Nothing pleasing or pleasant (or really unexpected) to report from yesterday’s election news, but most unsettling was the decision by Maine voters to repeal gay marriage. James Kwak at The Baseline Scenario, however, posts on some reasons for cautious optimism, nevertheless.
For someone who takes the 1970s and the 1980s as the frame of reference, the shift in opinion vis-a-vis gay marriage over the past ten years has indeed been surprising and welcome. With progress, however, comes disappointment; but then again, I’ve come to think of disappointment as a part of the genetic code of our federal system of governance. In any event, I’d also be interested in knowing not only the source of shifts in public opinion, but within the gay community itself – if I’m not mistaken, commitment among gays and lesbians to such a ‘bourgeois’ ideal as marriage was hardly uncontroversial or widespread, even as recently as twenty years ago. I should read Tina Fetner’s book, which may have some answers.
It’s surprising that a talk by a Nobel Laureate leaves me famished, but that’s exactly what happened last night, after I went to a lecture by Daniel Kahneman (sponsored by Columbia’s Heyman Center) entitled ‘of two (or more) minds.’ The lecture was a preview, I think, of an upcoming book, and Kahneman used the occasion to outline his perspective on ‘dual systems’ approaches to the study of mind. Interesting enough, but the examples which he and the discussants used…Marshmallow tests! Cookies! Chocolate cake on the dessert tray! After dinner drinks! I dragged a friend to a nearby restaurant after all was said and done, and we shared a nice salad and skirt steak.
The basic outline: dual systems approaches in psychology are common enough; Kahneman doesn’t claim originality in adopting the terminology, which he finds useful. The idea is that there are two systems of mind, each with their own ‘personalities.’ System 1 is ‘effortless,’ associatively coherent, hungry for meaning (stories), and is at the source of our ability to make quick intuitive leaps of judgment (which are, however, often wrong). System 2 is ‘effortful,’ logically coherent, and axiomatic in nature – it underlies reflective pause, the application of reason, and so on.
Walter Mischel, Jon Elster, and George Ainsle were the discusssants. None challenged the ‘dual systems’ approach per se, but introduced alternative distinctions that might be seen as expanding upon Kahneman’s version. Mischel introduced his distinction between ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ systems (accompanied by a funny video of children trying to force themselves not to grab the cookies placed in front of them); Elster, after questioning the utility of characterizing these systems as ‘personalities,’ distinguished between ‘meaning-making’ and ‘meaning-breaking’ system of mind; and Ainsle, talking about his ongoing research into mechanisms of self-control, identified two behavioral styles lying on a continuum, one able to see things in ‘big picture’ context and the other more focused on the individual choice at hand.
I couldn’t stay for the general discussion – it was already running past eight; this is what happens when a 6:15 talk starts at 6:35pm. A Giddensian might call this a discussion of ‘practical’ versus ‘discursive’ consciousness, or something along those lines – but there was no sociology; I think one takeaway of the evening was that we have a lot of brain science to look forward to over the next few years.
If you’d like to see a film that’s under two hours, won’t make you deaf, and will make you think for a moment or two, you could do worse than see ‘An Education.’ I know, this is hardly a ringing endorsement, but I’m finding it difficult at the moment to think of a movie that’s come out in the past two months or so that I’ve felt compelled to go to a theater to see (the lone exception has been ‘The Informant!‘ which features a deliriously batty and very funny Matt Damon). ‘An Education’ tells a story you’ve probably already seen, heard, or read in one version or another, but the performances are pitch-perfect, even if the characters’ motivations aren’t always explicable.
