For the last several days, social media has been raging with discussions about race and law enforcement. I’ve felt an impulse to jump in with one insight or another in response. But I’ve refrained. Emotions are fraught and even if my insights are rationally defensible, they will do no good. I have at least enough social intelligence to recognize that the debates are at least as much about what people are feeling as they are about the intellectual merit of the ideas being expressed. It took a little longer for me to recognize that my urge to participate was born of emotion as well. There are others with much greater emotional needs relative to the events of the day, and my explorations of interesting angles to the stated arguments would not be helpful.

So, I decided to scratch my itch with this blog post. As a younger man, I considered myself oh-so-rational.  You know the type. The kind of adolescent white boy who reads “the Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged” and nods approvingly at how vigorously rational Ayn Rand’s ideas are. But, really, the appeal to a kid like I was is very emotional. The very special protagonist is being held down by silly social constructs that won’t let him thrive or enjoy the recognition he so richly deserves. So he takes his toys and goes home, making everyone cry. It’s a revenge fantasy. It’s the little kid threatening to run away because “then everyone will be sorry.” But it’s dressed up as a sort of philosophical musing. For a kid like me, it captured my emotion and then let me pretend I was merely being coldly rational when I found some appeal in the ideas.

I say that not to trash my younger self or even, really, Ayn Rand. (All right, so I take a little pleasure in the gratuitous hit on Rand — but I try to be kind when I think of younger me.) I say that as an example of how our minds encourage us to disregard the emotional man behind the curtain. Advertisers know that it’s not the words that matter, it’s the feeling that counts.

See, for example, this explanation in a post about brain science and marketing:

The reptilian brain first wants to know if the thing is threatening or desirable (edible, sexually attractive). It ascertains this from what it can see, smell, taste and touch, not what it can deduct by rational means. All these evaluations occur without recourse to the rational mind.

The limbic brain then responds emotionally and asks, “Is this my friend? Can I put my trust here?” . . . Finally, when most of this is sorted out, the rational brain creates a story to make sense of it all. How memorable that story will be is also set within the limbic system, by the amygdala, where the emotional impact of an experience determines its memorability.

We often mistakenly think the rational brain’s story or the person’s stated argument is the primary focus of the discussion. But, often enough, it’s just the container for the emotional content — merely a bottle for the wine within.

When you’re negotiating or having a discussion with someone, you should always be on the lookout for pretext. When there is a pretext involved, meeting the person’s stated needs will never be entirely satisfactory — because there is an unstated need that has to be addressed. That’s essentially what is at work when you ignore the emotional context of a discussion. If someone makes a statement or an argument online (or anywhere else, really) that’s prompted because they are angry or sad, you can’t engage with them productively unless you consider the emotional background of the statement. It’s maybe easier to see with kids. How many times have you seen a kid who is unmanageable because he or she is tired? The stated reason for their unhappiness is only rarely, “I need to be put to bed!”

And it’s not like everyone else is an emotional basket case while, somehow, you are the only intellectual adult in the room. You have your man behind the curtain, deep in your lizard brain, affecting your rationality. You’re never going to stop that, but you can mitigate its effects to some degree by being mindful of the dynamic.

It’s not necessarily your job to be some Internet stranger’s caretaker, but when you go online and see someone holding forth about how some person or group or thing sucks, you’re not necessarily going to get very far by patiently explaining the ways in which that person or group or thing does not, in fact, suck. If you care to do so, you’ll probably have a more productive conversation by recognizing “hey, this person is angry — I need to grapple with the anger in some fashion before we’ll be able to move forward.” But, you’re not a Vulcan. That’s a lot of work and frequently not worth the effort. Sometimes it’s a lot more emotionally entertaining to get into a fight.

It seems that Advance Indiana blogger, Gary Welsh has passed. The IMPD is investigating it as a suicide. I did not hate him nor did I love what he did. But I had a certain affinity for him simply because he had been blogging so long. He was certainly prolific and enduring. I’m not sure, however, that I detected joy in his work. Much of what he wrote struck me as hateful or paranoid, but I could never quite bring myself to remove Advance Indiana from my feed reader because some of what he wrote was insightful and showed energetic investigation. At times, I felt like I was reading posts from two different people. So, in the blogosphere, I kept reading what he wrote, but generally gave him a wide berth. If nothing else, I respect his tenacity and output.

Obviously I had mixed feelings about the man. I hope he has found peace. For what it’s worth, my favorite thing that he and Advance Indiana did was a piece he did in 2010 with Carl Moldthan on Mitch Roob and privatization at the FSSA.

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, also known as the bike-shed effect, posits that members of an organization will give disproportionate attention to trivial issues. There will be a lively discussion on those issues where there aren’t significant barriers to entry in terms of technical expertise you must have to hold your own and, preferably, where there cannot be definitively right or wrong answers. So, in Parkinson’s case, “a committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spent the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike-shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important but also a far more difficult and complex task.”

I was put in mind of this “law” while seeing social media light up about whether Cam Newton was unduly petulant after his Super Bowl loss or whether, instead, he is being unfairly scrutinized due to his race. Or whether the half-time show was ruined a lot or only just a little by Coldplay’s participation.

You can even see it here where it’s been a week or more since I posted about a bill even though we’re in the middle of a legislative session. The trivial is just easier and more entertaining to talk about even though there a lot of important things that concerned citizens ought to be spending their time on.

I date the beginning of this blog from November 15, 2004. Prior to that, I had been holding forth on national politics on, I think, a blogspot platform. After the November 2004 elections, I felt like there were plenty of people offering opinions on national issues. My first post was an ode to a young dog of mine I had to put to sleep because of a cancerous tumor on her liver. A couple of weeks later, I started reporting on state issues and was off and running from there.

My productivity has ebbed and flowed over the years — probably as a mirror of my productivity out in the real world. My favorite time to blog is probably the beginning of the legislative session when none of the introduced bills have yet been filtered by the legislative process. These bills are easy to digest, frequently entertaining, and generally come at a time when I have a lot of energy. Later on in the session, the important bills get technical and complicated, things move fast, and my energy level is down. In any event, my best work has to do with reading and writing about the bills during the legislative session. The rest is often filler. The summers and falls feature fewer entries, less focus, less objectivity, and more off hand opinion. Over the years, as I’ve mentioned before, other social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook have scratched the blogging itch in a way that has decreased postings here.

The state blogosphere was pretty sparse when I started. The Indiana Law Blog and Advance Indiana are probably the only blogs I followed then that are still around today. Lots of bloggers have come and gone during that period. A decade is an eternity in Internet time. But there is one blogger in particular I want to mention: I particularly mourn the passing of Doghouse Riley during that period. Once he got going, his writing was like an avalanche falling down a mountain onto the target of his wrath. It was a thing of beauty.

My tenure has been marked by relatively little wrath; more of a nerdy interest in the political. Low key sarcasm and mockery is more my style. Maybe it’s a Gen-X thing. Probably the issue I followed the most extensively and gained me the most readership was Daylight Saving Time. Back in December 2004, I didn’t even know how to say it right, referring to “Daylight Savings Time”

This has been the basic problem with daylight savings time legislation in the past. The state splits about 50/50 as to whether to have it or not. Most folks who think about it have a fairly strong opinion one way or the other. The folks who are in favor of it are divided between Eastern time and Central time, so they have been losing the fight for decades. Now, we have one party rule and a governor who apparently thinks it’s a good idea, so maybe it has a chance.

Guess it did have a chance.

If I had to pick a favorite blog post over the years, it would probably be “Chrysler and the Indiana Bankruptcy.” It had a lot of things going for it I liked. I was jousting with some fellow bloggers; I did some reasonably thorough legal analysis; the complexity of the underlying subject matter lent itself to specious, disingenuous, and self-serving characterizations in other places; I was skeptical of Richard Mourdock before it was cool; I’ve had cause to reuse the original piece over-and-over again.

Over the years, I’ve noticed an affinity for certain broad topics – health care, education, religion, privatization, nostalgia for the “good old days,” and the nature of labor. But also a focus on certain narrower matters: daylight saving times, license plates, and the Toll Road for example. But there has been absolutely no plan. From time to time, people ask me why or how I do this. It’s simply a matter that I enjoy writing. I enjoy reading. I enjoy holding forth on topics of interest. And, so I do what I enjoy doing. When I feel like writing, I do it. When I don’t feel like writing or don’t feel like I have the time. I let it go. While I could probably have greater readership and have produced better things over the years if I had a less whimsical approach to this, I probably would have burned out years ago.

The experience has been almost entirely positive. I have met a good number of great people through this blog, and become closer to others. I hesitate to mention anyone in particular for fear of excluding the others, but just as an example, “HoosierOne” has become a dear friend of the family, welcome at family dinners, and a great favorite of my kids.

At times, this blog has felt like a public space with remarkable discourse among the readers. Certainly I have learned a great deal from others at those times. Other times, particularly when one of the dedicated trolls has taken an interest in my blog, the discourse has devolved into something less valuable. But that’s the Internet for you.

So, I’ll keep mashing away at the keyboard from time to time and hope something more or less readable comes out. Thanks for reading.

I have just been informed by a reliable source that Doghouse Riley, blogging at Bats Left/Throws Right has passed away. Doghouse was, of course, a nom de blog. I don’t know that I’m at liberty to unmask him, so I won’t. (Edited to add: As reflected in the comments, Mrs. Doghouse has given permission to let it be known that James Briggs Stratton “Doghouse” Riley had a given name of Doug Case, and his obituary can be found here.)

However, my deepest sympathies go out to his “Poor Wife” (as he consistently called her.) I always got a kick out of his consistently referring to me as “brave Hoosier blogger Doug Masson” and will sincerely miss having Doghouse refer to me in such a way.

But, most of all, I will miss his writing. He was firey and more passionate in his beliefs than I probably will ever be. He had a gift for language to which I can only aspire. And, with his departure, we have become less than we once were.

Rest in Peace, Doghouse.

The Indiana Law Blog flagged a column by Margaret Sullivan posing the question of “who is a journalist?” Sullivan notes the blurring of lines between journalists, columnists, and bloggers. It used to be that freedom of the press was for someone wealthy enough to own a press. Now everyone owns a press. One reason it matters, according to Sullivan, who is and is not a journalist:

There is a strong legal component to this discussion: Who will be covered by a federal shield law that would give legal protection to journalists who have promised confidentiality to their sources, if it ever comes to pass? Will it cover only established news organizations or those who get paid for news gathering? Or does it cover everyone with a Facebook page?

I’m not a journalist. Sometimes, arguably, I report news. More often, my blog is the functional equivalent of an opinion column. In any event, I’m a citizen who likes to talk about the issues of the day. That’s my privilege and, frankly, I regard it as something of a duty as well. But, I’m not a great fan of media shield laws. I don’t think we should be making a distinction about the sorts of expression that is and isn’t protected based on one’s profession. A citizen afflicting the comfortable with the truth would, in a perfect world, be afforded some protection from the blowback regardless of whether he or she is getting paid for it. But I don’t see why the likes of Judith Miller should be afforded more protection than the rest of us.

Sullivan goes on to discuss the notion of professional respect afforded individuals doing their work in an established newspaper being different than that afforded, say, bloggers. I think that has less to do with the proper definition of “journalist,” and more to do with whether the people doling out the respect in question are credible arbiters of respectability.

I kind of spaced the anniversary, but it occurs to me that my humble blog has crossed the eight year mark. Reviewing those early entries, it occurs to me that I have only a dim memory of the beginning. I had sort of noodled around with a blogger site, mainly bellyaching about national politics. About the time of the 2004 election, I was disappointed and took a break from politics and really national news in general. My first entry was a memorial to my dog who passed away just after the 2004 election. Then it was dribs and drabs for a couple of weeks as I figured out the Movable Type platform I used for awhile.

It doesn’t look like I found my niche until the second week of December, 2004, when I started blogging about state government generally and the legislative session specifically.

I know the quality and the quantity of my work has ebbed and flowed with my interest level and available time. The community of people with whom my hobby has brought me into contact has been unbelievably rewarding. There really are a lot of smart, interesting folks out there. So, I’ll keep on plugging along. Because it’s fun.

Sometimes the Indiana blogosphere seems way too lethargic. Maybe I’m just not reading the write right blogs. But, in any case, here I am like a schoolyard gawker yelling “fight! fight!” Mark Small of Civil Discourse Now wrote a blog post entitled Yes, Paul Ogden, the “tea party” played a big part in Romney’s loss. This is a response to Ogden’s post entitled the Future of the Tea Party Movement.

In a lot of ways, the Tea Party has been to political observers as words were to Humpty Dumpty.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’?” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’?”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

Small does a good job of describing the Tea Party as it was observed in the wild. I think Ogden’s concept of the Tea Party is more of a vision he’d see in Plato’s cave.

Sheila Kennedy has a post entitled, “Today’s Coffee House?” She mentions the contributions to the Enlightenment of the coffee house.

An interesting observation was that the Enlightenment was a product of the coffee house. According to the author, the practice of gathering in coffee houses and exchanging points of view–debating, discussing, considering alternatives–sparked the development of new philosophies, new ways of engaging reality. That diversity of perspective is also what makes cities important generators of new ideas, new inventions–as the author points out, the density of urban life also requires that we encounter people with different ideas, backgrounds and points of view, and it is that “bubbling cauldron” that incubates progress.

I got my sense of the 17th century coffee house from Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle where a fair amount of the Enlightenment activity in that story was taking place in London coffee houses. These were places where smart people, aided no doubt by a bit of a caffeine jolt, could go and spread news, discuss the events of the day, and debate new ideas.

Places on the Internet no doubt serve as modern day analogs to those Enlightenment-era coffee houses. But, they are perhaps diluted and, it’s likely that the quality of discussion in those coffee houses of old has grown in the telling. Still, I am on the lookout for quality Internet “coffee houses.” One that, in the early days of the Internet, pretty well fit the bill was The Well. That place was a fountainhead of Internet thinking and culture. I’m a participant there, and it still has as good of discussion as any place else I’ve found on the Internet, but to hear the old timers tell it (and there is some objective evidence as well) it is a shadow of its former glory.

I’ve tried, with very limited success, to make this blog a third place for the discussion of current events and new ideas (with a heavy emphasis on Indiana politics.) I just noted a discussion the other day on my Facebook wall that involved some acquaintances of mine who are a) very smart; and b) had differences of opinion on a particular issue. So, that’s another “place” that sort of qualifies. In order to have quality debate, it’s counterproductive to have the debate consist of creative ways of saying “me too.” (“Megadittos Rush!”) Though, I think those old time coffee houses were, themselves, given to factionalism. Loyalists of one political party, for example, preferring one coffee house to another.

Even beyond the coffee houses, I find it interesting that great historical and cultural advances came out of population centers that we would consider too small to make much of a cultural impact today. Golden Age Athens had only a couple hundred thousand people, I think. So, I wonder what it was about those places, times, and people that led to a cultural flowering with resources we’d consider fairly limited today.

But, on a more practical level, if anyone knows of “virtual coffee houses” that are interesting and valuable, I’d love to know about them.

As the weather gets nicer, I find that I care less about Internet stuff. Maybe it’s the cognitive dissonance between the online world of ZOMG the world is in an existential crisis, everything sucks on the one hand and my immediate circumstances being quite pleasant on the other.

Maybe once the existential crises come spilling out from the Internet and into my real world I’ll be singing a different tune.