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<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019ve been working on my senior essay and I\u2019d like to spread the misery around. \u00a0So this week\u2019s Quick Takes are a round up of\u00a0aggravating\u00a0social developments (though I promise a respite at the end).<\/p>\n
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I was pretty dubious about David Brook\u2019s new book The Social Animal<\/em>\u00a0when I read the awful excerpt<\/a> of it in The New Yorker<\/em>. \u00a0My suspicions were confirmed when I read Will Wilkinson\u2019s review<\/a>. \u00a0Feel free to forward to anyone considering buying the book. \u00a0Here\u2019s an excerpt:<\/p>\n The laudably ambitious aim of the The Social Animal: A Story of Love, Character, and Achievement, the new book by New York Times columnist David Brooks, is to weave a unified picture from the scattered discoveries in the various sciences of the mind and bring to life this picture\u2019s practical implications through the tale of two fictional characters, Erica and Harold.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the happiest story you\u2019ve ever read,\u201d Brooks begins. It isn\u2019t. It is depressing. \u201cIt is about two people who lead wonderfully fulfilling lives.\u201d Actually, it is about two boring people who lead muted, more or less satisfactory lives in the successful pursuit of achievement as it is narrowly defined by their culture. That such emotionally straitened, humorlessly striving characters are cast as romantic leads in the science-certified \u201chappiest story\u201d of all is baffling and sad. More baffling still is that Brooks\u2019 intends this chilling portrait to offer consolation, to persuade us there is much to gain, and little to fear, in losing our unscientific illusions about human nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But don\u2019t take our<\/em>\u00a0word for it. \u00a0Just look back to the New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0excerpt and you\u2019ll see Brooks looks an awful lot like the strawman materialist dedicated to unweaving the rainbow that the Christians always warned me about. \u00a0Quoth Brooks:<\/p>\n Ms. Taylor was always reminding the class of how limited her grasp of any situation was. \u201cSorry, I get distracted easily,\u201d she\u2019d say, or, \u201cSorry, sometimes I jump to conclusions too quickly.\u201d In this way, she communicated the distinction between mental strength (the processing power of the brain) and mental character (the mental virtues that lead to practical wisdom). She stressed the importance of collecting conflicting information before making up one\u2019s mind, of calibrating one\u2019s certainty level to the strength of the evidence, of enduring uncertainty for long stretches as an answer became clear, of correcting for one\u2019s biases. As Keith E. Stanovich, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, writes in his book \u201cWhat Intelligence Tests Miss\u201d (2009), these \u201cthinking dispositions\u201d correlate weakly or not at all with I.Q. But, because Ms. Taylor put such emphasis on these virtues and because Harold admired her so much, he absorbed and copied her way of being.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yikes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The next frustration can also frequently be found in the pages of The New York Times<\/em>. \u00a0Among the frequent\u00a0jewelery\u00a0ads, I spotted this one for Cartier earlier this week:<\/p>\n In case you can\u2019t make it out, the tagline is Trinity: All about you forever<\/em>.<\/p>\n How can this possibly be an effective pitch? \u00a0What kind of person thinks that the best, most lasting gift they could give to themselves is a set of shiny rings. \u00a0I\u2019m depressed just looking at it.<\/p>\n Think that celebration of self indulgence can\u2019t be topped? \u00a0Think again.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a promotional image for \u201cCome On Guy<\/a>\u201d an art installation consisting of frat boys drinking and misbehaving behind plexiglass in front of an audience. \u00a0According to a review<\/a>:<\/p>\n Now, not only will these strapping young examples of our nation\u2019s future drink (and drink, and drink) for you, as photo evidence shows, they\u2019ll brawl, barf, and even relieve themselves in a bucket supplied by the artist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cOh what a piece of work is man,\u201d this ain\u2019t!<\/em><\/p>\n Given how bad it\u2019s gotten, I probably should have given up Glee<\/em>\u00a0a while ago, but my love of spontaneous musical numbers kept me coming back. \u00a0This week\u2019s episode, titled \u2018Sexy\u2019 and supposedly focusing on sex ed. \u00a0The episode managed to be the worst of both worlds: not providing very useful information on safe sex and repeatedly implying (or outright stating) that girls who abstain from sex are afraid and\/or frigid, while all boys are intrinsically insensitive selfish louts when sex is involved.<\/p>\n The only upside of the episode was that it introduced me to \u201cLandslide\u201d by Stevie Nicks<\/a>.<\/p>\n To wrap up the depressing portion of the Takes, check out this NYT<\/em>\u00a0article about people who will spend inordinate sums of money on guitars used by Eric Clapton<\/a> or even guitars that are replicas of ones used by Eric Clapton.<\/p>\n A team of Yale psychologists concluded that much of this behavior is based on \u2018celebrity contagion\u2019 and belief in a quasi \u2018sympathetic magic<\/a>.\u2019 \u00a0People honestly, irrationally believe that they will play better on a guitar that has been used masterfully in the past. \u00a0A carefully made replica is believed to attract some of the properties imbued in the original.<\/p>\n This is a pervasive flaw in human reasoning, and it\u2019s more\u00a0embarrassing\u00a0to for me to reflect on, because I thought this way frequently as a child. \u00a0This is the logic of fantasy novels that see a hidden connection and design in all things, that imagines we leave a notable imprint on the world with our actions, and which imbues even inanimate objects with personalities and dignity (ever cajoled a recalcitrant computer or said \u2018Sorry\u2019 to a chair you\u2019ve bumped into?).<\/p>\n No wonder I\u2019m such an easy sell on Chesterton<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I promised I\u2019d wrap up on a lighter note, and what could be more fitting than this article on the origins of Jewish humor from BoingBoing<\/a>?<\/p>\n Supposedly, most of the dark humor thought of as typically Jewish (or typically New York) grew out of the tradition of a badhkin, a jester who mocked at weddings. \u00a0After a series of pogroms, a group of rabbis decided the massacres were retribution for light-heartedness and banned most humor.<\/p>\n The badhkin was the only kind of comic exempted from the ban because the rabbis were convinced a badhkin was more abusive than humorous. \u00a0So thank heaven for small mercies.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/-kpyfYEfa9Qc\/TXmrUe_4HgI\/AAAAAAAABUM\/jenZl0oRI_0\/s640\/IMG_0374.JPG\")
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