Radical Moderates, Depressive Realism, & Visionary Pessimism

Depression is an odd thing. It is one of the most debilitating ‘diseases’ that mostly goes unseen.

A depressed person can appear normal and even someone in a severe depressive state can hide how bad it is. This is why suicides can surprise so many people, sometimes as if it came out of nowhere. Some depressives can hide their depression from their own awareness, burying themselves in work or distracting themselves with addiction.

It is also one of the least sexy of the mental illnesses. It’s not as fascinating as schizophrenia or multiple personal disorder. It only reaches the level of melodrama if depression is of the bipolar variety. But unipolar depression is actually rather boring. The only time it becomes romanticized is in the writings of famous authors, especially if they are alcoholics who kill themselves.

As for normal people, depression is more likely to increase one’s invisibility, because the depressive withdraws from the world, sometimes to the point of becoming unemployed or even homeless. The depressive, when pushed to the extreme, can become an isolated non-entity. The depressive rarely commits suicide in direct fashion (surprisingly difficult to achieve), instead preferring to slowly kill themselves through lack of taking care of their own basic needs. Sustaining bodily existence isn’t always a central concern for the severe depressive, whether or not they commit self-harm.

Still, for someone familiar with depression, there are some aspects of it that fascinate. The withdrawl from the world isn’t just social but also psychological. Experience loses meaning and emotion. The world can feel empty and lifeless. The sense of self shrinks, sometimes to the point of disappearing. At the lowest of low points, depression swallows the person whole. It can be a truly stark state of mind, everything cut down to its minimal essence, even the voice in one’s head gone silent and no outside voice able to reach into that silence.

As one person described it, “Because I had no self. No safe space inside. Just despair.” The self ultimately can’t function in isolation, as relationship is the lifeblood of our humanity. It is utter alienation, disconnection between self and other, and so disconnection within the self, an implosion of one’s existence: “Alienation—feelings of estrangement from some aspect of a person’s existence (nature, others, and self)—results in loneliness, emptiness, and despair and is the antithesis of Heidegger’s being-in-the-world.” One then inhabits a dead world.

This seems the opposite of something like schizophrenia. In schizophrenia there is a conflation of or blurring between self and world. Rather than loss of meaning, there is an explosion of meaning. Voices don’t stay contained to self or other. It’s true that schizophrenics can experience depressive symptoms. But I suspect it it is a far different kind of experience. Interestingly, treating schizophrenia can lead to depressive-like symptoms as side effects:

“Also, the antipsychotic medications used to treat schizophrenia may produce side effects which are very similar to depressive symptoms. These side effects may include limited spontaneity in the person’s speech and movements, restlessness, and a negative mood.”

This is what fascinates me, anyway. I don’t know schizophrenia on a personal level. But I do know depression. The problem of depression is the opposite of not knowing how to differentiate the real from the imaginary—the mundane reality feeling all too real to the point of being stifling, a sense of unavoidable and irresolvable actuality, just is. If anything, imagination gets shut down or submerged into the background. Some have argued that this is depressive realism, most specifically in terms of self-awareness and self-assessment, what is and has been, although the evidence is mixed. Even an optimism proponent like Martin Seligman, in The Optimistic Child (p. 296), discussed the merits of pessimism:

Supporting evidence for depressive realism can flooding in: Depressed people are accurate judges of how much skill they have, whereas non-depressed people think they are more skilful than others think them to be (80% of American men think they are in the top half of social skills). Non-depressed people remember more good events than actually happened and forget more of the bad events. Depressed people are accurate about both. Non-depressed people are lopsided about their beliefs about success and failure: if rewards occur – they claim the credit, the rewards will last and they’re good at everything; but if it was a failure, you did it to them, it’s going away quickly, and it was just this one little thing. Depressed people are even handed about success and failure.

The unipolar depressive has fewer extremes of emotional affect (i.e., emotional numbing and flattening) and so maybe fewer other extremes as well, which could express as ‘moderate’ (i.e., emotionally detached) views and opinions, the unipolar depressive simply not getting all that excited about and emotionally invested in externalities, a pervasive disinterest and indifference. This may have something to do with why political moderates are less happy than political extremists, the latter tending toward partisanship and dogmatism (the loyal followers and true believers). In turn, this might be why liberals are less happy than conservatives, as liberalism (specifically as liberal-mindedness) predisposes one to questioning the status quo, doubting social norms, challenging authority, and pushing boundaries.

In a world dominated by a status quo of extremists (extreme in attitude and demagoguery, not in breadth of political spectrum), the moderate liberal will be the least happy person around. Or is it the least happy will simply turn to moderate and liberal views, not out of ideological principle but just basic psychological bias? Either way, when extremists are in power, moderation becomes a radical act and so moderate in that case doesn’t mean centrist and mainstream. The problem, as always, is the loudmouthed and sometimes violent extremists get all the attention, and they are more zealously motivated to take power and enforce social norms. The moderate too often remains silent or is silenced, because to speak out is to become a target of extremists and those who will openly support moderation and defend moderates are unfortunately too few.

In this context, there is an insightful commentary about depression and autism, in the context of nerd identity:

“Communal belief – social reality – and the sacrednesses that it produces are precisely the powerful layers of distortion that we are likely to notice (and hence have a chance at seeing through). We are less able than normal humans to perceive social/sacredness reality in the first place, and to make matters worse, we are addicted to the insight rewards that come from trying to see through it even further. Autism is overrepresented in our community; depression, too. Autism is associated with a reduced ability to model other brains in the normal, social way; this failure carries even into modeling the mind of God, as autism is inversely linked to belief in God. The autistic person is more likely than the neurotypical to notice that social reality exists; we might say the autistic person gets a lucid dreaming reality check for the great social dream with every inscrutable (to him) human action he witnesses.

“Mild depression removes pleasurable feelings from everyday life; it interferes with a mechanism for sacredness-maintenance distinct from the theory of mind path autism blocks. Meaning is deconstructed in depression; social connection is weakened. Ideas and things that for normal individuals glow with significance appear to the depressed person as empty husks. The deceptive power of social and sacredness illusions is weakened for the depressed person (as are certain other healthy illusions, such as the illusion of control). This is not necessarily a victory for him, as self-deception is strongly related to happiness; the consolation of insight may not make up for the loss of sacredness in terms of individual happiness. The characteristic that distinguishes us is not necessarily a good thing. Our overdeveloped, grotesque insight reward seeking is likely maladaptive, and is probably not even doing our individual selves any good. Extremists – those most capable of perceiving social/sacred reality – are happiest.”

This relates to defensive pessimism. It isn’t just about an attitude but also behavior. Depending on the task and context, defensive pessimists can be as or more effective than strategic optimists. But it is true that optimists will be more successful specifically in fields where selling oneself is a priority to success. A pessimist will be honest and accurate in their self-appraisal, not always a recipe for success in a Social Darwinian (pseudo-)meritocracy.

As such, optimists are better able to make positive change from within the system. They have a less antagonistic relationship to the status quo and to the ruling authorities that maintain the status quo. They look on the bright side of the way things are, looking for opportunities to exploit rather than fundamental problems to explore. So, they are more likely to be successful in socially acceptable ways. They’re less likely to rock the boat.

Major changes that challenge the entire social order and dominant paradigm, however, would require a different kind of mindset. That is where depressive realism might have the advantage. Many radical and revolutionary thinkers were highly critical and often antagonistic. They saw what was wrong with the present, which motivated them to imagine alternatives.

This could explain someone like Thomas Paine—he came to be hated by so many, even as he was proven correct in his visions and fears of the fate of the United States. His critical attitude was too demanding and uncompromising. He cut right through the bullshit and so had a way of making many people feel uncomfortable and irritated. In common parlance, he was an asshole with a sharp tongue.

Nothing ever seemed to quite work out for Paine in his personal life, with much unhappiness from early on and into his old age, a failure by mainstream accounts. He was profoundly dissatisfied with the way the world was. This is what fueled his outrage and made him a visionary, not a mere optimist. But, oddly, I don’t think he ever wanted to be a radical—like John Dickinson who also was Quaker raised, Paine spent his life trying to moderate a world of destabilizing and often horrific extremes. Such moderation is rarely taken kindly and, by both extremes, is seen as extreme. Religious and atheists, reactionary right and Jacobin left— they all attacked him with equal fervor.

Depressive realism can shut down imagination. But not always. Sometimes depression opens up the vista of imagination by forcing one to question hidden biases and assumptions. It forces one to stand back, which allows the opportunity to see a greater view. Seeing reality in the present more clearly can lead one to see reality in entirely new ways.

Seeking the first kind of change will tend toward happiness. The second kind less likely so. But there is more to life than happiness.

Game Theory and the Truce of the Ruling Elites

If you’re in the mood for a dark view of the world and of humanity, then boy oh boy I have the article for you: The Clash of the Civilizations. Some are content with mere pessimism. That isn’t enough for the author, W. Ben Hunt. He aims for the apogee of cynicism.

“Lots of quotes this week, particularly from my two favorite war criminals – Sam Huntington and Henry Kissinger.”

Such casual disregard about war crime and those who commit it. I’m impressed right from the start.

I’m not a Christian, but I find myself automatically putting something like this into a Christian context. I don’t just mean the mention of war crime. I’m talking about the entire article that follows it. The war crime comment just sets the tone. There are a number of reasons for my thinking of Christianity, both in terms of morality and history.

First and foremost, what brought Christianity to mind was the simple fact that the person who recommended the article to me is a practicing Christian. That person isn’t just any Christian. He is my father who not only raised me in Christianity but raised me to take Christian values seriously. I don’t know how my father would square Hunt’s views with Jesus’ teachings, assuming he would even want to try. I do know my father deeply struggles with his faith and how it applies to the larger world, but in the end my father is in the impossible position of any other conservative Christian. Simply put, Jesus wasn’t a conservative, not to say Jesus was a liberal, but he certainly wasn’t conservative in any sense of the word (politically, socially, or attitudinally).

My own values have a Christian tinge. I don’t care one way or another if Jesus ever actually existed, but the radicalism of the message itself has stood out to me for a long time (far more radical than can be allowed for by either mainstream conservatism or liberalism). Jesus was always on the side of the powerless, not the powerful (on side of the victims of such things as war crimes, not the purveyors of it). I was thinking about this lately in context of the Ferguson protests and, more importantly, in the context of the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

You can agree or disagree with someone like MLK, but what is clear is that his view is in line with a Christian worldview. He was a Christian preacher, after all. Hunt’s philosophy, on the other hand, is just as clearly not in line with a Christian worldview. Hunt is advocating for something that is un-Christian or even anti-Christian.

I wanted to note that upfront. Hunt, as with those he quotes, seeks to defend Western society. But his interest seems to be more a desire to protect a particular power structure and social order, rather than any substance of the culture itself. Huntington and Kissinger were both advocates of American imperialism where mass violence was used to enforce the will of the American ruling elite (e.g., the Vietnam War). He is invoking American imperialism by relying on two major figures who have been the focus of serious accusations of war crimes, as he acknowledges.

Hunt shows no concern for Christian values, except maybe as they offer a contrast with non-Christian societies. He is not making a moral argument, at least not in the straightforward sense, or rather the morality he is proposing not of an inspiring variety. It’s more in line with might makes right, rather than love thy neighbor.

“Everyone has heard of Kissinger, fewer of Huntington, who may have been even more of a hawk and law-and-order fetishist than Kissinger”

I might point out that the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate were also law-and-order fetishists. They were likely hawks as well.

“But Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” argument is not just provocative, curmudgeonly, and hawkish. It is, I think, demonstrably more useful in making sense of the world than any competing theory, which is the highest praise any academic work can receive. Supplement Huntington’s work with a healthy dose of Kissinger’s writings on “the character of nations” and you’ve got a cogent and predictive intellectual framework for understanding the Big Picture of international politics.”

Basically, the author is arguing that the best way to understand the world is by listening to those who advocate for cynical realpolitik. Huntington and Kissinger are favorite thinkers of those in power. They speak for power and justify power. They are giving voice to those who rule the world. So, of course, they best explain the actual way the world is being presently ruled or at least how that rule is being rationalized in the minds of the ruling elite, whether or not the rationalization explains much of anything.

Hunt is going even further, though. He thinks that Huntington and Kissinger were speaking for reality itself. It is a cynicism so deep that it blinds him to genuine alternatives. It isn’t just the way the world is because how those in power have made it to be. He is going far beyond that. The claim is that it could be no other way.

“Huntington and Kissinger were both realists (in the Thucydides and Bismarck sense of the word), as opposed to liberals (in the John Stuart Mill and Woodrow Wilson sense of the word),”

By admiring them as realists, he is advocating realism. There is capitalist realism that has been dissected by others (e.g., Mark Fisher). The criticisms of capitalist realism parallel the criticisms of communist realism. But the view here isn’t using the Cold War rhetoric of either the freedom of markets or the freedom of workers. And it denies liberalism as being valid, liberalism both as progressivism and neo-liberalism. This is pure neo-conservatism. Ruthless power as its own justification.

That is the ‘reality’ Hunt lives in, and so it is the ‘reality’ he would like to enforce on all of the world. He can’t imagine the world any other way.

At the beginning of the article, the author included this quote:

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
– Samuel P. Huntington (1927 – 2008)

Many people would interpret a statement like that as an admonishment of Western imperialism. But one gets the sense that Huntington and Hunt takes that as a point of pride. We are the winners! Bow down and submit!

The above was the second quote. It immediately followed this:

“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.”
– Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1996)

Combining those two quotes, what is implied is twofold.

First, the West is intrinsically unique and fundamentally different from all the rest of humanity. We are the pinnacle of civilization, at least for now (and, for many hereditarian reactionaries, we are also the pinnacle of human evolution).

Second, what keeps us at the pinnacle is nothing more than being better at maintaining power through “organized violence” (i.e., brute oppression and military imperialism). This is to say we are better at keeping everyone else down and in their place where they can’t challenge us. And by saying ‘we’ and ‘us’, I mean the Western ruling elite, specifically those who aspire toward an authoritarian oligarchy or paternalistic plutocracy. Actually, their aspiration is greater still, as is made clear in this article. They want to be part of a transnational ruling elite, not just in the US or even the West but across the entire globe.

To continue with what the author was saying about Huntington and Kissinger, he stated this,

“basically just means that they saw human political history as essentially cyclical and the human experience as essentially constant.”

Right there, that is what I zeroed in on. I just happened to be reading a book that I’ve had for some years, but only now got around to looking at in detail. It is Circle and Lines by John Demos. The subtitle is “The Shape of Life in Early America”.

There was a cultural transition and psychological transformation that had been going on. Demos sees it as a centuries-long shift, but I would identify it’s having begun much earlier with the breakdown of the bicameral mind and the ensuing developments during the Axial Age, during which linear theologies came to dominance (temporal existence as a one-way trip, a cosmic narrative with a conclusive and final ending; the prime example in the West being Christianity which is from the late Axial Age, having been built on preceding expressions and influenced by concurrent expressions of the Axial Age such as Alexandrian Judaism, neo-Pythagoreanismm, Greco-Roman Mystery Schools, Egyptian Isis worship, etc).

One might point out as an example, specifically a Christian example, MLK’s preaching that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This arc extends from the past into the future, as progress toward something. It is not a pagan cycle of return that repeats endlessly, ever coming back to what is, has been, and always will be.

The linear style of thinking had particularly taken hold in the West because of the Hellenistic tradition that was spread through the joint effort of the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. It was reintroduced during the Renaissance, became a real force during the Enlightenment, and then violently disrupted the social order during the early modern revolutionary era. It was a slow process over millennia for it to take hold. It still hasn’t fully taken hold, as is shown by the ease of Hunt’s dismissing it out of hand. Hunt, instead, harkens back to an ancient cyclical view of humanity and the world, not only still fightng againt the Enlightenment Age thinkers but also the Axial Age prophets.

“Life is fundamentally “nasty, brutish, and short”, to quote Thomas Hobbes, and people band together in tribes, societies, and nation-states to do something about that.”

It is unsurprising that the author seeks support from a pre-Enlightenment thinker. But I doubt Hunt would accept Hobbes’ belief that all humans are equal, for the very reason that death makes life “nasty, brutish, and short” (any person could kill any other person). I’m also not sure how the cyclical view could be fit into Hobbes’ ideas about society (in Hobbes and Human Nature, Arnold Green argues that, “In short, stasis was the goal. Cyclical theories do not deny development, as Hobbes essentially did.”), since Hunt doesn’t seem to be denying development in his own cyclical theorizing, just denying progress as a fundamental force of transformation and improvement. Anyway, Hobbes is a weak foundation upon which to base a post-Enlightenment modern view of global society and cross-cultural social order (see Beyond Liberty Alone by Howard Schwartz).

“As such, we are constantly competing with other tribes, societies, and nation-states, and the patterns of that competition – patterns with names like “balance of power” and “empire” and “hegemony” – never really change across the centuries or from one continent to another. Sure, technology might provide some “progress” in creature comforts and quality of life (thank goodness for modern dentistry!), but basically technology just provides mechanisms for these political patterns to occur faster and with more devastating effect than before.”

In a nutshell: Competition between powers is the only constant. Nothing fundamentally ever changes or can change. There is no such thing as improvement. That is a stark worldview.

Besides moral criticisms, a main problem I have with it is that it doesn’t fit the evidence. Humanity has vastly changed over the centuries and millennia. The neighboring towns around where I live are not separate competing tribes or city-states that are in constant battle with my town. I can travel in most places in the world with relative ease and relatively little fear. For an increasing number of people, life no longer is “nasty, brutish, and short”.

These changes aren’t superficial, but have fundamentally altered how human nature has been expressed (possibly even at a genetic level to some degree, as research shows evolutionary changes can happen over shorter periods of time). John Demos speaks of this psychological level of change at the heart of social change, but even more profoundly it has been analyzed by the likes of Julian Jaynes and the Jaynesian theorists.

“The central point of “Clash of Civilizations” is that it’s far more useful to think of the human world as divided into 9 great cultures (Huntington calls them civilizations, but I’ll use the words interchangeably here) rather than as 200 or so sovereign nations.”

I agree that cultures are important, but this view lacks much depth. If you look very far into this topic, you quickly realize that dividing populations up into clearly delineated and broadly sweeping ethno-cultural categories is about as meaningful as doing the same with races, which is to say not particularly meaningful. These cultures are fluid and constantly shifting. They have porous borders and syncretistic pasts.

Democracy has become associated with the West, but it originated at a time when Greeks had more culturally in common with other Mediterranean people (including Near Easterners and North Africans) than with what we today think of as Westerners. Many of the major building blocks of Western Civilization originated from elsewhere. There was nothing inherently democratic, imperialistic, and colonial about Western cultures prior to these ideological systems having been introduced into the West. The West was utterly and quickly transformed in its process of becoming what it is today. Hunt is being plain ignorant in ignoring this fact.

“Marxism and liberalism are inherently optimistic visions of human society. Things are always getting better … or they will be better just as soon as people wake up and recognize their enlightened self-interest … as ideas of proletariat empowerment (Marxism) or individual rights as instantiated by free markets and free elections (liberalism) inexorably spread throughout the world.”

My sense is that Hunt is missing something centrally important. I’ve wondered if optimism isn’t actually the defining feature of liberalism and leftism. Maybe optimism at best is just a side result of a particular worldview. Liberals and leftists don’t necessarily see everything as progress. Rather, they primarily see it as irreversible, both the good and the bad. Not just irreversible, but also unstoppable. Hunt wants the world to stop so that he can get off. That just isn’t possible.

“For realists like Huntington and Kissinger, on the other hand, this is nonsense. Free markets and free elections are good things (as is proletariat empowerment, frankly), but these central concepts of liberalism only mean what we Westerners think they mean if they exist within the entire context of Western culture.”

These aren’t Western ideas in the first place. They evolved over a complex history that extends way beyond the West. The narrowness and superficiality of Hunt’s view is staggering.

“The West may very well want to impose the practices and institutions of free markets and free elections for its own self-interest, and China may want to adopt the practices and institutions of free markets (but not free elections) for its own self-interest, but the logic of self-interest is a VERY different thing than the triumphalist claim that the liberal ideas of Western free markets and free elections are “naturally” spreading throughout the world.”

I have no desire to impose anything on anyone. But if I did want to impose my own version of Western values on particular people, I’d begin with those who agree with Huntington and Kissinger. I would argue that it is Hunt who is dismissing Western tradition, not just as it might apply to non-Western societies but more importantly as it applies to the West. A linear view of change has become a central tenet of Western thought at this point. He wants to defend some abstract notion of the West by cutting out its beating heart.

Many liberals and leftists are the opposite of triumphalist about Western cultural imperialism. In fact, it is Hunt and those like him who are trying to create a new kind of Western cultural imperialism. He doesn’t actually mind imposing his ideas onto the rest of the world. What he fears is that the influence might be two-way. He wants near total Western dominance where we can protect the West with some utopian hope of cultural isolation.

Even his understanding of game theory is Western. He never explains why non-Westerners would want to submit to his game theory model of a truce among ruling elites. If non-Westerners refuse his desire that they play by Western rules as they inevitably would, what does he advise? No doubt, he would agree with Huntington and Kissinger in their advocacy of military force. Despite the rhetoric, it will always come back to violent power.

“A brief aside here on the distinction between personal beliefs and useful models. I’m not saying that I believe that authoritarian regimes and jihadist despots have some sort of moral equivalence to liberal governments, or that human rights don’t matter, or any of the other tired bromides used to tar realists. On the contrary, I personally believe that everyone in the non-Western world would be better off … MUCH better off … if their governing regimes gave a damn about individual rights and liberties in the same way that ANY governing regime in the West does.”

If that were true, Hunt better get up to speed. His ignorance of world history and world events is massive. The non-Western world is the way it is largely because of Western actions: wars, invasions, occupations, assassinations, coup d’etats, arming and training militant groups, alliances with authoritarian regimes (dictatorships, theocracies, etc), promoting fascism, military-imposed resource extraction, total control of trade routes, and on and on. If we don’t like the world we have helped to create, maybe Western governments need to start acting differently.

“But what a realist recognizes is that our personal vision of how we would like the world to be is not an accurate representation of The World As It Is, and – as Huntington wrote – it’s false, immoral, and dangerous to pretend otherwise.”

A genuine realist would acknowledge our social and moral responsibility for the world we helped create. Hunt is arguing for a vision of a Western society that doesn’t exist, except in his mind and in the propaganda of imperialists.

“Is a realist happy about any of this? Is a realist satisfied to shrug his shoulders and retreat into some isolationist shell? No, of course not. But a realist does not assume that there are solutions to these problems. Certainly a realist does not assume that there are universal principles like “free and fair elections” that can or should be applied as solutions to these problems. Some problems are intractable because they have been around for hundreds or thousands of years and are part and parcel of the Clash of Civilizations.”

Does this guy know anything about history?

The original Clash of Civilizations in Europe was between Greco-Roman culture and the tribal indigenous cultures. The memory of that clash was still so fresh that Thomas Jefferson could cite the pre-Norman English as an inspiration for American liberty (Normans having been the first serious introduction of Roman culture into Enlgand). Jefferson saw a free American society having its roots in the Germanic-Celtic people, not the imperial Roman tradition. There is no and never has been a singular unified Western culture.

“I think the crucial issue here (as it is with so many things in life) is to call things by their proper name.We’ve mistaken the self-interested imposition and adoption of so many Western artifices – the borders between Syria and Iraq are a perfect example, but you can substitute “democracy in Afghanistan” if you like, or “capital markets in China” if you want something a bit more contentious – for the inevitable and righteous spread of Western ideals on their own merits. This is a problem for one simple reason: if you think Something happened because of Reason A (ideals spreading “naturally” and “inevitably” within an environment of growing global cooperation), but it really happened because of Reason B (practices imposed or adopted out of regime self-interest within an environment of constant global competition), then you will fail to anticipate or react appropriately when that Something changes.”

I would agree with one basic component of that assessment. We should be clear in what we speak about. The failure of Hunt is that he lacks genuine understanding. Someone like Noam Chomsky would make mincemeat of his pathetic attempt at international analysis.

“And here’s the kicker: change is coming… It’s going to get worse.”

Sure. Liberals and leftists would be the first to say that. The difference is whether one accepts change or fights against it and tries to deny it. Hunt wants to defend the West against all change, to make sure all change is externalized along with all the costs.

Following that, Hunt goes on for quite a while about economics. That demonstrates the superficiality of his understanding.

There is a certain kind of person that sees everything as economics. To this thinking, all of the social order, all power, all culture comes down to economics. This is unsurprising for someone like Hunt. His career is in finance. That is his hammer by which all the world looks like a bunch of nails. Because of this, he is unable to look deeper into the historical and social forces that have made and are still making the world we live in.

This is an inevitable outcome of his worldview. He sees all change as superficial, which is to say nothing fundamentally changes. His attempt is to understand the change going on in the world. But since all change to his mind is superficial, it forces him to offer a surface level analysis. Economics are just the chips in the poker game, to be won or lost, but the players play on. There is only one game in town and that is the game of power.

The following is part of what interested my father:

“No, the existential risk is that the great civilizations of the world will be “hollowed out” internally, so that the process of managing the ten thousand year old competition between civilizations devolves into an unstable game of pandering to domestic crowds rather than a stable equilibrium of balance of power.”

Hunt supports his view with a quote from Kissinger. In that quote,

“Side by side with the limitless possibilities opened up by the new technologies, reflection about international order must include the internal dangers of societies driven by mass consensus, deprived of the context and foresight needed on terms compatible with their historical character. As diplomacy is transformed into gestures geared toward passions, the search for equilibrium risks giving way to a testing of limits. …

“Because information is so accessible and communication instantaneous, there is a diminution of focus on its significance, or even on the definition of what is significant. This dynamic may encourage policymakers to wait for an issue to arise rather than anticipate it, and to regard moments of decision as a series of isolated events rather than part of a historical continuum. When this happens, manipulation of information replaces reflection as the principal policy tool.”
– Henry Kissinger, “World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History” (2014)

Hunt wants a ruling elite who will paternalisticaly manage Western civilization and will manage the balance of power with the ruling elites of non-Western civilizations. This is a natural worldview for Hunt, as he manages a financial company.

He wants the world managed in the way a transnational corporation is managed. This relates to why he doesn’t think the center of power should be in nation-states. He envisions a transnational ruling elite that would somehow have greater power and influence than even the elected officials of governments.

This would also be an element that resonates with my father. He was a business manager for many years and then taught business management. My father’s entire worldview is steeped in the experience and attitude of the management model of solving problems.

Unlike Hunt and my father, I actually want a functioning democracy, not just in form but also in substance, a culture of democracy and an entire democratization of every aspect of life and governance. What they want is in reality an increasingly privatized technocracy, with maybe some outward forms of democracy by way of a paternalistic ruling elite that would use superficial rhetoric to make claims of representing the people (no different than any other ruling elite in all of history, as even kings claimed to represent the people). Hunt would also want that technocracy to be transnationalized. My father has a slight libertarian tendency and would be more wary of such transnationalization, but still not wary enough for my taste.

Here is where the author goes into detail about game theory.

“I’ll just introduce two key game theoretic concepts at the core of Kissinger’s warning.

“First, the proliferation of the most dangerous game of all – Chicken. […] Chicken is such a dangerous game because it has no equilibrium, no outcome where all parties prefer where they are to where they might be. […]

“Second, the dumbing-down of all political games into their most unstable form – the single-play game.When Kissinger writes about how political leaders come to see “moments of decision as a series of isolated events”, he’s talking about the elimination of repeated-play games and shrinking the shadow of the future. Most games seem really daunting at first glance. For example, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is famous for having a very stable equilibrium where everyone is worse off than they easily could have been with some very basic cooperation. But there’s a secret to solving the Prisoner’s Dilemma – play it lots of times with the same players. Cooperation and mutually advantageous equilibria are far easier to achieve within a repeated-play game because reputation matters. The shadow of the future looms large if you’re thinking not only about this iteration of the game and the moves ahead, but also about the next time you have to play the game, perhaps for larger stakes, and the next, and the next.”

The author is seeking a stable and unchanging balance of power. He doesn’t want a shared human society nor does he want progress, for free democratic societies are inherently unstable and constantly changing. He wants to create or return the world to some ideal holding pattern between superpowers. The game he speaks of is between elites. He doesn’t care about the rest of us. Democracy and freedom are of secondary concern to him, at best. What he is focused on is stability at all costs, a repeating game between the same players with the same results, an agreement among the powerful to keep the game of power going, a mutual understanding and respect among the world’s ruling elites.

I want to end by noting that, while in the middle of writing this piece, I did talk to my father about the article. He, of course, saw it through a different lens. All that I noticed didn’t occur to him.

He focused on the game theory aspect, apparently to the exclusion of all else (I doubt Hunt’s war crime comment even registered in his awareness to any great extent or, if it did, he probably just took it as humor). The likely reason for this is that my father shares many of the same assumptions and biases as Hunt, specifically the right-wing reactionary mistrust of “the people” along with a desire for an enlightened, meritocratic, and paternalistic ruling elite. The premises of Hunt’s argument didn’t stand out to my father as something to question and doubt. His offering the article to me was just a passing thought, just an expression of mild curiosity about how game theory might apply to international politics. The worldview itself was just background.

For me, game theory seemed like a small part of the argument, and the argument seemed like a small part of a larger worldview. Game theory was more just supporting evidence than the heart of the matter. My attention was caught by how it was being framed.

What to my father just seemed a bit pessimistic to me felt outright cynical. That is because Hunt and my father are conservatives, as contrasted with the liberalism that I espouse and they criticize. Much of conservatism, to my mind, has a disturbingly cynical bent and a fatalistic tendency, but to conservatives it is just being ‘realistic’. That is a ‘reality’ I’d rather avoid.

Let me wrap up with a couple of things about Hunt’s use of game theory.

First, game theory is inherently amoral. What I mean is that it can be applied to and used to justify various moral and immoral purposes. I’m not entirely sure about the universal applicability of game theory. To return to Christianity, I don’t see Jesus as advocating a game theory worldview. I’m thinking that game theory leaves a lot out, at least in a simplistic interpretation as Hunt is using it. However, if we weren’t to interpret it simplistically, how might game theory apply toward morality, rather than just toward self-interest of power and profit?

Second, Hunt is applying game theory only to the ruling elite. He is assuming that the ‘masses’ of the general public won’t be allowed to play, as long as people like him can control the playing field and the rules of play. But if Hunt were to be honest, he would have to confront this inconsistency. He claims that game theory fits human nature the best. In that case, why doesn’t it also apply to all humans, not just the ruling elite? Why not apply game theory to democracy, to freedom and liberty, to social responsibility and public accountability, to moral hazard and externalizations?

Hunt assumes that he is writing to an audience that either is part of the ruling elite, who aspires to be part of the ruling elite, or who sees their interests in line with the ruling elite. The related assumption he is making is that the rest of the population is too stupid, too indifferent, and too powerless to care or be able to do anything about it. Why does he make these assumptions? What if the average person refuses to play by the rules of the ruling elite? Should we expect that the violence committed against foreigners, as neocons recommend, will also be turned against us, the local citizenry?

What does game theory tell us will happen when the ruling elite gets too oppressive?

Bashing My Head Against a Brick Wall: Love of Truth or Masochism?

I’ve come to a point of frustration. Let me explain.

A conclusion I’ve flirted with for many years is that humans are fundamentally NOT rational (which isn’t necessarily to say humans are irrational; a better word is ‘arational’). Humans have some minimal capacity for rationality, but I suspect most of what is considered ‘rational’ is too often largely just rationalization. This is no grand insight per se. Still, I’ve resisted it. I want to believe that humans can be persuaded by facts. I want to believe that truth matters. However, I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that people don’t change much once set in their ways (which tends to happen early in life). As such, people don’t usually change their minds even when confronted with new facts and new ways of interpreting the facts. It’s just that people die and new generations come along (with new biases). The best hope one has of changing another’s mind is to meet them when they are a small child. After that point, there is little hope left for any further change.

Debating most people is about as worthwhile as bashing your head against a brick wall. Even worse, the people most interested in ‘debate’ tend to be the very people who are least interested in truth. It’s rather ironic. People tend to seek out debate because they want to ‘prove’ themselves right, not to explore possibilities, not to learn something new. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. You might bash your skull to a bloody pulp before you find them.

And, no, I’m not excluding myself from my own criticisms. I know from my own experience how challenging it is to try to be ‘rational’ (objective, emotionally neutral, self-critical, aware of cognitive biases, being on guard for logical fallacies, genuinely trying to understand different viewpoints, being fair toward another’s argument, considering all the data instead of cherrypicking, and on and on). It’s hard enough for me to deal with all this within myself. It’s just too much to have to try to deal with it in other’s as well, especially when those others in most cases don’t want to (or don’t have the capacity to) deal with it in themselves. Spending so much time online, I end up interacting with many people who don’t bring out the best in me and who put me in a generally combative, irritable mood. And it’s my fault for being so easily effected. I’m the way I am. People are the way they are. There is nothing that can be done about that. In this post, I merely wish to explain my frustration.

– – –

I’ll give some examples.

I recently wrote about the differences between Southern and Northern cultures. There are two ways of treating these differences. The standard liberal view is that cultures are different with both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects. The standard conservative view is that some cultures are inherently or fundamentally superior. The problem with the conservative view is that conservative states and societies don’t rank well on many factors most people consider worthy (education, health, economic equality, etc). The conservative will often dismiss this data outright or rationalize it away. And, of course, a lot of (most?) conservatives have little interest in conceding to the liberal view of openminded and tolerant multiculturalism. As a liberal, how do I win or how do I find a win/win middle ground of understanding? I often can’t.

When I was writing about the Southern/Northern culture issue, I also brought up the related issue of race and IQ because it’s a favorite discussion of conservatives. As a liberal, I have a bias toward believing in egalitarianism. It bothers me on a fundamental level that conservatives are always seeking to prove others (usually those different than them) are inferior. Nonetheless, I’m inclined to defer to science on these kinds of issues. Facts are more important than my beliefs and preferences. I take it seriously when conservatives reference studies suggesting a correlation between race (i.e., racial genetics) and IQ. Because I take facts so seriously, I’ve researched the subject extensively by looking at all the studies I could find along with meta-analysis of the studies. It’s true there are some studies that suggest a possible correlation between race and IQ. But what these conservatives don’t wish to acknowledge is that there are also many studies showing no correlation between race and IQ and also many studies correlating IQ to many other factors. Simply put, the data is complex and the research is inconclusive. There is no scientific consensus, as far as I can tell.

I find odd this conservative attitude. These conservatives will cite research that supports their preconceived conclusions while ignoring all the research that contradicts their views. They completely ignore the issue of scientific consensus. I’ve found conservatives quite suspicious of scientific consensus. Conservatives like science when it agrees with them, but they realize scientific authority is a two-edged sword. Once you accept scientific consensus, you eliminate your ability to cherrypick the data. As a comparable example, most conservatives utterly despise the fact that most scientists in all fields and vast majority (98% as I recall) climatology experts who are active researchers agree that the data supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It took decades for conservatives to accept global warming was even happening, but seemingly most still don’t accept that humans contribute to global warming. So, despite the strong scientific evidence and strong scientific consensus, conservatives are wary about science when it disagrees with their beliefs. They’ll ignore what most scientists conclude about AGW and instead they’ll find the small minority of studies and scientists who agree with them.

Accordingly, science is just there to be referred to when convenient and ignored when inconvenient. I don’t understand this attitude. I just don’t get it. If the majority of experts agree about something, I won’t be so presumptuous as to claim that I know better nor will I simply cherrypick the data that agrees with me. Why would I do this? What is to be gained by such anti-intellectual tactics?

One last example. I was looking at reviews of some books by Jim Wallis. One reviewer (in reference to God’s Politics if I remember correctly) mentioned the abortion issue. The person was criticizing the ‘moderate’ position that Wallis was proposing. As I understand it, Wallis is against abortions except when they are absolutely necessary (such as to save the mother’s life) and so is against banning abortions entirely. This position is ‘moderate’ in two ways. First, it strikes a balance between the practical and the moral and seeks a middle ground between two extremes (of pro-life and pro-choice). Second, it is the view held by most Americans and so is the ‘center’ of public opinion. The critical reviewer was promoting the common conservative view that abortions are bad and so compromising principles is to let liberals win. In a sense this is true because compromise is a liberal principle but not a conservative principle. Polls show that liberals support and conservative don’t support compromise. Even independents, although more supportive than conservatives, don’t have a majority that supports compromise. So, when Wallis is promoting a ‘moderate’ position he is by default promoting the ‘liberal’ position. Also, on many issues, most Americans hold positions that are ‘liberal’ (even though Americans don’t like to label themselves as ‘liberals’).

It just seems like liberals in America always lose even when they win. The liberal can have facts and public opinion on their side… and, yet, liberals are treated like an elitist minority to be dismissed and distrusted. It’s understandable that conservatives are wary about science considering most scientists identify as ‘liberals’.

– – –

All of this has made me increasingly pessimistic. I grew up among idealistic liberals which rubbed off on me a bit, but I’ve over time become cynical in response. What is the point in bringing up facts and analyzing the data? Those who agree with me probably already know what I know or are at least open to learning. And those who disagree with me probably won’t accept the facts no matter what.

My frustration isn’t entirely limited to those on the right. I often find a simplemindedness in the idealism and egalitarianism on the left. Even so, I rarely find the same radical anti-intellectualism on the left as I described above. Plenty of liberals don’t understand science and misrepresent scientific research, but they tend to do so out of an admiration (albeit a confused admiration). There are, for example, the New Age type liberals who want to turn science into a pseudo-religion about the beauty of nature and the wonder of the universe. It’s well intentioned even if naive. From my view, this liberal simplemindedness is mostly harmless. Liberals generally aren’t interested in trying to use science against some race or culture. This isn’t to say I don’t feel frustrated by the liberal New Age woo, but it doesn’t usually make me angry and it won’t make me lose all hope in humanity. Even if a liberal dismisses out of hand scientific studies suggesting a possible correlation between race and IQ, they do so because of worthy ideals of egalitarianism. Liberals want to make the world better for everyone, not just better for one group. Liberals are correct that many conservatives will use any scientific research, with or without scientific consensus, against those they perceive as ‘other’. Yes, we should be wary of ulterior motives when scientific research is being cited.

It’s hard for me to grapple with my frustration or to fully understand it. It’s my own personal issue (which relates to the depression I’ve experienced for a couple of decades), but it’s obviously not just about me. I’m a liberal in a society that is dominated by a conservative ruling elite. I see the polls showing most Americans agree with liberals like me on many issues, but none of that seems to matter. Those with the most power and those who are loudest aren’t generally the liberals. It’s rare for the majority public opinion to become visible such as with the protests in Wisconsin. The liberal majority is largely a silent majority. Most ‘liberals’ (whether or not they identify themselves as such) are ‘moderates’ and so they aren’t radicals who want force their opinion onto others. Anyway, polls showing what most Americans believe or support is quite likely irrelevant to most conservatives. Either they just know most Americans agree with them (no matter what the polls may show) or else the general masses isn’t to be trusted (any more than the intellectual elite).

I’m just frustrated. I have many non-fiction books that interest me and many posts I’d like to write if I had the time… but what is the point? Time is a precious commodity. I could be spending it on activities less frustrating. Yes, I enjoy learning new things, but the process of learning can be less than enjoyable at times because of those I run into while doing research online. I think I just have to accept that what interests me isn’t what interests most others, including in many cases most other liberals. I can get obsessive when my curiosity is piqued. It’s not unusual for me to spend weeks or months doing research and thinking about some subject before writing about it and it can take equal amount of time to gather my thoughts into the form of a post. After all that, very few people typically will ever read what I write. I largely do it for my own reasons and so this shouldn’t matter, but it does matter. It just makes me feel isolated. Truth matters to me in the same way God matters to a religious believer. Truth is my religion. There I said it. I know it sounds silly. I know most people don’t idealize truth in this way and to this extent. It’s because truth matters to me that I want to communicate my own understanding of truth. I want truth to matter to other people. I want to live in a society that values truth above all else. But that isn’t the world I live in.

Honestly, does truth matter? Why should it matter? Why should anyone care about truth?

My frustration makes me feel cynical, but I don’t want to be a cynic. Still, I do understand the attraction of ‘giving up’. As Thomas Ligotti once wrote, in response to superficial optimists (which can apply to all the superficialities of human society): “Once you understand that, you can spare yourself from suffering excessively at the hands of ‘normal people’, a pestilent confederation of upstanding creatures who in concert keep the conspiracy going by rehashing their patented banalities and watchwords.” I can’t begin to explain how much I sympathize with Liotti’s words, but he presents a conclusion of radical pessimism that goes far beyond even my own frustration. What I like about his advice is that bashing one’s head against a brick wall becomes unnecessary and avoidable once one realizes the brick wall for what it is. The brick wall ain’t going to move, not easily anyway. Even the best of us can only bash our heads against a brick wall for so long. I can’t say I’ve given up on my ideal of truth. I just need to let my fractured skull to mend a bit for the time being. Maybe I should read some fiction.

Probably – A Disillusioning Aniboom Animation by Kate Anderson

NONSTOP TOTAL FAIL

From Horror to Gnosis: Pessimism, Culture, Monomyth

I’ve had many ideas rolling around in my head this past week or so. I’ve at least mentioned most of them in my recent blogs, but there are still some I’ve been meaning to get around to.

Even though I’ve mentioned Ligotti, I haven’t ever written about the one nonfiction work (besides textbooks) that I’m aware of him writing. Only an excerpt of it has been published so far and its in a recent volume of Collapse journal which also included some nonfiction by the well known fantasy writer China Mievelle. Anyways, he writes about the philosophy known as Pessimism in relationship to suffering.

He uses as one of his primary inspirations the ‘The Last Messiah’ by Peter Wessel Zapffe. Zapffe called his type of thinking biosophy and its my understanding that he had major influence on the deep ecology movement. The basic idea is that humans have certain over-developed functions, specifically consciousness, which cause humans to not easily fit into their environment.  More importantly, for my purposes, are the problems it causes with a hyper-sensitivity to suffering, and hence the necessity to counter it with various methods that Zapffe puts into 4 categories: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation. Zapffe was actually a rather life-embracing guy who liked to climb mountains (for the very reason that it was pointless) and wrote humorous stories, but Ligotti takes his ideas in a much more cynical direction.

I get the sense that Ligotti is a failed idealist.  My idealism has likewise failed in many ways but not entirely (and maybe correspondingly my faith has increased in certain ways). I think I’ll always have some of the hopeless idealist in me. Its hard to tell what Ligotti’s personal experiences or views are as he keeps his philosophizing mostly on the level of the abstract. He claims this is intentional because his arguments aren’t based on his moods, but he does admit that the experience of horror is something most people will never understand. He seems to accept that he is in the minority and that his writing will probably never be widely read (despite the fact that he is one of the better writers alive today and is highly respected by other writers).

I can agree with Ligotti in many ways. Humans are naturally optimistic and we avoid the experience of suffering as if our lives depended on it… because our lives probably do. I imagine that most people would go insane or kill themselves if they ever felt suffering fully. In all actuality, I doubt humans are capable of experiencing suffering without various psychological filters and buffers limiting our consciousness.  Its the double-bind of being human… the inability to either fully avoid or fully face suffering.

The problem is that Ligotti seems to leave this Existentialist insight on the level of biological horror. I don’t know that he has never had any experiences that he’d deem “spiritual”, but if he has he leaves them out of the equation. I’ve had experiences that went so far beyond (or within?) suffering that my experience was transformed… or, if not exactly transformed, I did touch upon something that felt entirely Other.

Because of this, I prefer to go the route of something like Gnosticism.  So, in this way, I can accept that the world is filled with suffering and yet not simply resign myself to it. Gnosticism is also a way I can give meaning to why the deep experience of suffering is so rare. Some have criticized Gnosticism as elitist, but I think that Gnosticism was simply observing the rarity of true gnosis (maybe similar to some early forms of Protestantism).

Its not an attitude of judgment because I wouldn’t claim true gnosis for myself as I’m way too confused for all that.  But I will say that I feel there is much superficiality and falseness in most claims of spirituality… and I can sense this even in myself whenever I try to speak of spirituality. I don’t believe gnosis is about being saved and so its not that the unworthy are left behind. Gnosis is just an insight and that is all and serves no greater purpose beyond that. Unlike the Gnostics, I have severe doubts about the notion of escaping suffering and prefer something more akin to Buddhism. Suffering, when felt deeply enough, can open one to understanding and potentially compassion.

As far as pure rationality goes, I consider Pessimism to be one of the most objectively accurate assessments of human experience that we are capable of coming up with.  For sure, its at least as reasonable as any other philosophical or theological position, not that reasonableness is the primary standard by which people choose their beliefs.

In light of Pessimism, there are the criticisms towards mainstream notions of freewill which interests me very much. Its without a doubt, in my mind, that the lack of freewill is the more scientific hypothesis given the scientific standard of parsimony. Rationality is important because all discussion (ie shared understanding) is of almost no use or merit without it, but when it comes to personal experience I don’t limit my understandings to mere rationality. Even someone like Ligotti with his very rational arguments is fully aware of the extreme limits of the human intellect.

I may have lost most of my audience by now with this dreary philosophizing during this time of “holiday cheer”, but I shall continue with another set of ideas.

When I think of Gnosticism, it automatically brings to my mind Jung… probably from whose writings I first learned about Gnostic-type of ideas. Also related to Jung are theories such as Myers-Briggs typology and Campbell’s Monomyth, but most Jungians dislike it when Jung’s ideas are systematized. The type of books that often reference Jung usually won’t reference the MBTI or the Hero’s Journey. This is the case with the books of Victoria Nelson and Eric G. Wilson.

I, of course, consider all of these to be related. In particular, I’ve been thinking about the Monomyth in how Jesus fits the typical Hero’s Journey and thus the corelation to the Gnostic interpretation of the Christ figure.

Even with the vastness of the internet, its still hard to find much writing about these connections. The best source I always seem to come back to is Tim Boucher in his extensive blogging. He has lots of interesting thoughts, but here are just a few quotes from his site that I found relevant:

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

the hero is basically synonymous with the ego. the ego is sort of the main part of the mind that we identify with as a culture. the “hero’s journey” to me seems like a story about what happens when the ego encounters parts of the mind besides itself. looking at how various cultures portray the archetypal “hero” can shed a lot of light on how their minds work, and the values they cherish. alternatively, i think that looking at the types of heroes and stories that you personally are drawn to can shed a lot of light on what’s important to you, what you’re struggling with, and possible symbolically encoded outcomes that could be achieved.

Demiurge and Ego

The Jungian concept of ego/Self dovetails nicely with gnostic theology as well. In it, the Demiurge is a false god who brashly and wrongly believes that he is the creator and most powerful being in the universe. Usually associated with the Judeo-Christian Yahweh, he is a jealous, egotistical god who is violent, capricious and authoritarian. Consider the first of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt have no other god before me.”

The Joseph Campbell of Conspiracy Theory

I’ve wondered before why Campbell didn’t talk more about “pop culture as mythology”. I mean, he did, but it wasn’t the focus of his work. I only realized very recently the sleight of hand that he really pulled. What he did was use pop culture as a vehicle. I think he realized that traditional religions were essentially dead in the water, or if not dead then at least declining in people’s lives. Certainly they still play a role, but nowadays the real grunt-work is done by pop culture. It provides us with a story-system which binds us as a culture, and which acts as a vehicle or vessel for the symbolic contents of our subconscious minds.

I think he realized this, but he also realized that there was a danger here. Namely, that our archetypes were being clothed in pop culture, and we didn’t even know it. Since it was happening mostly outside the context of organized religion, with traditions of ritual and symbolism, most people were missing out on the important lessons learned in those traditions. So what he did, the real genius of his work, was to strip out the symbolic messages out of all world religions, and inject them directly into the bloodstream of the new religion, pop culture. And he essentially trusted that through the chaos of the mediasphere, these messages would ultimately find their place on their own and go right to where they were needed.

His speaking about pop culture returns me to the genres. Ever since Star Wars, the Monomyth has become a standard model for making movies in Hollywood… a model that even mainstream religion has had to come to terms with, however reluctantly. Parallel to the Monomyth, Neo-noir has brought Gnosticism into the public view. These two strains have come together in many movies such as The Matrix. So, I’m back in the territory of Philip K. Dick and the cultural analyses of Victoria Nelson and Eric G. Wilson.

What I was thinking about is the narrative structure of Gnostic films. They often end with the door in the sky. The narrative must end there because that is where rationality ends. Is there something beyond that door? What might it be? Any answer given won’t satisfy. We’d be disappointed if we followed Truman to the world beyond the Demiurge’s false reality.

This makes me wonder. The Monomyth is circular without any apparent escape. The traditional hero leaves just to return, but the Gnostic hero leaves without returning… or, if you prefer, his leaving is his returning to the real world… or in Jungian terms to his real Self. His boon is self-transformation (or else ananmesis) which is rather intangible.

This is where my personal sufferings and doubts come in. I recognize the limits of rationality.  At its best, fiction can (potentially) at least point beyond itself in a way that philosophy doesn’t seem as capable of doing.

Nonetheless, the narrative ends with the Gnostic hero’s accomplishment and yet we the audience are stuck in this endless loop of Monomyth’s repetition. Stories can be just as much distracting entertainment as mode of insight. The Monomyth is a circle, but traditional religion offers us the hope of either escape from the enclosing periphery or otherwise to bring us deeper to the center around which it all revolves.

Can we only worship the hero as most Christians do or like Gnostics can we become the hero? Or is identifying with the hero part of the ego’s trap of endless misery? How does the story truly end? Does the story ever end? Will people still be telling ever new versions of the Monomyth far into the distant future (assuming we’re still around)?

The whole finger pointing at the moon comes to mind. What is the point of studying stories? What is the point of worshipping the Monomyth hero even if you believe him to be the Son of God? Does turning to religion offer us any further insight or guidance?

I don’t know the answer to all of that. My questioning here is partially in response to similar thoughts that Eric G. Wilson writes about which I might go into more detail about sometime. For now, I’ll just end with my wondering about all things archetypal.

What are the archetypes? Mere biological mechanisms of Darwinian evolution? A good case can be made for that, but it doesn’t satisfy me personally. I’d like to believe that archetypes, if not the moon the finger is pointing at, may at least be the trajectory of the finger pointing. If I follow the archetypes in contemplation, where shall they lead me?

To use the sea as a metaphor for the vastness of suffering, is there any reason to leave the shore?

* * *

BTW I’m not despairing beyond hope or anything. I still find life amusing. When I typed that last question about whether to leave the shore, I was smiling. Its a silly question. Yes, life is suffering, but I don’t think anyone gets the choice of sitting on the shore. I like the image though… sunbathing on the beach of human misery… don’t forget to bring the sunscreen.

The most important aspect of this blog for me is that of storytelling.  A religion is only as successful as its story.  Certainly, the Judeo-Christian tradition doesn’t lack stories.  Every large-scale world religion will have its imperialistic tendencies, but that isn’t enough to ensure the conversion of the masses.  Even an empire needs a good story to convince people to accept oppression.

Also, any good story will get re-used and retold again and again.  There is no original story.  This is partly about the Monomyth which is based on human psychology (such as the relationship between men and women) and observation of the physical world (such as the solar year).  But this also largely cultural transmission.  Pretty much every story in the Old and New Testament can be found in various versions in the cultures that preceeded and surrounded the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Those stories survived because they were good stories.  Don’t underestimate simple entertainment value.

Simply put, stories are powerful.  Nations and religions live and die by them.  On the personal level, we need stories to make sense of it all.  Humans couldn’t live without stories.  Many stories are seen as fact because good stories are very convincing.  Stories work mosty on the unconscious level and we are probably barely aware of most stories that rule our sense of reality.

Okay, all that is easy enough to understand.  Considering stories, we must take seriously archetypes whatever they may be.  I doubt stories could exist without archetypes, but archeytpes aren’t limited to story.  Story is just one way of conveying story.

Also, we have a limited notion of story in our culture.  Stories, traditionally, were inseparable from religion, cultural identity, ritual, song, environment, etc.  Stories still carry some of this, but we have seemingly become somewhat disconnected from their true potential.

I’d go so far as to suggest the possibility that reality itself is a story.  If so, who is the storyteller?  And exactly what are we living, individually and collectively?

I’ve had a desire to get at the heart of my own story which obviously includes the larger story of the culture I’m immersed within.  This is partly why I like to write stories because its a way of bringing consciousness to the fore.

Closely related to stories are dreams.  Over the years, I’ve begun to see repeating themes in my dreams.  This fascinates me because it feels like a glimpse into some underlying structure of my psyche.  Dreams are spontaneous narratives.  Dreams give us insight into the nature and limits of narrative.  Its tempting to say that dreams are purer forms of primal narrative structure, but I think that would be a simplification.  The stories we’ve been influenced by will of course influence our dreams in turn.

Childhood is particularly interesting form an adult perspective.  I have many recollections that I can’t determine the source of.  Memories?  Dreams?  Something I heard othes speak about?

I don’t know where my thoughts are going with this.  I’m just pondering.

Response to ‘Why are zealots so happy?’

Posted on May 29th, 2008 by Marmalade

I came across a recent blog post by C4Chaos titled Why are zealots so happy?. 

Basically, I do believe such presently uncontrollable factors as genetics do have a disproportionate influence on human experience and behavior, but I’m not sure how disproportionate it is.  This is something I’ve thought about a lot over the years and I did enjoy Seligman’s book even though I’m uncertain about his optimistic conclusions.  I want to look further into the happiness research to see what the latest evidence is showing.

C4Chaos touches upon how happiness fits into religion.  Here is the statistics(from the link in C4Chaos‘ blog) that relate to happy zealots(ie extremists):

Source: 2004 General Social Survey

I would add the morality angle.  What has troubled me over the years is how the ideal of The Good is inextricably tangled with feeling good.  And, yet, I sense they aren’t identical even though there may be an influence.  If there is an influence, does the influence go both ways?  I can imagine how feeling out The Good may help one to feel good.  But by seeking to feel good can we feel out The Good?

Here is an insightful paper that relates:
http://www.ksharpe.com/Word/EP20.htm
The Sense of Happiness:
Biological Explanations and Ultimate Reality and Meaning
Kevin Sharpe

Here is my response to C4Chaos:

I do think there is a connection between discontentment and questioning, and also between discontentment and creatively seeing possibilities.  This translates as unhappy people are more motivated to ask new questions and to seek new answers.  Of course, there is a point of too much discontentment and unhappiness that shuts the mind down.

Here is a nice dialogue between Steven Pinker and Martin Seligman.
http://www.slate.com/?id=2072079&entry=2072402

I’ve read one of Seligman’s books.  His view is that human choice is greater than genetics.  The limitation of his writing is that its basically pop psychology and its only moderately backed up by research.  One thing I remember is that pessimists have a more realistic perception of reality, but optimists have more ability to create a different future.  Its funny that the optimists delusion is what makes them effective, but you don’t want to ask them for objective understanding.  On the other hand, the pessimist knows precisely what is going on, but doesn’t know how or feel capable of changing it.  (Interestingly, I’m a depressed person and I value the straight truth more than anything including happiness… which conforms to this view.)

However, despite the pessimist’s useful ability to see reality clearly, Seligman believes that everyone should strive to be optimistic.  He does concede that society needs a few pessimists to ground the optimists’ vision. But, as I remember, he seems to optimistically think that the strengths of pessimism can be carried over into a more optimistic attitude.

Steven Pinker comes at it from a pure scientific perspective.  He limits himself to what the research says.  And his book isn’t meant as inspirational writing.  I haven’t read his book, but I have recently come across some of the research done on happiness.  Here is an interesting one:
http://www.psych.umn.edu/psylabs/happness/happy.htm
Happiness is a Stochastic Phenomenon
David Lykken and Auke Tellegen
University of Minnesota
Psychological Science Vol.7, No. 3, May 1996

Abstract
“Happiness or subjective wellbeing was measured on a birth-record based sample of several thousand middle-aged twins using the Well Being (WB) scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). Neither socioeconomic status (SES), educational attainment, family income, marital status, nor an indicant of religious commitment could account for more than about 3% of the variance in WB. From 44% to 53% of the variance in WB, however, is associated with genetic variation. Based on the retest of smaller samples of twins after intervals of 4.5 and 10 years, we estimate that the heritability of the stable component of subjective wellbeing approaches 80%.”

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about 10 hours later

Nicole said

wow. very interesting. i wonder why people think zealots are happy? the ones i know are a pretty miserable lot actually…

 

 

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about 22 hours later

Marmalade said

Good question.  There is a lot of research out there, but I’m not a scientist.  Here is one paper that looked particularly interesting.

Religious orientation, religious Coping and happiness among UK adults

Christopher Alan Lewis, John Maltby and Liz Day
“In general, no significant associations were found between religiosity scores and happiness scores. However, both higher intrinsic orientation scores and positive religious coping were significantly associated with higher scores on the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire Short-Form. It is proposed that these differential findings are consistent with the theoretical distinction between subjective and psychological well-being. It is suggested that when religiosity is related to happiness, it is related to psychological well-being, which is thought to reflect human development, positive functioning and existential life challenges.”

Here is from the link in C4Chaos’ blog:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/the-politics-of-happiness-part-4/

“In the 2004 General Social Survey, 35 percent of people who said they were extremely liberal were very happy (versus 22 percent of people who were just liberal). At the same time, a whopping 48 percent of people who were “extremely conservative” gave this response (compared with 43 percent of non-extreme conservatives). Twenty-eight percent of people squarely in the middle – “slightly liberal” to “slightly conservative” – were very happy.”

“A happiness edge enjoyed by the extremes persists even if we control for the other relevant forces like income, education, race, religion, and so on.”

The conclusion of this author is based on 3 factors: evidence showing extremists as more happy than moderates, evidence showing conservatives as more happy than liberals, and evidence showing the religious as more happy than the non-religious.  He notes that conservative extremists are the happiest of any political sector and implies the connection with how vocally religious this group of people are.  Hence, religious zealots are happier.

The conclusion is fairly straightforward.  Any disagreements would be with the research he uses as evidence.  Is it accurate?

 

 

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about 22 hours later

Marmalade said

Here are some comments from this section in the series that C4Chaos was linking to:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/the-politics-of-happiness-part-4/

1. May 14th,
2008
11:43 am

I haven’t read all 4 parts completely but I wonder if this is true all the time. In other words, could the extreme be happy right now because of current conditions in our country? Extreme left: “Change is coming, yoo-hoo!” Extreme right: “We have beaten off terrorists and liberals for 7 years, who would have thought?!”

– Posted by Marcus Lynn
4. May 14th,
2008
11:55 am

Interesting… but isn’t it likely that anyone who rates themselves as “extremely” anything is likely to have strong views in general, and therefore more likely to put “very happy” rather than just “happy”. It would be interesting to see the above graph with numbers of people who are “very UNhappy”

– Posted by Charles
17. May 14th,
2008
2:15 pm

To follow on what frankenduf(14) said:
Psychological studies have shown that when people believe they have control over their lives and actions, they are happier; whether or not they ever exercise that control. Could it be that extremists, because they are more likely to be “acting out”, feel that they are in greater control? Moderates, on the other hand, “moderate” their views to accomodate multiple other points-of-view; in essence, ceding control, and increasing their discomfort.

A second, not necessarily contradictory, explanation would be that cognitive dissonance causes most frustration. Other psychological studies have shown that the more extreme our beliefs, the more likely we are to attribute facts that belie our worldview to chicanery, and the more likely we are to become emotional rather than analytical in response to statements that contradict our ideas. Byt this theory, extremists will become angry, per frankenduf, release anger, and thus avoid unpleasant cognitive dissonance by avoiding considering inconvenient truths.

– Posted by misterb
33. May 16th,
2008
7:04 am

This analysis misses one significant point.

Combined with those in the “moderate” camps, left and right, are those who can’t bother to have strong political opinions. Among these are those who are depressed, clinically or otherwise.

This subset of depressed people can completely skew the numbers when it comes to associating happiness with political fervor.

– Posted by Greta
36. May 18th,
2008
11:47 am

2 comments:
#1: Depressed people tend to have a more accurate self-assessment of their abilities and performance. (I really hate to say “studies show…”, but they do. It’s a simply psychological experiment: give people a task to do, then ask them to rate their own performance.)
It’s certainly been my experience as well….

#2: Well, duh! The message of the study is not that conservatives are happier, it is that IN THE USA, conservatives are happier. It’s an easy bet that in a liberal society, the happiness distribution would be reversed. Anyway you cut it, compared to other nations, the US is politically & religiously conservative society.

So, yeah, you analyze the data controlling for income, education, race, religion, etc, so that you can conclude that conservatives are happier folks, but the results are only valid in the USA!

– Posted by Dennis

 

 

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2 days later

Nicole said

interesting… i think there is some amount of truth in each comment… so who can say really what it all means?

 

 

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2 days later

Marmalade said

Yes, interesting… but what to make of it?!  I find research about this very intriguing, but I don’t have the capacity to really understand it.  Statistics are so easily interpreted with one’s bias.  Seligman interprets it one way but there is no objective reason for him to interpret it that way.  He gives it an optimistic slant and he is probably the happier for it whether or not he is correct.  🙂

 

 

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3 days later

Nicole said

i have similar reservations to you about this whole optimism thing…

and yes, like archaeology where “rocks are plastic” or in other words, diggings can “reveal” many things depending on the assumptions of the scientist or interpreter, statistics can mean pretty much anything. So, IMO are often meaningless

Victimization: Culture & Education

“There is a good deal else that would not exist without “poisonous pedagogy.” It would be inconceivable, for example, for politicians mouthing empty clichés to attain the highest positions of power by democratic means. But since voters, who as children would normally have been capable of seeing through these clichés with the aid of their feelings, were specifically forbidden to do so in their early years, they lose this ability as adults. The capacity to experience the strong feelings of childhood and puberty (which are so often stifled by child-rearing methods, beatings, or even drugs) could provide the individual with an important means of orientation with which he or she could easily determine whether politicians are speaking from genuine experience or are merely parroting time-worn platitudes for the sake of manipulating voters. Our whole system of raising and educating children provides the power-hungry with a ready-made railway network they can use to reach the destination of their choice. They need only push the buttons that parents and educators have already installed.”

 ~ Alice Miller (as quoted from Poisonous pedagogy)

This video is an insightful analysis.  I don’t have in opinion about the book in question (The Catcher in the Rye) since it’s been many years since I read it.  There is another video about it from the movie Six Degrees of Separation.  I like what Will Smith’s character is saying about imagination.

The two views of the book are a bit different, but maybe there is a connection.  What kills the imagination?  Imagination is very personal.  For the imagination to become externalized and objectified (as entertainment or organized religion) implies that a violent disconnection has occurred.  So, what about our society is responsible for this?

Since I’m reading Derrick Jensen right now, I have been thinking about the connection between abuse and hierarchy.  Jensen discusses it in terms of the victimization cycle of victims becoming victimizers and the culture of power and fear (in particular, Jensen discusses all of this in relation to child abuse including his own personal experience).  Related to the imagination and the individual, Jensen also talks about the commodification of our culture.  Imagination becomes a commodity as entertainment and people become commodities as workers.  This process is largely dependent on proper ‘education’.

The guy in the first video pointed out something I hadn’t heard before.  He mentioned that both prostitutes and those who seek them out tend to have histories of sexual abuse as children.  I had heard about this being true for sex workers, but it’s strange that sexually abused people would seek eachother out to form this kind of business relationship.

I think it’s important that he connects abuse to general dysfunction both in the individual and society.  Abuse early in life messes up a person psychologically and often turn to self-medication.  Everyone blames the victim, says this guy… and he has a theory about it.  “Of the three major kinds of abuse (verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse), it is the verbal abuse victims who become the political leaders… Those who are physically abused become the workers… While those who are sexually abused often become the criminal class.” 

Civilization isn’t the normal state of the human species.  People have to be formed correctly at a young age to fit into such an unnatural situation.  Mostly this isn’t planned out in a conscious way (and conscious awareness of the process is discouraged by the system itself).  Abuse is self-replicating.  In a society based on victimization, it is easier for a victim to become a victimizer than it is for a victim to become a defender of victims.  We are all victims in various ways as we live in a very oppressive society, but abuse makes for a good example because it’s more obvious (for anyone who wants to see).  Child abuse is very common in our society and most often children are abused by their parents.  A child is statistically safer around strangers.  Rape, whether of children or adults, is also very common. 

If you blame the victimizers, you’d be blaming a large percentage of our entire society and most victimizers were also once victims.  To go by the theory presented in the video, maybe blaming the victims in the first place promotes victims becoming victimizers.  The separation between victims and victimizers is less than we like to think.  There is the cartoon of the boss who yells at the employee who goes home to yell at his wife who yells at the kid who yells at the dog.  That is a simplification of the process.  Everyone wants to be in the position of the abuser rather than the abused.  If the employee becomes the new boss, he will then yell at his employees.  When the kid grows up to be a parent, he will yell at his kids or his wife.

No single person can be blamed.  The victimization is systemic to our entire culture.  It can be seen in the news and in entertainment.  It can be seen in politics and war.  It can be seen in the police force and in business practices.  It can be seen at work and at home.  It’s all around us and we are all apart of it.  The key point that Jensen makes is that we shouldn’t blame ourselves for being born into this society.  We do what we can.  We should understand that we all are the walking wounded and should be compassionate.

I must admit that I find it difficult to be compassionate at times.  I’m one of the walking wounded as well.  My own suffering sometimes makes me more compassionate and sometimes less.  I wish I were capable of always being kind and caring, but it is always a challenge.  I found helpful the attitude expressed by Thomas Ligotti which comes down to hate the sin, not the sinner.  In speaking about his own pessimism (which could be applied to Derrick Jensen’s pessimism), he writes:

“It would be a sign of callousness to bemoan the fact that pessimistic writers do not rate and may be denounced in both good conscience and good company. This judgment makes every kind of sense in a world of card-carrying or crypto-optimists. Once you understand that, you can spare yourself from suffering excessively at the hands of ‘normal people’, a pestilent confederation of upstanding creatures who in concert keep the conspiracy going by rehashing their patented banalities and watchwords. This is not to say that such people do not have their struggles and responsibilities, their pains and sufferings, and their deaths by accident, murder, or disease, which only makes all the  more pestilent their normal thinking that being alive is all right and that happiness should attend upon the arrival of life’s newcomers, who, it is always assumed, will be normal.”

 ~ “Thinking Horror” by Thomas Ligotti, Collapse IV (which is an extract from the soon to be available The Conspiracy Against the Human Race)

If you criticize society, those who identify with society and promote it’s values will at the very least criticize you in return.  But if this is all they do, be thankful.  Many people throughout history (and in the present as well), have been ostracized and imprisoned, beaten and killed for criticizing society.  As long as you merely criticize, those with vested interests often don’t care.  But as soon as you attempt to act on those criticisms, prepare yourself be punished and put back in your place.

Knowing this, you have two responses.  You can go by Ligotti’s advice… Don’t provoke the dangerous animal!  Or you can go by Jensen’s advice… Someone has to stop the dangerous animal from continuing to kill.  I understand Jensen’s view, but I don’t have it in me to fight the system.  I’ll write my criticisms and hope for the best.

In conclusion, the following is a quote from an article that strengthens the argument about the connection between society, trauma, and addiction (I’ve written along similar lines in the post Homelessness and Civilization).  Dislocation is one of the most fundamental aspects of victimization and one which Derrick Jensen speaks of in terms of destroying stable traditional cultures.

The Roots of Addictionin Free Market Society
by Bruce K. Alexander

As free market globalization speeds up, so does the spread of dislocation and addiction.

In order for “free markets” to be “free,” the exchange of labour, land, currency, and consumer goods must not be encumbered by elements of psychosocial integration such as clan loyalties, village responsibilities, guild or union rights, charity, family obligations, social roles, or religious values. Cultural traditions “distort” the free play of the laws of supply and demand, and thus must be suppressed. In free market economies, for example, people are expected to move to where jobs can be found, and to adjust their work lives and cultural tastes to the demands of a global market.

People who cannot achieve psychosocial integration develop “substitute” lifestyles. Substitute lifestyles entail excessive habits including—butnot restricted to—drug use, and social relationships that are not sufficiently close, stable, or culturally acceptable to afford more than minimal psychosocial integration. People who can find no better way of achieving psychosocial integration cling to their substitute lifestyles with a tenacity that is properly called addiction.

In case you’re interested in the evidence and arguments behind the view of the first video, the same guy made some other related videos:

“But in this dark world where he now dwelt…”

I’m in the process of reading again The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen.  In a recent discussion with Quentin S. Crisp, I was mentioning how Derrick Jensen is more depressing than even Thomas Ligotti. 

The more I think about it, though, their two views do seem to resonate to a degree.  Jensen is an environmentalist and writes about environmentalism.  Ligotti, although not an environmentalist as far as I know, relies heavily on the Zappfe’s philosophy and Zappfe was an environmentalist who inspired the beginnings of deep ecology.

There is one other similarity between the two.  Both take suffering very seriously which I appreciate, but there is a limitation to this.  I don’t know how else to explain this limitation other than to use an example.  Here is a scene from A Scanner Darkly (the video is from the movie and the quote is from the novel):

“There had been a time, once, when he had not lived like this… In former days Bob Arctor had run his affairs differently; there had been a wife much like other wives, two small daughters, a stable household that got swept and cleaned and emptied out daily, the dead newspapers not even opened carried from the front walk to the garbage pail, or even, sometimes, read. But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn’t hate the kitchen cabinet; he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garbage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that.

“Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe.  All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all.

“But in this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing.“

 ~ Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (the book)

The last sentence is particularly what I had in mind as being a contrast to that of Jensen and Ligotti.  I’ve written before comparing Ligotti with PKD(Burroughs, PKD, and Ligotti, PKD Trumps Harpur and Ligotti).  There are certain similarities: both are mainly fiction writers who also wrote extensively about philosophical ideas, both willing to look unflinchingly at the sources of human suffering.  But the difference is that PKD expresses an endless sense of curiosity, wonder, awe (see: PKD, ACIM, and Burroughs, PKD on God as Infinity).

I just love the way he describes this sense of reality: “ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly…”  That is beautiful.  It’s this kind of verbal expression that inspires my desire to write.

I’ve had many experiences that have touched me deeply, and they’re always at the back of my mind.  Even though I’ve rarely written about them, I strongly desire to write about them.  There are several things that hold me back.  First, they’re experiences that are a bit on the uncommon side.  Second, I don’t feel capable of of fully describing them in words, of capturing that actual in-the-moment experience.

Let me just mention some of them briefly so that you’ll have an idea of what I speak of:

• Dream – In general, dreams are perplexing to write about.  One particular dream was of a theatre where spirits would come and go, but when the spirits were present the theatre transformed into a vast desert landscape.  The experience of it was profound and mysterious.  More than any other, this dream has always stuck with me.
• Psychedlic – I experimented with drugs in my 20s.  I only did mushrooms once, but they really blew me away.  I felt the whole world alive, breathing in unison, and the field was shimmering like that scene from Gladiator.  Concepts such as ‘animism’ or panentheism are just interesting philosophies until you experience them.
• Spiritual – In some ways, the most haunting experiences I’ve had happened while fully awake and when no drugs were involved.  There was a period of my life where depression, spiritual practice, and a broken heart all came together.  At the bottom of this suffering, I came across a truly incomprehensible experience of life, almost a vision.  It was a unified sense of the world that was both absolutely full and utterly empty.  My response to it was at times a sense of loneliness but it was an intimate loneliness that transcended my individuality.  It was a presence that wasn’t my presence.  It just was whatever it was.

Any of those experiences are probably meaningless to anyone who hasn’t had similar experiences.  Of course, they are far from meaningless to me.  Each individual experience is meaningful to me in that they’ve all influenced me.  I can even now viscerally remember these experiences.  More importantly, these experiences together are meaningful because they remind me of my sense of wonder.  The world is a truly strange place.

The animistic visions I’ve had particularly give me a sense of wonder on a daily basis.  I can to some degree shift my perception into an animistic mode.  I can put my mind into that sense of anticipation where the whole world feels like it’s on the verge of becoming something entirely else. 

This animistic sensibility combines both PKD’s gnostic revelation and the shamanistic worldview.  Much of PKD’s writing conveys a sense of paranoia.  I think this modern sense of paranoia is essentially the same thing as the premodern shamanistic view of the natural world.  The suffering of life is more than mere biological horror, more than mere existential angst.  The darkness isn’t empty.  There are things out there unseen that aren’t human.  The world is alive with intelligences.  The seeming empty spaces have substance.  We aren’t separate from the world.  Our skin doesn’t protect us from invasion.  Most of that which exists is indifferent to humans, but some things may take interest.  When we look out at the world, the world looks back.

We modern humans bumble our way through the world oblivious to all that surrounds us.  The police protect us.  Various public and private institutions make sure our daily lives run smoothly.  We generally don’t think about any of it… until something goes wrong.  The indigenous person lived differently than this.  A tribal person depended on themselves and others in their tribe to take care of everything.  If you’re walking through the wilderness, you have to pay attention in order to remain alive.  The possibility of death is all around one.  Death is a much more common event for hunter-gatherers.  When someone is injured or becomes sick, there is no emergency room.

This seems rather scary to a modern person.  However, to the indigenous person, this is simply the way one lives.  If your life had always been that way, it would feel completely normal.  You simply know the world around you.  Being aware would be a completely natural state of mind.  All of the world can be read for the person who knows the signs.  Just by listening to the calls of birds you can know precisely where the tiger is, and you simply make sure you’re not in that same place.

The problem is that I’m not an indigenous person and I’m definitely no shaman.  I at times can see something beyond normal perception, but I don’t know how to read the signs.  If you go by polls, most people have experienced something weird in their lifetime.  The weird is all around us all of the time.  We just rarely think about it.  And when we do notice it, we usually try to forget about it as quickly as possible.

Yes, Jensen is correct about how humans victimize one another, is correct about how civilization is destroying all life on earth.  And, yes, Ligotti is correct about how humans are paralyzed by suffering, is correct that all of human culture arose as a distraction from this primal horror.  Yes, yes, yes.  Even so, there is something beyond all of that.

Violence, Dark Thoughts, Righteousness, Collective Mood, Contingent Love, Public Opinion

Here are some articles from The New York Times that caught my interest (I do look at other news sources such as The Wall Street Journal, but for whatever reason The New York Times seems to have more articles on subjects of interest to me).  Anyone who is familiar with my blog will notice that these articles relate to subjects I often write about.

 – – –

Memorial Held for Slain Anti-Abortion Protester by Damien Cave

Stephen McGee for The New York Times

About 300 people attended a memorial service Wednesday for James Pouillon, who was slain Friday while protesting abortion.

 

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Mary Jo Pouillon sang at a memorial service for her slain father, anti-abortion protester James Pouillon, in Owosso, Mich. on Wednesday

I’m always saddened by killings based on ideology whether or not I agree with the ideology of either side.  A random killing by a gang or a crazy person seems less evil.  Ideological killings seem so evil because the killer often rationalizes their actions as good.

There was nothing particularly interesting about this article except for one line.

His killing is believed to be the first of someone protesting abortion, and at the memorial and a vigil later outside a Planned Parenthood office, he was praised as a symbol of dedicated action.

That is utterly amazing.  He was the first anti-abortion protester to be killed.  On the other hand, anti-abortion protesters regularly kill abortion doctors.  Why did Damien Cave leave that important detail out?  There are two extensive Wikipedia articles about anti-abortion violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence_in_the_United_States

Why is this one murdered anti-abortion protester a symbol of dedicated action?  Are all of the doctors, nurses, receptionists, and security guards who died in supporting abortion (or simply doing their jobs) also symbols of dedicated action?  Going by the Wikipedia articles, anti-abortion protesters have committed hundreds of incidents of violent attacks, death threats, murders, attempted murders, kidnappings, bioterror threats, property crimes, bomb threats, bombings, arsons, vandalism, and trespassing.  Most of those, of course, were committed in the US.

This reminds me of protesters who try to protect nature and animals, but the situation is in reverse.  Evironmentalists and those against animal testing have never killed anyone in US history.  However, these protesters have been the target of numerous threats and acts of violence leading to many deaths and injuries.  Why is that?  Why are conservatives (social conservatives in the case of anti-abortion protesters) more prone to violence than liberals?  The most violent liberal protesters ever in US history were the Weather Underground and even they never killed anyone.  The Weather underground used bombs, but were always careful that people wouldn’t be harmed.  Contrast that to anti-abortion bombers who specifically target people.

What is interesting is that liberal protesters are often threatened, harmed and killed by people working for the government or large corporations.  The reason for this is that liberals are more likely than conservatives to clash with authority probably because conservatives by nature are more subservient to authority (which can be explained using the research into boundary types which shows that thick boundary types are more likely to be promoted in hierarchical institutions).  Maybe I’m being unfair, but it seems to me that conservatives for whatever reason are more likely to turn their aggression towards private citizens (i.e., those they perceive as being below them rather than those they perceive being above them).

Actually, I wonder how true it is that conservative protesters are less likely to confront and conflict with authority.  There are some conservative protesters that are aggressively confrontational to the powers that be and they tend to be libertarians especially of the religious variety, but maybe that says more about religious extremism than conservativism.  I was also thinking about how libertarians (such as farmers and other landowners) will support environentalists against the government and big business (such as when the government wants to take or otherwise use their land).

The odd thing is that Fox news was during the Bush administration so critical of protesters.  But now that a Democrat is in power they support and actively promote protest.  However, the protesters of Bush were often libertarians.  Why does the conservative party have an uncertain relationship with libertaranism.  When it comes to protesting, libertarians became identified with liberals because it’s often impossible to tell them apart and even the protesters don’t necessarilly make this differentiation.

So, there are two questions.  Why are conservatives reluctant towards becoming involved in protesting and often critical of protesters?  Why are conservatives the most violent protesters when they do become involved?

 – – –

Stumbling Blocks on the Path of Righteousness by Benedict Carey

Ross MacDonald

I really loved this article.  It goes against commonsense, but I must admit it’s the type of thing that has always made sense to me.  I’m just happy when research supports my own intuition.  🙂  However, I have no special power of intuitive knowing.  If you’ve studied widely the subject of psychology, I doubt you’d be surprised by this research.

In recent years, social psychologists have begun to study what they call the holier-than-thou effect. They have long known that people tend to be overly optimistic about their own abilities and fortunes — to overestimate their standing in class, their discipline, their sincerity.

But this self-inflating bias may be even stronger when it comes to moral judgment, and it can greatly influence how people judge others’ actions, and ultimately their own.

Heck, you don’t even need to study psychology.  Just observe people and this holier-than-thou effect is fairly obvious.  There really is nothing surprising about the fact that moral judgment has a personal bias.  That’s just basic human nature.  However, self-awareness of one’s own human nature isn’t inherently of human nature… or, to put it simply, most people are oblivious to their own biases.

A quote from the social psychologist David Dunning is more intriguing.

“But the point is that many types of behavior are driven far more by the situation than by the force of personality. What someone else did in that situation is a very strong warning about what you yourself would do.”

That is something that is so important that it can’t be over-emphasized.  Social conservatives always worry about moral relativism, but what their ideology misses is the actual psychology of moral behavior.  People should think twice before judging someone else.  If you had the same experiences and were in the same situation as another person, you’d probably make the same choices.  In this light, righteousness isn’t very moral in and of itself.  Compassionate awareness and humility is more likely to lead to tangible moral results.  I would guess that the more righteous someone is the more likely they’re to act against their own stated beliefs.  This is partly why outspoken evangelists become involved in socially unacceptable sexual activities.

“The problem with these holier-than-thou assessments is not only that we overestimate how we would have behaved,” Dr. Epley said. “It’s also that we blame every crisis or scandal on failure of character — you know, if we just fire all the immoral Wall Street bankers and replace them with moral ones, we’ll solve the problem.”

And that is exactly what moral conservatives believe.  This attitude comes up all of the time in the comments of the local news website.  The more different someone is the more likely they’re to be judged harshly for their failings.  It’s easy to dismiss the situation of another person when you’ve never lived in that situation.  Also, people tend to want to take credit for the advantages they were given in life and claim it as “moral character”.

In experiments as in life, the holier-than-thou effect diminishes quickly when people have actually had the experience they are judging: dubious accounting practices will appear less shady to the person who has had to put a good face on a failing company. And the effect is apparently less pronounced in cultures that emphasize interdependence over individual achievement, like China and Spain.

It’s hard to be humble and compassionate if you’ve never experienced difficulties and suffering, and even then you’ll tend to only sympathize with the specific difficulties and sufferings that you’ve experienced.  I always get irritated by people who judge others for something they’ve never personally experienced.  That is one of my pet peeves.

I appreciated the last comment about “cultures that emphasize interdependence”.  I’d assume that those cultures also emphasize sympathy because it’s through sympathy that interdepndence is encouraged.  On the other hand, I should point out that research also shows that interdependent cultures tend to isolate individuals and so the sympathy that is encouraged might be very narrow.  Anyways, an interdependent culture would certainly value personal humility over personal righteousness.

One practice that can potentially temper feelings of moral superiority is religion. All major faiths emphasize the value of being humble and the perils of hubris. “In humility count others as better than yourself,” St. Paul advises in his letter to the Philippians.

Yet for some people, religion appears to amplify the instinct to feel like a moral beacon. In a 2002 study, [ . . . ] the students in this highly religious group considered themselves, on average, almost twice as likely as their peers to adhere to such biblical commandments as “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The study also found that the most strictly fundamentalist of the students were at the highest end of the scale. “It reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers,” said Dr. Epley, of Chicago. “ ‘Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.’ ”

This reminds me of a long post I wrote trying to come to terms with Christians relationship with morality (Morality: Christians vs. Jesus).  I was comparing research done on the type of person who supports torture with the teachings of Jesus who was tortured.  The extremely interresting fact was that Christians were largely in favor of torture.  This seems rather odd until you consider the larger context of Christian history and modern fundamentalism.  This article adds even further data to explain this situation.  The more ideologically religious one is the more one is likely to judge oneself favorably and presumably more likely to judge others less favorably.  This might be explained partially by the way a religion creates a clear sense of an in-crowd and an out-crowd.  And the person not a part of the group is inherently less worthy (and this attitude is probably responsible for a fair amount of the violence in the world).

For all that, an abiding feeling of moral superiority is intrinsic to what some psychologists call self-enhancement. So-called self-enhancers think that they’re blessed, that they’re highly appreciated by others and that they’ll come out on top. And sometimes they do, studies suggest — especially in life-or-death crises like 9/11 and the Bosnian war.

“Self-enhancers do very well, across the board, on measures of mental healthin these situations,” said George Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia.

But in the mundane ebb and flow of life, an inflated sense of personal virtue can also be a minefield. “Overconfident stock traders tend to do worse; people buy too many gym memberships,” said Dr. Dunning, of Cornell. “In the economic realm, the outcomes are not so good.”

This reminds me of research done on pessimism and optimism.  Optimists are more successful in many fields and there are many advantages to being an optimist such as better health.  However, pessimists have a more realistic assessment of the actual facts and also a more realistic assessment of themselves.  A pessimist may sound like a cynic, but they might be more likely to consistently act according to their own sense of morality.

 – – –

Why the Imp in Your Brain Gets Out by Benedict Carey

Scott Menchin

An important point I’ve read about before is the following.

But a vast majority of people rarely, if ever, act on such urges, and their susceptibility to rude fantasies in fact reflects the workings of a normally sensitive, social brain, argues a paper published last week in the journal Science.

It’s normal to have “abnormal” thoughts and fantasies.  It’s because people worry about these kinds of things that they become so prominent in the workings of our minds.  The person who acts on such horrible thoughts may actually think and fantasize about it less than normal.  However, these thoughts do have influence.

The empirical evidence of this influence has been piling up in recent years, as Dr. Wegner documents in the new paper. In the lab, psychologists have people try to banish a thought from their minds — of a white bear, for example — and find that the thought keeps returning, about once a minute. Likewise, people trying not to think of a specific word continually blurt it out during rapid-fire word-association tests.

The same “ironic errors,” as Dr. Wegner calls them, are just easy to evoke in the real world. Golfers instructed to avoid a specific mistake, like overshooting, do it more often when under pressure, studies find. Soccer players told to shoot a penalty kick anywhere but at a certain spot of the net, like the lower right corner, look at that spot more often than any other.

[ . . . ]

The researchers had about half the students try to suppress bad stereotypes of black males as they read and, later, judged Donald’s character on measures like honesty, hostility and laziness. These students rated Donald as significantly more hostile — but also more honest — than did students who were not trying to suppress stereotypes.

In short, the attempt to banish biased thoughts worked, to some extent. But the study also provided “a strong demonstration that stereotype suppression leads stereotypes to become hyperaccessible,” the authors concluded.

None of this is exactly new insight, but the point is that research is starting to prove it.  Psychologists and parenting gurus have been telling people for a long time to state things in the positive because the mind doesn’t understand a negative.  To the subconscious mind, the phrase “don’t think” simply translates to “think”.  Any self-aware person realizes the truth of this.

The point of taking this type of research into consideration is that it can be helpful to give people perspective.  People shouldn’t be so hard on themselves.  There is nothing wrong with you for having strange thoughts.  If you’re worried about acting on dark fantasies, your worrying demonstrates that your unlikely to act on them.  However, if those urges become too strong, I’d recommend seeking help.  When the voices tell you to kill someone, please get a second opinion.

 – – –

When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’ by Alfie Kohn

Wesley Bedrosian

I was just recently writing about this topic and this author in my blog (Punishment/Reward, Good/Evil, Victim/Victimizer).  This article is about contingent love as a method of parenting (and I think this topic has direct bearing on the above article about moral righteousness).  One can question the morality of contingent parenting, but the practical side of it is simply whether it works or not.

This raises the intriguing possibility that the problem with praise isn’t that it is done the wrong way — or handed out too easily, as social conservatives insist. Rather, it might be just another method of control, analogous to punishment. The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that children must earn a parent’s love. A steady diet of that, Rogers warned, and children might eventually need a therapist to provide the unconditional acceptance they didn’t get when it counted.

 Any reward always implies a potential punishment.  Even if the punishment isn’t overt or even intentional per se, what is the effect of this contingent love?

It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed. [ . . . ] Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional affection with their own children.

[In another study] giving more approval when children did what parents wanted was carefully distinguished from giving less when they did not.

The studies found that both positive and negative conditional parenting were harmful, but in slightly different ways. The positive kind sometimes succeeded in getting children to work harder on academic tasks, but at the cost of unhealthy feelings of “internal compulsion.” Negative conditional parenting didn’t even work in the short run; it just increased the teenagers’ negative feelings about their parents.

 I’m a fan of research.  Most people ground their opinions in ideology rather than facts.  Of course, the data has to be interpreted.   There are always other interpretations, but even so an interpretation is only as good as the data it’s based on.  I don’t believe parents should simply submit to experts to tell them what to do any more than they should blindly submit to any other authority figure.  Parents should trust their own experience to an extent, but research can help us to understand the larger context of our experiences.  Any parent should take this kind of research very seriously.

In practice, according to an impressive collection of data by Dr. Deci and others, unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.

The last of these features is important with respect to unconditional parenting itself. Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children — whether they feel just as loved when they mess up or fall short.

 I liked these ending comments.  This answers the crticisms of those who would oppose unconditional parenting.  It doesn’t simply mean to let kids do whatever they want, but it means having a sympathetic and understanding of one’s child.  The idea is that if you want respect from your children then you should treat them with respect.  If you  want to teach your children how to be loving, how to be open and trusting, then you should teach by example.  One has to decide about one’s priorities.  Is it more important to force a child through fear (or withholding of love) to respect one’s authority or is it more important to raise a happy and well-balanced child?

  – – –

Does a Nation’s Mood Lurk in Its Songs and Blogs? by Benedict Carey

Wesley Bedrosian

This is the type of research that fascinates me.

In a new paper, a pair of statisticians at the University of Vermont argue that linguistic analysis — not just of song lyrics but of blogs and speeches — could add a new and valuable dimension to a growing area of mass psychology: the determination of national well-being.

“We argue that you can use this data as a kind of remote sensor of well-being,” said Peter Sheridan Dodds, a co-author of the new paper, with Christopher M. Danforth; both are in the department of mathematics and statistics.

“It’s information people are volunteering; they’re not being surveyed in the usual way,” Dr. Dodds went on. “You mess with people when you ask them questions about happiness. You’re not sure if they’re trying to make you happy, or have no idea whether they’re happy. It’s reactive.”

But I do have some criticisms.  Emotional expression may not be equivalent to emotional well-being.  The ways of expressing emotion may change, but I’m unconvinced that the basic level of emotion has changed.  Even so, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a change has occurred.  I do share the excitement of these researchers but I also share the opinions of the skeptics.

“The new approach that these researchers are taking is part of movement that is really exciting, a cross-pollination of computer science, engineering and psychology,” said James W. Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas. “And it’s going to change the social sciences; that to me is very clear.”

Researchers who specialize in analyzing mass measures of well-being are skeptical about what a content analysis of pop culture can really say, at least as a stand-alone measure.

“The approach is interesting, but I don’t see any evidence that the method produces a valid population-based measure of well-being,” Uli Schimmack, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, wrote in an e-mail message.

One issue is that pop culture and mainstream media have changed which might be the actual result of this apparent change in emotional well-being.  Media was more controlled and self-censored in the past.  There are more indie musicians who get their music out now than in the past.  There are more people voicing their opinions through non-traditional media.  So, maybe this only demonstrates a shift in censorship of emotional expression.

 – – –

‘Athens’ on the Net by Anand Giridharadas

Ridharadasp

I’m impressed by the quality of journalism in this article.  The subject matter a bit different from the other articles in this post, but it’s related.  It’s about how the common person participates (or not) in US democracy, and how this could change.  So, it’s about human relationships.  More importantly, it’s about challenging the hierarchical territory of politics where democracy only exists in name (btw I see this issue of hierarchical politics loosely related to the hierarchical style of parenting that promotes contingent love).  It’s a serious issue to consider whether democracy is doomed to be forever controlled and manipulated by the money and power of corporations and special interest groups.  It’s hard to imagine what a real democracy would even look like.  Some people claim a direct democracy where the average person’s opinion actually counts is an impossibility…. or even dangerous as the general population if given power supposedly would just turn into a mobocracy.

PERHAPS the biggest big idea to gather speed during the last millennium was that we humans might govern ourselves. But no one really meant it.

 Exactly!  Ideals are always nice.  They make for good political fodder and an effective method for subduing the masses… as long as they forever remain just ideals.

The headlines from Washington today blare of bailouts, stimulus, clunkers, Afpak, health care. But it is possible that future historians, looking back, will fixate on a quieter project of Barack Obama’s White House: its exploration of how government might be opened to greater public participation in the digital age, of how to make self-government more than a metaphor.

 I’ve been of the opinion for some time that we are in the midst of a major socio-political shift in our culture and probably in the world in general.  Technology is utterly transforming the world and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.  With the technological generations coming into power and taking over the workforce, we are going to see a massive jump in technological innovation of the likes that hasn’t been seen in recent decades.  The industrial age and the modernist ideals it fostered are still very powerful, but a new paradigm has finally gained enough power to challenge it.  It’s been a long time coming, but the massive size of Boomers slowed down this shift.  Gen Xers have been working in the background building the infrastructure of the Information Age and now we have our first Gen X president.  Obama won by appealing to the youth which offers us a glimpse of what we’re going to see in the near future when in 2012 the Millennials will dominate the presidential election.  The US is no longer controlled by the Boomers, but the Boomers are far from being out of the game.  There will be some major generational clashing in the next decade.

President Obama declared during the campaign that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” That messianic phrase held the promise of a new style of politics in this time of tweets and pokes. But it was vague, a paradigm slipped casually into our drinks. To date, the taste has proven bittersweet.

 I’m not sure it matters that Obama lives up to his promise.  The important point is the promise was made.  The sweetness of it may be undermined with the bitterness of politics as usual, but still the sweetness once tasted creates a hunger.  Any promising ideal will usually fail when it’s first proposed.  If one looks to history, it can take centuries for a good idea to really catch on and succeed.  Without a revolution to overthrow the government, it takes time to change established politics.  However, technology may speed up this process.

Federal agencies have been directed to release online information that was once sealed; reporters from Web-only publications have been called on at news conferences; the new portal Data.gov is allowing citizens to create their own applications to analyze government data. But the most revealing efforts have been in “crowdsourcing”: in soliciting citizens’ policy ideas on the Internet and allowing them to vote on one another’s proposals.

During the transition, the administration created an online “Citizen’s Briefing Book” for people to submit ideas to the president. “The best-rated ones will rise to the top, and after the Inauguration, we’ll print them out and gather them into a binder like the ones the president receives every day from experts and advisors,” Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, wrote to supporters.

 It sounds good in theory.  LOL  The author describes the results of this gathering of public opinion.  It may not seem inspiring, but I’d rather hear people’s actual opinions no matter what they are.  Even if the average person’s opinion is completely stupid, that is still a good thing to know.  Maybe the public isn’t capable of more serious opinions until their collective opinion is taken seriously.

There is a lively debate in progress about what some call Gov 2.0. One camp sees in the Internet an unprecedented opportunity to bring back Athenian-style direct democracy. [ . . . ] The people in this camp point to information technology’s aid to grassroots movements from Moldova to Iran. They look at India, where voters can now access, via text message, information on the criminal records of parliamentary candidates, and Africa, where cellphones are improving election monitoring. They note the new ease of extending reliable scientific and scholarly knowledge to a broad audience. They observe how the Internet, in democratizing access to facts and figures, encourages politician and citizen alike to base decisions on more than hunches.

But their vision of Internet democracy is part of a larger cultural evolution toward the expectation that we be consulted about everything, all the time. Increasingly, the best articles to read are the most e-mailed ones, the music worth buying belongs to singers we have just text-voted into stardom, the next book to read is one bought by other people who bought the last book you did, and media that once reported to us now publish whatever we tweet.

Yes, it’s a strange new world.  The question is does this actually open debate.  Do people just listen to the crowd and follow along?  Do people just get stuck in their own self-created niche where everything caters to their biases?  There are definite dangers.

Another camp sees the Internet less rosily. Its members tend to be enthusiastic about the Web and enthusiastic about civic participation; they are skeptical of the Internet as a panacea for politics. They worry that it creates a falsely reassuring illusion of equality, openness, universality. [ . . . ] “Many methods and technologies can be used to give voice to the public will. But some give a picture of public opinion as if through a fun-house mirror.”

True it creates an illusion, but politics at present just creates another kind of illusion.  Choose your illusion, as they say.  From my viewpoint, the risk is worth it because the opportunity is increased (as are the stakes).

Because it is so easy to filter one’s reading online, extreme views dominate the discussion. Moderates are underrepresented, so citizens seeking better health care may seem less numerous than poker fans. The Internet’s image of openness and equality belies its inequities of race, geography and age.

Now, there is a criticism that resonates deeply with me.  I get annoyed by how few moderates choose to voice their opinions and I get annoyed that so many ideologues feel it’s necessary to announce their every thought.  The internet is a specific medium that attracts a specific type of person.  The internet is Social Darwinism in action where thoughtful debate isn’t always fostered.  It takes effort to encourage people to relate well, but the ease of the internet doesn’t lend itself to people going to this effort.  People often make their quick rude comments and the people running the site are too busy or lazy to moderate such trolling and other anti-social behavior.

Lies spread like wildfire on the Web; Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, no Luddite, warned last October that if the great brands of trusted journalism died, the Internet would become a “cesspool” of bad information. Wikipedia plans to add a layer of editing — remember editing? — for articles on living people.

This sounds like fear-mongering to me.  The great brands of trusted journalism aren’t going to entirely die out.  The ones that do die out will be replaced by new ones.  People want good journalism and anyways the quality of journalism was suspect long before the internet.  People have been looking for alternative journalism for much of this past century and now the opportunity is here for alternative journalism on a large-scale.  It will take time for all of this to develop, but it will develop because the demand is there.

Perhaps most menacingly, the Internet’s openness allows well-organized groups to simulate support, to “capture and impersonate the public voice,” as Mr. Fishkin wrote in an e-mail exchange.

Ah, yes.  This very well may be the biggest danger of them all.  The new technologies allow for manipulation and propaganda on a scale never before possible.  The workings of the internet are so subtle that most people don’t even notice the inherent biases to search engines.  Also, it’s hard to tell if a website is trustworthy or even who is running and funding it.  Even so, there is more info than there ever has been.  The difference of todays technology is that it allows people to research something if they want to.  However, the average person has little desire (not to mention time and energy) to research most things.  If manipulation succeeds in todays world, it’s because of willful ignorance.  As long as people are willing to unquestioningly accept lies and deception, then there will always be those willing to supply it.  But this has always been true no matter what kind of technology is used.

There is no turning back the clock. We now have more public opinion exerting pressure on politics than ever before. The question is how it may be channeled and filtered to create freer, more successful societies, because simply putting things online is no cure-all.

Damn straight!  There is no turning back.  Full speed ahead be it utopia or dystopia.  It’s a brave new world, baby.  However, I don’t see too much reason to worry about it mainly because worry won’t alter the change that is happening.  We all might as go along with the flow.  Instead of struggling against the inevitable, let’s save our energies and keep our eyes open.  Democracy needs to be able to adapt and that is true now more than ever.  Also, democracy needs vigilance.

To end on a humorous note, I shall reward anyone who made it all the way down to the bottom of this post.