Our fair (biking) city

Cambridge was awarded Gold-Level Bicycle Friendly Community status by the League of American Bicyclists on Saturday, May 18. Just before the Cambridge Sweet Ride began in front of the Public Library, the Mayor was presented with the plaque, and we came to know that Cambridge is

• the 260th community in the country to receive Bike Friendly status
• the first city on the East Coast to receive Gold status.
• the second city east of the Mississippi (after Wisconsin).

The ride itself consisted of two parts, thoughtfully organized on either side of a bathroom break at the Public Library. The first part, called the “Sweet” Route took us to places in Central and Kendall Squares and thence to East Cambridge. The second part, called the “Savory” Route went to Harvard and Porter Squares, returning to the library via Julia Child’s house on Irving Street.

I had attended a small community ride in Somerville last week – one of the many events commemorating bike week – and expected this to be a similar one, but that wasn’t the case at all. By my conservative estimate there were easily about 400 cyclists, including some people from Somerville and the neighboring cities. While last week’s ride in Somerville required only a small police escort, Saturday needed a massive operation, with several policemen shepherding the traffic. This being Cambridge, the police were on bicycles, complete with blue blinking lights. During the ride, as we went along Beacon Street, someone joked, “On a Cambridge Sweet Ride, you have to be careful, if you take a right turn you’ll find yourself in Somerville.”

It was an easy-paced, orderly, 12-mile affair, and the most interesting part of it, for me, was too look at the sheer variety of cycles. Here, unlike in most other parts of the country, cycling is a recognized as a way of life, rather than the province of awesome lycra-clad physical specimens who push their own bodies to incredible levels of stamina. There were a few of those too, and they gamely adapted to the 7 mph average speed, merging into the throng of bicycles: There were mountain bikes, and hybrids, and beach cruisers, and cross bikes repurposed into single-speeds, and dirty extra-cycles still carrying the mud from past touring expeditions, and children on little bikes enthusiastically climbing up the sloping roads, and children in little carriers behind their parents, and there was even a “bakfiets” which a lady pedaled vigorously from start to finish while her little one looked out at the world.

Everywhere, people would stop and watch – they had no choice but to do so, as the group was so large. On the sweet route, the hip crowd sipping their weekend coffee and pastries on outside-chairs waved as we passed. In East Cambridge, a little brother took his littler sister’s arm and exclaimed, “Look! there are so many of them!!”. My favorite part of the ride was also its most unexpected. We were passing a non-descript parking lot containing USPS vehicles, and some delivery-men-and-women were out and about. They saw us, and began to wave, and clap, and then someone in a van had the bright idea to play rhythmic beats on their truck horns. Before we knew it, the entire USPS lot was a delirious and endearing cacophony of vehicle horns and claps.

Having done a few of these rides, I see some familiar faces now. We don’t know each other by name, but conversation comes easy. There are men and women from the ages of 20 to 75, doing different kinds of jobs, and living very different lives, having in common a simple love for the practical bicycling way of life. If you heard their conversations about fenders and bike art and do-it-yourself mud flaps refashioned from linoleums, you might think that they’re a bit crazy or even  tiresome. But, I like being in their midst; they’re my kind of people.

On discovering Chinua Achebe after his death

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

[W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming]

Six and half years ago, I wrote a post about reading Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. I had just finished the book, and had discovered that someone named Chinua Achebe had called Conrad a racist. My view – then, as now – remains that the Marlow, the narrator of The Heart of Darkness did come across as a laconic white traveler who regarded the natives as pathetic and subhuman animals. Thus, while it was quite clear that Marlow was a racist, I wasn’t sure whether the accusation is transferable to Conrad. One of the blog’s readers, Max,  explained in a comment that Achebe’s view was not based just on the isolated example of The Heart of Darkness, and recommended that I read some of Achebe’s works, particularly Home and Exile and Things Fall Apart.

From then on until the month of March 2013, I thought of The Heart of Darkness very rarely, once I think, while reading The Lord of the Flies. In March, however, as I drove into my apartment’s parking lot, news came over the radio that Chinua Achebe had died. I hadn’t heard the name in a long time, but fortunately remembered the context in which it had first come to my attention. In the ensuing interview, the radio host spoke with an African theater director about Achebe and, in particular, about Things Fall Apart. That was how, I came to know that  ”someone named Chinua Achebe” was a rather important figure in African literature, and that was how I came to pick up this remarkable and beautiful book.

Among the Ibo, the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten.

[Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart]

Set mostly in the tribal African village of Umofia, Things Fall Apart is the tragic story of Okonkwo – a mighty wrestler who has worked hard to build a life of prosperity and esteem. The story is set in motion when, in response to the judgment of the tribal Oracle (arbitrary as such human-endowed pseudo-dieties tend to be), Okonkwo joins some male villagers and kills a teenaged boy who had long considered him a father figure. Okonkwo’s life is riddled by guilt and frustration and begins to slowly unravel. In the commotion, ardor and music of a funeral ceremony, his gun fires by accident claiming the life of a young boy; he loses his place of prestige within his clan and is forced to go into exile in his mother’s village of Mbanta for seven years. These seven years coincide with the arrival in the two villages of British colonizers and evangelical Christian missionaries. One by one, either by the explicit design of the armed and modern colonizers, or by the clan’s suspicion of the religion of the white man, the society of Okonkwo and his forefathers is rent apart.

It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul – the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed.  He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled.

[Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart].

It is unfortunate that Things Fall Apart is not more well-known, for Achebe is a writer of surpassing brilliance. In a short span of two hundred pages, the reader lingers briefly but vividly on patriarchy, feminism, religion, culture, and race – never passing judgement but staring each one full in the face, before walking slowly back from the scene alone, eyes unblinking and bloodshot from a small  oasis of clarity in the vast desert of unknowing. Okonkwo is the novel’s African conscience, and we watch his life unfold while simultaneously experiencing the changing epoch through his eyes and his fierce, stubborn, chauvinistic heart. In so doing, we become aware that — underneath our differently colored skins, and behind our differently veneered civilizations, and below our variously fantastical gods — underneath all the variegated baggage that we have accumulated since we left our ancestral homes in Africa all those tens of thousands of years ago, we haven’t really changed very much at all.

Taxicab Proselytization

“You’ve driven me before.”

“Really?”

That was how it began, one of those chance conversations with a taxi driver who definitely had driven me to the airport before. Yes, Cambridge is small enough for that to happen. I remembered less of his face than the constant murmuring and  the distinctive style of driving that consisted of lurching forward, or to the left or  right, treating the vehicle less like a car than a primitive bludgeon poking at a mob closing in on all sides. Cab drivers often offer surprising information about the taxi business in Boston and Cambridge, and sometimes they talk about their lives outside the taxi, but this one took a strange turn.

“What did we talk about?”, said he.

“We didn’t talk much actually, There was a traffic jam that day on the pike”. It was true, and I remembered the lurching, the murmuring, the cursing.

“I usually talk about what I’m learning and studying.” He began.

“Well, what are you studying?” I became interested. Eager young cab drivers can, to your surprise, tune out the mind-numbing cacophony that is a Boston traffic jam, and talk enthusiastically about vocational courses they are taking in community colleges; their plans to attend university or to send their kids to one. They speak with feeling about living double lives, studying in the evening or night classes so that they and their families – often composed of hardworking immigrants – can have a more comfortable existence in a new country. But, this was not one of those conversations.

“I study the Bible. The world is changing. It’s not natural … weather like this in December? … but it’s all in the prophecy. Here, take this. It’s all in there.” he said, handing me a booklet. It was thin and orange, with a sketch of a beautiful young woman with a rapturous expression on her face. This was the November edition of The Watchtower, a periodical published by Jehovah’s Witness. Inside, there were articles which spoke of how one’s life will improve immeasurably, and how the meaning of life will become self-evident, if only one became a member of the church. None of us are rational all of the time, but our sense of rationality asserts itself in the presence of what we consider irrational. While leafing through the pages, I began instinctively fisking the articles; nearly every sentence appeared to justify itself not on logic or evidence but based solely on its occurrence in the Bible.

Growing up in a country like India that is simultaneously secular and religious,  one becomes aware of the tension between the political need to be secular and the citizens’ attraction to particular religions. For the most part, the country is peaceful when it comes to religious differences; religious customs and traditions stay within families, fortified by marriages within particular castes, pickling over the generations. The public space is dominated more by people’s concerns with opportunities for livelihood and the scourge of systemic corruption than with fighting for religious primacy. Politicians and mobsters, however, know this tension all too well, and the most cynical of them keep it carefully sheathed in their holster of tricks until the time is right, exploiting it when the opportunity presents itself. These are what led to the shameful and religious massacres related to Babri Masjid in 1992-93 or Godhra in 2002. At these times, many people abandoned the secular ideals of the country’s founders. Many of our comfortable living rooms – insulated from the pogroms and horrific deaths in Ayodhya or Gujarat – became venues for expressions of repressed religious exclusivism. Wives would listen to their husbands blithely pontificating over their umpteenth unproductive cup of tea with friends, and then their children would echo those pontifications the next day at lunch break.

My childhood years remained sheltered from religious or political strife as a result of the parents’ choice of the cities in which we lived in the period from 1978 through 1999. We were fortunate to be far away from the flashpoints, and religious diversity was a more or less normal fact of my life, as it is for many Indians. For a time, I attended a school run by Catholic missionaries near the town’s railway station – an area of working-class residents with a higher concentration of Christians and Muslims than one is likely to find in most of India. Thus, friends and teachers hailed from families that practiced rituals of different religions, and partaking in the customs and celebrations from outside the Hindu religion was natural; this illusion of normalcy became apparent only after the fact, when we moved to more homogenous communities.

For better or worse, though I believed in God as a child, I do not recall thinking too carefully about my particular religious identity, nor can I recall a single experience of being in the presence of overt evangelism by a Muslim or a Christian. When I was a little older, I remember visiting Bombay for exams; There, my father showed me the traces of burnt walls and destroyed houses – after-effects of the 1993 riots. Eventually, I would read about the heavy-handedness of the Shiv Sena in the name of the Marathi identity. To my surprise, many discussions in college revealed that classmates relished taking sides; some even proclaimed the legitimacy of religious rioting — a phenomenon that I now attribute more to the overheard conversations of their elders who sat in the aforementioned comfortable living rooms, than to independent thinking. For my part, I doubt that I was thinking independently either, but the specter of violent death associated with these riots poisoned my mind against religious jingoism. This did not have much to do with a logical or rational rejection of religiosity; that would come later.

In the United States, fortunately, religious strife has been largely absent for a long time. Evangelism abounds, but it is not too threatening. Peaceful conversions happen all the time, such as in weddings. This probably causes some friction within families, and at the political fringes, but in the most difficult of times, the country appears to be remarkably resilient to religious upheaval. Having never witnessed evangelism before, my first experience of it was quite educational – it happened when I was a graduate student and was living near a Mormon Church. Many of us remember being approached by two exceptionally well-dressed and equally well-mannered male members of the Mormon Church asking you politely if you were interested in a conversation about God. One eventually loses count of the leaflets received on casual strolls to the supermarket or to the subway station, pointing us to a nearby church and its free sessions. As a commuting cyclist in Cambridge, you sometimes return to your parked bicycle to find a granola bar perched on the saddle, and a discreet note with information about a nearby church. Bizarrely, even though Hindus do not have an obligation to evangelize, many students on US college campuses have been offered a free Bhagvadgita or Isopanishad by the Institute of Krishna Consciousness.

In this latest episode of proselytization, the fault was primarily mine. I had begun the conversation; the cab driver merely took the chance offered him. A prospective convert was in the back seat, and the medicine would have to be administered before Logan airport came into view. It became immediately clear what the intent of ensuing conversation was, but sitting in the car weaving through the tunnels of the Big Dig, I could not have guessed the method that would be employed to convince me of the omniscience of God and the plans He has for us: Arithmetic. It involved the calculator app on an iphone.

“See, Revelation tells us that a year is 360 days. Seven years is how much?”, and he began doing the multiplication on his phone.

I was slow on the uptake, and puzzled because I didn’t know where 360 or 7 came from, so before I could multiply, he was flashing “2520″ at me as we took the exit into Logan.

“Then we remove 607 years for Jerusalem”, said he, referring — as I later found out — to the year 607 BC when Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jerusalem was destroyed. The subtraction done, he pushed the phone backwards towards me, but then took it back and looked quizzically at the number 1913, wondering whether he had made a mistake.

“Oh,” he said suddenly, “and we add one for Jesus”. As far as I can tell, he was adjusting for the transition from BC to AD, but I could be wrong. Then, satisfied with the answer, he proudly displayed “1914″ to me, and asked triumphantly, “Do you know what happened in 1914?”

“Yes”, said I, intrigued and eager-to-please, “The First World War began?”. All those history lessons about Ferdinand and Sophie came back to me.

He gave me a strange look, and I couldn’t tell if he was irritated. But, we were at Terminal C already and I was not to  discover if my answer was correct or not. I hastily gave him the voucher, packed the Watchtower booklet into my laptop case, and went to the back of the car to retrieve my suitcase.

“Pay attention”, he said as he handed me the suitcase from the boot, “The prophecy says that the UN will destroy all the world’s religions and try to unite all the people of the world, and (paraphrased) that will be when God will act.”  I was, at this point, utterly bamboozled by the mention of the United Nations and its connection to Armageddon. I said something silly: “Alright. I’ll keep my eyes open,” and entered the terminal. Only afterward did I realize that, in my state of amazed puzzlement, I forgot to ask him when this world-changing event was supposed to take place.

Musings on Tolkien: Art, Myth and Religiosity

The books of J. R. R. Tolkien comprise one of my fondest literary experiences during the time I have spent outside India. I have come at the works in a sequence that the venerable professor would probably not approve of, reading first The Lord of the Rings, followed by The Hobbit, and now The Silmarillion. Over the years, I have often wondered why I love the books, and the movies and most of the art that derives from Tolkien’s works so much. I have often put this fascination down to a love of language of a certain musical kind, and an attraction to myth and story. Indeed, it is impossible not to admire JRRT’s dedication and artistic drive in creating multiple languages, landscapes and cultures to hold together a mythology of such intricate detail that it was never complete and was being refined to the very end of his life.

Many of us, especially readers of fiction, also identify with the attraction to story and myth. In the telling, Tolkien’s stories flow in the manner of tales handed down the ages, not so much in written form, but in the form of song and verse. This quality of his prose first became tangible to me when I was reading The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically the part in which the company journeys into Lothlorien after losing Gandalf to the Balrog of Morgoth. In my mind, that attraction of song-lore extends outward from the books and into derivative artwork, including the beautiful and distinctive styles of Alan Lee and John Howe, and the blockbuster movies that – some would hasten to point out – changed the book far too much. I do not mean to say that I like everything in the movies, but even with the ridiculously extended movie adaptation of The Hobbit, my fascination with the original work does not yet brook snobbery at the mercenary imagination of film-makers.

Now, as I read The Silmarillion, I become even more conscious of the incongruence of my fondness for Tolkien’s work. The professor was a devoutly religious man and the influence extends to the fictional world that he created, with  God (Illuvatar), the angelic powers (the Valar), and creation of Arda (Earth) as an expression of the music of Illuvatar. I don’t subscribe to any supernatural creationist view in real life, and am extremely uncomfortable in religious settings, or when asked to perform any religious activity [1]. Yet, I am enthralled by Tolkien’s descriptions of the creation of Arda, the music of the Valar, the discordant notes of Melkor. The only obvious explanation I have for this is that I compartmentalize Tolkien’s world as being distinct from reality, and that within it, these unscientific things not only make sense, but do so beautifully, musically, and bravely.

Embedded in these tales is Tolkien’s love for simplicity and goodness that most of us aspire to. What exactly constitutes simplicity and goodness is admittedly a tough question, but it is fair to say that we find those ideals more difficult to attain in our technologically augmented world. There seems to be in Tolkien’s work, a component of the moral fable, such as that found in Aesop’s stories or The Panchtantra [1]. And like the great religious epics of Europe and Asia, there is a more or less clear demarkation of good and evil, instances in which good turns to evil, and few (if any) cases in which an evil entity redeems itself; In day-to-day existence, I am quick to repudiate such a black-and-white characterization of human personality and human activity. Yet inside the pages of the Silmarillion, compartmentalization happens effortlessly as I read – sometimes aloud as if I am reciting the words to someone else – of the doom of the Elves and the proliferating darkness of Morgoth and his hordes.

——-

[1] I recall reading that Tolkien did not consider The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit as moralistic fables, so he would not have liked the above characterization, despite the parallels with the other myths of our time. He was creating an alternative world, as consistently and meticulously as he could and that, it appears, may have been more important to him than any allegorical interpretations.

On Translation

“I believe that serious professional translators, often in private, think of themselves—forgive me, I mean ourselves—as writers, no matter what else may cross our minds when we ponder the work we do, and I also believe we are correct to do so. Is this sheer presumption, a heady kind of immodesty on our part? What exactly do we literary translators do to justify the notion that the term “writer” actually applies to us? Aren’t we simply the humble, anonymous handmaids-and-men of literature, the grateful, ever-obsequious servants of the publishing industry? In the most resounding yet decorous terms I can muster, the answer is no, for the most fundamental description of what translators do is that we write—or perhaps rewrite—in language B a work of literature originally composed in language A, hoping that readers of the [translation] will perceive the text, emotionally and artistically, in a manner that parallels and corresponds to the esthetic experience of its first readers. This is the translator’s grand ambition.”

[Edith Grossman, Why Translation Matters.]

Grossman has translated – among other books – two incredible novels that I read in English and would probably never have encountered if not for laborious and generally unheralded profession of translation: Love in the Time of Cholera, and Of Love and Other Demons.

The full introductory chapter of the book, Why Translation Matters is available at  Words Without Borders.

Questions concerning the right to bear arms

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, many took to print, online, and social media to give expression to our collective outrage, our sadness and our specific frustrations. Those in favor of gun control wondered how many shootings it would take until the political establishment has had enough of their inaction. Those saddened by the limitations of mental healthcare drew attention to this difficult condition. After the appropriate length of honorable silence, some people came out in support of the Second Amendment. All of these views are understandable when taken in the context of the deepest concerns of the people making them. Then, in what seems to be a bizarre hypothesis, the National Rifle Association (NRA) proposed that schools would have been safer, had more of the school personnel been trained in the use of — and equipped with — firearms.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution (1791) is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The intent of the Amendment is to empower citizens to organize against a tyrannical government, or an invading power, or to  combat crime or enforce law. The Amendment is held in high regard by many, especially those who espouse political libertarianism, especially by those who do it loudly [1]. While there are arguments to be made on both sides, the adversarial nature of debate in today’s media coverage makes it difficult for people to oppose the Second Amendment in a nuanced way because they are immediately put in the embarrassing situation of being against the Constitution, against the Founding Fathers, against personal liberty and right to property, and therefore against the country. In this environment, many reasonable objections to the Second Amendment do not get expressed. In particular, the question is rarely framed in the following way: Given that increased gun ownership demonstrably increases the likelihood of the tragic death of innocents, and given that increased gun control demonstrably reduces personal liberty, might it be reasonable to at least consider giving up some personal liberty to reduce some tragic deaths? And as a corollary, at how many such tragic deaths do we draw the line?

I often wonder how much of the support for the Second Amendment comes, not from conscious thought but from our penchant for blindly adhering to powerful documents about which we have become thoroughly indoctrinated. Perhaps, it is not entirely oversimplified in this case to draw a parallel between biblical literalism and  Constitutional literalism. In some parts of the US, notably some of the Southern states, these two go hand in hand. In other parts, notably among groups enthralled by libertarian ideology, there appears to be no shortage of those who will abandon the first, only to substitute it with the second. If we are not to accept the Second Amendment just because it happens to be a part of a document that outlines one of the great ideas in human history – the idea of a government of, for and by the people, or for those swayed by nationalist rhetoric, the idea of the greatest nation on earth  - then how do we rationalize its inclusion in the Constitution?

It is natural to assume that the framers of the Second Amendment were influenced by the social, cultural, military and political climate of the late 18th century. The framers of the Constitution looked upon a country that had forged its independence at the cost of many lives, against what they perceived as unjust constraints imposed by England. These same men participated in, and even perpetuated, a social setup in which slavery was normal and acceptable, and in which it was normal to think that women were inferior to men. It was not unheard of in those days, to settle individual disputes over money, property and love interests by means of a duel in which two men attempted to kill one another, often with guns. Therefore, while acknowledging that these people and those who followed in their steps had a great vision for this new country — a vision of personal liberty, limited government, freedom of expression, and the right to own property — is it so difficult to accept that they were limited by the zeitgeist? Is it so difficult to accept that we live in a world that they could scarcely have imagined? Why then, do supporters of gun ownership parrot the Second Amendment without pausing to think about the consequences of the ease of obtaining firearms in the twenty-first century, or even the merest possibility of updating Constitutional dictates that are over two centuries old?

It is an inescapable conclusion that any argument that legitimately questions the continued existence of the Second Amendment, questions by association the existence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the power exercised by its euphemistically named lobbying arm, the Institute for Legal Action. I did not write this post trying to fish for those arguments, but to express and clarify (even to myself) two broad questions that arose in my mind about the right to bear arms. The first dealt with the relevance of the Second Amendment in our historical epoch, and was expressed above. The second deals with the practical argument that the presence of guns in the hands of the right people “levels the playing field” and by doing so, reduces the likelihood of violent crime.

This argument certainly has some logical merit: An emotionally disturbed or deranged  individual wielding a firearm would be killed or incapacitated before he or she has had the chance to inflict a large number of casualties. An old shopkeeper in an unsafe part of town would be spared misbehavior, assault and theft by young hoodlums if they knew that she kept a gun handy. It seems to make sense. However, it is possible to carry that argument too far. Imagine the scenario that the NRA or its supporters propose, in which more people in the school administration, e.g., janitors, some teachers, some newly stationed armed guards,  have access to guns. This is, without exaggeration, a society where guns are more normal everyday things, and many people that you see or interact with on a day-to-day basis possess a firearm on their person. By construction, this levels the playing field, and will most likely mitigate catastrophic loss of life in tragedies like Columbine and Sandy Hook.

The next question to ask is whether this makes for a stable and healthy society. It is possible to ask this question as a social scientist, which I am not. It is also possible to consider this as an instance of a zero-sum game between a person likely to attack others without provocation (call this person an adversary), and a person able to defend himself or others from the adversary (call this person a protector). Then, we have 4 possibilities: If both the protector and the adversary are unarmed, then we have a safe outcome. If the adversary is armed, but the protector is not, then we have a catastrophic situation. If the protector is armed but the adversary is not, then we again have a safe outcome. If the protector and the adversary are both armed, then we have controlled damage and fewer casualties. Then, it is strictly advantageous for the protector to be armed, and I suspect that this is the reasoning (if any) behind the NRA’s proposal, and behind the pronouncement of gun advocates. This creates a situation that we often encounter in the case of a different game-theoretic formulation, the popular Pascal’s Wager [2]: A solution is justified without examining whether the underlying model is correct.

The problem here is indeed in the assumptions of the above game theory problem. In the abstractions for mathematical tractability, it is assumed that both parties – the adversary and the protector – are aware of all possible outcomes, and they are perfectly rational when the experiment is conducted. Now, it is obvious that, an emotionally disturbed person is far from rational and this would appear to buttress the argument for gun ownership. But, it is also obvious that the protector, in the real world, may also occasionally become irrational and erratic, or be surrounded by people who are so. This being the case, it is only reasonable to have a process in place that can distinguish prospective adversaries from prospective protectors, as reliably as possible. It would also be reasonable to provide firearms only to those people who can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that they are prospective protectors and not prospective adversaries. It would further be reasonable to place and enforce rules on the storage of the firearm, so that it does not fall into unintended hands, such as those of a little child who may accidentally set it off, or a disturbed adolescent who may steal it with terrible consequences. It would further be reasonable to place limits on the type and number of firearms that an individual can possess. It would perhaps – though I have to admit that this is problematic territory – be reasonable to ask people to regularly confirm their emotional well-being as they age, so that today’s protector does not become tomorrow’s adversary.

Thus, at first glance, the game-theoretic interpretation suggests that more guns in the hands of more people makes for a safer world. But, on even a slightly closer look, practical reality as distinct from mathematical abstraction suggests that access to guns should be carefully controlled. There are other assumptions that are routinely shoved under the rug: In addition to perfect rationality, many models assume that the two players are equally skilled, fully informed, have a weapon of the same potency, and act at the same time (thereby modeling the surprise element out of existence). [3]

I haven’t even considered the question of whether people would prefer to live in such a culture of guns. This is a matter for social surveys, and is a heavily culture-dependent issue. In such surveys, many — including myself — would say “No. I would not want to live in a world where so many people are armed. I’d rather live in a humane society where guns are unnecessary.” To which, many others would legitimately retort that this view is utopian. But couldn’t we agree that, at the very least, gun ownership laws in this country need to be tightened significantly and enforced properly [4], and that victims of gun tragedies should have at least as much leverage in determining the course of gun ownership as the vested interests of a powerful gun lobby?

[Note: If you want to comment or point out flaws in the reasoning of the author or other commenters, please do so below in a civil manner. Inflammatory comments and ad hominem attacks will be summarily deleted.]

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[1] Penn and Teller produce a thoroughly entertaining, humorous and informative program called “Bullshit!” in which they tackle issues ranging from religion to pseudoscience to alternative medicine. Unfortunately, in the case of their segment on gun control, it becomes apparent that they are not immune to synthesizing (or at least propagating somebody else’s) bullshit.

[2] Pascal’s Wager is in essence this: If you believe in God and He exists, you are saved. If you believe in God and He does not exist, you wasted your time but no harm done. If you don’t believe in God and He does not exist, no harm done. If you don’t believe in God, and He exists, then you will face eternity in Hell. Thus, your dominant strategy is to believe in God whether He exists or not. Some form of this argument is often used to justify belief in God, without considering that it is applicable only to the model of a petty, vengeful God, and without considering the relative scientific merits of belief and disbelief.

[3] Robert Taylor’s paper on a game-theoretic formulation of gun control and its policy implications, includes a more detailed game between an attacker and a victim than the one mentioned in this post. The extra detail is introduced by incorporating the possibility that attacker and victim may have different costs in procuring, learning, and using the firearm. It reaches the conclusion that gun control could reduce social welfare, which is a disturbing thought until it becomes clear that Taylor does not consider the consequences of the assumption that attacker and victim act simultaneously. This has been pointed out in an article by Rich Lafferty.

[4] The question of how this should be done is beyond my expertise. However, it is being hotly debated in the news media these days. My intent was to ascertain (as much for myself as for any reader) broadly whether gun control is logically reasonable. It seems that even the basic reasons covered above are not being talked about, and they did not seem obvious to me.

The Belmont Syndrome

On a recent business trip to Baltimore, I found myself unable to socialize with the other meeting attendees. These were people far more experienced than I at technology standardization, who seemed comfortable within the established cliques that are a fact of life at recurring meetings like these, who didn’t seem that interested in carrying out a conversation with me. Partially intimidated by my ignorance of the myriad intricacies of motions and ballots and voting rights and partially put off by their cliqueishness, I spent most of my meal-times alone with a copy of John Kenneth Galbraith‘s A Short History of Financial Euphoria, having failing to read it once before.

On the second reading, I was sustained by a growing interest in investing, which provided me with enough motivation to read about the phenomenon of market bubbles which constitute the primary subject matter of this book. In the short space of about a hundred pages, Galbraith treats the most important market bubbles in history, beginning with Tulipomania of the 17th century and ending with the stock market crash of 1987. It is a cautionary essay written for the general public and until the very end, it remains remarkably lucid, free of jargon, and punctuated by the writer’s mature, benevolent wit. It is the sort of writing that I quietly admired in the books of Bertrand Russell.

Because the book is so clear, it’s message can be easily distilled though Galbraith admits, it is hard to internalize. Firstly, financial instruments do not lend themselves to true innovation. As a consequence, each supposedly new financial innovation happens to be — at its root — a different method of leveraging debt. The public at large seems to have a short financial memory of a few decades at most, and when painful recollections of previous bubbles have faded, it becomes comfortable with incurring the risks of very high leverage, setting the next bubble into motion. For each successive bubble, Galbraith elaborates on which “new” financial innovation set the bubble in motion, how the bubble was sustained, who were the supposed financial geniuses of the era, how the bubble burst, who became the scapegoats, and how the question of what caused the public to speculate was repeatedly ignored. It is quite the eye-opener and I recommend it highly.

Having liked this book, I searched for other written work by Galbraith and interviews he gave at various points in a long and productive life in politics and academia. Preliminary exploration turned up this funny and insightful remark —proximately about the state of economics research, but applicable to other spheres of our lives as well — made in a 1986 interview with an unbelievably young Harry Kreisler:

… I do think that the last 20 years have brought a strong shift back to what I’ve called the “esoteric aspects” of economics — to mathematical expressions in economics, econometric niceties, and a tendency to leave the real world alone. It’s something that in Cambridge we call the “Belmont Syndrome.” Belmont is an extremely comfortable suburb adjoining Cambridge, and the “Belmont Syndrome” is a desire to move from a peaceful, happy life in Belmont to a peaceful, happy life at Harvard, from life to computer and back again, without any disturbance from Ronald Reagan.

[Conversations with History Archives.]