Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

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Favoring 19th-Century Attitudes About Human Groups

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The outlook is especially grim for social sciences. In response to a detailed list of questions, the White House spokesperson Kush Desai told me in an email that the administration ‘is committed to cementing America’s dominance in cutting-edge technologies of the future—innovation that is being driven by advancements in hard sciences, not in ideologically-driven ‘social sciences.’”  –Hana Kiros in The Atlantic, May 2026.

It is hard to overstate the threat posed by conservative ideologues to the vital, multidimensional social sciences that yield vital social capital so important to the nation. The trouble starts with the Trump Administration but extends to hostilities toward the human sciences from states like Florida and Texas, think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, and too many in the American and occasionally European population who don’t know what they don’t know. Modern societies have advanced to a point where they can be smart about how to enhance humans living in close proximity to others. The UK’s Prime Minister once offered the stunning conclusion that “There is no such thing as society.” For her and other primitives, there are only individuals: men and women as creatures buffeted by whatever physical and circumstantial circumstances intersect with their lives. Likewise, for a shallow and narcissistic thinker like Donald Trump there is no moral issue with his government cutting basic human needs programs like jobs, healthcare, or housing and personal safety. As summarized by the New York Times, his administration has formalized its intention to cut funding to “initiatives that ‘promote anti-American values,’ contribute to illegal immigration, advance diversity, equity and inclusion or assist in voter registration.”  All of these values are viewed as “anti-American,” even while including some of the founding principles of the nation.

If a person is like him it is easy to miss the myriad ways humans work to create a fabric of interdependence. “I did it all myself” is the lie delusional narcissists will tell themselves. This kind of hole in the soul is so extensive that it can end up not noticing the vast trove of what we have learned about the history and adaptability of various human groups.

In the case of the social sciences, we are talking about core fields of human inquiry that include sociology, cultural anthropology, geography, linguistics, history, various branches of psychology, and their many offshoots and subdivisions. For these pretend-independents, the ideas of “social intelligence,” “compassion,” or the “social contract”  are alien and hostile to the sentimental view of humans as independent agents. With this kind of thinking it is easier to cut research on  subjects such as disease contagion patterns, gender equality, education methods, reducing the homelessness, lowering rates of child abuse, and so on. The idea of social progress is so vast and all-encompassing it is difficult to comprehend its detractors.

Major university faculties appear to be the targets, with unclear and ersatz criteria to defund any work through the National Science Foundation and other Federal funding sources. This draconian purge combines a dangerous form of anti-intellectualism with an irrational fear that a “woke” understanding of the variables of the human condition may yield new insights that will be required to adapt to rapidly changing social conditions.

To be sure, not all social science methodologies and approaches are fruitful. Methods of investigating the causes of certain common behavioral outcomes can be slippery. Cause and effect theorizing about human behavior is not for the faint at heart. In addition, qualitative methodologies such as straight narratives are out of favor in many fields: a serious oversight taken in the name of rigor. Quantitative methods so often reduces the subtleties of human variability, something we all sense in research or corporate efforts to survey subjects with closed-ended questions.

Even with the methodological challenges, the discovery of revealing patterns of human interaction will surely be impeded by the incoherent federal administration. But progress will occur regardless of the retrograde puritanism it displays. Violent crime has been reduced in most of the U.S. in large part because of tested methods for controlling its causes. We have a far better understanding now about what keeps families together. Various states have seen dramatic improvement in reading outcomes using new and tested hardware and methods. If we are going to meet the collective challenges of this nation will have to continue to find new insights about our social selves; we will need supported graduate-level study, human development labs, and modern informatics. Anything less sinks us deeper into risky ignorance.

 

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Cameras as Identity Markers

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“If you don’t get that photo, it’s like, what’s the point of the trip?”

We should be interested in recent news from Japan about the crowds traveling southwest from Tokyo to Fujiyoshida, a town of 42,000 that offers good views of Mt. Fuji. Millions come every year, mostly for one reason: to get a picture of the famed peak from the town itself or an adjoining park. Their presence is not so different from the scores of photos friends send us or post affirming that they visited somewhere interesting. But, increasingly, the pictures seem like a surprise visitation from relatives who make it their habit to ignore the usual courtesies that Japanese hosts have so carefully ritualized.

Smartphones have given their users cameras that need a reason to exist. What better use than to turn them into identity markers that include a selfie and, ideally, a backdrop intended to provoke some envy. I recall previous older relatives being a bit more cautious about putting themselves in the picture. But now “selfitis” can wear others down. It is a kind of narcissism that is not so different from the Evil Queen’s search for reassurance of her worth in a mirror. A modern variant in a scenic backdrop may also carry a more detailed message: “I was here and you were not: I’m in the presence of a recognized icon, which confers jealousy and maybe prestige.” Getting the picture as a photo tourist spares a person from doing anything more than moving on to the next recognizable meme.

As for Mt. Fuji, “I saw this gorgeous photo on social media,” noted Julia Morrow from Ohio. “If you don’t get that photo, it’s like, what’s the point of the trip?”

Oh my. That is a level of shallowness that in prior times might have come with some shame. Ms. Morrow should consider the implications of her view.

Reports in the New York Times and elsewhere describe the frustration of the locals in the town who take a few pictures, and then apparently leave without visiting any of the merchants along its busy commercial street. The new tourist rule seems to be to go and capture an image that is some facsimile of what is commonly seen elsewhere. Better, too, if your face is in the shot.

What a weird and shallow form of tourism.

Look at photos of the Salle des États Gallery in the Louvre, which features the iconic Mona Lisa. Too many visitors are struggling to take a second-rate picture of an object that should be taken in with one’s own eyes. To many, the first-hand experience seems expendable, leading to an obvious question:  why not buy a good postcard of the da Vinci painting? If museum employees curate their galleries, it should be equally true that the rest of us should do a better job of curating the experiences we sometimes go to great expense to create.

I marvel at how our sense of place has changed.  In a public gallery a crowd often dominates and affirms the value of the spectacle itself. That is odd, because we were never meant to see the Grand Canyon or the rugged Pacific coastline only from Seat 14a on a tourist bus. A photo may indeed represent a location we may never get to fully inhabit in person. But it is yet another case of asking too much of a small-capacity medium to represent the 360-degree experience of a place in its natural state. If it means anything, living life to the fullest should include engaging all of the senses.

Sometimes a picture is just a picture. But the self-curated photograph that suggests that “I’m here and I matter” is perhaps assuaging feelings of invisibility in a world with too many ingenious ways to ignore others. We should want more.