Allocating Anger

The last century has seen tremendous progress in all sorts of ways. In the same way we struggle to balance how we choose to spend our time because we are putting out fires, and we think sharks are really dangerous because of Jaws and because they 'look scary', we aren't very good at taking a step back and recognising what has been achieved. Steven Pinker does a great job of looking at the big, positive picture in this book:

                                    
The Better Angels of Our Nature                       Coal Mining by UK County

The last century has also been about isolated battles overlapping. Instead of a cohesive 'Human Rights Group' (which should include everybody), people slowly had to have their resistance to their own prejudices broken down by realising how others felt when something similar happened to them. The movie 'Pride' is an awesome example of this happening when the Lesbian and Gay community of London decided to support a small Welsh village of miners during the 1984-85 Miner's strikes. While the miner's thought of themselves as 'against the perverts' - their ability to see the common struggle, and the friendship, shed light on their own bigotry. 

Forming groups does allow us to focus on a specific issue. We can't solve everything, so focus helps, but by its nature it is exclusionary. A straight miner doesn't come across a Lesbian & Gay rights group and say, 'I'll be having some of that - where do I sign up'. It also makes us form tribes that become tribes for their own sake. Then we identify with the tribe and the tribe makes up our mind for us. If you are a Democrat - you believe this. You can't believe that - you must be a Tory. How can you say that - next thing you are going to don a Red Beret and chant Juju.

In order to get their view across, a group often gets angry. There are few things that are likely to close your ability to see another groups point of view more than them being angry with you. Emma Watson's (@EMWatson) talk below is a call to include more men in the 'Gender Equality' battle. She is launching a group called 'he for she' to shift the conversation from Feminism which she feels has some of those angry connotations. In it she mentions how there is not a single country in the world that has achieved 'Gender Equality'. In this she is taking a different approach from Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) who points out that women in the US and Europe are the freest and most liberated in human history.

The big ticket items that Watson mentions are absolute no brainers in the quest for progress. We need to end the practice of child marriage. She didn't mention Female Genital Mutilation - again a no-brainer. The issues however become much subtler once countries on the whole become wealthier and more liberated. What is equality? Is fewer women in the Boardroom an indication of sexism, or is it an indication that the Boardroom is an awful place to be and exceptional women are making better life choices? Should female sports stars get paid the equivalent of their male counterparts? These issues go beyond simple obvious facts. They start involving economics and how pay gets decided by supply and demand. They start involving philosophy and how people want to spend their time. In a liberal society we also end up doing a vast array of different things. When there are small groups, it becomes harder to see if there are biases or if it is just the way the cookie crumbled - random. The issues remain important, but I think creating groups around them becomes harder.

I am proud to live in a time when one of the most powerful people in Europe is Angela Merkel, and in Latin America is Dilma Rousseff. Whether you agree with them or not, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, and Condoleezza Rice have been examples of women right at the centre of global politics. More personally, I have had no lack of female role models. My mother, aunt and step-mother all went back to university in their late 40s/early 50s to do honours and masters degrees and become psychologists. I have and have had awesome teachers, lecturers, bosses, colleagues and friends who have been females. The women my friends and I have dated, loved and married have been equals. I do not think the same could be said of 50 years ago. There are also still large chunks of the world that need to change. There are also still small chunks of hold-outs who still have ridiculous beliefs.

I agree with Watson that groups that don't exclude will help. I agree with Sommers that we live in an unprecedented age of freedom and liberty. I agree with all those who think we have more work to do.

I like celebrating the big wins. I have a preference for focusing on the areas that can lead to those when allocating my anger.