Manipulation

Intro

 I want to make an argument that:

All manipulation can be broken down into 3 methods: putting people down, lying, and distorting facts or truth.

I think society has an unhealthy obsession with manipulation. They try to claim narcissism on everyone, they blame other people for tricking them or they make other people into the bad guy, but I don't think that 100% of the time that someone calls another person out for being a manipulator that they are being accurate. I've tried to stress my whole life that being accurate is very important because if you approach a problem with a person from the perspective that they are a master manipulator and they aren't, then you won't accomplish anything, you won't make headway. On the other hand, if you approach them as what they are, maybe selfish, maybe an asshole, you'll be able to work on that. 

So again, I think we should be accurate and I think there's a lot of fluff out there about manipulation. Doing a google search you'll pull up countless websites on how to determine if someone is manipulating you, but you will be hard to find any articles explaining how to tell if someone else is being manipulated. These two aren't the same thing. The signs that someone is being manipulated are different from the signs that someone is manipulating you, and the signs that someone is manipulating someone else are different from the signs that you are being manipulated. Hence why I propose this new method of thinking about manipulation.

Before I explain it, let me make a preface: I became preoccupied with manipulation a long time ago and have spent at least 10 years of my life trying to avoid being manipulative. Before that 10 years, I think I fell into the trap of toxic masculinity and in my teenage years I learned how to manipulate without realizing I was learning how to manipulate people. When I got into university, I learned through studying English how to write persuasive papers and how to twist claims in a way to always win, but I also learned that it is wrong to do this and I've read plenty of literature that explores why it is wrong to manipulate, a few good examples are Shakespeare's work, Macbeth, Othello, even King Leer. At the same time that I was learning about what are called fallacies in argument, I was taking a course on ethics and I learned the philosopher's path to being ethical, Kant, Utilitarianism, etc. The arguments presented by people like Aristotle and Plato for why we should focus on an ethical life I could not find any fallacies in them and believe them to be genuine and logically sound, so I choose to follow an ethical life and by combining the two: understanding manipulative speech and being ethical, I have spent at least 10 years of my life (since I was 18) trying not to manipulate people. 
I also served an LDS mission following my university instruction on the matter and I had some serious problems with the way the religion is spread and preached. I struggled on my mission and went home 4 months early because I had a huge "crisis of faith" or "moral dilemma" or "ethical quandary." I eventually left the religion because I believe I found too many fallacies and unexplained ethical dilemmas in the way the religion is conducted. In short, I believe 99% of the Mormon religion utilizes manipulation to get people to join, contribute, and stay in the church, and if the basis of the organization is that a solely benevolent (always good and ethical) god runs the church, then it makes no sense why even 5% of the religion would focus on manipulative tactics.

So that's my claim of why I feel I am qualified to speak about this topic. I've devoted my life to it, I have experience and have witnessed it on both ends, and the longer I devote to it the more I recognize manipulation.

The Argument

The claim I am making is that all manipulation comes down to 3 forms: 

1. Lying
2. Distorting facts and truth
3. Putting down

I have a hard time combining lying and distorting facts because I think there is enough difference between them that they should be separate.

Lying is telling falsehoods or failing to tell the truth when prompted. I feel as though there needs to be a criterion here to say that there is a difference between knowingly lying and unwittingly lying. I think it's hard to unwittingly lie, so maybe these should be thrown out, because if you don't know something is true and you act as if it is or believe that it is, I don't think you are necessarily manipulating people, I think you yourself have been deceived. If you tell someone something as if it were a fact even when you know it is not a fact, you are lying. If someone asks you a question and you knowingly tell them something else, you are lying. Most people understand lying and understand some of the problems with it. When it comes to manipulation, lying is manipulation because you can get people to act in your favor simply because they trust you. 

I should maybe take a step back and say that I believe there are two types of manipulation: manipulation that brings the manipulator benefit, and manipulation that brings someone else negative side effects. In other words, if you get a thrill from convincing people to do things contrary to what they would do, you are manipulating them because you gain from it psychologically, even if they benefit from the manipulation as well. Or, if you cause someone harm by convincing them to take certain actions, you are manipulating them. --Of course, both of these examples are prefaced by whether you are using one of the three forms of manipulation. For a good example, lets imagine you convince a friend to invest in the stock market believing that it will benefit them. You do so with no ulterior motives, you don't stand to gain from it in any way personally, and you're doing it to help them. If somehow the gamble does not pan out and they lose a lot of money, I don't think you are manipulating them because it doesn't meet one of the three form criterion, even if it meets the type criterion. 

Distorting facts is a little different from lying though if you obsess over nuances I suppose you could say it is a form of lying. Distorting facts occurs when you purposefully change past facts, or you cause another person to doubt those facts. Lawyers do this all the time, and it often does not pass ethical standards, even though they claim that it is unethical to punish an innocent person and they see letting a guilty person go free as less unethical than punishing that innocent person. We can all think of a few cases where a guilty person went free and the long-standing consequences of letting that person go free has touched so many people that I think it breaks utilitarian ethics. You don't necessarily have to lie to distort a fact, you can merely cause a person to question what they believe, or you can present them with things to think about that have no solution. A good example that comes to mind is when religions tell you to act on faith even though there is no way to prove that your faith leads to positive outcomes, they merely want you to believe and trust in hopes that one day things will work out. This is manipulative because it causes people to disregard negative outcomes in their life and in many cases it never brings positive outcomes--the understanding is that after death those positive outcomes will come, but no one can argue about what happens after death because no one has been there and come back from it--except for me, I drowned when I was a toddler and they brought me back to life in the hospital. And No, I can't tell you what it was like. 

There isn't a problem with faith based arguments, the problem is when those arguments are used to cause people to ignore problems in the present. If you convince someone that they need to break up with their partner because their partner is causing them to sin, and your argument is that they just need to have faith--then you are being manipulative (this really happened to a good friend of mine.) 

Putting down seems to be one of the ultimate means for manipulating people. I don't claim to understand completely why it works, but I do claim to know how it works. When you put someone down, it is a direct assault on their self confidence. Self confidence is what we rely on most to make decisions. If you lack self confidence, self trust, or self worth, you doubt your decision making ability. They are directly related: trusting in your self and decision making, believing you have value and decision making, and "going with your gut" or your instincts and decision making. When enough people put you down, or someone you trust immensely puts you down, you start to believe it, it impacts your self esteem, and then you struggle to make decisions. Once you are weak in that way, the manipulator can convince you to take actions. A former U.S. President was notorious for manipulating in this way. He would convince people that they were inadequate and blame it on certain oppressions by the government or by certain laws that favored minority groups. He would then build those groups up using false statements about how "beautiful" they were, or how great they are or how great they will be, that had no logical standing--it was a distortion of truth manipulation because there was no way to argue simply because they weren't specific enough or because they were opinion. He then would issue a target to these people: "The other party is trying to take away your guns!" and sometimes outright lie to do so, "These people are coming across the border and taking your jobs." And in that way he manipulated the masses into doing atrocious things that make me question my own patriotism. His method of putting down started with saying that America isn't great or wasn't great at the time, when if you look at the statistics and you look at key moments in American history, America was probably at its greatest just before he took office. But he caused us to doubt ourselves. He tore down our confidence and our trust in ourselves and in our government, and then he convinced us to act in a way that brought about a lot of negative outcomes and benefited him personally (financially*, emotionally, etc.) 

Final Thoughts

Just as a final note, I wanted to test out my argument using a common term that people agree is manipulaiton: Gaslighting. 

Gas lighting falls under the #2 form of manipulation though it usually encompasses all 3. Gas lighting is lying about facts or distorting past events and denying denying denying. It causes you to mistrust your ability to perceive and think about past events. And Yes, gas lighters knowingly lie about the past in order to manipulate you. I think there are probably a lot of manipulation terms that we use that can be applied to this framework of what manipulation is and I trust that this framework is adequate for defining manipulation in all forms.

One drawback I see to this framework of recognizing manipulation is that it doesn't speak to anything about how a manipulator can build you up with false confidence.--I think that falls more under the category of distorting the truth, or lying, but I can foresee people reading this and wanting to put that in its own category.

The benefit to this framework is that you can apply it to yourself "Am I being manipulated?" as well as other people "Is he/she being manipulated?" Just watch the suspected manipulator carefully and if they are doing any of these three things, then you merely decide if they are benefiting or if the person being manipulated is suffering negatively from those methods and if so, then yes they are being manipulated.

Sickness

I couldn't think of an immediate title for this post. It's been a long time since I've had the time to write much of anything for myself--and that's what this website is...a place for me to voice my thoughts to myself in a manner much like someone thinking outloud. The difference is that what I write can be read for years later.
I'll admit, this isn't the most sane thing to do considering people could look me up and possibly find this and some of the crazy ideas I've had and probably they could misinterpret them as though they are thoughts are currently share. I don't go back and read these very often. This is kind of a public journal, but it's funny because few people write journals to read themselves--more often their kids or family end up reading them or even their ancestors or people who want to know the dead.
I wonder if anyone will read all of these posts and come up with some grand theme or a common thread that all of them share--that would be really cool really, so if you are doing something like this, let me know, or if I'm dead then come to my grave and let me know because what you would be doing is summing up a rare part of my life throughout the years. You would essentially know me more than I know myself!
I just don't think anyone has that kind of time and although some of my ideas are extreme or cutting edge at the time, most of them are not so edgy anymore and most of them are more rants than gems. I might even feel bad for the person that takes the time to analyze these or make inferations from what I've written because there are so many more enjoyable things one could do with their life.

---There. That's all the intro you get to explain away the last several months since I've posted anything.

What I really wanted to write out was how I have that sick sick feeling again in my soul. That disgusting, creepy, black abyss that I sometimes catch a glimpse of as though this ship I call my body is about to set sail right into because I'm getting sucked further and further into it without any means of escaping. --Yet somehow I always find a way out of it, so there's also a bit of excitement to the whole thing and anticipation of when I will shift from darkness to blinding light.

What could be making me so sick to the core? What could be causing this weird hormonal imbalance?

If you HAVE been reading all of my posts up to the present then you'd understand that the thing that weighs me down is the world. Is people. Is bad people. Is people who disrupt my fun-loving, my peaceful, my cheery life.

Let's recap:
It's almost my wedding day. I've been succeeding in my schoolwork to the point that I'm sitting on a covetous GPA. I have the whole world ahead of me and truly feel as though there is nothing I can't do. I've reinforced those long known thoughts that: "If I put my mind to anything, I can accomplish everything." Things are looking up for me! Truly, they are!

Yet maybe I've been exposed to some bad pollutants and that's what's triggering me to see this sick thing and want to just crawl under the bed or hid out in the crawl space just to get away from it all.


People are disgusting.


Now that I'm old enough to say this, I think I'm going to say it: I've lived a very innocent and benevolent life. I used to think I was corrupt at times, mean, rude, selfish and all of those negative traits that people generalize about themselves. Yet, I really have not. I've never been to jail. I've only been drunk once in my life. I haven't had a speeding ticket in years. I don't lie and don't have a reason to lie--actually, let me correct myself: I lie, but it's nothing major and I'm so truthful that I actually paused and was going to correct myself but decided it was better effect to just append my statement about lying. I've never taken advantage of anyone even though it would have been sooo soooo easy to do so. I haven't done that because I have way more restraint than anyone I know. I've never stolen in my adult life--probably the last thing I've stollen in my life was my classmates tomagachi in 3rd grade. I've never done drugs, not even soft, legal drugs, never taken oxy, never been around people that take molly or ecstasy. Never even taken an ambien. I take two ibuprophen when I'm in pain and that's it, maybe some coffee to clear my head now and again. I've cut back on sugar to the point that I almost rarely eat candy. --I am a model citizen and proof that you can be good and still exist in life.

And yes, it's very easy to do it.
It's not that I haven't had opportunities. Its that I know my vice and I keep it in check, every day of my life, and all of those other things aren't appealing to me.

Wow--that was quite the backstory.


So my question is, with all that I've experienced in life, why is it so easy for other people to do these disgusting things. Why do our institutions reek of filth and corruption? Why do people get away with so many crooked things and there is no means to stop them?
I really am not okay with this.

I think one thing that hit me hard this week is the wages of nurses--RNs in particular.
They have a minimum of an associates degree and 1 year of experience and yet they make $25/hr starting pay. Yet you can be a janitor, cleaning up not just the shit people leave in the toilets but also the disgusting behaviors of people who purposely wipe their feces all over the bathroom just to give you more work. We've got so-called "essential" employees working behind cash registers that could easily catch disease from the creeps that purposely try to get people sick and they get paid $9/hr where I live. How about being a skyrise welder, wearing a harness and messing with both flames and high voltage just to weld a beam 100 ft in the air--those guys make around $25/hr in the height of their career and also have to go through about 18 months of training plus a year of experience or more. Compare that to the pay of government scientists with master's or doctor's degrees--they get $28/hr starting pay and know a hell of a lot more.
I just don't see the value here. I'm not sure if that part of my brain that is able to gage the value of something is just turned off or what, but I really don't see the value that RNs provide to society. Most RNs are working in a vanity industry trying to prolong the life of an individual who isn't able to support the community. I think people have an obsession with long life and that disturbs me, it disgusts me. I just don't think nurses are worth what they get paid.
Then again, I don't think doctors are worth what they are paid either, I think doctors are paid more based on the risk they take rather than the value they generate, and I think there's some degree of hyperinflation based on the fact that people will pay anything just to live longer, which to me is an ethical concern that doctors really should think long and hard about instead of settling on "That's just the way it is." But do nurses really have to take risks? Maybe physical risks and mental/emotional risks, but the magnitude of those risks really don't seem like enough to constitute being paid so highly.

I've also recently found out the nuances of hiring federal government positions: veterans, former federal employees, they all get privileged status for jobs over regular civilians. Is that ethical? does it really promote the best person working in these important federal jobs? What about on the local level--in many counties and cities, the community's taxes go to supporting cornies--friends and family of current managers of these places or political appointees.

Why do people garner power and then instantly abuse that power? Where have ethics gone?
I'm really disturbed by this and I am honestly starting to think that our civilization will fall apart in my lifetime because of these very bad bad things.

I really do not want to live in this world.

Ethics of Terraforming our planet and beyond

I read an interesting article about terraforming Mars, which has peaked the interest of the philosophy world. I won't get into that particular article but suffice it to say that there is a debate between whether it is ethical or not to alter the surface of a planet. The particular article I read summarized some other views and then presented that so long as there are no living organisms on the planet they contended that it was ethical to alter the planet because it would bring about greater knowledge of our own planet.

I guess that conversation is very far removed from the world we live in (earth), but it got me thinking about our planet...

Humans aren't the first living creatures on Earth. One theory submits that the original life on earth wasn't developed on earth but rather escaped some other planet and survived on an asteroid that impacted earth.

Another unique aspect of Earth is that it is in fact unique--the more that astronomers look out into the universe, the more they find rocks that are nothing like our own and those rocks appear to be common, yet our Earth, a pale blue dot, has an abundance of water. Lots of rapid change from weathering and from life(ok that's a cheat because we're the only planet we know with life :P) . A unique atmosphere. Basically, the more astronomers look into space the more they realize that our planet is uniquely suited to house life and yet those other planets and asteroids and moons are inhospitable.

So that gets me thinking. If these other planets aren't suited for life at the present moment, what good are they? Are they nothing more than intergalactic monuments? Nature's art? Points in space that are good for nothing more than to look at for a brief moment and then to look away to something more interesting?

The universe is vast and incomprehensible in it's entirety. If a person had the ability to spend a day on one celestial body per day and then travel to another body in mere moments and on that new hunk of rock they could explore and enjoy and exist, they would still only experience a tiny speck of what is actually out there, and yet if you look at life as a sensory experience that you are limited in how many experiences you have, then the universe is irrelevant because it is so large that you could never experience it all.

My point is, I think from a utilitarian point of view, there is not a lot of utility out there that we know of in outer space. Our planet is very much usable in its present state for whatever we wish, and it appears to have the capacity to heal itself given enough time.

The great fear that most people have is that what we are doing to the Earth is altering it in a way that will destroy all life on the planet. I guess there is a fear that we will ruin this great gem we have and make it unusable and then it will become just like all the other planets in the universe.

Thinking of it in that manner, I return to my original statement: Humans weren't the first living organism on earth. Though some people might say "we have as much a claim to this earth as any other living organism", I disagree. --It is difficult to explain in words here a concept I am trying to explain, so try to take this next part for its bigger meaning than the base words I will use.--I believe that we have as much of a claim on the earth as we can wage war with other living organisms to take it.
In a cubic yard of soil there are many many organisms, and above that soil there may be many many more organisms, all living and existing in very close proximity to one another--some even on top of one another. Those organisms appear to work in concert with one another, where one produces more wastes, another comes in to get rid of those wastes. There is a sort of market economy of life existing in this very small area.
That said, humans come along and they alter their surroundings for themselves. Much like the earthworm or the ant moves debris from the surface and feeds on it, thereby altering its surroundings, the human exists as one component of a bigger part of this planet.
Do you think the earthworm knows of the presence of the human working the surface of the field above it? Do you think the human knows of the presence of whatever force is shaping above it?

Cue Pocahontas music: "You can own the Earth and still all you'll own is earth until you can paint with all the colors of the wind."

What if the universe was moving in a direction that we cannot comprehend just yet because we are so tiny? What if we--and all life--play a role in the universe on a grander scale of time that we cannot see because we don't live long enough?


I think the Earth is inherently balanced.
I think it would be difficult for us as a species to go extinct because we know too much about the workings of our Earth and other life on it and can utilize that knowledge to remain alive. --Maybe not all of us, but some of us will always persevere.
However, what part could a resource hogging human being that severely alters the environment, destroys other species play?

Fair Distribution of Wealth

To follow up with my previous articles on this subject, I want to present my idea for "redistributing" wealth--even though it isn't "re-" distribution because I don't think it would be fair in any way to take away the wealth of someone who has already accumulated it.

What I do think is fair, is placing limits on how much an individual can earn in proportion to other people who aid in the production of that wealth.

For instance, McDonald's CEO earned 3,101 times that of the median employee, 1.2M times for Amazon's Jeff Bezos. --These numbers are preposterous.
I'm not opposed to the leader and financer making a large profit, but even pirates shared the wealth equally among themselves--this is worse than piracy, this is robbery.

Full disclosure: I invest in the stock market and believe in the American Dream. I believe in retirement by riding off of and taking part in the American Economy. However, I've been in the sorry situation before where my wages didn't cover my expenses. I think they call that underemployment, where you earn some money but it's not enough and you need to make more to keep on living. --Honestly, I don't know how I survived and now that I'm away from it and I have various mental and physical benefits from not having that stress in my life, I think I should turn back and say that this disproportionate distribution of wealth is not sustainable nor is it ethical.

My suggestion is that we place limits on the amount of money anyone can make on the backs of another human being. That includes the stock market, though I don't know how to make that work logistically speaking. If you invest money into a company and you make say 1000X or more what that company's median salary is, you should be required to pay (all or part of) the taxes of those individuals who earn less than that median salary.

So if you invest in McDonalds and you report earning more than $10/hr, you should be required to pay from your profit (say if the value of the stocks went up by $1,000 in the year) You should be required to pay the tax bracket rate that they get paid--in this case they are paid $10/hr which falls in %12 range, so you pay $120 divided by all of those employees (which comes down to like 1 cent per person).
But that one cent per person times the total number of people who gained $1000 off of the growth of McDonalds, plus all the Officers and personal investors who own the company, these indivduals could actually take home money (yes, I'm saying that they should be paid more than just their taxes, but I'd settle on them being paid just all of their taxes, which does amount to a significant portion of their salary.

Redistribution of Wealth and Death

Redistributing wealth after a person dies only perpetuates a world where there are wealthy individuals who remain wealthy--this is the world we live in presently. In the social world we have created for thousands of years, kings would give their power and wealth to their children (primarily sons because of tradition and bias) and those children would increase the household wealth, giving their children the incentive to please their father so that they can be held "worthy" of the amassed wealth.

Redistributing wealth before a person dies is also problematic. In the unique situation where a wealthy king or capitalist did not have heirs, he or she could opt to choose someone to be their stand-in heir. This involves a lot of political intrigue. Many of Shakespeare's plays explored the problems with this type of wealth and power redistribution.


After-Death Redistribution (ADR) of wealth favors the cheats of the world, the aggressive, the liars, so on and so forth--people who break society's rules to gain wealth. It favors such lowlifes because if they are not the wealthy powerful king or tycoon, in order for them to compete and rise to a level comparable with their local wealthiest person, they must cheat in order to rise at rapid enough of rate as to surpass or maintain the distance between the two of them!--If you are wealthy and invest your wealth, because you have more money to invest, you will gain more than the person who invests a small amount and gains the same rate of yield as you do.
With this form of wealth progression, wealth in society dumbs down to who can manage their money the best so that they mitigate losses and maximize gains, as well as who can exploit the system so that they maximize their gains more than the next highest person. --And all you have to do to see the effects of this is look in any national newspaper in 2018. Investment Bankers cheating the poor by writing up fake loans so that the shares of their stocks are padded. Rulers of countries changing the laws to support their own agendas or that of their cronies. Corrupt police and investigative forces throughout the world who discover criminals making lots of money and so they blackmail and coerce them into working for them instead of their selfish interest. You even see management and company officers who earn 120 times of that which their blue-collar, producer workers earn.--The people who actually make the product are being exploited by those who, in many instances, don't even know the intricacies of how the product is made.
It is this kind of exploitation that we as a society would like to eliminate, but every attempt to do so is thwarted and then exploited by the cheats of the world. 

A few more forward thinking individuals have decided that they will give ALL of their wealth after-death to charitable organizations, and although this is a good step, it will not solve this problem. This is merely a middleman attempt at Redistribution Before a Person Dies (RBD). Such billionaires turn over their wealth to an appointed heir rather than a blood heir, the only difference is that the appointed heir is an organization of people rather than one individual, such as a non-profit charitable foundation.
Just like in olden days when the king would declare an heir after much political intrigue and cheating to get ahead, today's RBD billionaires are merely creating an environment where only a select few who reach a specific requirement receive the previously acquired wealth of one person.--Who determines where the money goes? If it's a board of individuals, that's better than a solitary president or financial manager, but it also creates a desirable position to be fought for where one or a couple people are rewarded with wealth or power to mete out wealth and power to other individuals as they see fit. Which, again, leads to exploitation, cheating, and gaming of this kind of system.

Regardless of whether you redistribute your wealth after death or before death, you are still in charge of who receives your wealth. You still choose who to give your money and power to and that opens the door for unfairness.--You may have earned your money from hard work, determination, guts, intense risk, and shrewd decision making, but whoever you give money to did not earn that money, and the rest of the world who did not receive that money unfairly must live in a competitive world where Privilege gives a competitive advantage to a select few.
Socialists of hundreds of years ago saw the problem with this system and were outraged enough to form political parties that would rob from the rich and give to the poor, but that wasn't a fair outcome for the rich--regardless of whether 100% of the money was earned or not, it is not fair to take the money right out of their hand because those people believe that it is the hard work and decision making and skill on their part that earned them that money.
So we see a system where people believe it is their own skill that is giving them an advantage over others even though it is skill at cheating, skill at sucking up, or luck of birth. --And...I supposed you could twist the meaning of the word "skill" to signify those things, but it doesn't change the reality of what you are doing, and what you are doing is unfair to some. Perhaps the belief that "everyone cheats" is enough justification to permit rampant cheating, but I believe that surely there must be a better way! Surely there must be the possibility of a more equitable society.

Distribution of Wealth Vs Redistribution

I've been exploring the philosophy behind the redistribution of wealth lately. It's a really dumb idea honestly, but I think there is a core principle behind it worth looking at:
The core principle is that there is a problem in our society with how wealth is disproportionately found among an elite group of people. The problem is manifest in inequality relationships in class, race, education, religion, and most other strata of society. --Simply put, being born in a privileged group that has access to wealth and resources, grants you a circular effect of greater education, opportunities, power positions, etc. It allows for the domination of minority groups such as racial or ethnic groups, and it has the great potential of securing bad actors in the position of power.

But, redistributing wealth is a bad idea because wealth is only one factor in the equation. People who are born wealthy have more resources than just financial resources at their disposal. With wealth comes connections or social capital. With wealth comes positions of power. With wealth comes greater education (as much as I hate to admit it). --Not to say that someone who is poor can't become as educated or intelligent or even surpass that of a wealthy person, but the journey is harder and the statistics of intelligent wealthy people outnumber unwealthy intelligent people.
Redistributing the wealth of people who have already amassed wealth and power is a bad idea if done on a strictly wealth basis--I have to make that claim because there may in the future come philosophies where many factors (intelligence, means, wealth, resources, knowledge, etc) are taken into account and actually balance the concept of redistribution, but it doesn't seem as feasible in my perspective of today.

A better idea (though probably facing the same level of pushback as redistribution) would be redefinition of distribution. Meaning, changing the way in which wealthy people can make money and collect resources and political power away from the way it is presently done today. --We know of the inherit flaws in our systems, and it isnt' to say that our political or social institutions benefit wealthy people, but rather wealthy people are aware of how to game the system and are better positioned to do so to strategically place themselves in such a way as to secure their current gains and accumulated wealth and also future gains.
What I am suggesting is that we redefine what is acceptable and what is not acceptable (i.e. ethical and protectable by social/legal laws).

I will present my ideas on a few topics which I see as possible for the distribution of wealth (NOT the redistribution). --I still believe that the wealthy--initially-- will have an advantage and may thwart the attempts, but if bright philosophical minds can combat such thwarts, perhaps we can make a social course adjustment to a more ethical, more equitable society which we all dream about.

Another Letter to Mike Lee

A couple questions and comments
First: Your online contact form doesn't allow me to choose the appropriate topic of "associational life" / "Social Capital"

Senator Lee,

After reading your report "Love, Marriage, and the Baby Carriage: The Rise in Unwed Childbearing" as well as listening to your town hall, I have a few comments and questions to bring to your attention:

First and foremost, I don't wish to criticize your efforts--I think you have compiled some valuable information on the family institution--however, my critical advice towards that report is that without first establishing a clear definition of what is "bad" about unwed childbearing, all you can do is point out what is happening. In other words, just because more and more children are being born into single-parent families doesn't automatically mean that those children are disadvantaged--a good political example would be Joseph Baena, who was raised by his mother through early life yet is in fact Arnold Schwarzenegger's son--statistically Baena would pull up in your cross-section, but that doesn't mean he's disadvantaged in the least, and in fact an argument could be made that he has benefited more by being the illegitimate son of a California Governor.--Sure, you can cut hairs and say, "he would have been better off if his father was married to his mother," but this is debatable. Yes, being born in a single-parent, unwed parent, household can put you at a disadvantage, but it doesn't automatically put you at a disadvantage in life.

I'm assuming by presenting "The Social Capital Project" that you are in fact trying to start a discussion and generate ideas from Utahns and possibly discover problems or solutions for future and present problems, so I'll go ahead and provide my opinions and comments and hope that some of them are taken seriously, because I think this is a very worthy endeavor and I can get behind it so long as it does actually accomplish beneficial things and not merely the appearance of accomplishing things.

If I understand you correctly, the project is meant to discover ways the government can encourage the flourishing of social capital among civilians and to recognize areas in which the government might be hindering social capital. I have a few ideas which you should look at:

Non-profits.
A lot of Utahns don't like non-profit laws that give tax breaks to non-profits, specifically property tax laws, but there are other incentives that non-profits receive that people are offended with. Personally, I don't think non-profits should necessarily receive any form of advantage that any other business organization wouldn't receive. The way that I interpret the spirit of the laws regarding them, they were designed to encourage non-profits to help the population at large, not just specific groups of the population. What I have seen, however, is that they only help niche groups get ahead and not others, and I don't see any other way around it either, because non-profits operate through the support of niche groups that only care about their niche groups' problems. The problem is that many truly disadvantaged groups are also under-represented by non-profits.
Case in point, you can go in almost any state in the US and find a shelter / safe haven house for victims of domestic abuse. The problem is, that 0 of those states recognize that Men can be the victim of domestic abuse. --They do not allow men into their facilities, only women and children. This is 2017, we're smarter than that--we know that in situations of domestic abuse, both partners are usually abusive. The discussion, however is completely one-sided, and non-profits are completely one-sided in this area too. So, why do we provide a benefit to shelters that help "victims of domestic abuse" yet those shelters are allowed to turn away "some" (i.e. men) who are victims?
More to the point, I'm a single male and outside of extremist groups that accept practically anyone that they can brainwash, I can't think of a single organization I can go to for support if I ever have struggles related to being a man, yet there are plenty of organizations related to women struggles that receive tax deductible donations. And along that same cross-section of society, which organization do you think brings in more money: Breast Cancer Awareness groups, or Prostate Cancer Awareness groups?
On the surface, the easy fix would be to encourage more non-profits to form so that under-represented groups can be equally represented, but a case can be made that because groups like the NAACP (people of color) or the NOW (women), or even religious groups like Joel Osteen's church or the Fallwell Dynasty, and yes, even the LDS church(religion), are so poweful that a narrative is established in our society that there must be something wrong with you if you stand up and support being white, or male, or atheist or some other group. --As another example, not all white nationalists are extremists, but they don't receive the same kind of benefits as other groups that represent other minorities, and sadly, the government doesn't always protect those groups the same way that they protect their equal-opposite groups.

Online Associational life.
More and more these days, networking has become less about on-the-ground networking as it has on-the-web networking. If you're going to investigate social capital, I think you should take a serious study of the digital world. It may be that people are retreating from the real world but proportionally increasing their involvement in the digital world. Thanks to digital networking, I landed one of my better jobs--a tech job based in Salt Lake City. I knew no-one who worked there, but through my social network on facebook, I was able to make friends with and receive his referral for a position that got me hired. --This job was (in my mind) the job that got me out of the recession.
Also, half of my real-life best friendships started as online friendships, though I have to point out that making the transition from online friend to real-life friend isn't easy or a smooth transition.

Volunteer opportunities/ Lack of opportunities.
I know a lot of the neighbors on my street and feel like I live in a good neighborhood even though I'm near many slummy neighborhoods in Ogden. Let me explain why: My subdivision isn't part of Ogden city--it was supposed to be created as an HOA, but the developers didn't form an HOA before they sold the lots and so it sits in a gray area. The city will not pay for any maintenance on the street and there is no HOA to cover normal expenses: that includes the broken water main line that we all had to pitch in and pay for last year (the bill was something like $8,000 to fix it several feet under the asphalt and the utility company which is run/managed by Ogden city, didn't pay for any of it but required us to fix it or have our water shut off), it also includes snow removal, so every winter, we all pitch in as neighbors to shovel our snow as well as the street. As far as I can tell, none of my neighbors are religious and none of them act out of religious fervor--we act as a community. One of my neighbors has a four-wheeler plow that they plow the road, sometimes I use my tractor, and a few other people have snow-blowers. I've met most my neighbors because of this. My point is, that our little community of about 30 houses is aware of who lives where and has an added sense of security because we have needs that we can't meet on our own and are forced to meet those needs outside of comfort zone.
Further to the point I'm trying to make, it seems to me that single parents (specifically single mothers) tend to be the ones who communities tend to know the most about because they are the neediest members of the communities. Second to them might easily be the elderly person who sits on their porch like it's still the early 1900s.
To restate the point I'm trying to make: it seems to me that the people with the greatest social capital are the ones who have the greatest needs. They are easier to approach because they can't turn down help--they need it too desperately--and by helping them there is a strong sense of personal fulfillment. Through those people--by getting involved in their lives--it is easy to network with others that help them or their family or their friends and then expand your personal network connection to them into personal Social Capital.
I think in older years it was the fact that people had needs that forced them to walk outside of their busy farms now and again and engage with their neighbors, whereas today, people have less of those needs because they can be met in many other ways.

Community Outreach
If anything, I would say there is a lack of awareness about other people in our communities more than a real lack of Social Capital. Maybe I have a warped imagination of what it was like in colonial times, but I picture the founding fathers getting together at community hubs to talk about politics openly--sometimes even spur of the moment. Today in Utah, it's hard to go to a city council meeting and see more than 15 people--10 of which are regulars. No one seems to congregate at the courthouse during trials. And there are very few physical places where people can engage in public forum unless they are organized by politicians as Q&A sessions.
Instead, from my experience, to get involved in local politics and things that matter to Utahns, you have to sign a clipboard during some county fair where some group put up a booth related to some topic you already care about. --I fail to see how anyone branches out of their personal opinions these days when the only place you might experience people of different opinion might be protesters of an event you already care about (and let's be real, no one listens to those protesters because they didn't come for community engagement, they came for whatever the activity was). Along these lines, if you do decide to meet up for a discussion outside of some public building (or inside) you usually have to schedule in advance with someone, stating that you're going to hold some meeting and then it gets put on a public agenda and then people who oppose the discussion that you have planned will be disruptive and sometimes violent (such as the debate over taking down Civil War Monuments that happened this year where supporters of keeping the monuments were harassed by people who didn't support it and triggered violent responses from both sides).
Aside from venues that charge fees to host events, I don't know of anywhere that people can go locally (within their own county) to discuss with other people who actually care about topics related to the community--excluding when they are already publicly scheduled. In other words, if I want to know about what other people in my county care about related to the national government, I have to listen to my Senators' Q&A meetings. --Caucuses in Utah were a great idea until they became polarized: I can't vote at both the Republican and the Democrat caucuses--Usually you can't even attend them both because they happen at the exact same time in different places and they don't happen all that often and don't typically involve Q&A sessions. How are good political ideas generated if half of them are stifled based on political affiliation?

Education.
You talk about in your report on Unwed Childbearing that family is "an institution with primary responsibility for ..."--that is correct, it is AN institution but not the only institution. As the old saying goes "It takes a village to raise a child." Education is another important institution that can have a mediocre effect or a major effect on your social capital in life. --Many successful business founders meet their business partners at college. Many people meet their spouses in high school and many of their life-long friends. Furthermore, education is often where people learn the skillsets that are most crucial to their future careers.

And, unfortunately, many people think the school system is broken. This would be a small drop in the bucket if other institutions could pick up the slack, but citizens age 5-13 are required to spend a majority of their waking hours not with their family but among their peers and with their teachers, and like your report indicates, if their family life isn't supportive and their school life isn't supportive, that leaves a small handful of other institutions providing, "values, knowledge, aspirations, and skills to subsequent generations."

If you want to improve people's social capital really fast, give them more opportunities through their education. --I don't mean force them to make social connections, but give everyone (not just children <18) more access to on-the-ground educational programs where they can meet people who share similar interests and opinions(the key being on-the-ground, because social networks are formed by person-to-person interactions, not online, go at your own individual pace educational programs).

Forming social networks don't end once you're out of regular school. If the intent of public schooling was to make responsible voting citizens who wouldn't be manipulated by outside powers, doesn't it stand to reason that there should be other institutions that adults (no longer children, but sometimes equally irresponsible) go to to remain responsible voting citizens? --it's no wonder so many people fell for so-called Russian election manipulation. How would they really know about it? That wasn't an issue when they were children and they weren't taught in schools that "one day, another country is going to run a bunch of biased ads on TV, Radio and the Internet to make you angry and polarized against or for a certain candidate," and they have very few outlets to learn more about the complexities of modern life. --This used to be the library, and possibly today it is supposed to be the internet, but the internet is quickly becoming a luxury that poor people cannot afford--they can't afford to go to the library all of the time while tending kids and working and they can't afford a computer or smart phone either.



If you've read all of this, it shouldn't surprise you when I say that I've put a lot of thought into this topic. During the recession that started in 2007 I was a recent high school graduate with the world ahead of me, but I lacked experience for many of the living-wage jobs that I felt I was qualified for and that ultimately led me into on and off depression. I grew up in a "close" family both of my parents are still married to each other and are well off, I had plenty of institutions to turn to for support, but from 2007 until 2015 I honestly feel like I lacked social capital. I struggled to get a decent job even while I was getting a post-secondary education. When I graduated with a Bachelors degree, I still struggled to get a job because I quickly learned that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Many of my peers seemed to live happier lives--they got married, had children, had nice jobs, etc. Me, I struggled, even though I was more intelligent and had more things going for me (not only were my parents together, had no family drama, but also my parents were dual earners my entire life and that gave me a little more access to wealth than most other people [at the drawback of not seeing either parent as often]).
It wasn't until I started thinking outside of the box about what I was lacking (social capital) that doors started opening for me. I have more friends right now than I have ever had in life--more friends than I can even manage. I feel pretty secure in my career, and in all areas of my life, and it has been a long time since I have felt any kind of depression. --That's actually the last point that I want to make:
When you're depressed, it's hard to develop or even utilize your social capital. I'm surprised that so few politicians admit to having depression--it must be one of the more depressing careers full of let-downs and emotional roller coaster rides! Yet, at the same time, I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced serious depression at least once in their life. To me, the biggest benefit to living in a "close knit" community or an "active" community, or to have a diverse collection of social relationships is not actually the networking side, but the sense of purpose and fulfillment that comes with it. We as humans and Americans aren't just individuals going through life independently, even though to some people who are depressed it seems like that is all there is to life. It would be nice if we had another great rallying cry like the one made by President John F. Kennedy in the '60s, "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country," but this time around the rally was extended to not just "country" but "neighbors."