Coordinated violence and the frame of “war”

Imagine that it is broad daylight and you are attending a large public festival.  Now imagine that you suddenly realize that you are walking around in your underwear.  Perhaps you are one of the many people who would find it disconcerting to suddenly find that so much of your skin, and most every crevice, curve and imperfection of your body was exposed to public view.

This thought occurred to me while I was at a municipal swimming pool with my children.  I was surrounded by hundreds of people who were wearing swimming suits that covered no mobeach-at-nantucketre skin (and often less) than the underwear that many of these people likely wore.  Yet these people strutted about and proudly spread out on their towels and lawn chairs without any apparent concern that they were flagrantly exposing so much of their “private” areas to total strangers.

What is it, then, that convinces people to expose so much of their bodies to strangers in one case but not in the other?  It would seem that the context of being at a public swimming area constitutes a “frame.”

George Lakoff wrote of the great power of frames in his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant!  Know Your Values and Framed the Debate (2004).  Here is how Lakoff describes frames:

Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world.  As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a

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Just because . . .

In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1998), Robert Cialdini describes an experiment that illustrated the power of the word "because."   The experiment was conducted by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer, who found that people are highly motivated by the form of others’ reasons, even reasons lack persuasive content. …

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Do unto thyself what thou wouldn’t let others do

Would we harm our selves in ways that we would never let others harm us?  Yes, actually.  We do this all the time.  This common occurrence has long intrigued me.

About fifteen years ago, I was trying to lose weight.  A diet book I was reading presented a hypothetical, which I have embellished:

Imagine that a gang of strangers repeatedly broke into your house.  Each time they broke in, they brought a large basket of food with them.  Each time they broke in, they tracked you down and forced you to eat food that you didn’t need or want.  “Stop that!”  You would yell.  “I’m not hungry.  Go away!”  Nonetheless, the strangers forced you to eat food that you didn’t want.  They returned every few hours and repeated his attack on you.  Every time you tried to exercise, the strangers appeared and made you sit on the couch to watch television instead. 

Over the course of months, the excess food the strangers forced you to eat caused your body to bloat larger and larger.  Your clothing stopped fitting.  It became difficult to get in and out of your car.  Most of your acquaintances gossiped about how you had become “fat.”  

And it got even worse.  You became diabetic. You got depressed.  You constantly cursed those strangers for making you obese and unhealthy.  You bought special burglar-proof doors and windows (but they didn’t work).  Because this gang repeatedly violated your rights, you even considered buying a gun to defend yourself from

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Beware of confident people. They might be ignorant of their own ignorance.

Just look at our intense national confidence! Ergo, we are doing well as a nation! Not so fast, scientists have warned.  There is actually an inverse relationship between one's own incompetence and one's awareness of one's incompetence. In a 2003 article entitled "Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence," psychologists…

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Noah, FEMA, Media, Resignation

At first, I scoffed at this ABC News headline: “Has Noah’s Ark Been Found? Christian Archaeology Team Believes It’s Found Biblical Remains?” 

According to this recent story,

Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah’s Ark in Iran’s Elburz mountain range.  “I can’t imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark,” said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.

The Bible also describes the Ark’s dimensions as being 300 cubits by 50 cubits — about the size of a small aircraft carrier. The B.A.S.E. Institute’s discovery is similar in size and scale.

The story indicates that the B.A.S.E. Institute’s samples “are being examined at labs in Texas and Florida.”   The story doesn’t mention whether the sample will be analyzed using secular methods or Bible methods. Choice of methodology might matter, though. According to the official website of BASE, here is the methodology used by BASE:

The BASE Institute employs a methodology that seeks to apply the best practices of many disciplines, while giving absolute priority to the Bible itself. While we do not discount the opinions of scholars, we do not place undue emphasis on them.

Here are the highlights of the BASE “methodology:

  • We recognize the weakness of a “Premise + Proof” methodology.
  • We recognize the strength of a “Possibilities + Problems” methodology.
  • We recognize that the Bible is fully inspired (superintended by God) in its autographs (original
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