Hit a nail and...

 In these polarized times, many people are wondering how to talk with people who think differently...often VERY differently. This is especially important when it comes to people you have to deal with, can't avoid and can't banish to a desert island or asteroid.

I've always found that a good place to start when wisdom is needed is the ancient Chinese classic the Tao Te Ching. To paraphrase some lines from the last chapter of that classic, "beautiful words are not true; truthful words are not beautiful. Arguments do not convince. The person of Tao does not argue."

That's hard advice to take until you think about it. Hit a nail and it goes in deeper. Push somebody and they push back harder. Pull people to you and be clingy and they'll probably pull away. Overuse an antibiotic and it'll stop working. Force, literal or otherwise, often creates resistance to itself. The so called "soft" martial arts are based on this insight and they can be very effective. In dealing with stronger opponents, it's about the only thing that works.

 The author Holmes Welch summed this up in Taoism: The Parting of the Way: if we interfere with existence,

 "it resists, as a stone resists crushing. If it is a living creature it resists actively, as a wasp being crushed will sting. But the kind of resistance offered by living creatures is unique: it grows stronger as interference grows stronger up to the point where the creature's capacity for resistance is destroyed. Evolution might be thought of as a march towards ever more highly articulated and effective capacity for resistance. Humans and human societies are thus highly responsive to challenge. So when anyone, ruler or subject, tries to act upon humans individually or collectively, the ultimate result is the opposite of what he is aiming at. He has invoked what we might call the Law of Aggression."

So if screaming at someone or otherwise flaming out isn't the best persuasive strategy, what is? Maybe a couple ideas from psychology and counseling might help.

First, psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Haidt argued that we generally have two operating systems. System 1 is pretty much autopilot mode, largely if not literally always unconscious, emotional, intuitive and reflexive. System 2 is our conscious, deliberative and rational self. We like to think System 2 is in charge, but most of the time we roll with System 1. It saves a lot of time and energy and is pretty adaptive most of the time--except when it isn't.

Haidt likens the two systems to a little person (2) riding on a huge elephant (1). The rider pretends to be in charge, but is really more like the elephant's lawyer than its boss. When challenged, the rider usually comes up with some more or less rational arguments to justify whatever the elephant does.

You don't usually get too far arguing with the rider. It's a better strategy to talk to the elephant. It's really kind of common sense that we often do better if we build some kind of rapport and find even a scrap of common ground. As my mother used to say, "you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."

(There's a pretty funny meme that argues you catch more with a rotting corpse, but that's not important right now).

Here's a real example. I'm friendly with a legislator with whom I disagree on just about everything. However, we both geek out on ancient Greek and Roman history and philosophy. After a bit of banter about Boethius or Plutarch, we can sometimes find some agreement or at least amuse ourselves for a moment. Similarly, listening projects, which are open ended surveys based on empathy can often help people think through things and sometimes wind up in a different space.

Another similar idea from counseling is motivational interviewing, which a friend described as the opposite of nagging. In a recent NY Times op-ed that's worth a read, Adam Grant described this way: 

 Instead of trying to force other people to change, you’re better off helping them find their own intrinsic motivation to change. You do that by interviewing them — asking open-ended questions and listening carefully — and holding up a mirror so they can see their own thoughts more clearly. If they express a desire to change, you guide them toward a plan.

Obviously, this takes patience and time, but as Lao Tzu loved to point out, soft things like water can overcome hard things like rocks and that flexible trees can survive storms that fell more rigid ones.

As someone who tries to write persuasively about issues, I obviously think there's a place for rational argument. It's just that arguments are often more likely influence or move other people than one's opponents. 

 

 

A look at the science of evil

In fall 2001, I taught a sociology class at WVU-Tech. The semester had barely started when the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the world.

That prompted me to look at the social science of how and why people can be cruel to each other. A good resource was social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister’s 1997 study, “Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty.”

According to Baumeister, “Evil requires the deliberate actions of one person, the suffering of another, and the perception or judgment of either the second person or an observer. Very few people see their own actions as evil ...”

Since evil is largely in the eye of the beholder, victims and perpetrators have vastly different perspectives on it. For the latter, it’s usually “not that big a deal,” while to the victim it’s a huge deal. Baumeister calls this difference the “magnitude gap,” and it’s one reason why acts of revenge are often out of proportion to the original offense. Violence is often a spiral, not a cycle.

One thing that keeps us from understanding evil and dealing with it is what he calls “the myth of pure evil,” which we pick up from sources such as myths, comic books, action movies, etc.

According to this, evil involves the intentional infliction of harm for the pleasure of doing it. Victims are all innocent and good, and perpetrators are all evil. Evil is always “the other, the enemy, the outsider, the out-group.”

One problem with this is that, in any given war or conflict, both sides see each other in terms of the myth. Perpetrators usually see themselves as victims.

According to Baumeister, “the myth of pure evil conceals the reciprocal causality of violence. By doing so, it probably increases the violence. The myth of pure evil depicts innocent victims fighting against gratuitously wicked, sadistic enemies. The myth encourages people to believe that they are good and will remain good no matter what, even if they perpetrate severe harm on their opponents. Thus, the myth of pure evil confers a kind of moral immunity on people who believe in it ... belief in the myth is itself one recipe for evil, because it allows people to justify violent and oppressive actions. It allows evil to masquerade as good.”

Baumeister identified four types of evil: instrumental, egotism/revenge, idealism and sadism. Fortunately, sadism — cruelty for the fun of it — is the rarest form. Most people don’t enjoy inflicting harm on others, although it gets easier with repetition. It appears to be an acquired taste, with some of the same mechanisms of addiction.

Far more common is instrumental evil, i.e., doing harm to gain other ends, such as money or power. Examples could include killing or hurting someone for money, organized crime, a government that mistreats people to keep power, etc.

His view of egotism and revenge challenges common assumptions. It’s often asserted that harm is committed by people with low self-esteem. He suggests, rather, that many violent individuals, groups, political movements and countries have high but fragile self-esteem and lash out violently whenever this is challenged:

“The people (or groups or countries) most prone to violence are the ones who are most susceptible to ego threats, especially those who have inflated, exalted opinions of themselves or whose normally high self-esteem does occasionally take a nosedive.”

Wounded egotism usually seeks a revenge that is entirely out of proportion to the original offense.

Then there’s the violence of idealism and true believers. As Bob Dylan said, “you don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.” When people think they are on the side of good and their enemies are evil, they feel morally justified in using extreme violence and cruelty.

“Human nature inclines people to align themselves in groups that square off against each other, each group seeing itself as good and the other as bad. Group competition can evolve into brutal conflict in which each side sincerely sees itself as the good guys who need to take strong measures to defeat the forces of evil that oppose them.”

Evil doesn’t generally appear all at once in fully developed form. It starts with a loss of self- or social control. “Many instances of profound evil begin with a small, ambiguous act that crosses a fuzzy line and then escalates gradually into even greater levels of violence.”

For example, the Ku Klux Klan began with a group of bored young men seeking amusement by mischief and practical jokes. The Nazi holocaust came at the end of a long progression of gradually escalating abuses. Often, Nazi leaders would pause at each stage to gauge world reaction before escalating violence.

Groups can be especially dangerous, because, in them, “evil escalates as the members bring out one another’s worst impulses, lose track of individual responsibility and reinforce one another’s wavering faith in the broad justifications for what they are doing.”

There’s no magic bullet to make evil go away, but understanding it is a good first step, and Baumeister’s work is a good place to start. He argues that bystanders can have a huge effect and “a responsibility to protest evil, because it will grow unchecked if they do not ... the victims of evil and violence depend on bystanders to bear witness to what is happening and take a stand against it. It is the only way.”

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail).

Getting used to it

For all the overheated rhetoric, it looks like governors across the political spectrum are getting used to the Affordable Care Act. According to AP,

"...governors from both parties say a full repeal of the law would be complicated at best, if not impossible, as states move forward with implementation and begin covering millions of people--both by expanding Medicaid rolls for lower-income residents or through state or federal exchanges that offer federal subsidies to those who qualify."

Meanwhile in West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette reported that "between the increase in private insurance enrollment and new enrollment in the state's Medicaid expansion, the number of uninsured West Virginians has dropped from 13.5 percent to 4.2 percent of the population." In fact, West Virginia leads the nation in per capita Medicaid enrollment.

That is a big deal.

ONE FOR THE ROAD. The rational animal never lived round here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Darwin, Malthus and Scrooge

Scrooge and Marley's ghost in Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution by means of natural selection were shaped in part by Thomas Malthus' theories of population. Malthus believed that human population tended to increase faster than available resources.

These ideas became very popular amongst conservative Victorians, who used the idea to argue against social reforms for the poor, which presumably would only lead them to have more children and become poorer.

This showed up in popular culture in the words of the as yet unrepentant Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Early in the story, Scrooge is visited by two humanitarian gentleman soliciting Christmas donations for the poor. Here's how Ebenezer responds to their request:

``Are there no prisons?'' asked Scrooge.

``Plenty of prisons,'' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

``And the Union workhouses?'' demanded Scrooge. ``Are they still in operation?''

``They are. Still,'' returned the gentleman, `` I wish I could say they were not.''

``The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?'' said Scrooge.

``Both very busy, sir.''

``Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,'' said Scrooge. ``I'm very glad to hear it.''

...


``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''

``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''

``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population...''

TALKING SENSE. Here's an op-ed by Robert Greenstein and John Podesta on letting Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

THE NEW UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's an op-ed by yours truly about how being unemployed has changed in this recession.

310 MILLION WHAT? Attacks on Social Security, rhetorical and political, are getting hotter.

DOING GOOD might make you unpopular.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A good gig

I have always been a big Darwin fan. I've been both fascinated by his big ideas and his personal life and habits. He had a lot of things going for him, starting with luck. As Cervantes said, "To be lucky in the beginning is everything."

How many people in life get the chance for a perfect job right out of school? The budding natural historian (as people interested in life science were then called) was a reluctant clergyman-to-be on completing his studies. He was saved from a life as a minor character in a Jane Austen novel by an offer to travel around the world as a scientist on H.M.S. Beagle on a five year voyage.

It was the mother of good gigs.

He then had the tenacity and persistence to work methodically through his specimens, observations and ideas for years to come as he developed his theory of natural selection. He could go micro as well as macro, not only pondering the evolution of all life but getting down to the nitty gritty studying humble creatures like barnacles and earthworms.

He was also a devoted family man, truly in love with his wife Emma and a doting father to his children. The kids even got into the act. There are delightful anecdotes about his children playing musical instruments to the earthworms to see whether they responded to such stimuli (they didn't as far as anyone could tell).

More on this to come.

ONE, TWO, MANY HERBERT HOOVERS. Job losses at the state and local level are threatening the economic recovery.

FALSE CHOICES. Dealing with the joblessness crisis will require overcoming deficit mania--at least until the economy improves..

WHACKADOODLE NATION. Here's a look at the top 10 conspiracy theories on the far right.

OFF THE HOOK. Here's what happens when a group of scientists go unplugged in the wilderness to study the effect of technology on the brain.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A changed landscape

The death of Senator Robert C. Byrd was a loss in many ways for many people. His life was a vivid testimony to the fact that people can keep changing and growing throughout their lives. It's an example and a challenge that will be tough to live up to.

The timing of his death was unfortunate in itself as the nation gears up for debate on energy and climate change issues. Byrd was the only West Virginia leader to take a strong, studied and independent stand on these issues and his voice and vote would have been crucial in making the next steps.

It's sad to say--and I'd really like to be wrong about this--but the great majority of state political leaders are likely, however unintentionally, to work diligently to block and obstruct any effort to seriously deal with climate change, an effort which, if successful, will help to ensure a dismal future for humanity. Coal controversies here are likely to get uglier and uglier without the voice of someone of his stature calling for a reasoned approach.

He leaves a void that is unlikely to be filled.

MORE ON BYRD. Here's Ken Ward's look back at Senator Byrd's changing position on coal and climate over the years. And here's the NY Times obituary.

RECESSION OR DEPRESSION? If it's the latter, blame a failure of public policy.

A CASE IN POINT is made in this op-ed by yours truly about the failure of the Senate to address unemployment and aid to states.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. It looks like the nation is rethinking its approach to crime and punishment (the real thing, not the novel).

WANDERING MINDS may not be a bad thing.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Psyched out: more from the Goat Rope book shelf

You know who. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Tis the season at this blog to discuss the waning year's reading material. I don't know about y'all, but it's been a good year of psychology books at Goat Rope Farm. One of the best was Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, which filled up a lot of blogging days round here this past summer. I'd put that one on the "must read" list.

A fun overview of research in the field can be found in Lauren Slater's Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. Her book led to me some classic Old School psychology, such as Leon Festinger's 1956 classic study of cognitive dissonance When Prophecy Fails, a case study of a UFO cult that miscalculated the date of the end of the world.

One of the most interesting books of the year was Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Pinker demolishes certain misconceptions enshrined in some models of social science and in some "left" circles. These include a denial of the legacy of our animal past and some of the nastiness that might entail (the blank slate), the belief that people in a "state of nature" are peaceful and holistic (the noble savage) and the idea that mind is independent of brain (the ghost in the machine). Some bubbles need busted.

For something completely different, Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain takes and interesting look at people with strange and interesting musical abilities and disabilities.

I also revisited some old items on the shelf, including Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung et al and James Gilligan's unfortunately neglected Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. Jung, by the way, was the subject of a huge but interesting biography by Deirdre Bair.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END. SORT OF

The Goat Rope Odyssey cruise continues, along with the usual links and comments about current events. If you like mythology, click on earlier posts.

Aristotle said that every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. That's true of Homer's Odyssey, although it's not told in a chronological way. It begins near the end, shortly before Odysseus' long-delayed homecoming after 10 years of fighting at Troy and 10 more years of wandering and getting stuck.

Here's a skeletal outline for now:

The goddess Athena asks her father Zeus to give Odysseus a break and help him go home. He's been stuck on the island of the goddess Calypso for seven years. It doesn't sound like a bad gig: sun, sand, surf, and sex with a goddess (most of whom were considered to be hot), yet he cries every day out of homesickness. Zeus agrees to cut him some slack.

The story then cuts to the Old Home Place at Ithaca. Things are bad. Swarms of suitors are swarming around his wife, the faithful Penelope. Most people think her husband is dead and she is under great pressure to marry. The suitors are insolent, bullying his son Telemachus and eating the family out of house and home.

Athena then goes to Ithaca to give Telemachus a boost and suggest a plan of action that gives him something positive to do and gets him out of harm's way for a while. He visits the homes Odysseus's' old comrades Menelaus and Nestor seeking news of his father and gaining a good repute.

We don't get to the main character until book 5, when the god Hermes (see last week) visits the island of Calypso and tells her she needs to let him go and help him on his way. Odysseus sails off with her help but is shipwrecked by the sea god Poseidon, who holds a grudge for Odysseus' blinding of his son Polyphemus the cyclops.

Eventually he makes it to the land of the Phaeacians, where he receives hospitality and eventually reveals himself. It's there that we hear from the man himself the well known stories of the cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis and the other disasters that befell him on his way home.

(There's a lot of irony in this story. One example is the fact that Odysseus is a totally unreliable narrator who has a great deal of trouble telling the truth. Was he or wasn't he?)

The Phaeacians deliver him safely to Ithaca where after many ruses he and Telemachus open a major can of smackdown on the suitors and he is reunited with Penelope. The carnage is severe but the gods again intervene to make peace.

Next time: greatest hits.

KNOW NOTHINGS. Has ignorance become a badge of honor?

ORWELL AND STRAUSS. A philosophy of fear underlies much of current politics.

LEAVING WAR TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR. Here's a good editorial from the Gazette.

TOUGH QUESTIONS ABOUT QUESTIONINGS. Psychologists are debating whether assisting in military interrogations is a violation of professional ethis.

DOING GOOD AND DOING WELL. Socially responsible investment funds are catching on.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

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

INFLUENZA

This man is easily influenced.

The theme at Goat Rope lately has been insights from the social sciences about human violence, cruelty and...well...evil. Once again, I highly recommend social psychologist Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect and its accompanying website.

One of the themes that jumps out over and over again from all the research (not to mention history) is that people are extremely susceptible to situational and systemic pressures which can make them do things they would otherwise never have done.

The sad thing is that a lot of the things that can get us into trouble are basic human tendencies we all share, such the need for acceptance, the desire to be liked; reciprocity; the sometimes very useful trait of obeying authority (which is only as harmless as the authority itself); our tendency to take cues from the actions of others (social proof); etc.

While the focus at Goat Rope lately has been on violence and cruelty, we can all fall under different forms of social influence in less extreme settings, including the workplace, buying and selling, relationships, etc. Not to mention advertising and politics...

At the Lucifer Effect website, Zimbardo and Cindy X. Wang have a useful section on resisting social influence that covers most of the bases. It's worth checking out.

So like obey me or something...

WHAT WENT WRONG? Conservative thinkers are trying to figure it out. El Cabrero has an idea or two...

NEEDED: A NEW SOCIAL COMPACT. That's what she said. I concur.

SLOWING DOWN THE NEXT WAR. Here's a positive assessment of recent citizen efforts in the US to prevent war with Iran.

MINIMUM WAGE. The federal minimum wage is increasing to $6.55 per hour. Twenty three states and the District of Columbia already have laws mandating a higher minimum.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MORAL LUCK

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero is fascinated by the idea of "moral luck." It's an idea that was first developed by philosopher Bernard Williams and later elaborated by Thomas Nagel.

I think it works something like this: We tend to praise or blame people for doing or not doing certain things as if the whole thing was up to the individuals in question. But in the real world, what people do or don't do is often as much a matter of chance and circumstances as choice.

Take the example of a soldier who commits atrocities in a war. Would he or she have done the same thing if a war never happened? Or what if people who supported a dictatorship and did bad things in its service happened to be born in a different country or under a different political system?

People who talk about moral luck often use the example of a car accident. Most of us have probably zoned out at a stop sign or two or neglected to obey a speed limit sign. Driver X runs a light and nothing happens, while when Driver Y does it, innocent people are killed. Both are blameworthy for not paying attention, but the results are vastly different. We tend to blame Driver Y more, but both their actions were the same. The main difference is luck.

All El Cabrero knows is that the main reason I didn't get into a lot more trouble as a kid than I did had more to do with luck than anything else. Virtue is often a matter of chance and opportunity.

Although he doesn't use the term "moral luck," Stanford social psychologist Philip Zimbardo (of Stanford Prison Experiment fame) sums it up pretty well in his book The Lucifer Effect:

If you were placed in a strange and novel cruel Situation within a powerful System, you would probably not emerge as the same person who entered that crucible of human nature. You would not recognize your familiar image if it were held next to the mirror image of what you had become. We all want to believe in our inner power, our sense of personal agency, to resist external situational forces... For some, that belief is valid. They are usually the minority, the rare bird, those who I will designate as heroic... For many, that belief of personal power to resist powerful situational and systemic forces is little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability. Paradoxically, maintaining that illusion only serves to make one more vulnerable to manipulation by failing to be sufficiently vigilant against attempts of undesired influence subtly practice on them.

So good luck!

GET HAPPY. As more economists and social scientists research the link or lack thereof between conventional economics and human happiness, some free market fundamentalists are getting nervous.

BUBBLE, BUBBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE. Here's progressive economist Jared Bernstein on "the shampoo economy."

LOCAL FOODS, LAZY OR NOT. Here's another dispatch from the growing (no pun intended) movement to consume more local food.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, food banks around the country are increasing leaning on gleanings from local farms.

WELFARE FOR THE RICH was the subject of a talk by David Cay Johnston in WV last night.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

He meant to do that.

In the 1950s, members of a UFO cult were convinced that the world as we know it was about to end at a given date (sound familiar?) When the date came and went, members were in a quandary.

They were in the distinctly uncomfortable situation of holding two conflicting ideas at the same time. On the one hand, they believed strongly that the aliens were going to come at a given time--except that the aliens didn't show.

They could have said, "Jeez, what was I thinking?"--but they didn't. Instead, they began to proselytise aggressively for their new religion, something they had never done before. After all, the saucer people were nice enough to spare us, right?

You can read about all this in psychologist Leon Festinger's engaging book, When Prophecy Fails.

Festinger called that conflicted state of mind "cognitive dissonance." It's a complicated idea but a commonplace reality. Here's the abbreviated Goat Rope version:

People don't like to think they were really, REALLY wrong about something and, as a way of avoiding that situation, they often construct elaborate rationalizations to justify things.

Let's take a hypothetical case. Suppose a national leader led his country to an unnecessary war and it turned out that the justifications for it were bogus. (Remember, this is just a hypothetical situation.) The leader could say "My bad." That would be a gutsy leader. Or, more likely, he could hold forth about "staying the course."

(Aren't you glad stuff like this never really happens?)

To use another scenario, suppose you have rounded up a bunch of prisoners and have begun to abuse them. Most people would be very uncomfortable thinking that they were abusing a random assortment of folks. It's a lot easier when you tell yourself and the world that these are dangerous terrorists.

For that matter, it's a lot easier to justify enslaving a group of people if you can construct an ideological justification for it. For this reason, some researchers have argued that slavery led to racism rather than vice versa.

In any case, cognitive dissonance and our attempts to escape from it contribute vastly to the world's violence, evil, and misery.

I'LL TAKE ONE! A British think tank is calling for a "Green New Deal" to confront the world's economic and environmental woes.

BULLY FOR YOU (NOT). Investigators have found a link between bullying and being bullied and suicide in children.

A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC MOMENT? From the AFLCIO blog, here's a report from Netroots Nation about how the US may be on the edge of progressive reform.

NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON. Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the US is slipping on the development index in terms of life expectancy, health and other factors.

MIRROR, MIRROR. Take a look.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

LESSONS LEARNED?

Salem witch trial, courtesy of wikipedia.

It would be nice to think that people who have experienced violence, oppression or discrimination would ever thereafter sympathize with people in similar situations. Sometimes it works out that way, but it could just as easily have the opposite effect.

El Cabrero has often shown the PBS documentary A Class Divided to sociology classes and other groups. It showed how elementary school teacher Jane Elliot tried to teach a group of white children what discrimination was like by segregating them on the basis of eye color. One day students with blue eyes are given top status and extra privileges, while the brown eyed students were marginalized.

On the next day, the roles were switched. One might hope that those who had been unfairly treated would refuse to treat others in the same way.

Not a chance. They couldn't wait to claim top status. It was only after a period of debriefing that students could begin to process the experience and learn from it.

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil puts it like this:

...what are the deeper lessons to be learned from such situations? Admire power; detest weakness. Dominate, don't negotiate. Hit first when they turn the other cheek. The golden rule is for them, not us. Authority rules, rules are authority.

These are also some of the lessons learned by boys of abusive fathers, half of whom are transformed into abusive fathers themselves, abusing their children, spouses, and parents. Perhaps half of them identify with the aggressor and perpetuate his violence, while others learn to identify with the abused and reject aggression for compassion. However, research does not help us to predict which abused kids will later become abusers and which will turn out to be compassionate adults.

Thus it is that in history the children of the oppressed can quickly become the oppressors and persecuted groups sometimes persecute others in kind when the opportunity occurs.

DEEP IN DEBT. The NY Times had an interesting item about the nation's debt crisis. Here's an excerpt:

Just two generations ago, America was a nation of mostly thrifty people living within their means, even setting money aside for unforeseen expenses.

Today, Americans carry $2.56 trillion in consumer debt, up 22 percent since 2000 alone, according to the Federal Reserve Board. The average household’s credit card debt is $8,565, up almost 15 percent from 2000.

College debt has more than doubled since 1995. The average student emerges from college carrying $20,000 in educational debt.

Household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, represents 19 percent of household assets, according to the Fed, compared with 13 percent in 1980

SELF HELP NATION. Also from the Times, here's an entertaining item about the burgeoning self help publishing industry.

OPPOSING THE NEXT WAR. People around the country are mobilizing to prevent a possible war with Iran.

STATE OF THE UNION. A new book makes the case for how labor unions strengthen working families. But the author says we need to help the general public connect the dots.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MORAL DISENGAGEMENT

St. Anthony tormented by demons, by way of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is understanding human evil, along with links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

Most normal people have internalized moral norms about how other people should be treated. However, under certain conditions, these moral restraints can be shut off. The result is what psychologist Albert Bandura called "moral disengagement" and it is often a key feature in acts of violence and cruelty. Here's a link to an essay of his on the subject.

This is the abbreviated Goat Rope version:

Under normal conditions, people have both inhibitive and proactive moral tendencies. Inhibitive means we understand it's not nice to hit little Tommy with a sledge hammer. Proactive means that if little Susy falls into a pit of boiling sludge we should pull her out. That's the good news. The bad news is that people all too often have ways of tossing both out the window.

Here are a two ways that can happen:

*Reconstruing the situation or coming up with moral justifications to treat people badly. Labeling them as the enemy usually works pretty good here. So does ideology. As Voltaire once said,

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

*Using euphemisms. Orwell was all over this one:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

We don't blow away villages; instead, we use surgical strikes. We don't torture, we just use rough interrogation. We don't kill innocent civilians, although collateral damage happens.

There are other ways of kicking off the switch, about which more tomorrow.

THE WIDENING GAP between rich and poor isn't just about money; it's about life expectancy, as the latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute suggests.

OH GOOD. Inflation may be the order of the day. That's all we need during a recession...

HEALTH CARE. A new report from the Commonwealth Fund found that

the United States spends more than twice as much on each person for health care as most other industrialized countries. But it has fallen to last place among those countries in preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care...

A TOUGH TEA LEAF TO READ. The US is finally sending a high level official to talk with the Iranian government. With a normal administration, I'd say that was a good sign, but I trust this one about as far as I could throw it. A worst-case scenario would involve the Bush administration prematurely declaring diplomacy to be a failure in order to try to justify yet another war.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, many Americans oppose a rush to war with Iran, if anybody is listening.

MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE. Bobby Brewster pleaded guilty to charges related to the kidnapping and torture of Megan Williams and faces up to 40 years in prison.

MINE SAFETY. Federal investigators are winding up a criminal investigation related to the fire at Massey Energy's Aracoma mine that killed two workers in Jan. 2006.

URGENT EXTINCT FLYING REPTILE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MOCKINGBIRDS

Don't kill the mockingbird. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

A pivotal scene in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird involves a mob about to lynch an African American accused of raping a white woman. Just as they are about to storm the jail, disaster is averted when the young girl Scout strikes up a personal conversation with someone in the mob. That little intervention brought the man back to himself.

While that's obviously a work of fiction, it does highlight some important truths about human behavior. People are more likely to engage in acts of violence and aggression when they part of a group, are caught up in a role they are playing, and/or are in a state of anonymity..

The psychological term for this is deindividuation. Together with the dehumanization of the victim or enemy group, it is one of the most powerful vectors of evil.

Often, a state of deindividuation is accompanied by a change in how one looks. This is particularly true in the case of warfare. As Philip Zimbardo wrote in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,

Cultural wisdom dictates that a key ingredient in transforming ordinarily nonaggressive young men into warriors who can kill on command is first to change their external appearance. Most wars are about old men persuading young men to harm and kill other young men like themselves. For the young men, it becomes easier to do so if they first change their appearance, altering their usual external facade by putting on military uniforms or masks or painting their faces. With the anonymity thus provided in place, out go their usual internal compassion and concern for others.

Deindividuation isn't always about personal appearance. It can happen in environments where people feel that no one knows who they are. Factors such as conformity, obedience to authority, groupthink, etc. all can contribute to deindividuation.

According to Zimbardo, there are two effective ways for bringing about this moral transformation. One is to "reduce the cues of social accountability of the actor (no one knows who I am or cares to)..." The other is to "reduce concern for self-evaluation by the actor," for example by the use of alcohol or drugs, emotional arousal, or by projecting responsibility outward onto others. A classical example of the latter is the belief that "I was just following orders."

THE YOUNG AND THE INSURANCE-LESS. Young adults are among those most at risk of lacking health coverage. Here's a link with more information and some policy suggestions.

THE SPORTING LIFE. And now for something completely different, the new sport of chess-boxing has gained national attention. El Cabrero is holding out for mah-jong ju jitsu.

THIS MIGHT EXPLAIN THAT UFO ABDUCTION. Loss of sleep can produce false memories, according to a recent study. But caffeine can help restore it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TURNING ON THE HATE SWITCH

World War I recruiting poster.

The theme at Goat Rope lately has been human evil and the kinds of things that make it thrive and grow (or not). If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

In George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, a typical workday includes an official two minute "hate session" aimed at enemies of the state. An image of an enemy appears on a screen and the faithful are expected to snarl, hiss, yell, jump up and down and otherwise to dutifully express their hatred.

You know, kinda like Fox News...

One of the most effective ways to create a climate in which evil flourishes is to label and dehumanize certain groups. This is usually an important step that governments and political movements use to pave the way to war, genocide, torture, and other atrocities.

For a good overview, click here.

As Philip Zimbardo wrote in The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,

The powerful don't usually do the dirtiest work themselves, just as Mafia dons leave the "whackings" to underlings. Systems create hierarchies of dominance with the influence and communication going down--rarely up--the line. When a power elite wants to destroy an enemy nation, it turns to propaganda experts to fashion a program of hate. What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torture, them even kill them? It requires a "hostile imagination," a psychological construction embedded deeply in the minds by propaganda that transforms those others into "The Enemy." That image is a soldier's most powerful motive, one that loads his rifle with the ammunition of hate and fear. The image of a dreaded enemy threatening one's personal well-being and the society's national security emboldens mothers and fathers to send sons to war and empowers governments to rearrange priorities to turn plowshares into swords of destruction.

Good thing that never happens anymore, huh?

100 YEARS? Majorities in the US and Iraq want a withdrawal of American troops.

NO MORE BLANK CHECKS. Here's Scott Ritter talking sense on Iran.

TOUGH DAYS FOR THE MARKET GOD. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne argues we're witnessing the shipwreck of market fundamentalism. The news hasn't reached everybody in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia yet.

THIS IS YOUR PET on drugs.

LOOK TO THE ANT, THOU SLUGGARD. That's what evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson does.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BAD SEED

In his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, psychologist Philip Zimbardo comes up with a good working definition of evil:

Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others--or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.

People have a strong tendency to believe that human actions are guided by why Zimbardo calls inner determinants (motivations). This can cause us to neglect the force of outer determinants. This leads in turn to a kind of moral dualism in which we see some people (like us) as inherently good and others as inherently evil.

Zimbardo suggests that

The idea that an unbridgeable chasm separates good people from bad people is a source of comfort for at least two reasons. First, it creates a binary logic, in which Evil is essentialized. Most of us perceive Evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some people and not in others. Bad seeds ultimately produce bad fruits as their destinies unfold. ...

There are problems with this simplistic view. The idea of a Good/Evil dichotomy

takes "good people" off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible role in creating, sustaining, or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, teasing, bullying, rape, torture, terror and violence. "It's the way of the world, and there's not much that can be done to change it, certainly not by me."

He suggests instead that we should think of evil in incrementalist terms, i.e. as something we are all capable of, depending on the situation. This view is more conductive to helping people take steps to prevent its spread.

WILL THEY OR WON'T THEY? Here's another look at Iran, the Bush administration, Israel and likely scenarios.

ANIMALS AND RIGHTS. As mentioned last week, the Spanish parliament is considering granting some quasi-"human" rights to great apes.

IMPERMANENCE. The NY Times reports that Buddhism may be dying out in Japan. Too bad--the world could use more of it.

VERY CUTE RACCOON PICTURES here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A FEW BAD APPLES?

Lucifer. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

When the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse story became public, government sources were quick to say that the whole unfortunate affair was caused by a few "bad apples." Those at the lowest levels paid the heaviest price, while those who set up the situation and the system that made it possible have so far gotten a free pass.

It may be comforting (and self serving, in the case of the Bush administration) to put all the blame on a few bad individuals. If that were so, good people like us could never do such things no matter what. In reality, however, the line between good and evil is permeable and normally good people can cross the line when placed under extreme situational and systemic pressures.

History and the social sciences show plenty of examples of otherwise decent people who have done horrible things under certain conditions. Some of the things that make evil thrive and grow are obedience to authority, pressure to conform, ideology that justifies treating others with violence, anonymity, dehumanizing and labeling "the other," a slippery slope of gradually increasing aggression, huge power inequalities, unfamiliar situations, role identification and environmental stressors.

The situation that the untrained guards at Abu Ghraib faced--such as lack of training and supervision, ambiguous orders ("soften up" prisoners for further interrogation), physical danger, heat and cold, lack of adequate food and resources, lack of accountability, etc.--created a climate conducive to disaster.

This is one of the key arguments of Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. As mentioned in earlier posts, Zimbardo designed the famous Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, in which psychologically normal students were randomly assigned to play the roles of guards and prisoners. The experiment rapidly deteriorated. Rampant abuses by the "guards" caused the experiment to be terminated in less than a week--and those conditions were almost ideal compared to the ones in Iraq.

In the real world, there are some bad apples, but the real danger is caused by bad barrels.

The point of all this is not to excuse the behavior of anyone, but rather to point out that situational and systemic factors can often override our ordinary moral restraints. Sadly, those who created the system and situation and who most deserve to be held accountable are protected by power and privilege.

HOW BAD IS THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS? Pretty damn.

TO BE MORE SPECIFIC, 343,000 homes were lost in the last six months.

WILL SANITY PREVAIL in dealing with Iran? El Cabrero is not a betting person, nor would I be inclined to bet on this one if I was.

PREVAILING WAGE LAWS that require decent wages on public construction projects make good economic sense according to the Economic Policy Institute.

THIS ISN'T A GOOD TIME TO SELL YOUR LIFE according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently, the "value of a statistical life" has gone down by $1 million in the last five years.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

Have you ever noticed that when people do things that irritate us we tend to think they do it because they're jerks? And that when we mess up, we usually excuse ourselves by saying that something caused us to act that way?

In psychology, this is called fundamental attribution error and it was classically demonstrated in an experiment in which subjects were asked to read essays for and against Fidel Castro. The writers were told in advance which way to slant their essays. The readers tended to believe that those who were assigned to write pro-Castro essays really were pro-Castro, even though they were only carrying out an assigned task.

In other words, they didn't recognize that it was the situation of the writers that caused them to write that way.

We often tend to attribute the actions of others to their disposition rather than the situation--especially the actions we don't like. But when the roles are switched, we change the rules. The dog ate our homework! If a driver cuts into our lane, they're an idiot. We, on the other hand, had to get over there and were under a lot of pressure.

In war, the enemy--whoever it is at the time--deliberately kills innocent civilians. We occasionally inflict collateral damage. When "they" do something bad, it's because they're evil. When our side does it, mistakes were made.

Fundamental attribution error seriously inhibits our ability to understand and deal with human evil by causing us to ignore the situational factors that encourage evil behavior. It also blinds us to our own potential for evil.

I don't mean to get preachy, but this is probably why Jesus--who knew a thing or two about a thing or two--told people to take the log out of their own eye before trying to remove the speck from their neighbor's. Whether we're religious or secular, it's always easy to locate sin in the other.

INEQUALITY, HEALTH AND MORE are the subject of this interesting piece from Harvard Magazine.

"FREE" TRADE, REVISITED. This item from the UK Guardian looks at NAFTA's casualties.

CHENEY KNOWS BEST. The VP who puts the "vice" in vice president tried to muzzle climate change testimony.

BRAINWASHING. Those old enough to have lived through the Cold War may remember the widespread fear of Communist "brainwashing." That turned out to be pretty much a dud, although the Bush administration tried some of the tricks of that trade in its dalliance with torture.

THERAPISTS OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS have their own problems, according to this NY Times item. That's life in Richistan.

CAUGHT ON THE WEB. Has the internet cut into your reading time...you know...with real books?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GETTING "EVIL SMART"

Lucifer in Gustave Dore's illustration of Paradise Lost.

One reason why we often fail to understand or counteract human evil is that we often think of it solely in individual, personal or dispositional terms. An extreme example of this kind of thinking has been supplied by the Bush administration, which holds the view that evil people do evil things because they are evil (it's no surprise that such folks are blind to the evil they have unleashed on the world).

As social psychologist Philip Zimbardo amply demonstrates in The Lucifer Effect, a great many evil acts are committed by normal individuals in abnormal situations which are created and maintained by systems of power.

According to Zimbardo,

Most institutions in any society that is invested in an individualistic orientation hold up the person as sinner, culpable, afflicted, insane, or irrational. Programs of change follow a medical model of dealing only at the individual level of rehabilitation, therapy, reeducation and medical treatments, or punishment and execution. All such programs are doomed to fail if the main causal agent is the situation or system and not just the person.

Rather than focusing solely on killing, warehousing, or treating individuals,

We need to adopt a public health model for prevention of evil, of violence, spouse abuse, bullying, prejudice, and more that identifies vectors of social disease to be inoculated against, not dealt with solely at the individual level.

SALUD! A national campaign to promote health care for all kicked off yesterday.

SPEAKING OF HEALTH, the economy doesn't have a surplus of that at the moment. Here's economist Dean Baker's analysis.

IRONIC MOMENT here.

WILL THEY OR WON'T THEY attack Iran?

ORANGUTAN UPDATE. This great ape species is in danger of extinction. The Wired Science item linked here also notes that the Spanish parliament approved a resolution granting something like human rights (life and freedom) to the great apes. It is the opinion of El Cabrero that we should give them voting rights in presidential elections too. They couldn't do much worse.

GOAT UPRISING. Arcadia S. Venus, the caprine first lady of Goat Rope Farm denies any responsibility for the following news report. But she approves...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED