I know, a catchy title.  A little unfair maybe, since there’s nothing particularly titillating in what follows.  Or maybe there is, depending on what–what’s the saying?–”pumps yer nads!”   But in view of Erich’s post about our newly appointed head of Family Planning, I thought this might be the time to indulge more than a little in a topic rather close to my heart (depending on where one locates said metaphorical organ).

Did you know that the last week of October is national Protection From Pornography Week?  Yes, indeed, signed into law by our illustrious president, Mr. Bush back in 2003.  I for one had no idea I needed to be protected from it.  How reassuring to know that we are being defended from dangers both real and imagined by the ever watchful gaze of our very own homegrown clerics.

We’ve spent tax dollars on this.  Here is the link to the official White House proclamation.

Seems innocuous enough, even homey.  All that stuff about the destructive effects of porn on children, who can argue?

Has it occurred to anyone throughout the last two decades (beginning, in my opinion, with Ed Meese–anyone remember him?) of the war on pornography that–like alcohol and tobacco–pornography is simply not for children?  It seems a ludicrously simple idea to me–it was never intended for them.  We manage to have reasonable laws about things not intended for children.  We don’t let them drive cars (except at amusement parks, in specially constructed rides), we don’t let them drink booze, we don’t allow the sale of tobacco to minors.  They can’t vote, either, because we presume to decide on their level of intelligence and ability to make political statements.  That one may be arguable, but…    

We don’t allow children to sign contracts.  We don’t let them in to see “R” rated movies without a parent or guardian.  Technically, children aren’t allowed to have credit cards, but sometimes that one slips through the cracks.

Point being, we manage these other prohibitions quite handily.  Occasionally something goes wrong, but we have a system for dealing with it that doesn’t require a national week signed into effect by the president.  I mean, we don’t have a National Protection From Contracts Week detailing how contracts have debilitating effects on families and children (especially children, oh, those poor innocents who cannot defend themselves from the deprivations of over-zealous loan officers and contract litigators!).

The other side of this is, however, perhaps a little more contentious.  We don’t allow children to participate in all this stuff, but we make an assumption that adults may, can, and that there is, for the most part, nothing wrong with it! 

So why do we need this Protection From Porn Week? 

Well, it’s not aimed at children.  With all that child sexual exploitation is an evil thing and no sensible adult would allow that it’s not, the target here is not to protect children.  It’s not even to protect.  The target is Sex.

Since the Sixties there has been a war going on in this country about the public function of Sex in our society.  I won’t here detail that war–we sell products with it, but we can’t actually sell the thing itself (except in certain places under strict licensing etc.); we all like to be sexy, even when we don’t admit it, but we don’t necessarily want to follow through on the implications, i.e. have sex commensurate with the degree of sexiness we like to pretend to; sex is one of the most wanted things we have, yet there is a perverse urge to deny it to others when we deem it inappropriate (or even when it is appropriate, just public).  The war has taken on all the canny subterfuge and annoying intangibility of the worst aspects of the Cold War, which I think is an ironic if apt comparison.  After all, the Cold War was as much about ideas as about actions.

Attorney General John Ashcroft spent $80,000 on a curtain to hide the tits of Justice so television viewers wouldn’t be offended.

Who really was?  We’ve been looking at public nudity like that for two centuries.  Except for a few extreme crackpots, I don’t know of anyone who ever seriously complained–because we have all made the distinction between nudity and sexuality in these instances.  I mean, no one seriously gets turned on by the nakedness of Justice.  Do they? (more…)

In Missouri, Republican legislators charged with getting to the bottom of a problem, have produced a fine example of spurious causal linkage that ought to go down in history with the assertion made by certain agents of the pope to Michelangelo that, since one of his marbles had taken seven years to complete, the new one for which he had requisitioned four helpers, would therefore take 28 years to complete–four times seven, you see, equals twenty-eight. It never occurred to them to divide, only multiply.

Which seems to be a problem Republicans have with regards to certain problems.

Their conclusion in this instance is that the rise in illegal immigration over that last three decades can be attributed to abortion. Specifically, because some forty-five million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade, those millions of potential Americans represent the short-fall in our labor pool which illegal immigrants are filling.

I haven’t laughed so painfully in a long time. Not over this sort of absurdity.

The Democrats on the same committee have refused to sign off on the report, but the report is now public, and all the Republicans signed it, hence alleviating any doubt (had there ever been any) where they stand on the issue of illegal immigration. Obviously, we should go on an accelerated program of creating a second baby boom to stem the tide of all those undocumented workers stealing American jobs. It will, of course, take about 18 years for the program to produce any tangible results–unless, of course, the Republicans intend sponsoring legislation to overturn child labor laws.

Anything to strike a blow at a woman’s right to choose.

Now, lest we not be clear about where I come down on this issue–both issues–let me state a couple of things up front.

I am a man. I therefore do not believe I have a “natural” right to say anything at all about what a woman does concerning reproduction. I have some contempt for males who bleat about their rights being trampled by abortion (after all, it’s MY fetus, too, she used MY sperm). In specific instances where a couple planned in advance to make a baby and the woman backed out after pregnancy occurred, I have a modicum of sympathy–broken promises are hard to take–but I don’t see any way short of legal instrument (a contract between them, notarized, etc) of ever proving the case. (more…)

Debate goes on, seeming forever, about the issue of religious belief in a secular society.  The validity of sacred texts becomes grist for the mill and sides line up over What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers.  We see competing fish on cars–Darwin fish with feet in answer to the unembellished christian fish symbol, then a bigger fish labeled Truth swallowing the diminutive Darwin fish, and on and on.

What is really at issue here hasn’t got one thing to do with who believes in god or evolution.  Belief is a self-contained, private matter.  The issue that gets lost in all the polemic is very simple: behavior.

Those who would sap the poison from the “inerrant word” crowd are defending their assumed right to live the way they want.  One might argue that belief in god doesn’t really limit people, and as far as it goes, that is true.  If you, as an individual, choose to believe in god, then you have elected to reform your life according to the tenets of your new faith.  You may adopt whatever modest or byzantine traditions and habits you wish.  After all, you have chosen this, you get to do it.

What you don’t get to do is tell everyone else to behave accordingly, and that’s where the meat of the issue lies.

Because fundamentalists–and we’re talking about fundamentalists here for the most part, of any stripe–do not adopt such an extreme view of faith out of intellectual curiosity or even spiritual need.  They do so to join a Program.  They want to be part of an army, marching in the cause of righteousness.  And for an army on the march to make any sense at all, there must be enemies to fight and victories to win.

None of which has anything to do with getting to heaven or living your own life according to a select set of principles.  It has to do with making changes in everything around you.  What would be the point of going to war, metaphorically or otherwise, if after you win you leave everything as it was before you marched?

We who disagree with these programs are defending ourselves in the most civilized way we can–by arguing over the justifications, the framework, and the legitimacy of the governing creeds.  We dissect Scripture and demonstrate that it is riddled with inconsistency, error, contradiction, and, by the way, a  lot  of bad advice in order to assert that those marching to change our lives do not  have the authority, much less the responsibility, to enact those changes.

What changes am I talking about?

Women, to put it as plainly as possible, are not chattel.  (more…)

     A few months ago I stumbled on a preacher on television.  The reason I stopped to listen was that on the screen he was scrolling through a litany of famous scientists, their fields and contributions, and noting that each was a Great Christian.  Then the preacher–I don’t know who he was, sorry–ended his litany by making the claim that science and religion are inextricably linked, that they must have each other to work, that there is no dispute between them–
     –and that evolution is wrong.
     This was a week after I listened to an NPR interview with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in which he made the claim that it is vital to settle this question of where “we” (meaning humans) came from because if evolution is true, then we would have no basis for morality.
     This is one of the most perverse false syllogisms I have ever heard, and it baffles me no end.  Underlying it is the assumption that morality only ever comes from a supernatural source, that without a deity we are too dumb, puerile, self-serving, and just plain hopeless to ever do anything right–for ourselves on anyone else. (The Erik Von Danniken theory of moral provenance.) That atheists are a priori immoral and that evolutionists, who reject special creation, are necessarily atheists, and therefore, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, likewise immoral.  They can’t help it.  They have no god giving them direction.
     A minute of clear thought shows how this is substantively untrue.  A few more minutes and you might begin to see that this is one of the foulest assaults on our civilization ever mounted.  By linking the two things in this way, you automatically create a Sisyphean task for anyone who doesn’t fit the fundamentalist christian mold (or the fundamentalist Islamic mold, etc).  Not only do we have to demonstrate how your argument is false, we must first demonstrate how we have a legitimate basis from which to make our counter argument, a basis automatically designated immoral, godless, groundless…
     Even christians should be afraid of this.  The logical result of this is to set a standard from which one may never deviate without fear of being labeled atheist and moral threat.  It shuts the door on any possibility of examining the universe in new ways, discovering new explanations for existence, and indulging in the wonder of examining life.
     One hesitates to engage the argument because it seems so infantile.  But when someone of Santorum’s stature makes such pronouncements–along with all his other rants about homosexuality, family planning, and the Liberal Agenda–it’s not a crackpot on the corner standing on his soapbox that one can ignore, though ignore him we should.
     What the basic argument comes down to is this: god–in this instance the christian god–supposedly created Everything.  By his will alone the universe exists and all that is in it.  By his will alone we strive to be Good.  That without him, we have no reason to be Good.  That evolution proposes that the universe just Happened and everything in it arose by processes independent of conscious intent.  And therefore, as this is an impersonal process, all the creatures within the universe have de facto no basis for being Good.  Morality, therefore, cannot pertain and we would all be lost.
     So.  The question comes to mind: if tomorrow it was demonstrated beyond any possibility of counter argument that god was gone–dead, left the building, or never existed–would you, Mr. Santorum, embark on a life of debauchery and self-satiation?  Would you rape?  Take drugs?  Go on a drinking binge?  Steal, murder, slander, and otherwise let your barely-suppressed immoral urges have free rein?
     I doubt it.  You’ve grown up living according to certain standards, standards which I’m sure you have found useful simply on the face of them, regardless of their provenance.
     Of course, if I’m wrong, and you would go on a major party rampage, flouting every standard you ever had, I would then ask: Why?  Didn’t you understand the utility of those standards?  Or are you so corrupt to begin with that you require divine muzzling?  (If that’s the case, why would anyone have elected you in the first place?)
     You have to make the argument that morality cannot exist outside a religious context, which is demonstrably untrue, as people leave such contexts all the time and do not cease being as moral as they ever were.  (Whereas many people who remain fervantly within such contexts continue to be whatever they are to begin with–as moral or immoral as ever.)
     But to make the case we have to ask a more fundamental question: what is morality?
     Depends who you ask, but the most common feature of any explanation is that Morality is the impulse to live in accordance with beneficial principles.  Maybe that’s a bit dry, but I think it’s accurate.  Ethics, on the other hand, which is often confused with morality, represents a codified approach to appropriate living within a community, and more often than not entails negotiations about terms of interaction.  These are processes and can vary from place to place, culture to culture, time to time.  What is ethical now was not always and what was ethical once is often quaint or repugnant now. (more…)

A follow up, answer, another viewpoint…

The title is somewhat rhetorical. Hate–in its undiluted, culturally-disseminated form has only one reason–the perpetuation of local power–for the individual, the power to insist that he/she is right and refuses to countenance criticism, implicit or otherwise; for the state, the power to maintain power in the face of outside insistence on change. . If those against whom the hatred is directed are unfortunate enough not to see how they play into it, then the issue becomes complicated. What we now see in the Middle East and many other parts of the world is a hatred based on local potentates (single rulers, committees, vested interests, or cultural hegemons) desire, need, hunger to maintain a privileged position in their section of the world, something that became more and more untenable int he aftermath of World War ll.

Can that really be? After the decades of beating ourselves (namely, the West, which includes Europe, North America, and certain isolated pockets here and there and may now, paradoxically, include Japan, but certainly includes Australia, and may in time include India…) for our “responsibilities” in causing global problems (such self-recrimination soundly based on the legacies of a colonialist past), maybe it’s time to revisit some of that surplus self-loathing and see where the responsibilities actually lie.

The current exacerbating events of the current mess are all from the same source–the end of the second world war and the onset of the Cold War. Lest we forget, WW ll was the final staggering example of a European tradition of major powers vying for dominance among themselves. There’s more than ample validity to the idea that it was no more than the second half of the first world war, which set the stage by yielding to a desire for revenge on the part of France (less so Britain) and the creation, in formal language, of the dominant ideology of revolution of the 20^th Century, namely Nationalism.

Nationalism, in some form, had been around for a long time, but it was subsumed in larger concepts of Country, language, ethnicity, certain cultural constants–it was not a separate political idea until Wilson let the genie out of the bottle at Versailles by suggesting that every group with a distinguishing identity deserved to have its own nation. Primarily, this was in answer to the problem of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was the unlikely casus belli of the war, but also in partial response to the Question of the Middle East which was presented by Prince Faisel in partnership with T.E. Lawrence. Faisel’s people were in a fix with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire–they had no nations, they possessed no political cohesion, they were largely in the same situations as most American Indian people’s of the 18^th and 19^th Century–they were separate peoples without a framework from which to tell other countries to keep out. Lawrence saw the feeding frenzy about to occur and worked hard to try to set up a principle of nationhood for the Arabs so they could–diplomatically at least–defend themselves.

He failed. Britain and France wanted the oil reserves, which they’d known about for decades, and they also wanted to slam the door on the Bolshevik regime in Russia and deny them access to the same oil and open access to the world’s oceans through the Persian Gulf. To them, this seemed of overriding importance–after Russia had just gone through a nasty revolution reminiscent of the French Revolution, which still colored European perceptions about revolutions in general, and Bolshevism was quite antithetical to everything they valued. Or so it seemed.

The Arabs got caught in the crossfire and remained there for most of the rest of the century.

It still took a long time for Nationalism to take root. Pan-Arabism, Nasser, and the emergent Palestinian issue fed into it. World War ll came along to center everyone’s attention on another problem and delayed a lot of the eventual difficulties this idea of Nationalism would present.

But it was the Cold War that solidified the concepts and turned them brutal. (more…)

This will be short.  Seems the Pope has gotten into a bit of controversy because of a couple of ill-conveived remarks he made about Islam.  Now, like most people, he probably meant Those Bad Ones Over There, who wear bombs and kill people in order to get into heaven.  But he used a wide brush and painted them all as violent.  The Vatican is trying its best to backpedal and make the best of it, but the fact remains, that like a lot of people, Benedict probably said what he felt.  Islam, as a religion, foments violence against infidels.  Many people who are not Muslim–heck, even some Muslims perhaps–believe that.

The problem is not so much that Benedict got it wrong–after all, Islam has this concept of the House of Submission, which it is charged with bringing everyone into, and it certainly has never suffered the handicap of having a turn-the-other-cheek ethic to wrestle with–but that, like most people, he didn’t cast a wide enough net.

Here’s the deal:  all evangelizing religions foment violence at some point.  It’s built in.  They must convert the unbeliever.  Since they will inevitably, eventually, run into people who will not be converted they are left with only a couple of options in dealing with them.  Frustration, suffered long enough, more often than not leads to violence.  Christianity had its conversion by the sword period (and there are some Christians who would still prefer that method), as did Judaism (although “conversion” wasn’t quite so high on the list of priorities, more a matter of slaying the unfaithful en masse).  Islam as a movement made a good stab at it back in the first couple of centuries of its existence (pun intended) and ran out of logistical steam.  It’s instructive to look at the intellectual life of someone like Martin Luther to see how this can happen.  He broke from the Church and one of his differences was over the treatment of the Jews.  He was magnificently tolerant–at first.  The longer the Jews he knew (and as a people) continued to refuse to accept Jesus, the less tolerant he became, till finally he was hating them pretty much on par with everyone else of a Christian persuasion in Europe.

Most people also pretty much ignore that aspect of their religions.  It would apall so-called mainstream christians if their leaders told them one day to pick up arms and kill anyone who didn’t believe the way they did.  Part of the reason christianity got over this more or less easily is that bit of “give unto Caesar” talk Jesus gave, which implies–powerfully–that religion ought to be separate from the state.  Otherwise…well, we have a rich history of theocracy and its abuses to show us why.  Islam doesn’t have such an out, though.  There is a political aspect to it.  Still, most Muslims still keep the two separate.

But–as with all other evangelizing faiths–the propensity for theological violence is built in.

I’m sorry Benedict got himself into such a situation, but really it’s his own fault for not remembering–for not recognizing, for not admitting–that the problem is not with Islam per se but with the whole Spread The Word and Convert the Unbeliever ethos, of which his own church subscribes whole-heartedly.  He didn’t include everybody.  He didn’t include himself.

What was that line about the beam in the eye?

Earlier, I wrote about the rosy, sunny image of “the good old days” and the sad reality that those days just never existed. A body of psychological evidence explains in part why we cling to this fantasy: we have a tendency to blanket our old memories with simplicity and inaccuracy.

First, memory tests conducted on the elderly suggest that as we age, we become more likely to remember warm, pleasant experiences and steer clear of recalling negative stimuli. Though most of us associate old age with grouchiness and malcontentment, older people actually tend to filter their memories in favor of the enjoyable.

In a 2004 study at Stanford, professor of psychology Linda Cartensen asked young adults and elderly adults to view a variety of slides and then complete a memory exam on the scenes they had witnessed. Though young adults beat out the elderly on overall short-term memory, elderly adults demonstrated a remarkable ability to recall pleasing scenes, such as those of happy infants and puppies, and performed even better than their young counterparts in this regard.

Surprised at these results, Cartensen also monitored the moods and memories of adults aged 18 to 94, and found that older adults reported greater happiness and spent less time “wallowing in bad moods” that brought younger respondents down. In a review of Cartensen’s study, Psychology Today wrote that seniors tend to “revise history” to make the overall image of their life appear more appealing. The article continues:

“Pleasant memories are always invading [seniors’] thoughts, and these fond recollections may “wash away” anger or sadness.”

Further analysis by Cartensen and other psychologists at Stanford found that the phenomenon of inadvertently editing one’s memory into a happy Cliff’s Notes version does sometimes occur in younger adults. We all have a tendency to make memories more cheery, it seems, at the end of a stage in life- such as right before moving, marrying, graduating, or retiring. For example:

“Think of getting ready to move to a new city. Annoyances or grudges toward local friends recede; memories of good times flood your mind. Your awareness that your time with them is finite pushes the things you’ll miss about them to the foreground, and the present moment comes more clearly into focus.” – An article on Stanford’s happiness studies as reviewed in Psychology Today, February 2005

Some of these findings fly in the face of the embittered, nostalgic conservative who rails against contemporary culture and preaches the virtues of “a simpler time”. If the researchers at Stanford have any say in it, our archetypical conservative should seem more, well, happy. Even so, this research still makes psychological sense- if we have a tendency to gloss over the past as wholly positive, then we will either yearn for that long-gone period or look to our current one with disgust. (more…)

I’ve been thinking about this since the initial post on our biases and all the responses.  In the course of trying to come up with an “appropriate” response to the world, we often find ourselves caught up in endless exception-making, fudging, attempts to shoehorn certain proclivities and habits into convenient moulds so we don’t go through our days constantly flinching at our inadvertant insensitivities. 

Does it do any good?  The flinching?  I mean, after the Sixties, one had to have been living on Mars for half a century not to be aware that there had been a Big Shift away from what might be called Gross Cultural Reliance to a more nuanced approach which has been (often derisively) termed Political Correctness.  The former is a condition wherein one “borrows” wholesale from the culture to make associational choices.  It doesn’t occur in this instance to question the wisdom of the culture–it’s what it is, and we are part of it, ergo…

But we realized that the Culture At Large was in many ways an Idiot.  It stepped on people.  It made too little room for variation.  It tried to be all things to all people, but it was necessary that all people somehow be The Same in order for that to work.  Those with a vested interest in keeping everything the same mightily resisted movement to change the rules.

We never did come up with a solid formulation that allows for prejudice.

You have to, you know.  What we ended up with was a vague, flat dictum that all prejudice is categorically bad.  But like all superlatives, it’s not true.  Nor is it feasible to make it so.

We talked a little about harmful vs harmless prejudice (we said bias, but we all know what we were talking about) and ended up wondering if any prejudice is harmless.  I suppose it depends on how you desribe “harm” to begin with.  If the idea is that everyone ought to be allowed inside every game being played everywhere, regardless of ability, desire, game rules, or the wishes of those already playing, then we have a big problem, and the seeds of profound, continual, and pointless hurt.  To tell little five-year-old Johnny that he can’t play soccer with the fifteen-year-olds just because he’s five may seem heartless, but we all know that not only could he probably not contribute anything to the team he ends up on, but he’s also likely to get smashed up and hurt.

But that’s not the same as saying he can’t play soccer at all.  He’s not barred from the game itself, just from that particular one, and maybe he’ll never be allowed into particular games.  But it’s not the same as being barred from all games.

I know, this sounds awfully like “separate but equal.”  It’s not.  There’s no argument over “equal” in this context.  We already know Johnny isn’t “equal” to the fifteen year olds.

Here’s what I’ve come up with.  We have categories of prejudice.  The one that does the most harm is the arbitrary one based on attributes that cannot be changed.  Skin color, gender, country of origin.  (Obviously I’m simplifying for the sake of some sort of brevity.)  You can lie about your nationality in some cases, but you shouldn’t have to.  Gender can be tinkered with at great expense, but again, why?  Skin color can even be changed, but not the DNA that gave it to you.  Still, why?  Prejudices erected based on these foundations are beyond reason.  If you are shut out of all things because of something you cannot change (at one time, bastardy was part of this) it is tragic and absolutely immoral.

A second category has to do with choices we make.  Political affiliation, diet, religion, etc.  Now it might be argued that some of these things are taught us by so forceful an arbiter as our parents in such a way that they might as well be things we cannot change.  How many people really choose their religions?  (Even if you break away from your so-called “milk faith” it lingers, it stays with you your whole life.)  But there are range of attributes we can and often do change. (more…)

 In 2004, George Bush was reelected.  We can debate endlessly over whether or not he stole that election, but it’s beside the point for this rant.  Besides, four million popular votes seems like a big wad to steal.

What we need to figure out if we want to have any possibility of turning this misdirected ship around is WHY SO MANY PEOPLE VOTED FOR THE REPUBLICAN RIGHT?  Not even just Republicans–there are decent Republicans that I would support (Arlan Spector comes to mind, as does a pre-2004 John McCain)–but the rabid fundie far right wing of the party, the wing that is destroying it and trying to turn this country into something like a theocracy. 

So what was it?

    The factor listed by most exit polls in Middle America was–is–Moral Values.  Not in California or the Northeast corridor, but in the Heartland.

    Moral Values.

    I had thought for a long time that the issues driving Bush supporters floated between abortion, school prayer, and taxes. I’m now not so sure tax cuts are that important–these people have got to realize that if Bush continues his policies, at some point a huge bill is going to come due.

    The furor over gay marriage in the last months of the campaign underscores the exit polls. Moral Values.

    If I thought the votes were driven by the deep morality stemming from a Kantian apprehension of the nature of the right, the good, and the universalizable as determined by a focused application of the categorical imperative, I wouldn’t be so concerned. If I thought people had given due attention to a reasoned examination of a sound set of moral principles and voted accordingly, I wouldn’t be upset. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that to be the case.

    Perhaps I’m being unfair–I’m sure there are individuals out there who did indeed make such a study and still voted for the Republican Right–but collectively, this whole Moral Values thing is a shuck. It’s more about appearances than anything truly moral.

    Look what the sentiments are:
 

1: The anti-abortion movement is a powerful centerpiece for this voter block. The overturning of Roe v. Wade is core. They wish to outlaw abortion.

2: Prayer as a public function. Prayer in school, Christian associational material in government facilities, a national embrace of religion in public life. They do not like a secular state.

3: A clear aversion to homosexuality.

4: A strong censorship movement to ban or diminish the presence of what they deem pornographic. This extends to literature in schools that seems to promote a serious re-evaluation of “traditional” morays or deals in subjects which make them uncomfortable–adolescent sexuality, racism, anti-authoritarianism, and extends to secular subjects such as biology, history, and philosophy.

5: A rejection of biological science, specifically Evolution as the determined mechanism of the development of life–most especially a rejection of the evolutionary given that human beings are part and parcel of that life and have come about in the same way as all other life.

6: A promotion of so-called Family Values, which is a catch phrase for a desire to return–as they put it–to a traditional set of relational codes defining the roles of men and women and children in society. Monogamy, procreation, and a hierarchical family structure are part of this, with the male as head of household.

7: A rejection of so-called affirmative action principles. Along with this comes an aversion to a suite of programs they label socialist. Anti-socialism is the center of their fear of government systems.

8: A stated desire to eliminate entitlements. “People who do not work should not get money,” is a phrase I have heard in relation to this for several years now.

9: The desire for a strong military and, by extension, an aggressively patriotic international diplomatic posture.

    Too bad I can’t come up with a tenth. The Ten Commandments of the Political Religious Right. There would be some symmetry to this, ironic symmetry. But I do not wish to get too ridiculous. I could find a tenth, but why bother? These nine do nicely to define the so-called Moral Values of Bush’s core supporters.

    In as brief an argument as I can muster, the legitimacy of calling this program the product of moral values can be questioned easily enough by a simple test. (more…)

I’d like to do another riff on the science and religion thing, so bear with me.  I largely don’t bother going on about this issue anymore, except in those instances where there may be an audience of undecideds. 

One of the things about Americans in small groups is that by and large we will listen and we will weigh what we hear before making up our minds.  It comes down to the slickness of the rhetoric or the overwhelming honesty of an argument.  That’s on us, we who bother to make such arguments.  It helps to remember that we do this for those who haven’t made up their minds yet. 

Evolution vs Creation Science.  The arguments are settled, the science is in, there’s no real dispute except on the Culture War Front.  Evangelicals simply don’t like the program.  When the truth destroys a cherished myth, print the myth.  An old newspaper adage from the 19th Century. 

We’ve been having this crap now for a couple of decades at least, in Kansas back in the 90s, and the issue is well-enough known and the stakes thoroughly understood by enough folks on both sides that anyone moving to circumvent the Supreme Court decision (Edwards vs Aguillard, 1987) is doing so with the knowledge that they are being duplicitous.  They have decided that, as they cannot win their case on the basis of fact and reason, and since they believe they are right and everyone who disagrees with them is wrong, any tactic by which they may advance their cause is just fine.

Science, meanwhile, is hamstrung by its in-built integrity–not that scientists themselves are not often duplicitous or even insidious, but they work with a process that, sooner or later, ousts the B.S.  This is a point the Creationists seem to miss about science.  Or maybe they don’t, but they just don’t care.  (Or, a third possibility, that they have a definition of Truth which simply rejects revision or the possibility of being in error–that if something is True, it must always be true, no matter what may seem to refute it–which makes any possibility of admitting to changes in fact remote.)  Scientists, in other words, end up having to play by the rules, because the rules are well-defined and function well enough that fraud is inevitably discovered and error corrected.  Bad science doesn’t stand because of that process.

While it is true that there have been scientists whose work has been vilified by fellow scientists, this proves nothing.  Eventually, if their work is sound, they are vindicated by the very process that will then discredit that bad or incomplete science blocking their work.  This has happened time and time again.

Likewise, it proves nothing to hold science up as some sort of religion with its own dogma, barring the radical and guarding the gates of orthodoxy like Cerberus, because in time the watchdogs are put down and good work has its day.  Consider the rather shameful episode of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose book Worlds In Collision suffered censure and open censorship when it was published. The scientific community reacted so negatively to the book that it went through its own period of HUAC stupidity in its treatment of Velikovsky.  Carl Sagan, in an exercise of integrity, righted this by having a forum of scientists give Velikovsky and his work serious consideration.  The result was the book Velikovsky Reconsidered , which is a collection of papers done on Velikovsky’s ideas. Velikovsky was shown to be in error.  But some good science came out of the forum, most especially with regard to Venus.

Point being, science changed its mind.  Not about the validity of Velikovsky’s work, but about the egregious manner in which it treated him–and thereby went on to discover some things it didn’t know before because it took a second, third, and fourth look.

Religion can’t really do that.  At least, the religiously dogmatic can’t, not without throwing over their dogma and admitting what they believed was in error.  And that’s why it doesn’t mix with science. (more…)

This link is to the district court ruling in the Dover, PA trial about so-called Intelligent Design. It is worth reading in full, especially in light of the recent survey publish in Science about our understanding–lack of, actually–of biology.  Basically, the judge threw out the claim by the defendants, that evolution is “merely a theory” and that Intelligent Design is somehow legitimate science.

This, of course, settles nothing in the long run. The true believers who pulled this stunt to begin with will not be persuaded, nor will they long shut up. That’s fine, that’s their prerogative, and it’s as should be in this country. My hope is that this will not be the last shot fired in defense of science and reason, against irrationalism and spiritual chicanery.

The critics of Judge Jones’ decision have come out screaming that he has overstepped his authority. He has written a pretty scathing and detailed decision. I can certainly see that he has hopes it will be used in other districts, as a means to settle this–at least legally–where and when it crops up. I personally see his response as fairly restrained, considering the clear frustration behind it. He has invoked the ground state complaint of the conservative–it has been a waste of tax payer money.

The profoundest irony, politically, is that Jones is a George W. Bush appointee. The right-wing Jesus faction of the Republican Party must be seized with apoplexy at this. One of their own–one anointed by their own prophet-in-power–has turned on them, delivering a rational verdict.

The point that is still lost on many people, I’m sure, is that what Jones said, and what was demonstrated in the trial, is that Intelligent Design simply is not science. I am not at all surprised at this misunderstanding, because people have such a poor understanding in general of what science is, be they fundamentalists who reject it on doctrinal grounds or just an average citizen who hated the subject in high school because it ran afoul of blithely partying one’s way through curricula. But it is at the core of the kind of civilization we have and it is at the core of the kind of philosophy by which we have dragged ourselves out of the past.

Science concerns itself with the testable. If you can’t put it on a table, dissect it, measure it, compare it physically to something else, and make both positive and negative statements about it with which to demonstrate its properties, then it is not a subject with which science is concerned. That leaves religious concerns out. Period.

Now, the one disturbing aspect of the trial, personally, was the way the witnesses for the plaintiffs took pains to say that there is no conflict between science and religion. There clearly is. Those striving to shove Intelligent Design into the classroom make it so. Their assertion–those driving the heart of this movement–is that if you believe in god, you cannot accept science. (more…)

I wondered recently, during an idle conversation, whatever became of that monumental media presence Rush Limbaugh.  Now I know.  He’s been upstaged.  Check out the following quote:

“They’re almost always biologists—the “science” with the greatest preponderance of women. The distaff MIT “scientist” who fled the room in response to Larry Summers’s remarks was, of course, a biologist. While I’m sure there have been groundbreaking discoveries about the internal digestive system of the earthworm, biologists are barely even scientists anymore. They’re classifiers, list-makers, like librarians with their Dewey decimal system. Except librarians don’t claim the Dewey decimal system holds the Rosetta Stone to the universe. There were once great biologists, but the morally vacuous ones began to promote their own at the universities. It was sort of intelligently designed devolution. Like Marxists gradually dominating the comp lit department, biologists will only be given tenure today if they foreswear any doubts about the evolution pseudoscience. Consequently, “biologist” almost always means “evolutionary biologist,” which is something like an “ESP biologist.”

Can anyone, for five points, tell me who said this?

I’ll save you the trouble and credit you the points.  Ann Coulter, in her latest screed “Godless”.

Rush used to combine some factoids and put a spin to it in ways that occasionally were very hard to find fault with, because he, for all his bombast, has a brain.  Ms. Coulter just screams any damn thing she thinks will fuel the fires of controversy.  To answer that one paragraph of destructive drivel would require a book or two and a couple of intelligent people who are well informed considerable time to undo.

But what intrigued me most was her insertion of the fact that WOMEN flock into biology, and this somehow makes the field suspect.  As if women cannot do the real hard stuff.  But even further, it’s somehow “natural” because women are all about biology anyway.  It’s just that, well, they don’t know anymore where the proper use of that essence lies.  You know…sex?  Making babies?

All of which is part of the tradition handed to us by that diva of privileged bias, Phyllis Schlafly, who chides “professional” women for abandoning their natural roles to have–god help us–careers!

Every time I hear a woman under 35–often quite innocently–condemn feminism, usually by associating them with lesbians or sexless scientist types or the like, I cringe.  I can now point to Ann Coulter and tell them “There lies your destiny if you don’t get your head out of your stereotypes!  The blond demigogue will take away your options and you will be cheerleaders, waitresses, and mommies and nothing else!

Coulter almost makes me wish for Rush to return as champion of rightwing reactionary screeding.  At least I felt there was some grasp in his nonsense.

But notice, in one paragraph–this is textbook stuff–she links moral vacuity, evolution, feminism, and science in general to cultural collapse in our society.  Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to have her as a student.

It is important for people like Ann Coulter to be challenged, and challenged thoroughly and thoughtfully.  It’s just that her nonsequiturs are so out of bounds that it’s difficult to know where to start.  But one might begin by recognizing that she in fact speaks for no one.  She is fueling her own fame.  Her books sell well.  She makes a lot of money.  And she’ll say anything to make more.  The best way to shut her down would be to ignore her.  But we can’t.  That doesn’t really work in this society.  We have to have an answer.

And what I have noticed is the latest trend of demagogues attacking biology–especially evolutionary biology–picked up when gene therapy began to appear practical.  Coulter and her ilk attack it now that something concrete is about to arise from it, which means they really do not see it as the nonsense–the non-science–they claim.

Interesting.  Maybe they really believe that stuff in Genesis about the Tree of Life, and that eating thereof will makes us “as gods” and never die…

Nah.  I don’t really believe she’s that smart.  Clever, sure.  But all her cleverness is destructive.  All she does is try to make people feel bad about what they have.

Earlier, I wrote about the tendency of suburbanites to feel they have limited options, and how such a life can seem unfulfilling or failed. At the time, I inspected the personal shortcomings that have a hand in this, as well as the human predisposition to discontentment. But it appears that yet another factor contributes to the often portrayed suburban dread: the structure of the suburbs themselves.

Prior to the Second World War, most suburbs had what architects and city planners call a “traditional” or “mixed-use” structure. Towns of this type have closely arranged, small city blocks intermittent with other amenities such as shops, restaurants, churches, and public buildings such as schools and post offices. To get a better idea of a town of this type, picture the typical conception of a small New England village or city. This traditional structure made pedestrian activity both easy and inviting, claims Andres Duany, one of the authors of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

In the 1950’s and beyond, building codes began to prevent such a seamless blend of commerce, public activity, and personal residence from organizing. Most American towns now have much more rigid building codes the divide all the realms of society into isolated sections: a housing district, a shopping center-like area, and government buildings shoved somewhere else. Duany describes the trend this way:

“It’s an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Our neighborhoods are being replaced by soulless alien substitutes. Instead of corner stores, we have Quick Marts. Instead of Main Streets, we have Mega Malls. Fast-food architecture –”McMansions” — sit forlornly along monotonous cul-de-sacs.”

This layout has made the classic “American Dream” all the more difficult. Isolated housing areas breed the sloping, Byzantine neighborhood structures where every house looks the same and the nearest shop lies nearly a mile away down a busy five-lane road. See the the following pictures, which compare a “traditional” neighborhood to a modern suburb (all from Suburban Nation): (more…)

Once regarded as a Generation-X anomaly, social scientists and news publications around the world now observe a frightening trend in young adults: a marked failure to leave home, find a career, attain what most regard as “adulthood”. The reported lack of maturity manifests itself not just in observation, but in real-world statistics: the percentage of 26-year-olds that live with their parents has nearly doubled since 1970, from 11% to 20% according to a University of Michigan study. The average college experience now takes five years, not four. This new agegroup of immature adults has a variety of names around the world- boomerang kids(Canada), nest-squatter(Germany), adultescents (a few US social scientists), and so on. Japan’s parliament even staged a debate on the disturbing reliance of today’s 20-somethings on their parents. But in some ways, this trend follows historical example.

Before the Renaissance, children did not exist. Of course, the age group did not fail to appear, but pre-Renaissance peoples thought of children as miniature adults more than their own stage in human development. Accordingly, children of the pre-Renaissance had to undertake much higher responsibilities, and enjoyed less education and emotional feedback than their modern equivalents.

Then, some time around the Renaissance, childhood came into existence. Society began to see its younger members as less than fully molded, emotionally delicate and needy. At the same time they receive more coddling, longer educational lives, and more parental patience with less physical punishment. In time it became psychologically clear that children did not posses the same mental and emotional strength as adults, just as they did not possess the same physical development.
(more…)

The puzzle goes like this: young student actor Wiley Wiggins, star of the trippy, philosophical film Waking Life, walks into a bar. There he finds University of Texas Professor of Philosophy Louis Mackey, who muses on two kinds of human suffering: those that suffer from an “overabundance of life”, like Professor Mackey himself, and those who suffer from a scarcity of it. Mackey then poses a question about our world that often seems full of failures and underachievers: “Which is the more universal human characteristic: fear or laziness?”

When Professor Mackey asks this, he refers of course to those of us filled to the brim with abandoned aspirations, high goals to greatness that we somehow never meet. He means also those of us who live unfulfilling, humdrum lives with little exploration or adventure. The subject of the suburb’s despair, this middleclass rut, appears countless times in contemporary sitcoms, novels, and cinema. The depression associated with it runs the gamut, appearing in a wide range of films from One Hour Photo to Brokeback Mountain. The same idea even appears in the civilians in V for Vendetta, nuclear family dullards who dream of revolution but don’t seem to possess the true drive to carry it out.

The message sent by modern media seems clear: we cannot climb the ranks we wish, or live the way we want. Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections looks at this modern phenomenon through the eyes of an aging baby boomer, which I’ll paraphrase in the interest of length: We place in our children all of the high hopes and dreams that we never achieved ourselves. Only after our children grow up and fail to make us proud do we resign to simply hoping that they end up happy. In Franzen’s view, this cycle seems to go on for generations upon generations of underachievers.

So what element of the human condition makes us so prone to settling for less than what we once aspired to reach? To paraphrase Mackey, do we disappoint ourselves out of fear of the unknown or just insufficient motivation? Which makes us so pathetic? Fear or Laziness?

A trick question, the student of evolutionary psychology might say. “Fear and laziness” really just refer to one unified trait: self-preservation. The natural desire to keep oneself safe from harm or loss compels us to remain in the cramped confines of our present situation. Like a domesticated animal, we stay where we know we’ll find food, shelter and security rather than scouring the unknown. It doesn’t make sense to venture into uncertainty (fear), and it certainly doesn’t seem worth it (laziness).

Or maybe I have over-simplified the human condition by comparing all of us to house pets. Perhaps we don’t even have an entire class of quitters or cowards at all. Could these complaints of a scarcity of life indicate not that middleclass people have settled for less than ideal lives, but instead that humans have in their nature a fundamental refusal to find anything satisfactory? Even as many Americans enjoy the highest living standards in human history, depression and reported frustration seem to skyrocket. I think this begs a new question entirely: which human characteristic truly dominates: fear, laziness, or discontentment?

Let’s do a thought experiment.  Start with a cage containing five monkeys.  Inside the cage, hang some bananas by a string from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath it.  Before long, one of the monkeys will go to the ladder and try to climb towards the bananas.  As soon as it touches the ladder, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. 

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result: all of the monkeys are sprayed with cold water.  Pretty soon, when any monkey tries to touch the ladder, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water.  Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.

The new monkey sees the bananas and wants to climb the ladder.  To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.  After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the ladder, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.  The newcomer goes to the ladder and is attacked.  The previous newcomer takes part in the attack with enthusiasm — he wants to be part of the group!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, and then the fifth.  Every time the newest monkey goes to the ladder, he is attacked.  Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the ladder or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys has ever been sprayed with cold water.  Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the ladder to try for the bananas.  Why not?  Because as far as they know that’s the way it has always been done around here.

And that, my friends, is how social norms are created. 

When I first heard this amusing, apocryphal story, it was being used to explain how company policies get created.  However, the story obviously has much wider application.  For example, I think about this story whenever I hear about the so-called “Puritan work ethic” in America:  Americans working so hard that they don’t have the time or energy to enjoy the fruits of their labors.  I also think about it when I hear Americans talking about our “high standard of living,” even though we get (for example) far less vacation time and far fewer benefits than do our European colleagues.  Case in point:  I once worked for an American company in which its US-based senior executives received less annual vacation time than the *entry level* factory workers and secretaries in the company’s European plants.  And, most curiously, neither group seemed to question the practice.

Likewise, Americans seem to take for granted all sorts of beliefs and behaviors, often without question.  Why, for example, don’t Americans turn off their car engines at long traffic lights to save gas, as drivers do in Europe?  Why are American cities designed for cars, while European cities are designed for pedestrians and mass transit?  Why do American department stores put women’s lingerie in a back corner or on an upper floor, while European department stores put it prominently inside the front entrance?  Why do nearly all stores organize clothing with the smallest sizes on the top-most shelves (where short people cannot reach) and the largest sizes on the bottom-most shelves (where tall people must stoop)?  Why do Americans consider bicycles to be children’s toys, while Europeans see them as practical transportation vehicles?  Why does the American military ban homosexuals, but not convicted felons, from serving their country?  Why has America failed to adopt the metric system when even Great Britain (which created America’s inches, pints and pounds) has already done so?  Why do Americans calmly accept virtually unlimited gratuitous violence on television, but react with outrage and disgust at the smallest hint of nudity?  Why do Americans warehouse prison inmates on a military (rather than an educational) model, when all available evidence shows that it does not produce rehabilitation?  (Indeed, why do Americans cut government funding for student financial aid, but then spend even more money on prisons for people who lack educational opportunities?)  Why do Americans believe nationwide healthcare coverage (so-called “socialized medicine”) is a horrible idea, while Europeans would never think of giving it up?  The list goes on and on.

 Surely, some of these behaviors are caused by practical considerations — the lower price of gasoline in America compared to Europe or the vast lobbying power of the American Medical Association — but to a very great extent the social norms we see today (in every culture around the globe) are merely the result of choices made by people who died hundreds (even thousands) of years ago.  Obviously, some choices are insignificant (e.g., Americans drive on the right, Brits drive on the left), but some could have far-reaching consequences (e.g., crashing an expensive space probe because navigation calculations were wrongly assumed to use metric units). 

The point of this essay is not (necessarily) to campaign for longer vacations, greater use of bicycles, or more nudity on television in America; it is to alert you to the fact that we are all (to some extent) monkeys in a cage.  Thus, each of us has a choice:  we can automatically attack our fellow cage-mates because of some archaic belief or social norm that we’ve never questioned; or, instead, we can be willing to challenge the status quo so that we, and our fellow monkeys, can all enjoy a nice bunch of bananas.  Whichever you choose, just remember:  your choice will help determine what tomorrow’s monkeys do in their cage.

Since the trial in Dover, PA over Intelligent Design, it must be obvious hat nothing was really settled other than a specific legal question.  I think it would be a good idea for every one interested in this issue to find and read the decision handed down by the judge.  But the furor shall continue. 

Why is this such a big deal?  Recently, in conversation with a friend who is an atheist, this question was raised.  She didn’t get it.  What difference does it make?  Why is this  issue so dominant in our cultural discourse? 

Thinking about it, I realized that this in fact is the question of the 21st Century.  When Senator Rick Santorum proclaims that this issue must be settled, he’s on the right track (for a change).

Consider: we are in a battle–politically–with people who believe in the End Times, that Revelations is a literal truth, and we are entering the period when antichrist will reign, the good from the evil will be sorted out, and judgment will descend upon us.  Granted, there have always been people who believed in this scenario, even long before The Book of Revelations was penned (check out Zoroaster).  The difference today is two-fold:  first, these people, many of them, are in positions of power.  They have money and they have political influence and they have managed to put their politicians in office in this country.  This matters because, regardless how one feels about it, this country is the biggest bear in the room, with all that such considerable size and animism implies.  Secondly, this is the first time (from about 1850 till now) that it has been possible to demonstrate unequivocally that Revelations is no more than the magic mushroom fever dream of an ascetic hermit who had a jones against Rome and a vivid imagination.  Further, by extension, we can demonstrate that the Bible–and any other so-called Holy Book–is nothing more than a collection of quasi-historical stories.

There have always been skeptics who believed the Bible was less than its cheerleaders claimed, but not until the 19th Century could anybody actually prove it.  The shift began with Lyell, and his realization that geologic time contradicted biblical time.  Then along came Cuvier with his comparative anatomy and the demonstration that there had once been an entire world of creatures on the Earth that no longer exist and which were not mentioned in the creation story.  Finally, Darwin.

Evolution is contentious because it supplants special creation.  There is no reconciliation.

Why is this important?  I mean, isn’t there a compatible forum wherein religion and science may coexist?  Ever since this debate came up, there have been sincere, well-meaning people who have tried to make this case.  Unfortunately, no.  Religion only has validity as a system if its tenets can be linked to the way the universe works.  If you make the case that it is entirely internal to the human experience–utterly personal–then it has no grounding on which to extoll its requirements to those who may have a different idea about how things ought to work.

(This is not to say “spirituality” is not real–it is very much so, but it is entirely personal and subjective.  It doesn’t come from without, it is a response to the universe on the part of the individual.)

The Big Deal is that, if evolution is true, then We–human beings–are simply part of nature, an