Having a bout of insomnia, which I fought for a while but have now resigned myself to allowing to capture me. Finishing my reading of @charlesmurray's "Human Diversity." Once again, in the sections on class, I feel he far too strongly discounts environmental influences. 1/

Given how hot it has been over the past few weeks--which I, already having hot flushes due to menopause, have been finding tough to deal with--I'm strongly aware of how much environment affects performance. (I've encountered a lot of people who did all their work the way I've 2/

done mine in this brief segment of the year: in very very hot and sticky conditions, without air con. But nevertheless, I find myself more in agreement with Murray's views than I thought I would, especially in this: human beings are far less malleable than idealists would like to

think. This includes ourselves! Trying to change people's habitual behaviour & shape their preferences is like cycling uphill into a strong headwind. We can put those drinking troughs out for the horses we are, but will we drink from them? I feel this myself all the time:

just buffeted by wind & waves, fighting strong currents, constantly in danger of just relaxing and being sucked back into the undertow. Self-improvement is hard. And improving others even harder. We should still try to do it because every small victory helps but it's tough.

On the other hand, there's something heartening in the fact that we often cannot be socially engineered, manipulated, marshalled, brainwashed all that readily. The chapters on class even contradict what Murray says about race because they focus, especially the later chapters,

on the stubborn universality of human nature (imho an incomparably more important factor than racial variations, even if such variations prove robust). @charlesmurray is moving in these last chapters: they ring true in a way some earlier parts of the book do not.

I also find myself in strong agreement with several things, including this "what matters most is not material equality, but access to the wellsprings of human flourishing." He puts his finger on something here. People obviously do want their basic economic needs to be secured,

but, beyond that, they care about values (hence, poor people voting "against their economic interests"; Hindu nationalist zealots voting for theocracy instead of clean air, even as they can barely breathe in their polluted cities). I mean "values" in a morally neutral sense.

Ideas matter more to people than their wallets. When Murray gets into the nitty gritty of what he would advocate, we diverge again. We should NOT celebrate marriage more than we already do: too many people are already lonely & we should not add to the loneliness of those who are

single--often not by choice--by doubling down on the idea that there is only one happy & companionable way of leading your life. Religion is a double-edged sword. Murray thinks we should strengthen it, but I say that theocracies are among the most miserable places on earth.

Where I do agree with him is in the need for Universal Basic Income. I think it could be an absolute gamechanger. And also in the need to change things always at the wellspring-- opportunities--rather than tinkering with results. We must put the chances in place & accept that

not everyone will take them & we can't make them (we can't even make ourselves!). Instead, we keep on trying to tinker with the results, trying to achieve equality of outcome--a totally unrealistic aim--rather than caring about equality of opportunity.

But when @charlesmurray is describing his ideal society: community-based, with strong families, centred around heterosexual marriage & deeply religious, he is thinking picket fences & apple pie. But I've lived in such a society: Pakistan. And I never want to go back.

I don't think such things are the key to human flourishing at all. Not at all. This is why I'm not a conservative. Conservatism in action is utterly stifling & not conducive to happiness for most. It's just one more attempt at social engineering--& such attempts fail AT BEST.

I also wish @charlesmurray hadn't been so demonised. Admittedly this & "The Bell Curve" are the only books of his I've read & I read "The Bell Curve" a while ago now & found it so dry that I retained little. And I don't know his other policy-based work. But he seems sincere.

I have the strong sense of someone searching for truth, though not finding it (in the chapters on race, in particular, really missing the mark). I have to confess, judging by the book alone, I like him.

There is an information hazard here: his work might point us in the direction of a truth we don't want to hear. I don't think this truth is that people of different races have differing levels of intelligence (this might also be true, I guess, but I remain highly sceptical).

But the *real* uncomfortable & inconvenient truth for me is how little we can each of us change our own personalities, abilities, habits of mind (& actual habits) & how hard we have to work to do even that little. Murray makes a strong case for this as the book ends.

I liked this part: "the ultimate goal of public policy is not to do things like raise incomes or increase college graduation rates but to enable people to flourish and to achieve deep satisfactions in life--to pursue happiness in the Aristotelian sense of the word."

But how? I sense that there is not just one devil in the details here, but an entire pandemonium of Beelzebub & his hosts.

I must confess that all the hullaballoo surrounding
@charlesmurray tends to influence me *in his favour,* perhaps unduly. I think I'd be a lot angrier about his views on race if I didn't hate cancel culture & infringements on free speech with such a burning passion.

Next up, now that I have finished "Human Diversity": Steven Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man."