Ep24 -- Tunnel Visions

 In 2010, The Economist published an article called "The U-Bend of Life,"  which was based on a study in Social Science and Medicine from a couple years earlier.  The U-bend that the story referred to is a chart of happiness across the course of one's life. So what that means is that on average, certainly not for everyone, people tend to be pretty happy early in life, in our teens and twenties. So on the left side of the U shape, your happiness is pretty high.  But then, again on average, it tends to drop and people report less happiness, less life satisfaction as they age. But then in middle age, around our forties and fifties, something strange happens. Happiness levels begin going up again, until you have people in their seventies and eighties reporting higher levels of happiness than 18-year-olds. 

Now there are definitely issues with this research. The biggest problem is that it's what's called a cross-sectional look at people's happiness, meaning at one point in time, it records the attitudes of people at different ages, rather than following individual people throughout their lives and asking about their happiness levels at different times. Obviously to do that kind of longitudinal study would take, well, an entire adult lifetime to conduct.  And clearly on average older people will suffer from more health problems, greater loneliness and more financial stress. Particularly in countries with weak social safety nets.  But there's still something very interesting when you do control for those things of seeing a U-shaped happiness curve appear at all.  

What's really interesting for me regarding this phenomenon is how it relates to the episode from a couple of weeks back about how lousy we are at predicting the future.  So when you're 20 years old and you imagine your life in middle age and beyond, you can't help but think about it in terms of your 20-year-old self.  So you think, and this assumes you're in a pretty decent place psychologically in your twenties, well, basically my older self would just be me, but with less hair, sore knees, no social life, and lots of burdensome responsibilities.  Even if I think about the potential positives of fame, fortune, or whatever my dreams are coming true.,  it's hard to imagine my older self being any happier than I am now.  And the closer I imagine myself getting to death, the harder it becomes.  

But that's not what the U-bend theory of happiness says. So this week I want to talk about what's going on with that, why we can be so wrong about looking into our futures, and mistakes we make when trying to connect the past to the present. Stay tuned.  

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we've all been conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with our human nature, and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind.  

But first a word about a sponsor.  This week's word about a sponsor is a little different. It's less about the nefarious behavior of one company and more about the sleazery of a whole category of companies, that is, monopolies. By the way, before I dive in, I just have to say that with all the talk of monopolies in the news lately, whenever I hear or read about one particular company abusing its market power, in the back of my mind, all I can hear is this Steven Wright line.  

Okay, to be more specific still, it's not just monopoly behavior in general, but one particular tactic that monopolies, and those who love them, employ to maintain their illegal advantage.  I read about this recently in Matt Stoller's, Substack newsletter called Big, which looks at the history and politics of monopoly behavior and antitrust enforcement. I know, it sounds kind of boring, but it's really fascinating stuff. And he's got a lot of material to work with.  

In a recent post, Stoller profiled Josh Wright, former Federal Trade Commission official and George Mason, professor who Stoller calls "the Harvey Weinstein of antitrust."   Now, you may have heard Wright's name because he is currently under investigation for trading his legal and political influence in exchange for sex with his female students. Or from his Title IX lawsuit against Georgia Mason, claiming that it was in fact he who was the victim of anti-male gender bias.  

But it's Wright's role in a diabolical bit of monopolistic gaslighting that's most relevant for our purposes.  You see before Wright resigned from George Mason under sex abuse accusations, he had published over 150 papers on law and economics and ran the university's global antitrust initiative.  Now, Wright is a big fan of monopolies and monopolies are a big fan of his. So you have this pro monopoly Institute funded by the likes of Google, Meta, Amazon Qualcomm, and others, that then hosts lavish events for judges and other public officials who then rule or legislate using Wright's scholarly work to justify their decisions.  So, for example, in 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an antitrust judgment against Qualcomm, citing Wright's papers. And I'm sure it was just a coincidence that in 2017 Qualcomm gave Wright's antitrust center $2.7 Million.  

You know, I think a lot about the era in which we live when you're in an era, you don't really think about its defining characteristics. After all they're just the reality you live in, until you can look back and see the actual shape of it. But it's pretty clear that we've been living in the same era since the late seventies. You might want to call it the Reagan era.  Also when you're in an era, it's hard to imagine that it will ever end, but if history is any indicator era's end and new era's begin.  It's starting to feel to me that when we look back on this era, we may finally recognize the extent to which corporate monopolies profoundly influenced our lives, not just as consumers, but as citizens as well.  And also while it's seemingly impossible to predict what event or phenomenon will shift us into the next era, the antitrust activity that we're finally seeing from the current Federal Trade Commission may be just the thing to do the job.  Or maybe not.  

BREAK

And we're back.  So getting back to the happiness curve, what is going on with that? My take on it is that in our twenties, our lives are full of potential. We have dreams and aspirations, and no matter how simple or grandiose they are, we can imagine them coming true.  Then as life continues in varying degrees, depending on how things go for you,  life really doesn't exactly match expectations.  It's not to say that life sucks, but reality sets in.  It's a little bit like attending your own funeral, except that it's the fantasy version of yourself that never came to be that you're mourning.  

But what then happens is that we slowly begin to accept our reality for what it is. We have enough to look back on that we begin to see those unexpected twists and turns for what they were: the shape of our lives to quote Billy Bob Thornton from The Man Who Wasn't There.  So the mistake we make when we're young is due to the fact that we can't imagine what it really feels like to have a few more decades under our belts. It changes everything.  It's like when I told you about that moment in late-night Philly, when I thought I was a dead man.  If I'd imagined what it would be like before it happened, I would've said I be terrified, frozen in fear. But being in that moment when it's actually happening and there's nothing you can do about it. It's just your reality.  It was actually kind of peaceful.  

And in old age, again, not for everyone, but for many people, being closer to death isn't as terrifying as young people would think it is. Because first of all, who could live every waking moment in fear of death? So instead we end up developing a greater appreciation for the time that we've had and the time we're still having.

So again, when we think about ourselves in the future,  It's very difficult to not look at it in terms of the present.

And I think this is something that distinguishes politicians, economists, and other powerful people whose thinking influences the trajectory of society from, say, great science fiction writers.  Great science fiction writers can create future worlds that hold together in every detail, where changes in technology go hand in hand with changes in norms and culture. But within which humans can still behave in ways that feel true to us today.  It's one of the things I love about the show Severance. 

You create this fiction, this brain implant that can sever one's consciousness depending on whether you're in or out of your workplace, and then place in that world some very real feeling human characters and see what they do in that context.  But,  politicians economists and the vast majority of influencers just aren't that creative.  They say, well, if this trend continues or if this thing changes, it's going to have this effect over time. But they don't usually consider all the other things that could change and influence this one issue that they're considering at that moment.  So for example, population growth is an important issue, with most people in power lamenting slowing growth has a very dangerous and destabilizing trend.  That opinion is so ubiquitous that it almost feels like a law of nature that we must always have strong population growth, or else, right?  

But then every once in a while, Some faint, faraway voice will suggest maybe, just maybe, there could be a way that slower growth or even a decline in population might actually be a good thing. Might mitigate the effects of climate change, increase gender equity, prevent the destruction of imperiled ecosystems.  But of course, that suggestion is immediately drowned out by a chorus of very serious adult-in-the-room-type voices, talking about how that will certainly lead to an economic collapse and that this faint, far away voice is far too naive to be taken seriously.  And yes, in a world built on the assumption of endless growth, such a suggestion is tantamount to apostasy and would lead to economic collapse. But that raises the question, why? Remember the question why? Why have we built our world on an assumption of endless growth? Is there some natural law that requires it? And if not, why can't we do it differently?  David Geraber once again: "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently."  

BREAK

So when we think about the future, we often do it through a kind of tunnel, with the one change we're thinking of within that tunnel, while everything else kind of goes on as it always has and there's no feedback between the change we see inside the tunnel and what's going on outside.  And I think the same thing happens when we try to connect the past with the present. And it's for this reason that I'm not a big fan of originalism as a legal or political philosophy.  The fundamental error that I think originalists make is that they pick one issue for which they want to establish the original intent,  and they open up that vision tunnel again and imagine that there can be a direct route between the thinking then on that issue and the thinking now, without any consideration of everything else that has changed in the outside reality in the interim.  I'm always wary of any kind of selective attention that asks you to put blinders on, just look at this one thing and don't ask too many questions, don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. Since that kind of demand is straight out of the gaslighters' playbook.  

So, yeah, it's an interesting philosophical exercise to imagine what the founders thought about, say gun regulation. But do you really think that if you were able to transport a founding father from then to now and let them see what the world is like now, that they would still adhere to the exact same beliefs?  Sure I suppose it's possible, but I'd never be willing to bet an entire legal doctrine on it being so, and I'm guessing not many originalists would want to try and explain their 21st-century logic to Thomas Jefferson.  

Well, that's it for this week. If you liked this episode, please share it with anyone you think might also enjoy it, and please post a review.  And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other some slack, and use your f$%#ing turn signal.