Meaning and Purpose in Life - two book reviews

Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, by Brian Greene.

The Meaning of Human Existence, by Edward O. Wilson.

Both of these books struck me as absolutely brilliant reflections on the meaning and purpose of human existence. The two authors are scientists, noted in their fields. Greene is a physicist, who comes to the problem from the big bang, through stars, to life, cells, etc. Wilson is a naturalist - known for the study of ants. he comes to it from the wonder of life on this planet, and the awe inspired by what humans are capable of. Wilson also focuses more on the biological element of our propensities.

These videos will give you a better sense of who they are - maybe entice you to read the books.
- Brian Greene: Mind, Matter And The Search For Meaning:  https://youtu.be/Ti1bniNNCmc 
- E.O. Wilson explains the meaning of human existence:  https://youtu.be/qzQBFlFdRPk 
   For a bit longer and more fascinating one: https://youtu.be/-6C75cyudzM

I am formally trained primarily as a philosopher and theologian, and these two hit me just right. I gained a whole new appreciation for the miracle that is life from both of them. 

Both of these men also hold no belief in any greater power. But that is not a source of despair - rather even more amazement at the wonder of life. In this vast universe, this vast history of time, coming from a tiny dot, and ending in a huge, dispersed nothingness - WE exist. We are here. We enjoy life and love and music and family and stories - etc. WE are amazing. All life is amazing, priceless, precious. And the reason is - we CHOOSE it. We choose to believe that life itself is meaning and purpose enough. 

We create love and family and music and art and science. WE are truly amazing. BUT - we need to work on our habitat just a bit. We seem to be bent on destroying the planet.
  How To Save Life on Earth https://youtu.be/Zq3w7cldgMU

When I am old and wandering about, just sit me down with Beethoven's Ninth, and a bird feeder in the window. I will be content. Thanks. 

Finally - I understand what is going on with people.

Since I retired some time ago, I have been trying to figure out how human beings work. Turns out we are truly WEIRD entities - see the book below by that name. (Henrich) In the 2020 election, that weirdness had one third of the United States vote for a narcissist, and one third voted for a really old white guy with moderate views, and one third DID NOT VOTE. How is that even possible?

I have read a lot - neuroscience, psychology, politics, economics, history. There is a list of books at the end of this with some annotation on what they taught me. And, drum roll, here’s the answer:

The United States of America has a pervasive implicit racist culture. 

Period. Full stop. Much to my amazement, that simple statement says it all. I also understand that my take on this is never going to persuade you. It would be more effective if YOU undertook a bit of reading, and see where it leads you. To entice you, this piece is a selected summary or subset. Let me know if this helps. If you come to a different insight, in the best of worlds, you nught be able to persuade me that I am wrong. That would be very helpful. Thanks.

For a real shorthand of the argument - watch this Daily Show interview. 9 minutes. And this Ted Talk - Racism Has Cost All of Us. 14 minutes - you can do this. 

For a VERY recent and wonderfully concise summary of the first part of this see this column by David Brooks: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/opinion/brain-reality-imagination.html

Just to be crystal clear upfront - this argument is NOT saying that most of our fellow citizens are overt racists. It is saying that we are all immersed in a culture and world view that implicitly structures our thinking and unconscious choices along a racial, classist view of society. It is also saying that some of our political leaders expressly call out that racist model to generate the emotion of fear, which puts the brakes on our rational choices such that we often vote against our own best interests. (Shenker-Osorio).

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions are Made.

Overview

This is a complex scientific work, by a preeminent neuroscientist. See her wikipedia entry. The theory is fairly new and debated. I think it is a brilliant insight, because it fits perfectly with all of the other evidence I have found. (DUH! That is called confirmation bias!) This is a “theory” but it is based on empirical research, not opinion. For a more populist explanation, see her much shorter book: Seven and a half Lessons about the Brain. She also has a TED talk you might enjoy. 

The Key Insight

Humans do not really THINK very much. We are simply NOT rational in most of what we do.

Our gut, our body and our brain is a reaction network of emotions and patterns that we learn over time. It is not automatic - most of it is learned behavior. We are taught to form predictions about the world, and we respond to them. We do not really have “ideas”, but rather “emotions”. What we think of as “ideas” are actually just another flavor of “emotions”. It is called the “theory of constructed emotion”. Our “thoughts” are really learned emotional responses to external stimuli. Our brain is a dynamic, flexible network, which learns how to respond based on our social environment! And the brain is very plastic - meaning it physically changes as it learns new responses. That also means that it does not easily let go of things - "ideas" or emotions.

 

There are cultures that do not distinguish between “ideas” and “emotions”. That distinction is a cultural mental construct. There are cultures that do not experience the emotion of anger - they simply do not have it. Our brain, our whole endocrine system is a complex of learned behavior - not automatic. Our culture taught us to smile when we first grimaced at our parents, and they responded with glee. We are inherently social beings, and our brain and emotions are formed in that context. There is very little abstract and rational about us. That thinking process that Kahneman calls the "slow brain" moves the things or emotions that we learn to our “fast brain.” All of our thinking has this built in "bias" or "framework." (Kahneman)

It also appears that we are not aware of most of the things going on in our brain network. Our senses are always picking up things and presenting them to the brain, which is always searching for patterns - for threats, for friends, etc. Things only pop into our conscious awareness when the "hidden controller" thinks we really need to be aware of something. That insight is from Robert Burton, On Being Certain. And John Bargh has extensive research and stories that illustrate that MOST of what is going on in our brain is really below the level of consciousness. See his book: Before You Know It

This constant and unconscious brain framework can be called our “culture” or “world view”. It describes our normal, “unthinking” response to things. It dictates how we regard children and adults, males and females, tall and short people, white and black people. For example, the Norwegian culture has the lowest view of the distance from top to bottom of society. Their king is no big deal. East African culture has the sense that they are not in charge of life. The U.S. culture says that we are in charge of our life, and the lives of everyone on the planet. We think we can install a democracy anywhere. 

Our U.S. culture also tells us that we live in a racial caste hierarchy. It is an implicit judgment that colors everything. It is not conscious, it is something we can barely recognize, even after a lot of introspection. It is just part of our fabric of life - our implicit world view.

This is why we have “biases”. This is why we have a protective cognition response to deeply held beliefs. When presented with evidence against our beliefs, our whole body reacts to protect itself, and to reaffirm our beliefs - the backfire effect! You cannot change someone's belief with Information! In fact, that only makes their belief stronger.

AND, since these basic "values", or "beliefs" are not arrived at by means of logic and argument, they are not amenable to change via argument. We are identified with these basic views or beliefs. So we automatically work to protect them.

Klein, Ezra, Why‌ ‌We're‌ ‌Polarized‌ 2020.

Overview Given that we are not really rational, how do we make decisions?. We use our emotions, and we use our "identities". We fall back on the default values of the group, the tribe to which we belong. The author makes the point that there is very little difference between the voting turnout by party in recent elections. People tend to vote by their party membership, even if they fundamentally disagree with the chosen candidate of their party. They identify with their party, and they have hope that the candidate will support their values.

The Key Insight
Good research indicates that we identify with our group, our tribe, our party. Our personal identity, our personal sense of self is supported by our group. In the past, people normally had multiple strong personal identities, such as family, their race, their religion, the club. In recent times, because of the increased pressure of social media, many of those identities have been weakened, in favor of our political party identity. When people had multiple identities, with values that cut across political party lines, the blind adherence to party policy was not as strong. 

Now the question is, what can we do about it? If logical argument does not work, what does?

Wilkerson, Isabel, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, 2020.

Overview

This is another scientific work, researched for 15 years, and brilliantly written, in beautiful English. The author is a journalist - contributor to the New York Times. She also wrote The Warmth of Other Suns - a heart rendering description of the migration and escape of Blacks from the terrorism of the southern United States. If you want to gain some racial empathy, read that one.

The Key Insight

The “culture” or “world view” of the United States is racist to its core. 

It started with slavery, and theology and economics - it endured and persisted through the Civil War, Reconstruction and the era of civil rights. It became even more pronounced with the election of our first black president. We all have it in our heads - black, brown, white, Asian, etc. It is in our institutions, in our laws, in our brains - it colors everything. 

Most other cultures in the world do not have this particular view of a racial hierarchy. There are no "Blacks" in Africa. There are no “whites” in Scandinavia. The caste position of the untouchables or Dalits in India is not about their race. The Germans did not try to obliterate the Jewish “race”, but Jewish heritage and culture. And they studied our Jim Crow laws to learn how to do it: deny them normal rights, make them seem less than human, make them different and of lower value.

It is no help to be “color blind” - rather we need to see color for what it is. We need to understand our history. We need to be “anti-racist.” But that is a lot of work, even for Blacks. It is doubly hard to see it if we are White. Whites at the bottom of our economic hierarchy still unconsciously consider themselves much higher in our system than any brown or Black person. It is not explicit - it is an implicit worldview, largely hidden from conscious awareness.

The United States Is Not Unique in Having a Hierarchical View of Society

This hierarchical mindset of “us and them” is a common human occurrence. Wilkerson is focused on our racist problem in this country, but most cultures have some form of this hierarchical world view. India’s caste system is well documented. The murderous climax of Hutu / Tutu genocide in Rwanda came from the colonial government’s intentional division of the country into upper and lower castes. The “indigenous people problem” in Australia and all parts of the Americas is another example.

McGhee, Heather, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, 2021. 

Overview

The author is a lawyer and social activist. She has been working in the field of race relations for decades. The book is based on interviews with hundreds of people, and documented scientific social research. For a very short synopsis of her argument, see this piece in the NY Times.

“The Way Out of America’s Zero-Sum Thinking on Race and Wealth.”

Here is her interview with Trevor Noah, on the Daily Show.

I have to warn you - this is one of the most depressing books I have ever read. It is hard to believe that we as a nation have done so much damage to so many of our fellow citizens - white and Black. This book documents thousands of cases, laws, and events that deprive whites and blacks of benefits, privileges and jobs, in order to maintain the racist status quo. I am ashamed to be a member of this dominant caste.

The Key Insight

The United States racist culture is a Zero Sum game. We all hold an internalized racial view of our world, where there are only winners if there are losers. Wealth or education or freedom is in limited supply. If you move ahead, then I fall behind. When you get more, I have less. We see all of life as a competition for scarce resources, and the competition is based on our hierarchical view of race. The author clearly documents how much we have all lost because of our common racism. She uses facts and personal stories to give an empathic insight into the true scope of the problem.

The cover of this book shows a picture of a young person jumping into a swimming pool. I could not imagine why that image was chosen. When I was a kid, we did not know anyone who owned a swimming pool. But there were two public pools within walking distance of my home. Walking distance back then meant "several miles." When it was hot, we would walk to a pool and spend the better part of the day there. We had no AC, and this was a great way to spend a hot summer day. One of the largest public pools in the country was in Montgomery AL. In 1959 a group of citizens sued the city over the segregation of pubic pools and parks. So the city of Montgomery filled in that large pool and paved it over. The city then paid the YMCA to provide a “non public”, segregated pool. The city also closed all of the public parks! Now there are no public swimming pools in Montgomery - or in most of the south, and many parts of the north. Why? Because they had to open them to all races! So they closed them. Here is a bit more on that pool’s history. Who lost in that outcome? All of us! 

The same outcome is documented by the author in every realm. Education - predatory lending practices - salary - unionism - guaranteed employment - minimum wage - voting access - health care. Our white population is harmed by our implicit racist policies. Our Black population is hurt more - but it is costing all of us. The push for smaller government is driven by this goal - take it away from *them" so mine is not affected! Libertarian indeed - it is just racist.

And our fearless leaders know this. They promote it. They “gaslight” us with ideas and phrases that sound rational - but are racist to the core. Smaller government - read, "less for THEM". These are the “dog whistles” of voter fraud, violent crime, welfare fraud, big government, etc. These messages call on the basic fear that our society has built over hundreds of years.

Election Fraud

We must have a voter id to protect our elections - with no evidence of fraud - just the implicit knowledge that it is more difficult for some of our poor to obtain an ID, so we keep them from casting a ballot by mail. They are the majority, so enabling them to actually vote puts us at risk.

Health Care

When health care is expensive - it costs ALL of us. It would be less expensive for all of us if our healthcare were provided as a basic right, not a “benefit” mediated by insurance companies that are profit engines. Would we accept a police department, or fire department, or sewer and water that was focused only on profitability? 

2008 Economic Collapse

The economic collapse of Lehman Brothers started as predatory lending that took advantage of people with a low income, a low credit rating. The common view was that these people were at fault for taking these risky loans. But most subprime mortgages actually went to people with good credit, who could qualify for much better terms. More whites than blacks were damaged - and our entire economy suffered a 19 trillion dollar wealth loss. 

Education

When education is poorly funded - it costs ALL of us. In our southern states, the primary beneficiaries of better education and health care would clearly be the vast majority of whites. At one point, a strong majority supported free access to college for all. But then it was cast as a “gift” to the “undeserving classes.” Now the white majority does not approve of such a largesse, because they see it as a benefit for those “other” people. It is something “they” do not deserve, something that will reduce MY share of the pie. When college tuition is too high for ALL of us, it is difficult for anyone to get ahead - whatever the color of our skin. 

Minimum Wage - Unionism

The same thing happened to the minimum wage and to unions. Once supported by a solid majority, when our fearless leaders cast these things as primarily benefiting our Black brothers and sisters, the majority of white voters turned against them.

Climate change 

How on earth is climate change a part of this? The author interviewed a Finnish sociologist, Kirsti  M. Jylha, who came to the U.S. to study the problem. She describes the cause as “systemwide social dominance.” She says that she could not figure out the problem, until she came here. She discovered that she is WHITE! She had no idea that she was a member of a superior caste. In Finland, there literally are no homeless people, no hungry, no destitute. There are no people on the bottom of the social ladder because of race or through their own fault. They really are all in this together. 

In our American cultural brain, we are part of a hierarchy - and it is a zero sum game - win / lose. Any improvement for the bottom is seen as a deprivation for those higher up. So the ocean rises, or temperatures soar - it will not hurt me at the top - just those people at the bottom. Better to have them suffer than to “damage the economy” by environmental measures. It’s their fault that they are at the bottom. If we lose a few of them, no big deal! We support the status quo that we think benefits us, even if it leads to greater suffering for all. And we think that if there are problems we are likely to be spared the costs. But that's not true with climate change. We all share the same sky, the one Gaia - mother earth.

Social dominance theory

We accept Inequality as normal. We attribute social wins and losses to skill and merit. Good fortune and government infrastructure are the real keys to success. There are cultures in the world where there are no homeless, no poor, no one on the bottom. Those cultures do not have a mental hierarchy of status and worth. Simply having and tolerating a lower class of poor people makes those on the top less caring about the rest of us.

Anti Government

Government is our investment in order and structure for the good of all: police, courts, defense, sewer and water, roads, communications, schools, research, etc. But for most of our history, the government has been racist. Many white people now believe, consciously or unconsciously, that the government has taken the other side and is changing the 'proper' racial order through social spending, civil rights laws, and affirmative action. This makes the government untrustworthy. Today, racial resentment by whites and distrust of the government are very highly correlated.

Immigration

It is well documented that immigration is an economic engine of development - especially with today’s demographics of declining birth rates. But the unspoken fear that these “lesser” castes will “ruin our economy” dominates our political discourse. We damage our economy by creating immigration barriers.

Unemployment

A large majority of the country once (1970) supported a guaranteed employment program. Our fearless white leaders made that out to be a Black benefit. Now most white people no longer support what would have been a great benefit in the midst of a pandemic. Our European “cousins” have automatic unemployment programs that simply kicked in for the pandemic. They also have universal health care - which we cannot seem to muster no matter how we work at it. Why is that? 

Conclusion: The Sum of Us

We all suffer for this zero sum game in our heads. With this implicit sense of where we stand in this racist hierarchy, we are not able to make “rational” decisions. We respond to racist diatribe, we react with fear and anger to efforts to improve our whole society. If we could master this - there would be a tremendous solidarity benefit. There are economic studies that document the trillions of dollars in development that would be generated by a healthy, well educated, and fully employed United States.

We can do better. We can all prosper. But we will need to own our history, to own that we are all embedded in this, and work to overcome it.

To Sum Up

• We are not rational - we are emotional. If we can get that idea into popular culture, maybe we can actually educate ourselves around this problem.

• Our emotions in this country operate in a zero sum view of a racist hierarchy.

• Much of the political partisanship that we see comes from this history, an implicit cultural model that we cannot easily resolve. It is most often "under the table", with gaslighting references like voting fraud and the like.

• This political divide has grown larger with social media and instant news, such that the two sides of our political spectrum are now less than civil, let alone rational.

• Kahneman and others posit that the way out of this is education that enables us to more fully examine our thinking processes. They point to experiments with mindfulness as one means to give people better insight into their bias or world view.

• But values that were not arrived at through logic are not going to be changed that way.

• To resolve this problem fundamentally, we must recognize our racist history. A "reconciliation".

• If you are presenting a program or choice, it is much better to frame it in a non racial way. Focus on the benefit to be accrued by the group you are addressing - not the benefit conferred on the total society. See research below (English).

• But you cannot simply ignore the negative, the fear. The message should explicitly call for a positive impact on our common humanity to expressly counter the fear filled message.

What To Do About It?

This is clearly the hard part. I have found very little solid research on how to overcome this fear, this implicit class society that is in our hearts and our heads.

One activist and researcher working on this is Anat Shenker-Osorio. She has been researching the kind of messaging that can call out this fear generation and counter it. (Shenker-Osorio) The key is to find a positive message that explicitly counters the negative messages that generate fear. This is key. It is not enough to generate a positive message, to point to rational arguments and the truth - those do not work to counter the emotion, especially fear. It is more effective to call on the positive values that we all share, and to create a message that creates empathy in people. Call them to be their best, to join those of us who are united in a positive message.

The science behind storytelling can help as well. If you can get a listener or a reader to live for a few seconds or few minutes in the life of their fellow citizens, you generate a positive, supportive emotion that can help overcome their basic fear.

Sometimes a campaign phrase, a set of messages can be successful. In other cases, a technique called "deep canvassing" might be helpful, where the interviewer engages a person in a shared exploration of common values. You can read more about that technique here: Changing the Conversation Together.

Supplemental Bibliography

I have found all of the books and articles below very helpful. They are in alphabetical order by author. The three above are also listed here without further comment.

Banerjee, Abhijit V and Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times, 2019.
Two Nobel Prize economists, who won the award for their work on poverty. I cite this one here because of the extraordinary research they present on the positive impact of immigration. It is behavioral based, research driven, and factual analysis of the economic basis of poverty. The point is, we can conquer this beast - if we just put our minds to it and get our emotions out.

Barge, John, Before You Know It, 2017.
Remarkable summary of research that shows that MOST of what we do is driven by purely unconscious rumblings in our brain and gut. The good news is that he has also discovered what drives this in us - and possible ways to help us improve. For instance, there is some tendency to be conservative of progressive from our genetics, but it can be modified. The conservative among us are primary moved by FEAR. They found that if they have people spend a few minutes calmly thinking of their safety and awe and the like, they become more progressive in their views. NOW, how to get our world to have that dominant attribute?  HMMM? 
If you are more into oral communication, he has a fine Google lecture that   is worth your time: https://youtu.be/QWdDRVhhx8A 2018  30 minutes with Q/A after. 

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions are Made, 2018. See above for details.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, 2020.
Brilliant work. This is the latest neuroscience. Your brain is not for thinking. This is the same discussion as the prior book, but much shorter, skipping some of the research and arguments.

Bregman, Rutger Humankind: A Hopeful History, 2020.
This is one of the most uplifting and encouraging books I have ever read. We can do this. The only problem is that the author is Dutch - he does not share our distorted hierarchical view of society. Instead, he documents the best of us from around the world. Humankind is amazing - if we can unleash ourselves here, in what is still the richest nation on the planet, we can accomplish anything. 

Brooks, David, How to Destroy Truth, 7/1/2021, NY Times, I found this column by David Brooks to be a remarkable encapsulation of what I have been trying to say - done with a much better and more meaningful framework. If the above did not work, please look at his assessment of our emotional history as a nation, and his suggestion for how we can move it forward. I don't know if he is aware of the neuroscience behind this, and it really does not matter. We need a felt story about our history - one based on truth, not lies. One that truly reveals us to ourselves. See what you think. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opinion/patriotism-misinformation.html -------------------- In this column, You Are Not Who You Think You Are, 9/2/2021, David Brooks has as nice and comprehensive summary of this brain research as I have yet seen. He gets it. I highly recommend reading this one. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/opinion/brain-reality-imagination.html

Burton, Robert, On Being Certain, 2009. This is a nice summary of research and an interesting discussion. It seems that most of what our brain network is about is not conscious. We have a hidden layer, a kind of committee, controlling what gets to pop up in our consciousness. We have precious little control over that - so it is no wonder that we are mostly "non rational" beings.

English, Micah , Joshua Kalla, 4/26/2021, "Racial Equality Frames and Public Policy Support: Survey Experimental Evidence," This is a fine bit of research, pointing out that it is not helpful to frame discussions in terms of race or class in our society. If you want to persuade someone, you tell them that the benefit accrues to THEM. They are less receptive when the benefit is to a "lower" class , or even to the whole of society where the lower class might also benefit. https://osf.io/tdkf3/ If this it a little too dense for you, look at this article from Newsweek for a nice summary of the research. The author is being polemical to the liberal elite, but you get the point. https://www.newsweek.com/anti-racist-messaging-failing-voters-so-why-cant-liberals-quit-it-opinion-1589535

Haidt, Jonathan, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
I have learned a great deal from this author, about evolutionary psychology, about politics and ethics. He really helped me understand that we are primarily emotional beasts. He did it with psychological and sociological research - while Barrett is focused on neuroscience. Talk to the elephant, not the rider! Our human self is like an elephant - our emotions pull us here and there. Our brain is sitting up on top, and it thinks it is in charge. For more on that see:
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2017/08/jonathan-haidt-righteous-minds-update.html
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-are-those-idiots-from-other.html 

Harford, Tim, Facts v feelings: how to stop our emotions misleading us, 2020.09.10, This is a nice summary of a lot of this research, as related to misinformation about the Covid crisis, with references. I find this type of article useful as a kind of ad hominem argument, but they never reach to the fundamental causes in our brain's operation. I think until people grasp that we will just be working on the periphery of the problem, instead of the roots! Freud put our "subconscious" into popular thought - we need to get the idea into our popular culture that MOST of our decisions are made without any rational, conscious input. This is an extract from his book, which I have added to my reading list: How to Make the World Add Up. It looks interesting, but, once again, it is at the periphery of the real problem. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/10/facts-v-feelings-how-to-stop-emotions-misleading-us

Henrich, Joseph, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous,2020.
Another remarkable book. This one starts with the basic ideas of Diamond’s work, Guns Germs and Steel, and expands it in the context of European history. The dominance of the western European model does not have to do with superior human attributes, but rather accidents of climate, geography and history. Europe’s enlightenment, democracy and economic expansion came from a radical change in how we all view family, and relationships outside of family. It was hundreds of years in the making, with many players and forces. The insight is that this “world view” has tremendous power. The downside is that there does not appear to be a lot we can do to shape it or have it bend to our will for progress. For more on that:
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-weirdest-people-in-world-book.html

Hofstede, Geert, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind
This was the first book I read on this journey when we returned from a visit to Africa. I was so impressed that the people of East Africa had a totally different world view, that I went in search of some explanation. This book is based on research conducted in more than seventy countries over a forty-year span. He examines what drives people apart—when cooperation is so clearly in everyone’s interest. He studied IBM employees around the world, and found radically different world views. We have these implicit views that come from hundreds of years of history and events - and they do not easily change.  Originally, I was focused on why economic development around the world was so very different. It has to do with our world view - our implicit cultural perspective. I think that idea is still valid, but I now am not so sure we can actually do anything about it. For more on this than you probably ever want to read, see my blog entry:  https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2011/01/culture-and-developing-nations.html 

Isenberg, Nancy, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, I highly recommend this book. I studied a lot of history, and I never heard any of these stories. From the early Pilgrims and Jamestown, through all of the colonial leaders, fathers of our country, and most of our population had a very high sense of class and separation from the poor and common person. The author tells the stories of the prevailing view that the poor are less than, not capable. This is our history. It should come as no surprise that a large percentage of us still have that fundamental value framework. If India is burdened with a visible caste system, ours is no less powerful, and has as long a history.

Issenberg, Sasha, "Why the battle for gay marriage was won so easily," 06/04/2021, This is an interesting discussion of this rapid social and legal change. There is not much scientific research here, but it would appear that the reason this "flew under the radar" was primarily because no one felt really threatened by it, with the exception of some Roman Catholic hierarchy. It may be that this does not feel like a zero-sum game for the most part. That must not be true for abortion, curiously enough. Women's rights?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-battle-for-gay-marriage-was-won-so-easily/

Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2013.
This is one of the books that sent me down this rabbit hole of how humans think. Kahneman is a psychologist who won the Nobel prize in economics. His research on how humans make decisions provided the foundation for the field of behavioral economics. Most of our decisions are the “fast brain” - our gut call - our emotions, if you will. For more on that than you might want to read:
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2017/12/cognitive-science-and-mindfulness-and.html  For a very insightful interview with Kahneman, listen or read this one with Krista Tippet. He gets this - and he has a few suggestions - not great hope - but . . . https://onbeing.org/programs/daniel-kahneman-why-we-contradict-ourselves-and-confound-each-other/

Kelton, Stephanie - The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy 2021.
This is a solid introduction to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) by one of the pioneers. She and her associates believe that sovereign debt by a nation that controls its own currency, is always a good investment. It can be inflationary, but we can construct safeguards against that. Basically, our sovereign debt is owed to ourselves, and is almost without cost. At first glance you might think this author needs some serious mental health assistance, but when you get into the details, it makes perfect sense. She is one of the leading economists who have analyzed how national currencies actually work - and has destroyed the myth. You should also be aware that many prominent economists think that this is totally crazy. The point for putting it here is that we can afford to fix our racist past - and that effort can fund a prosperous future. To get a better handle on that, read my review, which you can find here, or:
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2021/03/book-review-and-celebration-deficit-myth.html 

Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist, 2019. Excellent, personalized account of overcoming his own racism, and how you can do the same thing. For a few more words on that topic, see: https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2020/07/how-to-be-antiracist-by-ibram-x-kendi.html 

Kirby, Kenton de, Beyond Thermostatic Response, 2020.06.23. This is a late addition to this reference list. I found this so unsettling that I had to include it, even though it does not actually support my argument. This article describes a theory of political response that seems founded on facts, given the research cited. But it is even more frightening than the one argued here. Basically the idea is that the prevailing opinion of the U.S. populace on any issue universally tends to move in the opposite direction of the discussion presented in public media. This piece is arguing that Donald Trump has pushed opinion to support action against global warming by his denial and efforts to undercut it. It is as though the general population are a thermostat - when things go too far in any direction, the middle seems to shift to support the other side. The murder of George Floyd was all over the media, and that was an extreme, which resulted in more support for Black Lives Matter. The problem is - how does one CHANGE public opinion enough to get legislators to agree to pass legislation, without going generating visibility in public media which might just have the middle to push back? I know politics is not rational, I just wish we had a better understanding of the mechanics.

Klein, Ezra, Why‌ ‌We're‌ ‌Polarized‌ 2020. A simple analysis of recent elections leads to the conclusion that most people vote based on their party identity - not on issues or the candidate's qualifications. The author explores the data that supports this view, and offers his own insights in what we can do about it.

Mason, Lilliana, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, (From Amazon Reviews) She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one other with distrust and to work for party victory over all else. Although the polarizing effects of social divisions have simplified our electoral choices and increased political engagement, they have not been a force that is, on balance, helpful for American democracy. Our social identities are shrinking in number, and growing in strength. You can also find this author discussing this topic in this podcast. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2019/07/29/yanss-133-how-political-conflict-became-a-battle-over-who-we-think-we-are-rather-than-reasoned-differences-of-opinion/

McGhee, Heather, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, 2021. See above. 

McRaney, David, YANSS 204 – "Why belief is not a conscious choice and certainty is a feeling, not a conclusion", Nice chat with the author of On Being Certain, Robert A. Burton, MD. He gets it - finally. Maybe we can actually all come to understand this at some point. Quote: That’s because the book posits that conclusions are not conscious choices and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are “sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason.” YANSS 204

Menakem, Resmaa, My Grandmother's Hands. This is an excellent book by a psychotherapist. He works with individuals and police departments to improve their "community relations". It is now well documented that our gut has a significant nervous system, that generates feelings and emotions that can easily overwhelm us. Most of our emotions and feelings are automatic responses to stimuli that are generated by this GUT nervous system. The author has developed some exercises that enable our various "bodies" to better manage our automatic responses.

Shenker-Osorio, Anat, Don't Buy It, This author has done research on the kind of messaging that works in our political world, to overcome the fear that is raised by those who call out our worst, implicit racist fears. She has also created some podcasts around how this type of messaging research has helped to move elections in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. This is not yet a highly refined science, but she is getting there. https://wordstowinby-pod.com/ See these podcasts in particular. All In Wisconsin: https://wordstowinby-pod.com/season-2-episode-1/ Greater Than Fear, Minnesota: https://wordstowinby-pod.com/greater-than-fear-minnesota/

Stiglitz, Joseph, People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, 2019. The author is an economics nobel prize winner. He explains the nuts and bolts of how our income and wealth disparity are destroying democracy and our prosperity. He presents the means we could use to grow our economy, and get us out of this mess of our own making. He also agrees with the Deficit Myth author - but he does not say that in this book. I think he is trying to avoid being seen as too far out for the agenda he is putting forward.  For a longer discussion, see this review. Or:
https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-people-power-and-profits.html 

Thaler, Richard, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, 2016. Thaler won the Nobel prize for economics in 2017 for being the inspiration behind Behavioral Economics. He applied Kahneman's research findings to economics to turn it into a science, instead of a quasi religious school of opinions. Turns out, humans are NOT rational. It is better to design things for the way we work rather than the way we think we work. I talked about this in connection with Kahneman's book, and in a piece on the World Bank: https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2017/03/world-bank-research-on-behavioral.html 

Wilkerson, Isabel, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, 2020.
See discussion above. 

Wilkerson, Isabel, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, 2011. Another fine work by this author. Again, 15 years of research, personal stories of people fleeing the persecution and terrorism of the South.