Dealing with monsters

Say what you want about human conflict, but literature would be a lot duller--or maybe even non-existent--without it. I remember a high school English class when a teacher explained that pretty much all of it had to do with conflict, either between characters, between characters and nature, or within characters. There might be some exceptions in this post-modern age, but he had a point

Imagine, for example, how dull Beowulf might have been if the creatures in it were expert at resolving conflict. In the epic, the monster Grendel is bothered by the noise of king Hrothgar's mead hall, where he and his boys revel all night:

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,
nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of man's beginnings.

Eventually, he starts eating people there. Imagine instead this scenario instead:

GRENDEL: Sorry to bother you, Hrothgar, but I've been having a little trouble sleeping since you built your mead hall. I know that this is very important for you but would appreciate it if you could keep the noise level down a bit. The thing is, I have a tendency to eat a bunch of people when I get upset and I'd rather that not happen.

HROTHGAR: Gee, Grendel, I never thought about that. We always have such a great time drinking, feasting and listening to the bard that I never thought this could bother anybody. But you have to understand that someone in my position has to have a place like that to give gifts and keep my boys happy--otherwise they wouldn't fight for me when I needed it.

GRENDEL: I totally appreciate that. Maybe we could agree that you guys could revel for a while but try keeping it down after, say, midnight. And since you've recently converted to Catholicism, maybe you could try something like bingo when it gets late.

HROTHGAR: Bingo...I never thought of that. How about we try this for a few weeks and see how it works: we'll tone it down after midnight and will even cut you in some livestock every now and then if you'll refrain from eating my guys.

GRENDEL: Deal. Thanks! See you around.

That just doesn't do it for me.

DUMBING DOWN. Here's Leonard Pitts on our falling away from science.

SWORDS TO PLOWS. Literally. This story is about an effort to help combat veterans from the current wars to try their hand at organic farming.

FOOD, FLOODS AND CLIMATE discussed here.

URGENT BLACK WIDOW SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Cultures of honor

Stewpot Rooster was always ready to defend his honor.

Lately Goat Rope is looking at how cultural factors can shape people's attitudes towards violence. As noted previously, in societies where the good things of life are scarce and easily stolen, people often develop attitudes that support the use or threat of violence to defend goods, status and respect.

Social scientists refer to such societies as "cultures of honor," but that term may require a little unpacking. The term honor, after all, has many meanings. In this case, we are not referring to honor in terms of moral rectitude or virtue such as Samuel Johnson did in his dictionary. Johnson defined honor as "nobility of soul, magnanimity, and a scorn of meanness."

Instead, as Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue in Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, the term refers to societies in which

The individual is prepared to protect his reputation--for probity or strength or both--by resort to violence. Such cultures seem to be particularly likely to develop where (1) the individual is at economic risk from his fellows and (2) the state is weak or nonexistent and thus cannot prevent or punish theft of property.

Think Wild West, prisons, rough city neighborhoods or schools, isolated but dangerous rural areas, herding societies, etc. Cultures (and subcultures) of honor have developed in many parts of the world where similar conditions prevail. And once a culture acquires certain traits, they can often endure long after the conditions that engendered them have changed.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here's a article about the influence of war on human evolution.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's Gazette columnist and economics professor John David writing in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

HUNGRY PLANET. From the New Yorker, this is an interesting take on the global food crisis that takes a swipe or two at market fundamentalism.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE don't watch a whole lot of television.

FAILED CHARM OFFENSIVE. Here's what Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship had to say about the recent settlement of a lawsuit by the widows of the Aracoma mine fire.

WOOLY MAMMOTHS, ANYONE? Scientists are talking seriously about cooking one up.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: MAMMOTH

HOW TO BREAK UP WITH A GODDESS

The god Hermes gives Calypso the bad news. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, but you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like that kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. The series started Aug. 4.

Odysseus doesn't really enter the story in his own right until Book 5 of the epic and he's in a strange situation. Imagine having everything most people think they want--and still being miserable.

For seven years, Odysseus, having lost all his 600+ men on the way from Troy, has been marooned on the island of the beautiful goddess Calypso. It's sun, sea, sand, sex with a beautiful partner and good food and wine every day. One other thing--she's even willing to give him immortality and freedom from further aging so he can keep doing that forever.

I know lots of people who would kill for a gig like that...

In spite of all that, Odysseus stands at the edge of the sea every day, weeping for his home. Thanks to the intervention of the goddess Athena, Zeus sends the messenger god Hermes to Calypso to tell her she needs to let him go. She doesn't take it very well:

..."Hard hearted
you are, you gods! You unrivaled lords of jealousy--
scandalized when goddesses sleep with mortals...
So now at last you train your spite on me
for keeping a mortal man beside me. The man I saved,
riding astride his keel-board, all alone, when Zeus
with one hurl of a white-hot bolt had crushed
his racing warship down the wine-dark sea...
And I welcomed him warmly, cherished him, even vowed
to make the man immortal, ageless, all his days...
But since there is no way for another god to thwart
the will of storming Zeus and make it come to nothing,
let the man go--if the Almighty insists, commands--
and destroy himself on the barren salt sea!"

But even with Zeus on your side, it's dangerous to hook up with an immortal--and even more dangerous to break up with one. When she tells Odysseus that she's willing to help him leave if he really wants to, he is characteristically cautious, making her swear by the River Styx that she isn't tricking him.

Then he has the delicate task of letting her down easily. One thing you don't want to say to a goddess is "You're OK but I like another woman better"--even if she's your wife. In a masterpiece of tact, he explains

"Ah great goddess,"
worldly Odysseus answered, "don't be angry with me,
please. All that you say is true, how well I know.
Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you,
your beauty, stature. She is mortal after all
and you, you never age or die...
Nevertheless I long--I pine, all my days--
to travel home and see the dawn of my return,
And if a god wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
in the waves and wars. Add this to the total--
bring the trial on!"

He may have been the inventor of the classic "It's not you, it's me" line. At any rate, she helps him on his way.

More tomorrow.

THE BIG ECONOMIC SQUEEZE is working its way up the income chain.

WATER, WATER (NOT) EVERYWHERE. Here's an item on the links between global water and food problems.

ONE GENDER GAP that is closing is the math gap between boys and girls.

MEDICAID. West Virginia's redesigned version of Medicaid took another hit in a study by Families USA.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE DRUGGED MARRIAGE

Just one look/that's all it took. In this ancient vase, Menelaus is stopped from killing his unfaithful wife Helen by one look at her beauty. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope Odyssey series continues. If you like the classics, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find news and comments about current events.

When you're in a bad way, sometimes you feel better if at least you have a plan to try something. When things are bad for Odysseus' son Telemachus--his mother's suitors are devouring his substance and threatening his life while his father is apparently dead--the goddess Athena gives him a boost. She inspires him to take a sea voyage to visit his father's comrades at Troy to seek for news.

He receives great hospitality but not much news from Nestor, king of Pylos. He then proceeds to visit Menelaus, king of Sparta, and his wife Helen, who was a major cause of the whole Trojan War. Menelaus tells of an encounter with the minor sea god Proteus who told him that Odysseus was still alive. The most interesting part of the story, though, is that of the very troubled marriage of Menelaus and Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

Back in the proverbial day, all the leading men of Greece courted her and swore to uphold the marriage when Menelaus prevailed. But when the Trojan prince Paris visited Sparta, he abducted Helen, not altogether unwillingly, and took her to Troy. This wasn't just bad manners--it was sacrilege, a terrible violation of xenia, the sacred guest/host relationship. According to the myth, this was what led the Greeks to invade Troy and fight there for 10 long years.

Paris is killed towards the end of the war. When the city is finally taken, Menelaus nearly kills Helen but is overwhelmed by her beauty and brings her back to Sparta where they try to get back to normal.

Now every marriage has issues, but this one is way over the top. There's not just infidelity, there's also a war that brought disaster on thousands of people on both sides. How do they deal with all those bad memories and recriminations? The answer is...drugs.

Then Zeus's daughter Helen thought of something else.
Into the mixing-bowl from which they drank their wine
she slipped a drug, heart's-ease, dissolving anger,
magic to make us all forget our pains...
No one who drank it deeply, mulled in wine,
could let a tear roll down his cheeks that day,
not even if his mother should die, his father die,
not even if right before his eyes some enemy brought down
a brother or darling son with a sharp bronze blade...

(There have been times when El Cabrero wouldn't have refused a swig of that mix.)

Then as now, people who have gone through war and other traumas often seek to dull the pain through self medication. It's probably not the best way of dealing with such things. In fact, as Jonathan Shay points out in his discussion of the Odyssey, it often causes people to miss or lose their homecoming.

But with a couple like that, what are you going to do?

DOES ANYBODY ELSE SEE A TINY BIT OF IRONY IN THIS STATEMENT by Condoleezza Rice about how invading another country can make a bad impression?

The behavior of Russia in this most recent crisis is isolating Russia from the principles of cooperation among nations of the communities of states when you start invading small neighbors, bombing civilian infrastructure, going into villages and wreaked havoc and wanton destruction of this infrastructure [emphasis added] .

HUNGRY PLANET, AGAIN. Here's another take on the global food crisis.

NOT A GOOD SIGN of the health of the economy, here's the latest on a key economic indicator.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS about environmental innovations can be found here.

THE MIRROR STAGE. Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror. Discuss.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

NEMESIS

The fearsome goddess, courtesy of wikipedia.

On the walls of the temple of the god Apollo at Delphi were carved the words "Meden agan" and "gnothi seauton"--Nothing in excess and Know thyself. As words of wisdom go, those are two of the best.

It was commonly held that excess (hubris) leads to destruction. (Good thing that doesn't happen any more, huh?). The "Know thyself" thing could be interpreted in lots of ways but the main idea was know that you are just a mortal, not a god.

A basic idea that runs through Greek mythology is that of nemesis, personified as a goddess of the same name that "gives what is due." When people are excessive, i.e. when they act as if they were gods, they have to pay the price. Although the goddess Nemesis doesn't have a speaking role in the Odyssey, the concept does.

Like Dylan said, "When you bite off more than you can chew/you've got to pay the penalty."

That was the case of the Greeks at Troy. After they finally gained access to the city they had besieged for 10 years, they committed a number of atrocities and excesses. Achilles' son Neoptolemos killed King Priam at his family altar. The child Astyanax, son of Hector and Andromache, is thrown from the city walls. According to some versions, Ajax the Lesser raped Cassandra, daughter of Priam, in the temple of Athena.

The gods were not amused.

For those reasons, the "victors" at Troy must pay a heavy price. Some, like King Agamemnon, will be slain when they reach home. Menelaus and Helen won't make it home for eight years. Ajax the Less will drown on the way home. Many others die on the way as well.

Odysseus must wander and suffer for 10 years and go home to face much trouble. In the epic cycle, the characters frequently opine that the lucky ones fell in battle.

As you may have noticed, sometimes you lose when you win and vice versa.

The Odyssey is all about the perils of homecoming and the price of excess.

SPEAKING OF NEMESIS. Thomas Frank ponders the conservative crackup in his latest book. Here's a preview.

HEY NEMESIS, COULD YOU PUT THESE GUYS ON YOUR LIST? It looks like Wal-Mart's latest attempt to intimidate employees might have backfired a little. Not enough...

HUNGRY PLANET. Here's an item on possible responses to the global food crisis.

CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICISM is predictable but unaffordable, according to this item from the Boston Globe.

QUEEN OF THE STARS. Brian May, founder and guitar meister of the rock group Queen just published his Ph. D. thesis on astronomy. I hope it comes with a guitar solo. For that matter, we should name a galaxy for Freddie Mercury. A planet just isn't enough.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: STELLAR

RESISTING UNWANTED INFLUENCES

Diego the turkey is mostly influenced by love.

It often seems to El Cabrero that people who are interested in trying to make the world a little less violent and more just sometimes rely more on rhetoric than research. While there ain't nothing wrong with talking pretty, it probably won't get us where we need to go. Whenever possible, I recommend taking advantage of the relevant findings from the social sciences.

This is especially true when dealing with issues of violence and cruelty. Labeling something as bad is not the same as understanding what causes it or what can prevent or reduce it.

The last few weeks at Goat Rope have focused on how situations and systems can influence people to do things they would not otherwise have done, with a special tip of the hat (or goat horns) to Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect.

Suggestion: buy the book!

On the bright side, I think that understanding how these things work can help give people the resources to resist unwanted social influences. By way of conclusion, here's a link to 20 tips on resisting unwanted influences as prepared by Zimbardo and Cindy X. Wang.

It's pretty basic stuff--like not thinking it could never happen to you, being willing to admit mistakes, accepting responsibility for one's actions, resisting illegitimate authority--but then it's usually the basics that you can rely on.

MINIMUM WAGE. The newly-increased federal minimum wage trails behind many states, as the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot reveals.

THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS is hitting Africa particularly hard.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The latest news about the US economy isn't good, but you already knew that. Here's something on the rise of unemployment claims and here's coverage of the latest Fed report on the state of the economy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DARKNESS VISIBLE

Lucifer falling. Gustave Dore's illustration of Milton's Paradise Lost. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Let's start with an unsolicited product endorsement. El Cabrero officially recommends that anyone interested in making the world be a little less nasty should get their hands on a copy of Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. It's not just a useful and important book. It's a page turner.

For starters, you can go to the book's informative website right now.

Zimbardo has been a leading figure in social psychology for decades. He is best known for the disastrous but illuminating Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), in which psychologically normal students were randomly assigned to prisoner and guard roles for an anticipated two week experiment. The mask quickly became the face and the roles became real. Guards began abusing prisoners within 36 hours and prisoners began to show signs of acute mental distress. The experiment had to be called off in less than a week.

In his 2007 book, Zimbardo not only recaps the SPE but generalizes its conclusions and summarizes other relevant research, with all too many illustrations from recent events.

There's a lot to unpack there, but here's a start. Most of the evil acts from human history haven't been committed by sociopaths but rather by normal people. As C. P. Snow put it,

...you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

Usually, when we try to explain evil behavior, we look at the individual psychology or disposition of the people who engage in it. But this misses two other factors that exert a much greater influence on what happens: the situation and the system that underlies it.

More on that tomorrow.

STATING THE OBVIOUS. Oil may have had something to do with the unnecessary war in Iraq.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE. On a related note, many Americans are rethinking their love affair with the car.

THE PROPER MEASURE of poverty and what to do about it is discussed herein.

TWO MILLION VIOLATIONS. A Minnesota judge ruled that Wal-Mart made employees work off the clock and skip breaks over 2 million times. Workers were granted back pay to the tune of $6.5 million. This fall, a jury will consider punitive damages.

LET THEM EAT ETHANOL. A recently leaked World Bank report blames biofuels for the global spike in food prices.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOT PYRAMIDS?

Pyramid of the Moon.

When El Cabrero was a little kid, I used to have a recurring dream (or one that I dreamed was recurring, anyway) about sitting among old stone ruins. Every time I get around some, even little ones, I kind of bliss out.

Visiting Teotihuacan was right up my alley.



This civilization thrived from a century or two before the common era and peaked around 350-650. At one time, its population was higher than the city of Rome.


Pyramid of the Sun.

It began to quickly decline in the 7th and 8th centuries for reasons that are still debated, including internal unrest (it takes a ruthless class system to make people build pyramids), invasion, climate change, famine, disease, etc.


Lesser pyramids.

Good though!

GOT FOOD? Here's another take on the world food crisis by Frances Moore Lappe.

MEASURING POVERTY. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute suggests the official federal poverty measure is obsolete and underestimates the real poverty level.

MILITARY FORCE is a blunt instrument for solving the world's problems or protecting national security, according to this item from the Center for American Progress.

CHICKEN OR EGG? A recent study suggests human thought may not follow the same flow as many human languages. Many languages follow the subject/verb/object sequence but when subjects who spoke different languages were given the task of conveying a message with hand signs, most followed the subject/object/verb pattern. Wasn't that the way Yoda talked? Interesting that is...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THOUGHTS ON DINOSAUR MANAGEMENT

Recent scientific discoveries point more and more to the evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds (search the Goat Rope archives for more). And the contemporary animal that shows up in articles about the above is the peacock.

Not long ago, there was an announcement that some dinosaurs had feathers, along with speculation that these performed the same display functions that you see in peafowl. Recent DNA tests have found that the tyrannosaurus had more genes in common with peafowl and chickens than with crocodiles and Komodo dragons.

Based on those premises, here are El Cabrero's thoughts on what you need to know about keeping dinosaurs.

1. Dinosaurs are LOUD. Especially in the summer when thoughts turn to love.

2. Dinosaurs are all about showing off. Especially the guys. (Note: they may not have a monopoly on this.) But they dress casually in the off-season.

3. Dinosaurs are kind of smart but really emotional when their hormones are ramped up. Sometimes boy dinosaurs get jealous of each other and chase each other around like a scene from the Benny Hill Show. But they can be really parental--even the dads (when the chicks are little).

4. Dinosaurs like to take dust baths.

5. Dinosaurs like to walk around and pick at things, but they usually sleep in pretty much the same places given the opportunity.

6. Dinosaurs are all about courtship, except for the chicken-related branches, for which consent is not required.

7. Dinosaurs read entirely too much sociobiology.

One final word about peacocks from the realm of religion. In a book I recently read on Buddhism, I was reminded that Prince Siddhartha grew up in a palace complete with peacocks in the garden. Now I know why he left home...

All I really wanted was a cat.

TOOL KIT for extreme inequality is here, by way of The Nation.

RISING FOOD PRICES are forcing many agencies to cut nutritional corners.

SEX ON THE BRAIN. Scientists have found a possible link between sexual orientation and brain symmetry.

URGENT ANCIENT GIANT MARSUPIAL WOMBAT UPDATE here.

IF IT SOUNDS LIKE THE MOTHER SHIP IS HOVERING OUTSIDE, must be cicadas.

ONE FOR THE ROAD. El Cabrero is about to hit the road for a while. Goat Rope, like the show, must go on, but without links about current events.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TWO BIRDS

Metaphors are an important and inevitable way of looking at the world. Some cognitive scientists think we're basically wired for metaphor. I even remember reading a book about the American Civil War that suggested one reason why the Union prevailed was that Lincoln made better use of metaphors than Jefferson Davis.

(The author had a point, but I tend to be of the same mind as the ill-fated Confederate General George Pickett, who mused that "the Union army had something to do with it" as well.)

We need good metaphors if we're going to start thinking and moving in the direction of a just and sustainable economy. I stumbled across a pretty good one in the introduction to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy:

For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. That's why centuries since Adam Smith have been devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production. The idea that individuals, pursuing their own individual interests in a market society, make one another richer and the idea that increasing efficiency, usually by increasing scale, is the key to increasing wealth that has indisputably produced More. It has built the unprecedented prosperity and ease that distinguish the lives of most of the people reading this book. It is now wonder and no accident that they dominate our politics, our outlook, even our personalities.

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. That changes everything. Now, if you've got the stone of your own life, or your own society, gripped in your hand, you have to choose between them. It's More or Better.

STICKING WITH THE THEME, perhaps the "age of heroic consumption" is at an end.

GROW IT. Local food banks are urging gardeners to donate fresh food to help feed the hungry. Beware the flood of zucchinis!

SPEAKING OF FOOD, this article argues that sustainable farming is the way to go and that globally we can expect women to take a leading role.

REST, REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT! Insomnia and poor sleep quality has been linked to suicidal symptoms in college students. I think it's nap time.

SPACED OUT. Here are a couple posts from Wired Science about how the location of extraterrestrial life, if it happens, might affect religion.

MEDICAID. This Gazette story discusses the current state of Medicaid in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHAT'S THE POINT?

The view of human nature and the good life that seems to prevail in some economic circles is one of endless growth and consumption and a rising GDP. Unquestionably, having an adequate standard of living in the society in which one lives is important and can contribute to happiness. Beyond a certain point, it's a little murkier.

There's something pretty flawed with a view that equates spending by itself with well being. In that scenario, as Bill McKibben notes in his excellent book Deep Economy,

Under the current system, as many have pointed out, all we do is add together expenditures, so that the most "economically productive" citizen is a cancer patient who totals his car on his way to meet his divorce lawyer.

Aside from sustainability, there are lots of problems with equating happiness with endless acquisition. One will be perfectly obvious to anyone who has ever watched (or been) a child at a commercially driven Christmas celebration. After endless anxiety about presents and the final orgy of opening them, a feeling of letdown prevails and the child sometimes derives more entertainment from playing with the boxes.

One term for that endless pursuit of happiness by means of stuff is the "hedonic treadmill." As anyone who has ever exercised on one of those infernal devices will attest, one works really hard without ever reaching an endpoint. Often, we are conditioned to think that if we only have the latest goo-gaw, bliss will be attained. But there's always another goo-gaw and bliss is always one goo-gaw away.

(Disclosure: El Cabrero has plenty of goo-gaws--almost enough, in fact. Just a few more and I'm set.)

ROBOT LOVE. Speaking of goo-gaws, how would you like a robot to love?

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, here's an article from the AFLCIO blog on 75 years of the Catholic Worker movement.

WHOSE NANNY STATE? This item shows that, contrary to free market ideology, government plays a role in the success of market outcomes.

GOOD THING THE COLD WAR ARMS RACE IS OVER. Global military spending has gone up by 45 percent in the last 10 years. Half of that would be the US. So that's where the butter went...

URBAN GARDENS MAKE A DIFFERENCE. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuban urban gardens have helped fill a nutritional and economic void. As the global food crisis deepens, these deserve a second look.

URGENT HORSESHOE CRAB UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SHAME

Funakoshi's shrine in Kamakura, courtesy of wikipedia.

The venerable Okinawan karate master Gichin Funakoshi left behind the essence of his teaching in his master text, Karate-Do Kyohan. The book concludes with a chapter titled "Maxims for the Trainee," which consist of proverbs, ethical advice and sayings from ancient sources.

One line in it puzzled me for years:

A gentleman should be gentle and never be menacing; close, yet never forward; slay, but never humiliate...

I got the gentle and close part, but it took a while to digest the part about slaying but not humiliating. Obviously, he wasn't advocating slaying since he constantly preached non-aggression and respect for life, even though he taught that one should be prepared for any emergency. The saying was meant to convey not the thinkability of slaying but the unthinkability of humiliating someone.

This wasn't just idle talk--it was almost a taboo. A traditional karate dojo drums respect and courtesy into a student from the first minute they step on the floor. (The student had better bow before doing that, by the way.) Respect is even--or maybe especially--to be extended to one's opponents. And people are expected to act that way in and out of the dojo. Funakoshi's mantra was "karate begins and ends with courtesy."

It was only after I made a study of the nature of violence that I came to fully understand his wisdom. As Dr. James Gilligan argued in his 1996 book Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, shaming, disrespect, degradation, and humiliation are precisely the pathogens that transmit violence:

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo the "loss of face"--no matter how sever the punishment, even if it includes death...

The emotion of shame is the primary or ultimate cause of all violence whether toward others or toward the self. Shame is a necessary but not sufficient cause of violence, just as the tubercle bacillus is necessary but not sufficient for the development of tuberculosis. Several preconditions have to be met before shame can lead to the full pathogenesis of violent behaviour. The pathogenic, or violence-inducing, effects of shame can be stimulated, inhibited, or redirected, both by the presence or absence of other feelings, such as guilt or innocence, and by the specific social and psychological circumstances in which shame is experienced.

The different forms of violence, whether toward individuals or entire populations, are motivated (caused) by the feeling of shame. The purpose of violence is to diminish the intensity of shame and replace it as far as possible with its opposite, pride, thus preventing the individual from being overwhelmed by the feeling of shame...

I'm presenting his conclusions rather than the case he makes to support them, so check out the book for that. I will say that he worked for decades with violent offenders in prisons and mental hospitals and has also studied the effects of structural violence such as inequality.

In my experience in trying to prevent or reduce violence, I've often noticed how the smallest incident which someone perceives as shaming can set off all kinds of consequences that can spin totally out of control and harm innocent people.

(All the carnage of the Iliad, the reader may recall, happened because someone degraded someone else by taking away his prize...)

Study and experience have convinced me of Funakoshi's wisdom. Sometimes struggles happen and when they're on, they're on. But they are more easily prevented and have more chance of eventual resolution if one refrains from humiliating one's opponents. It's a powerful preventive measure in containing the toxin that contributes to violence.

HUNGRY COUNTRY. Rising food prices are cutting the value of food stamps even as more Americans turn to them. This one is from the Washington Post.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE FOOD PANTRY, costs are climbing along with demand.

MORE CHEERY NEWS about what the Iraq war has done to global energy costs can be found here.

One more thought...our industrialized and globalized food system is based on cheap oil, both for transportation and for fertilizers.

YOU MAY NEED A WEATHERMAN. A new stuudy of climate change predicts major disruptions in water, agriculture, and forestry.

SAIL ON... El Cabrero is sad to report the death of labor folksinger and Wobbly Utah Phillips, who died in his sleep on May 23. He "taught" me several classic IWW songs, which I still occasionally plunk out on guitar when the mood strikes. Here's hoping he really does get pie in the sky.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MORAL JU JITSU

Dojo practice in Japan, circa 1920, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is about applying principles from the martial arts to working and writing to achieve social change or social conservation. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

In yesterday's post, I talked a little about ju jitsu, moral, political and Brazilian. Today's will pick up on the latter. I urge non-martial artists to bear with me since I honestly believe these strategies represent the last best hope of making things a little less bad.

In the 1990s, a revolution occurred in the martial arts world as a result of full contact matches with very few rules that pitted people from different fighting styles against each other. Overwhelmingly, the winners were grapplers trained in or influenced by Brazilian ju jitsu, a style widely associated with the Gracie family.

For an old karate dinosaur like El Cabrero, this was sooo not cool. It really wasn't fair. People who were really formidable in arts based on striking but knew nothing else were helpless against ju jitsu fighters. And the weird thing is, the ju jitsu guys would win in a way that left no room for doubt but which didn't hurt their opponents at all, aside from wounded pride.

How bad was it? Let's just say that if you pitted a real good boxer or striker with years of experience and no knowledge of grappling against a rookie who's been practicing ju jitsu for six months, the smart money is on the rookie.

Part of the reason for that is Darwinian. When critters are exposed to a threat for which they have not evolved defenses, they're toast unless and until they adapt. But part of the reason is a refined strategy which is really a development of the ideas of classical martial arts. Like all styles, ju jitsu uses the force of the opponent and attacks weak spots. But it does something more.

Brazilian ju jitsu is based on the idea that a struggle has different phases (some would say ranges or levels) and positions. Each phase or level requires a different set of skills. Brazilian stylists will try to take the fight to a phase or level where their opponent's strengths are useless. Once there, they position themselves in a such a way that the opponent is rendered harmless and can be persuaded to give up (often by the application of a submission technique).

Here's an illustration. A boxer can be dangerous--standing up. On the ground, not so much. As Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido, put it,

Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate.

Summary: when engaged in a struggle with powerful opponents to make things less bad, don't engage them where and when they are strongest--change the level. Take the game to a place where the odds are better.

Here's a specific example. Several years ago, there was an incident of police brutality with racial overtones in a small rural community. The local paper and Powers That Were ignored it and tried to cover it up. We changed the level and took the story to statewide media outlets and notified people all over the country. After that, they couldn't ignore it any more and there was a pretty decent outcome.

A general example. Often in a democracy, when a bureaucracy of whatever kind does something that is tacky and/or harms people with less power, it usually likes to do so quietly. You can change the level by making it public. Sometimes you can change the level by questioning the legality of a policy, sometimes by building coalitions, sometimes by raising the noise level, or some combination thereof.

In a word, don't play their game. Make them play yours. Every situation is unique, but the principles, like the Dude, abide.

"PLASTICS." In the classic film The Graduate, that sage advice was given to Dustin Hoffman's character. I'm not sure how much that would help now. As the Economic Policy Institute's latest snapshot reveals, this month's new college graduates will face a challenging job market.

HOT TIMES. The latest issue of Nature summarizes the evidence on climate change. Here are the opening lines:

A comprehensive analysis of trends in tens of thousands of biological and physical systems has provided more evidence to bolster the near-universal view that man-made climate change is altering the behaviour of plants, animals, rivers and more.

HUNGRY PLANET. Several experts on the world food crisis weigh in on the problem in Newsweek. Some of them make sense.

UNION PREMIUM. A new report from the WV Center on Budget and Policy and the Center for Economic and Policy Research highlights the benefits of union membership.

CALMER THAN YOU ARE. On a positive note, research indicates that happiness can be learned if we chill out a little.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CAN WRITING MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Thomas Paine, courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately El Cabrero has been blogging about writing for social change, a jag that is likely to continue this week.

But first a comment on the idea of social change. If that's your goal, don't sweat it--it's going to happen anyway, what with the whole impermanence thing and all. The question is, will it be good or bad?

Sometimes, the fight to improve or protect conditions for working people is more about conserving things rather than changing them. Defending what's left of the Constitution or the New Deal legacy is a case in point. A few years ago, we had to fight pretty hard to protect Social Security from privatization and that one probably isn't over yet.

Having said that, a look at history convinces me that writing can play a necessary if not sufficient part in making things better or less bad.

In American history, good writing at the right time has made a difference over and over. In the days when independence was being debated, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, published in early 1776, had a big impact on public opinion, as did a certain Declaration published that summer.

If you haven't read the Declaration in a while, dust it off. It's pretty damn good, even if some of the things George III was accused of weren't quite fair in retrospect.

And, when the revolution was going south, Paine struck again with The Crisis, which even George Washington credited with helping to steel American resolve. Take a look at the first few lines:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

Not too shabby! I wish I would have written something like that when it would have done some good.

Slave narratives, such as those of Frederick Douglass, helped influence opinion against that system, as did Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, about which more tomorrow.

HUNGRY PLANET. While millions of people around the world face a food crisis, the UK Independent reports that multinationals are cashing in.

MISSING A CHANCE. The housing and credit meltdown shows the need for reform, but will we miss the boat?

HAD ENOUGH? In our new Gilded Age, we're moving from the Ownership Society to the Foreclosure Society. It might be time to rock the boat.

HEALTH CARE. This Saturday, a few hundred people in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia rallied for health care. While many people are rightly concerned about covering the uninsured, even people with health insurance are finding it less affordable.

VIOLENCE. Here's an interesting article from the NY Times Magazine about a public health approach to reducing violence.

HABIT FORMING. Aristotle referred to habits as "second nature." Here's what the research says on how to change yours.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED