man I really learned a lot from Hurlbut’s book. it took me three reads to make it through the prologue lol he summarizes Sheila Jasanoff’s—the goat of science legal theory—scalding hot take that science holds a special, elevated position of authority in the court system. it’s “special” because there is no constitutional basis for it. scientists are paraded into court to provide unquestionable evidence as singular authorities and stewards of truth—the judges, the lawyers, the jury, all the public, must swallow scientific data as incontrovertible Facts like the uninformed plebs they are. science’s role is of course good and bad: good because it really can help provide input on legal and policy decisions but bad because, as Hurlbut goes on to describe in the next 300 pages, it has contributed to the erosion of trust of scientists due to their mismanagement, often through unsubstantiated claims of future discoveries (and sometimes plain misuse), of that authority. how has science ~really~ made our lives better? and specific to human embryo research, what treatments have come out of the last 20 years of research? are scientists any more moral than “regular” people? the answer is clearly no and to continue to state the obvious, science has a long history of exploitation that is rarely discussed by the folks actually doing the research in an effort to put a big shiny gold star on Science to get more money to do, well, more research

building on Jasanoff, Hurlbut describes how scientists in federal advisory committees—in this case ethical review boards both in HHS and the White House—have positioned themselves as the sole arbiters of what he calls “reasonable pluralism,” a “democratic” process to account for all viewpoints in a final decision. of course, none of the committees he documents really do that effectively and he’s not clear on what that would actually look like in practice. stem cell policy is wrapped up the politics of each administration and that influence is clear in the products of these “independent” policy bodies—the president can more or less place who he wants on these committees, even at the agency level

with scientists deciding what is “reasonable” they have often excluded public views, sometimes religious, from ethical deliberations, or at a minimum, included them insofar as they can be rationalized by scientific fact, i.e the 14-day limit on culturing embryos outside of a uterus—at day 14 after conception, the embryo develops what’s known as a “primitive streak” the first real cellular structure that eventually becomes a human’s nervous system—because the public is too stupid to understand the science. and this returns us again to the book’s central thesis: bioethicists wield too much power in making policy decisions, have a clear conflict of interest in establishing such an authority, and to date no committee has followed anywhere near a “democratic” process in establishing research guidelines. in Hurlbut’s view the closest advisory committee to undertake a near-pluralistic approach was G.W. Bush’s “President’s Council on Bioethics. ” and as Kirstin pointed out to us, the author’s father was on that committee so lmao

we read another book for book club finally lol. all of us hated it. it’s called “strangers in their own land” by Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild. it is yet another anthropological study written as a long, boring story full of corny narrative flair that would accomplish more as a 2000 word peer-reviewed journal article.

she interviewed about 60 people from coastal Louisiana about their “deep stories” in an effort to hurdle the “empathy wall” that distances them (tea party members) from the ostensible audience for the book, and the author herself (liberal jerks) on environment regulation. in particular, she tries to answer the question: why are those most affected by environmental pollution the least likely to a.) care and b.) want the government to do anything about it?

the subjects have had their lives completely destroyed by local chemical plants: their family members dead from cancer, their homes swallowed by giant sinkholes, their jobs lost to temp laborers, their lives spent fighting faceless corporations in endless, fruitless legal battles, and their land sold by the state to the same companies (now under different names) they’ve spent their lives suing after the loss of their families, homes, and jobs.

however the prose is anything but empathetic. mostly because the author uses the phrase “empathy wall” so loosely--how can she feel empathy for these people? how can i? or literally anyone else the book is targeting? (it made allllll the best seller lists). toward the end of the book she tries to bring down the empathy wall through a metaphor about a “line”: the Louisianians feel as though they’re patiently waiting, watching others “cut” in line with the help of government programs, even though many of them benefit from the same programs. here then is the supposed common ground: everyone’s in the line and we all feel like strangers in some regard, ie., they feel like their values (AMERICAN values, religion, hard work, being white) are being erased by progressives and immigrants and we feel like far right conservatives and Trump supporters are racist, ignorant shitheads.

the result of the study was that people are driven by their values rather than information. more information never helps, and in most cases, it hurts--the state becomes an enemy and any sort of intervention (taxes, regulation) is bad. there is plenty of science to back up this conclusion, much of it well publicized in the wake of Trump’s election. Kirstin mentioned that she thought Hochschild should have touched on corruption, and some reviews point toward the omission of a discussion of capitalism as the driver of rural decay. neither “corruption” nor “capitalism” were used in the book that i can remember *thinking face* rather than break down the wall, she could have spent any time at all arguing why the wall exists

a month or so ago i got a chance to see my friend Lauren give a lecture-performance at the Menil’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel. Lauren’s practice has always been meaningful to me -- my brain idly drifts to her work as much as it does for nearly any other artist, favorite song, or memory. it’s generous, beautiful, and often l.o.l. funny

i spend a lot of time worrying that i’m not engaging with content “the right way”, that i am not having the “right” experience. i’ve more or less stopped going to “new things” or go and feel detached as to avoid the painful and distracting “am i consuming this appropriately” sus spiral. or worse yet could also just as easily be instead the garbage narrative of disengaging lamely and lazily because sincerely enjoying things is hard. with with Lauren’s work i’ve always found being present to be easy, like even her paintings are somehow kind, inviting

in conversation, Lauren uses a phrase i really like: “i’ve been thinking about _____”. like “i am dedicating time at the front of my brain to this” and by doing so imbuing it with meaning. during her talk was the first time i had thought about prayer or thought as a process that has its own intrinsic value. that the product of the thought is sometimes just that it existed. like how sometimes it can be powerful to ask the right question rather than try to answer it. “i’ve been thinking about...” invites this open dialog

however, Lauren is also very skilled at collecting experiences, drawing associations between them, and sharing these lines of thought in coherent and enjoyable ways. thought as an outcome is then also powerful because she thought it and has chose to share it, and in what context

Dr. Gawande led WHO team which aimed to create a set of basic instructions for all surgical procedures that would tackle a shockingly common set of hospital malpractices: infections, operating on the wrong side of patients, or even on the wrong patient O_O and piloted a study in 8 hospitals worldwide to see if the checklists made any improvements. I have never read about hospital culture or really even consumed any content medicine-related content because I’m squirmy, like even on the level of Scrubs lol. So just hearing in plain terms about specific cases and the truly insane amount of steps that goes into treating all of the world’s illnesses and injuries was enough to be like wow this is really neat that y’all can do this. But then he switches to an equally dramatic example, airplane crashes, and then finally less dramatic but equally “epic” example, skyscraper engineering. Why

one important thing Dr. Duck stated which i liked is about the oft-used phrase “culture of poverty” which outsiders, usually white, describe poor people as living chaotically -- with hella trash, deserted homes, and other indicators of poverty. his point is that the “culture” is a consequence of the environment, not the cause of the environment. rather than holding individuals accountable we should look for systematic ways in which these communities were established and are held in place by racist housing policies, welfare reform, and shitty schools. further, that the hood operates with it’s own set of independent rules of trust, commitment, and other social factors, in response to the poverty. and, that this social structure is fairly advanced and well defined.

several general rules he laid out struck me from my own, very limited experience living on Holman. one: people talk. never in my life have i been greeted so much, so frequently. even when people hadn’t seen me around before. several people went as far to give me nicknames, like, immediately.  and, two: he spends some time discussing how drug dealers in isolated communities differ from their depiction in popular media and also in major cities. in isolated poverty, everyone knows where people are selling drugs and who those people are -- they are embedded in the community. as Dr. Duck writes, there are appropriate times to make eye contact and times where it should be avoided. i am sure he goes deep into these dynamics in the book, i regret not picking it up sooner.

i am a tall, affluent white man. i am also only living in third ward for a few years and have the ability to leave at any time. i know that the extreme privilege those things bring me affects these social dynamics in ways i do not fully understand and am always learning about. i try to be very visible but respectful that it is not my space. i don’t know a better way to go about living there, except that i should volunteer or work in third ward if i plan to stay there longer term and probably should have started up somewhere when i moved there.

one primary argument is that as “human economies”, where goods have value based on the complex system of interpersonal relations, become “commercial economies”, where money is used strictly to make more money rather than service the needs of individuals, individuals are reduced to their value based on a set of predetermined statistics based on their race, gender, age, education, credit score etc. individuals are removed from the context in which they decided, or were forced, to take on debt and become a source of revenue. this is evident in the development of, say, the automated teller, where debtors don’t necessarily deal with the creditors directly but rather answer to a giant, faceless banking system. As the author puts it, “the narrative of communal decline... [describes] a replacement of ‘interpersonal trust’ with ‘system trust.’“

abstraction is a method, then, for creating uniformity of social groups, and thus creates an iterative process for reinforcing cultural stereotypes. the author of course discusses subprime loans directed toward poor p.o.c. in time leading up to the housing crises. mortgages were abstracted one step further from the people living in those houses to become betting chips for hedge funds. wild. worse yet “accountability” in this system is grossly unfair, where an inability to pay off loans strips people from their community, as well as access to both social and financial resources--and further, is often conflated with moral character--while most creditors, historically (at least with respect to the 08/09 bailout) are not held responsible for their shady or illegal banking practices.

i’d imagine all of this this feels kind of like “okay, yeah duh” for people in debt, especially those living through the housing crisis. a lot of the language is fairly dense, so it feels like i’m supposed to be drawing more from the discussion on labor and Marx and “accounting”. but eh, i think it’s kind of just like “yo here is one way the ~system~ is fucked up because of a number of interacting social dynamics and financial forces”, although instead of me just ranting, the ideas presented are based in robust sociological and economic research.