Most Americans agree that racial discrimination has been, and remains, a big problem. But that is where the agreement ends.
26 July 2020
Aeon: Nostalgia reimagined
With these clarifications in mind, let’s re-evaluate the tripartite view of nostalgia, beginning with its cognitive component. According to this view, nostalgia involves autobiographical memories of one’s homeland, suggesting that the object of one’s nostalgic states must be a place. However, research shows that by ‘homeland’ people often mean something else: childhood experiences, long-gone friends, foods, costumes, etc. Indeed, the multifarious nature of nostalgia’s objects was first systematically studied in 1995 by the American psychologist Krystine Batcho. She documented 648 participants’ nostalgic events, and found that, while they often reported feeling nostalgic about places, they also felt so about nonspatial items: loved ones, the feeling of ‘not having to worry’, holidays, or simply ‘the way people were’. Similarly, in 2006, the psychologist Tim Wildschut and his colleagues at the University of Southampton coded the content of 42 autobiographical narratives from Nostalgia magazine, as well as dozens of narratives from undergraduates, and found that a large proportion were about things other than locations. This variability holds across cultures too, as evidenced by the work of Erica Hepper and her international team who in 2014 studied 1,704 students from 18 countries and found that they frequently experienced nostalgia about things other than past events or places, including social relationships, memorabilia or childhood. These results suggest that mental states associated with nostalgia needn’t be memories of specific locations nor of specific autobiographical events. [...]
Although memory and imagination are usually thought of as different, a number of critical findings in the past three decades have challenged this view. In 1985, the psychologist Endel Tulving in Toronto observed that his amnesic patient ‘N N’ not only had difficulty remembering his past: he also had trouble imagining possible future events. This led Tulving to suggest that remembering the past and imagining the future were two processes of a single system for mental time-travel. Further support for this hypothesis came in the early 2000s, as a number of scientific studies confirmed that both remembering the past and imagining the future engage the brain’s so-called ‘default network’. But in the past decade, it has become clear that the brain’s default network supports mental simulations of other hypothetical events too, such as episodes that could have occurred in one’s past but didn’t, atemporal routine activities (eg, brushing teeth), mind-wandering, spatial navigation, imagining other people’s thoughts (mentalising) and narrative comprehension, among others. As a result, researchers now think that what unifies this common neural network isn’t just mental time-travel, but rather a more general kind of psychological process characterised by being self-relevant, socially significant and episodically, dynamically imaginative. My suggestion is that the kinds of nonautobiographical cognitive contents associated with nostalgic states are instances of this broader category of imaginations. [...]
But what about all these negatively valenced symptoms – the sadness, the depression – associated with nostalgia? Aren’t they also effects of nostalgia? My sense is that physicians of old got the order of causation backwards: nostalgia doesn’t cause negative affect but, rather, is caused by negative affect. Evidence for this claim comes from a number of recent studies showing that people are more likely to feel nostalgia when they are experiencing negative affect. Specifically, it has been documented that certain negative experiences tend to trigger nostalgia, including loneliness, loss of social connections, sense of meaninglessness, boredom, even cold temperatures. This doesn’t mean that nostalgia is triggered only by negative experiences, but it does suggest that the negative affect can often be a cause, rather than an effect, of nostalgia. [...]
A more tractable version of this second reading was championed by Charles Zwingmann’s medical analysis of nostalgia in 1960, according to which what the subject wants is for gratifying features from past experiences to be reinstated in the present, presumably because the current situation lacks them. Although a person might feel nostalgia about a childhood friendship, her longing would actually be satisfied not by travelling back in time but by improving her current relationships. There are two advantages to this approach. First, it helps to understand nostalgia’s particular instantiation of Gorgias’ paradox: the nostalgic individual wrongly attributes the desirable features of the object to an unrecoverable event, when in reality those features can be dissociated from it and reattached to a current condition. Second, this approach can help to understand recent findings suggesting that nostalgia can be motivational, and can increase optimism, creativity and pro-social behaviours.
New Statesman: Nicola Sturgeon: Britain’s most powerful woman
By most accounts Sturgeon has had a good crisis. Five and a half years into her reign as leader of the Scottish National Party and First Minister, she is the most powerful woman in Britain. Her avowed aim, of course, is Scottish independence and step by stealthy step she is creeping closer to achieving it. A recent Panelbase poll put her personal rating at plus 60, while that of Boris Johnson – who is even less popular north of Hadrian’s Wall than Margaret Thatcher was – is at minus 39. [...]
Sturgeon’s admirers are barely able to conceal their glee. One senior SNP member of Scottish parliament who has known her for decades says, “we’ve been incredibly lucky to have her,” adding, “No one expected her to be quite so exceptional.” What has impressed him has been the forthright, uncompromising manner in which she has informed the public about what is expected of them. There has been no obfuscation, no false optimism, no dithering, no knee-jerk pandering to those clamouring for an early return to “normality”. People may not like what she has to say but in general they accept it as a prescription that must be followed. Yet, despite Sturgeon’s direct approach, Scotland has recorded 2,491 deaths from Covid-19 since March. [...]
A poll for the Wings Over Scotland website, a haven for the fundamentalist cohort, found that 26 per cent of voters would either “definitely or probably” give their list vote to the so-called “Alliance for Independence” party if it was fronted by Salmond. It is not a prospect that those in the upper echelons of the SNP relish. “The idea of splitting pro-independence votes is manna from heaven for the unionists,” says one former confidante. “He is feasting with panthers.” [...]
Where Salmond was “collegiate and would take advice from everyone”, observes Campbell Gunn, who has worked for both the former and current first ministers, Sturgeon relies on a small group for advice. The close circle includes Liz Lloyd, her chief of staff, and her husband. But other names are conspicuous by their absence. Gunn recalls that when he was working for Salmond and monitoring press coverage over the weekend they would be in constant communication. In contrast, Sturgeon is happy to delegate. “Call me if there’s something urgent,” she’d say. “Otherwise leave me alone.” Having said that, Gunn says of her: “If she achieves independence, she has her place in Scottish history. I thought Alex had done a remarkable job in transforming the SNP but Nicola has done even better.”
Vox: The fight for America's 51st state, explained
On June 26, 2020, the US House of Representatives voted to make America’s capital city, Washington, DC, the country’s 51st state. It was a historic vote, and the closest the country has come to adding a new state in over 60 years. But it was also, for the time being, completely symbolic. Because at least in 2020, DC has no chance of actually becoming a state.
That June 26 vote was almost entirely along party lines; Democrats mostly voted in favor of DC statehood, and Republicans against it. That’s because making DC a state would give the Democrats additional seats in Congress, potentially affecting the balance of power between the parties. It’s why President Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate have both promised to strike down any bid for DC statehood. And in fact, statehood in the US has always been a political issue. In the past, the US has often added states in pairs to preserve the political balance. Admitting a new state on its own has happened, but it’s unusual.
But the case for DC statehood is strong: The city has a similar population to several states, its hundreds of thousands of residents lack any say in national lawmaking, and its local government is uniquely vulnerable to being strong-armed by Congress and the federal government. Simply put, the laws that created the district did not anticipate that it would one day be a major city. And while in 1993, the last time Congress voted on DC statehood, the Democratic-controlled House failed to pass it, today’s Democratic Party is increasingly on board with it. If 2020’s election puts the Democrats in full control of the federal government, America might actually get its 51st state.
Slate: Conservatives Slam “Swamp-Infected” John Roberts After Nevada Church Ruling: “National Disgrace”
Cruz was reacting to the decision involving Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley in Dayton, Nev., which argued that the cap imposed during the coronavirus pandemic was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court disagreed in a 5-4 decision that rejected the Christian church’s request that it should be subject to the same rules that allow casinos and restaurants, among other businesses, to operate at 50-percent capacity. Roberts sided with the liberal majority and denied the request without an explanation, which is standard practice for emergency motions. In contrast, the four more conservative members of the court filed three strongly worded dissents saying they would have granted the church’s request while the court considered the case more carefully. “The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “It says nothing about the freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine, or to engage in any other game of chance. But the Governor of Nevada apparently has different priorities.” [...]
The anger at Roberts expressed on social media Saturday morning marks the latest chapter of how conservatives have been attacking the chief justice in light of his recent decisions, including striking down a restrictive abortion law in Louisiana. Trump’s campaign is trying to fuel that anger to motivate conservative voters who may be disenchanted with the president to support his reelection campaign. Some have doubts about whether that can amount to a winning strategy.
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