Year in Review (2020)

 

As I am sure it has been for everyone else, the year 2020 has been one filled with new challenges, stress and some significant losses.

On a personal note, sadly my mother passed away in early June.  This was during the strictest part of the COVID-19 lockdown in Ontario, which meant that I wasn't able to see her in the last 3 months of her life, nor was I able to bring my children to her funeral.  That was very hard.  And now I have had both my parents pass away within 18 months of each other. Both were major losses.

The pandemic meant disruption to the kids school and work plans.  They are pretty versatile but I know it has been tough on them.  For about 6 months I had them home doing online learning while I tried to work from home.  Let's just say that was not fun.  And we are set to repeat that again in January for at least a few weeks. 

The BLM protests in the summer of 2020 lead to me doing a major re-think and overhaul of my year long history of political thought course.  In the past the issue of racial justice was addressed in just one week, covering MLK, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Prison" and a discussion of civil disobedience, Rosa Parks and Stokely Carmichael.  But I undertook a major (6 months +) revision of the course content, adding more details on the Black Lives Matter movement, and new sections on anarchism, Mills on the racial contract, and a new substantive section on Black Political Though covering Anna Cooper, WEB Du Bois and Franz Fanon.  This work was a major undertaking, but I believe it has made the course more current and balanced in terms of the topics, voices and perspectives it covers.  I wanted to ensure the course was part of the solution to the problems of today vs part of the problem.  

The other main challenge with teaching this year was moving all my courses for the year online.  I am teaching approximately 300 students in both terms. This has proven to also be a major undertaking, eating up most of the scarce free time I have had for the past 8 months.  I estimate that a typical one hour of lecture took at least 4 hours on average to design into an online lecture of that length (typically 3 20 minute lectures, with embedded videos, etc.) after a steep learning curve.  In the beginning it took me approximately 10 hours to design 1 hour of online lecture content.  Surprising I found this task more enjoyable than I thought I would.  I have made it playful, adding some jovial content into the lectures to lighten things up for the students and fuel my own enthusiasm.  However it is a distant "second-best" to in-person teaching.  I cannot wait for a return to in-person classes, whenever that should occur. 

The pandemic also meant my usual volunteer teaching in the prison was cancelled this year.  I really feel for the inmates, as I know they are now subject to many additional stressors (less family time, cancellation of volunteer activities, stress of COVID-19 spread within the prison) beyond that typical of imprisonment.  I am optimistic I will return to those volunteer activities hopefully some time next year.

Despite all of the events of 2020, it was a very product one for me research-wise.  The following publications appeared in print this year:

"The Focusing Illusion of Ideal Theory" was published in the book John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions.  This paper develops the line of criticism against Rawlsian ideal theory I first developed in my 2007 paper in Political Studies.  It was timely this chapter should come out in 2020 as I believe the pandemic and BLM movement protests reveal the importance of theorizing the non-ideal vs ideal.

I also had two collaborative publications appear in print this year, which were the outcome of a workshop at Harvard University back in 2018.  The two papers are:

“Current recommendations on the selection of measures forwell-being” in the journal Preventative Medicine.

And a follow up commentary on that article titled “Brief well-being assessments, or nothing at all?” also in Preventative Medicine. 

In the works for appearing next year, I have a new chapter titled ""Positive Biology" and Well Ordered Science" forthcoming in this OUP book Measuring Well-Being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the Humanities.

I have also committed to write a commissioned article on ethics and life extension for a new edited volume next year.

I also have plans for a major research project on pandemic justice, this will be a multi-year research project and will likely dominate my more substantive research interests for the foreseeable future.

And finally, as already noted earlier this month, I also just signed a new book contract for a new introductory textbook on classics in political philosophy for today with Hackett Publishing.  This is a major undertaking, bringing together 20 years of teaching experience covering some 2000+ years in Western political philosophy.

This will be the third textbook I have undertaken over the last 20 years, the other two books being An Introduction to ContemporaryPolitical Theory and Genetic Ethics: An Introduction. I know many academics have a somewhat negative view of the value of writing textbooks.  Such works are often considered “low value” scholarship compared to publishing specialized journal articles and research monographs.  As such many academics would never consider writing a textbook, either because they see it as beneath them or of low value to scholarship.  I think this attitude is very unfortunate, and people outside of academia will (rightly) find it somewhat surprising.  Professors teach students, so why would writing books that students will utilize in their classes be considered “low value” compared to publishing articles that only a handful of specialized scholars would ever likely read?  Such is the hierarchical state of knowledge and research in higher education today.  I think it is very unfortunate.  

I am lucky in that I am at the stage of my career, with an established track record of published specialized journal articles and research monographs, that permits me to indulge myself with undertaking another textbook.  Indeed, I see these projects as intimately linked to my other research projects.  I have become a much better scholar because I have published more introductory books on the subjects I have written on. 

In Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art (see my book review here) he makes a distinction the writer who writes from their heart and a writer he describes as "a hack".  A hack asks what their audience wants them to write before they start writing vs the author that writes from their heart (or intellectual curiosity).  A hack writes what they think will play well in the eyes of others- be it tenure and promotion committees, research grant committees, etc.  The artist, argues Pressfield, must do their work for their own sake, not for the validation that comes via hierarchy. 

Of course academics are not artists, so we have to keep an eye on hierarchical markers if we hope to get, keep and flourish in our careers.  But I think we shouldn't be uncritical slaves to such markers either.  If research and writing is, first and foremost, “a calling”, then we will be able to transcend hierarchical thinking and (at least over the long run) genuinely write  from the heart.  The ideal situation is when writing from the heart also ticks key boxes in the “hierarchical markers” needed to keep one’s academic career moving forward in a positive direction.  In my case I know that writing interdisciplinary work on topics I believe are pressing and interesting societal predicaments is my passion.  This doesn’t always lead to the optimal payoff in the hierarchy of academia as such a hierarchy often rewards the inward specialization of knowledge and the tackling of “topical issues” distinct from what I address.  But I think my career success can be (largely) credited to my tendency to gravitate towards outlier interests and be somewhat innovative and a bit more risk-taking on methodological issues.  I did not start my career that way.  My first four journal publications (here, here, here and here), all based on my PhD dissertation, were very much in line with the interests and methodology of analytical political philosophy in the late 1990s.  I did write them from the heart, but they also provided what Pressfield calls “psychological security” within the hierarchy of a group.  Once I gravitated (in the early 2000s) towards non-ideal theory, and my interests in human biology and genetics, I started to carve out my own niche way of thinking about ethics and political philosophy that went against the hierarchy.  This reflected my connecting with what Pressfield calls “your territory”.   

Pressfield’s suggested test to reveal one’s territory is as follows- imagine you are the last person on earth, what activities would you do? This test stripes away any hierarchical considerations.  I have tried to take a somewhat similar approach to my academic research over the past 20 years or so- imagine there are no tenure and promotion committees, no external referees, no research funding committees or Deans, no journal editors and referees you must placate.  What research and writing would you undertake in those circumstances?  That is your true territory.  Indeed, this blog constitutes “my territory”.  I write here purely for my heart for the reward of expressing and conceptualizing my thoughts and ideas.  I do not receive any financial or (direct) career benefits from writing blog posts for over 16 years.  I have written more on this blog than in any book or journal article I will publish.  This writing has been immensely valuable to my intellectual development as both a scholar and a human being.  I have fun expressing my ideas here when they are still at the embryonic stage of development.  I suppose the blog functions as both an intellectual diary and a “idea catalogue” for me. 

The above projects will keep me more than busy for the next few years.  2020 has certainly been an exceptional year in many respects.  I have been fortunate to discover positives in the challenges that have been thrown at me in my professional life.  I am very passionate about pandemic justice, as it brings together my interests in non-ideal theory, science and aging.  It is likely to consume most of my research for at least the next few years.  I find it a significant, challenging and fascinating problem to theorize about.  

I hope others have been able to find some positives and opportunities for growth and development in the year 2020, despite it's challenges and adversity.  And here's to a New Year and a brighter future for all in the year 2021!

Cheers, 

Colin

Pandemic Year in Review

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic is coming to an end.  I have posted a few substantive reflections about this pandemic over the past 8 months.  And I have already started in earnest on a multi-year interdisciplinary research project on the issue of “pandemic justice”.

Here I will offer a few lengthy reflections on insights outside the mainstream frameworks and talking points.  My usual disclaimer follows- this pandemic is a very serious public health problem, but not among the most pressing public health predicaments facing us today nor over the past century.

The World Health Organization estimates that the death toll from COVID 19 in the year 2020 is approximately 1.7 million, which means it is equal to the number of annual deaths from diabetes.  However diabetes is much more lethal for the young than COVID-19, as 50% of diabetes deaths are among people age < 70 compared to less than 20% of COVID-19 deaths.  I don’t recall hearing any media news item about diabetes this year, and sadly there has been no government announcements about new preventative measures or emergency therapeutics in development to tackle this public health predicament. 

OK, some will complain this isn’t a fair comparison because COVID-19 is an infectious disease and diabetes is not.  Because it is an infectious disease it has the potential to cause significantly higher rates of mortality, overwhelm healthcare resources, etc.  I don’t actually think this fact undermines my point- nor do I think it is a compelling response to the people currently living with diabetes concerning the priority we currently place on diabetes research vs Covid-19 research.  Nonetheless I will move on to consider this rejoinder because it is important to address.

At this moment in time (late Dec. 2020) the top media headlines are focusing on (i) the rapid growth of positive infection numbers, (ii) a new (dubbed “UK”) variant of the virus, (iii) the approval and distribution of vaccines and (iv) the growing mortality toll from the virus (which I just noted, now equals the annual death toll from diabetes).

What I want to emphasize in this post are what I think are the significant stories about this pandemic that are not currently dominating media headlines, but will prove to lasting and significant stories in 2-3 years time, once better data is in and there has been time to digest what actually took place in the year 2020.

Firstly, we still do not know what the infection mortality rate of the virus is.  Back in March 2020 infection fatality ratios of 3.4% were being thrown around which would (if they were accurate) have made the virus extremely lethal and likely to kill millions of people in just a few months.  However these estimates proved to be cavalier and, most importantly, mistaken.  Initial estimates focused simply on the case fatality ratio, which is the percentage of people who die from a confirmed case of a virus.  But such a measure is very problematic when trying to determine the actual lethality of a virus because the only data it considers are confirmed cases of the virus.  If the only confirmed cases are people suffering severe symptoms on the virus this will inflate the estimated fatality ratio.  What makes things challenging in determining the infection fatality ratio of COVID-19 is that (i) anywhere from 20% to 80% of people with the virus have no symptoms at all (asymptomatic), and (ii) that it is much more lethal for older persons (age 60 and above).  When the dust settles, in 2-3 years time, we should have a sense of how many life years the virus has cost different countries.  There have been some early estimates on this front, but I think they are premature (they were published before the first year of the pandemic was even over) because of the second complication which I will address now.

All year long the media, politicians and public health experts and advisors have been referring confidently to the number of deaths caused by COVID-19.  I think this will prove to be an issue of significant revision.  Before 2020 we didn’t even know COVID-19 existed as a virus, let alone it being listed as the cause of death on any person’s death certificate.  And like influenza deaths, we should expect there to be a range of estimated COVID-19 deaths vs a precise number of such deaths.  There are clearly cases were it makes sense to say someone died from COVID-19.  For example, if there was a 55 year old who was otherwise healthy and contracted the virus and died that is a easy case of a COVID-19 death.  But that will be an atypical case.  In most cases the virus was a contributing factor.  For example, imagine the case of an 87 year old chemotherapy patient dying from stage 4 lung cancer who contracts COVID-19 and this accelerates (by a few months) when they die.  Do we say that COVID-19 killed them?  And then there will be cases of persons who died from some other cause but who also tested positive for COVID-19.  Is the patient in a nursing home who dies of a heart attack who was also isolated for COVID-19 considered a COVID-19 death?  There has been so much ambiguity around these cases, and politicians and public health advisors have been loose and opportunistic when invoking the (in my opinion premature) data.

There is also the issue of excess deaths.  Did the year 2020 actually have significant and unprecedented numbers more people dying than in your typical non-pandemic year?  And if so, how many of those deaths can be attributed to the virus itself vs our response to the virus?  Lockdowns have caused unemployment, isolation leads to more addictions and suicides, people afraid to go to hospitals don’t seek out medical assistance after a heart attack or stroke, cancelled medical procedures mean cancers go undetected and important surgeries are delayed etc.  If we look at the country that took the most lax policy (among the developed countries) with respect to the lockdowns and face masks- Sweden- in 2019 approximately 88, 882 people died, with cardiovascular disease accounting for nearly 1/3 of those deaths.  As 2020 ends, the number of total deaths for lax Sweden are not yet posted.  But there is approximately 8200 COVID deaths, which would be 10% increase in deaths.  I suspect that percentage will actually be significantly lower, because the majority of deaths in the first six months from COVID-19 represented people who would have died this year from non-COVID-19 causes.  This means that the country with the most lax lockdown measures will likely be only a few % increase in total deaths (if that) and the vast majority of those deaths will be among persons over age 70.  This doesn't mean it is trivial death toll, nor is it the calamity we often hear in news stories about Sweden.  

Another profound insight that the media has completely ignored today is the fact that the countries hit hardest by the virus in terms of per capita mortality are among the world’s most affluent and developed (not poorest) countries.  The 4 highest COVID-19 deaths per 100 000 people countries are Italy, Spain, the UK and USA.  On the face of it this is baffling.  What could possibly explain this fact?  The USA and UK have over 100 COVID-19 deaths per 100 000 people, and yet India and Indonesia have 1/10^th those rates?  Doesn’t wealth and better healthcare translate into better protection from infectious disease mortality?  There is no simple answer to this question.  What more wealth and better healthcare can buy is success in helping aging populations better manage multi-morbidity (thus delaying death but keeping people alive into ages that are very susceptible to COVID-19 mortality).  

My hunch, and that is all it is at this point, is that age (coupled with ability to manage co-morbidity so the elderly survive beyond age 80) explains a least a non-trivial part of this differential.  Biology trumps even capitalism! The median age of the USA is 38 (though with a 41% obesity rate among adults age 20 and older, it is de facto much higher), the UK age 40, whereas India has a median age of only 27 and Indonesia 30.  And the richer countries can afford(!) to pay for the medicines and treatments needed to keep more people alive into the advanced ages where they are most at risk of COVID-19 mortality.  Other factors that probably explain part of it are the number of COVID-19 cases identified and deaths classified as being caused by COVID-19.

In my worldview, this pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger issue facing humanity this century- the predicament of global aging.  The world’s aging populations are more susceptible to COVID-19 mortality, and (even more significantly) to the chronic diseases of late life like cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia. 

In 2019 I published this article titled “Aging,Geroscience and Freedom”.  In that paper I argue that senescence (biological aging) is one of the greatest threats to human freedom in the 21st century.  My central target in the piece was the chronic diseases of late life, like cancer, heart disease and dementia, which limit both the negative and positive liberty of people all over the world.  But this year the pandemic has revealed how global aging can also bring significant threats to the freedom of both young and old alike via state interventions that treat millions of persons not as individual persons, but as contagion that should be contained indefinitely.  This has lead to months and months of strict lockdowns, the cancellation of in-person learning for children and university/college students, massive unemployment, and the enforcement of social distancing and wearing face masks.  All these measures have been undertaken by most developed countries to try to mitigate/contain a virus that is mostly lethal for a low percentage of persons over age 70. 

Over the next 2-3 years I anticipate that ample empirical evidence will emerge that the prolonged lockdown measures taken to try to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 caused much more severe and lasting damage- loss of life years, mental health, educational deficits, economic prosperity, etc- than the virus itself could cause had we taken a more humane and targeted protection approach.  There never was anything like a cost-benefit analysis undertaken in response to COVID-19.  There wasn’t time.  Most governments adopted a precautionary principle and, as an initial response, I think that might not have been (significantly) objectionable as the initial response.  But after the first month of lockdown, when we knew much more about the virus (e.g. it was very contagious, asymptomatic for many people and not very lethal for those age < 70 without underlying co-morbidities) we should have opted for a focused protection strategy while expanding our healthcare capacity to care for the sick.  Instead most governments doubled down by asking the population to act like they were positive and contagious for a year +.  In my opinion this was an unethical experiment.  It had known harms, unproven benefits and was extremely costly.  I believe history will judge such measures to be among the worst public health decisions ever undertaken.  Not because such measures cannot be an appropriate response to certain infectious diseases, but they were inappropriate responses to take to this particular virus.  

I have the intellectual humility to recognize that my estimate could be mistaken.  And I know my view is (at this time) an outlier one.  But I believe that is so because most of the discussion and debate surrounding the pandemic has focused almost exclusively on the harms that are “on screen”- like the numbers of positive cases, hospitalizations and COVID-19 deaths.  But in the years to come there will be a steady stream of evidence from the demonstrable harms (currently “off screen”) caused by this massive social experiment.  These harms will include an increase in global poverty and unemployment, an increase in addictions, anxiety, and suicides, educational deficits, delays in other life saving vaccinations, delays in cancer detection and other health maladies that were pushed aside during the frantic year of fixation on one particular virus.   

There are so many important lessons to be learned from 2020.  We were unprepared for this pandemic, hopefully we won’t be for the next.  The prominence of social media, and the low quality of the media more generally, made responding sagely to this pandemic even more challenging.  It is much easier to invoke people’s fear and anxiety than it is to subdue those same emotions when public policy is driven by a need to placate those emotions vs follow the credible data.  This pandemic was a real test for how well democracies can handle an infectious disease pandemic, and I would score it a grade of D+.  Not quite a failing grade, but significant improvements are needed to avoid making these same mistakes again in the future.

I finish this lengthy reflection on the pandemic year of 2020 by emphasizing what, for me, is the most significant harm of our handling of this virus this year.  And that is this-- the kind of human beings our response to this virus has made us into.  The kind of human beings that phone the police on their neighbour if they believe they are floating the rules about social distancing or the number of people permitted in their house.  The kind of human beings that will voluntarily subject themselves and their children and friends to months and months of continuous isolation without critically questioning their justification.  The kind of human beings that will obsess about one particular health risk (COVID-19) and yet ignore risks that are much more likely to cause premature death (e.g. obesity or smoking) and mental health problems (prolonged social isolation). 

There are worst things than risking disease and death.  And that would be to create a culture, and become a people, were everything worth living for has been abandoned in favour of the one-dimensional obsession with placating our fears about one particular health risk.  Of course I want my children (and all children!) to live in a world with less infectious disease, but I also want them to live in a world with more human connection and play, less anxiety, more trust in public health, science and fellow human beings, less of an appetite for authoritarianism, higher quality of journalism, better education, and more love. 

The biggest mistake I think we can make is fighting for a future consumed by just one goal or value.  An environment devoid of the 1400+ infectious organisms that cause disease in humans would be great.  But it will never happen.  And like the chronic diseases that kill most human beings alive in the world today, we must find a way to sagely pursue the preventative and therapeutic aspirations of medicine, while also continuing to live full and meaningful lives that are worth living.  As we end the first year of this pandemic I think that aspiration has been lost. 

I finish this post with two apt quotations from authors I admire.  The first is from the Prussian philosopher Wilhelm von Humbolt (1767- 1835), the second passage from the British biologist and Nobel prize winner Peter Medawar (1915 –1987).

“As soon as one stops searching for knowledge, or if one imagines that it need not be creatively sought in the depths of the human spirit but can be assembled extensively by collecting and classifying facts, everything is irrevocably and forever lost”. Wilhelm von Humboldt from Humanist Without Portfolio

 “There is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and on his profession than roundly to declare — particularly when no declaration of any kind is called for — that science knows or soon will know the answers to all questions worth asking, and that the questions that do not admit a scientific answer are in some way non-questions or pseudo-questions that only simpletons ask and only the gullible profess to be able to answer.”

― Peter Medawar, from Advice to a Young Scientist

 Cheers, 

Colin

New Book Contract

I am very pleased to announce that I have signed a new contract with Hackett Publishing for a book tentatively titled Classics in Political Philosophy for Today.  It will cover a range of thinkers and themes from the history of political thought, including Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Anarchism (Kropotkin and Goldman), Rousseau, Burke and Conservatism, Mary Wollstonecraft and feminism, Black Political Thought (Anna Cooper, WEB Du Bois and MLK, Jr.), Utilitarianism and Marx, along with a concluding chapter examining the societal challenges of the 21st century (e.g. climate change and Artificial Intelligence).  The material draws on 20 years experience of teaching the history of political philosophy, especially the last 12 years of teaching my mandatory year-long course to 250+ students each year.  

What I hope will be a distinctive feature of this book is its emphasis on the contemporary significance of engaging with the critical thinkers of the past, revealing the "emancipatory knowledge" they offer (e.g. Plato on the limits of democracy, Wollstonecraft on the nature vs nurture debate, Du Bois on racial inequality, Burke on the wisdom of tradition, Marx on the harms of capitalism, etc.), but also highlighting their cognitive blindspots and the unexamined assumptions and beliefs of their arguments.  By fostering a critical engagement with thinkers of the past we can refine the critical thinking skills necessary to think sagely about how we ought to live now.  

It is an ambitious project, one I have contemplated undertaking for years.  Events over the past year helped convince me that I needed to make this project a top priority in my research plans.    

Cheers, 

Colin