Month: September 2014

NYT: What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola

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2014-09-17 Ebola_virus_virion

Michael T. Osterholm’s piece on Eblola for the NYT pretty much confirms what I’ve been thinking about this unfolding crisis. First: what’s to stop the virus from spreading from West Africa to megacities in the developing nation. He mentions Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasha, or Mogadishu (in Africa) or even Karachi, Jakarta, Mexico City, or Dhaka. If you’re curious, here are the population figures for those cities:

Just for some context, New York City has a population of 8,405,837 and a density of 27,779 per square mile. So some of these cities are more than twice as big and Dhaka, at least, is more than twice as densely populated. Of course, unlike New York City, they don’t have First World sanitary and medical services. The devastation wreaked by an outbreak in such densely populated regions could be horrific, not to mention the accompanying chaos from fear and quarantine measures.

The other fear, however, is that the virus will mutate to become airborne. Right now it is spread only by direct contact with bodily fluid of someone who is infected, which is why First World nations are probably not as vulnerable to widespread contagion. But, like many viruses, Ebola mutates a lot. What’s particularly worrisome, however, is that the more people that get sick, the more copies of the virus there are to mutate. Every new host is trillions of new chances for an airborne version to emerge. This is why fighting the outbreak now is a global concern, other than for the obvious humanitarian reasons.

I’m not writing this as a scare article. There’s no guarantee that the virus will mutate. This is the worst Ebola outbreak ever, but it’s certainly not the first. I had just wondered, myself, if mutation to an airborne strain wasn’t the primary reason for concern. But I hadn’t heard anyone mention it. Until now. Looks like it is the primary concern. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. (Osterholm’s piece has recommendations for hos to fight the virus now, most of which involve the UN.)

Top 10 Most Influential Books: Walker Edition

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I have decided to use Nathaniel’s Top 10 post as a reason to do my own. This was a fairly difficult list to make, but it was likely easier than a list of “favorite” or “best” books. What makes this list different from those is that I don’t have to think the books are any good. They could in principle be awful. What matters is the impact they had on me. However, my life has been influenced by many articles and essays, which technically don’t count. For example, Nobel economist F.A. Hayek’s 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” was far more influential than, say, his famous book The Road to Serfdom. Hamlet continues to enthrall me and was the main reason I came to love Shakespeare. It ignites my emotions and a need to reflect in a way few works do. I didn’t include it mainly because it is a play, but also because my initial reading of it was intertwined with a viewing of Kenneth Branagh’s film version (which I love). The FARMS Review (now the Mormon Studies Review) was a highly influential journal for me and my main introduction to biblical and Mormon scholarship. My familiarity with academic journals was largely because of it. But obviously, journals don’t count. David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech/essay “This Is Water” has influenced the way I view the mundane in everyday life. This in turn inspired numerous blog posts, a conference paper, and a new direction of research for me. But it is an essay, not a book. Of course, there are my many kind and intelligent friends that have helped shape my views through discussions, recommendations, blog posts, theses and dissertations, etc. As you can see, plenty of influential pieces and people are being left out, some of which are pretty big.

Now that that has been clarified, let’s proceed with the list (in the order I read them):

1. The LDS Standard Works

Being a devout Latter-day Saint (Mormon), it shouldn’t be any surprise that our scriptural canon shows up on the list. One could say that the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price are all separate books (and they’d be right), but as you can see in the pic, the four are often published together in a “quad.” These “standard works” are essentially the Mormon canon. Understanding the historical, cultural, textual, and theological meaning of these texts take up a considerable amount of my time and thinking. These are the foundational texts for the paradigm by which I make sense of life. And it was the desire to learn everything I could about these texts and their meaning(s) that eventually spilled over into various fields.

2. Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book (1995)

I often say that Calvin and Hobbes was my first introduction to philosophy. And I mean that quite seriously. I used to remove the “funnies” every Sunday morning from the paper in order to read the latest strip from Watterson. I cut out strips centered around Spaceman Spiff and kept them in a folder (I was a big Star Wars fan, therefore, anything with space was cool). Calvin & Hobbes strips are scattered with nostalgia, wisdom, practicality, and imagination. I now own five C&H volumes. The 10th anniversary book was my first and features an introduction by Watterson, which discusses the transition of comics, his influences, the constraints of Sunday strip formats, an explanation of the recurring characters, etc. But the best part is his commentary on the various strips, no matter how brief. For example, the strip where Calvin breaks his dad’s binoculars features this insert from Watterson: “I think we’ve all gone through something like this story. You die a thousand deaths before you even get in trouble.” Nice to know someone else gets the small things in life.

3. Truman G. Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet (1989)

I’m slightly cheating here. At the very beginning of my mission, my trainer (i.e. first missionary companion) owned Madsen’s 1978 audio lectures titled Joseph Smith the Prophet. I didn’t come into contact with the book version until I was well off my mission. But given the fact that the book is basically a word-for-word reprint of the lectures, I included it. I cannot stress enough the impact of these lectures. We listened to them in the car during our travels (when we had a car). I would lay awake late at night listening to them with my headphones. I included them as part of my personal morning studies. This was the first time that Joseph Smith, the founder of my religion, became real to me. While still a positive, faith-promoting rendition, it was the first time he was fleshed out as a living human being. More than that, it was the first time that I can remember any historical figure being fleshed out in my mind. Up to that point, history was an abstraction to me. But these lectures made me want to dive into the details and nuances of history (and eventually everything else). While scholarship over the last few decades has surpassed this, it was still monumental for me. In essence, this was the beginning of my intellectual journey.

I was lucky enough to meet Truman and Ann Madsen at a women’s conference in Las Vegas on my mission. We four missionaries (me, my companion, and another missionary companionship) were virtually the only males in attendance. I was saddened when Truman passed away a couple years later. It made me all the more grateful that I had been able to thank him personally for the impact his work had on me.

Left to right: Elder Velasco (an eventual groomsman), Ann Madsen, Truman Madsen, Me
Left to right: Elder Velasco, Ann Madsen, Truman Madsen, Me (2007)

4. Gerald L. Schroeder, The Science of God: Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom (1997)

I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone frankly. It is mildly interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying when it comes to the religion vs. science debate.[ref]It might be worth noting that atheist philosopher Antony Flew was impressed by Schroeder’s arguments, which helped move him to embrace a form of deism late in life.[/ref] However, it was Schroeder that made me actually look at the debate. My interest in science and the history of science can be traced back to this book. Furthermore, it is the reason I became quite comfortable with biological evolution. Prior to my mission, I hadn’t given evolution a thought. I gave it superficial attention on my mission, drawing largely from outdated, anti-evolution quotes (still) found in the Church’s institute manuals.[ref]I remember being called a “hybrid Mormon” one time because I answered the evolution question with, “I don’t personally believe it, but if that’s how God did it, I’m fine with that.” This was my answer for some time.[/ref] But it was Schroeder’s book, which I picked up at a Barnes & Nobles (?) one P-Day,[ref]Mormon missionary lingo for “preparation day,” which was basically our day off. We were supposed to “prepare” for the rest of the week by doing our grocery shopping and the like. Most of us took it to mean “Play Day” and that’s what we did.[/ref] that made me think differently. Despite being critical of the theory (he is one of the contrarian scientists in Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed), he provided a new paradigm by drawing on ancient Jewish scholars such as Rashi, Maimonides, and Nahmanides. This helped me think about my own faith’s approach to science and I found myself defending evolution against fellow missionaries by the end of it all.

5. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. D-F: 1650 to the Present, ed. Sarah Lawall, Maynard Mack (2002)

In elementary school, I was part of a “gifted and talented” program called EXPO (EXceptional POtential). One of its perks was that I was allowed to attend an EXPO course during regular class time. Most the time, EXPO was much more fun than your everyday class. However, when I arrived in middle school, I found that EXPO was during my English class. English had been my favorite subject for years, which is why I quit going to EXPO after one class because I didn’t want to miss it. This love of English stayed with me up to my World Literature course in my early years of college. I had recently returned from my mission, during which I had been trying to understand the history, language, and culture of the scriptures as well as Christian history generally. This anthology was required for the course and it immersed me in multiple voices from a variety of times and cultures. It included works by Yeats, Proust, Lu Xun, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, and more. It reminded me that there is so much to learn and that my studies should not only be cross-cultural, but interdisciplinary. In short, reading this anthology was my first big taste of one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism: “…receive truth, let it come from whence it may.”[ref]Unfortunately, my fiction reading basically died that same year. I was largely non-fiction until recently.[/ref]

6. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)

I had never read any C.S. Lewis prior to my mission. A ward member bought Elder Anderson and I copies of The Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas one year, but I never read any of Lewis’ philosophical/apologetic writings until my first year of marriage. I still remember quite clearly lying in bed in our first apartment reading the first chapter (letter) of The Screwtape Letters and being struck by the following (from the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood): “Your business is to fix his attention on the stream [of immediate sense experiences]. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’.” I also remember asking myself afterwards what exactly I meant by ‘real’.[ref]This portion comes from a post at The Slow Hunch.[/ref] It could be said that Lewis’ book was my first introduction to the importance of metaphysics. This led to later works on metaphysics, from Blake Ostler to David Paulsen to Edward Feser to David B. Hart to Stephen Webb. My current outlook is similar to Rosalynde Welch’s “disenchanted Mormonism,” but I imagine it will continue to change as metaphysics play an increasingly important role in my theological framework and overall worldview.

7. Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (2004)

I became a Sowell admirer by reading his weekly columns when I was first becoming interested in politics, but it was this book that made me fall in love economics. I ended up reading his other works soon after, including Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Intellectuals and Society, A Conflict of Visions, Economic Facts and Fallacies, etc. All of these had their own influence, but it was Applied Economics that started it all. What made this different from, say, his Basic Economics was that it looked at economic effects in the real world and explored the unintended consequences of particular choices and policies. It showed what he calls the “constrained” or “tragic vision”[ref]This is explored in his A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.[/ref] (i.e. there are no solutions, only trade-offs) in action. It aided in my understanding of economics as not merely models and math, but behaviors, emotions, relationships, and everyday choices.

8. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2009)

I was originally an accounting major as an undergrad. However, I both hated accounting and sucked at it. Realizing I was too far into my business degree to consider a complete change, I ended up choosing Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management (mainly because it sounded better than Business – General Studies). I didn’t have much interest in management or business outside of the practicality of a business degree until I had to do a group project on organizational culture in my HR course. In my research, I came across Dan Pink’s TED talk on human motivation. The focus on autonomy, mastery, and purpose in the workplace made me look at businesses in a different light; as organizations or communities of people rather than abstract entities. Organizational theory and management literature became a way of assessing the human condition. Business can be a practice pregnant with meaning, joy, and moral significance. The reason it often isn’t is because, as Pink puts it, there is “a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” A desire to understand and possibly help repair this chasm was a major factor in my decision to pursue an MBA.

9. Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (2010)

In his many lectures and interviews,[ref]These influenced me far more than, say, Capitalism and Freedom, mainly because I’d watched many of them before I ever read any of his books.[/ref] famed economist Milton Friedman often encouraged his audience to have a sense of proportion. It is easy to look at anecdotal evidence or snapshot data and draw conclusions about the world. Ridley’s book provides the evidence for Friedman’s “sense of proportion.” He documents how prosperity emerged and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years via specialization and exchange. This helped me look at major problems like poverty from both a global and historical perspective. More important, it helped me take typically leftist crusades like “social justice” seriously and thus led to my embrace of a kind of bleeding-heart libertarianism. By tracing the rise of living standards over the centuries, I came to see how important trade and innovation are to the improvement of human well-being. It also left me just a tad more optimistic about the future.

10. Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2010)

On a panel at Beyond Belief 2006, astrophysicist and popular science educator Neil Degrasse Tyson made an insightful comment while (kindly) rebuking the (in)famous Richard Dawkins for his rhetorical methods: “Being an educator is not only getting the truth right, but there has to be an act of persuasion in there as well. Persuasion isn’t always “here’s the facts, you’re either an idiot or you’re not.” It’s “here are the facts and here is a sensitivity to your state of mind.” And the facts plus sensitivity, when convolved together, creates impact.” Rhetoric today has a rather negative connotation, one associated with cheap emotionalism or a lack of substance. However, McCloskey’s book argues that it was rhetoric–the act of persuasion or, more to the point, the power of words–that caused and sustained the Industrial Revolution. The bourgeoisie (i.e. the professional and educated class) were praised and seen as dignified and free. This shift in opinion changed the social and political spectrums. Far more than an excellent work in economic history, this book demonstrated to me how words and ideas, along with the way they are articulated, ultimately have the ability to transform societies. Rhetoric can inspire brand new thoughts or even recast old ones in a new light. This in turn has inspired me to be careful and selective in my choice of words and phrasing when expressing my ideas.

 

Here are a few honorable mentions with very brief explanations as to why:

 

I kind of wish my list was a little different, but it is what it is. This will surely change in the future. I probably missed some too. But this is what I can come up with as of now. Hope you enjoy.

The Intimacy of Crowds

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2014-09-16 Intimacy of Crowds

There’s an absolutely fascinating article on crowd psychology in aeon that I’ve been meaning to share for several weeks now. The article questions and rejects the conventional wisdom on crowds, which focuses on violent mobs and on the idea that, once they had joined, individuals had “surrendered their self-awareness and rationality to the mentality of the crowd.” In contrast to a kind of brute mob mentality, modern research supports the conception of crowds in which “crowds behave not with mindlessness or madness, but by co-operating with those around them. They do not lose their heads but instead act with full rational intent.”

That approach might sound counterintuitive, but that makes sense because in reality crowds don’t actually behave the way they are supposed to in popular imagination. And so, “the model also explains why crowds in emergency situations are disinclined to panic, putting them at higher risk.” The article cites many people who milled around in the Two Towers 13 years ago instead of immediately fleeing, which is something they might have been much more prone to do if they’d been alone, and also cites several other disturbing historical accounts such as “the aircraft fire at Manchester airport in the UK on 22 August 1985, when 55 people died because they stayed in their seats amid the flames.”

This isn’t the first I’ve read of this research. Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist who invented moral foundations theory, has done a lot of work on crowds and his theories are closely related to the idea of a “superorganism“. A superorganism is “an organism consisting of many organisms,” and the textbook example is a beehive. A beehive is not just a collection of bees. It can be thought of as a creature in its own right that happens to be made up of bees in the same kind of way (although not exactly, obviously) that we human beings are made up of many cells. The human capacity for “groupish behavior,” which is to say behavior that doesn’t make sense from a strictly individualistic standpoint, is a major differentiator and perhaps the essential differentiator between humans and all other primates. This gets into group-level selection, which is something that Darwin believed in but which has only been rigorously outlined and defended very recently. Group-level adaptation is the idea that not just individuals are evolving as they compete for resources, but groups of individuals, too. Like beehives. Human capacity to function as individuals or, when circumstances are right, to lose themselves in part of a larger collective are the reason Haidt describes us as “90% chimp, 10% honeybee.”

Keep that in mind when you read this next sentence about crowd behavior:

Contrary to popular belief that crowds always panic in emergencies, large groups mill around longer than small groups since it takes them more time to come up with a plan.

In a real sense, it’s not that the individuals within the group take longer to come up with  a plan. it’s that the group itself takes longer to come up with a plan when it’s a bigger group.

There isn’t just one pithy practical or political implication of this research. It’s the kind of fundamental change in how we look at the world that can end up taking you in any one of thousands of different directions. To me, it’s just another part of the major advances in understanding human nature that are becoming possible now that we’re developing some rudimentary tools for analyzing complex systems.

Some Things I’ve Learned from Ferguson

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2014-09-09 Ferguson

A lot of the writing that has come out since Ferguson has focused on the disconnect between anger in black communities and apparent indifference in white communities. A lot of these articles have been unhelpful. They start with the premise that Michael Brown’s shooting was obviously illegal and immoral when the reality is that we don’t know. There are reasonable grounds to suspect the shooting was justified. From that erroneous premise, these pieces quickly conclude that the only reason for white people to remain silent on the issue is cowardice, racism, or both. This is unfair, often self-righteous[ref]Especially when the writers are white and don’t demonstrate any deeper awareness of the problem.[/ref], and never helpful.

The problem, I think, is that the shooting of Michael Brown was just a spark that ignited a powder keg. As a symbol, it’s potent, but in terms of understanding the real problem it’s a distraction. Not only because the events are unclear, but also because it puts focus on police-community relations, which are a small part of the real problem: the larger relationship between municipal governments and poor communities. The best article I’ve read on that is the Washington Posts’s How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty. The story is relatively simple: fairly innocent violations that would be a speed bump to someone in the middle class are much more disrupting to people who don’t have the same kinds of safety nets and flexibility. These folks are easily trapped in a cycle of violations that are too expensive (literally, in terms of dollars) for them to escape. Meanwhile, the local governments profit from the unending cycle of fines and fees: “Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts.” Read the article, however, to truly understand the scale and perversity of the parasitical relationship between local governments and the populations they are supposed to serve.

It’s a serious problem and a serious injustice that underscores another criticism that I’ve seen liberals make of social conservatives. For all that social conservatives are worried about federal overreach, it’s historically federal or state governments that have stepped in to stop injustice perpetrated by state and local governments. Fear of federal tyranny seems utterly inexplicable in communities that have a history of seeing federal law defend them from local tyranny. Perversely, it doesn’t help that conservatives do see an issue to be angry about in Freguson: the violent initial overreaction of local police to peaceful protests. Militarization of local police is a serious concern, and the fact that conservatives see something legitimate to be upset about can make them all the more mystified when that concern is not acknowledged or shared by liberals.[ref]This isn’t to say that liberals ignore police militarization, but they certainly don’t seem to see it as fundamental to the Ferguson story./[ref]

It’s an old story, really. Both sides have points, but they fail to apprehend each other’s respective points of view. It is deeply unfortunate that sensational, random, tragic stories–like what happened to Michael Brown–seem to be the only thing that gets people talking. It’s not really a conversation when both sides are talking past each other.

Porn Leads Teens to Coerce Girlfriends into Sex

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2014-09-12 Porn Coerce Sex

I don’t like writing about porn any more than I like writing about sex, but I think it’s important. Earlier this week I posted an article about how one man stopped watching porn because he felt it was warping his ability to express warm, respectful, and compassionate sexuality. This link is to the flip-side of that, a study in England that demonstrates how boys who don’t moderate or (better still) abstain from pornographic content end up coercing their girlfriends into sex. Where does one draw the line between convincing a partner to do something, pressuring a partner to do something, and outright rape? No matter where that line is, it seems clear at least some of these young men have crossed it.

Researchers interviewed 130 men and women aged 16–18 from diverse social backgrounds in three different locations in England. The report, published last month, states that young people “frequently cited pornography as the ‘explanation’ for [engaging in] anal sex,” although masculine competition between boys to see who could engage in the activity the most often also played a role.

They found a “key element” in this risky new behavior is the “normalization of coercion and ‘accidental’ penetration. It seemed that men were expected to persuade or coerce reluctant partners.”

“Some events, particularly the ‘accidental’ penetration reported by some interviewees, were ambiguous in terms of whether or not they would be classed as rape (i.e., non-consensual penetration), but we know from [one] interview that ‘accidents’ may happen on purpose,” wrote Dr. Cicely Marston and Ruth Lewis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in a report published in BMJ Open.

Historically, social conservatives have a reputation for crying wolf about dangers to children. The usual examples are the Dungeons and Dragons scare in the early 1980s and, more recently, the connection between violent video games and real-world violence.[ref]Obviously there is a connection between violent behavior and violent video games since one would expect people who are violent to enjoy violent entertainment. It’s much, much less clear that violent video games cause violent behavior in any serious or lasting way.[/ref] This history of hysteria is going to make it easy for articles and studies like this to be dismissed as “social conservatives say Playboy turns normal kids into rapists.” That’s the exaggerated version. The actual point is that pornography–especially hardcore pornography that is easy to find online–correlate with violence towards women and that we have good reason to suspect some of that relationship is causal. This doesn’t mean a nice, caring man will turn into a serial rapist after watching 30 minutes of porn one day, but it does mean that–aggregated across society–porn is very likely having an impact in fueling a very real culture of rape that treats women as objects to be exploited for pleasure and prestige.

Are Liberals the Real Authoritarians?

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2014-09-12 che_guevara_tshirt

I’ve been very influenced by Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral foundations theory which, in a nutshell, postulates that there are 6 components to intuitive moral reasoning, and that conservatives tend to apply them all but liberals only use a narrow set. The foundations are:

  1. Care/harm for others, protecting them from harm.
  2. Fairness/cheating, Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions (He has also referred to this dimension as Proportionality.)
  3. Liberty/oppression, characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized.
  4. Loyalty/betrayal to your group, family, nation. (He has also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
  5. Authority/subversion for tradition and legitimate authority. (He has also connected this foundation to a notion of Respect.)
  6. Sanctity/degradation, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. (He has also referred to this as Purity.)

According to Haidt, liberals consider chiefly care/harm and  liberty/oppression, leaving the rest (including authority/subversion) to conservatives. But is that really true? Are liberals so anti-authoritarian? Or do they just have different authorities in mind? Megan McArdle has her doubts:

In the ultra-liberal enclave I grew up in, the liberals were at least as fiercely tribal as any small-town Republican, though to be sure, the targets were different. Many of them knew no more about the nuts and bolts of evolution and other hot-button issues than your average creationist; they believed it on authority. And when it threatened to conflict with some sacred value, such as their beliefs about gender differences, many found evolutionary principles as easy to ignore as those creationists did. It is clearly true that liberals profess a moral code that excludes concerns about loyalty, honor, purity and obedience — but over the millennia, man has professed many ideals that are mostly honored in the breach.

And, as it turns out, McArdle’s instincts are on to something. She points to an article by Jeremy Frimer for the HuffPo: How Do Liberal and Conservative Attitudes About Obedience to Authority Differ? The Surprising Result of My Study. After coming across extreme reverence for Che Guevara in Brazil, Frimer reconsidered the stereotype that conservatives are uniquely authoritarian:

Past psychology studies had found that conservatives have the more favorable attitudes toward statements such as, “If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer’s orders, I would obey anyway because that is my duty.” Did conservatives have a good feeling about this statement because they think that people ought to obey (in general), or because they support the military and its agenda? I suspected it was the latter.

Subsequent studies bore Frimer’s (and McArdle’s) suspicions out. If you ask about liberal authorities (e.g. “an environmentalist”) then suddenly you get anti-authoritarian conservatives and authoritarian liberals, leading Frimer to conclude: “Rather than thinking of liberals and conservatives as being fundamentally different psychological breeds, I now think of them as competing teams.” Frimer goes on to speculate that the reason we associate conservatives with authoritarianism is that, over time, authorities become conservative. But I think that depends on conflating two separate notions of conservatism: the literal one (e.g. those that maintain traditions) and the more common one (the right-wing of American politics, which is a blend of traditionalism and classical liberal philosophy). Authorities probably become traditionalist over time for obvious reasons. Once you control the institution, you have a vested interest in the institution. But there’s no reason why the institution should correspond to classical liberal philosophy vs any other philosophy other than historical accident.

For me there’s one more big question: where does this leave Haidt’s moral foundations theory? I think it’s plausible that Haidt is right about the 6 dimensions, but wrong about the divide between liberals and conservatives. It might not be that liberals don’t care about authority or sanctity. It might simply be that they don’t recognize their own innate moral drivers because, in American politics, the authority and sanctity considerations of the left are covert. We think of the military and police as authorities. We don’t think of academic as authorities, but they are. We think of purity as a religious concept, but it’s no different in function from the kind of purity that drives orthorexia (aka “Whole Foods syndrome”).

I would further speculate–just speculation at this point–that being cognizant of moral drivers allows them to be better moderated. Conservatives are self-conscious about their respect for authority, which permits critique of that authoritarianism. Liberals, however, are in denial of their authoritarian tendencies and so they are basically unchecked, which is dangerous.

Muslims in WWII and the Holocaust

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The Washington Post has recently published an article by Michael Wolfe entitled “Meet the Muslims who sacrificed themselves to save Jews and fight Nazis in World War II.”

I’m glad that the article tries to present a forgotten side of Jewish-Muslim relations and the positive role of Muslims in Western society, but after reading it I have some concerns.

First, Wolfe somewhat blurs the distinction between rescuing Jews and being involved in the Allied war effort.

Noor Inayat Khan was certainly remarkable, and deserves her own article. Her fiancé had been Jewish, and the Nazi treatment of Jews was one of the factors leading to her involvement in the war effort. She found Nazism “fundamentally repulsive and opposed to all the principles of religious harmony that she had been brought up with by her father.” Her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, was fond of an old Sufi proverb, “Be the follower of love, and forget all distinctions.” This is a beautiful example of how religious spirituality (in this case, Muslim), however, Noor Inayat Khan was not directly involved in the rescue of Jews, and her motivation was universalist.

It is unlikely that the majority of Senegalese Tirailleurs- conscripts- were motivated by a desire to assist Jews, let alone sacrifice themselves for that cause. There was growing resentment of France for the distinctive uniforms they wore (“slave’s clothing”), and for the insensitive treatment by their officers, so when they helped liberate French towns and discovered that not everyone was fighting in the resistance, they were understandably outraged. This is not to denigrate the Senegalese in any way. They fought bravely, loyally, and often suffered more than other troops. All it means is that they were human, and did not necessarily respond enthusiastically to sacrificing themselves for what they considered a stranger’s cause.

Second, Wolfe presents an entirely rosy view of Muslim efforts to rescue Jews.

The Iranian diplomat Abdol-Hossein Sardari comes across as genuinely good, a dedicated servant of his country. However, the claim that he issued Iranian passports to 500 French Jews is unsubstantiated, appearing only in a statement made by his nephew many years after Sardari’s death. Sardari himself never mentioned it. The actual story involves the Jugutis- a community of crypto-Jews whose ancestors had been forcibly converted to Islam in Meshed in 1839. They lived outwardly as Muslims whilst secretly adhering to Judaism. Several of them resided in France, alongside Jews from Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran. One of their leaders, Dr. Atchildi, came up with a plan to save his community by claiming that Jugutis were religiously Jewish, but ethnically Aryan. Sardari helped him achieve legal recognition exempting Jugutis from anti-Jewish laws, and then requested that he place Iranian Jews on the list of Jugutis as well. Sardari’s chief concern was to help his compatriots, which is not a bad thing at all.[ref]Sardari has often been labelled the Iranian Schindler. I don’t concur, but I personally see Sardari more positively than I do the often unsavoury and opportunistic Schindler.[/ref]

The other diplomatic examples in the article pale in comparison. Corry Guttstadt extensively researched Turkey’s role in the Holocaust, and her findings exploded the myth of Turkish rescue. Some consuls, it is true, did save Jews, but the documented cases do not reach thousands of people saved, and the motivations were rarely very noble (though on this score many diplomats of other nations also fare rather poorly). Rescue was often the result only of sexual and monetary exchanges. Lives were saved, which is a good thing, but it hardly does credit to those diplomats who primarily benefited themselves. The Neçdet Kent story of the train seems very moving and inspiring, but is pure fabrication. Kent is the only source of the story, no survivor testimony corroborates it, and it is contradicted by material evidence.

Wolfe’s other Turkish example is even uglier. Not only did Behiç Erkin not issue Turkish passports to thousands of Jews with only distant connections to Turkey, he actually stopped the one individual on his staff- a French national- who did. Beginning in 1942, the Nazis had Jewish nationals of neutral countries deported. The passage to Turkey was neither funded nor organized by Turkey. Individuals either had to pay from their own pocket, or receive funding from a Jewish relief organization. Turkey, in fact, was not only slow to save its Jewish citizens, it even rescinded the citizenship of many Turkish Jews, leaving them stranded and vulnerable.

Ahmed Somia apparently was a dedicated resistance fighter, and the hospital did rescue many parachutists and members of the resistance, although everything that I have read accords Abdelhaffid Haffa- the hospital’s guardian- with a far bigger role than Somia. Haffa led the resistance activity, working secretly with a Jewish doctor. Si Kaddour Benghabrit, a religious leader of Paris’ Algerians and rector of the Grand Mosque, played a far more ambiguous role. Benghabrit saved some Jews, washed his hands of others (even as late as 1944), and generally pursued a range of actions from collaboration to resistance. In Benghabrit’s defense, we tend to approach WWII and the Holocaust with considerable hindsight. Things were usually not as clear to participants. [ref]Avraham “Yair” Stern, leader of a militant Jewish underground in Palestine, even proposed an alliance with Hitler. He thought that although Hitler was persecuting and murdering Jews, the real existential threat came from Britain.[/ref] Benghabrit pursued what he considered the best course for preserving his community. This did not always involve rescuing Jews.

By all means, Muslim assistance to Jews in the Holocaust should be highlighted, but romanticized myth-making does not build better bridges, and might make reconciliation and cooperation even harder.

“Generally, the myths historians interrogate are those that reinforce, rather than contradict, univocal narratives of conflict. In such cases, while the more complex truth may be painful, it can offer recognition to both sides, providing a more blended version of a disputed history and paving the way for possible reconciliation. By contrast, in the case of the Grand Mosque, the more mythical story does not seem to reinforce entrenched hatreds but rather to offer promise for reconciliation. Yet in so doing, it obscures a more complicated historical reality, and… reinforces a wider series of problematic perceptions that mar Jewish-Muslim understanding.”

In other words, we cannot have a meaningful discussion about Jewish-Muslim relations, or Muslims and the Holocaust, or the modern role of Muslims in Western society if we stick to myths. Even if the myth is positive, it obscures the real history and the real problems.

Of course, I also think that history matters, whether or not it leads to meaningful dialogue.

Still, I would like to end with a very positive example from Wolfe’s list. Albanian Muslims (and Catholics, too) were dedicated in saving Jews to an extent rarely found elsewhere. They were moved not only by besa– their code of honour- but also in many cases were influenced by the teachings of the Bektashi Sufi order.

Some Thoughts on Mean Conservatives

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2014-09-11 equality-to-liberals-and-conservatives1

Conservatives have a reputation for being mean: callous, unthinking, insensitive, cruel. You get the picture.[ref]Liberals, perhaps, have a corresponding reputation for being dumb: naive, sentimental, idealistic. But let’s just stick with conservatives for today.[/ref] Part of the reason conservatives have that reputation is because it’s politically advantageous for liberals to portray them that way. But part of it comes from conservatives themselves who–to a degree that I think is more true than with liberal commentators–tend to say things that are combative, adversarial, and aggressive. The question I’ll address today is this: why?

I’d like to ask of you, the reader, to entertain the notion that it might be something other than sheer meanness that animates the way some conservatives appear to pick fights unnecessarily. And this might be tough, because I’m going to focus on Ann Coulter, who is arguably the meanest of all conservative commentators out there commentating today. I have plenty of friends who will go into paroxysms of rage at the mere mention of her name or sight of her picture, but I’ve never been one to shy away from controversial topics. Besides, I’m not going to try to convince anyone to accept her points of view or nominate her for “Most Compassionate.,” I am, however, going to speculate on what it is that makes her write the way she does, and further speculate that it is something other than a heart as tarnished and black as coal.

I discovered Ann Coulter as an undergrad and for me her books[ref]Treason and How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) are the two that I read at the time.[/ref] were a revelation. It turns out, however, that they were also not entirely accurate. The first example that comes to mind is from her book Slander where–in the first edition–she alleged that the NYT ignored Dale Earnhardt’s death as evidence of the disconnect between red and blue America. Except, of course, that the NYT did cover it:

The New York Times did, in fact, cover Earnhardt’s death the same day that he died: sportswriter Robert Lipsyte authored an article for the front page that was published on February 18, 2001. Another front page article appeared in the Times on the following day.

It was also from Coulter that I learned that all the racist white Southerners during Jim Crow were Democrats, but she left out the part where they all switched to Republican after the Democratic Party embraced civil rights.[ref]And there died the last remnants of my capacity to care about political parties in America other than tactically.[/ref] But the real end of my Ann Coulter fandom came when I went to see her speak and stayed afterwards to get my books signed. In fairness to her, I was the last person in line and she was probably really, really tired. But when I asked her about coalition-building with moderate, patriotic Muslim-Americans her response (which I cannot recall with accuracy and won’t try to reproduce) was so utterly dismissive that it left me completely disenchanted.

I know that for a lot of people admitting that you liked Ann Coulter at any time in the past is something you would confide only in embarrassed tones and with lots of assurances that you were young and stupid then. But I’m not embarrassed about it. I’m always trying to find aspects of common wisdom that everyone else accepts that are actually wrong. That’s a dangerous quest ’cause when the common wisdom is right you look doubly like a fool, but I’m not ashamed of being willing to look like a fool for the sake of bucking conventional wisdom. And this seems like a good time for some William James:

He who says ‘Better to go without belief forever than believe a lie!’ merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe…. This fear he slavishly obeys. …For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world. . . .It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

Now, returning to Ann Coulter, even though I can’t consider myself a fan in an unqualified sense any more, I still do carry both respect and affection for her and her writing. I think she’s often but not always very funny and always smart even when she’s wrong. But I’ve learned a couple of other things that, naive as it might be, make me think I have some insight into her character and–along with it–the fundamental reason why conservatives come across as mean, callous, etc.

One of the big insights for me came when a couple of students threw pies at Ann Coulter during a speech in 2004. Pie-throwing, or just pieing, is one of those things that sounds funny until you think about it seriously, as this writer for the New Republic did:

As a concept, throwing pies at pompous bores is pleasing. As a reality, it’s not pleasing at all. It’s one thing to parody, to tease, to lampoon. Jon Stewart throws metaphorical pies at hypocrites and fools several days a week. It’s another thing to see a face distorted and dripping with foam or custard as the person sits blinking and trying to take stock of what happened. Just watch Anita Bryant weeping.[ref]Check out the article for videos of people being pied, including Ann Coulter.[/ref]

In addition to the initial incident, however, Coulter later claimed that the local DA dropped the charges against the students against her wishes. Media Matter blamed Coulter because she didn’t show up at the trial. Coulter, for her part, wondered what strange legal system Arizona must have such that if a victim doesn’t show up at a trial the charges are automatically dropped, and further claims that when she asked if she was required to attend and when and where the trial would be held, she got no response at all. I don’t think it’s obvious from those two posts what the truth is, but I do think that in most cases calling someone a liar because they didn’t show up at the trial of someone who physically assaulted them would be justifiably called “victim-blaming.” I’d call the whole thing–from pie-throwing to mocking–simply this: bullying.

Sure, sure: she brings it upon herself. You can say that about a lot of people who are bullied. That’s because being bullied tends to make people scared and angry. We understand that when it’s about a normal human being, but for some reason we in America don’t treat famous people like normal human beings. Although they are.[ref]This is something I think about a lot, by the way, and not just with conservative pundits. The way Big Entertainment chews up and spits out starlets and child actors like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears is, I think, a truly grim indictment of our culture. Everyone hates the paparazzi, but the mags that run the pictures don’t seem to be facing any boycotts.[/ref]

Look, as long as I’m writing a somewhat personal blog entry, I’ll go all in. First, I was bullied a lot myself in middle school. It was what I’d call pretty severe, including things like people vandalizing clothes in my locker while I was in PE, teachers leading the kids in  making fun of me, and administrators calling me a liar when my parents tried to stand up for me. Second, I have parents who are–at least in Mormon circles–moderately famous. And people treat them really poorly sometimes. I’ve seen my mother publicly lambasted and called a narcissist stooge of the patriarchy who is in it for the money by prominent individuals who should know better. It’s not just that the accusations are flagrantly false[ref]They are, and even though I’m biased let me just tell you: they really are.[/ref], it’s that they are the kind of accusations that you just wouldn’t make about a fellow human being. You make them against symbols, dehumanized enemies, or inhuman icons. Not against your brother, your sister, or your neighbor.

So how does it feel to be Ann Coulter? To have people throw pies at you and have other people treat it like a joke? To have people organize to shout you down when you are invited to speak, and to have their actions lionized and applauded as though a mob of angry people shouting at an unarmed woman in high heels is the paragon of bravery.[ref]Truth to power, indeed.[/ref]

I get it. The immediate response is: “I’m not Ann.” As in, I don’t voluntarily write a bunch of hateful stuff. So, just to recap, this woman invites criticism by having loud, offensive opinions that aren’t popular. If she didn’t want to be physically assaulted, she should just keep her mouth shut. You could even say she’s asking for it, couldn’t you?

Or maybe she deserves what’s coming ’cause she got paid. Well, I think Kirsten Dunst and Jennifer Lawrence and the other women who had their iCloud accounts hacked and personal photos stolen probably get paid a lot for their work–some of which involves looking beautiful–but call me crazy if that just doesn’t justify stealing photos, posting them online, or looking at them either. Being well-compensated for work shouldn’t be an excuse to dehumanize someone.

OK, well maybe Ann Coulter deserves it because she says mean things for money. I’m skeptical of that. First of all: nobody does anything for just one reason. I really doubt that Coulter or anyone else (say, Michael Moore) has such a pure profit-motive. Does anyone think that Ann was just going through life and then was like, “Hey, I know a great way to get rich. I’ll say really horrible things for money!” I’m sure that Coulter has some sincere principles. I’m sure Michael Moore does, too. I’m sure at least part of what she does is because she thinks it’s the right thing to do. After all, doesn’t everyone think–usually sincerely–that they are a good guy?[ref]If you imagine any other human being to be consciously operating on some nefarious motive, like pure greed, you’re probably already seriously off-track. Real life people are neither angels nor demons.[/ref] I’m sure her good intentions are also warped by the riches and adulation of the fans that love her. She wouldn’t be human if they were not. But my question, again, is does this justify how she is treated? I don’t think it does. The thing with all these rationalizations and excuses is just that: they are rationalizations and excuses. We know better.

Last personal note: Earlier this week I posted a long article about the myth that rape is exclusively about power. The immediate response from one of my more vocal critics was to call me a misogynist on his FB wall, and then there was a pile-on after that. As a general rule, I think of myself as someone who has relatively thick skin. I’ve debated on the Internet for many, many years and have been called all kinds of things. Usually, I laugh. I have also called people all kinds of things, although I regret that and have tried to reform.[ref]I know of at least two people I’ve made cry in debates. One in-person, one online. I’m not proud of that, but it shows you the kind of tactics I used to use.[/ref]

But there’s something different about being accused in abstentia. When someone is screaming at me and calling me names it might not be pleasant, but in a perverse way I know I’m important enough to warrant an excess of emotion on their part. It might be totally dysfunctional, but we’re communicating. We are in a social relationship. I am still connected. When a group of people mock you and you’re not even there, it feels different. It feels worse. It feels like being made into a non-person. As we learned from Kreacher in Harry Potter, the cruelest opposite of love is not hate. “Indifference and neglect often do more damage than outright dislike,” as J. K. Rowling put it. The reason that indifference and neglect are worse than hatred is that they amount to treating a human being like a thing instead of like a person. It is the absolute negation of our essential worth.

Just to twist the knife a bit, of course, the reason I wrote that piece is because I have known many women in my life who have suffered from sexual violence and I want to do something about it. For me, “doing something about it,” has to start with really understanding the problem. I may have been flagrantly wrong in my approach (although my critics haven’t swayed me that far yet), but whether I was right or wrong wasn’t even relevant to the attacks. The issue wasn’t how good my arguments were. The issue was what a terrible human being I am.[ref]Incidentally, someone should really warn my wife that she’s married to a misogynist.[/ref]

I think I have a pretty good handle on my own insignificance. I see the web traffic to my blog, and I know what web traffic is to some really major blogs. I am not a public figure. I don’t meet Wikipedia’s notability criteria. There are not hundreds or thousands or even millions of people out there talking about me. There’s this one rather odd individual who seems to have an unhealthy fixation and–by extension–some of his friends. I can shrug, not read his page in the future, and get on with my life. But this is true precisely to the extent that I’m inconsequential. Someone like Ann Coulter doesn’t really have that option and so when I think about how she goes about her day-to-day life, I have empathy for her and the vitriol she sometimes spews. I can see that feeling like you are living under siege would make lots of people want to lash out.

That doesn’t mean I think lashing out is OK. Understanding is not excusing. To go back to my own past again, when I was in middle school and the bullying was at its worst I didn’t really have friends.[ref]The birthday party where only one kid showed up comes to mind. But, hey: it could have been nobody.[/ref] But I did have a group of kids who hung out at school before first class purely because we were all in the same place (the library) hiding from our own bullies. We put up with a lot of weird anti-social and unpleasant behavior from each other. Partially because we had to but also, I think, because we understood each other. We knew we weren’t exactly the best versions of ourselves. We knew that all of us would be smarter, more gracious, more competent, and better if our circumstances were a little different than they were.

This post is going to be a big joke to a lot of people who believe that trying to find empathy for rich folks, or for hate-mongers is a waste of time and who find the entire idea of a vulnerable pundit to be laughable. Believe me, lots of people will take from this, “Nathaniel likes Ann Coulter, ergo he is even stupider and more hateful than I thought!” and nothing more. I’m sad about that, but unwilling to modify the post for the sake of my reputation, such as it is. The message is what it is, and the command is to “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” (Matthew 5:44) By golly I just don’t see an exception for income or fame or ideology any more than I do for race or gender or sexuality.

The decision I’ve made is to remain unaffected by the mockery and scorn that comes my way (to the extent that I can) and try to stay true to my Christian ideals. Frankly, there’s very little of it (see above, re: my own insignificance) and if I can’t handle this trickle then that’s just sad. I will try to love my neighbor: even the rich ones. Even the famous ones. Even the pundits. And yes: even the dogmatically liberal bullies.

As a note: I absolutely don’t think conservatives are, on an individual basis, any better at treating their opponents with dignity and compassion. I can’t help but notice that we live in a world where the journalists, writers, editors, actors, directors, script-writers and–in short–the folks with their hands on the rudder of our culture are extremely socially liberal. In that context, I think conservative commentators face more pressure, especially the kind we don’t see because it comes from their peers in the news/entertainment industry–but I don’t for a second think that Michael Moore or Rachel Maddow have it easy, either.

I haven’t figured out how to reconcile all this love-thy-enemy stuff with my belief that facts matter, that policies are worth debating, and that some ideals and principles the world thinks are dumb are worth standing up for. But I’m working on it. I have this vision in my mind of having genteel adversaries who fight tooth and nail to defeat each other, but who always play within certain rules. And who are able to engage in witty banter, tokens of respect, and maybe even admiration and friendship despite being on opposite sides. Naive and stupid, perhaps, but it’s the best I’ve got. I like the idea that I could throw a party and all my friends would show up–no matter what their politics–and everyone would know they were welcome in my home. I think it’s harder to pull off than that, but like I said: I’m working on it.

So, going back to Ann Coulter one last time, I think partly what happened is that all the crap she has to deal with made her bitter, and that comes out in her writing. I’m not saying she didn’t do anything to bring it upon herself, or that she would be writing nothing but children’s fairytales if only people would be nicer to her. I’m also not saying there isn’t room for biting satire in political discourse: differnet people have different voices and some are going to be more abrasive than others. I don’t think there’s One True Tone for Correct Political Discussion. I just hope to avoid succumbing to bitterness and anger myself, and hopefully not pushing too many people too far in that direction either.

An Objective Net Neutrality Overview

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2014-09-10 Net Neutrality

I found this blog post on net neutrality to be a pretty good, unbiased overview of the debate. I’m actually somewhat undecided on the issue. The cons are pretty obvious. If ISPs are allowed to create different tiers for different kinds of Internet traffic, this will end up being a threat to the kind of innovation that has so far characterized the Internet and made all of our lives better. But there are also some potential upsides to a tiered approach to bandwidth because not all packets[ref]Internet traffic is broken up into discrete chunks called packets[/ref] are equal. As a consumer, I would be interested in treating packets for VOIP and gaming traffic as higher-priority (lower-latency) than packets for video streaming (high latency). You can’t really do that under the current system.

I think it’s possible that something more nuanced than complete and total net neutrality (all packets are treated identically) might be in order, but I’m not sure I trust regulators to be able to come up with reasonable, simple rules that give consumers more flexibility without introducing easy ways for people to game the system. I support net neutrality for now, but only as a kind of “least bad” alternative. I just can’t get all excited about the ideology of the argument.

Marriage and Children Outcomes

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The above graph comes from yet another post at the Brookings Institution, which finds that marriage leads to better outcomes for children. However, this study breaks it down into two main reasons:

  • More money: the income effect

  • More engaged parenting: the parenting effect

However, the authors come to an interesting conclusion:

If the benefits of marriage for children can be explained by other observable characteristics of the family, and especially money or parenting behavior, then policy may be more successful if focused on those pathways. It would be convenient to find the magic bullet – the one family input that really matters – but of course the truth is messier. Children’s life chances will be influenced by a complicated, shifting mesh of family characteristics (and many other factors outside the family).

Marriage is a powerful means by which incomes can be raised and parenting can be improved. But marriage itself seems immune to the ministrations of policymakers. In which case, policies to increase the incomes of unmarried parents, especially single parents, and to help parents to improve their parenting skills, should be where policy energy is now expended.

Yet, W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project points out that

marriage itself fosters higher income and better parenting among today’s parents. For instance, men who get and stay married work longer hours and make more money than their unmarried peers. And fathers and mothers who are in an intact marriage tend to engage in more involved, affectionate, and consistent parenting than their peers in single- or step-families.

The bigger point is this: you cannot easily strip marriage of its constituent parts, such as more money and a supportive parenting environment, give those parts to parents apart from marriage, and expect that children will do as well, apart from marriage.