An Argument Against Myopic Thinking

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark said:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! 

I may agree to 'a piece of work' part, but should I agree to the 'noble in reason' part as well? Should I endorse the viewpoint that man is an owner of admirable qualities? or Should I shrug off this phrase as a spell of romantic thinking and admit to an unromantic, even cynical, picture of a man?  Well, as it turns out that, while we humans are indeed noble in reason in many aspects, we, at the same time, are the opposite too. When faced with problems, we, at times, tend not to resolve the underlying problem, but to just deal with the tip of the iceberg. We invent shortcuts and short-term solutions as a response to deeper systemic problems. We succumb to our own myopic thinking and thus, inadvertently structure our society around the hidden fractures.

In this blog, I intend to throw a light on such kind of myopic thinking and such fractures that go right through the fabric of our society.

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I shall start with the case of prisons. Have you ever pondered why do we need prisons? A simplistic explanation that is usually given is that some people don't stick to the rules of society. They become a threat to the rest of the society and hence they need to be kept away from the society. A plausible argument, but very myopic. When we propose to lock up the supposedly-bad people, are we looking at the root of the problem or are we just trying to solve the problem temporarily? If prison indeed would be a solution to anything, then over time it should have reduced the number of criminals in the society. Well, has it? 



The clear failure of prisons to either act as a deterrent of crime or as a place of rehabilitation indicates a major flaw in our thinking: that by choosing to imprison the culprits, we choose to go the easy way; the way which can suppress the problem in the short term, but is of no good in the long term.

My argument is that the correct way to deal with the crime conundrum is not to lock up those who perpetrate it, but rather address the very causes that perpetrate the perpetrators.

 

As the graph above indicates that there is an inverse relationship between crime rates and economic inequality, we can conclusively suggest that rather than spending our money on making more prisons and therein locking up more people, we should focus on making our society more egalitarian; we should endeavor to reduce poverty, provide good education to everybody, provide employment and a good standard of living; we should ensure that kids are brought up in homes that are free from violence. These steps, unlike our myopic ways of thinking, shall ensure a lesser violent society in the long term. However, it should not be inferred that prisons can be completely done away with. An utopian society, a world without prisons is mostly a myth, but at the same time we should not turn a blind eye to the fact that prison is not the optimum solution for the ills of the society and hence attempts like deprivation of liberty, dehumanizing the confined are simply short-sighted methods- products of our own myopic thinking.
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The second example of the epidemic of myopia that sweeps over our society is in the educational system: in the form of the grading system or the ranking based system. We tend to manage by numbers or letters, which, in my point of view, is far too simplistic. We aim to measure and compare the learning of students, but to achieve that we invent a shortcut method: "grade them". We aim to motivate the pupils to study and end up taking away the very essence of education itself. Let's see how.

In our society, grades have become such a powerful social and symbolic force that grades and grades alone determine the future prospects and opportunities for a student. Consequently, schools become a competition and grades an obsession; in the backdrop, true learning takes a backseat. Exams and league tables, more often than not, pollute the learning environment and make the pursuit of education look like a rat race. Students feel afraid to pursue their true passion, because in a ranking based system, they would fall behind in the subjects which they don't love.

The irony of the grading system, therefore, is that while it seeks to incentivize education, it does the opposite. To show how removing grades can liberate our education system, the best example I can present is that of the Finnish Miracle. In 2006, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted a survey of 15-year-olds' academic skills from 57 nations. Finland came first in science by a whopping 5% margin, second in math (edged out by one point by Chinese Taipei), and third in reading. And this has been a trend, more or less, over the years. So, how does Finland churn out so many avid learners year after year? The key is that Finnish schools rely very less on the grading system. "Students in Finland sit no mandatory exams until the age of 17-19. Teacher based assessments are used by schools to monitor progress and these are not graded, scored or compared; but instead are descriptive and utilized in a formative manner to inform feedback and assessment for learning." Great emphasis is put on trust and well-being. In short, there is no corrosive competition, unjust comparison or unsound evaluation. Finnish schools take away exactly the effects the grading system engenders and this is exactly what makes them shine.
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The third example of our myopic thinking is the reservation system or preferential treatment system, which is supposed  "to improve the well-being of perceived backward and under-represented communities" defined primarily by their 'caste', 'religion', 'color', 'gender' etc. In many countries we observe that whenever certain group or class of people is not doing well, the government provides them free lunches. In my point of view, this is plainly a short-term thinking. If you want to build your muscles, should you take a pill and get the muscles overnight or should you hit the gym and exercise regularly to achieve the same? We should cure not the symptoms but the underlying cause of illness. Let me clarify the point with examples.

Take the reservation system in India. And think carefully. Should we provide reservations to those not doing well and directly help them come in the mainstream( which, by the way, is against the utilitarian principle as well) or should we address the root cause which includes providing them better infrastructure, better education and making them capable enough to compete with the rest? Instead of giving them separate quota in jobs and other social opportunities, should the government not ensure that every kid from backward communities get little more attention in primary schools? Why not make the foundations stronger, for without proper foundation all attempts to make a stable building would be futile? 

Another recent example that comes to mind in this context is the case of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. A number of reasons are cited for the crisis ranging from securitization practices to misaligned incentives to unethical bankers. But the source of the crisis lies somewhere else. The crisis owes its existence to the short-term thinking of the US government: the myopic policy of giving free credit to those falling behind in the economy. Raghuram Rajan, in his book "Fault Lines" summarizes this fault-line in the following paragraph.



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Thus we see that we tend to look for easy solutions to the deeper problems of human society. Though at times, they might appear as the best possible solutions, but in retrospect, the shortcuts do more harm than good. If you want to solve a problem, go to its root cause. Though there are many pressing political conditions which force the policy makers to take the easy route, one can never justify the ills of a myopic policy. Period!