From the Atlantic … the next time someone says the Internet killed reading books, show them this chart:
The chart has a number of problems, not the least of which is how they put the present time on the left, defying all normal chart conventions, and therefore making it look like there was a decline. Sigh. But other issues include the gap between 1957 and 1990, and that there is no more recent data than 2005. So I went looking for more.
This article presents a nice summary of the Pew Research Center's recent research into U.S. adult reading. It shows that 78 percent of adults read a book in the past year, and that four times the number of people are reading e-books compared to just two years ago. It looks like the larger the number of book formats available - e-books, audio books, print - the more reading.
And the Mary Sue reports that Generation Y (those born between 1979 and 1989) has just officially overtaken the Baby Boomers as the generation that reads the most books (and 43 percent of their book purchases are online).
I found a lot more statistics online that seem to be all over the map. The ones bemoaning our assumed decline in reading are often presented with no context, so it's only really the stats that compare over a long time that are valuable.
As a side note, here's a tidbit from The Week (Aug 24-31, 2012): "A textual analysis of 1.2 million books published since 1900 found that the proportion of male pronouns to female pronouns fell from 4.5 to 1 in the 1950s to less than 2 to 1 in 2005." If I had to make a guess, I would bet that the number of female authors rose dramatically in the same period. This relates back to the overall reading numbers, of course, in that a surefire way to make reading appeal to greater numbers of people is to increase the diversity of what's available.
PS> Keep an eye out for my next post - a special announcement just in time for my 100th blog post!
I don't think I've ever directly hawked a product on this blog before (other than maybe some recommendation asides), but this is important. You will not believe how much healthier this product will make you. My wife and I both tried it, and we can look forward to a much healthier life than if we had never used it. And as soon as we had finished our treatment, I immediately lent it to my parents to give it a try, and then I'll loan it to my friends.
This product works directly on the brain, by clearing out toxins caused by today's fast-paced environment. You wouldn't believe how many of these toxins we've all accumulated over our lifetimes - without even knowing it! These toxins include misconceptions, rumors, bad advice, snake oil, old wives' tales, and superstitions. And this product will clear them all away.
That's because it's an educational course, on DVD. (There's an audio version, too - and you can stream them both online as well.) It's one of the Great Courses, a series of lectures by esteemed professors on tons of topics. I've been watching them for years, and I can honestly say this is the best one I've ever seen. My wife and I watched all 24 episodes together, riveted. The content was great, and the presenter, Dr. Steven Novella of the Yale School of Medicine, was excellent.
Debunking myths is a long-time hobby of mine, but the majority of this information was new to me. Unless you're a doctor - and one well-versed in every specialty, who stays up-to-date on recent studies and the scientific consensus - I bet most of it will be new to you, too. Did you know …
Vitamin C does not help colds. (Try to find a bottle that says it does!)
You don't have to wait after eating before swimming.
Homeopathy is a complete myth.
"Natural" is not inherently better than man-made … in fact, it's often worse.
Hypnosis is real, but doesn't work the way you'd expect.
Amnesia is real, but people never forget their identities.
Acupuncture is fake, but still beneficial.
Sugar does not lead to hyperactivity.
And what about probiotics? Antioxidants? Toxins? and, and ...
The myths range from harmless to dire. Taking extra vitamin C will not hurt you, for example. But certain of the myths in this series are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people - such as the myth that vaccines cause autism, or the myth that sleeping with a virgin can cure HIV (yes, this is a real belief in some parts of Africa.)
More important than any specific myth is the framework that Dr. Novella shares in how the medical industry works, how doctors think, and how to judge medical claims for yourself. How are drugs evaluated? Are placebos ethical? How does misinformation spread? Does the way we think about specific "diseases" even make sense in many cases? And in general, how should we safeguard our own health - and the health of our children and others we care about - when we swim in such a vast sea of competing medical information?
Watch the DVD and find out. If you've read The Secret Peace, you know that in today's day and age, we each finally have the means and the responsibility to investigate truths for ourselves. This has tremendous potential benefit, but it can also be a burden. This course is a huge help. I wish they had taught this in school; I think it should be essential viewing for everyone.
Did you hear that Connecticut abolished the death penalty? The state's practically next door, but somehow I missed this news when it happened in April, and just found it now. What's interesting is how it's part of a trend: Connecticut is the 17th state to abolish capital punishment (along with the District of Columbia, too), and the fifth in just five years.
When it comes to the death penalty, I believe the trends show: 1) the gradual abolishment of capital punishment in the world, 2) a glimpse - probably in our lifetimes - of a world in which the concept itself will feel outdated and barbaric, and 3) that this is part of a larger trend of decreasing violence. Capital punishment, even when carried out by a legitimate state with the support of its citizens, is still violence of a type. And as Gandhi taught, violence - though it can accomplish short-term goals - inevitably sows long-term problems (usually more violence.)
The decline of the death penalty in the U.S. can be tracked not just by the number of states endorsing it, but by two other trends. This chart shows one:
This is from Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, and shows the rate of executions declining dramatically. That's right, even in the states that still have it on the books, it's mostly used less frequently.
In addition, Pinker brings up a good reason to abolish it: because it's a slippery slope. With execution on the books it's simply too easy to put innocent people to death. Did you know that during the last years of the reign of Henry VIII, there were over 10 executions in London per week? By 1822 England had 222 capital offenses on the books, including cutting down a tree. But by 1861 this had been reduced to four. The Wikipedia page on capital punishment in the U.S. has an interesting chart showing when the last execution was for each crime other than homicide. The last execution for witchcraft, for example, was in 1779, and the last for burglary was in 1941.
In fact, it's estimated that in the past 2,000 years, 19 million people were executed worldwide for trivial offenses. I had this same thought while reading Game of Thrones recently, as the capricious king in the book executes practically everyone who so much as glances at him funny. We take for granted the simple concept today - even if we support capital punishment - that the death penalty should be used only for dire offences, and only after a lengthy evaluation of guilt. Soon, there will be no offences left that we deem worth it.
I've frequently gotten mad at knee-jerk liberal reactions against capitalism since the most recent economic crisis. The obvious flaws in capitalism revealed by the crisis are a good case for more government oversight. But they do not condemn capitalism as an overall concept.
A lot of The Secret Peace is devoted to showing how free trade and globalization have accomplished the miraculous in the last few decades: lifting millions of people out of poverty. Communist governments could not do this. China could not do this, for example, until it started allowing some free enterprise. We have a lot of evidence about this. Capitalism works.
So, in that respect, I completely agree with the broad point made by Arthur Brooks in this adorable animated video: free enterprise is a good system. So it's unfortunate that, like the knee-jerk liberals who want to paint capitalism with a broad brush of evil, he is emblematic of the Ron Swansons on the right who would do the same thing to government. They argue that since government has obvious flaws (chief among them being that it costs a lot of money, and can be wasteful), it must all be bad.
Why can no one on the right or left simply convey the truth that our system consists of a split partnership of government and business, and always will? America is, say, 70% business and 30% government, and it's perfectly necessary to debate if it should be 80%/20% instead, or 60%/40%. But why does everyone have to pontificate as if it will ever be 100%/0% or even 95%/5%?
Brooks's video makes such broad points that they easily resonate and seem correct in our hearts while we're watching. That's because they mostly ARE correct - on a broad, conceptual level. But in practice, and if you look at the details, there are some big "plot holes" he glosses over.
Let's look at the video step-by-step. His first trite example, of Muffin the dog, has the plot hole of NOT ENDING. He misses a step. We never learn its lesson: why shouldn't we eat the dog? He simply says because "its immoral." But there's a reason it's immoral, and it has to do with social conventions and our emotions due to Muffin being a "member of the family". Moral arguments can have logic, and this one does, he just doesn't mention it.
And it kind of disproves his point ... his point here being that sometimes logic has trouble winning over people who are arguing emotionally. It's a totally valid point. But he uses a bad example, since there are morally logical reasons not to eat Muffin. (Perhaps next time, to avoid this problem altogether, the family won't name their pets after delicious foods.)
His next, similar, point is that you shouldn't argue using anecdotal evidence. Sure, good point. Although it's not as if this video is instead leaning on lots of statistics.
He then compares the US to Greece, which is problematic. Michael Lewis writes some great stuff in Boomerang about how messed up and unique Greek culture is and how its corruption contributed to their crisis. America isn't that similar.
It's also disappointing how Brooks offhandedly mentions that "government just grows and grows" in a tone implying that it's obvious that this is a bad thing. But he hasn't yet shown that.
He next makes the case that money doesn't buy happiness and instead "earned success" is the best way to make us happy. He's right; recent studies show this. But he makes it sound like that's the ONLY way to create ANY happiness, which is not true. Being helped with your success is not worse than having no success at all. And at any rate, there are ways to help that COMBINE with hard work, not replace it, to pay off: does the college student who receives a scholarship not have to work hard for good grades?
He calls the welfare state "shoving marshmallows into people's mouths", as if the benefits it provides are extra confectionery treats - added money going to people who would otherwise be fine if they just tried a little harder. What he doesn't acknowledge is that many of those people ARE trying their hardest.
A leading theory in conservative thought says that handing out money to people will disincentivize them to work and make them lazy. Again, this is taking something that has a kernel of truth - since I'm sure that does happen with some people - and extrapolating it to all cases. Government programs should try to identify and focus on those in need who could not get help in any other way. Granted, this is a challenge, but it can work.
This is easier to see in Brooks's school metaphor. Here, Brooks is correct that people who don't try hard don't deserve good grades handed to them. But he assumes that the only reason a student would ever get a bad grade is that they didn't try hard enough. It's like The Secret of grading. In Brooks's school, no one has learning disabilities. No one has dyslexia. No one has no time to study because they're working two extra jobs or taking care of their grandmother.
In real schools, some people are at a disadvantage, and the government provides them extra help. (In this metaphor, the government actually represents the government, assuming this is a public school.) Help isn't provided by just adjusting their grades up - the equivalent of handing them money they didn't earn. Instead, they are helped by placing them in special classes where they get more attention, or providing tutors, or focusing on different types of learning, or providing lunch so they can focus on studying instead of wondering where there next meal is coming from.
The same holds true of the "welfare state". The goal of the government isn't to hand money to people who don't deserve it. This probably happens sometimes as a negative externality, sure, although I doubt the consequences are as bad as Brooks paints them. But there are millions of real people who are disadvantaged in some way and need help to get to a point at which their own hard work will even be effective.
We have hundreds of years of evidence that the free enterprise system works - it works as an overall concept, and it works better than any other system. But in practice, it always has loopholes, cracks in its edifice, people it overlooks. The job of good government is to close those loopholes.
I recently read The Chairs are Where the People Go, which is a fun collection of essays by Misha Glouberman, with Sheila Heti. The book is just a low-key collection of Misha's idosyncratic observations on people and cities and society. This short essay stood out for me as presenting a small, but important point we often overlook:
Why a computer only lasts three years
People complain about how in our modern world things aren't built to last. So when you buy a phone, for instance, it breaks after two or three years and you have to buy another one, and the same with a computer, whereas it used to be that you could buy a typewriter or a telephone and it lasted for decades.
I see this as a pretty benign consequence of progress. The typewriter that lasted for fifty years wasn't built in a world where the machines we type on become a hundred times more powerful every three years. Would it really be so awesome if the DOS-based 8086 IBM PC that you bought in 1983 still functioned today? Presumably it would have cost twice as much to make that machine last that long. Now, for less than a week's salary for the average person, you can buy a machine that can access all the information in the world while copying a movie and storing more text than is contained in a floor of a university library. So you can buy this machine that does all these incredible things, knowing that in three years a machine will come along that does all those things and more, even more incredibly.
This built-in obsolescence doesn't come out of malevolence. It comes out of the breakneck speed of progress. We get so insanely much for our money. These machines are such incredibly great deals. And the return on the money accelerates so fast. There's no sense in the manufacturer spending extra money to make this year's machine durable enough to compete with the machines that will be around in three years.
Last month I read Steven Pinker's latest book, the ambitious 700-page The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, and it instantly became one of my favorite non-fiction books I've ever read. (It wins for most pages marked of any of my books … see photo.)
It's also one of the books most similar to mine - with the main difference being Pinker's focus on declining violence, which is the focus of just one of my 11 chapters. Essentially, it's a super-expanded version of The Secret Peace's chapter seven.
Pinker is able to go into a lot more detail, and while The Secret Peace focuses on current events, he delves deep into history to make his point that we are living in a less violent world. To me, the most compelling parts of the book were Pinker's colorful depictions of just how awful the past was. For example, he vividly writes that our ancestors "were infested with lice and parasites and lived above cellars heaped with their own feces. Food was bland, monotonous, and intermittent. Health care consisted of the doctor's saw and the dentist's pliers. Both sexes labored from sunrise to sundown, whereupon they were plunged into darkness." Any atrocity you can think of happening today, you can bet that it happened in the past as well, but worse, and more frequently, and with no one batting an eye.
This goes against many peoples' assumptions. In one survey that Pinker did himself, they presented people with sets of two time periods and asked them which they thought had higher rates of violence. In each case everyone thought the modern cultures were more violent, by a factor of 1.1 to 4.6. In reality, the earlier cases were actually more violent, by a factor of 1.6 to more than 30. For example, people guessed that 20th-century England was 14 percent more violent than 14th-century England, even though it was actually 95 percent less violent.
The horror of waterboarding, as bad as it is, doesn't hold a candle to medieval torture. The violence of boxing doesn't compare to the game of nailing a cat to a tree and trying to be the first to kill it with your head (yes, this was real.) Remember when wars used to have names like the "Thirty Years' War" and the "Eighty Years' War"? People in the past believed in the legitimacy and honor of war in a way we no longer do. In the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, wars broke out between European countries at a rate of about three new wars a year.
Pinker describes how the "shocking truth is that until recently [20th century] most people didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with genocide, as long as it didn't happen to them." He discusses the common medieval practice of enacting vengeance on someone by cutting their nose off, which is the source of our charming phrase, "to cut off your nose to spite your face." He talks about customs such as "slavery, serfdom, breaking on the wheel, disemboweling, bearbaiting, cat-burning, heretic-burning, witch-drowning, thief-hanging, public executions, the display of rotting corpses on gibbets, dueling, debtors' prisons, flogging, keelhauling, and other practices that passed from unexceptionable to controversial to immoral to unthinkable to not-thought-about."
At one point, Pinker shows a chart of the rate of battle deaths since the late 1940s (so, starting after WWII ended.) Our current decade enjoys an astoundingly low rate of worldwide battle deaths: 0.5 per 100,000 per year. This is lower than the homicide rate of most countries. In absolute numbers, annual battle deaths have fallen by more than 90 percent, from around half a million per year in the late 1940s to around thirty thousand a year today (and with a much larger population now, too.) He also talks about how effective peacekeeping is: studies have shown that the presence of peacekeepers reduces the risk of recidivism into another war by 80 percent. All other measures of violence have also declined: did you know that the rate of rape in the U.S. has declined by 80 percent just since 1973? (Actually, it was probably more, since women are more willing to report rape in recent years and it is now more often recognized as a serious crime.) Or that 24 countries have now banned not just child abuse, but even spanking altogether? We as a global culture have become so offended by violence that I even read an article recently about the possibility of banning football.
The past was a terrible, terrible place, and by comparison, today looks downright peaceful.
Take a look at this great ad from Image Comics, one in a series featuring quotes from their creators. This one shows writer/artist Natalie Nourigat saying "There's always a better way to do things. You keep your eyes and ears open, never assume that you know it all, and you just keep improving."
This type of thinking - a work ethic and desire to improve one's work - is not only personally inspiring, it's also what's driving the Secret Peace. Everyone keeps improving.
At the individual level, each person is inspired to improve out of self-interest, but the accumulation of all those bits of self-interest translates into huge gains at the level of society. Of course, self-interest can refer to A) the desire to get a better income, or more praise, or ways to impress a mate, but also B) the innate desire to be better and challenge oneself.
Cynics will say that not everyone shares Natalie's work ethic. And they're right. There are certainly millions of people who are lazy. There are millions of people who don't like their jobs. There are millions of people who get along just fine doing what they're doing and don't feel motivated to challenge themselves. But I bet the proportion of people who are lazy or unmotivated is much smaller than our worst assumptions lead us to believe. Of course, there are also millions of people who don't have the time or energy or resources to go above and beyond because just getting by is exhausting.
But I don't think those people are a negative drain on society; rather, they're just sort of neutral. They're still contributing, but maybe not at Natalie's pace of productivity. The more important thing to realize is how few people are actively trying to be worse at their jobs - surely a small number. If the vast majority of people are either eagerly pushing forward or neutral, civilization in aggregate moves forward. This is why productivity keeps increasing and rarely regresses. So, not everyone needs to work quite as hard as Natalie.
This work ethic has always existed, but progress is happening much faster nowadays due to improved communications technology and information storage. Because of it, Natalie can easily share what she learns and inspire others. In fact, she does this, posting on her blog guides, sketches, updates, and even samples of influences. Did you know YouTube is filled with artists who have recorded themselves working as videos so others can watch and learn from the process? (Like this great one from Sara Pichelli.) Other artists post step-by-step tutorials as well, such as this one by Kat Laurange.
When I was in school for art, we didn't have any of this. (Not to mention Meetups, such as the Central Park Sketch Meetup, of course.) It is so much easier for a novice to get started with art nowadays, and get free training. Some of them will turn into great artists, whereas in the past they would never had had the opportunity (only a select few people ever got into drawing schools or got to be an artist's apprentice).
It's only a small percentage of people that need to be instructing or pushing the envelope at any given time, but that knowledge adds up faster since it's now all easily available. Anything Natalie learns - which pen works best, how to compose a page, how to schedule her day - she passes along and other people can pick up. And of course, bad information gets shared as well, but the cream eventually always rises to the top. Now think about how that's true in every field, not just art. Anyone innovating and teaching helps to drag all the rest of us along, constantly building a smarter, more advanced civilization.
