Tough Questions: On Shaming Your Kids

A couple weeks back, a discussion came up on TYT that got me all conflicted, as it sometimes does. I've realized that when you agree with some people 95% of the time, that only makes the 5% you disagree on feel more jarring. This case had to do with parenting, and whether or not it is a viable parenting strategy to shame your kids.

 

 

Jimmy Dore and Karamo Brown - a new occasional co-host on TYT, disagree quite strongly on whether or not subjecting your child to public humiliation is a good parenting strategy. Viscerally, I disagreed with Karamo Brown, but I wasn't quite sure why. There were other instances of publicly humiliating kids that had been covered by TYT which I did agree was a good strategy, despite the fact that Ana often comes out 100% against it. In this case, however, I found myself siding with Jimmy Dore, although it took a while for me to wrap my head around why that was.

It all clicked when I was watching an old episode of the Atheist Experience. Discipline and parenting had come up, and Matt Dillahunty had a very interesting perspective on the different ways to parent. Paraphrasing, he came up with two scenarios involving kids who misbehave in a restaurant. In one scenario, you tell the child that if they misbehave they will be grounded, if they behave they get an ice cream. In the other scenario, you teach the child why it is rude to misbehave in a restaurant, you teach them to empathize with the other patrons, asking them how would you feel if someone was disrupting your favorite pastime? In the short run you probably get the same result: a child which behaves in the restaurant. However, in the long run, the child who understands the reasons behind their behavior are more likely to be empathetic, and are less likely to misbehave if, for instance, the person doling out the punishments or rewards is not present the next time they go out. It is parenting through instruction, rather than through fear, which I have always been in favor of. Now of course this is a simplistic example necessary to illustrate the point, and all parenting is a combination of instruction and punishment/reward, but I have always found myself in favor of erring on the side of instruction. I have also found myself using this example to illustrate why hitting your kids is not an effective strategy, just replace "grounded" with "smack in the face" or, as per this video, "old man haircut".

Another layer to it is that I have noticed, in my working with children (despite not having any of my own as of now), that (especially when they are quite young) the more delayed the consequence, the less likely it's going to work. When they're getting picked on in school and bullied and laughed at they're not going to remember that it was because they talked back to their mother or they misbehaved in a restaurant, they're going to know that they're feeling miserable right now and their parents put them there. That might inspire fear of crossing their parents (and hey, some parents think that's a good thing for some reason), or it might harbor resentment for them, but it is often not an effective way for them to connect their current misery as a consequence of a previous transgression.

So give all of this, why was I conflicted at all? It seems as though I pretty much come out against publicly shaming your kids. Why the need to ponder it?

Well, because there have been some cases of public shaming of children when I came out firmly on the side of the parents. However, after going through the previous scenario I understood why.

All of the times I have favored shaming kids, the kids were 1. teenagers, and 2. bullies.

I realized that the reason I felt it was good to shame these kids, was because the shaming was the lesson in empathy. They were kids who routinely laughed at their peers, put them down online or bullied others in one way or another. Knowing what it feels like to be the target of that kind of abuse is something that can teach them to empathize with others.

It wasn't a delayed punishment meant to create misery for a previous transgression, it was the learning experience.

To be fair to Karamo Brown, he did couch his example of shaming his own child in a lot of sitting down, explaining and teaching language, which I am sure contributed to my feeling conflicted, and which is why I didn't really disagree with him as strongly as I might have in a different context. It wasn't until some time later, when he came on TYT again and made some very sex-negative comments, to the effect of 'well, if you have sex in a deserted field, you deserve to be filmed by a pervy cop! WHAT IF MY KIDS HAD SEEN YOU?!' 

 that's when I realized I'm really going to be disagreeing with this guy. It's very shallow, but when I find someone as breathtakingly attractive as Karamo Brown (calm down every one, I know he's gay, doesn't make him any less of a beautiful beautiful man) the vehemently disagreeing part always comes as a bit more of a disappointment.

Is Secular Humanism Only Compatible With Socialism?

I've been on a bit of a The Atheist Experience binge lately during my hours of pipetting and sitting in front of the microscope, and so I came across one particular episode in which an interesting question came up, and one that I do not think was answered or discussed in sufficient detail. The caller (watch from 38:00 of the video below for full context) basically floated the idea that an atheistic morality is only compatible with socialism as an economic structure, because it is centered around humans having inherent value, rather than capitalism, which promotes competition and stepping over your fellow man.

While the discussion travelled towards the limits of how much you can morally expect from an individual to put the needs of others over their own, the caller was steering the conversation towards economic policy, which forced Russell (much to his chagrin) even defend right-wing capitalism a little bit.

What they all failed to acknowledge is that most successful societies are based on an amalgamation of capitalism and socialism. While I agree that a pure cut-throat capitalistic society is not the best strategy, especially from a moral standpoint (what would that even look like? Pure libertarianism? More on that later) pure, unadulterated socialism doesn't work either.

Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons for socialism. The fundamental principle is to base a society on meritocracy, where every person is born equal and is not inherently superior by sole fortune of the circumstances in which they were born. Of course this is also why so many socialist countries have needed to rely on propaganda and censorship in order to convince their people that those in power actually deserve their leadership position (for an extreme example, see all of the ridiculous stories that come out of North Korea to justify the awesomeness of their leaders), but for the sake of argument lets forget about regimes which pervert the fundamental principles of their purported economic structure. Even disregarding the tendency of purely socialist states to devolve into dictatorships, a purely socialist economic structure does not take into account the fact that human beings respond to reward for their efforts.

My father tells an amusing story about when he was in Prague at the very end of the communist era. He had to travel a lot for work, and in this case he was in Prague for the first time with some colleagues which had traveled there before. They arrived late and hungry, and so they all went out in search of a restaurant where they could have dinner. When they knocked on the door of the first one they could find, the manager answered and informed them that the restaurant was completely full. While my father accepted this and turned to leave, his more experienced colleague protested and barged into the restaurant, which turned out to be completely empty. This man then explained to my father that this lie was commonly told because, since the people who ran the restaurant earned the same (and rather meager) wage regardless of the number of clients they served, they clearly preferred showing up to work and doing as little as possible. If your wages at the end of the day were the same regardless of the success of the restaurant, why bother busting your butt to serve as many people as well as possible?

Of course I also do not think that the other extreme is fair either, like servers in the States which have to basically prostitute themselves for tips because their base wage doesn't even come close to the minimum wage, let alone a living one. A healthy balance, in which people are rewarded for their hard work but at the same time do not have to worry about making ends meet at the month, is the most successful model that we have yet come across.

In my opinion, it is possible to have a healthy balance of the capitalist reward structure and basic socialist principles and safety nets. In fact, the most successful societies available today have a mixture of these two principles. Even if we are to disregard the "what makes for a successful society" argument and focus exclusively on morality, how does providing monetary rewards for hard work infringe on the morality of caring for your neighbor? How does allowing people to earn small luxuries, like a nice vacation or a day at the spa, after they have earned it with their efforts bring people to care less about their fellow man? While I absolutely concede that the US has struck the balance too far in favor of capitalism, I do not think that a purely socialist structure is the only one that is compatible with a secular morality. I think there is room for a bit of both within our moral principles.

 

Conflating Morality With Legality

I started thinking about this topic when I was discussing the legality of C-sections in Italy with a colleague of mine. I was unaware of this, but apparently it is technically illegal for a woman to give birth via C-section unless there is a legittimate medical reason for doing so. Given the rather loose language that entails, and the fact that there are far far more C-sections being performed in the South compared to Northern Italian states, leads us to believe that if a woman really wants to have one, she can find a doctor who will be willing to schedule her one. The point of disagreement between us was based on whether or not this law should exist at all.

 

Her perspective on this is that, while she has absolutely no problem with avoiding a vaginal birth for legittimate health concerns (a baby not turning, heart problems etc.), she believes that no woman should be allowed to simply opt for a C-section simply because of fear of a vaginal birth, stating studies that have found a correlation between cesarean births and an increased risk of certain chronic illnesses. It is her opinion that pregnancy comes with certain responsibilities, one of which is giving birth as nature intended, should you have a completely normal and healthy pregnancy. I of course disagreed, hence my writing this post.

 

I realized that all too often we conflate what we believe is immoral with what we believe should be illegal, and this is not, nor should it be always the case. Of course there is significant overlap between the two concepts, but there is also plenty of space for the two things to remain seperate. The problem is that morality is inherently subjective, especially when we begin to dissect these kinds of minor issues, while the law is objectively applied across the board. It is therefore important to not allow one's own opinion about the morality of something to affect a law which would be applied to everyone without good supporting reasons.

 

I disagreed with her reasoning because, essentially, I believe it comes down to bodily autonomy. Either someone has control over their own body, or they don't. It's the same reason why I think it doesn't matter whether or not someone thinks abortion is immoral, it should still be legal. While I concede that there is evidence that C-sections can lead to increased risk of certain kinds of illness, so can maternal obesity, gestational weight gain and, ever so importantly, drinking, but we don't go around criminalizing any of these behaviors simply because they bring an increased risk of harm to the fetus. We rely on educating women on the facts and dangers associated with certain behaviors but, ultimately, we trust them as adults to make their own decisions regarding their body and their life. To me, whether or not I think it is moral for a woman to opt for a C-section out of fear, her legal right to do so should not be in question.

 

A Baby Skeptic Stares At The Stars...

Yesterday's post had me thinking a lot about how I formed my views on reality and the universe as I was growing up. Yesterday I wrote about how my experiences led me in the wrong direction, away from reason. However, there were other aspects of my reasoning that betrayed the skeptic that I would eventually become. One such example was my pondering on how we perceive time and space.

As an only child I often needed to entertain myself, which is probably one of the many reasons I thought about the nature of reality so often to begin with. So when we would go to the countryside I did what countless children had also done before me, and that is lay back and stare up at the stars. Staring into space gave me vertigo the way that looking over the edge of a cliff never did. It was scary, but once I assured myself that there was no danger of falling into the abyss of space it was exciting, and brought on many thoughts about how limited our understanding of space and time must be.

I realized, based on my experience of space and time, that the linear perception of time was just not going to cut it when it came to the vast universe above me. That X comes before Y which comes before Z was all well and good when looking at the timeline of my life, but I realized that this linear perception of time was very limiting. So what came before the Earth? What came before that? And before that? If time is just purely linear, where did it all start? How could something just start? Doesn't there have to be something there for it to start from? The same went for space. Beyond this field is this country, beyond that is the world, beyond that is the galaxy, beyond that more galaxies and the universe, but what about beyond that? Could there be such a thing as true, limitless space? Doesn't it have to end somewhere? But if it does, what lies beyond it? Of course, my Catholic upbringing gave me a very easy answer to these concepts: Beyond space is heaven, before time there's God.

But even that seemed like a cop-out to me. How is pondering the possibility of a timeless God any easier to wrap your mind around than a time which has existed forever? How is conceiving of an infinite heaven any easier to comprehend than an infinite universe? Despite the whole "oh well one is natural and one is supernatural" explanation, it didn't seem like an answer so much as more of the same question. Because of this I came to my own conclusion: I just don't get it. And that's O.K.

I realized that we describe what is going on around us as best we can, but we (or, at least, I) don't have the capacity to really visualize such huge concepts as the beginning of time or the ends of space. My brain can't reach that far, and that's kind of cool. Like not being able to describe colors to someone who was born blind, there could be concepts completely beyond my realm of understanding, and there is nothing wrong with that.

I think the makings of a skeptic is to let go of the fear of the unknown. There are legitimate biological reasons why we are predisposed to fear that which we cannot see or perceive, but when it comes to certain concepts there is no need to invent and answer to fill in the blanks. Not knowing, or really coming to grips with the limits of our understanding doesn't have to be scary, it can be amazing. 

 

How Lucid Dreaming Contributed To My Woo Thinking

So a couple of days ago I told you about how I have been a lucid dreamer for as long as I remember. I allowed myself a little back-patting with the recent study indicating that lucid dreamers are more self-aware, but now I want to revisit the subject to discuss how lucid dreaming may have slowed my progress out of woo thinking and into rational thought.

Those of you who have read this blog more frequently may remember my post on how I became an atheist, written in response to an open call by PZ Myers on Pharyngula. In it I briefly touched on my fascination with forgotten religions and all things magical and woo. I was raised by a mother who is still very much attached to her new age-y beliefs, I don't think she has stopped believing in anything from aromatherapy to crystal healing, and I know for a fact she still believes in fairies, so of course I had little hope of rejecting these ideas as a child. Plus, let's face it, believing in magic is fun! At least for a while. The fact that she encouraged this fantastical thinking definitely hindered the development of my skeptical muscles, although the tendency to do so was always in my personality. Despite the fact that it is in my nature to be a skeptic, however, I later noticed that my lucid dreaming was, in a small way, responsible for keeping me back, at least with regards to some views of the world.

I mentioned in my previous post on the subject that it is difficult for one to escape one's own context, as it was for me with lucid dreaming. So when I was introduced (by my mother, of course) to the concept of "mind over matter", everything just made sense to me. She showed me programs like What the Bleep! (which at the time I of course had no idea was pseudo-scientific drivel) and convinced me that there were many gurus who had achieved things like levitation and walking on water. Not to place all the blame on her shoulders, I took little convincing. While I was skeptical about many things in my childhood (for example, I never bought the existence of the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy for a second, no matter how hard my mother tried), the idea that matter, which was made up of mostly empty space, was only solid to the touch because your conscience expected it to be, made perfect sense to me. The reason this made sense in my mind was directly because of my lucid dreaming.

Those of you who are capable of lucid dreaming know that honing your skills at it requires a lot of concentration. It requires you to shut out that little doubting voice in the back of your mind. Let's say, for example, you are dreaming you have the power of telekinesis, which you are using to defeat the monster in your nightmare. The second there is a little doubt in the back of your mind that says "oh no! What if this power stops working?" POOF! you don't have the power any more (I also blame movies and TV shows which always put the hero of the story in a bit of jeopardy with a twist like that for those doubts.... dumb movies). Perfecting your abilities in lucid dreaming is all about mind over (albeit perceived) matter. That is why I needed to get better at flying: at first I could only jump off of buildings and soar, and if I carried anything it would weigh me down. I then managed to pump my arms like a bird and take off from the ground. It took me years to be able to soar into the sky carrying any burden at will, because I had to concentrate, convince myself it was possible, and completely eliminate any doubt or fear. It is the same reason why making things disappear in your dreams is easier than changing their appearance, unless you close your eyes or place your hand in front of them while doing so. 

Because I was so well versed in the art of this kind of concentration, the reason the "mind over matter" concept made so much sense to me was because I figured that modifying your reality was like modifying your dreams, only infinitely harder.

Although lucid dreams are incredibly vivid and, at times, freakishly realistic, they still have that "taint" of a dream. You can still tell, once you wake up, that reality just feels much more "real" than dreams do, despite how real the dreams felt at the time. Because of this, it made sense to me that "mind over matter" would be much easier in dreams than reality. It made sense to me that it would take years of the kind of concentration I had been practicing in my sleep to be able to erase every last trace of doubt from your mind that your hand will not pass through that table, or that your body will not hover a few inches off the ground. It also made sense to me that it would require an even longer time concentrating to be able to pull off such a feat in front of others, with their disbelieving huffs tainting the back of your mind. 

It was because of the fact that I could dream this way, and that I had no idea that I was in the minority, that I clung on to this particular brand of woo for the longest of all of my woo thinking. It made so much sense to my context, to my life, that it made me wonder: are the inventors, or the major proponents of "mind over matter", also lucid dreamers? 

Is It Sexual Assault?

This train of thought came upon me when watching one of those famous TYT Supreme Court moments that I've blogged about before. This video involves the so-called "Alabama Teabagger", and while from that title I thought I was going to get a few laughs at the Tea Party's expense, what I actually saw was just kind of gross.

As usual, the person that I disagree with the most in this case is Jayar, whom as usual is the one that, in my opinion, has the most unreasonable perspective. I could rant on and on about how much I hate the argument that he makes, the close cousin to the "well I was beat up at school and I turned out alright, therefore I think that bullying should not be addressed because it builds character!" argument. However this is not about that. This is about a question that I immediately asked myself even before Ana brought it up: if it was a woman, would I have a different opinion as to how harshly he should be punished?

I appreciate the point that Cenk makes, that context matters and that it would be different if it was sexual in nature. If the guy did it to get off it's blatant sexual assault, whether he's doing it to a woman or a man. However I think it is pretty clear in the video that the act was intended as a prank, one which would humiliate the victim. However, even so, even if there was the exact same stupid-college-prank intent behind it, a part of me still feels like it's worse if the victim is a woman. Why is that? Is this another possible deep core of sexism hidden within me?

I realized that my feelings stemmed from the reaction that I imagined the victim, upon seeing that video, would have. When you see a burly college guy passed out at a football game getting pranked, you imagine that when he wakes up and discovers what happened he would be enormously pissed, and either beat up the prankster or devise an extremely elaborate and equally humiliating counter-prank. When you see the same thing happening to a woman, you imagine her being extremely humiliated, possibly depressed, possibly not having the guts to face her classmates for some time afterwards. Some of this is unfair stereotyping, some of it is from the cultural double-standard we have regarding men and women and embarrassing sexual-related things happening to them, but most of it is the imbalance of power. When you humiliate your peer it's a prank, when you humiliate someone who is weaker than you it is bullying. The fact that imagining the same thing happening to a young man that was weaker and picked on by the football team gave me the same gut reaction that imagining it happening to a woman did confirmed that this was the source of my double standard. 

Therefore the question becomes: is it fair to assume that a woman has less power? Is it fair to automatically jump to the conclusion that she would not be able to take it the same way and defend herself in the same way that another man could?

I think the answer is yes and no.

I know for a fact that there are women out there who would immediately try to devise the most complicated and terrifyingly humiliating counterprank imaginable. I know that there are women that would not be afraid to find that guy and kick the crap out of him in front of his friends, accomplishing both tasks. However, I do think that the football, frat-like and overall college culture would not be expecting that reaction, and I think that is the point.

Except for very special circumstances in which some girls may have been accepted into certain groups as "one of the guys", I think that the reaction that the "prankster" would expect from the woman would be the first that I described. All of a sudden, the prank moves away from being humiliating-but-harmless-fun into the realm of actively trying to make that person miserable. I think that a man who would do that would be trying to provoke that reaction from a woman, even if he does wind up getting a good kick in the balls for his troubles. That's where I think that the intent would be significantly different, and where it would not necessarily apply solely to women. 

It's not that women necessarily have less power than men in this circumstance, it's that more likely than not the man would be doing this because he expects her to have less power and not be able to defend herself.

This is why there are trials for this sort of thing, and why it shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all sentence. I think that, regardless of the victim being a man or a woman, if the person doing it has the intent that I last described, I could accept two years. If, on the other hand it was meant as simply a very stupid prank towards a peer, it's way way over the top.

In this case I have no idea where the victim stood in this regard. For all I know the prank could have been payback for something the passed-out person did previously. Because of this, I reserve judgement on the severity of the sentence in the absence of all the facts.

Judging What Is Real: Part II

A continuation, if I may.

It is interesting that while I was mulling around the contents of yesterday's post in my head, something happened that made me want to extend the topic of what constitutes as real.

This weekend I started my first Coursera course, and I was incredibly excited. It's given by Caltech, and is about Drugs and the Brain. I need a good refresher course in neuroscience, as I haven't even looked at it since my first year in college (when I was not a good student at all, thanks depression!), as I only did a very specific neurobiology course in my last year. It's all stuff that can be useful to me in my career and PhD, so I signed up, took my little notebook out and almost nostalgically started taking notes while watching one of the mini lectures during my lunch break. A colleague of mine saw me at in, right in the middle of copying down and trying to make sure I understood a physics equation (something I haven't studied since my second year in high school, so I really needed a refresher there), when she asked me astonishedly: you're taking notes?! For a coursera course??!! 

I replied well... yes! Of course I am! how else am I going to learn enough and pass the exam! To which she replied but.... it's all fake! What are you doing that for?!

Here I was befuddled and quite a bit miffed. Never mind that she knows exactly what coursera is, what it's about and at least said that she thought was absolutely brilliant. Never mind that she knows full well that these courses are offered by some of the most prestigious universtities in the world. And yes, this specific course is relatively brief and might not earn us an unofficial certificate of completion, but what about all of this makes the course "fake"?

What is so "fake" about knowledge?

Is it because the course is not one that carries university credit, and therefore cannot be used towards getting an official degree from Caltech? But then does that make any class that someone audits "fake"?

Is it because it is not a course that is directly improving my career chances? But does that make her own pursuit of her second degree in archaeology, despite being a biologist, "fake"?

What is so fake about learning?

It really comes down to what your priorities are, when it comes to deciding what you think is "real" and "fake". She obviously gives far more importance to officiality, and what others will officially recognize as something that you have done. I understand that coursera is new and relatively open in structure, there has been no standardization of course structure or examination, there is no way of comparing how strict or lax the grading method is, and therefore as of now is not as "offical" as it could be. Nevertheless, it is still education, it is still knowledge and it is still something I want to learn. I may not get an unofficial certificate of completion, but the knowledge that I gain from this course could really help me explore other avenues of research, or make me be able to hold my own in an interview in which knowledge of these things is required. To me, that makes this course very real indeed.

Officiality is, in my opinion, extremely limited. There are diploma mills out there that have not yet been discovered, where you can buy a degree without putting in a day's work. Less obivous are universities (and some high schools) which are exceedlingly expensive but also pathetically easy, which require next to no work to complete so long as there is a healthy influx of cash. Some may officially recognize certificates from these institutions, but to me they are the real "fakes" here. 

Where do your priorities lie when it comes to deciding what is real, and what is fake?

Thoughts On: How We Judge Reality

Now that I have managed, somehow, to get through my 2 presentations in 10 days, I think I can breathe a little bit and get to the topics that I have had mulling around in my head for a while.

I'm sure that all of your have heard this narrative at some point in your lives. For me, I found that it became particularly prevalent in my pre-teen/early teen years, when kids really start to delve into their first existential questions. 

The very first ones of course tend to come up much earlier. For example, I remember thinking I was HOT SHIT when, at 8 years old and first discovering the existence of color-blindness, I came up with the age-old question: How do I know that what I see as blue is what you see as blue? Maybe what I call blue, you call purple! OMG SUBJECTIVITY FTW!! But apart from those classic one-hit wonders, the real "deep" discussions (which often ended in, if not tears, a lot of brooding and moody pondering), at least for me and my peers, began at the pre-teen stage. Things like whether or not love exists, whether or not the soul exists, whether or not the supernatural exists, what that all means with respect to us and our lives and our meaning and purpose, these were all hotly discussed. 

Of course these discussions were not as "deep" as we thought them to be at the time, which is about as much as you can expect from a bunch of barely pubescent kids. They were riddled with logical fallacies and a whole lot of "this is what I would like to be true and therefore this is what I believe" was going on, but that is immaterial to the point I will finally get to. The common thread of discussion that I want to bring up is one that I'm sure you've all heard by now, and I want to bring it up because it is one that I have heard come up among adults as well. It goes a little something like this:

Desperate Romantic (DR): Of course true love exists! I believe in it fully! It is what makes us human! It is what binds us! 
Presumed Skeptic (PS): I don't believe in true love. It doesn't exist. 
DR: Well I've found a soul mate! How do you explain that?
PS: There are no soul mates because there is no soul. The soul is just electrical impulses in the brain. Love is just hormones firing in the brain, that's all.
DR: You're diminishing what it means to be human by saying that! That's such a nihilistic perspective! 

And here is where I get lost in the backwards-ness of our culture.

Notice how DR is the one who says s/he believes in things like love and the soul, while PS is the one who claims not to.
And yet PS is the only one that is pointing to a physical, measurable something that either love or the soul could be, while DR insists they have to be invisible, unseeable, unmeasurable, untouchable.
Catch my problem here yet?

What I don't understand is how in the bleeding hell we managed to get so twisted in our logic that we accept that if something is invisible, unmeasurable and untouchable makes it more real, while claiming that it can be seen or measured makes it less real. That is why I called the second generic person in this back and forth "presumed" skeptic, because despite being seen as the nihilistic atheistic person in this exchange, they are making just as much of a backwards and illogical argument as the first person is. 

What is so bad about finding the chemical, measurable source of love? Doesn't finding that, measuring that, by definition prove it to be real? Why are so many people, PS-es out there included, so ready to dismiss the natural world as less-than? But more than that, how did we get here? Isn't it amazing that if tomorrow scientists came out and demonstrated a measurable compound which causes the feeling of love, and demonstrate that that feeling of love can be viewed in the brain beyond a shadow of a doubt, so many people would throw up their hands and cry "well that does it, love doesn't exist!" ??!! 

I believe that there is a physical, natural source for love, and therefore I believe that love exists. Interestingly, I was always on the outskirts listening in when this particular debate came up in my childhood, because I hadn't quite made up my mind about it.

Now I realize that the reason for that is because I was truly in the middle.

Tough Questions: On The Limits of Personal Freedom

Despite my extremely patchy posting, I found that I had to re-address one last aspect of the issues that I brought up surrounding Savita. As usual, thinking about the victims of backwards, brutal religions just gets me thinking about all of the ways that these religions infringe on the rights of human beings to be healthy. I think not only about people who die because of dangerous pregnancies, but about circumcision, acid being thrown in girls faces, AIDS because of a lack of access to condoms and children dying of preventable diseases because their parents were told not to believe in a certain medicine. 

When thinking about the horrors that many religious people impose on their own, especially their children, it is very easy to say things like "You know what asshole? If your adult self wants to be a dumbass and not take a blood transfusion to save your own life go right ahead, one less idiot on this planet, but don't let your child die because of your lunatic beliefs!" I am sorry (am I? I'm not sure yet) to say that I also have said this more than once, and am usually of this opinion, but this recent tragedy has really gotten me thinking. 

First of all, any regular reader of this blog will know that I am one HELL of an advocate for personal freedom. I feel that if you are an adult, are fully capable of making your own decisions and are not hurting anyone else in the process you can pretty much to whatever you like. I have taken this idea to some pretty dark extremes, defending even things that make my stomach turn in the utmost disgust. You can see my post on incest, for instance. When that story came out about that German guy that looked for a guy on the internet who loved the idea of being eaten, then killed and ate him, I said he shouldn't get life in prison because the guy not only volunteered, he really really wanted to be eaten - and shouldn't what happens to his own life be his choice and no one else's? I once even saw a documentary about these rare cases of voluntary amputation (if I find it again, I'll update and link it), where these people cannot live with a limb and try desperately to cut it off in any way possible, finding it of course very hard to find a doctor willing to amputate a perfectly healthy limb, and thinking that if I were a doctor I'd try to help these people out. Coming from this perspective, you'd think that my being OK with an adult doing something unhealthy because of their religious beliefs would be absolutely nothing, right?

And yet, there were two examples that stuck in my mind which made it very difficult for me to continue shrugging my shoulders in the face of weird choices that I will never understand but have no interest in shaking my finger over. One of them is the case of adult women electing to be fully circumsized, which a South African friend of mine tells me is the norm in the small town where he is from. The other is the idea of a woman getting a symphysiotomy despite knowing exactly what it is and what it will do to her (and yes I know that this was not the case in Ireland). Am I just being uber sexist, and only balk at these things because they involve women? 

I hope not, because there is a very fundemental difference between the two categories. The first category that I described is one in the absence of coercion. A person has a very strange fantasy, or has a rare illness that makes them need something desperately, who am I to tell them they can't have it, if they're not infringing on someone else's rights in the process? In the case of the latter, however, I don't think that is the case. If your community basically tells you you're an unmarriable slut if you elect to not be circumcised, that's not really a free adult making a free choice is it? If a woman is led to believe by her country steeped in patriarchal religion that her only worth on this planet is to make as many babies as possible no matter the cost or risk to her health, how can I possibly be in favor of that? 

The question thus becomes, would I be in favor of putting hard laws against these things that I despise? Just because I despise them, even though adults are (relatively) volutarily electing to have them?

I think that history has shown that laws are the wrong way to go about these things, especially when it comes to limiting adults. While I am in favor of laws preventing these things being done to children (as relatively powerless citizens they need extra protection), having only laws leads to one thing: back alley proceedures. I personally would invest my resources and energy into education, education, education, always. Let's talk about how these things are incredibly dangerous. Let's talk about changing our culture to something that is sex positive, not slut-shaming. Let's change people's minds.

I suppose the fundemental conclusion is this. When someone has an innate, psychological problem, such as the people who desperately want to become amputees, there's nothing you can do to remove that need inside them. They have it and they will be miserable for the rest of their lives if they are forced to keep that limb, and misery pushes people to do desperate and dangerous things. This means that we need to pick the better of two not-ideal situations: allow that person to sever that limb in the safest way possible.

On the other hand, if we have a person whose only reason for wanting something so dangerous and brutal is because they were unfortunate enough to be born into a society which tells them that they are worth less if they don't do it, well that's just not. fucking. fair. I don't want anyone to think that, and I will not want to stand idly by while the vicious cycle goes round and round. While legislation will probably do more harm than good - pushing an already unsafe proceedure underground - tackling the root, the source of the problem is the hardest but the best way to handle this unfairness. 

There's more to struggle with this, but this first part I hope is clear enough.

Thoughts On: Body Farms, Autopsies and Anatomy Museums

This one has been swirling around in my head for a while, but it also just so happens to be an appropriate topic for Halloween, don’t you think?

This is one of those cases in which for a long time I had to think to death why I felt the way I feel about a certain thing. So here’s the deal: I am not opposed to art exhibits or museums which display human bodies, I was brought to an anatomy museum as a freshman in high school, and while it was a little disturbing for a 13-14 year old (particularly the severely malformed fetuses and the poster book of a sliced pregnant woman), I do not oppose their existence. Of course I am also fully aware that body farms and autopsies performed for medical training are invaluable to our society and even if I were opposed to the former, the latter is undeniably essential. Here’s my one caveat though: the people who are used have to have consented to this while they were alive. I am firm in this, and I did not go to one of the exhibits in Dublin because I was told that the majority of the bodies used were unclaimed as opposed to voluntarily donated. Why, though, do I feel this way?

I obviously am not religious or superstitious in any way. I do not believe that the “souls” of those people will “know” what is being done to their bodies and upset them. I do not believe that they will become angry ghosts for the way that their bodies are being treated. I do not believe that any of them will be denied access to heaven because they were not buried in a certain way. Why, then, am I so adamant about consent, when they would never know any better anyway?

The answer came to me when I was talking to a friend of mine who is considering visiting the Human Body Exhibition in Milan. She has never been to one of these before nor has she ever seen an autopsy, so while she is very curious she is unsure how she will react. Discussing it, she said that she would probably be very sad, because she will be thinking about how these bodies were real live people once. To which I responded that that would not make me sad in the slightest, so long as I knew that those people had wanted their bodies to be displayed in such a way. And that is when it clicked.

Respecting their last wishes is my way of preserving their humanity. I will always remember that those bodies were people, I cannot disassociate what they are now with what they were. However, knowing that this is what they wanted for themselves and their bodies would make me happy to participate, not sad. I do not fear death the way that many others do and I accept it, however I feel that respecting someone’s wishes is respecting their humanity. I would find it incredibly sad if I knew that the exhibit was filled with unclaimed bodies, that just because those people had outlived their family or perhaps died in the wrong place at the wrong time that somehow made them less human, less worthy of respect, less deserving of choosing the fate of their bodies. I would feel for those people, I would wonder what their lives were like, what they would have wanted, why they died alone and unwanted. On the other hand, to know that the last wish of the person I am looking at was to be looked at by me and the thousands of others that walk through the exhibit makes me feel happy to oblige. I would not think on their past life with sadness but with curiosity and a smile on my face. Finally, I feel that there is an inherent hypocrisy in giving some people the right to do with their body as they choose but deny that right to others.

I may not have really explained myself that clearly, so feel free to ask or bring up another tangent. I am also aware that this is very subjective, so what are your thoughts on the subject?

Have you ever been, or would you ever go to a body exhibit or a human anatomy museum?

What Does It Mean To Be Biased?

This is something that I have been pondering for a while when it comes to discussing news, media and the like with people of my generation especially. Of course our generation is quite sullen when it comes to these things, and it is very difficult to get them to admit they like anything in the media without this very important modifier: "well, of course Show X is completely biased, but I kinda like it because.....". In many cases I did not agree, but I realized that while many of them will say that regardless of the actual evidence (wouldn't want to be accused of being naive, hellz no), in some cases we are operating with different definitions of the word biased.

The word is used in many different contexts, so it is a difficult one to pin down. For example, in a sports game, a ref that is "biased" is one that has a particular preference for one team, subconsciously or otherwise, and will therefore be "harder" on one than the other. This meaning that if one team commits a foul the ref will call it, but if the other preferred team commits the exact same offence they do not get called on it. I think this is a fairly straightforward example, and one that can be evaluated relatively objectively. 

Another context in which the word is used is in the law: a biased judge, for example. In this case the word takes on a slightly different meaning, as it is well known that judges have certain political ideologies and ideals, therefore two judges may rule quite differently on the same case. This however is something that is known before hand and therefore not considered "biased": a judge becomes biased (or rather, not impartial) if he or she has a vested interest in the outcome of the case, or if one of the lawyers is his/her spouse etc. A judge can also have a racial or gender bias, being harsher on one more than another for the same crime/whatever. However, in this case, simply having a personal leaning, preference or ideology is not enough to call bias, there has to be a far more tangible source.

This, however, seems not to be the case in the media. I have begun to notice with this whole "everything, everyone, every single modicum of the news media is biased!!!" argument is based on the personal ideology of the newscaster. The idea is that regardless of how hard they try, even if it is not an opinion piece, their personal beliefs will subconsciously "leak" out, tainting their broadcast, and thus making everything that comes out of their mouths biased. Therefore, if we're watching actual opinion news like The Young Turks, we must be absolutely 100% sure we communicate in no uncertain terms that we KNOW it is TOTALLY biased, before we can ever admit to liking and watching it. This is where I tend to disagree.

I do not think that TYT is biased the way that FOX News is biased. The main difference is that, while TYT will loudly state their opinion(s) on a subject, I have not found them to purpously misrepresent facts in order to fit their ideology, and the mistakes they have made they have come forward to correct. FOX News, on the other hand, routinely selectively edits their news stories, twisting the facts and misrepresenting them in order to support a preconceived idea, rather than presenting all the facts and then drawing the necessary conclusions. 

This, to me, is what it means to be "biased" in the media, and therefore in some ways I do not think that all media outlets are biased at all. If anything, I find that many media outlets in the US are so terrified of being called biased by the right wing that they misrepresent a loony far-right perspective as if it had the same basis in truth as the other side, thereby misrepresenting the facts and being biased in favor of the right wing.

So what do I do in these cases of conflicting definitions? To the dictionary!

Oxford English Dictionary:

biased: unfairly prejudiced for or against someone or something: we will not tolerate this biased media coverage

Ouch, that's a little vague isn't it? To be "unfairly prejudiced" can be taken in extremely broad or extremely narrow terms. Let's try a couple of others:


Cambridge:

biased: showing an unreasonable like or dislike for a person based on personal opinions

The newspapers gave a very biased report of the meeting.

I think she's beautiful but then I'm biased since she's my daughter

Dictionary.com:

bias:  a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice


Aiaiai, can we get any more different in our definitions?! I am surprised at how few entries there are for this word as well, given that these dictionaries tend to waffle on for ages (remember the post on cults? yeesh) and this word can be quite versatile. At the end of the day though, I suppose what you consider to be biased is really up to you.

It all comes down to the "level" of bias you're willing to handle from a media outlet. While I do think there is some truth to the "subconscious leakage" hypothesis, I do not think that any such leakage would matter to me when drawing my own conclusions from facts. These sorts of things have to be rigorously controlled in an experimental setting (for example, having someone who does not know which are the "treatment" and "control" groups collecting the data, as in a clinical trial) or a criminal setting (for example not having someone accidentally influencing a witness into picking someone out of a lineup). In a news story, on the other hand, I do not think that subconscious or loud outspoken "bias" or opinion will sway me. 

So long as I have all the facts laid out in front of me I can draw my own conclusions, regardless of what the person laying them out for me thinks. The fact that their opinions wont change my mind is what makes me call shows like TYT not biased. On the other hand, if I am only given a selected subset of the facts presented in such a way to make them seem like something they are not, that is what could really lead me to draw the wrong conclusion, and therefore that is what I will call being biased in the media.

What are your thoughts on the problem, or lack of a problem, of bias in the media?



 

Clashing Cultures: Round Two

I've written before about one aspect in which the Italian culture is significantly at odds, almost the direct opposite of US culture, and today I realized that there is another aspect that I had not fully formulated in my mind, though I have been aware of it all my life. It still falls squarely into that good old Italian pessimism that I have written about before (although not very recently), but it is an interesting parallel manifestation of it. I am talking about the ways that both regard ambition.

Ambition is something that is greatly admired in the United States, and something that I noticed very much when I was applying for college. Apart from the obvious historical cultural background: pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and defeating all the odds, taking huge risks to become immensely successful even when you were working multiple dead-end jobs to get there, there is an incredible focus put on ambition in your career. I didn't want to go to the United States for college for financial reasons as well, beginning my working life with a huge debt on my shoulders seemed ridiculous to me if I could avoid it (and I didn't even know what kind of a nosedive the global economy was about to take as I entered the workforce either), but primarily I had personal reasons for not wanting to move there. The US is just so far away from the rest of the world, so isolating, so monocultural in so many ways that I much prefered the idea of staying in Europe. When I left Ireland also for personal reasons despite the fact that I was trading an excellent chance of getting a PhD for a very small one, the reaction of my American family was largely the same. I was perhaps not ridiculed, but very nearly, for putting personal reasons anywhere near my career on my list of priorities. The idea was that, unless I wanted to be a sucker, career had to become a very distant first on my list, who cares where I lived or if the weather was miserable or whatever else. You do what you have to do to succeed and become the best. Of course, Italy is the complete opposite.

While every Italian completely understood my reasons for leaving Dublin (and even expressed shock that I even stayed to finish my degree), they are the least ambitious and most pessimistic bunch I have ever known. All of them told my family "tell her not to come back to this shithole! She'll never get a PhD here! There's no point in even trying if she doesn't have Italian professors as friends, don't you know how it works here?!" The fact that I was offered a PhD in all three places I applied doesn't sway them one little bit: "Oh she got in? Wow, she must be some kind of super genius or really really lucky, because that never happens". Well no shit it never happens if you sit on your ass and don't even bother applying! I'm not saying that this is the golden land of opportunity, very far from it, but the mentality is irritating beyond measure. And for the record no, I'm not a super genius, far from it actually, but I showed enthusiasm for my work and that I really wanted to be here, and that made a huge difference.

This also goes for anyone who shows the slightest bit of ambition regarding their future plans. I've had people look at me with a raised eyebrow, saying "what, you think you're getting into academia? Pfft please, no one makes it that far (the fact that the very exisitence of professors contradicts this argument eludes them completely). Or, if they're talking about their own plans: "I don't want to sound ambitious or anything, you know, but I was thinking about...." I get immensely frustrated, what the fuck is wrong with being ambitious?! It's not like I'm saying that I KNOW I'm going to be immensely successful, but I'm not going to lie down and die for fear of failing. If I wind up being a waitress for the rest of my life at least I know I gave my dream a shot, even though it didn't pan out, and I wont have to die with that regret on my conscience. However, for some reason, in Italy ambition is in some ways related to not being modest, being arrogant, which is the main reaction you get if you express the slightest bit of ambition.

As usual, I think both approaches are flawed, as they represent both extreme sides. On the one hand I am a human being, not a robot. If I'm not happy in the place that I'm living, or my partner is not happy, my life will suffer in a way that earning a bit more is not going to make up for. Happiness comes in many froms, not just how high you climb up a career ladder or how much money you make. I could give a damn if others think that I could be doing more or earning more, I made my decision based on what was best for me, not best for my career. Some people don't distinguish the two and validate themselves entirely based on their career and that's OK too, but I'm not one of them and most people are not.

On the other hand you have an attitude that is very much akin to living in fear. Although its a resignation more than a fear that leads Italians to talk and behave in this way, the results are largely the same: their full potential is not being realized, and the best people for positions are either leaving the country or not bothering to try. The result? Only people who think they have a better shot, because of connections and not necessarily the most qualified, even bother showing up to the job interviews. While it does occasionally happen that interviews are set up as a formality to officially give the job to your pet, not bothering to show up for any because you automatically assume they're all the same only exacerbates the problem.

My conclusions are always the same in these little rants: borrow a little from each other and find a middle ground, there's no need to be so damned apocalyptic about everything all the time!

What Exactly Is A Cult?

As I mentioned yesterday in my post about Scientology, for some strange reason I'm in a cult-documentary phase at the moment, and by now I think I've seen every single one of them that I can find on youtube (except the ancient aliens one from the history channel, I refuse). What struck me was that, despite my searching "cult documentary", I never really knew what to expect when I watched one of the videos, mostly because of the extremely diverse views as to what constitutes a cult.

Sometimes the documentaries would be strictly about extremely violent and sociopathic cults, like the Manson family or Aum Shinrikyo. These were the kind of documentaries that I liked the least, dealing mostly with the shock value of these heinous crimes in the oh-my-god-how-did-he-convince-these-people-my-lordy sense. Incidentally I would have found them far more interesting if they were presented in the context of the psychology of sociopaths, Stokholm Syndrome etc, rather than pure awe at how good people can go so terribly wrong given a charasmatic enough leader (as if it were that simple). Either way, in this case it was evident that the writers were considering the word "cult" in the strictest sense, a small brain-washed group of puppets controlled by an evil Satan-like leader. In other cases I would get the documentaries about an organizations that are recognized officially as religions in many countries. Others yet considered cults to be people who believe in things that are just far too silly and out there to be taken seriously (as if a parthenogenic teenager that popps out a guy that can walk on water is somehow more probably than space aliens coming for our bodies when we die). I saw some instances where the people proudly announced that they were in fact part of a cult, and others (none more so than the Scientologists) that could not find a single more offensive word to describe themselves. Suddenly I'm very confused.

What exactly is a cult? What is a religion? Can we come to a consensus as to what the two words mean and how exactly they differ? 

Now my favorite snarky response to this question is one I heard a while ago from my father, who in turn saw it on a t-shirt: The only difference between a religion and a cult is numbers. I can definitely agree with that assessment (especially when referring to people who think that cults are simply people who believe "crazy" things), but let's take a closer look for a second.

This is the part when we go back to the dictionaries, and let's see if we can get a little consistency.

Oxford English Dictionary:

cult: a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object:

       1. a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members

religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods

            1. a particular system of faith and worship

            2. a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion


Merriam-Webster: eek, this is a long list

cult: 1. formal religious veneration

         2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents 

         3. a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents

         4. a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator

         5. great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad 

religion: 1. the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion>    

            2. (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

            3. a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 

            4. archaic : scrupulous conformity

            5. a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith 

dictionary.reference.com:

cult: 1. a particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies.

         2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers

         3. the object of such devotion

         4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc

         5. Sociology . a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols  

religion: 1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs

               2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects

               3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices

               4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc

               5. the practice of religious  beliefs; ritual observance of faith

Crap, my head hurts just looking at all that. Doesn't seem that anyone can really agree can they?

Well, for starters, there is obviously a lot of overlap between what constitutes a religion and what constitutes a cult, which of course is quite obvious. If we take away all of the overlap, what do we really have left?

1. a relatively small group of people

2. practices regarded by others as strange or regarded as unorthodox

3. imposing excessive control over members

As I said before, the second one is quite subjective and based on nothing particularly concrete- should we call creationists a cult? AIDS-denialists? 9/11 truthers? perhaps, but as I said earlier, I don't see anything in the core beliefs of the main monotheistic religions that makes them more reasonable than these other logic-defying beliefs, so unless we want to abandon the distiction between the two words entirely I would be wary of this point here.

The first one is interesting in that it falls into the snarky comment that I made earlier. I suppose those that believe that this is the main distinction are the ones that find absolutely nothing wrong with being referred to as a cult and even adopt the label with pride: they are the few people who actually got it right and so be it. 

It is the third that I find the most telling, and the one that I think the one factor that tied all of those documentaries that I saw together: the excessive control. The splitting up of families, of not allowing members to speak to or interact with anyone outside the faith. The strict rules with which they control every aspect of their followers' lives, eliminating the chance that they think for themselves. 

This aspect is unfortunately found, in a diluted form, in pretty much every religion there is: you can talk to outsiders, just not marry them. You can marry them, but only if you convince them to convert. You can marry someone who does not convert, but the children you have must be raised in the faith. You can talk to your child who decides to leave the faith, but you must be deeply ashamed of them and worried for the fate of their soul. You have to fast for a month. You don't have to fast for a month, just no meat on Fridays. You can eat meat on Fridays, just not on Fridays during Lent. On and on and on it goes. 

When these rules and restrictions become less and less reasonable and cause the people following them to be less able to integrate into their society, we begin to call that religion a cult. There are also many religions that follow all three of these criteria but that are simply referred to as "fundementalist religions", but is there really a difference? Either way, does it really matter?

What do you think when you hear the word "cult"? Is there anything that these dictionaries have left out, but that you would have included in the definition?