The things our biggest and most nebulous villains have in common

Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis is one of my favorite books of all time. It is in the top 10 books I have heavily annotated. Here's a sampling of why (although if you search for "Haidt" in the search field of this website, you will find 20 of other posts regarding Haidt's work). In the following excerpt, Haidt discusses what all of our biggest villains seem to have in common:

When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled desperately seeking Satan . With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and a child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of Communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: they are invisible (you can't identify the evil one from appearance alone) their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, were stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some secular good (animals, fetuses, women's rights), and you can't have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.
How devastingly "refreshing" that modern villains are so identifiable and that they are doing such tangible damage. We are now looking at a devastated national economy, two expensive and needless wars, a ruined ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, an energy crisis and a helpless political system created by an utterly dysfunctional election system that, for the most part, attracts megalomaniac ignoramuses and repels humble, good-hearted and well-informed people. It remains to be seen whether we will ever be able to let go of our bogeymen and, instead, focus on our real villains. Addendum: See this related post on "The Power of Nightmares."

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Father’s Day thoughts

I am the lucky father of two young ladies, aged 10 and 11. Though I have worked hard with my wife to raise these two girls for more than a few years, this work doesn’t qualify me as any sort of expert. I am a father like most other fathers, without any specialized training or insights regarding parenting. I think about my daughters every hour of every day, and that is no different than most other fathers. I am far too often away from home at work missing my daughters, often painfully so, but this is unfortunately typical in our culture. I want the best for my children, and in that regard, I am no different than any other father. I can’t imagine not having become a father, and that is another thought that occurs to virtually every other father. Though extolling fatherhood in writing is not something that all other fathers do, I am far from unique in this regard too. I work hard to respect the privacy of my daughters . It is not my right to freely disclose details about my relationship with either of my daughters to a large online audience. It is for this reason alone that you won’t read much about my relationships with my daughters (though here is a rare exception). I’m tempted to share thousands of joyous moments on this site, because these sorts of powerful moments happen every day. I don’t write about these private happenings, however, because it wouldn’t be fair. These privacy concerns won’t stop me from writing about fatherhood in general. Here I am, writing on “Father’s Day,” knowing full well that for all committed fathers, every day is Father’s Day. Every moment one sees one’s child beaming a smile, it is Father’s Moment. As I sit here tonight, I find myself thinking that this is an appropriate day for re-considering what it is that I’ve been trying to accomplish as a father. This sort of contemplation exercise was encouraged by the authors of a child-raising book called The Manipulative Child: How to Regain Control and Raise Resilient, Resourceful and Independent Kids, by E.W. Swihart and Patrick Cotter. These two authors encourage parents to periodically set aside the time to draft a concise statement of what it is that they are trying to accomplish as parents. We live in a scary world, and the ubiquitous dangers frame my views on parenting. I'm like most parents in that I constantly struggle to walk a fine line with my children. I want them to feel safe, but I also want to prepare them for the real world. It is in this context that I define my goal as a father something like this: When my daughters grow up to be adults, if they are still relying on me, or tending to my wants, putting me on any sort of pedestal or trying to please me, then I have failed as a father. When my daughters become adults, what I seek is a genuine friendship with each of them. In my view, a loving friendship is the sort of relationship that results between a parent and a child if the parenting has been successful. My hope is also that my daughters, once grown, will have developed the wide array of skills necessary to allow them to compete well with the global workforce, not merely the American workforce. I want them to also have the social skills (emotional intelligence) to allow them to confidently thrive both within and outside of groups. I want them to feel comfortable around many types of human beings, including those who have very few material resources. Nor do I want them to feel any obeisance when they find themselves in the company of people who have greater notoriety, power or material resources. I want them to be self-critical, such that they will want to repeatedly revisit their own most cherished presumptions (as well as those of others). And as my own mother told me, I want my daughters to be kind-hearted. Without going into any details, I am celebrating on this Father’s Day because I live with two kind-hearted, hard-working, self-critical, independent-minded daughters. There is a lot to celebrate today. My hope is that my beautiful daughters will continue their impressive journeys out into the world in order to make the world a better place, and to discover who they themselves are in the process. That is my Father’s Day hope.

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More quotes

More quotes I've recently added to my growing collection ... Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951) [I]f by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." John F. Kennedy, 1960 “When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall meekly behind them. . . The mantra ‘the best we can get’ is a recipe for corruption. We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences.” Howard Zinn It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Krishnamurti A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. Dean Acheson The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), Ecce Homo, Foreword [more . . . ]

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Meteorite in the garden

I think it's so utterly cool that this married couple discovered that the big rock decorating their garden was a meteorite that started its journey to Earth half a billion years ago. I write this post full well knowing that meteorites commonly strike our planet: there have been 1,086 meteorite "falls" (witnessed impacts) and 38,660 meteorite "finds" in the history of our planet. I once had the privilege to view the Barringer Crater in Arizona, a crater extending .73 miles in diameter caused by a meteorite impact only 40,000 years ago. I tend to think of the Earth as stable and the meteorites are striking us. The truth is that all of us are streaking through space on a huge rock we call Earth. It's equally amazing that the solar system once did not exist and that it will one day cease to exist. We are privileged to be cognizant of this amazing tour of space, passengers who are lucky to be alive and lucky to be conscious of this experience, all of us touring on the skin of our planet. All of this constitutes the most amazing and true story ever, but I've never yet read any of this in any newspaper headline.

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The next best thing to vegetarianism

Today I had the opportunity to discuss the meaning of life with St. Louis Activist Adam Shriver. Adam mentioned that, a few months ago, he was invited to write an op-ed for the New York Times. The topic he examined was what we can do about the 100 pounds of meat the average American insists on eating every year. This situation raises moral red flags for many of us because it is rather clear that confined animals suffer painful bone and joint diseases. In his article, which he titled "Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free," Adam noted that mammals have two parallel pathways relating to pain:

[A] sensory pathway that registers its location, quality (sharp, dull or burning, for example) and intensity, and a so-called affective pathway that senses the pain’s unpleasantness. This second pathway appears to be associated with activation of the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, because people who have suffered damage to this part of the brain still feel pain but no longer find it unpleasant.
This neurological situation, combined with the ability to genetically design mammals that lack proteins necessary for the perception of the sharpness of pain, presents a potential solution (or, rather, it presents a fascinating thought experiment):

If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

Adam's tongue in cheek solution, then would be to continue to abuse the animals but to relive ourselves of moral queasiness by genetically modifying the animals so that they won't hurt. Adam's article reminded me that I've sometimes wondered what most vegetarians would think if we could grow meat in test tubes, meat that was never connected to any sort of brain. Imagine pounds and pounds of brainless meat coming out of big vats at a factory, the raw materials being mostly grass. Before you answer, consider that I raised this topic a few years ago over lunch. A woman in attendance was adamant that if we could develop veggie burgers that tasted as good as beef burgers, it would still be immoral for a committed vegetarian to enjoy that food. A buddy and I looked on perplexed as she ranted at length. She scowled and said, "If you created a meat substitute that had the shape and texture one would experience if eating a human baby, it would be immoral to eat it!" Now I do think it's creepy to contemplate eating anything resembling the texture and taste of human babies (I insist that I haven't actually tried this delicacy), but in my book, eating something that is not a human baby is not anything like eating a human baby. And consider too all of the people who play violent video games. Is "killing" the image of an innocent person somewhat immoral, even just a bit? And what about a man who fantasizes about having sex with children, or even creates his own drawings of nude children to enhance his fantasies? Assume, further that he has never solicited a real-life child. Is he immoral? And imagine this: imagine that someone at work really pissed you off. Is it immoral, even a little bit, to imagine poisoning that person the next day at work? What if this sort of fantasy actually kept you calmer and actually prevented you from being fiercely tempted from carrying out the murder? Maybe I'm just too much enamored with thick black lines, but I believe that for something to be immoral (or criminal), one must actually do the forbidden act rather than fantasizing about or simulating doing the forbidden act. Now, back to the eating of abused animals who couldn't feel pain. What if I could actually choose to buy such pain-free animal-meat at the grocery story? Wouldn't it be more moral to eat the pain-free animals than the animals who ached with joint pain? It would seem so, even if it not perfectly morally commendable. [Full disclosure: I am a somewhat guilt ridden non-vegetarian. Most of the meat I eat is chicken or turkey, though I do eat a hamburger every few weeks.]

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