RWL #279

San Francisco, Emerging adulthood, and What Putin got wrong

Jun 12, 2022

Greetings from the LHH! You’ll have to keep indulging me with pics from the back yard - it was a long winter and I am still celebrating the return of the leaves and flowers. It’s also been a long week - I’ve been doing a lot of dad duty helping daughter #2 get settled into her new place - so this newsletter is getting out a bit later than usual.

I am excited to tell you that my podcast is ramping back up after a lull. I have three interviews recorded and a couple more scheduled, and I am super excited to share them with you. I interviewed my colleague Tyler Jamieson from our Department of Human Development and Family Studies about her research on emerging adult romantic relationships and that interview will be coming out next week. More about that next week, but I had a lot of fun talking to her about her research. Our romantic relationships play a crucial role in our personal well-being, which is why I wanted to include her in the series. If you are not familiar with the concept of emerging adulthood, scroll down to Watch and learn all about it!

The summer is flying by - it’s hard to believe it’s been a month since the end of classes already. I’m trying to make the most of it - and I hope you are as well. So with that, willing good for all of you, I present you with the links!

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What: The Atlantic, HOW SAN FRANCISCO BECAME A FAILED CITY, And how it could recover

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/

Why: One of the things I learned in my Army career as my wife and I moved around the country is that wherever you are, the people who are from there love their hometown, and most can’t really imagine somewhere that is more perfect. The trick to moving somewhere new is to listen to what the locals are saying that they love about their home and engage in it the same way as they do. Every place has something going for it, or people wouldn’t live there. For me, rural, seacoast New Hampshire is just this side of heaven. Nellie Bowles, the author of this piece, feels the same about her hometown of San Francisco. But San Francisco seems to be failing.

If you consider the social determinants of health, housing is near the top, along with freedom from crime. Despite being one of the most Progressive cities in the country, San Francisco seems to have been working on a social experiment to destroy the social determinants of health for many years. Politics has real impacts in the real world. It seems to me that San Francisco voters have indulged too many of their luxury beliefs and not paid enough attention to the impact of those beliefs on the real world.

From the conclusion:

San Franciscans tricked themselves into believing that progressive politics required blocking new construction and shunning the immigrants who came to town to code. We tricked ourselves into thinking psychosis and addiction on the sidewalk were just part of the city’s diversity, even as the homelessness and the housing prices drove out the city’s actual diversity. Now residents are coming to their senses.

Read the whole thing. Bowles, a self-proclaimed left-wing liberal, clearly weeps for her city. San Francisco is a lesson in political hubris.

Watch

What: TEDxPSU, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Why does it take so long to grow up today? (11 min)

Why: Arnett coined the idea of emerging adulthood as a life-stage in the early 2000’s. When he first described it, he said it was becoming common that young adults in Western economies were entering a stage of life between adolescence and full adulthood - and he put the years 18-25. Since then, that period has been extended to include 18-29. The idea is that during emerging adulthood a young person is engaged in the process of exploration and developing human capital necessary to be successful as a full adult. This concept implies a certain degree of economic privilege - one must have the resources to do this exploring and not have economic responsibilities that force one to settle down into making a living. Getting married and having children are typically acts that end emerging adulthood because they come with significant responsibilities to others and force a closure of exploration. When I think of emerging adulthood, I think of the show Friends. Here were six young people who had no real responsibilities, they were economically stable, and were engaged in an endless series of frivolous activities that essentially were explorations. Emerging adulthood is a really important idea for understanding young people, especially if you are an employer and hire people in this age bracket. This is a great introduction to the concept if you haven’t heard of it before.

Listen

What: ‎The Foreign Affairs Interview, What Putin Got Wrong About Ukraine, Russia, and the West (40 min)

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/what-putin-got-wrong-about-ukraine-russia-and-west

Why: Excellent new podcast from the editor of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs features outstanding analysis of what is happening in the world. I also listen to their podcast, The World Next Week, which is also excellent.

This is the inaugural interview for this series, and I hope they keep up the quality.

Steven Kotkin is interviewed and gives a wide-ranging perspective on the state of the world order, and talks about Russia and Putin’s war in Ukraine applying both a great man approach as well as a historical forces approach. He discusses China in a similar vein. I came away from this interview reflecting on why countries with democratic institutions tend to have better economic outcomes - when people are engaged, they are more willing and more able to give greater discretionary effort. Different political and economic structures make discretionary effort more or less likely. This applies at all levels of society.

This is a really excellent discussion.

Flourishing in the World

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