Good morning all-
Today is the Superbowl. Our society will crown a football 'champion', relegating all other teams to forgettable, also-ran status. We also have a collegiate championship, although less clearly chosen.
Why do we divide the world dichotomously? It is simple, and it has the appeal of being 'definitive'. We choose a winner, making everyone else at least some kind of loser. We have good and bad, democrat adn republican, black and white, my gang/your gang. These categories are obviously artificial, but of great significance to most people.
These distinctions are mostly false of course, and make it difficult to think about the totality of a person or of human experience. The most obvious example of this is the difference between racial definitions in Brazil and the US. Here, a person of one white and one black parent is considered black. Indeed, a person of two mixed race parents, both of whom have been labelled black from a social perspective, is considered black. In Brazil the exact opposite is true. A person of one black and one white parent is considered white. These people are the same, but placed n two different demographic groups, with very different social assumptions, just on a label!
We have reached the point of 'ranking' a college recruitment class, when the real value of that class will only be apparent 3 years later. Some of those recruits will never come to class because fo academic difficulties. Some will have social problems and be dismissed from the team. Some will get bad or personally inappropriate coaching, and never reach their potential. Yet we rank the classes anyway, even use them as future recruiting tools.
With these rankings, the public very rapidly forgets who went where, as does the press, and we hear only about the rank of a particular institution. Having just come back from Auburn, I heard repeatedly about their number 4 ranking recruiting class.
This arbitrary division into two categories, most especially winner and loser, has merit in making binary choices. One can not be a Catholic and a Methodist at the same time. You can not be part of UT's football program and Auburn's at the same time. Divisions are much less clear when it comes to winner/loser. I love cars, and read three different car magazines each month (given today's concerns about CO2 I suspect I could more easily admit to reading three different pornographic magazines each month, but I like what I like...). Every month there is a car comparison test, where one is chosen as best. The ratings are highly subjective, and the 'losers' are terrific vehicles. Each one has a different character, a different balancing of choices.
I often tell patients there are rarely clear best choices. They will frequently ask me what pill is 'best'. In telling them the infrequency of clear winners, I often cite the auto industry. If there were a clear best car, everyone would buy it. The profusion of models and makers tells us immediately that, contrary to the auto magazines, there is no one best.
Our frantic, 24 hour news cycle perpetuates these dichotomous distortions, so that if a vehicle is named 'Motor Trend's Car of the Year', that label will be broadcast over and over again for days. It will turn into slogans and ads, and people will forget that there are so many other good cars out there.
Political parties and candidates often state they have a clear mandate to govern, of course meaning they perceive they have the right to govern as they please, that the people have endorsed their way of doing things. Really? Our electoral system is designed to magnify differences between candidates. Without going through all the math, the electoral system is much fairer than a direct popular election, a commonly misunderstood fact. Small differences in popular vote can lead to large differences in electoral votes.
In winning and losing, the electoral system improves fairness. In governing, it makes no difference at all. The news often makes reference to an electoral landslide, when this has no governmental meaning at all. In contrast, the popular vote totals do make quite a difference. Here some perspective is needed.
I ranked the presidential elections a few years ago by popular vote proportion. The largest popular vote winners, by percentage, not numbers (both parties engage in the fatuous 'largest vote in history' claim, whether winning, as in Obama and Bush 04, or losing, as in Gore 00), have been Johnson in '64 and Nixon in '72. Both these men won 2/3 of the voters. Most elections, however, fall in a range of a 2-5% advantage in vote. here I am not talking about total spread, but how much over 50% does a candidate win. so, for example, if the vote a 53-47, the spread is not 6%, but 3%. A few elections have had very narrow vote totals, notably '60 and '00 in modern times.
Obama's win in '08 ranks in the 'middle of the middle' of vote percentage, having gotten 53% of the vote. This has been interpreted by him, the democrats and the media as an overwhelming mandate to govern. It hardly seems to me that a 3% plurality is a strong mandate. In swinging his agenda well to the left, Obama has forgotten the 47% of voters who did not vote for him, but whom he still governs as president. Also, a non-trivial proportion of the 53% who did vote for him did not vote for a leftist but a centrist.
Never buy your own hype. The team that really believes it got the best recruiting class may get lazy. The winner of the Superbowl may get very complacent if it believes it is really that much better than everyone else. The same is true of politics. When the media labels you a 'sea change in American politics' and you claim for yourself you are a 'new way forward', you can fall into the trap of believing it. There is not so large a difference between Obama 08 and Bush 04. Bush won 52%, Obama 53%, but Obama's win was portrayed as a landslide in the media, while Bush was portrayed as barely legitimate. A 5 percent shift in voters is all that separates them, regardless of electoral totals. Elected officials would be wise to keep that in mind when making policy choices.
Today is the Superbowl. Our society will crown a football 'champion', relegating all other teams to forgettable, also-ran status. We also have a collegiate championship, although less clearly chosen.
Why do we divide the world dichotomously? It is simple, and it has the appeal of being 'definitive'. We choose a winner, making everyone else at least some kind of loser. We have good and bad, democrat adn republican, black and white, my gang/your gang. These categories are obviously artificial, but of great significance to most people.
These distinctions are mostly false of course, and make it difficult to think about the totality of a person or of human experience. The most obvious example of this is the difference between racial definitions in Brazil and the US. Here, a person of one white and one black parent is considered black. Indeed, a person of two mixed race parents, both of whom have been labelled black from a social perspective, is considered black. In Brazil the exact opposite is true. A person of one black and one white parent is considered white. These people are the same, but placed n two different demographic groups, with very different social assumptions, just on a label!
We have reached the point of 'ranking' a college recruitment class, when the real value of that class will only be apparent 3 years later. Some of those recruits will never come to class because fo academic difficulties. Some will have social problems and be dismissed from the team. Some will get bad or personally inappropriate coaching, and never reach their potential. Yet we rank the classes anyway, even use them as future recruiting tools.
With these rankings, the public very rapidly forgets who went where, as does the press, and we hear only about the rank of a particular institution. Having just come back from Auburn, I heard repeatedly about their number 4 ranking recruiting class.
This arbitrary division into two categories, most especially winner and loser, has merit in making binary choices. One can not be a Catholic and a Methodist at the same time. You can not be part of UT's football program and Auburn's at the same time. Divisions are much less clear when it comes to winner/loser. I love cars, and read three different car magazines each month (given today's concerns about CO2 I suspect I could more easily admit to reading three different pornographic magazines each month, but I like what I like...). Every month there is a car comparison test, where one is chosen as best. The ratings are highly subjective, and the 'losers' are terrific vehicles. Each one has a different character, a different balancing of choices.
I often tell patients there are rarely clear best choices. They will frequently ask me what pill is 'best'. In telling them the infrequency of clear winners, I often cite the auto industry. If there were a clear best car, everyone would buy it. The profusion of models and makers tells us immediately that, contrary to the auto magazines, there is no one best.
Our frantic, 24 hour news cycle perpetuates these dichotomous distortions, so that if a vehicle is named 'Motor Trend's Car of the Year', that label will be broadcast over and over again for days. It will turn into slogans and ads, and people will forget that there are so many other good cars out there.
Political parties and candidates often state they have a clear mandate to govern, of course meaning they perceive they have the right to govern as they please, that the people have endorsed their way of doing things. Really? Our electoral system is designed to magnify differences between candidates. Without going through all the math, the electoral system is much fairer than a direct popular election, a commonly misunderstood fact. Small differences in popular vote can lead to large differences in electoral votes.
In winning and losing, the electoral system improves fairness. In governing, it makes no difference at all. The news often makes reference to an electoral landslide, when this has no governmental meaning at all. In contrast, the popular vote totals do make quite a difference. Here some perspective is needed.
I ranked the presidential elections a few years ago by popular vote proportion. The largest popular vote winners, by percentage, not numbers (both parties engage in the fatuous 'largest vote in history' claim, whether winning, as in Obama and Bush 04, or losing, as in Gore 00), have been Johnson in '64 and Nixon in '72. Both these men won 2/3 of the voters. Most elections, however, fall in a range of a 2-5% advantage in vote. here I am not talking about total spread, but how much over 50% does a candidate win. so, for example, if the vote a 53-47, the spread is not 6%, but 3%. A few elections have had very narrow vote totals, notably '60 and '00 in modern times.
Obama's win in '08 ranks in the 'middle of the middle' of vote percentage, having gotten 53% of the vote. This has been interpreted by him, the democrats and the media as an overwhelming mandate to govern. It hardly seems to me that a 3% plurality is a strong mandate. In swinging his agenda well to the left, Obama has forgotten the 47% of voters who did not vote for him, but whom he still governs as president. Also, a non-trivial proportion of the 53% who did vote for him did not vote for a leftist but a centrist.
Never buy your own hype. The team that really believes it got the best recruiting class may get lazy. The winner of the Superbowl may get very complacent if it believes it is really that much better than everyone else. The same is true of politics. When the media labels you a 'sea change in American politics' and you claim for yourself you are a 'new way forward', you can fall into the trap of believing it. There is not so large a difference between Obama 08 and Bush 04. Bush won 52%, Obama 53%, but Obama's win was portrayed as a landslide in the media, while Bush was portrayed as barely legitimate. A 5 percent shift in voters is all that separates them, regardless of electoral totals. Elected officials would be wise to keep that in mind when making policy choices.
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