Unintended consequences

I don’t smoke, my friends don’t smoke, and cigarettes have long since killed the vast majority of my family members who used to smoke. I am, however, from a tobacco state, from a family with a history of farming tobacco, and am attending a school that, even with non-smoking signs plastered around campus, was funded largely by tobacco dollars.

I read a case study earlier this week analyzing how pure economic research into the “price elasticity of demand” for cigarettes eventually grew into a lobbying and policy effort to curb youth smoking through an increase in the federal excise tax. The article and the class discussion that followed addressed some important factors of “sin taxes” that one most consider — namely, if you tax the vice out of existence, the government loses that stream of revenue. Such issues are complex and solutions cannot simply be summed up as right or wrong; one must be prepared to re-frame the problem, as expected outcomes often go awry:

With the possible exception of the hydrogen bomb, nothing in modernity is more generative of paradox than cigarettes. Thus, in 1955, when the Federal Trade Commission sought to curb misleading advertising by banning the publication of tar and nicotine levels, the ruling proved to be a boon to the industry, enabling it to advertise filter cigarettes for their implicit safety even as it raised the toxic yields to compensate for the filters. So it went with the 1965 law requiring warning labels on cigarette packs, which preempted potentially more stringent state and local regulation and provided a priceless shield against future liability suits. So it went, too, with the 1971 congressional ban on broadcast cigarette advertising, which saved the industry millions of dollars, effectively froze out potential new competitors, and put an end to the devastating antismoking ads then being broadcast under the fairness doctrine. Even such left-handed regulation as the 1982 increase in the federal excise tax benefited the industry, which used the tax as a screen for a series of price increases, doubling the price per pack in a decade, and invested the windfall in diversification.

Every forward step taken by government to regulate smoking–the broadcast ban, the ban on in-flight smoking, the welter of local bans on smoking in public places–moved cigarettes a step further back from the consciousness of nonsmoking voters.

                         – Jonathan Franzen, “Sifting the Ashes”

 

Finding a story, part 1

A lot of the blogs I read focus on the need to learn to operate in a “story-driven world.” To stand for something. To find a passion. Despite all the posts I read over the past year, though, very little stuck with me until the last few weeks, when a number of opportunities availed themselves to me.

I am beginning to realize that for me, the best part of the college experience is the way in which the campus serves as a magnet for lecturures, conferences, forums, and all manner of other thought-provoking events. A week ago I fulfilled a long-time dream of mine and finally heard acclaimed writer, poet, entertainer, activist, and all-around amazing figure Maya Angelous speak. Despite living only a short distance away from my university, she explained to us that she had not been invited to speak there in over a decade, so she was going to use every minute avilable to her that night — and indeed, she did. 

I have never seen anyone so effortlessly combine song, prose, and poetry into a single performance — a full recap of the evening is due its own post, but I could not let this update pass by without commenting on the impressiveness of Dr. Angelou.

I continued my exposure to brilliant thinkers and inspiring figures on Saturday, when I attended the inaugural Ten Years Ahead Conference, a gathering of students and university leaders brought together to discuss and brainstorm on three issues affecting my state in years to come: agriculture, energy, and transportation.  Attendees included some of the most decorated philanthropists in the state, a deputy superintentant for the state Department of Public Instruction, former and current department heads, and some of the most influential students currently attending my school.  

A number of them immediately held my attention, and in talking to them, I finally realized why: from Maya Angelou to seniors joining the Peace Corps, they each had a story to share.

Some were able to summarize their story in just a few words — one, the philanthropist, introduced himself in the following way: “I spent the first 18 years of my life dying to get to UNC. And I’ve spent every year since trying to go back.”

Others were not so concise, but they had a clear passion, had part of their identity attached to some interest, so they always had something to talk about, to spark conversation with others. Speaking with them was oftentimes a much more fulfilling experience, because I walked away feeling that I had gained something, or at least had more easily formed a connection.

 What I have come to realize is that I don’t yet have a story. Knowing that I need one, though, seems to be the best place to start.

***I’d like to send a public thanks to Jeff Widman for offering up the time for a phone conversation that actually sparked most of my self-reflection. He is an incredibly friendly guy, and really practices what he preaches in terms of social outreach and building networks via sincerity and doing what he can to help people.***

 

I love Wikipedia

I found the following quote in the signature of a member of the Rudius Media Message Boards, and tracked it to the Wikipedia article of Henri Charrière, French felon and author of Papillon:

During his sentence on Devil’s Island [Charrière] decided that all of his past escape attempts were too complex. His new simplified plan would be to fling himself into the ocean from a cliff using a bag of coconuts as his raft.

In April 2008, Clay Shirkey estimated that approximately 100 million hours of collective work had gone into the building of Wikipedia. Founder Jimmy Wales has led this project with a very specific goal in mind: “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” Fortunately, in the proccess of accumulating “the sum of all human knowledge,” the ocassional peculiarity slips its way into publication.

 

A short reading list

I recently saw my cousin, the photographer, and a mention of Gladwell’s Outliers sparked a discussion about what I have been reading over the past few years. He asked for a reading list, so I sent him a number of suggestions, trying to tie as many as possible to some aspect of what I imagine he might face while working as an independent freelance photographer. I pasted the list in its entirety; for reasons unknown, the David Foster Wallace excerpt resonates with me, and thus I continue to share it with others.

Additional suggestions would be greatly appreciated – I certainly do not expect him to read all of the books, but the topics at hand legitimately interest me as well, and I would love to find some new material.

————-

Books:

Highly recommended:

Ferrazzi, Keith – Never Eat Alone

Ferriss, Tim – The 4-Hour Workweek

Gladwell, Malcolm – The Tipping Point

Worth reading:

Gladwell, Malcolm – Outliers

Greene, Robert – The 48 Laws of Power

Blogs:

Ryan Holiday (Strategy and self-development) – www.ryanholiday.net

Seth Godin (Marketing) – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Scott Adams (Random thoughts) – http://dilbert.com/blog/

Tucker Max (Producing an independent movie) – http://ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com/

Articles:

Anderson, Chris – “Do Something New Every Three Years” -http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/12/do-something-ne.html

Wallace, David Foster – “2005 Commencement Speech” – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html

Excerpt:

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

 

Changes

A lot has changed in a year.

I got into college. I joined a gym and started paying closer attention to my fitness. I received some minor recognition for my writing. I interned at a law firm. I traveled to Spain. I campaigned for a local political candidate. I graduated high school. I joined the State Farm Youth Advisory Board. I found myself in a healthy, satisfying relationship. I worked at said law firm for the summer instead of the scuba shop. I realized that I do not want to practice law. I entered college. I think I might have gotten a bit smarter, or at least began wising up to how much I don’t actually know.

Last year, the New Year resolutions I posted to my blog were more along the lines of a response to Tim Ferriss’ How to get George W. Bush or the CEO of Google on the phone – that is, a list of people I would like to communicate with throughout the year.

I had a moderate degree of success with this goal, but recent reflections on my efforts have revealed a substantial error in my judgment: from the few I received a response from, I went no further. Those who took the time to write back were kind enough to offer a few words of advice or even a bit of feedback, but that was all. I established the tiniest foundation for some sort of a relationship, and then let it crumble because I felt that I could not offer anything beyond a reply of ‘thank-you’ to the exchange.

I refuse to give up, though, and see this as an excellent opportunity to learn from my mistakes. From the last moments of 2007 to today, my social network is larger, my reading list is longer, and my opportunities are more numerous. My resolutions for 2009 will be better organized, and better designed to fulfill my goals.

 

Quote from Godin about marketing, life

Discussing the attitudes and approaches of successful marketers and investors, Seth Godin recently said the following:

My favorite combination is the quiet confidence of knowledge, combined with the humility that comes from realizing that you’re pretty lucky and that you have no idea at all what’s guaranteed to work tomorrow.

I believe, however, that this applies to a lot more than just marketing. In formal settings, business meetings and the like, people exhibiting “quiet confidence” are usually much more likely to grab my attention, hold on to it, and earn my respect. When conflict arises and two hot-headed individuals bow up at one another and begin raising their voices, I rarely involve myself; at that point, such an argument wastes the time of everyone, and until they calm down, trying to shout a compromise into the mix only adds to the noise.

People who realize they have nothing to prove through volume, however, often find the best routes to conflict resolution. Why waste energy that could be put to something far more productive?

A far more important, “real-world” example that applies Seth’s quote to a broader field comes from my personal experiences growing up in a firefigher family. One of my favorite quotes from my father is “Panic breeds,” a simple reminder that one person losing control is the surest catalyst for rapidly-spread hysteria. And in an emergency situation, in a burning house or collapsed building or even with a heart attack, no room exists for human error brought about because of emotional melt-downs.

That is why good firefighters can enter horrific scenes, do everything they can to resolve the crisis, and move on to the next task. They have the training, they have the confidence, and they have no reason to risk their own lives and the safety of others by boisterously advertising what they could do, when instead they just do what is necessary.

 

Connecting some dots – Part 1

*There are a lot of links in the posts ahead — they are present as much for me to organize some ideas as they are for readers to follow my train of thought*

Recently inspired by Ilan Bouchard, I have begun making use of free time by setting up a system which facilitates increased note-taking and analytical reading, attempting to make my learning even more productive. With Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers on hand and fresh in my mind, this became my first attempt.

Having spent so much time with my nose buried in that book, I was thus pleasantly surprised to find Chris Anderson citing it in a recent article, ‘Do Something New Every 3 Years.’ In his post, Anderson explains that throughout his career, he has, in some form or fashion, embarked on a new venture or project every three years. Considering that the youngest generation of workers already expects to frequently change jobs, this alone does not come as a revelation; rather, Anderson links his personal experiences to a major tenant of Gladwell’s latest book:

I was thinking about the three-year rule while reading about Malcolm Gladwell’s observation that it takes 10,000 hours to become truly expert at something. If you really throw yourself into a job, you’ll spend 60 hours a week working. That’s 3,000 hours a year (allowing for vacation), which means you’ll hit the 10,000 hour mark a few months after your third year.

I prefer to think of the ‘10,00-hour rule’ as a set of guidelines instead of a concrete law (and in fact, comments on Anderson’s blog reveal research suggesting that these critical hours cannot be crammed into such a short period of time), but I like the direction of the thinking, if only because it meshes well with how I was raised. Dig deep, work hard, and you will see results. In the context of musicians, Gladwell explains:

[Researchers] couldn’t find any “naturals,” musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any “grinds,” people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks… the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works….

Anderson makes a good point though, in reminding readers that even experts can’t hurt from trying something new. Maybe three years or 10,000 hours is not the perfect formula for everyone, but anyone could potentially benefit from taking the general principles into consideration.

 

Two blogs

One of the best things to ever happen to spur my intellectual curiousity was my discovery of Google Reader. My interests have varied since I first began reading blogs, but diversifying these subscriptions has only opened my world to new ideas and the wide-ranging opinions of others. Below I have detailed two exceptional blogs; they are unlike almost anything else I subscribe to, and I always look forward to their next update.

My tumblr is here for me to record all of the things I wonder about during the day. Whether it’s the origin of houndstooth (which we’ll get to in a bit) or how many germs really ARE on an airplane (which I may prefer not to know) or what the heck is “subprime lending” and why is our economy tumbling down – I’m curious about it. Perhaps you are too.

Written by “a curious girl in a curious world,” What I Learned Today has consistently provided me with some of the clearest explanations of the latest and greatest happenings in the world, particularly those related to economic and environmental issues. Repeat visits to her site this summer was finally what allowed me to make sense of the subprime mortgage crisis, and she has covered the subsequent financial fall-outs with a tremendous amount of clarity. Check out the archives for a cool calendar-style approach to providing coverage – some frivolous, some serious – of news stories and factoids from the past year.

Examining “[h]ow writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days,” Daily Routines has quickly become another of my favorite blogs. One can outright expect some notable characters, like Benjamin Franklin or Karl Marx, to be featured, but the inclusion of other, more current persons of interest, including Thomas Friedman or George W. Bush, provides a fun look at the habits of figures we constantly see in the news. Everyone has their own unique schedule that they follow, but I have begun looking for common themes and already determined that I should really start waking up earlier in the morning. I guess sometimes, no matter how ugly, you can’t avoid the truth.

 

Thoughts from Chuck Klosterman

I don’t consider Chuck Klosterman the ‘voice of my generation’ or the definitive cultural critic (I have yet to find either), but I have loved his writing since I first read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in 9th grade.  I generally keep an eye out for his newer articles – the “Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,” for example -but my favorite recent essay examines the role of a nemesis and an arch-enemy in being motivated to succeed in life.

Although Klosterman may have found his arch-enemy as a young teenager, I cannot say for certain whether or not I have found mine. I can almost understand the gist of his argument though, and when comparing some of Robert Greene’s strategies for achieving influence and surviving conflict, the presence of enemies cannot be ignored.

Personally, I have always sought to befriend everyone and avoid the sort of drama which leads to fistfights and malcontent — that strategy has worked for me so far. Competition is undoubtedly a powerful motivator, and while I am sure that I may eventually (and inadvertently?) piss some people off, I don’t necessarily aim to become wildly hated in exchange for successful in life.

For those who have a nemesis (or an arch-enemy), does this drive you? Do you even find it particularly healthy? I don’t buy Klosterman’s argument in its entirety, but I think this could generate interesting discussion.

From Klosterman’s article:

HOW TO MAKE ENEMIES As the accompanying essay makes clear, you’ll need a nemesis and an archenemy if you wish to be successful in this world. The good news is, it’s entirely possible that you already have each of these entities in your life; perhaps you just don’t realize it (or maybe you can’t tell them apart). As a public service, here are a few signs.

RECOGNIZING YOUR NEMESIS
•At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend.
•You have punched this person in the face.
•If invited, you would go to this person’s wedding and give him a spice rack, but you would secretly hope that his marriage ends in a bitter, public divorce.
•People who barely know both of you assume you are close friends; people who know both of you intimately suspect that you profoundly dislike each other.
•If your archenemy tried to kill you, this person would attempt to stop him.

RECOGNIZING YOUR ARCHENEMY
•Every time you talk to this person, you lie.
•If you meet someone who has the same first name as this person, you immediately like him less.
•The satisfaction you feel from your own success pales in comparison to the despair you feel at this person’s triumphs, even if those triumphs are completely unrelated to your life.
•If this person slept with your girlfriend, she would never be attractive to you again.
•Even if this person’s girlfriend was a hateful bitch, you would sleep with her out of spite.

 

Papers, finals, and miscellaneous updates

Finals start tomorrow, and I will soon be an eighth of the way through my college experience.  Last summer, people told me time and time again that the next four years would pass by faster than any other stage in my life, and while I believed them, I am just now beginning to truly understand what they meant.

I met with my public policy professor today, and talked to him about my policy brief and discussed with him the possibility of spending a semester in Washington, DC studying — and he finished my sentence for me — “foreign policy.”  He then inquired about my second (prospective) major — Peace, War, and Defense — but expressed surprise at my potential minor in Urban Studies and Planning, asking, “where does that fit in with [your foreign policy interests]?”

The fact is, I don’t know. Right now, I tell myself that international economic development is a field I could get involved with… but really, that just happens to be my interest of the moment. I also just wrote, and found myself fascinated by, an analysis of domestic infrastructure reinvestment. And I want to learn about so many other things – languages, sciences, economics, philosophy – but I don’t know where I will find the time.

I consider myself to still be in the process of learning just how much I do not know, but the pressure is already building for me to start creeping away from general topics and begin settling into more specific fields of study.

Luckily, I suppose, preparing for a week of exams will take up any time I would otherwise spend dwelling on my concerns. I would rather feel that I have too many opportunities than not enough… and I fully trust that I will make the right decisions in due time.

On a brighter note, I am really enjoying Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and would recommend it to anyone who has not yet gotten caught up in the hype surrounding the release of the book. I prefer the articles he writes for The New Yorker more, but the book is certainly worth reading.

Also, a bit of humor: