Does freedom mean happiness?

Apparently not.

Stumbling and Mumbling reports the findings of a new report on the correlation between freedom and happiness. Among the points made:

1. We're bad at forecasting our future tastes. In particular, we fail to foresee that we'll adapt to our new circumstances.
2. We have positive illusions. We think we're better than we are; we exaggerate our ability to control our environment; and we are too optimistic.
3. We value hard, quantifiable, things like money more than less quantifiable but important things - which might explain why people prefer the drudgery of long hours in factories to rural life.
4. Because we're loss averse, and value what we have, we stay in situations where we're unhappy, like frogs who stay in water getting gently hotter until they boil to death.

Blind optimism and poor foresight seem to be two of the major reasons we are less happy when free, arguments such as the one above assert.

Are we really unable to make choices that maximize our happiness when presented with a wide array of choices? What does this say about our favored system of government, democracy? And what about choice and the free market? Ultimately, are we free humans really too inept to make the right choices? I do wonder whether there are better options. Perhaps we glorify freedom and democracy a bit too much — especially in the area of happiness — but what realistic conditions of existence would be better?

Why are we obsessed with terrorism?

Throughout this month, I will be posting excerpts of my lengthy paper "The War on Terror and the Fire Paradox", as mentioned in this post. Here is one such excerpt...

One underlying cause for the terrorism/counterterrorism culture is the public’s obsession with terrorism.

Do you want the ultimate in political change tactics, whether it is terrorism or counterterrorism that causes that change, using fear as a tool? To be able to do so, one must first understand why people are so drawn to terrorism.

Global health, the environment, climate change, poverty, AIDS, water, and other issues are far more pressing than terrorism. It kills relatively few and should be minor in the eyes of the public, right?

Like plane crashes, terrorism is unpredictable, sporadic, spontaneous, sudden, often human-caused, mysterious-seeming; and, unlike plane crashes, unscientific. It has no rationale — or so observers think.

People's obsession with terrorism helps explain why politicians use it against their own people — whether in original terrorism or a spin on the original (i.e. some form of counterterrorism) — and why extremist rebels use it in the first place.

Here is a (partial) list of why people, and their news media, are so attracted to terrorism:

Abstract in nature (like politics and religion);

People cannot grapple with terror like other health/sociological threats;

It is political; ties into human emotion and politics;

Violence and fear (like some crime stories);

Personal attachments (could this happen to me?);

Some sort of sexiness (from all the hype);

Shocking, spontaneous;

Deep connection to inner-psyche (exact cause is unknown, explaining speculation);

Does not develop (like a disease or something like that), unpredictable (things that happen suddenly produce more attraction, coverage);

Human interest (goes psychologically deep);

Accomplishes motives of fear and attention, like martyrs do;

The act of understanding why people use terrorism, or trying to leads to more obsession with terrorism itself;

Superficially evil, perfect villain, but more layers lie beneath (like with an onion);

The change it creates, human obsession with change or lack thereof;

I.e., deals with change — a constant source of human interest;

Unlike many other crimes;

I.e., often committed with no specificity (can have a target, but no intent on target like with a common murder, for instance, in which which the killer has a reason for the death of the specify person they kill);

Just the word "terrorism" is extremely political and emotional, holding strong connotations depending on one's subjective, often political view of the word and the related semantics.

Young children and racial prejudice

Here is an interesting article:
Prejudice at Age 6

By age 6, many kids are well schooled in societal prejudice. In fact, children associate white workers with higher status jobs.

By age 6, many kids are well schooled in societal prejudice. In a study, researchers interviewed 92 African-American first- and sixth-graders from varying socioeconomic backgrounds about job status and their own interest in particular occupations.

Children from all economic backgrounds associated white workers with jobs that they saw as higher in status. Furthermore, when asked about unfamiliar and even imaginary jobs such as a "tenic," someone who organizes and marks handicapped parking spaces, children rated careers pictured with white workers above those depicted with black workers or a mixed group.

"It's troubling that children in our society take race as something that defines the status, importance, and pay of jobs," says Lynn S. Liben, professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University and coauthor of the study, published in Developmental Psychology.

Liben also found that poor children in the sixth-grade group showed less interest in high status jobs such as a doctor or airline pilot, which they saw as occupied primarily by whites. She speculates that underprivileged children in particular may "self-select" away from high status jobs because they assume a lack of access to the education and resources needed to attain them.

By the age of 11 or so, a child will finally be able to understand abstract concepts like politics and religion — though the age and the understanding differs from person to person. However, by then (age 11) it may be too late. The socialistic, familial, and otherwise biases imposed on him or her might have already made an impression that would last a lifetime. There are some (like me) who can break free from these kinds of social constructs of opinion and form their own, even if basing off of those around them and what they have been taught, experiences, and shoved into their minds.

I will be writing more on society — and individual opinions — soon. I've been busy lately but will try hard to post some this weekend.

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