The Galli Report: 02.26.21

Late bloomers are normal. "The 'Majority-Minority' Myth." The ideology of choice. Symbols of the disaffected. Pictures from Mars!

It’s Not Too Late!
Let’s start off with some good news—especially for boomers! This is one take away from “The case for opsimaths. Maybe late bloomers aren't so late: Late bloomers and lifelong learners.”

Different sorts of people realize their abilities at different stages of their lives. This is consistent with recent research on the ages at which different cognitive functions peak throughout our lives….

We are not very good at knowing how to assess people who have not yet succeeded but who might become impressive later on. Why do some people show no sign of their later promise, and how can we think about the lives of those late bloomers who had precarious journeys to their eventual flourishing?

This is not something unique to one profession or period of time. It is becoming much more recognized that some people bloom later for inherent reasons, not just because of external circumstances. We ought to find this less remarkable than we do—and feel less of an instinct to explain it. It is, in fact, quite normal.

“The ‘Majority-Minority’ Myth”
Andrew Sullivan has written an intriguing piece by the above title. It’s subtitled, “Our racial future may not be what we have come to believe.”

If there’s one core assumption shared by the two tribes of our culture, it is that America will soon be a “majority-minority” nation. Among today’s seniors, “whites” still dominate; but among children, “non-whites” are now a very clear majority. The debate about when exactly America will become a majority-minority country moves around a bit in the projections, but it’s somewhere near the middle of this century. And this underlying reality has created a kind of background noise to our debates about race and culture, immigration and populism.

For both tribes, it feels as if a seismic shift is coming soon that will shape the meaning of America for the foreseeable future—a transformation some in the blue tribe may celebrate as a final victory over “whiteness”, and many in the red tribe agonize over as an end to the America they have long felt a part of. …

But what if this entire scenario is just empirically wrong? What if the entire idea of a majority-minority country is based on an illusion? That’s the arresting proposition of some scholars who examine demographic shifts and don’t quite buy the binary nature of the conventional wisdom.

“Combatting an Ideology of ‘Choice’”
This is the title of a book review, summarized in a callout as “University of Notre Dame professor O. Carter Snead argues for a public bioethics that encourages the desire ‘to make the good of others our own good.’” From the first few paragraphs:

Today the right to individual autonomy remains the dominant legal argument upholding abortion as the guarantor of women’s basic equality and flourishing….

Beyond the high-profile battle over the survival of Roe v. Wade, similar often unexpressed assumptions have shaped laws and public debate dealing with end-of-life care, including physician-assisted suicide, as well as policies facilitating the largely unregulated IVF industry and related reproductive technologies. 

What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics by O. Carter Snead seeks to address the assumptions that drive this ideology of “choice” at any cost. 

Symbols of the Disaffected
This subject is a bit dated now but still interesting—to me anyway. I hadn’t been paying attention to the various and sundry symbols employed by the January 6 rioters. A primer (in Fast Company, of all outlets) helped me better see and understand what they represented. As the subtitle put it, “The Capitol rioters wore pelts, carried flags, and plastered themselves with logos that hid deeper meanings.”

On the Stellar Road Again
For reasons I can’t quite fathom, I’ve been moved by the video of the landing of Perseverance on Mars, as well as the early photographs. (I’ve managed to find an article that gives the goods without having to wait for advertisements to run!)

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli
markgalli.com