It is often hard to be a person on the planet Earth. It can be scary, overwhelming, fraught with obstacles, and most of all, inescapably lonely. We are, after all, alone in our minds, our bodies, and our selves. I think most all of the stuff we do as people - creating, building, loving, consuming and communicating is meant, at the most basic level, to help us forget or at least put a band aid on the ache of that loneliness.

That is one reason we band together in tribes of similarity and often poke fun (or worse) at those who are other. Race, nationality, politics, religion, non religion, gay, straight, gender, geography. We work so hard to escape the singularity and loneliness of existence by being a part of something bigger. Today this country is as divided as I ever thought I’d see it. After 2000, 2001, and then 2004 I didn’t think it could get worse, but it feels like it is. Do you remember the horror, the rage, the fear? I think back on it a lot these days. I saw grown men on all sides of the political spectrum weep and rage. I watched people of all flavors do both beautiful and horrible things. Just like now.

I am as sad as I am hopeful. We are faced with terrific challenges today. Yet we cling so tightly to the myths that separate us instead of reaching for the meanings that could unite us. I, like everyone, often take refuge in the ability to reach out to those who think as I think, or who recognize me as part of their team. “Lifelines in the midst of the madness”, I say to myself, so thankful I have the opportunity. It might be friends, family, colleagues, or acquaintances I meet online, might be a chance encounter and conversation that makes my day. These days we have tools to help us seek out other people like us, whatever us might mean. It can be easy to find someone to answer our need to not be alone, our need to be understood.

One danger is that all this connectivity within easy reach can reinforce the tribes of sameness we cling to so tightly. It often makes us more rigid instead of less, and less tolerant instead of more. I think we need so much to belong, to understand and be understood, to find connection and meaning that takes away the ache of loneliness, that in our searching and our finding we forget that everyone else is doing it too. Thus ,those who are not part of our tribe become less human. It reduces us, collectively, as people, and it is dangerous.

It is so common, and it scares me. I’m trying to fight it within myself, trying to see the humanity within the folks that frighten and enrage me. Its not easy. I have to leave the comfort zone of my tribe, and work to see something that humanizes the other. It is hard to fight the “us vs. them” mentality that seems so central to any discussion today. It becomes easier when one practices seeing it as an artificial divide, a human construction.

That practice requires fearlessness. If one accepts the premise that what divides us is not a given, but our own creation forged from our own fears and vulnerabilities, then so are the group identities that give us comfort and meaning. Thus, we find our selves truly alone, which is the uncomfortable position that contributed to the mess in the first place. Hopefully, though, the practice and effort will yield a healthier and more realistic perspective, and most importantly, the ability to reach out with compassion and strength, instead of lashing out and manufacturing distance from fear.

Are you out there, can you hear this,
Jimmy Olsen, Johnny Memphis
I was out here listening all the time,
And though the static walls surround me
You were out there, and you found me,
I was out here listening all the time

……Are You Out There, Dar Williams

How many posts at this site have been about the election? I haven’t counted them, but there are so many that it almost seems like an obsessive pursuit. It’s almost a little embarrassing, especially for a website that does not present itself as a current events or news commentary site.

On the other hand, the upcoming election is compelling to many of the authors at this site (I am the most guilty), because John McCain and Sarah Palin embody so many of the characteristics that inspired the creation of this blog in the first place.

Back in 2004, a handful of my acquaintances became emboldened by the national political mood and came fully out of the closet with their fundamentalist explanations for how the world works and how it must be changed. The positions were strikingly uninformed and one-sided. They were proud of their lack of any basis for the conclusions other than the Bible or their version of our “Christian” government. They showed no ability to understand the basis for the beliefs of people who disagreed with them. They quoted the Bible incessantly without showing any understanding of the historical development of the Bible as a book of stories, many of them entertaining or inspiring, but many others disturbing and self-contradictory.

I took advantage of this opportunity, just as I still do today, to question such beliefs.  Because I was hearing such silliness out of the mouths of real human beings, I was inspired to write, research, converse, and write some more, in an attempt to figure out what was going on. I wanted to know if my worldview was utterly and starkly disconnected from that of fundamentalists and neocons or whether there was some possible translation by which we could still communicate with each other.  In those early days of this blog, I remember feeling frustrated, sometimes angry with fundamentalism of all stripes.  I now realize that good-hearted people who happened to have traditional religious beliefs (but who were not fundamentalists) got caught up in my frustration. It’s not that I don’t have differences of opinion with non-fundamentalists religious believers, but I have gradually come to the conclusion that it is fundamentalism that is the real problem.  I am now fully aware that there are many good hearted people who sincerely believe in a sentient God who are my full-fledged allies, despite our many differences in the way we respond to the mysteries of life.

One way of illustrating my re-orientation is to consider that there are many agnostics, ignostics and atheists out there with whom I have less in common than with many good-hearted and thoughtful believers in gods and religions. This becomes all the more clear when I articulate what really should be our main concern as inhabitants on this planet: to get along with each other and to make the community a better place for all people.  Yes, many nonbelievers are also good-hearted (Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism is one of my favorites), but not all nonbelievers are good-hearted. The ultimate question is to ask with whom I would have more in common: a goodhearted thoughtful believer in “God” or a self-centered and intolerant nonbeliever?  Because the answer to that question is clearly the former group, this means that I am not here to wage a war on religion itself.  It is my firm belief that each of us acts on beliefs that we cannot prove. My attack is on destructive impulses, regardless of the manner in which someone packages his or her destructive belief system.

I will continue to explore why people who claim to believe in God make their (to me untenable) supernatural claims. This is a fascinating topic that deserves the increased amount of discussion that it is now getting.  It is clear to me, however, that thoughtful and kind-hearted people who believe in gods and who belong to religions are not a threat to my way of life, whereas fundamentalism is a threat because it shuts down the brain in a way that prevents meaningful discussion of real-life issues and all too often inspires heavy-handedness, reckless and insensitive conduct. Fundamentalism is usually based upon out-of-control anxiety and fear, hyper-groupishness, obeisance to authority, and intolerance to the differences of others. It is also clear to me that fundamentalism comes in a variety of flavors, the most visible being religious fundamentalism (there are Christian, Muslim versions, for example). There is also political fundamentalism, of course. Those who are neoconservatives represent an especially dangerous version. It is my belief that the highly visible decay of the United States is due to the rise of both political and religious fundamentalism.

I started this site back in 2006 because I realized that humans need a constant and a healthy dose of skepticism to keep themselves from falling prey to various types of fundamentalism.  This self-vigilance needs to be unrelenting, but our inner personal battles also need to be fought intelligently. Those of us who are too skeptical become paralyzed with doubts and we thus fail to reach back out into the world to actually make the world a better place. For fundamentalists–those who reject skepticism–there will be lots of reaching out in the community because movement always seems like progress, but there is a huge difference between changing one’s community and intelligently changing one’s community. There is no better example than the US invasion of Iraq, where our political and social leaders were anxious for some sort of tangible activity that would “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.  It is clear now that what we got is an extremely expensive (in terms of money and lives) endeavor which made the world and the United States worse off and completely failed to “respond” to the 9/11 attacks.

John McCain and Sarah Palin now assert that they are different than George W. Bush.  It is equally clear that they wish to continue the same failed policies of the current Administration, especially the war-mongering.  Based on the kinds of answers they are giving to questions posed to them, it is also clear that McCain and Palin are political fundamentalists who reject any evidence that does not fit in their pre-conceived notion of how the world works.  We can’t afford any more leaders who reject the importance of inconvenient evidence.  We desperately need leaders who are self-critical and who are not embarassed to admit this.

It is without apology, then, that we will continue to take an unrelenting side-excursion into politics, at least until November, because it is really not detour at all. Rather, the current campaign is allowing us to see, in a tangible and high-stakes way, the intellectual concerns raised in this site ever since we appeared in 2006.

The world seems to have gone mad. Not really of course, but it there are times it feels that way, what with the financial meltdown, an incredibly bizarre VP choice, and the finality of no more WAMU commercials, ever.  Crazy times. Scary times.  Periodically I look out my window to see if the Mississippi has reversed course like it did in 1812 from an earthquake here in Missouri. Some real activity on the New Madrid fault would be the icing on the cake, especially after waking up to a bed shaking appetizer earlier this year.

All this stuff happening out in the world fits so well with my own business related lessons. In the wee hours of sleepless mornings I sometimes agonize about that fact that, in essence, I gamble for a living. All my careful research, preparations, and process only serve to remind me of all the things I do not control. I may have the ideal candidate, perfectly prepped, and poised to solve real problems at a receptive client. After a lovefest interview and an out of this world offer, my candidate might get an even more out of this world offer and turn my client down, or end up having faked an MBA, or lose the job because the client discovers his ultra-kinky porn site complete with rubber sheets, war paint and golden showers. In perfect situations I am not in control, and I so rarely have the best situations to manage.

It is a great for me to earn a living at the same time as it is crazy making. Every day I come face to face with the fact that no matter how hard I work, or how good I am at what I do, life happens and I am not in charge, even though I want to pretend I am.

Life happens. Sometimes good stuff, sometimes terrible stuff. Walls fall down. We don’t decide what will happen to us, to strangers on the street, or to those for whom we care. We can only control our reactions, and that control is often as much an illusion as any other. I can try to be mindful of how I react to the person that cuts me off in traffic, but, more often than not, my determination to look with eyes of compassion is forgotten when the big truck almost runs me off the road. I’m working on that, but I have a long way to go.

I think wrestling with expectations and illusions of control on a personal and business level have helped me keep some perspective about the direction the world is going, economically, politically, and socially. I can only do what I can do, and mostly that is keeping my head on straight when things go pear shaped. Seeing and accepting circumstances as they really are instead of how I think they ought to be is the only way to have forward motion in an uncertain world. Focusing on that helps me to remember that while I am most certainly not in charge, I do have choices, even when the walls are falling down around me.

I have personally heard this claim from several Christian Fundamentalists. It usually doesn’t survive examination. They were raised to the church, had a normal adolescent rebellion and denied everything to do with the authority structure they knew. Then as they matured they experienced the guided hallucination (revelation, dream, epiphany, psychotic break) that returned them to the church with the burning fervor of any new convert. Proverbs 22-6 pretty well promises this return to type.

What was their “atheism” like? Let’s quote one who has recently been visiting us:

“I have lived life apart from God (thinking that I was the center of the universe, not wanting to admit that I was a follower, I was convinced of my uniqueness).”

I don’t know any atheists like that.

“Center of the Universe“? Rational atheists know that the universe is big, and the Earth is tiny. We are as unlikely to be the center of the universe as we are certainly living on a minor planet near a smallish star near the edge of our own little galaxy of 200,000,000,000 or more stars. This is a minor galaxy in our local galactic cluster, that is itself nothing significant in the vast foam of galaxies. All created for “me”? Uh. Huh.

“Convinced of my Uniqueness“? Aside from the statistical uniqueness of any macroscopic assembly of fermions compared to any other, atheists usually know that we are basically interchangeable parts of any social unit larger than their close circle of family and friends. Every individual is unique unto himself. But not to the social matrix in which we live. Any of us might have written this post, allowing for stylistic differences, pleasing or offending the same readers.

“Not wanting to admit I was a follower” is typical adolescence. Sociologically and anthropologically, humans are pack or tribe animals, somewhat like wolves but more like bonobos, who form fractal group hierarchies naturally. Teens are especially prone to forming cliques with leaders and followers within and between. But the followers don’t want to think of themselves as such, so they claim to be individualists, as they carefully mimic the behaviors and accouterments of the current peer leaders while carefully disassociating themselves from the societies of their progenitors and predecessors.

“Life apart from God“? I was never a theist. The faiths in which my parents were raised canceled out before I was born, and they quietly raised atheist kids in a rural Christian neighborhood. We never did drugs, we never were promiscuous. We respected our elders as well as did our peers, and lived by the Golden Rule. Excluding Santa Claus, we never believed in invisible father figures. We never believed in eternal posthumous punishment for our own actions, much less for the actions of our very distant ancestors.
Yes, I was raised apart from God. Never missed him.

Another charge raised (but not in this particular quote) is that Atheists think the world was always as it now is. Nope. Rational atheists know (and most Eastern philosophies have always held) that the world is ever changing. Mountain ranges come and go. Oceans relatively rise and recede. Glaciers come and go, and continents drift gracefully like the slag on ladle of steel. Societies, languages, civilizations, and species are always evolving, even faster than the landscape. The Sahara wetlands (a true Garden of Eden) became a desert in the time that man has lived there. All of this is measurable.

Was I raised with any beliefs? Sure. I always believed in discernible causes for any given effect. I probably believed in Evolution until I had enough education to understand it. Now I know it. Like gravity, electromagnetism, or quantum parity.

Just like Me? I don’t think so.

Reductive religion is just as objectionable as reductive science, and for the same reason: Reality is large, and our minds are small

-Wendell Berry, The Burden of the Gospels

Regulars know that our particular corner of the blogosphere, already hazardous enough (see name), has recently been hit by a juggernaut of rhetoric whose driver is under the influence of a kind of intoxication of certainty. While I understand that almost everyone is tired of the debate, I’d like to say that in some ways I recognize the embattled feeling he communicates so vividly.

I think any of us who are parents and who try to instill in our children skills of self-control, responsibility,  and compassion, feel that we are swimming against the tide of the whole culture. I want my daughter to realize that she has value and worth beyond sexual attractiveness, but I face a culture that glorifies pimps and hos and pornstars - a culture, in short that views sex as a commodity. I want her to have self-control and the ability to delay gratification, but the culture says “Grab it now. You deserve it!”

The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral minimalism: the desire to be efficient at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. The minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination—this is the culture of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled children…We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

–Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limit

I want her to be responsible and accountable, but we our leaders refuse to be held accountable for their mistakes. CEO’s feel no qualms about drawing large salaries while running their countries into the ground. I live in a country where politicians feel no compunction about repeating what they know to be lies and distortion about Iraq’s connection with 9/11.

…our cultural tradition is in large part the record of our continuing effort to understand ourselves as beings specifically human: to say that, as humans, we must do certain things and we must not do certain things. We must have limits or we will cease to exist as humans; perhaps we will cease to exist, period. At times, for example, some of us humans have thought that human beings, properly so called, did not make war against civilian populations, or hold prisoners without a fair trial, or use torture for any reason…

-Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limit

I want her to have compassion, and the courage to fight for justice, but again, these are qualities not often found in those our culture rewards with money and power.

The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly..  An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product.

Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

In short, while I feel with Erik that a moral indictment of society is in order, I think we need to get beyond obsessing with what goes on in other people’s bedrooms and really look at society as a whole. We say that we want our children to have ethics, responsibility, compassion and critical thinking skills. These values are hard to teach when all around them children see adults rewarded for the opposite qualities.

Finally, I would like to speak in favor of discipline. Not discipline as punishment, but discipline as developing the habit of turning away from the path of least resistance. We speak of academic or scientific disciplines: to be effective in science, the mind must be disciplined to avoid assumptions and to demand evidence. There are also spiritual disciplines which can help develop compassion and develop what the Buddhists call “skillfulness” in personal relationships. Mental and emotional discipline both require a certain skepticism to our own deeply held certainties. For in the end, while the universe is infinite,  our minds are finite.

[I have interspersed some quotes of Wendell Berry with my thoughts, as an example of a Christian and conservative (in the classic sense of the word, one who conserves) writer whose thinking I respect, though I don't always agree with it.]

Over the years, I’ve often thought of the following quote: “The child is father of the man.”  These words often haunt me deeply.  They capture the absurd but true notion that each of us is nurtured and tutored (and sometimes damaged or destroyed) by younger versions of ourselves.

At one time, I thought the meaning of this quote was obvious, but now I see that it isn’t obvious at all. By the way, my interpretation has nothing to do with the fact that the quote is written in a masculine version.  The quote could and should be translated to cover both male and female.  Something like, “The Child is the parent of the Adult.”

The quote appears as part of a poem by Wordsworth:

“MY HEART LEAPS UP WHEN I BEHOLD”

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

What, then, is the meaning of “”The child is father of the man”? Here is my interpretation. Think of the person you are today. Think of the life that you are currently living.  Consider both the predicaments you are now in and the joys you are now experiencing. Much of that (or all of that) has been made possible as a result of decisions (good and bad) made by younger versions of you.  Here’s an obvious example.   I am alive today because a young boy (a younger version of me) repeatedly made safe decisions when crossing streets and when riding a bicycle near traffic.  My fate was in the hands of that young child.

But my intellectual fate was also in the hands of that young boy who was me.  I am currently 52 years old. Numerous key decisions I made when I was 5, 8, 12, 18, 21, 25, 37, 45 and 48 allowed me to become who I am now. I am truly grateful to former versions of me. Thanks to their sacrifices, I currently have many resources and options.  We are all mostly self-taught, right?  And who is doing most of the teaching, other than younger versions of ourselves.  Perhaps it’s not always conscious, but it’s unrelenting and powerful because those younger versions of ourselves serve as strong filters, determining the kinds of information and social contacts that “they” will allow to future versions of themselves.   And you’re doing that right now, deciding what to notice and what to ignore, thereby shaping that future version of you.

I remember being 9-years old and paging through encyclopedias from cover to cover.  This introduced me to many topics of which I knew nothing until that time.  That 9-year-old kid sent me off on an intellectual voyage that I am still taking. If he hadn’t cultivated his curiosity and gotten comfortable with some aspects of the big world around him, I might have lacked a meaningful basis for stretching that understanding further when I was 12, 16, or 42.

Even when I was five years old, I remember hearing things I didn’t believe and reacting to it carefully, strongly and in a way that lingered.  My 5-year old self taught his skepticism to my 6-year old self, and so on.  For instance, my religious father once took me into an empty church when I was about five.  He tried to convince me that Jesus lived in a small golden tabernacle and that Jesus was a piece of bread. I still remember that conversation because it triggered a crisis for me, even at that young age.  I knew that bread was not alive and that people don’t live in shoebox-sized boxes in churches.  Why was my father saying such strange things?  That five-year-old version of me handed the skeptical baton to the six-year version of himself.  The six-year old took that lesson to heart and reformed it a bit, before passing it to the 7-year old version of myself.  Almost 50 years later, I am still benefiting from that lesson first noted by a five-year old.

The six-year-old version of me took an interest in music that I retain to this day.  It reminds me of the children’s game of “Telephone,” though.  Every time the lesson was passed down to a new version, it changed a bit.  By the time it got to that 25-year old version of me, the love of simple children’s songs had turned into a passion for playing jazz.

The 8-year old version of me intuitively appreciated the scientific method.  “He” explored the world in a careful, sensitive and somewhat skeptical way. He heard and saw a lot of things, but rejected some of them as being too far-fetched. It’s like a long line of torch carriers, of which I am only the most recent.

It also amazes me that there is a powerful path-dependence to this succession of earlier versions of me.   If earlier versions of me hadn’t worked hard in various ways, I would not have had many the opportunities that I ended up having. (more…)

For the past few years, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt has successfully injected a huge does of psychology into the study of morality. Along the way, he has gone a long way toward bridging the “is” with the “ought,” a chasm that many philosophers have insisted to be unbridgeable.  Haidt explores these moral-psychological issues in highly readable form in his 2006 book, The Happiness Hypothesis:  Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Here’s a photo of my personal well-worn copy of Haidt’s book:

Based on his experiments, Haidt has been extraordinarily successful in describing the moral differences distinguishing conservatives and liberals.  Which group is more moral?  That isn’t the right question, according to Haidt.  Both of these groups sincerely strive to be “moral.”  Conservatives and liberals differ in the way they characterize morality because they base their differing moral senses on different measures. Based on Haidt’s research, there are the five separate measures (I think of them as tectonic plates) that underlie all moral systems.  Conservative morality substantially draws on all five of these five measures:

- harm/care
- fairness/reciprocity
- ingroup/loyalty
- authority/respect, and
- purity/sanctity

For liberals, however, the moral domain consists primarily (or only) of the first two of these five measures (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity).  For liberals, the other three measures (I’ll call them “conservative measures”) tend to fly under the liberal radar.  In fact, many liberals scoff at claims that the conservative measures (ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity) have anything at all to do with morality.  To avoid a potential misunderstanding, remember that many conservatives also find the first two measures on the list to be important. Conservatives don’t limit their senses of morality to these first two measures, however.  Many conservatives thus feel strongly about issues regarding fairness and they feel compelled to help the poor and unfortunate members of society.  These impulses aren’t the full story for conservatives, though, and these first two measures are often overruled by the three “conservative measures.” For more detail on the five measures, see this previous DI post on Haidt.

Liberals thus downplay the three “conservative measures” and argue that when a government treats its citizens well and fairly, the government has fully done its job.  For liberals, the three conservative moral-measures are, at most, matters of personal prerogative.  For liberals, it’s certainly not the government’s job to tell us “My country, right or wrong.”  For liberals, it’s absurd for the government to expect us to respect authority figures we find severely lacking.  For liberals, government should focus on equal rights, not the personal disgust felt by many heterosexuals, when considering the issue of gay marriage.

Here’s the problem:  the three conservative moral measures often work for conservatives.   Why do they work for conservatives?  It’s not clear.  It’s a trillion dollar question.  If you can figure it out, let us know.

Conservative measures don’t compel all of us, of course, but they seem like life and death considerations to many conservatives.  The bottom line is that the three “conservative moral measures can be incredibly powerful influences on many people.  The conservative measures underlie the emotions that are triggered when conservatives see waving flags and threats of “terror.”  Use of certain types of triggers (such as “orange alerts” invocations of “God”) allow Machiavellian political operatives to play conservatives like puppets.  The documentary “War Made Easy” demonstrates the unrelenting (and potentially destructive) power of these “conservative” moral measures.

In his September 9, 2008 article at Edge.org, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, Haidt hits the bulls-eye when he explains why Democrats are so often seem so confounded in the face of Republican moralizing.  In his article at Edge, Haidt has persuasively explained how it is that so many conservatives embrace God-fearing flag-waving, even when those preachy flag-wavers are unabashed liars. Consider what Haidt proposes as the “first rule of politics”:

This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.

In short, morality bubbles up from below for most people.  Morality is a gut-level phenomenon.  Morality does not originate in the form of top-down intellectual activity, contrary to what philosophers have often suggested. Haidt’s writings thus line up well with those of Antonio Damasio, who demonstrated through experiments involving people with damage to the pre-frontal cortex that there is no such thing as rationality in the absence of the guiding influence of emotions.

If Democrats are going to prevail, then, they can’t simply explain things to the People, they can’t simply stand up to reason with the People.  Instead, Democrats need to tap into the right emotions with their political positions.  They need to set aside serious time to better understand those conservative moral tectonic plates.  Only if they take this bottom-up approach will good things follow.

As Haidt makes clear, preaching about a “fair” society and a society that “cares” are not enough.  These two moral measures, in the absence of the other three, make for a thin, non-compelling moral soup for most conservatives.  Conservatives don’t want soup, they want a thick stew!

Conservatives don’t believe that the job is done when government makes sure that citizens have fair doses of resources and then sends them out to have a good life with no strings attached.  For conservatives, this seems like a big amoral (or immoral) party-time or, as Haidt, puts it, a shopping spree.

How does Haidt, a “moral psychologist” define morality?:

Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.

Notice how Haidt’s definition focuses on the function of a moral system rather than any particular repertoire of activities (e.g., “Don’t have gay sex!) or any particular way of intellectualizing conduct (“For the sake of justice, let’s enact a new program to fairly distribute resources to the poor.”).  Notice, too, how both conservative morality and progressive forms of morality easily fit into Haidt’s definition.

In what way do conservative politicians excel?   They know that “morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.” For conservatives, morality is far more than a voluntary social contract. (more…)

Back in the mid-1980’s, two graduates of Mercy High School (located in University City, Missouri) drew deeply on that Catholic education and decided to get together every week or so in order to create cartoons.   Whew!  That was more than twenty years ago.  Our plan was to make cartoons so insightful and/or funny that publishers would buy them and then we would never need to get real jobs.  It didn’t quite turn out that way.   Mike Harty was the guy who could draw and I was the guy who couldn’t, but who was willing to offer lots and lots of ideas until Mike found one worth drawing.  This brings to mind the idea of Linus Pauling:  “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

Mike and I are both baby-boomers.  We drew these in the midst of Ronald Reagan’s second term–cold war politics often worked its way into our cartoons.  As did death and “meaning of life,” and God, and incongruity.  We really didn’t have a plan other than to do something that resonated.  After reading these, you’ll probably pick up on the reason why Mike and I weren’t as popular as the football stars in high school . . .

We worked at drawing and scheming and creating, week after week, until we had created a couple hundred cartoons.  I recently spoke with Mike and asked whether it would be OK to publish some of them at DI.  He was delighted.  Tonight, I dug out my box of cartoon archives and selected several cartoons that still “resonated” with me.  Most of these need no explanation (I hope!).  The exception is the first cartoon.  We drew it in 1986, when scientists and engineers were struggling to figure out how to make the space shuttle safe (the Challenger space shuttle had exploded a few months earlier).  this was also an era when Christian fundamentalism was on the rise.

If anyone wants to buy the rights to publish these cartoons in a big magazine (so that we can finally retire), please let us know.

(more…)

I always carry a camera these days, hoping to capture something worth sharing. Whether I’ve succeeded will be for you to judge. Here’s the best I could come up with over the past few weeks. These photos really don’t have anything to do with each other other than that I thought that each of these images were worth noticing. That’s not going to stop me from trying to spin them into a coherent story. Actually, this faux series of segues reminds me of a saying regarding graduate students (not that I’m really a graduate student): “You know you are a graduate student when everything is relevant to everything else.”

This first photo is a collection of heads. This is noteworthy because I think I know where these heads came from.

Here’s another sort of collection. Grandfather clocks. This shop is in Belleville, Illinois. Some of the clocks cost thousands of dollars. I asked the store clerk whether these big expensive clocks were mostly purchased by institutions. She said no. Most of them are bought by people who put them in their homes.  I didn’t buy one, since I’m happy with my $20 digital watch.

Here’s yet another collection. If this is your car, let me know and I’ll give you full credit.

Speaking of vehicles, I wouldn’t recommend parking next to a sign that says “free stuff.”

And what do you put into cars? Gasoline. Have you noticed all of the greenwashing of gasoline these days? The gas pumps are often painted the color green, as well. And why not make the cigarettes look healthy too, decorating them in forest green and ocean blue?

Cigarettes? That reminds me of death, of course. And that reminds me of my recent trip to a huge Catholic cemetery . I hadn’t before visited the graves of my grandparents. They are all in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. It was a moving experience for me, even though I don’t believe in life after death. But many people do believe in ghostly beings, of course. And there are many statues to celebrate the purported life after death. The pair of statues below reminded me of just how often earthly religions depend on social hierarchies.  Lots and lots of people bowing to each other and groveling before each other [Yes, and the word "groveling" reminds me of Monte Python's movie "The Holy Grail,"--you know the scene I'm referring to]. Now what would religion be without all the groveling?  Of course, these earthly social pecking orders are imitations of the supposedly heavenly pecking orders, with God the infallible at the top of the heap, giving the orders. For me, these parallel pecking orders constitute proof that “God” is truly made in man’s image and likeness.

Which leads me to think of what life on earth really is about. For those of us who are afflicted with existentialitis, it is about learning the truth, above all (in the long run, of course, when we’re not busy eating or sleeping). Why? For “Strength?”  This quote can be interpreted several ways, one of which makes truth seem so utterly un-holy, so much the tool of a self-centered manipulative person.  I prefer to interpret the quote as a reminder that hard-fought truth (contrasted to dogma) is the tonic that can turn bickering individuals into a highly functioning community.  Truth makes for strong and healthy communities.

Here is a plaque displayed at Washington University in St. Louis, located about six miles from my house. I’ve had the opportunity to audit dozens of credit hours of courses at Wash U, and I have grown so found of the school, its impressive teachers and students that I now consider it to be “my” school, even though my degrees are from other schools. You see, the deep value in a school is really really really not about getting a degree. I believe that unflinchingly. Nor is a school the only place to get an education. Nor should education stop after one finishes getting degrees.

To bring this series of images to an end, for now, what is the purpose of all of this education and thinking? Why do some of us engage in all of the hard work that it takes to hone our understanding of anything worthwhile? Honest people know that we don’t really know, and the most honest people are the most humble. Sometimes, I think that the moon passes overhead to remind us that we are physically small and that there is much that we don’t know (yes, I know that this sounds like a non-sequitur). The photo below is the moon passing over my front yard tonight (or is it more accurate to say that this is me spinning under the moon tonight?). With this last meandering thought brought to its knees by a clear photo of an awe-inspiring object a quarter of a million miles away, that’s where this word salad is going to end, for now.

I collect quotes (who doesn’t?). Really, it’s a good hobby. It’s cheap and often interesting. When they are really good quotes, it’s like a novel condensed to a mere sentence.

The first two of this set are about one of my favorite topics, rampant materialism. The others all relate closely to one another, but only if you have a wild imagination or if you think of a very broad topic like “meaning of life.” Without further ado:

Who is content with nothing possesses all things.
– Nicolas Boileau Despreaux

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
– Feodor Dostoyevsky

The trouble is that you think you have time.
– Zen Master

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.
– Antisthenes

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.
– Austin O’Malley

War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.
–Anonymous

Never mistake motion for action.
– Ernest Hemingway

(more…)

MSNBC has recently reported on the prosperity gospel of Televangelist Kenneth Copeland, which appears to be benefiting mostly—Kenneth Copeland and his relatives.

Kenneth Copeland, 71, is a pioneer of the prosperity gospel, which teaches that believers are destined to flourish spiritually, physically and financially — and share the wealth with others.

His ministry’s 1,500-acre campus outside Fort Worth is testament to his success. It includes a church, private airstrip, a hangar for the ministry’s aircraft and a $6 million, church-owned mansion.

I shake my head when I read these corporate media reports about these upstart religions. That’s because many long-established religions also allow their leaders to live in wanton opulence. Consider, for instance, the Catholic Church (in which I was raised). When is the last time the Pope or any of the Cardinals or Bishops missed a meal because they couldn’t afford it? Although I know of frugal (and morally admirable) priests and nuns, I have yet to hear of any high-ranking Catholic clergyman who had to scrape by. If you doubt this, check out the opulent living quarters of your local Cardinal or Arch-Bishop.

It’s also pathetic to watch the mainstream media attacking newly-established religions for preaching the prosperity gospel. You can almost hear the sneering and snarling when the big media outlets report that preachers like Copeland (or, another example, Joel Osteen) teaches that there’s nothing wrong with being rich or enjoying a life of conspicuous consumption.

It’s a rare religion, though, that has ever ejected any member for being rich or for consuming conspicuously. It doesn’t matter that Edward or Susan or Walter has five vacation homes or a private jet or pays 27 times more to eat at fancy restaurants than most people pay for food. Here’s what being rich does for members of organized religions: they get more deference and more respect than lower earning members of the church. Never are they scolded from the pulpit. I beg you—if anyone reading this knows of any rich person being asked by any mainstream church to stop living so lavishly, let me know.  I assume that it occasionally happens in tiny or fringe sects, but not in Big Church USA.  For instance, do you think the Catholic Church has ever told any of the Kennedys that they should sell their lavish property at Martha’s Vineyard or that they should otherwise cut down on their conspicuous consumption? Their whirlwind vacations or their fancy cars or their fancy jewelry?  Churches are utterly obeisant to rich people.

Here’s the real-life gospel every Sunday: “No matter what we say up here, it’s OK for you to keep the vast majority of your money and to blow it on any luxury you care to dream up.”

Mainstream certainly preach the gospel that “Blessed are the poor,” but they actually push their members to act on it. I’ve yet to see it. Therefore, why does the mainstream media pounce on churches that allow its leaders and members to flaunt their wealth?  Jealousy?  Schadenfreude? For rich people (and for many poor), church is for Sundays only.

Most churches founded by organized religions are country clubs with steeples. They are happy to accept most anyone who walks into the door, especially if that person has some resources he or she might donate to the church. In return, wealthy members of mainstream churches have grown accustomed to a substantial return benefit. Never will a church leader suggest that those wealthy members need to actually change anything about their lifestyle unless it involves something about family planning or sex for pleasure.

It’s less likely that a mainstream church will scold a member for conspicuous consumption than it would be for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

Tonight I watched “It’s Bad For Ya,” George Carlin’s final nationally televised performance. The entire show is available on YouTube (Below is Part I of VII). The show was broadcast live on March 1, 2008, only a few months prior to Carlin’s death (due to a heart attack, on June 22, 2008).

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Carlin opened the show by announcing that he was 70 years old. In Parts I and II, he speaks bluntly about society’s failure to deal frankly with death. It’s impossible to watch this performance without feeling the irony. At one point, he states:

So don’t be afraid to get old. It’s a great time of life. You get to take advantage of people and you’re not responsible for anything! You can even shit in your pants!

He dissects many other topics, including law, religion, children, education and national pride. He shows no patience for the way our culture handles any of these issues. His performance gets especially dark when he asserts that there is essentially no hope for us, ecologically speaking—he predicts that in 40 or 50 more years, the entire planet will be a massive ball of pollution. At many points in the performance, it’s not easy to tell whether Carlin retains any personal optimism. Is his performance intentionally injected with hyperbole or is this really and truly what Carlin thinks. I suspected the latter, but I don’t really know.

I heard many gems during the performance (meaning that I heard many things with which I agree wholeheartedly). Here’s my favorite, this one delivered during the topic of society’s often-stated goal that “we should teach our children to read.”

It’s not important to get children to read. It’s much more important to teach children to question what they read. They should be taught to question everything. Everything they read and everything they hear. They should be taught to question authority . . .

Amen.

Conflict: competitive or opposing action of incompatibles: antagonistic state or action.

Pornography: (3): the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction.

What else could it be, other than conflict pornography, when a major media source unnecessarily frames a story in such a way as to concoct a “conflict” in order to arouse a quick intense emotion reaction in its readers? That’s exactly what Newsweek did this week with its cover story: Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?

I can imagine what the Newsweek Editors were really thinking: Americans get easily bored unless there is conflict. Even concocted or unnecessary conflicts will do the trick. Let’s turn Lincoln against Darwin to sell more advertising. Just as we’ve turned every election into a horse race rather than a sober choice. Let’s conjure up conflicts everywhere so that Americans don’t get distracted and thus turn away to watch one of the dozens of sports contests playing at every hour of the day. Let’s frame all of our stories as conflicts so that Americans don’t run off and watch any of innumerable movies where violent conflict appears to be the plot itself, rather than a means to a higher end.

Americans can’t help themselves when there is a conflict to behold. The corporate media knows that Americans are war-mongers. They know that when we are troubled, we are always relieved to know that we can go to war. As we’ve repeatedly done in Latin America. After all, war is movement. War is doing something. Not going to war is nothing. War is conflict. All movement is progress. Therefore, War is progress. Peace is boring. Darwin is boring. Lincoln is boring. But Lincoln versus Darwin is a conflict and thus it is interesting. Just like attacking Iran is more interesting because it is laden with conflict rather than peaceful resolution based on compromise.

Therefore, let’s not have any more stories based on resolved conflict. Let’s not herald two great men. Let’s pit them against each other. Just like we’ve done with God versus Allah. Or gays versus straights. Or Blacks versus Whites. Or Liberals versus Conservatives.

Human animals are rigged to give immediate and sustained attention to conflict. We need to be more aware of our propensity because we are so easily manipulated by those who choose to frame their communications as conflict when, in reality, other frames are much more appropriate. Because we are so vulnerable to apparent conflict, manipulative news media can make irrelevant things look relevant and un-compelling things look compelling. The news media all too often feeds our base craving for stories full of conflict. For a lot of evidence, just check out your local TV news. Huge issues involving the survival of the American way of life (exhaustion of resources, overpopulation and white collar systemic fraud) are overlooked. Rather, we get massive doses of the local crime report and sports. A bit of conflict will make just about any story look compelling.

But our yearning for conflict is addictive, just like our yearning for sweets, fatty or sugary foods, drugs, physical possessions and (for some of us) indiscriminate sex. These cravings run deep in human animals. We need to be made more aware of them, so that we don’t pursue warped priorities.  We could know more about them if we studied Darwin, even if we don’t worry about whether he was more important than Lincoln.  If we take that time to know more about the biology of human animals, maybe we wouldn’t run around getting mesmerized by conflict pornography.

I wrote about complacency once before. I focused on the complacency of most Americans in the face of the energy crisis that is clearly upon us. We have no assurance that gasoline won’t double or triple in price over the next five or 10 years, throwing our economy into a massive depression. With stakes like these, you would think that prolific energy wasters like us would immediately jump on our energy consumption problem by enacting a national conservation plan to cut our petroleum use in half. This could be accomplished by modifying our wasteful energy usage in dozens of ways. For instance, we really could carpool. We could build up our mass transit systems and encourage their use. We could walk and bike more. We could make our homes much more energy-efficient. Instead of building new homes in existing farm fields, we could renovate homes that already exist. While we’re at it, we could cut our use of all other forms of energy in half too. For instance, the technology already exists to make zero-carbon footprint buildings.

Others have written extensively regarding many methods by which we could reduce energy use. Due to the widely accepted law of supply and demand, cutting our use of energy would also have the effect of lowering the price of energy (relative to whatever it would have been had we not taken such measures), thereby diminishing the financial damage from our perennial trade deficits and budget deficits.

My concern is that so many people (including many people I know personally) are absolutely complacent about the need to change the way we produce and use energy. I keep hearing people say that “they will make our gasoline out of corn” or “we have plenty of coal” as though some unspecified “corn plan” would produce net energy without causing people to starve or some fantasy “coal plan” could be a foolproof substitute for petroleum, without somehow contributing massive amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

People are finally buying more energy-efficient cars, but that is only in response to the spiking costs of gasoline. It’s like we need to be kicked in the shin in order to get our attention. Many mainstream news articles discuss that this price jump of gasoline occurred “suddenly,” as though it was impossible to see that high gasoline prices were in our future. We still don’t get it, though. For example, many news articles are currently talking about the high price of gas as though gas will continue to be five dollars per gallon five years from now, as though we’ve hit a stable plateau.

As I suggested in my prior post about complacency, I sense that there’s a rampant attitude that most of the big things in life are not under our control. Rather, they simply “happen.” According to many people, the “free market” decides what will be available for sale and at what price it will be sold. Similarly, “God” makes decisions about disasters and diseases such as heart attacks and lung cancer (even though people cause many of their own problems through climate change in lifestyle at choices). The people who are big believers in the free market and a sentient God see humans as powerless children who simply react to situations. We act like there’s nothing we can do to root corporate corruption out of our national political system.

From so many people, I hear this solution: “They” will come up with something to solve our energy problems, our medical problems, our food production problems, our natural resource supply issues and our pollution problems, as though these problems don’t start with each and every one of us. As though we are not responsible for what “they” need to do. As though we don’t make the messes that “they” need to clean up.

I have no doubt that we could cut our energy usage in half. We could substantially reduce our risks of certain diseases by changing our lifestyles. We could eat foods that are friendlier to the planet, such that the average item of food would not actually need to travel 1000 miles or more to our plates. We could start making difficult decisions that would ensure sustainable supplies of water well into the future, at least for many communities (Las Vegas might not be in the plans). By using much less of everything we consume we could substantially cut the amount of toxic waste we generate. When “we” live more responsibly, “they” have less work to do to save us.

Admittedly, some bad things do seem to just happen to us. On the other hand, many of our biggest problems are caused by us. Therefore, to act complacently as a general rule is a huge cop-out virtually guaranteeing disaster. The real solution is to force ourselves to follow the chain of production through our use of our products and resources so that we can see that our local actions often have tangible national and global consequences. We are incapable of assessing these big problems to the extent that we allow ourselves to overlook problems that have solutions that would be expensive or inconvenient to us.

Sacrifice is a dirty word these days. No politician wants to tell the citizens that we will need to give up some of our wasteful ways. The same thing goes for the many “greenwashing” articles out there. For instance, I read several “green” magazines, including Plenty; they are extremely light on the need for self-sacrifice. (more…)

About some things, Americans are incredibly stupid. For instance, I’ve kept an eye on science and religion related ignorance for years. 15% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Half of the people in the United States (an allegedly “Christian Nation”)  can’t name Genesis as the first book in the Bible.

There are a lot more statistics where those came from. If you’d like to read a few dozen zingers, read Rick Shenkman’s article in Alternet, “Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?” There are some real head-shakers in Shenkman’s article. Several might have you wondering whether we should require citizens to pass rudimentary intelligence tests in order to vote. Shenkman’s compilation of stupidity had me wondering this. I know that this is an extremely controversial idea based on the way it has been misused in the past. It is clear, though that huge numbers of people have no idea how their government is designed to work, who is running their government, the basic characteristics of the scientific method, the basic facts of the religions to which they cling, or rudimentary principles of geography, history or economics. Now really . . . should such a person vote? This question makes me squirm.

I’m not really suggesting that we should take official government action to keep people from voting based on their intelligence levels. On the other hand, reading Shenkman’s article makes me wonder whether our “Get out the vote” campaigns should be focused on getting people to vote only if they know something other than their favorite TV shows and sports stars. Rather than “get out the vote,” perhaps we should have “vote only if you’re informed” campaigns. Here’s one of Shenkman’s many statistics that especially got me thinking in this entirely unacceptable way:

In the election of 2004, one of the hot issues was gay marriage. But gauging public opinion on the subject was difficult. Asked in one national poll whether they supported a constitutional amendment allowing only marriages between a man and a woman, a majority said yes. But three questions later a majority also agreed that “defining marriage was not an important enough issue to be worth changing the Constitution.” The New York Times wryly summed up the results: Americans clearly favor amending the Constitution but not changing it.

What is stupidity? Early in his comprehensive article on the lack of comprehension, Shenkman designates the five types of stupidity:

First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who’s in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country’s long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Although the article at the top of this post, “Ignorant America,” is full of compelling statistics, it (like many articles documenting American stupidity) is also riddled with many questions that confuse trivia for knowledge. How important is it for most Americans to know the name of the Secretary of Defense? Isn’t it possible that someone can be rather up to speed about America’s military policies without actually knowing the name of the Secretary of Defense?

America is obsessed with trivia and it is not unusual for trivia to masquerade as something important for tests that purport to measure intelligence. Knowing lots and lots of facts, though, especially the inert facts common for trivia buffs, is not the same thing as being intelligent. If these two things (knowledge and facts) were equal, we would regularly have great insights and discoveries occurring as a result of Trivia Nights, yet I don’t believe that has yet happened even once.

The problem with many intelligence tests is that they only measure ability to recall bits of information rather than detecting true understanding, much less wisdom. For this reason, many of the questions used to illustrate how “stupid” we are resemble the same problems found in many formal “intelligence tests.” A thorough review of those problems with IQ tests can be found in Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man (1996).

I recognize that we all have our focus when it comes to understanding the world. Someone who is dedicated to one field of study might not know as much about other fields of study. It is also important to remember that all of us have huge gaps in information. If we have dedicated our lives to understanding nanotechnology, how much are we actually going to know about the history of classical music ? If you work as a professional athlete, should we really be expected to know all five of the specific legal rights granted by the First Amendment? (Did you know that one of those rights is the right to petition the government?). Having written this, I think it’s more likely that those who truly excel at a field tend to be rather well-rounded.

There’s probably more than a few people who would insist that the scientific method is the be-all and end-all of intelligence because of its insistence on proof. There is an uneasy truce between belief and proof, however. In the area of religion, belief is often said to be justified even in the absence of proof. But don’t forget that even very smart people find an irresistible urge to believe many things that they cannot prove.

Here’s another caveat for those who walk around wagging their fingers (like I do) at the large number of “stupid” Americans. Howard Gardner has put forth a strong argument that there were actually multiple intelligences. He holds that the concept of “general intelligence” is highly suspect and that there might not be such a thing as GI. There are those who are incredibly talented at reading the moods and motives of other people (he calls this interpersonal intelligence), but who don’t do well at mathematics. There are people who are terrifically talented in musical ways (e.g. Hillary Hahn), but might not be very good at biology (I’m not suggesting that Hillary on is not good at biology– because I am deeply infatuated with Hillary Hahn, I assume that she is excellent at everything she does!). Many of us do know some “absent-minded professors” who can talk for hours on esoterica such as Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative but who seem inept at coping in the real world on a day-to-day basis. In the category of super-intelligent, I would quickly place my plumber (who can talk knowledgeably about almost anything, it seems) and a carpenter who has done work at my house, who has a superhuman grasp of his profession. I can’t imagine being as good as he is at the many arts of transforming a house, even if I trained for 20 years at the foremost “carpenter school.” (more…)

I’m currently reading a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World (2008).

The main point of the book is that modern parents tend to over-schedule their children and otherwise deprive them of time for creative play.  For instance, many parents are letting their children get addicted to two-dimensional screens (television and computer screens) and many of us are inundating our children with toys that deprive them of creative play, toys that “aren’t designed with the goal of engaging children for years, or even months.  They are designed to sell.”  The net result is that creative play “is in danger of extinction.”

Why is this loss of time for creative play important?  Because children use play to cope with “the greatest of human challenges, including life-threatening illness, death and loss.”  Play is much more than momentary fun.  It is “a fundamental component of living a meaningful life and essential to mental health.”  Linn was motivated to write her book to encourage readers to ensure that their children are given ample opportunities for creative play.

It seems as though Linn’s subject matter, creative play, might also extend to adults in a critically important way.  Such application would have the potential for shedding light on religious rituals.  Although Linn’s book doesn’t dwell on this possibility, it is certainly acknowledged.

Linn speaks of the transitional objects of childhood, the blankets, bears and other “cuddlies” that are crucial for a child’s comfort.  Sometimes they “seem to be even more important than actual parents because children cannot bear to be parted from them.” As