Currently webcasting: Social Justice & Social Empathy featuring Robert Reich:
What does empathy have to do with inequality? Robert Reich, former United States secretary of labor in the Clinton administration and a distinguished visiting professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
Pretty amazing spiel, although the drag about these events for me is that as fun as it is to run the webcasts, doing so detracts from ability to pay full attention. Some salient points I took away:
– We are a society of “exit-ers” — we simply leave situations we don’t like rather than sticking around to “give voice” or get involved and try to repair our own communities.
– Our fates are connected, you and I. “Insightful selfishness.” You are wealthy and you are willing to pour money into education. Why? Doing so makes society more productive. Productive citizens will partake of your goods and services, thus increasing your wealth. Rising tides raise all boats. My actions bring society up or down, as do yours.
– (via audience member) We don’t breast feed or sleep with our babies as commonly or for as long as in Canada, Europe, Japan. Is there a correlation between the extended core bonding giving to infants in these places and the greater inclusivity of countries with democratic/socialistic tendencies?
Well as we all know, one never solves a problem by dropping it
The previous comment is quite false. Sometimes dropping/leaving a problem can solve the problem absolutely. I need provide only one counterexample to prove the preceding “never” statement false. Here are several:
If the elevator next to your hotel room is noisy and you flee it by changing rooms or hotels, the problem is solved. It is not only the cheapest solution, it is the fastest, and the only one guaranteed to work. You could instead argue with the manager, but how likely is that to work *tonight*? You could take a wrench to the elevator yourself and get injured or jailed. Or you can leave and solve the problem. QED.
If a dog is mean, you flee it. If a neighborhood gets violent, you flee it. If a pot handle is too hot, you don’t wait for it to cool, you drop it. It’s silly to dream about solutions when none exists and evasion is the only way to avoid consequences. Sometimes (not always), leaving is not only *a* solution, it is the *only* accessible solution.
In both examples, fleeing is used as a case of doing nothing, which is absurd. Fleeing is as much an action as any other.