Creative Dreaming

1 Reply

I came up with this blog topic in the shower this morning. That’s where I come up with the vast majority of my blog topics. Why is that do you suppose?

PsychicReaderI occasionally have psychic readings for fun. Purely for fun as I have absolutely zero belief that psychics are really psychic. There simply is no such thing. But I am extremely impressed and fascinated by the rare and marvelous talent of these people to make others believe that they actually have real psychic powers. I see them as a type of stage magician.

As in the art of horoscope writing, the biggest trick in being a convincing psychic is coming up with observations that are universally true but little appreciated, and seemingly specific yet actually very vague and generic. Then you make a lot of them and the mark will selectively remember those that ring true.

Decades ago, one particular psychic gazed deeply into my eyes and revealed to me “You have many of your best ideas in the shower, don’t you?”

YES! That’s amazing! How could you possibly know this quirky and intimate detail about me? The only possible explanation is that you must be truly psychic! What else can you tell me? Oh, you need more money to unveil even more startling revelations about where I’m destined to meet my true love? Do you take MasterCard?

But in reality  this is just a great example of a using a near-universal truth that we falsely imagine is something unique about us that no one could possibly know unless they have psychic powers.

Why is it that so many of us relate to this particular “psychic” insight? My theory of shower-thoughts begins involves dreams.

I suspect that dreams have a very important and largely unrecognized evolutionary benefit. I think that dreams are an essential part of our creative thinking process. In his 1993 book The Metaphoric Mind (see here) author Bob Samples summarized current thought about the creative process. He said that creative thinking requires that we alternate between “play” mode and “logic” mode in order to arrive at creative solutions. We must follow a line of reasoning logically until we reach a dead-end, then enter play mode and make wild leaps of free-association to find a new starting point from which to reenter a new logical train of thought. Techniques like brainstorming are methods for formalizing this process.

I speculate that dreams are a way that evolution has already hard-wired the creative process. Dreams give us a method for entering this “play mode” in which we rearrange the niggling facts of the previous day (selectively those that are unresolved threads of dead-end logic) and make wild leaps unconstrained by logic, by assumptions, or even by the physical reality of our real-world desk and pen and gravity. In the morning, our minds freshly brimming with “play” thoughts, the shower gives us the undistracted time we need to logically process them, to connect and rationalize them into something sensible, and to follow new trains of logical inquiry to unexpectedly new creative conclusions.

Shower-thinking isn’t very novel insight anymore. It’s now pretty well-known (see here), but I am not sure that the role of dreaming in this process is sufficiently appreciated. Nevertheless, this is exactly the kind of detail that a good psychic latches on to in order to establish credibility with an otherwise skeptical client.

The job of a psychic must be getting harder however. Even 20 years ago a psychic could make this kind of “reading” and it would be fairly difficult and unlikely that their client could learn that this amazing insight isn’t actually that amazing at all. If I went to a psychic today and they told me that I have all my best ideas in the shower, a quick Internet search would show me that this is actually pretty universal and quite well-known and documented. It would be clearly obvious that one did not need psychic powers to divine this.

But here is the important lesson. Even 25 years ago when that particular psychic told me this about myself, even though I could not easily fact check this particular phenomenon at that time, my conclusion was not “this person must be a real psychic.” It was “this phenomenon must be more common than I realized.” Keep that in mind when some psychic makes a seemingly correct observation about you, even if their “psychic impression” isn’t quite common knowledge on the Internet yet. Even if you can’t imagine what it might be, there is necessarily some mundane trick to their apparent psychic powers.

Lack of information and openness to magical thinking are the essential conditions for mysticism and fakery to thrive. Religion makes us more susceptible to other kinds of magical thinking. And some of what we are lead to believe through mysticism and fakery is not so harmless and benign as the entertaining insights of a $20 psychic.

So use your dreams creatively. Evolution almost certainly produced them to give you an advantage over your non-dreaming cousins. But don’t imagine there is anything mystical or magical about them.

 

Novel Romances

Leave a reply

RomanceNovelDo you read romance novels? If you said no, are you lying? If you said no again, are you lying about lying? Chances are pretty good that you are.

According to Nielsen statistics reported by the Romance Writers of America (see here), 13% of all adult fiction consumed are romance novels. That’s a lot of romance totaling up to over $1 billion in sales in 2013. A whopping 84% of this market are females, mostly between 34 and 55 years of age.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that men’s notions about romance are pretty juvenile. But men don’t need to snuggle under a quilt and sip wine over a romance novel to experience their romantic fantasies. Men can pretty much just go see any mainstream movie for some vicarious romantic fiction.

Male romantic fantasies are pretty simple. Whether the hero of the movie is James Bond, or a flawed hero like Wade Wilson in Deadpool, or just an extraordinarily ordinary guy like Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer, the man is lucky enough to meet an extraordinary woman who “gets” him. She accepts his profession, she finds his jokes funny, she cares about what he cares about, she accepts him exactly as he is, flaws and all, and she adores him just like he is. Oh yea, and of course she’s incredibly sexy.

While quite similar, female fantasies differ in some essential respects. If you read any number of romance novels, you find that almost all follow the exact same formula. The woman portrayed in the story is utterly amazing but no one appreciates just how amazing she is – until that one guy comes along. He recognizes that she is one in a billion and immediately becomes so smitten that he will do anything to have her.

This guy is never just any ordinary guy. He is invariably a bad boy, a super alpha male who can have any woman on the planet he wants, who has unlimited resources and power, who is so incredibly alluring that every woman wants him, and so bad ass that every man fears him. But despite all that he only desires the heroine and is helplessly devoted to her.

She however, invariably plays hard to get – very hard to get. Whether the guy is a secret agent, a Pirate Captain, a Persian King, or an ethically compromised billionaire, the hero must overthrow civilizations, vanquish armies, forsake his fortune, suffer torture and agonies that would kill most men, even cheat death itself, before she will finally give herself to him. And most importantly, since he is a bad boy, one essential way he must prove himself to her is by giving up his bad-boy ways for her.

As one example, I recently read the Hidden Fire series by Elizabeth Hunter (see here). I was looking for a good vampire novel and didn’t realize that this was as much romance novel as gothic adventure. The central figure Beatrice was working as a bookish librarian when a dark and mysterious stranger named Giovanni enters her life. He of course turns out to be a powerful ancient vampire who immediately recognizes that Beatrice is the one woman who he must have. He then sets about battling against every incredibly hopeless adversity in order to claim her and convince her of his undying loyalty and devotion. Honesty is almost always a key obstacle in these plot lines. In this story, Gio almost loses Beatrice when he lies to her to save her life.

Don’t get me wrong, the Hidden Fire books are  well-written and I enjoyed them, but they follow the same tried and true recipe for appealing to female readers. As a guy I found myself groaning with every other paragraph reading corny lines like “Gio couldn’t keep his eyes from straying toward her ample breasts” or “the ancient vampire trembled with desire as her hair brushed past his cheek.” It all seemed just as ridiculous as gorgeous women jumping into bed with James Bond (especially since they are usually just trying to kill him anyway).

But beyond the differences in style, the key difference between guys romantic fantasies and those of women seems to be that men dream that some alluring woman will love them immediately and unconditionally or at least want them sexually. Women want the powerful bad boy to find them, to be obsessed with her, to feel that they are the most amazing woman on the planet (or the galaxy and/or of all time), to overcome insurmountable adversities to win her, to prove his honesty, and to forsake all his bad-boy ways to eventually win her over.

What these romance novels seem to echo is the reality that while both men and women desire an attractive and capable romance partner, men want a woman who will accept them as they are while women want a guy who not only accepts her as she is but is willing to fundamentally change for her. The old adage that “men want the woman they love to never change and women want to change their man into the guy they love” seems to be a universal truth in romance fiction at least.

In the final analysis, there is one element of truth from romantic fantasy that transcends gender boundaries. Men and women alike both dream of being found by someone who will love them exactly as they are. Both James Bond and Beatrice agree on this. But Beatrice would expect James to prove his love by giving up exactly the behaviors that attracted her to him.

Love has no obligation to make sense, especially in romantic fiction.

 

Addendum: I received this comment via email. It’s so good I had to add it.

Women have been changing themselves to be attractive to men for centuries.  They starve themselves, squeeze their bodies into all kinds of unnatural shapes, suppress their ambition to become equal members of society…  Maybe the reason that men don’t want their women to change is that they don’t need to – the women have already done the changing.  Maybe the men in these romance novels are attracted to those women who have already become what the men want.  And maybe the men should consider the fact that in any relationship, both parties have to make accommodations, including them.

 

Dear Future Time-Traveler

3 Replies

If you are reading this it is probably the year 2416, give or take, you are undoubtedly one of the few technologists remaining alive in the last enclave of a largely uninhabitable future Earth decimated by the ravages of corporate planetary exploitation resulting in resource wars fueled by religious extremism. Your search algorithm undoubtedly pulled this ancient blog article off of molecular storage because you have just completed a prototype time-travel machine, you have only enough energy left on the planet to send one person back one time, and you are researching what a single lone agent could do to avert your catastrophic timeline.

ReaganHere is what you must do. It is your best chance for survival. You have to stop Ronald Reagan.

I know that time travel theory requires that you make only the most subtle possible alteration at a key intersection in the timelines, so just killing Reagan is ill-advised. Besides being ethically unacceptable, even to save the planet and billions of future lives, his death could result in wildly unpredictable repercussions. Therefore, you must send your agent back to April 22nd, 1980 just two days before the fateful Operation Eagle Claw failed famously to rescue American hostages held in Iran. Your agent must gain access to Col. Charles A. Beckwith and convince him to inspect the helicopter rotors and hydraulics and avoid flying though regions with sandy particulates.

If your agent can assure that these minor problems are avoided, he or she can thwart Reagan’s alleged conspiracy with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election in order to discredit Jimmy Carter. In any event, this will likely prevent Reagan from gaining the White House, which will keep the solar panels on the roof and ensure that the nascent enculturation of Carter’s responsible, science-based energy and social policies are not aborted by Reagan.

By thwarting the Reagan Presidency, we avoid the critically pivotal fork when we chose self-interest over social good; unrestrained consumerism over sustainability; religious extremism over humanist ethics; voodoo trickle-down economics over sound economic policies; superstition over science; beliefs over facts; hatred for the government over pride in government; rabid partisanism over political cooperation; and unrestrained militarism over a thriving peace-time economy.

If Carter had retained the Presidency, there would have been a chance at least that science and fact-based thinking would have prevailed; that the religious community would have followed his humble example of restraint and separation from government affairs; that rampant consumerism and self-interest would not have completely corrupted corporate leaders into elevating next-quarter’s profits and personal bonuses above all social considerations; that subsequent generations of government leaders would not be hell-bent to destroy government and the people that support them would not be convinced that government is their enemy. In the alternate timeline, John McCain would never have considered nominating Sarah Palin and Donald Trump would never have become the orange-haired Frankenstein’s Monster of our own creation that he is. The existential threat of Global Climate Change and all of its resultant horrors would have been managed responsibly with a long-term and forward-looking sense of responsibility for the planet and for future generations.

So, future time-traveler, this is your only hope, our final hope. You must ensure that Operation Eagle Claw does not fail. If you succeed in that mission, this whole tragically cascading timeline will never have occurred. Hopefully moments after I click Publish on this blog article, my timeline will shift because you will have read it in the future and sent your agent back in time and he or she has succeeded in averting the failure of Operation Eagle Claw which has prevented the Reagan Presidency and the ascendency of the crazy religious anti-government Right. Your future world and mine will transform into a sane, rational, humane planet, unpolluted and unthreatened by climate change, with an America that is truly the light of the world rather than the single greatest threat to its survival.

If we fail to rise to our challenge of building a sane and sustainable planet, you future time-traveler are our last hope!

 

Consitutution Thumping

Leave a reply

scaliaI have a colleague who is really smart. Undeniably smart. He does his complex job extremely well and is deeply conversant in all spheres of intellectual discussion. He is also Bible literalist. He truly believes that he has arrived at all of his religious views through careful reading and unbiased interpretation of the Bible. In the end all he really does is cleverly pick and choose from the Bible to claim external validation of and authority for the beliefs he wants to embrace.

Substitute the word Constitution for Bible here and I could be talking about the late Antonin Scalia.

This is not an uncommon trap that smart people fall into in order to justify their biases and beliefs. Look at Ken Ham (see here). He invokes the Bible to “prove” his truly insane ideas and uses convoluted arguments to dismiss any Bible passages that contradict him. Ham claims that any Bible passages that can be interpreted to agree with him are “literal passages,” and any that do not agree are “historical.”

Just as Ken Ham and my colleague use the Bible as their inviolate source of authority that only they can interpret correctly, so do Conservatives like Scalia attempt to turn the Constitution into a secular Bible to serve their religious and conservative agenda. To them, the Bible and the Constitution are both sources of authority that they can invoke to support their dogmatic views. They claim that any interpretation that supports their views is literal or purist or originalist, while any that disagree are attempts to reinterpret or bastardize these written in stone authorities.

Since secular society does not accept the absolute authority of the Bible, religious fundamentalists seek to transform our Constitution into a secular Bible to serve as a proxy through which they can impose their religious views. Having established themselves as the protectors of the Constitution and as the authoritative interpreters of original intent, they portray the Constitution as infallible and unchangeable, like the Bible. No one is allowed to question its authority or that of those who profess to protect it.

By coopting the Constitution, religious fundamentalists have established an authority structure by which they can mandate and enforce social change according to their religious worldview. All they require is a Supreme Court that will continue to interpret the Constitution so as to maintain and expand their theocratic worldview. Antonin Scalia has been their great champion in this effort.

There is a great deal of manipulative coded language that these religious fundamentalists employ to market their reimagining of the Constitution. Foremost, they preach the absolutism of original intent. This is actually a phrase first adopted by Bible literalists to justify their interpretation of the Bible in the same way that religious fundamentalists seek to own the Constitution.

Even if it were possible to interpret original intent, this is neither practical nor desirable. The very idea is antithetical to what was almost certainly the clearest original intent of the founders that the Constitution remain a fluid and responsive document that can be continually reinterpreted to best meet the needs of a growing and changing nation. This view has actually gained widespread acceptance in Canada and formalized as their “living tree doctrine” which mandates that their constitution remain organic and be progressively reinterpreted to adapt to changing times. However, in America fundamentalists continue to try to reshape the Constitution into their own likeness and then cast it in stone.

Ironically, those who seek to control us incessantly warn about “activist judges who reinterpret the Constitution.” They tout the intellectual purity of Supreme Court justices like Scalia who “uphold the Constitution” according to “first principles.” In short, if you hear people invoking the Constitution and ranting about Constitutional first principles, be very wary.

Supreme Court judges like Scalia who claim to rule according to original intent are as deluded or as deluding as Ken Ham. Every interpretation of the Constitution is unavoidably colored by current culture. Every ruling is necessarily constrained and shaped by the many rulings that form a chain of precedent reaching back eventually to the Constitution. But that chain of legislative rulings may have drifted far, far away from original intent, as we saw most recently in the long, twisted chain of rulings that have taken us to Citizens United, a ruling so completely in contradiction to “first principles” as to be considered almost comical. I call this process of judicial drift from one precedent to the next until it has drifted far out to sea, “judicial brainwashing.”

Ironically, these same patriots who are overwhelmingly concerned with upholding the purity of original intent when interpreted according to their religious ideals are the first to push for Constitutional changes when they find the Constitution insufficient to their ends, as in pushing for a Constitutional Right to Life amendment.

Does this mean that original intent does not matter? It certainly does. As Garrett Epps pointed out in his excellent article “Stealing the Constitution” published in the February 7, 2011 edition of The Nation magazine:

“Serious originalist scholarship is very useful as one way of learning more about the Constitution. But in the hands of judges like Antonin Scalia or demagogues like Glenn Beck, it is really a kind of intellectual weapon…”

Antonin Scalia was the Ken Ham of the Supreme Court. If he truly cared about original intent, he would have acknowledged, for example, that our forefathers could never have imagined let alone intended to protect modern weaponry. The most they might have known was that this new innovation called the “flint-lock” was soon to appear. They could never have imagined or factored in the horrific killing-power of modern weaponry. But instead, what Antonin Scalia did was focus on the word “the” in “the right to bear arms” as the key concept in his extremist interpretation. Antonin Scalia, like Ken Ham, was a deeply self-deluded individual.

Our Constitution is a tremendously important statement of principles. However, in truth there are many countries with similarly admirable Constitutions. It is only the high court system of a nation, and how it interprets and enforces that Constitution, that makes it a great nation or a poor one.

The Constitution might just as well be a Rorschach drawing or Simon and Garfunkel lyrics for that matter. Either of these alternatives might be just as good in the hands of wise men or just as abused in the hands of ideologues.  Antonin Scalia may have been smart, but he was not wise. We can only hope his successor will not be so susceptible to Justice Scalia’s insanely flawed moral and intellectual reasoning.

 

 

Satisfaction Surveys

2 Replies

SatisfactionSurveyHave you ever filled out one of those ubiquitous satisfaction surveys? Of course you have. Everyone wants to know how satisfied you are. Whether it be your phone company or your local dry cleaner or your waiter, everyone is keen to quantify, record, and report your level of customer satisfaction.

But despite the fact that satisfaction surveys are as annoyingly common as pennies, how truly useful are they? If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t provide exactly high quality response data to these surveys. If I cannot escape the survey without being rude, I just check “Excellent” for everything without even reading the questions. It’s the easiest thing to do. And what direct benefit is there in it for me to be thoughtful and honest? I’m much more likely to get better service next time if I indicate that my waitress is excellent in every possible way, especially if she was terrible!

And there are lots of reasons beyond immediate self-interest and laziness that most of us lie like Persian rugs on these surveys:

  1. People forget the bad stuff. We have selective memories, and the longer it is after our terrible customer experience, the more likely we are to remember it positively.
  2. People never want to seem like complainers. Even if we had gripes, we are programmed that complaining only reflects badly on us.
  3. People are nice. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings unnecessarily – even if we are anonymous.
  4. People are habituated to say “I’m fine.” Even if we’re in the middle of vomiting up our lunch after being told that our beloved kitty just got electrocuted attacking an electrical outlet, we automatically say we’re fine.
  5. We assume no one <really> wants to know. We figure that this is pointless paperwork that no one will ever actually read let alone act on it.
  6. Saying everything was wonderful is the easiest way to dispense with this annoying and meaningless survey and get home in time for The Walking Dead.

Here’s an even bigger problem worth discussing in depth. We don’t know what we don’t know and have poor imaginations to envision what we could have. Satisfied compared to what? How do you rate your Toyota? Excellent. Oh wait, I didn’t realize I could have had a Porsche instead… Can I change that answer to Poor?

How do you rate your healthcare? Excellent? Great! But did you know that Norway has a healthcare system that costs ½ the price and ranks 11th to your 37th? Would you like to change your survey answer?

Since we don’t know what we don’t know let alone what we cannot even imagine, Poor to Excellent is not an absolute scale. It only encompasses what we know. If we’re given a dozen similarly bad options, we’re likely to rate the least worst of them Excellent. By the way, this is one of the reasons that “happiness scientists” tell us that more choices make us less happy. We become less satisfied with what we can get if we are made aware of all the better options that we cannot hope to get our hands on.

I have a more nefarious theory about these surveys. I think that smart customer service providers offer these surveys knowing all of this, but they figure that when you indicate that their service was great you’ll actually remember it as being great. Probably sound psychology!

But here’s the biggest problem with these victim-less white lies called satisfaction surveys. We sometimes really, really do need an accurate answer to assess satisfaction. We have lots of important social science studies that have little choice but to measure satisfaction through this sort of survey. Unfortunately, for all the reasons given, this data is usually just so much garbage in.

We need smarter measures of satisfaction.

One solution is to de-emphasize or even abandon the self-reporting of satisfaction measures. Instead, smart companies or researchers measure indirect indicators of satisfaction. Rather than ask for a self-reported satisfaction, they look at objective behaviors that correlate with satisfaction.

For example, given a subsequent choice of options, what option does the person actually choose? Do they recommend the option to others? Instead of asking whether they like the coffee or the ambiance of the restaurant, measure how many refills they ask for and how long they remain to digest and converse over their coffee.

Satisfaction surveys are just a microcosm within a wide range of human behaviors. In almost every situation dealing with people, looking at actual behaviors can tell us far, far more than relying upon anything they tell us about their motivations or their opinions.

Dismissed with Prejudice

5 Replies

ElvisDo you have one of those wacky friends? The ones with a deep, sincere, heartfelt conviction that Elvis still lives. That he is actually in seclusion preparing for his epic comeback? Busy rehearsing for the ultimate Elvis concert that will transform the world?

Your friend undoubtedly has an articulate rebuttal for every possible reason you can throw at him for dismissing the possibility that Elvis might still be alive. His death was staged. The witnesses are all in on it. The corpse in Graceland is a DNA-identical clone of him. He is being kept young by a chemical concoction that the pharmaceutical industry has suppressed.

Your friend probably turns the tables on your skepticism quite easily. How can you be so arrogant to claim to know everything? Are you that close-minded? Surely you can’t prove and therefore can’t know for certain that he isn’t still alive. If you are as scientifically open-minded as you claim you must admit some possibility that he might still be alive. Surely you can admit that reasonable people can disagree on this unless you believe he is dead purely as a matter of faith. The only intellectually honest position on this question must be agnosticism.

Your friend points to several well-regarded scientists who admit that it is possible Elvis is alive. He recommends a plethora of scholarly books that debunk all those fallacious “scientific” arguments claiming that Elvis is dead.

Or perhaps your friend has a different but similarly wacky belief that he clings to and argues for with great passion.

All that was my way of setting the stage for the real point of this article – that I do not need to read any of those books purporting to prove that Elvis might be alive. Elvis is dead. Period. Any book that starts with the premise that he may still be alive is necessarily idiotic. There is no need for me to actually read them in order to legitimately dismiss them out of hand. Good scientists dismiss an infinite number of implausible claims all the time every day.

So there is no need for me to entertain arguments about how Elvis might still be alive. And there is no reason for me to read a book that starts with the premise that Elvis is alive or the Holocaust did not happen or the Moon landing was faked or alien overlords built the pyramids. I can dismiss them all out of hand without even reading the book jacket. The only reason to read them may be if your interest is studying delusional thinking or the infection of magical thinking amongst otherwise healthy individuals.

And I have read a great many of these books that purport to present a logical or scientific argument for at least allowing the possibility that god might exist. When I wrote my book Belief in Science and the Science of Belief (see here) I took the time to slog through a 4-foot stack of books that undoubtedly made Amazon the lucrative enterprise it is today. It was largely a waste of time and money on my part. Believers have had two millennia to come up with arguments so there are simply no new ones to be found.

As a concrete example, I bought several books on Neurotheology (see here). I did the world a service by throwing these out rather than reselling them. Written by Andrew B. Newberg and a host of his followers, these books typically spend 250 pages citing brain imaging and cognitive studies related to belief and god. Their real goal is to establish their science creds so that you will believe them when, in the last 50 pages, they leap to outlandish claims that go something like “since we have clearly evolved to believe in god, the only conclusion must be that god himself designed us to believe in him.”

The only conclusion is that this is an idiotic conclusion. But then again what can you hope to get from any author that starts from the silly premise that god exists and works backwards?

Religious books purporting to be scientifically legitimate examinations of the “evidence” for god pop up on Amazon every day like so many weeds. I can’t read them all but I can still dismiss them all out of hand. There simply is no god, can be no god, and therefore every book claiming to argue this point is necessarily as idiotic as books arguing that Elvis is alive and well and living in a secret wing of Graceland.

And thus, dear reader, we finally reach the heart of my dilemma: Do I read these silly books and respond to them or do I simply ignore them?

Ignoring them is not easy. If no one pushes back on them, they seem to win the argument. And there are so many of them saying the same silly things that many readers mistake quantity as an indication of quality. On the other hand, the time for engaging these silly debates is over. At this stage of the atheist movement, we must move past engaging in and thereby legitimizing these ridiculous debates. We should give no more consideration to religious ideas than we do to racist ideas or homophobic ideas or sexist ideas or the idea that Elvis is amongst us.

Still it’s hard to resist getting sucked in. Recently a new book appeared on Amazon called “Can Science Explain Religion” (see here) written by a priest who is also a Professor of Religion. It apparently “debunks” the very theory of the evolution of belief that I present in my own book. Do I buy this and read it so I can credibly criticize it and defend my position, and thereby risk encouraging this nonsense? Or is it best not to even respond and hope that the rest of the country follows my sensible example?

After struggling with this dilemma for many years, I have come to believe that refusing to engage is the best strategy moving forward. Engaging in further debate with them only feeds the beast. Like booing Donald Trump at a rally.

It’s not an easy course of action nor is it without risk or criticism. But in science, we must first ask whether our basic assumptions are valid before we enter into discussions of the resulting questions. We must not let ourselves get caught up in grand debates over how Santa manages to deliver all those presents in one night when the very premise of Santa is pure fantasy.

And that is how we should respond to these books and these arguments – by dismissing them out of hand and with great prejudice and by refusing to entertain dependent arguments arising out of purely implausible assumptions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proximity Ethics

Leave a reply

Proximity EthicsIn our everyday lives we make ethical judgments resulting in ethical decisions all the time. So often in fact that we mostly don’t even realize that we are doing so. Often we don’t even think of these as ethical decisions but merely as practical routine judgments. These range from small personal decisions to collective national policy decisions.

In making these judgments we weigh and balance, largely subconsciously, a large number of different criteria across a number of different dimensions. One key criterion is the proximity of the individuals or organizational entities involved relative to ourselves and our own identity groups. In general, the closer the impacted group is to our own, the greater weight, priority, and consideration we give the issue.

This is perfectly understandable, natural, and sensible. For example, we give our spouse higher priority than our family which we give higher priority than our friends to whom we give higher priority than other people. Similarly, we give higher priority to our own neighborhood, followed by city, state, and country. We are more concerned over issues impacting our own gender or race or religion than others.

There is a great deal of sensible practicality in this kind of analysis. It’s fair that we organize into groups. It doesn’t say we should ONLY give consideration to groups closest to our own, but it’s fair that we give groups in close proximity to us greater consideration.

But there are a number of ways that this proximity calculation can fail us. The first is if our concern falls off too rapidly. While we should first look out for those close to us, too much emphasis on our own groups can lead us to be needlessly callous and insensitive to the needs of groups farther away. We demand the best school for our own kids, but completely ignore the needs of other kids in our own neighborhood. Orthodox Jews, as one example, might focus exclusively enriching their own enclave communities, regardless of the cost to society as a whole. We often maintain an extremely close proximity calculus even when helping those farther away from our own sphere would, in the long run, help ourselves as well.

The second problem that arises from our proximity calculation comes into play not when we are thinking about allocating benefits, but when we are assigning and assuming responsibility. In this case we often assign far too much weight to far groups and assume far too little for our own. How often do we hear “those Chinese should take action to stop climate change” or “I’m not responsible for US militarism.”

Of course we have to keep it in perspective. Of course the Chinese should do their part to alleviate climate change and we as individual citizens cannot bear the entire brunt of US aggression abroad. But we can and should affect change in our closest proximity groups first. Those are the groups we can and should make right first before we point fingers and deflect all blame and responsibility. We should step up and take every action we can on climate change first. We should appreciate that each of us are citizens with the right to vote and speak out. We all collectively share <some> blame and responsibility for American militarism and torture.

The bottom line is this. Be aware of the role of proximity assessments in your ethical decisions and judgments. Try to avoid giving unduly large or exclusive priority to your own narrow group. Likewise try to avoid assigning blame and responsibility disproportionately to groups farthest away from you.

How do you achieve a fair, just, and healthy balance of self-interest and social consciousness? Here’s a couple good rules of thumb:

  1. If you typically care about how others can share benefits that your group desires or enjoys, you’ve probably got it pretty right.
  2. If you first ask what your group can do to improve the world for everyone before you point fingers at other groups, you’ve probably got it pretty right.

 

Liberal Moderation

1 Reply

Moderation“All things in moderation” is a pretty sound truism. It is true for most things, but there are exceptions. Lead is never good to ingest even in moderation. Likewise, activism is not usually very effective and can even be harmful when taken in moderation.

Imagine you were an abolitionist living in the 1760’s. Would you demand a complete end to slavery or would you politely request limits on slave whippings?

Or how about if you were a feminist in the 1860’s? Would you demand equal rights or would you have request (demurely) that women be allowed to smoke in public?

How about if you were a civil rights activist in the 1960’s? Would you demand nothing less than equal rights or would you go out of your way to show how nonthreatening you are by simply asking to sit a few rows further up in the bus if all seats further back are taken?

This was the very question that troubled Martin Luther King in 1963. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” King pushed back against his well-meaning supporters and their strident calls for moderation. He correctly assessed that these friends were a bigger hindrance to the achievement of equal rights than were his opponents. The modest calls of his so-called allies undermined his own demands by making them seem unreasonable and even radical in comparison.

I feel his same frustration. In all the causes I care about, I feel thwarted by fellow “activists” who demand only minor incremental improvements with negligible benefits. Often doing a little bit is worse than doing nothing at all. It often gives the impression we’ve already “fixed” that issue, making it even harder to come back later for real effective change.

That was certainly true for Healthcare. Failing to demand national healthcare and accepting at least a public option was a tactical mistake of President Obama from the beginning. Now we are stuck with a private for-profit “solution” that addresses none of the systemic private-market abuses of our healthcare system.

JoyBuzzer.pngIn fact, President Obama took years to figure out that his moderate reasonable approach in all areas were doomed to fail. Over and over he reached out across the aisle with modest requests of Jokers in Congress, only to accomplish less than nothing. It took him what, 5 years of getting joy-buzzed to finally understand that moderation did not make his opponents any more reasonable or receptive.

Bargaining isn’t a new or complicated skill. In bazaars all across the continents merchants show us how to do it. You demand 10 times what that trinket is worth and finally settle for “only” 5 times its actual value. Only a fool starts out with its actual value and hopes to get anything close to it.

Yet far too many activists fail to apply these simple bargaining rules. In a vain hope of looking reasonable, they ask for next to nothing and if they are unfortunate enough to get it, it becomes extremely difficult to come back for more. The other party always wins when they give away next to nothing. Yet we see these moderate activists in every important area diligently undermining the “extreme militant activists” who might without their “help” bring about real change.

Healthcare: What we asked for and got was a “reasonable” giveaway to the private healthcare sector. What we should demand in the next round is nationalized healthcare. We may be willing to settle for a quality low cost public option.

Gun Control: What moderates call for are “sensible” expanded background checks and mental health services. What we should demand is a near total crippling of the gun industry and close security monitoring of those who own certain guns. We might settle for reestablishing the right to sue gun manufacturers and dramatically increased gun controls and insurance requirements.

Climate Change: What moderates call for are “realistic” industry-friendly systems like carbon trading. What we actually have to achieve in order to save our planet is a near total shutdown of carbon-based fuels and greatly expanded emission limits. Our planet simply does not have the time for moderation on this.

Campaign Financing: What moderates call for are modest reforms that do nothing except create yet more loopholes and workarounds. What we should demand is a complete prohibition from politicians receiving any outside money or working in the private sector for 10 years after leaving office rather receiving a generous government pension. We might settle for public campaign financing.

Atheism: “Non Angry” atheists call for mutual respect and a live-and-let-live attitude toward religion. What we should demand is that magical thinking, like racist or homophobic thinking, not be taken seriously in any aspect of civil society. What we might settle for would be a far stricter enforcement of the separation of church and state including an elimination of all religious carve outs and tax benefits.

War Funding: Our “pragmatic” moderates are thrilled if we can just limit the amount of annual increase in the Pentagon budget. What we should call for is a 90% reduction of our military budget and a retuning of our military industrial complex. Perhaps we might settle for only a 50% reduction.

Abortion: Supposedly hardcore Choice advocates feel lucky if they can mange to push back on just a few of the State actions to restrict abortion. We should call for Federal funding of abortion services and a requirement that all institutions receiving Federal funds provide abortion services. We might settle for much stronger Federal protections of abortion services that prohibit any State legislation that intentionally or unintentionally inhibits abortion services.

Income Disparity: Moderates beg for a slightly higher minimum wage. What we should demand is a steeply graduated progressive tax up to 90% with a maximum income cap based on some multiple of a guaranteed minimum income. We could possibly negotiate on the threshold levels.

Presidents: Moderate liberals feel lucky if they can elect a President that is only slightly to the Left of their Republican opponent, even if that takes us much farther to the Right than before. They should support Bernie Sanders and maybe settle for Hillary Clinton. But they should not vote for her out of fear. The timidity and fear of our liberal moderates ensures we keep losing ground and that is why our nation has drifted steadily Right for nearly 40 years.

In the end, moderation in activism does more harm than good. Moderation does not ever sway our opponents or make the battle any easier. The effort to achieve ANY compromise is not significantly lessened if the demands are modest. Rather it is often easier to get ones opponent to accept a significant compromise if far below the demands. And in the end the ground gained through a small compromise of modest demands is far less than the ground gained by a large compromise on grander demands. Further, you often only get one compromise in a decade or more so incremental movement is often a delusion, or at least far too slow for the people or the planet involved.

A bolder and smarter enemy will give a bit of inconsequential ground to keep their key institutions safe. They will give a bit of ground to gain a bunch of ground elsewhere. That is all the Conservatives give us in response to our modest demands. Conservatives are bold and smart and they know how to demand and bargain and play the long game.

But like President Obama, liberal moderates have no clue. They are neither bold nor smart and they generally lose the long game on every front by moderating each other with continual calls for moderation.

 

I Have New York Values

Leave a reply

TedCruzRecently Ted Cruz got a lot of attention for his disparaging reference to “New York Values.” It’s unclear what Senator Cruz meant unless one is attuned to that particular dog whistle. In fact it may mean different things to different people. But according to Cruz himself, he sees New Yorkers as liberal elitist Jews and Atheists who are pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-media, and pro-money. He sees New Yorkers as anti-gun and anti-prayer.

You know what Ted? You’re right. Many New Yorkers are wonderfully tolerant and educated, rational and socially-conscious. Most are proudly liberal and some of us are even willing to call ourselves socialists. Our religious communities get along just fine with our Nones. Perhaps you’re frustrated that you cannot divide us along these lines. We do believe it is the legal right for every woman to choose to have a safe abortion if she so decides. We do believe it is the right of every loving couple to enter into marriage if they choose. We do believe in a free and effective Fourth Estate and value culture and theatre and all forms of fine arts. We do practice free enterprise and believe in making a good living, including all those protesting in front of McDonalds for a decent minimum wage. We don’t need to strut around flaunting heat to show how macho we are. And we don’t believe in relying upon prayer when modern medicine and science offer actual measurably beneficial results.

In short, we New Yorkers do not persist in clinging to our guns and our bibles as if we are still living in the Dark Ages. We don’t wrap ourselves in religion or patriotism to conceal our racism and bigotry. And we’re up front about making our money. We don’t pose and pretend we are something we are not like you do. And unlike you, we don’t hide behind sniveling dog whistle comments. We tell you straight up Ted that you are a slimy Joe McCarthy wannabe.

And here’s the thing. It isn’t only New Yorkers that have New York Values. Across the nation people everywhere share our values because they are reasonable, tolerant, open-minded, and hold truly “Christian” values in the best humanist sense.

As a New Yorker myself, I want to now address a few comments to everyone who is not Ted Cruz. New York is not the big city you may imagine it to be. Yes it is big but it is also the biggest small town in the USA. No matter where you live in New York, you live in a distinctive neighborhood, with its own character, with its own community, and with local businesses that are part of that community. Right around my home in Manhattan are lots of local pubs patronized by locals. There are at least 5 local diners where they know me and bring me my usual Sunday morning breakfast without having to ask how I like it. Even at the Subway where I get my lunch, the workers all know me. If I forget my wallet it’s no problem, just bring it whenever. We have local politics and daycare and community theatre in any of the community churches. My wife and I take walks nightly through our parks and along our rivers. In short, it’s really the best of what people dream of when they think of small town America.

We New Yorkers are not the OTHERS that Ted Cruz would like to convince you we are in order to create an enemy to hate and fear and blame. In the final analysis we’re essentially small town folk just like you, no matter where you happen to live.

So to our compatriots everywhere, don’t let fear-mongering hate-spewers like Ted Cruz divide and conquer us. Get yourself a piece of cardboard and a marker. Write “I Have New York Values” in bold letters on the sign and display it proudly so that Ted can see all the potential votes he has kissed goodbye.

Godless Grace

Leave a reply

GodlessGraceIf you believe all grace comes from god, then the phrase “godless grace” probably sounds like an oxymoron to you. Or maybe even a blasphemy. You would probably maintain that grace cannot come from anywhere except from god.

But if you know that god does not exist, the word “godless” is just a superfluous qualifier. Of course all grace is godless. Just as is all love and ethics and compassion. We don’t specify “godless gumdrops” after all.

Still, when used in the context of god, grace is certainly a Christian concept defined as divine assistance or favor. The implied threat is that there would be no grace without god. And without divine grace there would be no good will, no altruism, and no self-sacrifice for others. Therefore, many believe, there simply must be a god.

In their book “Godless Grace: How Nonbelievers are Making the World Safer, Richer and Kinder,” (see here) authors David I. Orenstein Ph.D. and Linda Ford Blaikie, L.C.S.W  reclaim the concept of grace from Christians. Grace, they say, cannot be bestowed by a god that after all does not exist. But that doesn’t mean that a purely human godless equivalent of grace is not a force for good in the world. The authors show that in fact grace does exist in the world and it is found in the good works of men and women who have no religious motivations. In the face of that reality, god becomes no more than a rain-dancer claiming credit for spring showers.

In this beautifully written love letter to secular altruists and do-gooders and sleeve-roller-uppers all around the world, Orenstein and Blaikie introduce us to dozens of actual people doing actual good works without any fear or promises from religion. These are not big name celebrity philanthropists, but regular folk from all around the world who are doing modest but important humanitarian work to benefit mankind. The authors did a magnificent job finding these unheralded pearls of humanity’s best. But they would be the first to modestly point out that their job was not all that difficult. There are far, far more “graceful” secular humanist folk than religious proponents would have us believe.

Beyond just identifying these great people, Orenstein and Blaikie help you to get to know them in easy yet pointed prose that make you feel not only that you know these people after only a mere page or two, but that you WANT to know these people. The authors were insightful in learning what motivates each one, non-religious motivations as varied as the people themselves, and are adept at effortlessly sharing those insights with the reader.

About these people overall, the authors conclude:

“… they see themselves as servants to and for humanity – people who do their good work not to please any gods, but to benefit all humans and other beings on the planet.”

Godless Grace is a splendidly crafted book that blends meticulous research and insightful observations into positive and inspiring tones that never sound mushy. It’s not too hot, nor too cold. Godless Grace is just right and you will feel better about your fellow humans and about the world after reading it. Godless Grace is exactly what the atheist/humanist movement needs at this stage. It doesn’t preach, it doesn’t debate, it doesn’t argue, it doesn’t play logic games. It simply shows us, in a positive and sincere way, just a bit of the good that real people do every day without god.