Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner REVIEW

“Freakonomics'', by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is considered by many critiques to be an “odd book”. One reason could be that the audacious authors, at the very beginning of the book, proudly state that it has no unifying theme. Moreover, the book has quite an unusual history: started as a profile of a young brilliant economist in New York Times (Steven D. Levitt) it was endorsed by readers, who responded to the unique questions Levitt was finding answers to by applying economic analysis to problems.

The authors strongly believe that there are absolutely no questions for which there are no answers. The problem is to formulate the right and sometimes audacious questions trying to find similarities between the things which seem to have nothing in common. (high school teachers and sumo wrestlers)

Levitt and Dubner write that "if morality is how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work." Thus they try to break conventional wisdom by giving nonconventional but very well-grounded answers to questions, both complicated and very simple. “What is more dangerous a gun or a swimming pool?”; “Which means of transportation is safer, the airplane or the car?” Have You ever thought about it considering not only plain statistic data, which gives us an illusion of the airplane being the safest means of traveling, but also taking death rate per hour into consideration? There are not so many people who die in plane crashes simply because we spend less time on board the plane than in our cars…

Freakonomics unites many themes: the history of Ku Klux Klan with some interesting facts; methods of building and developing crack market; legalized abortion, a sudden drop in crime rate in America in the 90s and their interdependence; the role of experts in our life; the authors try to find out if there are typically black or white names and how they can change one’s destiny.

My choice fell on Freakonomics for I’ve always wanted to study economics but couldn’t find the right book to start with (classical scholars might find economics too bare and cold). New York Times review of the book, which I accidentally found while surfing the web, made me consider Freakonomics a perfect start for discovering the world of economics. I have learnt to combine logic and economic methods while solving any puzzle which we might face almost every day, to look deeper into the core of any question to see “how deep the rabbit hole goes”. 

whitman's "Song of Myself"

How can Self-Reliance be instrumental to elaboration of Whitman’s lines:

“Creeds and schools in abeyance” and “I harbor for good and bad”?

               

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is not only a celebration of individualism as a core value of american life, but it is also a vivid image of what in Emerson’s theory is called Self-Reliance.  To grasp the essence of the poem under consideration it is necessary to go into the particulars of Emerson’s idea of a self-reliant person.

            Ralph Waldo Emerson gives us an image of a self-reliant person who is not willing to depend either on someone else or on any kind of social institution, who is spiritually abstract from groups or conglomerations and who is ready to speak his own voice. Conformity is seen as a serious threat to a self-reliant person. To be more precise, the very idea of self-reliance contradicts any kind of conformity: ”...it scatters your face. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character”. Consistency is also seen in Emerson’s theory as an impairing condition for the freedom of thought and speech. “Speak thyself”!

            A self-reliant individual is not longing to be understood. On the contrary, it might be magnificent to be misunderstood for the greatest men in the history of humanity were not given homage at the time when they were making their ideas or theories public. Understanding gives ground for already existing phenomena but it produces nothing of a new kind.

            Thus we have an image of a hero described by Whitman, who celebrates himself, who intends to assume what HE thinks is right. A trully self-reliant person belongs to no time or place, which is clearly seen in the poem. The only link to the surrounding world for the hero is the NATURE. As Emerson writes, “Where he is, there is nature”. He comes from “this soil, this air” as his fathers did.

            In this writing i’m supposed to focus on the last verse of the poem. “Creeds and schools in abeyance...” this is much intrinsic for the nature of a self-reliant person. Emerson questions the value of prayer as it is usually false. People beg for a particular commodity and forget that creeds are the “contemplation of the fact of life from the highest point of view”. Schools (as social institutions, which bring “enlighment” by shaping brains of milloions) foster restlessness and make our minds travel. We are being accustomed to traveling and imitate it in our thoughts and dreams. For a self-reliant person traveling is “a fool’s paradise”. Our minds are trying to find more and more amusing things or places but, in fact, we are constantly carrying “ruins to ruins”. Thus, facing a self-reliant person, “creeds and schools are in abeyance, retiring back a while sufficed at what they are...” It is always a great idea, according to Emerson, to go to the princeiples to fing all the necessary answers. This helps us understand the second part of the quotation above.

            A self-reliant person is neither good nor bad. He is capable of stating an individual opinion apart from the mob, drawing his energy from the NATURE. Emerson’s ideas make the last lines of the verse clear:

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at any hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

            Emerson’s idea of Self-Reliance will help one to understand not only the “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman but also a good number of masterpieces of American literature, where individualism and self-reliance are the key, basic values.