Café Philos: an internet café

I've noticed for sometime now a steady stream of traffic to this blog because of a brief post I made back in May on fatherless girls. So, tonight, I was trying to count all the fatherless girls I've known in this town.

I would count a few, think I'd finished, then remembered another one or two. In the end, I simply gave up. It's overwhelming. Not the numbers, but the faces. Overwhelming.

I wonder if we will ever again be a society in which it is unusual to grow up without a father. My own father died when I was two years old. At the small school I attended, I was the only child in my class of about 100 students without a dad at home. What are the numbers today?

When I came to Colorado at midlife, I landed in a coffee shop that was a hang out for an eclectic crowd that included everyone from the mayor of the city to a group of homeless gentlemen. The coffee shop was also two blocks from the city's largest high school, and it attracted very many mildly disaffected youth who enjoyed its eclectic atmosphere as much as I did. Most of the first 200 or so people I met in this town were mildly disaffected kids.

Some of those kids attached themselves to me. When I look back it strikes me that the boys who attached themselves to me usually had fathers. But the girls who did were usually fatherless.

I wonder why most of the boys had fathers, while most of the girls didn't?

Growing up a male myself, I knew the boys at that age are not usually looking for a father figure when they attach themselves to an older man. Instead, they are most likely looking for help in entering the adult world. That is, at that age, they want to work out how to relate to adults who are not their father. I suppose the girls wanted pretty much the same thing.

Yet, I don't know. I don't know why most of the boys who wanted to associate with me had fathers while most of the girls who wanted to associate with me didn't have fathers. Nor do I know whether there was any difference between the boys and the girls in why they wanted to associate with me. Some things seem bound to remain a mystery.

At any rate, my experience of fatherless children -- or more precisely, my experience of fatherless girls -- has convinced me they are especially vulnerable, they are often overlooked, and that we all could do more by them. So, I've decided to make my own small contribution to their cause by blogging from time to time about some of the fatherless girls I've known, what kinds of problems they've faced, how they met those challenges, and what wonderful people they are. I hope you'll be interested.

D.H. Lawrence somewhere says that youth should not be misled into believing that it must rebel against authority and tradition in order to achieve freedom. Lawrence asserts that those battles have already been fought and won. Youth is largely free to do as it pleases today, and so it is misleading youth to tell them that they should be battling against authority and tradition.

On the other hand, Lawrence points out that the real revolution youth must accomplish is "to find the undiscovered and unsuspected door." That is, to find and exploit the aspects of life that youth does not even as yet suspect are part of life. Doing so will bring about a greater revolution in youth than will battling against authority and tradition.

What do you think of this? Is the real job of youth to find the undiscovered and unsuspected door, or is it to battle against tradition and authority? Which brings greater freedom? Which is more revolutionary?

Now and then, I run across someone who wishes to ban all religion. Yet, as many people know, that's impossible. It doesn't matter how bad it gets. Even if religion were identified as the sole cause of a thousand wars, a hundred thousand famines, a billion murders and a zillion cruelties -- and even if everyone knew religion was the sole cause of those horrible things -- religion would never be rejected by the vast majority of people.

At best, people would soundly reject the use of religion to justify wars, famines, murders, and cruelties. But the large majority would not reject religion itself. And that's not because people are stupid. Instead, it's because there are at least two reasons why most of the world's population is religious, and neither reason has much to do with people being stupid.

To understand those two reasons, let's imagine for a moment that some future world wide society idealistically decides to do away with all religion. And to make this a little bit interesting, let's say everyone in the world -- without exception -- agrees that religion should be done away with. Furthermore, they agree the best first step to doing away with all religion is to abolish the core belief of so many religions: God.

Everyone fully cooperates in this program to abolish god. They quite talking about god. Then they zealously search out every reference to deity in the world's literature and censor those references out of existence. They tear down all the holy houses around the world. They burn and blow up all the holy art. Finally, there is not a single reference to a deity in all the world, and moreover, not even one person in all the world is left who will talk about deity.

If all that could happen, the notion of god would still be reborn within the next generation.

The first and most powerful reason that would happen is humans are innately wired with the basic concept of deity. God is in our genes. That's not to say any particular god is in our genes. We certainly are not genetically programed to believe in the god of the Bible. Nor the god of the Gita. Nor the god of the Qur'an. But, as Scott Atran points out, we are genetically programed to view the world in certain ways -- ways which easily predispose us to a belief in deity. Unless we humans genetically engineer that way of viewing the world out of our nature, the concept of deity will be reborn with each generation.

While the first reason affects nearly all of us, the second reason affects only some of us. It seems some people experience god. More precisely, they have experiences they interpret as experiences of a god. Quite often, people who "experience god" come to believe their experience is proof that deity exists. So, even if you eliminated in a single generation all references to deity, there would still be in the next generation some people who experienced deity and concluded that deity exists.

There will always be people who wish to ban religion, but if only for those two reasons, the task is impossible, unless people somehow change human nature.

Are there any lessons to be drawn from this?

Perhaps the single most important lesson that might be drawn from the above is that trying to convert believers into non-believers is probably less likely to succeed than trying to convert irresponsible believers into responsible believers. You need not abolish religion to ameliorate all or most of its negative effects. So far as I know, there is little evidence the European Enlightenment significantly reduced the number of people who believed in deity. But it certainly reduced the number of people who believed in burning heretics at the stake.

What other lessons, if any, might be drawn from all this?

When Bob Dylan sings the words, "He's not busy being born is busy dying", he offers us an important insight into human psychology. Namely, if we ever are so foolish as to refuse rebirth and renewal, then we are "busy dying". For the only way a human can stay alive spiritually, or psychologically, is to be reborn -- again and again and again.

I am often reminded of that truth these days because of a friend of mine. He has reached old age and, unfortunately, ceased being reborn.

Even on a relatively superficial level -- the level of one's opinions -- my friend has turned to stone. The opinions he has today are substantially no different than the opinions he held a decade ago. His intellectual curiosity has evaporated. He merely repeats himself.

Somewhat more profoundly, he has come to isolate himself as much as possible from new experiences. His routine is set. His day contains few challenges. He no longer wishes to be bothered with the new, the novel, the unexplored.

Old age can do that to us; it can be merciless. I do not point to him in order to blame him for what so many of us experience -- or will experience -- if we live long enough. Instead, I merely wish to illustrate how "He's not busy being born is busy dying".

Yet, we need not look to old age alone to illustrate in what ways Dylan's observation might be true. Society in many ways puts a great deal of pressure on all of us to be as unchanging, as constant, as ossified, as possible. Nor does one have to look far to see great and small examples of that pressure. Didn't society teach you the only valuable love is unchanging? Didn't it teach you any love which comes and goes is "mere infatuation"?

Or, look at class distinctions in so many societies -- the social sanctions that are leveled like canon against anyone who dares to break out of the social class they were born into.

Again, take even the most trivial example: How often have you heard someone called a "flip-flopper", a "waffler"? How often have you heard it said changing your opinions shows a lack of firmness and character? Demanding that someone never change their opinions is tantamount to demanding they learn nothing from one day to the next. Yet, society generally values the person who learns nothing during the course of a day over the person who learns something new.

I cannot begin to cover here the myriad ways society tries to pressure people into remaining constant. Yet, remaining constant is not at all the same thing as being true to ourselves.

"He's not busy being born is busy dying". How else can you stay genuinely true to yourself without being reborn -- again and again and again? For the self is always changing.

I think that becomes obvious once you give up trying to be a self and instead just observe yourself day to day. When you have learned to observe yourself like a scientist would observe a fruit fly -- as dispassionately as that -- you see how much you change. But to clearly observe yourself, I think you must neither condemn nor praise what you observe. A dispassionate scientist would neither condemn nor praise a fruit fly -- why should we think we need to condemn or praise ourselves? Condemnation and praise seem to be mere ways of escaping from clear observation.

I do not believe it is necessary -- and I believe it can even be detrimental -- to set for ourselves a goal of change or renewal.

Instead, once we learn how to dispassionately observe ourselves, we will understand ourselves -- and with that understanding comes change. But if we set a goal of renewal, we will only achieve a little change -- far short of a rebirth -- and then backslide. Everyone has seen that happen to those people who pray fervently to become better people, go for two weeks or two months, and then backslide. It's even true some people spend their whole lives doing that without ever catching on to how worthless it is. Yet, merely learn how to dispassionately observe ourselves and the rest will come naturally.

D. H. Lawrence somewhere writes beautifully of another reason we should avoid setting a predetermined goal for how we want to change. Speaking to young people, he reminds them they have often been told that the challenge of youth is to throw off the chains that oppress them. He then explains how they have been misled by that, and how throwing off the chains that oppress them is by no means the primary challenge of youth. Instead, he tells them their job is to "discover the unexpected door" to their lives. Why is that true?

I think it is true because, as Heraclitus long ago said, "No man steps into the same river twice, because either the river has changed, or the man has changed, or both." Now, if that's a simple fact, then how can anyone stay true to themselves without being reborn -- without "discovering the unexpected door"? Perhaps when we set a predetermined goal to how we want to change, we close off that unexpected door, and with it, our chance for genuine rebirth.

For me, one of the most fascinating things about the net is how the net makes it easy to meet and know exceptional people.

I am not talking about famous people here.

Frankly, all but a few of the world's most famous people cause me to despair of humanity. Really, is there anything about a Bush, a Putin, or a Musharraf that makes you want to celebrate humanity? Is there anything about a James Dobson, a Britney Spears, or a Bill O'Reilly that makes you want to cheer? Have you ever praised The Cosmic Weirdness for gifting you with a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? I strongly suspect most of the world's most famous people became famous because they were driven to covet fame, power, or money above all else in their lives. In other words, because they were shallow.

When you turn away from the most famous and instead surf the net for the much less famous, though, you seem to turn away from some of the worse people humanity has to offer and turn towards some of the best it has to offer. That has been the great discovery I've made about the internet -- it allows you to meet and know people who lack fame, but who are genuinely exceptional.

That point tends to pop up in my mind each time I surf blogs. If all I knew of humanity were the world's most famous people, I would become a cynic. I could not believe in humanity. I would despair of it.

Yet, so very many of the people I've met on the net have proven themselves kind, gifted and even wise. That's not to say everyone I've met is those things. Yet, I'd rather take my chances of meeting a very decent person on the net, than take my chances of meeting a very decent person at a White House dinner.

On the net, I have met people who are not famous, but who are world class writers, poets, or photographers. I have met people who are extraordinarily intelligent or exceptionally wise. I have met people who are better informed and more intellectually honest than most of the world's famous pundits. I have met people who I suspect have an unrivaled capacity for kindness. I have even met people who have either the luck or the talent to lead quite interesting lives. In short, I have met dozens of people who should be world famous if that sort of fame was based solely on one's human merit. Largely because of these people, I do not despair of humanity.

So, what effect can meeting so many great, but largely unknown, people have on us? Perhaps I can only speak for myself here, but one effect all of this has on me is to create a longing to become -- not merely a good American, not even merely a good Westerner -- but a good citizen of the world.

This is coming from someone who does not consider himself sentimental about humanity. I know humanity can be ugly. I know we are the least sane of the Great Apes. I am aware we are destroying the only world we have, and I recognize it's a long shot the world will ever come together in a sustainable peace. Yet, I still wish to become a good citizen of the world. It seems to me the sanest course in an insane world. What hope I have for such sanity comes to me in some large part from having met so many wonderful people on the net.

If the world is ever to be a decent place for most of us to live, it won't be because of the Bushes and Cheneys, the Dobsons and Spears, the politicians, pundits and preachers, but because of the common people.

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy:

Despite a one-third decline since the early 1990s, the United States still has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and birth among comparable countries. In 2004, the U.S. teen birth rate was 41.1 births per 1,000 teens aged 15-19. By way of comparison, the U.S. teen birth rate is one and a half times higher than the teen birth rate in the United Kingdom (26.8 per 1,000) which has the highest teen birth rate in Europe, more than twice as high as the teen birth rate in Canada (14.5 per 1,000), seven times higher than the teen birth rate in Japan (5.6 per 1,000), Denmark (5.7 per 1,000) and Sweden (5.9 per 1,000).

Why does America lead the industrialized world in teen pregnancies? Let me suggest the reason might have something to do with the willful stupidity of American policy makers.

The nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (NCPTUP) released on Wednesday a comprehensive review of research into teen sexual behavior. The review utterly damns America's cherished "abstinence only" sex education programs. Abstinence only sex education programs are programs that teach kids only one way to deal with their sexual feelings -- and that's by abstaining from sex.

The NCPTUP review failed to find even a single abstinence only program anywhere in the country that works -- despite that they looked at a total of 115 studies. They couldn't find one program that delays the initiation of sex. They couldn't find one program that hastens the return to abstinence. And they couldn't find one program that reduces the number of sexual partners. In any sane country, policy makers would study the NCPTUP report and abandon all support for abstinence only sex education.

This not a sane country.

Instead of abandoning abstinence only sex education, the Federal Government is about to increase the funding for it. Just a few days ago, the Democrat controlled Congress agreed to Bush's demand for an additional $28 million to fund abstinence only sex ed. That brings the annual funding for the Federal CBAE program to $141 million -- more than enough to wreck a few teens' lives. Can anything be more willfully stupid than that?

The CBAE program even requires those it funds to lie to kids about their sexuality. "For example, any program that receives CBAE funds has to teach [kids] that 'sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.'" Yet, if a kid is so young or fragile they are going to experience "harmful psychological and physical effects" from sex, marriage isn't going to make much difference.

In stark contrast to abstinence only sexuality education, the NCPTUP report found that, "Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect." Comprehensive sex ed programs do not fail to teach abstinence. Instead, they teach abstinence as the preferred behavior and the use of condoms and contraceptives as the second, fall back behavior. The "positive behavior effect" of comprehensive programs included delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.

Opponents of comprehensive sex ed have often promoted myths about it. One thing that makes this NCPTUP report especially interesting is that it confronts the lies told about comprehensive sex ed by its opponents:

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

So, there you have it. Not only does abstinence only sex ed utterly fail, but comprehensive sex ed succeeds more times than not. Yet, abstinence only sex ed is Federally funded while comprehensive sex ed receives not a penny in Federal funds. Small wonder the US leads the industrial nations in teen pregnancies.


References:

Emerging Answers 2007: Report of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Report: Abstinence Programs Don't Work

One More Time: Abstinence Only Programs Don't Work, Comprehensive Programs Do

Just Say No To Increases In Abstinence Funds

According to some historians, during the thousand year long Middle Ages in Europe there was on average one peasant revolt per year. All of them failed.

There are several reasons for the failure of the peasantry to successfully revolt against the elites of the Middle Ages, but I'll mention only one reason to illustrate the difficulty the peasants faced. Before the advent of the hand-held firearm, it required years of training to produce someone highly competent in the best weapons of the Middle Ages. Most peasants didn't train in those weapons, and as a consequence, were usually over-matched when they revolted. Sickles against lances, hammers against swords.

But why did the peasants so frequently revolt in the first place? The most usual reason seems to have been famine. During most of the middle ages, transportation was so poor that it was almost unheard of to ship food in bulk for any distance. So, if the crops failed in one locality, that locality could experience famine even though there might be a surplus of food a mere 30 miles away. When famine struck a locality, the elites had custom, law and force all on their side -- they got what food there was, despite that the peasants produced the food. That left the peasants starving and prone to revolt.

Broadly speaking, at least three things came together to end the thousand year landscape of the Middle Ages. The first was the rise of capitalism, which can be traced back to very early beginnings around 900 A.D. The second was the British Agricultural Revolution -- a remarkable increase in agricultural productivity -- that can be traced back to around 1500 A.D. And the third was the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1700 A.D.

Those three factors, working together, created Europe's most successful peasant revolt. For, while all the revolts of the Middle Ages failed, capitalism, the British Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution eventually brought not only wealth and long lifespans to the peasantry, but arguably contributed to their political liberation.

It seems odd to me that nowadays so many of us have come to resent those three developments. We see the many serious problems they have created and we sometimes imagine it would be a good thing if we were rid of capitalism, industrialization, and even large scale agriculture. Yet, to get rid of those things would surely plunge us back into an age when most people lived a short life of scarcity and want. So, I think the real problem is not to get rid of the very things that have lifted societies out of poverty, but to "update" them. We do not need, for instance, to abolish capitalism so much as we need a newer, more useful version of it with the most pressing bugs worked out.

A final consideration here is my gripe against ideologies. Not just any ideology, but all ideologies suffer from the fact they are either impossible or cumbersome to change. The world moves on, but the world's ideologies merely turn into retarded and retarding dogmas. I have never met an ideology that didn't turn to stone all it touched. If a software company were ever to adopt an ideology of software, you can bet they would go out of business -- because they would never update their product in any meaningful or useful way. Version 2.0 would have the same bugs as version 1.0 -- and only the marketing department would say it was better than 1.0. If we are ever so unwise as to leave the future of capitalism, the agricultural and industrial revolutions entirely to ideologists, we will surely get the disasters we deserve for our folly.

After all, it wasn't Christianity, the ideology of the day, that brought about Europe's most successful peasant revolt. Nor should we expect the ideologies of our day to bring about a successful social and economic future for humanity.

I think it's ironic that at the very moment communication and transportation technologies are creating a "global world", specialization is fragmenting each of our societies into expert little niches that often do not understand one another.

It's no longer much of an exaggeration these days to say the only people who understand the law are lawyers, the only people who understand medicine are doctors, the only people who understand information technologies are IT specialists, the only people who understand plumbing are plumbers, and the only people who understand carpentry are carpenters.

Yet, all of those people are increasingly using each other's products and services. I'm typing this on a computer whose components are made in several countries to be read by people from several countries -- and yet much of what I know about the world is so highly specialized that I avoid discussing it except in general terms. Likewise, I can only follow general discussions of what my friends for whom I'm typing this know about the world.

It's not just that we are becoming one world: We are also at the same time dividing into many worlds. I think that is one of the reasons the internet is so important to the future of humanity. It seems to have the power to bring together people from diverse backgrounds, from diverse skill and information niches, into unified online communities. Without that, the world could unite economically -- and even politically -- but perhaps not in a very humane way.

I pulled up an old article published on the web by Discover Magazine this morning and read, "Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser's new theory says evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong." Yet, that's not quite what Marc Hauser is saying.

Instead, it would be more correct to say, Hauser is asserting something along these lines: Our concept that there is such a thing as right and wrong is hardwired into us by our evolution. We have a sort of universal "moral grammar", but not a universal "moral language". For instance: The notion it is wrong to harm an innocent person is universal, but specific notions of who is innocent and who is not innocent are far from being universal.

Yet, most certainly, Hauser is not saying right and wrong exist independent of us. In Hauser's world, man is the measure of right and wrong -- not some metaphysical standard of right and wrong.

Oddly enough, saying "man is the measure of right and wrong" does not preclude a god having something to do with that measure. For, if I were religious, I could always say something like, "God inscribed a universal moral grammar upon the human heart."

Of course, were I both religious and uncomprehending, I could say something like, "God inscribed morality upon the human heart." But that implies there is only one true morality -- and implying that is just as silly as asserting there is only one true human language.

Another way of illustrating the distinction between moral grammar and moral language would be to say morality is hardwired into us much like tool use is hardwired into us. Humans naturally create and use tools. But the specific kinds of tools humans use can vary from culture to culture. And how tools are used can even vary from person to person. So, too, morality is hardwired into us on one level, yet is determined by our culture on another level, and on yet a third level is individual.

Earlier, Don and I drove out of town south into a hazy fall afternoon. We speculated the haze could be coming from the large California fires, for there seemed no other source for it. It's happened before that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles into Colorado from large fires as far away as California. Was that happening today?

No way of to be certain. But the distant mountains to the south and west were obscured by the haze while above us the sky still embraced the royal blue depth of a perfect autumn day.

I hadn't driven south of Colorado Springs in well over two years. You forget how beautiful the hills and canyons are. The colors are mostly understated and subtle in the fall. Olive junipers dot the yellow grasses, cling to the sandy red cliffs like freckles. The deeper greens of Ponderosa and pinon pines crowd the junipers, and the scrub oak has copper leaves. All respectable earth tones. But then along the water courses, the light bursts as it falls into the luminous yellow leaves of the cottonwoods.

Gorges and canyons, mesas and buttes. The land seems eternal here. It's hard to believe people own it -- you think more of the land owning them.

There's defiance of the land in some of the houses people have built. Houses whose architecture is traditional in distant parts of America -- in the northeast, for instance -- but not here in Colorado. You can't look at those houses without imagining some newcomer has tried to transplant a bit of the lush eastern United States, complete with well watered bluegrass lawns, to the rocky, thin soils of the arid west. Maybe he got homesick for a more congenial landscape. Maybe he's in denial he no longer lives in Massachusetts, Georgia or Kentucky. Whatever the case, it's not really your problem -- yet in this land, his home is an alien.

Some miles south of the Springs, Don and I turned off the main road and, after a few miles, entered Phantom Canyon. Phantom Canyon is a narrow gorge whose rock walls rise 150 or 200 feet. It winds for miles up into the Rockie Mountains -- right into the heart of the high gold country. The road changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to earth. The walls were mostly red rock deeply fractured by the weather, like an old man's face; and brilliant cottonwoods lined the floor of the canyon.

It's strange how in some parts of Colorado you can see everywhere the evidence of people -- you are after all, traveling a road built by people -- and yet you almost feel you are the first person to explore the land. Twice in the Canyon cars passed us coming from the other direction and each time the occupants waved to us as if we were the first people they'd seen all month. I think that feeling of being a little bit beyond the boundaries of society doesn't just come from the scarcity of people on the Phantom Canyon road. I think it comes from the way the world rises up 150 to 200 feet above you. I think it comes from the way the trees, the grasses, and the brush obey their own laws -- not some gardener's laws. I think it comes from the uncivilized quiet that confronts you when you finally stop and step out of your car. But whatever the source of it, the effect is to give you a slightly different perspective on yourself.

It's not the beauty of nature that most inspires me to reflect on myself. Nature is not always beautiful. But nature is always indifferent. And it's that indifference that inspires both thought and feeling about the human condition.

You can never really put what you learn about yourself from nature in words because what you learned, you didn't learn from words. Rather, you simply experienced a truth. You can write all the commentaries you want about your experiences, but you cannot recreate them through those commentaries. Words never brought a fractured rock cliff into existence.

At times, it seems that societies revolve around the ego. Perhaps it can even seem they are huge conspiracies to make the ego primary in this world. I think the ego is just as much a part of us -- of who we are as a species -- as our eyes and noses, and I reject any ideology that calls for the annihilation of the ego. Yet, I don't think the ego is of primary importance. I think it has its place, but that place is not central.

I believe I see that most clearly when I am out in nature, away from society, away from its tendency to make the ego primary. Yet, it is also out in nature when I feel I am being most true to myself. Is that a paradox?

The other day I was listening to a bimbo talk show host who was scandalized that a nudist resort in Virginia or someplace allowed teens. He seemed to feel that while it was OK for consenting adults to practice nudity, it was horrifying that teens would be allowed to practice nudity. In fact, he thought it was downright immoral of the resort to allow teens in.

Now, I happen to think the talk show host was making a moutain out of a mole hill. For some years ago, I was acquainted with many teens in this town, several of whom would invite me to go along with them on their various excursions, which were often to a nude resort up in the mountains. I recall a number of things about those trips, including staying up until three in the morning in the sauna listening to the teens discuss relationships, sex and God, or being sought out by one teen or another for private chats about their anxieties, but I don't recall that any kids were traumatized by their experiences on these trips. So, I tend to think the bimbo talk show host was just being a bimbo.

But what do you think? Do you think the bimbo talk show host for once had a point? Is there a danger to teen nudity that I didn't see (wouldn't be the first time I haven't seen something)? Should teens be allowed in nudist resorts?

I have long regarded the death penalty as little more than state sponsored terrorism. It's purpose, at least in the United States, seems to be two-fold: To terrorize the American underclass, and to pander to people who want criminals punished as harshly as possible. If it actually serves any other purpose in America, I am unaware of it.

In absolute numbers, though, the capital of the death penalty is not the US, but China. As recently as 2006, the Chinese government conducted two thirds of the world's legal executions. In 2005, it executed an estimated 1,770 people, and sentenced 4,000 to death.

Yet, it has recently done two things to reduce the number of state sponsored murders: (1) In January it began requiring all death sentences to be approved by the Supreme People's Court; and (2), very recently the Supreme People's Court ordered all other courts to reserve the death penalty for "an extremely small number of serious offenders".

We'll have to see what those reforms mean in practical measures, but I think they are steps in the right direction. Governments are evil enough without giving them the right to take the lives of their people.


References:

China to Reduce Death Penalty Use

China Executions at "10 Year Low"

Facts and Statistics on the Death Penalty -- Amnesty International

Some political bloggers are having fun with a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The study finds evidence the brains of liberals and conservatives function differently. It appears liberals have brains that adapt to sudden changes a bit more readily than do the brains of conservatives. Naturally, liberal bloggers are spinning the study one way while conservatives are spinning it the other. Each side wants to show how the study "proves" folks on their side of the fence are superior thinkers. But neither the liberal nor the conservative bloggers that I read are discussing one of the most interesting implications of the study -- that humans may have evolved innate perspectives or prejudices.

The study was conducted by political scientist David Amodio and his colleagues at New York University. They recruited 43 subjects for the experiment and began by asking each subject to rank his or herself on a scale for political views. One end of the scale was "extremely liberal" while the other end was "extremely conservative".

After the recruits ranked themselves, they were directed to sit before a computer screen and press one of two buttons depending on whether they saw an "M" or a "W". Each time they saw a letter, they had only half a second in which to respond -- nothing like a little pressure to think fast.

Eighty percent of the time (400 out of 500 instances) they saw the same letter. This was to encourage them to expect that letter. "You keep seeing the same stimulus over and over, so when the opposite stimulus comes on it's always a surprise," said Amodio.

When the less common letter appeared on the screen, the people who identified themselves in the conservative half of the scale pressed the "usual" button 47% of the time instead of switching to the correct button. In comparison, the "liberals" achieved the slightly lower error rate of 37%.

Up until this point, nothing about the study was surprising: There have been dozens of studies showing a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits. "Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances (Source)." But Amodio's study is unique because he performed electroencephalogram (EEG) scans on the brains of his subjects while they were performing their task -- thus discovering significant differences in the way the brains of liberals and conservatives were operating.

Liberals had slightly over twice as much activity as conservatives in a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. Some scientists think that area of the brain acts as a mental brake by helping the mind recognize "no-go" situations where it must refrain from the usual course of action. They refer to that function of the anterior cingulate cortex as "conflict monitoring".

According to Amodio, "The neural mechanisms for conflict monitoring are formed early in childhood," and are probably rooted in part in our genetic heritage. "But even if genes may provide a blueprint for more liberal or conservative orientations, they are shaped substantially by one's environment over the course of development."

It seems to me Amodio's overall take on his experiment is in line with what most other scientists are saying these days: Genes may predispose us to certain thoughts and behaviors, but environment still plays a major role in how we think and act. But if genes predispose us to certain inclinations, then how and why did those genes evolve?

As luck would have it, Ed Yong has a post on the evolution of personality differences over at Not Exactly Rocket Science that sheds considerable light on the question of how and why personality differences (and by extension, political preferences) might have evolved in us. Basically, it turns out that certain personality traits most likely evolved as ways of answering the age-old question, "Should I have kids now or later?" At first blush, there might not seem to be much of a relationship between reproduction, personality differences, and political preferences, but do check out Ed's article for insight into how those things might be linked.

I think the important thing to realize here is that "liberal" and "conservative" tendencies evolved in us because both tendencies increase our biological fitness -- depending on the circumstances. If one or the other were inherently superior, then natural selection, working over millions of years, would have resulted in that one particular tendency being the only tendency humans have. Either we would all be "liberals" or we would all be "conservatives". But that didn't happen because both liberal and conservative personalities have advantages.


UPDATE: Cognitive Daily has an illuminating critique of the study here. I think it should be read in conjunction with Ed's article, however, because I don't think Cognitive Daily's critique of the "Left-wing/Right-wing" study amounts to an refutation of the notion there may be significant and inherent differences in the way liberal and conservative brains operate.


References:

Homo Politicus: Brain Function of Liberals, Conservatives Differ

Political Affiliation Could All be in the Brain (New Scientist)

Study Finds Left-Wing Brain, Right Wing Brain (L.A. Times)

Sometime in the 1920's, a cousin of mine established world records in two sports. My mom, who earlier today told me his story, is 89 and cannot recall offhand which two sports he excelled in. I might ask her someday to look it up in the family genealogy -- she has the records -- but I didn't want to put her to that trouble this morning. At any rate, my cousin's prowess in those two sports earned him an invitation to participate in one of the Olympics.

Unfortunately, after the invitation was extended, it was withdrawn upon discovery that my cousin was not that well rounded. He was indeed a superb athlete for his day, but it seems he lacked in academic accomplishments. That's to say, if his shoelaces had required a working knowledge of algebra or history for him to tie them, he would not have been able to tie his own laces. So, the Olympic Committee took back it's invitation. To understand why, it might be useful here to quote from Wikipedia:

The English public schools of the second half of the 19th century had a major influence on many sports. The schools contributed to the rules and influenced the governing bodies of those sports out of all proportion to their size. They subscribed to the Ancient Greek and Roman belief that sport formed an important part of education, an attitude summed up in the saying: mens sana in corpore sano – a sound mind in a healthy body. In this ethos, taking part has more importance than winning, because society expected gentlemen to become all-rounders and not the best at everything. Class prejudice against "trade" reinforced this attitude. The house of the parents of a typical public schoolboy would have a tradesman's entrance, because tradesmen did not rank as the social equals of gentlemen. Apart from class considerations there was the typically English concept of "fairness," in which practicing or training was considered as tantamount to cheating; it meant that you considered it more important to win than to take part. Those who practiced a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it merely as a "hobby."

Those were the good old days: When athletes were expected to be gentlemen and gentlemen were expected to be well rounded. My cousin might easily have beaten the other competitors at that Olympics -- his records show that -- but that would have missed the point back then.

Today, most of us could not care less whether an Olympic athlete is a well-rounded gentleman or lady. For us, the Olympics are about athletic excellence, rather than virtue. And that attitude permeates all of society. Most of us admire a self-made millionaire for his business acumen even if he is only half-competent as a human being. We admire the famous for being famous without demanding they be more than marginally decent. We vote for politicians who are shrewd political operators but whose wisdom and understanding in all other matters borders on imbecilic. We are a world in love with the expert and the specialist. But we no longer love the gentleman, the lady, the well rounded amateur.

I do not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing -- overall. I can see strengths and weaknesses to both approaches. So, what do you think?

It bugs me that many people just don't get science. In my weaker moments, when I want the world to be radically other than it is, I want everyone to understand science. Not just to know scientific fact, but to understand scientific reasoning. But what bugs me more -- much more -- than the simple fact not everyone understands science is the horrible fact some people will consider you stupid if you don't understand science.

Thirty or so years ago when I was in college, I tutored logic for the Philosophy Department. It was while tutoring students in logic that I began to suspect there was more to "intelligence" than I had been taught.

At that time, thirty years ago, Howard Gardner had not yet invented the theory of multiple intelligences, and no one else was seriously entertaining the notion that intelligence might have more than one axis. The IQ test ruled the day: intelligence, everyone thought, could be summed up as a single thing.

Yet, when tutoring logic, I discovered people who were amazingly bright in some ways, but who just could not for the life of them grasp logic. It perplexed me no end. Until I actually sat down to work with such people, I had always assumed anyone who was bright was bright in everything. And anyone who was dull was dull in everything. But now I was confronted with people who needed exceptional help just to pass an introductory course in logic, but who excelled in other ways -- I could not deny they were in those ways bright people.

The question never went away. Over the following years, I was always alert to noticing how people could be bright in some ways and not so bright in others. Eventually, I came to think, "There are many different kinds of human intelligence", and I tried to categorize the different kinds based on my own experience of people. Then one day, after several years thinking I was alone in my heresy, it occurred to me others too might be thinking along the same lines as I was. So, I Googled several search terms until I hit the key one, "multiple intelligences". Up popped Howard Gardner's work, and I became as excited as a boy who has just discovered his first real friend.

Today, there is a movement among people to label themselves "Brights". The people who like to do that largely seem frustrated with the fact not everyone gets science as well as they do. I find the movement unsettling. "Bright" is not a term that should be reserved only for people who get science. There are at least eight distinct kinds of intelligence, according to Gardner, and so there are at least eight distinct ways to be bright. Moreover, even if one is not especially bright in any of those eight ways, perhaps one has a mix of intelligences that allows one to see certain things more surefooted than other people see those things.

Of course, the temptation to see our own kinds of intelligence as superior to any other kind is not limited to people who like to call themselves "Brights". It's done all the time -- even by people who are not "Brights". For instance: Many people who have a great deal of interpersonal intelligence tend to see others who lack such "people smarts" as inferior to them. And many people who are exceptional athletes.... I could go on, but every example is at heart the same: Many people think their own brand of intelligence makes them decisively superior to everyone else. That, my friends, is not too smart.

It is also arrogant. I do not mean to mean to imply any moral condemnation of arrogance here. I mean only to be descriptive -- not prescriptive. The essence of arrogance is a lack of realism or proper perspective about how our own talents, abilities and skills compare to the talents, abilities and skills of others. To be arrogant, you must be to some extent deluded.

Life presents us with many challenges and not one of us is equally adept at meeting each and everyone of those challenges. Humans have the great advantage, though, of being able to communicate exceptionally well with each other (when compared to other species). In practice, that means we can seek advice on how to handle challenges that play to our weaknesses, rather than our strengths. Suppose I don't understand politics as well as you do. If that's the case, then it would be wise of me to ask for your advice about politics when I have need to -- so long as you yourself are honest in giving advice. In that way, I combine your strengths with mine.

On the other hand, if I am arrogant, I believe that your knowledge of politics is inferior to my own because -- at least in part because -- I have no real grasp of my own limits. Most likely, I see myself as intelligent in every way that really matters. Why then should I seek out anyone else? Why should I look for opinions that are fundamentally different from my own? In my delusion of across the board superiority, I merely consider any fundamental difference in opinion to be the proof you are wrong and I am right. Worse, I probably don't even understand your point of view.

When we are too arrogant to consider any views but our own, we cease to take advantage of one of our species greatest strengths -- the ability to draw on the strengths of others to meet the many challenges of life that play to our own weaknesses. That strength is nowhere more highly developed than in humans. It's almost inhuman not to use it.

Ed Diener is America's foremost psychologist researching human happiness. In a 2003 study, he and Shigehiro Oishi discovered that European and Asian Americans behaved differently when choosing tasks to perform.

The European Americans typically picked tasks they were good at, while the Asian Americans were significantly more likely to ignore whether they were good at something when choosing whether to do it. Diener and Oishi further discovered that over time the European Americans expressed greater happiness with their tasks than the Asian Americans. That is, both groups were given a choice what tasks to perform, but only the European Americans picked tasks that made them happy.

Given a choice, why would anyone not choose to do what makes them happy?

Unfortunately, not everyone in this strange world has the option of fully playing to their strengths. It seems in many cases the reasons for that are economic. I would guess the need to earn a living, combined with a lack of opportunities for doing so, has probably forced more people into jobs and lives that play to their weaknesses than perhaps any other single factor. Just imagine how many immensely talented people in the long course of human history have been street beggars because the society and economy they lived in provided them with little or no opportunity to do anything else! Yet, even in wealthy nations today many people find themselves going into jobs where they cannot make full use of their talents and skills, but must to one great extent or another play to their weaknesses.

Besides economics, many social and cultural factors can pressure people into opting for a job or life that does not play to their strengths and leaves them less happy than they would otherwise be. The classic example of that is the social and cultural oppression of women. Until recently, most societies allowed women very few choices in life. And minorities within a society often face similar restrictions.

A third set of factors are probably psychological. A few years ago, the Surgeon General of the United States released a startling report that concluded one in five Americans was mentally or emotionally ill. A symptom of many disorders is anhedonism -- that is, an aversion to pleasure. People who suffer anhedonism are more likely to seek things that make them unhappy than things that make them happy. Although I don't know what percentage of the population suffers from anhedonism, it seems likely enough that it could be a few million of us.

While playing to our strengths is a significant source of happiness, not all of us do so for many and various reasons -- some of which I've touched on.

"Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, pessaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc."

- Henry Miller

I've been neglecting everyone, not just here, so don't feel too personally offended.

This week I began my new job as office wench at a large home appliances outlet. It was also week 4 of a migraine that just isn't interested in going away.

After debating and ignoring and distracting myself for quite a long time, I dragged my sorry bum to the Emergency Room, where I was given a shot of morphine, a prescription for some outrageously expensive medication that causes birth defects and 'occasional loss of consciousness', and told to smoke more pot.

No joke.

While it is not necessarily typical to hear this from a doctor (no, not even in Canada, though I'm sure you've all heard stories) it didn't seem like horrid advice. I might have taken it if I was the type to smoke a joint in the evening and still wake up for work the next day.

It did leave me wondering, however, why drugs of any kind have been made illegal to begin with.

We obviously know that many drugs have harmful effects, both physical and otherwise. They can be dreadfully addictive, and cause us to make poor decisions, or leave us unable to drive and function safely.

There must be a thousand prescription medications (not to mention alcohol, caffeine, and cigarettes) that fit these criteria as well.

Not that I'm advocating the use of any or all drugs, just questioning how the problem became a lawful one.

A 'Crime' is something that has been designated unacceptable behavior.

How far should that label stretch?

Assuming that drug use/possession is an unlawful act just because it always HAS been concerns me a little.

Any input?

I read an extremely disturbing story earlier tonight of a young woman who was raped a few months before her planned wedding. Not only was she sexually violated, but afterwards, most of her community -- rather than rush to her support -- betrayed her. They turned against her as if she were the criminal. And they succeeded in destroying any chance she had of marrying the man she loved and who loved her.

We are the most insane of all the great apes.

As most of us know, rape is an atrocity. It ranks with murder and manslaughter as among he most heinous of crimes. It very often leaves its victims emotionally and mentally scarred for years. And the threat of rape alone is a curse against freedom. It is bad enough in itself, but it is even worse when the victim's community abuses the victim for having been raped. At that point, the community becomes despicable. It becomes immoral. And it becomes worse than the rapist himself.

Precisely the opposite should happen. The community should rally to the support of the rape victim. It should do everything within its power to reassure her that she is loved, valued, and held in esteem. It should make it its mission to help her heal from the trauma of rape, to recover her life, and to move on as best she can. A community that will not or cannot do at least that much for a victim of rape is treacherous. What possible allegiance could anyone owe such a community?

People's attitudes towards the victims of rape can and must change.

Let's assume Howard Gardner is correct in asserting there are eight kinds of human intelligence and that no one person excels in all eight. What would that say about us as social animals?

The old adage, "Two heads are better than one", comes to mind. Or, rather, eight heads are better than one -- provided the eight each represents a different kind of human intelligence. I recall something a graduate student in anthropology said about his experiences living with a Southwestern (US) tribe that might illustrate the point here.

Soon after student had begun living with them, the tribe faced a crisis over who controlled the legal rights to much of the water that fed their reservation. An elder went from family to family and explained to them what the situation was. Then, over the course of six months, he returned to each family to ask for advice, after giving the families time to discuss the crisis among themselves.

Finally, the entire tribe gathered in one village to vote on what to do about the water. The elder was the first to speak. He began by once again laying out what the problem was. He then described his efforts to get everyone's advice. At last, he came to the point of the meeting by describing the only three options the tribe had come up with after discussing the issue for six months. And then he did something that shocked the graduate student.

The elder apologized for being unable to think up more options.

Why did that shock the graduate student? Because he himself came from mainstream American culture where publicly debated decisions are made in precisely the opposite way. In America, the goal of public debate is usually to narrow down the choices until only two choices remain. Then a vote is taken to decide between them. But here was a society of Native Americans who thought even three options too few. Instead of wanting to narrow down their choices, they wanted more choices than they had. Furthermore, after inquiring, the graduate student discovered that the tribal leaders typically strove to present the tribe with six or eight choices -- and sometimes as many as twenty!

That tribe knew how to take advantage of the apparent fact humans have multiple kinds of intelligence. They made an effort to get as many perspectives as possible by drawing everyone into the decision making process. Then they laid out all the options they had come up with as a group, leaving out none. Last, they voted on the available options -- which is another way of insuring that everyone's unique mix of intelligences is heard from and represented in the final decision. In doing things that way, the tribe tapped into the fullest ability of humans to come up with creative solutions to the challenges they faced.

It is commonplace to point out that humans are a social animal. Yet, we are only recently beginning to understand what that means. Millions of years of evolution created an animal who functions best in a society. Even the apparent fact we have eight kinds of intelligence seems to reflect that truth. As the graduate student's story illustrates, we come up with the largest variety of options when we work together as a group. It is mere common sense that the more options you can come up with when meeting a challenge, the more likely you will have at least one that helps you survive that challenge. For doing that, eight kinds of intelligence are better than one.