"73% of adults consider themselves lifelong learners.
74% of adults are what we call personal learners – that is, they have participated in at least one of a number of possible activities in the past 12 months to advance their knowledge about something that personally interests them. These activities include reading, taking courses or attending meetings or events tied to learning more about their personal interests.
63% of those who are working (or 36% of all adults) are what we call professional learners – that is, they have taken a course or gotten additional training in the past 12 months to improve their job skills or expertise connected to career advancement.
These learning activities take place in a variety of locations. The internet is often linked to a variety of learning pursuits. However, it is still the case that more learners pursue knowledge in physical settings than choose to seek it online.
By an 81% to 52% margin, personal learners are more likely to cite a locale such as a high school, place of worship or library as the site at which personal learning takes place than they are to cite the internet.
By a similar margin (75% to 55%), professional learners are more likely to say their professional training took place at a work-related venue than on the internet."
And, of course, as would be expected, the survey found that people who did not view themselves as lifelong learners or participate in such activities were disproportionately Black.
This article suggests that, among a couple of other things, perhaps it is a sense of personal agency that influences whether or not adults choose to engage in lifelong learning. The article might be of particular interest to this readership since it cites rather heavily the great Nobel winning economist Amartya Sen. The article concludes"
"we argue that looking at socio-demographic background characteristics and barriers to participation is insufficient in understanding why adults do not learn. Providing the evidence base for adult learning policy development and the monitoring of policies requires a re-examining of how adults’ connection to learning is positioned in a wider social, economic, environmental context and how this context provides a conducive environment in which adults first of all would value learning and can pursue learning. Based on the capability approach, we explored the interplay between different factors that influence whether adults intentionally act towards engaging in organised and structured learning or development activities. Agency, conversion and perceived benefits of learning are mutually enforcing whether adults see learning as a valuable (life) choice.
This approach opens new perspectives to empirically explore the interplay between agency, conversion and benefits and identify main factors stimulating adult learning. This empirical research will bring us closer to a validated conceptual model on what prevents and what stimulates adults to learn. A model that is very much needed to evaluate and monitor adult learning and lifelong learning policies delivering on their priority status and combating current and future economic and societal challenges."
This, of course, subverts the oppressor-oppressed axis that is the foundation of the current US education model. Nevertheless, one might reasonably wonder whether, promoting lifelong learning or not, the question of whether or not the USA education system is producing individuals with well developed senses of agency might be a foundational issue and any shortcomings addressed there might go a long way towards addressing symptoms such as non-participation in lifelong learning.
On a related but possibly tangential note, I’ve noticed that politicians are quoting “the experts” these days, when justifying their policy decisions. Too often, the experts they quote are, in fact, activists or advocates, by which I mean people who push one side of an issue, look only at the evidence supporting the one side, and ignore and/or denigrate anything relating to the other side. Careful consideration of policy decisions, looking at all the evidence and the pros/cons of various paths, has been abandoned in favour of choosing a single ideological path and then justifying it after the fact. Examples are numerous, including the Covid response, the government approach to climate change, etc.
I also oppose the righteous, close-minded activist. As well as close-minded non-activists.
Doesn't a more open-minded person, though, often learn "through activism?"
Sometimes you join a "movement" - and realize people involved don't actually have plausible solutions. Or their motivations for joining are - about dating.
Sometimes you do direct service - tutor a kid perhaps, or clean a park - and perhaps feel motivation, or notice inefficiency, or learn "technical" things.
If you were advising an open-minded 20 year old poli sci major who is currently spending 100% of "learning" time studying for their 4 or 5 college classes....wouldn't you say "Find an issue, get involved, learn that way too."
It may be that some amount of "activism" accelerates lifelong learning for open-minded people.
No man can serve two masters. The lesson of history is that political activism always inevitably comes into conflict with truth, and something's got to give, and it's usually truth, i.e., epistemic corruption. A lot of people on the right favor free political speech on campus. That's mostly because right now only some political speech gets unfairly penalized, to the disadvantage of the right, so they figure the only way to restore fairness is to penalize nothing. However, there is another way to restore fairness, which is to penalize everything. The no-speech campus. "Shut up and LISTEN. Shut up and learn, shut up and calculate, shut up and discover, shut up and create, shut up and build, shut up and exercise, shut up and reach your potential for excellence in all things ... SHUT UP!!!"
This is the advice we should give, and this is the advice I wish I and all my classmates had gotten and taken to heart.
I agree with Arnold that activists are generally closed-minded. Getting involved in something as a volunteer, without being an "activist" is an entirely different thing, though.
It’s hard to improve processes that you do understand too. While I can understand the opposition to blind activism this shouldn’t lead to the opposite vice of an informed passivity. All activism shouldn’t be condemned. If people had to wait until they deeply understood social and political processes there would be no progress at all.
You may be right. I do think, though, that most of the real progress humanity has made has been through increased productivity rather than activism. Women are, unfortunately, doomed to be second-class citizens in a world in which brute strength is the key to survival (see, for example, Afghanistan). With the Information Age, women are on equal - and, perhaps, more than equal - footing with men.
Child labor wasn’t a “problem” in the past, it was just what children did to survive. We were able to outlaw the practice in this country only after productivity had increased to the point that a single worker could support an entire family and child labor had become the exception rather than the norm.
When we tried to export our child labor laws to third world countries, the results were often horrific. Children now had the “option” of starving or working illegally. Illegal workers tend to be exploited far more frequently and far worse because they have no recourse to the law.
We had similar results when we shut down overseas sweatshops. Workers who previously had the option of working in factories under conditions that we in the first world find unacceptable, had that choice taken from them. All too often, their second best option was to turn to prostitution or selling drugs.
Activism is often aimed, not at encouraging people to change their behavior or to voluntarily work to achieve a specific goal, but at demanding that government force people to act in accordance with the activists’ wishes. I don’t believe that society is improved when factions vie with each other to sway government to use its coercive power to advance their ideas and interests. I think that instead produces an angry, polarized society.
Interesting comment. I don’t though equate progress only with production or economics. I also didn’t follow your view about activists (individuals) trying to influence the government. Isn’t that what interest groups of all kinds do in a democracy? Where should the government get it’s policy ideas from?
The key to understanding how to make people wait some, but not too much, is to recognize the difference the two types of activism, what I call "Political Activism vs Practical Activism."
Think of activism more broadly than political activism. You could define activism as trying to achieve progress. And you could define progress as establishing new positive sum ways that make it easier for people to get what they want. Leftists try to include "even more coercive redistribution" in that definition of progress, but that's a stretch.
Using these broader conceptions, an entrepreneur is an activist - but a Practical Activist.
He is trying to solve problems or make new or better kinds of goods and services available, and he doesn't get to shove anybody around. An artist or an author is a practical activist in trying to create new powerful aesthetic experiences, and he can't force anyone anyone to look or buy or patronize. An apolitical academic is a practical activist (well, "intellectually practical") in trying to discover new truths and explore the possibilities and capabilities which new knowledge can unlock, usually for all mankind and for the rest of time in a process of perpetual accumulation and refinement.
The difference between all those kinds of "Acting Means Achieving" Practical Activists and the Political Activist is that achievement-focused Practical Activism forces the Practical Activist to have skin in the game and thus to *want* to learn the optimal amount in order to get to point where he can decide whether to get started and if so to be best-equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to make a genuine contribution, and to set things up so as to continue learning as much as possible in the process of making and improving, which never ends. Wanting to learn how to actually achieve non-political things is infinitely better than wanting to learn how to 'win' arguments, play social dominance games, or agitate mobs.
The non-political Practical Activist has skin in the game because sacrificing considerable opportunity cost and putting his own time, effort, and money at risk and on the line, and because he will most directly and intensely experience the consequences of success or failure. For the entrepreneur to solve people's problems, in addition to innovating, he has to convince investors to invest, customers to buy, and employees to work, without being able to use hard coercive power. He cannot evade hard trade-offs, so that people really must value the benefits of what he is trying to do more than the cost of doing it, according to their own preferences and judgments instead of his own.
The typical Political Activist has very little skin in the game that is actually aligned with the interests of those affected by whatever political changes they may succeed in implementing. With the power of the state at play, they don't have to pay for what they want bought, the whole point is to make other people pay for it, because the state can just grab more money from those who earned it.
And if it all blows up, as it often does in practice, their lives are often insulated from the consequences and don't bear the brunt of the fallout. The clearest example is the political-activist judge who finds an excuse to let most violent criminal defendants free to live in the ghetto next to their former and future victims, while he and his family is secure in a gated suburb. If the judge had to live in the ghetto, his interests would align with the security of the ghetto, and he would stop being a Political Activist and start being a Practical Activist.
This is very similar to Milton Friedman's explanations of the different ways to spend money. Spending your own money on yourself means you take care to get the best deal and you get what you most want. Spending your own money on somebody else means you get a good deal, but it's not what they most want. Spending someone else's money on yourself means you get what you want, but you didn't care to look for a good deal. And spending somebody else's money on yet another person means a bad deal for the unwanted. It's the worst way to spend money, and it's the only way government spends money.
Likewise, and for the same reasons, Practical Activism is the best kind of activism, while Political Activism is the worst kind of activism. That attendance at an Academy going along with participation in mushy-brained Political Activism ever got to be be so common and considered so naturally tightly-linked constitutes one of the worst turns ever made in the history of our civilization, and we are paying a dearer price for it with every passing day. For political speech, if it could be done, then then the no-speech university would be superior in almost every respect to the free-speech university.
Arnold says, "If you really want to learn and achieve something in life, forget non-profits, go work for a profit." Likewise I say, "If you want to contribute to progress, forget Political Activism, pursue Practical Activism."
To highlight one small facet of Arnold's essay, consider his comment that "The greatest people in business, sports, and culture never stop learning. They constantly strive to enhance their capabilities." Somehow, George Will's book "Men at Work" comes to mind. The book is about professional baseball players and how they continually hone their skills, learn about the game, and study their opponents in order to be better players. This apparently is true of professional basketball players too. The best players such as Michael Jordan have been great students of the game, knowing its history, watching other players, and more.
Where would we be without activism. Taking it to the streets actibism during the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and up to current times has accomplished plenty for the progressive agenda.... And than citizens united happened and other none sense from our current SCOTUS. We need to take it the street again. Be active. Give a damn
Those of us who have been married a long time, never divorced - I've been married well more than half my life - have often amassed the experience of two families.
In my case it offers a contrast which I can illustrate with a single example.
Many decades ago my grandfather pulled himself up the ranks (from nothing) of the elite of the boomtown to have joined its premier bay club for hunting and fishing - a rather, I fancy, Yankee-ish place in this Southern state. Clapboard lodge, rocking chairs, very simple but good food, iron bedsteads with thin mattresses, cold showers, an old TV and cracked leather furniture and a room for playing cards: its spartanness in tandem with its exclusivity, as often used to be the case. (A hurricane finally got it, or rather moved it off its foundations; and I suspect the interiors have been rebuilt after a different, modern fashion.)
As a child, we didn't really vacation but instead went to this place, which remains very important to members of my family A, particularly to the brother who loved goose and duck hunting best.
Over time, of course, as everywhere down here - the area, once genuinely beautiful (for the Third Coast) in its remoteness and wildness, is filling up with sprawl, and of course apart from that, migratory birds generally have to look harder to find the wetlands they need.
Family A is utterly non-political and passive. They would have just stood around and watched the source of their hobby (land and water) just disappear. I'm not even sure it would ever even have been a topic of conversation. The concept of "the environment" is not in their heads. They just think about the world in terms of getting and spending, that is all, nothing more. And yet I would insist that no one on Earth values this particular landscape as my brother does. He knows it well and loves everything about it.
I married into what you would call an activist family. Amid their myriad activities, statewide, curiously, has been the "shoring up" of a buffer around the bay club (with which they have nothing to do). Family B just loves nature; and has prevented development immediately hard by, and added also to the nearby wildlife refuge. These efforts are ongoing and will hopefully have another success this year. Apart from the birds and alligators &etc. - there can hardly be any group more benefitted by these activities, than the wealthy bay club crowd - none of whom, I am absolutely certain, has any record of such activism, though they may send a little money to Ducks Unlimited or GCCA from time to time.
Now, my family B are not marchers or placard-wavers - at least, not in a *very* long time, having access to professional means by now - but they are inveterate speakers at hearings, fundraisers, grant-seekers, dealmakers, bringers-together of disparate interests, opposers of bad things that (usually) the government (at the behest of private interests) is trying to do, and supporters of good things that (usually) the government is trying to do (at the behest of private interests).
They would undoubtedly be considered activists, in the opinion of this forum; and I have learned much more from them than I ever did from my nuclear family.
Tangentially related (i.e., I'm not saying that your family is like this), I am convinced that many -- possibly even most -- environmental activists know next-to-nothing about the actual out-of-doors and never get out and see it themselves. One example is that many people who live or visit rural areas consider wind turbines and solar-panel arrays to be a blight that ruins the views, but the environmental activists live in urban areas and don't care because they don't ruin their views. Another example is the big push to force everyone to use electric vehicles. I don't have any personal experience with them (yet), but my strong impression is that they are acceptable for driving around in town, but would be a real problem if you want to drive to a wilderness area a couple of hundred miles away to go backpacking. I also worry about the people who talk about forcing everyone to use self-driving cars (sometime in the future, obviously). I can imagine that working in town and on highways, but the issue of being able to drive on bad roads to get to remote camping areas or trailheads doesn't seem to even be on their radar.
I don't know who you think are "environmental activists" - can't begin to imagine; it's a group so small.
There is indeed now an unfortunate - and libertarian - tendency to want to site solar panels and wind turbines wherever - without regard for wildlife or plants - e.g. please put the former on a coastal bermuda pasture - or on top of all these flat-roofed buildings littered over the landscape - rather than on a rare prairie remnant. This is a battle I've been involved with firsthand. But like anything else, we must absurdly pretend there is something called The Market that makes these calls for our dumb selves.
And there is a push to put wind turbines in the Gulf right on the flyover path where exhausted birds are liable to fall out onto them. This has proceeded with no EIS or evidence whatsoever.
But sadly the answer to these problems ought to be - "conservation" - but that is a taboo word now.
Where I part from you is electric vehicles. Those people who are interested in encouraging that technology, have every right to buy whatever they want in that way. I don't think anyone is being forced to drive an electric vehicle into the wilderness. The last time I saw this scenario play out, there was an electric outage in an interstate town. The EV drivers waited it out at the Marriott. Not exactly a lethal threat.
The real issue is there are fewer and fewer people every day that care about wilderness at all, as the Boomers die off.
Absolutely, people interested in EVs are welcome to buy them. But are you unaware that many governments have plans to try to force everyone to buy EVs over the next 10 to 15 years? In New Mexico, where I live, the governor has proposed mandating that 43% of cars sold in 2027 would have to be EVs. (I'm not really sure of the details or whether it is just a proposal or an actual mandate.) I don't believe it will happen because EVs are just not "ready for prime time" yet, but how far will it get before they reverse course?
I expect - in New Mexico - this reflects an unrealistic idea of whether they will ever sell another car in that state. My state will be totally a shadow economy by that point so such aims - irrespective of their advisability - would be a joke.
ETA: I remember 30-odd years ago breaking down in rural New Mexico in a Volkswagen of some sort - and that was hard enough! It involved like a 150 mile tow.
The Internet is indeed great at facilitating lifelong learning. It also, however, makes it easier to get the feeling of righteousness from taking a socially-approved stand on the Current Thing, without actually having to do any work or make any practical difference in the world. Thus, it exacerbates one of the worst failure modes of activism.
The question of which effect will ultimately dominate remains unsettled. Both effects have been powerful for at least two decades now-- you might think of the social justice left today in connection with the second effect, but think also of the way that bloggers cheerleading for the Iraq war were, with some justice, mocked as the "101st Fighting Keyboarders." So it's not just about 2010s social media.
I like what you said but I always try to look at how the other side would view it. You did that but took an all or nothing view. I certainly find your view more palatable than the opposite but there can be intermediate options. In particular, always be open to alternatives and new info but work towards fixing wrongs as you currently see it. After all, doing nothing isn't such a great option either. I don't think there's any doubt about segregation, redlining, firing all pregnant teachers (whether married or not), denying credit to women, and plenty of other past issues. I'd agree many issues of today are more gray or even backwards but there are still needed changes too. And I think the arguments against college students being involved in these issues are rather weak.
FWIW, Pew has some related survey data from 2016:
"73% of adults consider themselves lifelong learners.
74% of adults are what we call personal learners – that is, they have participated in at least one of a number of possible activities in the past 12 months to advance their knowledge about something that personally interests them. These activities include reading, taking courses or attending meetings or events tied to learning more about their personal interests.
63% of those who are working (or 36% of all adults) are what we call professional learners – that is, they have taken a course or gotten additional training in the past 12 months to improve their job skills or expertise connected to career advancement.
These learning activities take place in a variety of locations. The internet is often linked to a variety of learning pursuits. However, it is still the case that more learners pursue knowledge in physical settings than choose to seek it online.
By an 81% to 52% margin, personal learners are more likely to cite a locale such as a high school, place of worship or library as the site at which personal learning takes place than they are to cite the internet.
By a similar margin (75% to 55%), professional learners are more likely to say their professional training took place at a work-related venue than on the internet."
See: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/03/22/lifelong-learning-and-technology/
And, of course, as would be expected, the survey found that people who did not view themselves as lifelong learners or participate in such activities were disproportionately Black.
Pondering this led me to an interesting April 2023 journal article entitled "What makes adults choose to learn: Factors that stimulate or prevent adults from learning" available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14779714231169684
This article suggests that, among a couple of other things, perhaps it is a sense of personal agency that influences whether or not adults choose to engage in lifelong learning. The article might be of particular interest to this readership since it cites rather heavily the great Nobel winning economist Amartya Sen. The article concludes"
"we argue that looking at socio-demographic background characteristics and barriers to participation is insufficient in understanding why adults do not learn. Providing the evidence base for adult learning policy development and the monitoring of policies requires a re-examining of how adults’ connection to learning is positioned in a wider social, economic, environmental context and how this context provides a conducive environment in which adults first of all would value learning and can pursue learning. Based on the capability approach, we explored the interplay between different factors that influence whether adults intentionally act towards engaging in organised and structured learning or development activities. Agency, conversion and perceived benefits of learning are mutually enforcing whether adults see learning as a valuable (life) choice.
This approach opens new perspectives to empirically explore the interplay between agency, conversion and benefits and identify main factors stimulating adult learning. This empirical research will bring us closer to a validated conceptual model on what prevents and what stimulates adults to learn. A model that is very much needed to evaluate and monitor adult learning and lifelong learning policies delivering on their priority status and combating current and future economic and societal challenges."
This, of course, subverts the oppressor-oppressed axis that is the foundation of the current US education model. Nevertheless, one might reasonably wonder whether, promoting lifelong learning or not, the question of whether or not the USA education system is producing individuals with well developed senses of agency might be a foundational issue and any shortcomings addressed there might go a long way towards addressing symptoms such as non-participation in lifelong learning.
On a related but possibly tangential note, I’ve noticed that politicians are quoting “the experts” these days, when justifying their policy decisions. Too often, the experts they quote are, in fact, activists or advocates, by which I mean people who push one side of an issue, look only at the evidence supporting the one side, and ignore and/or denigrate anything relating to the other side. Careful consideration of policy decisions, looking at all the evidence and the pros/cons of various paths, has been abandoned in favour of choosing a single ideological path and then justifying it after the fact. Examples are numerous, including the Covid response, the government approach to climate change, etc.
Thoughtful, provocative as always.
I also oppose the righteous, close-minded activist. As well as close-minded non-activists.
Doesn't a more open-minded person, though, often learn "through activism?"
Sometimes you join a "movement" - and realize people involved don't actually have plausible solutions. Or their motivations for joining are - about dating.
Sometimes you do direct service - tutor a kid perhaps, or clean a park - and perhaps feel motivation, or notice inefficiency, or learn "technical" things.
If you were advising an open-minded 20 year old poli sci major who is currently spending 100% of "learning" time studying for their 4 or 5 college classes....wouldn't you say "Find an issue, get involved, learn that way too."
It may be that some amount of "activism" accelerates lifelong learning for open-minded people.
No man can serve two masters. The lesson of history is that political activism always inevitably comes into conflict with truth, and something's got to give, and it's usually truth, i.e., epistemic corruption. A lot of people on the right favor free political speech on campus. That's mostly because right now only some political speech gets unfairly penalized, to the disadvantage of the right, so they figure the only way to restore fairness is to penalize nothing. However, there is another way to restore fairness, which is to penalize everything. The no-speech campus. "Shut up and LISTEN. Shut up and learn, shut up and calculate, shut up and discover, shut up and create, shut up and build, shut up and exercise, shut up and reach your potential for excellence in all things ... SHUT UP!!!"
This is the advice we should give, and this is the advice I wish I and all my classmates had gotten and taken to heart.
I agree with Arnold that activists are generally closed-minded. Getting involved in something as a volunteer, without being an "activist" is an entirely different thing, though.
"Help Directly, Not Politically."
“A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.”
Social justice fundamentalism is a religion that fails to teach character and virtue.
True but so does social and political apathy and indifference.
Isn’t this a circular argument?
How so?
Apathy by its own nature doesn’t teach character and virtue.
True.
It’s not actually an argument, it’s an observation.
It’s hard to improve processes that you don’t understand.
It’s hard to improve processes that you do understand too. While I can understand the opposition to blind activism this shouldn’t lead to the opposite vice of an informed passivity. All activism shouldn’t be condemned. If people had to wait until they deeply understood social and political processes there would be no progress at all.
I’d add that most of the activism in the West is aimed at destroying the institutions that are responsible for much of the world’s progress.
You may be right. I do think, though, that most of the real progress humanity has made has been through increased productivity rather than activism. Women are, unfortunately, doomed to be second-class citizens in a world in which brute strength is the key to survival (see, for example, Afghanistan). With the Information Age, women are on equal - and, perhaps, more than equal - footing with men.
Child labor wasn’t a “problem” in the past, it was just what children did to survive. We were able to outlaw the practice in this country only after productivity had increased to the point that a single worker could support an entire family and child labor had become the exception rather than the norm.
When we tried to export our child labor laws to third world countries, the results were often horrific. Children now had the “option” of starving or working illegally. Illegal workers tend to be exploited far more frequently and far worse because they have no recourse to the law.
We had similar results when we shut down overseas sweatshops. Workers who previously had the option of working in factories under conditions that we in the first world find unacceptable, had that choice taken from them. All too often, their second best option was to turn to prostitution or selling drugs.
Activism is often aimed, not at encouraging people to change their behavior or to voluntarily work to achieve a specific goal, but at demanding that government force people to act in accordance with the activists’ wishes. I don’t believe that society is improved when factions vie with each other to sway government to use its coercive power to advance their ideas and interests. I think that instead produces an angry, polarized society.
Interesting comment. I don’t though equate progress only with production or economics. I also didn’t follow your view about activists (individuals) trying to influence the government. Isn’t that what interest groups of all kinds do in a democracy? Where should the government get it’s policy ideas from?
I pick up litter when I walk, I don’t demand that government force others to pick up litter.
I’m picturing a citizens’ brigade in place of the Clean Water Act, “picking up the litter”.
Ha! Good point.
The key to understanding how to make people wait some, but not too much, is to recognize the difference the two types of activism, what I call "Political Activism vs Practical Activism."
Think of activism more broadly than political activism. You could define activism as trying to achieve progress. And you could define progress as establishing new positive sum ways that make it easier for people to get what they want. Leftists try to include "even more coercive redistribution" in that definition of progress, but that's a stretch.
Using these broader conceptions, an entrepreneur is an activist - but a Practical Activist.
He is trying to solve problems or make new or better kinds of goods and services available, and he doesn't get to shove anybody around. An artist or an author is a practical activist in trying to create new powerful aesthetic experiences, and he can't force anyone anyone to look or buy or patronize. An apolitical academic is a practical activist (well, "intellectually practical") in trying to discover new truths and explore the possibilities and capabilities which new knowledge can unlock, usually for all mankind and for the rest of time in a process of perpetual accumulation and refinement.
The difference between all those kinds of "Acting Means Achieving" Practical Activists and the Political Activist is that achievement-focused Practical Activism forces the Practical Activist to have skin in the game and thus to *want* to learn the optimal amount in order to get to point where he can decide whether to get started and if so to be best-equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to make a genuine contribution, and to set things up so as to continue learning as much as possible in the process of making and improving, which never ends. Wanting to learn how to actually achieve non-political things is infinitely better than wanting to learn how to 'win' arguments, play social dominance games, or agitate mobs.
The non-political Practical Activist has skin in the game because sacrificing considerable opportunity cost and putting his own time, effort, and money at risk and on the line, and because he will most directly and intensely experience the consequences of success or failure. For the entrepreneur to solve people's problems, in addition to innovating, he has to convince investors to invest, customers to buy, and employees to work, without being able to use hard coercive power. He cannot evade hard trade-offs, so that people really must value the benefits of what he is trying to do more than the cost of doing it, according to their own preferences and judgments instead of his own.
The typical Political Activist has very little skin in the game that is actually aligned with the interests of those affected by whatever political changes they may succeed in implementing. With the power of the state at play, they don't have to pay for what they want bought, the whole point is to make other people pay for it, because the state can just grab more money from those who earned it.
And if it all blows up, as it often does in practice, their lives are often insulated from the consequences and don't bear the brunt of the fallout. The clearest example is the political-activist judge who finds an excuse to let most violent criminal defendants free to live in the ghetto next to their former and future victims, while he and his family is secure in a gated suburb. If the judge had to live in the ghetto, his interests would align with the security of the ghetto, and he would stop being a Political Activist and start being a Practical Activist.
This is very similar to Milton Friedman's explanations of the different ways to spend money. Spending your own money on yourself means you take care to get the best deal and you get what you most want. Spending your own money on somebody else means you get a good deal, but it's not what they most want. Spending someone else's money on yourself means you get what you want, but you didn't care to look for a good deal. And spending somebody else's money on yet another person means a bad deal for the unwanted. It's the worst way to spend money, and it's the only way government spends money.
Likewise, and for the same reasons, Practical Activism is the best kind of activism, while Political Activism is the worst kind of activism. That attendance at an Academy going along with participation in mushy-brained Political Activism ever got to be be so common and considered so naturally tightly-linked constitutes one of the worst turns ever made in the history of our civilization, and we are paying a dearer price for it with every passing day. For political speech, if it could be done, then then the no-speech university would be superior in almost every respect to the free-speech university.
Arnold says, "If you really want to learn and achieve something in life, forget non-profits, go work for a profit." Likewise I say, "If you want to contribute to progress, forget Political Activism, pursue Practical Activism."
Lifelong learning is my joy. I wouldn’t enjoy being an academic if I wasn’t still learning.
To highlight one small facet of Arnold's essay, consider his comment that "The greatest people in business, sports, and culture never stop learning. They constantly strive to enhance their capabilities." Somehow, George Will's book "Men at Work" comes to mind. The book is about professional baseball players and how they continually hone their skills, learn about the game, and study their opponents in order to be better players. This apparently is true of professional basketball players too. The best players such as Michael Jordan have been great students of the game, knowing its history, watching other players, and more.
Where would we be without activism. Taking it to the streets actibism during the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and up to current times has accomplished plenty for the progressive agenda.... And than citizens united happened and other none sense from our current SCOTUS. We need to take it the street again. Be active. Give a damn
Those of us who have been married a long time, never divorced - I've been married well more than half my life - have often amassed the experience of two families.
In my case it offers a contrast which I can illustrate with a single example.
Many decades ago my grandfather pulled himself up the ranks (from nothing) of the elite of the boomtown to have joined its premier bay club for hunting and fishing - a rather, I fancy, Yankee-ish place in this Southern state. Clapboard lodge, rocking chairs, very simple but good food, iron bedsteads with thin mattresses, cold showers, an old TV and cracked leather furniture and a room for playing cards: its spartanness in tandem with its exclusivity, as often used to be the case. (A hurricane finally got it, or rather moved it off its foundations; and I suspect the interiors have been rebuilt after a different, modern fashion.)
As a child, we didn't really vacation but instead went to this place, which remains very important to members of my family A, particularly to the brother who loved goose and duck hunting best.
Over time, of course, as everywhere down here - the area, once genuinely beautiful (for the Third Coast) in its remoteness and wildness, is filling up with sprawl, and of course apart from that, migratory birds generally have to look harder to find the wetlands they need.
Family A is utterly non-political and passive. They would have just stood around and watched the source of their hobby (land and water) just disappear. I'm not even sure it would ever even have been a topic of conversation. The concept of "the environment" is not in their heads. They just think about the world in terms of getting and spending, that is all, nothing more. And yet I would insist that no one on Earth values this particular landscape as my brother does. He knows it well and loves everything about it.
I married into what you would call an activist family. Amid their myriad activities, statewide, curiously, has been the "shoring up" of a buffer around the bay club (with which they have nothing to do). Family B just loves nature; and has prevented development immediately hard by, and added also to the nearby wildlife refuge. These efforts are ongoing and will hopefully have another success this year. Apart from the birds and alligators &etc. - there can hardly be any group more benefitted by these activities, than the wealthy bay club crowd - none of whom, I am absolutely certain, has any record of such activism, though they may send a little money to Ducks Unlimited or GCCA from time to time.
Now, my family B are not marchers or placard-wavers - at least, not in a *very* long time, having access to professional means by now - but they are inveterate speakers at hearings, fundraisers, grant-seekers, dealmakers, bringers-together of disparate interests, opposers of bad things that (usually) the government (at the behest of private interests) is trying to do, and supporters of good things that (usually) the government is trying to do (at the behest of private interests).
They would undoubtedly be considered activists, in the opinion of this forum; and I have learned much more from them than I ever did from my nuclear family.
Tangentially related (i.e., I'm not saying that your family is like this), I am convinced that many -- possibly even most -- environmental activists know next-to-nothing about the actual out-of-doors and never get out and see it themselves. One example is that many people who live or visit rural areas consider wind turbines and solar-panel arrays to be a blight that ruins the views, but the environmental activists live in urban areas and don't care because they don't ruin their views. Another example is the big push to force everyone to use electric vehicles. I don't have any personal experience with them (yet), but my strong impression is that they are acceptable for driving around in town, but would be a real problem if you want to drive to a wilderness area a couple of hundred miles away to go backpacking. I also worry about the people who talk about forcing everyone to use self-driving cars (sometime in the future, obviously). I can imagine that working in town and on highways, but the issue of being able to drive on bad roads to get to remote camping areas or trailheads doesn't seem to even be on their radar.
I don't know who you think are "environmental activists" - can't begin to imagine; it's a group so small.
There is indeed now an unfortunate - and libertarian - tendency to want to site solar panels and wind turbines wherever - without regard for wildlife or plants - e.g. please put the former on a coastal bermuda pasture - or on top of all these flat-roofed buildings littered over the landscape - rather than on a rare prairie remnant. This is a battle I've been involved with firsthand. But like anything else, we must absurdly pretend there is something called The Market that makes these calls for our dumb selves.
And there is a push to put wind turbines in the Gulf right on the flyover path where exhausted birds are liable to fall out onto them. This has proceeded with no EIS or evidence whatsoever.
But sadly the answer to these problems ought to be - "conservation" - but that is a taboo word now.
Where I part from you is electric vehicles. Those people who are interested in encouraging that technology, have every right to buy whatever they want in that way. I don't think anyone is being forced to drive an electric vehicle into the wilderness. The last time I saw this scenario play out, there was an electric outage in an interstate town. The EV drivers waited it out at the Marriott. Not exactly a lethal threat.
The real issue is there are fewer and fewer people every day that care about wilderness at all, as the Boomers die off.
Absolutely, people interested in EVs are welcome to buy them. But are you unaware that many governments have plans to try to force everyone to buy EVs over the next 10 to 15 years? In New Mexico, where I live, the governor has proposed mandating that 43% of cars sold in 2027 would have to be EVs. (I'm not really sure of the details or whether it is just a proposal or an actual mandate.) I don't believe it will happen because EVs are just not "ready for prime time" yet, but how far will it get before they reverse course?
I expect - in New Mexico - this reflects an unrealistic idea of whether they will ever sell another car in that state. My state will be totally a shadow economy by that point so such aims - irrespective of their advisability - would be a joke.
ETA: I remember 30-odd years ago breaking down in rural New Mexico in a Volkswagen of some sort - and that was hard enough! It involved like a 150 mile tow.
Good article on EVs: https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/my-us-senate-testimony-on-epas-ev . (Robert Bryce is great, by the way.)
Certainly he was prescient in seeing that humanism, not environmental writing, would butter his bread over the next few decades.
The Internet is indeed great at facilitating lifelong learning. It also, however, makes it easier to get the feeling of righteousness from taking a socially-approved stand on the Current Thing, without actually having to do any work or make any practical difference in the world. Thus, it exacerbates one of the worst failure modes of activism.
The question of which effect will ultimately dominate remains unsettled. Both effects have been powerful for at least two decades now-- you might think of the social justice left today in connection with the second effect, but think also of the way that bloggers cheerleading for the Iraq war were, with some justice, mocked as the "101st Fighting Keyboarders." So it's not just about 2010s social media.
Higher Education ≠ Social Justice
Higher Education = Truth
~ Fin.
If only.
I like what you said but I always try to look at how the other side would view it. You did that but took an all or nothing view. I certainly find your view more palatable than the opposite but there can be intermediate options. In particular, always be open to alternatives and new info but work towards fixing wrongs as you currently see it. After all, doing nothing isn't such a great option either. I don't think there's any doubt about segregation, redlining, firing all pregnant teachers (whether married or not), denying credit to women, and plenty of other past issues. I'd agree many issues of today are more gray or even backwards but there are still needed changes too. And I think the arguments against college students being involved in these issues are rather weak.
Indeed, I do.
Thought is father to the deed.
Learn to think before you act.
Good point but this doesn’t exclude acting after you think.
Agree?