The wolf himself

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is in the process of winding up a long series of reflections on the Odyssey of Homer, although you'll also find links and comments about current events.

Odysseus, the eponymous main character, is a hero in the ancient Greek sense of someone who lived a larger than normal life and whose deeds are remembered after his death. The word did not imply moral superiority and some of the most famous Greek heroes did some pretty nasty things.

Such is the case with our boy. As we've seen along the way, he's a terrible commander who is directly or indirectly responsible for the death of around 600 of his men on 12 ships--and that was after the war was over. He is secretive, totally lacking in social trust, excessive in his desire for revenge, and impulsive. He lies nearly every time he speaks, even when there's no good reason to do so. What's his deal, anyway?

The VA psychiatrist and classical scholar Jonathan Shay has some interesting thoughts about this. First, while Odysseus has been through many grueling ordeals at war and on his way home, he doesn't seem to have suffered from the classic symptoms of war-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a direct result. But there are interesting clues of an earlier trauma.

In his homecoming, he is recognized by his nurse Eurycleia by a scar on his thigh that he received as a child:

Bending closer
she started to bathe her master...then,
in a flash, she knew the scar--
that old wound
made years ago by a boar's white tusk when Odysseus
went to Parnassus, out to see [his grandfather] Autolycus and his sons.
The man was his mother's noble father, one who excelled
the world at thievery, that and subtle, shifty oaths.

Autolycus means something like "wolf-like" or "the wolf himself" or even "werewolf." It was he who gave him the name Odysseus, which means something like "man of pain" or "he who gives and receives pain."

When he was a boy, he went to visit Autolycus and nearly died on that hunt. Some commentators have seen this as a turning point in his development. This may have given him a sense that those who were responsible for his well-being couldn't be trusted. As Shay put it,

I see it as a darker transformation, when Odysseus concluded that no one was to be trusted, when he concluded that unless you beat them to it or get over on them first, other people only want to hurt, exploit, or humiliate you...

Shay notes that some of his patients who had the most difficult symptoms experienced abuse and neglect in childhood and adolescence prior to their military service.

...If the expectation that other people plan only harm, exploitation, and humiliation produces a cynical "strike first" attitude, trauma can produce an active, self-starting predator. Odysseus' scar alerts us to the interconnection of childhood trauma, combat trauma, and a veteran's character.

El Cabrero is well aware of the limited practical utility of psychoanalyzing literary characters, but there you have it. Let's just say he had issues.

THE BIG NEWS of course is the failure of the Wall Street bailout bill in the House. El Cabrero has mixed feelings about that. The bill was a vast improvement over what was originally proposed but didn't go far enough in helping ordinary Americans. The best advice I've heard is for people to take a deep breath and then start advocating again for a package that provides more protection for homeowners, an ownership state in every firm that receives public assistance and increased regulation of the financial industry. Congress also needs to consider another targeted stimulus package aimed at the hardest hit Americans.

RETHINKING "FREE" TRADE. Lots of economists are.

STALEMATE. A BBC poll conducted in 23 nations found that 59 percent of respondents believed that the Bush administration's "war on terror" either hasn't weakened al-Qaeda or made it stronger. Let me guess...the decision to invade Iraq didn't help.

URGENT DEEP SEA FISH COMMUNICATION UPDATE. Stop the presses! It appears that the cusk-eel uses some form of sonic communication, which is to say it makes noises to other cusk-eels. Take that, all you cusk-eel communication skeptics out there!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MORAL DISTANCE

The ghost of Hamlet Sr. urges revenge, courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately Goat Rope has been exploring violence in warfare and other settings. If this is your first visit, please consider clicking on earlier posts.

While most normal people have a strong resistance to hurting or killing others at close range, distance—physical or emotional—makes it easier. Yesterday’s post looked at how perceived cultural distance or seeing the opponent as the Other does this. Another kind of distance that facilitates violence is moral distance.

As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman writes in On Killing,

Moral distance involves legitimizing oneself and one’s cause. It can generally be divided into two components. The first component usually is the determination and condemnation of the enemy’s guilt, which, of course, must be punished or avenged. The other is an affirmation of the legality and legitimacy of one’s own cause.

It’s easier to kill people when they are seen as evil. In such cases violence can be rationalized as simple justice. Revenge for past acts of aggression, real or imagined, is often a component of moral distance. But as psychologist Roy F. Baumeister noted in his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (search this blog for more on that), revenge is often out of proportion to the original act of provocation.

The reason for this is what he called “the magnitude gap.” Simply put, this means that acts of aggression seem worse to the victims than the original perpetrators. Retaliation, therefore, tends to escalate the violence. And sadly, given that much of world history is a game of Got You Last, it’s not usually that hard to come up with some kind of slight to avenge.

Grossman comments that the danger of this kind of rationalization is that “every nation seems to think that God is on its side”—and as Dylan sang, you don’t count the dead when that is the case.

MORE THOUGHTS ON TAX DAY. Here's a good op-ed by Holly Sklar on the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy over the last several years. Here's the beginning:

WHEN IT COMES to cutting taxes for the rich, President Bush can truly say, “Mission accomplished.” The richest 1 percent of Americans received about $491 billion in tax breaks between 2001 and 2008. That’s nearly the same amount as U.S. debt held by China — $493 billion — in the form of Treasury securities.

HOUSING MESS. The credit/housing crisis is causing serious problems for millions of Americans. Here's economist Dean Baker on the problem and some suggestions for solutions.

SPEAKING OF PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS, here's a new paper by the Center for Law and Social Policy about how the current recession is hitting low income workers and families and what could be done to improve the situation.

"FREE" TRADE, UNFREE WORKERS. Labor and human rights groups in the US and Colombia are joining to oppose a proposed Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Here's more on the subject from the American Friends Service Committee.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MOVING BEYOND RESENTMENT

Caption: This man can barely keep his head above water.

The guiding thread of this week’s Goat Rope has been about the politics of resentment and the disastrous results this has brought to the nation as a whole.

Fortunately, there is some good news.

Ruy Teixeira, writing for the Center for American Progress, reports that public opinion research nonetheless shows that “the public is very willing to extend a helping hand to the least fortunate in society.” In fact, this sentiment is increasing, perhaps due to the growing sense of economic insecurity and growing concerns about inequality:

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in January of this year, for example, shows that 69 percent agree that “the government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep” and an identical 69 percent agree that “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.” These figures are up 10 and 12 points respectively relative to their recent low point in 1994.

Americans are also willing to consider a wide range of options for helping the poor. The most complete results along these lines are provided by an NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard poll from 2001. As the chart below shows, four proposals garnered 80 percent support or higher: expanding subsidized day care, increasing the minimum wage, spending more for medical care for poor people, and increasing the tax credit for low-income workers. Yet every option offered, even increasing cash assistance for families, received majority support.

The country as a whole needs policies that promote shared prosperity and grow the middle class again. The research shows that people want it. Now we have to make it happen.

NEW TRADE BLOG. People interested in issues of fair trade by want to check out Public Citizen's new "Eyes on Trade" blog.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CAUSE WHY? AND STUFF ON "FREE" TRADE

Caption: This turkey hen blames global warming on Thanksgiving.

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope is a series of musings on how people explain events. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to yesterday's post.

Have you ever noticed that after something really bad happens, the media goes into overdrive, reporting the facts and then bringing in an endless stream of talking heads to explain Why It Happened?

(I dare you to diagram that sentence.)

Sometimes people say the darndest things, whether there is any real evidence for them or not. Sometimes the talking heads use these opportunities to score political or propaganda points.

The classic example was the chat between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on the 700 Club after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when Falwell said

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

I remember a conversation I had in the 90s about youth violence with someone who blamed the teaching of evolution in schools. At the time, I gently tried to suggest that most perpetrators were probably not too well versed in the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

Right wingers don't have a monopoly here either. Last week I received a statement blaming the VT massacre on the capitalist system.

Two thoughts come to mind. First, anybody can attribute the causation of anything to anything...and usually does. Second, anything can be predicted after the fact. When we move beyond shooting for explanations from the hip, it's a little more complicated. And often a little less certain.

About which more next time.

TRADE TALKS STALLED. The New York Times had an interesting article this weekend about how the issue of labor rights is stalling further action on new "free" trade deals in the US House. Short version: the majority wants them in and the administration wants them out.

I trust we need not pause to allow readers to recover from the shock....

Sample from the middle of the piece:

At issue is the Democratic demand that pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama, Peru and South Korea include a provision guaranteeing certain rights for labor in the trading partner countries, including a ban on child and slave labor and the right to organize.

In addition, the Democrats want the accords to endorse general labor protections adopted by the International Labor Organization, like the right to organize.

The Bush administration, backed by business groups, contends that this Democratic demand could lead to trading partners suing to overturn basic American labor practices, like teenage summer jobs or work on farms, or the practice in some American states of prisoners making consumer goods.

Probably the real issues the administration doesn't want uppity foreigners, many of whom are un-American, to remind it that many workers in this country are effectively denied the right to organize due to weak protections for workers.

The most amusing part of the article was a comment by National Association of Manufacturers president John Engler, who said “For state constitutions or laws to be subject to a foreign nation’s challenge would be unacceptable."

Mr. Engler chose to ignore the fact that under NAFTA and related trade deals, democratic decisions by state and local governments can already be overturned if they are considered unfair to foreign investors, but not if they are unfair to workers.

This should be interesting.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED