to a chair to prevent her doing anything silly. What a miserable life that must have been.

But most options involve impossible levels of personal care. The article describes how societies evolve from one where women stay at home to care for elderly relatives, then employ low-cost home help for the task from developing countries, then resort to care homes. Even the best care homes lack resources for the level of personal care needed. So sometimes residents are still restrained, and often they are heavily sedated.

When resources are available, it is obvious that the best choice involves plentiful social interaction. Our own home organises bingo and crafts and prayer and puzzles and many other distractions and brain stimulation, but this can only defer the day when one-on-one care becomes necessary.

Even giving that care is difficult. If I sit with a suffering resident for 30 minutes, it can seem like hours and severely test my ability to find distractions and conversation that achieves more good than harm. Here again good practice has evolved. Before, carers were told to be brutally honest. If a nonagenarian resident is looking urgently for her mum, we were supposed to point out that mum had been dead for fifty years. But good practice now is to minimise suffering. One professional quoted three golden rules: don’t ask questions that may cause distress; listen and only offer information that will make them feel better; do not contradict. I find these helpful, and wish that my volunteer training had included some specific advice for handling such situations. But I can promise you that, golden rules or not, it is not at all easy – and I can always go home when I have had all that I can take. It is a bit like sitting with a three-year-old with toothache or earache – hard work and often depressing.

Boseley also describes some modern concepts for community living for people with dementia, such as a village in the Netherlands that is part of regular society but with external walls that residents cannot get past. To me this sounds brilliant but not scalable: it involves a lot of capital and plenty of training too.

But somehow we will need solutions. More of us are living longer, dementia will only become more common, and we will need more homes with smarter designs. Perhaps better drugs can help – at the moment homes seem to use general sedatives like morphine that surely have side effects. Perhaps more people can join the army of carers: I love the idea of siting care homes with nurseries, and I read recently that in the Netherlands they are even experimenting with using paroled prisoners. I applaud Boseley for a very balanced and well-researched contribution to this urgent debate.

Now, where did I leave that soup?

Poverty in America

The Economist included one of its excellent special reports last week, this time on the subject of poverty in America – meaning the US. I found the report enlightening and thought provoking, but also perhaps with a few gaps.

My first takeaway from the report was just how many archetypes of poverty exist in the US. The report looked into former mining communities in Appalachia and black towns in the Deep South. It also highlighted smaller cities in the rust belt, such as Youngstown, which have lost their only significant employer and seen a drain of resources ever since. Then there is urban poverty, both in struggling cities such as Detroit and in generally thriving ones like New York. In the latter it is possible to get a job, but sometimes not one paying enough to escape a life of constant hustle and rent arrears, mainly due to the lack of affordable housing. Then there are Native American communities, hidden places of suffering out of the public view.

We can add a few more categories. There are many people with outwardly affluent lives but who are riddled with debt and with no feasible way out. Addicts, of opioids or alcohol or anything else, have a similar prognosis. Often, people from these latter categories are hidden in plain view.

While it is hard to get a full picture, I have managed to observe people from many of the categories. Last week I was in Europe, and they exist there too, but somehow I get the sense that the numbers are smaller and the plights usually less desperate.

Other reading tells a similar story. I am still haunted by the book “Evicted”, about the poverty trap in Milwaukee. I also read a long article last week about workers on a tipped minimum wage. While we all read about the regular minimum wage and cheer that it is finally shifting upwards in many cities, we are rarely reminded that workers designated as tipped staff do not qualify; indeed the federal tipped minimum wage has remained unchanged at just over $2 per hour for decades, and over the bridge in New Jersey it is just over $2.50. In a poor town, many folk on that wage will work at a  down-at-heel diner, where tips will hardly be abundant. 

My instinct is supported up by the second takeaway from the Economist report. Data confirms the US to be an outlier among rich nations. Despite the official definition for income poverty being much lower than elsewhere, the US has a higher proportion of poor people than its peers. To be classed as poor in the US, you have to be very poor indeed. By the definitions of poverty in most of Europe, over a third of US households would be classed as poor. That is one large contingent of households, of voters, of misery and of lost opportunity.

My next takeaway from the Economist report is that it seems that not enough people care about poverty in the US. Otherwise, why is it so large? Why is that I watch Democratic presidential debates, and there is little discussion of poverty? Instead there is an emphasis on particular programs, such as higher minimum wages, universal healthcare and eliminating student loans.

While all of these would reduce poverty, they are not well targeted. A high federal minimum wage would work in affluent cities, but be wrong in poorer places where the cost of living is lower – there it would probably reduce employment. Universal healthcare would be good, but the bigger issue with healthcare is its overall cost to the economy, due to monopolies and poor incentives. And student loans are irrelevant to most of the poor, and eliminating them would on balance subsidise richer people with better prospects.

Sadly, I reach the conclusion that reducing poverty would be great policy but is currently seen as bad politics. The reasons for this are depressing. The most prevalent is that Republicans have managed to sell the line that a lot of poverty is due to individual laziness or bad character. The Economist report demonstrates plainly that this is rubbish, but the notion makes it hard for Democrats to champion poverty reduction as a goal – they can be painted as promoting handouts for the undeserving.

Then there are other Democratic calculations going on. I suspect that the reason they don’t highlight the tipped minimum wage is that they rely on donations from businesses that exploit it and from the organisation representing the minority of tipped employees who do very well from tips. A more defensible possibility is that they realise that grand federal programs are not the best way to address poverty, yet grand federal programs are all the news media wants to hear about. Lastly, there is the calculation that poor people don’t usually vote.

Perhaps this is a major missed opportunity. The media like grand federal programs, but even more they like grand federal goals, and eliminating poverty would be a powerful one. It is the antithesis of everything the Trump administration stands for. It would lead to many practical policies. And it might enthuse voters. A good argument can be made that poverty drives outcomes that swing voters really do care about such as crime.

The Economist report argues that Lyndon Johnson won an election on precisely that messaging back in the 1960’s. It also shows the good and bad side of what happened next. Civil rights were improved, and programs of Medicare and Social Security lifted a lot of people out of poverty. These policies were good for their time, but they ended up helping older people on average, and the policies failed to evolve to meet other needs. The Economist makes a compelling argument that the primary focus of a new federal goal should be children. That would even help the political marketing, because not even Republicans argue that poor children are undeserving.

It appears that Elizabeth Warren has an almost unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination. She is a master of detail, with a catchphrase of “I have a plan for that”. The problems are that big goals can get drowned out by all the detail, and that many plans feel more like nasty retribution towards the wealthy than anything more worthy. An umbrella goal of eliminating poverty within a generation and child poverty within fifteen years could alleviate those problems. It is positive, exciting and completely differentiated from anything Trump has to say. The many existing plans can fit neatly under the umbrella, while the umbrella helps with prioritisation and also indicates suitable policies locally. Cities need reformed housing support and more housing supply; struggling smaller cities need regeneration plans; the Deep South needs quality education for all. As a result, her campaign can focus on meaningful policies in swing states and districts.

Trump may often seem to be imploding but his message is simple and his base seemingly robust to anything. Warren is a powerful candidate, but is vulnerable to appearing vindictive and geeky. The Economist report on US poverty might have revealed an opportunity to give her a better chance of winning, and then a better chance of implementing good policies. We can all pray for those outcomes. 

Income Envy

One of the judgments around retiring early nine years ago was about money. Did I have enough? I had been well paid, well overpaid really, for fourteen expatriate years, and had paid off all debt and then saved what seemed quite a lot. There was a severance package available, half of a house in England to cash in, and the prospect of starting my pension at 55 if need be. My daughter would soon be off the payroll.

I can’t recall the calculations I made. No doubt there was some fancy spreadsheet. But whatever it said, it was hopelessly wrong. I did not reckon on significant earnings after retirement. I did not think about the prospect of an inheritance from my mum. I didn’t consider income from investments. But most of all, I underestimated my expenses. Part of that was about separating, remarrying and taking on two new kids. A lot of it was about moving to an expensive city like New York. And some of it just did not account for inflation and societal changes.

Luckily, even if almost every line of the spreadsheet turned out very wrong, the bottom line has turned out to be close., at least so far. Once upon I time I saw a documentary where all these rich people were shown obsessed with money and concerned to make more and more. One guy near the end of the show was different and seemed to enjoy his life a lot more despite having only modest wealth. The narrator asked him how much he had, and he responded with a single word – enough.

For sure bad things can happen. The stock market is bound to collapse at some point. One of the kids might need help. One of us might lose our good health. But most of the time, when I think a bit about it, I think I am the guy in the documentary. I have enough, probably, and what a rare blessing that is.

Most of the time, that means I don’t have serious negative thoughts about money. But occasionally I do, indeed more often recently. So I wondered what might have caused that. My answer is not about spreadsheets, but about stories. I have become susceptible to income envy.

I remember when I clearly had the first such twinge. This one did not directly concern money, but ambition. Shell has a system called CEP, in which people are assigned a job level to indicate where their careers could reach, a ceiling if you like. It is a good system, though it has flaws, mainly in how it is executed. I remember the day I found out that someone who had previously been my direct report had been promoted to a level that was higher than my own CEP.

For some reason, this briefly made me envious. It was a sign of being terminally overtaken in some great race. The feeling was quickly usurped by ones of pride and pleasure, but it had been present and was uncomfortable.

Of course, that experience quickly became commonplace, as my career plateaued and those of the many talented people I had tried to coach blossomed. Since then, many of my former reports have risen to impressive levels, inside Shell and outside. Some have thrown me some generous crumbs, and many are still kind enough to remember the help I gave them. I am not envious, even when I observe lifestyles that I never enjoyed and certainly are way beyond me now.  Well, maybe just a tiny bit envious, in weak moments.

My lifestyle is on a steady glide path downwards, yet I choose to live in a city of extremes where others have openly opulent lifestyles and many are on a stratospheric path. There could be a four-box model here, with wealth or the past on one axis, and income or the future on the other. Each box has its own characteristics and its pitfalls. My own box, of high past and modest future, can be a relaxing place to be, but can open up spasms of envy, and also of making unfair judgments on those in other boxes.

A typical New York story occurred recently when I met a choir friend for coffee. She explained that she might have to miss a few rehearsals because her husband had just changed job, from one Wall street firm to another. I expressed the hope that at, even if the new job meant longer hours and more stress, there might at least be the consolation of more money. Oh no, she said, he took a pay cut of $200,000 per annum, to move to a better environment. My jaw dropped. The passing twinge of income envy followed soon afterwards.

We have a good friend who is a Chinese lady in her late twenties. Other friends of ours had played an informal foster-parent role for her when she had lived in England, and we were delighted to inherit that responsibility when she moved to New York. We still give plenty of personal help and companionship to her, and we are delighted to serve and get a lot back in return from her. But within two years she has rocketed from the low past/ unrealized future box to the affluent present / spectacular future box in my model. Two years ago we were stocking her fridge and always paying for dinner. Now she spends more in a month than we do in a year. It is lovely to see it, and she remains the same unaffected young lady she always was, but I have to confess to just the occasional pang of income envy.

The stories with people I know well are always the most poignant, but in New York there are opportunities for income envy of strangers every day. My recent experience of buying a car had few positives, but one big negative was fighting off the envy of recognizing that others were shopping in an altogether more glamorous market than I was.

Occasionally I get some evidence that makes me rethink assumptions. My dentist is a lovely lady who works hard and deserves her success and high income. But, one day while with my mouth wide open in her chair, I started advocating against income inequality, and was quickly reminded that she was still paying off six figures of student debt, in her late forties with two kids in college. Both axes in the model can weigh heavily, and can challenge easy assumptions.

I once had a good friend who was in the same box as me, but in a more extreme place within the box. We called him the poorest rich guy we had ever met. He owned a huge estate, but it offered him no income at all and he lived as modestly as anyone I have ever known. Then we have all encountered the converse, someone addicted to luxury but mired in debt. Appearances can deceive, and models can be complicated.

Like all failings, the first step is to acknowledge it, and nowadays I have learned to recognise the income envy feeling and have found ways to move past it. It can help to cast my eye just a little wider and to observe the many people who are worse off than I am. But for this particular negative feeling, I can do that and then consider a more structural fix.

The fix goes back to that documentary and the magic word “enough”. The envy feeling always starts with a mental reference to a race, and the sense of being overtaken and having no way to overtake back. But if think a bit harder we can realise that there is no such race against others, just our own journey meandering through life. If we can convince ourselves that we have enough, then that journey can be peaceful even if we are overtaken, by one close friend or by a million New Yorkers. They are welcome to their own race; indeed I can wish them all the best and cheer them on from my seemingly diminished vantage point.

For me, that realisation helps every time the income envy twinge comes around, and helps me to find peace. For others, that same realisation could be even more powerful, if it stops the urge to stretch to buy something they can’t afford, just to impress the neighbours, wife, parent or ego. Positions in four-box models are subject to change, after all. 

Fixing Congress

Despite all the hullabaloo about Trump, the really broken part of US governance is congress. That is easy to establish, but hard to fix. Even if steps can be identified to improve its performance, congress is unlikely to implement many of them, at least until we have turkeys up and down the land voting for Christmas.

The US has been underperforming as a nation since at least 1980. Mainly this is because its laws have not kept pace with the times and do not match the will of the people nor the interests of the nation. Results include declining life expectancy, mass incarceration, homelessness and inequality, unsustainable personal and national debt, rampant addiction and mental illness, failing foreign policy, and weak education. Before long the Chinese will be richer, the Europeans happier and everybody else anxious to stay away.

There are bright spots in the form of universities and tech companies, and it is true that more people want to come to the country than leave it. But for a nation with such a lead militarily and economically two generations ago and with such abundant advantages as its geography and its constitution, the performance has been stunningly poor.

The fault lies squarely with congress. It is true that there have been some woeful presidents, many unhelpful religious and corporate leaders, and some legacy attitudes to hinder progress, such as the gun culture and racial mistrust. But these persisted even while the US was doing well, and could all be circumscribed by an active and effective congress. Meanwhile, congress passes few laws, and many of the ones it does pass are either irrelevant or tend to make matters worse.

There are several causes. Around 1980, the executive made a power grab over congress and have continued that trend since. In 1994, Newt Gingrich essentially hijacked congress on behalf of a small minority, subsequently maintained by right-wing talk-show hosts. Around 2006, a well-intentioned decision to outlaw earmarks had the unintended consequence of blocking many compromises. From 2008, Mitch McConnell declared the sole aim of his party in congress to be blocking Obama. The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in 2010 introduced a flood of money and rich interest groups to congressional elections. Since 1980, media has become more partisan and splintered, while technology enabled scrutiny of individual voting records, leading to pressure on members of congress to pander to uncompromising positions. Meanwhile, geographical divides between coast and heartland and city and country only hardened, cementing many states and districts as red or blue.

From this list, it is hard to separate root causes from symptoms, and also hard to identify remedies. Many of the factors flow from one another, while reversing some factors would not halt the flood of inadequacy. Some factors are simply societal trends that cannot be reversed.

A good place to start is in the mind of a member of congress. I assume most start out with the intention of serving the public and reflecting the interests of their constituents. This is not where they finish up, so it will be useful to establish why that might be.

I can imagine the life of a congress-person to be pretty compromised. Mostly, it is about money. It helps to be independently rich or have the backing of wealthy groups. Then, life is one long fundraiser, mixing with people of extreme views and a strong sense of entitlement, just like all those lobby groups in Washington. There is not much chance of returning to a normal life after this so-called service, even if there aren’t any legal skeletons that might land you in jail, so you had better stay in the job for ten or twenty years. The only way to achieve that is constant pandering to those donors and lobbyists, and keeping your nose clean with your voting record. Keep that head down!

Then there is the party. You might consider yourself pretty independent, but your choice from the two parties will consume you soon enough. How do you get any influence at all? How do you maintain an organization? How do you ally with others to keep some semblance of control over all the lobbyists? How do you retain your nomination when the boundaries of your seat change? In return, the party expects absolute loyalty, whatever the madcap views of the current president may be.

In most cases, the real threat to your position comes not from voters but from a primary challenger from your own party. So the people to watch out for are those same extremists and lobbyists that pay your bills, but might choose to pay somebody else’s instead tomorrow.

Scarily, or perhaps handily, most voters don’t even know who you are. If it is not a presidential election year, maybe only 30% will vote at all, so pandering to the extremists is a sound strategy. If it is a presidential year, you are just an invisible surrogate of that candidate, so you had better not stray out of line. All publicity is good publicity? Not for you, my friend.

I almost feel sorry for them, until I see their inflated egos, hear their pathetic hypocrisy and imagine their dodgy trust funds. But I think is fair to accept that they are mainly the inevitable product of a broken system.

So what can be done? Of course, very little is likely to be done, because the ones who would need to initiate change would be the same spineless people I have just described. But I suppose we can dream.

There are some obvious steps. Citizens United is not set in stone – it is an interpretation by judges of current law. But the law can be changed! Similarly, it is time to end gerrymandering. In 1992, I arranged a reorganization of business geographies by buying a simple piece of software. I think that 27 years later it should be possible to solve this one.

For this type of problem, I often look for single steps that would unlock many advances. How about term limits, say one six year term for senators and three two year terms for the house? Read the travails above, and think what this could achieve. Less wealthy people could apply and maintain their passion. Independents would have more chance. Lame ducks do not have to consider the lobbyists and extremist donors, just their legacy (and maybe even the interests of their voters).

I also think congressional elections could move to odd years, so that they are separated from presidential ones. It is disheartening to watch the democratic debate and realize that most of what they argue about does not lie within their responsibility. Split elections, and we can talk about policies that are relevant to each election. Then there are other good ideas, such as open primaries (rather than party ones), multi-member constituencies, and single preference voting – all designed to reduce the stronghold of the two parties. 

Finally, it would really help to have more people voting. Voting can be early, electronic and at weekends. There is also a case for compulsory or heavily incentivized voting.

I have tried to avoid being too partisan in this analysis. I do believe it is the systems of congress that are broken, not just individuals from one side. But I also believe there are acid tests. Generally, there is only one party consistently trying to make it harder rather than easier to vote. That is simply unforgivable.

It is Congress that is broken

We read a lot about the decline of democracy. Commentators look at how China can bring half a billion people to prosperity, develop winning industries and build up reserves of dollars and influence, all the while maintaining some social cohesion, albeit at a cost of a million or so Uighurs in concentration camps and a little local difficulty in Hong Kong.

We compare that enviously with the dire straits that American democracy has reached, and the way autocrats have managed to hijack democracies in Hungary, Poland, Italy and even Britain, somehow bringing along a large minority of the population with them.

Look further afield, and Brazil, South Africa, Thailand and other so-called democracies have been laid low. In Russia, the promised renaissance from the fall of communism only led to state capture followed by more autocracy – at which point things seemed to function well again, albeit with horrible corruption.

So have we reached a state where we can no longer even defend Churchill’s limp defence of democracy as the worst form of governance, except for all the others? What is wrong with our democracies, and is there anything that could stop the decline?

Mainly we can see this as a cyclical thing, or as a great race with humanity progressing, but in a rather haphazard way. Institutions develop at one pace, wisdom and education at another, technology at a third. If one gets out of step with the others for a time, democracy becomes more vulnerable than usual until that is fixed, and may well perform worse than the least corrupt forms of autocracy. But over time things get better, even if it needs a war to set things back onto positive paths.

I think that is where we are at the moment in many countries. Technology is marching ahead. Wisdom and education is doing quite well, but not well enough to make all the new technology an unalloyed benefit. Institutions are way behind. Every country has its own story, but currently we are out of balance in many places.

So that makes it worthwhile to explore which institutions are failing and how they might be induced to catch up. Surely that is a better response than trying to stifle the technology?

The US is a wonderful case study for this. We love to blame the current president for all the ills in the US, and to dream that if we get rid of Trump, then everything will be well. But that ignores many realities. Recent presidents, including Trump, have been limited in what they can do (rather than say) to a few executive orders and a free hand on foreign policy. Often, executive orders are limited too, usually to undoing the executive order of a predecessor. Even those are subject to a barrage of attacks in the courts.

The US constitution is a beautiful thing. The statement of goals is wonderful – even if it took a while to realise that women and slaves had rights too. The division of government into executive, legislative and judicial was a work of genius in design and execution. The hierarchy of powers at federal, state and local level is also excellent.

And until recently, the track record has been excellent. There is more than slavery and natural resources and (partially) sitting out European wars behind the powerhouse that the US became. The US is not a simple place to govern. The geography is immense. That and the different waves of immigrants have led to a nation of multiple conflicting cultures. Some of its legacy was poisonous. Yet somehow the place has stayed together and moved forward.

Until now. Since about 1980 the US has gone backwards in most respects. True, it still dominates business, using scale and colleges to lead the internet revolution. But what else? The military still underperforms while its rulers still embark on crazy follies. The debt rises relentlessly; that and persistent deficits lead to a nation with declining share of the world’s assets. Real incomes have stagnated and quality of life worsened, with appalling health, welfare, housing, education and criminal justice outcomes – life expectancy is even going down! Gaping divides persist along gender, racial and geographical lines. The USA usually lags Europe in social progress.

We can’t blame all that on Trump, nor on George W or even Reagan. The real culprit is congress.

Under the constitution, the president sets the tone and leads execution. It is congress that works through issues to come up with smart laws, which the judiciary can then referee. It is a good design, but since 1980 we have almost no meaningful legislation, and what there has been has often not reflected the will of the people or the interests of the nation.

There are countless issues where the law is woefully out of step with public opinion, for example gun control, abortion, parental leave and environmental policy. There are others where the law has not responded to new challenges, for example competition policy, health care needs, welfare, immigration, housing or trade. Congress is even supposed to contribute to security policy, but its only meaningful bill in 20 years was of one sentence giving the president carte blanche after 9/11; finally it started to grow up last year by challenging Saudi Arabia. In other areas, congress passes bills by stealth that benefit only entrenched vested interests, such as the wealthy, unions or traditional industries.

In all of these areas, which, lets face it, amount to a rather full description of public policy, congress has passed virtually no legislation since 1980, and the trend is even worsening, with each successive congress underperforming its predecessor. There are rare glorious exceptions, such as the criminal justice reform bill passed last year, but these are also getting rarer.

One poignant indictment of congress is to compare its effectiveness with the European commission. Now, the US is hard to govern, but Europe is much harder, with its long suspicion and short history of integration and its immature institutions. Yet in many areas Europe is streets ahead – look for example at competition policy or regional policy.

What we are left with is a series of inadequate patches and dangerous power vulnerabilities. The states are largely functional, and can lead federal change, for example with marijuana and hopefully eventually with environmental action. But one result if that is to sharpen the geographical chasm. The president can try to set the law himself by executive order, but that is dangerous and easily reversed. Many issues get resolved by the Supreme Court; that only serves to further politicise that branch and leads to delayed and partial conclusions.

There are even more ridiculous outcomes. Wealthy individuals, such as the Koch brothers or Bill Gates, increasingly define public policy and even its execution. It was weird to read last week of 500 or so CEO’s writing about corporate social responsibility. That is the ultimate symptom of a vacuum of regulation or law reflecting the interests of their staff. Businesses have also led in other areas, for example in moderating the religious extremism of Pence and his ilk.

So far, there is surprisingly little direct action by the most dangerous group of all, the people. We see protests and campaigns, some with a real effect. But I wonder if the breakdown in law making might ultimately portend serious social disruption and rioting. I think it could be the next logical step.

I was going to try to explain how the breaking of congress came about and how it might be put together again. I have some ideas, but I fear congress might be like Humpty Dumpty and beyond repair, at least for another generation. But now that will have to wait until next week.

The Great Race

Last week’s musings about temptations and human frailty led me down a different thought path. Rather than considering this at a micro, individual level, we can also use temptation to explore the macro level of a society or even humanity as a whole.

Ants are wonderful creatures. Despite having tiny brains and flimsy bodies, they achieve great things. Their concept of society might even be considered as superior to humans, since I am not aware of dysfunctions such as mass shootings or anxiety among ants.

How do they do it? Well, they have evolved in such a way that they develop and retain collective wisdom, and they find a way to collaborate, with common goals, roles, signals, leadership and learning. It is a wonderful miracle, a testament to evolution. But it also carries the clear lesson that collaboration can beat individualism, given the right structures.

The main difference between humans and ants is that we have evolved to consciously think as well as do. Ants know their roles and goals, but we can think about ours. We have some hardwiring, thanks to evolution, leading to primary goals of reproducing and nurturing. But we all make conscious choices all the time.

What a mixed blessing this is! This huge brain that we have accelerates our evolution, so much that we can almost feel it happening. But evolution is known to be a process of trial and error, and it hurts us to witness the errors. It hurts us even more to feel that we could reduce the errors, if only… Well, we all have our own set of “if only” statements, many of them blaming other people. I think we can argue that most of the mistakes come from our temptations. Given that those temptations are part of our evolutionary make up, we are doomed to some mistakes. Our challenge is to reduce them.

Or is it? What defines a mistake anyway? Unlike ants, we can also choose our own goals and our own roles. We have sensations of happiness, anxiety, empathy, fear, and many others, all linked to our evolution but somehow individual as well. Among many other things, we all have to decide, consciously or not and riddled with execution errors, how our personal goals can overlap with those of our family, our tribe or the whole of humanity.

Oliver Burkeman had a wonderful story in the Guardian weekly this week – indeed he has most weeks. It was in the context of task orientation. A new Yorker goes on holiday to Brazil and meets a local who whiles away his time fishing, drinking and playing music with friends. Never short of an opinion, the New Yorker offers a lecture about the potential to make millions from building a fishing empire with staff and assets. That way the local can retire, and then while away his days fishing, drinking and playing music with friends.

As well as being a funny reflection on the New York character, the story speaks to our different goals and how we see time. It can also be linked to the famous experiment with marshmallows: would we rather have one today or two tomorrow?

This is how humanity progresses, through fits and starts, errors and brilliant discoveries, using our scale and diversity to grow wisdom. Our complex brains can achieve everything the ants can, and much, much more.

We can see this as a race. We can either be like the ants, with set roles and goals and steady progress, or we can go faster, but with pitfalls. We progress when we can collectively grow our wisdom more quickly, so long as our systems and structures are able to keep pace and so long as our temptations don’t get the better of us.

When we all lived in villages things were simpler. We hunted for food, sought sexual partners and nurtured our young. There was some specialisation, we learned to look after the old for their wisdom, and we devised some rules and hierarchies. Superstition became religion, and some people used religion to embed structures advantageous to their own type. The structures helped to keep temptations in check, but at the expense of slowing the growth of wisdom.

As we developed, things became more complicated. Communications and technology and all the other drivers of development expanded our scope to accelerate. The village became a town and then a tribe and then a nation, all enabling more specialisation and teamwork, but requiring more sophisticated structures to be effective. Our various goals drove forward our collective wisdom, competitiveness being among the double-edged drivers, a spur and a temptation.

Systems have evolved in response. Village councils became influenced by priests and kings, then parliaments and autocrats. Laws developed for property, companies and misdemeanours. Now we even have a series of challenges that a global in scope, notably climate change and nuclear weapons.

Through this story we can be broadly divided into those embracing some risk in the interests of progress, and those preserving existing structures to prevent chaos (or more likely in practice to protect privileges). Embracing risk involves including more and more of humanity to solve larger and larger challenges, but sometimes invites chaos or disaster or unintended consequences.

So, just two hundred years ago, kings had real power and only wealthy, male, landowners could vote. Everybody else was a worker ant. In some respects now, we are all kings.

A good example for how this can develop is the use of referenda. The Swiss have fine-tuned a system for these to be more often a driver of progress than of chaos. In theory, referenda are a wonderfully inclusive, empowering tool. Social media and other communications advances offer a future in which we can all contribute to collective governance in real time.

What could go wrong? Well, in the great race, our wisdom has not yet caught up and our temptations get in the way. I saw this in a related context, in a company that I sometimes work for, where smart software enables many people to share and compare ideas in real time. It is brilliant and always insightful, but without a strong moderation it usually fails. Our team has to work behind the scenes to make sure questions are asked and followed up in a smart way. Otherwise, the output is usually banalities such as “we must work better together”.

That links to a common failing in political situations, the confusion of goals and plans. A plan with no goal is an aimless mess. A goal with no plan can be inspiring and a good starting point, but will only lead in a positive direction if people can respond independently to the goal. You need a goal and a plan. Make America Great Again is a goal, but can be worse than worthless without credible steps to head in that direction.

Similar failings doom many a worthy cause. We are either not smart enough to take advantage of a potential advance, or our structures let us down, or our temptations get in the way. Communism started as a strong idea. Chavez was once a powerful leader. A Brexit referendum might have been a good idea in different circumstances.

I find two major takeaways from all of this. The first is that it is not hard for me to choose the progressive side. The potential of humanity is unleashed if we strive for progress, accepting some failures along the way. It is usually easy to spot the selfish arguments on the other side. Black people are not inferior. Women can do better than men at most human undertakings. M5S in Italy started as a worthy endeavour, focussing on input from the people at every stage. The only valid arguments against innovation are practical. Can we make this work within our structures? Does it risk falling foul of our temptations? If the answer is yes, which it sadly often is, then the honest challenge is how to fine tune the idea or the structures, not to abandon the whole project.

The second takeaway I find inspiring. It comes back to those pesky temptations. If we accept this model for human progress, then pride, greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, envy and anger really are our limiting factors. If we could find a reliable way to moderate those temptations, that could be a true game changer for progress could accelerate. Yet each succeeding generation is doing a much better job of handling temptation, and the science of the brain seems on the verge of achieving huge breakthroughs.

What an exciting thought that is for humanity

Lead us not into Temptation

Within a few months, we will have to learn a change to the Lord’s Prayer. Every so often, liturgical changes come down from on high, and we have to respond. It is difficult, because one of the purposes of ritual is repetition; we are supposed to murmur our prayers from familiarity, only occasionally thinking more deeply about their meaning.

It takes years to embed a change. It must be ten years now since “of one being” became “consubstantial” in the Nicene Creed. I still murmur it wrongly now. Listening to others reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I still hear a mixture of who’s and which’s and thy’s and yours’s, from changes introduced decades ago but not consistently across congregations.

Understanding all this, liturgical committees only change when they see a very good reason, although I would argue that consubstantial fails that test pretty clearly. The impending change is to the line “lead us not into temptation”, which will change, I believe, to “let us not be led into temptation”. The logic is that God loves us, so would hardly lead us to sin; rather it is we who are sinners, perhaps influenced by Satan, who need God’s protection. I guess if we can accept that God seems to allow an awful lot of suffering for no obvious purpose into the world, we can also buy into this logic. Still, I wonder if I will be flawless in the new rendition before God chooses to end my mortal life.

Anyway, considering the change made me think about the nature of temptation, so perhaps some good has come of it. The main outcome has been amazement at how poor we are at resisting temptation, and to wonder why that might be.

Even though we know what causes obesity, humanity moves from malnourishment to widespread obesity within two generations. We cannot fail to know by now the harm that smoking causes, yet still many partake. The same is true of drugs and alcohol. Most of us find ourselves attracted to forms of pornography, and many find it hard to remain fully honest within a monogamous relationship. We understand something about debt and the odds around gambling, but many succumb. Social media has created a large class of purveyors of vitriol. Our phones lead us so easily into idle wasting of time, even when we know we should be sleeping. We would rather binge watch junk than educate ourselves with anything that makes us think. We become very tribal in how we respect others and constantly seek affirmation of views that the slightest thought would have us reject. We text while driving despite knowing the risks. Some of us too easily become violent, and a few even contemplate suicide. Most will undertake unprotected sex at some point in our lives despite being aware of the potential consequences of such recklessness.

It is hard to read this list and to feel righteous. There are clearly differences between thoughts, occasional actions and habitual actions, but most of us would have to admit to at least a few habitual actions from the list.

The bible apparently does not list seven deadly sins, but we have Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to thank for pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth as our list of shame. No wonder he did, he must have been perplexed at how strong each of these temptations is, no doubt even for himself. All of the list above can be classed under one or more of the seven sinful categories.

Most of the potential pitfalls above feel to me like manifestations of the classic child experiment about self-control. The child is offered one marshmallow now, or two later, and many cannot resist the urge for instant gratification. We are those children, when we binge or pig out or flirt or get out the credit card or condemn others.

That might lead to a more helpful way of looking at temptation than self- flagellation. Most are natural consequences of humanity, our evolution and our chemical make up. Many urges emerged as necessary ways to develop our own species, either through reproduction, nurturing or just surviving. Many remain good things in moderation. Even some of those we have come to proscribe in excess are merely societally imposed constraints, some with arguable benefits except for those making the rules.

Is temptation getting worse? I don’t know, but some trends don’t help. We don’t trust our elders and our clerics so much nowadays, so the old constraints around sin don’t work so well, especially when we see those same clerics as flawed and hypocritical. An open and free society creates all sorts of tempting situations, and technology brings some to our fingertips. Stressful lives lead us towards options for easy relief.

Most of all, it seems that modern capitalism is almost designed to encourage temptation. That single marshmallow is so often gift-wrapped, and its opportunity cost obscured. My car dealer is paid handsomely by a bank to persuade me to buy with a financial package. He gets his sale, the bank might get lots of interest when I default later, both sets of shareholders make their 6% real, and I even have some new shiny wheels, but might be in debt for life. States are rushing to promote lotteries, casinos, sports betting and legalised drugs. Facebook designs everything to keep me hooked, and coca cola supersizes my gut. They all pay lip service to moderation only in their small print, though even the state pays in the end through higher medical and law enforcement bills.

Back to the marshmallow experiment, which kids demonstrated most self-restraint? It was the educated ones from stable and affluent families. And this trend reinforces itself, because waiting for two marshmallows is also a good predictor for future affluence.

This leads to a different way to think about temptation. We are humans, so we are all tempted, and the most vulnerable are the most tempted. It is not a sin be to be human. If we want to be good humans, we should work to make sure that the things we condemn are really those that damage us, and that more of us can understand this and have tools to make better choices. Some marshmallows are just nice and can be enjoyed in abundance. Some we can indulge in moderation as a choice, but with good disclosure about consequences. And others are just poisonous, primarily that ones that harm the young.

We should not cast the first stone, but be honest about our own temptation, and the fact that if we have better self-control than others that probably reflects our lucky legacy more than our godliness. Indeed, we should accept that if others err, there will usually be good reasons. There are few health food stores in Baltimore but plenty of loan sharks. If your life is likely to be brutal and short, then it is only common sense to be reckless and enjoy today. A sweet marshmallow is very tempting to someone who is hungry.  

As usual, I am optimistic. Education can help successive generations make smarter choices. Health science has huge and imminent scope to work on our chemical make-up and to improve therapy. There are plenty of good tools available already, and more will follow. Humanity is progressing quickly, with or without help from God.

But the risks are also obvious and perhaps increasing. Populism offers a huge sweet marshmallow with beautiful wrapping. Populists in power only want to make those marshmallows sweeter still and to consume plenty of them too, while the planet burns. Authoritarians can reduce marshmallow consumption, but only by fiat.

We do indeed lead ourselves into temptation. We can be honest in accepting that, even embracing it, and then helping ourselves and those more vulnerable to limit marshmallow intake to a healthy level. It is not a bad social manifesto. And that way we can forgive trespasses and be delivered from evil too, no matter how Pope Gregory I’s successor chooses to word those phrases.